America's uneasy Gulf allies adding to arsenals

By Brian Murphy, AP, Jul 30, 2012

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)—While Iran’s military loudly trumpets every new project or purported advance in hopes of rattling the U.S. and its Gulf Arab allies, the U.S. is quietly answering with an array of proposed arms sales across the region as part of a wider effort to counter Tehran.

In the past two months, the Defense Department has notified Congress of possible deals totaling more than $11.3 billion to Gulf states such as Qatar and Kuwait, which are seen as some of America’s critical front-line partners in containing Iran and protecting oil shipping lanes.

The proposed sales—including Patriot missile batteries and Apache attack helicopters—are still modest compared with massive Gulf purchases such as Saudi Arabia’s $60 billion package last year. That deal included more than 80 new F-15SA fighter jets, missiles, radar warning systems and other equipment.

The arms sale need congressional approval, but usually few objections are raised for key allies such as Gulf nations.

Among the proposed U.S. sales is a $4.2 billion package to Kuwait for 60 Patriot missiles and related systems to “strengthen its homeland defense and deter regional threats,” the Defense Department said in a statement. Kuwait could also buy, pending congressional approval, a $49 million arsenal of 300 Hellfire II missiles, which can be launched from helicopters or drones.

For Qatar—which hosts one of the Pentagon’s command hubs—the Defense Department is seeking clearance for a $6.6 billion air support upgrade that includes 24 AH-64D Apache attack helicopters, 12 Blackhawk helicopters and 22 Seahawk helicopters, with options to buy six more.

Oman, which shares control of Hormuz with Iran, is seeking an $86 million purchase that includes 55 Sidewinder missiles as part of plans to upgrade its F-16 fighter fleet.

For decades, the Gulf had looked mostly to Washington for its weapons, but European arms deals also appear on the rise.

In Berlin, German government spokesman Georg Streiter said Monday there has been an “expression of interest” by Qatar in about 200 Leopard II tanks. A similar Leopard tank deal with Saudi Arabia was reported last year by German media.

In May, Saudi Arabia signed a $3 billion deal with Britain for air force training planes apparently linked to a 2007 agreement to buy 72 Eurofighter Typhoon fighters.

Although the Gulf Arab states have no direct ties to Israel, any military strike on Iran by the Jewish state could require some degree of coordination, with Washington likely to play an intermediary role. Gulf military forces also could be quickly drawn into a wider conflict or a confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for one-fifth of the world’s oil.

“Amid the standoff between Iran, Israel and the West, there’s another side that is often overlooked,” said Sami al-Faraj, director of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies. “It is the Gulf states. They are the ones caught in the middle.”

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Dr. Mercola Interviews Mark McAfee about Raw Milk

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Milk Wars: The latest battlefront in food freedom

by James Corbett
boilingfrogspost.com31 July, 2012

For centuries, the image of the family farmer has been as iconic a piece of Americana as baseball and apple pie. Rugged and independent, the farmer still represents in the minds of many those true ideals of American individualism that the country was based on, with Thomas Jefferson’s ideal of the “yeoman farmer” providing for him the ideal citizen for the fledgling American republic.

Even now, after the virtual extinction of the family farm model in the corporate agri-business paradigm, long after the American population shifted from predominately rural and agrarian to predominately urban and corporate, there is still the ideal of the farmer, dedicated to a life of hard, honest work, growing the food upon which we all rely.

What an indictment of modern day America, then, that it sits by while a federal agency appoints itself over the remaining few organic family farmers, presuming to come between these farmers and their customers, telling people what they can and cannot eat, and even raiding farms that dare to resist with guns drawn.

Although the recent Rawesome Foods raids have garnered national and even international attention for their senseless violence and the in-your-face nature of the armed FDA operation, these raids were by no means the first such raids conducted by the FDA in the name of keeping the world safe from raw milk.

In 2006, police officers and agricultural officials involved in a “sting operation” arrested Gary and Dawn Oaks of Double O Farms on suspicion of selling raw milk. Some of the shareholders in the Oaks’ cow-share program were physically restrained at the scene, kept from retrieving the milk from their own cows, and repeatedly told to shut up and stay out of the way while officers browbeat Gary, who was later sent to hospital.

In 2008, six Pennsylvania state troopers and a Pennsylvania DoA official trespassed onto the farm of Mark Nolt, a Wenger Mennonite dairyman, confiscating over $20,000 worth of his products and equipment and forcibly arresting Mr. Nolt for selling raw milk without a license.

In 2010, Bloomington raw milk consumer Rae Lynn Sandvig had her home raided by police and was threatened with prosecution by the Minnesota DoA for acting as a distribution point for raw milk from a local farmer.

Many other such incidents continue to take place across the United States, often in localities, like California, where the sale of raw milk is perfectly legal.

Ostensibly, these crackdowns are being done in the name of “safety.” Raw foods, after all, can be dangerous, and pasteurization is touted as one of the great triumphs of modern food safety processes. Recent research and data, however, are challenging long held beliefs about the benefits of pasteurization, and a vigorous debate is currently underway in the medical profession over the safety and benefits of raw, organic dairy products.

Whatever side of this argument any individual comes down on in the scientific debate, the policy and law that comes out of that debate has to be seen in the larger societal and historical context. If farmers have enjoyed the freedom to grow and process their foods as they see fit for centuries, and customers likewise have enjoyed the freedom to purchase those foods from those producers they personally trust, how and why did the FDA gain the authority to interfere in that process? By what jurisdiction does a federal regulator have the authority to legislate what foods people are allowed to put into their own bodies?

The legal argument for FDA jurisdiction in these cases is the interstate commerce clause, that part of Article I of the constitution which gives Congress authority over commerce that crosses state lines. In this case, any food product that crosses state boundaries can be said to come under federal jurisdiction, and with this foot in the door the FDA has argued that it is within their mandate to terrorize family farms, raid them at gunpoint, dump their milk and spoil their produce, and arrest the farmers.

Some on Capitol Hill have attempted to stop this legislative tyranny with counter-legislation that would remove this authority from the FDA altogether.

But reducing the scope of the interstate commerce clause is an indirect way at best of countering the tyranny inherent in this bureaucratic, legislative assault on food freedom. Many people will judge this debate, not on the merits of the scientific arguments, or on the principle of freedom of choice by which individuals are naturally invested with the right to choose what food they do or do not eat, but by the question of “food safety” that the FDA uses to frame their involvement in the debate. This “safety” is akin to that of the TSA’s “airport safety.” In the name of providing that mythical state of “safety” which will supposedly keep our skies free of terrorists and our plate clear of potential hazards, the federal government proposes an all-encompassing, all-pervasive, inescapable bureaucracy with the power to pat down old ladies in wheelchairs and young children alike, or to conduct guns-blazing raids on family farms and private food clubs where voluntary exchanges happen between customers and producers, or even to shut down children’s lemonade stands in state after state, because the proprietors don’t have the proper license to conduct business.

Even if we were to accept the premise that pasteurized milk was in each and every case empirically healthier for each and every individual, and that raw milk was invariably inferior or even potentially harmful, by what right does the federal government come between the people and their dinner plate? If the government is invested with the power of watching over everyone’s individual diet, then why not the mandated eating of broccoli? Why not the banning of ice cream? Why not the outlawing of sugar in favor of aspartame or nutrisweet or AminoSweet or whatever label its corporate manufacturer is assigning it this week in an attempt to dupe an unwitting public?

Once again, we see that the operative principle of freedom is the only guarantee from systemic harm. If the supposedly all-loving nanny government comes in with such mandates and those mandates prove to be wrong, or harmful, then every single man, woman and child in the country has to choose between eating the government-prescribed foods or being an outlaw in the pursuit of a healthy alternative. If the public is granted freedom, however, then no one will be forced into any behavior that they find unacceptable. Those who believe in the unerring efficacy of pasteurization can happily feed that to their family, just as those who seek organic dairy alternatives would be able to purchase that free from harassment.

Such a system does not guarantee that mythical ideal of total safety, but it does guarantee that no wrong decision is hard-wired into society, and that no one is imprisoned for eating the wrong foods. And in the end, who can argue with freedom of choice?

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As Syrian War Drags On, Jihadists Take Bigger Role

By Neil MacFarquhar and Hwaida Saad, NY Times, July 29, 2012

BEIRUT, Lebanon—As the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s government grinds on with no resolution in sight, Syrians involved in the armed struggle say it is becoming more radicalized: homegrown Muslim jihadists, as well as small groups of fighters from Al Qaeda, are taking a more prominent role and demanding a say in running the resistance.

The past few months have witnessed the emergence of larger, more organized and better armed Syrian militant organizations pushing an agenda based on jihad, the concept that they have a divine mandate to fight. Even less-zealous resistance groups are adopting a pronounced Islamic aura because it attracts more financing.

Idlib Province, the northern Syrian region where resistance fighters control the most territory, is the prime example. In one case there, after jihadists fighting under the black banner of the Prophet Muhammad staged significant attacks against Syrian government targets, the commander of one local rebel military council recently invited them to join. “They are everywhere in Idlib,” said a lean and sunburned commander with the Free Syrian Army council in Saraqib, a strategic town on the main highway southwest from Aleppo. “They are becoming stronger, so we didn’t want any hostility or tension in our area.”

Tension came anyway. The groups demanded to raise the prophet’s banner—solid black with “There is no god but God” written in flowing white Arabic calligraphy—during the weekly Friday demonstration. Saraqib prides itself in its newly democratic ways, electing a new town council roughly every two months, and residents put it to a vote—the answer was no. The jihadi fighters raised the flag anyway, until a formal compromise allowed for a 20-minute display.

In one sense, the changes on the ground have actually brought closer to reality the Syrian government’s early, and easily dismissible, claim that the opposition was being driven by foreign-financed jihadists.

A central reason cited by the Obama administration for limiting support to the resistance to things like communications equipment is that it did not want arms flowing to Islamic radicals. But the flip side is that Salafist groups, or Muslim puritans, now receive most foreign financing.

“A lot of the jihadi discourse has to do with funding,” noted Peter Harling, the Syria analyst with the International Crisis Group, adding that it was troubling all the same. “You have secular people and very moderate Islamists who join Salafi groups because they have the weapons and the money. There tends to be more Salafi guys in the way the groups portray themselves than in the groups on the ground.”

But jihad has become a distinctive rallying cry. The commander of the newly unified brigades of the Free Syrian Army fighting in Aleppo was shown in a YouTube video on Sunday exhorting men joining the rebellion there by telling them: “Those whose intentions are not for God, they had better stay home, whereas if your intention is for God, then you go for jihad and you gain an afterlife and heaven.”

What began as a largely peaceful, secular protest movement in March 2011 first took on a more religious tone late last summer as it shifted into an armed conflict waged by more conservative, more rural Sunni Muslims whose faith already formed an integral focus of their daily lives.

But greater attention has been focused on a Qaeda involvement in the uprising since mid-July, when fighters professing allegiance to the terrorist organization appeared during the opposition takeover of the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey.

An activist helping to organize the Syrian military councils said there were roughly 50,000 fighters in total, and far fewer than 1,000 were foreigners, who often have trouble gaining local support. “If there were 10,000, you would know, and less than 1,000 is nothing,” said the activist, Rami, declining for safety reasons to use more than one name.

Fighters, activists and analysts say that jihadi groups are emerging now for several reasons. They generally stand apart from the Free Syrian Army, the loose national coalition of local militias made up of army defectors and civilian volunteers. Significantly, most of the money flowing to the Syrian opposition is coming from religious donors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region whose generosity hinges on Salafi teaching.

Further, as the sectarian flavor of the uprising deepened, pitting the majority Sunni Muslims against the ruling minority, the Alawites, it attracted fighters lured by a larger Muslim cause. Alawites, the president’s sect, dominate Syria, but many orthodox Muslims view them as a heretical offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Understanding the military players in the Syrian opposition has become remarkably more difficult in recent months through the proliferation of brigades, battalions and fronts, many bearing religious names. Plus they change all the time, and some have all but disappeared.

But there is a marked trend in videos not displaying the revolutionary banner—Syria’s independence flag with a green, white and black stripe and three red stars. “The issue of the flag really is key,” Mr. Pierret said, “They are on their way to a more Salafi, jihadi agenda and a rejection of the national framework.”

The commander in Saraqib said that when he invited jihadists into his military council, they rejected several proposed names for the expanded group that included references to Syria. “They consider the entire world the Muslim homeland, so they refused any national, Syrian name,” he said.

Adel, a media activist from Idlib interviewed in Antakya, Turkey, in June, complained that “the Islamic current has broken into the heart of this revolution.” When a Muslim Brotherhood member joined his group in Idlib, he said, inside of a week the man demanded that the slogans that they shouted all included, “There is no god but God.”

“Now there are more religious chants than secular ones,” Adel groused.

Behind the surface tussling over symbols lies a fight for power and influence. Those attacking the government in the name of religion want more say, while those who preceded them want to limit their role. As in Iraq, the longer the fight, the more extremists will likely emerge.

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Romney comments at fundraiser outrage Palestinians

By Kasie Hunt, AP, Jul 30, 2012

JERUSALEM (AP)—Mitt Romney told Jewish donors Monday that their culture is part of what has allowed them to be more economically successful than the Palestinians, outraging Palestinian leaders who called his comments racist and out of touch.

“As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality,” the Republican presidential candidate told about 40 wealthy donors who breakfasted around a U-shaped table at the luxurious King David Hotel.

The reaction of Palestinian leaders to Romney’s comments was swift and pointed.

“It is a racist statement and this man doesn’t realize that the Palestinian economy cannot reach its potential because there is an Israeli occupation,” said Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

“It seems to me this man (Romney) lacks information, knowledge, vision and understanding of this region and its people,” Erekat added.

The economic disparity between the Israelis and the Palestinians is actually much greater than Romney stated. Israel had a per capita gross domestic product of about $31,000 in 2011, while the West Bank and Gaza had a per capita GDP of just over $1,500, according to the World Bank.

Romney, seated next to billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson at the head of the table, told donors at his fundraiser that he had read books and relied on his own business experience to understand why the difference is so great.

“And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things,” Romney said, citing an innovative business climate, the Jewish history of thriving in difficult circumstances and the “hand of providence.”

Romney, in comparing the Israeli and Palestinian economies, made no mention of the fact that Israel has controlled the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem since capturing them in the 1967 war. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but continues to control access, and has enforced a crippling border blockade since the Islamic militant Hamas seized the territory in 2007.

In the West Bank, Israel retains overall control, and Palestinians only have limited self-rule. Israel controls all border crossings in and out of the West Bank, and continues to restrict Palestinian trade and movement.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have said repeatedly that the Palestinian economy can only grow if Israel lifts those restrictions.

“It’s Israeli occupiers and Palestinians under occupation, and that’s why Palestinians cannot realize their potential,” Erekat said.

The breakfast with top donors—including Adelson, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and hedge fund manager Paul Singer—concluded Romney’s visit to Israel, the second leg of a three-nation overseas tour designed to bolster the his foreign policy credentials.

Standing on Israeli soil for the first time as the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, Romney on Sunday declared Jerusalem to be the capital of the Jewish state and said the United States has promised never to “look away from our passion and commitment to Israel.”

The status of Jerusalem is a critical issue in peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

A goal of Romney’s overseas trip is to demonstrate his confidence on the world stage, but his stop in Israel also was designed to appeal to evangelical voters at home and to cut into Obama’s support among Jewish voters and donors. A Gallup survey of Jewish voters released Friday showed Obama with a 68-25 edge over Romney.

Romney and other Republicans have said Obama is insufficiently supportive of Israel.

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A Day Job Waiting for a Kill Shot a World Away

By Elisabeth Bumiller, NY Times, July 29, 2012

HANCOCK FIELD AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, N.Y.—From his computer console here in the Syracuse suburbs, Col. D. Scott Brenton remotely flies a Reaper drone that beams back hundreds of hours of live video of insurgents, his intended targets, going about their daily lives 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan. Sometimes he and his team watch the same family compound for weeks.

“I see mothers with children, I see fathers with children, I see fathers with mothers, I see kids playing soccer,” Colonel Brenton said.

When the call comes for him to fire a missile and kill a militant—and only, Colonel Brenton said, when the women and children are not around—the hair on the back of his neck stands up, just as it did when he used to line up targets in his F-16 fighter jet.

Afterward, just like the old days, he compartmentalizes. “I feel no emotional attachment to the enemy,” he said. “I have a duty, and I execute the duty.”

Drones are not only revolutionizing American warfare but are also changing in profound ways the lives of the people who fly them.

Colonel Brenton acknowledges the peculiar new disconnect of fighting a telewar with a joystick and a throttle from his padded seat in American suburbia.

When he was deployed in Iraq, “you land and there’s no more weapons on your F-16, people have an idea of what you were just involved with.” Now he steps out of a dark room of video screens, his adrenaline still surging after squeezing the trigger, and commutes home past fast-food restaurants and convenience stores to help with homework—but always alone with what he has done.

“It’s a strange feeling,” he said. “No one in my immediate environment is aware of anything that occurred.”

Routinely thought of as robots that turn wars into sanitized video games, the drones have powerful cameras that bring war straight into a pilot’s face.

Although pilots speak glowingly of the good days, when they can look at a video feed and warn a ground patrol in Afghanistan about an ambush ahead, the Air Force is also moving chaplains and medics just outside drone operation centers to help pilots deal with the bad days—images of a child killed in error or a close-up of a Marine shot in a raid gone wrong.

Among the toughest psychological tasks is the close surveillance for aerial sniper missions, reminiscent of the East German Stasi officer absorbed by the people he spies on in the movie “The Lives of Others.” A drone pilot and his partner, a sensor operator who manipulates the aircraft’s camera, observe the habits of a militant as he plays with his children, talks to his wife and visits his neighbors. They then try to time their strike when, for example, his family is out at the market.

“They watch this guy do bad things and then his regular old life things,” said Col. Hernando Ortega, the chief of aerospace medicine for the Air Education Training Command, who helped conduct a study last year on the stresses on drone pilots. “At some point, some of the stuff might remind you of stuff you did yourself. You might gain a level of familiarity that makes it a little difficult to pull the trigger.”

Of a dozen pilots, sensor operators and supporting intelligence analysts recently interviewed from three American military bases, none acknowledged the kind of personal feelings for Afghans that would keep them awake at night after seeing the bloodshed left by missiles and bombs. But all spoke of a certain intimacy with Afghan family life that traditional pilots never see from 20,000 feet, and that even ground troops seldom experience.

“You see them wake up in the morning, do their work, go to sleep at night,” said Dave, an Air Force major who flew drones from 2007 to 2009 at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada and now trains drone pilots at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

Some pilots spoke of the roiling emotions after they fire a missile. (Only pilots, all of them officers, employ weapons for strikes.)

“There was good reason for killing the people that I did, and I go through it in my head over and over and over,” said Will, an Air Force officer who was a pilot at Creech and now trains others at Holloman. “But you never forget about it. It never just fades away, I don’t think—not for me.”

The complexities will only grow as the military struggles to keep up with a near insatiable demand for drones. The Air Force now has more than 1,300 drone pilots, about 300 less than it needs, stationed at 13 or more bases across the United States. They fly the unmanned aircraft mostly in Afghanistan. (The numbers do not include the classified program of the C.I.A., which conducts drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.) Although the Afghan war is winding down, the military expects drones to help compensate for fewer troops on the ground.

Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, said it was “conceivable” that drone pilots in the Air Force would outnumber those in cockpits in the foreseeable future, although he predicted that the Air Force would have traditional pilots for at least 30 more years.

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Mysterious Death of JFK

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Syria After the Fall

By Vali Nasr, NY Times, July 28, 2012

THE conflict in Syria has reached a tipping point, but not one that promises a quick end to the fighting. With or without Bashar al-Assad as its leader, Syria now has all the makings of a grim and drawn-out civil war: evenly matched protagonists who are not ready for a cease-fire, and outside powers preoccupied with their own agendas and unable to find common ground.

There is no easy way out of such a stalemated struggle, and this one threatens the stability of the whole Middle East. If the Syrian conflict explodes outward, everyone will lose: it will spill into neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey. Lebanon and Iraq in particular are vulnerable; they, too, have sectarian and communal rivalries tied to the Sunni-Alawite struggle for power next door.

In the past week, Mr. Assad has lost control of important parts of the country, and the opposition, buoyed by outside sympathy and support, has built on the momentum of a bombing in Damascus that killed key security aides to the president. The shift in balance is significant, but it is not decisive. Rather, it sets the stage for a protracted conflict that would divide Syria into warring opposition and pro-Assad enclaves. For now, the Assad government has enough support and firepower to keep fighting, and it shows no sign of giving up. Most members of Syria’s Alawite, Christian and Kurdish minorities, along with a slice of its Sunni Arab population, still prefer Mr. Assad to what they fear will follow his fall; together, those groups make up perhaps half of Syria’s population, the rest of which is largely Sunni Muslim.

The opposition, meanwhile, is winning territory, but its ranks are divided among some 100 groups with no clear political leadership. Even if Mr. Assad were to step down voluntarily, his Alawite military machine and its sectarian allies are likely to fight on, holding large chunks of territory.

Syria would then fracture, with the fighting deciding who controls what area—a larger version of Lebanon in the 1970s. There would be ethnic cleansing, refugee floods, humanitarian disasters and opportunities for Al Qaeda.

In Lebanon, a decade and a half of carnage was stopped only with the assistance of Syria and its army as peacemakers. A similar sectarian conflagration plunged Iraq into violence after the American invasion. There, a surge of American troops in 2007 helped stop the fighting. In Syria, there are no foreign troops to play such a role, and little prospect that any will come while the war lasts.

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How did a blind archer set a world record at the Olympics?

The Week, July 27, 2012

On Friday, South Korea’s Im Dong Hyun, who is legally blind, set the first world record of the London Olympics, notching a score of 699 out of a possible 720 in the first round of the men’s archery contest. It’s no fluke—the record he broke was his own and, at previous Olympics in Beijing and Athens, Im helped South Korea’s archery team capture gold medals. He’s now the favorite to win the individual gold in London, as he progresses to one-on-one knockout rounds. Here, a guide to Im’s seemingly impossible feat:

How bad is his sight? Pretty bad. The 26-year-old has 20/200 vision in his left eye, which means “he needs to be 10 times closer to see an object than someone with perfect 20/20 vision,” says Nick Reeves at Agence France Presse. “His right eye, with 20/100 vision, is not a whole lot better.”

Does he wear glasses? No. Im claims glasses only make him uncomfortable, says The Associated Press. Instead, he “relies on distinguishing between the bright colors on the target,” with its rings of yellow, red, blue, and black. “With my vision, when I look at the target, it looks as if different color paints have been dropped in water,” Im says. “When I look down the range at the target all I can do is try to distinguish between the different colors. If I couldn’t see the colors, now that would be a problem.”

I’m having trouble believing this. Believe it. “Im would be hard pushed to read a newspaper at arm’s length,” says Reeves, “yet has no problem in hitting a target the size of a supermarket grapefruit from a distance of 70 meters.” That’s about three-quarters the length of a football field.

“In a sport that demands incredible focus and sight more than anything else, Im has overcome the strongest of obstacles to throw down archery’s finest Olympic effort,” says Patrick Clarke at Bleacher Report. Before the opening ceremonies even unfolded, what will surely be one of the games’ most “memorable” moments is history.

Sources: Agence France Presse, The Associated Press, Bleacher Report, The Guardian, Newser

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Serviço Excepcional

Jesus falando em profecia

A vida na terra sem dúvida é dura e difícil. Eu bem entendo, porque vivi isso. Não importa a idade, carreira profissional, ou onde se vive, todos enfrentam dificuldades e batalhas.

Sei que é difícil entender por que permito dificuldades e provações. Por que não facilito a vida das pessoas? Por que tantas dificuldades e problemas para resolver? Podem ser situações relacionadas à família, carreira, finanças, saúde ou à luta diária para ser um cristão verdadeiro -- batalhas fazem parte da jornada. Mas você aprende e melhora por ter que solucionar problemas. Torna-se uma melhor esposa ou marido, um melhor pai ouprofissional, e um melhor reflexo do Meu Espírito.

Pode não sentir que está melhorando, mas você adquire uma experiência muito valiosa com tudo o que vivencia e com cada batalha que trava e resulta em aprendizagem. Contribui para enfrentar o desafio seguinte com mais entendimento. Um dos elementos mais fortes é justamente o fato de continuar enfrentando as dificuldades da vida e recorrer a Mim para as soluções.

A meta não é evitar todos os problemas. Não é realista achar que nunca vai precisar fazer algo difícil ou que exija muito de você. Meus filhos, todos têm batalhas e dificuldades, mas é importante lembrar que também possuem treinamento espiritual e prático para enfrentar as provas da vida com graça, paciência e perseverança. Podem contar Comigo e a Minha Palavra, e com toda a ajuda espiritual que posso lhes dar – e é bastante ajuda! Não precisam tentar calcular e prever tudo, porque estou aqui para ajudá-los. Estou ao seu lado os acompanhando na árdua tarefa de alcançar suas metas, sempre disponível para lhes dar conselhos e orientações.

Podem contar com a orientação e o encorajamento da Minha Palavra para enfrentarem qualquer batalha e conservarem sua saúde mental e paz de espírito, por mais que demore para ganharem a vitória. Sem dúvida algumas batalhas são bastante estressantes e talvez não vejam como vão conseguir “chegar lá” e intactos física e mentalmente. Mas podem sempre contar com paz de espírito. Eu conservarei em perfeita paz todos os que confiam em Mim, que mantém a mente firme em Mim![1]

Muitos que não Me conhecem pessoalmente sentem-se perdidos e num beco sem saída, sem força mental para perseverar. Falta-lhes o alicerce rochoso da Minha Palavra onde se firmarem. Vocês têm e sempre terão isso. Portanto, no grosso da batalha, lembrem-se que vão conseguir vencer e Eu os ajudarei. Por mais intensas que sejam as batalhas ou pressões da vida, Eu sou forte e os segurarei, portanto jamais precisam ter medo e achar que vão se perder ou cair no esquecimento.

Precisam lutar com força para superar as provas da vida; trabalhar arduamente para alcançar êxito, pois esses elementos sempre existirão. Se pensam, “Logo logo tudo vai ficar mais fácil, não vou precisar mais me esforçar tanto”, vão ter uma desilusão. Sempre vai ser preciso lutar para ficar perto de Mim e continuar tendo êxito no serviço a Mim, mas se fortificarão nesse processo.

Vocês nem imaginam como estão habilitados para a batalha espiritual! Precisam ficar fervorosos para receber a unção para seguirem com a sua carreira e outras responsabilidades, além de viverem como cristãos e darem testemunho. É preciso muita fé, perseverança e amor por Mim e pelos outros, muita dedicação e compromisso, sem falar de convicção desmedida. Mesmo que a pessoa não se dedique a tempo integral, se for trabalho de qualidade, então é excepcional, porque vem do coração. E eu usarei o que Me entregarem. Multiplicarei seus esforços e os usarei onde serão mais produtivos e efetivos. Estou orgulhoso de vocês; parabéns pelo papel valioso que desempenham no Meu reino.

Sei que as circunstâncias dificultam, mas mesmo com a continuidade das batalhas, estou aqui para ajudá-los. Prometo lhes dar graça e unção para cada uma; não posso impedi-las, porque são inerentes à vida e necessárias no processo de aprendizagem e fortalecimento pessoal, mas posso ajudá-los a aprender rápido e lutarem eficazmente. É o que farei, porque os amo e preciso de vocês.

Quando se esforçam ao máximo para viver a sua fé cada dia, vocês se fortalecem. São preciosos para Mim e para os perdidos no mundo. Talvez não percebam completamente a importância e o valor do seu papel como testemunhas, mas é muito importante.

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Eu os escolhi do mundo.[2] Foi o que disse aos Meus primeiros discípulos há tantos anos, e repito para vocês. Reflitam nessas palavras. Um dos significados é que os escolhi para saírem do mundo no espírito, para se tornarem pessoas que não vivem pelos valores do mundo, mas sim do plano espiritual.

O seu legado permanecerá por toda a eternidade. É o legado de um discípulo de Jesus, de alguém que acredita no invisível. Um dia tudo será revelado. O que agora é invisível se tornará aparente. Então, os que acreditaram por fé serão verdadeiramente bem-aventurados.[3] Os que preferirem não acreditar ou seguir o que não conseguem discernir com a mente natural vão se arrepender, mas os que optarem por Me seguir por fé, para viverem uma vida baseada na fé, receberão recompensas que compensarão por todas as provações.

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Aprenda com os célebres personagens do passado que lutaram por uma grande causa, dedicaram-se pela melhoria do ser humano, e extrapolaram seus próprios limites. Os testemunhos dessas pessoas vão inspirá-lo. Lembre-se que a decisão de dar mais um passo, de ajudar mais uma pessoa, de suprir uma necessidade mais uma vez, são os tijolos que constroem uma vida temente a Deus no dia a dia. O seu caráter se formará pouco a pouco e o seu temperamento será moldado. As pequenas decisões de fazer o bem que às vezes passam despercebidas vão moldar o seu caráter e ajudá-lo a alcançar o seu potencial como mulher ou homem de Deus.

Publicado originalmente em março de 2009. Atualizado e republicado em junho de 2012. Tradução Hebe Rondon Flandoli. Revisão Denise Oliveira.


[1] Isaias 26:3.

[2] João 15:19.

[3] João 20:29.

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