LDS Freedom Forum

The State of Washington is suing a small flower shop after the owner declined to provide flowers for a homosexual wedding – based on her religious beliefs. Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Wash., is facing thousands of dollars in fines and penalties for allegedly violating the state’s Consumer Protection Act. “If a business provides a product or service to opposite-sex couples for their weddings, then it must provide same-sex couples the same product or service,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement. On March 1, a longtime customer asked Stutzman to provide flowers for his upcoming same-sex wedding. According to court documents, she told him that she would not be able to do so “because of her relationship with Jesus Christ.” http://visiontoamerica.com/14564/state- ... y-wedding/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Gospel singer George Beverly Shea, who sang to millions at Billy Graham crusades, dies at 104.

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney is planning to attend the interfaith service on Thursday in Boston to honor the victims of this week’s bombings, joining a host of other dignitaries that include Romney’s former rival, President Obama.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee, was invited to attend the service by Governor Deval Patrick. Patrick invited all former governors to attend, and Bill Weld and Jane Swift are also expected to be at the service. A source close to Romney confirmed that he would be attending the service, which will take place at 11 a.m. at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

President Obama, who will joined by First Lady Michelle Obama, is planning to speak at the service.

It will be only the second time Romney will be at the same venue with President Obama since the election in November. Shortly after the election, Romney came to the White House for a private lunch with Obama.

In the hours after the attacks on Monday, Romney sent a tweet out from his account saying, “Our hearts are heavy with the news out of Boston today. #PrayforBoston”

http://www.boston.com/politicalintellig ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.theprovince.com/news/world/T ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The FBI and CIA are obsessed right now with the unsolved riddle of why Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, ethnic Chechens whose historic enemy has been Russia, chose to attack last Monday’s Boston Marathon. As the young brothers spent many of their formative years in New England — where as Republican immigration critics have scathingly noted their family had been granted asylum.

... where Croats, Serbs and Slavic Muslim elders incited their children and grandchildren to murder by constantly recalling atrocities often going back more than seven centuries to the Battle of Kosovo Polje — the Tsarnaevs did not have to have lived in Chechnya to have learned how to hate like Chechens. Their kin and community would have given them a thorough schooling in their community’s bloody history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC5o-UNp ... r_embedded" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

video clearly shows the 26 year old being escorted to BPD vehicle whilst handcuffed and not wounded, which in total contradiction to official reports which claim the suspect was shot by police and then run-over by his younger brother in a stolen SUV in Sommerville, MA
http://www.21stcenturywire.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Shortly after the Boston Marathon bombings killed three and injured 178, the media wasted little time dragging out the usual leftist fantasies about the bombers being Right-wing or Tea Partiers. The president himself initially refused to use the word “terrorism” because he didn’t want to imply a Muslim connection, and presidential spokesman Jay Carney floated the notion that the bombings had something to do with tax day, implying that the Administration suspected the Tea Party, despite there being no history of Tea Party violence.
Almost from Obama’s first day in office, the Administration has been accusing the Tea Party, veterans, Bible-believing Christians and conservatives in general without any evidence of being potential terrorists. The mainstream media and its lesser Soros-inspired cousins at the Huffington Post, Salon and elsewhere didn’t need to be told twice and ran with the theme, hammering on it over the past several years whenever a mass murder hits the news.
Unfortunately for the media and the Department of Homeland Security, one after another mass murderer or would-be bomber in memory has been a clear leftist or Muslim. The liberal politics of mass killers gets scant coverage from the media that fervently hope to report on a conservative crazy, but it’s the media’s and Administration’s particularly blind eye for Muslim terror that is proving increasingly dangerous to America.
http://godfatherpolitics.com/10493/obam ... z2RE7RA4OL" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

NEW YORK—A rusted 5-foot (1.5-meter)-tall piece of landing gear believed to be from one of the hijacked planes destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks has been discovered near the World Trade Center wedged between a luxury apartment building and a mosque site that once prompted virulent national debate about Islam and free speech.
The twisted metal part, jammed in an 18-inch (460-millimeter)-wide sliver of open space between the buildings, has cables and levers on it and is about 17 inches (431 millimeters) wide and 4 feet (1.2 meters) long, New York Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Friday.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/398269/par ... z2RdxbH2fq" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/25/smallbu ... picks=true" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
In late 2010, Dr. Grady Snyder saw the writing on the wall. He was burned out, his revenue was shrinking and it was getting too expensive to run his rural practice in Pueblo, Colo.
It was time to quit. On August 19, 2011, Snyder sold his practice to a local hospital 30 miles away.
"I gave up on health care in America," he said. Later that year, he moved to Australia and took up rural medicine there.
The choice was heart-wrenching for Snyder. He didn't want to feel like he was abandoning his nearly 5,000 patients, and he'd been the only family physician in the area for 16 years.
"I wasn't just a doctor there, I was part of this community," he said. "I coached youth basketball here. My kids went to school here."
Snyder's decision to leave was years in the making.
A third of Snyder's rural patients were on Medicare. When Medicare reimbursements to physicians started shrinking in the late 1990s, his revenues fell. At the same time, the cost of running his practice was rising. Snyder tried to control expenses as much as he could.
Then in 2009, a law was passed requiring doctors and hospitals to move to electronic health record systems by 2015. If they didn't, their Medicare payments would be cut further.
That was the final straw. "I couldn't afford that expense. I didn't have $100,000 lying around," he said.
Snyder wasn't ready to give up being a rural doctor, though. "It's what I loved to do," he said.
Disillusioned with how health care had evolved, and how stressful and expensive it had become to be in private practice in the U.S., Snyder began to explore opportunities to work abroad as a "locum tenens," or freelance doctor.
Locum tenens physicians temporarily cover for physicians at a hospital or private practice when they are sick or on vacation. Because of a shortage of rural physicians, freelance doctors are frequently used to fill the gap.
As he researched opportunities online, a video caught his attention. It was from an Australian nonprofit, Rural Doctors Workforce Agency, which specializes in recruiting freelance primary care doctors from overseas to work in rural parts of southern Australia.
In February, 2011 he interviewed with RDWA. By May he had a contract. He quickly sold his practice, and got his work visa and medical licensing paperwork squared away.
Snyder and his wife, Frances, arrived in Australia on Oct. 6 and settled in Adelaide. Getting certified to practice in Australia as a solo physician took about a year. Until then, he could only work under supervision of a certified doctor.
The work was strenuous and challenging personally and professionally, said Snyder. He traveled a lot and was away from home every other week. He couldn't easily refer patients to specialists, because there weren't many practicing in rural towns around Adelaide. Lack of medical technology was another challenge. "Here you don't have an MRI or CAT scan facility at every corner," he said.
Still, Snyder embraced the experience in a country where he said the locals were welcoming and "loved my accent."
In America, Snyder hardly ever took time off. In Australia, Snyder is contracted to work only 36 weeks a year, plus he gets four weeks' paid vacation time. That's given him time to travel -- he and his wife have visited Sydney, Malaysia and elsewhere in the region.
Even with a much lighter schedule, Snyder is making the equivalent of U.S.$250,000 a year -- $100,000 more than he made practicing in Colorado year round.
Moving overseas has made being a doctor fun again, he said.
"Primary care is highly respected here. That's not the case anymore in America," said Snyder. "In the United States, health care has become more about the business of making money. The personal side of medicine is going away."
In fact, Snyder said he wouldn't be surprised if more primary care doctors in the U.S. look for opportunities elsewhere. His own contract expires at the end of June but he's renewing it for another two years.
Would he consider moving back at some point?
If he could get the benefits he does in Australia back at home, he said, "I'd still be working in America."

A Nevada psychiatric hospital has over the past several years purportedly released, then bused hundreds of patients to states across the country...The hospital has since 2008 sent at least one of the 1,500 patients to every state in the continental United States, with California receiving 389, based on the investigation by The Sacramento Bee newspaper, which includes a review of state records of Greyhound Bus receipts.
While the policy is not illegal, it appears unusual, according to the investigation in which mental-health agencies in California and other states said putting a psychiatric patient on a bus without support was not permissible....The newspaper investigation found Nevada, faced with a budget deficit, cut mental-health spending by 28 percent from 2009 to 2012 and was already spending below the national average of per-patient care. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04 ... t-dumping/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://minutemennews.com/2013/04/tsarna ... -benefits/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The Tsarnaev family, including the suspected terrorists and their parents, benefited from more than $100,000 in taxpayer-funded assistance — a bonanza ranging from cash and food stamps to Section 8 housing from 2002 to 2012, the Herald has learned.
“The breadth of the benefits the family was receiving was stunning,” said a person with knowledge of documents handed over to a legislative committee today. The state has handed over more than 500 documents to the 11-member House Post Audit and Oversight Committee, which today met for the first time and plans to call in officials from the Department of Transitional Assistance to testify. “I can assure members of the public that this committee will actively review every single piece of information we can find because clearly the public has a substantial right to know what benefits, if any, this family or individuals accused of some horrific crimes were receiving,” said state Rep. David Linsky (D-Natick), the committee’s chairman.

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/lo ... n_benefits" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=7Jrh_uuPmd0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/ ... /#comments" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Antoine Dodson is no longer gay, and said today that he "renounced myself" from the ways of homosexuality.
"I want a wife and family, I want to multiply and raise and love my family that I create," says Dodson, who adds that he is "no longer into" being gay.
"I could care less about the fame and fortune, I've giving all that up to know the true history of the Bible. For I am the True Chosen Hebrew Israelite descendant of Judah."
The Hebrew Israelites believe they are the descendants of the ancient Israelites, but they don't consider themselves as "Jewish" per se. Anyway ...
Antonie Dodson adds, "As True Israel I know that there are certain things we just can't do. And I totally understand that now. I don't need a Mercedes Benz."
"I don't need a big house in Beverly Hills all I need is the Most High and my family (Israel). I have been awaken by the great and so should you."
"Hate me if you must, bash me if you must, I won't break, do what you will, for this is my calling."

"Primary care is highly respected here. That's not the case anymore in America," said Snyder. "In the United States, health care has become more about the business of making money. The personal side of medicine is going away."

He hit the nail on the head with that observation. If only I could get all or most of the family out... but its not just me. We did leave the Wasatch front area and move to a small rural community in the midwest, partly to help out the small branch here.

My 2 cents:

1. Doctors don't do Primary Preventitive Care. Primary Prevention is what Mommy and Daddy are supposed to be doing. By the time your doctor is telling you, it is likely too late.

2. Christ taught: "the whole hath no need of a physician but them that are sick".

3. CLIA and other Federal Regulations make it difficult for Primary Physicians to do anything in their clinics and offices.

4. Many specialists are becoming proceeduralists and not interested in practicing medicine. They just want to do their couple surgeries, Cath you, or perform an EGD and Colonoscopy.

5. Doctor's offices are filled up with chronic pain patients.

6. Many Primary Doctors no longer take care of patients in the hospital but leave that to Hospitalists.

So:

A. Patients can still go to the office to get thier routine lab work, and (secondary) preventive screenings. But there is no need to see the doctor. They can see a nurse, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant and only see the doctor if something comes back abnormal. Doctors need to reserve their time to see their sick urgent patients and not waste all day doing "well checks". "Well checks" is not being a physician.

B. Primary Doctors need to be empowered to do more in their offices and clinics. They need to be empowered to provide more services. So many end up in the ED because their doctors say "you sound sick, better go to the ED because we can't help you here"

c. Again, chronic pain patients don't need to see the doctor either. At this point, medicine has failed you and all you need to see is a physican assistant to refill pain meds and only need to see the doctor if anything has changed or is different.

d. stronger families mean better educated parients and better primary prevention and better health

e. I think there is a big problem with doctors who do proceedures on patients or give them poison like Chemo and then don't have to deal with the problems associated with what they are doing. Let surgeons, oncologist and nephrologists use physician assistants but I say let them deal with all the problems their proceedures and interventions cause.

MURRAY, Utah (AP) — A 46-year-old soccer referee who was punched by a teenage player during a game and later slipped into a coma has died, police said. Ricardo Portillo of Salt Lake City passed away at the hospital.Police have accused a 17-year-old player in a recreational soccer league of punching Portillo after the man called a foul on him and issued him a yellow card. Portillo suffered swelling in his brain and had been listed in critical condition, Dr. Shawn Smith said Thursday at the Intermountain Medical Center in the Salt Lake City suburb of Murray. The teenager was playing goalie during a game at Eisenhower Junior High School in Taylorsville when Ricardo Portillo issued him a yellow card for pushing an opposing forward trying to score a goal. In soccer, a yellow card is given as a warning to a player for an egregious violation of the rules. Two yellow cards lead to a red card and expulsion from the game.
The teenager, quite a bit heavier than Portillo, began arguing with the referee, then unleashed a punch to his face. Portillo seemed fine at first, then asked to be held because he felt dizzy. He sat down and started vomiting blood, triggering his friend to call an ambulance. When police arrived around noon, the teenager was gone and Portillo was laying on the ground in the fetal position. Through translators, Portillo told EMTs that his face and back hurt and he felt nauseous. He had no visible injuries and remained conscious. He was considered to be in fair condition when they took him to the Intermountain Medical Center. But when Portillo arrived to the hospital, he slipped into a coma with swelling in his brain. Johana Portillo called detectives to let them know his condition had worsened. That's when detectives intensified their search for the goalie. By Saturday evening, the teenager's father agreed to bring him down to speak with police. Portillo's family said he had been attacked before, and Johanna Portillo said she and her sisters begged their father to stop refereeing because of the risk from angry players, but he continued because he loved soccer.

HiViz Shooting Systems, formerly located in Fort Collins, manufactures various parts for a number of weapons some of which are now outlawed under Colorado law, are moving their entire operations to Laramie, Wyoming.
http://godfatherpolitics.com/10698/colo ... z2SXdEzgIM" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Magpul Industries manufactures high capacity magazines that hold 30 rounds now illegal in Colorado. Magpul has already started production in another state, but that location is being kept under wraps until after the NRA Convention being held in Houston.

http://freedomdefense.typepad.com/fdi/my-jihad.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
AFDI is fighting back. Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front groups, with eager help from the mainstream media, have embarked on a cynical nationwide campaign to confuse Americans about the meaning of jihad, and make us complacent about the threat of jihad and Islamic supremacism. Finally, after months of wrangling and First Amendment violations, our AFDI jihad truth campaign has hit the streets of Chicago and Washington, DC to counter the deceptive and misleading #myjihad propaganda of the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The unfettered access and influence the Muslim Brotherhood has to the mainstream media is astonishing. But we are going over the heads of the mainstream media with our ads, and taking the truth directly to the people -- and in the process, we're forcing the media to discuss the grim and bloody reality of jihad. We don't need lessons in jihad. September 11, Fort Hood, the Fort Dix Six, the Christmas tree bomber, the Christmas day bomber, the Times Square bomber, Jihad Jane, and the rest have taught us plenty. Our dead in the cause of Islam have taught us plenty. Over 20,000 jihad attacks around the world since 9/11, each with the imprimatur of a Muslim cleric, have taught us all we need to know.

AFDI intend to run jihad truth ads in every major US city, and especially to counter Hamas-CAIR's Big Lie campaign in every city in which it runs.Americans deserve to know the truth about the threat we face. At AFDI, we are among the only ones still unafraid to tell it, and the only ones effective enough to break through the media's disinformation fog. Please help us today.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/the-dollar-a ... -is-toast/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


The once-mighty United States is now the most indebted nation on Earth. In round numbers, here are just some of the vital statistics as the patient dies:National debt: $17 trillion, or $50,000 per man, woman and child, or $150,000 per taxpayer. Annual federal deficit: $1 trillion. Medicare/Medicaid/Obama”care”: $1 trillion a year. Social Security: another $1 trillion a year. Defense: two-thirds of a trillion. Unemployment handouts: $2 billion per working day. Debt interest: $1 billion per working day. Federal pensions, ditto.

Now for the big numbers. Your government’s Social Security liability is as big as the national debt: $17 trillion. Its prescription drug liability is $22 trillion. Then there’s the Medicare liability of $86 trillion. Total unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government are $125 trillion.Net assets for each U.S. citizen are $300,000. The net liability of the U.S. government, shared among its citizens, amounts to almost four times that: $1.1 million a head. And the government’s debt is growing at $1 million every 45 seconds. To cover its annual deficit, it is printing $1 trillion a year of currency that is not backed by any asset whatsoever.

A booming birth rate, fuelled by new arrivals and not budgeted for by a clueless political class, must partly explain the shameful fact that the UK has dropped out of the best 20 nations to give birth in. British women are now at higher risk of death in childbirth than women in Slovakia and Lithuania... As a direct result of uncontrolled immigration, there is a crisis in maternity services that senior midwives say is endangering both mothers and babies. Is this what Nick Clegg had in mind when he said that leaving the EU would make Britain “less safe”? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... nding.html

Throughout the world, the first day of life is the most hazardous time for a baby; just over one million children die each year within 24 hours of being born. Save the Children's annual "State of the World's Mothers" report ranks 176 countries on levels of well-being among children and mothers. This year's edition puts a special emphasis on newborn health, featuring its first-ever Birth Day Risk Index. The index ranks countries from the safest to the most dangerous for a baby to be born in. In the United States, babies are 50 percent more likely to die on the same day they were born than in all of the other industrialized countries combined, according to the report. Each year, nearly 11,300 babies die on the day they were born in the United States, making American babies twice as likely to die in their first 24 hours as European Union babies.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... -children/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Those with criminal intent can always obtain a gun, despite law abiding citizens being unable to legally purchase, use, or carry guns for self defence In Australia.
May 11, 2013
A 22 year old man was today threatened with a gun and robbed of his mobile phone on a street in Sydney's inner west.

http://www.libertynews.com/2013/04/ca-l ... l-conduct/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It’s been three months since CA’s legislative and executive branches banned parental, medical, and/or religious discourse that dissuades minors from homosexual activity and inquiry. SB 1172 was amended six times in a four month period before Governor Brown signed the final draft into law on September 30, 2012. It was set to become effective on January 1, 2013. A successful December 21, 2012 Liberty Counsel appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court for an emergency temporary injunction is all that prevents this law from full implementation. Part Two to this article, titled Light at the End of the Tunnel, will discuss the Conservative battle to prevent this law from taking full effect.

This major restriction of free speech for CA parents, mental health providers – including counselors and clergy, is being buried in a law that the majority of Americans would never think about reading.SB 1172 is now Article 15, Section 865 to Chapter One of Division Two in the state’s Business and Professionals Code Relating to the Healing Arts. This report will explain the core of the law and its impact on CA’s children, parents, counselors, and conservative clergy. The new law’s Art. 15: Section 865.1 states: “Under no circumstances shall a mental health provider engage in sexual orientation change efforts with a patient under eighteen years of age.” Section 865 (b) (1) defines sexual change efforts as “efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”

The law includes an exhaustive list of who is considered a mental health provider in 865 (a); however; any licensed (or certified) marriage and family therapist or counselor is included in the list. Though the law does not explicitly include clergy by title; the legal fact is that any pastor, rabbi, or priest who is also a licensed (or certified) marriage and family therapist would be considered a mental health provider. According to 865.2, that clergy member would be forbidden from dissuading anyone from practicing homosexual acts that is under eighteen in their congregation, despite parental insistence. If they do anything but encourage the minor to explore or embrace homosexuality; they could have their counseling license revoked in CA.

Additionally, 865 (a) deems public school counselors to be mental health providers too. Further, 865 (2) says that acceptable conversations or modes of therapy for homosexual minors are only those which support “safe-sex” practices that “do not seek to change sexual orientation.” What else could the law have required? The April 16 amended draft is one of the only versions available online with all the redactions visible. A look at the redactions is a good way to see the lengths to which CA lawmakers were willing to go to violate doctor-patient confidentiality and parental rights in order to encourage minors to explore homosexuality.

Originally, the state was willing to permit counselors to encourage patients to question homosexuality and undergo behavior modification if the parent consented and the minor was told what the therapy would be like and how long it would last. The minor and parent would also have to have been given a brochure produced and distributed using taxpayer dollars that would explain why they should not participate in any attempt at altering their homosexual desires or explorative goals. In exchange for this concession; mental health professionals would’ve had to give the CA Department of Mental Health annual reports on the treatments of their patients, clients, or congregants that included everything about the minor patient, client, or congregant and their situation that included everything about them except their name. This requirement included everything from the age and sex of the patient to the issues with which they were struggling and the provider’s reason for recommending that the individual not embrace homosexuality. The state even wanted to know the “method of payment” the family was using to cover the cost of the care.

Eventually, the draft language of 865.2 (a) eventually said explicitly what the language of the final draft which became law said implicitly: Under no circumstances shall a patient under 18 years of age undergo sexual orientation change efforts, regardless of the willingness of a patient’s parent, guardian, conservator, or other person to authorize such efforts.” At the end of the day; a law buried in a code few people rarely, if ever consult, if violated, threatens the licenses of any conservative psychologist, psychiatrist, nurse, doctor, counselor, or pastor who encourages a minor to question embracing homosexual exploration or lifestyle because homosexual activists consider such recommendations child abuse.

http://www.hlntv.com/video/2013/05/11/t ... -sex-trade" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Each year, more than 17,000 people (mostly women and children) are trafficked around the United States. They are held against their will-- often times sexually abused and tortured. Although it's hard to imagine this happening to a woman or child you know, it happens in America every single day.

Human trafficking advocate Theresa Flores joined Natasha Curry to talk about her horrifying experience as a victim and her story of survival.

After 10 days of deliberations, jurors convict Kermit Gosnell of three counts of first-degree murder for severing the spinal cords of infants born during abortions at his West Philadelphia clinic. http://www.washingtonpost.com/?wpisrc=al_national" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have visited this area, and remarked at the time how vulnerable theses sites are

http://www.theage.com.au/world/mayan-py ... 2jjb0.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Belize City: A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project.The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe, said the destruction at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was detected late last week. The ceremonial centre dates back at least 2300 years and is the most important site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico.
"It's a feeling of incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity ... they were using this for road fill," Mr Awe said. "It's like being punched in the stomach, it's just so horrendous." Nohmul sat in the middle of a privately owned sugar cane field, and lacked the even stone sides frequently seen in reconstructed or better-preserved pyramids. But Mr Awe said the builders could not possibly have mistaken the pyramid mound, which is about 30 metres tall, for a natural hill because the ruins were well-known and the landscape there is naturally flat. "These guys knew that this was an ancient structure. It's just bloody laziness," Mr Awe said.Photos from the scene showed backhoes clawing away at the pyramid's sloping sides, leaving an isolated core of limestone cobbles at the centre, with what appears to be a narrow Mayan chamber dangling above one clawed-out section.
"Just to realise that the ancient Maya acquired all this building material to erect these buildings, using nothing more than stone tools and quarried the stone, and carried this material on their heads, using tump lines," said Mr Awe.
"To think that today we have modern equipment, that you can go and excavate in a quarry anywhere, but that this company would completely disregard that and completely destroyed this building. Why can't these people just go and quarry somewhere that has no cultural significance? It's mind-boggling."Belizean police said they are conducting an investigation and criminal charges are possible. The Nohmul complex sits on private land, but Belizean law says that any pre-Hispanic ruins are under government protection. The Belize community-action group Citizens Organised for Liberty Through Action called the destruction of the archaeological site "an obscene example of disrespect for the environment and history". It is not the first time it's happened in Belize, a country of about 350,000 people that is largely covered in jungle and dotted with hundreds of Mayan ruin sites, though few as large as Nohmul.