A doctor in an impoverished Philadelphia neighborhood delivered babies alive, killed them with scissors

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DA: Pa. had 'utter disregard' for abortion-seekers

AP – FILE - This Feb. 23, 2010 file photo, shows the Women's Medical Society in Philadelphia. Abortion doctor …

PHILADELPHIA – A doctor accused of running a filthy "abortion mill" for decades in an impoverished Philadelphia neighborhood delivered babies alive, killed them with scissors and allowed a woman who had survived 20 years in a refugee camp to be overmedicated and die at his clinic, prosecutors said.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, was charged Wednesday with eight counts of murder for the deaths of seven babies and one patient. Nine employees also were charged, including four with murder.

Prosecutors described the clinic as a "house of horrors" where Gosnell kept baby body parts on the shelves, allowed a 15-year-old high school student to perform intravenous anesthesia on patients and had his licensed cosmetologist wife do late-term abortions. A family practice physician, Gosnell has no certification in gynecology or obstetrics.

Four months after Karnamaya Mongar reached the United States after spending nearly two decades in camps in Nepal she was dead at Gosnell's clinic. The 41-year-old mother of three died of cardiac arrest when she was given too much Demerol and other drugs, prosecutors said.

"Pennsylvania is not a third-world country. There were several oversight agencies that stumbled upon and should have shut down Kermit Gosnell long ago. But none of them did, even after Karnamaya Mongar's death," city prosecutors charged in a nearly 300-page grand jury report.

The "Women's Medical Society" opened in 1979 and was inspected by the state Department of Health only sporadically. The last inspection was in 1993. Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams accused state health officials of "utter disregard" for Gosnell's patients, who were mostly poor minority women like Mongar.

Gosnell made millions performing thousands of dangerous abortions. A second woman, a 22-year-old mother of two from Philadelphia, died in 2000 from a perforated uterus.

Mongar, a refugee with her husband Ash from native Bhutan, had gone to the clinic in November 2009. Gosnell wasn't at the clinic at the time. His staff administered the drugs repeatedly to the 4-foot-11, 110-pound Mongar as they waited for him to arrive. No one who answered the phone Wednesday at a listing for Ash Mongar in Virginia could comment.

"Those are the kind of stories that break your heart," said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, which rejected Gosnell from membership years ago because he did not meet its standards of care. The group's 400 members perform about half the abortions in North America, she said.

"Unfortunately, some women don't know where to turn. You sometimes have substandard providers preying on low-income women who don't know that they do have other (safe) options," she said.

Authorities who raided Gosnell's clinic early last year in search of controlled drug violations instead stumbled upon a stench-filled clinic with bags and bottles of aborted fetuses scattered throughout the building.

"By day it was a prescription mill; by night it was an abortion mill," the grand jury report said.

Oddly, Gosnell also kept jars of severed feet on his shelves, Williams said. Gosnell also had a taste for macabre jokes, once muttering that a nearly six-pound baby born alive to a 17-year-old who was seven-and-a-half months pregnant could "walk me to the bus stop," the report said.

Gosnell typically worked weeknights, arriving hours after his unskilled staff administered anesthesia and drugs to induce labor. He then "forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord," Williams said.

In addition to the two women who died, scores more were injured from perforated bowels, cervixes and uteruses, authorities said. Some were left sterile at the clinic, which had no trained nurses or medical staff other than Gosnell, they said.

"He does not know how to do an abortion," Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore said. "Once he got them there, he saw dollar signs and did abortions that other people wouldn't do."

Women came from across the city, state and mid-Atlantic region for the illegal late-term abortions, authorities said. He didn't advertise, but word got around. They paid $325 for first-trimester abortions and $1,600 to $3,000 for abortions up to 30 weeks. The clinic took in up to $15,000 a day, authorities said.

"People knew near and far that if you needed a late-term abortion you could go see Dr. Gosnell," Williams said.

White women from the suburbs were ushered into a separate, slightly cleaner area because Gosnell believed they were more likely to file complaints, Williams said.

Few if any of the unconscious patients knew their babies had been born alive and then killed, prosecutors said. Many were first-time mothers who were told they were 24 weeks pregnant, even if they were much further along, authorities said.

State regulators ignored complaints about Gosnell, or the 46 lawsuits filed against him. State officials, who arrived to testify with lawyers in tow, "enraged" the grand jury, Williams said. Yet he could find no criminal charges with which to charge them, in part because of the time that had elapsed.

The state's reluctance to investigate, under several administrations, may stem partly from the sensitivity of the abortion debate, Williams said. Nonetheless, he called Gosnell's case a clear case of murder.

"A doctor who with scissors cuts into the necks, severing the spinal cords of living, breathing babies who would survive with proper medical attention commits murder under the law," he said. "Regardless of one's feelings about abortion, whatever one's beliefs, that is the law."

The grand jury spent a year investigating Gosnell's practice. According to the report, Gosnell had no nurses on hand to monitor the women's medication or recovery, no hospital on standby for emergencies and few if any medical records because Gosnell destroyed them. His staff testified about "scores of gruesome killings" of infants born alive.

"These killings became so routine that no one could put an exact number on them," the grand jury report said. "They were considered 'standard procedure.'"

Authorities charged that Gosnell deliberately hired unqualified staff so he could pay them low wages. He sent his six children to private schools — one is now a doctor and another a professor — and has a beach house at the New Jersey shore, prosecutors said.

Besides the five charged with murder, five other clinic employees, including Gosnell's wife, were charged with conspiracy, drug and other crimes. Pearl Gosnell, the doctor's third wife, performed extremely late-term abortions on Sundays when the clinic was otherwise closed, the report said. All 10 charged were in custody.

Williams, a Democrat, released the report a day after Republican Gov. Tom Corbett succeeded Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat. Spokesman Kevin Harley pledged Corbett's administration would do more to oversee such clinics.

Lawyer William J. Brennan, who represented Gosnell during the investigation, noted that the doctor served patients in a low-income city neighborhood for decades.

"Obviously, these allegations are very, very serious," Brennan said.

Under Pennsylvania law, abortions are illegal after 24 weeks of pregnancy, or just under six months, and most doctors won't perform them after 20 weeks because of the risks, prosecutors said.

In a typical late-term abortion, the fetus is dismembered in the uterus and then removed in pieces. That is more common than the procedure opponents call "partial-birth abortion," in which the fetus is partially extracted before being destroyed.

Gosnell earned his medical degree from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and is board certified in family practice. He started, but did not finish, a residency in obstetrics-gynecology, authorities said.

Online:

Grand jury report: http://www.phila.gov/districtattorney/grandJury_WomensMedical.html Read more at news.yahoo.com

 

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Law officer kills self at Battle Ground

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Law officer kills self at Battle Ground

BATTLE GROUND, Wash. (AP) -- The Clark County sheriff's office says an off-duty law enforcement officer who shot himself Tuesday night in the woods near Battle Ground was distraught over marital problems.

The Columbian reports the man had been drinking and putting a gun to his head and deputies had responded to a report of a domestic disturbance at his home.

Sgt. Tony Barnes says deputies were trying to talk with him when he walked into the woods.

Deputies heard shots and searchers with night-vision equipment found the body.

Information from: The Columbian, http://www.columbian.com Read more at hosted.ap.org

 

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Occult Pagan revival signals death of America and the West

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Occult Pagan revival signals death of America and the West

By Linda Kimball

More than eighty years ago, America began moving away from its' founding Biblical-based worldview to what President Calvin Coolidge identified as "pagan materialism." Fearing for the future of our Constitutional Republic he said in a speech delivered on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 5, 1926: "Democracy is Christ's government in church and state," said Coolidge as he quoted John Wise (1710). "Here was the doctrine of equality, popular sovereignty, and the substance of the theory of inalienable rights....When we take all these circumstances into consideration, it is but natural that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence should open with a reference to Nature's God and should close...with an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world and an assertion of a firm reliance on Divine Providence...In its main feature the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. " (Backfired: A Nation Born for Religious Tolerance No Longer Tolerates Religion, William J. Federer, pp. 270-271) The "pagan materialism" Coolidge warned against is evolutionary materialist scientism, also known as Secular Humanism. Materialism is neither new nor scientific. In the main, it is ancient Epicurean Atomism revamped and dressed up as modern science. Materialism teaches that all that exists is merely material or energy which is impersonal, totally neutral to any moral system or any interest in man as man. In this view, there is no basis for law, and no basis for man as unique and important. Materialism is of the world view of monism which teaches that all that exists is "one self-creating, self-sufficient substance" which may be divine spirit (pantheism) or spiritless substance (materialism). Monism is held in common by materialism, pantheism, and spiritualism and dates back to pagan antiquity and was or is taught by all non-biblical thought systems from Buddhism to Epicureanism, Gnosticism and today's New Age Cosmic Humanism. Monism teaches that all things, including mankind, are merely diverse parts of the one-substance. God is acceptable to this monistic frame of mind only if He is not something outside of and superior to the one-substance but one with it. In other words, God must be dispersed throughout the whole substance. In his book, "Utopia: The Perennial Heresy," Thomas Molnar explains that evolution, whether Darwinian or a spiritual conception such as Teilhard's idea, serves as an imaginary mechanism of perfection for both man and the one-substance: "Through evolution the world substance becomes progressively pure, homogenous and perfect until the terminal point is reached..." (p.235) At that point, there is either a perfected non-spiritual substance (materialism) or a perfectly spiritualized substance (pantheism). For utopians this means a heaven on earth ruled by perfected god-men. In that materialism excludes the transcendent Creator, angels, demons, heaven, and hell it must also explain away man's God-given individual spiritual endowments — soul, mind, free will, and conscience — attributes defined by the Founders as self-evident truths, for it is self-evidently true that all men think, choose, and feel guilt. In short, in denying the existence of God the Father and man's supernaturally endowed attributes, materialist scientism abolishes our unalienable rights, thereby making worthless both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It was for this reason that Coolidge warned against pagan materialism: "Unless the faith of the American in these religious (Biblical) convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We cannot continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause." (ibid, p. 265; emphasis added) Despite the valiant efforts of Pres. Coolidge and many other men of integrity to edify Americans, the consensus in contemporary America and the western world is no longer Biblical but pagan, that is, Cosmic Humanism (Eastern/Gnostic occult New Age) and Secular Humanism (materialist scientism). In practical terms, this means that through the goetia (black magic) of Darwinian transformism "we the people" have been speculatively reduced to aggregates of matter, subsumed into the "one substance" and now have solidarity (oneness) with apes, rocks, trees, fish, tumblebugs, pond scum, and dirt. Individual salvation has become collective salvation, individual rights are now group rights, male-female created distinctions have been melted down into androgyny, and monogamous marriage has become a sexual free-for-all. Law, foreign affairs, taxation, politics, immigration, morality and all other important decisions are now decided by a small group of "elites," many of whom are New Age spiritists led by spirit guides and Transcended Masters, and what they decide at any given moment is supposedly for the common good of society. These all-powerful individuals are America's Ruling Class, and in back of them, the U.N., NGOs, and other powerful global organizations. The Return to Paganism C.S. Lewis observed in The Abolition of Man (1947) that Cosmic and Secular Humanism appeared in Western history in the heart of Christendom during the Renaissance. The Renaissance reawakened a magic view of the world closely connected with pagan Gnostic sectarianism, Eastern pantheism as well as alchemical-scientism. Along with Eastern pantheism came spiritual evolution, reincarnation, karma and occultism, which means that evolutionary conceptions existed long before Darwin. Early on Lewis understood that Cosmic and Secular Humanism were merely two sides of the same revival of pagan monism. Thus he argued, Cosmic and Secular Humanism are not enemies in principle but rather cooperating philosophies united against the transcendent Creator, Christianity and Christian-based civilization. Brooks Alexander also identifies both Cosmic and Secular Humanism as the two sides of pagan monism. And because they are from the same root they tend to cross-pollinate and: "mingle, producing a brood of offspring that exhibits the genetic heritage of its parents in a confused and confusing array. Soon it becomes impossible to say whether a given movement, trend or school of thought is a secular impulse that has absorbed Eastern/occult values, or an Eastern/occult teaching that has dressed itself in secular language." (The Rise of Cosmic Humanism: What is Religion?" Brooks Alexander, SCP Journal, 1981-82, p. 2) "Ye Can Be As Gods" The powerfully seductive Big Lie underlies both Cosmic and Secular Humanism. This thought is expressed openly in the teachings of Swami Vivekananda and Dr. Beverly Galyean, leading exponent of occult New Age confluent education: "The Buddhists and the Jains do not depend on God; but the whole force of their religion is directed to the great central truth in every religion: to evolve a God out of man." (Inspired Talks, Ramakrishna Vivekananda Center, 1958, p. 218) "Once we begin to see that we are all God, that we have the attributes of God, then, I think the whole purpose of human life is to reown the Godlikeness within us...So my whole view is very much based on that idea." (Galyean quoted by Francis Adeney, Educators Look East, Radix 12, No. 3, Nov-Dec. 1980, p. 21) This same idea expressed in secular terms such as self-realization and self-actualization (a term coined by Abraham Maslow) underlies many contemporary psychotherapies. In carefully couched terms, the "Humanist Manifesto" (1973) also declares autonomous man's godhood: "We affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational...life has meaning because we create and develop our futures." The conclusion of both Cosmic and Secular Humanism is the same: human beings can be as God and invent their own "ten commandments." Another key point at which Cosmic and Secular Humanism intersect is evolution. Secular Humanism adopted the Gnostic myth of biological (Darwinian) evolution as an explanation both for the origin and development of life as well as for the perfecting of the one substance and mankind. Cosmic Humanism springboards off of Darwinism into imaginary spiritual conceptions such as Teilhard de Chardins' idea. The apostate French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) taught that God emerges from matter. According to him, this evolution of God from the world results in evolution becoming "conscious of itself" and ultimately, in the transformation of all matter into "Christ consciousness" or "pure spirit." He called this final stage the "Omega Point" or "the cosmic Christ." New Age techniques to get in touch with the "Christ consciousness" include physical exercises, special diets (especially vegetarianism), biofeedback, chanting, psychodrama, consciousness-raising strategies, hypnosis and self-hypnosis, centering, body disciplines and therapies such as hatha yoga and aikido as well as sensitivity groups and encounter groups, Zen, Tibetan Buddhism and transcendental meditation and yoga. Former guru Rabindranath R. Maharaj, now a committed follower of Jesus Christ, describes his former transcendental meditation ritual and its' terrifying consequences: "Nothing was more important than our daily transcendental meditation, the heart of Yoga, which Krishna advocated as the surest way to eternal Bliss. But it could also be dangerous. Frightening psychic experiences awaited the...meditator, similar to a bad trip on drugs. Demons described in the Vedas had been known to take possession of some Yogis. Kundalini power, said to be coiled like a serpent at the base of the spine, could produce ecstatic experiences when released in deep meditation — or...it could do great mental and bodily harm. The line between ecstasy and horror was very fine...During daily meditation I began to have visions of psychedelic colors, to hear unearthly music, and to visit exotic planets where the gods conversed with me, encouraging me to attain even higher states of consciousness. Sometimes in my trance I encountered the same horrible demonic creatures...depicted by the images in Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, and other religious temples. It was a frightful experience, but the Brahmacharya explained that it was normal and urged me to pursue the quest for Self Realization. At times I experienced a sense of mystical unity with the universe. I was the universe, Lord of all, omnipotent, omnipresent. My instructors were excited at this. I was obviously a chosen vessel, destined for early success in the search for union with Brahman. The Forces that had guided my father were now guiding me." (Death of a Guru, Rabindranath R. Maharaj, pp. 56-57) Dying Materialism Opens Door To Occult Forces "Unless we are mistaken...the twentieth century...is to witness a gigantic conflict of spirits...More serious and fiercer than ever before, the conflict is between the old and the new worldview." Herman Bavinck, Christian theologian, 1901 Materialist scientism has always been utterly repugnant to more spiritually sensitive people. With its' nihilism, mindless mechanistic universe, reductionism, moral anarchy and irrationalism, it has generated its own crisis of credibility. However, as a universal alchemical-solvent that has broken down the West's Biblical-based worldview, it has served to throw wide the door to equally irrational but far more dangerous occult New Age Cosmic Humanism, which as a spiritual force began to emerge in the United States around 1965. By the mid-1980s, a bright "new" spirituality began to seductively beckon demoralized, restless, narcissistic, consumerist Westerners. Promising personal "spiritual" power, peace, unending pleasure, and oneness with the Divine, it enticingly whispers, "you can become god." In Marilyn Ferguson's book, "The Aquarian Conspiracy," she identifies the "new" spirituality as New Age and says that this movement of spirit is poised to radically transform our culture. Western society is at a pivotal point, said Ferguson in reference to what she called the "Emergent Culture" of New Age. Ferguson called it the Aquarian Conspiracy for two reasons. First, astrology foretells the end of the Age of Pisces (the fish). Astrologically the fish symbolizes the Christian Age, which is finally giving way to the New Age of Aquarius. Second, she calls it a conspiracy in recognition of a spiritually-cohesive, vast interlocking-network of individuals, grassroots initiatives, and thousands upon thousands of formal New Age organizations at every level of society, from the lowest level to the highest global corridors of political, spiritual, and economic power that link this movement both nationally and internationally. As occult spirituality moved with great speed and force over and across post-Christian America, mainstream media took note and reported: "Neopaganism Growing Quickly: Numbers Roughly Double Every 18 Months in United States, Canada, and Europe." Denver Post, June 26, 2008 (How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces that are Transforming America, David Kupelian, p. 115) "Sorcery Sells, and the Young are Buying" Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 10, 2007 (ibid) "Wicca is Believed to be One of the Fastest-Growing Religions Among High School and College Students" National Public Radio, May 13, 2004 (ibid) In his book, "America's Schools: The Battleground for Freedom," Allen Quist warns: "New Age religion is now aggressively being taught in our nation's public schools." A model curriculum has been developed that "is clearly centered on pantheism." "Much of what passes for environmental education and multiculturalism is really indoctrination in pantheistic/New Age theology. The ACLU and other similar organizations have no objections to (pantheistic indoctrination). It is only Christianity that these organizations object to." (p. 51) Tom DeWeese, President of the American Policy Center, has also been following the rise of occult pagan spirituality. In a work entitled, "Teachers, Preachers and Greens: The Unholy Alliance to Transform America," DeWeese reveals the existence of a well-funded yet covert effort to paganize American society through an assault on schools and churches. He reveals that the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City is the home of the enormously influential Gaia Institute as well as the Temple of Understanding — a politically influential U.N. Non-Governmental Organization. DeWeese describes a pagan "church service" at St. John the Divine: "As the congregation sit in their church pews in the great Cathedral of St. John, the Divine in New York City, the priest stands at the alter, ready to receive a procession of animals for the annual Feast of Saint Francis blessing. Down the aisle comes a procession of elephants, camels, donkeys, monkeys and birds. These are followed by members of the congregation carrying bowls of compost and worms. Next, to the sounds of music, come acrobats and jugglers. In the pulpit, former Vice President Al Gore delivers a sermon, saying, "God is not separate from the Earth." (http://www.federalobserver.com/2010/11/14/teachers-preachers-and-greens-the-unholy-alliance-to-transform-america/) Men Have Souls ...and Demons Exist Today anthropologists, scientific psychiatrists, and other professionals from the counseling and medical field take very seriously the fact that something frightening and unexplainable by Western science is going on here in America and throughout the West. In their search for answers they are jettisoning as useless materialist explanations. A "new" consensus is emerging: Men have souls and demons exist: "...we need to understand a number of different concepts in order to comprehend the worldwide phenomenon of possession and exorcism. On the psychological level, we have come to know the notion underlying all possession, namely, that the body is a shell, inhabited by a soul, and that this shell may on occasion be surrendered to an intrusive alien entity. " (How about Demons? Possession and Exorcism in the Modern World, Felicitas Goodman. IndianaUpress:1988) "Dr Frank Lake in a talk on the demonic recalled the occasion when 'Hans Rudi Weber was giving a talk on Christ's Victory over the Demonic Powers to this large gathering of psychiatrists and theologians. It was quite amusing to see how uncomfortable the theologians were at this strange exhibition of what I think they regarded as Medievalism from a distinguished member of their own theological group. It was as if they were apologizing to the scientific psychiatrists present that a theologian had returned to the era of demons and evil possession. By contrast the psychiatrists were in fact leaning forward eagerly recognizing that the collective demonic is something with which they are continually dealing. As they said afterwards, 'Why didn't some theologian tell us about this before? We know what he's talking about, we live with it'" (But Deliver us From Evil: An Introduction to the Demonic Dimension in Pastoral Care, John Richards, London, Dartman, Longman and Todd,1974) Possession takes two forms, communal and individual: "...central possession is communal, strongly institutionalized, and ritualistically induced, but peripheral possession is more normally individual and spontaneous." (Demonic Possession: A Medical, Historical, Anthropological, and Theological Symposium, John Warwick Montgomery (ed.), Bethany,1976) "In later life, Jung admitted that he was open to the ideas that all these metapsychic phenomena could be explained better by the theory of spirits ....in the long run (he said) I have to admit that the spirit hypothesis yields better results in practice than any other." (The New Age Movement and the Biblical Worldview: Conflict and Dialogue, John P. Newport, Eerdmans,1998) Dr. Carl Raschke also notes with alarm America's downward spiral into the madess of occult spirituality. He points out that the decadence, pornography, mass murders, criminality, the 'new religions,' and Satanism in American culture have certain social and spiritual ties that bind them together, revealing that they are part of a similar spiritual genus. In "Satanism and the Devolution of the 'New Religions,'" Raschke notes that Satanism is so widespread today that there are even U.S. military personnel who are members of secretive Satanist groups. Raschke concludes that the "upsurge of Satanist practices...must be interpreted not as some kind of odd wrinkle...but as a culminating phase of the "New Age" movement...The Satanist mindset is not "religion" in the regular sense of the word, but a mystification of the most corrupt secular passions and values...Satanism is but the spiritual Frankenstein created by a social order that has attempted to sustain itself without God." (Satanism and Witchcraft: The Occult and the West — Part 6, Dr. John Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon) "All the gods of the pagans are demons" Psalm 95:5 New Age Cosmic Humanism has infused and spiritualized secular materialism, transforming it into an agency for the transmission of ultimate values and revelations from the unseen realm....from powers and principalities. As a result, in the space of a few short decades, occult pagan spirituality has made profound inroads. Its upsurge manifests itself in the form of everything from UFO channeling cults, ghost-hunting, necromancy, goddess worship, shamanism, light-bearers, spirit guides, goddess worship, transcendental meditation, contemplative prayer, labyrinth walking, yoga, Wicca, revitalized Norse paganism, the annual Burning Man Festival (now televised) and the proliferation of Satanic cults. From England to Australia, from New Zealand to South America, Canada and the United States, occult New Age spirituality is quickly becoming the West's dominant orthodoxy. The End of the West? Evolutionary conceptions, monism, empiricism, reductionism, determinism, positivism, materialism, pantheism, socialism, and the 'new religions,' in the words of Calvin Coolidge, are not "elements which we can see and touch," but religious convictions, aspirations, ideals, and ideas in the minds of men. As the great apocalyptic prophet Fyodor Dostoevsky clearly understood, they are a madness-inducing "fire in the minds of men" that comes from the "unseen world." This being the case, political fixes and Republicans in control will not cure what ails America because Americans, by and large, are spiritually diseased. This means that our primary battle is spiritual, for we are not "contending against flesh and blood, but against the (evil spirits)....against spiritual wickedness in the high places." (Eph. 6:12) Occult spirituality always surfaces at the end of a civilization. It heralded the end of Babylon, Rome and the Aztec civilization. It came at the end of the medieval world and now it has come at the end of the post-Christian West..." a social order that has attempted to sustain itself without God." During Rome's darkest, most evil hours, early Christians — thousands of whom were cut in half, used as human torches, and crucified upside-down — nevertheless successfully forced occult forces underground, thus allowing for Christendom and later on America to arise. America is the West's last best hope. But do contemporary Christians and like-minded Americans possess the undying faith, unfaltering courage, love of Truth, rock-solid conviction, perseverance and will to engage this spiritual war? Additional Sources: Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, Fr. Seraphim Rose Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America, Peter Jones "...is there evidence for the existence of "spirits" and some "spiritual dimension"? http://christianthinktank.com/eyesopen.html Related Reading: The Original Lie: Basis For America's Ruling Class Barbarians Darwinism: Devilish Gnostic Myth Dressed Up As Science Evolutionism: The Dying West's Science of Magic and Madness © Linda Kimball Read more at www.renewamerica.com

 

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Amplify’d from www.cathnewsindia.com

Christians and Muslims meet UN official

Muslims at a meeting in western India’s Gujarat state where sectarian violence in 2002 killed more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims

Christian and Muslim groups in Gujarat have told a UN official that their government harasses them for standing up for the rights of the poor.

UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders Margaret Sekaggya visited Ahmedabad Jan. 17 to hear human rights defenders from Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan states.

She met the activists after meeting with state officials.

Christian groups in Gujarat told the visitor that the government treats them as “second class citizens” when they try to protect the rights of tribal and dalit people.

The pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, Indian people’s party) led by Narendra Modi has ruled Gujarat since 1995.

Jesuit activist Father Cedric Prakash told the UN official that in 2004 the Gujarat government labeled him anti-national, registered a case against him and sought to seize his passport.

The priest was among the few to protest when Hindu radicals attacked Muslims in 2002. Three-month long Hindu-Muslim riots killed more than 2,000 persons, mostly Muslims.

“Because of my stand on human rights violations, several Church personnel and institutions are denied of what is lawfully theirs,” Father Prakash said in a written submission to the UN official.

Father Prakash now directs a human rights center in Ahmedabad and represents the Gujarat United Christian Forum for Human Rights.

Suhel Tirmizi, a Muslim, said the government tried unsuccessfully to cancel the license of five lawyers who defended the 2002 riot victims.

R. B. Sreekumar, the state’s former director general of police, said that the government punishes its officials who try to defend religious minorities. The Hindu official was denied promotion by the government for not toeing its line.

Mallika Sarabhai, another Hindu human rights activist, said the government forced her staff to file false case against her when she moved the Supreme Court to hold Modi responsible for the 2002 anti-Muslim violence.

Source: ucanews.com Read more at www.cathnewsindia.com

 

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Amplify’d from crowncitynews.com

Brown Needs To Keep Hands Off Property

Posted by Wayne Lusvardi in Local Government, Opinion | 5 comments

The media commentariat have tried to compare new California Gov. Jerry Brown with outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the kind of leader it takes to manage under different economic circumstances makes for a difficult comparison.

During economic booms it is easier to rule by love and surfeit, and during financial busts it is necessary to rule by fear of the budget cut. But leadership in California means more than being hated by Republicans and Independents and loved by Democrats.

Legitimate rule

Brown comes into office partly based on his family name but mainly on his abilities as former two-term governor and attorney general. Schwarzenegger came into office on the fluke of a recall election based on his charismatic prowess, money, his wife’s family name, but with no proven track record and thus less legitimacy. A state assumed by one’s own natural skills and experience during an economic contraction is much less difficult to maintain control over than one based on mainly good fortune during an economic bubble and an out-of-control state spending binge.

The 15th century political thinker Niccolo Machiavelli wrote in his classic book The Prince: “A private citizen who becomes a ruler out of sheer good luck needn’t make much effort to take his state but will have to sweat it if he is to hold on to it.” Machiavelli mentions examples of luck such as being appointed to office, buying an office with money (Meg Whitman), or rising to power by bribing the army.

Arnold came into office by luck of a recall election. After being elected and his bundle of ballot reform propositions failed, Arnold tried to win over his prison guard army with lucrative pay and pension benefit plans with disastrous budgetary consequences. By contrast, Brown is promising to return the funding of government services back to the local level. Most notably the expensive state prison system is going to have to divert prisoners back to cheaper county jails to avoid continuing to dig deep budget holes. But will Brown stand up against his army of unionized prison guards and risk becoming as feckless as Arnold after his package of reform initiatives failed?

Circumstances and necessity

Schwarzenegger came into office facing a hostile Legislature after a state-created energy bubble followed by a real estate bubble. Brown comes into office in a period of bubble deflation with supposedly a more cooperative Legislature. In other words, the circumstances that each governor inherited are exactly opposite. One inherited a bubble economy, the other a troubled economy; one a hostile legislature the other supposedly a more facile legislature. But the budget deficit realities have only grown larger.

Collapse the boxes

It was as if the union-dominated Legislature and the bureaucracies were trying to bust the budget under Schwarzenegger, while under Brown the early signal is the state budget is going to be readjusted downward; and in the case of some agencies, such as redevelopment, possibly reduced to moonbeam dust.

In November 2010, the voters passed Prop. 22 to prevent the state from raiding local redevelopment property taxes for schools. Nonetheless, Brown stated he would de-authorize redevelopment agencies statewide. Redevelopment is a luxury in a state that is broke and in which little new development is viable. Arnold may get the last laugh as he always wanted to “blow up the boxes” of the state’s luxury bureaucracies and commissions.

Energy and environmental wars

Arnold Schwarzenegger came into office on a recall election after the abject failure of former Gov. Gray Davis and the state Legislature to manage the California Energy Crisis of 2001 when they enacted price controls resulting in an induced electricity price bubble. Neither then-Gov. Davis nor new Gov. Schwarzenegger told the public that the energy crisis was set into motion by the EPA mandating clean air regulations on California at the threat of cutting off federal funds for highways and schools. This resulted in the disastrous mothballing of old, polluting power plants whose bonds weren’t paid off. Once elected, Schwarzenegger folded the unpaid debts on the decommissioned power plants into a $42 billion bond to be paid back by long-term power contracts set to expire in 2012.

In 2001, California was running out of clean sky, not energy per se. In 2010, California is once again running out of clean air and is hurrying to build expensive in-state green power plants and a cap-and-trade pollution credit program. But the air will be cleaner in Utah, Nevada or Arizona where California’s imported dirty power comes from, not in the smog basins of California’s cities. Again quoting Machiavelli: “Like anything that appears suddenly and grows fast, regimes that come out of nothing inevitably have shallow roots and will tend to crash in the first storm.”

Thus, in November 2010 California voters indicated they wanted green power (No on Prop 23 to suspend green power) but weren’t told they could end up facing another “perfect energy storm.” It looks like Brown will risk turning the mid section of the good ship California directly into the impending energy storm, just as he risked building geothermal power plants that failed during his last administration in 1979. Southern California water rate payers ended up paying off a quarter of a billion dollars in bonds on the mothballed Bottle Rock geothermal plant planned by Brown. Today, the Bottle Rock plant has re-opened and sells electricity to Northern California cities subsidized by Southern California water ratepayers.

With the luxury ocean liner of California already leaking water into its bilge, it remains to be seen if the ship will capsize. The ship is unlikely to sink into default but it may list to one side while being towed by tugboats. Another future energy crisis might drive many immigrants out of the state and reverse globalization may occur. Former Gov. Pete Wilson and Prop. 187 may be vindicated if such an event transpires. Jerry Brown could risk being hated if he raises electricity bills on the backs of the poor and economic migrants.

Unintended consequences

In 2006, Schwarzenegger pushed through Assembly Bill 32 – the Global Warming Solutions Act – to capture the revenue premiums from long-term power contracts for green power. The roll out of AB32 by 2012 may backfire on California because the Obama administration plans to socialize the regional power grid and bust open the green energy cartel that California had hoped would reduce the state budge deficit.

Thus, the result of AB32 may not be less but greater dependence on imported power from other states – only it will be expensive green power not cheap coal power. As Machiavelli warned when referring to the regime of Cesare Borgia: “If his efforts came to nothing, it was not due to his own shortcomings, but to an extraordinary run of bad luck.” And bad luck it will be if Schwarzenegger’s legacy is greater dependence on imported power.

Water wars

Schwarzenegger’s management of the so-called drought by declaring a statewide emergency in 2008 after only two years of normal light rainfall and snowpack was an example of bureaucratic capture. The drought required higher water rates in Southern California due to water conservation required as a result of a court shutting off water to farms and cities to protect a tiny fish. The court was hoodwinked by bogus science and later rescinded its water shut down order.

Water agencies in Southern California no longer enforce their water conservation ordinances but have not repealed their water rate hikes, arousing suspicions that the whole drought was fishy. Paraphrasing the new governor’s inaugural speech, Brown will have to discern a “problem” from a “condition,” and a contrived drought is not a condition of nature.

Schwarzenegger should have learned from the Klamath River Conflict in 2001 in Oregon where this trick of using a bogus environmental lawsuit to raise water rates and grab land and water rights from farmers was previously pulled off. Paraphrasing a classic proverb in the public water business: “Even when the water is shut off, water flows up hill toward money.”

Brown has wisely cleaned house of all the major department heads, including Lester Snow of the Department of Water Resources. It will be more difficult for Brown to succumb to bureaucratic and legal capture on the drought issue now that the meteorological gods have already dumped double the normal snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for this time of year.

Brown has not mentioned if he will freeze the $4.1 billion of unspent funds from prior water bonds, which have mainly funded greenbelt projects around wealthy residential enclaves. Neither has he mentioned whether he will endorse the proposed $31 billion Consolidated Water Bond (including interest and matching fund mandates) on the upcoming 2012 ballot given that it is full of political pork and questionable projects, but no Peripheral Canal. If the economy doesn’t improve fast, the new bloated water bond has a snowball’s chance in Death Valley of passing.

Culture wars

Marriage and family law has historically been used to reinforce what is politically important. Schwarzenegger’s handling of the cultural and legal crisis of Prop 8, the Protect Marriage Act, was a failure of cultural leadership.

Machiavelli described how in the 15th century Pope Alexander VI did a favor for French King Louis by dissolving his first marriage in return for French military assistance against those who opposed papal expansionism and the appointment of his son, Cesare Borgia, as a powerful duke. The pope wanted to give church land away to expand his son’s power. But the French ended up abandoning Borgia on the battlefield and went back home and “he (Borgia) decided never to rely on other people’s armies and authority again” (Machiavelli).

In 2008, Schwarzenegger faced a cultural crisis not of his making but originating with the shortsightedness of the state Supreme Court, the modern day version of a secular papacy. Prop. 8 sought to limit the legal definition of marriage to a man and a woman. Prop. 8 passed despite opposition from Gov. Schwarzenegger. A judge eventually struck down the gay marriage ban. Both governors Schwarzenegger and Brown have refused to appeal Prop. 8, thus its overturning by the 9th Circuit appeals court may stand. Prop. 8 is on an eventual track to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Neither the courts, religious groups, or Gov. Schwarzenegger were able to serve as a cultural mediator of this conflict and it is unlikely that Jerry Brown will be either, despite his priestly image and past Jesuit training. California can’t find a middle ground on cultural or budgetary issues because of its polarized social classes and political gerrymandering.

Loved or feared?

Machiavelli’s following advice in his book The Prince may be helpful in defining both leadership and public policy in California:

“Is it better to be loved than feared, or vice versa? The answer is that one would prefer to be both but, since they don’t go together easily, if you have to choose, it’s much safer to be feared than loved….Men are less worried about letting down someone who has made himself loved than someone who makes himself feared. Love binds when someone recognizes he should be grateful to you, but, since men are a sad lot, gratitude is forgotten the moment it’s inconvenient. Fear means fear of punishment, and that’s something people don’t forget.”

“All the same, while a ruler can’t expect to inspire love when making himself feared, he must avoid arousing hatred…And a ruler won’t be hated if he keeps his hands off his subject’s property. Above all, he mustn’t seize other people’s property. A man will sooner forget the death of his father than the loss of his inheritance.” (Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, translated by Tim Parks, 2009).

Former Gov. Schwarzenegger wanted to be loved and he ended up being disrespected. New Gov. Brown must find a way to be more than loved by Democrats and hated by Republicans and independents. He must find a way to be feared but not hated. And to do that he must keep his hands off people’s property, whether in the Sacramento Delta, a proposed split commercial-residential tax roll under Prop 13, farmer’s water rights or environmental regulatory takings.

Unfortunately, public pension benefits have been enshrined into the status of private property. If there is any place to start with plugging the deep hole in the state budget deficit and the disaster it portends for local governments, it will be with public pension reform and union concessions. New Gov. Brown will be probably be judged on this issue more than all others. Read more at crowncitynews.com

 

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John Paul II's blood to be relic in Polish church

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John Paul II's blood to be relic in Polish church

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A vial containing blood drawn from Pope John Paul II shortly before he died will be installed as a relic in a Polish church soon after his beatification later this year, an official said Monday.

Piotr Sionko, the spokesman for the John Paul II Center, said the vial will be encased in crystal and built into the altar of a church in the southern city of Krakow that is opening in May.

The exact date of the opening is not yet known, but it should be shortly after John Paul's beatification at the Vatican on May 1.

Sionko said the idea came from Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the archbishop of Krakow and the longtime friend and secretary of the late Polish-born pontiff. The blood was drawn for medical tests at Rome's Gemelli Polyclinic shortly before John Paul's death on April 2, 2005, and is now in Dziwisz's possession, he said.

"It was the cardinal's proposal," Sionko said. "He is of the opinion that this is the most precious relic of John Paul II and should be the focal point of the church."

The church in the Lagiewniki district is part of a center that will be devoted to cultivating the memory and the teaching of the late pope — who was born Karol Wojtyla in Wadowice, southern Poland, and spent decades in Krakow.

Many Catholics in the world are rejoicing over Pope Benedict XVI's announcement last week that he will beatify John Paul on May 1. Beatification is the last major step before possible sainthood.

The idea of displaying the pope's relics has met with some reservations, even inside the Catholic Church.

"The tradition of relics comes from medieval practices of teaching the Bible through images and symbols," said the Rev. Krzysztof Madel, a Jesuit priest in Nowy Sacz who has publicly questioned the usefulness of displaying John Paul's blood. "But in today's rationalized world the message should rather come through teaching about someone's life."

After John Paul's death, some Polish officials said they hoped John Paul's heart would be removed from his body and returned to his homeland for burial. However, church officials dismissed any possibility of dismembering the body, saying the age had passed for that practice.

Dziwisz said Friday that he has always been against dividing of the body, but that "relics have always existed and will always exist."

John Paul II Speeding Toward Sainthood Newser - Jan 12, 2011

John Paul II to be beatified in May Herald Sun - 5 days ago

Late pope now on the road to becoming saint The Salem News - 4 days ago Read more at www.google.com

 

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America's top exorcist-for-hire comes to Miami

By Tim Elfrink

Illustration by Kyle T. Webster

Is any city more firmly locked in the brimstone-y grasp of Satan than Miami?

Lustful tourists gape at topless sunbathers while the rest of us worship a false idol who's so prideful he gets Swarovski to sponsor his birthday cake. Our police chief and mayor, meanwhile, carry on a wrathful tit-for-tat, and South Beach leads the nation in sunny sloth.

So it should come as no surprise that demons — minions of Lucifer who invade the weak of heart and Ouija-board fan clubs — are strong indeed in the Magic City.

You might even be infected yourself.

Or so says Reverend Bob Larson, a bearded, crucifix-wielding Evangelical known as America's top exorcist-for-hire. For the low price of $495, scores of Miamians lined up at Hilton Miami Airport for Larson's one-on-one demon removal sessions on Friday.

"I've seen everything: levitation, supernatural languages, materializations, and de-materializations," Larson tells New Times.

Exorcisms are usually the realm of the Catholic Church, but Larson — a decades-long syndicated Christian radio host recognized in the '70s as a leading scholar on the dangers of rock and roll — says he learned his trade from top demonologists at the Vatican.

Since the mid-'90s, his Arizona-based church has focused exclusively on exorcisms. He has websites and DVDs (Do You Have a Demon?) and an online "Demon Test" that can tell you if you're possessed. Last year, Syfy Network featured him in a documentary called The Real Exorcist.

"The number of people walking the streets with demonic possessions is much higher than people realize," he says.

Of course, Larson has his critics. Don't the "possessed" really just need mental health treatment and substance abuse care?

"Mental illness is obviously involved, but the difference is easy to recognize," he says. The mentally ill, for instance, don't generally have the power to float off the ground or speak Babylonian.

If you missed your chance to cleanse your soul with Larson, don't despair: He's training a Cuban couple in his church to become Miami's first certified exorcists.

"If you've got a friend or relative who's spiritually tormented, and you think it might be supernatural, get in touch with us," Larson says.

Now that you mention it, this guy LeBron has been acting mighty odd on Twitter lately... Read more at www.miaminewtimes.com

 

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