Happy Holloween?!

Killing fields memorial
Originally uploaded by flaming_raisins.

The religion of communism's Khmer Rouge resulted in death to the non-believer. Now the Islamic religion of the Wahidist terrorists looks the same: death. Their dogma results in either living in fear or die.

At the approach of Holloween (my misspelling on purpose) I get a hollow feeling in my stomach at the site of modernity's soulless embrace of death's image amplified by our children frolicking in the streets as priests and priestesses of death. This hollow joy squeezed out in our still lost world, after the fall, is a religious act of sorts. Religion in its simplest form is a set of beliefs, values and practices. Religion is a cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.

May the hollow feeling in your stomach ushered by this post and picture nurture reflection and hopefully revelation. Let's cross over into living a life of beauty, living for others, living as family.

Peace through family.

SCAMS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN FLORIDA

Click here to check for new ones

"Jury Duty" Telephone Fraud (3/30/06) Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Charles H. Bronson today alerted consumers to a growing identity theft scam in which con artists posing as courthouse workers claim that the person being called has failed to report for jury duty. The scammers try to get the consumer to reveal personal information for purposes of identity theft. It is yet another example of how con artists try to rip off consumers. The scam has been reported in 11 states, although it is unclear whether it has surfaced in Florida, officials say. - Also visit the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Website

Scammers May Impersonate Government Agencies (11/3/05) The Federal Trade Commission has issued an alert for consumers warning that sweepstakes scam artists may be impersonating government agencies in an effort to convince consumers that they have won a monetary “prize.” The alert says that scammers, claiming to be from the non-existent National Sweepstakes Bureau, the “national consumer protection agency,” and even the FTC, tell consumers that the supposed government agency is supervising the distribution of sweepstakes winnings. They also may give consumers a phone number at an actual government agency or use Internet technology to make it appear that they are calling from Washington, DC. Learn more...

Better Business Bureau (BBB) - Online Scam (6/23/05) Better Business Bureaus have issued an international alert to warn about individuals who are fraudulently using the BBB name to extort money from online shoppers seeking to purchase “big-ticket” items advertised at “low ball” prices. Learn more...

The “Dirty Dozen” for 2005 (2/28/05) The Internal Revenue Service today unveiled its annual listing of notorious tax scams, the “Dirty Dozen,” reminding taxpayers to be wary of schemes that promise to eliminate taxes or otherwise sound too good to be true.

New Variation on Old Scam (2/16/05) There is a new twist on the old Nigerian Check Scam that has been circulating for some time now. Learn more...

411 Wireless Service
An unfounded email circulating the Internet has millions of Americans frantically trying to add their cell phones to the Do Not Call List to avoid telemarketing calls. The rumor likely started due to a new project called the Wireless 411 Service, which has been proposed by several major wireless phone carriers. Learn more...

FTC Warns - Check Overpayment Scam
“Check overpayment” scams target consumers selling cars or other valuable items through classified ads or online auction sites. Unsuspecting sellers get stuck with a big loss when scammers pass off bogus cashier's checks, corporate checks, or personal checks. The Federal Trade Commission has issued a new consumer alert, “Check Overpayment Scams: Seller Beware,” that explains this scam and offers consumers tips on how to protect themselves and their pocketbooks. Learn more...

Phishing - Don't take the Bait
Phishing is a high-tech scam that uses spam, pop-up messages and emails to deceive you into disclosing your credit card numbers, bank account information, Social Security number, passwords, or other sensitive information. Learn more...

Return Call Scam (11/8/04) A telephone scam that has been around for many years has appeared again.  This scam involves returning calls to the 809, 284 and 876 area codes that originate in the British Virgin Islands.

Consumer Alerts

Free Credit Reports are available June 1, 2005
A recent amendment to the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies to provide you with a free copy of your credit report, at your request, once every 12 months. Learn more...

Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)
The CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical, or mechanical hazard or can injure children. This is the current CPSC State and Local Newsletter: Volume 1, Issue 3 [79K PDF]

Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (10/18/04) Starting October 28, you better have enough money in your checking account when you write a check, because some checks could clear the same day. This is thanks to a new federal law nicknamed Check 21, which will allow banks to process checks electronically, instead of the old-fashioned way.

Consumer Alerts and Factsheets - Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent United States government agency that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable; its jurisdiction covers the 50 States and territories.  This site provides helpful information to consumers regarding issues such as:  Telephone Bills and Charges, Telephone Scams, Internet Information, Broadcasting Information and other consumer information.

Search for recalls The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from more than 15,000 types of consumer products. You can find information on over 4,000 product recalls using the various searches on this page. 

Click here to check for new ones

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Motor Vehicle Repair Consumer Complaint Form

Chapter 570.544(3) F.S.

Please fill in all information. Incomplete forms cannot be processed. Fields with the red asterisk * by them are required fields.

Once this form has been completed and submitted, a copy of your complaint will be displayed for printing and record keeping purposes. An additional copy will be sent to the email address provided below.

Please MAIL any supporting documents such as estimated sales invoice letters written or received from the business, contracts, cancelled checks, receipts, or any other proofs of purchase. If your complaint concerns a product or service which was advertised, include a copy of the advertisement. Please do not send originals.

MAIL SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS TO:

Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services
Motor Vehicle Repair Program
2005 Apalachee Parkway
Terry Lee Rhodes Building
Tallahassee, FL 32301

I understand that your office does not give legal advice. I also understand that your office cannot take legal action for me. I am filing this complaint to notify your office of the activities of this business/individual and to seek any assistance you may be able to render. Check here _____

Whoever knowingly makes a false statement in writing with the intent to mislead a public servant in the performance of his official duty shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the second degree, punishable as provided in s.775.082, s.775.083, or s.775.084, Florida Statutes.  Check here _____

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Be sure to go to the site click here.
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How to file a complaint in FLORIDA or read more about the area of business; Here is the place to do it.

I found this site by accident and now you can use this information. Haven't you ever wanted to know how to report some shady activity. Here you go . . .

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services functions as the state's clearinghouse for consumer complaints. We assist consumers with information, protection and complaints, regardless of whether we regulate that particular industry.

Upon receipt, we review each complaint and take the following action:

If the complaint falls within another agency's jurisdiction, we refer it to that agency
If the complaint falls within our jurisdiction, we attempt informal mediation to resolve the consumer's dispute and evaluate the business for compliance with applicable statutory provisions; or

If a complaint is filed against a business that is not regulated by any federal, state, or local government entity, we attempt informal
Use mediation to resolve the consumer's dispute.

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services regulates the following businesses.

If you have downloaded a complaint form, please mail the completed form to:

Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services

Division of Consumer Services
2005 Apalachee Parkway
Terry Lee Rhodes Building
Tallahassee, FL 32301

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When even the pope has to whisper - and insight for Jan 10 Asian Times Writer Spengler and others

I just found this through answers.com while doing due diligence upon hearing the news swirling around the Pope's controversial statement recently.
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AGI Online 
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POPE: FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM CONTRADICTS MUHAMMAD

(AGI) - Ratisbon, Sept. 12 - Benedetto XVI once again condemned every form of religious fundamentalism by citing the Koran that says: "no oppression of faith." It is one of the sure things of the initial period in which Muhammad himself was still without power and was threatened," reminded the Pope in his speech this afternoon in the aula magna of the University of Ratisbon in Germany. Ratzinger also cited other "dispositions, developed subsequently and established in the Koran, about the Holy War", but he focused his attention precisely on the contradiction that exists between this statement and the norm, even if attributed to Muhammad,"of spreading the faith that he preached by the sword." An opportunity for this analysis of the two different concepts of Islam was given to the Pope by a historic page, the talk that "the intellectual Byzantine emperor Manuele II Paleologo, perhaps during the winter in 1391 near Ankara, had with an intellectual Persian on Christianity and Islam and on the truth of both." The Pontiff states clearly while citing Theodore Khoury, the author that reconstructed that conversation, "Violence is against with the will of God and the nature of the spirit. God does not give in to blood; to not act according to reason is against the will of God. Faith is fruit of the spirit, not of the body. Thus whoever wants to bring someone to faith needs the capacity to speak well and to reason correctly, not violence and threats." From that conversation, the theologian Pope also described the end:"to convince a rational spirit it is not necessary to use your fist, nor firearms, nor any other means to threaten a person with death. According to Ratzinger, "the decisive statement in this argument against conversion through violence is: to not act according to reason is against the will of God." Pope explained,"For the Muslim doctrine, God is absolutely supernatural, thus his will is not tied to any of our categories, even that of rationality." Thus we can discern from the Pontiff's argument that this is the element that causes the most problems in the dialogue with Islam, because for this theological vision, "God is not even tied by his own words and nothing would obligate him to reveal the truth to us. If it were his will, man would also have to practice adulation," the pope concluded. (AGI) -
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Popes statement above.  I believe this is what has stirred up a hornets nest.  If his words are true I would expect violent retribution coming from Islamic fundamentalists soon.
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From Asia Times  Jan. 10 206 by SpenglerWhen the Pop has to Whisper (read the whole article recommended. . .  exerted here.)
. . . Fessio described a private seminar on the subject of Islam last year at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence:

The main presentation by this [start new-window link here] Father [Christian] Troll http://www.sankt-georgen.de/lehrende/troll.html was very interesting. He based it on a Pakistani Muslim scholar [named] Rashan, who was at the University of Chicago for many years, and Rashan's position was Islam can enter into dialogue with modernity, but only if it radically reinterprets the Koran, and takes the specific legislation of the Koran, like cutting off your hand if you're a thief, or being able to have four wives, or whatever, and takes the principles behind those specific pieces of legislation for the 7th century of Arabia, and now applies them, and modifies them, for a new society [in] which women are now respected for their full dignity, where democracy's important, religious freedom's important, and so on. And if Islam does that, then it will be able to enter into real dialogue and live together with other religions and other kinds of cultures.

And immediately the holy father, in his beautiful calm but clear way, said, well, there's a fundamental problem with that because, he said, in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Mohammed, but it's an eternal word. It's not Mohammed's word. It's there for eternity the way it is. There's no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it, whereas in Christianity, and Judaism, the dynamism's completely different, that God has worked through his creatures [emphasis added]. And so it is not just the word of God, it's the word of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the word of Mark. He's used his human creatures, and inspired them to speak his word to the world, and therefore by establishing a church in which he gives authority to his followers to carry on the tradition and interpret it, there's an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations.

The interviewer then asked Fessio, "And so the pope is a pessimist about that changing, because it would require a radical reinterpretation of what the Koran is?" Fessio replied, "Yeah, which is it's impossible, because it's against the very nature of the Koran, as it's understood by Muslims."

That is precisely what I argued in an essay titled You say you want a reformation? on August 5, 2003:

Hebrew and Christian scripture claim to be the report of human encounters with God. After the Torah is read each Saturday in synagogues, the congregation intones that the text stems from "the mouth of God by the hand of Moses", a leader whose flaws kept him from entering the Promised Land. The Jewish rabbis, moreover, postulated the existence of an unwritten Revelation whose interpretation permits considerable flexibility with the text. Christianity's Gospels, by the same token, are the reports of human evangelists.

The Archangel Gabriel, by contrast, dictated the Koran to Mohammed, according to Islamic doctrine. That sets a dauntingly high threshold for textual critics. How does one criticize the word of God without rejecting its divine character? In that respect the Koran resembles the "Golden Tablets" of the Angel Moroni purported found by the Mormon leader Joseph Smith more than it does the Jewish or Christian bibles.

I claim no originality whatever in this matter, for I simply follow the leading Muslim authorities, who are unanimous that Islam is in no need of reform. The immutable character of Islamic revelation makes the subject of Koranic criticism into a minefield. It is universally known among scholars that alternative texts of the Koran have been discovered in various archeological sites - something of an embarrassment for the Archangel Gabriel - but the subject has disappeared from the media. [1] When Newsweek in 2004 published a brief mention of the work of the pseudonymous German philologist Christoph Luxenberg, the government of Pakistan seized the entire print run. Luxenberg became famous for re-translating the Koran to read that martyrs would receive raisins in Paradise rather than virgins. One finds nearly 12,000 Google references to Luxenberg but not a single hit on Google News. The subject, once so passionately debated in editorial columns, has vanished from the media in their entirety.

It is dangerous to publish anything that Muslims might interpret as blasphemy, as Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest newspaper, discovered when it published 12 cartoons of Mohammed, some portraying the Prophet in violent acts. Muslim protests and threats caused two of the cartoonists to go into hiding. After Arab foreign ministers condemned Denmark for refusing to act against the newspaper, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen offered a near-apology in his New Year's address.
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This is a delicious article which introduces points which really need to be chewed on and digested.  I would welcome any conversation with this article as the launching pad.  Let the debate begin!
Tags: Pope, Islam, Conversion, Violent Conversion, War, Holy War, Fundamentalism, Faith, God, Man, Word, Modernity, Religion, Religions, Peace, Crusades

'Accounts about Man don't add up without God' says pontiff

fROM : ANSA.it

'Accounts about Man don't add up without God' says pontiff (ANSA) - Regensburg, September 12 - Pope Benedict XVI on Monday issued his strongest criticism yet of evolutionary theory, calling it "unreasonable" .

Speaking to a 300,000-strong crowd in this German city, the former theological watchdog said that, according to such theories derived from Charles Darwin's work, the universe is "the random result of evolution and therefore, at bottom, something unreasonable" .

. . . further on in the article . . .

In response, the director of the Vatican's Space Observatory, Father George Coyne, said critics of evolutionary theory underestimated God's willingness to give "freedom" to Nature .

The Baltimore-born Jesuit, 73, who has just stepped down after 28 years at the helm of the Vatican's flagship science programme, rapped Schoenborn for "underestimating" the US context in which he was speaking and branded Creationism as "a religious movement devoid of all scientific basis" .

. . . the debate is on . . . YEAH!!

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