All

Hello again and welcome to another edition of Laura's Links. It's been another busy week in our household with Passover preparations and another crazy week in world events. It really does seem that the main purpose of Obama's third term was to set the

The government long ago sold us out to the highest bidder.

The highest bidder, by the way, has always been the Deep State.

What’s playing out now with the highly politicized tug-of-war over whether Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act gets reauthorized by Congress doesn’t just sell us out, it makes us slaves of the Deep State.

Read the fine print: it’s a doozy.

Just as the USA Patriot was perverted from its stated intent to fight terrorism abroad and was instead used to covertly crack down on the American people (allowing government agencies to secretly track Americans’ financial activities, monitor their communications, and carry out wide-ranging surveillance on them), Section 702 has been used as an end-run around the Constitution to allow the government to collect the actual content of your conversations (phone calls, text messages, video chats, emails and other electronic communication) without a warrant.

Now intelligence officials are pushing to dramatically expand the government’s spying powers, effectively giving the government unbridled authority to force millions of Americans to spy on its behalf.

Basically, as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has warned, the Deep State wants to turn the American people into extensions of Big Brother.

This is how an effort to reform Section 702 has quickly steamrollered into an expansion of the government’s surveillance powers.

We should have seen this coming.

After all, the Police State doesn’t relinquish power easily, the Surveillance State doesn’t look favorably on anything that might weaken its control, and Big Brother doesn’t like to be restricted.

What most Americans don’t get is that even without Section 702 in play, the government will still target the populace for warrantless, suspicionless mass surveillance, because that’s how the police state maintains its stranglehold on power.

These maneuvers are just the tip of the iceberg.

The police state has passed the baton to the surveillance state.

On any given day, the average American is now monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it will all be recorded, stored and used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

Talk about a system rife for abuse.

Now, the government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from its mass spying program because they’re only looking to get the “bad” guys who are overseas.

Don’t believe it.

The government’s definition of a “bad” guy is extraordinarily broad, and it results in the warrantless surveillance of innocent, law-abiding Americans on a staggering scale.

Indeed, the government has become the biggest lawbreaker of all.

According to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the FBI repeatedly misused Section 702 in order to spy on the communications of two vastly disparate groups of Americans: those involved in the George Floyd protests and those who may have taken part in the Jan. 6, 2021, protests at the Capitol.

This abuse of its so-called national security powers is par for the course for the government.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, intelligence agencies conduct roughly 200,000 of these warrantless “backdoor” searches for Americans’ private communications each year.

No one is spared.

Many of the targets of these searches have done nothing wrong.

Government agents have spied on the communications of protesters, members of Congress, crime victims, journalists, and political donors, among many others.

The government has claimed that its spying on Americans is simply “incidental,” as though it were an accident, but it fully intends to collect this information.

As journalist Jake Johnson warns, under an expanded Section 702, U.S. intelligence agencies “could, without a warrant, compel gyms, grocery stores, barber shops, and other businesses to hand over communications data.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, “The Securities and Exchange Commission is deploying a massive government database—the Consolidated Audit Trail, or CAT—that monitors in real time the identity, transactions and investment portfolio of everyone who invests in the stock market.”

Journalist Leo Hohmann reports that the government is also handing out $20 million in grants to police, mental health networks, universities, churches and school districts to enlist their help in identifying Americans who might be political dissidents or potential “extremists.”

Ask the government why it’s carrying out this far-reaching surveillance on American citizens, and you’ll get the same Orwellian answer the government has been trotting in response to every so-called crisis to justify its assaults on our civil liberties: to keep America safe.

What this is really all about, however, is control.

What we are dealing with is a government so power-hungry, paranoid and afraid of losing its stranglehold on power that it is conspiring to wage war on anyone who dares to challenge its authority.

When the FBI is asking banks and other financial institutions to carry out dragnet searches of customer transactions—warrantlessly and without probable cause—for “extremism” indicators broadly based on where you shop, what you read, and how you travel, we’re all in trouble.

You don’t have to do anything illegal.

For that matter, you don’t even have to challenge the government’s authority.

Frankly, you don’t even have to care about politics or know anything about your rights.

All you really need to do in order to be tagged as a suspicious character, flagged for surveillance, and eventually placed on a government watch list is live in the United States.

As long as the government is allowed to weaponize its 360 degree surveillance technologies to flag you as a threat to national security, whether or not you’ve done anything wrong, it’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it won’t be long before Big Brother’s Thought Police are locking us up to “protect us” from ourselves.

At that point, we will disappear.

Reprinted with permission from The Rutherford Institute.

Last week, the Supreme Court effectively abolished the right to assembly in three Southern states. By refusing to hear an appeal of a speaker accused of being liable for what a protester did in an audience the speaker addressed, the court exposed all protest organizers and speakers to potentially ruinous financial penalties for what unknown persons have done.

Here is the backstory.

The right to taunt the tyrant — whether the tyrant be a king or a president or local police — is among the natural rights of expression integral to all persons. Your rights to think as you wish, to say what you think, to read what you choose, to publish what you say, and to do this alone or in concert with others — without a government permission slip or fear of government reprisal — are natural human rights possessed by all persons above the age of reason.

Expressing oneself in concert with others is also a constitutional right, as the First Amendment expressly prohibits Congress from making any law infringing upon it. From and after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, the congressional prohibition applies to all branches of government — legislative, executive and judicial — and to all levels of government — local, state and federal.

The companion right is the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. What once were written petitions have today become mass demonstrations, at which folks articulate their antipathy to government or cultural trends, expecting extensive media coverage and hoping that their views will resonate with the public at large and bring about the change they seek or at least a general awareness of the grievances that vex them.

This right is as old as America. It began in pubs in the 1770s in Boston, New York, Princeton, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Charleston, where revolutionaries met to complain about oppression by the British. These meetings produced county, regional and statewide gatherings that adopted early local versions of the Declaration of Independence, which itself was adopted unanimously by the Continental Congress in July 1776.

The right to assemble in public and complain about the government is so well-rooted in American history that it is hard to imagine our secession from Britain coming about without it. The colonists accepted it as normal and natural and when they gathered to shake their fists in the tyrant’s face — metaphorically of course, as George III was 3,000 miles away — they did so without fear of retribution.

Until now.

Now, if you organize, foment or even speak at a gathering in Louisiana, Mississippi or Texas, and some unknown person in the audience — at a time unknown, in a manner unknown and even unseen — harms another unnamed person nearby, the injured party can sue you.

This actually happened in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where DeRay McKesson organized a rally in 2016 outside a police station to protest what he claimed were excessive uses of force by the police. Someone at the rally — not McKesson — threw a rock that hit and seriously injured a nearby police officer. The officer, whose lawyers have declined to identify, sued McKesson, even though they acknowledge that he didn’t throw the rock, didn’t advocate attacking the police and uttered no words suggesting imminent lawlessness.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit — which covers Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — permitted the suit to move forward. McKesson asked the Supreme Court to intervene, and it declined to do so last week.

We have two fundamental legal issues intertwined here. The first is freedom of expression, and the second is vicarious liability.

Do expressive rights evaporate merely because someone in the audience became violent? Until last week, the universal answer to that was: No.

Indeed, the courts have many times rejected the so-called heckler’s veto whereby a person adverse to the speaker causes a disruption that results in personal injury or property damage and the harmed parties sue the speaker. In those cases, the courts have held consistently that unless the speaker’s words command and produce immediate lawless behavior, the speaker is not liable for the heckler’s violence.

Vicarious liability — holding A liable for the crimes or misbehavior of B — often comes up in the First Amendment context. The modern jurisprudence has uniformly held that the right to free assembly is so integral to democracy, so well-rooted in our history, so necessary for effective free expression that it actually tolerates the violence that sometimes accompanies it. Were this not so, then hecklers would have their veto and there would be no such thing as free assembly.

In Chicago in 1946, a Roman Catholic priest, Father Arthur Terminiello, gave an incendiary speech attacking President Harry Truman. The speech drew nearly as many hecklers as it did appreciators. The hecklers stormed the stage and trashed the lecture venue. The Chicago police arrested Terminiello, not the hecklers. He was convicted of disorderly conduct and the Illinois courts upheld his conviction.

The Supreme Court reversed the conviction for the reasons that have now become a well-accepted aspect of our jurisprudence: All innocuous speech is absolutely protected; and all speech is innocuous when there is time for more speech to challenge it.

The McKesson decision is ridiculous. When the Giants last beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl, two drunks had a fight in the stadium. Can they sue Tom Brady? Of course not.

In McKesson’s case, he neither advocated nor caused violence. Yet the court — abandoning the Terminiello principles — will allow an unnamed victim to sue him for what an unknown and unseen assailant did. This is a major blow to the freedom of expression. The court gave no reasons for its bizarre decision. One can hope that a jury will do the right thing; or the court, if it has this case again, will return to first principles.

To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO

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Bishop Indrias Rehmat chose Fr Abid Tanvir, former diocese vicar general, as parish priest. Two catechists were also appointed to work with him. Admired and visited by Muslims, the church named after Saint Anthony was inaugurated last year. The bishop urged the faithful 'to make this beautiful church stronger in spirituality.'

At least 12 people are under investigation, six of whom are currently in jail. At the centre of the investigation is a cell based in Başakşehir and responsible for the attack on the Franciscan parish at the end of January. Other operations targeting the parliament, military barracks and police stations are under investigation.

Texas Is Being Turned Into a Woke Democrat State

Paul Craig Roberts

The Biden Regime is using federal money to bribe the Aggies, Texas A&M University, to come up with ways to advance “race-based hiring” in public schools. https://texasscorecard.com/investigations/texas-am-advancing-race-based-hiring-in-schools/

Possible you remember or have heard that Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement was about judging “people by their character and not the color of their skin.” Once perhaps, but it has been a long time since. For half a century skin color has had preference, if it is non-white, in university admissions, employment and promotion.

Feminists latched onto the scheme and the female gender was also privileged.

This is not to say that no blacks and no females are qualified for their position. Many of them are. It is to say that they are in their position despite their qualifications because they constitute a privileged category before the law, a total violation of the US Constitution and its 14th Amendment.

The emphasis on “diversity” has prevailed over the merit-based system into which I was born and grew up. Today merit is considered racist, a white supremacy tool. Many gifted student programs and high schools for the exceptional have been shut down because two few blacks are qualified, and small presence of blacks violates the sacredness of “diversity” and “equity.”

A country whose education, employment and promotion is based on diversity and not on merit is a country that is failing, and most certainly America has long been a failing country. For example, we now have “diversity” appointments to prosecutorial offices such as prosecutors and attorney generals and as judges who have no understanding of law as a shield of the people, but who see it is a weapon to be used against disapproved parties. We see the total collapse of justice in America in the many examples of the Democrats’ Stalin show trials against President Trump and against the alleged “insurrectionists” who attended the Trump rally..

To the few remaining people of my generation it is astonishing that merit, which made America great and a ladder of upward mobility, has been officially cast aside for “diversity” in which advance is based on skin color, gender or self-proclaimed, non-biological gender.

Have the people who have created this deplorable situation ever wondered how a non-merit based mediocre society can be a superpower, an unipolar, a hegemony whose exceptional and indispensable existence gives it right to hegemony over the world?

China, the host of most of American manufacturing must wonder at the American Delusion.

Russia, whose power and economy have been greatly elevated by the mindless American sanctions, must wonder if the USA even qualifies as an opponent.

Even Iran no longer fears the US.

If you are so unfortunate as to live in New York City or other blue cities, your home and your rental properties can be stolen from you by the Democrats’ massive and ongoing wave of immigrant-invaders who can occupy your property in your absence and occupy your rental property between leases and you cannot evict them.

Regardless of the reality in which they live, many Americans still vote Democrat. When a people vote for their own-self destruction, it is clear that the country is finished.

Fort Worth, Texas, has a “cultural awareness program,” called “Diversity Matters Champions.” The city’s Diversity and Inclusion Department lists events, such as LGBT Pride Month, Juneteenth, and Hispanic Heritage Month. If a city employee attends 5 events, they will qualify as a “Diversity Matters Champion” and be qualified for advancement. https://texasscorecard.com/local/fort-worth-employees-can-become-dei-champions/

This is America today. The youth are lost to us, because they are no longer schooled in the virtues of a free society but are propagandized against it as white supremacy. Moreover, the freedom my generation experienced is almost gone, so American youth do not know freedom.

How can this be repaired? How can freedom be resurrected? Not in the public schools. University “education” departments turn out woke morons alienated against their country. Law schools turn out alienated graduates who regard the US Constitution as a racist document and prosecutors who regard law not as a shield of the people but as a weapon to be wielded against the people.

This is all serious and truth. There is no free country here.

As Parts 1, 2, and 3 of The Great Dispossession make clear, our remaining independence is about to be brought to an end.

For the thirteenth year in a row, Japan has experienced a population decline. The childcare subsidies launched by the government almost a year ago do not seem to be enough. Demographer Minagawa: 'Conflict in work and family management and the pressure on motherhood in society also weigh heavily. Secularisation is also a factor: according to research by the Pew Research Center, Japanese people who pray are more likely to have children.

An important interview from a year ago

The Durham Report showed top FBI officials involved in high treason but refused to indict them.

https://rumble.com/v2pznzm-paul-craig-roberts-the-governments-fraud-and-force.html?e9s=rel_v1_b

National Public Radio CEO Declares Truth to be a Distraction that Gets in the Way of Her Agenda

I have advised readers for many years that NPR, NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, and the rest of the presstitutes are lie machines whose only function is to indoctrinate Americans with official narratives so that they have no comprehension of what is really happening or why and renders them ignorant of the real threats that they face.

Now the NPR CEO 100% confirms everything I have told you.
New NPR CEO Katherine Maher gave a Ted Talk during which she asserted that “truth” is a “distraction” which is “getting in the way of getting things done.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-npr-ceo-gave-ted-talk-asserting-truth-distraction

Calls are growing for NPR to have its government funding withdrawn after a series of tweets by Maher were uncovered in which she supported far-left causes, including endorsing racial reparations and making claims that the planet is “burning.”
But the content of the Ted Talk she gave is raising even more eyebrows.
Maher ludicrously suggested during the speech that far-left Wikipedia had a model “which actually works really well” in determining “what the truth really is.”
Acknowledging that Wikipedia writers are “not focused on the truth, they’re focused on something else, which is the best of what we can know right now,” Maher suggested the “truth” was not a priority.
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1780492620634202153?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1780492620634202153%7Ctwgr%5E29f647ef9348b6ea0e8b9400ad59eb0b8e5b5c02%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fnew-npr-ceo-gave-ted-talk-asserting-truth-distraction

“In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done,” she said.

Maher went on to claim “there are many different truths” based on the feelings, environment and perception of different individuals.
In other words, there is no objective truth and the truth is whatever left-wing journalists and biased Wikipedia editors say it is.

[As I have told you for years, truth has been dethroned and made secondary to emotion. It is no longer truth that is important. What is important is your emotional state based on your political and ideological brainwashing and biases. Education has destroyed the idea of objective truth among young Americans. The consequence is the demise of science, scholarship, and justice. Juries now convict not on the basis of facts but on the basis of their emotions. If it is a well publicized case, the media will have already programmed the verdict into the jury. The Woke generation will be the most illiterate generation in modern history.]

Elon Musk has blasted NPR in recent days, asserting that the network has “become a hard left propaganda machine that tolerates no dissent.”
That was in response to comments by award-winning veteran senior NPR editor Uri Berliner, who was suspended after sharing concerns about the state of the mainstream media especially NPR.

Berliner lamented the “declining ratings” and “sorry levels of trust,” calling on the legacy press to go back to square one “with the basic building blocks of journalism.”

[Zero Hedge: Berliner just resigned, explaining that “I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.”]

Musk also highlighted how Maher (who puts pronouns in her bio) has a history of working for corrupt, globalist institutions.

“While NPR often claims that public funding accounts for only a small portion of its budget, the outlet’s parent company, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, received $525 million this year, $126 million of which went to public radio stations. Because much of NPR’s public funding is indirect, channelled through member fees paid by local stations, it is able to claim financial independence,” reports Unherd.

Last year, Twitter placed a label on NPR’s account describing the outlet as “State-affiliated media,” with owner Elon Musk commenting that the description “seems accurate.”

The question I have is: what is the difference between Katherine Maher and Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot? She believes exactly as they did: Truth is whatever serves the agenda. As far as I can tell this is the belief of the entirety of the liberal-left.

Michael Hudson Explains that Israel’s Satanic Policy Toward Palestine Was Worked Out 50 Years ago at the Hudson institute

https://www.unz.com/mhudson/the-truth-about-the-destruction-of-gaza/

After I did a post on Tuesday about the book of hours of King Henry II of France (born 1519; reigned 1547-59), reader Steven Hensley noted in the combox that his Queen, Catherine de’ Medici (1519-89), also had a very beautiful book of Hours, illuminated in a similar style. Fortunately, this is also in the public domain through the website of the Bibliothèque national de France (Smith-Lesouëf 42.)Gregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0

Lying between Taiwan and Mainland China, Kinmen Island would almost surely be the first place Chinese armies would land if they were to invade Taiwan. Kinmen also serves as the tripwire to bring the US into a China-Taiwan conflict.

Lying between Taiwan and Mainland China, Kinmen Island would almost surely be the first place Chinese armies would land if they were to invade Taiwan. Kinmen also serves as the tripwire to bring the US into a China-Taiwan conflict.

This is the Chapel of the International Seminary of St. Pius X in Écône, Switzerland. Please note how uncluttered the chapel is; how prominent and easy to see, the altar is and how beautiful the ambo/pulpit is. Please note, too, that the altar railing is on the first step up from the nave of the chapel making its use quite easy for young and old alike. 
Most modern Mass sanctuaries are cluttered with plants, flowers, fabric and banners. The altar is too low and thus makes it seem as though it is absent in a full church. There is no spaciousness for other types of liturgies be they ordinations, nuptial liturgies or funeral liturgies. 
Please note the reverence for the deceased body of a retired bishop of Chur who chose to join the SSPX and not to be buried in his former cathedral but next to Archbishop Lefebrve. You can read the Pillar story HERE.

I always explain this phrase when I use it, because it is so commonly misunderstood.So many folks think that it means the careful, critical examination of a text, so as to elucidate more and more of its meaning.It doesn't. It means trying to work out what "the original text" actually was.  It most commonly applies to texts which have been transmitted in manuscript form by copyists. HereFr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com0

In this current age of mass media and constant Internet access, the process of theological reception can oftentimes be rushed and clumsy. The race is on, as it were, to forge and brandish one’s latest “hot take” on any given Church topic, document, or papal interview. Merely minutes after the introduction of Dignitas Infinita by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF)…

Source

Recently on his show, Bill Maher shocked his audience in admitting that pro-lifers are correct: "They think it’s murder—and it kind of is." The audience enters a nervous silence. Then he adds a shocking line: "I’m just okay with that." The audience enters another nervous silence, not sure if he's joking. But he is not. [...]

Recently on his show, Bill Maher shocked his audience in admitting that pro-lifers are correct: "They think it’s murder—and it kind of is." The audience enters a nervous silence. Then he adds a shocking line: "I’m just okay with that." The audience enters another nervous silence, not sure if he's joking. But he is not. [...]