Uncategorized – Page 35 – The Faithful Watchman

Shoplifting Wave Drives Walmart, Target To Take Unprecedented Step — 40 Minute Wait Times For Underwear!

The Rising Tide of Shoplifting

In a significant effort to address the increasing problem of shoplifting, major retailers Walmart and Target have taken an unprecedented step by placing essential items such as underwear and socks under lock and key.

This move highlights the severity of theft issues affecting retailers across the country, with losses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.

In recent years, shoplifting has become a growing concern for retail giants, forcing them to implement new security measures such as locking up basic essential items.

According to the National Retail Federation, shoplifting accounted for $49.9 billion in losses in 2019 alone. This staggering amount has forced retailers to reevaluate their security measures and take action.

Longer Wait Times Make Stores Feel Eerily Apocalyptic

While the locking up of essential items may deter shoplifters, it has also had an impact on consumers. Longer wait times for assistance at the cash register, as well as the inconvenience of having to ask store employees for assistance in unlocking items, has led to frustration among shoppers.

This frustration has led to a decline in customer satisfaction and could potentially drive customers to seek out alternative shopping options.

Law Enforcement’s Forced Involvement Means More Wasted Tax Dollars

The increase in shoplifting incidents can be attributed to various factors, including the rise in organized retail crime and the influence of social media on encouraging such behavior. Additionally, some argue that the lack of consequences for shoplifters has contributed to the problem.

The decision to secure everyday commodities like underwear has surprised consumers, especially in California’s Bay Area where the measure has been prominently implemented. Local officials like Richmond City Council member Cesar Cepeda have expressed concerns that these measures could potentially lead to higher costs, longer wait times, and traveling longer distances for residents to get their basic needs.

The National Retail Federation has reported a rise in organized theft, with seven out of ten retailers experiencing an increase in recent years. This trend has prompted a call for stricter legislation against those profiting from retail crime.

This bold move by Walmart and Target underscores the significant impact of shoplifting on retailers and the measures being taken to address this issue.

Satanic Temple threatens to sue if schools bar its leaders from chaplain program in Florida

Two bills recently introduced in the Florida Legislature that would allow volunteer chaplains to provide counseling services in public schools have prompted The Satanic Temple to threaten legal action if its members are barred from participating.

Senate Bill 1044 and its companion House Bill 931, which already passed the Florida House of Representatives last month, would also mandate that principals in schools with volunteer chaplains tell parents about it and offer them a list of the volunteers, all of whom will be subject to a background check.

Parents will be allowed to choose from the list of chaplains and allow their children to receive counseling with written permission, though representatives from The Satanic Temple have expressed a desire for their chaplains to be included in such offerings.

“Any opportunity that exists for ministers or chaplains in the public sector must not discriminate based on religious affiliation,” Penemue Grigori, who serves as The Satanic Temple’s director of ministry, told The Tallahassee Democrat.

“Our ministers look forward to participating in opportunities to do good in the community, including the opportunities created by this bill, right alongside the clergy of other religions.”

Lucien Greaves, co-founder of The Satanic Temple, spoke out against what he described as the legislation’s attempt to allow a back door for religious instruction and “proselytizing evangelism” in Florida’s public schools, according to Fox News Digital.

“In an effort to dismiss concerns about bringing religious viewpoints into schools, advocates for chaplain bills have a scripted response that insists their interest is in merely providing additional ’emotional support’ for potentially troubled youth,” Greaves told the outlet.

“If that were true, they could simply be calling upon volunteers who hold licensure as counselors to offer their services in the schools in their communities.”

Greaves also said that school districts can expect legal action if satanic priests are prohibited from participating in the chaplain program, which would go into effect on July 1 and largely be left for individual districts to govern, according to local Fox 35.

“They should also not want to waste public funds on a lawsuit that’s certainly going to lose because of some superfluous effort to put chaplains in schools on a false rationale,” Greaves told the outlet.

Florida state Sen. Erin Grall, a Republican who represents Vero Beach, did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment but said she is concerned about the potential of satanic priests taking advantage of the legislation she sponsored.

“But I think that as soon as we get in the middle of defining what is religion and what is not, and whether or not someone can be available and be on a list, we start to run up to constitutional problems,” Grall said, according to The Tallahassee Democrat.

“So I think that us making sure that it’s open and available to anybody who wants to put themselves through the background screening, and let parents know they’re available for that service, is the best way to go,” she added.

The Satanic Temple of Iowa also made news in the lead-up to Christmas last December when they prompted fierce debate even among Republican lawmakers by erecting a statue of Baphomet near a Nativity scene in the Iowa state Capitol.

Federal Debt Went Up $100 Billion in Only Four Days

Federal debt is up $100 billion in just four days. We’re on track for $37 trillion by the end of this year. And $40 trillion by the end of next, Peter St. Onge warns.

A prominent Wharton professor is warning of a “meltdown” as early as 2025 as debt swamps financial markets.

At some point, the US will crash, probably sooner than later.

“Juan Gomez Wharton, senior vice Dean of Research at Wharton, warns the $34 trillion debt, soon to be 35 trillion, could trigger a spiral like we saw in Britain in 2022 when national debt fears spiked interest rates, sparking panic selling in bonds that threatened to crash the economy and bankrupt banks and even pensions…”

St. Onge said, “The CEO’s of Bank of America and JP Morgan, the two biggest in the country recently warned of a quote market rebellion over debt as we careen towards a $5 trillion quote fiscal Cliff at the end of next year.

“Keep in mind that’s all counting current projections. In other words, it assumes no new trillion dollar spending surprises and it also assumes no recession, so the fabled soft landing, if instead a recession does hit, then going by history, the deficit grows potentially by another couple trillion as social spending spikes and tax collection slump.

“Even without recession and those new spending surprises, we’re looking at 37 trillion in debt by the end of this year and 40 trillion by the end of next year. It’s worth noting that’s about twice the pace that the Congressional Budget Office forecast…

“$144 trillion…Yes, that was the forecast that said we’ll have $144 trillion in federal debt by 2053. Now, when it came out, that 144 trillion was met with an audible gasp. After all, that is more than literally all the money in the world. It’s about one-third of the accumulated assets of humanity, and at the moment, we’re actually going a lot faster…

“Washington has lost all semblance of fiscal sanity at this point. They’re competing for who can drain the treasury fastest…”

King’s cancer ‘may be more dangerous than we have been led to believe,’ warns expert

King Charles has reportedly begun work on his succession plan, sparking fears his cancer diagnosis may be ‘more dangerous than we have been led to believe.’

Earlier this month Charles revealed he had been diagnosed with cancer after being admitted to hospital for a separate issue regarding an enlarged prostate.

The type of cancer has not been revealed to the public, but it was reportedly caught early and the King has been undergoing ‘regular treatments’ ever since.

Nevertheless, the issue has reportedly prompted the King to start formalising his succession plans earlier than intended and ensure that Prince William is at the heart of them, sparking rumours that his illness could be more serious than we have been led to believe.

Tom Quinn, a Royal expert and author, told the Mirror: ‘Charles is also aware that, as future king, William is at the heart of the succession planning that is taking place right now – officials had assumed Charles would remain healthy at least into his mid-eighties before succession planning would need to begin but in fact it has now begun and indicates perhaps that Charles’ cancer is more dangerous than we have been led to believe.

‘Succession planning is highly secret and no one trusts Harry to be part of it for the simple reason that if he feels in any way slighted or not given what he feels he deserves he will run straight to the media.’

Prince Harry’s autobiography, Spare, caused major friction in the royal household following its release in January 2023 after the Duke of Sussex made a series of bombshell claims about his family members and took swipes at his father and brother.

‘Humanity’s remaining timeline? It looks more like five years than 50’: meet the neo-luddites warning of an AI apocalypse

From the academic who warns of a robot uprising to the workers worried for their future – is it time we started paying attention to the tech sceptics?

Eliezer Yudkowsky, a 44-year-old academic wearing a grey polo shirt, rocks slowly on his office chair and explains with real patience – taking things slowly for a novice like me – that every single person we know and love will soon be dead. They will be murdered by rebellious self-aware machines. “The difficulty is, people do not realise,” Yudkowsky says mildly, maybe sounding just a bit frustrated, as if irritated by a neighbour’s leaf blower or let down by the last pages of a novel. “We have a shred of a chance that humanity survives.”

It’s January. I have set out to meet and talk to a small but growing band of luddites, doomsayers, disruptors and other AI-era sceptics who see only the bad in the way our spyware-steeped, infinitely doomscrolling world is tending. I want to find out why these techno-pessimists think the way they do. I want to know how they would render change. Out of all of those I speak to, Yudkowsky is the most pessimistic, the least convinced that civilisation has a hope. He is the lead researcher at a nonprofit called the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, California, and you could boil down the results of years of Yudkowsky’s theorising there to a couple of vowel sounds: “Oh fuuuuu–!”

“If you put me to a wall,” he continues, “and forced me to put probabilities on things, I have a sense that our current remaining timeline looks more like five years than 50 years. Could be two years, could be 10.” By “remaining timeline”, Yudkowsky means: until we face the machine-wrought end of all things. Think Terminator-like apocalypse. Think Matrix hellscape. Yudkowsky was once a founding figure in the development of human-made artificial intelligences – AIs. He has come to believe that these same AIs will soon evolve from their current state of “Ooh, look at that!” smartness, assuming an advanced, God-level super-intelligence, too fast and too ambitious for humans to contain or curtail. Don’t imagine a human-made brain in one box, Yudkowsky advises. To grasp where things are heading, he says, try to picture “an alien civilisation that thinks a thousand times faster than us”, in lots and lots of boxes, almost too many for us to feasibly dismantle, should we even decide to.

Trying to shake humanity from its complacency about this, Yudkowsky published an op-ed in Time last spring that advised shutting down the computer farms where AIs are grown and trained. In clear, crisp prose, he speculated about the possible need for airstrikes targeted own datacentres; perhaps even nuclear exchange. Was he on to something?

Egypt Warns Of ‘Catastrophic Repercussions’ If Israeli Attacks Rafah

Egypt warned on Tuesday that Israel’s planned ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza would have “catastrophic repercussions” for peace in the Middle East.

Foreign ministers from Arab League countries told the United Nations Human Rights Council that some nations were turning a blind eye to the suffering in Gaza.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said the extreme polarisation exposed by the Gaza war had laid bare the double standards of some members of the UN’s top rights body.

Israel has said a truce with Hamas would delay, not prevent, a ground invasion of Rafah on the Egyptian border, where an estimated 1.4 million Palestinian civilians have sought refuge from the war.

“The world is witnessing the most heinous crimes and violations against the Palestinian people,” Shoukry said.

He called for an immediate ceasefire and urged Israel not to attack Rafah.

“Any military action in the present circumstances would have catastrophic repercussions that undermine peace in the region,” he warned.

The war in Gaza began after the Hamas militant group that controls the Palestinian territory launched an attack on October 7 that killed about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli figures.

Hamas militants also took hostages, 130 of whom remain in Gaza.

Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza have killed at least 29,878 people, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Shoukry said some countries on the 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva were shying away from the firm action they had taken over other conflicts.

“It seems that life in Gaza is not worthy enough of their attention, that the massacre of tens of thousands of children fails to shake their otherwise all-too-sensitive conscience,” he said.

“The lives of Gaza’s children are seemingly less valuable than others.

“This preludes the… collapse of the international system, including this council.”

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Abdullah al-Yahya said the “brutal crimes of the Israeli occupation forces against defenceless civilians” had led to “catastrophic crisis and destruction”.

Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said the world “cannot keep turning a blind eye” to the “unprecedented human disaster” in Gaza.

Qatari International Cooperation Minister Lolwah Al-Khater said Gaza was witnessing a “genocidal war”, while the situation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was also deteriorating.

“Sponsoring this Israeli exceptionalism above international law by some global powers should stop,” she told the council.

Gene-edited mosquitos get released, now dengue fever rockets by 400%

Dengue fever, carried by mosquitoes, is swamping the populations of Brazil and Peru, Argentina, Laos and causing major concerns in other parts of the world.

It has spiked fourfold in Brazil just this year following the release of millions of gene-edited mosquitos by the World Mosquito Program run by the United Nations.

Vaccines are being produced and distributed on a timetable pushed by the urgency of the events, and multiple deaths already are being reported.

The Guardian reported there have been nearly a million cases in Brazil, and almost the same number in Peru.

Government officials say there already have been dozens of deaths.

“Brazil has bought 5.2m doses of the dengue vaccine Qdenga, developed by Japanese drugmaker Takeda, with another 1.32m doses provided at no cost to the government,” the report said, explaining three Brazilian states are in a state of emergency.

The ailment is spread by mosquitoes, which were described in an International Business Times report as the “most dangerous animal in the world.”

It was the United Nations that previously cited a World Health Organization warning that more than half of the world was at risk from mosquito-transmitted dengue fever.

The U.N.’s response was to work with technology to create millions of “sterilized pests” and then release them, a campaign which reached Brazil only months ago.

“Countries have already started like Italy, Greece and Mauritius, and others are on the point of doing it, for example the United States, France and Brazil,” said Jeremy Bouyer, medical entomologist at the Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, a joint International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) / Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) initiative.

Christian high school sues after it’s banned from all athletic tournaments for forfeiting game over transgender player

A Vermont high school is suing state officials after they were banned from all athletic and academic events for refusing to allow their girls basketball team to compete against a transgender player, Fox News reported.

Mid Vermont Christian School says they were barred from all athletic play after forfeiting against a Long Trail girls high school basketball team that had a biological male on their team on Feb. 21.

The Christian PK-12 school says they were “irreparably harmed by being denied participation” and “losing out on playing competitive sports as well as academic competitions,” their lawsuit, filed by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), reads.

The ADF is a Christian legal advocacy group that works to defend and preserve freedom of speech to expand Christian practices within public schools and in government, outlaw abortion, and curtail LGBTQ rights — their website states.

Immediate action was taken by the Vermont Principal’s Association (VPA) following Mid Vermont’s decision to cancel their game against Long Trail, stating the school violated it’s policies on “commitment to racial, gender-fair, and disability awareness” and on “gender identity.”

The VPA initially put out a statement back in February saying “VPA policies prohibit discrimination and/or harassment of students on school property or at school functions by students or employees.”

Mid Vermont refuted such claims in their lawsuit and made clear they were only acting in accordance to the religious beliefs their school abides by.

Mid Vermont says that VPA was “denying the Christian school and its students from participating in the state’s tuition program and sports league because of their religious beliefs.”

The small Christian school, located in Quechee, lists itself on its official school website as “intentionally non-denominational,” emphasizing their education is strictly engrained with “the mind of Christ.”

“The State is entitled to its own views, but it is not entitled, nor is it constitutional, to force private, religious schools across the state to follow that orthodoxy as a condition to participating in Vermont’s tuitioning program and the State’s athletic association,” the lawsuit reads.

Dutch law allowing euthanasia for children takes effect

On February 1, a Dutch law allowing the euthanasia of terminally ill children went into effect. The law legalizes the killing of children ages one through 12 who are deemed to be “suffering hopelessly and unbearably.”

Previously, the country allowed euthanasia of children older than 12, along with infants under age one who could be killed if their parents and doctors agreed and they faced an illness labeled as terminal or faced serious suffering. In 2023, lawmakers passed a controversial expansion of the eligibility guidelines to include children of all ages.

According to reports, the new guidelines state that “the child’s opinion should be sought as far as possible in a way appropriate to the child’s understanding and age,” though parents can decide to have their child euthanized in conjunction with a doctor even if the child is unwilling or unable to consent.

Though the Ministry of Health expects that the new guidelines will affect only a “small group” of cases — about five to ten children a year — opponents are warning that there is nothing to keep this broadened rule from spiraling out of control.

In an op-ed, Elise van Hoek-Burgerhart and Yvonne Gueze-van Horssen, both from the group NPV-Care for Life, warn that the “distressing” regulation has many flaws, including the fact that children are unable to consent to their own deaths. “While the ‘voluntary and well-considered request’ is an important building block of Dutch euthanasia policy, this request is absent for children. Children are impressionable and are (often) not mentally competent,” they wrote.

Physician-assisted death in the Netherlands has continued to climb since it was first legalized. The period from 2021 to 2022 saw a 14% increase in euthanasia deaths, with a record number of 8,720 people dying via assisted death. Of those, 115 people were killed simply due to psychiatric illness — not because of any terminal diagnosis. In July 2023, it was revealed that numerous autistic people and people with intellectual disabilities had been euthanized solely because they felt they couldn’t lead “normal” lives.

Christian leaders abandon faith in Christ, push “mental health” and trusting medical doctors as solutions for life’s problems

Corporate Christianity, meaning your average 501(c)3 “nonprofit” organization calling itself a church, is riddled with corruption and deception, including with regard to medicine, healing and honoring God with one’s body.

Joined at the hip with the government, Christianity as it predominantly exists today is Big Pharma’s best kept secret. Modern churches, so-called, are infested with corrupt psychiatrists, doctors and other medical professionals who instead of directing congregants to Jesus Christ, push mainstream “mental health” dogmas and tell people to trust modern medicine, vaccines and all, to treat life’s woes.

One of the most predominant Christian organizations herding the sheep into the pharmaceutical and mental health slaughterhouse is Focus on the Family, founded by psychiatrist Dr. James Dobson. Broadcast on more than 5,000 stations in more than 150 languages, Focus on the Family programming reaches an estimated 200 million people globally.

This past week, Focus on the Family published a two-part broadcast on “mental health” that instead of discussing anything from the Bible focused on mental health as the cure for depression. The broadcast featured Dr. Gregory Jantz, a leading authority on mental and behavioral health, who told “success” stories about patients who have found hope and healing for mind, soul and body not by trusting and relying on Jesus Christ and His Word but by taking prescribed pharmaceutical medications.

It turns out that the medications Jantz pushed are not only dangerous but they also do not work as claimed. They also constitute the pharmakeia concept that the Holy Scriptures tells followers of Christ to flee from in order to save their souls from the spiritual and physical destruction they inflict.