[help promote this story by voting it up on reddit.com, here and here]
As shown in video from the event, in November 2009 Hawaii Republican candidate for United States Senate Cam Cavasso, currently running against Democratic US Senator Daniel Inouye, attended a ceremony (Cavasso's attendance at the ITN conference has been confirmed by his campaign office) held at the International Transformation Network's 2009 Hawaii conference, near Honolulu, at which evangelist Pat Francis declared, from onstage, before would-be senator Cavasso,
"we put our foot on Hawaii. And you said every place we put our foot, we will rule. So we are the Kingdom, the Kingdom is here."
In the ceremony, introduced by International Transformation Network CEO Ed Silvoso, evangelist Francis sought to drive out "false gods" from Hawaii, banish "generational curses" and "witchcraft," and give evangelical Christians divine authority over the state.
Video from the disturbingly triumphalist ceremony also shows Hawaii Republican candidates Shaun Kawakami (candidate for State House of Representatives, District 38), and Beth Fukumoto (candidate for State House of Representatives, District 37) in attendance.
As speaker Pat Francis shouted during the ceremony, that capped her speech at the ITN conference, advertised as a "keynote" address,
[Ed Silvoso introduces Pat Francis], "We release the battle. We are poised for battle. We are indwelled by the Holy Spirit. We are standing on the scriptures and we say to Hawaii, Hawaii you are God's Hawaii. Hawaii, you are the vortex of transformation..."
[Pat Francis] "We break generational curses, we break generational curses, we break generational curses, and we plead the blood of Jesus over every altar of demon, over every altar of ancestral spirit, over every altar of false religion, and in Jesus name we declare that you are the King of Hawaii, you are the Lord of Hawaii. We dispossess the gods of Hawaii, and we lift up the one and true God, Jesus Christ.
And we are charged, standing guard, and we put our foot on Hawaii. And you said every place we put our foot, we will rule. So we are the Kingdom, the Kingdom is here.
Therefore in Jesus name, the King of Kings, so rule in Hawaii, and the people of Hawaii are blessed. We break the power of poverty in the name of Jesus, we break the power of poverty in the name of Jesus, we break the power of poverty in the name of Jesus, we break the power of witchcraft power, every witchcraft power we drive you out, in the name of Jesus."
In a speech he gave at a ceremony that opened the November 2009 ITN conference, Republican gubernatorial candidate Duke Aiona told hundreds of delegates ("from all habitable continents," noted the Hawaii Lt. Governor) assembled at the ITN's Christian supremacist event near Honolulu, "We're all here to disciple the nations, here in Hawaii and everywhere else, I want you all to know that."
Following his speech, Aiona was blessed onstage by top ITN leaders, in an event reminiscent of a coronation.
CEO of the entity sponsoring the ITN Hawaii conference, Ed Silvoso, wrote in a 2007 book that "discipling" was what Lenin and his Bolsheviks did to Russia and what Ayatollah Khomeini did to Iran but, judging by the words of speaker Pat Francis, "discipling" appears similar to Rand Paul campaign member Tim Proffit's "curbing" assault on Moveon.com member Lauren Valle.
Last week, a minor Hawaii media storm erupted concerning a video I compiled which featured footage of Lt. Governor James "Duke" Aiona attesting, in 2008, to being a part of "Transformation Hawaii" but denying, in 2010, to being in the organization.
As the Associated Press described,
The video was produced by Bruce Wilson, who co-founded a blog about religion and politics. It includes clips of [Duke] Aiona at a 2009 meeting in Hawaii of the International Transformation Network, an evangelical Christian group, and its local arm, Transformation Hawaii.
Other clips are of ITN's 2008 meeting in Argentina in which a pastor calls on followers to collect idolatrous objects to be burned, and of Aiona urging viewers to attend a 2005 ITN meeting in Hawaii.
In May 2010, Hawaii environmental activist and AM radio show host Carrol Cox filed an ethics complaint (also see Aiona-friendly Hawaii KITV coverage) with the Hawaii State Ethics Commission concerning Lt. Governor Duke Aiona's acceptance of cash gifts of over $7,000, most of that given to Aiona by International Transformation Network and Transformation Hawaii leaders.
As discussed in an interview I did with Cox, the complaint was inexplicably dismissed with no public notice and no explanation whatsoever, by the Ethics Commission - which is in under the authority of the gubernatorial administration of Duke Aiona and Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle. Cox alleges a "whitewash" of the investigation.
Lt. Governor Duke Aiona's involvement in the ITN's aggressive form of evangelical Christianity, fast spreading in Hawaii, has been on the media radar screen since late 2004, when Aiona led an ITN-sponsored public ceremony dedicating Hawaii and its public schools to Jesus. Aiona has contributed a chapter to an ITN book about the "transformation" of Hawaii and attended at least five separate major ITN conference and events, including a 2006 ITN event in Argentina at which Aiona was filmed praying together with Janet Museveni, First Lady of Uganda.
International Transformation leaders and speakers including Ed Silvoso and evangelist Cindy Jacobs (also shown in ITN 2008 footage attempting to exorcise "homosexual spirits") have advocated and celebrated the destruction of native art and at an October 2008 ITN conference in Argentina, ITN CEO Ed Silvoso and Transformation Hawaii officer Suzanne Mulcahy likened their political opponents to rats.
Transformation Hawaii is an official chapter of the International Transformation Network, which has "transformation" projects ongoing across the world, including in Uganda, Argentina, the Philippines, Mexico, South Africa, Jacksonville, Florida, and Hawaii.
Initially, when I published my two-part extended report Transforming Hawaii in April 2010, I believed the involvement of Hawaii politicians in Transformation Hawaii and the ITN was far more limited than I now know it to be, and preliminary indications are that multiple Hawaii politicians, at every level of politics, have attended ITN conferences.
The implications are profound - during one of the most heavily covered American mid-term elections in history, a wave of politicians associated with a nakedly supremacist evangelical ministry whose leaders make statements ideologically reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition or the Crusades, have been filmed, less than a year ago, at a major conference held by that ministry at a well-known convention center. That footage has been, for the last year, freely available online.
The revolution was indeed televised. Nobody was watching.
In the final weeks of the 2010 mid-term election, video footage from the 2009 ITN conference, attended by Aiona, Cavasso, and other Hawaii candidates, disappeared from Ed Silvoso's Transform Our World website.
