rigorousintuition.ca

FourthBase » Wed Mar 19, 2014 3:09 pm wrote: The fuck is up with World Vision's shitty mall demos?

Wombaticus Rex wrote:My overall impression of capitalism is that comprises a veneer of respectable commerce and innovation which is almost precisely a single inch deep: the rest is drugs, guns and bad sex, all the way down.

Always bears repeating: http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2012/08/a-wor ... rug-money/

"Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities... There were signs that some banks were rescued that way." -- Antonio Maria Costa

Aid packages labeled 'World Vision' for the victims of typhoon 'Haiyan' in the Philippines are loaded into a Lufthansa aircraft at Frankfurt International Airport in Germany.
Fredrik Von Erichsen /DPA /LANDOV

Two Days Later, World Vision Reverses Policy That Allowed Hiring Of Gays

by Eyder Peralta
March 26, 2014 7:29 PM

World Vision U.S. changed course on Wednesday, saying it would return to its policy of not hiring Christians in gay marriages.

The Washington-state-based charity caused an uproar among its supporters when it announced on Monday that based on the changes many churches were making, it would allow the hiring of avowed Christians who had been legally married to someone of the same sex.

World Vision U.S. president Richard Stearns explained the organization was not endorsing gay marriage. Instead, gay marriage would join a series of issues — like divorce, remarriage, baptism, female priests — that many Christian churches disagree on.

"Changing the employee conduct policy to allow someone in a same-sex marriage who is a professed believer in Jesus Christ to work for us makes our policy more consistent with our practice on other divisive issues," he told Christianity Today. "It also allows us to treat all of our employees the same way: abstinence outside of marriage, and fidelity within marriage."

The AP reports:

"The change drew widespread condemnation, with many donors posting on the agency's Facebook page that they would no longer fund the sponsor-a-child programs that are central to World Vision's fundraising and education.

"Darrell Bock, a New Testament scholar at , wrote on his blog that the new hiring policy was an 'act was a betrayal of the nature of the Christian community' and 'a denial of how Jesus defined marriage as between a man and a woman when he was asked about divorce.'"

Today, World Vision sent a message to its supporters asking "forgiveness."

"The board acknowledged they made a mistake and chose to revert to our longstanding conduct policy requiring sexual abstinence for all single employees and faithfulness within the Biblical covenant of marriage between a man and a woman," . They added that the change in policy was "not consistent with ... our commitment to the sanctity of marriage."

World Vision has a yearly operating budget of about $1 billion.

Beyond Homophobia: The Even Bigger Reason To Avoid World Vision

Sunday, 06 April 2014 10:10

By Valerie Tarico, Away Point | Op-Ed

In a media frenzy akin to the Komen scandal, Evangelical aid organization World Vision (annual budget one billion plus) announced recently that it would allow legally married and monogamous queer Christians on its payroll. Conservative co-religionists, including Franklin Graham of Billy Graham Ministries, and Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention took to the media denouncing the decision as a violation of biblical Christianity and all that is good. Thousands of Evangelicals withdrew their support from desperately poor children around the world, over $800,000 in all.

To compensate, moderate people of faith solicited donations. But then World Vision caved and reinstated its old employee conduct rules which require a commitment of abstinence for all but married straights. Questions abound: Will Evangelicals who withdrew their support return? Will the new pledges stick? (World Vision U.S. has offered to refund them, and World Vision Canada has issued assurances that it abides by Canada’s anti-discrimination laws.) How will the controversy affect World Vision coffers, grantees, and partner relationships in the long run?

One irreversible effect of the controversy is that World Vision is now out to the general public as a “para-church” entity, bound to biblical literalism and a derivative set of theological orthodoxies. When disaster strikes, World Vision solicitations rarely call attention to the Evangelical beliefs that are baked into its organizational structure. Consequently, some would be donors think they are giving to either a secular organization like Save the Children or one with distant Christian roots like the Red Cross.

The reality is that World Vision is committed to their Evangelical worldview. In 2011, World Vision fought all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States and won the right to fire warehouse workers and support staff who didn’t believe in the trinity or the unique deity of Jesus. In seeking exemption from anti-discrimination laws, attorneys for World Vision argued that the organization couldn’t fulfill its Christian mission if such internal theological differences were allowed.

This argument may seem patently specious. After all, in order to secure hundreds of millions annually in taxpayer funding World Vision has said repeatedly that the organization does not proselytize, and a liberal Christian or even a godforsaking atheist can pack medical supplies into a box as well as an Evangelical can.

But does World Vision really provide aid without a side-serving of evangelism? Their website and contents of a recent World Vision Christmas catalog would suggest otherwise. The catalog included Bibles in a child’s own language as one of the items that donors can purchase for aid recipients, along with soccer balls and musical instruments: “Share the meaning and message of Christmas,” the print exhorted. “It will mean more than you can imagine for a child who is eager to have a Bible in his or her own language. What a wonderful way to show a boy or girl God’s love.” In 2012 alone, World Vision claims to have made available 1,296,038 Bibles and New Testaments.

Keep in mind that the targets of such giving include kids who may own no other books. Soccer balls, school supplies, food and Bibles add up to a pretty persuasive argument for considering Christianity. As their website puts it, “In all ways appropriate for a local context, we seek to witness to Christ — through our deeds of love and mercy, the character and conduct of our staff, and through our words of testimony.”

One place World Vision partners with local churches and works on “child witness” is Uganda, where the influence of American Evangelicals has led to legislation that prescribes a life sentence for homosexual behavior. The bottom line is that no-one should be supporting World Vision who doesn’t hold Evangelical beliefs and desire to win souls for Jesus.

operator kos » Wed Mar 19, 2014 3:26 pm wrote:I know that interesting links can be found between World Vision and events as diverse as the Phoenix Program, the training of the Contras, the Jonestown massacre, the assassination of John Lennon, and the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. But is there any single "smoking gun" that proves that they are a front for black ops?

When it began to operate in Vietnam in the mid-60's, World Vision decided to put its large headquarters across the street in front of the U .S . Embassy in Saigon . Writing in Christian Century Magazine, Michael Lee, U .S . journalist states that World Vision was openly supportive of U .S, intervention in South East Asia and enjoyed the support of the U .S . Army as evidenced by its use of American military trucks and helicopters during its field programmes . "The CIA", Lee added, "used information obtained by the group's field workers as a part of its normal intelligence function" . (2) In fact, this was not the first time that such a strong accusation was made against World Vision . On 1 August 1975, the National Catholic Reporter (Kansas City), basing itself on a New Asia, News dispatch published in the Far East Economic Review reported that World Vision was getting "million dollar annual subsidies from the US government for highly valued political and military intelligence ."

Just at a time when it might have been thought that world public opinion has forgotten about its links with the USAID, CIA and US Army during the cruel Vietnam War, World Vision found itself involved in yet another scandal, this time in Central America, where it has been operating since 1976. In 1980, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, after consultation with the Honduran authorities appointed the Evangelical Committee for Develpment and National Emergency (CEDEN - its acronym in Spanish) to coordinate the distribution of U .N. aid to refugees in Honduras, a country with a predominantly Catholic population. CEDEN was at the time the main indigenous Protestant umbrella body involved in humanitarian and relief aid and representing the various denominations in Honduras .

The following year in 1981, most aid agencies, CEDEN included, decided to stop registering refugees with the Honduran regime because of suspicions that their names were being reported to the Salvadoran death squads directed by Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, a leading light in the WACL, and to the Honduran security and intelligence services. In reprisal to the decision taken by the aid agencies, the Honduran regime began creating all sorts of difficulties and putting; obstacles to impede their humanitarian work, including direct interference in the running of the refugee camps, the arrest and subsequent expulsion from Honduras of several members of CEDEN and Caritas, the international Catholic aid body respectively on the basis of false and misleading reports circulated secretly and widely by World Vision staff that they are Marxists, incompetent in their work, and sympathise with the Farabundi Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN), the leading guerrilla movement in El Salvador.

As it happened during the Vietnam War, World Vision ignored the decision taken by the other aid agencies and continued to register the names of refugees with the Honduran regime. This led to a situation wherein the other aid agencies were on the one hand criticizing the Honduran regime for [human rights violations] while World Vision on the other continued to strengthen its already close links with the mainly US-trained Honduran intelligence service and security police.

For example by 1982, it emerged that World Vision had a curious team as its staff in Honduras . The man in charge of the 14 refugee aid workers under World Vision employment, the Reverend Mario Fumero, was both a Pentecostal preacher who once directed World Vision's 'love brigades' crusades and a fiery anti-Communist Cuban traitor assisted by about six camp co-ordinators. Four of these were 'former' soldiers in either the Honduran or Salvadoran Army. According to the testimony of Father Fausto Milla, a Honduran priest who once worked with refugees but was later forced to go into exile in Mexico by death threats, two of these, while parading under the cover of reservists in the Honduran Army were each actually members of the Division of National Investigations (DNI), the Honduran security police and the Public Security Forces (FUSEP), the national police.

As if this were not enough, Fumero is known to have been a close friend of Colonel Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, chief of FUSEP from 1980 until 1982 when he was made a general and promoted to chief of staff in the Honduran Army. A graduate of an Argentine military college where one of his instructors was Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, now serving a life sentence for ordering the murder of many hundreds of Argentine patriots by secret death squads, Gen. Alvarez has the dubious credit of being the creator of the Honduran death squads and has been described by other observers of the Central American situation as "the CIA's errand boy". In fact, his meteoric rise to power is directly related to the assistance given by some leading figures of the WACL, including Col. Bo Hi Pak, the right hand man of the self-styled Rev. Sun Myung Moon and president of CAUSA international, the political arm of the Unification Church (Moonies), who gave him a 50,000 US dollars cheque at the launch of his so-called Association of Progress for Honduras (APROH) on 14 January 1983.

It was through Col. Alvarez as chief of FUSEP that Rev. Fumero managed to get an appointment with the then Honduran Minister of Defence and after discussions, was allowed free and safe passage to the common border areas between Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua for World Vision staff. This was at a time when such access was being denied to the other aid agencies.

Things came to a head in May 1981 when one evening two Salvadoran refugees, fleeing the genocidal regime in their country, arrived in Limones No. 2 camp, one of the refugee camps run by World Vision along the Honduran border with El Salvador. Almost immediately, the camp co-ordinator reported their names to the local authorities. The next day, Honduran soldiers came in a jeep and took away the two refugees for interrogation. Some two days later, they were found dead with torture marks on their bodies by the Lempa river which forms the border line between Honduras and El Salvador.

About Us

Our Leadership

Hugh Evans, Co-Founder and CEOHugh is an Australian humanitarian and an internationally renowned development advocate.His passion for poverty eradication was sparked at the age of 14 while on a World Vision trip to the Philippines. The abject poverty Hugh was exposed to led him to begin his work challenging the status quo of extreme poverty. Following a trip to South Africa in 2002 as World Vision's inaugural Youth Ambassador, Hugh co-founded the Oaktree Foundation; Australia's first youth-run aid organization. Oaktree’s success under Hugh’s guidance as Director led to Hugh being named Young Australian of the Year (2004) and Junior Chamber International Person of the World (2005).