THE CHURCH MILITANT
Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse.
The United States and other global powers are helping Iran to update and reconstruct a nuclear reactor that has been suspected of helping the Islamic Republic produce enough material for a potential nuclear weapon, according to regional reports and statements from the State Department.
The United States’ goal is to work with Iran to refit the reactor in such a way that it can no longer produce weapons grade material.
However, Iran maintains that the United States and other partner nations will soon provide “advanced equipment” for the reactor, which is located near the Iranian industrial city of Arak.
A spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, the Islamic Republic’s main nuclear regulator, said on Tuesday that the United States and several other nations would begin supplying Iran equipment so that it can modernize the nuclear reactor.
“Four countries of the [nuclear negotiating team] have accepted to cooperate with Iran in supplying advanced equipment for the (Arak) reactor and different other issues,” Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for the Iranian nuclear authority, said Tuesday.
Kamalvandi said that while Iran could complete the modernization on its own, “it has sought the world powers’ assistance to accelerate the job.”
The issue of Arak was a key negotiating point during nuclear talks that recently produced an agreement aimed at curbing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions.
“We have had negotiations on this issue in Vienna and recently, some consultations have been made by the Iranian foreign ministry officials in China,” Kamalvadi was quoted as saying.
The Obama administration announced that it would assist Iran is rebuilding the Arak reactor when the nuclear deal was implemented in late October.
Nuclear experts from the Department of Energy will be tasked with helping to accomplish this goal, according to Secretary Ernest Moniz.
“Under the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], one step that Iran must take is to redesign its Arak Heavy Water Research reactor, including removing its existing calandria and rendering it inoperable,” Moniz said in an Oct. 18 statement. “To support this effort, the Department of Energy’s nuclear experts will lead the U.S. effort to work with our P5+1 partners and Iran to modernize the Arak reactor, effectively eliminating a potential source of weapons-grade material.”
U.S. nuclear experts also will provide Iran with “technical advice” on nuclear issues, Moniz said.
“In addition to co-chairing the Arak Modernization Working Group, the Department of Energy’s technical experts will also continue to support President Obama, Secretary [John] Kerry, our P5+1 and EU partners, and the [International Atomic Energy Agency] through technical advice and expert consultations on nuclear matters,” he said.
Assistance will also be provided by the other global powers that helped secure the nuclear deal, including China, France, Germany, and Russia.
Seyed Araqchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, praised the nuclear modernization project in comments to reporters offered after an October meeting between Iran and the global powers.
“A statement was compiled and released by Iran, China, and the U.S. yesterday in which the three countries announced their resolve to modernize Arak site in due time but what is more important to us is an official document which should be signed between Iran and the six members of the G5+1,” Araqchi was quoted as telling reporters at the time.
A State Department official directed the Washington Free Beacon to Moniz’s October statement when asked for comment about Kamalvandi’s recent remarks.
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This week, the Dallas City Council fast tracked and approved an aggressive and dangerous bathroom ordinance that allows men into women’s bathrooms and tramples religious freedom. In a surprise move that involved the Council approving controversial language in a closed door meeting late Monday night, without public input, the Council voted unanimously to pass the new sweeping language Tuesday morning. The language is similar to the “gender identity, “sexual orientation,” and “public accommodations” language contained in the Houston Bathroom Ordinance that was emphatically defeated by Houston voters, 61%-39%, just last week.
Make no mistake, LGBT advocates want to spread these dangerous laws to every city in Texas. The voters in Houston made a strong statement but now Dallas (and all of Texas) must send the message that we will not allow common sense, safety, and religious freedom to be destroyed by political correctness.
City of Dallas Extends Civil Rights Protection to Transgender People
Published on Nov 10, 2015
The Dallas City Council unanimously approved an amendment to its anti-discrimination ordinance on Tuesday to include protections for transgender people. Transgender people will be protected against being denied employment, housing or access to public spaces based on gender identity. The ordinance had previously included lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Just a week ago, voters in the city of Houston, Texas, rejected the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance by a wide margin, a measure that was aimed at increasing civil rights protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Top University Professor Exposes Mind Control Programs in Many Universities Department of Defense Operatives Draw In Students Willing to Sell Their Souls for Socialist Causes
Published on Nov 12, 2015
Professor Darrel Hamamoto breaks down how university students are being manipulated and mind controlled through university programs and what it is doing to society.
Alex Jones breaks down how past events spearheaded by the globalists, created the atmosphere that led to the Paris Attacks which have so far killed 129 people. When you open your borders to people who are diametrically opposed to your basic principals, it is a recipe for disaster. This is order out of chaos.
Keely Mullen, one of the lead organizers of the Million Student March, spoke with Neil Cavuto on Fox Business on Thursday saying that “[t]he movement, the Million Student March, is a movement for a more equitable and fair system of education,” noting that others should have to pay for college students’ schooling.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Answering a question posed by a reporter at a press briefing on November 10, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed that “the administration strongly supports the Equality Act.” The reporter had described the legislation as “a federal anti-discrimination bill against anti-LGBT discrimination known as the Equality Act.”
Earnest elaborated further:
It is now clear that the administration strongly supports the Equality Act. That bill is historic legislation that would advance the cause of equality for millions of Americans. And we certainly are pleased with the many legislators in Congress that have stepped forward to try to advance a bill that would deliver comprehensive equal rights for LGBT Americans. And we look forward to working with Congress to ensure that the legislative process produces a result that balances both the bedrock principles of civil rights, like those I’ve just described, with the religious liberty that we hold dear in this country.
Earnest also stated that “the Equality Act would have an impact on a substantial number of government policies” and that “the administration does look forward to working with Congress to try to advance this legislation consistent with the values that we have articulated about the importance of equal rights and making sure that people can’t be discriminated against because of who they love, while at the same time making sure that we can protect religious liberty at the same time.”
Setting aside the ongoing debates abut same-sex “marriage” for a moment, it is important to note that the quest for “equal rights’ for homosexuals has now escalated to include also “transgendered” individuals — the “T” in LGBT. Though the definition of “transgender” may vary, it generally means an individual who views his "gender" as being different from his sexual orientation — for instance, a biological male who identifies as a female.
Whichever one of the letters in the LGBT acronym (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) a person chooses to identify with, however, his biological gender is an integral part of his DNA and can never be changed, with all males having an X and a Y chromosome and all females having two X chromosomes. Nothing can change this — not even so-called sex-change operations.
Therefore, Earnest’s statement that “people can’t be discriminated against because of who they love,” misses the point entirely. No one has ever presumed to discriminate against another person because of whom they love, although some people may choose to discriminate whether they want to participate in a person’s behavior that violates their religious principles. Earnest asserted that the Equality Act “balances both the bedrock principles of civil rights, like those I’ve just described, with the religious liberty that we hold dear in this country.”
Many people doubt that religious liberty will be preserved if social engineering legislation such as the Equality Act is passed, however.
The day after the legislation (“The Equality Act of 2015,”H.R. 3185 and S. 1858) was introduced in both houses of Congress on July 23, the Witherspoon Institute’s online Public Discourse published an online essay by Andrew T. Walker (the director of Policy Studies for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention) entitled: “The Equality Act: Bad Policy that Poses Great Harms.”
In his essay, Walker wrote:
The Equality Act represents the most invasive threat to religious liberty ever proposed. Were it to pass, its sweeping effects on religious liberty, free speech, and freedom of conscience would be historic.
Aside from the enumerated protections that give rise to conflict between sexual identity and religious liberty, by elevating sexual orientation and gender identity to the level of race, the law’s effect would functionally equate those who don’t agree with it with racists and label them perpetrators of irrational bigotry.
Among the insightful points that Walker made to bolster his position were:
• “To favor the Equality Act is to oppose and actively stigmatize the moral convictions that millions of Americans adhere to with abiding sincerity and deep religious precedent.”
• “Passing anti-discrimination statutes on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity lacks both the philosophical warrant and the cultural necessity of protections based on race.”
• “Unlike race, sexual orientation and gender identity are known through conduct, which can and should be ethically evaluated.”
• “There has never been a systematic regime of laws aimed at demeaning the existence of LGBT individuals comparable to Jim Crow.”
• “Consider the cases of florists, photographers, and bakers who have had no problems serving gay customers for years, but have objected to providing their services for gay weddings. The Equality Act leaves these individuals defenseless by failing to accommodate their sincere religious beliefs and by failing to distinguish between the dignity of gay individuals and the particular conduct (such as wedding ceremonies) in which some cannot in good conscience participate.
The Equality Act of 2015 would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin) to replace the word “sex” with “sex,” “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.” While some who object to the current proposed change still uphold the original 1964 legislation, a look back in history reveals that constitutional conservatives of that day did not accept that bill’s violation of states’ rights and increase in the power of the federal government without objections.
Among the most famous opponents of the 1964 legislation was that year’s Republican nominee for the presidency, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.). Goldwater voted against the bill, explaining afterwards that the reason for his opposition to the bill was Title II of the legislation (which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce). The Arizonan said that, in his opinion, that section violated individual liberty and states’ rights. Most Democrats from the Southern states opposed the bill and led an unsuccessful 83-day filibuster to stop it. These included Senators Albert Gore, Sr. (D-Tenn.), father of the future Vice President, J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.), and Robert Byrd (D- W.Va,) who personally filibustered for 14 hours straight.
There are essentially two different issues at stake with this year’s Equality Act of 2015 under consideration. The first is the potential threat to religious liberty, as mentioned by Andrew Walker. The other is the historic assault on states’ rights by a federal government that strives to go beyond its constitutional bounds to regulate every aspect of life in the United States — the same reason constitutional conservatives opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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Americans with common sense celebrated thesuccess of a recent Houston referendum repealing an ordinance that would, among other things, have forced private-property owners to permit an individual to use the restroom of his choice rather than the one assigned to his genetically determined sex. But those celebrants might want to put the corks back in their champagne bottles for the time being: A bill currently in Congress and endorsed by President Barack Obama could impose that same policy on the entire country.
The Equality Act, a version of which has been introduced in both houses of Congress, “would add ‘sexual orientation and gender identity’ (SOGI) to more or less every federal law that protects on the basis of race,”reported the Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson. The bill vastly expands the number of establishments classified as “public accommodations” — and therefore subject to federal antidiscrimination law — to include “any establishment that provides a good, service, or program, including a store, shopping center, online retailer or service provider, salon, bank, gas station, food bank, service or care center, shelter, travel agency, or funeral parlor, or establishment that provides health care, accounting, or legal services,” plus transportation providers and any “establishment that provides exhibition, entertainment, recreation, exercise, amusement, gathering, or display.” That covers just about everything, with the possible exception of family dwellings.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the bill explicitly states that “an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.” In other words, practically no one would be allowed to prohibit a man who claims to be a woman from using the women’s restroom or locker room (or a woman who claims to be a man from using the men’s facilities).
“So it would be a bathroom bill on a national level being forced on all 50 states,” the Family Research Council’s (FRC) Peter Sprigg told OneNewsNow.
This is not mere speculation or alarmism. Even the bill’s supporters proudly admit this to be the case.
Lambda Legal, which advocates for special privileges for individuals with deviant lifestyles, states on its Equality Act: Frequently Asked Questions page: “Under the Equality Act, companies with sex-segregated facilities including restrooms and locker rooms must provide access to gender-appropriate facilities for individuals in accordance with their gender identity.”
The bill also expressly prohibits people from claiming exemption from its provisions under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. “Thus,” FRC wrote in an Issue Brief, “the Act would force people to affirm homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and transgenderism, despite their religious objections in various situations, including the provision of public accommodations.”
The ramifications of the Equality Act, which FRC more accurately dubs the “Inequality Act,” are enormous. As Anderson put it, laws such as the Equality Act
threaten small-business owners [and, for that matter, large-business owners] with liability for alleged “discrimination” based not on objective traits, but on subjective and unverifiable identities. They expand state interference in labor markets, potentially discouraging job creation. They endanger religious liberty and freedom of speech. And they mandate employment policies that, with regard to many workplace conditions, violate common sense.
In short, SOGI laws regulate commercial decisions that are best handled by private actors, and they regulate educational decisions best handled by parents and teachers, not bureaucrats.
If the Equality Act becomes law, schools will face the unenviable task of accommodating all varieties of confused students and employees, potentially introducing children to subjects they are not mature enough to handle or to which their parents might prefer they not be exposed — not to mention giving pedophiles easier access to children of the opposite sex. Moreover, observed Anderson, “an employer would be negligent to ignore the concerns of female employees about having to share a bathroom with a biological male who identifies as female. The same is true for students. The implications for the privacy rights of adults and children are extremely serious.”
There are those such as Anderson and Sprigg who argue that there is nothing wrong with antidiscrimination laws per se. Such laws, Sprigg told OneNewsNow, should simply be restricted to protecting people with “characteristics like race which are inborn, involuntary, immutable, innocuous, and/or in the U.S. Constitution.”
Such an argument, however, yields too much ground. Once one agrees that the government has the authority to tell private citizens that they must associate with certain groups of people and acquiesce to those groups’ demands on their person, labor, and property, he has given up on the principle of private property. Henceforth, all property rights are exercised at the sufferance of those groups with political clout.
There is also the matter that federal antidiscrimination law is largely unconstitutional. The feds have the power to ban discrimination by their own agencies, and maybe, under the 14th Amendment, by state and local governments; but they have no authority to interfere with the freedom of association of private citizens, businesses, and organizations. Most of the laws that the Equality Act amends ought to be repealed, not merely maintained in their present form, and they certainly should not be expanded to cover even more people.
While dozens of bills get introduced into Congress each session only to die without attracting much attention, the Equality Act has a great deal of support among liberal lawmakers. The House bill, introduced by Representative David Cicilline (D-R.I.), has 170 cosponsors, all Democrats. The Senate bill, introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley (R-Ore.), has 39 cosponsors, all Democrats or independents, including Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. In addition, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters last week that “the administration strongly supports the Equality Act.”
The only thing standing between Americans and a national “bathroom bill,” therefore, is the GOP. Since Republicans control both houses of Congress, they can effectively block the Equality Act from ever coming to a vote, let alone being passed.
Constitutionalists — and everyone else who cares about liberty and decency — must hope that Republicans prove equal to the task.
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A proposed law in Germany would give police the power to enter people’s homes without their permission in order to conduct a “suitability” check to see if the accommodation could be used to house asylum seekers.
Journalist Gunnar Schupeliuswritesthat he was so shocked by the idea he first thought it was “satire,” but after doing some digging found that the Senate Chancellery has actually proposed altering German law, which currently forbids police from entering a home against the owner’s permission without a warrant or unless it’s “to avert imminent danger”.
The proposal would add a paragraph to § 36 ASOG to state (translated version), “The regulatory authorities and the police can enter to check the suitability for accommodation of refugees land, buildings or parts thereof without the consent of the owner, if the threat for the Prevention Homelessness is required.”
Although the proposal has attracted virtually no media coverage, Berlin FDP General Secretary Sebastian Czaja said it represented an “open breach of the Constitution” and called for protests.
Schupelius is asking Governing Mayor Michael Müller (SPD) to “come clean” over the proposal, which he asserts represents a “secret and surreptitious intrusion into private homes.”
Germany is currently struggling to find new accommodation for the hundreds of thousands of migrants pouring into the country. Some German citizens who live in social housing have beengiven eviction noticesin order to make way for asylum seekers.
Migrants are also being housed in4-star hotelsandlocal churches. Last month, a regional governortold residentsof a municipality in Germany that if they didn’t embrace the arrival of hundreds of new migrants, they should leave.
As wereported earlier this week, a German member of parliament has also called for introducing a “compulsory labor” program under which young Germans would be forced to spend a year in the service of migrants.
Police To Enter European Homes by Force To Check On Refugees
Published on Nov 14, 2015
Rather than assert their sovereignty and a limit to what Europeans can logically withstand. European leaders are applying more pressure on their citizens. A proposed law in Germany would give police the power to enter people’s homes without their permission in order to conduct a “suitability” check to see if the accommodation could be used to house asylum seekers.
Also in Germany, a “Refugees Welcome” organization based in Bonn posted a message commenting on a party that was held for the migrants last week. During the celebration, female members of the “Refugees Welcome” group were sexually molested by the refugees.
Migrants in the Netherlands, who previously complained about slow Internet and not being given enough money to buy cigarettes, are now sleeping on the streets in protest against not having televisions in all their rooms.
While such facilities are apparently not up to standard for many of the migrants, the Netherlands is footing an €870 million a year bill to accommodate them, meaning each asylum seeker costs around €36,000, despite the country currently suffering from a housing shortage.
Earlier this year in Sicily, migrants had taken up residence in the Florio Palace until they were driven out by Palermo police. And in Germany, A Church had its altars and crosses removed to accommodate the muslim migrants. Europe is under a full scale invasion similar to what transpires during a war. Except this invasion and all of the brutality and economic hardship associated with it, rolls out in the name of a left wing New World Order Agenda that the average European doesn’t recognize until it’s too late.
Politician Calls For German Youth To Service Muslim Migrants
The Swedish government announced on November 11 that it would reintroduce border controls to stem the uncontrolled flow of migrants entering the Scandinavian nation. Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters in Valetta, Malta, the day after the announcement: “when our authorities tell us we cannot guarantee the security and control of our borders, we need to listen.”
A report on Aljazeera America news channel noted that about 10,000 refugees arrived in Sweden last week, with 2,000 entering in one day — setting new records. This is remarkable because Sweden’s only land borders are with Norway and Finland, far to the north and do not provide easy access to the country. The refugees, mostly Syrians and Iraqis, fled violence and unrest in the Middle East and began entering Europe through Turkey and Greece, migrating northwestward hundreds of miles across Macedonia, Serbia, and Hungary. Most of these migrants headed to Germany and other more prosperous western European countries, where they are seeking to settle permanently.
From Germany, some refugees traveled through Denmark, where the only way to enter Sweden is over the strait known as the Öresund. Migrants and others can cross the strait either by ferry or across the five-mile-long Öresund Bridge from Copenhagen in Denmark to Malmö in Sweden. In accordance with the Schengen Agreement and the Nordic Passport Union, there have usually been no passport inspections when crossing the border over the bridge. However, that will now change as Sweden begins to control those bridge and ferry crossings.
Following the EU’s Schengen Agreement rules, Sweden will initially reintroduce the checking of documents at its border for just 10 days. Under the Schengen rules, noted a Breitbart report, the Swedish government may continue to impose border controls for up to two months, after which they must open the borders again. However, the agreement does allow a country to reinstate controls temporarily if there is a serious threat to its “public policy or internal security.” The European Union must be alerted to any border closures beforehand, and member nations must agree to allow the EU to monitor how the changes are implemented.
A valuable lesson to be learned from the EU’s authority to dictate to member states how they may control their borders is that such regional quasi governments mean the end of national sovereignty. This is an important point for Americans to keep in mind when asked to enter into regional arrangements such as the rejected Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). The SPP was founded in Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005, by Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and U.S. President George W. Bush.
In 2006, CNN anchor Lou Dobbs argued that the SPP was part of a plan to merge the United States, Canada, and Mexico into a North American Union similar to the European Union. Multiple articles published by The New American and by its affiliated organization, The John Birch Society, made exactly the same point.
Faced with strong criticism, those seeking to establish the SPP eventually allowed the plan to die. However, the idea itself never died. On February 4, 2011, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Obama announced a new security and prosperity initiative with plans to “pursue a perimeter approach to security in ways that support economic competitiveness, job creation, and prosperity.”
With the United States now facing a border crisis of its own (the Obama administration estimated that 60,000 children unaccompanied by parents or relatives would pour into the United States last year), it is not difficult to imagine how much more difficult it would be to control our borders if we had to answer to a North American authority such as the SPP or a North American Union before tightening restrictions. Fortunately, unlike Sweden and other EU members, we have not yet ceded our sovereignty.
As Sweden began implementing the new border controls, immigration officers stopped a train arriving at Hyllie station in tthe city of Malmö to check passengers' identification documents, reported The Local — a digital English language newspaper. Police also began checking papers at ferry terminals for vessels arriving from Denmark and Germany, noted the report.
The border crisis that has suddenly reached Sweden’s doors is part of an ongoing influx of refugees who have fled the turmoil in Middle Eastern nations such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and the North African nation of Libya. One of the first European leaders to voice concern about the number of migrants entering his country was Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who on September 7 criticized efforts by European Union leaders to impose immigration quotas before the continent’s borders are made secure. Orban said:
As long as we can't defend Europe’s outer borders, it is not worth talking about how many people we can take in....
The quota system wants to treat the effects before it treats the causes of immigration. The main reason for this is because (the EU) cannot control its outer borders.
To help stem the tide of migrants, Hungary built a 110-mile-long fence along its border with Serbia.
Just two days after Orban’s statement, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, speaking in Strasbourg, France, asked members of the European Parliament to accept 160,000 migrants.
In his speech, Juncker proposed a more centralized approach to handling the refugee crisis, stating:
We need more Europe in our asylum policy. We need more Union in our refugee policy.
A true European refugee and asylum policy requires solidarity to be permanently anchored in our policy approach and our rules. This is why, today, the Commission is also proposing a permanent relocation mechanism, which will allow us to deal with crisis situations more swiftly in the future.
By “solidarity,” Juncker obviously means a uniform, centrally controlled system throughout the EU for processing all asylum requests, thereby denying member states the right to accept or reject migrants who want to cross their borders.
As we can see with Sweden’s situation, however, EU members are already greatly limited by the EU’s Schengen Agreement rules. An important lesson to remember, on either side of the Atlantic, is that the ability to control its borders is one of the key elements of making a sovereign nation sovereign.
