Enticing the Troops

This commercial from Mexico reminds everyone what the men and women of the Mexican military are gearing up to protect:



The Ukranian Army has a novel approach for enticing young men to serve their country:



Building on that theme, the Russian military takes a higher, more sophisticated road:



Young Chinese men and women are offered an exciting alternative to making our iPhones under harsh conditions:



In the Royal New Zealand Navy, young recruits are there to help the Lord defend their country:



In India, a young person can make everyone proud by joining the Air Force:



and members of the Romanian armed forces can also hold their heads up high:



In Slovenia it's business as usual. V vsaki službi means "In every job..."



while in Taiwan, you flat-out get to be a Transformer:

Idolatry

This blog post won't score me any Brownie points with Prof. Ulichne (or most people) but there's an important religious issue that nobody is talking about and somebody needs to bring it up.

This statue that was supposedly found by a fisherman in Gaza

should strike the fear of God into the heart of every Jew, Christian, or Muslim that sees it.

By Biblical definition, it is absolutely, 100% a pagan idol of another diety.  I won't even tell you the diety's name.  You'll have to read the article to find out.

Different religions have different ideas about what angers the Lord.  In the church I grew up in, drinking caffeine made God mad. Lots of churches told me that caffeine was okay, but God gets mad if we drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.  I never read any of that in the Bible, but one thing I've read enough times that I can say with absolute certainty is that idolatry angers the Lord.

See for yourself.  Scroll down this page to get a general idea about how the God of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims feels about statues of other dieties, and what the consequences can be for displaying said statues for the adoration of others.

This item is now in the hands of Hamas authorities.  According to archeology official in Gaza,

"It is a precious treasure, an important archaeological discovery," said (Ahmed) Bursh. Once the statue was released by police, his ministry plans to repair it and put it on show in Gaza.  "International institutions have also contacted us and have offered to help with the repair process," he said, adding that a museum in Geneva and the Louvre in Paris wanted to rent it.

 If you're an atheist or your religious beliefs are not Abrahamic, this is no doubt an incredible archeological find that should be celebrated by lovers of antiquity everywhere.  But if your religious beliefs stem from Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, this is not just an artifact... it is in every way an idol.  Prayers are always needed for the Holy Land, and anywhere else this abomination might happen to turn up.

Back from the (Brain) Dead

My uncle Al's brother remembers hearing the doctor tell his wife that he was "brain dead" and should be removed from life support.  It was enough to give him the strength to open his eyes and blink them.

Many people who doubt that "brain dead is dead" will point to the case of Zack Dunlap, who also remembers hearing doctors declare him brain dead.

Are these simply two isolated miracles, or could it be that doctors routinely declare people "brain dead" for the sake of harvesting organs when there's a chance that a recovery could occur?

I posed the question to the professors at Google University and came up with many more such "miracles":

Officer David Salgado
http://www.jrn.com/ktnv/news/better-lv/225530482.html

Rae Kupferschmidt, 65
http://archive.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=498009

Ross Smith, age 37,
http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/9997345.print/

Alexis Salaz, age 2
http://hollywoodlife.com/2012/03/19/two-year-old-brain-dead-abuse-recovery/

Kate Allatt
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1387810/Doctors-said-stroke-victim-brain-dead-saved-love-courage.html 

Steven Thorpe
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2134346/Steven-Thorpe-Teenager-declared-brain-dead-FOUR-doctors-makes-miracle-recovery.html

Cole Hicks
http://sarasgarden.org/support-cole-hicks/

Isla Traquair's mum
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/isla-traquair/mri-scan_b_1415849.html?just_reloaded=1

Kitt52's Cousin
http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage_public_journal_individual.asp?blog_id=5136687

Frank England
http://www.cadillacnews.com/news_story/?story_id=791816&year=2009&issue=20090414#prettyPhoto

Ann's Dad
http://expectamiracle.com/component/stories/?view=story&sid=2794

Colleen S. Burns
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/07/st_joes_fined_over_dead_patien.html

Ruby Lambert
http://www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2011/apr/laughing-again-ruby-lambert-girl-whose-heart-attack-was-started-alarm

Sam Scmid, 21
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/arizona-accident-victim-emerges-coma-poised-donate-organs/story?id=15208351

Scott Maloney
http://www.telegram.com/article/20130329/NEWS/103299761/1020

36-year old woman in Kuwait
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/kuwait/clinically-dead-mother-returns-to-life-after-baby-is-born-1.1182178

Jeff Markin
http://www.examiner.com/article/a-reason-to-believe

Carina Melchier, 19
http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10278

Katlielou80's dad
http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?p=1260592

Perhaps you can see what I'm getting at.  I'm not saying we should end organ transplants and force people to live on machines that otherwise wouldn't want that.  What I am saying is that patients and parents deserve the choice of when life support is discontinued.  In the United States, we are only given the option of discontinuing treatment.  A family that wants to hold out hope is given enough time to gather the family for one last goodbye once "brain death" has been determined (unless they get the courts involved).  The government has decided what "dead" means, and a lot of times it doesn't really mean dead.

You can find many more stories such as these and learn some scary things about the Organ Harvesting industry at Organ Facts

http://www.organfacts.net/

Getting Your Site to Display Properly on Facebook

Facebook has special tags that you can add to the HTML of your website that will let you control how it looks when somebody shares your site on Facebook.  These are called "Open Graph" tags.  If you don't have Open Graph tags, Facebook will just pull a random picture from your website, or let you choose between several on your page (not always the one you want).

Here are some Open Graph Meta Tags you can use to make sure your site gets displayed properly.  Add these somewhere between HEAD and /HEAD section of your page's HTML code:

Click to enlarge.  Sorry you can't copy and paste... it wouldn't let me add the code to the blog post.

***NOTE***  Your image has to be at least 200x200 pixels or Facebook won't pick it up and will revert to a default image from your page.

Add these to your Meta Tags and then type your link into your status update box, and see if it displays properly.  Facebook will cache everything, which means if you change those OG tags above, it won't recognize it.

If you need Facebook to update your site's Open Graph information, go to this link and type in your URL:

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug


It will update their info and you can keep doing that until you've got it just like you want it.

~*Cheers*~

Getting Off the Fast Track

We really need your help this Saturday, November 16, in Kansas City and in cities throughout the world.  There's a major threat looming on the horizon, and most people have no idea it even exists.  This is a cause that people of all political types would get behind if they understood what's at stake.

The cause we need your help with Saturday is very complicated and confusing, and I've spent weeks just trying to figure out how to explain it to people.  It's complicated and confusing for a reason, so that people won't pay attention to it and discuss it, etc.  If you've never heard the term "TPP" you're not alone, but you can find out about it right now, and start letting your friends and loved ones know what's going on. We need everyone's help to keep the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership from being rammed down our throats without any oversight or public scrutiny. The TPP is a trade pact, as the following videos will show, that is being secretly negotiated by a few government officials and LOTS of corporate advisers.  The TPP will take everything that's already bad about the world and make it much, much worse. There is almost no industry that goes untouched.

For example, you know those generic prescription drugs that people can get for a fraction of the price of their brand-name counterparts? You can say goodbye to any more of those coming onto the market, because the TPP wants to extend drug company patents to the point that many of us won't live long enough to see any new generic drugs on the pharmacy shelves.  This video from a Canadian health organization explains how that will effect what they do.  What effect will it have on you?

And then there's the Internet. Remember SOPA? Meet its big brother, the TPP

This video shows just one example of what the TPP will do to jobs... the TPP threatens every industry you can imagine

This guy lays it out pretty clearly, touching on the workers that will be exploited, environmental protections dissolved, and what the TPP will do with banking and farming

And this is all just the beginning.  On Saturday, November 16, we need you to help get out the word by passing out flyers and contacting people you know.  We need millions of people to find that there's a thing called the TPP, and what they can do to get it off the Fast Track.

Fast Track Authority was created during the Nixon Administration because Congress is so busy, you see, that they don't have time to think about things like trade agreements with other nations, so they give the president Fast Track Authority and the president can handle the whole thing without their input. Then the president will give them a bill that they can vote "yes" or "no" on, but they can't change anything about it, and it will be thousands of pages long and filled with all kinds of horrible international laws that we'll be subjected to.  Congress won't know everything that is in the agreement because naturally they won't read it.

Without Fast Track Authority, Congress can get in on the negotiations and demand that the veil of secrecy be lifted so that everyone can know what's in this agreement and urge their representatives to cast an informed vote.  That's why we have to stop the Fast Track before it's too late, and it can be done. It's up to Congress.

I'll be having more on this between now and the 16th, but for now, join the Facebook group and find out what you can do to take action!  Here's the Kansas City group, and here's the national group.  Add your voice, and get ready to figure out how to explain this to everyone else!