Society's ChildS


Cult

Ensnared Brazilians detail abuses, shattered lives by US based Word of Faith church

Peter Prengaman, Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr
Associated Press
Wed, 26 Jul 2017 00:00 UTC
Word of Faith cult member
© Associated PressJuliana Oliveira, a former member of the Word of Faith Fellowship, cries during an interview in Betim, Brazil. "When you are in a cult, you don't know you are in a cult because little…
At the Word of Faith Fellowship churches in the Brazilian cities of Sao Joaquim de Bicas and Franco da Rocha, the signs of broken families are everywhere: parents separated from their children, siblings who no longer speak, grandparents who wonder if they will ever know their grandchildren.

Over the course of two decades, the U.S.-based mother church took command of both congregations in Brazil, applying a strict interpretation of the Bible and enforcing it through rigorous controls and physical punishment, The Associated Press has found.

Many of the more than three dozen former members interviewed by the AP in Brazil said they live in perpetual fear of retribution. Some have sought psychological help. Others ask themselves how they put up with the abuse for so long.

Former member Juliana Oliveira remembers when life was normal in the Sao Joaquim de Bicas church, but that was years ago, before the Americans came from Spindale, North Carolina. Before the Brazilian traditions were stripped away, she said, and the screaming and beatings began.

"When you are in a cult, you don't know you are in a cult because little by little it all becomes 'normal,'" said Oliveira, 34. "It's like a frog in a pot of water. By the time it's boiling, he can't jump out."

Comment: More on Jane Whaley's Word of Faith cult:

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Question

Prominent Manhattan holistic doctor and wife allegedly jumped to their deaths leaving typed suicide notes

Erin Elizabeth
Health Nut News
Fri, 28 Jul 2017 00:00 UTC
Glenn Scarpelli

Update: According to the Heavy, a neighbor swears they heard screaming just before the 'jumps'...

On Friday, July 28, at around 5:45 a.m., a well known holistic Manhattan doctor (who loved his family and was a regular volunteer) and his wife allegedly jumped to their deaths leaving separate and typed suicide notes, in securely sealed ziplock baggies, in their pockets. (You get to decide how you feel about that. Also, can you think of the last time the news published a picture of a suicide note? Me either but you can see it below.)

They were found on the street shortly before 6 a.m. by a shocked woman who worked at a nearby 7-Eleven store.


Comment: The death toll among holistic doctors keeps rising, fueling conspiracy theories stemming from the often highly suspicious circumstances involved in many of these deaths. For more background, see:

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Crusader

Orthodox Church unites: Tens of thousands gather on Baptism Day in Kiev, opposing war

Politnavigator - translated by Inessa Sinchougova
Fort Russ News
Fri, 28 Jul 2017 15:17 UTC
Baptism Day of Kyivan Rus took place in Kiev
On July 28, 988 AD, Vladimir the Great Baptised Kievan' Rus. In commemoration of this day, tens of thousands of believers have gathered in Kiev.

Despite the threats of right-wing radicals - Nazis and dissidents supported by the official authorities - on 27 July a procession of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) dedicated to the Baptism Day of Kyivan Rus took place in Kiev. The celebrations gathered tens of thousands of people. Such a show of numbers is extremely undesirable for the ruling regime - after all, as is known, the Church condemns the fighting in the Donbass and calls for the immediate cessation of internecine war.

In the early morning people began to flock to the Vladimir Hill, where at the monument to Prince Vladimir a liturgy was held.
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Arrow Down

'Australian women need Muslim men to fertilize them,' says head of Halal Certification Authority in Facebook rant causing online outcry


RT
Sat, 29 Jul 2017 13:15 UTC
Muslim men
© Jason Reed / Reuters
The head of a Muslim food certification body in Australia has said "Australian women need [Muslim men] to fertilize them," causing an online outcry.

Mohamed Elmouelhy, the head of the Halal Certification Authority in Australia, wrote on his Facebook page that Australian women needed male Muslims because men in the country "are a dying breed."

"Australian women need us to fertilize them and keep them surrounded by Muslim babies while beer swilling, cigarette smoking, drug injecting can only dream of what Muslim men are capable of," his post read.

He added that Muslims "have a duty to make your [Australian women] happy."

Elmouelhy concluded that the white race in the country "will be extinct in another 40 years" if Australia "is left to bigots."

He advised Australian men to "better go choose a plot for yourself at your local cemetery" and "if you can't afford it, commit suicide."
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Arrow Down

Homeless Facebook employee lives out of her car


KTVU.com
Sat, 29 Jul 2017 14:28 UTC
facebook
The high cost of living in the Silicon Valley is taking its toll- even on tech workers.

Just ask Unique Parsha.

She has a job at Facebook and is also homeless, living out of her car.

Parsha's nickname is "Pinky"- she has pink hair, a pink car, and even a pink dog. But she says, things aren't always as rosy as they appear.
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Handcuffs

Children openly sold 'in plain sight' - largest sex trafficking ring in western US busted

Jay Syrmopoulos
Free Thought Project
Fri, 28 Jul 2017 14:11 UTC
child sex trafficking
A report of a missing teenager in Tulare County, California, in late 2016 culminated into the uncovering of one of the largest sex trafficking rings in the Western United States, according to an announcement by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on Thursday. Thirteen young women and girls, including the missing teen, were freed from captivity as a result of the extensive investigation.

The missing teenager's disappearance, and subsequent discovery in a West Hollywood apartment in January, led investigators in the LA Sheriff's Department to discover an extensive human sex trafficking network that extended from Nevada to California. During the course of the investigation, detectives discovered the ring used apartments in dozens of communities, including Burbank, West Hollywood, and Las Vegas, as brothels.

"Years ago, a human trafficking case of this magnitude was not likely," Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell said in a news conference in downtown. "We knew the more we looked, the more we would find."
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USA

What divides Americans from each other (and the world)

William Hawes
Counter Punch
Tue, 25 Jul 2017 12:48 UTC
american flag divided
Mugambi Jouet's Exceptional America is the type of book where you have to laugh in order not to cry when reading. Mugambi Jouet systematically explains how Americans are born and raised into an anti-intellectual culture where harsh incarceration practices, Christian fundamentalism, gun violence, and a plutocratic economic structure controls the lives of average citizens.

Jouet, a lawyer, reveals in the introduction of the book the strict, Old-Testament style of the US judicial system, where his client is faced with a sentence far longer than it should be. When Jouet appeals to reason by pointing out that lengthy sentences do little to reduce crime, put a drain on public finances, as well as explaining that rehabilitation is far more effective, the judges shut him down. His client is charged six years for a minor, non-violent drug offense. After one reads these first pages, one can hear a gavel smashing down giving judgment, but it isn't towards Jouet's client: it is directed squarely at the US criminal justice system. To further his point, Jouet appropriately quotes Camus: "One can judge a society by its prisons."
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Attention

War on Smoking: FDA vows to cut nicotine in cigarettes to 'non-addictive levels'


RT
Sat, 29 Jul 2017 12:59 UTC
cigarette nicotine smoking
© Frank May / Global Look Press
The US Food and Drug Administration has announced its plan to cut nicotine in conventional cigarettes to "nonaddictive levels," pushing tobacco companies' stocks into the red.

The new regulations, which are yet to be finalized, are part of the government's effort to push the tobacco industry toward developing alternatives that "may be less dangerous than cigarettes," said the FDA in a press release on Friday.

"The overwhelming amount of death and disease attributable to tobacco is caused by addiction to cigarettes - the only legal consumer product that, when used as intended, will kill half of all long-term users," said the FDA's new Commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, MD, who was appointed to the position by President Trump in April.

Comment: The war on smoking continues. For more info, see:

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Info

Upset with Trump's 'Transgender Ban'? Blame The Aggressive LGBT Playbook

David Benkoff
The Daily Caller
Sat, 29 Jul 2017 12:59 UTC
DTrump
© wunc.org
President Donald Trump's announcement today of a total ban on transgender military service was wrong. But given the longstanding (and often successful) LGBT strategy of incrementalism and hyper-defensiveness, his move was unsurprising and perhaps inevitable.

There are indeed challenges with incorporating transgender individuals into the military that go way beyond the costs of surgery and of hormone therapy. Male soldiers who transition become physically less capable, which is why the military applies female fitness standards to trans women. It's not transphobic to question whether a defense organization should allow its members to weaken themselves. Then there are the practical problems regarding uniform codes and housing in an institution that still treats men and women very differently; and the fact that US servicemembers spend a lot of time in countries that are less enlightened regarding gender. And will anybody join the military just to fund the costs of their transition?
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People 2

Feminist Muslim to open liberal mosque in UK


RT
Sat, 29 Jul 2017 12:59 UTC
Seyran Ates Muslims Mosque Berlin liberal
© Hannibal Hanschke / ReutersSeyran Ates, founder of the new liberal Ibn-Rushd-Goethe-Mosque, prays in Berlin
The Muslim feminist behind Berlin's first liberal mosque is scouting locations for a liberal mosque in the UK in what she describes as part of a revolution in Islam.

The proposed UK mosque would allow female imams and let men and women pray together, and will be open to LGBT members of the Muslim community. All sects of Islam will be welcome, from Sunni to Shia and Sufi.

Seyran Ateş, a Turkish-born German lawyer, hopes to open similar mosques all around Europe. Ates received death threats and fatwas were issued after the Berlin mosque opened in June.
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