To live without faith, without a patrimony to defend, without a steady struggle for truth – that is not living, but existing.
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Site: AsiaNews.itAfter suspending operations in March 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine, the fast-food company has resubmitted its registration application to the relevant office ofRospatent.While diplomatically stating that this is only a renewal of trademark rights, Moscow already considers it a seal of the new friendship with Trump's United States.
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Site: AsiaNews.itToday's news: US tariff exemption for Bibles printed in China;Four former members of the Legislative Council released in Hong Kong after serving their sentences;Indian authorities demolish the homes of at least 10 suspected militants in Kashmir, while accusations against Islamabad continue;Prime Minister Ishiba promotes free trade between Japan and Vietnam, against trade wars.
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Site: Zero HedgeEco-Extremists Should Be Tried Under Terror Laws, Sweden Democrats SayTyler Durden Tue, 04/29/2025 - 03:30
Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,
The Sweden Democrats have called for climate activist groups to be convicted under terrorism laws, arguing that sabotage by eco-extremists is making life miserable for ordinary citizens and must be stopped immediately.
Fed up with repeated disruptions from groups like Restore Wetlands, which have recently blocked rush-hour traffic, interrupted parliamentary debates, and even stormed the Royal Ship Vasa, the Sweden Democrats are calling for harsher measures to arrest the ongoing civil disruption.
Pontus Andersson Garpvall, a member of the Riksdag’s Justice Committee, told Aftonbladet that voters and citizens are exhausted by the relentless activism.
“Voters and citizens are very tired of this type of action,” he said.
“We believe that it should be examined whether current terror legislation is applicable to this type of action. If that is not possible, we must look at changing the terror legislation.”
He emphasized that the goal is to introduce such severe penalties that socially disruptive sabotage will be eliminated altogether.
The Sweden Democrats intend to negotiate with the government to advance this proposal.
The right-wing populist group currently props up the center-right government led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson following the Tidö Agreement, which confirmed SD support for the current administration in exchange for certain policy proposals, particularly on migration.
Now, the party has eco-warriors in its crosshairs, with Garpvall accusing a small group of extremists of hijacking the lives of ordinary citizens by believing in apocalyptic scenarios and taking increasingly aggressive actions to spread their message.
“An ordinary worker who is on his or her way to work is not very happy if he or she is late because people have sat down on the road. There is irritation from the common man against this, so it is up to the politicians to come up with measures,” he told the Swedish newspaper.
He acknowledged that some level of civil disobedience should be tolerated in a democracy, but stressed that actions targeting protected sites such as airports must be dealt with much more severely.
“If it had been a foreign power that, for example, flew drones at Swedish airports to stop flights, they might have had a completely different view of it than they have now,” he said of the government.
Adding to their concerns, Garpvall pointed out that many of these activist groups have international ties and that it remains unclear who is financing their operations.
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Site: Zero HedgeCiti Closing Málaga Office That Once Offered "Better Work-Life Balance"Tyler Durden Tue, 04/29/2025 - 02:45
The good news is that without the work, former employees are going to have plenty of time to spend on their lives. The bad news is that they're not going to have much more money to spend.
Citigroup is shutting down its Málaga office less than three years after opening the hub, cutting a few jobs and relocating others to London and Paris, according to FT.
Opened in 2022 during a fierce post-pandemic talent war, the Costa del Sol office offered junior bankers eight-hour days and work-free weekends, a sharp contrast to the grueling hours typical in New York and London
Citi said the closure is part of its plan to “simplify the firm and make improvements to how we operate.”
It added, “Unfortunately, this decision means that six of our colleagues in Málaga will be leaving the firm, and we will provide support to them during this process.”
FT writes that the initiative, which selected 27 analysts from over 3,000 applicants, was originally praised by Citi’s global co-head of investment banking, Manolo Falcó, who said it was “not a gimmick” and that there would be no “stigma” for those opting for better work-life balance.
The closure comes amid a wider retreat from pandemic-era perks, as a prolonged dealmaking slump forces investment banks to tighten office policies.
We've come a long way since Covid, when work-life balance came into focus after disgruntled Goldman Sachs junior bankers made the infamous PowerPoint presentation that forced banks on the street to at least pretend and posture like they cared about their lower-rung employees' mental health.
We reported last summer that junior bankers on Wall Street were already back to working 100 hour weeks. Interviews with current and former junior bankers revealed that 100-hour work weeks had resurged as banks pursued a modest deal flow. Employees, speaking anonymously, said that workloads were testing promises to protect trainee health.
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Site: Mises InstituteNew "Canadian" PM Mark Carney has been head of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. The technocracy acknowledges no borders.
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Site: Zero HedgeThe Next Pope: Kerygma Or Catechism?Tyler Durden Tue, 04/29/2025 - 02:00
Authored by Amir Taheri via The Gatestone Institute,
In 2013 when a little-known cardinal from Argentina was elected the Pope of the Catholic Church, taking the title of Francis, many wondered in which direction he might walk in Saint Peter's shoes.
The election came as a surprise in the wake of the unprecedented decision of Pope Benedict XVI to abdicate the pontificate. Benedict, a German, had been revealed as a conservative pontiff focused on the doctrine in what he called "a time of upheavals." That was the time when globalism was in the ascendancy and all religions appeared to be on the defensive in the face of political and cultural forces advocating multiculturalism and secularism.
In his book Values in a Time of Upheavals, Benedict spoke of "the three myths" that threaten mankind: science, progress and freedom which, transformed into absolutes, pretend to replace religious faith.
Once elected, Pope Francis turned out to be at the other end of the spectrum from Benedict as far as their respective world views were concerned. In a sense Benedict, steering away from the quotidian of politics, focused on the core doctrine of his faith, powerfully spelled out in his other book, Jesus of Nazareth.
Pope Francis, however, quickly showed that he wished to play a political role in the hope of injecting his religious values into the global debate. Leaving the doctrine to his predecessor, he used catechism or the flexible rituals of the faith as the template for his political positions which he spelled out in a book formed by interviews with two Italian journalists.
Because Francis was the first Jesuit priest to become Pope, it was not surprising that, true to his evangelist mission as a "soldier for Christ," his emphasis was on securing the largest possible audience for the Catholic Church rather than defending the strictest form of doctrine in an age of cultural relativism.
He learned much from his most recent predecessors: John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The former emphasized the political dimension of his mission, especially in the struggle to help central and Eastern Europe bring down the Iron Curtain. When the Cold War ended with the disintegration of the Soviet Empire, John Paul II was among history's victors, his doctrinal conservatism conveniently pushed aside.
In contrast, Benedict XVI, a theologian by training and temperament, put the emphasis on doctrinal issues in a brave attempt to save the Catholic Church from the ravages of political correctness, wokeism and multiculturalism.
As a result, many Catholics did not warm to him, while non-Catholics found him anachronistic. Francis decided to look to John Paul II rather than Benedict XVI as a model. The difference was that John Paul II was a political Pope on the right of the center while Francis turned out to be left of center. That encouraged some of Francis's critics on the right to portray him as a fellow traveler or even a communist.
In his book, Francis admitted that he was attracted to communist themes, if not actual policies. In fact, the only political book he cites is "Our Word and Proposals" by the Argentinian communist writer Leonidas Barletta. "It helped my political education," Francis said in his book. Francis deepened his "progressive" profile with a list of his favorite authors, including German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, Italian novelist Alessandro Manzoni, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Belgian mystic Joseph Maréchal, and, last but not least, Argentina's own literary icon, Jorge Luis Borges, none of whom could be branded as leftists.
Francis regarded "liberal capitalism" as immoral and said he found some sympathy for the "liberation theology" of the Latin American guerrilla-priests of the 1960s, while insisting that he was "never a communist."
In fact, he included communism, along with unbridled capitalism, Nazism and liberalism in his list of totalitarian ideologies. And, yet, he points at secularism as the principal enemy of faith. "There is a denial of God due to secularism, the selfish egoism of humanity," he asserted. Throughout his pontificate, Francis wrestled with the "social issues" that have dominated the public debate in the West in recent decades, among them abortion, birth control, divorce, gay and lesbian marriages, sexual abuse by church staff and prelates, and celibacy for priests. Here, Francis faced a real difficulty.
If he had simply reaffirmed the traditional positions of the Church, as Benedict XVI did, he would have weakened his status as a "progressive Pope." If, on the other hand, he had adopted the "progressive" position, he would have antagonized many in his flock.
Francis dealt with this dilemma in the classical Jesuit style of seizing the bull by both horns.
Echoing Benedict, he asserted that what mattered was the core narrative of Christianity, the technical term for which is kerygma. Beyond that we have what Francis called "catechism," which, in the sense he used it, concerns behavior and social organization.
Interestingly, he seldom mentioned dogma, the bridge between kerygma and catechism. Thus, issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and the Eucharist for divorced individuals, do not affect the kerygma. As for celibacy for priests, it is "a discipline, not a matter of doctrine," he asserted, and thus could be abandoned in the future.
A year before his death, Francis published a pamphlet on literature, advising his flock to read as much as possible, even works by non-believers or adversaries of the faith. This was a bold move by a man who had inherited the office that created the infamous Index of books to ban and burn, which had remained in force until 1966. In addition to being a "progressive," Francis was also an optimist.
"The moral conscience of different cultures progresses," he asserted, reminding us how such "evils" as incest, slavery, exploitation, for example, were once, in different phases of human history, tolerated by all cultures and even religions but are now rejected with revulsion by all. But is human "moral progress," if it exists at all, as linear as the Pope Francis seemed to believe? Francis' intellectual landscape was dominated by ideas that could be traced back to ancient Athens rather than Jerusalem. He was more comfortable in the company of Aristotle than the Church Fathers. The only one he quotes is the quasi-Aristotelian St. Augustine, ignoring the contrasting positions of Jerome and Tertullian, among others. Is the church, indeed any formal religious organization, necessary for salvation? Francis couldn't but answer with a resounding "yes."
However, he weakened that "yes" by recalling that, as a young man, he dreamt of becoming a missionary to Japan, where Christianity had managed to survive and to some extent even prosper without any priests and no organization for over two centuries. I don't know whether Francis had read Japanese novelist Shūsaku Endo's fascinating novel "Silence", which deals precisely with that subject. Endo shows that, even under the worst conditions of torture and despair, human beings look to religious faith for a measure of certainty about right and wrong and good and evil. Today, the problem is that religion, in most of its forms, is trying to imitate philosophy, which is the realm of doubt, or replace ideology as a means of organizing political action.
Francis repeated the assertion by André Malraux, that the 21st century will be "religious or it will not at all."
The question is: religion in which of its many forms?
There are those who see kerygma as a poetic conceit, focusing on catechism, or its Islamic version the Shari'a, as a means of social and political control and domination. Then there are those who, having asserted the kerygma, allow the elastic to be pulled in the opposite direction as far as possible. The problem is that, at some point, the elastic might snap.
Will the next Pope continue Francis's "progressive" agenda or return to Benedict's "traditional" path? An Italian proverb says "morto un papa, se ne fa un altro" (Death of a Pope, makes another).
Since a majority of the 135 cardinals of the conclave mandated to elect the next Pope were appointed by Francis, one might assume that they would choose someone to continue his "progressive" legacy. However, taking Saint Mathews' advice to "neither presume nor despair", one cannot be sure.
The global mood has changed from the time Francis was chosen, and Benedict's zeitgeist seems to be making a comeback in a world disappointed with the empty promises of progressivism.
So, don't be surprised if the cardinals will have a tough time choosing between kerygma and catechism.
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Site: The Unz ReviewHow odd to look back now — now, as Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine ends in ignominious defeat—and think of that cornucopia of propaganda spilling out of what I called during the early months Washington’s “bubble of pretend.” Take a few minutes to remember with me. There was the “Ghost of Kyiv,” an heroic MiG–29...
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Site: AntiWar.comApril 30, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of the final, definitive defeat of the U.S. military crusade in Vietnam. The images of U.S. helicopters desperately flying American diplomats and Washington’s high-level South Vietnamese collaborators from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon effectively captured not only the chaotic environment, but also the extent of … Continue reading "50 Years On: US Elites Learned Nothing From the Vietnam Defeat"
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Site: AntiWar.com“Rights are granted to those who align with power,” Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student, eloquently wrote from his cell. This poignant statement came soon after a judge ruled that the government had met the legal threshold to deport the young activist on the nebulous ground of “foreign policy”. “For the poor, for people … Continue reading "Deporting Dissent: The Dangerous Precedent Set by the Persecution of Pro-Palestine Activists"
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Site: The Unz ReviewPresident Donald Trump has pulled a fast one against the US Constitution, if not quite and not yet a coup d’état. “We have an idea of coups being external military assaults on the government,” a US constitutional law professor has reported. “But self-coups take place within the government, from within the executive branch in particular.”...
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Site: The Unz ReviewPutin’s 3 day ceasefire, which begins in 8 days, is unrelated to the Ukrainian negotiations. The ceasefire is in memory of the 80th Anniversary of Russia’s defeat of Germany in World War II, a defeat in which the US, Britain, and France played a minor role as the casualty lists indicate. Russia bore the brunt...
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Site: The Unz ReviewIranian MP Mohammad Siraj claims that the massive explosion at Bandar Abbas was a deliberate act of sabotage. Siraj told Rokna News Agency that “Israel was involved in the explosion. It was not accidental. Clear evidence points to Israeli involvement.” The MP claimed the blast---which killed at least 70 people and left 1,200 more severely...
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Site: The Unz Review1. Greetings, Roger! How are you doing? My life has never been better, and there are signs of hope in my country as well after the horrible interlude of the Biden presidency. 2. You have been involved in White nationalist activities for years, yet you are best known for your statements on gender and sexuality....
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Site: Public Discourse
On February 18, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes heard arguments surrounding the Trump administration’s executive order “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” following a lawsuit from several current and would-be servicemembers who identify as transgender.
Section 2 of that executive order maintains that two factors stand at odds with the military’s “high standards for readiness, lethality, unit cohesion,” and other qualities. Those factors are, first, “the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria,” and second, “the use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”
Much of the early news coverage centered on pronouns and, in particular, on Judge Reyes’s skepticism that they affect military readiness. Addressing the administration’s lawyers, she said: “You and I both agree that the greatest fighting force that world history has ever seen is not going to be impacted in any way by less than one percent of the soldiers using a different pronoun than others might want to call them.” In Judge Reyes’s view, a “military [that] is negatively impacted” because of transgender pronouns would be “incompetent.” She called the suggestion “frankly ridiculous” and said that “any common sense, rational person would understand that [pronoun use] doesn’t” affect military readiness.
The judge even issued the following challenge: “If you can get me an officer of the United States military to get on the stand and say that because of pronoun usage, we are less prepared, I will be the first to buy you a box of cigars.”
As an Air Force officer with a Ph.D. in philosophy who has personally struggled with the issue of transgender pronouns in the military, I am writing to meet this challenge. Importantly, I do so not out of “animus”—a common accusation surrounding this case—but with a sincere belief in the intrinsic worth of people who identify as transgender, with whom I have worked both personally and professionally, and whom I wish well. Nevertheless, the challenges that transgender pronoun use raise for our pluralistic military are real, and citizens need to understand them.
The use of transgender pronouns creates a dilemma for military readiness. So long as the military permits such pronouns, it has two basic choices: require their use or leave that use optional. Yet either choice brings real costs.
Choice 1: Require Use
Suppose the military required the use of transgender pronouns. To see the consequences, consider the following facts.
First, there are many people among us who cannot in good conscience use transgender pronouns. These include people who, for religious or philosophical reasons, believe that calling a biological male “she/her,” a biological female “he/him,” or calling someone any of the various other preferred pronouns such as “zi,” “zem,” or “fae,” amounts to a falsehood. The conscientious abstainers believe that their use of such language actually harms all parties involved: the speaker, who must violate his commitment to truth or his duties to God; the person who identifies as transgender, who will be encouraged in what the speaker believes to be a falsehood; and any other listeners, who may feel added social pressure to join, or continue, in that supposed falsehood.
Now, it is true that many people do not agree that transgender pronouns amount to a falsehood. This latter group sees the use of such pronouns as a mark of authenticity, even courage. But here I am focused on the former group, the conscientious abstainers. Their position gets little serious attention in most media coverage surrounding this issue, yet they need understanding too.
According to recent survey data, this group is not small. A 2022 Pew Forum study found that “[t]he vast majority of Republicans and those who lean toward the GOP say gender is determined by sex assigned at birth (86 percent),” along with “38 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners”—a massive number in a country of 340 million people, with a relatively even split between the parties. If you believe that biological sex determines one’s gender, then calling a biological male who identifies as a woman “she/her” (for example) will be for you direct participation in a lie.
That may help to explain why, according to a PRRI study from 2023, 43 percent of Americans reported that they were “somewhat” or “very uncomfortable” using “pronouns like ‘he’ or ‘she’ that do not match your perception of their appearance.” That figure includes 68 percent of Republicans, 40 percent of Independents, and 33 percent of Democrats—again, a massive number.
Nor, for many of these people, will the supposed falsehood appear innocent. A study by Gallup in May 2024 found that a “steady 51 percent of Americans think changing one’s gender is morally wrong,” and many of those cited religious reasons, meaning their opposition is not surface-level but goes very deep, even into First Amendment territory. Although that study focuses on more extreme means of transition (puberty blockers and hormone treatments, for example), such treatments exist along a spectrum, and changing one’s pronouns surely falls along that spectrum.
Thus, were the military to require the use of transgender pronouns, it would alienate a substantial portion of eligible citizens, who may conclude that it is no longer safe to serve, since doing so exposes them to a not-insignificant chance of being forced to violate their conscience. This chance greatly increases when viewed over the course of a twenty-year career, with the myriad colleagues that will come into their path. Instituting such an obstacle to military service for so many citizens poses a clear readiness problem.
Choice 2: Leave Use Optional
Suppose instead that the military leaves it optional whether or not to use transgender pronouns. This too creates a readiness problem, in two distinct ways.
First, although many Americans cannot use transgender pronouns, others view that refusal as an existential threat, a “denial” of the transgender person’s “very existence.” Claims about this erasure of existence are numerous. (See, for example, here, here, and here.) As such people see it, to deny the requested pronoun (and the beliefs on which it is based) is to deny that the requesters are who they claim themselves to be; it is to deny the real them. The coexistence of these two groups—the pronoun abstainers and the pronoun requesters—provides a recipe for immense tension in a military unit, as one group demands what the other group cannot, in good conscience, give. It does so, at the very least, so long as such pronouns are optional, for then members can be found culpable for not using them.
That tension intensifies when we consider that many of today’s prominent voices portray all who refuse to use transgender pronouns—or to support other aspects of a transition program—as bigoted or hateful, even when abstainers state their reasons clearly and in gracious terms. (See, for example, the 2018 controversy surrounding Isabella Chow, a former UC Berkeley student senator—a case I explored in detail in my doctoral dissertation.)
Now because our military is pluralistic, it contains representatives of both groups: those who cannot use transgender pronouns, and those who either demand their use or who regard abstainers as bigoted or hateful. Thus, a portion of servicemembers declining to use transgender pronouns could easily undermine trust and cohesion in the unit, while alienating servicemembers who identify as transgender. This is hardly a recipe for success.
Those who wish to understand these two groups better, and therefore to engage in more productive dialogue about pronouns and related issues, might start by reading the entries on “gender identity” and “transgender” in the Red Blue Translator, a resource from the public benefit corporation AllSides. Such awareness can humanize opponents, while clarifying conflicts that seem inexplicable when one does not know the basic assumptions of the other side.
There is a second way in which the optional use of transgender pronouns can damage military readiness. Certain aspects of military culture create immense pressure on servicemembers to use transgender pronouns, regardless of whether such pronouns are theoretically optional or whether they align with such servicemembers’ beliefs. Consider the following scenarios.
A commander of an Air Force squadron has been asked to officiate the promotion ceremony of one of her airmen, a person who identifies as transgender. It is customary in the Air Force that the officiant make remarks on behalf of the promotee. These remarks are often personal, summarizing major milestones in the promotee’s life and career—they often last for ten minutes or more. The promotee’s family is usually present, along with his teammates.
What, then, is our commander to do? All eyes (and ears) now rest upon her, with the expectation that she will help make the occasion special. And though she wishes to make it special, she belongs to that large group of people who object to using transgender pronouns.
Have you ever tried to omit pronouns when speaking about someone who identifies as transgender? Planned every sentence in advance? Heard the awkwardness as you repeat the person’s name again and again, rather than the graceful alternation between name and pronoun that our language affords? If so, then you can appreciate just how difficult our commander’s task is. Perhaps we can trust seasoned leaders with that challenge, but what about 18-year-old recruits or your average mid-level supervisor? Are they up to it?
And if they fail, what then? Will they be subject to an Equal Opportunity (EO) complaint, or even a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice on harassment grounds? This may sound far-fetched, but one military lawyer and professor at West Point has argued that EO law supplied such a basis as recently as last year.
And what should that airman’s teammates in the audience infer from their commander’s abstention? That she is a bigot and full of hate, as many allege? So much for unit cohesion.
Next, take the case of a junior servicemember who serves under a civilian leader—a government service (GS) employee who identifies as transgender. How should our servicemember address the leader in question in all his interactions with that person?
This case is especially difficult for multiple reasons. Unlike in the previous scenario, where the commander could at least alternate between using the airman’s rank and his or her first name, the servicemember in our new scenario has no such option. There are no gender-neutral titles for civilian employees. You would not call someone “GS-15 Smith,” for example, whereas you can and do call someone “Colonel” or “Airman Smith.” In the civilian case, one uses “Mr.” or “Ms.,” “Sir” or “Ma’am,” a custom which leaves conscientious abstainers no way out.
Unlike many civilian organizations, which are “flat” in nature, the military is strictly hierarchical, and it adheres to time-honored customs and courtesies. In our current system, many would consider it extraordinarily inappropriate for a junior servicemember to refer to civilian leaders by their first names, or to use titles like “boss.” This especially applies to major political appointees (service secretaries, for example). Were such people to request alternative pronouns, that could create a crisis of conscience for tens of thousands of their subordinates, who may either fear reprisal or the assumption of animus from many of their non-abstaining teammates.
In short, so long as the military permits transgender pronouns, it faces a dilemma. To require their use means alienating a substantial percentage of eligible servicemembers who cannot use them in good conscience. To leave them optional threatens unit cohesion, and it risks the continued alienation of those who, given the nature of military culture, see no genuine room for abstention.
Judge Reyes, and all those holding authority over our nation’s armed forces, should take the real dangers posed by a culture of pronoun usage—whether mandatory or “optional”—seriously.
The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the official guidance or position of the United States Government, the Department of Defense, the United States Air Force, or the United States Space Force.
Image by roibu and licensed via Adobe Stock.
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Site: Zero HedgeIran Says Port Blast Was 'Negligence' Amid Reports Missile Fuel Stored ImproperlyTyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 19:40
As of Monday an Iranian official in Bandar Abbas has said that the major Iranian port fire is 90% extinguished, which means emergency crews have been battling the blaze for over 40 hours. The death toll has since risen to at least 46 amid the ongoing emergency. Over 1,000 injuries have been reported.
The massive, deadly explosion which shocked Iran two days prior is the largest at an Iranian commercial port. The resulting fire ball, partly the result of missile fuel reportedly having detonated, was so large that there was initial widespread speculation that the Israelis were behind it.
Via Associated Press
Certainly it wouldn't have been the first Israeli sabotage attack against vital Iranian infrastructure in recent history. And so it is somewhat of a surprise that the Iranians on Monday have not alleged any kind of external sabotage or interference, but are instead calling it an accident due to negligence
Iran’s Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni described the blast at the nation's largest commercial port two days earlier as caused by "negligence" and failure to comply with established safety measures. There is an ongoing investigation.
"Some culprits have been identified and summoned… There were shortcomings, including noncompliance with safety precautions and negligence in terms of passive defense," Momeni told state TV. He suggested that some materials should not have been kept at the port.
Drone closeup footage from aftermath of Iran port blast released by an IRGC linked outlet. pic.twitter.com/2eGPaMW1rw
— Khosro K Isfahani (@KhosroIsfahani) April 28, 2025According to The NY Times, a volatile component was improperly stored:
A person with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that what exploded was sodium perchlorate, a major ingredient in solid fuel for missiles. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss security matters.
The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency quoted an official as saying the explosion was likely set off by containers of chemicals, but did not identify the chemicals. What caused them to detonate was not clear, but the Iranian authorities did not suggest it was sabotage or a deliberate attack.
Reddish-orange clouds over the area have further suggested a significant chemical component to the blast, and Iran's health ministry has declared a state of emergency in the impacted Hormozgan province.
On-the-ground video of the still-smoldering aftermath...
❗️Iran’s LARGEST port looks apocalyptic — craters, smoke everywhere, 10,000 containers destroyed, fire still raging, 40 DEAD, 1,000+ injured https://t.co/97e7BuuD5X pic.twitter.com/rtoMSiqa2G
— RT (@RT_com) April 27, 2025The ministry is warning of airborne toxic pollutants and is urging people to stay indoors and to keep windows closed and wear masks. The fact that the port will have to be halted for a significant amount of time is expected to unleash harm and uncertainty on the already isolated Iranian economy.
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Site: Edward FeserIn my latest essay at Postliberal Order, I discuss what Christ, the Fathers of the Church, and Aristotle have to say about the moral hazards of riches.
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Site: Zero HedgeLeftism Is Killing ChocolateTyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 19:15
Authored by Andrew Widburg via AmericanThinker.com,
After years of writing about politics, I’m a pretty hardened character. I’m cynical, pessimistic, and, while I’m often disgusted, I’m seldom shocked or panicked. But what I read at the JoNova site was so terrible I’m reeling: “Price fixing kills the cocoa farm.” It turns out that, thanks to price controls in Ghana, one of the world’s primary chocolate-producing countries, chocolate farmers aren’t even bothering to plant new crops. Honestly, I feel quite ill.
I love chocolate at a level that comes close to (but I hope never crosses into) being idolatrous. It is one of the greatest pleasures in my life. Every day, I nibble at my Guittard Extra Dark Chocolate Chips, which, to my mind, are the best around: not too sweet, with a perfectly balanced fruity, vanilla undertone. Also, when the spirit moves me and the freezer isn’t too full, I make what is quite possibly the best chocolate ice cream around, using Droste Cocoa (worth every penny), along with hints of caramel and almond.
When I say I take chocolate seriously, I am not exaggerating. I consider it essential. So, when I read that socialist price-fixing policies in Ghana (as opposed to the leftists’ delusional bugaboo of anthropogenic climate change) are threatening the world’s cocoa supply...well, I’m getting ready to place a big chocolate order, that’s all I can say.
Jo Nova, one of Australia’s top real science writers (as opposed to the faux, leftist science writers), has the story:
There has been a wicked price spike in cocoa beans which the usual suspects are blaming on “climate change” as if your air conditioner was ruining cocoa crops in West Africa.
Instead African governments have fixed the price of cocoa for decades, forcing poor farmers to work for a pittance, and keeping the big profits for themselves.
Not surprisingly, even though there is a wild price spike, farmers in Ghana are leaving the industry, smuggling crops out (because they get a better price).
They didn’t plant new trees, they ran out of money for fertilizer, and didn’t try new varieties.
Their children don’t want to farm cocoa, and the yields are falling on old sickly plantations.
So, surprise, socialist government controls wrecked the industry and they are now scrambling to put the pieces back together.
Things are so desperate, the government of Ghana raised the price of cocoa by 58% last April and then raised the price of cocoa by another 45% last September, to try to reduce the smuggling.
(The government was losing too much money).
At one point last year it was estimated that a third of the national crop was lost to smugglers.
A few months after this, the farmers were hoarding their beans in expectation the government would have to give them another price rise. Just chaos for everyone.
Of course, that’s just the top note of an excellent essay that isn’t just about chocolate but, instead, uses the chocolate debacle as a springboard to discuss how socialism perverts markets, diminishing available supplies and impoverishing ordinary people. It’s worth your time to check it out.
So, next time you hear a chocolate lover bemoan the price of chocolate and, naturally, blame climate change for that situation, be sure to direct your friend to Jo Nova’s article. Your friend might learn something. Indeed, because every person has his or her truth, the one thing that matters most to him, your friend might suddenly decide that the free market is a good thing.
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Site: The Remnant Newspaper
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Site: Zero Hedge"ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE": Trump Rages After Negative Polls, Demands InvestigationsTyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 18:50
President Donald Trump on Monday said that pollsters reporting a recent slide in approval ratings should be investigated for "election fraud" over how wrong they were during his reelection campaign, as the country approaches Trump's 100th day in office and markets continue to pivot over chaotic messaging.
Citing recent polls from the NYT, WaPo, ABC News, and Fox News, Trump wrote on Truth social on Monday: "They are negative criminals who apologize to their subscribers and readers after I win elections big, much bigger than their polls showed I would win, loose a lot of credibility, and then go on cheating and lying for the next cycle, only worse," adding "These people should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD, and add in the FoxNews Pollster while you’re at it."
"They suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and there is nothing that anyone, or anything, can do about it. THEY ARE SICK, almost only write negative stories about me no matter how well I am doing (99.9% at the Border, BEST NUMBER EVER!), AND ARE TRULY THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! I wish them well, but will continue to fight to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" Trump continued.
That said, Trump's approval rating hasn't slipped that much according to a recent WaPo-ABC News poll - which found that 55% of adult Americans disapprove of the way he's handling his job vs. February at 53% disapproval.
The same poll found that Trump's approval rating is the lowest for any past president at the 100-day mark in their first or second terms.
Fox News, meanwhile, found that voters are displeased with Trump on just about every issue aside from border security.
Overall approval of Trump’s job performance comes in at 44%, down 5 points from 49% approval in March. That’s lower than the approval of Joe Biden (54%), Barack Obama (62%), and George W. Bush (63%) at the 100-day mark in their presidencies. It’s also lower by 1 point compared to Trump’s 45% approval at this point eight years ago.
Some 59% of voters are unhappy with how things are going in the country. That’s an improvement since the end of former President Biden’s term (68% dissatisfied), but worse than four years ago at the beginning of Biden’s term (53% dissatisfied). It’s also worse than the 100-day mark of Trump’s first term (53% dissatisfied). Since his inauguration in January, satisfaction among Democrats has turned to dissatisfaction and vice versa among Republicans. Dissatisfaction remained steady among Independents.
There were 4 national polls released today. All of them show the same thing. Trump’s approval is crashing and it’s directly tied to how Americans feel he is handling the economy, and particularly tariffs.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) April 28, 2025
The economy went from his strongest issue to his weakest due to tariffs. pic.twitter.com/Wb9Ar1LO33What say you?
First 100 days for Trump
— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) April 28, 2025 -
Site: Zero Hedge"The Federals Are Coming!"Tyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 18:25
Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
Americans were taught about Paul Revere’s ride in school. He was said to have ridden from his home in the North End of Boston, to Lexington and Concord, to warn the people there that Federal troops had landed in Boston Harbour and would soon reach the townships.Of course, the story was tarted up a bit for the history books. First, it’s unlikely that he shouted, “The British are coming,” since, at the time of the ride, in 1775, he was in fact British – a British colonial – and would have regarded himself as British, as would the townspeople.
It’s also unlikely that he galloped through the towns shouting, “To arms! To arms!” since a major portion of the British colonists, particular those who were older and had a lot to lose, were loyalists, and taking up arms would be treasonous. (At that time, treason was one of only two capital crimes.)
So, what did he shout on his ride… or did he in fact shout anything? It’s more likely that he simply went to the back doors of select sympathisers and asked them to spread the word that the Federal troops were on the way. But, of course, that would have made for a far less colourful story.
It is likely, though, that the ride itself did actually take place and that he did succeed in rousing the townspeople. Amongst them were the minutemen, who later did quite a good job of picking off the Federal troops.
At that time, this practice was looked upon by armies as cowardly. It was considered honourable for columns of troops to march toward each other and fire. Those with the most troops to sacrifice usually won. The colonists could not have prevailed, had they followed this method of battle.
But the colonists’ cause was a laudable one, even if they were far outnumbered and not as well-trained or well-armed as the Federals. Under the circumstances, they succeeded because they swallowed their pride, used their wits and, fighting guerilla style, prevailed against a greater opponent.
In creating the United States, the founding fathers of the US endorsed the concept of a republic – a conglomerate of states in which the individual right was tantamount. They were deeply suspicious of sliding into becoming a democracy. As Thomas Jefferson said,
“Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49.”
Quite so. And yet, from the very first presidential cabinet, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton pushed for a move away from a republic toward a stronger federal government. (In 1789, he formed the Federalist Party and the contest began.)
Since that time, the US has moved away from being a republic and has become more of a federalist state.
This progression continued fairly steadily until 1913, at which time two major changes occurred. The banking interests in the US had become powerful enough to push through two bills that would serve to enrich them for generations. The source of that wealth would be the American taxpayer.
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First, income tax (which had been attempted previously, but never gained full acceptance) was introduced.
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Second, to add insult to injury, the Federal Reserve was created. It was neither a federal body, nor was it a reserve. However, in addition to having the power to create all currency for the US, it had the power to set interest rates.
Through this control, it was possible to create steady annual inflation (defined as an increase in the currency in circulation). This had the effect of diminishing the purchasing power of the dollar by slow measures, effectively robbing the population incrementally through inflation.
Had Paul Revere been around in 1913, he might well have wished to get on his horse to warn the people that the Federals were coming. Only this time, it wasn’t the Federal troops, it was the Federal Reserve.
The Fed’s power made it possible to create large amounts of money out of thin air, to be loaned by banks. With this easy money, investors could borrow heavily and buy into the stock market a level previously regarded as impossible. This cornucopia was so forthcoming that, by 1929, a level of debt was reached that was unsustainable. If even a small increase in the interest rate was advanced, a stock market crash would occur, as debtors, who were up to their teeth in debt, would be underwater overnight.
What’s interesting here is that the very body that had taken over the economy in 1913 – the Federal Reserve – had created the artificially low interest rates, supplied the money, created the bubble, then, by raising interest rates in 1929, provided the pin to prick the bubble.
Not very sporting.
Today, the value of the dollar has been eroded by over 97% of its 1913 purchasing power and is due for replacement. If the owners of the Federal Reserve are to continue to regularly scalp the hoi polloi, the best approach would be to engineer a second major buildup of debt, trigger a crash, then introduce a new currency to “save the economy.”
This, they will most assuredly do. The debt has already been created. A crash can be triggered in many ways, including the tried-and-true method of raising interest rates.
And, after the predictable crash, the public will most assuredly cry out for those in power to “do something.” The warning signs have been in view for some time that that “something” will be digital currency – a currency that will make it necessary for virtually all economic transactions to pass through the hands of banks. Person-to-person transactions will virtually end, except for the possibility of barter, which would be likely to flourish as soon as the public have realized that they’ve been hoodwinked.
Unfortunately, our friend Paul Revere is nowhere to be seen on the horizon, but the Federals are indeed coming and the American people, in the not-too-distant future, will need to learn to survive the onslaught from the digital currency system that will take the place of the bullets of the late eighteenth century.
Once again, Americans will need to understand, as did their late eighteenth century forebears, that their only hope against a more powerful opponent is to use their wits – to adopt the minuteman approach and implement the economic equivalent of guerilla warfare.
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Excessive money printing and misguided economic ideas have created all kinds of distortions in the market. All signs point to this trend continuing until it reaches a crisis… one unlike anything we’ve seen before. That’s exactly why Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent video that explains how and why this is happening… and what you can do to protect yourself and even profit from the situation. Click here to watch it now.
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Site: LifeNews
“A fetus isn’t a baby.” “A woman has a right to choose.” These are often the most common statements a pro-lifer hears when discussing abortion with pro-choice people. “It isn’t a baby until it’s born.” “Abortion isn’t killing.”
The rank-and-file of the pro-choice movement usually deny that an unborn baby is a human being with a right to life. Occasionally you will find someone who argues that the fetus is a baby, but the woman has a right to abort him or her anyway – but usually you’ll hear pro-choice people denying the humanity of the unborn.
One word that’s always avoided is pro-choice publications is “baby.” “Fetus” or “product of conception” or “tissue” is how the aborted baby is described. It isn’t a life, they say.
But the people who know the most about abortion are the clinic workers and doctors who perform them. And many of them have come out saying things that would make even the most hardcore pro-choicers cringe.
Follow LifeNews.com on Instagram for pro-life pictures and videos.
In one article in the American Medical News that was probably never meant for pro-life eyes, abortion providers from around the country discussed the emotional difficulties of performing abortions. One doctor said:
I have angry feelings at myself for feeling good about grasping the calvaria [head], for feeling good about doing a technically good procedure that destroys a fetus, kills a baby. (1)
Baby? Perhaps this doctor didn’t get the memo. Pro-choice activists know never to refer to the “fetus” as a baby. You won’t hear Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) or the National Organization for Women using the term “baby” to describe a child being aborted.
Another abortion doctor uses honest terms to describe his job:
A late termination is actually not very nice and there is no way of getting away from it, I don’t feel I am doing it for any other reason than for the best of both the mother and the baby. (2)
Again the word “baby.” Could it be that these abortionists are fully aware that the “fetuses” they are aborting are in fact living babies?
If there is any doubt that at least some abortion providers know that abortion is killing a baby, it is put to rest by British abortionist Judith Arcana:
It is morally and ethically wrong to do abortions without acknowledging what it means to do them. I performed abortions, I have had an abortion and I am in favor of women having abortions when we choose to do so. But we should never disregard the fact that being pregnant means there is a baby growing inside of a woman, a baby whose life is ended. We ought not to pretend this is not happening. (3)
This straightforward admission must have caused some consternation to pro-choice activists who read Arcana’s article. Few are willing to admit to the reality of abortion.
One unnamed abortionist said the following in a book that profiled doctors from different fields:
Nobody wants to perform abortions after ten weeks because by then you see the features of the baby, hands, feet. It’s really barbaric. Abortions are very draining, exhausting, and heartrending. There are a lot of tears. … I do them because I take the attitude that women are going to terminate babies and deserve the same kind of treatment as women who carry babies … I’ve done a couple thousand, and it turned into a significant financial boon, but I also feel I’ve provided an important service. The only way I can do an abortion is to consider only the woman as my patient and block out the baby[.] (4)
In this short paragraph, the doctor mentions the word “baby” four times.
It is clear that many abortion providers know that they are ending life. They see the babies kicking and moving on the ultrasound screen and then see them later, in pieces, in the back room of the clinic.
Clinic counselor Tim Shuck, who worked at the Lovejoy abortion clinic until his death from AIDS, said the following to a writer who was chronicling the daily workings of the clinic:
I have never denied that human life begins at conception. If I have a complaint about our society, it’s that we don’t deal with death and dying. Do we believe human beings have a right to make decisions about death and dying? Yes we do, and those decisions are made every day in every hospital. (5)
The author who quoted Shuck never revealed whether or not Shuck told the women he counseled that life begins at conception.
Another clinic worker said the following:I see more of murder the further along they get. Although inside me I know it’s murder from the beginning… (6)
In an article in the Dallas Morning News, abortion clinic administrator Charlotte Taft made the following statement:
We were hiding … some pieces of the truth about abortion that were threatening. [Abortion] is a kind of killing, and most women seeking abortion know that. (7)
This was a little too much honesty for Planned Parenthood – after the late Taft came out with this statement, they stopped referring patients to her clinic. Eventually, she resigned.
Reporter Leonard Stern spoke to Joan Wright, the owner of a clinic in Ottawa. She explained how she and her fellow workers were fighting to force pro-lifers to take down a banner that announced, “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart” and gave a phone number for women considering abortion to call for help. Stern confronted her with pro-lifers’ allegations that her clinic gave deceptive counseling to women. From the article:
She said. “Good grief! They accuse us of pretending we’re not doing what we’re doing? I’m in the business of death!” (8)
This is probably the most honest and frank admission by an abortion provider that you are likely to hear.
In his essay “Why I Am an Abortion Provider,” Dr. William F. Harrison says the following: “No one, neither the patient receiving the abortion, nor the person doing the abortion, is ever, at any time, unaware that they are ending a life.”
In reality, the fact that abortion ends a life is often hidden from women. The baby is described as “products of conception” or “tissue.” The abortion “empties out the uterus.” The facts of fetal development are glossed over or outright distorted. The woman is facing a life-changing, irrevocable decision at a vulnerable time in her life, and she is susceptible to being deceived.
Look at the way one abortion clinic (Summit Medical Center) describes an abortion on its website.
You will first lay [sic] on an exam table like you would’ve for regular gynecological exam. Most patients will then receive IV sedation/twilight anesthesia… Patients opting for twilight anesthesia are mildly awake, but should feel no more than slight (if any) discomfort, and usually have little or no memory of the procedure afterwards.… Just as with a Pap smear, the doctor will use a speculum to hold the vaginal walls open, and then begin the procedure of using a series of dilation instruments to open the cervix. The contents of the uterus are then removed with a gentle vacuum aspirator.
Here are more examples of abortionists and clinic workers who acknowledge that abortion is killing:
The owner of one abortion clinic, identified only as “Michelle” in a book by James D. Slack, said the following:
I’ve thought through this issue, to do it as long as I have, and I have to sleep well at night… Is it life? Clearly it’s life. Does it deserve protection? My answer is “no.” The bottom line, you have two competing interests: the mother and the baby (or the embryo or the fertilized egg). And sometime during that nine month gestation, a woman’s rights are going to digress. At that point, I guess, rights can be ascribed to the fetus. (9)
This clinic owner has no problem calling an embryo a baby. She merely considers the baby’s life unimportant. There is no doubt that she knows exactly what is happening at her clinic.
Abortionist Don Sloan, explaining the morality of abortion to his teenage niece in an essay that appeared in an anthology on abortion, said the following:
Is abortion murder? All killing isn’t murder. A cop shoots a teenager who appeared to be going for a gun, and we call it justifiable homicide – a tragedy for all concerned, but not murder. And then there’s war… (10)
In this case, the abortionist (Sloan had been practicing for over thirty years and has done over 20,000 abortions) admits that abortion is killing but claims that it is not murder. He equates abortion with self-defense and war. But is the unborn baby sleeping in her mother’s womb really an aggressor?
Except in very rare cases, a woman’s life is not endangered by a pregnancy. And unless the pregnancy is a result of rape (which is a factor in only 1% of all abortions) the woman’s own actions (along with those of the baby’s father) resulted in the baby developing where he or she is. The baby may be unwanted, but she is not truly an intruder if the woman’s own actions are responsible for her presence in the womb. An unborn baby is not a teenager with a gun or an enemy soldier on a battlefield; she is an innocent and helpless member of the human race.
Abortionist Dr. Neville Sender said the following in a newspaper article:
We know that it is killing, but the states permit killing under certain circumstances. (11)
The clinic where Sender worked later came under scrutiny for throwing the bodies of aborted babies in the trash.
Abortionist Dr. Curtis Boyd, who performs abortions up to 24 weeks: “Am I killing? Yes, I am. I know that.” You can see a video of him saying it here.
Another abortionist, who remained anonymous, said:
It [the fetus] is a form of life[.] … This has to be killing[.] … The question then becomes, ‘Is this kind of killing justifiable?’ In my own mind, it is justifiable, but only with the informed consent of the mother. (12)
Another abortionist admits that abortion is killing but also tries to justify it by saying the babies he kills would have difficult lives if they were allowed to be born:
I have the utmost respect for life; I appreciate that life starts early in the womb, but also believe that I’m ending it for good reasons.
Often I’m saving the woman or I’m improving the lives of other children in the family. I also believe that women have a life they have to consider. If a woman is working full-time, has one child already and is barely getting by, having another child that would financially push her to go on public assistance, yes that is going to lessen the quality of her life. And it’s also an issue for the child, if it would not have had a good life. Life is hard enough when you’re wanted and everything’s prepared. So yes, I end life, but even when it’s hard, it’s for a good reason. (13)
Are these good reasons to kill a child?
Another abortionist puts it more plainly:
Abortion is killing the fetus. … Human life, in and of itself, is not sacred. Human life, per se, is not inviolate. (14)
This doctor has foregone excuses and accepted the belief that human life is not sacred or worthy of protection. He has no need for justifications. He knows he is killing – and he doesn’t care.
After talking extensively to one abortionist, author Nancy Dey writes:
Dr. Ed Jones (pseudonym) says it’s always in the back of his mind that he is terminating a life. (15)
Another abortionist, Dr. Harrison, simply said, “I am destroying a life” (16). This doctor has performed over 20,000 abortions.
Dr. William Rashbaum performed thousands of abortions before his death in 2005. He revealed to an interviewer that he was haunted by a recurring nightmare of an unborn baby hanging on to the uterine wall with its tiny fingernails, fighting to stay inside. When asked how he dealt with this dream, he said, “Learned to live with it. Like people in concentration camps.”
The interviewer then asked if he really meant that metaphor:
I think it’s apt – destruction of life. Look! I’m a person, I’m entitled to my feelings. And my feelings are who gave me or anybody the right to terminate a pregnancy? I’m entitled to that feeling, but I also have no right communicating to the patient who desperately wants that abortion. I don’t get paid for my feelings. I get paid for my skills… I’ll be frank. I began to do abortions in large numbers at the time of my divorce when I needed money. But I also believe in the woman’s right to control their biological destiny. I spent a lot of years learning to deliver babies. Sure, it sometimes hurts to end life instead of bringing it into the world. (17)
Rashbaum knew that abortion takes a life, but he never mentioned this to the women who were coming in for abortions. One can only wonder about the psychological strain of equating oneself with a Nazi, with knowing that you end babies’ lives for a living.
Pro-choice writer Miriam Claire interviewed several abortion providers for a book she wrote. One of them, Dr. Bertram Wainer, said the following:
My whole professional training was to prolong life, to nurture and protect it. Abortion is clearly at odds with that ethos … [yet] I have never refused to perform an abortion because of any personal conflict[.] (18)
There are other examples of abortionists and clinic workers who admitted that abortion ends lives. Magda Denes, a pro-choice author, interviewed a number of doctors and clinic workers in her book In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death Inside an Abortion Hospital. Every doctor she interviewed, and many of the clinic workers, admitted at some point during the interviews that they regarded abortion as murder. One doctor said:
It [abortion] goes against all things which are natural. It’s a termination of a life, however you look at it. (19)
There are similar quotes throughout the book.
There is no way to know for whether or not these doctors and clinic administrators are representative of all abortion providers. But it is clear that many, if not most, abortion providers know that they kill. It is also clear that the average pro-choice person, who argues in support of allowing these men and women to continue practicing, has no awareness of the truth that so many abortion providers know – that abortion kills babies.
1. Diane M. Gianelli, “Abortion Providers Share Inner Conflicts,” American Medical News, July 12, 1993
2. ABC.net: Religion and Ethics: 12-28-2005. Quoted by Life Dynamics
3. Judith Arcana “Feminist Politics and Abortion in the US” Pro-Choice
Forum (Psychology and Reproductive Choice) Sponsored by The Society for the Psychology of Women.
http://www.prochoiceforum.org.uk/psy_al8.php4. John Pekkanen. M.D.: Doctors Talk About Themselves (Delcorte Press: New York, 1988) 90-91
5. Peter Korn. Lovejoy: A Year in the Life of an Abortion Clinic (The Atlantic Monthly Press: New York, 1996) p 94
6. James Tunstead Burtechaell, C.S.C. Rachel Weeping: the Case against
Abortion (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row Publishers, 1982) 135 – 1367. “Abortion rights activist resigns as clinic director; Taft cites differences with Routh Street owner” Dallas Morning News 2/2/1995
8. Leonard Stern “Abortion Wars” The Ottawa Citizen Sun 28 May 2000
9. James D Slack Abortion, Execution, and the Consequences of Taking Life (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009) 49
10. Tamara L. Roleff. Abortion: Opposing Viewpoints (Greenhaven Press: San Diego 1997) 25
11. John Powell, S.J. Abortion: The Silent Holocaust (Argus Communications: Allen, Tx) 1981, p 66
12. Democrat & Chronicle 7/5/92
13. Cheryl Alkon “Confessions of an Abortion Doctor” Boston Magazine December 2004
14. Abortionist “Dr. Smith” (Pseudonym) . Leo Wang “The Abortionist”
Berkeley Medical Journal Spring 199515. Nancy Dey Abortion: Debating the Issue (Enslow Publishers: Springfield, IL 1995) 49
16. Nat Hentoff “An Abortionist’s World: How to Rationalize
Inhumanity” The Washington Times Febuary 6, 2006. Citing Stephanie Simon “Offering Abortion, Rebirth” Los Angeles Times November 29, 200517. Norma Rosen “Between Guilt and Gratification: Abortion Doctors
Reveal Their Feelings,” New York Times Magazine April 17, 1977 p 73, 74, 7818. Miriam Claire The Abortion Dilemma: Personal Views on a Public Issue. (Insight Books: New York) 1995, p 30
19. Magda Denes, PhD. In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death Inside an Abortion Hospital (Basic Books, Inc.: New York 1976)147
LifeNews Note: Sarah Terzo covered the abortion issue for over 13 years as a professional journalist. In this capacity, she has written nearly a thousand articles about abortion and read over 850 books on the topic. She has been researching and writing about abortion since attending The College of New Jersey (class of 1997) where she minored in Women’s Studies. This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here.
The post Abortionist Admits That Abortion “Kills a Baby” appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: AsiaNews.itThe apostolic nuncio in Damascus - who turns 80 next January - is among the cardinals called to choose Bergoglio's successor. Despite the war and violence, he has never left his diplomatic mission or the Christian community.The 'poverty bomb', the tragedy of sanctions and the issue of the disappeared, which also affects the Syrian Church.
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Site: Zero HedgeThe Great Spillover HoaxTyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 17:40
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,
Why precisely were Anthony Fauci and his cohorts so anxious to blame SARS-CoV-2 on bats and later pangolins in wet markets? It was not just to deflect attention from the possibility that the novel virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan doing gain-of-function research. There was a larger point: to reinforce a very important narrative concerning zoonotic spillovers.
It’s a fancy phrase that speaks to a kind of granular focus that discourages nonspecialists from having an opinion. Leave it to the experts! They know!
Let’s take a closer look.
For many years, there has been an emerging orthodoxy in epidemiological circles that viruses are jumping from animals to humans at a growing rate. That’s the key assertion, the core claim, the one that is rarely challenged. It is made repeatedly and often in the literature on this subject, much like climate claims in that different literature.
The model goes as follows.
Step one: assert that spillover is increasing, due to urbanization, deforestation, globalization, industrialization, carbon-producing internal combustion, pet ownership, colonialism, icky diets, shorter skirt lengths, whatever other thing you are against, or some amorphous combination of all the above. Regardless, it is new and it is happening at a growing rate.
Step two: observe that only scientists fully understand what a grave threat this is to human life, so they have a social obligation to get out in front of this trend. That requires gain-of-function research to mix and merge pathogens in a lab to see which ones pose the most immediate threats to our existence.
Step three: in order to protect ourselves fully, we need to deploy all the newest technologies including and especially those which allow for fast production of vaccines that can be distributed in the event of the pandemics that are inevitably coming, probably just around the corner. Above all, that requires testing and perfecting mRNA shots that deliver spike protein through lipid nanoparticles so they can be printed and distributed to the population widely and quickly.
Step four: as society breathlessly awaits the great antidote to the deadly virus that comes to us via these vicious spillovers, there is no choice but to enact common-sense public-health measures like extreme restrictions on your liberty to travel, operate a business, and gather with others. The top goal is disease monitoring and containment. The top target: those who behave in ways that presume the existence of anachronisms like freedom and human rights.
Step five: these protocols must be accepted by all governments because of course we live in a globalist setting in which otherwise no pathogen can possibly be contained. No one nation can be permitted to go its own way because doing so endangers the whole. We are all in this together.
If that way of thinking strikes you as surprising, ridiculous, and scary, you have clearly not attended an academic conference on epidemiology, a trade show for pharmaceutical companies, or a planning group feeding information to the United Nations and the World Health Organization.
This is conventional wisdom in all these circles, not even slightly unusual or strange. It is the new orthodoxy, widely accepted by all experts in this realm.
The first I had heard of this entire theory was the August 2020 article in Cell written by David Morens and Anthony Fauci. Written during lockdowns that the authors helped shepherd, the article reflected the apocalyptic tone of the times. They said humanity took a bad turn 12,000 years ago, causing idyllic lives to face myriad infections. We cannot go back to a Rouseauian paradise but we can work to “rebuild the infrastructures of human existence.”
I was obviously stunned, reread the piece carefully, and wondered where the evidence for the great spillover – the crucial empirical assertion of the piece – could be found. They cite many papers in the literature but looking at them further, we find only models, assertions, claims rooted in testing bias, and many other sketchy claims.
What I found was a fog machine.
You see, everything turns on this question. If spillovers are not increasing, or if spillovers are just a normal part of the complicated relationship between humans and the microbial kingdom they inhabit alongside all living things, the entire agenda falls apart.
If spillovers are not a pressing problem, the rationale for gain-of-function evaporates, as does the need for funding, the push for the shots, and the wild schemes to lock down until the antidote arrives. It’s the crucial step, one that has mostly evaded serious public attention but which is nearly universally accepted within the domain of what is called Public Health today.
Who is challenging this? A tremendously important article just appeared in the Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health. It is: “Natural Spillover Risk and Disease Outbreaks: Is Over-Simplification Putting Public Health at Risk?” by the Brownstone-backed team at REPPARE. It’s something of a miracle that this piece got through peer review but here it is.
They present the core assumption: “Arguments supporting pandemic policy are heavily based on the premise that pandemic risk is rapidly increasing, driven in particular by passage of pathogens from animal reservoirs to establish transmission in the human population; ‘zoonotic spillover.’ Proposed drivers for increasing spillover are mostly based on environmental change attributed to anthropogenic origin, including deforestation, agricultural expansion and intensification, and changes in climate.”
And the observation: “If a genuine misattribution bias regarding spillover risk and consequent pandemic risk is arising, this can distort public health policy with potentially far-reaching consequences on health outcomes.”
Then they take it on with a careful examination of the literature generally footnoted as proof. What they find is a typical game of citation roulette: this guy cites this guy who cites this guy who cites that guy, and so on in spinning circles of authoritative-seeming apparatus but fully lacking in any real substance. They write: “We see a pattern of assertive statements of rapidly rising disease risk with anthropogenic impacts on ecology driving it. These are cited heavily, resting largely on opinion, which is a poor substitute for evidence. More concerningly, there is a consistent trend of misrepresenting cited papers.”
We’ve seen this movie many times before. What’s more, there does exist a largely ignored literature that closely examines many of the supposed causal factors that drive spillovers that reveals grave doubts about any causal connection at all. The authors then place the skeptical papers against the opinion papers usually cited and conclude that what has emerged is an evidence-free orthodoxy designed to back an industrial project.
“There are several potential reasons for this tendency to reference opinion as if it is fact. The field has been relatively small, with authorship shared across many papers. This risks the development of a mechanism for circular referencing, reviewing and reinforcement of opinion, shielding claims from sceptical inquiry or external review. The increased interest of private-sector funders in public health institutions including WHO, and its emphasis on commodities in health responses, may deepen this echo chamber, inadvertently downgrading or ignoring contrary findings while emphasizing those studies that support further funding.”
See the pattern here?
Anyone who has followed sociology of “the science” over these last five years can. It’s groupthink, the acceptance of doctrine believed because all their peers believe it. In any case, the gig pays well.
Now we can better explain why it is that Fauci and the rest were so emphatic that the coronavirus of 2019 did not originate in a lab for which they had arranged the funding but instead leapt from a bat or something else from a wet market.
“Sadly, it appears we have a leak from a lab.”
“No worries. We’ll find some scientists and steer some grant money to prove the pathogen in question originated from zoonotic spillover, thus proving the point that we need more funding.”
“Brilliant Dr. Fauci! Do we have contacts in the media?”
“We do. We’ll get on that.”
The wet market narrative was not only designed to cover up their scheme and avoid blame for a global pandemic of any level of severity. It was also to deploy the potentially catastrophic consequences and resulting public panic as a rationale for continuing their own biological experimentation and funding grift.
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Site: Zero HedgeHouse GOP Gears Up For Trump's "Big, Beautiful" Budget BrawlTyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 17:20
House Republicans have returned to Washington after a two-week break, laser-focused on assembling the “big, beautiful bill” that’s set to carry President Trump’s legislative agenda, and they’re wasting no time getting to work.
Six of the 11 House committees tasked with piecing together the massive package are holding markups this week, with the others gearing up to join the push in the coming days. The plan is to stitch the various proposals together in the House Budget Committee before sending the final monster bill to the floor.
The Republicans are banking on the budget reconciliation process to ram the legislation through without needing a single Democrat vote, bypassing the Senate filibuster - which of course assumes the GOP can stay united. With a razor-thin margin, just four Republican defections could sink the entire package.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had circled Memorial Day on the calendar as the deadline to get the bill on President Trump’s desk. But even getting it through the House within the next month looks dicey, thanks to intraparty squabbles over spending and tax cut details.
The action kicks off Tuesday with three committees, Armed Services, Homeland Security, and Education & Workforce - meeting at the same time.
The Armed Services Committee is proposing a staggering $150 billion in defense funding, including $34 billion for shipbuilding, $25 billion for a "Golden Dome" missile defense system, and $21 billion to restock America’s munitions. “President Trump has a visionary strategy of peace through strength, and this investment is how we begin to execute it,” said Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL).
Meanwhile, the Homeland Security Committee plans to shovel $46.5 billion into completing Trump’s border wall and boosting border security tech. There’s also $5 billion earmarked to upgrade Customs and Border Patrol facilities, $4.1 billion to hire over 8,000 new agents, and $2 billion to keep and recruit staff with bonuses.
The Education & Workforce Committee is doing its part to find savings, touting $330 billion in cuts by overhauling student loan programs. “This plan brings accountability and holds schools financially responsible for loading students up with debt,” said Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI).
But these are the easy fights. The real fireworks are expected when committees turn to tackling safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and hammering out the details on tax cuts - areas where Republicans are eyeing even bigger savings but where internal divisions loom large.
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Democrats aren’t sitting idly by. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) led a 12-hour sit-in on the Capitol steps Sunday to protest potential cuts to Medicaid and other safety net programs.
“As Democrats, we’re going to continue to stand on the side of the American people, and we will not rest until we bury this reckless Republican budget in the ground,” Jeffries vowed.
Booker chimed in, hoping enough Republicans could be pressured to “do the right thing and vote no.”
The legislative slog continues Wednesday, when the Judiciary, Financial Services, Oversight and Government Reform, and Transportation & Infrastructure committees dive into their pieces of the bill.
The Judiciary Committee's slice is packed with immigration crackdowns: $45 billion to expand detention facilities, $14.4 billion for transport and removal ops, $8 billion to hire more ICE agents, and $1.25 billion for immigration judges and staff.
Oversight and Government Reform found more than $50 billion in offsets, including $31 billion from hiking federal workers’ retirement contributions and $10 billion by axing an early retirement annuity for most employees.
Financial Services would claw back unspent Inflation Reduction Act funds for green housing retrofits, fold the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board into the SEC, and cap the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding.
The Transportation & Infrastructure Committee is set to unveil its piece Tuesday.
With the clock ticking and tensions rising, the fate of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is barreling toward a showdown — and the GOP’s unity will be put to the ultimate test.
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Site: LifeNews
In mid-April, the notorious late-late-late term abortionist Warren Hern announced that his Boulder Abortion Clinic was closing.
His retirement, on January 22, 2025, was not supposed to slow down the killing machine. His clinic would continue to make available “the safest, most compassionate and highest quality outpatient abortion services available anywhere.”
But after almost 55 years and a death toll rising to an estimated 42,000 babies, the 86-year-old Hern told Colorado Public Radio [www.cpr.org/2025/04/24/boulder-abortion-clinic-closes-after-50-years] “All of us who do this work have had increasing difficulty in being able to offer the services,” adding, “We can’t continue, and it breaks my heart. But this is the way it is.”
What happened in just three months?
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despite attempting to remain open, the facility struggled without Hern. Abortionist Benedict Mills was believed to have stepped in as Hern’s replacement.
The Boulder Abortion Clinic website now automatically redirects to another site, www.drhern.com, which states that the facility is permanently closed. In a letter posted to the site, Hern referred to the killing of viable preborn human beings as his “life’s work” which gave him “great satisfaction and meaning.”
The recipient of a slavishly adoring press—Haylee May’s story for Colorado Public Radio was typical—Hern’s decision to close one of the only three clinics that “perform the procedure after 30 weeks” was because
Terminations later in pregnancy are an extremely costly procedure, and not always covered by insurance.
“In my practice, I’ve basically had an abortion intensive care unit, which requires very, very highly skilled professional medical people, nurses, counselors, physicians. That’s an expensive process, and the patients – most of them – cannot pay the fees that are required to cover the cost of this,” Hern said. “The funding agencies have been very generous in many cases, but the funds are sort of drying up.”
Not only are funds running low, but so are the number of physicians who are able to perform the procedure. He was unable to reliably bring on a new practitioner.
But Colorado shoulders on, ever protective of the Abortion Industry. Colorado, thoroughly controlled by pro-abortion Democrats, now rivals Illinois and New York in its maniacal zeal to multiply the number of publicly-funded dead preborn babies.
The Denver Post’s Meg Wingerter assures us that
Most states have a limit on how far into pregnancy doctors can perform an abortion. Colorado is one of nine states without a limit, according to the Guttmacher Institute. A ballot initiative to add a 22-week limit in Colorado failed in 2020, with 59% of voters rejecting it.
Indeed, according to May, last week Gov. Jared Polis (a Democrat, of course) signed a bill that (1) “ensures protections for doctors providing prescriptions for medical abortions, even for patients across state lines”; and (2) another that “updates state laws to match new rules created by Amendment 79 which was approved by voters in the November election. The bill essentially removes a prohibition in the state constitution on using public money to pay for abortions and adds protections to the right to have an abortion in Colorado.”
Hern is not the hero of the downtrodden, performing abortions almost entirely on babies with fatal fetal anomalies, as the accounts of the likes of May and Wingerter would suggest. On January 9, 2025, the Charlotte Lozier Institute reported
Late-term abortion specialist Dr. Warren Hern has published research indicating that abortions on babies with abnormalities made up just 30% of the 1,251 abortions his center performed between 2007 and 2012, although he did not share the percentage of specifically late-term abortions that were performed on healthy babies. However, another paper by Hern reviewed 1,040 late-term abortions performed at 18 to 38 weeks of gestation between 1999 and 2004. Of these late-term abortions, just over a fifth were performed because of a prenatal diagnosis. Dr. Hern’s research also shows that of second- and third-trimester abortions performed for a prenatal diagnosis, abortions because the baby had Down Syndrome composed the largest group.
By the way, Hern “charges between $8,500 and $25,000” for “late abortions” (not defined in a story in the Los Angeles Times) — “compared with $1,500 for first-trimester abortions, which are far simpler.”
Hern was/is, shall we say, prickly. He did not suffer fools gladly, and that included almost everyone. But that didn’t stop the Los Angeles Times’s Molly Hennessy-Fiske from filing a 2022 profile of Hern that was equal measures flattering, unctuous, and sycophantic.
You could tell where this was going early in the story: Hern was inspired in his formative years by reading a biography of Albert Schweitzer no less!
Hennessy-Fiske writes that Hern was a trailblazer. “Dr. Warren Hern pioneered new approaches to make late-term abortions safer. ‘It’s difficult work, and not everyone can do it,’ he says.”
“At the time [the early 70s], most doctors believed abortions couldn’t be done after the first trimester without risking women’s lives,” Hennessy-Fisk writes. “Hern proved them wrong, pioneering new approaches to make later abortions safer, including dilating cervixes with Japanese seaweed tubes called laminaria.”
He described the grisly D&E (dilation and evacuation) abortion at the Association of Planned Parenthood Physicians meeting in San Diego on October 26, 1978, as a procedure in which “the sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current.”
Aborting a second-trimester and beyond baby takes a certain kind of personality, as we gather Hern clearly has in abundance. Hennessy-Fisk writes
Hern starts by giving patients the abortion medication mifepristone. Next he injects digoxin into the fetus, which stops the heart. Then he begins dilating the cervix.
Then they wait.
On day three or four, Hern releases the amniotic fluid and then uses two drugs — misoprostol and oxytocin — to make the uterus contract.
Then he can remove the fetus.
Hern gave no evidence that what he does has exacted a toll, emotional or psychological. Referring to abortions performed after the 18th week, Hennessey-Fiske tells us that
It’s precisely because they are so controversial that Hern considers them foundational to democracy. On this he sees no room for compromise. A fetus is never a baby, a pregnant woman is not a mother, abortion at any stage should never be illegal — and anybody who disagrees is simply wrong. [Emphasis added.]
Not so for his staff. “The work has caused some of his employees ‘serious emotional reactions that produced physiological symptoms, sleep disturbances, effects on interpersonal relationships and moral anguish, Hern reported in a medical journal. Some said they dreamed that they vomited fetuses.”
I’ll give Live Action’s Cassy Cooke the last word.
Whatever reservations Hern may have initially had, he overcame them, later saying that he loved committing abortions. Hern is known to have collected as much as $25,000 for an abortion, living in a lavish, expensive home while allowing his abortion facility to fall into disrepair around him.
I’m guessing Hern is not wanting for money.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.
The post This Abortionist Killed About 42,000 Babies appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeTrump, Tariffs, Trade... And A Taboo?Tyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 17:00
Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,
After only a hundred days, the Trump counterrevolution has made quite miraculous progress on the border, illegal immigration, cost-cutting, curbing the DEI/woke revolution, and a historic Ukrainian War settlement.
The pushback to this multifront effort from the left has been formidable, if not hysterical. The greatest fury mostly centers around Trump’s efforts to force U.S. trading partners to adopt either reciprocal or no tariffs while obeying international trading norms—an effort aimed at vastly reducing the U.S. trade deficit.
If Trump could cut a proverbial deal in the next 100 days that, say, cut the annual $1.2 trillion trade deficit in half, coupled with multitrillion-dollar foreign investments, then stocks and bonds would settle down.
Wall Street would go back to its traditional platitudes that the trade deficit then would be no higher than the 3-percent-of-GDP red line.
Stocks would then soar in anticipation of the other news of a continuation of tax cuts, more budgetary reductions, robust energy development, and further deregulation.
The U.S. has run a half-century of trade deficits. And now the red ink has climbed to nearly $1.2 trillion, the largest in history.
Yet for all practical purposes, only a few entities account for most of an astronomical sum. And they all have corollary concerns to the U.S. that make their surpluses part of larger problems.
The administration can accurately talk about “70 nations wanting to deal.” But, in truth, if Trump were to settle with just China, Mexico, Canada, the EU, and the ten-nation Southeast Asian trading bloc (ASEAN), then the so-called trade wars would be over.
Start with our North American partners Mexico ($171.9 trillion surplus) and Canada ($63 trillion surplus) that alone account for over 20 percent of the U.S. trade deficit.
Canada’s surplus is almost entirely attributable to its vast oil and gas sales to the U.S. Almost all its daily oil exports go to the U.S., some four million barrels—as well as half its natural gas shipments.
Canada claims that it sells oil and power at a discount to the northern U.S. It also boasts that its asymmetrical sky-high tariffs on American dairy products and poultry are rarely used if the American exports just stay below certain thresholds. But aren’t thresholds themselves a form of tariff?
Canadian oil deposits are landlocked and far from ports. Canadian crude is heavy, sulfurous, and difficult to refine for many nations’ refineries. In contrast, the huge U.S. market right across the border and the ability of American refineries to handle Canadian crude explain the “discount” better than simple Canadian magnanimity.
Moreover, Canada is one of the stingiest of NATO partners. It is underinvesting in military readiness at only 1.37 percent of its GDP on defense, stonewalling its 2 percent commitment for over a decade.
Should the Trump administration prompt Canada to invest 2 percent in defense—about $41 billion extra—and buy enough U.S. products to cut its surpluses, say, by $10-20 billion of its current $63 billion, a deal could and should be easily reached.
Mexico’s surplus is huge and growing at $171 billion. It is largely created by assembling cars, electronic goods, and appliances sent to it from other countries to enter the U.S. market with reduced taxes.
Trump could ask Mexico to cut that $171 billion in half, particularly given that Mexican cartels funnel an estimated $10 billion to $20 billion annually into the U.S. through drug smuggling. Their drug factories are designed for U.S. export and contribute to the deaths of 60,000 to 100,000 Americans through opioid overdoses.
Add in the $63 billion in untaxed remittances that Mexico’s expatriates send home. Most senders are illegally residing in the U.S. Additionally, many are subsidized by local, state, and federal American entitlements to free up their cash to be sent home.
In other words, like Canada, there are other issues with Mexico transcending trade alone. To even the playing field, Trump could either focus on the cartels, tax remittances, or urge Mexico to buy more U.S. goods in a tripartite effort to reduce the outflow by half.
China’s surplus with the U.S. is the largest at $300 billion. And it is the most difficult to address, given that Chinese global tentacles have compromised dozens of nations. Still, we retain far greater leverage on Beijing than Beijing has on us. But to use such levers—stopping visas to 300,000 students, delisting Chinese out-of-compliance companies from our stock exchanges, curbing all technological transfers that have military applications and key spare parts for their imported goods—we would then enter a veritable Cold War.
Instead, China should use its over $1 trillion trade surplus to raise the standard of living for its own 1.4 billion consumers. But redirecting its export economy would cut back on its geostatic initiatives of massively rearming, the Belt and Road imperialist adventure, and spreading billions of dollars around in the Western world to influence universities and buying up strategic property.
Unless Trump wishes an all-out trade war, he, for now, should aim at reducing the Chinese surplus by $300-500 billion and seek some trade reforms, given Chinese violations of every international commercial canon.
The EU runs up a $235 billion surplus with America—mostly from the surpluses incurred by Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, France, and Italy, which export massive amounts of pharmaceuticals, chemicals, cars, and machinery.
The EU’s socialist and highly regulated member economies grant direct subsidies to industry and agriculture and rely on contorted uses of the VAT tax and asymmetrical tariffs to gain an advantage over U.S. goods. As a rule, the EU ministers despise Trump, are closely allied with the kindred American left, and would likely do nothing to help Trump unless pressured.
In somewhat ironic fashion, the EU suffers a $315 trade deficit with China but then turns around to run up a $235 surplus with the U.S. That circular strategy helps to ensure the EU can still rely on an aggregate $171 billion surplus with the world, again largely due to the U.S.
In the EU’s case, its $235 billion surplus with the U.S. is an inseparable issue from its assumption that the United States’s strategic arsenal and oversized NATO presence have always ensured European continental security.
The U.S. spends the most of the NATO membership on defense and is largely responsible for prodding 24 of the 32 NATO members finally to meet their 2-percent obligations, and timely so given the subsequent Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Unlike the ASEAN countries that are trying to reach Western standards of prosperity by piling up trade surpluses, the EU is struggling to maintain its own wobbling prosperity. Its disastrous energy policies, wide-open borders, massive Islamic immigration, and political paranoia about the rise of populist conservative parties have impoverished Europe materially and culturally.
What can we conclude from this global labyrinth of trade?
Most nations see the U.S. market and its reserve currency as critical to their export industries. They believe America is wedded to libertarian economics and would never impose tariffs similar to their own.
They understand, as do Americans, that a $37 trillion national debt, a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, and a $2 trillion budget deficit are force multipliers of each other and not sustainable. But until those numbers hit critical mass, most nations will remain as eager to keep running up surpluses as Americans have been to borrow and spend.
So, what is the logic behind Trump’s loud art-of-the-deal trade gambits?
He wants our “friends” and “allies” to seek reciprocity defined either as symmetrical or no tariffs, some reductions in their trade surpluses, and greater investment in the U.S.—in preference, of course, to a trade war.
For belligerents like China, Trump seeks to coerce it to follow global rules of commerce that it flaunts with impunity to run a global mercantile system based on technology theft, asymmetrical tariffs, espionage, and its loan-sharking Belt and Road initiatives designed to pry away nations from the Western orbit.
Will the Trump trade and tariff strategy work?
It can if it follows some simple dos and don’ts.
1. Trump knows that other nations privately concede they are taking advantage of the U.S. and are willing to renegotiate - if Trump shows them some deference, cools somewhat the “rip-off” language, and settles for gradualism. He has the moral high ground.
To win his current tariff standoffs, he needs not achieve instant trade parity, but perhaps instead only prod nations to cut their particular deficits with the U.S. in half, with a schedule of more parity and further surplus reductions to come.
2. The U.S. economy is not in recession. Job growth, stable prices, increased energy production and low prices, and corporate profits were all encouraging in March and April. News of an impending budget bill that extends tax cuts and deregulates, along with trillions of dollars in new foreign investments and budget discipline, will all fuel stock markets.
And what a funny stock market cohort—the 10 percent who own 93 percent of the nation’s stock market capitalization! From May through August of last year, investors boasted that they had hit 40,000 in the Dow Jones.
Now, less than a year later, their portfolios are back at 40,000. And yet still they moan that they lost trillions of dollars in March. These strange people apparently believe that the highest stock market peak is encased in amber as their God-given permanent profit. (They should try farming where commodity prices remain volatile and can wipe out a grower in a season if prices collapse and often do—and sometimes do not return to previous highs for years on end.)
3. The world may fear China, but it hates it even more, given its commercial bullying, trade mercantilism, autocracy, and military buildup.
For all their double-dealing, the Europeans and our Asian partners will come to appreciate that someone is finally risking it all to bridle China into following global rules while deterring its expanding military.
4. Trump might wish to pivot to a “tragic” style of discourse. He can remind the world he inherited a $3-billion-a-day interest tab on a growing $37-trillion national debt, fueled by $2-trillion budget deficits, which are all force multipliers of the effects of an annual $1-trillion trade deficit.
In other words, he did not want to lay off employees at home, slash programs, or badger and provoke our friends abroad. But at least in the past quarter-century, no president has made any progress on any deficit and debt front. So, Trump can admit he had no choice given the magnitude and variety of the red ink and America’s impending rendezvous with financial Armageddon.
5. There may be one important taboo.
Trump might curb talk of “revenue,” as if we can return to the pre-income tax age, prior to 1913, when federal revenue came largely from tariffs.
Today’s tariffs prior to 2025 account for only $77 billion of the total annual revenue of $5.27 trillion. Even the most optimistic estimates suggest $1-3 trillion in new Trump tariff income over the next decade, with the new proposed trade policies. That might mean some $100-300 billion more per year—a fraction of our current aggregate annual income.
But far more importantly, the American people will stick with Trump if they believe we are victimized by predatory nations whose asymmetrical tariffs deliberately run up surpluses with the U.S.
They want to see the Trump trade war as an effort to obtain either similar or no tariffs with trade partners and reduce trade deficits. But if the U.S. preempts and raises higher tariffs on those with whom we now run surpluses (like the U.K. and Australia) or brags that we can become rich from tariffs (at other nations’ expense), then the administration will lose the moral high ground, and the people will not support his cause.
In sum, Trump will win this tariff spat if he sticks to “parity” and “fairness” and downplays talking about gargantuan “profits.”
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Site: Zero HedgeFighter Jet Falls Overboard As USS Truman Evaded Inbound Houthi FireTyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 16:40
A $60 million fighter jet has been "lost" at sea at a moment American naval assets under US Central Command have been conducting bombing campaigns against Yemen's Houthis since March 15.
But as far as what's being reported from the Pentagon, the jet wasn't shot out of the sky during operations - it apparently rolled off an aircraft carrier.
The US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet "fell overboard from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier while it was being towed on board, the Navy said in a statement on Monday," CNN reports.
US Navy file image
Initial reports strongly suggest the mishap was caused due to the Truman carrier having to take sudden evasive action to avoid inbound Houthi fire:
A US official said that initial reports from the scene indicated that the Truman made a hard turn to evade Houthi fire, which contributed to the fighter jet falling overboard. The Houthi rebel group claimed on Monday to have launched a drone and missile attack on the aircraft carrier, which is in the Red Sea as part of the US military’s major anti-Houthi operation.
A naval crew member had been able to jump off the jet at the last minute when the accident occurred as it was being towed out of the hanger bay. One sailor reportedly sustained minor injury.
The Houthis said Monday they launched a fresh attack targeting the Truman carrier, following many other such claimed attacks. This appears to be the first time the US Navy has linked damage aboard a warship with an inbound Houthi assault (albeit somewhat indirectly). A prior incident involving 'friendly fire' against a US jet also resulted in the aircraft's loss (see below).
"The F/A-18E was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard," a US military statement said. "Sailors towing the aircraft took immediate action to move clear of the aircraft before it fell overboard. An investigation is underway."
Suggests Truman carrier group is under Houthi fire more frequently (and with a greater impact) than is being publicly acknowledged. https://t.co/Vs2MZYRzJt
— Gregory Brew (@gbrew24) April 28, 2025The aircraft has sunk in the Red Sea, at a loss of at least $60 million. The US Navy sought to emphasize Monday that the strike group and its air wing "remain fully mission capable."
This is the second known F-18 jet lost at sea related to the US patrolling regional waters in the wake of the Gaza War:
The Truman has repeatedly been targeted in attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. It made headlines in February when it collided with a merchant ship near Egypt; no injuries were reported. Another F/A-18 from the Truman was also “mistakenly fired” upon and shot down by the USS Gettysburg in the Red Sea in December ; both pilots ejected safely.
All of this brings up the possibility that US warships have suffered direct hits in the past, but the Pentagon has kept it quiet...
Amid news that an F/A-18E fighter jet made a hard turn to evade Houthi fire and fell overboard, worth noting: the Houthis have claimed direct hits on the USS Truman aircraft carrier, and Hezbollah’s Al-Manar aired footage it claims shows parts of the ship damaged and draped over. https://t.co/sbTUQLpoAp pic.twitter.com/OIOKpbYseS
— Sina Toossi (@SinaToossi) April 28, 2025Given these 'close-calls' and mishaps due to the chaos of the fight with the Houthis - which it should be noted is military action still not approved by Congress - it is perhaps only a matter of time until a bigger, more direct clash and incident. Thankfully, no US aviators or sailors have been killed or seriously wounded so far.
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Site: LifeNews
During the final days of Alfie Evans’ all-too-brief life, I didn’t sleep well. I went to bed praying for him and woke up, way too early, wondering if he was still alive.
As one member of “Alfie’s Army,” I knew that people around the world were also watching the drama unfold, hoping against hope.
Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, where Alfie was being held, wanted to disconnect the 23-month old toddler from his ventilator so he could “die with dignity.” Tom Evans and Kate James, Alfie’s parents, refused to give up on their son and, with the help of Pope Francis, received an offer of help from Gesu Bambino hospital in Rome.
The hospital and multiple courts said, “It is in Alfie’s best interests to stay here and die,” even though the Italian government granted Alfie citizenship and sent a plane to England to pick up their newest citizen.
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But the hospital and UK courts prevailed. After five long days, Alfie died. The battle to save one precious little boy became an international controversy. Why?
What was it about Alfie that grabbed the world’s attention? Was it because he was just sooo adorable? The last photo I saw was Alfie being carried by his mom, after the ventilator had been removed. How could anyone think that cuddly little darling would be better off dead?
Did Alfie grab the world’s attention because his young parents were fighting so hard for him? It was not difficult for parents to identify with Tom, 21, and Kate, 20. Parents around the world could easily imagine how they would react if any hospital told them their son or daughter was no longer worth the effort; that no other hospital would be allowed to see what they could do for him; or even that their child would not even be allowed to go home to die.
I ask again, why did this one life move people? Many were shocked and angered that Alder Hey and the British government were adamant that they alone knew what was best for Alfie. It was not as though Alfie’s dad did not fully understood how bleak the prognosis was. In a moving letter to Malcolm Patrick McMahon, Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Liverpool, Tom wrote: “I am aware that my son’s death is a real possibility and maybe is not a long way off. I know that heaven is waiting for him as I cannot imagine which kind of sin that innocent soul, nailed to his bed as to a cross, may have committed.
“But I’m also aware that his life is precious before God’s eyes and that Alfie himself has a mission to accomplish. Perhaps his mission is to show the entire world the cruelty behind the judge’s words. For this judge stated that Alfie’s life is ‘futile’, thus supporting the same opinion of the hospital which wants him to die by suffocation.
“…We don’t want to force ourselves upon him and we don’t want therapeutic obstinacy but we would at least like his disease to be diagnosed and we would like him to receive the best possible treatment.”
Unfortunately, and in my opinion inexcusably, Archbishop McMahon sided with the hospital, saying they had done all that was humanly possible. Maybe the medical staff at Alder Hey had done all that was possible there, but the Archbishop doesn’t explain why other doctors were not allowed to try something else that may have been possible for them.
Alder Hey and the UK courts—the trial judge, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court–wanted Alfie dead perhaps rather than risk the fallout from what the world might learn from a second opinion. Removing Alfie to Italy would have relieved Alder Hey of any financial burden for caring for Alfie.
But because Alder Hey couldn’t diagnose his mysterious brain disease, they claimed that continuing care compromised his “future dignity.”
How smart must these cold clinicians be, to know better than Alfie’s loving parents what was a burden on Alfie? The battle to save Alfie brought together people from around the world with one loud unified voice to speak on his behalf.
As I read through my Twitter feed with #AlfieEvans or #AlfiesArmy, I could see encouragement and solidarity expressed in many different languages.
This one precious soul, following so closely after last year’s similar situation with Charlie Gard, woke up a world to the injustice happening under our very eyes. Why?
Because a critical number of people finally became aware that cases like this have happened before and, unless things change, will happen more often.
They could happen to you or your loved ones.
Parents in this country have lost children because medical care and treatment were denied because of a genetic anomaly.
Senior citizens and people with disabilities or illness are encouraged, in letters from an insurance company or a state government insurance, to “take advantage” of physician-assisted suicide, rather than seek expensive medical treatment.
And we remember that every baby, including those not yet born, deserves this same outpouring of affection. This battle to save Alfie Evans reminds us that every human being is precious– born or unborn, young or old, healthy or not-so-healthy.
To all those working to save the Alfies of the world, born and unborn, thank you! If you aren’t already fighting for these lives, please join us today.
LifeNews Note: Carol Tobias is the president of the National Right to Life Committee.
The post Remembering Alfie Evans, The Boy Who Died When a Hospital Yanked His Life Support appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Fr. Z's BlogOnce again we are privileged to have another sonnet from the 19th c. poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli… Er Belli. He wrote seriously funny sonnets in the Roman dialect about life in Rome and aimed deadly satire at Rome’s clerics, religious, prelates … Read More →
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Site: Fr. Z's BlogIn the Eternal City, sede vacante, we had the rising of the sun at 6:08 and its setting at 20:08. The Ave Maria cycle changed to 20:30. It does that. Today in the Vetus Ordo was the first day possible for … Read More →
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Site: Zero HedgeOn Elites' Batshit-Crazy Dedication To Ideas Bent On Destroying The American Republic...Tyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 16:20
Authored by James Howard Kunstler,
Now You Know
"Being mean or telling the truth is indistinguishable to far too many people."
- Mike Thompson on X
Woke liberalism is exactly what Christopher Lasch predicted in The Revolt of the Elites, published in 1995 the year after his early death at 61. Lasch saw how the juvenile idealism of Boomer hippiedom would slide into the narcissistic, sado-masochistic degeneracy of open borders, drag queen story hours, Covid-19 despotism, DEI racism, showbiz Satanism, censorship, forever wars, and now, the legal insurrection of lawfare.
In doing so, Lasch also predicted the “mass formation psychosis” described by Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet, spawned by a crisis of meaning and purpose in the thinking classes of Western Civ. And now you know exactly how come a place like Boston, with its concentration of “elites” in universities, computer tech, and medical research displays a batshit-crazy dedication to ideas bent on destroying our political culture: the American republic.
The word republic derives from the Latin, res publica: the public thing, the idea of a state dedicated to the common good. By “state” you can infer both a group of people in a certain place, but also the set of conditions they dwell in. You can’t have a common good without a common culture, which means a general agreement among citizens on values in that certain place — which is our country, the USA.
You can’t overstate the importance of shared ideas and values in that enterprise of being a nation, we-the-people in our particular place.
The juvenile idealism of Boomer hippiedom wrecked the crucial idea of a common culture, and I will tell you exactly how that happened.
Two crusades: first, the civil rights campaign, and second, stopping the War in Vietnam, defined the era.
The first of these climaxed in twin landmark legislative acts designed to abolish Jim Crow racism: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination in public places, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited unfair obstacles to voting.
The idealism in that moment of history was extreme.
The dominant old-school Liberal ethos displayed a sense of triumph. Its cardinal belief in human progress was validated in the new law-of-the-land. We were supposedly entering a utopia of racial harmony.
It proved to be a huge disappointment, a failure.
In some fundamental ways, black and white America could not agree on certain values, especially language and behavior. These matters were so hypersensitive that discussing them became taboo, and when someone dared to — such as the rogue journalist Tom Wolfe in his book Radical Chic, which made fun of the cultural elites trying to socialize with the Black Panthers — he was buried in the most extreme censorious opprobrium by the elite good-thinkers of politics, academia, and the cultural media. They couldn’t believe old Tom dove clear through the Overton Window the way he did, head first.
In fact, a big segment of black America after 1965 became much more overtly separatist and oppositional, while white America became more frantically confounded and depressed by it. The result was the elite’s solution to that quandary: multiculturalism! Which basically meant: we don’t need a common culture in the USA. (We don’t need an agreement about values, language, and behavior.) Each group in America can have its own menu of these things. This accomplished two ends: it allowed criminal behavior to explode; and it allowed the elites to excuse themselves from any serious further attempts to manage the res publica. The people of the ghettos were free to do their thing; while the elites turned their full attention to Boomer careerism and Gordon Gecko style financial moneygrubbing.
As for the crusade to end the War in Vietnam, that was also an epic failure, never properly acknowledged. In fact, no one in the USA, no party or faction, ended the war. We simply lost the War in Vietnam. We just never said so, and still don’t. It ended in ignominy, with the last remnants of US officialdom in Saigon having to be rescued by helicopter from the roof of the American Embassy. The so-called “gooks” in their black pajamas beat the giant American “grunt” army with its bottomless supply of attack helicopters and napalm. Chalk up another “L” for old school Liberalism.
You can’t overstate how demoralizing this was. And so. . . the serial reenactments of our forever wars of recent decades, mostly botches and failures despite our vaunted “defense” establishment, our glorious war technology, and our fake commitment to “spreading democracy.” We simply need to prove that we can’t possibly lose wars against more primitive people — though we have lost repeatedly, the fiasco in leaving Kabul in 2021 being even more ignominious than the flight from Saigon. This can only be understood, finally, as a species of national neurosis.
As was absolutely everything about the George Floyd riots of 2020, Wokery-in-action, with the torching of cities, the looting flash-mobs, and the tearing down of statues honoring American heroes. Try understanding that as the latest chapter in civil rights egalitarianism gone awry, starting with the sanctification of the druggie thug George Floyd, who so perfectly personified the failures of multiculturalism. (What were his values? Ever ask yourself that?)
Now, try (if you can) to understand what the election of Mr. Trump represents: the drive to restore a viable American common culture, to re-set our agreement on values, to repair the broken res publica.
And note how wildly that is resented and opposed by this corrupt and degenerate residue of idealism gone to hell (literally), this ragtag and bobtail of Democratic Party elites, consumed in their mass formation psychosis, addicted to lying and violence, and furious that they are no longer in command.
So, now you know how all this works. An American common culture matters, and if we can’t put it together, we’re sunk. This is our chance to put it together.
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Site: LifeNews
After the Biden administration spent four years “weaponizing” her division, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon says that she needs more “energized attorneys” to help her spearhead new initiatives to protect rights that have been trampled on in the past years.
The priorities pursued in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division by her predecessor Kristen Clarke — prosecuting pro-life activists, suing states over election integrity efforts and targeting police departments — are going to change, Dhillon told the Daily Caller News Foundation during a Friday interview.
Under her leadership, Dhillon said the Civil Rights Division will continue its core mission, while expanding to new areas of focus including defending the Second Amendment, ending race discrimination in employment, securing parental rights and fighting antisemitism on college campuses.
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Some current and former career attorneys in the division are claiming the shifts in policy will undermine civil rights enforcement. Last week, around a dozen senior lawyers in the division were reassigned, Reuters reported.
“We have changed the priorities, not the mission, the priorities, in each of the sections in the Civil Rights Division,” Dhillon told the DCNF. “Some personnel here have decided that they’d rather make their careers elsewhere.”
The following interview has been edited for the sake of length and clarity.
A lot of Americans were concerned over the past four years how this division has been one of the most weaponized in the DOJ. What did you walk into three weeks ago when you came in?
The Civil Rights Division is one of the largest litigating departments of the United States Department of Justice, and you’re correct, a lot of the most notorious, headline-grabbing policies out of the Biden DOJ came from the Civil Rights Division.
For example, the Civil Rights Division was responsible for challenging Georgia’s election laws. The DOJ took it upon itself to harass Georgia over doing the right thing. The DOJ Civil Rights Division spent a lot of resources persecuting Christians for praying outside abortion clinics, not violently, not in any way obstructing people, just praying. That’s outrageous, and we’ve dismissed those prosecutions. The Civil Rights Division has been bringing and maintaining, I think, pretty flimsy cases against police departments and other law enforcement agencies for alleged statistical anomalies in arrest rates, very small anomalies. Statistics are easily manipulated.
We are here to absolutely punish misconduct by the police, by employers, by housing agencies that discriminate against people, by educational institutions that discriminate against students and a whole host of other civil rights statutes. There’s human trafficking, certain human trafficking statues come under our purview.
We’re required to enforce the federal civil rights laws. So all of that is going to continue to be done under the Civil Rights Division, disability law and all of that, but the emphasis is going to be different. It isn’t going to be on opening up investigations and harassing people endlessly and maintaining 40-and 50-year-old consent decrees. It’s going to be examining wrongdoing or alleged wrongdoing and determining quickly whether it occurred or not. If it does, we’ll go after it. If it doesn’t, we’ll move on.
More importantly, I think the rights of ordinary Americans over the last years have been stripped and violated. The First Amendment: during COVID, we saw so many violations of civil rights in every single area, which is something that I took on as a private lawyer. The FACE [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances] Act can be used to protect clinics where women get counseling about their options for abortion, and 200 of those have been violently attacked, firebombed, picketed and otherwise been obstructed over the last few years with zero action from the DOJ. That’s going to change.
We have changed the priorities, not the mission, the priorities, in each of the sections in the Civil Rights Division. Some personnel here have decided that they’d rather make their careers elsewhere. So there’ll be quite a bit of turnover here in the Civil Rights Division.
What does that look like as far as staffing? Do you have enough attorneys to execute those new priorities that you’re hoping to focus on?
Love more. We’re waiting for, you know, throughout the federal government, people are being offered an opportunity to take severance that pays them for five months, and they don’t have to work anymore. They still stay on our books, so, you know, from the bean counter’s perspective I have all those people.
But reality is, not only are we going to continue the mission of the Civil Rights Division, the traditional, core functions, there are a lot of new functions that our president wants us to be looking at, and new functions that I want to do. For example, the Second Amendment is a civil right. The Civil Rights Division has never gone after states that systematically violate our right under Bruen and other Supreme decisions to carry weapons, to bear arms, to keep them in our homes. We’re going to be doing that in the Civil Rights Division.
I mentioned the FACE act, different applications of the FACE act. Rampant antisemitism on college campuses is going to come to an end under our purview. Employers that discriminate against people on the basis of race and use quotas in hiring that are in no way justified, public sector employers, will be getting inquiries from us, and so that’s a new priority that wasn’t being done before. That’s almost every employer in America, unfortunately, certainly in the public sector. We’re taking on de-banking practices.
These are all new things. I’m going to need new, energized attorneys dedicated to this mission. Once we finish this reorganization, and finish the severance process, we’ll be hiring again.
What are some of the lessons you learned from your private practice in the past that you’re bringing into your role here?
I am the rare thing of a conservative civil rights lawyer almost my entire career. So for 18 years, I had my own law firm. For six years, I had a nonprofit that I founded. Both of those, well, one, represented the president in his campaign and his personal life, and many prominent people whose speech rights were violated.
That’s something I’m very passionate about, the First Amendment. But during COVID, we saw every American’s rights trampled on in so many different ways. I filed more lawsuits during COVID than any other lawyer in the United States to challenge governors and local officials stripping away people’s private rights. So these are some of the things that I intend to bring to bear here.
I’ve been a lawyer for the Second Amendment community. I’ve been a lawyer for the pro-life community. Very passionate about all of those areas. I’m not here to do my priorities. I’m here to do the president’s priorities, which happen to overlap a lot with my priorities.
Another priority that Trump signed an executive order on is child gender mutilation and the transgender issue. Could you address specifically what actions you might be taking in the future? How you might be dealing with doctors, medical malpractice cases?
I can’t be specific because that wouldn’t be appropriate, but I can tell anyone to look at my record. In my private practice, in my nonprofit, I represented four prominent young women who detransitioned — Chloe Cole, Luka Hein, Clementine Breen and one other. These girls and their families were sold a package of lies. They were subjected to medical malpractice, and frankly, doctors looked the other way on their actual medical issues and put them on this conveyor belt. Thankfully, each of them realized they made a terrible mistake, and they’ll never get their breasts back. Thankfully, worse wasn’t done to them.
The president and the attorney general have emphasized that we need to be using female genital mutilation statutes that bar female genital mutilation on girls under the age of 18, a barbaric practice that we condemn around the world, but do right here in the United States. That doesn’t protect boys, unfortunately, but we will aggressively be looking at the extent to which doctors, medical institutions, public institutions, UCSF, and you know, all these public institutions around the country, have been violating the civil rights of American families.
Some states are systematically destroying parental rights, which is a civil right, by enabling the smuggling of children across the state borders to obtain this destructive treatment and surgery. That’s illegal, in my opinion, and it may violate human trafficking statutes. So there are a number of things that we’re going to look at.
On the religious liberty front, I know you’ve spoken a lot about that. Earlier this week, there was a meeting of the anti-Christian Bias Task Force. What do you see as the biggest issue in the religious liberty space?
Well there’s so many. I’ve mentioned some of them, but I think there’s open hostility to religion in many sectors of our society.
We’ve had presidents mock people who cling to their faith. People who sought medical exemptions from the COVID vaccine during that terrible era, were fired from our military, were fired from jobs all over the United States. There’s active anti-Christian hostility in the military, in various government agencies. Chaplains are told not to preach their faith if they’re Christian. I mean, there’s so many things. Secretary Hegseth went over those at our meeting. And State Department Secretary Rubio talked about examples over there.
We have federal statutes that protect religion, not just the First Amendment, but there’s the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. We’ve brought several cases in the DOJ Civil Rights Division to protect houses of worship, Christian and others. It’s an important right that we have, and we need to protect people of faith, even in prisons. People who have committed crimes don’t lose their religious rights. I’m very passionate about that issue, and have spent my entire 32 year career working to represent the rights of people of faith.
On election security, I also wanted to ask you, what can be done about states that are allowing non-citizens on voter rolls? What role will the Civil Rights Division have in those issues?
We have a role. We administer the Voting Rights Act, the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act. Those are specific statutes. What we are not is the all purpose law enforcement agency of elections. Americans need to understand that most of our election laws are based in the states. However, there are these federal laws.
As a lawyer for many candidates over the years, and having been a candidate myself, I’m very passionate about that. And as an immigrant to this country, I think it’s outrageous that people conflate immigrant and illegal immigrant and [say] ‘nobody should be asking for anybody’s ID.’ It’s 2025. Everyone in America who’s here legally can easily get an ID. So that’s nonsense.
I do think that we need to be enforcing voter ID laws, allowing them, enabling them and making it easier for anyone who is legally entitled to vote in the United States to vote easily. That’s the bottom line. So the hostility that we see from one side politically and from judges to this basic concept, we have to work around it. There may be legislative solutions that are required, but whatever we can do at the DOJ to make sure that our elections are fair, safe and reliable, we will be doing.
You mentioned judges. There’s been a lot of talk about district court judges overriding the president, a lot of the executive orders. What do you think the answer is there?
Oh, that’s the heavy one. And I have to appear in front of these judges, so I will not say exactly what I think about some of these judges and their rulings. What I will say is that we have a runaway trend of judges, you know, substituting their judgment for the president’s. That is not what separation of powers means. I’ll leave it at that. I’m involved in several active cases. I can’t really take a position any more than this.
Finally, what would you say Americans should expect from the Civil Rights Division over the next four years? What’s your final message?
Well, they can expect that we’ll be enforcing the federal civil rights statutes. They can expect that the emphasis of that enforcement is going to be more towards the president’s agenda. He has many executive orders out there that I fully agree with and he has a right as an executive, the person that the American people chose to be our president, to direct that agenda.
Now, that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop doing traditional work, like the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) is an important statute. Discrimination is bad. Violence at any house of worship or any health care facility is unacceptable, and all those statutes are going to be enforced. But we will not be weaponizing the federal government against law abiding citizens, against law abiding employers, against police departments that are trying to do the right thing and are largely doing the right thing. But if you’re enabling violent and obstructive, antisemitic protests on your campus, and I have jurisdiction, you will not be doing that.
LifeNews Note: Katelynn Richardson writes for Daily Caller. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience.
The post Harmeet Dhillon Needs Conservative Attorneys to Reform DOJ Office That Targeted Pro-Life Americans appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeUS Treasury Unexpectedly Reports Sharp Drop In Debt Borrowing Needs, Rates SlideTyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 15:49
In our preview of today's Treasury borrowing estimate release, we said that we expect the Treasury to announce $507bn in Q2 borrowing, a "figure much higher than Treasury’s estimate of $123bn in February" and entirely due to a lower starting cash balance, which as regular readers know, has collapsed due to the debt ceiling impasse that has forced the Treasury to draw down on its TGA (cash) balance as well as use various extraordinary measures.
We were off by a tiny $7 billion, $507BN vs $514BN as per the table below:
Source: US Treasury
At 3pm ET, ahead of Wednesday's Refunding statement, the Treasury published its debt borrowing estimates for calendar Q2 and Q3 and it was just as expected:
- During the April – June 2025 quarter, Treasury expects to borrow $514 billion in privately-held net marketable debt, assuming an end-of-June cash balance of $850 billion. The borrowing estimate is $391 billion higher than announced in February 2025, primarily due to the lower beginning-of-quarter cash balance and projected lower net cash flows, partially offset by lower QT (i.e. debt redemptions) to the tune of $60 billion.
The above was completely expected, which means it is completely distorted due to the ongoing debt ceiling standoff. This is what we said earlier:
Treasury issuance in Q2 will most likely end up short of the estimate if the debt ceiling remains unresolved this quarter. Similarly, Q3 estimate will assume a normal beginning-of-quarter cash balance, but actual issuance could end up materially higher once the debt ceiling constraint is lifted during the quarter and Treasury begins to rebuild its cash balance (and if it isn't, and the US begins to default, there will be much bigger problems at hand than termed-out debt issuance).
Translation: the Treasury drew down its cash by $444BN from $850BN to $406BN, also as we said in our preview.
What we didn't say, because we didn't know it (and neither did anyone else), is what the Treasury reported as an endnote to its borrowing needs paragraph, namely that "the current quarter borrowing estimate is $53 billion lower than announced in February" which indicates that DOGE is indeed working and the US funding needs are actually declining.
To be sure, this also should not be a huge surprise, because as we also reported just before the Treasury press release, "fiscal flows year-to-date are coming in better than expected (thank you DOGE). Gross receipts are tracking slightly above prior-year levels (adjusted for CBO forecasts for 2025), while outlays are closer to the bottom of the historical range, although sadly nowhere near enough to make a notable impression over the long-term."
And while fiscal flows could deteriorate in the coming quarters - especially if there is a sharp recession - that risk is largely viewed as relatively low, for now. Meanwhile, DB economists estimate the deficit impact from TCJA extension and other Trump proposals could be largely offset by higher tariff revenues this year, before the deficit widens out more substantially relative to the CBO baseline next year and onward.
Looking ahead to calendar Q3, or the July – September 2025 quarter, the Treasury now expects to borrow $554 billion in privately-held net marketable debt, assuming an end-of-September cash balance of $850 billion. It remains unclear if the Treasury will be able to restore cash to its "runrate" balance of $850BN, as that will depend entirely on when the debt ceiling deal will be concluded. As a reminder, earlier we highlighted the thoughts of DB's Steven Zeng who moved
his x-date estimate from late July to mid-August, indicating that there is a modest buffer, but not enough to push the debt ceiling date into Q4 without major damage.
Finally, looking at the historical data, during calendar Q1 which ended March 31, 2025 quarter, the treasury borrowed $369 billion in privately-held net marketable debt and ended the quarter with a cash balance of $406 billion. In February 2025, Treasury estimated borrowing of $815 billion and assumed an end-of-March cash balance of $850 billion. The $446 billion difference in privately-held net market borrowing resulted primarily from the lower end-of-quarter cash balance. However, excluding the lower than assumed end-of-quarter cash balance, actual borrowing was $2 billion lower than announced in February.
In other words, DOGE is working: in Q1, US debt funding needs were $2BN less than the Treasury forecast in February, and in Q2 the Treasury is expected to need $53 billion less than it forecast 3 months ago.
This unexpected drop in pro forma debt issuance (because one way or another, the debt ceiling constraint will go away), may be the reason why yields have been sliding all day, and at 4.21% are at session lows.
Source: US Treasury
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Site: Zero HedgeChina Extends Its Suspension Of US LNG ImportsTyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 15:40
Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,
China has not imported any liquefied natural gas from the United States since early February, data from Kpler cited by Nikkei has shown.
The last LNG cargo that left the Gulf bound for China set off on February 6, the data showed.
The Chinese tariffs on U.S. goods, including energy products, and the broader trade war between the world’s two biggest economies could have long-term consequences on the ability of new U.S. LNG export projects to attract anchor offtake commitments, analysts have warned.
The United States was never a major supplier of LNG to Chinese buyers, but after Beijing slapped retaliatory tariffs on U.S. energy imports, the flow ended completely.
Following the tariff exchange, Chinese LNG buyers with long-term supply contracts with U.S. producers started reselling the cargos to Europe, Bloomberg reported in March, citing sources from the trading world. What’s more, Chinese traders have grown cold towards new long-term commitments for future supply from the United States, instead seeking long-term deals with gas producers in the Middle East and the Asia Pacific.
The latest news in that space was for a 15-year supply deal for liquefied natural gas from Emirati Adnoc, at a rate of 1 million metric tons annually.
This made the contract the largest LNG supply deal for a Chinese company, ENN Natural Gas. ENN said the agreement will boost energy supply security and diversify its sourcing.
The outlook for Chinese LNG imports in general appears to be bearish, with BloombergNEF forecasting last month that high levels of gas inventories will push demand lower for the year, leading to the first annual decline in LNG imports since 2022.
The tariff push is now affecting the U.S. LNG industry in another way as well.
President Trump has slapped tariffs on Chinese-built ships calling at U.S. ports, aiming to stir U.S. energy companies towards using U.S.-built vessels, of which there are none yet.
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Site: LifeNews
The University of Colorado Boulder (CU) sought to partner with an abortion clinic to host a now-canceled “Sex Ed Summer Camp” for incoming 5th through 8th grade students.
The event, hosted in part with the Boulder Valley Health Center, planned to cover topics such as “bodies beyond the binary” and “gender and sexuality.” The health center announced the camp was canceled due to “safety concerns,” the clinic’s website states.
“Sex Ed Summer Camp is everything your camper won’t always get to learn in school!” the now-removed CU webpage exclaimed. The camp also promised to be “justice-rooted” and “affirming,” according to advertisements.
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Sex Ed Summer Camp – CU Boulder & Boulder Valley Health Center
The Boulder Valley Health Center specializes in “reproductive and sexual health,” its website boasts, highlighting abortion and “gender affirming care” on its frontpage. The clinic specifically mentions offering “confidential” services for minors.
“We understand how important privacy, or confidentiality, is to accessing medical care,” the center’s teen clinic page asserts. “We will not talk to anyone else about your visit, results, medications, or any other aspect of your care unless you give us specific permission to do so. Patient confidentiality also applies to patients who are under the age of 18.”
The teen clinic lists vast “affirming” resources for minors questioning their gender.
Boulder Valley Health Center Teen Clinic
The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment was met with an automatic reply email repeating the same language as the website.
“Due to safety concerns, the Boulder Valley Health Center – CU Boulder’s Renee Crown Wellness Institute’s Sex Ed Summer Camp for 5th – 8th graders has been cancelled,” the clinic stated. “The camp aimed to provide age-appropriate sex education to prevent unwanted pregnancies and emphasize the importance of sexual health for overall well-being. Any extrapolation about the camp’s intentions is incorrect.”
Current Colorado law provides a “right” to abortion and “gender-affirming” procedures, including for minors.
CU did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
LifeNews Note: Jaryn Crouson writes for Daily Caller. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience.
The post Colorado University Cancels “Sex Ed Summer Camp” for Kids appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: LifeNews
A new study published as the “largest-known study of the abortion pill” reveals that the abortion drug, mifepristone, is 22 times more dangerous than the drug label currently indicates.
The Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) just released a study based on “analysis of data from an all-payer insurance claims database that includes 865,727 prescribed mifepristone abortions from 2017 to 2023.” That pool is in stark contrast to the 10 clinical trials with a total of 30,966 participants the FDA currently relies on, as well as Danco Laboratories, the largest provider of mifepristone in the nation.
According to the study, 11% of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion. And, while the label for mifepristone claims the rate of these adverse events is “less than 0.5 percent,” EPPC’s much broader study reveals the “real-world rate of serious adverse events following mifepristone” to be 22 times higher than that.
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Figure 1, Ethics and Public Policy Center
In 2024, Operation Rescue’s Annual Survey highlighted these same growing dangers surrounding the abortion pill – drawing attention to women who have died, to an alarming boom in unregulated providers, and calling out the FDA’s wilful lack of oversight.
“In the last few years, both the FDA and the former Biden administration steadily stripped away any common sense restrictions for such a dangerous drug,” says Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. “In 2023, even a required in-person visit with a real doctor was permanently eliminated, opening the floodgates for what we call the ‘virtual back-alley’ – unregulated, online suppliers of abortion pills. The number of those suppliers tripled between 2023 and 2024.”
OR’s Annual Survey also shows that, while the number of surgical clinics were decreasing, the number pill-only clinics were on a steady rise from 2017 to 2023, the same timeline EPPC’s study uses for analysis.
This steady rise, along with the recent explosion in online suppliers and other dangerous telemed options, have resulted in chemical abortions now accounting for two-thirds of all abortions in America. And, as predicted, this new study shows the rate of chemical abortion complications is also much higher than women have been told.
“America is saturated with this ‘kill pill,’” says Newman, “and the FDA has shown no care whatsoever for the devastating effects. Even when women die.”
In light of its new research, the EPPC study calls for the FDA to immediately reinstate stronger safety protocols for mifepristone, to investigate the true rate of injuries, and to reconsider the approval of the drug altogether.
“Operation Rescue takes it even further,” adds Newman. “This study clearly shows how harmful this drug has been to women, and we already know it’s intentionally lethal to an unborn child. Moreover, these new stats indicate a total lack of scientific integrity within the FDA, Danco Laboratories, and any other providers of the ‘kill pill.’ We call for mifepristone to be banned immediately. As this new study so truthfully states: ‘Women deserve better than the abortion pill.’ Let’s ban the ‘kill pill’ now, America.”
LifeNews Note: This article was originally published by Operation Rescue, a leading pro-life, Christian activist organization dedicated to exposing abortion abuses, demanding enforcement, saving innocent lives, and building an abortion-free America. The author, Sarah Neely, is Chief Operating Officer for Operation Rescue.
The post Abortion Pill 22 Times More Dangerous Than FDA Reports appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: RadTrad ThomistThe friends of Sister Lucy Truth that I have met in Rome so far, tried to provide me an answer to the question as to why, so many pilgrims of all ages, especially young people a couple of days ago, would be flocking to fawn on every aspect of Francis/Bergoglio, the viewing of his body, his funeral, and to view his awful grave that stands in stark contrast to the astounding beauty of St. Mary Major. A cement hole in the wall with Francis' abstract "crucifix" are the things that strike you the most when you visit.My friends, who are traditionalists in the widest sense, say that what I am looking at is a facade. The Italian Left were big lovers of Francis, for the simple reason that he was one of them. The young people like the New Church doctrine of living together without marriage and no demand to believe in particular doctrines, especially the doctrine of Hell. Francis has culminated Vatican II by creating a "church" without definitive lines, both with regard to morality and doctrine, but, also, with regard to everyday behavior --- you cannot really tell that the "pilgrims" to, say St. Paul's Out Side the Walls, were in any way distinct in their dress or behavior from any other youth that you typically meet in the Roman metro system. One of my friend called them "blasphemers," and laughed at the idea that they go to church. He indicated that the local priest tells the young that it is fine, in light of Francis' teaching, to live together before marriage. This is something they very much appreciate. Apparently, from what they say, this is universally the case in Europe, with the sole exception of Poland. Polish pilgrims are all over Rome, I would even say that I hear Polish spoken in the streets here now as second only to Italian.My friends that I have met here have said that many of those in attendance at this Francis event, are merely the curious. They are here anyways for the hight of the tourist season in Rome and for the Jubilee Year "pilgrimages" led by a colored Novus Ordo Priest and what must be every remaining nun on the face of the earth! The Bergoglian Church IS a Church without rational, moral, and doctrinal lines. It includes everything --- except Catholic Tradition --- and yet nothing at the same time. Man as a rational animal is meant to draw lines. That is how he thinks by distinguishing one thing from another. That is not the beast that Roncalli and Montini have created and Bergoglio given full-spectrum dominance.The doughy and indistinct face of Sister Lucy II needed to replace the highly differentiated and unrepeatable face of the real Sister Lucy. One fit the amorphous mass of New Church, the other definitely did not!
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Site: Zero HedgeUnhinged Billionaire Democrat Gov. Calls For "Mass Protests" & "Mobilization For Disruption" Against RepublicansTyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 15:20
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker — a far-left billionaire born into wealth as an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune — has called for "mass protest and mobilization for disruption" against the Republican Party.
"Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now," Pritzker told the audience at the New Hampshire Democratic Party's annual McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club Dinner on Sunday evening.
Pritzker continued: "These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They must understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soap box and then punish them at the ballot box."
Pritzker calls for mass protests and disruption - “Republicans cannot know a moment of peace,” he says, swaying their portraits will one day be put in museums “reserved for tyrants and traitors” pic.twitter.com/BBBuL1Uz9O
— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) April 28, 2025Pritzker's fiery speech last night at the 100 Club Dinner in New Hampshire strongly suggests he is considering a presidential run and testing the waters:
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New Hampshire is a critical early primary state, and the McIntyre-Shaheen Dinner is one of the biggest Democratic Party events in the state.
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Presidential hopefuls typically use speeches there to build national visibility, court party insiders, and gauge grassroots support.
The billionaire Democratic governor is testing the waters after socialists Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders toured the country in private jets to campaign against "oligarchy" — a nationwide touring effort largely seen as a dud.
Pritzker, who is an heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, has criticized the Trump administration's deportation efforts of illegal alien criminals, as well as Elon Musk's DOGE efforts to eliminate fraud and waste from the bloated federal government.
Publicly available data shows the wealthy Pritzker family and their connection with Hyatt.
Pritzker might also be jumping into action after President Trump issued a presidential memorandum last week to target Democratic online donation platform, ActBlue, specifically cracking down on foreign contributions in American elections.
The rudderless Democratic Party can't win with common sense, so they are doubling and tripling down on more protests funded by NGOs. As the saying goes, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
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Site: Zero HedgeGenerative AI Could Be Supercharging Freight Industry FraudTyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 15:00
Authored by Mark LaBrosse via FreightWaves.com,
We’ve all heard how emerging AI technologies will optimize the freight industry in ways we can only dream about. But the scary truth is that AI is already fueling our nightmares—by supercharging freight theft.
Why aren’t more people talking about the dark side of AI? For one, most of the worries are centered on job loss and plagiarism. But perhaps it’s largely because it’s so good that it’s hard to detect. Regardless, it’s clear some strategies are already in play.
What’s critical to know: Even those highly attuned to scams can fall victim as generative AI more closely mimics real business experiences and enables crime syndicates to operate at scale.
This is an arms race. It will take good-guy tech fighting bad-guy tech and a coordinated human response to protect cargo from these modern cyber pirates.
Discerning real from fake is getting increasingly difficult
Crime syndicates can already evade detection and prosecution by operating outside the United States and creating new fraudulent documentation whenever they’re discovered.
With AI in play, these bad actors are orders of magnitude more effective.
“Generative AI makes fraud an infinitely scalable and near-automatic process,” warns BAYNCORE senior consultant Dr. Richard Paul, who earned his PhD in computer simulation and artificial intelligence.
“Anyone can now set up an AI bot to scan the internet for key fragments of information,” Paul explains. “When assembled, these simple AI tools can automatically create documents, emails, and text messages that appear legitimate.”
Monitoring a freight industry awash in phishing scams, Brittany Graft, COO of fraud prevention platform Highway, shares Paul’s concern.
“If we take phishing schemes, for example, we historically have been able to detect and avoid them because the English is broken, the grammar is poor, or a logo is misplaced. AI is going to help the bad guys create an experience that so closely replicates what brokers and carriers are used to,” says Graft, “that the discerning eye will have a harder time picking up that it’s a scam.”
“Already, we’re seeing phishing attempts work because the imitations are so good,” Graft continues. “If we click some of these links, they look exactly like the legitimate site.”
And once brokers and carriers enter their credentials into illegitimate login pages and websites, their accounts—even email inboxes—are immediately compromised. From there, it’s quick work for AI agents and those using the tools to insert themselves at every level, logging into load boards, capturing freight, and creating havoc.
Complicating matters further, bad actors can use generative AI to beat the numbers game by creating tens or even hundreds of fraudulent carriers or brokers—complete with cloned sites, identical documents, and perfectly written emails.
One, two, even fifty fraudulent carriers could be caught, and it would barely be a dent in the coming cyber threat onslaught.
“At the same time, freight brokers are being held to ever-higher standards of accountability in the court of law,” according to FreightWaves Group President, Kaylee Nix. “The situation has reached a crisis, and it’s time for the industry to come together to address this critical problem and share best practices on how to mitigate it.”
In response, the logistics industry’s largest media platform is hosting a FreightWaves Fraud Symposium on May 14 to help brokers better protect their businesses and customers.
FBI raising the alarm on deepfakes
In December 2024, the FBI issued an alert, drawing attention to how criminals are using generative AI to scam the general public. These same tactics are also being deployed against freight industry businesses and their customers.
In addition to creating fraudulent credentials, the FBI specifically cites how vocal cloning, audio bots, and generative video can falsely confirm the identity of the person you’re speaking to.
Now classic verification methods, like a simple phone call to confirm identity, can be thwarted.
“They can convince you they are from someone you know,” Paul says. “Complete with intimate details about you, in a familiar tone, even convincingly cloning a voice you know well.”
Paul adds, “The content and messaging these custom AIs generate is near-perfect, even better than legitimate actors frequently create—and thus is very hard to detect.”
Graft shares these concerns.
“We go really deep on verifying the identities of motor truck carriers and the individuals who represent them,” she says. “We collect their driver’s license, ask them to take a live photo, and verify that their digital identity matches their physical identity.”
“We’re aware of the potential for generative AI to replicate that live photo step and potentially try to brute force the system by creating multiple attempts to see which one will work,” Graft continues. “We’re bringing machine learning into that process to detect the visual signals on AI-generated photos and monitor the number of attempts.”
It’s clear—we’ll need tech solutions like this to get ahead of AI-enabled fraud.
Building trust face-to-face: The freight industry’s human response
If you’re worried about strategic cargo theft, you’re not alone. A Freight Caviar poll found that double brokering was the leading fraud concern among brokers, topping outright theft and hijacking.
In this threat landscape, it’s highly likely that every broker and carrier in the country has already been targeted—or will be in short order. It’s the worst-kept secret in the industry. Unfortunately, victimized brokers and carriers have experienced a shocking lack of action when they’ve turned to the FMCSA. This rapidly rising fraud simply hasn’t been an agency priority.
While the federal government has yet to take meaningful action, freight brokers and carriers aren’t standing idle. They are taking their own actions, adopting new tools, and opening up dialogue.
Partly in response to this chaos, they’ve banded together and launched the Broker-Carrier Summit to deliver critical education, build relationships, and open up the lines of communication necessary to strengthen the industry and help fend off scammers.
Fighting fire with fire: The freight industry’s tech response
While emerging technologies have enabled a whole new level of criminality, brokers and carriers also leverage cutting-edge tech to protect against AI-powered scammers. In fact, tech-enabled fraud prevention tools have done more to combat this increasingly sophisticated threat than anything else out there.
Graft agrees.
“We’ll have to increasingly rely on technology to help us ascertain identities because AI is going to get better at impersonating reality,” she says.
What tools do we have at our disposal?
Digital identity wallets, like the well-established ID.me, are now taking direct aim at deepfakes, leveraging biometrics for facial verification and liveness detection. (Privacy concerns aside.)
Carrier vetting platforms, including FreightValidate and Carrier411, surface an operator’s entire history—or, in the case of many bad actors, the lack of a legitimate history.
Some carrier identity SaaS systems and plugins, like Highway, feature machine learning (ML) to monitor inbound phone calls and email inboxes, looking for various fraud signals, like spoofed phone numbers and email addresses.
As this digital war rages on, some fraud detection tools are getting into a more proactive position, now executing real-time behavioral and intent monitoring—detecting increasingly subtle patterns.
It’s a lot to take in, I realize. The growing scale of strategic freight theft—up 1,500% since 2021, according to the American Trucking Association—is enough to leave you breathless.
We’ll need every human and tech-enabled arrow in our quiver to protect our supply chain.
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Site: AsiaNews.itThe archbishop of Goa, 72, has chaired the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences since the start of the year. He has been very attentive to the life of families whom he constantly encouraged in his ministry. As head of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India-Latin Rite, he promoted a broad consultation in the dioceses, which led to a document with 16 priorities, including Dalits and digital technologies.
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Site: Zero HedgePutin Declares Surprise 3-Day Ceasefire In Ukraine For WW2 Victory DayTyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 14:20
In an unexpected development on Monday Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine on the occasion of Russia's Victory Day celebrations, coming next week.
This year's observance will mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. The Kremlin published a statement calling for the ceasefire to being at midnight on May 8, lasting until midnight on May 11. The Kremlin intends for all Russian military operations to be suspended.
This full three-day ceasefire would mark the longest such pause in fighting of the war, following on the heels of this month's 30-hour Easter truce, which largely held but saw accusations of repeat violations hurled between both sides in some locales.
Prior 'Victory Day' parade, via AP
The ceasefire is “out of humanitarian considerations," the statement indicated. "Russia believes that the Ukrainian side should follow this example," the Kremlin added.
"In the event of ceasefire violations by Ukraine, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will respond appropriately and effectively."
Moscow further said it "reaffirms its readiness for peace negotiations without preconditions, aimed at addressing the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis and engaging constructively with international partners."
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, was the first to respond on behalf of Kiev, and asked why there can't be an immediate ceasefire, if Moscow is willing to declare one for May 8.
"Why wait until May 8th? If the fire can be ceased now and since any date for 30 days — so it is real, not just for a parade," Sybiha wrote on X. "Ukraine is ready to support a lasting, durable and full ceasefire. And this is what we are constantly proposing, for at least 30 days.”
One Russian source has been quoted as pointing out this is largely about signaling the Trump administration:
“We are sending a signal to the outside world: we are peace-loving, and they [in Ukraine] are terrorists — referring, for example, to the recent killing of General Moskalik,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to talk candidly about the situation.
“Another intended recipient of this signal is the U.S. president himself: ‘Look, Mr. Trump, we are trying,’” the official added.
Trump has been increasing the pressure not only on Zelensky but on Russia too, warning both sides that US patience will run out, and urging the forging of a ceasefire within days.
But in reality neither side has budged, given also just on Monday FM Lavrov set forth maximalist demands to end the war: full recognition of Russian control over the four territories, 'deNazification', and a pledge for Ukraine to never joint NATO, along with protection of the Russian language in Ukraine.
New on MoA:
— Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) April 28, 2025
Russia Rejects Trump's Freeze Of The War In Ukrainehttps://t.co/Adz8e0loFS pic.twitter.com/Gxk7JTtvZ5However, Trump has lately suggested he thinks Zelensky is ready to give up Crimea, but there's been no official confirmation of this as of yet. The Ukrainian leader would face immense pushback from many of his own military commanders if he formally relinquishes territory.
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Site: Zero HedgeTrump Pinpoints Biden Operative Who Most Of All "Should Be In Jail..."Tyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 14:00
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
President Trump has called for the person who was operating the autopen that signed many documents, and pardons, while Joe Biden was in office to be jailed.
In a Truth Social post Sunday, Trump wrote “Hopefully ACTBLUE, the Democrats ILLEGAL SCAM used to raise money, including from not allowed “foreign contributions,” is being looked at by authorities. The Dems only know how to win by CHEATING, something which they do better than any group or party in history.”
He added that “now, with their terrible policies and candidates, and with people like Crooked Adam Schiff, who demanded a full Pardon from Sleepy Joe, leading the way, it is almost impossible to reach their money goals. The USA is wise to these scoundrels and crooks.”
Executive Orders were signed that Biden himself had no recollection of signing.
— The Conservative Alternative (@OldeWorldOrder) April 27, 2025
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has talked about this at length.
It doesn't seem like Biden was actually in control of the Executive Branch ... which is concerning, to say the least.“Also, why did the Auto Pen give Schiff a Pardon?” Trump continued, adding “Biden knew nothing about it. Who operated the Auto Pen? That is the biggest question being asked in D.C. They almost destroyed our Country. They should all be in jail!!!”
The autopen scandal is a big deal. You can't have someone basically forging the President's signature on important documents.
— Red Moon (@LSDSurvivor) April 27, 2025They weren't elected the President of the United States, and these people committed crimes that abused the elderly dementia victim Joe Biden's name plate.
— AC Cibock (@CibockAc67066) April 27, 2025Last month, Trump declared that all of the pardons issued by ‘Joe Biden’ in the final days of his fake Presidency are void because he didn’t sign any of them.
He added that anyone who receive a pardon should not rest assured that they are immune from investigation, adding “In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden.”
“He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime,” Trump further urged.
The autopen issue was revealed in findings from The Oversight Project.
The organisation released further analysis finding that Biden’s pardons for family members, Anthony Fauci, General Milley, J6 Committee members, and Gerald Lundergan were all autopenned.
The Oversight Project also found that two different autopens were used, pointing out that Neera Tanden was the White House Staff Secretary when Biden autopenned pardons from a golf course in the US Virgin Islands.
You were White House Staff Secretary when Biden autopenned pardons from the golf course in USVI.
— Oversight Project (@ItsYourGov) March 17, 2025
This you? https://t.co/26z9C6cE7m pic.twitter.com/7btD2RTX0N* * *
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.
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Site: LifeNews
An article published in the Toronto Sun on April 25 and written by Brian Passifiume concerns David Baltzer, a Canadian veteran who was offered euthanasia instead of medical treatment in December 2019.
Baltzer, a two tour Afghanistan combat veteran with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI,) told the Toronto Sun that:
he was offered MAID in Dec. 23, 2019 — possibly making him among the first Canadian soldiers offered therapeutic suicide by the federal government.
“It made me wonder, were they really there to help us, or slowly groom us to say ‘here’s a solution, just kill yourself,”
The Toronto Sun reported Baltzer as saying:
“I was in my lowest down point, it was just before Christmas,” he told the Sun.
Follow LifeNews.com on Instagram for pro-life pictures and videos.
“He says to me, ‘I would like to make a suggestion for you. Keep an open mind, think about it, you’ve tried all this and nothing seems to be working, but have you thought about medical-assisted suicide?’”
Baltzer said that the suggestion left him reeling. Passifiume reported that Baltzer was offered treatment for PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) after returning from Afghanistan. The treatment was unsuccessful. Baltzer then turned to alcohol and substance abuse to deal with his trauma. Passifiume reported that:
The story first came out when when he was interviewed by CAF veteran Mark Meincke, whose trauma-recovery podcast Operation Tango Romeo broke the story.
Meincke said Baltzer’s story shoots down VAC’s assertions blaming one caseworker for offering MAID to veterans, and suggests the problem is far more serious than some rogue public servant.
“It had to have been policy. because it’s just too many people in too many provinces,” Meincke told the Sun.
Meincke and Baltzer are calling for a complete reform of the Veterans Affairs.
Meincke said that he knows at least 5 veterans who were offered MAiD by veterans affairs.
LifeNews.com Note: Alex Schadenberg is the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and you can read his blog here.
The post Disabled Veteran With PTSD Offered Euthanasia Instead of Treatment appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeActor Jon Voight To Tell President Trump How To "Fix" HollywoodTyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 13:40
Actor Jon Voight and his manager, Steven Paul, are preparing to present President Donald Trump with proposals to boost U.S. film and TV production as soon as this week, according to Bloomberg.
Beyond traditional state tax credits, their plan could include incentives for infrastructure, job training, and tax code changes.
“It’s important that we compete with what’s going on around the world so there needs to be some sort of federal tax incentives,” Paul said. He added that their goal is to curb the current state-by-state competition for productions and bring business back from overseas.
Bloomberg writes that film and TV production has declined in California and across the U.S. as studios cut back and other countries like the UK, Australia, Hungary, and Spain lure projects with tax incentives.
“It’s been very, very difficult here,” Paul said. “We’re feeling the cries of people in town.”
A California bill aiming to more than double state film incentives to $750 million annually is moving through the legislature. Voight, alongside actors Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone, was named by President Trump in January as a special ambassador to Hollywood. Scott Karol, president of SP Media Group, said Voight’s team has consulted studio executives, union leaders, and state officials for input.
One proposal could involve extending and expanding Section 181 of the U.S. tax code, which currently allows $15 million in accelerated deductions for productions but is set to expire this year.
Another idea is to incentivize long-term investments like sound stage construction, similar to Netflix’s 10-year deal in New Jersey. Paul, who produced Man With No Past with Voight, said he plans to shift three upcoming films to California and invest in a Los Angeles studio.
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Grab a lighter / flashlight combo and a Knife for free shipping at ZH Store.
Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back
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Site: Henrymakow.com
Please send links and comments to hmakow@gmail.comTrump will be forced to back down on tariffs as his popularity plummets.President Trump battered by brutal polls that show his approval sinking -- including one revealing the lowest ratings since World War II.https://nypost.com/2025/04/27/us-news/trump-battered-by-polls-that-show-his-approval-rating-sinking/"In one poll from Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos, Trump's standing was the lowest of any president in the first 100 days of his term since 1945, with 39% saying they approve of his job performance while 55% disapprove."-China rejects Trump claims of Xi Jinping tariff phone callChina and US 'have not engaged in consultations or negotiations regarding tariff issues,' foreign ministry says, as Beijing keeps up denials"Never interrupt your enemy whe he is making a mistake."Makow- China is hanging Donald Trump out to dry. Like his buddy Satanyahu, Trump's only way out may be to escalate. After all, this trade war is reallly about repatriating the supply chain in advance of WW3.China shrugs off threat of U.S. tariffs to economy, says it has tools to protect jobsThe officials who spoke Monday reiterated China's rejection of what leaders there call bullying."They make up bargaining chips out of thin air, bully and go back on their words, which makes everyone see one thing more and more clearly, that is the so-called 'reciprocal tariffs' severely go against historical trends and economic laws, impact international trade rules and order and seriously impair the legitimate rights and interests of countries," said Zhao Chenxin, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's main economic planning agency.----"Worse Than Trudeau: Canadians Should Expect Disaster With Carney In Charge" :" By most accounts, the majority of Canadians were ecstatic to see Trudeau exit the stage.""But what if they still haven't learned their lesson? How is that even possible?""Carney has rebranded himself as a "centrist" in order to win public favor, but nothing could be further from the truth. Mark Carney is, in fact, worse than Trudeau on every level."-
On April 23, the White House released a statement revealing that foreign companies are investing billions of dollars in U.S.-based manufacturing. These include Swiss drug and diagnostics company Roche, which looks to invest $50 billion into manufacturing and R&D in the U.S.-Nova festival founder outed as Israeli intel collaborator involved in Gaza genocide--The Roots of Christian Zionism: The Scofield Bible ApostasyThis "Roots of Zionism" presentation may be the first of its kind with a factual explanation of how Christianity's latest apostate epidemic was launched with the publishing of C. I. Scofield's reference Bible in 1909, and the influence of the notes in it.--
Hamdy Mig--"Today I am experiencing loss again. The occupation directly targeted my cousin, my friend, and my beloved, which led to his martyrdom. I said goodbye to him and buried him today."A Way to Help GazaC'mon gold bugs! Share some of your good fortune!For Greater Glory: Mexico's Cristeros Resistance"In 1914, President Carranza -- who put in place by the U.S. -- inaugurated a period of open persecution. Priests were massacred, including 160 killed in Mexico during February 1915. Nuns were abused and conscripted as camp followers and concubines of the warring factions roaming the country. John Lind, one of Woodrow Wilson's advisers, rejoiced over the news: "Great news! The more priests they kill in Mexico, the happier I shall be!"--(RFK Jr. may be doing good things but he is posing with Rabbi Schmuley in gaze of Rebbe Schneerson)Having been called a liar by Anthony Fauci for saying that "not one of the 72 vaccines mandated for children has ever been safety tested", RFK Jr. sued Fauci.After a year of stonewalling, Fauci's lawyers admitted that RFK Jr. had been right all along."There's no downstream liability, there's no front-end safety testing... and there's no marketing and advertising costs, because the federal government is ordering 78 million school kids to take that vaccine every year.""What better product could you have? And so there was a gold rush to add all these new vaccines to the schedule... because if you get onto that schedule, it's a billion dollars a year for your company.""So we got all of these new vaccines, 72 shots, 16 vaccines... And that year, 1989, we saw an explosion in chronic disease in American children... ADHD, sleep disorders, language delays, ASD, autism, Tourette's syndrome, ticks, narcolepsy.""Autism went from one in 10,000 in my generation... to one in every 34 kids today."-Feels like the Zionists have turned over a rock and all the drugged Demonrats are scurrying about in complete disarray.-Eckhart Tolle's Teachings are Consistent with Christ's-
It's a world war.Putin thanks North Korean troops for assistance in retaking Kursk from UkrainePyongyang acknowledged for the first time its deployment of troops to assist Russia in its war against UkraineIn remarks released by the Kremlin, Putin praised the Korean People's Army (KPA) units for fighting "shoulder to shoulder with Russian fighters" to defend Russia's Kursk Oblast. "The Russian people will never forget the heroism of the DPRK special forces," Putin expressed, vowing to honor the sacrifices of the Korean soldiers who fought alongside Russian troops. -
Site: Mises InstituteThe welfare state is supposed to signal the existence of the “compassionate” society that provides care for all. However, this “compassion” has resulted in the proliferation of social pathologies that undermine civilization itself.
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Site: AsiaNews.itElevated by Pope Francis in 2022, the first East Timorese cardinal is a Salesian from a small Catholic country where young people make up 70 per cent of the population, marked by a long struggle for independence from Indonesia. Appointed bishop of Dili in 2016, he inaugurated the John Paul II Catholic University and promotes an 'open' and united Church. He remembers the joy of welcoming the pontiff before an immense crowd on Francis's trip last September.
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Site: Henrymakow.com
by Larry Brandt(henrymakow.com)The Manitoba Progressive Conservatives are in freefall -- and it's no accident. Once a party grounded in personal freedom, fiscal responsibility, and common sense, it has abandoned its roots to chase the approval of special interest groups, lobbyists, and politicalinsiders.The recent leadership race was a disaster that confirmed the rot. Instead of learning from the elitist failures of the past, the party doubled down. Only 10,990 memberships were sold -- nearly half of the previous race. Just 6,750 ballots were returned. Wally Daudrich won the popular vote with 3,387 votes to Obby Khan's 3,334 -- a clear one-person, one-vote victory. But the PC establishment had already stacked the deck with a manipulated "points system," allowing Khan to seize victory by weighting small ridingsheavier than large ones. In places like Steinbach, Daudrich's strong showing was diluted. Meanwhile, Khan's wins in low-turnout ridings like The Maples translated directly into points.Even Premier Wab Kinew could see it coming. The fix was in.The will of the membership was thrown aside in favor of what insiders wanted. The result? A deeply divided party, rapidly shrinking, financially strained, and morally compromised.The scandals continue to pile up.• Over $2 million in consulting contracts were quietly funneled to the PC's failed campaign manager, Marni Larkin, through daycare projects while the PCs were in government.• The son of a major PC fundraiser was handed multimillion-dollar daycare construction contracts without competitive oversight.• A campaign "car rental" expense turned out to be a hidden payment to a known sex coach.• The Integrity Commissioner's pending report into the Sio Silica project looms over the party, with serious questions about attempted fast-tracking after electoral defeat.• Now, the party's newly installed leader, Obby Khan, faces a $400,000 lawsuit from a former business partner alleging financial wrongdoing.At the same time, the PCs -- led by figures like Khan -- are increasingly paralyzed in the face of street-level violence and campus protests where hatred toward Jews is openly displayed. They cannot -- or will not -- forcefully condemn the violent, hate-filledideology taking root, because political Islam now lurks just beneath the surface of their new coalition.This is no accident. Political Islam, dressed as a religion, has destabilized the Middle East and Europe -- and now it's creeping into Canada. It does not coexist with Western freedoms. It seeks to dominate them. And with figures like Khan at the forefront,the Manitoba PCs have placed themselves on the wrong side of history, unable to defend the very principles our civilization was built upon.Unless the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives return to true conservative values -- courage, accountability, and loyalty to the people, not the elites -- they will not just lose power. They will lose their soul.For true conservatives -- for those who still believe in protecting our freedoms, in honest leadership, and in standing unapologetically for the people -- there is a better choice: the Keystone Party of Manitoba.The Keystone Party represents the future that the PCs abandoned: a movement built not for lobbyists or insiders, but for ordinary Manitobans who are tired of being sold out. It is the home for those who will no longer tolerate corruption, ideological drift,or moral cowardice.If you believe in real conservatism, if you want real leadership with real accountability -- then it's time to walk away from the broken PC establishment and build something better.It's time to come home. It's time to build Keystone. -
Site: Zero Hedge'They Lied To Us About Iraq's WMDs, But They've Taken It To Another Level With Ukraine...'; Hitchens'They Lied To Us About Iraq's WMDs, But They've Taken It To Another Level With Ukraine...'; HitchensTyler Durden Mon, 04/28/2025 - 12:00
Authored by Peter Hitchens via The Daily Mail,
In my trade I have long grown used to the way governments lie and get others to lie for them.
It is what they do.
But I have seldom seen such a cloud of lies as we face now. Hardly anyone in this country knows the truth about Ukraine.
There has been nothing like it since we were all lied to about the Iraq invasion, with bilge about fictional ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’. The liars were caught out.
And they learned from it. They learned to lie more skillfully.
Meanwhile, many of those in our society who knew how to challenge such lies died off or retired and were not replaced.
We have never had a debate about the Ukraine crisis which started from the beginning. Did anyone in power ever tell you truthfully how, when or why this war began? No. Did anyone in power explain why Britain, crime blighted, decrepit, rubbish-strewn, rat-infested, broke Britain, had to get involved in it? Never.
You have just been fed propaganda rubbish about ‘democracy’, freedom and an invented Russian menace. Here are some of the lies you have repeatedly been told.
The war, they say, was not provoked. Seldom in history has a war been more provoked.
Russians, nice ones like the liberal, democratic politician Yegor Gaidar, and nasty ones like the bloody despot Vladimir Putin, begged the West to stop trundling its military alliance, Nato, eastwards towards Russia.
ALL Russians, including the great anti-Communist author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, had been shocked and angered when Nato in 1999 abruptly gave up its defensive posture and launched attacks on Yugoslavia – which had not attacked a Nato member.
These protests reached their peak in February 2007, when Putin made a dramatic speech in Munich. He said Nato expansion was ‘a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. We have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?’
Look, if someone as gaunt as Putin spoke to you like that in a pub late in the evening, you’d take it as a warning that he was seriously riled. And unless you wanted a fight, you’d back off. But we didn’t back off.
US President George W.Bush, the genius who invaded Iraq, deliberately raised the temperature the following year. Can it be that Bush likes wars?
In April 2008, Bush said that Ukraine should be placed on the path towards joining Nato. Even the Guardian, the Liberal Warmonger’s Gazette, conceded that this was ‘likely to infuriate the Kremlin’. And so it did. I suspect we were on the path to war from that moment.
I am always accused, when I say that, of making excuses for Putin. I am not.
I think he was stupid as well as wrong to be provoked. Wise men ignore provocations. But to claim he was not provoked is just to lie.
Another lie we are repeatedly told is that Russia attacked Georgia later in 2008. But anyone can find, on the web, a 2009 Reuters news agency story headlined ‘Georgia started war with Russia: EU-backed report’.
The dispatch summarises an inquiry by the respected Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini. She had been asked by Brussels to look into that war. That is what she said. But, somehow or other, a lot of Western media outlets failed to find space for it. I still meet supposedly informed people who have never heard of Ms Tagliavini or her report.
And then there is the claim that this is about democracy and freedom. It isn’t. The more the West claims to care for these things, the less it does to help them.
Some examples:
Ukraine’s elected president was lawlessly overthrown by a mob in 2014. Britain and the USA condoned this shameful event because they preferred the illegal rebels to the elected government. You just can’t do that and pretend to be the guardian of democracy. But then, we aren’t anyway.
You will search in vain for protests against the treatment of Romania’s presidential candidate, in a country that is in the EU and Nato.
CALIN Georgescu’s election was annulled by judges in December when he looked like winning the first round. And he has been banned from standing in the second round – all because he has the wrong kind of politics. And if that’s not enough, look at the West’s deep, shaming silence over the frightening, thuggish behaviour of Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan.
A few weeks ago, this Turkish Putin arrested and jailed Ekrem Imamoglu, an opposition politician who looked likely to beat him at the polls.
Mr Imamoglu joined the many journalists and democrats who already rot in Turkish prisons.
Erdogan has crushed free media, free speech and the freedom to protest. But his country is still allowed to stay in Nato, and Western states have made less noise than an angry vole guarding its nest. They’re scared of Erdogan.
I won’t even try to explain how Germany recently recalled its old, dead parliament to push through laws the newly elected parliament would not pass. This was done to allow the spending of extra billions on the Ukraine war. But I hope you get my drift.
Demand proper debate. Demand the truth. Don’t be dragged into more stupidity, or we will end up with bomb craters as well as potholes.
* * *
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
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Site: The Remnant Newspaper - Remnant ArticlesMay the Lord in His infinite mercy look upon the prayers, tears and sacrifices of all true Catholics who love our Mother Church, who in these days humbly and confidently implore the infinite Mercy of God to grant us a new Pope, who burning with the zeal for the glory of Christ and the salvation of souls, will “strengthen the brethren in faith” (Luke 22:32), being uncompromisingly faithful to his name and duty as Successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ on earth.
Via Associated Press
US Navy file image
Source: 
Prior 'Victory Day' parade, via AP
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