On the other hand you have something PG calls the maker’s schedule – a schedule for those of us who produce stuff. Working on large abstract systems involves fitting the whole thing into your mind – somebody once likened this to constructing a house out of expensive crystal glassand as soon as someone distracts you, it all comes barreling down and shatters into a thousand pieces.

Finally, an explanation!

We expect to carry on our lawful lives free from police intrusion unless a judge can be persuaded that the police are justified in their intrusion into your life, including the fact that the intrusion relates to a lawful investigation into criminal wrongdoing. Lawful access would remove the only check and balance, allowing police the ability monitor citizens without any reason.

Just in case you thought plans for a police state here in Canuckistan have finally died their natural death, think again…

It’s back, it hasn’t changed much and it still has exactly the same goal: the removal of the only firewall we have to modify the behavior of those we have given the power of life and death, bondage and freedom and rights vs. responsibilities.

And, it still needs more voices speaking out against it.

The organizers of Occupy Wall Street are fighting to upend the system. But what gives their movement the potential for power and potency is the masses who just want the system to work the way they were promised it would work. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans are really struggling. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans want a revolution. It’s that 99 percent of Americans sense that the fundamental bargain of our economy — work hard, play by the rules, get ahead — has been broken, and they want to see it restored.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the news media, almost to a journalist, simply fails to grasp what is going on world wide as the protests in the world wide financial centers multiply and the frenzied rhetoric calling for the arrests of the protestors out of the financial leaders increases in pitch and volume. They write curious articles wondering who these people are, what they want and about how silly they are to be there.

Strangely, the financial leadership is NOT giving voice to the same wonderment. They already know.

What they know is this: when the people of Egypt came to understand that they had a two tiered court system, that they had been fleeced out of their money, that they were under surveillance and control, that they were living in fear, that normal means would not get the job done and that they needed a change in those who were ruling over them, they went to the seat of power and overthrew those leaders. (Sadly they failed to figure out what they would replace it with…)

Well, the rest of the world has too figured out that they have a two tiered court system, that we have been fleeced out of our money, that we are under surveillance and control, that we are increasingly living in fear, that normal means will not get the job done as our political critters are all on the take and that we need a change in those who are ruling over them, they went to the real seat of western power and are clearly working to overthrow the real unelected overlords of our society. (Sadly they also have failed to figure out what they would replace them with…)

But, make no mistake, the loudest protests are not coming from the guys on the mattresses in the park out front – they are coming from the 33rd floor of the building because, unlike the press, they get it. They get that their paid shills in Congress, the Senate and on the North Side of the 49th may have to finally grow a spine and admit that the sort of theft these uber-rich managed to get written into law is just wrong. Perhaps, they may even have to do something about it – hopefully by tossing these thieves in jail.

Let’s just hope they all figure out how to spell, “Wrong,” before, as in Egypt, our overlords are dragged in the street.

So what’s keeping kids indoors? Fear of abduction is a big one, followed by worries about kids getting hit by cars and bullies, surveys have found.



Those fears have created legions of overprotective parents rearing “wimps” who are unable to cope with the ups and downs of life because they have no experience doing so, said Hara Estroff Marano, the New York-based author of the book A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting.



“The home of the brave has given way to the home of the fearful, the entitled, the risk averse, and the narcissistic,” Marano said. “Today’s young, at least in the middle class and upper class, are psychologically fragile,” Marano said in an interview published in the journal.



Hovering parents, these researchers said, also deprive their children of something else — joy. One survey found that 89 percent of children preferred outdoor play with friends to watching TV.



“Parents have to remember that childhood is this special time. You only get it once, and you don’t want to miss it,” LaFreniere said. “Mixing it up with other kids in an unrestrained manner isn’t just fun. It isn’t a luxury. It’s part of nature’s plan.”

Apparently, there’s something rather positive to be said for mediocre parenting…

With all the helicopter parenting, early childhood education, language immersion and other tactics we are all so sure will help our kid to get ahead, we’ve forgotten how to raise humans who know how to get along. Perhaps we finally have an explanation for the American political system…

StopSpying.ca

This is probably the second most offensive plan Ottawa has set in motion – and they need to hear your voice. Like, a in, yesterday!

By contrast, secular society is embracing masturbation as a way for women to better understand their bodies and enhance their pleasure with their partners. Millions of women struggle with reaching orgasms during sex, so, more and more, sex-ed teachers are including masturbation in their curricula. Last year, the United Nations released a report suggesting that children as young as 5 learn about masturbation. The National Health Service in Britain recently released a pamphlet for teenagers with the headline “An Orgasm a Day Keeps the Doctor Away,” advocating that regular masturbation is good for cardiovascular health. In Spain, one regional government has just launched a sex-ed campaign with the slogan “Pleasure Is in Your Own Hands,” stating that masturbation boosts confidence and self-esteem. And even Oprah Winfrey, the standard-bearer for mainstream American ethics, has discussed the benefits of female masturbation many times on her talk show. One of Winfrey’s frequent guest experts, Laura Berman, says encouraging girls to masturbate can help them avoid unhealthy sexual experiences.

But Renaud isn’t pleased with secular society’s increasing acceptance of porn and masturbation for women. Interestingly enough, she’s fine with teaching young children about the existence of masturbation and porn—as long as they don’t try it. “It’s a very dangerous society that we live in,” she says, “when we’re telling women that it’s OK to look at porn.”

Many girls in Renaud’s ministry think that once they get married, they will be free to express their sexuality and enjoy orgasms with a man. This causes some to take the fast track to the altar, only to find that after they’ve married, they still feel the same taboo urges. One forum commenter married at 19 in the hope that pious matrimonial intercourse would rid her of her sinful thoughts—only to find that during sex with her husband, she would have the same fantasies. “I cannot cleanse my mind of these images,” she says. “I try so hard to focus on my husband only, but my thoughts are so warped.”

One of the most striking pieces of this article is the subject’s inability to grasp any sort of difference between the erotic (part of every society and artistic practice around the world) and the pornographic (rage based materials designed to dehumanize, degrade and shame those depicted so as to allow those who are so awash with hatred that they do not view themselves as capable of connecting or becoming stimulated in a normative bonding based manner to become aroused.) The result of such is a strange, dichotomous hostility to everything erotic and to every thought of sexuality (no matter how relationally oriented) that is meshed with a completely artificial separation of secular erotica from Scriptural erotica (Psalm of Solomon for example) but yet still denounces even the thought of such arousal response that Scripture itself could generate.

In other words: Internal inconsistency to the point of the insane…

The article is also completely devoid of any sort of grasp of the difference between fantasy (Mental expression of need and preparation of the person for the pursuit of the legitimate meeting of said need that draws us into the beauty of permanent intimate love that God designed for us) and lust (The predatory desire to use, consume and then dispose of the person with no thought for the other’s well being.)

It is then overlaid with a pseudo science that holds that the neurological release of any chemical indicating pleasure is indicative of addiction (and thus to be avoided) that completely ignores that dopamine is also released as a result of, er, bowel movements… (It’s a rather convenient way of avoiding addressing anything approaching modern psychological understanding of said bondage that basically leaves them free to demonize anything they want.) An addiction is, to quote Patrick Carnes from memory, “A pathological relationship with a mood altering experience.” In other words, it is a bent way of replacing a person with a substance, experience or mental state and using such not to feel/to feel numb.

Stoicism and Gnosticism would be proud – for to them, pleasure and the body were the enemy…

But, the most striking part of the whole mess is on the first page:

While many of the women she counsels report turning to pornography as a form of escape—from traumas like sexual abuse, infidelity, and even prostitution—Renaud compares their masturbation to alcoholism, saying that “like drugs and alcohol, so many things that feel good in a short amount of time can end up hurting you.” Renaud’s advocacy is labeled antipornography, but it aims to treat all masturbation, whether it involves porn or not. When you peel back the layers, the core of her crusade is against sexual thought—even within marriage—unless those thoughts are about your husband while you are engaging in intercourse with him.

Read it carefully: She is fully aware that the women in her group have been damaged, severely abused and often had their sexuality commercially exploited and are in desperate flight from soul wrenching pain, but she’s more concerned about that which Christ already took away: their sin.

Matthew 23:1-15 New International Version

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.

They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

“Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteriesa wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’ “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

Like in the time of Christ, the entire charade exists to ensure only one result: That the human leaders of the charade ensure their own place at the helm of the lives of their members — where Christ alone should stand.

CPS involvement did not improve long-run outcomes, a 2010 study found. Such involvement sometimes harms children by taking them from their families unnecessarily – which, in my office’s experience, happens more than 100 times each year in the District. These removals traumatize children and devastate families.

I wish I could disagree with the study, but, while I have always followed the code drilled into me at least once every month of my training and constantly by every brief of the laws I am under, about 2/3rds of the time, I ended up wishing I had not. Most of the time, it’s like watching an episode of some sort of absurdist sitcom entitled, “The invasion of the mental munchkins.”

The same is true when adults report rapes etc. It’s been my experience that less then 2-3% of the offenders ever see a night in jail – while the victims get to experience a system that pretty much torments them for months and leaves them tormenting themselves long after. I’d say that the majority of the PTSD symptoms that later emerge are not the result of the rape but, rather, the result of police and social services stupidity.

As sad as it is to say, it’s getting so therapists need to issue guidelines for reporting to them…

Just a few of the things that are never taught in the ivory castles of education by those who epitomize the statement that, “Those who can, do, the rest teach,” to say nothing of even being remotely grasped by the legal system…

What is hateful… is not rebellion but the despotism which induces the rebellion; what is hateful are not rebels but the men, who, having the enjoyment of power, do not discharge the duties of power; they are the men who, having the power to redress wrongs, refuse to listen to the petitioners that are sent to them; they are the men who, when they are asked for a loaf, give a stone.

(Speech in the House of Commons, 16 March 1886, in Oscar Douglas Skelton, Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1921), 321)

What is more interesting in our present society is how we have run a constant campaign of the opposite and codified it into law (even when nearly the entirety of society wants the opposite laws passed) in the name of the good of that society…

It’s almost like they are begging for that rebellion – and not because they think they will lose…

Here I was, seeing the flesh-and-blood results of the kind of parenting that my peers and I were trying to practice with our own kids, precisely so that they wouldn’t end up on a therapist’s couch one day. We were running ourselves ragged in a herculean effort to do right by our kids—yet what seemed like grown-up versions of them were sitting in our offices, saying they felt empty, confused, and anxious. Back in graduate school, the clinical focus had always been on how the lack of parental attunement affects the child. It never occurred to any of us to ask, what if the parents are too attuned? What happens to those kids?

Ten years ago or so, I started seeing a phenomenon. A constant stream of clients began to come into the office who really did have perfect parents and had gone through perfect childhoods with that they described as, “Perfect Self Esteem,” – whatever this week’s definition of that is…

And, they had just ditched their second wife or husband.

What the linked article – well worth the really long read it is btw – misses is that there is a second tier of issue happening here that goes way beyond just the person’s ability to deal with stress, it has to do with foundational skills in relationships.

You see, while said perfect parents are running around and making sure that junior has the perfect life, they are not focused on each other, not locking their kids out of their room and making mad passionate love that properly disgusts their children, they are not making out in the living room until their teens want them to get a room, they never go out on dates alone and (GOD FORBID!!!) leave the children with a sitter, they never chase the kids out of the room to have a private, deeply emotional and intimate conversation (that the child overhears from around the corner anyway) and they have never demonstrated to the child the struggle it takes to make a real marriage work.

No, they are too busy raising the perfect child…

Enter stage left another perfectly parented child with perfect delusions from Hollywood about relationships and a marriage happens. And neither of them have any clue about even making a real marriage work – much less the romantic ideal. And, it blows sky high. And, we wonder why…

Then, in retirement acres down somewhere where the sun always shines, the two elderly perfect parents sit across the patio from each other wondering why they can’t even talk enough with each other anymore to discuss why junior and juniorette can’t seem to stay married. Some of them also wonder if that inability to talk has anything to do with why, lately, they seem to be pushing happy hour up to lunchtime…

One of the theories regarding the cause of schizophrenia suggests that, due to an excessive release of dopamine, the brain remembers too many irrelevant things. Schizophrenics are then overwhelmed by the vast amounts of facts, thoughts and memories all crammed together in their heads, and start processing them into conclusions that aren’t based in reality. It’s called the hyperlearning hypothesis, and researchers at the University of Texas in Austin recently tried to see if they could simulate it – in a computer.

After an hour of work on my inlaw’s Windows machine, I knew there had to be a credible explanation…

Dr. Maté’s work focuses on the centrality of early childhood experiences to the development of the brain, and how those experiences can impact everything from behavioral patterns to physical and mental illness. While the relationship between emotional stress and disease, and mental and physical health more broadly, is often considered controversial within medical orthodoxy, Dr. Maté argues too many doctors seem to have forgotten what was once a commonplace assumption, that emotions are deeply implicated in both the development of illness, addictions and disorders, and in their healing. [includes rush transcript]

All I have to add is: Thank you medical community — it’s SO about time!!!

The NASA and NOAA boffins used their more accurate science to model a world where CO2 levels have doubled to 780 parts per million (ppm) compared to today’s 390-odd. They say that world would actually warm up by just 1.64°C overall, and the vegetation-cooling effect would be stronger over land to boot – thus temperatures on land would would be a further 0.3°C cooler compared to the present sims.

International diplomatic efforts under UN auspices are currently devoted to keeping global warming limited to 2°C or less, which under current climate models calls for holding CO2 to 450 ppm – or less in many analyses – a target widely regarded as unachievable. Doubled carbon levels are normally viewed in the current state of enviro play as a scenario that would lead to catastrophe; that is, to warming well beyond 2°C.

It now appears, however, that the previous/current state of climate science may simply have been wrong and that there’s really no need to get in an immediate flap. If Bounoua and her colleagues are right, and CO2 levels keep on rising the way they have been lately (about 2 ppm each year), we can go a couple of centuries without any dangerous warming. There are lots of other factors in play, of course, but nonetheless the new analysis is very reassuring.

So, we’ve been sure for years — and anyone who denied it was a denier of the entirety of science. One more spin around the block in your trusty ol’ SUV is gonna finally add the last part per million of the dreaded toxin C02 to the atmosphere and a major ocean current or atmospheric stream is gonna come to a screeching halt and then the next ice age comes sweeping out of the north and we’re all gonna have to move to Mexico — ya, or something…

And then, real scientists (who actually have to be accountable for what they publish) weigh in and we find that it’s gonna take over 200 years of burning hydrocarbons at the current rate (Expert tip here: WE DON’T HAVE THAT MUCH LEFT TO BURN) to even make the scales flicker — if we aren’t into fusion as a power source by then…

Oh, and, what did technology look like 200yrs ago exactly and how much future progress can we extrapolate???

Printing press in 1811

Cannon in 1806

Transportation in 1810

We probably shouldn’t tell the Sierra club but, perhaps destroying our economy, shutting down trade, starving the 3rd world, telling lies about the poor of the world drowning in rising sea levels, running insane commercials about unplugging cell phone chargers and freaking out on people who simply wanna eat grapes in December might be just a little premature…

The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms an increase in cognitive “secrecy tax” and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.

The more I watch the current world wide kangaroo court of Sweden, Interpol and the US government (To say nothing of an idiot republican by the name of Mike Huckabee who thinks they can prosecute for treason a non-American), the more I realize that Assange and his organization may be the last hope for real freedom anywhere on this ball of rock.

This article and all of the linked files are an essential read for anyone who does not relish the idea of political totalitarianism and control over the masses by corporatist elitism.

In His words:

The leak, in other words, is only the catalyst for the desired counter-overreaction; Wikileaks wants to provoke the conspiracy into turning off its own brain in response to the threat. As it tries to plug its own holes and find the leakers, he reasons, its component elements will de-synchronize from and turn against each other, de-link from the central processing network, and come undone. Even if all the elements of the conspiracy still exist, in this sense, depriving themselves of a vigorous flow of information to connect them all together as a conspiracy prevents them from acting as a conspiracy. As he puts it:

If total conspiratorial power is zero, then clearly there is no information flow between the conspirators and hence no conspiracy. A substantial increase or decrease in total conspiratorial power almost always means what we expect it to mean; an increase or decrease in the ability of the conspiracy to think, act and adapt…An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think is powerless to preserve itself against the opponents it induces.

in states where texting while driving is illegal, there appears to be a “slight increase in the frequency of insurance claims filed under collision coverage for damage to vehicles in crashes.”The finding is based on the institute’s comparisons of claims in four states — California, Washington, Minnesota and Louisiana — before and after texting bans took effect, compared with patterns of claims in nearby states. It could be that drivers who continue to text while driving are doing it more surreptitiously, hiding their phones from view of other drivers and law enforcement, increasing the risk of an accident even more, the institute says.

Apparently, the proponents of yet another law fail to realize that laws were meant to be broken — and that people who need to be controlled by said laws are NEVER made any smarter by the presence of such. (Meanwhile, the rest suffer anyway…)

For the last 12 years, I’ve dedicated immense amounts of time, money and energy to end violence against women and children. As a victim of violence myself, I’m deeply committed to destroying any institution or individual leveraging the sex-power matrix that results in child trafficking, nonconsensual prostitution, domestic violence and other abuses. If I believed that censoring Craigslist would achieve these goals, I’d be the first in line to watch them fall. But from the bottom of my soul and the depths of my intellect, I believe that the current efforts to censor Craigslist’s “adult services” achieves the absolute opposite. Rather than helping those who are abused, it fundamentally helps pimps, human traffickers and others who profit off of abusing others.

On Friday, under tremendous pressure from US attorneys general and public advocacy groups, Craigslist shut down its “Adult Services” section. There is little doubt that this space has been used by people engaged in all sorts of illicit activities, many of which result in harmful abuses. But the debate that has ensued has centered on the wrong axis, pitting protecting the abused against freedom of speech. What’s implied in public discourse is that protecting potential victims requires censorship; thus, anti-censorship advocates are up in arms attacking regulators for trying to curtail First Amendment rights. While I am certainly a proponent of free speech online, I find it utterly depressing that these groups fail to see how this is actually an issue of transparency, not free speech. And how this does more to hurt potential victims than help.

Law enforcement is always struggling to gain access to underground networks in order to go after the bastards who abuse people for profit. Underground enforcement is really difficult, and it takes a lot of time to invade a community and build enough trust to get access to information that will hopefully lead to the dens of sin. While it always looks so easy on TV, there’s nothing easy or pretty about this kind of work. The Internet has given law enforcement more data than they even know what to do with, more information about more people engaged in more horrific abuses than they’ve ever been able to obtain through underground work. It’s far too easy to mistake more data for more crime and too many aspiring governors use the increase of data to spin the public into a frenzy about the dangers of the Internet. The increased availability of data is not the problem; it’s a godsend for getting at the root of the problem and actually helping people.

Censoring Craigslist will do absolutely nothing to help those being victimized, but it will do a lot to help those profiting off of victimization. Censoring Craigslist will also create new jobs for pimps and other corrupt intermediaries, since it’ll temporarily make it a whole lot harder for individual scumbags to find clients. This will be particularly devastating for the low-end prostitutes who were using Craigslist to escape violent pimps. Keep in mind that occasionally getting beaten up by a scary john is often a whole lot more desirable for many than the regular physical, psychological, and economic abuse they receive from their pimps. So while it’ll make it temporarily harder for clients to get access to abusive services, nothing good will come out of it in the long run.

If you want to end human trafficking, if you want to combat nonconsensual prostitution, if you care about the victims of the sex-power industry, don’t cheer Craigslist’s censorship. This did nothing to combat the cycle of abuse. What we desperately need are more resources for law enforcement to leverage the visibility of the Internet to go after the scumbags who abuse. What we desperately need are for sites like Craigslist to be encouraged to work with law enforcement and help create channels to actually help victims. What we need are innovative citizens who leverage new opportunities to devise new ways of countering abusive industries. We need to take this moment of visibility and embrace it, leverage it to create change, leverage it to help those who are victimized and lack the infrastructure to get help. What you see online should haunt you. But it should drive you to address the core problem by finding and helping victims, not looking for new ways to blindfold yourself. Please, I beg you, don’t close your eyes. We need you.

Some articles are so brilliant and show such a grasp of the issues they nearly require no comment.

This whole Craigslist stupidity reminds me of the entire campaign to put children in school uniforms because it, “Ends gang violence.” At the end of the day, when others finally did the analysis, the same number of violent acts still went down in the schools — but now the teachers couldn’t identify the perpetrators as gang members (As they were no longer wearing their colors) so they just reported violent acts. Hence, the problem of gang violence in schools was fixed by uniforms.

The censoring of Craigslist by the Evangelical Right and the myopic blindness of the bleeding-heart Left will result in nothing more then the same illusion of safety though denial and sweeping the problem into someone else’s back-yard.

But, Shhh, nobody tell the Polaris Project or a blind crew of Attorney generals that the pimps have already moved over into the, “Casual Encounter’s,” section. You might spoil their celebration…

For years, the aggressive presentation of the American Psyc. Asso. has been that homosexuality is innate, that any attempt at reparative therapy amounted to abuse and that therapists who offer such should be banned. They further promoted the idea (and aggressively attempted the enforcement of such) that schools must affirm and even market homosexuality/bisexuality/lesbianism/transsexualism as a great idea for youth or risk being seen as and create children who are bigoted.

It would be nice if they had founded all of this politicking on anything more then rumor and thin air — but, they didn’t — the science just isn’t on their side.

Finally, the push back is coming — and coming VERY hard — from none other then the American College of Pediatricians in the form of a letter stating the obvious:

(1) individuals with unwanted same sex attraction often can be successfully treated;

(2) there is no undue risk to patients from embarking on such therapy and

(3), as a group, homosexuals experience significantly higher levels of mental and physical health problems compared to heterosexuals. Among adolescents who claim a “gay” identity, the health risks include higher rates of sexually transmitted infections, alcoholism, substance abuse, anxiety, depression and suicide. Encouragingly, the longer students delay self-labeling as “gay,” the less likely they are to experience these health risks. In fact, for each year an adolescent delays, the risk of suicide alone decreases by 20%.

In light of these facts, it is clear that when well-intentioned but misinformed school personnel encourage students to “come out as gay” and be “affirmed,” there is a serious risk of erroneously labeling students (who may merely be experiencing transient sexual confusion and/or engaging in sexual experimentation). Premature labeling may then lead some adolescents into harmful homosexual behaviors that they otherwise would not pursue.

Optimal health and respect for all students will only be achieved by first respecting the rights of students and parents to accurate information and to self-determination. It is the school’s legitimate role to provide a safe environment for respectful self-expression for all students. It is not the school’s role to diagnose and attempt to treat any student’s medical condition, and certainly not a school’s role to “affirm” a student’s perceived personal sexual orientation.

Here’s a couple more sources of real information from NARTH and Liberty Counsel.

Don’t expect the politburo at the APA to agree though…

I have no idea what the rest of the movie is about but the trailer gets my vote for movie of the year…

Female homicide bombers are being fitted with exploding breast implants which are almost impossible to detect, British spies have reportedly discovered.

The shocking new Al Qaeda tactic involves radical doctors inserting the explosives in women’s breasts during plastic surgery — making them "virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines."

It is believed the doctors have been trained at some of Britain’s leading teaching hospitals before returning to their own countries to perform the surgical procedures.

MI5 has also discovered that extremists are inserting the explosives into the buttocks of some male bombers.

"Women suicide bombers recruited by Al Qaeda are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery," Terrorist expert Joseph Farah claims.

After the failed genius of the underwear bomber who mostly lit his nuts on fire, I commented to a friend that the stupidity of strip searches, make-you-naked-body-scanners and other useless projects of the airline safety industry would only die when some wack-job finally blows something out of the air with an explosive boob-job and the public gets around to realizing that taking away your nail-clippers was nothing more then a sham of security.

Well, it looks like it’s about to happen — and, perhaps, with a butt job too…

Sooner or later, we just gotta admit that no matter how many strip searches we perform, how many people get fondled by security teams and how many naked body scans we perform, we are never gonna be able to get ahead of a terrorist who is unafraid to die and happy to have the mechanism for such sewn inside his/her body…

So, can we all grow up, admit that who people associate with matters, admit that we are gonna have to go back to good-ole-detective-work, start paying attention to who is hanging out with other radical nut cases and figure out who it is who has some insane ideology that would make them want to blow other people up in first place?

Oh, ya, never mind — that would be racist and religiously bigoted. On second though, hand over your nail-clippers sir – we’re certain you are gonna nibble the flight crew to death with them…

Can you imagine if Jesus actually showed up for that service? The first-century Galilean apocalyptic radical is somehow transported through time and space ala Bill and Ted’s phone-booth, and he can understand English and has a social context for the gathering “in his name”…I imagine him fashioning a whip and driving people out of their seats saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of retards.”

Hopefully, after his mini-sermon Jesus mounts one of the mimes and beats him into submission… ’cause that would be awesome!

Ok, a client just gifted me this site today. My abs and throat already hurt from laughing and I’ve only been at it for 1/2 an hour.

What Evangelical Christendom most desperately needs is another 500 sites like this — sites run by people who stand up in what the true prophetic calling of Christ and His Church really is: the call to truth in the face of that which is SO overwhelmingly and pervasively, yes, “Retarded.”

Then, just maybe, the general public will start waking up, cut off the funding that keeps these people on the air and demand a real relationship with the living God.

The American Family Association, a religious right group, is urging that Tillikum Tilly, the killer whale that killed a trainer at SeaWorld Orlando, be put down, preferably by stoning. Citing Tilly’s history of violent altercations, the group is slamming SeaWorld for not listening to Scripture in how to deal with the animal:

Says the ancient civil code of Israel, “When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable.” Exodus 21:28

However, the group is going further and laying the blame for the trainer’s death directly at the feet of Chuck Thompson, the curator in charge of animal behavior, because, according to Scripture, But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn’t kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time,

“the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.” Exodus 21:29

SeaWorld has no plans to execute Tilly.

And, we all hoped they would learn from Pat Robertson/Haiti…

But, I for one vote for it… but, they have to stand in the tank while throwing the stones…

Christian parents who objected to their children being taught about other religions in a mandatory new Quebec school course have suffered a serious setback with a ruling this week that the teachings do not infringe their religious freedoms.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-Guy Dubois dismissed a bid by parents in Drummondville, Que., who said the course on ethics and religious culture introduced across the province last year was undermining their efforts to instill Christian faith in their children.

“In light of all the evidence presented, the court does not see how the … course limits the plaintiff’s freedom of conscience and of religion for the children when it provides an overall presentation of various religions without obliging the children to adhere to them,” Judge Dubois wrote.

Step #1: Schools and the governments that back them all over North America throw their lot in with secularization and toss religion out of schools. The backing belief is that our society needs freedom of religion — and such freedom demands a secular state that supports all religions equally and promotes none of them.

Church response: “Help, we’re being oppressed!!! You have taken God out of the classroom and our children are becoming secular humanists.”

Step #2: Those same school systems and governments realize that religion is a critical part of society and the ability to understand those religions usually means less killing of the members of such. As such, they introduce a fair and balanced program that promotes none of those religions but simply teaches the facts about them.

Church response: “Help, we’re being oppressed!!! You are indoctrinating our children with other religions…” (Then they sue the school board…)

Step #2: Judge comes back with a well reasoned response saying that learning about world religions is not the same thing as promoting them — and tells them to go away and shut up.

Church response: “Help, we’re being oppressed!!! You are infringing on our rights to form our children’s faith development and we’re gonna sue you some more…”

Humm, so, let me get this straight: The only way a free society which values general human rights can avoid treading on your specific rights is to teach every student in every school only about your religion… Thus, your snowflake’s little minds can remain properly ignorant I mean pure, undefiled and Godly.

Sounds to me like the veil just got ripped back on a plan for a totalitarian theocracy — not the freedom Jesus died to bring.

It may actually be rather pivotal though… We finally get the chance to see Fundamentalist Evangelicalism and Catholicism admitting their hatred of that freedom and acknowledging what they really wanted all along:

Control.

Pivotal, because at least truth provides a foundation for change…

The power of Eternality:

The man/woman who stands with no fear of death is the most dangerous being alive. The entirety of the system of this world rides on the ability to take a life from another. When death ceases to terrify, control is lost.

The power of Absolution:

This world — especially the Christian side of it — stands in the constant fear of guilt. It stands with heads hung in shame while playing roles designed to prove to those who hold this weeks rating scale that they do, indeed, measure up. The teachings of Jesus have been so bastardized and bent by the keepers of religious power that it actually seems reasonable when that-which-formerly-was is again brought as a means of enforcing the awareness of our guiltiness and pinned on Jesus. But, we didn’t get a Bandaid for our sins — we, with Christ, died to them — and were raised to a new life that doesn’t relate to them. Our heads can never again hang low — because the standard which judged us (The law) can never again condemn us — no matter what.

The power of Love:

So many people live in the fear that if they ever gave God control of their lives, He’d bring out massive pain and torment (and a few plagues from Egypt too) to finally hurt them enough to change them. Yet, Jesus made it very clear that to see His heart was to see the Father. It’s a heart that will never lead through shame, fear, guilt, condemnation, coercion, punishment, torment or wrath. It’s a gentle heart that works quietly inside — when we are ready — to call us to life.

The power of Life:

Almost every aspect of our world is focused upon dying. We have drugs — they keep us emotionally dead. We have TV and entertainment to keep us distracted until we die. We have disassociative meditative techniques that are used to attain the peace of the grave while living. We run from shame, fear, guilt and the paralysis that comes from feeling trapped and bound and this drives that seeking of death. Through canceling all of that, the Gospel not only reawakens the desire to live, it legitimated the call to live and unlocked the creative energy to drive such.

The power of Freedom:

Wanna know why our bricks and mortar churches are emptying by the droves? People heard that Jesus came to set them free — and something deep within them intuitively knows that a list of rules isn’t what He had in mind. The message of the Gospel isn’t less rules — it’s TOTAL freedom. “When a man finally grasps grace, he suddenly finds himself standing, naked and trembling, in such a wide open space that he can do naught else but reach up for a hand to hold — for a guide to lead him through.” Anon

The power of Intimacy:

We can reach up for that hand to hold and that guide who will lead us through. It’s safe now. The cross is critical to this for it proved that not only is God good — but it proved that who He is IS GOOD. The human race unleashed the very worst it had to offer on the one being in the universe who could have annihilated them with a thought — and He loved them so much He let them kill Him and then came back to love them even more. To love ME even more…

The power of Faith:

Faith isn’t belief — faith is Christ in you, the hope of Glory. The Christian life has nothing to do with trying harder or trying period. It’s about surrender to that new life which has been created in you to enough of a degree that you can stop trying and literally get the hell out of the way. It’s about a surrender to a wisdom so much greater then our own that the foundations of this sick and corrupt system of control we call life begin to get blown up — not just for yourself, but also for those you love.

The power of Holy Anger:

Jesus made one thing very clear: He didn’t come to make nice — He came to start a war. The religious leaders of the day didn’t kill, “Gentle Jesus meek and mild.” They killed a guy who they could plainly see was destroying everything about their system of religious power — not trying to start the Progressive Conservative/Republican party. Then, He turned to the disenfranchised, the broken, the humiliated, the poor, the shameful, the powerless and promised them a power greater then the world had ever seen — just before he invited them to join up and open fire.

The power of Humanness:

Look around the world — every major religion out there sees human beings as basically screwed up and disgusting. It then offers it’s prescription to fix them — if people will only tow their line. The Gospel sees people as made in the image of God and, though once broken, as currently perfect without them doing anything to fix themselves. (That’s God’s job.) He came not to destroy them — but to reverse that which was broken about them once and for all. He came to make them fully human and fully alive.

The power of Transformation:

The foundational job of the gospel is to tear back the veils that keep people from seeing the beauty and dignity of the current reality of their lives. Read that again — not to fix people, for that job is already done. The primary weapon we are given is truth — the ability to tear back the lies that have the ones we love trapped in a set of falsehoods that reduce them to that which formerly was (dead) and drive them towards a set of broken strategies which will never fulfill the deepest longings of their hearts.

The power of Passion:

The magical core of the Gospel is the call to the deepest desires of our hearts. If God made those hearts and planted those deep longings within them, then those deep longings have to be His will for our lives. All of the above was NOT done because God wants to finally get you to the point of being a well-trained-seal who will do some religious dance when told. He did all of the above so you could finally reach inside and discover that deepest place of your heart where He planted the vision He created for you to become — and then full-tilt LIVE IT OUT.

The Gospel is not seen in ethics. The Gospel is first seen when a human heart, transformed so that it both is able to hear the voice of God and longs to do so, begins to reach out for the hand of a loving father and, when finding that hand, begins to take the risk to step out and live.

The Gospel achieves it’s true 10,000 candle-power brilliance when that heart reaches out and loves, it stops and cries, it gives to another, it stands in defiance of the night, it attacks with fury, it rescues the broken, it binds up the wounded, it touches that paintbrush to canvas, it places finger to string or key, it speaks with fire and precision, it screams with the fury of Almighty God at the thought of one of His precious children living with even one chain, it kisses with passion and then it makes love with with all of the erotic intensity that only a heart set free can even risk.

It’s the captivating and irresistible master plan of liberty the God of the universe, exploding out of the passionate longings of His heart, wrote for you.

Religion is serious business, she says, and cultural elites like Hitchens are foolish if they think they can jettison it.

For one thing, she says, religion ties into the the glorious art and cultural traditions of the West. With their bare-bones, secular education, students come to university knowing nothing, Camille says. “NOTHING!” she shouts to the audience, the heavens, the ancient statues that lurk in adjacent rooms.

They don’t know Bible stories anymore (except, occasionally, for working-class students from religious homes, she said). They don’t know the story of Moses, fleeing slavery from Egypt.

How can you understand the depth of the American civil rights movement, she asks, without a regard for the religious underpinning of Martin Luther King Jr. and other clergy? “Let my people go,” which black slaves used to sing, had a great resonance that allowed them to unite their pain and longing with a powerful, religious tradition.

What do we have? Homer Simpson? O.J. Simpson? The Terminator?

And again:

Religion is serious business

It’s just a bunny trail but… It seems that even the atheists are more capable of understanding the current state of Christianity then most of the Church…

That’s true in two senses — the reality that the Church has mostly become a business, and at a deeper level as well…

For years, secular society has claimed art — and we let them (Often acting as though most of it were evil — God FORBID we should paint/photograph a nude…) They claimed music — and we held idiot-level seminars on the evils of drums in worship. They have claimed the authority on traditions and culture — and we let them — often ignoring the roots of such ourselves. Secular society reduced the world to a mechanical system — and we avoided science and the beauty/order that clearly shows a Creator. They claimed/revised history — and we allowed them to ignore spirituality throughout it. They (correctly) mocked religion — and we passively sat back and defended religion instead of reciprocally mocking their ignorance and presenting intimacy with God.

In a place where spiritual people should have stood up and been counted, we have been silent — while barking furiously about ethical issues that change nothing in a society.

Now, finally, the ultimate pathetic irony: We’ve crawled our whipped hides back into our little stained glass caves where we are sitting, licking our wounds and railing on about the evils of this world and it is now the ATHEISTS who have had to stand up and defend the cultural value of faith out of their own fear of what a truly secular society would actually look like.

A Freelton man who describes himself as a software developer and aspiring screenplay writer is accused in a California court of running a $14-million US Ponzi scheme.

Gordon Driver and his company, Axcess Automation, are alleged to have defrauded more than 100 Canadian and American investors since 2006 by promising them weekly returns on their investment as high as 5 per cent, based on special software he says he developed to trade futures.

Among those who invested in the alleged Ponzi scheme, court documents say, are Ron and Reynold Mainse, sons of David Mainse, founder of Burlington’s Crossroads Television and 100 Huntley Street.

Reynold Mainse became interested, Driver testified, and eventually invested some money. Ron Mainse also became an investor.

In Driver’s April 23 testimony, he alleged the two Mainse brothers also acted as finders, bringing other investors to Driver.

Ron Mainse is out of the country and could not be reached for comment.

Reynold Mainse did not respond to an interview request.

(For explanation on the title, go here.)

The mothership, meanwhile, had this to say:

Well the board of Crossroads have asked me to inform you that Ron and Reynold Mainse will not be appearing on any Crossroads programming or otherwise represent Crossroads for the time being as they focus their energies on certain matters in their personal lives. They’ve stepped down from their duties until such time as the board of directors have complete understanding of all the issues related to a matter that they were involved in outside of the ministry here at Crossroads.

(Of course, immediately the right set about painting them as victims instead of the finders they were.)

Nothing ever changes:

Rather interesting how they go down in flames right after attempting to mock/silence Drew for calling them and the Church to account for a gospel of control, shame and guilt and towards a Gospel of freedom, grace and intimacy with the Father. It’s almost Luke 13 in real life:

One of my favorite heretics paraphrased Luke 13 this way:

“I tell you it is not true that these people suffered such things because they were worse sinners than any other, but I also tell you that as long as you persist in seeing it this way, your deaths will be viewed in the same [Judgment of God] way.”

If only they could have looked forward with these eyes — it wouldn’t have been Drew’s last appearance…