Tag: religion

Florida Police: Christian School Teacher May Have Used Student Images to Create AI Child Porn

A sixth-grade teacher in Central Florida was arrested this week on a host of charges for possessing child pornography, apparently created with online AI technology and possibly using student photos from his Christian school.

State Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office charged David McKeown of Holly Hill with 19 enhanced felony counts of possession of child sexual abuse material and six counts of possession of animal pornography, according to a statement released by the office.

McKeown was arrested Friday by the Holly Hill Police Department at his home in Volusia County. He was a sixth-grade teacher at United Brethren in Christ (UBIC) Academy, a school affiliated with the UBIC church.

Holly Hill Police Department’s investigation alleges that McKeown shared and downloaded pornographic images depicting child porn via Discord, an online chat service, while at school and connected to the school’s Wi-Fi network.

Some 30 images were allegedly shared, including six files depicting McKeown sexually abusing animals, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLA) reported.

Uthmeier said in the statement:

As a teacher, parents trusted Mr. McKeown to impart knowledge to their children. Instead, he spent parts of the school day sending and receiving child sex abuse material and providing other pedophiles with UBIC Academy students’ personal information. What he did is beyond betrayal — it’s devastating and sick.

The investigation was launched early this month after receiving a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which tracks the internet for exploitative content involving minors, Orlando’s Fox 35 reported.

The news outlet also reported authorities believe McKeown used AI technology to create the pornographic images and may have used photos of real children, perhaps his own students. The investigation is continuing.

Detectives seized a number of devices from the teacher’s home in Holly Hill and from the school. He was booked into the Volusia County jail and a judge denied him the possibility of bond.

If convicted, he faces up to 315 years in prison, officials said.

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Cops remove 88 children from a Bible study camp in Iowa as part of a human trafficking investigation: officials

Deputies raided an Iowa church and removed 88 children participating in a Bible study camp as part of a sweeping human trafficking investigation, police said Monday.

The youngsters are now in protective custody of local agencies after they were taken from the Shekinah Glory Camp run by Kingdom Ministry of Rehab and Recreation, according to police and local reports.  

Deputies executing search warrants removed the children over the weekend and took them to nearby Wapello Methodist Church to meet with child protection workers, deputies told KWQC.

The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services placed the children in temporary foster care until they could be reunited with their parents or guardians, deputies added.

The Kingdom Ministry of Rehabilitation and Recreation, founded in 2018, was hosting the summer camp from June 8 to 29.

The family behind the ministry that runs the camp in Columbus Junction denied the allegations, according to WQAD8.

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Al-Qaeda Leader Makes Chilling Demand of Muslims in America

What is happening in Los Angeles these days is insurrection enough, but Sa’ad al-Awlaki, the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), wants much more. If he gets his way, America will be awash in blood, with the principal leaders of the Trump administration, above all the president himself, all assassinated. Al-Awlaki sees such assassinations as an Islamic religious duty, and made his case to Muslims in America, some of whom are already out on the streets in Los Angeles, on the basis of their Islamic responsibilities. Whether any will take heed remains to be seen.

In a video published on Sunday, al-Awlaki asserted that assassinating non-Muslim leaders was a form of Islamic jihad: “Anyone who can revive the tradition of assassinations and is near the leaders of apostasy – those who support the war in Gaza with money, aid, and logistics, the Jewish Arabs, like the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and all the rulers of the Arabian Peninsula – should not hesitate even for a moment. By Allah, [assassinations] are the greatest form of jihad today.” The “Jewish Arabs” are the Muslim leaders whose countries have accords with Israel, or who have, like Saudi Arabia, been working toward a rapprochement with the Jewish state largely behind the scenes.

As for assassinating leaders, that is indeed an Islamic tradition. As “The History of Jihad” explains in detail, in the twelfth century, a Shi’ite Muslim sect, the Nizari Ismailis, came to be known as the Assassins. With their planned murders of many of their individual opponents, the Assassins gave the English language its word for one who commits planned, premeditated murder, and foreshadowed the individual jihad terror attacks of the twenty-first century. 

The word “assassin” is derived from “hashashin,” or hashish smokers, a name given to the group by its foes and based on stories about their novel method of recruiting new members. Recruits would be given hashish and taken into a garden where beautiful women awaited them. Later, when they came to their senses, they were told that they had been in paradise and that they could return there by killing Allah’s enemies and being slain in the process, thereby taking hold of Allah’s promise of paradise to those who “kill and are killed” (Qur’an 9:111). 

Today, al-Awlaki has some very specific targets in mind. He called upon observant Muslims in countries that aren’t attacking Israel, and who “fear Allah’s punishment for abandoning their brothers in Palestine,” to take matters into their own hands and “strike the Jews, the American military bases in the region, and the American aircraft carriers that are looming in the sea here.”

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Nearly 800 infant remains found in septic tank at nun-run Irish unwed mother and baby home

Crews in Ireland began work this week to excavate the site of a former church-run home for unmarried women and their babies to identify the remains of around 800 infants and young children who died there.

Many of the remains were found in a septic tank, according to authorities. 

The backstory:

The long-awaited excavation at the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway in western Ireland, is part of a reckoning in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country with a history of abuses in church-run institutions.

The home, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961, was one of many such institutions that housed tens of thousands of orphans and unmarried pregnant women who were forced to give up their children throughout much of the 20th century.

In 2014, historian Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in Tuam between the 1920s and 1961 — but could only find a burial record for one child.

Finding a mass grave

Dig deeper:

Investigators later found a mass grave containing the remains of babies and young children in an underground sewage structure on the grounds of the home. DNA analysis found that the ages of the dead ranged from 35 weeks gestation to 3 years.

A major inquiry into the mother-and-baby homes found that in total, about 9,000 children died in 18 different mother-and-baby homes, with major causes including respiratory infections and gastroenteritis, otherwise known as the stomach flu.

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Trump Shares Private Text From Mike Huckabee That Compared Iran Situation To Truman in 1945

President Trump on Tuesday shared a private text message from US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee that compared the president’s decision related to Iran with President Truman’s situation in 1945, the year he dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan.

Huckabee, a Christian Zionist who believes God gave historic Palestine to the modern state of Israel — a view that’s rejected by the majority of Christian denominations — told the president that he believes God “spared” him for this moment.

“God spared you in Butler, PA to be the most consequential President in a century—maybe ever. The decisions on your shoulders I would not want to be made by anyone else. You have many voices speaking to you Sir, but there is only ONE voice that matters. HIS voice,” Huckabee wrote.

“I am your appointed servant in this land and am available for you but I do not try to get in your presence often because I trust your instincts. No President in my lifetime has been in a position like yours. Not since Truman in 1945. I don’t reach out to persuade you. Only to encourage you,” the US ambassador added.

Huckabee continued, “I believe you will hear from heaven and that voice is far more important than mine or ANYONE else’s. You sent me to Israel to be your eyes, ears and voice and to make sure our flag flies above our embassy. My job is to be the last one to leave. I will not abandon this post. Our flag will NOT come down! You did not seek this moment. This moment sought YOU!”

Since being appointed ambassador, Huckabee has approached the issue of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory through the lens of his radical religious views. He has said he believes the US is no longer pursuing a two-state solution and suggested a Palestinian state could be carved out of a “Muslim” country.

“Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?” Huckabee said in an interview with Bloomberg last week, using the Biblical name for the West Bank.

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Over a Hundred More Christians Massacred by Islamists in Nigeria in Ongoing Genocide Campaign — Where is the Media Coverage?

Fulani Islamic militants have unleashed another round of unspeakable violence on the village of Yelewata in Nigeria’s Benue State.

Over the weekend, attackers stormed homes, locked families inside, and set them ablaze — killing over 100 civilians, including women and children.

The attack, which began late Friday and stretched into the early hours of Saturday, left dozens missing and hundreds injured. With no access to medical aid, survivors watched their communities reduced to ash.

Benue is located in Nigeria’s “Middle Belt,” an important where the Muslim North meets the Christian South.

Foreign-funded jihadist groups and radicalized Fulani herdsmen are pushing southward in deadly waves, slaughtering Christian farming communities under the banner of conquest.

The Yelewata massacre is not an isolated event, but rather a systematic campaign of genocide and extermination.

Just days prior, in coordinated assaults across Benue and Plateau States, Fulani jihadists murdered over 130 Christians in cold blood.

Between May 24th and June 2nd, villages like Gwer West, Apa, and Munga Dasso were turned into charnel houses.

Victims were butchered, burned, or executed as militants moved with total impunity.

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From Torah to trauma: A Satanic child abuse scandal blows up in Israel

There are crimes so profound that words fail to capture them. Last week, several survivors testified to the Israeli Knesset about just such a horror.

The story broke with an investigative report published by Israel Hayom, which unearthed a long-standing pattern of ritual sexual abuse, psychological manipulation, and spiritual desecration occurring not on the margins of society but from within its most sacred institutions. Survivors speak of torment that begins in early childhood and lasts decades, often committed under the guise of religious observance. It is not just a crime of the flesh. It is a theft of the soul.

Israeli children, some as young as infants, were subjected to methodical abuse masked in religious ritual. Survivors describe ceremonies invoking biblically-vilified deities, conducted by members of observant Jewish communities. As a survivor named Noga (all of the victims’ names are changed in the report) recalled: “The gods I remember are Baal Peor and Ashtoreth… our lord Peor and our lady Ashtoreth.” (Note: All these deities are categorically condemned in the Bible).

The culprits are not fringe radicals. These are individuals who keep kosher, celebrate the Sabbath, and adhere to the minutiae of Jewish law even as they engage in acts so depraved that they defy comprehension. Here is snippet from a survivor’s testimonies:

“I remember a pentagram on the floor, usually in red. When the ceremony was in the forest, the pentagram was marked with a hoe and surrounded by lit candles in a circle. The rabbi would bless…they would repetitively read Psalms, like ‘A Psalm of David, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’ They told me ‘you are special, you are chosen’ and they would insert… I remember a palm branch, Hanukkah candles, a shofar.”

Some of these perpetrators are qualified to blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah — a high privilege among observant Jews. Family members, most of whom may have once been victims themselves, are often the ones who hand over their little ones to these monsters.

Several rabbis’ names appeared repeatedly in survivor testimonies. Multiple complaints filed at different police stations across Israel were quickly nipped in the bud. Prosecutions leading to imprisonments are rare. Much like anywhere else on this planet. Have any elite members of the Jeffrey Epstein pedophile network – itself rumored to be a Mossad operation – been charged in any court of law?  Have the victims been asked to identify the perpetrators of these wicked deeds during the trial of Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell?

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A Rabbi, a Minister, a Monk, and a Priest Took Magic Mushrooms. Here’s What Happened

After scientists asked “psychedelic-naïve” professional religious leaders to take psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, most found the experience “religiously significant, meaningful, and generally beneficial.”

Historically, several world religions incorporate psychedelic compounds in their practices. However, this is the first study to examine what impact these experiences would have on the professional work of leaders from Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism, four of the world’s major religions.

Magic Mushrooms and Mystical Experiences

In their published study, the late Roland Griffiths, of Johns Hopkins University, and Stephen Ross and Anthony Bossis, from New York University Grossman School of Medicine, discuss the role of psychedelic compounds like LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and peyote in religious ceremonies. While uses of these substances vary among cultures and religions, the researchers note that they can induce experiences that share similarities to “non-pharmacologically triggered” experiences often described as “religious, spiritual, or mystical.”

“Mystical experiences are characterized by a range of subjective features including a sense of unity, “noetic” quality (e.g., an authoritative sense of truth), transcendence of time and space, a sense of awe or sacredness, intense positive mood, transiency that nevertheless feels timeless, presence in awareness of mutually exclusive states or concepts, and ineffability,” they explain.

The researchers note that such experiences are also sometimes observed in states of consciousness “associated with near-death experiences, meditation, prayer, fasting, breathwork, and music.” Although psychedelics continue to be used in some Indigenous religious contexts, the researchers note “they are generally not used within major world religions (e.g., Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam).”

Curious if these religious leaders would have similar experiences and how these experiences might affect their job performance, the team recruited volunteers from all four major religions. According to the results, the study participants experienced several impacts on their personal and professional lives, including “enduring increases in well-being and spirituality,” that lasted up to 16 months after taking magic mushrooms.

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Gender ideology mandate in foster care opposed by religious liberty, gay rights, pro-drag groups

Vermont’s refusal to place foster children in families with religious objections to gender ideology compels parents to parrot the government’s preferred messages, establishes the Green Mountain State’s own religion and treats “comparable secular activity” more favorably, while the judge who upheld the gender-affirming mandate relied on dubious research.

Those are a handful of arguments in friend-of-the-court briefs as the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals evaluates whether Vermont violated the First Amendment by stripping foster-care licenses from Christian couples Brian and Katy Wuoti and Michael and Rebecca Gantt.

Social workers gave the couples glowing reviews, but Vermont deemed them “unqualified” to parent “any child (even a relative) of any age (even an infant) and for any length of time (even a few hours)” due to their religious beliefs, harming children who need “loving homes,” the couples’ lawyers at the Alliance Defending Freedom said.

No federal appeals court has yet determined “whether a state may categorically exclude families from foster care because of their protected speech and religious beliefs,” though the 9th Circuit will “likely” rule on the issue “soon,” ADF’s opening brief says.

The San Francisco-based appeals court heard oral argument nearly a year ago, but has yet to rule, in another ADF case by Oregon widow and mother-of-five Jessica Bates, who is suing the Beaver State to let her adopt foster siblings without requiring her to use their preferred pronouns and even give them “hormone shots” if they desire.

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Leading rabbi accused of sexually assaulting young girls

Several young women accuse a leading rabbi of repeatedly sexually assaulting them and others in interviews with Channel 12.

The women describe how Rabbi Haim Yosef Abergel, A prominent Sephardic rabbi from the southern city of Netivot, repeatedly molested them in recent years, with some of them as young as 12 when the assaults started.

The young women describe how aides to the rabbi tried to silence them and their families with threats and bribes.

One of the women, who spoke on camera but was not identified, filed a complaint with police this morning. Channel 12 says police are likely to launch a formal investigation.

A lawyer for Abergel denied the accusations, calling them completely false and a blood libel.

Abergel made headlines recently with reports he was planning on establishing a new Sephardic ultra-Orthodox party to compete with Shas.

Abergel is the son of the late Rabbi Yoram Abergel, a popular rabbi who himself split with Shas in 2015. In 2013, the senior Abergel was arrested on suspicion of extortion in connection with threats against a mayoral candidate in Netivot, but the charges were dropped for lack of evidence.

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