Pages

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

THE EARTH BIBLE PROJECT -- LINK BETWEEN FAITH AT WORK AND EARTH CHARTER

Recently the former FAITH AT WORK now known as LUMUNOS sent me a notice of their sale priced books.  I took advantage and cheaply added to my library of blatant apostasies.  Among the additions was a book they were selling READINGS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF EARTH edited by Norman C. Habel.  It was Volume I of the EARTH BIBLE and was released in 2000.  It is part of the EARTH BIBLE PROJECT which among its six guiding principles such as "interconnectivity" calls for a suspicious reading of the Bible without regard to an apologetical perspective (i.e. belief that the Bible is true!).

Quoting from its website:


"Earth Liturgies
An important development of the total project is the development of Earth liturgies in variouscommunities around the world. Norman Habel, who has been involved in developing these liturgies, hasedited a collection entitled Seven Songs of Creation. This collection includes Earth liturgies, Earth Songs and related worship resources. This volume is being edited and will hopefully be released by Pilgrim Press mid 2003. One of these liturgies, 'The Song of Earth' was celebrated at Adelaide College of Divinity as part of the Adelaide Fringe festival.
The new Earth Songs emphasise not only the web of creation and the interconnectedness of nature, but also the need to respect Earth as sacred and listen to Earth as a living subject. One song was sung as a themesong at opening of the 2001 Asia Pacific Earth Charter Conference in Brisbane. The Earth Bible was also part of one of the workshop sessions.
A traditional hymn that devalues Earth commences, 'Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.' An Earth Bible re-write of verse one that song follows:
You who watch the highest heavens
Wond'ring where God's mansions are;
You who hope to spot an angel
Spinning like a falling star;
Earth is calling,
Earth is calling,
Come back home and rest in me,
Come back home and rest in me."

Well, one does not have to be a theological genius to make a very educated guess that the "angel Spinning like a falling star" is none other than Lucifer and that those looking for him should come back to Earth and rest in it!

This project which is ongoing and is an international coalition of the worst of the worst ranging from Jon Granberg-Michaelsen, Earth Charter, Matthew Fox, and beyond is one of the most blatant apostate bridges to the very Earth worship proscribed in Revelation 14 -- the complete opposite of "Fear God and give glory to Him for the hour of his judgment is come -- worship God who created the heaven, the earth, the seas, and the fountains of waters."  This project blatantly calls for striking all scripture from our theological repertoires which does not lend itself to a strained interpretation of earth worship itself.

I have long suspected that the prophesied "image of the beast" is none other than worship of the Earth itself as a living entity.  This project has added much grist to that mill!

Join me tonight in half an hour at www.themicroeffect.com.  I will be sharing its outrages on the air!

Stay tuned!

CONSTANCE

44 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:47 PM

    No comments? Where is everybody?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous12:10 AM

    don't turn around, I am standing right behind you...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous12:39 AM

    very interesting, I recall you making the comment about the "image" of earth before. Interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  4. 6.9 Earthquake Hits China

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36486706/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

    ReplyDelete
  5. This headline this morning on MSNBC.com:

    Big Banks Make Big Profits from Loans to Poor

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36492773/ns/business-the_new_york_times/

    The article paints several companies as sharks while Yunus and his Grameen bank smell like roses.

    For more information regarding Microcredit, see JD's informative and well-researched articles on this blogspot in February and March, and also at http://jd-thedevilisinthedetails.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  6. Forgive me if this has already been posted:

    Mexico: Cell phone registration deadline is extended

    http://thenews.com.mx/articulo/cell-phone-registration-deadline-is-extended-10325

    ReplyDelete
  7. To JD, YesNaSpanishTown:

    MAJOR story in New York Times this morning -- front page and a full page later in front section -- about major problems and abuses of MicroCredit industry.

    Constance

    ReplyDelete
  8. JD,

    I went to post something to your blogspot from the usual link on mine and could not find the link. I may have accidentally deleted it when I was fixing links last week. Could you please post that link here again so I can repair it?

    Thanks!
    Constance

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous8:46 AM

    just fond this on look up fellowship



    Britain's left-of-center daily - "The Guardian" - has reported that former international environmental lawyer Polly Higgins has launched a new campaign urging the United Nations and the
    International Criminal Court to
    deem environmental damage on par with genocide and crimes against humanity in international courts.

    "Supporters of a new ecocide law also believe it could be used to prosecute ‘climate deniers' who distort science and facts to discourage voters and politicians from taking action to tackle global warming and climate change," Juliette Jowit, "Guardian's" environmental editor wrote April 9.

    "Higgins makes her case for ecocide to join that list with a simple equation: extraction leads to ecocide, which leads to resource depletion, and resource depletion leads to conflict. ‘The link is if you keep over-extracting from your capital asset we'll have very little left and we will go to war over our capital asset, the last of it,' adds Higgins, who has support in the UN and European commission, and among climate scientists, environmental lawyers and international campaign groups."

    Among the "10 reasons why we need ecocide as the 5th international Crime Against Peace" on Higgins' "Thisisecocide" website, number five states "action can be taken against any individual. As an international crime against peace, no-one escapes liability".



    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/anthony-kang/2010/04/12/environmentalists-new-un-proposal-put-ecocide-and-deniers-par-genocide

    Amanda

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous8:55 AM

    And this

    A confidential U.S. government document obtained by the London Guardian highlights the ongoing agenda to create a structure of global governance in the name of combating climate change.

    “Titled Strategic communications objectives and dated 11 March 2010, it outlines the key messages that the Obama administration wants to convey to its critics and to the world media in the run-up to the vital UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico in November.” The Guardian reports.

    The newspaper says that the document (full text below) was “accidentally left on a European hotel computer” before it was passed to their editors.

    http://www.infowars.com/leaked-u-s-document-calls-for-global-regime-to-tackle-climate-change/

    Amanda

    ReplyDelete
  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Constance,

    I just checked your link to JD's blogspot at 9:28 and it worked for me.

    His blogspot is

    http://jd-thedevilisinthedetails.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  13. Constance,

    I sent a email with the correct address but I see Terri has posted it here already. (thanks Terri) This piece is disturbing and reminds me of the New World Bible(not to be confused with the New World Translation) with a green twist. For those who have not seen it, the NWB is essentialy a New Age type of scripture putting all religions in the same category with a zoroastrian flare.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Terri,

    Susanna and I have found some disturbing pieces regarding the big bailedout banks and how they are begining to channel focus into microcredit. I will be adding these into a piece, as we are seeing a change in dialect as it pertains to lending, as it appears that they no longer want these types of loans applied to the poor but to the majority.

    ReplyDelete
  15. This is off topic, but needs to be seen as it pertains to the developing situation here at home.

    Special army unit ready to be deployed on American soil just before Nov. elections

    In October of this year, one month prior to the November midterm elections, a special army unit known as 'Consequence Management Response Force' will be ready for deployment on American soil if so ordered by the President.

    http://tinyurl.com/y2rds53

    So is this a sensationalist story or a viable piece of information?
    From army.mil:

    Consequence Management Response Force to join Army Northern Command

    The response force will be assigned on Oct. 1 to U.S. Northern Command, Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., and placed under the operational control of U.S. Army North, Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

    This week, Col. Lou Vogler, U.S. Army North's chief of future operations, and Marine Corps Lt. Col. James Shores, director of plans and policy for Joint Task Force Civil Support, participated in a round table interview with online journalists to discuss the force, including its unique mission and training.

    "U.S. Army North is the Army component of U.S. Northern Command," said Vogler, "and we're charged with coordinating the federal military response in the land domain for domestic operations or disasters, to include CBRNE."

    Vogler said that the response force is a scalable, dedicated force that is prepared to reinforce state and local responders when they request federal assistance. The force's alignment under U.S. NORTHCOM shortens the line of command to increase readiness and responsiveness.

    http://tinyurl.com/ygyfnlx

    I'll let everyone else be the judge of what this means. I just wish to point out, that they are now assigning tactical brigades for purposes that the National Guard was designed for. The obvious difference is that states exert a form of control when it pertains to the National Guard, where as the Army proper responds soley to federal orders.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Susanna2:52 PM

    Constance, JD, All

    Here is the New York Times article on problems and abuses of the microcredit industry that Constance was referring to earlier.

    BANKS MAKING BIG PROFITS FROM TINY LOANS

    By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
    Published: April 13, 2010


    In recent years, the idea of giving small loans to poor people became the darling of the development world, hailed as the long elusive formula to propel even the most destitute into better lives.

    Actors like Natalie Portman and Michael Douglas lent their boldface names to the cause. Muhammad Yunus, the economist who pioneered the practice by lending small amounts to basket weavers in Bangladesh, won a Nobel Peace Prize for it in 2006. The idea even got its very own United Nations year in 2005.

    But the phenomenon has grown so popular that some of its biggest proponents are now wringing their hands over the direction it has taken. Drawn by the prospect of hefty profits from even the smallest of loans, a raft of banks and financial institutions now dominate the field, with some charging interest rates of 100 percent or more.

    “We created microcredit to fight the loan sharks; we didn’t create microcredit to encourage new loan sharks,” Mr. Yunus recently said at a gathering of financial officials at the United Nations. “Microcredit should be seen as an opportunity to help people get out of poverty in a business way, but not as an opportunity to make money out of poor people.”

    The fracas over preserving the field’s saintly aura centers on the question of how much interest and profit is acceptable, and what constitutes exploitation. The noisy interest rate fight has even attracted Congressional scrutiny, with the House Financial Services Committee holding hearings this year focused in part on whether some microcredit institutions are scamming the poor.

    Rates vary widely across the globe, but the ones that draw the most concern tend to occur in countries like Nigeria and Mexico, where the demand for small loans from a large population cannot be met by existing lenders.

    Unlike virtually every Web page trumpeting the accomplishments of microcredit institutions around the world, the page for Te Creemos, a Mexican lender, lacks even one testimonial from a thriving customer — no beaming woman earning her first income by growing a soap business out of her kitchen, for example. Te Creemos has some of the highest interest rates and fees in the world of microfinance, analysts say, a whopping 125 percent average annual rate.

    The average in Mexico itself is around 70 percent, compared with a global average of about 37 percent in interest and fees, analysts say. Mexican microfinance institutions charge such high rates simply because they can get away with it, said Emmanuelle Javoy, the managing director of Planet Rating, an independent Paris-based firm that evaluates microlenders.

    “They could do better; they could do a lot better,” she said. “If the ones that are very big and have the margins don’t set the pace, then the rest of the market follows.”

    Manuel Ramírez, director of risk and internal control at Te Creemos, reached by telephone in Mexico City, initially said there had been some unspecified “misunderstanding” about the numbers and asked for more time to clarify, but then stopped responding.

    Unwitting individuals, who can make loans of $20 or more through Web sites like Kiva or Microplace, may also end up participating in practices some consider exploitative. These Web sites admit that they cannot guarantee every interest rate they quote. Indeed, the real rate can prove to be markedly higher.


    cont....

    ReplyDelete
  17. Susanna2:53 PM

    cont...

    Debating Microloans’ Effects

    Underlying the issue is a fierce debate over whether microloans actually lift people out of poverty, as their promoters so often claim. The recent conclusion of some researchers is that not every poor person is an entrepreneur waiting to be discovered, but that the loans do help cushion some of the worst blows of poverty.

    “The lesson is simply that it didn’t save the world,” Dean S. Karlan, a professor of economics at Yale University, said about microlending. “It is not the single transformative tool that proponents have been selling it as, but there are positive benefits.”

    Still, its earliest proponents do not want its reputation tarnished by new investors seeking profits on the backs of the poor, though they recognize that the days of just earning enough to cover costs are over.

    “They call it ‘social investing,’ but nobody has a definition for social investing, nobody is saying, for example, that you have to make less than 10 percent profit,” said Chuck Waterfield, who runs mftransparency.org, a Web site that promotes transparency and is financed by big microfinance investors.

    Making pots of money from microfinance is certainly not illegal. CARE, the Atlanta-based humanitarian organization, was the force behind a microfinance institution it started in Peru in 1997. The initial investment was around $3.5 million, including $450,000 of taxpayer money. But last fall, Banco de Credito, one of Peru’s largest banks, bought the business for $96 million, of which CARE pocketed $74 million.

    “Here was a sale that was good for Peru, that was good for our broad social mission and advertising the price of the sale wasn’t the point of the announcement,” Helene Gayle, CARE’s president, said. Ms. Gayle described the new owners as committed to the same social mission of alleviating poverty and said CARE expected to use the money to extend its own reach in other countries.

    The microfinance industry, with over $60 billion in assets, has unquestionably outgrown its charitable roots. Elisabeth Rhyne, who runs the Center for Financial Inclusion, said in Congressional testimony this year that banks and finance firms served 60 percent of all clients. Nongovernmental organizations served 35 percent of the clients, she said, while credit unions and rural banks had 5 percent of the clients.

    Private capital first began entering the microfinance arena about a decade ago, but it was not until Compartamos, a Mexican firm that began life as a tiny nonprofit organization, generated $458 million through a public stock sale in 2007, that investors fully recognized the potential for a windfall, experts said.

    Although the Compartamos founders pledged to plow the money back into development, analysts say the high interest rates and healthy profits of Compartamos, the largest microfinance institution in the Western Hemisphere with 1.2 million active borrowers, push up interest rates all across Mexico
    .....read more.....

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/
    14/world/14microfinance.html?hpw

    ReplyDelete
  18. Susanna4:12 PM

    This is from Live Mint at the Wall Street Journal:

    BORROWERS NOW FIND SMALL LOANS TOO EXPENSIVE

    Many lenders in countries such as Nigeria and Mexico are charging as high as 125% average annual rate

    Neil MacFarquhar / NYT

    http://www.livemint.com
    /2010/04/14215128/Borrowers-
    now-find-small-loans.html?pg=1

    _________________________________

    If I am not mistaken, microcredit was originally financed by non-profit philanthropic foundations that were simply content to break even.

    When the banks and other commercial lenders got into the picture, that is when the trouble seems to have begun.

    The commercialization of microlending is leading to exactly the kind of market speculation ( possibly vis a vis derivatives) that has brought down currencies in various countries.

    While it is true that by definition, the purpose of being in business is to make money, it is also true that when you are a bank you have a fiduciary responsibility not to risk depositors' money without their knowledge by irresponsibly lending to people who not only do not have tangible assets to offer as collateral/security, but are also unemployed - except for the future businesses the microcredit is supposed to be financing.

    An interesting kind of "futures" speculation indeed! And not always advantageous to the lenders.

    In the course of our research, JD and I have learned that recipients of microcredit often use the borrowed money for things other than the purpose for which they originally borrowed it - like food and other everyday household needs.

    Of course, at the end of the day, microcredit, in its corrupt commercialized form, could be merely one more marxist/socialist "redistribution of wealth" scheme - especially if a microcredit meltdown requires a taxpayer bailout as has the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Looks for sure like they are redistributing the wealth -- from the poor to the wealth "socially responsible investment" companies.

    Constance

    ReplyDelete
  20. Constance
    I'm not sure if you know about the Georgia Guidestones, but they are 4 hugh granite stones sitting in the middle of nowhere in Georgia, with a message for the nations carved in 12 different languages. There are 10 statements and number 10 says "Be not a cancer on the earth. Leave room for nature, leave room for nature."
    No one will admit that they know who ordered these stones or who paid for them but the message sounds alot like the mother earth people. I live in Ga. and went to see these "guidestones" several years ago. They really are amazing to look at yet very disturbing at the same time.

    Deb

    ReplyDelete
  21. For anyone interested in finding out more about the Georgia guidestones here is a website.
    Is this satans 10 comandments?

    http://www.thegeorgiaguidestones.com/Message.htm

    Deb

    ReplyDelete
  22. Anonymous7:09 PM

    To Deb:

    Thanks for sharing this.

    It's as if their 10 'statements' are a demonic perversion of God's Ten Commandments:

    I'm being tongue-in-cheek here:
    'Thou shalt keep the population of the earth under 500,000,000' seems to be their primary goal.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Hi Deb,

    Thanks. I have heard of the Georgia Guidestones, although I have not yet personally viewed them, I have conducted my own research. They were first called to my attention in the 1980's.

    Thanks!
    Constance

    ReplyDelete
  24. Hizbullah confirms report it received scud missiles

    Hizbulah officials say they received a new delivery of long-range scud missiles which places all of Israel within its reach, Israel Radio reported Thursday

    http://tinyurl.com/y2gcof9

    How convienient is the timing of this news? I see a meltdown on the horizon, which will in all likelyhood will end with Israel bearing the brunt of international anger.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Susanna9:30 AM

    Given what I have already posted on this same thread and the fact that George Soros is;

    1.Very much involved in the microcredit industry vis a vis the Soros Economic Development Fund,

    2.Chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute

    3.Former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations

    the following article is interesting to say the least.
    ________________________________

    MARKETS COULD BE DERAILED AGAIN WARNS SOROS

    http://blogs.reuters.com/fundshub
    /2010/04/14/markets-could-be
    -derailed-again-warns-soros/
    ________________________________

    Just for the record, Soros is still trying to get out of paying the $2.3 million fine levied on him by the French government for insider trading.

    ..In 1988, he (Soros) was asked to join a takeover attempt of the French bank Société Générale. He declined to participate in the bid but did later buy a number of shares in the company. French authorities began an investigation in 1989, and in 2002 a French court ruled that it was insider trading, a felony conviction as defined under French securities laws, and fined him $2.3 million, which was the amount that he made using the insider information.

    Punitive damages were not sought because of the delay in bringing the case to trial. Soros denied any wrongdoing and said news of the takeover was public knowledge.

    His insider trading conviction was upheld by the highest court in France on June 14, 2006. In December, 2006 he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that the 14-year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing....


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros

    By the way, the aforementioned European Court of Human Rights to which Soros is directing his final appeal is the same European Court of Human Rights that revcently tried to ban crucifixes from public schools in Italy.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Susanna9:39 AM

    DEFAULTS RISE IN LOAN MODIFICATION PROGRAM

    By DAVID STREITFELD
    Published: April 14, 2010
    Sign In to E-Mail

    The number of homeowners who defaulted on their mortgages even after securing cheaper terms through the government’s modification program nearly doubled in March, continuing a trend that could undermine the entire program.

    Data released Wednesday by the Treasury Department and the Housing and Urban Development Department showed that 2,879 modified loans had been ended since the program’s inception in the fall, up from 1,499 in February and 1,005 in January.

    The Treasury Department said it could not explain the growing number of what it called cancellations, almost all of which were apparently prompted by the borrower’s being unable to make the new payment. A scant number — 37 — were because the loan had been paid off, presumably because the borrower sold the house.

    About seven million households are behind on their mortgage payments
    The Obama administration’s modification program has been widely criticized for doing little to help them. The program received another bad review on Wednesday with the release of a report from the Congressional Oversight Panel.

    The Treasury’s stated goal is for the modification program to help as many as four million households, the oversight report said, “but only some of these offers will result in temporary modifications, and only some of those modifications will convert to final, five-year status.”

    The report continued: “Even among borrowers who receive five-year modifications, some will eventually fall behind on their payments and once again face foreclosure. In the final reckoning, the goal itself seems small in comparison to the magnitude of the problem.”

    The Treasury took issue with the report and said the pace of modifications was picking up. The number of active permanent modifications in March was 227,922, an increase of 35 percent from those in February. An additional 108,212 permanent modifications are awaiting borrower approval.

    Shaun Donovan, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said in an interview that those were the important numbers to focus on.

    “One percent of these loans defaulting is a tiny fraction,” Mr. Donovan said. “Given how stressed these borrowers are, even in the best situation, there will be redefaults. But I don’t think there is any evidence that would cause us to worry at this point.”

    Julia R. Gordon, senior policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending in Washington, said she expected the number of post-modification defaults to continue to rise.

    “It’s definitely alarming to look at those statistics,” she said. “The current model for modifications doesn’t necessarily produce sustainable results.”


    cont...

    ReplyDelete
  27. Susanna9:42 AM

    cont....

    While the program is too new to predict its long-term success,
    the data on previous modification efforts is not encouraging.

    Sixty percent of modifications undertaken by banks in late 2008 were in default a year later, according to the latest Mortgage Metrics Report compiled by the Office of Thrift Supervision and the comptroller of the currency.

    Many of these private plans either kept the payments the same or increased them. Inevitably, those mortgages suffered the highest failure rate: about two-thirds of the borrowers defaulted again.

    Loans for which the payments were decreased by at least 20 percent failed at a slower but still significant rate of about 40 percent.

    The government program takes a more aggressive approach, lowering the interest rates for all loans. On many loans, terms are also extended or principal payments put off for years. Treasury data shows that the median savings for borrowers receiving permanent modifications is $512 a month.

    Many borrowers remain deeply indebted, however. They owe not only on the house, but on homeowner association fees, home equity loans, car loans, alimony and credit card interest.

    Even after modification, $61 out of every $100 earned by the borrower goes to servicing debt, government figures show. For increasing numbers of modification recipients, mortgage relief is apparently not enough to stave off financial collapse.

    “If you can help 60 percent, and 40 percent have to fall back, is that worthwhile?” asked John Courson, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association. “Clearly for the 60 percent it was, and the 40 percent weren’t going to make it anyway.”

    The Treasury said on Wednesday that it had always anticipated that some homeowners would not sustain a modification, which was one reason the program had been greatly expanded. New elements focus on allowing distressed homeowners to sell their properties for less than they owe and on shaving the principal owed by borrowers.

    The notion of cutting principal, however, has already run into some resistance from the big banks, which do not want borrowers to get the idea that their mortgage can be chopped on a whim.


    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/
    15/business/15mortgages.html

    ReplyDelete
  28. Susanna10:15 AM

    JD,

    I wonder how much of the delivery of long-range scud missiles has been facilitated by "microlending" schemes in Gaza.......which are reportedly benefiting Hamas and Hizbollah in so far as they are using some of these microlending enterprises as fronts for moneylaundering and traffiking in arms. Read on....

    HOW UNRWA (UNITED NATIONS RELIEF AND WORKS AGENCY) SUPPORTS HAMAS

    Palestinians in the new Islamic State of Gaza, crying out for more aid from the United Nations, are turning to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for help. Their reliance upon UNRWA comes as no surprise. The organization has been providing food, medicine, and social services to the Palestinian people for 57 years. Unfortunately, UNRWA has never taken steps to withhold assistance to extremist groups. In some cases, it has cooperated openly with terrorists. Today, as UNRWA provides assistance in Gaza, it is directly providing financial and material support to the Hamas terrorist organization.

    A Mutually Beneficial Relationship

    According to the U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees, up to 825,000 of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants claim refugee status. These Gazans receive food rations and other assistance through the United Nations, including medicine, education, and even jobs via UNRWA.

    While the refugees benefit from UNRWA, the organization benefits more from the refugees. These refugees are the organization's raison d'etre. Accordingly, UNRWA has zero incentive to resolve the Palestinian refugee problem; ending the refugee problem would render the agency obsolete.

    The interests of the refugees and UNRWA are so intertwined that UNRWA is staffed in situ mainly by local Palestinians—more than 23,000 of them—with only about 100 international United Nations professionals. While the U.N. High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Fund) avoid employing locals who are also recipients of agency services, UNRWA does not make this distinction.

    Thus, in the interest of self-perpetuation, UNRWA seeks to maintain the violent status quo in the Middle East, even if it means turning a blind eye to terror.


    cont.....

    ReplyDelete
  29. Susanna10:19 AM

    cont...

    Helping Hamas Govern Gaza

    Supporting the status quo means that UNRWA can be counted on to support the new Hamas government, so long as Hamas enables UNRWA's continued existence. UNRWA is only too eager to provide the services that Hamas does not, cannot, or chooses not to. Hamas can continue to divert international monies that should be earmarked for food or electricity to the stockpiling of weapons and the creation of anti-Israel or anti-American propaganda as long as UNRWA provides the services that the negligent Hamas government should fulfill. In this way, UNRWA is undermining the Western strategy of weakening the Hamas government in Gaza to encourage the return of Palestinian Authority rule under President Mahmoud Abbas.

    UNRWA does not hide this. As Commissioner General Karen AbuZayd states, UNRWA's goal "is to reconstruct houses, create jobs, and micro-financing." It has been filling this role since 1991, when UNRWA launched its micro-finance and micro-enterprise program (MMP) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Indeed, UNRWA provides services that the Palestinian economic ministry or treasury should handle. UNRWA, originally conceived as a temporary apparatus to ease the refugees' economic plight more than a half-century ago, has been providing the Palestinians of Gaza (as well as the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan) with critical economic services for a decade so that the Palestinian government, whether Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, can continue to concentrate on "resistance."

    Supporting the Hamas Platform

    UNRWA does not seem to have a problem with Hamas' Islamist agenda. It has not condemned the brutal Hamas violence that enabled the terrorist group to take the Gaza Strip by force in June. UNRWA waited to see who would win the battle, then immediately indicated to Hamas that it was eager to get back to providing its services.

    UNRWA only appears to be concerned with its own survival and continued funding. As AbuZayd recently said after the Hamas takeover, "we are not scared. Donor countries have not in any way said they will stop their aid to UNRWA. On the contrary, we were approached by many of these countries, even Israel, asking us to continue our services to Palestinian refugees and perhaps even extend these services to do things we haven't done before."

    As long as it can continue to feed refugees, UNRWA does not appear to be scared of Hamas' terrorist agenda, either. Professor Rashid Khalidi, a noted Hamas apologist at Columbia University, explains that UNRWA employs, "members of different political groups such as… Hamas and Islamic Jihad, without reference to their belonging to a specific group."


    cont....

    ReplyDelete
  30. Anonymous10:20 AM

    An "Earth Bible", like the "Earth Charter", is a welcome mat for the return of widespread Gaia worship, complete with the old temples...and of course, the old temple activities.

    Think of the possibilities!

    If temple prostitution is allowed back into the mix and gains popularity, we might not have such a big problem with sexually frustrated, gay, or pedophile priests. We could save money by legalizing crime, even turn some crimes into a sacrament while protecting public health at the same time. Yes, it makes sense to take crime off the streets and have a place where such things are celebrated, in the Earth churches.


    http://firstthings.com/blogs/evangel/2009/12/temple-prostitution-a-modest-proposal/

    or

    http://tiny.cc/qooro

    omots

    ReplyDelete
  31. Anonymous10:20 AM

    cont....

    Moreover, according to Yoni Fighel, a former Israeli military governor in the Palestinian territories, UNRWA workers are permitted to openly affiliate with terrorist groups. He notes that, "as long as UNRWA employees are members of Fatah, Hamas, or PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], they are going to pursue the interests of their party within the framework of their job…Who's going to check up on them to see that they don't? UNRWA? They are UNRWA."

    In other words, UNRWA sees Hamas and other terrorist groups as part of the Palestinian landscape, and therefore embraces these groups.

    Teaching and Preaching Hamas Ideology

    Since many UNRWA teachers are alumni of the UNRWA school system, they often perpetuate the vitriolic curriculum they were taught, vilifying Israel and the West. For example, Suheil al-Hindi, an UNRWA teachers' representative, openly applauded suicide bombings at a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza in 2003. Instead of a condemnation, al-Hindi received a promotion and was subsequently elected to UNRWA's clerks union.

    UNRWA teachers who publicly identify with radical groups have created a teachers' bloc that ensures the election of Hamas members and other individuals committed to Islamist ideologies. After using their classrooms as a place to refine their radical messages, these teachers gravitate to politics. As such, UNRWA's education system has become a springboard for Hamas leaders. For example, Said Sayyam, the Hamas minister of interior and civil affairs, was a teacher in UNRWA schools in Gaza from 1980 to 2003. He went on to become a member of UNRWA's Arab Employees Union, and headed the teachers sector committee.

    Notable graduates of the UNRWA school system include former Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, the former Hamas chief who attended UNRWA secondary school in Khan Younis and graduated top of his class.


    cont....

    ReplyDelete
  32. Susanna10:39 AM

    cont....


    UNRWA and Terrorism

    UNRWA institutions have not just produced terrorist ideologues. They have also produced terrorist masterminds. According to Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, UNWRA has produced graduates like Ibrahim Maqadama, who "helped create the military structure of Hamas." Gold notes that, "at least 46 terrorist operatives were students in the UNRWA schools."

    There have also been widespread reports of terrorism from UNRWA-supervised facilities, including sniper attacks from UNRWA-run schools, bomb and arms factories in UNRWA camps, the transport of terrorists to their target zones in UNRWA ambulances, and even UNRWA employees directly tied to terrorist attacks against civilians.

    Nidal Abd al-Fattah Abdallah Nazzal, an ambulance driver for UNRWA from Kalqiliya in the West Bank, was arrested by Israeli security services in August 2002. Nidal admitted that he was a Hamas activist and that he had transported weapons and explosives to terrorists in his ambulance, taking advantage of the freedom of movement afforded to UNRWA vehicles by the Israelis.

    Nahd Rashid Ahmad Atallah, a senior official of UNRWA in the Gaza Strip, was also arrested by Israeli security in August 2002. In his capacity as an UNRWA official, he provided support to families of wanted Fatah and PFLP terrorists. He used his UNRWA car to transport armed members of the "Popular Resistance Committees," a militant faction of the Fatah movement, to carry out attacks against Israeli troops at the Karni Crossing.

    UNRWA also appears to be in the business of cultivating new terrorists. The New York Times exposed in 2000 that UNRWA allowed terrorist groups to use their schools as "summer camps" so that 25,000 Palestinian children could receive paramilitary training, including instructions on how to prepare Molotov cocktails and roadside bombs.

    UNRWA does not appear eager to prevent this kind of activity. When the U.S. government's General Accounting Office (GAO) asked UNRWA whether it screens beneficiaries for ties with terrorists, UNRWA claimed that it couldn't because such a screening would endanger its staff. Similarly, when the houses of six Palestinian families on UNRWA's registry were destroyed during bomb-making activities, UNRWA concluded there was not enough evidence to deny them benefits under the terrorist exclusion law.
    Target UNRWA?
    As the West searches for ways to weaken Hamas in Gaza, UNRWA should be an obvious target. UNRWA provides food, medicine, economic aid, jobs, radical education, political opportunities, and even logistical assistance to Hamas and other extremist groups. UNRWA's budget, which exceeds $365 million, is funded by many nations, but the United States and other Western nations are the largest contributors. Cutting off UNRWA's budget would be detrimental to Hamas in Gaza. It would also send an important message to the United Nations, which perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem and lends legitimacy to groups like Hamas through UNRWA's continued existence.

    Asaf Romirowsky is an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum and Manager of Israel & Middle East Affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.


    http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org
    /53/how-unrwa-supports-hamas

    _________________________

    By the way, the aforementioned United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has ties to George Soros.

    http://unitedagainstislamicsupre
    macism.wordpress.com/2009/04/
    07/unrwa-gisha-phr-ocha-the-
    saban-center/

    ReplyDelete
  33. Susanna11:05 AM

    UNRWA STAFF NOT TESTED FOR TERROR TIES

    February 1, 2009

    http://logicalsceptic.blogspot.
    com/2009/02/unrwa-staff-not-tested
    -for-terror-ties.html

    ReplyDelete
  34. Susanna11:22 AM

    This is from Israel Commentary.

    My reason for posting so much here in response to JD's comment is because the UNRWA is an entity of the United Nations and because George Soros is using capitalism to impose socialism.

    _______________________________

    March 21, 2010

    Who is George Soros?

    Soros Group Preparing to Steal 2012Election.

    (This is one of over a dozen articles appearing in Whistleblower Magazine, March 2010. For those interested in seeing that our country and way of life is not indeed stolen, please read Whistleblower)

    Redacted from article By Matthew Vadium

    copyright 2009 The American Spectatorm


    History’s most notorious Georgian turned-Russian, the politically astute Joseph Stalin once remarked, “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” The lesson has not been lost on the increasingly notorious Hungarian-cum-American George Soros.

    A group backed by Soros is gearing up to steal the 2012 election for President Obama and congressional Democrats by installing left-wing Democrats as secretaries of state across the nation. From such posts, secretaries of state can help tilt the electoral playing field. This is, of course, the same Soros, the same hyper political left-wing philanthropist, who makes no secret of his intention to destroy capitalism. In an interview with Der Spiegel last year, Soros said European-style socialism “is exactly what we need now. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful — but also very harmful to our society.”

    The vehicle for this planned hijacking of democracy is a below-the-radar non-federal “527” group called the Secretary of State Project. The entity can accept unlimited financial contributions and doesn’t have to disclose them publicly until well after the election. It was revealed during a panel discussion at the Democratic Party’s convention last year that the Democracy Alliance, a financial clearinghouse created by Soros and Progressive insurance magnate Peter B. Lewis, approved the Secretary of State Project as a grantee. The Democracy Alliance aspires to create a permanent political infrastructure of nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups — a kind of “vast left-wing conspiracy” to compete with the conservative movement. It has brokered more than $100 million in grants to liberal nonprofits, including ACORN
    ...read more...


    http://webcache.googleusercontent.
    com/search?q=cache:1qem1
    4IIbtsJ:www.israel-commentary.org/+George+Soros+
    UNRWA&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&ie=UTF-8



    ....read more....

    ReplyDelete
  35. It looks like Europe is having a real emergency. It is coming from a natural disaster that forebodes GLOBAL COOLING and NOT "global warming."

    I am posting a new blogspot on it.

    Constance

    ReplyDelete
  36. I read this over at Born to Watch in regards to Iran's nuclear ambitions.

    http://tinyurl.com/y4z4mhd

    Iran: We will join 'world nuclear club' within a month

    Iran announced that it will join the "world nuclear club" within a month and will be capable of deterring possible attacks on the country, the Iranian Fars news agency reported on Tuesday.

    "No country would even think about attacking Iran after Iran's membership in the club," said Behzad Soltani, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, according to the report.

    ReplyDelete
  37. In a related article...

    http://tinyurl.com/y4qzt7q

    Tehran: If Iran is attacked, nuclear devices will go off in American cities

    This warning, along with an announcement that Iran would join the world's nuclear club within a month, raised the pitch of Iranian anti-US rhetoric to a new high Tuesday, April 13, as 47 world leaders gathered in Washington for President Barack Obama's Nuclear Security Summit. The statement published by Kayhan said: "If the US strikes Iran with nuclear weapons, there are elements which will respond with nuclear blasts in the centers of America's main cities." For the first time, debkafile's military sources report, Tehran indicated the possibility of passing nuclear devices to terrorists capable of striking inside the United States.
    Without specifying whether those elements would be Iranian or others, Tehran aimed at the heart of the Nuclear Security Summit by threatening US cities with nuclear terror.
    debkafile's Iranians sources report that Tehran is playing brinkmanship to demonstrate that the Washington summit, from which Iran and North Korea were excluded, failed before it began, because terrorist elements capable of striking inside the US had already acquired nuclear devices for that purpose.

    I don't know how reliable a news source this is, but it's quite alarming.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Anonymous12:56 PM

    Volcanic ash from Iceland forces cancellation of flights, disrupts travel for thousands . . .

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
    dyn/content/article/2010/04/15/AR
    2010041500560_pf.html

    ReplyDelete
  39. Anonymous1:08 PM

    On CNN right now . . .

    Volcanic ash has CLOSED (disrupted) airspace all over Europe!!! This is the largest impact on air travel since World War II.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Anonymous1:35 PM

    Maybe a little 'pay back' for the EU's attempts to keep Iceland isolated???

    ReplyDelete
  41. Anonymous1:40 PM

    Constance,

    Following up from the previous thread. They can't arrest the Pope because there's no evidence against him, and not to mention they are going to look like major fools in a court of law, for not being able to read a legal document.

    But what they can do is unleash a wave of propaganda through the court of public opinion, in order to get people riled up, something similar to what the Nazis did.

    Savvy

    ReplyDelete
  42. Susanna,

    Thanks for sharing that. I also have a mound of info about UNRWA, microfinance, and Hamas in the comments section of the Update post on my blog. Most of which came from the three way conversations between you, I, and Dorothy on the subject, so I am certain you have most of it. But for anyone else interested, it is there.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Dear Savvy,

    A very insightful analysis and I agree.

    Constance

    ReplyDelete