Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

The Racket (swindler din and den) of the Religious Cry .. Christian News Today .. Ephesians 5: 11 & Mark 4: 22 (first bit mine)

An Overview of Religious Financial Fraud .. Balance Sheet for Global Christianity

David Barrett, editor of the World Christian Encyclopedia, and a team of statisticians have been studying religious financial fraud for more than 20 years. Barrett and his team estimate that $27 billion will be stolen by Christian religious leaders in 2009. Another sober fact: more money is stolen each year by Christian religious leaders than is spent on world missions. This crime wave is projected to grow to $65 billion in fraud annually by 2025. These ecclesiastical crime statistics are published annually in the January issue of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research. [link added] Todd Johnson, director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and one of Barrett's colleagues, says that these figures were the result of Barrett "developing a balance sheet for global Christianity." Barrett was "trying to understand the totality of Christian finance.

A Global Problem .. Almost every week newspapers publish stories of a religious leaders being arrested
or convicted of financial fraud. Here's a small sample of the allegations from around the world:

* Brazil: Bishop Edir Macedo, head of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God,
and 9 of his associates have been charged with embezzling more than $2 billion.3

* USA: Trent Huddleston, former senior accountant at Oral Roberts University, alleges that more than
$1 billion was money laundered annually by members of the ORU board. The case is currently on appeal.

COMMENT: I'VE NEVER HEARD OF THAT MINISCULE MINNOW. GUESS THE
SHARKS ARE TOO BIG TO BE NETTED? POLITICS GETS IN THE WAY? VOTES?

* Canada: Televangelists Ron and Reynold Mainse are accused of
participating in a Ponzi scheme.5 Living Waters Ministry Trust loses
tax exempt status for operating a tax shelter.6

* China: A whistleblower goes to jail for speaking out after donations for earthquake victims were stolen.7

* Ukraine: Pastor Sunday Adelaja charged with fraud in promoting a
business venture to his congregation that lost $100 million.8

* United Kingdom: Church treasurer Derek Klein embezzled funds to pay for a stamp collection
.. much more .. http://www.scribd.com/doc/24336837/An-Overview-of-Religious-Financial-Fraud

Also .. $ Vatican Bank Facing Money Laundering Probe

$$ Obama Has Kept the Machine Set on Kill” – Journalist and Activist Allan Nairn Reviews Obama’s First Year in Office .. one entrenched chunk ..

The US itself, in its operations in dozens upon dozens of countries, is violating not just international law, but US law. People have forgotten about them, because they’re not enforced. Here are four US laws currently on the books. There can be no US weapons used for aggression. That’s the old Harkin amendment. There can be no US aid for foreign internal security forces of any kind. That’s Section 660 of the 1974 Foreign Assistance Act. There can be no US military aid for any regime that engages in a pattern of gross human rights violations. That’s 22 US Code 2304(a). There can be no US aid for any military unit that commits atrocities. That’s the Leahy amendment. Now, these are not radical political demands; these are existing US law. And the US systematically violates its own laws, not to mention the murder laws of local countries.

AMY GOOMAN: Where? Name the countries.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, just—you know, we mentioned before some of the places where the US is bombing and attacking. Less known, these are some examples of the machine being set on kill, repressive—what in RAND’s words—RAND Corporation’s words, repressive regimes being backed by the US: Algeria, where they annulled an election, they stole an election, they do systematic torture; Ethiopia, where there’s mass hunger among the population, but where the US is building up the Ethiopian army and using them against Somalia; Saudi Arabia, the most religious extremist, anti-woman dictatorship in the world; Jordan, a torture center—the Jordanian intelligence outfit was, in the words of George Tenet, owned by the CIA, and both the CIA and Israel use it for torture; Rwanda, whose army and paramilitaries have been pillaging and raping and massively killing in the eastern Congo; Congo itself, Secretary of State Clinton went there and made a good denunciation of rape by the Congolese army, and as that was happening, the US was delivering weapons and training to that same Congolese army; Indonesia, where the army now de facto occupies and terrorizes Papua and has recently resumed assassinations in Aceh, the other end of the archipelago; Colombia, where army and army-backed militaries are the world’s number-one killer of labor activists; Uzbekistan, massive torture backed simultaneously by the US and Russia; Thailand, where officers who—US officers who I spoke to use their US training in what they call “target selection” to assassinate and disappear Muslim rebels in the south; Nepal, where US Green Berets for years created old Guatemala-style civil patrols that carried out lynchings against pro-Maoist forces and civilians in the countryside; India, where the police do daily torture and where their own officers talk about using terror against villages in the Naxalite rebel areas; Egypt, one of the world’s leading torture states and Israel’s accomplice in the blockade and hungering of Gaza; Honduras, where the army recently staged a coup when the oligarchy’s president, Zelaya, turned against his fellow oligarchs; Israel, which committed aggression against Gaza using US white phosphorus and cluster bombs as the US was—the US was shipping in new materiel as this, you know, attack was underway; and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, where, as the British Guardian just reported, the security forces are doing systematic torture of Hamas people and other dissidents under CIA sponsorship. And that’s only a partial list. We’d need another twenty-minute segment to complete the list.

But in not one of these cases has Obama decided to comply with US law, comply with international law, and cut off the killer forces. In fact, in a number of them he has stepped it up. In Indonesia, for example, he’s made a push to renew aid to the Kopassus, the Red Berets, the most deadly of the killer forces, hated by the people, long trained by the US Green Berets.

AMY GOOMAN: You made a provocative statement at the beginning of this broadcast, comparing an Obama
presidency with a possible Palin presidency, and whether you would see a difference when it comes to foreign policy.

ALLAN NAIRN: Right. Well, in terms of killing civilians overseas, no difference. Every single action I’ve laid out could easily be adopted by Palin. In fact, Obama is carrying them out using Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Gates, using Bush’s old counterterrorism man, Brennan, using Admiral Blair, Admiral Dennis Blair, who personally—this is something that we discussed on an earlier show and which I personally reported on—who green-lighted church massacres, massacres of Catholic churches by General Wiranto in occupied East Timor in 1999 to punish the Timorese for voting for independence. So Palin could do all those things."

Yup, Obama, in some ways, is criminal as Bush was. As any other who has any hope in hades
of becoming US president would be. YUP, as Australian leaders, and others around the world.

$$$ Faith-based fraud .. this huge bag-of-whatever,



swindler makes 'Elmer Gantry' look like a Mother Teresa.

pro_se, Grassley's 3 year effort ^*&*%??? was obviously an expensive piece of fancy-ass window
dressing; he oughta be ashamed of his result, but of course he knew 3 years??? ago what it would be.

PS: F6, posted a beauty on why it was dicey to donate to worthy causes via the church collection plate. It was the one i was looking for.

LOL, pro_se, MOST OF US UNDERSTAND YOUR 'NOT REALLY' .. completely ..

PSS: late thought .. sheeezzzz .. Falwell is lucky he has a center of gravity .. who wants more earthquakes ..