By Matt Agorist

An Amish community in Warren County, Pennsylvania has just lost a major battle against the state which is now requiring them to violate their religious beliefs and use electricity. Despite the Yoder family never causing harm to anyone by not using electricity, the government is forcing them to connect to the grid anyway.

At the heart of the Amish religion is the rejection of individualism. The Amish anti-individualist orientation is the motive for rejecting labor-saving technologies that might make one less dependent on their community. Modern innovations like electricity might spark a competition for status goods which is in direct conflict with the Amish way of life. Therefore, they reject it.

While the Amish lifestyle may seem odd to others, the fact that it causes no harm should mean that no one should be able to force them to change. Sadly, that is not the case.

The Yoder family lives entirely off-grid. This off-grid religious lifestyle includes the use of a self-composting toilet—an “old-fashioned privy”—that did not require electricity or running water.

Had the Yoder family been dumping their raw sewage into the public watershed or otherwise polluting the community in any way, requiring them to hook up to the grid would be more sensible. However, that is not the case.

The Yoder family is being required to violate their religious beliefs and go against their long-standing traditions—which have harmed no one—for the mere fact that they are in violation of a city code that requires all property owners to be tied into the grid.

For years, the Yoders have successfully fought off the sewer connection requirement. However, they will now be forced to hook up an electric grinder pump. The court ruled that the electric pump is the “least intrusive means” of connecting to the sewer system.

Judge Patricia A. McCullough voiced the dissent, arguing the Yoder’s are sincere in their religion-based shunning of electricity. “I believe (the Yoders) are being denied their rights to religious freedom,”she wrote.

The American Civil Liberties Union also weighed in on the ruling, noting their concern for the Yoder’s religious freedom as well as the undue burden it now places on them to install the pump.

“They didn’t consider the other ways that the government could have achieved its ends,” Sara Rose, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU said.

Rose said that although this case didn’t set a precedent, it will undoubtedly be cited in future cases which may apply to Pennsylvania’s Religious Freedom Protection Act.

View image on Twitter

Kat Murti@KatMurti

A Pennsylvania state court has ordered an Old Order Amish family to use electricity and connect to a public sewer system — even though it violates their religious beliefs. https://buff.ly/2Ddw3FM

3:05 PM - Jan 10, 2018

• 1919 Replies
• 5353 Retweets
• 4040 likes

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Unfortunately, in the so-called ‘Land of the Free’, the government can and will force you to conform or face consequences. This conformity often hits the innocent Amish communities the hardest.

As TFTP reported last year, Samuel Girod, an Amish farmer who made natural health products, was charged with conspiracy for the way he labeled his salve.The

In June, Girod was sentenced to six years in prison for obstructing a federal agency and for making and selling herbal health products that were not adequately labeled as required by federal law.

In another case, which actually had a happy ending, 12-year-old Sarah Hershberger, an Amish child from Ohio, was persecuted and faced government kidnapping because she and her parents refused chemotherapy to treat her cancer.

In June of 2013, Sarah was receiving chemotherapy at the hospital and her parents were convinced that it was making her condition worse.

“We were pretty sure we were going to lose her if we kept doing the chemo,” Anna Hershberger, Sarah’s mother said.

The parents began to object the treatment and faced strong resistance from the hospital staff, who even took them to court and attempted to gain guardianship over Sarah. The doctors had testified that without receiving chemotherapy immediately, Sarah would die within six months.

The family stood firm in their denial of the treatment, which prompted an intense legal battle. At one point during the ordeal, the family was forced to flee the country so she was not kidnapped by the hospital. Eventually, the family won in court, and it was decided that they had a legal and constitutional right to treat her cancer as they saw fit.

Now, years later, Sarah is not only still alive, but she is actually entirely healthy, and cancer-free.


(activistpost.com)

By Rachel Blevins

While the same media outlets that have been openly critical of President Trump became the topics of his “Fake News Awards,” the entire event was filled with hypocrisy, and served as a depiction of the pot calling the kettle black—both entities have spent a significant amount of time lying to and misleading the public.

WikiLeaks, an organization that the mainstream media have attempted to claim is a pro-Trump, pro-Russia propaganda firm, took to Twitter to point out the hypocrisy surrounding the awards:

“While WikiLeaks, as a primary source organization with a perfect verification record welcomes debate over ‘fake news’ it should be noted that along with the U.S. establishment press, the Trump administration is a frequent source of false information,” the organization claimed.

The statement is notable because it serves as a reminder of the relationship between WikiLeaks and the Trump administration. When Trump was running for office, and WikiLeaks was releasing emails from members of the Democratic National Committee, Trump was more than happy to credit the organization when citing the damning information that it released about his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

However, now that Trump is in office, he has made no attempt to pardon WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, who is currently living at the London embassy in Ecuador after he was granted political asylum.

Trump has also openly criticized Chelsea Manning, the Army whistleblower who helped to put WikiLeaks on the map by releasing 700,000 files and documents that revealed atrocities committed by the U.S. military in Iraq.

Trump’s hypocrisy when it comes to WikiLeaks is notable because it serves as a reminder of his hypocrisy when it comes to foreign policy. He uses stories of innocent children killed by airstrikes and the dangers of blowback when it suits him but ignores those same factors when they challenge his administration’s policies.

When Trump was viewed as the “outsider” candidate in the 2016 election, and he needed support from an anti-establishment fan base, he was fully in support of holding Saudi Arabia accountable for the role it played in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. However, once Trump was in office, his tune quickly changed, and Saudi Arabia became the first stop on his first foreign trip as president—paving the way for the completion of the largest single arms deal in U.S. history.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Great to be in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Looking forward to the afternoon and evening ahead. #POTUSAbroad

4:44 AM - May 20, 2017

• 20,94620,946 Replies
• 96,04296,042 Retweets
• 98,82998,829 likes

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Trump’s cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia has resulted in pure genocide in the poorest country in the Middle East. While the massacre was initially started by the Obama Administration, the Trump Administration’s foreign policy has only made conditions worse in Yemen, where the latest records show that since 2015, 5,000 children have been killed or injured, 3 million were born into war, and 1.8 million children are acutely malnourished.

Trump’s hypocrisy on foreign policy extends to Syria, where he began criticizing Obama’s attempts to invade the country in 2013. He also used his time on the campaign trail to accuse the Obama Administration of helping to create ISIS in its attempts to overthrow Assad.

However, despite Trump’s rhetoric, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson boasted a “new” strategy in Syria centered around long-term U.S. military presence that would eventually lead to overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad, during a speech at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

Tillerson vowed that the U.S. will stay until “ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria suffer an enduring defeat; do not present a threat to the homeland; and do not resurface in a new form; and that Syria never again serves as a platform or safe haven for terrorists to organize, recruit, finance, train and carry out attacks on American citizens at home or abroad or against our allies.”

Tillerson also said the U.S. still seeks to overthrow Assad “through an incremental process of constitutional reform and UN-supervised elections.”

“A stable, unified and independent Syria ultimately requires post-Assad leadership in order to be successful,” Tillerson said. “The departure of Assad through the UN-led Geneva process will create the conditions for a durable peace within Syria and security along the border for Syria’s neighbors.”

Department of State

✔@StateDept

Secretary Tillerson: #Syria remains a source of severe strategic threats, and a major challenge for our diplomacy. But the United States will continue to remain engaged as a means to protect our own national security interest. https://go.usa.gov/xnvG2

9:23 PM - Jan 17, 2018

• 6060 Replies
• 157157 Retweets
• 296296 likes

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Ultimately, Trump is correct in stating that the mainstream media has published stories about him that were false or misleading. But Trump is guilty of the exact same offenses that he accusing CNN and MSNBC of committing.

While one might wonder why the mainstream media would focus more on Russiagate than on the dramatic increase in civilian casualties, or the escalation of military spending under the Trump Administration, they should also realize that in order to provide accurate and honest coverage of Trump, the media would have to admit that he is only continuing the exact same thing his predecessors have been doing—and the media has been covering up—for years.

Rachel Blevins is a Texas-based journalist who aspires to break the left/right paradigm in media and politics by pursuing truth and questioning existing narratives. Follow Rachel on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This article first appeared at The Free Thought Project.

(activistpost.com)