I just heard on the news that Eric Rudolph was a member of a cult called the Christian Identity Movement. They are a racist religious movement that promotes white supremecy, anti-semiticism, anti-immigrant and anti-government.
Bomb Suspect linked to Religious cult
by DevonMcBride 10 Replies latest jw friends
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DevonMcBride
http://www.msnbc.com/news/920361.asp?0cv=CA01
RUDOLPH, 36, WAS captured after a young rookie cop in western North Carolina spotted a man digging in trash behind a grocery story in the small town of Murphy about 3:30 a.m., said FBI Special Agent Chris Swecker at an afternoon press conference. After first giving police a false name, he revealed his true identity, which was confirmed through fingerprints, investigators said.
Rudolph had been on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list and had eluded a massive manhunt for five years, much of it in the western North Carolina mountains near where he was arrested Saturday. The FBI had offered a $1 million reward for his capture.
NOT SEEN SINCE 1998
The Army veteran and experienced outdoorsman hadn’t been seen since July 1998 after he took supplies from a health store owner in North Carolina.
Authorities believed he had fled into the mountains, and as more time passed with no reported sightings of him, some believed he must be dead.
“We always thought he was up here in the mountains,” Swecker said. “We had no credible sightings elsewhere in the country.”
Clad in work clothes, a camouflage jacket and jogging shoes at the time of his arrest, Rudolph was in good health when he was taken into custody, police said. “He’s lost quite a bit of weight,” Cherokee Count Sheriff Keith Lovin said.Agents spent years searching the hills and caves around Murphy for any trace of Rudolph. Early in the search, they ran across some camping sites believed to be his and found cartons of oatmeal and raisins, jars of peanuts and vitamins, and cans of tuna they said were the same brands Rudolph ate.
The 1996 bombing at the crowded Olympic park during the summer Olympics in Atlanta followed closely on the heels of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing and stunned the world.The bomb was left hidden in a knapsack in the crowded Centennial Olympic Park on July 27, 1996. When it exploded, it killed one woman and injured 111 other people.
Two years later, Rudolph was charged with that attack and in three others — at a gay nightclub in Atlanta and at an office building north of Atlanta in 1997, and at an abortion clinic in Birmingham in 1998. One police officer was killed.
In all, the bombings killed two people and wounded more than 100 people, according to the FBI.
Rudolph is expected to appear in federal court in Asheville, N.C., on Monday, where it will be determined if he is to be taken first to Atlanta or Birmingham to face charges.
Rudolph, a Florida native who moved to western North Carolina in 1981, was believed to adhere to Christian Identity, a white supremacist religion that is anti-gay, anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner. Some of the four bombs he is charged with planting included messages from the shadowy “Army of God.” The search for Rudolph began a day after the Birmingham blast. He was initially sought as a witness: A gray 1989 Nissan pickup truck registered in his name was seen near the clinic following the explosion.He was tied to the bombings when authorities who searched a storage locker he had rented in Murphy found nails like those used in the clinic attacks.
At its height, the search for Rudolph in the mountainous region in western North Carolina, just over the Tennessee border, included more than 200 federal agents. In 2000, it was scaled back to less than a handful of agents working out of a National Guard Armory just outside Murphy.
Pockets of western North Carolina have had a reputation as a haven for right-wing extremists. Some there mocked the government’s inability to find Rudolph with bloodhounds, infrared-equipped helicopters and space-age motion detectors — and some said they would hide him if asked.
The FBI had said it believed Rudolph was somewhere in the Nantahala National Forest, living on his own, breaking into vacant vacation cabins, stealing from local gardens. Murphy Police Chief Mark Thigpen would not comment Saturday on whether or not Rudolph had filled police in on his specific hideouts.Early Saturday, Murphy Police Officer Jeff Postell spotted a man behind the Save-A-Lot grocery who was rooting through trash and looked suspicious, authorities said.
Postell, 21, who has been on the Murphy force about a year, was alone when he approached the man with his gun drawn because Rudolph was holding a flashlight that Postell thought might be a weapon, Thigpen said. Thigpen said Rudolph offered “no resistance whatsoever.” No weapons were found on his person of in the backpack he was carrying.
Police said Rudolph first gave them a false name. When that didn’t check out and they asked him again for his name he admitted he was Rudolph, Lovin said. Lovin said Rudolph appeared to be “somewhat relieved and he has been cooperative at this point.”
Jeff Lyons, whose wife, Emily, was critically injured in the women’s clinic attack in Birmingham, said they had never given up hope that Rudolph would be caught. Saturday morning, a friend called after hearing the news.
‘WORTH BEING WOKEN UP FOR’
“I turned to Emily, and I said, ‘What news would be worth being woken up for?”’ he said. “This is indeed one of the best days we’ve had in quite some time.”
Robert Stadler, whose wife worked at an attorney’s office in the Atlanta building that was bombed in 1997, had been inside the building with the couple’s baby twins when the bomb exploded. They had made it outside when a second bomb exploded that injured several police officers.
“We had moved on from what happened in 1997,” Stadler said Saturday, “but always there was a feeling that Eric Rudolph was somewhere.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report -
teenyuck
I think he must have been listening to Dr. Laura....
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Kenneson
I did a search on the net on the Army of God. There homepage shows graphic pictures of babies being aborted. Not for the squeamish. They actually believe they are at war against those killing God's children and therefore justified to bomb clinics and even kill abortionists. They feel they are called to defend those babies who are unable to defend themselves.
I fail to realize how they are different from those they are trying to stop. How is it right to kill in order to prove that it's wrong to kill?
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Hamas
Hopefully, this story might make people think that not all terrorists are muslims, as some in the west think.
Yet, no doubt as he goes down the religion that engulfed him will be forgotten about. If he were Muslim, his religion would create a legacy over him for years to come .
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Double Edge
Hopefully, this story might make people think that not all terrorists are muslims, as some in the west think.
Terrorists can be anyone with an extreme agenda. Although, just in shear quantity alone, radical muslims seem to go to the top of my list. But then again it's been that way since the 70's with the killing of all those Olympians, the plane hijackings of the 70's and 80's, taking 64 embassy employees hostage for 444 days in Iran, the theatre hostages in Russia last year, bombings in Africa, Europe, Saudi Arabia....yeah, I think I would put them at the top of my list, but of course, not alone on the list.
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Kenneson
Hamas,
I was trying to respond to you and the link was supposed to go here, not in the URL. At any rate, my computer sometimes does that and I don't always catch it right away. At any rate, I wanted to say that many of us are aware that we have in the U.S. our own home-grown terrorists. The Southern Poverty Law Center keeps a close tab on all these hate groups and para-military groups. Go to:
http://www.splcenter.org/intelligenceproject/ip-index.html
Click on to the hate groups and patriot groups. The Christian Identity is somewhere in there, too. It's only one of hundreds of terrorist groups existing in the U.S.
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Hamas
Thanks.
I didn't mean to say that ALL Americans think the same way.
Thanks for the link.
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sf
http://www.godandscience.org/cults/falseadmission.html
Jehovah's Witnesses Admit to Promulgating False Prophecies Under Oath in a Court of Law
Introduction
Jehovah's Witnesses claim to be the prophet of God at this time. 1 However, in November 1954, the Douglas Walsh trial was held in the Scottish Court of Sessions, in which the Watchtower Society tried to establish before the British court that certain of its members were ordained ministers. High ranking leaders of the Society testified, including vice-president Fred Franz and legal counsel for the Society, Haydon C. Covington. Covington's testimony before the attorney for the Ministry of Labour and National Service included the following admissions:
Jehovah's Witnesses admit to promulgating false prophecies
Q. Is it not vital to speak the truth on religious matters?
A. It certainly is.
Q. Is there in your view room in a religion for a change of interpretation of Holy Writ from time to time?
A. There is every reason for a change in interpretation as we view it, of the Bible. Our view becomes more clear as we see the prophesy fulfilled by time.
Q. You have promulgated -- forgive the word -- false prophesy?
A. We have -- I do not think we have promulgated false prophesy, there have been statements that were erroneous, that is the way I put it, and mistaken.
Q. Is it a most vital consideration in the present situation of the world to know if the prophesy can be interpreted into terms of fact, when Christ's Second Coming was?
A. That is true, and we have always striven to see that we have the truth before we utter it. We go on the very best information we have but we cannot wait until we get perfect, because if we wait until we get perfect we would never be able to speak.
Q. Let us follow that up just a little. It was promulgated as a matter which must be believed by all members of Jehovah's Witnesses that the Lord's Second Coming took place in 1874?
A. I am not familiar with that. You are speaking on a matter that I know nothing of.
Q. You heard Mr. Franz's evidence?
A. I heard Mr. Franz testify, but I am not familiar with what he said on that, I mean the subject matter of what he was talking about, so I cannot answer any more than you can, having heard what he said.
Q. Leave me out of it?
A. That is the source of my information, what I have heard in court.
Q. You have studied the literature of your movement?
A. Yes, but not all of it. I have not studied the seven volumes of "Studies in the Scriptures," and I have not studied this matter that you are mentioning now of 1874. I am not at all familiar with that.
Q. Assume from me that it was promulgated as authoritative by the Society that Christ's Second Coming was in 1874?
A. Taking that assumption as a fact, it is a hypothetical statement.
Q. That was the publication of false prophesy?
A. That was the publication of a false prophesy, it was a false statement or an erroneous statement in fulfillment of a prophesy that was false or erroneous.
Q. And that had to be believed by the whole of Jehovah's Witnesses?
A. Yes, because you must understand we must have unity, we cannot have disunity with a lot of people going every way, an army is supposed to march in step.
Q. You do not believe in the worldly armies, do you?
A. We believe in the Christian Army of God.
Q. Do you believe in the worldly armies?
A. We have nothing to say about that, we do not preach against them, we merely say that the worldly armies, like the nations of the world today, are a part of Satan's Organization, and we do not take part in them, but we do not say the nations cannot have their armies, we do not preach against warfare, we are merely claiming our exemption from it, that is all.
Q. Back to the point now. A false prophesy was promulgated?
A. I agree that.
Q. It had to be accepted by Jehovah's Witnesses?
A. That is correct.
Q. If a member of Jehovah's Witnesses took the view himself that that prophesy was wrong and said so he would be disfellowshipped?
A. Yes, if he said so and kept persisting in creating trouble, because if the whole organisation believes one thing, even though it be erroneous and somebody else starts on his own trying to put his ideas across then there is disunity and trouble, there cannot be harmony, there cannot be marching. When a change comes it should come from the proper source, the head of the organisation, the governing body, not from the bottom upwards, because everybody would have ideas, and the organisation would disintegrate and go in a thousand different directions. Our purpose is to have unity.
Q. Unity at all costs?
A. Unity at all costs, because we believe and are sure that Jehovah God is using our organisation, the governing body of our organisation to direct it, even though mistakes are made from time to time.
Q. And unity based upon an enforced acceptance of false prophecy?
A. That is conceded to be true.
Q. And the person who expressed his view, as you say, that it was wrong, and was disfellowshipped, would be in breach of the Covenant, if he was baptized?
A. That is correct.
Q. And as you said yesterday expressly, would be worthy of death?
A. I think - - -
Q. Would you say yes or no?
A. I will answer yes, unhesitatingly.
Q. Do you call that religion?
A. It certainly is.
Q. Do you call it Christianity?
A. I certainly do.