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A lifetime ban on public criticism of homosexuality was upheld against a Catholic activist in Canada by his province's superior court. Bill Whatcott was fined 17,500 Canadian dollars by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission in a complaint by four homosexuals who charged he "injured" their "feelings" and "self respect" in pamphlets denouncing the "gay lifestyle" as immoral and dangerous, Lifesite News reported. "This fine is for telling the truth [that] homosexual sodomites can change their behavior and be set free from their sin and depravity through the forgiveness of sins and shed blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," Whatcott said.
Church shootings, in the headlines because of the attacks by Matthew Murray, 24, of Englewood, Colo., on two Christian groups last weekend, are on the rise across the United States, even though they're not yet at epidemic proportions. Murray killed two people at a Youth With A Mission missionary training center in Arvada, Colo., early last Sunday morning, then apparently posted some rantings on the Internet, and drove to the New Life Church in Colorado Springs where he killed two teen girls. He also wounded half a dozen others before he was confronted by a church member volunteering as a security guard, and was shot.
A tabulation of church shootings, or those closely related to a church setting, was done by Gary Cass, chairman of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, and include 10 such attacks over the last four years, including Murray's two attacks. "The tragic events in Colorado this past weekend underscore the fact that anti-Christian hostility is reaching a new, more violent level," Cass told WND. "Churches used to be sanctuaries that were regarded as sacred, now all church leaders must be prepared to effectively defend themselves and use deadly force if necessary to protect their congregations from violent acts."
Weeks before Matthew Murray armed himself with enough weaponry and ammunition to kill hundreds, attacking both a Christian missions training center and a Colorado Springs church, he apparently boasted in an e-mail that he had discovered and practiced the teachings of controversial British occultist Aleister Crowley, called during his lifetime "the wickedest man in the world." "I have since joined freemasonry and found, studied and practiced the teachings of Aleister Crowley/Thelema/The Golden Dawn, Qabbalah, H.P. Blavatsky/Theosophy, Manly P. Hall, Alice Bailey, and others," the writer told Pastor Joe Schimmel.
World Net Daily reported at the time on the disturbing rantings Murray apparently left on several websites before – and even between – the attacks, including those reported by National Terror Alert, which documented a series of postings by "nghtmrchld26," which said, "You Christians brought this on yourselves … All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world."
- JJ Commentary: This is the kind of Christian persecution that is ramping up as the end-times wind down. Expect to see more and more of it.
CAIRO (AP) — Al-Qaeda's No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri said in a new message Friday that last month's U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace conference was a "betrayal" of the Palestinians, the terror group's first reaction to the gathering. The audiotape by Osama bin Laden's deputy was the latest al-Qaeda attempt to rally Muslims using the widespread bitterness felt toward Israel over the Palestinian issue. Al-Zawahri focused his anger against Egypt, a top U.S. ally and the first Arab country to sign a peace deal with Israel. He called on Bedouin tribes in his native country to rise up against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak. "The Annapolis meeting was held to turn Palestine into a Jewish state," al-Zawahri said in the 20-minute audio recording posted on an Islamic militant Web forum.
The Egyptian-born al-Zawahri denounced Mubarak's government, saying it had turned Egypt into a "base to supply the Crusader war on Muslims and Islam." He denounced Egypt's sealing of its border with Gaza after the takeover of the Palestinian territory by the militant group Hamas and Cairo's support for the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
- JJ Commentary: As we noted in last week’s report, the militant Islamists will not be appeased no matter how many concessions are made by Israel. Their only goal is Israel’s complete annihilation.
LISBON, Portugal (AP) — European Union leaders signed a new treaty on Thursday that would give the 27-nation bloc a long-term president and streamline its decision-making process. The treaty changes the way the bloc is run, with member states surrendering more powers to centralized rule in Brussels after years of resisting encroachment on their sovereign powers. The intention is to enable a swifter response to global issues. Among the treaty's provisions is the appointment of an EU president who can speak in the bloc's name, which should end the old American gripe of "who do you call when you want to speak to Europe?"
The so-called Lisbon Treaty, said by leaders to be a milestone in the history of the post-World War II bloc, will come into force after it is ratified by all member states. The aim is to complete that process by 2009. Providing for a new European boss who will serve a five-year term will allow the EU to scrap the current and often confusing system in which EU countries take turns at holding the presidency for six months at a time.
- JJ Commentary: Global issues (warming, war, bird flu, Aids, etc.) will be the logical basis upon which the one-world government prophesied in Revelation 13 will be built – just like the tower of Babel.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — The head of the U.N. panel on climate change compared him to Hitler. Another leading scientist called him a parasite. A third described his latest book as a "stealth attack" on mankind. The list of allegations against Bjoern Lomborg, one of the world's leading climate change skeptics, almost reads like an indictment for war crimes. As Al Gore shows off his Nobel Peace Prize and world policymakers hammer out a new strategy for saving the planet, climate change contrarians say they have been elbowed out of the debate. They say mainstream scientists have stifled healthy intellectual discourse by demonizing dissenters as oil industry lobbyists or lunatics.
"I really think it reflects entirely on them," said Lomborg, a mild-mannered Danish statistician who says global warming isn't a big threat and that international treaties requiring sharp and immediate cuts in carbon emissions would cost a lot but do little good. Angry words and table-pounding, he said, only show "that your argument is not that strong." Lomborg accepts that the Earth is warming because of man, but says a changing climate, including the threat posed by rising sea levels to small island nations, is a less urgent problem than, for example, AIDS or malnutrition. His newly released book on climate change, Cool It, has also met sharp criticism. In a review in the Washington Post, Australian scientist Tim Flannery called it "a stealth attack on humanity's future."
Climate change experts counter that the contrarians are no longer relevant because the evidence now is overwhelming that man-made warming will have dangerous consequences if left unchecked. "Their claim that debate is being stifled has the same credibility as members of the Flat Earth Society complaining about the round Earth mafia," said NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt.That the planet is getting warmer is well-documented by scientific data, so skeptics now mainly challenge the majority view on the scope of the problem.
- JJ Commentary: Even this “balanced” article misses the main point. Is the warming human caused or a natural cycle. We have had ice ages and warm periods in the past well before humans started emitting “greenhouse” gases. Regardless of the cause, it certainly fulfills Biblical end-time prophecies.
BOSTON (AP) — Republican Mitt Romney responded to questions about his faith by surging rival Mike Huckabee on Wednesday, declaring that "attacking someone's religion is really going too far." In an article to be published Sunday in The New York Times, Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, asks, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?" Romney, vying to become the first Mormon elected president, declined to answer that question during an interview Wednesday, saying church leaders in Salt Lake City had already addressed the topic.
- JJ Commentary: Huckabee is correct about Mormonism and it is indeed important. Spiritually speaking, the oil runs from the head down the entire body. If it is tainted oil, it pollutes the entire body.
JERUSALEM, West Bank (AP) — The World Bank on Thursday endorsed a Palestinian reform plan that requires $5.6 billion in international aid over three years, but warned that the money will not stem economic decline in the West Bank and Gaza unless Israel also eases Palestinian movement and trade. The Palestinians will ask for the aid at a conference of donor countries next week in Paris. However, if Israel's closures remain in place, these large sums would at best slow a "downward cycle of crisis and dependence," the report said. By contrast, a considerable easing of Israeli restrictions could help the Palestinian private sector recover and lead to double-digit economic growth, the World Bank said.
Israeli defense officials have been reluctant to remove roadblocks and barriers, first set up after the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in 2000 to keep attackers from Israel. Security officials say the moderate Palestinian government in the West Bank is still too weak to rein in militants effectively.
- JJ Commentary: They will never be able to rein in the militants because they, and Islamic militants in other surrounding countries, will never give up trying to completely destroy Israel.
JERUSALEM (WND) – A top member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government today announced Israel "must" give up sections of Jerusalem for a future Palestinian state, even conceding the Palestinians can rename Jerusalem "to whatever they want." We must come today and say, friends, the Jewish neighborhoods, including Har Homa, will remain under Israeli sovereignty, and the Arab neighborhoods will be the Palestinian capital, which they will call Jerusalem or whatever they want," said Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon. Positions held by Ramon, a ranking member of Olmert's Kadima party, are largely considered to be reflective of Israeli government policy.
Ramon's statements follow last month's U.S.-sponsored Annapolis summit at which Olmert committed to aim at completing negotiations by next year to create a Palestinian state, with Israel expected to evacuate swaths of Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank. About 231,000 Arabs live in Jerusalem, mostly in eastern neighborhoods. The city has an estimated total population of 724,000.
- JJ Commentary: This is so blasphemous that it defies comprehension. Jerusalem is God’s throne in this world, the future seat of Christ’s throne on earth. God’s heart must be sorely grieved.
SACRAMENTO (AP) — For all the praise and attention California has received for its landmark emissions-reduction plan, it's becoming clear that signing the legislation was the easy part. But as California lawmakers take up the nitty gritty task of implementing the law, they are haggling over what the 1990 benchmark even is and exactly who will be asked to make emission cuts. And industry representatives now warning that cutting production may be the only way they can meet its requirements. Air regulators believe California's output of greenhouse gases increased by at least 13% between 1990 and 2004, but they acknowledge their own estimates likely will need updating.
Al Gore says switching from incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescents can help save the planet from global warming. California, Canada and the European Union are so persuaded he's right, the three governments are in the process of banning the sale of incandescent light bulbs, following the trailblazing paths of Fidel Castro in Cuba and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is on board, urging American citizens to do their part for the environment and switch to the twisty little CFL bulbs that last longer and use less electricity. But opposition is building among other environmentalists who say the threat of mercury contamination as a result of hundreds of millions of broken CFLS, each containing about 5 milligrams of the highly toxic substance, outweighs any benefits from a switch from Thomas Edison's trusty old invention
- JJ Commentary: It’s so reassuring to know that science continues to be so reliable and exact.
