America Moving from Kingdom of Cash to Socialism – Pravda

I don’t know what amazes me more… This story or the fact that the story comes from Pravda. The last turning point similar to the current one happened approximately 400 years ago. The Western European society discovered a new hierarchy of values. Feudalism that valued service and chivalry was replaced with capitalism. Wealth became the measure of success, and everyone was to care about his own pocket only. The cult of money replaced all other values, including religious.

Capitalism turned everything upside down and made people more excited about stuffing their bank accounts than anything else. This system turned out to be extremely efficient in terms of production of goods, services, and comfort. America benefited from the system the most, and decided that the rest of the world has to adopt it as well. If some underdeveloped countries are unable to appreciate the benefits of capitalism, they should be forced to do it.

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Atheists Roll Out New Advertising Campaign

Campaign Slogan – In The Beginning Man Created God

This provocative twist on the Bible’s opening line was plastered on the side of 25 Chicago buses this week as part of an advertising crusade by the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign.

The ads have been cruising between downtown and the city’s North and South sides, including the No. 56 Milwaukee route, since the beginning of the week and will run through June.

“The intent of the campaign is to stimulate discussion of religion and its place in our society,” said Charlie Sitzes, a spokesman for the Indiana group who with help from the American Humanist Association has collected more than $10,000 in private donations to buy the ad space in Indiana and Illinois.

The group brought its message to Chicago after a similar campaign in Indiana – to post the slogan “You can be good without God” – was rejected by transit authorities in Bloomington and stalled by officials in South Bend, who didn’t want the ads posted in time for President Barack Obama’s speech at Notre Dame.

Indiana’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has sued the Bloomington Public Transportation Corporation on the atheist group’s behalf. Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan has denounced his own transit system, saying he does not condone government censorship.

“It would appear that where there is more opposition to the message that maybe that would be the place where we needed dialogue more,” Sitzes said, maintaining that the slogan is a simple fact.

“All non-believers believe God is a creation of man,” he said. “We used to have thousands of gods. Now we’re down to one. We’re getting closer to the true number.”

Among the guidelines for determining if an advertisement can run on the CTA is a requirement that the ad be truthful and is “not directed at inciting imminent lawless action.”

via Atheists roll out ad campaign | The Seeker.

Half of Israelis Back Immediate Strike on Iran

Just over half of Israelis back an immediate attack on the nuclear facilities of arch-foe Iran but the rest want to wait and see the results of US diplomacy, according to a poll released on Sunday.

Fifty-one percent support an immediate Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, while 49 percent believe the Jewish state should await the outcome of efforts by the US administration to engage with the Islamic republic, said the survey published by Tel Aviv University.

But 74 percent of those questioned said they believe that new US President Barack Obama’s efforts will not stop the Islamic republic from acquiring atomic weapons.

Israel, widely considered to be the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear armed state, considers Iran its arch-foe after repeated statements by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the Jewish state to be “wiped off the map.”

Israel and Washington accuse Iran of trying to develop atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme, a charge Tehran has repeatedly denied.

via Half of Israelis back immediate strike on Iran.

Americans Shopping For A Different Religion

William Lobdell has followed four different religions. Now he’s an atheist.

Raised Episcopalian, the 48-year-old Orange County, Calif. man switched to a non-denominational parish and then a Presbyterian one. After going through a year of Catholic conversion classes he eventually realized that he is “a reluctant atheist.”

“I wish I believed,” said the former Los Angeles Times reporter and author of the memoir “Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America – And Found Unexpected Peace.” “I’d like to believe that someone is watching over me and protecting me, but I just don’t believe that.”

He may be an extreme example, but approximately half of Americans change religions at least once in their lives, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The forum recently released a report, “The U.S. Religious Landscape: Exploring Religion in America,” based on surveys of 35,000 people.

Pew found that Catholicism has seen the sharpest decrease in membership among all religions in the U.S. About 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics, according to the survey. The Archdiocese of Chicago declined to interview for this article.

via Americans ’shopping for religion’.

Will Israel Be Forced To Face The World Alone?

As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu prepares for his visit to the United States next week, warnings abound that the Obama Administration’s policies will leave Israel to face Iran and Hamas alone.

The warnings are summed up in recent articles by the West’s two main pro-Israel female commentators: Melanie Phillips and Caroline Glick. Writing in the Spectator (United Kingdom) last week, Philips warns that “Obama is attempting to throw Israel under the Islamist bus.” She cites the report that Obama’s National Security Adviser told a European foreign minister that Obama will be ‘forceful’ with Israel, and plans to impose, with the EU and moderate Arab states, “a satisfactory endgame solution” upon Israel.

“This is all not only evil,” Phillips says, “but exceptionally stupid… The Arab states are beside themselves with anxiety about Iran. They want it to be attacked and its nuclear programme stopped. They are desperately fearful that the Obama administration might have decided that it can live with a nuclear Iran… A Palestine state will be Iran, in the sense that it will be run by Hamas as a proxy for the Islamic Republic. The idea that a Palestine state will not compromise Israel’s security is ludicrous.”

American Jewry: Spineless

After expressing incredulity at the American demands for further Israeli concessions in the light of the utter failure of the Disengagement, Phillips writes that U.S. Jews are reacting “with a total absence of spine… Almost eighty per cent of American Jews voted for Obama despite the clear and present danger he posed to Israel. They did so because their liberal self-image was and is more important to them than the Jewish state whose existence and security cannot be allowed to jeopardise their standing with America’s elite.”

Netanyahu must therefore take Israel’s message to “the ordinary American people,” she concludes: “They do value and support Israel. They do understand that if Israel is thrown under that bus, the west is next. And it is they to whom Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu must now appeal, over the heads of the politicians and the media and certainly America’s Jews and everyone else. He must tell the American people the terrible truth, that America is now run by a man who is intent on sacrificing Israel for a reckless and amoral political strategy which will put America and the rest of the free world at risk.”

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George Barna: America Is Being Destroyed Inside Out

Christian pollster George Barna made a controversial argument Wednesday night that Americans are to blame for the destruction of their country and it is up to faith groups to restore it.

George Barna, founder of The Barna Group, shares ideas presented in his latest book, 7 Faith Tribes, on the opening night of the Evangelical Press Association/Associated Church Press Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana on Wednesday, May 6, 2009.

The once great United States is decaying, declared Barna to a crowd of hundreds of Christian journalists on the opening night of the Evangelical Press Association/Associated Church Press Convention.

America’s divorce, abortion, sexually transmitted disease, spousal abuse and crime rates are the highest or among the highest compared to other developed nations. And the percentage of students graduating from high school on time has not changed in 32 years.

“The enemy of America today is not Iraq. It is not Afghanistan or communism. It is not Somalian pirates. It’s the moral degradation and spiritual complacency of Americans,” contended Barna, founder of the research firm The Barna Group. “In essence it is the willingness of Americans to become victims of the imposition of values and objectives that defy our common good.”

Many factors have led to America’s deterioration, he said, including moving from mass production to mass consumption, moving from common values to now radical individualism with personal values, and competition among faith groups rather than cooperation.

“Just think about the shift in mottos that characterize our nation,” Barna noted. “We talked about one nation under God, but today really we are one nation under self, sometimes aided by one or more gods.”

“We shifted from a nation that said ‘In God We Trust’ to reality and self we trust,” he said. “We transitioned from being a land of the free and the home of the brave, to now we are the land of the indebted and the home of the self-indulgent. We also shifted from a land that believes you can be all you can be to now it’s get all you can get.”

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Christian College Creates Homosexual Housing

The church-affiliated Texas Christian Read more

Americans Calling Themselves Christians Drops 11% In One Generation

When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers.

The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

“More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, ‘I’m everything. I’m nothing. I believe in myself,’ ” says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

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Don’t Destabilize Russia, Putin Warns Foes

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned Russia’s foes on Friday against trying to destabilize a country facing broadening economic crisis, Russian news agencies reported.

Putin did not specify who might pose a threat to Russia’s stability. But in the past, he has often blamed Western security services of trying to destabilize the country using opposition groups and non-governmental organizations as their instruments.

“Any attempts to weaken or destabilize Russia, harm the interests of the country will be toughly suppressed,” they quoted ex-KGB spy Putin as telling an annual meeting of top spies and security officers ahead of their professional holiday.

Putin, who was the Russian president in 2000-08, has contributed greatly to the growth of influence of Russia’s FSB federal security service, a successor of the Soviet-era KGB.

Many ex-KGB officers became key government and regional officials during his presidency forming his power base, which largely remained intact after Putin handed over powers to his successor Dmitry Medvedev in May.

Critics say that under Putin, security services have become excessively influential and expressed fears Russia could one day become a police state.

Rights campaigners have urged Medvedev to veto a cabinet bill ordering that professional judges rather than juries run trials involving terrorism, civil unrest and several other serious crimes.

They also urged Medvedev to block government attempts to impose high treason charges on people accused of “harming the constitutional order,” which critics believe could lead to a political witch-hunt.

Analysts say the role of the security services is likely to grow even further as Russia plunges into an economic crisis marked by rising unemployment and financial woes that threaten the popularity of the government.

Avoiding civil unrest and maintaining political stability is viewed by the government as a top priority.

via  Yahoo News.