Kidnapping children for Jesus

From Reuters:

Americans arrested taking children out of Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haitian police have arrested 10 U.S. citizens caught trying to take 33 children out of the earthquake-stricken country in a suspected illicit adoption scheme, authorities said on Saturday.

The five men and five women were in custody in the capital, Port-au-Prince after their arrests on Friday night. There are fears that traffickers could try to exploit the chaos and turmoil following Haiti's January 12 earthquake quake to engage in illegal adoptions.

One of the suspects, who says she is leader of an Idaho-based charity called New Life Children's Refuge, denied they had done anything wrong.

The suspects were detained at Malpasse, Haiti's main border crossing with the Dominican Republic, after Haitian police conducted a routine search of their vehicle.

Authorities said the Americans had no documents to prove they had cleared the adoption of the 33 children -- aged 2 months to 12 years -- through any embassy and no papers showing they were made orphans by the quake in the impoverished Caribbean country.

"This is totally illegal," said Yves Cristalin, Haiti's social affairs minister. "No children can leave Haiti without proper authorization and these people did not have that authorization."

Emphasis mine.

The group mentioned in the Reuters article, the New Life Christian's Refuge is associated with the Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho, and the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho. The mission is to help these children to safety, well away from any godless, heathen family that might be looking for them and to “help them find a new life in Christ.” Thank goodness the evil, secular authorities are paying attention.

Really, how would you like it if there was a crisis and someone took your children to another country?

From another Reuters article:

Haiti quake raises fears of child-eating spirits

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - The earthquake that shattered Haiti has unleashed fears that child-eating spirits, mythological figures entrenched in Haitian culture, are prowling homeless camps in search of young prey.

The 'loup-garou,' which means 'wolf man,' is similar to werewolf legends in other parts of the world, but in Haitian folklore it is a person who is possessed by a spirit and can turn into a beast or even a dog, cat, chicken, snake or another animal to suck the blood of babies and young children.

Haitians fear loups-garous in the best of times and even more since a powerful earthquake wrecked the capital of Port-au-Prince two weeks ago, killing as many as 200,000 people and forcing hundreds of thousands more to sleep outside in vast camps or on the streets.

Some people accused of being loups-garous have apparently been lynched since the earthquake, including a man killed at the La Grotte camp for displaced people on a barely accessible hillside that looks down on Port-au-Prince.

"After the earthquake, the loup-garou fled from prison. He was bragging that he was in jail because he was caught eating children ... During the night he went into the tents and tried to take someone's child," said Michaelle Casseus, a camp resident.

Which is exactly what the Christians are doing.

Well done, people.

Good

I am not worthy

Not my kitchen. More my dream kitchen. Found on This Old House

Mom Plans Meals for Entire Year - ABC News

I plan anywhere from 2 weeks to a month ahead. I may just try shooting for a year.

Why diets are bad

For once I'm not cranking off about religion or politics.

From Venus Diva:

1) Many diets support the use of non-nutritional, highly chemicalized foods like fake fats and fake sugars. These chemicalized foods negatively affect body chemistry, cause low-level undernourishment, and often encourage overeating when the dieter gets the signal that s/he is not getting properly nourished.

2) Diets have such a high failure rate that they really are a gamble with a low chance of success. Why not just play Keno? If you look at the fine print of most studies on diets, they will tell you that, despite potential immediate success in limited numbers, diets have a 90-99% long-term failure rate. People lose some weight, only to find their weight creep back up, often surpassing their initial, pre-diet weight. Even the “successful” dieters often don’t keep all of their weight off.

3) Dieting gives dieters the message that they cannot trust their internal sense of what nourishes them. This distrust of internal signals affects other aspects of a dieter’s life, where they seek external approval and control of their non-food related actions.

4) The diet industry has a deep interest in the failure of dieters — if everyone got skinny, they’d go out of business.

5) Dieters’ self esteem is often tied to their weight — they feel good about themselves when they’re losing weight and bad about themselves when they’re gaining weight. This is a particular problem given item #2, if most dieters regain the weight they lose, they spend much of their lives feeling bad about themselves.

6) The diet system reinforces low self esteem in dieters by making them feel like they have no “willpower” when they have diet lapses. In actuality, diets encourage people to ignore their internal will in exchange for the perceived will of the diet industry. This out of control feeling reinforces low self esteem and makes dieters feel out of control in other areas of their lives.

7) Rather than being about nourishment, food often becomes about reward and punishment for dieters. They let themselves have a “treat” because they’ve been “good” on their diets and deprive themselves when they’ve been “bad.” Food is a necessary part of life. When food is about reward and punishment, we override our internal cues about what our bodies actually need.

8) Diets cause dieters (who are often women) to revolve their lives around food rather than other things that may really matter to them (relationships, careers, social issues). Who knows how many great ideas, inventions, beautiful relationship etc. the world is missing out on because so many of us are so obsessed with dieting.

9) Diets cause a lot of body hatred, particularly when the dieter isn’t losing weight. Dieters tend to see their bodies as wrong and problematic when they’re not seeing the “results” they want. But really, body and mind are connected, and this false conflict creates a great deal of unhappiness.

10) Diets often categorize foods as good/okay vs. bad/forbidden. Just like our culture’s genesis story revolves around a woman eating a forbidden food (the apple), it’s human nature to want what’s forbidden. Thus, it’s no wonder that dieters often crave forbidden foods even more once they are forbidden, and then hate themselves for eating those foods (maybe because they’re made to feel as though they’ve caused all of humanity to become sinners).

11) Diets encourage what I like to call “lottery thinking” — most dieters know that diets haven’t really worked for them nor most of the people they know, yet they think that some new diet is going to make them thin, and they’ll finally be in that tiny successful group. This creates a great deal of disappointment for dieters who are constantly trying to achieve something that is nearly impossible.

12) Most diet programs are expensive. I cringe when I think about the money that I and my friends and family have spent over the years on Weight Watchers, special shakes and diet pills!

13) For some people, diets are like Band-aids on deep scars. For people who really overeat and eat unconsciously, they often eat to numb their feelings and consciousness. Their issue is not really “portion control.” In fact, they often are too controlling of themselves and their emotions.

14) Diets assume that all fat people eat too much. They don’t account for the fact that people come in all shapes and sizes, and that a person’s weight is not an indicator of overall health.

15) The weight loss/gain cycle created by dieting is more stressful on the body than just being plain, old fat.

16) Diets work on a scarcity principle. Diets make dieters focus on lack, tell them they can only have “this much and no more” and that to want more is a bad thing. Because dieting is so all-encompassing, this scarcity principle often filters into other aspects of dieters’ lives. They begin to see lack and scarcity in their relationships, in their jobs, and in the world.

Could not say it better

Hypocrisy Watch

Mojoy over at Deep Thoughts is keeping a running watch of Pastors and Priests behaving...badly. As in criminally badly. The map is part of the project, showing every incident for the last half of 2009 alone. Click to see how it's shaping up.

The black dots indicate a sexual component to their crimes. Think on that.

Here's a copy of his current list:

Rev. John Wielebski suspended
Rev. Gaston Smith raises ethical questions
Rev. Edgar Sepulveda arrested
Pastor Paul Meeks to stand trial
Student Leader Jordan Vernon arrested
Pastor Dieugrand Jacques arrested
Pastor Kenneth Terrell arrested
Rev. Alejandro Flores discovers he cannot fly
Pastor Dean Tarkington arrested
Pastor Edwin House arrested
Youth Pastor Robert Weber arrested
Pastor Phillip Joubert charged again
Pastor Lloyd Sartain arrested
Pastor Steve Hilman arrested
Pastor Emmanuel William on trial for rape
Archbishop Edgardo Gabriel Storni sentenced
It's only porn and hypocrisy

And that's just what he reported in January 2010. He currently has 766 posts in his hypocrisy watch.

Why does religion crop up in every culture, when there is no proof of a supernatural deity? Maybe because it provides the perfect excuse for a small group to stay in power, have unlimited authority over others, do whatever they want, and not be questioned for it.

Why do they hate atheists so much? Maybe because we don't grant them unlimited authority and power, and we question everything.

Just a thought.

Perhaps he thinks they should have just remained in slavery

It starts about 6 minutes in.

"You know, Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. Ahhh...you know, Napoleon the Third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. They said we will serve you if you get us free from the French. True Story. And so the Devil said "Okay, it's a deal." and...uh...they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other. Desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It's cut down the middle, on one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. Um, they need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God. And out of this tragedy, I'm optimistic, something good may come."

I can't add to this, I really can't.

UPDATE: Billy Graham is asking for donations to send...chaplains.

"Chaplains will arrive today in Haiti to assess the level of need and to determine how to best provide emotional and spiritual care in the aftermath of the tragic earthquake that devastated the impoverished country. Please pray for the victims of the earthquakes, especially those who are still searching through the rubble looking for lost loved ones," said Jack Munday, Director of the Rapid Response Team. "Pray also for our team as they bring hope and comfort in the midst of this disaster."

Found here.

I can understand sending grief counselors, once the initial recovery has passed, but right now their survival needs are much more immediate, so sending money to send in people to pray would be an utter waste. And besides, as I understand it, the bulk of the country is Roman Catholic, using trauma to try to convert people is really low, but about what I would expect.

May I suggest that people who want to send real help donate to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières. They had the hospital in Port Au Prince, are currently doing trauma triage in the courtyard as the building is gone, and their American and Canadian teams are heading down there with inflatable surgical suites to save as many lives as they can (via the YarnHarlot)

Donate here:

From the USA
http://doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/?ref=main-menu

From Canada
http://www.msf.ca/donate/

Everyone else go through here
http://www.msf.org/

I just have to

This one's even more appropriate, I think, and I don't want to clutter things with too many cartoons.