Advocates for the poor and often hungry in the US say that problems for the nation's needy could intensify if the agriculture department bows to pressure from congress to reduce food-assistance schemes.
Politicians are looking at ways to stimulate the economy and balance the federal budget with a proposed $4.2bn cut in its food-stamps programme that currently assists 45 million people.
According to a recent US government report, some 15 per cent of Americans are relying on food stamps. That is a 50 per cent jump from last year at a cost of $65bn per year.
Al Jazeera's Kristen Saloomey reports from New York.
The official list includes a number of English language slang terms for sexual acts, religious words and other words Pakistani religious authorities consider obscene.
International Christian Concern's Jonathan Racho says the move is a step beyond Pakistan's previous anti-Christian actions.
"You have to remember that this is a government that controls a lot of activities in the country, including mobile companies," Racho said.
"It's very easy for them to contact the mobile companies and give them the list of the words that can't be transmitted over the airwaves. It is doable if the government wants them to do it."
But he said the move already has been met with "an outcry from Christians from many parts of the world."
Racho said it remains to be seen how the government will prosecute violations. Pakistan has an infamous law that bans the defaming of any recognized religion but in practice applies only to Islam and its prophet, Muhammad. Penalties for violation of the law include death.
"I don't think that use of the name of Jesus or any of those words will be made a part of the blasphemy law," Racho said. "I also don't think the government wants to prosecute anyone who sends a message with one of the seventeen hundred words on the list.
"If the words coming through question Muhammad, then the messages will automatically fall under the existing blasphemy laws," he explained.
Opposition to the texting restriction is also coming from government officials.
A Christian member of the Sindh state's parliament, Salim Khursheed Khokhar, introduced a resolution to overturn the ban on the words, but his motion has been rejected.
The major concern for human rights organizations is the further erosion of religious freedom in Pakistan.
"If Jesus Christ remains on the list of banned words, it will seriously limit the freedoms of Christians, and it will open a new chapter in the history of persecution of Christians in Pakistan," Racho said.
However, a report in today's Times of India says the Pakistani Telecommunications Commission may be reconsidering because of the criticism.
"The list was met with uproar, both at the attempt to censor messages and the inclusion of many seemingly innocuous terms, among them Jesus Christ, lotion, athlete's foot, robber, idiot, four twenty and harder," the Times of India report said.
Pakistan Telecommunications Authority spokesman Mohammad Younis Khan told Agence France-Presse the agency would consider making the list much shorter after consultation with civil society representatives and mobile phone operators.
"At the moment we are not blocking or filtering any word. No final decision has been taken in this regard," Khan said, according to the report.
There is no word coming from Pakistan on whether the name of Jesus is still on the shorter list of words that will still be banned.
The central secretariat of the Pakistan Christian Congress said there are more than a million Christians who are mobile phone customers in Pakistan, and they often wish blessings on each other in Jesus name.
Nazir Bhatti said that such censorship denies basic human rights.
A report from the Pakistan Christian Post noted the problem apparently developed after young Muslims started using phrases such as "Jesus, it's awesome," "Jesus Christ, is it true" and "Swear upon Jesus."
DES MOINES, Iowa — Livestock farmers are demanding a change in the nation's ethanol policy, claiming current rules could lead to spikes in meat prices and even shortages at supermarkets if corn growers have a bad year.
The amount of corn consumed by the ethanol industry combined with continued demand from overseas has cattle and hog farmers worried that if corn production drops due to drought or another natural disaster, the cost of feed could skyrocket, leaving them little choice but to reduce the size of their herds. A smaller supply could, in turn, mean higher meat prices and less selection at the grocery store.
The ethanol industry argues such scenarios are unlikely, but farmers have the backing of food manufacturers, who also fear that a federal mandate to increase production of ethanol will protect that industry from any kind of rationing amid a corn shortage.
The subject of debate is the Renewable Fuel Standard, a 2005 law requiring the nation to produce 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2012. The standard was changed in 2007 to gradually increase the requirement to 36 billion gallons by 2022.
While a $5 billion-a-year federal ethanol subsidy is scheduled to expire this year, the production requirement will remain, unless it's changed by Congress.
That has other corn consumers worried that if production falls and rationing is needed, ethanol companies will be exempt. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently reduced its estimate of this year's corn crop because of flooding in the Midwest and drought in the southern plains, and corn reserves are expected to fall to a 20-day supply next year. A 30-day supply is considered healthy.
At the same time, the price of corn for livestock feed has risen from an average of just over $3 a bushel in 2006-07 to an average of more than $6 this year.
"If we get a short crop, the ethanol industry does not participate in rationing and the brunt will fall on livestock and poultry," said Steve Meyer, president of Paragon Economics, a livestock and grain marketing and economic advisory company in Adel, Iowa.
A bill introduced last month by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., would partially waive the ethanol goals when corn inventories are low.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents more than 300 food and beverage makers, also has endorsed the bill.
"We're behind livestock producers on this issue," said Geoff Moody, the association's director of energy and environmental policy. "We believe if there is a need to ration that ethanol will eat first because of the mandate."
About 5.9 billion bushels of corn were used for animal feed last year; 2.4 billion were exported; and about 4.9 billion were used for ethanol, up from about 630 million bushels in 2000, according to the National Corn Growers Association. About 1 billion bushels were eaten by humans in products such as cereal, sweeteners, and beverages.
U.S. corn farmers have steadily increased production over the years thanks to hybrid seeds and improved techniques, but Meyer said a 20 percent decline in the harvest would be enough to force corn rationing and lead to feed shortages. That would leave livestock farmers with little choice, he said.
"We can't shut down feeding," Meyer said. "The only way to do that is to kill the animals."
Even if there's no rationing, ethanol manufacturers generally have been better able to cope with high corn prices than livestock farmers because their business has bigger profit margins, said Darrel Good, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois.
Randy Spronk, who raises corn and hogs in Edgerton, Minn., said farmers don't want to attack the ethanol industry but they want a plan in place if the corn supply should drop significantly.
"We really don't want to attack ethanol but wise people make plans," he said.
Matt Hartwig, chief of staff for the Renewable Fuels Association, called the effort to rewrite the fuel standard law "little more than a Trojan horse effort" to weaken or even eliminate it. He said the farmers' complaints were overblown and most livestock producers and meatpacking companies were making good profits.
Also, the ethanol industry now produces about 1 billion gallons of ethanol more than is required and if corn supplies fall short, it could cut back, he said.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the fuel standard, said in a statement that states can already ask for a waiver "under certain circumstances, including inadequate domestic supply or harm to the economy or environment of a state."
Texas Gov. Rick Perry did this in 2008, claiming rising corn prices were hurting ranchers in his state. The EPA said it denied the request because the quota for renewable fuel wasn't causing severe economic harm to the state.
Meyer said many farmers are skeptical about a process that leaves such decisions to the EPA administrator, who "many in agriculture believe won't consider the best interest of livestock."
Good, the University of Illinois farm economist, said meat supplies could tighten if competing demands force corn prices higher. He said it boils down to a simple choice: "We're going to have to reduce our rate of increase in corn consumption or we're going to have to produce more corn."
JERUSALEM (AP) — Newly found coins underneath Jerusalem's Western Wall could change the accepted belief about the construction of one of the world's most sacred sites two millennia ago, Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday.
The man usually credited with building the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary is Herod, a Jewish ruler who died in 4 B.C. Herod's monumental compound replaced and expanded a much older Jewish temple complex on the same site.
But archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority now say diggers have found coins underneath the massive foundation stones of the compound's Western Wall that were stamped by a Roman proconsul 20 years after Herod's death. That indicates that Herod did not build the wall — part of which is venerated as Judaism's holiest prayer site — and that construction was not close to being complete when he died.
"The find changes the way we see the construction, and shows it lasted for longer than we originally thought," said the dig's co-director, Eli Shukron.
The four bronze coins were stamped around 17 A.D. by the Roman official Valerius Gratus. He preceded Pontius Pilate of the New Testament story as Rome's representative in Jerusalem, according to Ronny Reich of Haifa University, one of the two archaeologists in charge of the dig.
The coins were found inside a ritual bath that predated construction of the renovated Temple Mount complex and which was filled in to support the new walls, Reich said.
They show that construction of the Western Wall had not even begun at the time of Herod's death. Instead, it was likely completed only generations later by one of his descendants.
The coins confirm a contemporary account by Josephus Flavius, a Jewish general who became a Roman historian. Writing after a Jewish revolt against Rome and the destruction of the Temple by legionnaires in 70 A.D., he recounted that work on the Temple Mount had been completed only by King Agrippa II, Herod's great-grandson, two decades before the entire compound was destroyed.
Scholars have long been familiar with Josephus' account, but the find is nonetheless important because it offers the "first clear-cut archaeological evidence that part of the enclosure wall was not built by Herod," said archaeologist Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, who was not involved in the dig.
Josephus also wrote that the end of construction left 18,000 workmen unemployed in Jerusalem. Some historians have linked this to discontent that eventually erupted in the Jewish revolt.
The compound, controlled since 1967 by Israel, now houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the golden-capped Muslim shrine known as the Dome of the Rock. The fact that the compound is holy both to Jews and Muslims makes it one of the world's most sensitive religious sites.
The dig in which the coins were discovered cleared a Roman-era drainage tunnel that begins at the biblical Pool of Siloam, one of the city's original water sources, and terminates with a climb up a ladder out onto a 2,000-year-old street inside Jerusalem's Old City. The tunnel runs by the foundation stones of the compound's western wall, where the coins were found.
The drainage tunnel was excavated as part of the dig at the City of David, which is perhaps Israel's richest archaeological excavation and its most contentious.
The dig is being carried out inside the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, and is funded by a group associated with the Israeli settlement movement that opposes any division of the city as part of a future peace deal.
The excavation of the tunnel has also yielded a Roman sword, oil lamps, pots and coins that scholars believe are likely debris from an attempt by Jewish rebels to hide in the underground passage as they fled from the Roman soldiers.
The 21-year-old Idaho man who shot at the White House earlier this month was a fan of antigovernment conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, The New York Timesreports today.
Oscar Ortega, the Mexican-American waiter from Idaho Falls who on Nov. 11 fired a semiautomatic rifle out of his car window while driving by the president’s residence, allegedly believes that he is the “modern day Jesus Christ” and that Obama is the antichrist. His friend Jake Chapman, who sold Ortega the AK-47 used in the shooting, told the Times that about a year ago, he and Ortega watched Jones’ 2009 “The Obama Deception,” a feature-length film promulgating the theory that the president is the puppet of shadowy agents of the New World Order who plan to transform America into a totalitarian state resembling Nazi Germany.
Chapman, 21, said he had never heard Ortega discuss violent action.
Ortega’s sister Yesenia Hernandez told the Times she thinks her brother was motivated by mental illness. Research psychiatrist Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Va., agreed, telling reporters that Ortega’s behavior, and the age at which it started, suggest a “textbook case of schizophrenia”
Hatewatch asked Torrey about the extent to which a schizophrenic person’s thinking might be affected by conspiracy theories like those Jones espouses.
“There are all kinds of crazy people putting out all kinds of crazy ideas, that’s been true forever and now it’s been magnified by a thousand by the internet,” Torrey said in a phone interview this morning. “People whose brains are working normally can hopefully work it out and realize, ‘this is a crazy idea.’ But if your brain is not working normally, you have less ability to work it out. Assuming Mr. Ortega has schizophrenia, he has less ability to sort through crazy ideas.”
Ortega is not the only violent extremist to whom Jones’ antigovernment conspiracy theories have appealed.
Byron Williams, the would-be terrorist who was arrested in July 2010 after a shootout with cops on his way to San Francisco, where he allegedly planned to kill employees at the offices of the ACLU and the Tides Foundation, also followed Jones. Another fan was Richard Poplawski, a white supremacist who was sentenced to death in September for the 2009 shooting deaths of three Pittsburgh police officers. Shortly after the murders, his friend Edward Perkovic told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Poplawski, 22, followed Jones, and that among other things he feared an attack on gun rights and thought that U.S. troops would be used against citizens – exactly the sort of conspiracist speculation that Jones specializes in.
True to form, a Nov. 18 article posted on Jones’ website, InfoWars, suggests that Ortega was a plant, possibly even a Mossad agent. “There are interesting facts surrounding Oscar Ortega-Hernandez and this case. At this point in time, we are left with more questions than answers,” it says. “How was it possible for a reportedly mentally challenged person to fire multiple high-caliber rounds into the White House from Constitution Avenue and escape the immediate security area without being detained? … More facts will undoubtedly filter out as this case proceeds.”
Coming upon a hate site unexpectedly, you sometimes get this down-the-rabbit hole, Alice-in-Wonderland feeling that you’ve been wrenched into an alternate reality. Such a place is Vatican Assassins, the domain of one Jon Eric Phelps, whose interests and identity are pretty well summed up in the nearly incomprehensible blurb for his 1,836 page magnum opus, Vatican Assassins: Wounded in the House of My Friends:
After Thirty-Eight Years of Suppression
(1963 – 2001)
Exposing the Murder of Knight of Columbus
President John F. Kennedy,
by the bloody hand of the Society of Jesus,
by Order of its Jesuit General being
“the Black Pope”,
In Command of His Most Obedient Servant,
the “infallible” Pope Paul VI being
“the White Pope”,
He Controlling the Soviet KGB
and Jesuit-trained Fidel Castro’s Communist Cuba
through the British, Russian and American
Branches of the Knights of Malta,
While in Command of His Jesuit-trained
Most Obedient Servant:
The Archbishop of New York and
Knight of Columbus
Francis Cardinal Spellman,
Directing the Cast of Organized American Traitors,
They Being the High Command of The Knights of Malta,
Shriner Freemasonry
The Knights of Columbus,
The Mafia and therefore,
The New York Council on Foreign Relations Controlling the “Holy Roman”
Fourteenth Amendment American Empire Including Its:
Commander-in-Chief, President Lyndon Johnson,
Federal Government and War Machine,
Federal Reserve Banking System,
Military Industrial Complex,
National “Lucepress” Media,
Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Central Intelligence Agency,
National Security Agency
Secret Service,
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court with his Warren Commission,
Speaker of the House of Representatives
with His Assassinations Committee,
and Vietnam War
by
Eric Jon Phelps, White American Freeman
Dispensational, Fifth Monarchy, Seventh-Day Baptist-Calvinist
Phelps, who advertises that he is a White American and a Baptist Calvinist (and a Fifth Monarchist, too, which is an apocalyptic cult that was active in England during the time of Oliver Cromwell), manages to touch on virtually every crazy theory in right-wing New World Order conspiracism, white separatism, birtherism, and 9/11 denial, while at the same time hearkening back to the Anti-Masons and the Anti-Papist Know Nothings of the nineteenth century and much earlier.
Click on the “news” stories featured on the Vatican Assassins website and you’ll learn that “Army General David Patraeous [sic] is a Jesuit Temporal Coadjutor,” as is Vice Admiral Gerald R. Beaman, Commander of US Third Fleet. So is radio’s Alex Jones. Newt Gingrich “is one of the ten most dangerous, Jesuitical politicians of the Pope’s ‘Holy Roman’ Fourteenth Amendment, Cartel-Corporate-Fascist, Socialist-Communist American Empire.” Pope Benedict XVI is an Illuminized Freemason of the highest rank and “[Former Carter Administration National Security Advisor] Zbigniew Brzezinski, a notable CFR-member, founder of the Trilateral Commission, key Bilderberger, fanatical Socialist-Communist, alien Polish Roman Catholic and high-level Freemason, was the foremost mentor of Barry Davis Soetoro, remade into ‘Barack Hussein Obama.’”
Especially crazy are Phelps’ theories of the Kennedy assassination that center on the Jesuit order and its leader, known as the “black Pope.” His fever dream is of a world that is controlled by the Jesuits—either directly or through their Jewish and Masonic proxies (not only were they behind 9/11, he tells us, the Vatican actually founded Islam in the 600s—the Arab Spring is their most recent handiwork), is based on a panoply of primary sources, most of them published long before JFK, Cardinal Spellman, or Pope Paul VI were born.
Protestant conspiracy theorists were obsessed with the Jesuits for centuries before the Illuminati, the Rothschilds, the Bilderbergs, or ACORN were ever thought of. Robert Ware forged the so-called Extreme Oath of the Jesuits all the way back in 1689 and published it in his book Foxes and Firebrands. “You have been taught to insidiously plant the seeds of jealousy and hatred between communities, provinces, states that were at peace, and incite them to deeds of blood,” it supposedly began. “You have been taught your duty as a spy….none can command here who has not consecrated his labors with the blood of the heretic; for ‘without the shedding of blood no man can be saved.’”
Phelps’s book is based on panoply of like-minded “primary” sources. If you buy it, he’ll send you a bonus CD that includes the complete texts of thirteen of them, among them The Black Pope, a book that was “one of the hottest, most controversial books of the late 1800s. This book was so hot, so very controversial that the Vatican forced its withdrawal shortly after it was published.”
The Black Pope: Or, The Jesuits’ Conspiracy Against American Institutions was published in 1892 by the Reverend O.E. Murray, Ph.D., and it was based on a series of lectures the Reverend delivered under the auspices of the virulently anti-Catholic American Protective Association—an organization that, for its relentless fear-mongering and its indifference to the truth, bears an uncanny resemblance to virulently anti-Muslim ideologues Robert Spencer and Pam Geller. The APA is perhaps best remembered for distributing a bogus encyclical in which Pope Leo XIII ordered loyal Catholics to exterminate all of the Protestants in the United States, “on or about the feast of Ignatius Loyola in the year of our Lord, 1893.”
Other texts on the CD are the Rev. John William Dowling’s History of Romanism: From the Earliest Corruptions of Christianity to the Present Time (1845) and Edwin Allen Sherman’s The Engineer Corps of Hell; or, Rome’s Sappers and Miners: Containing the Tactics of the ‘Militia of the Pope,’ of the Secret Manual of the Jesuits, and Other Matter Intensely Interesting, Especially to the Freemasons and Lovers of Religious Liberty, Whithersoever (1883). But wait, there’s more. You’ll get The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (1835)—a prurient account of a Canadian nun’s escape from sex slavery that was America’s bestselling book before Uncle Tom’s Cabin—and Thrilling Mysteries of a Convent Revealed by T.B. Peterson (1835), which features scenes in which Jesuits drink blood from a human skull, burn the Bible, and trample the American flag underfoot. Then there’s Abbate M. Leone’s Jesuit Conspiracy: Secret Plan of the Order. This last is the story of a teenaged novice who overhears his superiors plotting to overthrow the governments of the world—a plot premise that can’t but have a familiar ring to readers of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purports to be the notes of a secret meeting of high-placed Jews with similarly nefarious aims.
Adachi goes on to mock Phelps for engaging in the same conspiracy mongering as his, “If Phelps is to be believed (not!), even the Rothschilds, the most infamous of Zionist Illuminati, are not really the guilty source of crimes or conspiracy. Phelps says the Jesuits are actually the hidden controllers of the Rothschilds. (What supermen these Jesuits seem to be!) The Jesuits run Hollywood, too, and the Jesuits are masterminds of the pornography industry. According to Phelps, the Jesuits are guilty of, well, just about everything. They’re probably even behind the extraterrestrial and UFO aliens.”
Apparently the story of the pot calling the kettle black hasn’t made its way into Phelps and Adachi’s circles.
FBI arrests seven over Amish beard cutting attacks
By Kim Palmer
CLEVELAND (Reuters) – Seven men from an Amish splinter group in Ohio were arrested on federal hate crimes charges on Wednesday, accused of involvement in humiliating attacks on fellow Amish involving cutting off their beards and hair.
The men face charges linked to multiple religiously-motivated physical assaults, and the most serious charges could carry a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
"The defendants forcibly restrained multiple Amish men and cut off their beards and head hair with scissors and battery-powered clippers, causing bodily injury to these men while also injuring others who attempted to stop the attacks," the statement said.
The assaults were viewed as particularly egregious for the Amish because, once married, Amish men typically do not trim their beards and Amish women do not cut their hair for religious and cultural reasons.
The attacks took place throughout the fall in three counties south of Cleveland, one of the country's largest concentrations of Amish.
Among the arrested was the breakaway sect's leader, Bishop Samuel Mullet Sr. of Bergholz, Ohio, who was accused of orchestrating the beard-cuttings as revenge for being shunned by the Amish community.
Also arrested were Mullet's family members, Johnny S. Mullet and Daniel S. Mullet of Bergholz and Lester S. Mullet of Hammondsville, Ohio. Police also arrested Levi F. Miller, Eli M. Miller, and Emanuel Schrock, all of Bergholz.
The men were expected to be arraigned later on Wednesday.
In one of the attacks, earlier this month, an elderly Amish man had his hair and beard chopped off by his son and grandsons, who have ties to the sect. The man, however, did not press charges, sticking with the Amish tendency not to contact police, Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said.
The attack drew the focus of the FBI.
"I'd like to see Sam Mullet convicted and taken from the community," Abdalla said after the November attack. "You just can't realize the power and domination he has over his people."
In October, five accused attackers -- Daniel, Johnny, and Lester Mullet, as well as Levi and Eli Miller -- were arrested on state charges of kidnapping and aggravated burglary after they were accused of attacking a family of five.
(Writing by Eric Johnson in Chicago; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)
In the first case of its kind, the FBI on Wednesday arrested the leader of an Amish splinter sect and six of his followers in Ohio on federal hate crime charges for cutting the hair and beards of other Amish men and women.
The hair-cutting was a form of religious degradation and viewed as punishment in a leadership squabble among various Amish clans, court documents say.
“The defendants conspired to carry out a series of assaults against fellow Amish individuals with whom they were having a religiously-based dispute,” Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division and Steven M. Dettelbach, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, said in a joint statement.
The suspects “forcibly restrained multiple Amish men and cut off their beards and head hair with scissors and battery-powered clippers, causing bodily injury to these men while also injuring others who attempted to stop the attacks,’’ the statement said.
The case is unusual in that the Amish are pacifists who denounce violence and routinely handle their disputes and punishments internally without involving law enforcement.
“The fact that federal charges have been filed is stunning in this Ohio town, as the Amish seek to forgive those who have wronged them,” Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter John Caniglia reported Wednesday from Millersburg.
The attacks began in September and continued as recently as Nov. 9, prompting FBI agents to move quickly to make the arrests with a federal criminal complaint and arrest warrants signed by a U.S. Magistrate instead of waiting for the more-protracted grand jury indictment process.
In a federal criminal complaint filed in Cleveland, Samuel Mullet Sr., Johnny S. Mullet, Daniel S. Mullet, Levi F. Miller, Eli M. Miller and Emanuel Schrock, all of Bergholz, Ohio; and Lester S. Mullet, of Hammondsville, Ohio, are charged with using a deadly weapon and causing bodily injury because of the actual or perceived religion of their alleged victims.
The attackers used clippers and bought a $27.95 pair of horse mane sheers to carry out the hair- and beard-cuttings, photographing the disfigured victims afterwards, court documents say. The maximum potential penalty for these federal violations is life in prison.
Johnny, Daniel and Lester Mullet and Levi and Eli Miller were arrested in Holmes County, Ohio, on Oct. 7 on state charges of aggravated burglary and kidnapping with the intent to terrorize or commit serious injury. They were free on state bond when they were re-arrested Wednesday when a team of FBI agents and local police raided the Bergholz compound near Millersburg, Ohio.
Samuel Mullet Sr., who became the bishop of an Amish clan in Bergholz, Ohio, in 2003, is accused in charging documents with leading the hate crime conspiracy, directing his sons to cut the hair and beards of followers who he ex-communicated after they moved away. Other Amish bishops later determined Mullet’s excommunications weren’t in keeping with Amish teachings and scripture, and the defectors were allowed to join other Amish clans – apparently angering Mullet.
The charging documents allege Mullet has “forced extreme punishment and physical injury” on those in his community who defy him. He has forced his followers to “sleep for days at a time” in a chicken coop and allowed members of the Bergholz clan “to beat other members” who disobey Mullet.
He also “has been counseling the married women in the Bergholz clan and taking them into his home so that he may cleanse them of the devil with acts of sexual intimacy,” the documents allege.
Set in the world of mega-churches in which a former Deadhead-turned-born again-Christian finds himself on the run from fundamentalist members of his mega-church who will do anything to protect their larger-than-life pastor.
Caught on Video: Helicopter Crashes Installing Christmas Tree in Auckland
Dramatic video. This one you've gotta see.
A helicopter installing a Christmas tree on Auckland's waterfront on Wednesday morning crashes in dramatic fashion, incredibly the pilot escapes serious injury. See the dramatic video footage below.
AP reports: Footage captured by Television New Zealand Wednesday morning shows the pilot slowly descending from about 25 feet (8 meters) when the chopper's blades appear to get caught in cables attached to scaffolding. The rear of the helicopter snaps and the pilot is tossed about as the helicopter smashes into the ground.
The television station reports that pilot Greg Gribble, who has 20 years experience, says he's "doing fine" after his ordeal
