Wednesday, November 30, 2011

PayPal returns frozen funds to pro-family activist following internet protest

PayPal returns frozen funds to pro-family activist following internet protest

November 29, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) — The PayPal corporation has returned funds it froze mid-September in pro-life and pro-family activist Julio Severo’s account following a campaign by militant homosexuals to cut Severo off from the company’s service.
Following several weeks of unfavorable articles on PayPal’s actions in LifeSiteNews and other media outlets, as well as a petition drive that gathered more than 10,000 electronic signatures and offers of legal help from multiple groups defending the rights of Christians, PayPal informed Severo that it would make an “exception” and release the funds.
The company had previously claimed that it would hold the money in the account, which constituted most of needed Severo’s funds, for up to nine months before returning it to him.
PayPal shut down Severo’s account and froze his funds after the organization was petitioned by the homosexualist organization All Out to eliminate ten organizations or individuals from its service, for opposing the homosexual political agenda.
Julio Severo and others were accused of peddling “hate,” although Severo makes it clear that he has no animosity towards homosexuals and wants them to be rescued from the self-destructive homosexual lifestyle. In addition to translating and writing for LifeSiteNews, Severo publishes a blog in Portuguese that is one of Brazil’s best-read, and is followed by politicians and other influential individuals in the country. Severo also has blogs in English and Spanish.
In response to the gay activist complaints, PayPal launched an investigation of the targetted groups. It sought to cut off any that could not prove that they were a legally-constituted charity capable of receiving donations, despite the fact that PayPal permits individuals to receive money without reference to membership in any group.
Also targeted by the campaign have been such groups as Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP), a Catholic group that defends the rights and dignity of Christians and opposes sodomy, and Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, which seeks to inform the public about the facts about the “gay” lifestyle.  So far, none of these have been cut off by PayPal. 
Although LifeSiteNews sent the petition list to a number of PayPal addresses and informed the company of the signatures, no response was ever received.
Source: LifeSiteNews

Sunday, November 27, 2011

The New York Times talks about Brazilian minister Silas Malafaia

The New York Times talks about Brazilian minister Silas Malafaia

Comment by Julio Severo: I didn’t like the mocking tone that the leftist American newspaper used to speak about Malafaia, but the leftist mindset is narrow and it keeps them from seeing reality as it is. The newspaper erroneously compares Malafaia to Pat Robertson, a conservative in times gone by so solid that he even suggested that Hugo Chavez, a friend of Lula and Dilma Rousseff, should be murdered. Although Malafaia has, on the abortion and gay agenda, the same stance as real conservatives do, his political leanings keep him away from a legitimate conservatism, and such fact was recognized in the interview itself when he admitted to have voted for Lula twice and not to have anything personally against Rousseff. If she didn’t support abortion and homosexuality, would everything be ok? Of course not. See, she was formerly a terrorist, and she has never repented of her terrorist past or of her socialist ideology and her connections with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. That repugnant socialist aspect doesn’t seem to be an inconvenience to Malafaia. I will continue, as a writer and blogger, to support Malafaia as he attacks the radical abortion and homosexual agenda. But how can we Brazilians follow his disastrous political leanings? It is a pity that he doesn’t have 50% of Michele Bachmann’s political convictions.
Here is the complete interview:
Silas Malafaia: “God called on me to be a pastor, and I won’t exchange that for being a politician.”

Evangelical Leader Rises in Brazil’s Culture Wars

By SIMON ROMERO
SILAS MALAFAIA’s books, which sell in the millions in Brazil, have titles like “How to Defeat Satan’s Strategies” and “Lessons of a Winner.” The Gulfstream private jet in which he flies has “Favor of God,” in English, inscribed on its body.
As a television evangelist, Mr. Malafaia reaches viewers in dozens of countries, including the United States, where Daystar and Trinity Broadcasting Network broadcast his overdubbed sermons. Over 30 years, Mr. Malafaia, 53, has assembled thriving churches and enterprises around his Pentecostal preaching.
Still, he might have garnered little attention beyond his own followers had he not waded into Brazil’s version of the culture wars. After all, Brazil has evangelical leaders who command larger empires, like Edir Macedo, whose Universal Church of the Kingdom of God controls Rede Record, one of Brazil’s biggest television networks. Others, like Romildo Ribeiro Soares, of the International Church of God’s Grace, are known for greater missionary zeal.
But it is Mr. Malafaia who has recently attracted the most attention, with his pointed verbal attacks on a broad array of foes, including the leaders of Brazil’s movement for gay rights, proponents of abortion rights and supporters of marijuana decriminalization.
Silas Malafaia gives an interview at the backyard of a hotel prior to an event.
“I’m the public enemy No. 1 of the gay movement in Brazil,” Mr. Malafaia said in an interview this month here in Fortaleza, a city in Brazil’s northeast where he came to lead one of his self-described “crusades,” an event mixing scripture and song in front of about 200,000 people. Tears flowed down the faces of some of the impassioned attendees, while others danced to the performances that served as his opening act.
Before ascending to the pulpit, he described how coveted he had become on television talk shows as a sparring partner with gay leaders. But that is only a small part of his repertoire, and television is just one of many media at Mr. Malafaia’s disposal. On Twitter, he has nearly a quarter of a million followers, and in videos distributed on YouTube, he lambastes not only liberal foes but also journalists and rival evangelical leaders.
Not surprisingly, his rising prominence has made him the source of both admiration and unease. He mobilized thousands to march in the capital, Brasília, this year against a bill aimed at expanding anti-discrimination legislation to include sexual orientation.
“He’s like Pat Robertson in the sense of being a pioneer in moving Brazil’s evangelical right into the national political realm,” said Andrew Chesnut, an expert on Latin American religions at Virginia Commonwealth University, comparing Mr. Malafaia to the conservative American television evangelist.
Brazil’s elite is seeking to understand the rise of such a polarizing figure, and how it might influence the nation’s politics. Piauí, a magazine that is the rough equivalent of The New Yorker in the United States, ran a lengthy article this year on Mr. Malafaia’s rise from obscurity in Rio de Janeiro, where he grew up in a military family, to the power he now wields.
BEYOND Mr. Malafaia, the broad expansion of evangelical faiths, particularly Pentecostalism, in recent decades is altering Brazil’s politics. (While Pentecostalism varies widely, its tenets in Brazil include faith healing, prophecy and exorcism.) Leaders in Brasília must now consult on a range of matters with an evangelical caucus of legislators with resilient clout.
About one in four Brazilians are now thought to belong to evangelical Protestant congregations, and Pentecostals like Mr. Malafaia are at the forefront of this growth. In a remarkable religious transformation, scholars say that while Brazil still has the largest number of Roman Catholics in the world, it now also rivals the United States in having one of the largest Pentecostal populations.
Not everyone in Brazil is enthusiastic about this shift.
In a November essay, the journalist Eliane Brum wrote of the intolerance shown toward atheists in Brazil by some adherents of born-again faiths, describing what she called the “ever more aggressive dispute for market share” among big churches.
Ms. Brum’s essay unleashed a wave of reactions from Pentecostals. Mr. Malafaia’s words were among the most caustic.
During the interview here, he called Ms. Brum a “tramp,” and repeated his contention that “communist atheists” in the former Soviet Union, Cambodia and Vietnam were responsible for more killings than “any war produced for religious questions.”
Whether by design or default, his aggressive language has often become a spectacle. In November, Época magazine reported that Mr. Malafaia, during heated comments about taking legal action against Toni Reis, a prominent gay-rights advocate, said he would “fornicate” Mr. Reis.
Mr. Malafaia fired off an explanation that he had actually said he would “funicate” Mr. Reis. While researchers were unable to find Mr. Malafaia’s word in reference dictionaries, he said it was slang that roughly translated as “trounce.”
The visibility Mr. Malafaia achieves from such episodes has fueled questions about his political ambitions. He said he had no desire to run for office because it could make him beholden to a specific political party, thus curbing the broader visibility he now has.
“God called on me to be a pastor,” he said, “and I won’t exchange that for being a politician.”
But political influence is another matter. Mr. Malafaia said he voted twice for Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and for years enjoyed access to Brasília’s corridors of power. But he also related an anecdote about Mr. da Silva’s successor, President Dilma Rousseff, that suggests how important evangelical figures are becoming in national elections.
He said she spoke with him by telephone for 15 minutes during last year’s presidential campaign, trying to lure his support. But he said he refused because of ideological differences with parts of the governing Workers Party of Mr. da Silva, a former labor leader, and Ms. Rousseff, a former operative in an urban guerrilla group.
“I told her, ‘I don’t have anything personal against you. I think you’re an intelligent, qualified woman,’ ” he said. “ ‘But how can I vote for you if I spent four years fighting with the group from your party supporting a bill to benefit gays, thus hurting me?’”
MR. MALAFAIA, while stabbing the air with fingers adorned with diamond-encrusted gold rings, delivers such tales in booming Portuguese with a thick Rio accent.
His persona has given him almost rock-star status among some supporters.
“I didn’t recognize him without his mustache,” said Erineide Mendonça, 39, an employee at the Fortaleza hotel where Mr. Malafaia was staying, referring to the trademark facial hair that he shaved not long ago. “But I recognized his voice,” she said, asking to be photographed with the evangelist she adores.
Both Mr. Malafaia and his wife, Elizete, were trained as psychologists, and when he rises to the pulpit, his voice echoes in sermons laden with lessons of self-help and perseverance.
A favorite theme involves success and how to attain it. While he contends that he still lives relatively humbly and is not even a millionaire, he makes no apologies for his own material rise. In fact, he celebrates it, touting, for instance, his Mercedes-Benz — a gift, he explains, from a prosperous friend.
Then there is the Gulfstream, acquired secondhand in the United States, he said, not by him but by his nonprofit religious organization at a reasonable price.
“The pope flies in a jumbo jet,” he said, referring to the chartered Alitalia plane that carries the bishop of Rome, and chafing at what he viewed as a double standard with which Brazil’s ascendant evangelical leaders must contend. “But if a pastor travels in any old jet, he’s considered a thief.”

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Diplomatic safe sex: No US asylum to Saudi gay

Diplomatic safe sex: No US asylum to Saudi gay

By Julio Severo
A homosexual from Saudi Arabia had his asylum request denied by the Obama administration.
The Jerusalem Post reported that Ali Ahmad Asseri “argued that if he returned to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia he would face execution because the country’s radically fundamental form of Islam mandates the death penalty for same-sex relations.”
Reportedly, the Obama administration denied the asylum to “avoid disrupting US-Saudi relations”. Annoying wasps is less dangerous than annoying a Muslim nation!
Is not the Obama administration the most radically pro-sodomy government in the US and world history? Has not the US government under this pro-Muslim president committed itself to fight “homophobia” whenever and wherever it appears?
To grant asylum to Asseri would show to the Muslim world that the Obama administration is serious about its world policies equaling sodomy to human rights.
Contrary to many asylum seekers, Asseri did not lie: Saudi Arabia really executes homosexuals. Poor Asseri! To tell truth did not help him.
In contrast, Brazilian homosexual Augusto Pereira de Souza, 27, had no such hardship to be granted asylum by the Obama administration. Enough for him was to allege that “Brazil is one of the most violent countries against homosexuals”. Nothing else than falsehood was necessary to get him asylum.
In spite of Pereira’s charges against Brazil as a threat to gays, Asseri could freely and safely live in Brazil. In fact, his troubles to get US asylum have been reported by a Saudi-American blogger and journalist based in Brazil, the “homophobic” country. In Saudi Arabia, Asseri and the journalist defending him would be treated very differently than the Brazilian government and society would do.
On the other hand, Souza is free to criticize and enter Brazil. As in the US, in Brazil media and government agencies are brazenly pro-sodomy and criticism against Christians and their “homophobia” is widespread and most welcome — as long as such criticism is directed exclusively to Christians, never to Muslims. What Souza cannot do is to criticize and enter Saudi Arabia. To enter there would spell his doom. At least, it would change his mind about “Brazil as one of the most violent countries against homosexuals”.
If Saudi Arabia were as Christian as Uganda is, it would be easier for the US to charge it of “homophobia” and grant asylum to the Saudi gay. Christians are always fair game for dishonest charges. But the US cannot afford giving similar treatment to Saudi Arabia, which is so radically against sodomy as the US is radically for it.
Stuart Appelbaum, a prominent gay activist in New York, said that if the Obama administration refuses to grant asylum to Ali Ahmad Asseri because it is afraid of the Saudi reaction, then the US will become complicit in his fate. “It is exactly because of how Ahmad might be treated on his return to his homophobic and brutal land that the United States should grant him refuge,” he said.
As far as Saudi Arabia and its Islamic law are concerned, the Obama administration will never sacrifice its economic interests with Muslim nations to defend sodomy as a human right. This is why it finds safer to grant asylum to a lying Brazilian homosexual than to a truthful Saudi homosexual. Between defending a perverted sexual act and not offending Muslim allies, the latter is priority diplomatic safe sex for a US radically committed to protect the former.
When homosexuality hits its international relations with Muslim nations, the US government commitment is not to annoy its gay-executing, Muslim allies.

Monday, November 21, 2011

A Gulag of Your Own Making

A Gulag of Your Own Making

Don Hank
A few weeks ago, PayPal cut off service to Julio Severo because Julio says on his blog that he agrees with the New Testament on homosexual behavior. They did this at the behest of a homosexual activist group.
Effectively, PayPal, as the only service of its kind, unilaterally decided to try and ban Julio’s blog, which has played a key role in stopping utterly totalitarian-style legislation in Brazil that would have banned speech perceived as offensive to homosexuals. Since PayPal is effectively a monopoly, they have threatened Julio’s livelihood in objection to his faith, which they want to see banned everywhere in the world.
PayPal is therefore what I call a NGE, or Non-Governmental Enforcer, of an unconstitutional speech code, circumventing the law by using methods that would be politically impossible for government to use.
And yet you will note that government has been glaringly silent and will do nothing to help Julio barring a lawsuit. And it is far from clear whether our leftist-packed judiciary will do anything to intervene on behalf of freedom of speech.
Now, not much fuss was made over Julio’s plight outside Christian activist circles, apparently because religious freedom is now being supplanted in Western minds by sexual freedom, a favorite platform of libertarians.
Yet, I have tried to warn that when you allow government (or its proxy) to tell Christians they may not speak out against what they perceive as evil, the totalitarian system will soon direct its fury against you, even if the government per se is not directly involved in this assault. Because you see, the far left (as exemplified by the Fabian Society, which has lost no time in stealthily removing your freedom since the 1880s) has always used stealth tactics to enforce laws, even laws not yet on the books. They believe they are on the side of History, and I write that with a cap because for them history is God.
Now, the West has gradually accepted the mindset that religion is nothing but a throwback and has no place in public life. In fact, they portray Christianity as a sinister system designed to enslave people. Yet when large corporations in league with corrupt government (crony capitalism) overtly take steps to eradicate Christian speech in public, then those liberty-minded individuals who generally ignore the plight of Christians, also considering us to be knuckle dragging Neanderthals, are unwittingly cutting their own throats, because if groups of bullies can tell Christians to shut up with impunity, then they can tell you to shut up as well. It is only a matter of time.
A few scant weeks have passed since PayPal censored Christian blogger Julio Severo and now, those who sat silently by are seeing the censors moving into their own territory. For libertarians generally believe that any censorship is bad and cuts into liberty. Yet, as suggested above, they foolishly look away when Christians are censored, particularly Christians who flout the Ruling Class purportedly on the “side of history.” What they fail to see is that the censorship of Christian speech is a harbinger of much bigger things to come. Because the Ruling Class despises Judeo-Christian values (as exemplified by their behavior in Europe where they import Christian-hating Muslims by the millions, and in the Muslim World, where each war they engage in invariably has the outcome of Christian persecution and decimation of the indigenous Christian populations).
This lack of compassion for Christian speech on the part of the “freedom minded,” including numerous nominal Christians, is a bad sign, my friend. You didn’t speak out for Julio because you bought into the left’s propaganda that only homosexuals can be victims, never Christians. The far left in league with the New World Order taught you that Christianity is the enemy of freedom and compassion, when in fact it represents the only real freedom and compassion one can ever hope to have.
Now we are here:
He [Assange] claims that since Wikileaks began publishing thousands of secret US government files and diplomatic cables online, an “arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade” has been imposed by Bank of America, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union.
Each and every one of those corporations are nothing more nor less than partners in an unholy alliance with the most radical political apparatus we have ever seen in America. Along with many others, I had said many times before that there is no longer free market capitalism in America.
But loss of economic freedom is never alone. Loss of religious freedom and loss of political freedom are never far behind.
We are now officially in that latter phase when the right to freedom of speech has been abridged and soon will be completely abolished unless you and I have a change of heart.
Did Assange complain when Julio Severo was cruelly denied a living for his family, including 4 children?
I didn’t hear his protests.
And I didn’t hear yours either when WorldNetDaily alerted you to this outrage.
So don’t protest when they muzzle you and take away your voice and your vote.
Welcome to Gulag America, a prison of your own making, through your silent complicity.
Don Hank has been the owner/operator of the Christian news and views site Laigle's Forum since 2006. His work has been published by WorldNetDaily, Canada Free Press, Christian Worldview Network, Etherzone, FedUpUSA, Renew America, Desert Conservative and Midia Sem Mascara. From 1971 to 2009 Don was the owner and operator of a technical translation agency. He has translated professionally from over 20 languages and is the author of Japanese-to-English Technical Translation Manual and French-English Dictionary of Aluminum Manufacturing Terms. He is now retired and residing in Panama with his wife Zoila and their daughter Luisa.