Profit `Not Satanic,’ Barclays Says, After Goldman Invokes Jesus

Al's Gore's much-anticipated sequel to An Inconvenent Truth is published today, with an admission that facts alone will not persuade Americans to act on global warming and that appealing to their spiritual side is the way forward.

His solicitor, Shah Qureshi, said: "Essentially what the judgment says is that a belief in man-made climate change and the alleged resulting moral imperative is capable of being a philosophical belief and is therefore protected by the 2003 religion or belief regulations."

The doctrine known as "the rapture of the church" did not originate from within the written Word of Yahweh God Almighty. In fact, the word "rapture" is not to be found in any Bible verse at all. Those denominations which teach the rapture theory are usually critical of the Roman Catholic religion for constructing doctrines based upon words not found in the Bible -- words such as "purgatory" and "rosary beads". However, the exact same thing is done by the promoters of the "rapture" as this teaching is simply one not based on Scriptural truth. Ironically the rapture theory was originally a Roman Catholic doctrine first invented in Chile during the mid 1700's by a Jesuit priest named Lacunza.

The St. Petersburg Times has interviewed former high-ranking Scientology officials who coordinated the intelligence gathering and supervised the retrieval of staff who left, or "blew."

They say the church, led by David Miscavige, wanted to contain the threat that those who left might reveal secrets of life inside Scientology.

Marty Rathbun, a former church official and confidant of Miscavige, said the leader especially targeted those he had edged aside during his rise to the top or anyone he feared might threaten his position or the church if left alone on the outside.

An umbrella organization for Israeli Arab groups accused Israel on Saturday of perpetrating "ethnic cleansing" in Jerusalem, in the wake of Israel's quelling of riots by Arab youths on the Temple Mount.

"Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, and the defense of Al-Aqsa and of East Jerusalem is an obligation for the whole Palestinian people, and for the Arab nation," the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee said in a statement.

When Victoria Romero, 6, dressed up as a witch for a Hallowe’en party this week she could hardly have imagined that she was provoking the wrath of God by attending a celebration akin to a Black Mass — at least in the eyes of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church in Spain.

The modern image of a witch riding a broomstick was inspired by the sight of a woman rubbing herself on the drug coated smooth stick of her broom, writhing in the throes of hallucinations, and no doubt, some intense orgasms as well. To her unsophisticated neighbors, such a sight would have been terrifying. The lack of an equivalent mechanism for men is one reason why "witchcraft" was seen as a predominantly female phenomenon. The addition of clothing to the witch is a modern embellishment to protect 'Family Values'."

In any event, what follows is a brief expansion on witches, brooms, and ergot, illustrated by woodcuts from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.

“Dishonoring Christian religious symbols is an old religious duty in Judaism. Spitting on the cross, and especially on the Crucifix, and spitting when a Jew passes a church, have been obligatory from around AD 200 for pious Jews. In the past, when the danger of anti-Semitic hostility was a real one, the pious Jews were commanded by their rabbis either to spit so that the reason for doing so would be unknown, or to spit onto their chests, not actually on the cross or openly before the church. The increasing strength of the Jewish state has caused these customs to become more open again.”

—Professor Israel Shahak, former Israeli citizen and holocaust survivor

Amawi was accused of traveling to Jordan on August 22, 2005 to deliver five laptop computers to the "co-conspirators." They were never delivered. No explanation was given why. Perhaps there were none in the first place, but, no matter. Carrying, transporting, or delivering computers isn't a crime.

You can tell which story is sacred and which one isn't by the reaction you get when you commit sacrilege. Nowhere in the West is anyone being brought up on charges of denying the crucifixion-resurrection. People can blithely doubt the crucifixion and the resurrection and the virgin birth and the trinity other tenets of Christianity and still work in the great universities of the West. In fact, if they don't doubt these things, they might have a harder time getting hired. Admit at a faculty luncheon that you don't doubt the resurrection or the virgin birth, and you'll get some very strange looks.

The fact is that many modern progressive and moderate religions do make claims about the observable world. And many of those claims are unsupported by science... and, in fact, are in direct contradiction of it.

The more we learn about the universe, the fewer signs we see of an intelligent designer. Isaac Newton thought that an explanation of how the sun shone would have to be made in terms of the action of God. Now we know that the sun shines because of the heat produced by the conversion of hydrogen into helium in its core. People who expect to find evidence of divine action in nature, in the origin of the universe or in the laws that govern matter are probably going to be disappointed.

An activist in Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Eda Haredit community was conditionally released from prison Monday, a day after his arrest for allegedly spraying an ultra-Orthodox woman with tear gas in the capital's Mea She'arim neighborhood.

Yoel Kraus was arrested after the woman filed a police complaint. The alleged attack occured about two weeks ago, during the Sukkot holiday, as the woman was walking on a "men only" sidewalk, and refused Kraus' demand that she move to the women's side.

After a 2-year investigation, FBI agents descended on a Dearborn warehouse Wednesday hoping to capture the suspected head of an Islamic fundamentalist group.

The scene quickly turned chaotic, however, in a shootout that caused agents to gun down Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, leader of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit.

"When we [Israelis] say that this is a political conflict, then we lose the battle," he told the Guardian, adding that it should be remembered that the ancient land of Israel is "given to us by the Bible, not by some United Nations".

Al-Sana said: "Israeli police initiate avoidable riots that will end in blood shed, when they enable extremists to desecrate the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

Not long after the Vatican State received sovereignty and $85 million after signing an alliance with Hitler's fascist mentor, Mussolini in 1929, Pope Pius XII dealt with another devil he admired, closing down
the Catholic-dominated Center Party, one of the Nazi Socialist Party's strongest opponents. As Jews were being carted away to gas chambers from their ghetto beneath the Vatican's windows, instead of condemning the Holocaust, "Hitler's Pope” is accused of forbidding monasteries and convents to shelter Jews, and accepting loot stolen from the Nazi's victims. One 1946 U.S. Treasury document alone shows the Vatican serving as a repository for more than 200 million Swiss francs.

We were led to believe that a new broom, wielded by the lay banker Angelo Caloia, had since swept clean the premises of the IOR, housed in the medieval Bastion of Nicholas V. The Vatican, it was thought, had learned the painful lessons of the Marcinkus era.

That assumption has been called into question by a new book, “Vaticano SpA” (Vatican Ltd), written by the Panorama reporter Gianluigi Nuzzi. A cavalier attitude to financial ethics continued well into the 1990s, with huge political bribes being laundered through the IOR and funds donated for charitable purposes being casually misappropriated by the bank’s administrators, according to Mr Nuzzi’s reconstruction.

Spending a few days with the characters in Genesis isn't the most relaxing literary vacation you'll ever take. Richard Dawkins wasn't kidding when he said, "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction." The God character in Genesis is cruel, violent, callous, insecure, power-hungry, paranoid, hot-tempered, morally fickle... I could go on and on. And God's followers aren't much better. They lie, they scheme, they cheat one another, they conquer other villages with bloodthirsty imperialist glee, they kill at the drop of a hat. This isn't Beatrix Potter here. It's more like Dangerous Liaisons by way of Quentin Tarantino. With tents, sand, and sheep.

Orthodox Jews try cases of child rape in rabbinical courts. Imagine if the Catholic Church failed to report abuse cases to the authorities and decided instead to institute its own ecclesial courts? Today’s article quotes a Jewish attorney urging law enforcement to recognize “religious sensitivities” for the guilty by seeking alternatives to prison. Allow a Catholic attorney to advise the same and it’s called corruption.

Last year, 40 minors in this small Jewish community said they were abused. Last year, there were 10 such allegations in the entire Catholic Church in all 50 states. Catholics are fed up with the duplicity. It’s not just Roman Polanski who can rape and run with impunity these days. The politics of child rape is sickening.

The Wallbanks have been told they must pay around £230,000 to repair the crumbling chancel of Aston Cantlow's 13th century church and also face a legal bill of around £250,000.

Speaking after they had seen the Grade II-listed Glebe Farmhouse go under the hammer at an eight-minute sale in Henley-in-Arden, the couple accused the Church of England of acting disgracefully during its efforts to force them to pay for the repairs.

The face of Jesus has been spotted in a toilet door in a Glasgow branch of Ikea.

THE Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church is fighting for survival after a catastrophic loss of $160 million on its once bountiful share portfolio.

If Andy Schlafly has his way, there will be no socialists or snake handlers in the Bible. No woman caught in adultery. And, definitely, no Stephen Colbert.

The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington Inc., which has pastoral charge of 233,000 Roman Catholics, sought protection Sunday night in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in an attempt to manage the potential liability resulting from a flood of clergy sexual abuse lawsuits.

The Church of England conceded yesterday that its involvement in a controversial New York property
deal now on the verge of default has left it at risk of losses that some estimates put at tens of millions of pounds.

The church will not confirm the extent of its potential liability, sustained in one of the largest and most contentious development deals in New York. That investment has since been brought low by, amongst other things, over-inflated expectations and wretched timing.

Some of the people walking around Palestine, Gaza, and the West Bank are blood relatives of Jesus. Distant blood relatives, but still blood relatives. Given 2000 years, it is possible that the vast majority of present day Palestinians are remote relatives of Jesus.

Israel is killing them.

And YOU are paying for it, which means you share the guilt. YOU are paying for the weapons used to kill the modern day family of Jesus. The moment you sign that 1040 form, you sign a confession, admitting before all the world that you are an accessory in the murder.

Think you are going to get into heaven after an insult like that?

People no longer trust Congress, the President, the courts, the media, corporations, political parties, and other institutions of society. People even doubt science and medicine.

Stuart Littlewood recounts how he is being harassed by a Christian Zionist extortionist "reverend", one “Charles J. Edgbaston”, who has threatened that, unless he pays him a suitcase full of US dollars and renounces his support for the Palestinians, he would facilitate his dismissal from work and endeavour to stop his medical and pension benefits, among other things.

Christianity too has its extremists and none worse than the Christian Zionists.

Faced with a determined Muslim stance against persistent efforts by government-backed Jewish extremists to arrogate a foothold at the Aqsa Mosque, the Israeli government has imposed further restrictions on Muslim entry into the Haram al Sharif compound, considered the third holiest Islamic sanctuary.

Personal belief does not need to be policed by a bunch of clerical fascists.

An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake.

...

Carbon dating tests by laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson, Arizona in 1988 caused a sensation by dating it from between 1260 and 1390. Sceptics said it was a hoax, possibly made to attract the profitable medieval pilgrimage business.

But scientists have thus far been at a loss to explain how the image was left on the cloth.

Garlaschelli reproduced the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages.

The Supreme Court has refused to block the release of documents generated by lawsuits against priests in Connecticut for alleged sexual abuse.

The justices on Monday turned down a request by the Roman Catholic diocese in Bridgeport, Conn.

Several newspapers are seeking the release of more than 12,000 pages from 23 lawsuits against six priests.

Israeli security forces beefed up security in the Old City Sunday and denied entry to the compound where the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine are located, said Adnan al-Husseini, the Palestinian-appointed governor of Jerusalem.

Worshipers arrived at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue this morning for Festive Holiday prayers only to find the building cordoned off by local police. They were told that the house of prayer was off limits to Jews for an unlimited period of time. Prayers were held in a small park across the street but were cut short when SWAT teams arrived with tear gas and water hoses which were used on the worshipers, causing them to scurry off.

A Vatican priest led police on a high speed car chase leaving three officers injured after being caught in a red light zone, a court has heard.

Recent Israeli police violence at Al-Aqsa Mosque confirms that Israel’s leaders condone attempts by Jewish fanatics to destroy the second holiest Islamic shrine.

A former Canadian bishop has been charged with distributing and selling child pornography after airport officials examined his laptop computer, it was reported today.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporporation said Bishop Raymond Lahey, from the Catholic diocese of Antigonish in Nova Scotia, was arrested at Ottawa airport last week after officers from the Canada Border Services Agency performed a random check of his laptop computer.

Dr Lahey subsequently announced last Saturday that he was resigning for personal reasons.

Some of the people walking around Palestine, Gaza, and the West Bank are blood relatives of Jesus. Distant blood relatives, but still blood relatives. Given 2000 years, it is possible that the vast majority of present day Palestinians are remote relatives of Jesus.

Israel is killing them.

And YOU are paying for it, which means you share the guilt. YOU are paying for the weapons used to kill the modern day family of Jesus. The moment you sign that 1040 form, you sign a confession, admitting before all the world that you are an accessory in the murder.

Think you are going to get into heaven after an insult like that?

“It’s not just them,” Clowdus told a reporter Sunday night. “They need to check all immigrants. They used to assimilate.”

Instead, immigrants retain their beliefs, weakening America, Marble Falls businessman Clowdus said.

The Vatican has lashed out at criticism over its handling of its paedophilia crisis by saying the Catholic church was "busy cleaning its own house" and that the problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger.

A pastor at a strip mall church has been arrested on suspicion of molesting four girls in his flock; all four of his accusers were living in church-owned housing for needy families, police said.

The Church may have opened its doors to 'fallen women'; but once they were inside, it exploited them mercilessly.

From speaking to mothers who were caught up in the convent homes, and by digging through government records, I realised that in the early Fifties the state was paying the nuns £1 a week for every one of the thousands of mothers they had in their care, and 2s 6d for every baby. In addition, the Church kept the proceeds from the girls' labour.

It was a source of significant income, and the nuns made sure the women stayed and worked for at least three years. They could get out only by paying £100 - an impossible amount for the vast majority.

I don’t mean to demean lovers of Christ. I do think any aware mind knows that the organized end of Christianity is the harvesting fields of the demagogue. Here the silver tongued devils reap the ignorant and send them forth to die for bankers who have a great deal to do with churches because of the God and Country thing… so, onward Christian soldiers. Alternatively they milk them of their resources and dummy up one new adversary after another ….all of them alleged conductors on the Street Car to Hell. Very often the so called enemy is humanity’s best friend.

Claire Rivero's liturgical music website.

The U.S. Supreme Court is gearing up to come back into session Oct. 5, and just in time for that, Justice Antonin Scalia has decided to pop off in the media about how much he hates church-state separation - again!

In what is billed as an "Historic Exclusive Interview" in the Brooklyn-based Orthodox Jewish newspaper Hamodia, Scalia attacks one of the core concepts of church-state separation - the idea that government must remain neutral between religion and non-religion.

To Scalia, this is all stuff and nonsense. He believes the government should be able to prefer religion. Government neutrality on religious matters, he says, "is not an accurate representation of what Americans believe."

"After all, these nutcases say, He DID make that promise to His “Chosen“ people that He will “bless those who bless thee and curse those who curse thee“ and therefore, logically, He is more than ready, willing and able to bring about Armageddon and the consummation of the entire world for the benefit of this the tiniest of minorities…That He sits up there with an itchy trigger finger, growling through clenched teeth “Go ahead punks, make my day…” and is just waiting for an excuse to run everything–vegetable, animal, mineral or what not–through the great divine paper shredder…"

In Matthew we read:

Mat25:5 While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

Mat25:6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.

(SO Tuesday midnight is actually 12am Tuesday September 22nd, Jerusalem time) However, in most of the world (by western time keeping) it would still be September 21st, 2009.

Also, check out these visions that The Rapture would take place on the 21st of the month:

http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/june2009/tedp614.htm

http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/sep2009/eric911.htm

http://www.rapture2009.org/prophecywarning92209.htm

One of the most powerful figures in the Anglican Church believes that Africa is under attack from Islam and that Muslims are “mass-producing” children to take over communities on the continent.

During the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, thousands of worshippers make their way there to pray in the space where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

But for many Palestinians living in the occupied territories, visiting the seventh century mosque is impossible due to Israeli-imposed travel restrictions.

Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reports on how others arrive at the site after taking considerable risks to make the journey – defying Israeli restrictions and sneaking under the separation barrier.

I would remind the far right what the Apostle Paul wrote, " ... there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God." Hence, Obama is the U.S. president and leader of the Free World because he was appointed by God.

A BRITISH film about Charles Darwin has failed to find a US distributor because his theory of evolution is too controversial for American audiences, according to its producer.

Jose Flores, who told police he was a Protestant minister, seized the AeroMexico Boeing 737 after take off from the Caribbean resort of Cancun demanding to speak to Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

Flores, 44, smuggled a false bomb on board and threatened to blow up the aircraft if he could not warn the president of what he said was an impending earthquake, police said.

"He said he is a minister and that it was a divine revelation that made him carry out this action," Security Minister Genaro Garcia told reporters.

Creationalists love to use Pascal's wager to say "You have nothing to lose by belief, but non-belief could be damnation"

*I* always love when they say that. I simply respond "I agree 100%, which is why you should start worshipping Zeus/Allah/Gaea immediately!!! After all, you have nothing to lose..."

Similarly, whenever christians insist on prayer in school, I say "Totally agreed, let's start each day with a Buddhist prayer for peace!"

ESPN and Major League Baseball have agreed to switch the starting time of a Yankees-Red Sox game to avoid conflicting with Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.