Thursday, August 27, 2015

Understanding Anti-Government Protests in Brazil


Understanding Anti-Government Protests in Brazil

By Julio Severo
Economic crisis produces protests. In Brazil, at least, the motivation behind protests has been, as reported by Reuters, “a sluggish economy, rising prices and corruption.”
Demonstration against Dilma Rousseff
Sadly, the protests have not been against the abortion and homosexual agenda, whose government obsession to impose it should be a top priority in the concerns of a Christian people.
In the early 1980s, Brazil had one of the biggest debts in the world and the commonest word in the Brazilian news was IMF (International Monetary Fund). Prices were skyrocketing. Inflation was the daily friend of Brazilians. All of this during the military regime, which was not corrupt.
Demonstration against the military rule in the 1980
Multitudes rallied as if Dilma Rousseff and her socialist Workers’ Party were in the government. The Brazilian people were tired of economic recession, inflation and high prices. So there were protests and more protests. Even many Brazilians in the United States made protests in the front of the Brazilian Embassy and consulates in the U.S. They did not spare Brazilian President João Baptista Figueiredo even when he needed to travel to the U.S. for medical treatment. In fact, abroad the most prominent Brazilian demonstrations against the Brazilian military regime happened in the U.S.
As an effort to appease the huge discontentment of Brazilians, the military government, under President Figueiredo, decreed that every October 12, from 1982 on, would be a national holiday in honor of Our Lady “Aparecida” as “Patroness of Brazil.” (“Aparecida” is an image of a black lady interpreted by Brazilian Catholics as “Mary, mother of Jesus,” but strangely with black skin. So she is the Brazilian black Mary.)
Such decree left evangelicals immensely displeased. In opposition to the decree, Pentecostal evangelist Manoel de Mello called evangelicals for a demonstration at the Pacaembu Stadium, in São Paulo, against idolatry, in October 12, 1982. In this date, the stadium was overcrowded, even under torrents of rain, for the service of protest against the national idolatry established by the military government.
Evangelicals were dissatisfied because they believed that Brazil belonged to the Lord Jesus, but because of the financial crisis, the military men handed Brazil over to Aparecida. Even today, the military decree keeps Brazil surrendered to Aparecida (the black Mary), which was incapable to protect Brazil from a leftist domination (PT, PSDB, etc.).
Even when Brazil was more Catholic, such a national holiday handing Brazil over to Aparecida had never been created. Yet, the military strategy, although having immensely pleased the Catholic Church and the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil, in no way helped Brazil to escape the economic crisis. Inflation was getting worse, the minimum wages were not enough to cover minimum expenses and protests against the military government grew larger and larger. It was in this environment of economic recession that Liberation Theology communities, connected to the Catholic Church, created and strengthened the Workers’ Party.
With this historic knowledge, you can assess better what is happening in Brazil today. With or without government corruption, Brazilians are going to protest against an economic crisis hitting their pockets. Brazilian protested against the military rulers, who were not corrupt. Brazilians protest against Rousseff, who is extremely corrupt. In both cases, the Brazilian motivation is economic crisis.
In the case of military rulers, who were hard-working and honest investors in the development of Brazil, is hard to understand how their administration was as economically recessive as the Marxist Rousseff administration is. The best explanation I have ever read was provided by U.S. economist John Perkins, in this article: http://bit.ly/1hhIpRc
Many Brazilians want today the military men to overthrow corrupt Rousseff from power. But if they do it and the economic crisis does not soften, multitudes are going to rally and blame them for the economic problems in Brazil, just as they did 30 years ago. Sadly, for the Brazilian people, economy is much more important than right or left and even more than moral values.
In the case of military rulers, the crisis aided socialists and communists, by giving abundant pretexts for attacking the military rulers and asking, through massive rallies, their exit.
In the case of the Workers’ Party, the crisis aides the right, by giving abundant pretexts for attacking the Workers’ Party and asking, through massive rallies, their exit.
In Brazil at least, economic crisis, not moral values, has provoked for decades massive protests, against the military rulers and against the socialist rulers.
Portuguese version of this article: Entendendo os protestos anti-governo no Brasil
Recommended Reading:

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Bishop Edir Macedo and Homosexuality


Bishop Edir Macedo and Homosexuality

By Julio Severo
The official website of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) announced that its founder, Bishop Edir Macedo, has a stance different, in the homosexual issue, of the position of many evangelical leaders in Brazil.
Bishop Edir Macedo
According to the website, Macedo said, “God does not want nothing by force. And we in the Universal Church do not impose anything on anyone… There are many evangelicals, ministers and churches raising a flag against the homosexual movement and against homosexual marriage. I ask: would Jesus do it if He were living in our time? I do not believe that He would do it, because in His time there were homosexuals and Jesus did not speak anything. Jesus did not raise a flag, saying, ‘Look, you should speak up against homosexuality, that it is forbidden, that it should not be done.’”
Macedo presented his view immediately expressing a contradictory information, because there is imposition at UCKG — concerning offerings. Many of the services of this strange neo-Pentecostal church are dedicated to impose on the members’ consciences that with no big offerings, there is no blessing. Even though it is not a legal pressure, it is a psychological imposition and manipulation. The result of the psychological pressure is offering money flooding the UCKG safes and making its biggest leaders rich, including Macedo, who rolls in money at offerers’ expense
Actually, Jesus made an abundance of miracles of healing and deliverance, but you never see Him saying, “If you want to receive a miracle, take part in the Miracle Campaign, with an offering (psychologically compulsory, as usual) from 50 percent or more of your income. You need to sacrifice your pocket!” No, with Jesus no one needed to empty his pockets and fill others’ pockets. But everybody received miracles. With Macedo is different: only those who fill his pocket are worthy to receive miracles. Big sacrifices, big miracles. His theology is an aggressive prosperity theology.
As to Macedo’s politically correct view that Jesus did not speak up against homosexuality, this perspective, which is not originally from him, has been expressed by progressive Protestants (progressive in Brazil is another designation for socialist). Rev. Carlos Bezerra, who is considered an ideal politician by the liberal sensationalist tabloid Genizah, said in 2013:
“How many times did Jesus speak about homosexuality? I answer: Never… Were homosexuals in the top list of people most confronted by Him?”
Bezerra is also a state representative and the most prominent leader of PSDB in the São Paulo state. (PSDB is the social democratic party in Brazil. Even though PSDB has opposed the ruling socialist Workers’ Party, PSDB founder Fernando Henrique Cardoso is a close friend of Bill Clinton. In the last Brazilian presidential election, David Axelrod, a Marxist strategist who was the top Obama adviser, came to Brazil to build the political image of the PSDB candidate. So the political fight in Brazil has been anti-U.S. leftists against pro-U.S. leftists.) It is with his conviction that Jesus has never condemned homosexuality that Bezerra never mobilized PSDB to hinder several homosexualist laws furiously advancing in the São Paulo state, ruled by PSDB.
Answering Macedo, who is imitating Bezerra, you could also say, “How many times did Jesus speak about child abuse? I answer: Never… Were child abusers in the top list of people most confronted by Him?”
Should you remove the gay agenda and child abuse from Christian concerns just because Jesus never mentioned them directly?
Jesus just did not attack head-on the homosexual agenda because this was not the obsession in the Jewish society where he preached the Gospel. Each generation has its own challenges and special attention. Without the Holy Spirit to guide us in God’s Word, it is impossible to give an answer to these challenges and special attentions. In this point, it is important to give attention to Luther’s words, “If I declare openly, with the loudest voice and the clearest expression, each portion of God’s truth, except precisely the tiny portion that the world and the devil are, in this time, attacking, then I am not really confessing Christ, however much I may cry aloud that I am confessing Him.”
Did Jesus speak or not against homosexuality? If you believe God’s Word, the answer is yes.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1 ESV)
Jesus is the Word. When you read Leviticus or Romans condemning homosexual acts, it is Jesus speaking. When you read the Old or the New Testament condemning homosexual acts, it is Jesus speaking.
In this point, some could conclude that Macedo is following some crazy prophecy or revelation that made him stray from God’s Word. Actually, Macedo rejects all prophecy and revelation for today. He believes that such manifestations of the Holy Spirit were available only 2,000 years ago and that today prophecies and revelations are demonic. Regarding to prophecies and revelations, he follows the cessationist heresy.
So if a prophecy or revelation comes to Macedo saying “Macedo, stop supporting the socialist Workers’ Party. Stop advocating abortion. Stop joining liberals to attack my servants who warn about the gay agenda” his answer will be, “Shoo, Satan! I expel you from my life with all your false directions.”
I believe in Christian revelations and prophecies as gifts given by the Holy Spirit to equip his church. But do I need these gifts to reject the socialist Workers’ Party, abortion and the gay agenda? Of course, I do not. I have never needed these gifts to know that socialism, abortion and the gay agenda are malignant.
And how to say that fighting these malignant agendas has no part in a prophetic manifestation in the last days? A prophecy in Malachi 4 says that before the great Day of the Lord, He will send Prophet Elijah, whose ministry was to fight the worship of god Baal, which was rife with baby sacrifice — equivalent today to abortion — and homosexual priests — equivalent today to the current condition of homosexuality, which is considered sacred by dirty laws.
This is, Prophet Malachi prophesied a restoration of Elijah’s prophetic ministry for the last days. Oh, I forgot that Macedo does not believe in prophecies…
If Macedo is not following prophecies and revelations, so whom is he following? In the homosexual issue, he is following Bezerra, who is liberal. But Macedo’s embrace of socialism is not new. Even though he today condemns pastors raising a flag against the gay movement and homosexual “marriage,” he is famous for his political endorsement of Brazilian socialist former and current presidents Lula and Dilma Rousseff. For years, Macedo has been raising a Workers’ Party flag at UCKG.
Using the same Macedo’s rule of measure, I ask: Would Jesus do it if He were living in our time? I do not believe that He would do it.
Although he declares that UCKG does not impose anything on anyone, apparently no UCKG minister remembers it in election time, when they impose on their congregations the choice of just candidates handpicked by the UCKG national leaders. And when these candidates are elected, their work has to be aligned with the UCKG big boss’ commands. If the big boss raises the Workers’ Party flag, everybody else are supposed to follow him.
I ask: Would Jesus do it if He were living in our time? I do not believe that He would do it.
And coincidently the Workers’ Party (WP) main flag has been abortion and homosexuality. With this flag, WP attacks any individual opposing abortion and homosexuality. In fact, every socialist will make the same attack. This is the reason Ed René Kivitz and other Brazilian progressive Protestants advocate gay rights and attack Assemblies of God minister Silas Malafaia and others in their conservative stances against abortion and the gay agenda. In the same vein, Carlos Bezerra of PSDB and Macedo of UCKG make the same attacks.
I liked more when UCKG, in the late 1970s, had an aggressive focus on delivering people from the oppression of Afro-Brazilian religions — which are very similar to voodoo and Santeria and, according to the Bible, are witchcraft. Today, the UCKG’s aggressive focus is to take money from people and invest in the fortunes of UCKG Solomons, who abound in greed, but are pauper in wisdom and Christian love.
During the 1980s and 1990s UCKG was conservative and pro-life. In 1993 a UCKG newspaper in São Paulo declared,
According to the Bible teaching, God gave free will to every human being. In other words, he gave to each individual the ability to choose what he wishes to do with his life. But the right to grant and take the life of an individual belongs only to God. First Samuel 2:6 says: “The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up” (ESV). No case of rape, or a risk of a child to be born with physical or mental deficiency, entitles a human to take somebody’s life. The Bible teaches that all is possible to him who believes (Mark 9:23). Therefore, the cases that in the science’s eyes appear to be impossible become possible in God’s eyes.
In 1996, Folha Universal (the official UCKG newspaper in Brazil) said,
This procedure (abortion), often insane, besides provoking the death of a small being, who has no minimal chance of defending himself, can lead its committer to death. Well, no one has a right to take the life of other individual.
Yet, afterward UCKG began to get near WP and support abortion. Before the election of Lula for the Brazilian presidency in 2002, Bishop Rodrigues, who was one of the UCKG founders, made political pilgrimages among evangelical leaders, proclaiming, “We have the obligation to dedicate ourselves in the Lula campaign… So let us embrace a new way of doing politics. It is action socialism.”
Rodrigues even asked forgiveness from Lula for the years UCKG had opposed him.
In 2003, he committed another fatal sin: he asked forgiveness from Afro-Brazilian religions’ adherents at the Brazilian Congress floor for the “opposition” UCKG had made against them. No much later, Rodrigues was swallowed by the vortex of WP’s political scandals.
The Brazilian religion that most embraces the homosexual sin is Candomblé, with other Afro-Brazilian religions and witchcraft. When Rodrigues, as the top UCKG representative in the Brazilian Congress, asked forgiveness from these religions, he gave a green light to the demons of these religions, including demons of homosexuality.
All that is needed now is for UCKG and Macedo to ask forgiveness from Luiz Mott, the most prominent leader in the homosexual movement in Brazil, for all the demons of homosexuality they expelled from sorcerers during decades.
Macedo is a black sheep in the prosperity gospel movement concerning abortion and homosexual issues. One of the most prominent preachers of this gospel, Dr. Myles Munroe, denounced the homosexual agenda.
Yet, to those who are surprised at Macedo now raising the flag of opposition to evangelicals fighting the gay agenda, it is worthy to remember that the UCKG founder has carried, for years, the disgraceful flag of explicit abortion advocacy. In 2013, Macedo said, “I support abortion yes, and I say it without fearing the consequences, and if I am sinning, I commit this sin fully aware, yes!”
In the official biography “O Bispo: A História Revelada de Edir Macedo” (The Bishop: The Revealed History of Edir Macedo), published in 2007, authors Christina Lemos and Douglas Tavolaro reveal what Macedo says:
“I support the right of a woman to choose… I support abortion, yes. The Bible also does it… A woman needs to have the right to choose.”
Now, he supports homosexuals having a supposed right to choose homosexual “marriage,” to the detriment of the natural family.
Therefore, his new stance on homosexuality should be no surprise, because it is just a natural progression of somebody who chose the advocacy of the legal slaughter of the unborn. It is the “progress” of decadence.
I suppose if Macedo lived in the time of King Ahab and Jezebel, he would have given them support. How do I know it? Because he has supported modern Ahab (Lula) and modern Jezebel (Dilma).
As to Prophet Elijah, who made so much opposition to Ahab and Jezebel, Macedo would say: “God does not want nothing by force. There are many ‘prophets’ raising a flag against Baal worship, baby sacrifice and homosexual priests…”
Macedo, who began his ministry expelling demons, now needs abortion and sodomy demons expelled from him.
Portuguese version of this article: Bispo Macedo e homossexualismo
Recommended Reading:

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Pro-Family Cannibalism?


Pro-Family Cannibalism?

By Julio Severo
C-Fam has been doing a nice work of exposing pro-abortion and pro-sodomy activities, groups and individuals around the world. But now, its director Austin Ruse did a recent un-nice work of exposing one of our people — namely, Dr. Scott Lively —, accusing him as a “boogeyman” used by homosexualist groups. In his article “Anatomy of a Mythical Boogeyman,” Ruse employed indeed a mischievous ruse to justify a moral cannibalization of Lively and his reputation.
Scott Lively
Ruse said:
Gay activists are not really afraid of Scott Lively. They know he’s had little to no effect overseas. He is their invention, a vehicle to keep their base riled up and the direct mail checks flowing.
Based on rumors, Ruse also belittled Lively:
He has bummed around the pro-family movement for many years but has never really been accepted by the mainstream groups. I am told he does not work well with others. One major pro-family figure told me that Lively is just as happy attacking other pro-family people as he is going after the LGBTs.
A Catholic attacking an evangelical. Something new?
So if gay activists choose a valid victim (Catholic Ruse) to trash, we are supposed to defend him. But if they choose an invalid victim (evangelical Lively), are we supposed to trash him too?
Last year, Matt Barber (who is not an unknown leader in the pro-family movement) wrote an article published on WorldNetDaily (which also is not unknown in the pro-family movement) defending Lively:
“As did Christ, Scott Lively speaks absolute truth, in absolute love, with absolutely no fear of personal destruction or even death. He loves everyone, whether friend or foe, Christian or pagan, straight or gay. For example, Scott and his family took into their home and nursed, both physically and spiritually, the late Sonny Weaver, a former homosexual who died, as so many have, from AIDS – a natural consequence of unnatural behavior. Sonny became homosexual after being raped at 7 years old by a gay man in a local YMCA. He became a former homosexual after accepting Jesus as Lord of his life.”
Ruse’s boogeyman piece received an intelligent answer from a fellow Catholic named “bonaventure,” who said:
Dear Austin
You do realize that the homofascist organizations like HRC, GLAAD, etc., refer to you no differently than they refer to Scott Lively?
Maybe Lively is “marginal” (i.e., has a small, unconventional, protestant/fundamentalist ministry, etc). And maybe he doesn’t get along too well with the more mainstream pro-life ministries (many of which opposed various state level Personhood amendments). So what? So what if he doesn’t share your humor, or doesn’t appreciate listening to Timothy Dolan’s “jokes” on different pro-life organizations’ board meetings?
You should have shown Scott Lively under a better light in your article, rather than scoff at him — which is no better than elevating him to be the chief boogeyman. Because, on the other side of the culture war, you are as much a boogeyman as Scott Lively is. In fact, you may even have your own “crimes against humanity” federal lawsuit badge of honor soon…
Seriously and without sarcasm: rather than presenting Scott Lively under the negative light as you did in your article (correct me if I am reading too much into it), you should have rather contacted him somehow, and joined him on a common front with whatever force and influence you actually HAVE.
Another reader, Nicola M. Costello, commented:
Why gratuitously trash Scott Lively, a leader on our side of the issue Mr. Ruse?
Homosexualist group GLAAD has a malicious bio sketch of Ruse, basically describing him as a version 2 of Scott Lively. Should now we treat Ruse as boogeyman 2?
Homosexual blog JoeMyGod, in a post titled “Austin Ruse To Scott Lively: You Can’t Sit With Us,” said about the Ruse-Lively imbroglio: “Delicious, delicious, delicious.”
In their ruses against Lively and in their “Crimes Against Humanity” lawsuit against him, homosexualist groups want a cannibalization of Lively and much more. Now will they use Ruse’s boogeyman piece as an evidence that pro-family groups are destructive and self-destructive?
In his answer titled “Taking ‘Friendly’ Fire,” Lively said:
“Marxist strategist Saul Alinsky taught his followers to 1) pick a target to be the symbol of their opposition, 2) freeze the target in place through unceasing propaganda, and 3) publicly destroy the target to set an example to those who oppose them. I’ve somehow become that target: the sacrificial scapegoat of the LGBT movement. And, short of a miracle of God, I will be publicly destroyed, if not through the ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ lawsuit then by some other means. If we have learned nothing else about the agitators of the modern LGBT movement, we know they are as relentless and implacable as their ancient counterparts in Sodom, who would not desist from their siege of Lot’s home even though they were struck blind by God.”
Above all, Catholics and evangelicals know, in their Bibles, that Jesus said that a house divided against itself cannot survive. He said:
“Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls.” (Luke 11:17 ESV)
What about a pro-family kingdom cannibalizing itself? Can it survive?
Portuguese version of this article: Canibalismo pró-família?
Articles by or on Scott Lively:

Saturday, August 08, 2015

Mackenzie Presbyterian University and Its Pro-Abortion Professor


Mackenzie Presbyterian University and Its Pro-Abortion Professor

By Julio Severo
Abortion legalization in Brazil was discussed in a Senate hearing on August 6, 2015. Among the debaters were pro-abortion feminists. The big surprise was that the Senate introduced one of them as “Márcia Tiburi, professor at the Mackenzie Presbyterian University.” Mackenzie is the highest Calvinist educational institution in Brazil.
Tiburi’s pro-abortion discourse, recorded by TV Senado (the official TV of the Brazilian Senate), began by saying that whenever she travels throughout Brazil in her pro-abortion activism she takes the name Mackenzie with her, stressing that she is not the only pro-abortion activist at Mackenzie. To watch the video in Portuguese, use this link: https://youtu.be/DLxm7U0OEes
In the hearing, the Mackenzie professor said, “To vociferate against abortion is just a biopolitical way to control women’s lives… and above all to recruit adherents for authoritarian causes… What is achieved by it and who wins by achieving it? Antiabortion priests promote a speech by which ignorant masses are convinced. In a nation of illiterate individuals, including women, and of excessive corruption in moral terms, votes, tithes and general consumption are infallible. Therefore, abortion legalization is a fundamental part of a socially responsible democratic process.”
According to her curriculum, she is directly connected to Mackenzie since 2008. Her specialty is to teach philosophy and ethics. But the words that she vociferated against the unborn life at the Senate demonstrate just the opposite: a total lack of ethics. Any philosophy that despises the most innocent life despises ethics itself.
Tiburi, who in her pro-abortion feminist activism has been praised even by the Communist Party of Brazil, has been exposing her lack of ethics since before 2008. Before becoming a Mackenzie professor, she defended abortion in the official website of the Communist Party of Brazil. If the contractor (Mackenzie—Presbyterian Church of Brazil) had been careful to make a basic investigation, it would have easily found, even by a simple Google search, that it was contracting not a mere and innocent professor, but a radical activist thirsty for the legal shedding of innocent blood.
How, in these 7 years of Tiburi at Mackenzie, there was no problem and scandal? The hired individual is directly connected to the pro-abortion movement. The contractor is directly connected to the Presbyterian Church of Brazil (PCB).
Tiburi’s sheer presence as professor at a Protestant university is a sign of victory for pro-abortion militants and defeat for evangelicals, who should evangelize, not contract, propagandists of baby-killing.
When Tiburi chose the designation at the Senate of “Mackenzie professor,” she fatally compromised the institution, which, because it is openly confessional (Mackenzie PRESBYTERIAN University), chose to contract a professor who is a pro-abortion feminist militant. The case is not that she deserves to be fired from Mackenzie. She never deserved to be contracted.
The hired individual is not to blame. The contractor, which has poorly chosen its job applicants, is to blame.
If a Pentecostal televangelist had committed the error of hiring a pro-abortion feminist activist for one of its confessional institutions, the self-appointed Calvinist apologists (“defenders of faith” and of “Sola Theologia”) would certainly beating them with their Calvinist sticks and damning them to hell.
In Mackenzie’s case and its pro-abortion professor, all the Calvinist apologists are in deathly silence, as if they were under monastic oaths never to expose anything of the Presbyterian university. In this scandal, no pro-abortion feminist, or her contractor, is going to be “burned” at the fire of the Holy Calvinist Inquisition. If the case were about some Pentecostal minister, he would already have become ashes at the condemnation stake.
Nevertheless, Mackenzie issued in the same day an official release saying:
Clarification Release
August 6, 2015 Chancellery Rectory
On August 6, 2015, the Mackenzie Presbyterian University president issued a release read at the Senate Human Rights Committee by Representative Leonardo Quintão to the attendees of the debate whose subject dealt with abortion. Below, the full text:
Dear Rep. Leonardo Quintão
Mackenzie Presbyterian University, based on its principles and values, rejects any attempt on life and affirms that the views expressed by its professors are products of free speech inherent to the human being and the intellectual life. Therefore, it reaffirms the stance of its supporting institution, the Presbyterian Church of Brazil, which rejects both abortion legalization, except for therapeutic abortion, when there is no other way to save the life of a pregnant woman, and the use of abortifacient contraceptives.
Benedito Guimarães Aguiar Neto
Mackenzie Presbyterian University President
Evidently, Mackenzie is not to blame for the insane views of its professors. But cannot a Protestant-professing institution make a selection and hire only morally fit professors and according to basic Christian and moral principles? Is there so big shortage of competent Calvinist applicants for jobs in the Calvinist institution that was necessary to hire an advocate of baby-killing? Why did not Mackenzie choose a pro-family Calvinist? Is there, in the whole PCB, no Calvinist able, in the place of the pro-abortion feminist, to teach philosophy and ethics at Mackenzie?
And now does Mackenzie want to dissociate itself from the hired activist by invoking, in a cynically democratic nod, a defense of an alleged “product of free speech”?
In this point, I am shocked! Is defense of abortion “free speech”? What about the defense of the Holocaust? What about the defense of Nazism? What about the defense of the Inquisition, which slaughtered Jews and Protestants?
Is lack of ethics “free speech”?
What about if instead of the pro-abortion professor, Mackenzie had a Julio Severo who, in his life outside Mackenzie, voiced views against the cessationist heresy, the Marxist Theology of Integral Mission and Freemasonry? Would Mackenzie then defend the stances of Julio Severo as “products of free speech”?
Mackenzie president’s release made it clear that the Presbyterian Church of Brazil “rejects abortion legalization, except for therapeutic abortion.” He had to quote the Presbyterian Church of Brazil (PCB), because the Mackenzie Presbyterian University is subordinate to PCB — thereby making, in a sense, pro-abortion Tiburi strangely connected to PCB.
Yet, why does not PCB also reject the so called therapeutic abortion? Dr. Brian Clowes, in his massive work “The Facts of Life,” says,
Therapeutic abortion: The current medical literature equates “legal abortion” with “therapeutic abortion.” The definition of the word “therapeutic,” however, mean “treatment of disease.” The use of the term “therapeutic” is another pro-abortion attempt to sanitize a repulsive act, and it also implies that pregnancy is a disease — an assertion many pro-abortionists have made directly.
Dr. Roy Heffernan of Tufts University Medical School has said that “Anyone who performs a therapeutic abortion is either ignorant of modern medical methods or unwilling to take the time and effort to apply them.”
If Mackenzie is really filled with activists with the same mindset as Márcia Tiburi, as she alleged at the Senate herself, I am going to receive a deluge of boos and complaints. And perhaps even lawsuits. I can hardly wait the headlines: “Pro-Abortion Professors at the Mackenzie Presbyterian University Sue Pro-Lifer Julio Severo!”
Be it as it may, no Christian-professing institution is forced to hire feminist militants whose lack of ethics leads them to advocate the legal slaughter of the unborn. If they do it, they have to take the consequences of a bad Christian testimony.
Portuguese version of this article: O Mackenzie e sua professora abortista
Recommended Reading:

Tuesday, August 04, 2015

John Perkins and His Confessions of an Economic Hit Man


John Perkins and His Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

By Julio Severo
Economist John Perkins said, “Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign ‘aid’ organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM.”
Other revelations by Perkins are equally impressive. According to him, in his 2004 book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” Saudi Arabia has a very special relationship with the U.S. since mid-1970s. He says,
“The evidence was indisputable: Saudi Arabia, America’s longtime ally and the world’s largest oil producer, had somehow become, as a senior Treasury Department official put it, ‘the epicenter’ of terrorist financing… Saudi largess encouraged U.S. officials to look the other way, some veteran intelligence officers say. Billions of dollars in contracts, grants, and salaries have gone to a broad range of former U.S. officials who had dealt with the Saudis: ambassadors, CIA station chiefs, even cabinet secretaries…”
Perkins came to get such knowledge not only because he was a respected economist, but also because of his involvement, decades ago, with NSA (National Security Agency) and even designing massive projects in Saudi Arabia.
In the 1960s and 1970s, NSA was not internationally known, but today, because of the leaks of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, NSA’s stealthy activities comprising surveillance and espionage have been exposed. Yet, ten years before Snowden, John Perkins had already made a significant exposé, which remained largely unnoticed, because apparently no one was willing to believe that the mysterious NSA was a malignant octopus.
How did Perkins come to know NSA? In 1967 he married to a woman whose uncle was a top echelon executive at NSA. In 1968 he was profiled by the NSA as an ideal economic hit man (EHM).
He had been deliberately hired by NSA because of his non-conservative qualities and a lack of moral values. A truly conservative, moral man would never do what he was hired to do.
In 1981 he married to another woman whose father was chief architect at Bechtel Corporation and was in charge of designing and building cities in Saudi Arabia — work financed through the 1974 EHM deal.
About his NSA training, Perkins said,
“First, I was to justify huge international loans that would funnel money back to MAIN and other U.S. companies (such as Bechtel, Halliburton, Stone & Webster, and Brown & Root) through massive engineering and construction projects. Second, I would work to bankrupt the countries that received those loans (after they had paid MAIN and the other U.S. contractors, of course) so that they would be forever beholden to their creditors, and so they would present easy targets when we needed favors, including military bases, UN votes, or access to oil and other natural resources. My job, [NSA agent] said, was to forecast the effects of investing billions of dollars in a country. Specifically, I would produce studies that projected economic growth twenty to twenty-five years into the future and that evaluated the impacts of a variety of projects. For example, if a decision was made to lend a country $1 billion to persuade its leaders not to align with the Soviet Union, I would compare the benefits of investing that money in power plants with the benefits of investing in a new national railroad network or a telecommunications system. Or I might be told that the country was being offered the opportunity to receive a modern electric utility system, and it would be up to me to demonstrate that such a system would result in sufficient economic growth to justify the loan. The critical factor, in every case, was gross national product. The project that resulted in the highest average annual growth of GNP won. If only one project was under consideration, I would need to demonstrate that developing it would bring superior benefits to the GNP. The unspoken aspect of every one of these projects was that they were intended to create large profits for the contractors, and to make a handful of wealthy and influential families in the receiving countries very happy, while assuring the long-term financial dependence and therefore the political loyalty of governments around the world. The larger the loan, the better.”
This was in the 1970s. I remembered Brazil, my country. In the 1970s, the military government in Brazil kept up massive investments in infrastructure — highways, telecommunications, hydroelectric dams, etc. The military rule, under President Ernesto Geisel, borrowed billions of dollars. Brazil was enjoying an investment boom that had pushed annual GDP growth to over ten percent. Large-scale infrastructure projects, such as the Itaipu and Tucuruí hydroelectric dams, fueled growth, and Brazil emerged as the undisputed industrial leader in Latin America, earning the title “the Brazilian miracle.” But the boom fell apart. By 1982, Brazil halted payment of its main foreign debt, which is among the world’s biggest.
Brazil was apparently the perfect field for EHMs’ activities. The Brazilian military government, which made investments of billions of dollars in infrastructure, ended with loans and massive debts. And these debts had no relation with corruption, because the military government was corruption-free. Probably, in the modern history of Brazil, Brazilians never had a so corruption-free government as the military government was.
If the job of EHMs (and their colleagues) was to persuade countries to take out loans worth billions of dollars, often to pay for infrastructure projects that the EHMs themselves recommend, as John Perkins wrote in his book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” then Brazil was probably a big victim.
As Brazil, many of the nations put into debt in the 1970s and 1980s were ruled by right-wing militarists and their debts were used by their socialist enemies as a reason to put their nations into a socialist route. The economic explorations made these military allies of the U.S. vulnerable before socialists.
The Brazilian military rule in the 1980s was plagued by inflation, recession and massive foreign debt. The International Monetary Fund was a daily subject in the Brazilian news. Socialist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who in 2002 was elected president of Brazil, agitated against the Brazilian government. His main weapon was the economic crisis, which made the Brazilian people discontent with the military presidents.
I cannot imagine the military rule in Brazil running into massive debt because of corruption. I only can imagine, by all the clues pointed by Perkins, that there is a possibility that they fell into an economic hit man’s trap.
John Perkins’ book was recommended to me by a U.S. conservative leader.
By reading his book, you see NSA and other U.S. agencies as machines of economic exploitation of nations. But often such exploitation is facilitated by political leaders of these nations who also exploited economically their own people. I do not believe that this was the case in Brazil, because the Brazilian military rule was hard-working. When socialists overthrew U.S. allies in Latin America — an overthrow facilitated by U.S. economic hit men —, they themselves became exploiters, economically and also socially and religiously, because socialism severely stifles speech and religious freedom.
Perkins saw so much corruption among his professional peers in America exploiting the poor in Third-World nations that he began to see favorably socialist ideas, thinking that socialism was the only answer to the massive capitalist corruption he saw coming from his own nation. Of course, he did not know the Gospel, which is the only real answer to socialism and capitalist corruption.
The human nature is wicked. If it occupies a high post, it explores people under its control.
People without the Gospel should be capable of not exploring other people, because they have a conscience.
People who have the Gospel are under a double responsibility not to explore, because they have God’s conscience available to them (the Gospel) and their own conscience.
It not a sin to be wealthy. But God commands the rich to be also wealthy in generosity. Yet, socialism sees all wealth (except for the wealthy socialist establishment) as exploitation. The Bible does not see all rich as exploiters. There are rich and there are exploiters. And there are wealthy exploiters.
In his book, Perkins writes,
“‘We’re a small, exclusive club,’ [NSA agent] said. ‘We’re paid—well paid—to cheat countries around the globe out of billions of dollars. A large part of your job is to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire—to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs. In turn, these leaders bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. Meanwhile, the owners of U.S. engineering and construction companies become very wealthy… [NSA special agent] described how throughout most of history, empires were built largely through military force or the threat of it. But with the end of World War II, the emergence of the Soviet Union, and the specter of nuclear holocaust, the military solution became just too risky.”
Perkins also shows how the U.S. changed profoundly Iran through stealthy economic actions. He said,
“The decisive moment occurred in 1951, when Iran rebelled against a British oil company that was exploiting Iranian natural resources and its people. The company was the forerunner of British Petroleum, today’s BP. In response, the highly popular, democratically elected Iranian prime minister (and TIME magazine’s Man of the Year in 1951), Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalized all Iranian petroleum assets. An outraged England sought the help of her World War II ally, the United States. However, both countries feared that military retaliation would provoke the Soviet Union into taking action on behalf of Iran. Instead of sending in the Marines, therefore, Washington dispatched CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt (Theodore’s grandson). He performed brilliantly, winning people over through payoffs and threats. He then enlisted them to organize a series of street riots and violent demonstrations, which created the impression that Mossadegh was both unpopular and inept. In the end, Mossadegh went down, and he spent the rest of his life under house arrest. The pro-American Mohammad Reza Shah became the unchallenged dictator. Kermit Roosevelt had set the stage for a new profession, the one whose ranks I was joining.”
Of course, the U.S. strategy in Iran eventually backfired, and today Iran has a mortal hatred of America.
Perkins also said,
“By 1968, the year I interviewed with the NSA, it had become clear that if the United States wanted to realize its dream of global empire (as envisioned by men like presidents Johnson and Nixon), it would have to employ strategies modeled on Roosevelt’s Iranian example. This was the only way to beat the Soviets without the threat of nuclear war. There was one problem, however. Kermit Roosevelt was a CIA employee. Had he been caught, the consequences would have been dire. He had orchestrated the first U.S. operation to overthrow a foreign government, and it was likely that many more would follow, but it was important to find an approach that would not directly implicate Washington. Fortunately for the strategists, the 1960s also witnessed another type of revolution: the empowerment of international corporations and of multinational organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF. The latter were financed primarily by the United States and our sister empire builders in Europe. A symbiotic relationship developed between governments, corporations, and multinational organizations.”
Perkins explains more about their dirty work:
“Roosevelt-as-CIA-agent problem had already been worked out. U.S. intelligence agencies—including the NSA—would identify prospective EHMs, who could then be hired by international corporations. These EHMs would never be paid by the government; instead, they would draw their salaries from the private sector. As a result, their dirty work, if exposed, would be chalked up to corporate greed rather than to government policy. In addition, the corporations that hired them, although paid by government agencies and their multinational banking counterparts (with taxpayer money), would be insulated from congressional oversight and public scrutiny, shielded by a growing body of legal initiatives, including trademark, international trade, and Freedom of Information laws.”
Saudi Arabia is “lucky.” Billions of its dollars in contracts, grants, and salaries to U.S. officials have protected the Islamic nation from dark consequences of EHMs.
Perkins was related to Tom Paine (1737-1809), the American revolutionary leader who fought for the U.S. independence from England. With his conscience, Perkins had a motivation to write his book against the exploitations from NSA and other U.S. agencies. He said,
“I only had to return to the American Revolution and Tom Paine for a model. I recalled that Britain justified its taxes by claiming that England was providing aid to the colonies in the form of military protection against the French and the Indians. The colonists had a very different interpretation.”
With information of Foreign Affairs and BBC.
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