Patrick Wood, the renowned author of several books about the global technocracy movement, says technocrats are, if nothing else, shameless hypocrites. We see this play out on a daily basis.
We reported yesterday on Kamala Harris boasting about how the government “investing” in electric vehicles would make for a cleaner environment for our children, the same children she says mothers should be able to abort, for any reason or no reason at all, at any stage of pregnancy. But even her electric vehicle claim rings hollow if you know how electric vehicles and EV batteries are produced.
“They promise (the UN, WEF and countless globalist NGOs) to save the world’s children and yet actual policies do just the opposite,” Wood writes. “Children are the most vulnerable group on earth because they are not able to defend themselves. Thus, they are trafficked, sexually exploited, injected, and marginalized.”
The two most common ways children are exploited are for sex and for labor.
In Africa, they are forced to work as slaves in harsh mining operations, such as cobalt mines. They toil in similarly barbaric conditions mining lithium in Afghanistan.
The U.S. Department of Labor has a report listing the goods produced globally by child labor as of 2022.
The short article below focuses on Africa’s cobalt mines.
By Lucy Wyatt, The Conservative Woman
COBALT is essential to modern technology. All sorts of electronic devices rely on it, along with other elements such as lithium. Solar panels and electric vehicles (EVs) wouldn’t function without them. While the environmental degradation associated with both lithium and cobalt extraction is well established, the issues around cobalt are even more poignant because of the manner in which it is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A new book, Cobalt Red: How the blood of the Congo powers our lives, published in January, details the human suffering, especially of children, directly involved in the mining. Written by a Nottingham University professor, Siddartha Kara, from first-hand knowledge gained by visiting the Congo, this is a book that should be required reading for every local authority that is implementing the Net Zero agenda. (You can read a review here).
Professor Kara is a British Academy Global Professor and Rights Lab Associate Professor of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery. He advises several UN agencies and numerous governments on anti-slavery policy and the law. We should take him seriously.
What happens in the Congo matters because it is the largest producer of cobalt, accounting for 70 per cent of global production. In 2022 there was a reported output of 130,000 tonnes; the next largest producer, Russia, mined 8,900 tonnes.
At a time when there is growing realisation of the plight of the children of the world, when more people are becoming aware of the Sound of Freedom (the film about child trafficking), it is impossible to reconcile what is happening in the Congo with saving the planet through the use of renewables and other technology. It is not acceptable that children should be sacrificed for us to live in our own little tech-enhanced eco-bubbles.
And yet there are virtue-signalling ‘green’ councils who boast about their use of ‘appropriate’ technology, which includes solar panels and EVs, who seem to have no idea about the inappropriateness of such technology. These fake green councils are in denial about so much. They have no awareness of the history of climate science, of how it all grew out of the oligarchs’ Club of Rome back in the 1970s. Instead they want us to believe that there were decades of concerned scientists warning humanity about climate change and then the elites took over. They are so wilfully ignorant.
The twisting of the history of climate science matters, because that way we fail to spot the deliberate manipulation. If it were too obvious that billionaires are behind the whole scam, we might struggle to believe the science. In the same way, we aren’t supposed to know that the billionaires fund activists such as XR who keep the greenest of ‘green’ councils on track. Forcing councils to focus on the so-called evil of fossil fuels, and carbon reduction, is a way of distracting from the even greater evil of cobalt extraction.
We should all be demanding that our local councils develop their own ecological policies; independent of pressure from international billionaires and their activist lackeys. We want policies that have integrity and genuinely care about the planet and its people. Not the cruel and damaging policies of the fake greens who dance to the tune of the billionaires who do not care about anything except themselves. Personally I would be more than willing to accept a few degrees of warming (and no carbon reduction, as if that makes any difference anyway) if I knew that that meant an end to children being exploited and the flamingos returning to the areas where the lithium comes from. Having less tech would hardly be a disaster for us in the West. Indeed, it might be an important step in healing the damage humans have inflicted on the Earth and its inhabitants.
LeoHohmann.com is 100 percent reader supported and funded, which allows Leo to report and analyze the news independently. If you’d like to support my work, you may send a donation of any size c/o Leo Hohmann, P.O. Box 291, Newnan, GA 30264, or via credit card below. Thank you.
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The poor child in the photo doesn’t look well. He literally looks sick and tired.
It looks like Africa is facing food shortages in the near future. Putin has decided not to renew the black sea deal where Ukrainian grain was allowed free passage through the black sea.
This will create food shortages on the markets and of course the poorer countries wont be able to compete with the richer countries as food is sold to the highest bidder, i.e., Europe.
We can expect to see mass migration from Africa into Europe. But that is the plan of the WEF and it’s puppets, i.e., Putin and Zelensky.
This will help to further destabilise Europe which is already under strain from the continued flow of migrants coming into Europe.
Preparation for the ‘great reset’ is progressing according to the WEF plan.
The pity we in the west feel for those poor African workers will soon extend to those within our own borders.
Just my opinion for what it’s worth.
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Ask why the Russians didn’t interfere with Ukranian grain shipments all during this war until now. The contracts between the Russian and Ukranians had been renewed every 6 months. But this time Zelensky and his NATO backers have screwed up the grain deal with their dishonesty and cheating on the deal (just like the Minsk agreements). Ukraine will lose $6-10 billion in revenue because of their refusal (and that of EU) to implement their side of the deal. 70% of its exports is food products. They shot themselves in the foot AGAIN.
Russia says Ukraine was using the Black Sea shipping corridors to smuggle weapons, including those attacking the Kerch bridge. Likely so. So Russia will no longer renew the grain deal or guarantee Black Sea shipping safety—what could anyone expect?? Russia took out the Odessa ports, so it can’t handle grain shipments anyway. The US will not escort shipping into Odessa; Turkey is blocking the Dardenelles. Poland and Lithuania will not help Ukraine out.
Meanwhile, as usual, Putin is 10 steps ahead of the globalist West who are already starting to accuse him of starving Africa—he has announced he is giving Russian grain away for free to the countries that need it. NO way the Russians want to alienate the Global South who are aligning themselves with Eurasia/BRICS/SCO. Russia is hosting an African summit, so no way they will let Africa starve for lack of grain.
Putin doesn’t act like a WEF puppet, otherwise he would be a Yelstin and hand Russia over to NATO/WEF for them for cut up into NATO dominated colonial regions and loot it all again. Zelensky is certainly a WEF/NATO/Nazi puppet pulled on many strings.
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@kkayjae
Thanks for your detailed comment. I don’t agree with your conclusion, which seems to turn a blind eye to Putin’s history with the WEF.
I believe that the whole situation is being choreographed just like politics in America where you have good guy versus bad guy.
I believe that the agenda is to flood Europe with migrants including the Ukrainian women and children who have been effectively pushed out of Ukraine.
Famine/food shortages is an ideal way to get people on the move and mass immigration is an ideal way overburden the European medical system and also the housing system which is in a state of crises in my country.
Putin makes friends with the religious leaders just like Trump. Trump awkwardly holding a bible is enough to convince the religious far right that he is their saviour.
Likewise, Putin befriending the religious community in Russia is a PR. stunt , in my opinion.
I think that we are in the end times and if I am correct then I think any one who is the leader of a major nation is in the hands of the devil.
I don’t think that Russia can make up for the huge shortfall of grain and fertiliser which will occur as a result of Putin ending the Black Sea deal.
Whatever aid Russia might supply to the poorer nations will be selective and will not avert mass migration into Europe in my opinion.
Handing Russia over to NATO would not be in the interests of the WEF.
The current tensions are exactly what the WEF need to further destabilise the world in preparation for the ‘reset’.
Order out of Chaos is the modes operandum of the WEF. But first they must create chaos.
Jesus predicted nation against nation, famines and pestilences which he said would be the beginning of sorrows leading up to the ‘great tribulation’.
I believe that the WEF will be at the heart of this.
And if I’m not mistaken, there are people alive today who will witness the ‘great tribulation’ .
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Thanks for your comment. Let’s examine Putin’s previous involvement with the WEF. Putin, having been stationed in Germany in his early years (he is fluent in German), became quite sympathetic to the West, and when he became president of Russia, he wanted Russia to join Europe and be allowed to partake of its prosperity. Russia generally wanted that. The WEF and Kissinger strung him along for a while.
However, it seems that it became increasingly obvious to him and the rest of Russia that the WEF/NATO/US/UK/EU had no intention of letting Russia join Europe. In fact, for 30 years many of the US neocon politicians and think-tank people openly advocated splitting up Russia and plundering it, an implacable hostility that has culminated in the WWIII-provoking policies of the Biden administration. Merkel stated how uncommitted the West was to the Minsk agreements and had signed them in bad faith. From that, Putin and Russia learned that the West speaks with forked tongue on everything, including the current grain deal. So he’s obviously not WEF now.
Europe has been flooding with refugees for decades, well before the Ukrainian war. There were some troubling immigration patterns occurring in the UK that Enoch Powell warned against, but the real problem began in earnest after the 1973 oil crisis. Europe, through the Common Market, made a deal in 1973 with the Islamic, oil producing countries to allow mass immigration of Muslims from their over-populated nations to Europe in exchange for oil. This was covered in detail in one of Bat Ye’or’s books.
Add to that the US wars and/or its constant fomenting of conflict in SE Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa (e.g. Libya), the Balkans that is ongoing. The Common Market agreement and US warmongering are the two things propelling all the immigration to Europe. The Ukraine situation is really our operation, not Russia’s, so if Europe gets masses of Ukrainians on their doorstep, know that they have been coming to my area, too—one of many waves of refugees settled here from our war-torn areas since Vietnam. That is due to our foreign policies entirely. The US through the IMF and other predatory finance or black ops organizations have also been causing hardships in Latin America for years, hence the reason our southern border is wide open and taking in millions of immigrants. So there’s a pattern going on against the West entirely caused by the West.
I cannot say whether Putin is a true Christian or not. This much I can say—he has been a firm supporter of Orthodoxy in Russia, as well as Orthodoxy in other countries. Whatever his reasons are for his favorable policies towards Orthodoxy, it is 180 degrees different from the Soviet era that was completely hostile, often genocidal to any religion, especially Orthodoxy. Unlike Trump, G.W. Bush, Reagan and Carter, who played the Christian card politically and fell far short in protecting or championing Christianity in the US, Putin has actually done a lot for Russian Orthodoxy to encourage its growth, and as a result, Russia is slowly re-Christianizing itself. Russian laws do not allow the transgenderism, homosexuality is unacceptable, and many other Western cultural aberrations are banned. Instead, religion is taught in their schools, churches have been rebuilt, restored or new ones built by the thousands. Pilgrimages are attended by huge masses of people, and massive religious public processions are seen in many cities attended by thousands. I have seen the pictures and read a lot of their literature.
If the WEF is creating chaos, it seems that the victim is the West itself, and all this is being choreographed by our own elites to destroy western institutions and laws. I’m not worried about Putin or Russia or even China when our deadliest enemies are our own criminal leadership. Whether we are in the “End Times” or not is debatable; certainly we are at the end of an age–the end of the West–and that by our own hand, I’m sorry to say.
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Thank you for your informative and well-argued comment.
Wishing you well, whatever happens!
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Thanks!
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Excellent, in depth comment. Thanks for sharing, Kayjae. Just from monitoring comments on this site and watching other sites, I think it’s extremely difficult for Westerners to wrap their heads around not only Putin, but the Russian culture in general. It is so different from the way Westerners think about almost everything. Westerners are steeped since kindergarten in this idea of “democracy,” even though the U.S. was never intended to be a democracy, that is what we have become, in violation of our own Constitution. The propaganda has infected our brains and altered our thinking, and that includes Western evangelicals and most Catholics. Most would probably bristle at the idea that “homosexuality is unacceptable.” I can’t tell you how often I hear Christians say, “I don’t care what happens between two consenting adults.” This is an idea, a libertarian idea, that is now part of our “democracy.” And that’s just one of many examples of how the Christian values the West was founded upon have been watered down. Because that hasn’t happened in Russia, they think Russia must be some kind of brutal dictatorship, when I would posit that for most Russians, there is just as much freedom in Russia as there is in Canada or your typical Western European nation (not a whole lot). I think we are still a bit more free in the U.S., where we at least have the Second Amendment, but we are sliding in the same direction as Canada and Western Europe. We have ceded the moral high ground to denounce or lecture any other country as being tyrannical. We have no right to lecture them while at the same time our government is arresting and incarcerating political prisoners, using the FBI to intimidate parents at school board meetings and little old ladies praying outside of abortion clinics, surveilling and silencing comments on social media, etc. By our government’s actions, it looks from my vantage point that it is racing to catch up with the worst of the worst, such as China and North Vietnam. And the churches are right there supporting the government narratives in most cases. How is that any different than Orthodox Churches supporting the narratives of the Russian government? The Orthodox love Putin and Putin loves the Orthodox. They have a social compact that works for that country, so why mess with it? People refuse to look at things through the eyes of the “other.” I guess that’s part of human nature.
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Thanks, Leo. Most people, including our foreign service, do not understand the East. Russia is Orthodoxy. China is fundamentally Confucian (despite the CCP). Our western leaders are mostly atheistic or apostates (like Biden) and do not understand Western Christianity at all and actively dismantle our Western Christian heritage and institutions to make our society wholly secular. Eastern Christianity would make their heads explode, being so different from Western Christianity.
Putin seems to be following, rather closely, the old Byzantine model of State-Church cooperative system. This means the Church provides the moral and spiritual guidance and the State enforces it throughout the society. The Moscow Princes followed this model very carefully. With the advent of the czardom this previously cooperative relationship began to change, making for conflict between Czar and Patriarch, mostly especially during the reign of Ivan the Terrible and Patriarch Phillip II. Since the first Romanov czar, the czars sought to make the Church submissive to the State. The Church did not get free from the State until Czar Nicholas II fell from power in 1918. Its freedom was brief, though, as the Bolsheviks began to exterminate it.
Russian Orthodoxy today is leading the revival of Russian culture. Because Russia is thoroughly Orthodox Christian (despite the communist interlude which was a western influence), its influence upon Russia is far deeper in so many ways than how Protestantism has influenced the US. Europe became quite divided between Protestant and Catholic cultures and now its become post-Christian, soon to be supplanted by Islam. Its religious wars had unfortunately exhausted its spiritual impulse in European culture, not to mention the open subversion of Christianity, particularly Catholicism, by secularism and pagan groups like Freemasonry. So the West is becoming very divided, and unable to draw effectively upon its cultural or spiritual past, while the East, most particularly Russia, is forging ahead by embracing again their spiritual and cultural past.
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Thank you for your analysis. I concur that we have created our own troubles by tolerating criminals in leadership positions and not doing anything to stop their devastating policies, decisions, actions. It is a shame that Russia was itself so badly damaged in its fight against Nazism. Not to allow them to participate in prosperity so they could rebuild after the war is far from Christian values and has caused much distress internationally.
Being so far physically from the on-the-ground war zones made the reality less intense and thus less impactful in terms of damages here at home while Russia suffered immense damage and mental anguish. Where was our compassion? Kissinger was not, is not, a good person. He fostered Klaus Schwab. I remember a family member warning me about Kissinger being a bad apple. He has done, and continues to do a lot of harm worldwide.
Our laws protect the bad guys as they are innocent until proven guilty, so they are able to secretly act under the guise of many layers of multiple organizations to hide their deeds and intentions. I hope we as the American people wake up and stand up NOW before we become embedded indelibly in the digital web of deception and horror. Our so-called leaders are maiming us, misusing our tax dollars in projects against us and our well-being. They are the proverbial evil bullies who will run for the hills if we push back against them. The country is big, making it more difficult to coordinate and organize, taking much time to act against this evil.
I pray for divine intervention as this evil has a deep, dark spiritual component invading our very existence. It seems though that many are awake. We just need to ensure our elections are not stolen and that the nefarious voting machines are outlawed, converted to prison bars, per Mike Lindell. And we need to buycott and boycott all the media and social media that practice censorship and lying. And the medical mafia bent on genocide and child mutilations, child sex and labor trafficking. These acts are a massive blight on our country and must be excised immediately.
Give them the Bud Light syndrome treatment. Their god is money, so depriving them of their idol will have an impact. Shame on all those theaters and media outlets that are implementing tactics to keep people from seeing “Sound of Freedom” and bad-mouthing this film in the media, interviews, talk shows, etc. These assaults on our constitutional republic simply cannot be tolerated. Free speech and freedom do not include these abusive tactics to obstruct the truth being told. These purveyors of evil are revealing themselves and providing the puppeteers and perpetrators for all to recognize for future legal action. I pray that more and more Whistleblowers will find the courage and conviction of conscience to expose these evil doers. There may not be enough prison space to contain them all, but traitors receive a more final destiny.
Blessings to all. Thank you Leo for your courage in uncovering truth, exposing evil.
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@ Leohohmann July 21, 2023 at 4:45 p
Hello Leo I agree with your reservations about democracy.
The problem with democracy is that there are too many moving parts and it can be brought to a virtual stand still, by one party opposing the proposals of another.
And now in America where the moral consensus has been destroyed, the democratic model will serve to destroy America.
Autocracy is a far better model for governing a nation, provided they have a wise and benevolent leader.
But the political structures in Russia and in China make them much easier to govern. I think that this has played a big part in the rapid development of China after Deng Xiaoping transformed China from the way it was under Mao Zedong..
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@kkayjae July 21, 2023 at 4:08 pm
Putin reminds me of Constantine who merged Christianity with the state, resulting in the ‘Roman Catholic’ church.
America has hijacked Christianity with it’s 501c incentives. They can now use the banner of Christianity to control a large portion of the population.
I believe that Putin sees the potential in having a large unified group on his side who will support his efforts including war, because they see Putin as a guardian of their church.
Trump has also used Christianity to form a unified group of supporters.
But as with Constantine, merging the church with politics compromises Christianity. For example it was Constantine who established ‘Sunday’ as the sabbath day for Christians. Sunday as we know was a Roman day which celebrated the Sun god.
In Russia “Patriarch Kirill’s support for the invasion of a country where millions of people belong to his own church has led critics to conclude that Orthodox leadership has become little more than an arm of the state – and that this is the role it usually plays.”
I’ve read that this has led to fractures in the orthodox church. Church and state should not mix because it inevitably leads to a compromise on the part of the church.
Some people think that Christianity should be defended with violence if necessary but that is NOT what Jesus Christ taught.
With regard to the migration topic, I am well aware of it’s history, but I can literally see an unparalleled rise in the numbers of immigrants coming into my country.
This has lead to protest marches in communities who feel threatened and overwhelmed by what’s going on.
Let me say that I do NOT engage in any of these protests, because there is a violent element organised by extreme right wingers. But I do see the frustration of people who cant get a timely appointment with their GP due to the unprecedented demand on the services.
Young Irish families cannot get a home because of the huge demand for accommodation.
It’s easy to be academic about this topic but for those who are affected by it, there is a real worsening of their quality of life and for their hope for a better future.
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Anthony–
First I want to clear up some history issues about the Church, then discuss Pat. Kyrill and Immigration. I don’t see Constantine as a bad guy. He legalized Christianity and did a lot of good for it—giving it favorable status, and got the bishops together to decide what Christian doctrine was to be in response to Arianism, resulting in the Nicene Creed that is used today. What Constantine did was to allow the Roman empire to become Christianized, and by the end of his reign, he purged the old Roman pagan temples. It was Theodosius I that made Christianity the official religion of the empire. Certainly Putin is following a venerable tradition, as I said in a previous comment, he seems to be following the old Byzantine model of Church-State relations, but unlike King Charles, he is NOT both the head of state and the head of the Church. Big difference.
And the Church of Rome had existed long before Constantine. It didn’t begin to become the “Roman Catholic Church” with its distinctive medieval forms and ecclesial structure until around the reign of Pope Gregory I (590-604), long after Constantine. With the fall of the western Roman empire in 476 AD, it became the primary authority in the west by default, and this, probably more than anything, affected its evolution.
Another important thing about Constantine that is different from previous Roman emperors–indeed all pagan rulers—is that he did not take to himself or have conferred upon himself a title of deification. Nearly all past pagan rulers combined the roles of god-priest-king within themselves, but he didn’t. The title “pontifex maximus” (supreme priest) that was once a prerogative of the Roman emperors was ceded to the patriarch, dividing the roles of king and priest (reverting to the practice of Ancient Israel with its division of the role of kings and chief priests.) But if Constantine wanted to set up the “Roman Catholic Church” with its primacy to be in Rome, then he should have stayed in Rome rather than decamp to Constantinople, which did nothing but cause dispute between the two jurisdictions.
Constantine did NOT establish “Sunday” as the Sabbath. Jewish Sabbath is Saturday, as you know. Sunday worship is NOT based on an appropriation of a pagan day “sun-day”. Sunday worship was a feature of Christian worship long before Constantine. St. Justin the Martyr writes about this practice in his “First Apology” (written approx. 155-157) as Sunday worship was the norm by the end of the first century. Theological reason: the Jewish Sabbath was the day that God rested after Creation. Jesus laid in the tomb on Saturday after his work on the Cross, and his laying in the tomb on that day represented the end of that age. The new age began upon his resurrection, which was on a Sunday. Creation in Genesis began on a Sunday, and the day of Jesus’ resurrection (Sunday) is considered the day of the New Creation. Our English-Germanic languages uses “Sunday” the old pagan name for that day (merely a linguistic holdover, like the names of the months of the year), but other languages describes that new day in proper Christian fashion. For instance, the Russian word for “Sunday” is “BOCKPECEHbE” which literally means “to create, call into existence”. This same word is used in the Russian Orthodox Paschal greeting, “Christ is Risen”.
Regarding Patriarch Kyrill’s “support” of the war in Ukraine. His speeches about it referred repeatedly to it as a “fratricidal” conflict, a war between Slavic brothers, which he abhors and calls for peace. He has not been Putin’s bully pulpit to send Slavs to fight Slavs, nor has Putin used him or the Church in that way. The “schism” in Ukraine is mostly a NATO/US creation (perhaps egged on by the Vatican?) and they, along with the Ukrainian Nazis, have been the ones fomenting this for years, resulting in their confiscations of the canonical church property, persecutions, violence against and arrests of the canonical clergy and laity. I remember seeing Joe Biden, as vice president, meeting in the Ukraine with the non-canonical schismatic Orthodox clergy and taking their side—I wondered what did this Catholic (apostate though he is) have to do with their controversy, except he was there to add fuel to that fire?? This “schism” has nothing to do with theology or even ecclesial jurisdiction issues, but with geopolitical issues.
Regarding immigration, I can see that in a small country like Ireland that massive immigration will cause terrific problems. I have read about it. But we also are having very massive problems, and it’s not academic to me—I have seen what happens up close and personal with these waves of illegal or legal immigration. Although the US is a big country and can absorb a lot, still—the chaos is growing, crime and violence is greatly increasing, social services and funds are getting overwhelmed, and certain diseases, once unknown here, are spreading. Our southern border is wide open to all nations and all nations are flooding here through that border, including Ukranians. Our government will not vet these people for their backgrounds or even health. I feel sorry for the poor Texans who have ranches along the border, because it’s been an invasion nightmare for them. A lot of grotesque human trafficking is occurring using children, weapons are coming over the border along with many military aged men, not to mention the drugs and violent gangs. A quaint Mexican drug cartel custom to take out rivals by beheading them and hanging their bodies on highway overpasses is starting to occur here in some of our southern areas. And it’s our leaders doing this to us using these unfortunate people as a weapon.
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@ kkayjae July 23, 2023 at 4:57 pm
Hello Kayjae, you say,
“Constantine did NOT establish “Sunday” as the Sabbath. Jewish Sabbath is Saturday, as you know. Sunday worship is NOT based on an appropriation of a pagan day “sun-day”. Sunday worship was a feature of Christian worship long before Constantine”
Here’s what I’ve read…
“Constantine the Great changed the Sabbath to Sunday On March 7, A.D. 321, Constantine the Great issued the first civil Sunday law, compelling all the people in the Roman Empire, except farmers, to rest on Sunday.”
Sunday being a day of worship for Christians does not mean that Christians changed the Sabbath day. They simply worshipped on Sunday.
We could argue back and forth about this but it was Constantine who compelled people to rest on Sunday and made it law.
The Jewish Sabbath is NOT Saturday.
“The Sabbath begins at nightfall on Friday and lasts until nightfall on Saturday. ”
This is in keeping with God’s definition of a day.
Genesis 1: 5
5 “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.”
However, I don’t believe that Christians are required to keep the Sabbath.
I refer you to Paul’s instructions to the church….
Colossians 2
16 “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ”
So, I believe that the early Christians who worshipped on Sunday were not keeping the Sabbath, as the day ordained by God for rest. In your own words they were celebrating Christ’s “resurrection, which was on a Sunday.”
You say:
I don’t see Constantine as a bad guy.
I say:
I don’t know Constantine’s heart but his merger of church and state helped create the monster that is the Roman Catholic church which has persecuted millions of true Christians and also Jews.
Obviously there were others after Constantine who helped solidify the merger of state and Christianity, but it was Constantine who began this initiative.
We could argue back and forth about historical details from different sources, but
the point I was making is that when Christianity becomes politicised it then becomes corrupt. So, many atrocities have been committed in the name of Christianity and not just by the Roman Catholic church.
The ‘crusades’ were enabled by a merger of state and church. These people ignored Christ’s message and instead sought to violently establish Christianity in Jerusalem and other places which they considered to be holy places.
Then we have the wars between Catholics and Protestants where again the resources of the state were used to fund these religious wars.
Our kingdom is not of this world.
Paul encourages Christians to settle disputes themselves rather than go to the civil courts.
1 “Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?”
In conclusion I would say that the merger of religion and the state has resulted in some of the worst atrocities in history and will again in my opinion, when we enter the great tribulation.
I rest my case.
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Anthony—One more reply from me to address your latest comment and I’ll have done, too. I well understand your concern about egregious abuses when a corrupt Church and State conspire together to oppress others. But more often than not in history, it was the State that first forced the Church to submit UNDER it (not to be equal to it), and then would use its department of religion to oppress others. Actually, this could be seen as an abuse of the Church itself as well. The Roman Catholic Church, even today, has been careful to keep itself out from under secular governments, acting as if it were a secular state in itself (with its Papal States an later Vatican City real estate to justify it). Except in the case of France from Louis XIV up to the French Revolution, when the French clergy allied itself with the French state, known as the Gallican Church. You know that the Church was captured by Henry VIII of England and remains a servant of the State to this day. Rome was not all that dismayed when the Gallican church fell along with the king during the French Revolution, because this helped a “back to Rome” movement gaining traction about then (through writers such as Joseph de Maistre and Lamennais), which went on to greatly strengthen the papacy by the 1840s.
Protestantism blames Constantine for many things, very much of it wrongfully, but Constantine was the one to transition pagan European culture into a Christian one. The Church at that time was still recovering from the Diocletian persecutions of the previous generation and they had few means to force their will upon anyone, so Constantine, a convert and the first Christian emperor, was charting new paths in rulership. (For what does it mean to be a Christian emperor in this new paradigm?) If some corrupt kings or emperors or even a corrupted Church failed to act in Christian “symphony” (the Byzantine vision of Church-State, which is NOT a merger, which denotes a resultant seamlessness of institutions), that was not his doing. And I do not believe the Roman Catholic Church to be wholly evil and without any merit as some make it out to be, although today the Vatican State is highly politicized in a “woke” sense and actually working against the traditional tenets of Catholic Christianity.
While there were some terrible religious wars in Europe and violent schisms, still these pale in comparison to the atheistic wars of totalitarianism in the years since the French Revolution. The worst atrocities in history were committed by the godless regimes, in terms of body count.
At the time of the Crusades, Europe was still working out what Christianity meant in the public sphere. Western Europe was mostly a barbaric warrior society, compared to the Christian East, which was much more civilized and had been thriving in relative peace with its neighbors until the muslim invasions. Byzantium had appealed to the pope for help against the muslim armies, and, in good faith, Pope Urban appealed to the European kings and princes to provide military help. But the movement quickly went out of control, the goals were changed midstream, and Byzantium was not helped at all. The pope, hearing reports of the crusaders’ behavior, came to regret launching the movement. Sounds to me that the popes actually had little control over the kings and princes during much of the Crusades, rather than this being some corrupt merger of Church-state.
The other extreme is what we see today, especially in the US/EU which is aggressively banishing the Church and any Christian influence from the culture altogether, and even setting up its own transhumanist religion in place of it. In the US, this trend started mid-20th century with many lawsuits pressing the “separation of Church and State” Jeffersonian concept to the point where the Church or any expression of Christianity is totally in exile. We can now see the chaotic, demonic and decadent outcome of this banishment in the culture at large. Is this what you’d rather see? I think not.
Regarding the Sabbath on Saturday. Of course it is. In both Jewish and Christian liturgical time, a new day begins at sunset, as you said. So after sunset on Friday, the new day becomes the 7th day which we call Saturday.
Did Constantine move the Sabbath to Sunday. NO—his decree does not mention Sabbath at all, and as I said before, Christianity had observed worship on Sunday from the 1st century. There was no “sabbath” in the Christian world to move to any other day. He simply made Sunday, the Lord’s day, a day of rest to facilitate worship, because the pagan world had no days of rest.
I’m sure we will continue to hold different views. Thanks for this discussion.
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The fact is that SLAVERY has always existed, as found in Biblical times and Feudal times, human labor trafficking, etc. Without God providing us the moral compass and disciplinary boundaries we all need, but many eschew, we will not be FREE. As Benjamin Franklin explained to the Pastor waiting outside the room where the constitution was signed, we have a constitutional republic, if we can keep it. Further clarification followed – only a moral and religious people can maintain and sustain a constitutional republic. Without a moral compass our constitutional republic will die.
Our American EXPERIMENT can only survive if we bring God solidly back into our lives, our country, our government. CEO’s of corporations and some non-governmental organizations are the new kings while their employees are the modern day slaves. The employees work for low wages while the CEO’s receive multi million dollar salaries plus huge bonuses, with little to no recognition that the success of the CEO’s relies totally on the productivity of the employees. Now they are creating robots and AI to replace the workers, to increase their revenues and decrease any benefits for employees. Yes, we all are slaves to this addictive technological system as taxes creep up and up, while inflation depletes our wallets. We are the SLAVES. We have lost control of how our tax dollars are spent, often for nefarious causes we never agreed to.
The only one I know about who is sincerely creating a solution for the slaves and a way out is Dr. Shiva with his TruthFreedomHealth movement. He teaches how the system is set up and how to counter act it successfully. He calls the elites/globalists whose goals are power, control, profit, the SWARM. It is about decentralization at the local level. It is worth knowing about.
I think it is time to throw off the yoke of slavery so we can truly be FREE. It is time to halt the disastrous use of our own money as a weapon to destroy us, our healthcare system, our economy, our souls and our truth, and our country – and the world. As Patrick Henry vehemently declared: Give me Liberty or Give me Death. So shall we also declare our demand for Freedom. There is no way to comply out of tyranny. Give the tyrants an inch and they surely guarantee they will take a mile and much more. Stand up tall and strong for Freedom and for God. May God bless and save America. Amen.
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Well folks It looks like my prediction in my opening comment, that food shortages will cause a mass exodus from Africa, is about to come true.
In addition to the food shortages which will result from Putin’s decision to end the Black Sea deal, now India has decided to drastically reduce it’s rice exports.
“India exports 40 percent of the world’s excess rice supply, providing rice supplies, in part, to billions of people. And India has just banned non-Basmati rice exports, causing a “rice panic” to unfold across Asia.
Combined with the wheat export crisis in Ukraine (due to malfeasance on the part of the USA and NATO), the world is now facing scarcity and food inflation across TWO food staples: Wheat and rice.!”
It seems inevitable now, that Africa and other poor countries will suffer a mass exodus of people. As I’ve said already “We can expect to see mass migration from Africa into Europe.”
In fairness the Indian decision is probably the result of weather conditions caused by El-Nino which is happening now and may last for up to four years or more.
But I believe that the timing of Putin’s decision to end the Black Sea deal has been co-ordinated to align with India’s decision to severely restrict rice exports.
I believe that the WEF are hijacking El-Nino and attributing it’s effects on the earth’s climate to ‘climate change’ which of course they will blame on ‘carbon emissions’ and cattle farming etc.
In similar fashion, I believe that they hijacked the seasonal Flu and attributed it’s effects to Covid 19.
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The hypocrisy is staggering! Everyone who thinks that electric cars are the solution should spend their summer in those mines, along with all those kids who are addicted to gaming with technology and adults who are addicted to or even watch any porn on it. Then we’ll see what they have to say!
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Sort of reminds me of how Amazon fired 10’s of thousands to bring in illegals
at 3/4 the wage shipped all over the country to work in their warehouses.
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Where’s the OUTRAGE??? Reminds me of the cancerous amoebae spreading everywhere. Biden signed the Uyghur bill to prevent child labor while enabling millions of illegals to enter the U.S. for child sex and labor trafficking. Hypocrisy, as Patrick Wood points out, phony legislation to prevent in China what he encourages in the U.S. What a …………… expletive ad infinitum. Leader of the free world??? I wonder why or if the laid off workers have a union or a voice to protest? We need some sharp teeth to enforce laws. Labor Department reports, while Biden obstructs and defies. And no Wyatt Earp in sight. Any sheriffs on board??? As I say, we have a lot to pray about and for. Unite with IFA in your state. Thanks for sharing.
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Many children have been killed or injured or made sick in cobalt mining over the years. But big corporate colonialism of many developed nations exploits child labor globally in many industries, as it always has since the Industrial Revolution. 3rd world countries, like the Congo, have regulations to prevent abuse of child labor, but these are not enforced because of those nations’ poverty makes them tolerate the abuse. It took quite a long time for the US and England to finally stop child labor which was so abusive in the 19th-early 20th century.
See the list of goods produced globally by child labor as of 2022 from this US government report: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods
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WOW! Perhaps Sound of Freedom can have a sequel about cobalt and lithium extraction child trafficking and abuse. My heart aches for all the children. They are God’s precious gift and deserve the opposite of this exploitation. Their potential and their lives are being devastated, wasted. Imagine the great contributions they could be making if they receive the education, nutrition, and love they all deserve.
May God bless and save these children, for all children belong to God and are gifted to us. They are innocent and the bringers of joy. Thank you so much for exposing this evil, this plight on our planet. When BIG TECH thrives on the backs of innocents, depriving them of their unalienable God-given rights, these BIG TECH Midas figures should fail. We do not need them. We actually got along much better without their plundering ways for they are destroying our food, our water, our air, our minds. These arrogant, condescending, totalitarian billionaires act as though they have no soul. They certainly have no respect, neither for the children whose lives they destroy nor for the taxpayers they also exploit.
Can’t we all just stand up and roar like a lion against these atrocities??? Or are we not still human??? Hypocrites of the first order, these people are so upside down in their priorities. It is ironic that lithium batteries are not even safe in EV’s and cost a small fortune to replace. Climate Change is a sorry excuse and evil distraction to cover this most offensive of evils.
May God bless Leo Hohmann and Patrick Wood for investigating and sharing. Your work is a blessing to all. May it produce much fruit.
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Oh my, you have expressed my heart, thank you. I couldn’t have come close to putting this in words as you have.
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Technology has also injured our relationships with one another.
I remember that the rule of diminishing returns applies to income. It seems the same rule applies to what Ex-Spurts call “progress.”
How many doo dads and “labor saving” gizmos do we really need for happiness?
Movies and TV have established pop culture by smothering folk culture and damaging high culture through dumbing people down. Without this level of technology they would never have been able to lock down the world.
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Excellent observations.
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Well said and thank you.
I’ve been haunted by the child slaves toiling in the cobalt mines. And, I must be honest, enraged by the sheer stupidity, ignorance and virtue signalling of those within the ‘green’ industry who delusionally believe they are helping to save the planet.
I know I’m wrong to be so harsh and judgmental but hope to put my energies into more helpful activities.
Thanks, Leo.
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You are not wrong.
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