Title: Idemia: The Corporation Building Spy Grid in China, National ID in India Also Creates Drivers Licenses in the U.S. Source:
Old-Thinker News URL Source:http://www.oldthinkernews.com/2018/ ... s-drivers-licenses-in-the-u-s/ Published:Aug 22, 2018 Author:Daniel Taylor Post Date:2018-08-22 10:13:21 by Deckard Keywords:None Views:9796 Comments:55
Company that helps manufacture U.S. citizens drivers licenses brags of building and managing databases of entire populations across the globe.
Big Tech has gathered unprecedented amounts of personal data from millions of people. At the same time, a system of total surveillance has been constructed: Facial recognition, biometric scanning, cell phone surveillance and more have amassed a huge amount of information.
We see the stories about the growing surveillance state, but we dont hear about the gigantic multinational corporation that is helping to build the physical infrastructure supporting it.
Idemia (formerly Morpho), is a billion dollar multinational corporation. It is responsible for building a significant portion of the worlds biometric surveillance and security systems, operating in about 70 countries. Some American clients of the company include the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and the FBI.
The company website says that Morpho has been building and managing databases of entire populations for many years.
Morpho has been building and managing databases of entire populations for governments, law enforcement agencies and other government bodies around the world, whether for national ID, health cards, bank cards or even driver license programs.
The company is now pushing digital license trials in the U.S. Delaware and Iowa are among five states involved in the trials this year. With the mobile license, law enforcement will be able to wirelessly ping a drivers smartphone for their license. The move is part of a wider trend toward cashless payment.
Idemia is assisting China and India with building surveillance and ID systems, trafficking in huge amounts of biometric data across the world.
In China, Idemia has helped build the massive biometric scanning and surveillance system that is used to keep Chinese citizens under a tyrannical boot.
The company has provided biometric payment and authentication systems to the country.
With a sales office in Hong Kong, Morpho offers services and solutions in the field of digital identity and smart transactions. The world leader in multibiometric identification technologies, Morpho supplies biometric identification systems to Chinese police forces and government immigration agencies.
Morpho has also provided facial recognition systems to police agencies in Shanghai, Tianjin, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Jiangxi, Guangzhou and Wenzhou.
In India, the controversial Aadhaar national ID card system is also enjoying the support of Idemia through Safran Identity & Security, now part of Idemia. The company states that it is in charge of all technological aspects of Aadhaar.
Morpho is one of the companies chosen to take part in an unprecedented program called Aadhaar to count everyone residing in India and then assign each person a unique identification number. Morpho is in charge of all technological aspects of Aadhaar.
One of the court filings (Mathew Thomas vs Union of India) details the rise of Chinas social credit system, comparing the Indian Aadhaar initiative to the Chinese program.
The Chinese government initially permitted corporations to aggregate personal data of their customers and built algorithms that could then rate the worth of these customers. As such applications began to get integrated and large technology companies began to dominate every aspect of citizen lives, the Social Credit Rating Systems that these companies ran became all the more pervasive.
Once this system had taken hold of the entire country, the State Council of the Central Government in China released an Outline of the Social Credit System Construction Plan (2014-2020), which specifies that such Social Credit Rating Systems would be integrated into their governance by 2020. This represents the integration of such infrastructure into the central architecture of the State, and would ensure a devastating amount of State control over its citizens.
A disturbingly similar pattern is being followed in the United States. Big Tech (Google, Apple, Facebook) has already gathered most of our personal data. It has also absorbed around 90% of internet traffic, and is now openly allying with communist Chinese policies.
Between Idemia issuing digital drivers licenses to U.S. citizens and Big Techs data collection, we are inches away from a fully integrated national ID system and an accompanying social credit score.
At the moment, the United States does not have a government backed program like the Chinese. However, if gone unchecked, a de-facto social credit system could still take hold due to the pervasiveness of big tech influence.
Idemia is building the infrastructure of the massive world-wide biometric surveillance grid. Demand for convenience with wireless, cardless, cashless payment and shopping is driving us right into their hands.
Idemia is building the infrastructure of the massive world-wide biometric surveillance grid. Demand for convenience with wireless, cardless, cashless payment and shopping is driving us right into their hands.
Yes, it is. And BECAUSE convenience IS paramount in busy lives, and we WILL be going to world-wide biometric surveillance, we HAVE TO UNDERSTAND that traditional morality - which has ALWAYS only been sustained through the opacity of private life and through massive hypocrisy, will no longer work. Traditional morality and its very ineffective enforcement mechanisms will, in an efficient surveillance and enforcement state, become the chain by which every life will be subjected to tyranny.
The ONLY escape from this is to change to the laws that allow the enforcement of morality certain aspects of morality, so that things that used to be subject to censure can no longer be prosecuted at all.
We HAVE TO UNDERSTAND that traditional morality - which has ALWAYS only been sustained through the opacity of private life and through massive hypocrisy, will no longer work.
HUH??
Again I don't understood where you're coming from.
"Traditional morality" is simply Bible-based. "The Golden Rule"; Ten Commandments; The "Protestant-Ethic".
This consensus of "traditional morality" has worked extremely well for the USA...until the 1960s.
Moreover, it's "traditional", even innate that the human conscience *knows* right and wrong": Lying, cheating, murder, greed...are wrong in ALL cultures. (except in fundamentally evil ones.)
The ONLY escape from this is to change to the laws that allow the enforcement of morality certain aspects of morality, so that things that used to be subject to censure can no longer be prosecuted at all.
By whose new authoritah?? Whom shall be the new arbiters of the "New Moraity"?? Human Secularists? The Pope? The UN? Who or whom??
The fool said he would choose Hillary and all of her abortion supreme court judges over cruz.
Today the dipshit said he would vote for Perot if it meant we get Clinton and all his rapes. Vic isn't right in the head. But you already know that from his delusions about raising cockroaches and rats from the dead.
I like Vic. I know you do too some degree. He's an honest poster (even if you and I don't agree with him at times), and contributes a bunch to ponder about.
That said, he is an enigma. Philosophically and politically he's all over the place.
To have supported Clinton to ANY degree was/is just insane.
The thing about veteran posters who've posted at FR, LP and LF -- some of us can indeed see the changes upon others that have taken place over the many years. Even among ourselves.
Most have mellowed to a degree. Others have embraced Eyes Wide Open; others have fallen prey to propaganda they used to fight tooth and nail.
Willie Green has changed to a dramatic degree; Vic also to a substantial degree.
What I *don't* understand is...rejecting ALL the evidence that public opinion and so-called "education" is rigged, while NOT grasping and fighting against the total evil and hijacking of the US Government by the Left's minions and Globalists.
"Traditional morality" is simply Bible-based. "The Golden Rule"; Ten Commandments; The "Protestant-Ethic".
The Protestant Ethic and "Traditional Morality" CLAIM TO BE Bible based, but they are not, in fact, based on what God actually SAID. They are based on what church leaders have ginned up for their own reasons.
In any case, we're going to head into another one of these debates so I'm going to just step back and state the tactical truth.
The Democrats and the Left, and I - though I am a different side, being neither a Democrat nor of the Left - have a huge advantage over your side, because we simply tolerate individual sin in our own (and I tolerate it everybody) with a "judge not lest ye be judged" standard, and look only at the specific things that the person proposes to do. (The Democrats are perfectly happy to go after YOU guys for the same sins they commit; I am not a hypocrite and don't go after either side over sins I don't care about.) You guys demand moral purity from human beings, and seek to use moral impurity to punish your political enemies.
It never works against us, because we will not join you in punishing people for things that your Protestant Ethic says are morals crimes that we simply are not all that exercised about. So, you do not harness up juries, or the public, only your own side, which is minoritarian. So you lose those fights with us.
BUT the Left win the fights against you, because you guys are hypocrites, your leaders are men, you all have morals crimes and sins too, so you stand on feet of clay, and you DEVOUR each other when it is exposed. So, when they come at you with a morals crime of YOUR leaders, you divide and fight amongst yourselves, and you lose.
As for me, I am just as inclined to let men of the Right (Trump, the various gay Congressmen, etc.) off the hook for their sexual immorality as I am to let men of the Left (Clinton, etc.) off the hook for theirs, so I don't join in either side's witch hunts. I understand that a greater principle of human liberty is at stake, and that the Right is behaving in a short-sighted and suicidal way.
But I DO take a certain satisfaction in seeing Right wing moralizers hoist on their own petard. That so many of those men who voted to impeach Clinton for lying about a consensual blowjob - a question he should never have been asked in the first place, that government officials do not rightly have the POWER to ask - that those men ended up having their careers destroyed and retiring in disgrace when their OWN sexual immorality was revealed struck me as being eminently just, in a divine justice sense.
You have a choice: you can be a rock-solid, tradition-following Christian, wedded to your book and what the ministers have taught over the years, or you can win on the political battlefield. You want to have both, and you can't. Your side loses. I do believe in God, and I agree that he does indeed have a revealed morality, but I think that traditional Protestant Ethics are themselves not from God, not particularly godly, not holy, pure or true, so I do not uphold them, and will not stand for them in politics.
MY beliefs about God allow me to tolerate political leaders who are personally immoral on sexual matters, in the same fashion that Israelites followed the sexually immoral David and the outright sexually depraved Solomon, and God was with them.
You will eat your own in order to uphold a false set of ethical doctrines, believe that God demands that of you because badly educated and self-serving ministers told your forefathers so and nobody has bothered to actually study it deeply for themselves. And you will attack me as "ungodly" for not following your ungodly false beliefs.
Oh pooh.
You're not going to change your mind, and neither am I. Unfortunately for you, it means that you're going to have to continue to twist yourself into knots over a serial adulterer like Trump as your leader, and you'll eventually eat your own. The Democrats never will. I won't eat your allies over the things you will, but I won't tell you that I think your Protestant Ethics are godly, because they are not.
Cooperation and alliance is possible between us because I oppose abortion and euthanasia, support a reasonably strong military, want the regulatory state pared back to what is necessary (you and I will not agree on the degree of this, but we can agree on some of the foundational stuff), want law and order, and agree on some aspects of human rights. We can cooperate on those things. I'm certainly not going to rule out cooperation with you because your religious beliefs are in error and your moral code is not godly - I'm not going to enforce a purity code on you. I understand that politics is pragmatic.
I don't think you can cooperate with me, however, because you have to give me sermons from the perspective of your false religion, which I reject and do not see as coming from God at all. I see it as coming from the pens and minds of distempered men through the ages, and I am not going to pretend that I find value in their views, because I find their views in sharp conflict with what my God tells me. Your religion sounds like a Christian form of Islam to me, and I don't hear God's voice over there either.
So if my paying lip service to your religion is the necessary price for you to be able to cooperate with me politically without going on of moral harangues about your religious beliefs, then you're never going to be able to get along with me, or trust me, or see me as an ally. I am, by your definition, ungodly, evil, a servant of Satan BECAUSE I reject the truth of your religion, not in totum, but on some of the most important points that you consider fundamental to it.
We are not of the same religion. Our religions are not really all that close. I can ally with you pragmatically, and I will. But you can't allow yourself to actually ally with me, because you're a religious and political fanatic who cannot accept heresy or what you consider "evil" in your midst.
Unfortunately for you, with all of that magnificent edifice of ethics, you've got a serial adulterer and philanderer at the head of your party, and you have to support and follow him or hand the whole government over the to Democrats, whom you condemn as demon spawn.
So you have to be a hypocrite to support Trump, and everybody sees it. I don't, because I don't subscribe to your values on the matter in the first place. Trump continues to do what I care about, and I don't care who he had adultery with, or that he paid her off, or that he had adultery. That's God's rule, not mine. God will enforce it on Donald, and that is sufficient. I'm not going to enforce it and reject him, or reject any other of my friends who have had an affair, fallen down, etc. Men are men - I don't judge them for being men. You do. And that makes a tremendous difference that you can't bridge. (I can, if an alliance with you would be useful to advancing the ball of what I care about. That is also true with Muslims. I can ally with them, tactically, to advance what I care about. You have to focus on their religion. I don't.)
Today the dipshit said he would vote for Perot if it meant we get Clinton and all his rapes.
I DID vote for Perot, and we got Clinton.
That Clinton raped women is despicable, but he didn't plunge us into an endless war in the Middle East and throw us into Somalia and not win them.
And he did preside over a very successful economy, while Bush lied to me about taxes, lied about Roe (appointed Souter), and for all of his foreign policy experience, got us into an endless war with Iraq and sent me to Somalia where my colleagues died for nothing.
Clinton was better than W Bush. Perot would have been best.
With 20/20 hindsight, I would go back and vote for Perot again, because that was the right vote.
That said, he is an enigma. Philosophically and politically he's all over the place.
But I'm not!
I am consistent. There is a set of things I want, and I will ally with ANYBODY to get those things - and I will turn on anybody and fight him if he is trying to undo what I want.
I am loyal to my beliefs, which means that I am loyal to whomever is with me AS FAR AS HE IS WITH ME, and will fight with him once he takes the other side of something that is important to me.
I have a very clear and discernible set of religious, moral and economic beliefs, and have held them consistently for decades. They are not the same as Republican, or Democrat, or Protestant, or Anglo-Saxon.
They are common-sensical, practical, Catholic-based (but not rigidly Catholic - the Catholic Church burnt a messenger of God, after all, and makes some pretty bad mistakes) and rooted in a concern for placing the needs of human beings at the center of the purpose of government, while leaving vast swathes of human activity off limits to government intrusion. My economics are pragmatic, not ideological, and I observe from history and experience that ideological economics are rigid, unrealistic, and don't work out too well over time, while pragmatic economics do.
You and Stone are ideologues, with very strong religious ideologies. I am a pragmatist with knowledge of the existence and will of God - and I follow what I understand to be his will precisely BECAUSE I am a pragmatist, not simply because somebody said "God said so".
It would be more productive, for example, to work out with me why it is that I so stubbornly support Social Security, which you and other ideologues seem to so thoroughly detest. That could result in an actual understanding of where I am coming from, which would be valuable for you if you seriously hope to actually help your side WIN on anything involving the matter. There are very pragmatic reasons why we need Social Security. Ideology cannot conquer them: we will not "assume a can opener". I understand you, and Stone. He mocks MY religion relentlessly, both the Catholic part of it and the personal experiences that show it to be true. What possible meeting of the minds can there be? I think his religious beliefs do not come from the real God, and he thinks I am a crazy liar who worships in Satan's front office at the feet of the Pope. Pretty tough to have a strategy conference when on side thinks that about the other.
The Protestant Ethic and "Traditional Morality" CLAIM TO BE Bible based, but they are not, in fact, based on what God actually SAID. They are based on what church leaders have ginned up for their own reasons.
Come on, Vic. The Ten Commandments *isn't* Bible-based?? Nor is the "Golden Rule"? Nor does the Protestant Ethic exists? Since when?
They ALL exist. And became the foundation of America's economic and political freedom. AS this same ethic and "traditional morality" became a *consensus* for ALL Americans. This consensus of shared values is what had created "American". Without it, what we/are we but divided & conquered?
The "Protestant Church" isn't like the RCC; It never had ONE "religious or political Leader like a Pope. Ergo, the Good Book easily guided and conferred our common and traditional "morality" as per applicable Bible chapters and verses.
The Left - have a huge advantage over your side, because we simply tolerate individual sin in our own (and I tolerate it everybody) with a "judge not lest ye be judged" standard, and look only at the specific things that the person proposes to do.
(Wait...are you actually taking the side of The Left here??)
This "Left" etal totally take that verse ( "judge not lest ye be judged" out of context and have NO REAL idea of Jesus' intent and meaning. It's just a convenient snippet/byte used by the Left to justify their own lies and hypocrisy.
(The Democrats are perfectly happy to go after YOU guys for the same sins they commit; I am not a hypocrite and don't go after either side over sins I don't care about.) You guys demand moral purity from human beings, and seek to use moral impurity to punish your political enemies.
We MUST have SOME common consensus for morality as a nation, no, Vic?? I repeat -- without common standards for morality, we are..divided.
As to "purity", WHO exactly is demanding IT??
Look -- They/you can be as ignorant, smug, and disingenuously concerned over "sins" as need be (as well as any pretense over "Judge, lest ye be judged") because most of us know that they are FOS and care not a whit about their snark, fake belief, and hypocrisy.
What are they but...moral relativists/Secular Humanists after all. Of course they are going to rebel against "Traditional Morality". And THIS is where they go off the rails while destroying "American Consensus", aka "Traditional Morality". YOU OTOH ought to know better.
I won't tell you that I think your Protestant Ethics are godly, because they are not.
Tell it to God. He's the Author.
You will attack me as "ungodly" for not following your ungodly false beliefs.
Stop going on the offensive. You claim to be unfairly persecuted, but here you are doing the persecuting and judging. Stay on topic. Which is, "TRADITIONAL MORALITY".
I don't think you can cooperate with me, however, because you have to give me sermons from the perspective of your false religion, which I reject and do not see as coming from God at all....Your religion sounds like a Christian form of Islam to me, and I don't hear God's voice over there either.
Man. Are you this far gone?? "A Christian form of Islam"?? Bizarre.
*I* am, WE are (those who read and heed the Bible and Gospel) are followers of Jesus Christ, of God's Word (The Bible). From Moses on through to Solomon and David and Jesus and The Apostles and Paul and...finally Jesus once again (through John in Revelation).
Whose Word are YOU heeding and following? Whose Book do you read?
We are not of the same religion. Our religions are not really all that close.
The boxes *I* check off are: Personal Savior: Jesus Christ. Son of God: Jesus Christ. Gospel? CHECK. Bible written as the Inspired Word of God. CHECK. Bible Prophets = God's Messengers: CHECK. Concede that we are ALL Sinners: CHECK. Through the sacrifice of God in the Flesh, Jesus Christ we are "saved", redeemed, exonerated from Indictments and Guilt. CHECK. Be guided by Wisdom of Bible: CHECK. Realize that even Believers CAN be deceived, habitually sin, commit evil, start making up our own spiritual laws, blaspheme the Holy Spirit, commit "Abominations", and lose Salvation: CHECK.
So what "religion" am I? And what are you??
Unfortunately for you, with all of that magnificent edifice of ethics, you've got a serial adulterer and philanderer at the head of your party, and you have to support and follow him or hand the whole government over the to Democrats, whom you condemn as demon spawn.
Seriously. Are you really going here?? Into politics already?
Ok. "Demon Spawn"??
Well, 0bama, the Clintons and Bernie (Democrats all) supported BABY MURDER. It's a political party that surrounded themselves with ONLY baby-murderers (Did Trump do that with HIS close associates that help run our gummint? OR even support Baby-Murder?)
Now tell me -- WHO supported and was the REAL "demon spawn"??
Men are men - I don't judge them for being men. You do.
As usual you make broad sweeping assertions...often out of context.
We ALL "judge" men -- their character, their degree of sincerity, benevolence and general goodness and honesty. "Judging" the destination of another's soul is another issue altogether.
But while we are on that subject, the RCC CONDEMNS ALL who do not believe that the Roman Catholic Church has THE Final Word on Salvation. NOT Jesus Christ. NOT God the Father.
I'll go my way, thank you. And so will all other Christians who believe much the same as I.
Frankly, I don't know what you actually believe...and oddly, neither do you seem to have a definite handle on it. I hope and pray your confusion and spiritual chaos is clarified.
Come on, Vic. The Ten Commandments *isn't* Bible-based?? Nor is the "Golden Rule"? Nor does the Protestant Ethic exists? Since when?
Come on, Liberator. The Ten Commandments were explicitly given to Hebrews at Mt. Sinai. They are not on their face, and never have been commandments for the whole world.
This is not trivial, it's important, precisely because of the "It's in the Bible so it's all binding LAW" nonsense that you Protestants do.
Of specific importance: the Sabbath Day. It's important because, if it were intended for all of mankind, it would have nullified the commandment to fill the world and subdue it, given at creation, and it would have rendered my own ethnic tribe either non-existent or in a permanent state of sin just for existing - they live north of the Arctic Circle.
Read carefully and correctly, the Sinai Law, including the Ten Commandments, were law given to Hebrews for living as Hebrews in Israel. They are not laws for mankind, and they never were. Jesus did not release you or me from them - we were never under them in the first place.
Now, some of those Sinai laws, notably the law against shedding man's blood, were revealed long, long before Sinai. The Ten Commandments did not create that law, and Jesus did not free us from it.
Yes, it is completely true that Christian tradition has raised the Ten Commandments up as The Law for mankind, but it isn't, and it never was.
Sure, it's IN the Bible, but to apply it as law is not what the Bible SAYS.
The Golden Rule, as it is popularly called, comes from Jesus. Yes, that is certainly what we have to do, and aspects of the Golden Rule are in the Ten Commandments.
But the whole reductionist exercise regarding the Ten Commandments that is the hallmark of traditional Christianity is not acceptable BECAUSE OF the stubborn legalism to which the Protestants and Catholics then turn when it comes to St. Paul's opinion regarding "faith" versus "works", a set of words that set up disagreements over which millions of people lost their lives in a century and a half of religious war in Europe.
Certainly there is a tradition, and it is strong and has many adherents. But at root it is in very great error, and that vitiates its appeal.
Hurting people is bad. Destroying and stealing their stuff is bad. Not looking after one another is bad. All of these things are known by everybody, Christian, Bhuddist, Muslim, Hindu, Confucian, Jain, and atheist alike. Did this innate knowledge come from God? Of course. We all did. Does that mean, therefore, that we must put up statues of the Ten Commandments at courthouses or have organized prayer in public schools or else we will all forget this? No, it does not follow.
Here's a common consensus for morality: hurting people is bad. Therefore, civilians shouldn't do it. And neither should officials of the government. Nobody should be hurting anybody else. It's a general rule. Unfortunately, some people WILL hurt other people, in various ways, so what do we do about it? Well, we have to discipline and dissuade those who would do the hurt from hurting, and we have to spare discipline to those who defended themselves against somebody else trying to hurt them. All of this has to be bound by rules of reason - when is it REASONABLE to use violent force in self-defense, and when isn't it.
Example: some time in the last couple of weeks somewhere down South, two guys got into an argument in a parking lot about a parking space. They yelled at each other and the bigger guy knocked the other guy down onto his butt, and stood there yelling at him. The guy knocked down on his butt drew his gun and pointed it at the bigger guy, who backed up immediately. The guy on the ground, clearly enraged, pulled the trigger and shot the bigger guy, who ran into the store and dropped down and died in front of his own child. The police declined to arrest the guy on his butt because of "stand your ground" laws. Then later they reversed themselves.
What do you get out of that fact pattern? We are fortunate to have this all on film and can see it. The sheriff's department saw the film too, and came to the conclusion to which they came. How is it possible that two people can look at that film, see what happened, apply God's standard, and come to different conclusions? How could the sheriff either not arrest the shooter, or be overruled and have to arrest him?
The problem of applying standards to human beings stands sharp and clear here.
Does it make any difference here that the combatants were both men? How about that the larger one was black? Or the fact that it happened in the South?
The police are making "I felt threatened" judgments all the time to kill people based on the fact that they are pushed by somebody who is angry at them, and they shoot a lot of people. By God's law, there isn't a different standard for them, but by human tradition and law there is a very different standard applied to them.
Where do you stand on applying a different standard to the police? I don't. I apply God's standard Golden Rule style. If you're putting a filter in there to allow the police or the army more, where are you getting that change to what God said? Not from God. You're getting it from tradition, or "reason", or any number of other things.
I won't do that. I apply God's standard straight, and it means that we need to change our view of the limits and powers of government, rejecting millennia of tradition in favor of what God actually SAID.
You won't go with me there. You'll throw up every barrier, but I'm actually applying directly.
Can we have this discussion on the terms I care about, or do we have to drag in the Church and the churches, Protestants and Catholics, the Jews, politics?
No he isn't. God is right here in this conversation - he's everywhere. He hears us. He knows why I am saying what I say, and he knows why you are saying what you say. He understands what I mean, he understands what you mean, I understand what you mean, you don't understand what I mean.
TRADITIONAL MORALITY - Traditional AMERICAN Morality - includes racial segregation and racial theory - UTTERLY ungodly, opposed to God's law.
It includes a belief in violent suppression of crime for which God never gave the death penalty ("Hang them cattle rustler's high!" is murder under the law of God - you shall not kill over property theft.)
It includes imprisonment for consensual sexual crimes between adults - God did not give that law to us.
Our law and our traditional morality routinely favor the powerful in judgment and law enforcement, not simply as a matter of prejudice but as a matter of the actual structure of the system itself: a man cannot effectively defend himself in court where he will be held to the procedural standards of the law (because "ignorance of the law is no excuse" - a tradition of our law that is contrary to what God said in his - ignorance IS an excuse before God, but not before OUR traditions about God and law) without a lawyer, and lawyers cost a lot of money, so our system is structured to give an inherent advantage to the wealthier party in every litigation, and it has always been so.
Our procedures for arriving at the death penalty look nothing like what God laid out when he laid out a judicial procedure. God's model was designed to make it virtually impossible to convict the innocent without a conspiracy of fraud - which itself carried the death penalty. Our procedures make it far, far easier to convict the innocent.
God gave all of mankind all of the plants to use. Where did he authorize men to shed men's blood and kill men for using certain plants? Where did he authorize men to kill other men for breaking rules that men set up? He didn't. TRADITIONAL MORALITY does authorize those things, in fact, exults in them.
We can go on.
War? Tending to the sick? On and on it goes. We should be able to have a quiet, reasonable discussion about what God actually said, but we can't, because YOU are inflamed with political and patriotic and TRADITIONAL religious passions none of which came from God, and all of which work directly to unravel what God said to do. You can't have the state you want to have and the power you want to have, or accumulate the wealth our society wants to accumulate, and obey all of God's laws - the ones that actually APPLY to us, as opposed to all of the Hebrews in the Desert stuff that never did.
Well, 0bama, the Clintons and Bernie (Democrats all) supported BABY MURDER. It's a political party that surrounded themselves with ONLY baby-murderers
The Supreme Court gave us baby murder. It was a Republican-controlled court.
The Supreme Court has always had the power to strike down baby murder, and it has been controlled by the Republicans CONTINUOUSLY since 1973 when it gave us baby murder in the first place.
There have been 6 Republican Presidents and 3 Democrat Presidents during that time, and the entire Supreme Court has been replaced - so EVERY Republican justice on that court was appointed by a supposedly pro-Life Republican President.
And yet baby murder remains the law of the land.
You want to lay this at the feet of Democrats, because you hate them and this is the most evil thing. They do support it, yes indeed.
But the fact is that we have baby murder BECAUSE OF Republicans - THEY put it in place, THEY have sustained it every single day since they did - THEY have ALWAYS had the power to strike it down and end it - THEY have replaced the court completely, and yet have not applied a litmus test on baby murder (Democrats do). And right now, you have yet another Republican appointee assuring us that Roe is "settled law".
So, baby murder was given to us by Republicans, has been preserved continuously by Republicans for so long that new Republicans, who COULD still overturn the law, will point to the long reign of Republican rule that has sustained Roe, and say "too long, law is settled".
And yet you dare to speak of me of the DEMOCRATS as the problem here? Your partisanship has simply blinded you to the truth.
Whatever parade of endless excuses and hyperventilation you may engage in, I will return to the cold, hard, brutal reality: REPUBLICANS gave us abortion, and EVERY DAY SINCE REPUBLICANS have always had the power to strike it down, and they don't.
Do not talk to me about Democrats on the subject. If you will not admit the truth, and will blame Democrats, you are simply a blazing partisan blinded by partisan hatred, and there is no honesty in you.
That's too bad, too, because you have such passion it would be good if it were channeled for something good. And the Republican Party for which you so passionately advocate is not that.
Whose Word are YOU heeding and following? Whose Book do you read?
I read the Bible, carefully, and I read what it says - about WHO has authority.
It says clearly that GOD has authority, all authority.
So, for example, when God SAYS at Sinai that this law for you here at Sinai, that means this law is for YOU here at Sinai, not for Gentiles living on the other side of the planet 4000 years in the future.
We read the same book, but the reading comprehension of your teachers is abysmal, and so you believe nonsense. I listen to God precisely.
Well, 0bama, the Clintons and Bernie (Democrats all) supported BABY MURDER. Now tell me -- WHO supported and was the REAL "demon spawn"??
As did, and does, the Republicans with the power to end it today.
The Republicans who GAVE us Roe, and the Republicans and Democrats who strongly support it.
Of course, if we're going to end Roe, we have to step up and create the public welfare infrastructure necessary to raise 1 million new poor people, mostly minorities, ever year, year on year. I'm ready to do that. You Republicans? You think that taxes are theft and that welfare is evil. So, if we actually let you have your way, a million poor babies will be born - and rapidly we'll be at Third World levels of poverty, starvation and desperation, because you won't spend the money to create the social welfare structures necessary to raise these kids, given that their parents are often derelicts. You'll rage at the immorality of the parents, and I will agree with that, but you will not honestly, or with the eyes of Christ, face the fact HEAD ON that if you stop the abortions today, the immoral idiots will remain so, and there will 1 million or more desperately poor babies born every year, and they all have to eat, be housed, be clothed, be educated - and their single mother parent will not do it. You will heap derision and scorn on her, and if you must do that in your anger, so be it. But you will ALSO, then start shouting the lie that taxation is theft and social welfare is theft. SO - these babies WILL be born, destitute, and the existing social welfare AND dwindling Church welfare networks will be overwhelmed, but you will be money-worshipping pharisaic prigs, lie in God's face and say that taxes and welfare are theft, and WHAT? Just let the babies DIE? Rely on magic to cause social supports to exist where none do? In the Third World the supports do not emerge, and they won't here either: the babies will die. And you will let them evilly calling taxes and social support theft, lying about what God said about wealth. You Protestants DISGUST me with your money- grubbing Pharisaic evil about money and welfare. That is what you will do. That's what so many of you here on this board have made SO CLEAR. You will NEVER EVER engage on the economic fact and ADMIT THE NECESSITY. You will prattle on endlessly about your morals, and taxes being theft, etc. It's why your religion is obviously false, and why we don't need your "Traditional Values". They are not from God, and they do not work. JESUS SAID to provide for the poor. And YHWH's state had a whole structure to do it. Now, we don't have to do it per the Sinai law, with a 10% tithe, etc., but we bloody well HAVE TO DO IT, and pretending that it will just spontaneously arise is a lie. It NEVER DID, anywhere, before, not ever. It exists BECAUSE states took it on, and government (Church government, which you roundly reject with your Traditional Protestant Morality) before that. No, we don't need your traditions anymore. They don't work. They're not honest. They're not really Godly. And if applied to abortion, they would leave a million new babies every year destitute. I'm not interested in hearing a repeat of lies and platitudes from an illiterate read of Jesus. Tell me how you're going to feed the babies when you kill Roe. Republicans CAN'T, because you have no intention of feeding the babies. You either have not thought it all the way through - which means you're unfit to lead. Or you have, and you don't CARE about the mass starvation that will ensue, because "taxes are theft" (which God said nowhere, ever). You're not going to acknowledge the fundamental linkage between Roe, babies, welfare and taxes. You're going to keep them separated, because you love the idea of money accumulation more than you love poor humans. That's the visible truth with you Republicans. It's why your "Christian values" cannot be taken seriously. On another thread, Stone was trying hard to call me a hypocrite because of what I do with my money. If you read the exchange, you will realize that under the facts, he really humiliated himself. I am perfectly consistent with my values in all things over which I have rational control. Where I am weak and admittedly a sinner is on matters of the heart over which I do not have control, where I can control my actions but not my most earnest desires. I stand before the Lord every day. He knows my flaws as well as I do. There's no hypocrisy in me - there is sin, and I acknowledge it. And it doesn't bear on this subject because it doesn't affect it. Other than the screaming Protestant Puritan who points out that I HAVE sin - a sin of hypocrisy (that I don't actually have - his facts are wrong), and that THEREFORE I am utterly neutralized on all I might say. That's how you people operate. That's your Traditional PRotestant Values and the way you try to enforce them. It's why you have lost. I'm as close to God as any of you, and I don't hear God in any of these accusations. But I DO see God in those babies, and in their bellies, and I want you to explain to me how you propose to feed, clothe, house and educate them without using taxes, since "taxes are theft" you wrongly state and make up something that is pretty much the opposite of what God said. You yell at me, I yell at you. We getting anywhere? Not as far as I can see.
But while we are on that subject, the RCC CONDEMNS ALL who do not believe that the Roman Catholic Church has THE Final Word on Salvation.
Old news. And fake news.
First, the RCC hasn't done that since 1962.
And second, who cares? I'm the Vicomte de [quelquepart], not the Catholic Church.
Yes, you can point out the bad things or over-the-top things that the Catholic Church has done, and we could go doctrine by doctrine through the catechism, if you would like, and I will tell you what I think is right, what I think is a bit off, and what is really wrong.
You will never do the same with your denomination, because you pretend to believe EVERY WORD...even though you probably don't actually KNOW all of the doctrines. Query: is "Tax is theft" actually a DOCTRINE of your religion? Did Jesus say to cooperate with theft and give to the thief? (If tax is theft, yes, he did.)
The problem with trying to turn the light in my eyes is this: when I say I have talked to God and experienced the miracles I have described, I am telling the unadorned truth. I know God, and God knows me, and apparently he likes me enough to do those things for me. That is why I have studied what he left us as artifacts and in words SO VERY CAREFULLY - and applied the careful legal training in two languages that he saw to it I received. So I have answers to your challenges, and to the challenges of hypocrisy. I know what he said, I know what he wants, and I have adjusted almost all of my politics and actions to fit it.
Can you say that.
Where my borders are weak are on matters of wrath in response to violence. I was a professional military man by choice for nearly two decades, I was a missile officer and a pilot, and I think in terms of airstrikes and physically killing the enemy. I have to discipline myself NOT to reach for the sword as the solution to things, and VERBALLY, when I become enraged, I DO still reach for the sword and want to shed a great deal of blood. If I had the actual power of decision to do it, I always restrained myself when I was in the position, and I still would. So I come across on a chat site of belligerent males as being more willing to shed blood than I actually am.
And the other thing is my internal weakness, which I don't need to marinate in in public.
You want to treat Catholicism like a political party. Go ahead. It's a really shallow, young ardent man's way of looking at things.
I look at the Church and I simply see the bulk of Christian practice moving forward through history, where the bulk of my ethnic roots lie. I was baptized there, and confirmed there, and sang in the choir for years. I dance with the one who brung me. Doesn't mean I'm a fanatic partisan. I'm a partisan of God. The Church is not so offensive to God that I feel any impulse from God to leave. He's never asked me to.
My Catholicism arouses the bigotry of Protestants to a greater degree than it arouses my own religious passions. I'm French, Irish, Basque - in part. My mother was Catholic. I was baptized as a baby and grew up in a half-Catholic family - the kind, unified part - and a half-Baptist/Nazarene and atheist part - whose religion consisted primarily of worrying about my and my mother's Catholicism. I've seen ignorant religious bigotry since I was a boy, and I marvel at how otherwise educated people could be so obtuse.
But I don't worry about it too much. In short: it is a waste of your time to keep bringing up my Catholicism. I'm Catholic and French and I think those are the best religion and the best ethnicities in the world. I recognize that Protestant Anglo-Saxons are the traditional enemy, and I recognize that that's because they always felt threatened by the Catholics and the French, were always poorer, were always culturally and intellectually way behind (and painfully aware of it), and that the Catholics and the French mostly won when it mattered.
So, Shakespeare wrote a play about Agincourt, but that was just one in a hundred battles. The decisive battle was Patay, a few decades later, and that was a French Azincourt that decided the war in France's favor. Do I care about these things? No. I don't think about them at all, until I'm attacked. Then I do, and it is comfortable and reassuring to be on history's winning side.
Frankly, I don't know what you actually believe...and oddly, neither do you seem to have a definite handle on it.
That's only because you don't want to listen, you don't want to think, and you don't want to hear. You want everything to fit into your dumb little American, Republican, Anglo-Saxon Protestant little boxes, and what I say fits into none of them. You don't sit down, calm down, and try to talk to me nicely to figure it out - I'm one of the smartest men you have ever met and you could learn a lot from me. But you want to preach at me and rage at me with jejeune nonsense.
You're not a bad person, I suppose, but you're never going to win anything important if you can't calm down and learn what you don't understand. You're raging at ghosts.
If you talk to me about God and even your precious Bible, you'll learn more about it than you know.
If you talk to me about history, you will learn things that will make you think and make you realize there is more in heaven and earth than is comprehended by your philosophy, Horatio.
That would actually make your time here USEFUL, for YOU, over time.
As it is, you're just flapping your jaws on a website before an audience of mostly old, retired men who grouse about politics. You can't effect anything here, you're not going change anything here, and you're not learning a damned thing. You COULD learn from me, but you're trying to lecture me, and you may as well go yell at the trees. The holes in what you say are gaping. I don't mock you for them - I'm actually not a mean guy. I would HELP you get a lot sharper. But you seem to think you're in the catbird seat, for some reason. Really, you're a mockingbird - copying the catcalls of other birds in a faraway flock - chirping at an old lion, who doesn't much care.
You want to learn? Drop the attitude and come into sidebar and we will talk. You want to goad me? Meh. If that's what you've got to do, save it for the weekend, because I'm not going to bother to read it until then.
Maybe Vic knows the end is near. Maybe hes got some bad news. That sort of shit can change a way a man thinks. Maybe hes been hiding the left side of his face from the forum mirror. Who knows.
I'm the infidel... Allah warned you about. كافر المسلح
For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
Lets see Vic. You are a lover of your self. No doubt there. You covet other peoples money to give it to non christians. You boast how smart and great you are. That makes you have the trait of pride. According to the Bible you blaspheme Gods word it seems to me. Were you disobedient to your parents? Did you tell them the truth about the cockroaches and lizards or rats or whatever you imagined.
Unthankful and Unholy. Hmm I think you fail at least one of those too.
#29. To: Vicomte13, bastard Catholic, AKA Stone (#20)
. I'm French, Irish, Basque - in part. My mother was Catholic. I was baptized as a baby and grew up in a half-Catholic family - the kind, unified part - and a half-Baptist/Nazarene and atheist part - whose religion consisted primarily of worrying about my and my mother's Catholicism.
No offense Vic, but if your parents weren't married in a Catholic church, then you're a bastard in the eyes of the church.
My father was a prot, but he had to convert to Catholic to marry my mother.
Her brother married a prot gal, and my grandmother & mother refused to attend the wedding, and wouldn't even talk to them for at least 30 years.
No offense Vic, but if your parents weren't married in a Catholic church, then you're a bastard in the eyes of the church.
First, that is false. Under the Canon Law, if parents are legally married, children are legitimate. If parents who weren't married when the child was born later marry, the child is also legitimate. Two Jewish parents who are legally married have a legitimate child under the Catholic Canon law. "Marriage" under the Canon Law does not equate to Sacramental Marriage, which is within the Church.
Second, my parents WERE married in the Church. My father acceded to my mother's wishes in that regard. My father did not convert to Catholicism, but he agreed to raise me Catholic, and that was enough.
Of course, after baptism, they DIDN'T do anything further to "raise me Catholic", so my being raised Catholic consisted solely of being baptized when I was a few weeks old, and nothing more.
And finally, the legitimacy or illegitimacy of a child matters little under Canon law. The PARENT'S are not legitimately married. The child is a child. Priests baptize illegitimate children. Illegitimate children are catechized, take first communion, are Confirmed. The child is a separate soul. The legal status of a child's parents is not a mark on the child as far as the Church is concerned. The practical effect of illegitimacy is merely to complicate permissions and authorizations, etc., for sacraments involving the child. This is a clerical matter, not a spiritual one. The child is legitimately a child, and a separate soul, and not accountable for the sins of the parents. Obviously.
Were you disobedient to your parents? Did you tell them the truth about the cockroaches and lizards or rats or whatever you imagined.
My parents have been dead for 25 years. The mouse and the lizard were raised within the last 5. So no, I did not talk to my parents.
You are pronouncing some interesting judgments there, Stone. Some of them have some validity. Others are way off the mark. You're heaping coals on your own head by doing so. Remember that. You will be measured by the measure by which you measured. So will we all.
For my part, I don't care about your personal sins. Those are between you and God; they are no skin off my nose. You're eager to judge mine, and to hammer home a political point by doing so. That's very, very unfortunate for you.
I would recommend that you go back and read the parable of the unforgiving servant again, and Jesus' admonitions about measuring and judging. Don't let your resentment of me become a stumbling block on your own path with God. We are different people from different places, and we don't agree on many things. Don't get so inflamed by that that you start committing sins against yourself in your desire to strike at me. That is not good for you, in the long run. The better course is to shrug your shoulders and move on.
No commie it is their parents responsibility by and large. They will need to step up to the plate. You are a welfare enabler. You are ok making the government steal other peoples money so you can feel good and pretend you did something.
Translation: I am going to outlaw abortion. This will certainly cause 1 million new unwanted babies to be born into poverty each year, and their support and upkeep is not my problem.
And that right there, my friend, is why abortion on demand will ALWAYS remain the law of the land. Because Christians and Republicans think like you do, and everybody knows it.
Therefore, there will be no support for the babies you would like to force to be born, and there will be neglect, death and Third World conditions if we let you have your way on abortion.
Everybody knows this. Which is why your position on abortion is the minority position, and why abortion on demand will remain the law of the land and cannot ever be changed.
The lives of babies ran up against the Christian Republicans' love of money, and money won. So the babies have to die.
That's the way it is. That's the way it's going to be. You ensure that it remains so by your stance.
The ONLY WAY to save the babies is by having, in parallel, a massive social welfare safety net to provide for all of them, educate them, and give them the full opportunities in life. THEN - and ONLY then - will enough people shift position to let them live.
You Protestant Christian Republicans love money too much to EVER let that social welfare safety net ever be built.
So Roe will remain. Because of you.
Of course, being self-righteous prigs, you will never accept your responsibility for any of it, just as you will never admit that it was you, the Republicans, who put Roe in place and who have kept it in place since 1973.
And you'll never address the issue directly and realistically. You'll do what you did in the text I am answering.
And that is how you ensure that Roe v. Wade will always be the law of the land. Your choice, not mine.
I would forbid abortion and raise the babies to be solid adults, using public money to do it, because there is no other way.
Given the choice between letting the poor babies live and grow up at great cost, and killing them and opposing taxation, you Protestant Republicans choose the later, and French Catholic me chooses the former. Alas, this is an Anglo- Saxon Protestant country so the babies and I lose, and you win.
The Ten Commandments were explicitly given to Hebrews at Mt. Sinai. They are not on their face, and never have been commandments for the whole world.
So your position is that the Ten Commandments or any of God's laws, rules, documents are *only* valid to those who receive them *directly*? OR, just the Ten Commandments?
I guess by that rationale, The Father also only intended that Jesus Christ die ONLY for the sins of the ancestors of those present in Israel...since there were no Frenchmen or Chinese there at the time.
This is not trivial, it's important, precisely because of the "It's in the Bible so it's all binding LAW" nonsense that you Protestants do.
This obsession of yours...and blame-game hatred projected upon Protestants is a bit unhealthy, no?
But that said, if the Bible is NOT the word of God, conferring HIS authority, then for you, what comprises OTHER "authoritative words" of God other than in the Bible??
The whole reductionist exercise regarding the Ten Commandments that is the hallmark of traditional Christianity is not acceptable BECAUSE OF the stubborn legalism to which the Protestants and Catholics then turn when it comes to St. Paul's opinion regarding "faith" versus "works", a set of words that set up disagreements over which millions of people lost their lives in a century and a half of religious war in Europe.
Let me understand what you're claiming; According to YOU, Paul is a liar. Paul did NOT speak on behalf of God. Moreover, in your mind, "works" earns a Believer "Salvation"?
And now for one of the most absurd thing I've ever heard (and that's saying a lot given this is LF): You are actually seriously claiming that the Apostle Paul insistence in relaying a "faith versus works" message directly FROM Jesus Christ helped create the "disagreements" that led to "millions of people lost their lives in a century and a half of religious war in Europe."
Where do you stand on applying a different standard to the police?
I don't. I apply God's standard Golden Rule style.
If you're putting a filter in there to allow the police or the army more, where are you getting that change to what God said? Not from God. You're getting it from tradition, or "reason", or any number of other things.
You are flying around, popping up and about on tangents that could last beyond our natural life-span.
No, I'm not going to read every select anecdotal challenge of yours (like this one on cops and LE) because it gets away from the original point of defining the "Traditional Morality" of America.
Can we have this discussion on the terms I care about, or do we have to drag in the Church and the churches, Protestants and Catholics, the Jews, politics? I think the latter, and that's too bad.
HUH?? Whoa, Nellie.
"Terms"?? Is this a contract or surrender?
I'll be polite and just say...YOU will NOT be lecturing ME. Especially not in the context of faith.