“What is perfection in love? Love your enemies in such a way that you would desire to make them your brothers … For so did He love, Who hanging on the Cross, said ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’” (Luke 23:34)
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Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual EnrichmentS Paul loved his fellow Jews, his 'kinsmen' and believed "the gifts and call of God are irrevocable". He believed that at the End, those among them who had rejected Christ would be brought in to the chosen people. He believed that they were like olive branches which had been cut off so that the Gentiles, wild olive branches, could be grafted in. But, when the fulness of the Gentiles had entered Fr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com3
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Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual EnrichmentLex orandi lex credendi. I have been examining the Two Covenant Dogma: the fashionable error that God's First Covenant, with the Jews, is still fully and salvifically valid, so that the call to saving faith in Christ Jesus is not made to them. The 'New' Covenant, it is claimed, is now only for Gentiles. I want to draw attention at this point to the witness of the post-Conciliar Magisterium of theFr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com13
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Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual EnrichmentWe have seen that the Two Covenant Theory, the idea that Jewry alone is guaranteed Salvation without any need to convert to Christ, is repugnant to Scripture, to the Fathers, even to the post-Conciliar liturgy of the Catholic Church. It is also subversive of the basic grammar of the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments. Throughout two millennia, in Scripture, in Liturgy, in her Fr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com7
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Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual EnrichmentThe sort of people who would violently reject the points I am making are the sort of people who would not be impressed by the the Council of Florence. So I am going to confine myself to the Magisterium from the time of Pius XII ... since it is increasingly coming to be realised that the continuum of processes which we associate with the Conciliar and post-Conciliar period was already in operationFr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual EnrichmentIn 1980, addressing a Jewish gathering in Germany, B John Paul II said (I extract this from a long sentence): " ... dialogue; that is, the meeting between the people of the Old Covenant (never revoked by God, cf Romans 11:29) and that of the New Covenant, is at the same time ..." In 2013, Pope Francis, in the course of his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, also referred to the Old Fr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com10
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Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual EnrichmentSince the Council, an idea has been spreading that Judaism is not superseded by the New Covenant of Jesus Christ; that Jews still have available to them the Covenant of the old Law, by which they can be saved. It is therefore unnecessary for them to turn to Christ; unnecessary for anybody to convert them to faith in Christ. Indeed, attempting to do so is an act of aggression not dissimilar to theFr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com11
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Site: Henrymakow.com
During a trip to Hong Kong, the billionaire duo decided to grab lunch at McDonald's. To Gates' amusement, when Buffett offered to pay, he pulled out a handful of coupons.Warren Buffett is a billionaire. He gets his meaning from making or saving a dime. Most of the super-rich suffer from spiritual poverty.Whether we are poor or rich, money holds us prisoner. The rich feel poor because of GREED. No matter how much they have, their identity ("feeling good, important, secure") was forged by a society dedicated to making and spending more money.
Money is supposed to free us from material concerns. Paradoxically it does the opposite. We become its prisoners."Enough is a little more than one has." Samuel ButlerUpdated from May 4, 2022 and Oct. 6 2023by Henry Makow PhDFew people take a rational approach to money.This would involve calculating how much money they need in relation to how much money they have, and how much money they make.Rather, people tend to focus on their last 2%. Did their "net worth" increase or derease on a given day?Depending on their tax bracket, this may involve their last $100, $1000, $10,000, $10 million or $10 billion. They ignore their big bank balance or stock portfolio. They always feel poor.Money is supposed to free us from material concerns. Paradoxically it does the opposite. We become its prisoners.We are satanically possessed. This means we identify with money rather than our Divine soul. We are money rather than God's personal representative on earth. The more money we have, the bigger and better we feel. These values are inculcated by our satanist-controlled mass media.I am addressing the roughly 50% of my readers who, according to my Gab poll, have enough or more money than they need. I don't fault the other 50% who don't have enough or are broke for feeling oppressed.
Paradoxically the rich suffer from a spiritual impoverishment.The more they identify with their money, the smaller they are. The more money they have, the smaller they are.In the case of the Illuminati bankers, this inner poverty is toxic. They are a cancer that threatens to destroy mankind.They want to "absorb" (their word) all the world's wealth leaving nothing to support humanity. They want it all!We're indoctrinated to seek money. Within limits, money is a great motivator and measure.I know someone who doesn't have to work. He works because he has nothing else to do, and it makes him feel productive and rewarded.Another friend is independently wealthy from investments. He retired a couple of years ago but is returning to his old profession out of sheer boredom.PERSONALI am as satanically possessed as anyone. I have had a lifelong struggle with greed. At age 74, I am just starting to master this demon.Recently I did the calculation above and realized that I have more money than I'll ever spend.My spending habits were formed during eight years as a graduate student living on roughly $10,000 per year. I really don't need or care about material things.Paradoxically, this lack of concern for money did NOT stop me from developing a gambling addiction. When I didn't have much money, I didn't care about it. When I sold Scruples to Hasbro in 1986, I became a money manager and thought my game smarts would extend to the stock market. MISTAKE.Scruples had been a labor of love. I did it because It was a workshop on everyday morality.After my windfall, I became satanically possessed (i.e. GREED.) If someone asked how I was, I said, "I'll ask my broker."We have to be on guard constantly because the voice in our head often is the devil!Then another voice arises from our soul and says, "Cool it, you greedy moron."You gamble with money you'll never spend. More or Less. What is the point? You don't even know your balance.We have a Mexican cleaning woman who supports an extended family. I have never met a woman whose smile exudes such warmth.Surely, these human qualities represent our true riches.Money is the lowest common denominator. People today are consumed by money. They are charmless.YouTube is packed full of "how I got rich" stories.While the world descends into Communist tyranny or faces a nuclear catastrophe, they act like money will save them.For people who have enough, freedom lies in eschewing money. Just not caring about it.Can you do that? -
Site: Mises InstituteMore units of public debt mean weaker productive growth, higher taxes, and more inflation in the future. All three are manifestations of a slow-burn default.
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Site: Eccles is savedFr Marko Rupnik, you will recall, is accused of a variety of sexual offences, including rape, some of them so disgusting that even Cardinal Fernández has said "I couldn't have used these ideas in any of my pornographic books - nobody would have believed them." However he is a GOOD FRIEND of Pope Francis, and must not under any circumstances be laicised, burnt at the stake, or otherwise inconvenienced. And even his dreadful "artwork" is still on prominent display in the Vatican, the Ivereigh Towers Art Gallery, etc. etc. Luckily, Dr "Expert" Ivereigh has come up with a compromise solution."These works raise our hearts and minds to God, so the answer is..."
"... QR codes!" Yes, from now on, we keep the Rupnik daubs in prominent places, adding a little QR code which conveys the message: "By the way, some Puritan heretics don't like what Rupnik has done, but who are we to judge?" Rupnik himself has agreed to wear a little lapel badge carrying a QR code (but we don't recommend any ladies to get close enough to scan him), and Ivereigh Towers also has a little QR code on the door warning people about what they may find inside. Cardinal Napier - another Rupnik fan - has agreed to have the QR code sewn into his mitre, as a gesture of solidarity with the "Don't let's be beastly to Marco" campaign.
The Rupnik QR code - note the traditional merging of two eyes. As a result of these new ideas, it is possible that the sacrament of Confession will also be modified in the near future, and that people will be allowed to create QR codes linking to a description of their sins, which can be scanned by the priest - surely this is less embarrassing all round?
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Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual EnrichmentThe author of the medieval English religious play the Resurrexio Domini sometimes gives the impression of introducing Kisses as amatter of course. The play is written in Middle Cornish; naturally, the rubrics or stage directions are in Latin.So, when the Lord visits His Mother after He has risen, Maria amplexatur eum et osculatur. After He has reassured her, Osculantur et separant. During the Fr John Hunwickehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17766211573399409633noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Crisis Magazine
It is hard to say which have been the lowest points in the history of the Church. The fourteenth century was pretty wretched. The papacy, exiled from Rome to Avignon, was largely in the pocket of the French monarchy. Then, after the pope finally returned to Rome, the French cardinals set up a rival pope, technically an anti-pope, at Avignon. If anything, however, the eighteenth century would be…
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Site: AsiaNews.itThe question of post-colonialism in Russia is the great underlying theme imposed by the Russian war in Ukraine. Behind the claims of the 'Russian world' are the aspirations of the many peoples who for centuries have been subjected to the imperial domination of different ideologies, from the Tsarist to the Soviet, and today by the Kirill-Putin Eurasian vision, which by taking on Ukraine has in fact uncovered the Pandora's box of all Russian history.
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Site: AsiaNews.itToday's news: China reorganisesthe army's cyber-warfare unit;Voter turnout in India over 60%;New missile tests from North Korea;Russia will take in 1,500 refugees from the Gaza Strip.
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Site: The Remnant Newspaper - Remnant ArticlesSince the earliest times of the world before Christ, God began to sprinkle prophetic signs in the history of the Jewish people of what was to come. Without exception, the Holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church have revealed the pre-figurations of baptism in the Old Testament, all of which found their fulfillment after the Incarnation of Jesus Christ: the creation of the world – when the Spirit of God hovered over the waters; Noah’s ark which traversed the waters of the flood; the passage of the people of Israel through the Red Sea.
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Site: The Catholic Thing
In his recent book, LIFE: My Story Through History, Pope Francis advocates for legal support of same-sex civil unions of “[homosexuals] who experience the gift of love.” In what sense, if any, is homosexual love a gift?
The mind of the Church is that it certainly cannot be a gift of God, neither natural (creational) nor supernatural (sacramental). According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the ultimate source of love is God himself. Quoting John Paul II’s 1981 Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, the Catechism of the Catholic Church asserts:
God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion [eternally united in being, relationship, and love]. Creating the human race in his own image . . . , God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman [Genesis 1:27] the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion.
Francis’ remark, on its face, does not seem to regard homosexual “love” as an inherently disordered form of love. Does he think that the homosexual is able to live the vocation to chastity, and hence, of love in a same-sex relationship? How could the homosexual do so? The vocation of chastity involves sexual differentiation between a man and a woman, which according to Christian anthropology, means “the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being.”
The Catechism explains, “Sexuality, in which man’s belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman.”
Chastity, therefore, presupposes the sexual differentiation of male and female, such that only a sexual union of male and female persons makes bodies in any real sense “one flesh” (Gen 2:24), with the latter organic bodily union being a necessary condition for the existence of authentic conjugal love.
Homosexual love is not a gift, indeed, it is a false love, because it is incapable of fulfilling the vocation to chastity, of perfecting the being of the person and developing his existence; and hence of being ordered to the natural law, the order of Creation, and hence to God. As a disordered form of love, it not only lacks integration but is a counter-integration by virtue of being an offense against the vocation to chastity, making it unable to realize the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift of self.
Christian anthropology must consider the reality of the human person, of man and woman, in the order of love. Why? Because, as Karol Wojtyla rightly states in his philosophical magnum opus, Love and Responsibility, the “person finds in love the greatest fullness of his being, of his objective existence. Love is such action, such an act, which most fully develops the existence of the person. Of course, this has to be true love. What does true love mean?”
The two angels visiting Lot’s house in Sodom strike blind the rapacious mob outside, engraving by P. Galle after Anthonie Blocklandt van Montfoort, c. 1580 [Wellcome Collection, London]
Love is an analogical concept, meaning thereby that there are different kinds of love: paternal love, the love of brothers and sisters, friendship, and, last but not least, the love between a man and a woman. (“The love of a man and a woman is a reciprocal relation of persons and possesses a personal character.”)
Briefly, love involves attraction to the sensory-sexual values, and spiritual or moral values, of the other person, for example, says Wojtyla, “to her intelligence or virtues of character.” There is also “need love,” or love as desire, and “benevolence.” “Need love” desires “the person as a good for oneself.” Love as benevolence is about desiring the other person’s good. “Benevolence is simply disinterestedness in love: ‘I do not long for you as a good’, but ‘I long for your good’, ‘I long for what is good for you’.”
Wojtyla then turns to the problem of reciprocity, which brings about a synthesis “of love of desire and of benevolent love.” Reciprocity involves the relation of “I” and “we.” And hence where an interpersonal community is formed:
Love finds its full being not merely in an individual subject only but in an inter-subjective, inter-personal relation. . . .The transition from “I” to “we” is for love no less essential than transcending one’s “I” as expressed through [attraction], love of desire, and love of benevolence.
Being inherently disordered, homosexual love is unable to form an inter-personal community where unity is manifested in the mature “we.” Finally, Wojtyla sees the fullness of love as gift love, or what he calls spousal love, which is giving oneself to the other person, entailing the reciprocal self-giving of persons. He adds, “The concept of spousal [gift] love possesses a key meaning for establishing the norm for all sexual morality.”
Since man – male and female – is created in and for love, accordingly, sexual ethics is unintelligible without love. This crucial point about finding in love the greatest fullness of his being must be applied to love between a man and a woman.
“Love is a union of persons,” says Wojtyla, an objective union in which a man and a woman constitute “one subject of action,” in a sense “one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24) This union may not be detached from its biological foundation in the organic differences between the sexes. This objective union is born of “a common good,” an “objective good,” that is, the good of the human persons, and a common end,” which binds [them].”
This end is procreation, progeny, the family, and at the same time the whole constantly growing maturity of the relationship between both persons in all the spheres brought by the spousal relationship itself.
Consequently, when the Catechism asserts that homosexual sexual acts are closed to the gift of life, it is because such acts do not have an objective union in the sexual differentiation of a man and a woman. “Under no circumstances can they be approved.” Such acts are “sin gravely contrary to chastity.” Hence, homosexual love is not a gift.
The post Homosexual “Love” a Gift? appeared first on The Catholic Thing.
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Site: Restore-DC-Catholicism
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Site: non veni pacem
Sorry for the lack of posts, I was traveling for work all week.
If you don’t get the 90s darkest of dark comedy reference, I’m sorry for you.
Australian police: "Police will be the source of truth, and not social media and misinformation."
When did Australia become such a dystopian hellhole?
This is the kind of statement I'd expect from a George Orwell novel, or North Korea.pic.twitter.com/eN2ZuxemCi
— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) April 19, 2024
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Site: Edward FeserProminent philosopher of mind, apostle of Darwinism, and New Atheist writer Daniel Dennett has died. I have been very critical of Dennett over the years, but he had two great strengths. First, he wrote with crystal clarity, no matter how difficult the subject matter. Second, as even we critics of materialism can happily concede, he could be very insightful on the distinctive nature of psychological modes of description and explanation (even if he went wrong when addressing how these relate metaphysically to physical modes of description and explanation). It is also only fair to acknowledge that of the four original New Atheist tomes (the others penned by Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens) his Breaking the Spell, despite its faults, was the one that was actually intellectually interesting. RIP
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Site: Henrymakow.com
(left, In 2017, Donald Trump pardoned a fellow Chabad gangster, kosher meat packer Rabbi Shalom Rabushkin.Rabushkin had served only nine years of his 27-year sentence. He refused to pardon Julian Assange.)Liberal Jew Discovered Evil Underside of Judaism shows that assimilated Jews are ignorant of the true Satanic nature of Judaism.In 1987, Journalism professor Stephen Bloom, a typical liberal, wanted to explore his Jewish roots by joining the Chabad colony running a kosher meat packer in Postville IA. He discovered that hatred of non-Jews and assimilated Jews animates them.
(left, Stephen Bloom)"They wanted nothing to do with their Christian neighbors. They were there to make money and the non-Jews, (goyim) whether Postville merchants or migrant workers, were barely distinct from the cattle on their assembly line."THIS IS ALSO THE MENTALITY BEHIND THE COVID HOAX AND VACCINATIONS.from Dec. 22, 2017Jews Must Face "Dark Side" of Judaismby Henry Makow Ph.D.
Stephen Bloom has a love of fairness and justice typical of many liberal American Jews. A journalism professor, he saw the opening of a Kosher meat packer by Hasidic Jews in Postville Iowa in 1987 as an opportunity to study the Jewish-gentile dynamic in microcosm.
He discovered more about Judaism and the causes of anti-Semitism than he wanted to know. His conclusion from "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America" published in 2000:
"Initially I had gone to Postville to learn from the Hasidim [Orthodox Jews], to share with them a sense of identity and belonging. Instead, what the Postville Hasidim ultimately offered me was a glimpse of the dark side of my own faith, a look at Jewish extremists whose behavior not only made the Postville locals wince, but made me wince, too."
"I didn't want to partake in Hasidim's vision that called on Jews to unite against the goyim and assimilation. The world, even in Iowa, was too bountiful to base my likes and dislikes solely on religion. The word Hasid ...literally means 'the pious one,' but the Postville Hasidim..were anything but pious. You couldn't become casual friends with them...They required total submission to their schema of right and wrong, Jew vs. Christian -- or you were the enemy." (291)
In other words, if you're a Jew but don't buy their insane hatred, then you're no better than the goyim. Unfortunately, their attitude typifies organized Jewry as a whole.EDUCATION OF AN ASSIMILATED JEWStephen Bloom was put under the tutelage of one "Lazar", a "model Lubavitcher, a mensch as well as a tzaddik" (wise man.)"I am a racist," Lazar told Bloom right off the bat. The Jews have persisted throughout history because "we are better and smarter." (192)
"Wherever we go, we don't adapt to the place or the people, Lazar preached..."It's always been like that and always will be like that. It's the place and the people who have to adapt to us."
(Except they haven't told the non-Jews. And Cabalist Jews hate assimilated Jews as well.)Bloom reflected: "Lazar's comment underscored the Hasidim's contempt for non-Jews, which wasn't limited to Postville gentiles but to all Christians...Hasidim like Lazar have a total disinterest in anything or anyone who isn't Jewish...The Hasidim were waging a cultural holy war...Their world was Jew vs. non-Jew...If you didn't agree, you were at fault, part of the problem. You were paving the way for the ultimate destruction of the Jews, the world's Chosen People. There was no room for compromise...no room for anything but total and complete submission." (196-198)This may explain why Chabad Jews are suspected of complicity in the Holocaust.
This enmity extends to business, which is a form of aggression against gentiles. "I don't feel like a Jew unless I bargain," Lazar told him. "A Jew has to feel he got something for the absolute lowest price or he feels rotten." After reaching a deal with a Gentile, the Hasid boasted of not keeping the terms or taking his time to pay.Bloom compared it to hunting: "The Hasidim not only [bargained] with alacrity, but enjoyed boasting about the terrain, equipment, first sighting and ultimate kill." (211)
Bloom relates a particularly shameful incident told by store owner. A Hasid pretended he had paid in advance for some merchandise, grabbed it and ran out of the store.
Despite being shunned by the Rabbis, a Rev Miller organized an ecumenical service with two other clergymen from Postville's other two churches. No Jews showed up. "Reverend Miller got stiffed," Bloom writes. (146)
Evidently, tolerance, ecumenicalism, anti-racism, diversity etc. is to weaken and dilute the goyim not the Talmudists.
CONCLUSION
It doesn't take a genius to recognize that Talmudic behavior is the real cause of Anti-Semitism.
But the implications are far more serious. Meyer Amschel Rothschild was a Talmudist. This satanic hatred of humanity, and Christianity in particular, is driving the covid vaccines. There is a direct line between the Crucifixion of Christ, who represented the God of Love, 9-11 and the New World Order in terms of the degradation of humanity through fake pandemic, war and depression. If this logic is correct, humanity's fate is to be crucified like Christ or otherwise slaughtered or enslaved.
Like Stephen Bloom and myself, 90% of American Jews are secular and ignorant of the Talmud. We find its views abhorrent. But these attitudes are the no longer hidden agenda of Communism, Zionism and Organized Jewry. A Gentile elite consisting of Freemasons (the Illuminati Order) has been installed by the Jewish bankers to advance this agenda. Joe Biden and most Western "leaders" belong to it.
The New World Order imperils humanity and assimilated Jews. As conditions deteriorate, anti-Semitism may become rampant. Jews must recognize that Judaism is not a religion but a conspiracy against humanity. It is also a conspiracy against Jews, whose security is endangered by its secret agenda. Zionism, Communism, Socialism, Liberalism, Neo Conservatism, Feminism are all deceitful means to establish the Masonic/Talmudic/Cabalistic central bankers in a thinly veiled "world government" tyranny.
Society has been brainwashed to reject the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which explains the methodology in detail. This document is not anti-Semitic; it is Satanic. I first recognized it was authentic when the author celebrated that a "cold and forlorn" mood had taken hold of Europe's cities. This is something no "forger" would think of.
Assimilated Jews need to dis-associate from organized Jewry and reinvent themselves as a people, recognizing how, like other peoples, they have been deceived and exploited by their so-called leaders. Like Stephen Bloom, many assimilated Jews have a strong sense of truth, justice and God's bountifulness, and must join their Christian neighbors in putting America back on track.
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Note: The Canadian billionaire Hershey Friedman, of Montreal, purchased the kosher meatpacking plant in 2009 and rebranded it as Agri Star Meat and Poultry. Agri Star now employs the vast majority of Postville's remaining Jews, with most of them serving as Jewish ritual slaughterers, or shochtim.
Related- Trump Commutes Prison Sentence of Shalom RabushkinMakow - Anti Semitism is Often JustifiedChabad Not Jewish? Chabad Mafia
Feds Prepare tax Evasion Charges
See "Economic Collapse Deliberate Policy of Fed"
Ted Pike "Pedophilia Rampant in Orthodox Judaism"PostscriptRecently, we posted an article, Ex-Chabad Member Exposes Trump Family Cult which demonstrated that Trump's family (Kushners) belongs to Chabad, a racist, criminal Jewish supremacist doomsday cult. The very next day Trump commuted the 27-year prison sentence of Chabad kosher butcher, Rabbi Sholom Rubashkin, 57, a GOP donor. He had served only eight years. " Rubashkin, as manager of the family-owned Agriprocessors meat plant ($300 million annual revenue) in Postville, Iowa, was convicted in 2009 of financial fraud for submitting fake invoices to the plant's bank that made the company's finances appear healthier than they were so that it could borrow more. The bankruptcy revealed a $26 million scheme of fraud.In addition, in one of the nation's largest illegal worker busts, federal authorities raided the plant and detained 389 illegal immigrants in 2008. ICE determined that at the time of their raid, two-thirds of the plant's workers were undocumented. It turned out the company itself was cranking out false social security cards. There were also 9,311 counts of child labor violations in the indictments, as well as horrific safety violations. Authorities also found a Meth lab.Plant supervisors in this hell-on-earth were involved in the rape and sexual abuse of workers. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) also documented and filmed what they called the worst animal abuses and extreme cruelty they had ever seen.The Rubashkin criminal exploits and methods were documented in the CNBC series "American Greed - The Slaughterhouse". The video has now been scrubbed from CNBC's site. It has been mirrored elsewhere, but this may not be online long." Source
(Jewbilation in Brooklyn at Trumps' announcement)The White House statement cited letters of support for review of Rubashkin's case from more than 30 members of Congress of both parties, including House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and veteran Republican Senator Orrin Hatch.Trump also pointed to bipartisan expressions of support for review of the case from over (((100 former high-ranking U.S. Justice Department officials, prosecutors, judges, and legal scholars.))) Source -
Site: LifeNews
Campaigners are calling on MPs to reject a new amendment tabled by Labour MP, Stella Creasy, to the Criminal Justice Bill that would make extreme changes to abortion laws.
The amendment (NC40) proposes making the biggest changes to abortion laws since the Abortion Act was introduced in 1967.
The proposed change to the law would make it more likely that healthy babies are aborted at home for any reason, up to birth, by removing key deterrents against performing an abortion at any point right through to birth.
The amendment would remove the possibility of custodial sentences for abortions after 24 weeks and by not suggesting any meaningful alternative sanctions, the amendment would remove a key deterrent against late-term abortions.
The amendment would also require the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) personally to approve prosecutions of women or abortion providers who perform abortions after the legal limit up to birth. This would introduce an extra hurdle before prosecutions can take place, which may deter police investigations, making abortions up to birth more likely. It would also likely lead to unreasonable pressure being placed on the DPP.
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These changes to the law would likely lead to a significant increase in the number of women performing late-term abortions at home, endangering the lives of many more women.
They would also likely lead to an increased number of viable babies’ lives being ended well beyond the 24-week abortion time limit and beyond the point at which they would be able to survive outside the womb.
Making it easier to cover up infanticides
Stella Creasy’s amendment would remove key deterrents against hiding the body of a dead baby included in Section 60 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
Section 60 makes it an offence to conceal the birth of a child by hiding the dead body of a child after its birth, including in circumstances when the baby has been killed through infanticide. This law change could make it easier to cover up infanticides.
Removing a series of key safeguards provided by the Abortion Act
The amendment would also remove a series of key safeguards provided by the Abortion Act through to 24 weeks.
It proposes making this law change by removing offences for women and doctors committed under sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act (OAPA) and the Infant Life (Preservation) Act (ILPA) through to 24 weeks.
As the Abortion Act was passed to create exemptions to sections 58 and 59 of the OAPA and the ILPA, removing such offences committed under sections 58 and 59 of the OAPA and the ILPA would make key safeguards provided by the Abortion Act 1967 redundant through to 24 weeks.
This means abortion would be available on demand, for any reason up to 24 weeks.
If the proposal becomes law, sex-selective abortion would become legal in England and Wales. Sex-selective abortion usually targets baby girls due to a preference among certain parents and some cultures for having sons. The Government maintains that, under our current legislation, abortion on the grounds of the sex of the baby is illegal because it is “not one of the lawful grounds for termination of pregnancy” set out in the Abortion Act, which stipulates that abortion can only be performed under specific grounds.
Under the proposed law change, the Abortion Act and the grounds under which abortion is permitted would effectively be made redundant up to 24 weeks, allowing abortion on demand, for any reason, including sex-selective abortion.
Section 1(3) of the Abortion Act restricts abortion to hospitals or places approved by the Secretary of State. Without this safeguard, there would be no legal restrictions on places where abortions could be performed up to 24 weeks.
The amendment would also result in there being no legal requirement that abortions take place under the care of a qualified doctor. Currently, the Abortion Act requires that an abortion takes place under the care of a registered medical practitioner (qualified doctor) who leads or directs the abortion process.
Under the proposed law change, there would also be no legal requirement that two qualified doctors certify an abortion. Section 1(1) of the Abortion Act requires two registered medical practitioners (doctors) to certify that an abortion is legal and is being performed under one of the grounds set out in the Abortion Act. Without this safeguard, there would be no legal requirement that two doctors certify an abortion up to 24 weeks.
Strong opposition from the public and medical professionals
Polling undertaken by ComRes, shows that only 1% of women support introducing abortion up to birth and 70% of women would support a reduction in the time limit from 24 weeks to 20 weeks or below. The same polling showed that 91% of women agree that gender-selective abortion should be explicitly banned by the law.
Polling published by the Daily Telegraph shows that more than half of the general public agree that it should remain the case that a woman is breaking the law if she has an abortion of a healthy baby after the current 24-week legal time limit up until birth. Only 16% disagreed.
Over 750 medical professionals have now signed an open letter to MPs opposing making extreme changes to abortion legislation part of the Criminal Justice Bill.
A number of high-profile commentators in the media, some of whom take a pro-choice position on abortion, have come out against making extreme changes to abortion legislation, saying the proposals go “too far”.
Major campaign launched to oppose abortion up to birth
Following the tabling of Stella Creasy’s extreme abortion amendment, pro-life organisation Right To Life UK, has launched a major nationwide No To Abortion Up To Birth campaign focused on defeating attempts to hijack the Criminal Justice Bill that would introduce extreme changes to our abortion laws.
Right To Life UK is encouraging members of the public around the country to urgently contact their MP using the tool at www.righttolife.org.uk/uptobirth to ask their MP to oppose the introduction of extreme abortion laws.
Right To Life UK spokesperson, Catherine Robinson, said: “These extreme changes to the law would remove key deterrents against performing an abortion at any point right through to birth. This would make it more likely that healthy babies are aborted for any reason, including sex-selective purposes, right up to and during birth”.
“It would likely lead to a tragic increase in the number of viable babies’ lives being ended through late-term abortions performed at home well beyond the 24-week abortion time limit, as well as the lives of many more women being endangered”.
“These extreme and radical abortion amendments have no place in the UK. Recent polling clearly shows that the public does not support these changes to the law. We are calling on MPs to reject these amendments and instead support Caroline Ansell’s amendment to lower the time limit, for which polling shows widespread public support”.
“We are calling on members of the public around the country to urgently contact their MP to ask them to oppose the introduction of extreme abortion laws”.
LifeNews Note: Republished with permission from Right to Life UK.
The post British MP Pushes Measure to Legalize Abortions Up to Birth in UK appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: PeakProsperityThe core insights that define the Peak Prosperity way of seeing the world are set against real-world data in this episode. Energy, debt, wealth, currency, GDP, & the fiscal vandalism of Congress combine to assure that the future will consist of hard choices as we navigate self-inflicted predicaments.
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Site: PeakProsperityCould I be any more bullish on Silver? Here's my analysis.
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Site: LifeNews
A feminist pro-life group has placed three billboards in the Pittsburgh area reminding readers of some significant realities about abortion.
“Abortion providers take your kid, your cash and give you tissues to cry it out. Thanks for nothing,” one of the billboards says.
The idea was prompted last fall as Feminists for Life hosted a billboard campaign to get the message out that women deserve support during an unexpected pregnancy, not an abortion, the group’s President Serrin Foster said.
“The number one reason women give for wanting an abortion is poverty,” Foster explained.
Feminists for Life of America is a nonsectarian, nonpartisan, grassroots organization that works for solutions to the challenges faced by women that could drive them to consider abortion, poverty being chief among them. Drawing upon core values of early American feminists who opposed abortion such as Susan B. Anthony, the group espouses justice, nondiscrimination, and nonviolence. One of the organization’s quotes is, “Abortion is a reflection that we have not met the needs of women,” and the perhaps most recognizable motto from the group is, “Women Deserve Better Than Abortion.”
Feminists for Life detailed the rationale for another of the billboards, noting in an email message to supporters how national statistics are skewed low because of inconsistent reporting.
“The most recent CDC report noted there were at least 4,070 abortions that took place at or after 21 weeks gestation when movement of the baby can be felt—and babies can feel pain,” the statement reads. “However, that report only counts 41 states and Pennsylvania, along with California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Wisconsin did not participate in the reporting making the actual number of late-term abortions much higher.”
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“In Pennsylvania, abortion is legal up to 24 weeks gestation, or approximately six months into pregnancy,” it continues. “Feminists for Life asks, “are you ok with that?”
One of the billboards calls out those CDC statistics.
“In 2021, there were at least 4,070 abortions after 21 weeks or more,” it states. “They were kicking inside their mothers’ wombs. Are you OK with that?”
Earlier this year the Pennsylvania Department of Health released abortion statistics from 2022 revealing the highest number of abortions in the state in 10 years. The statistics also showed that abortion complications have tripled in Pennsylvania in the last five years.
According to the 2022 Pennsylvania Health Department findings, there were 510 abortions (1.5% of the total) performed between 21 and 23 weeks of gestation; no abortions were reported at 24 weeks or later. The city of Pittsburgh is in Allegheny County. That county had 3,583 abortions in 2022; 67 of them between 21-23 weeks.
In its email message Feminists for Life expressed the heightened need for support for women in the Black community, stating, “According to the CDC report, Black women underwent about 42% of all reported abortions, higher than any other race or ethnicity (as well as facing higher maternal mortality risks).”
“We know that lack of resources and support often drive women to abortion,” the group said. “Feminists for Life believes Black women deserve better—and their children are just as precious as any other.”
The third Feminists for Life billboard uses the group’s most common catchphrase, stating simply, “Women Deserve Better Than Abortion.”
It then offers encouragement to women with, “There is help,” and provides the number for Option Line, 1-800-712-4357.
Option Line is the bi-lingual contact center that provides pregnancy help 24/7 via phone call, text, chat, or email. Option Line is managed by Heartbeat International, the largest network of pregnancy help organizations in the U.S. and the world.
Foster said they chose to put the Option Line phone number on this billboard so that women are able to find the “better” in their unexpected pregnancy by locating a pregnancy help center for support.
Some pregnancy resource centers in Pennsylvania have been affected the commonwealth’s Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro defunding Real Alternatives in 2023. Real Alternatives is a non-profit, charitable organization that administers pregnancy and parenting support services for Pennsylvania and Indiana. Pregnancy help organizations continue to operate and provide compassionate care and support to women and families in Pennsylvania despite Shapiro’s action.
Feminists for Life believes many women across the nation, including Pennsylvania, know there are indeed alternatives to abortion.
The billboards have been in place in the Pittsburgh area since late March, and there has actually been one one complaint. Foster said Feminists for Life received an email filled with expletives claiming their organization “was not truly feminist.”
She did not let that one email upset her.
“Anger masks pain,” Foster said, and she added that she is hoping more people are drawn to the Feminists for Life website and learn more about women and true feminism.
“There’s nothing more important than being a mom,” said Foster.
LifeNews Note: Tabitha Goodling has been writing for media outlets for more than 20 years in her home state of Pennsylvania. She has served as a client services director at her local pregnancy center since 2018. She and her husband are raising four teenage daughters, which include a set of triplets. This column originally appeared at Pregnancy Help News.
The post Pro-Life Billboards Say “Women Deserve Better Than Abortion” appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: LifeNews
Heartbeat International weighed in to defend women and their unborn children from chemical abortion in federal court this week. Heartbeat, alongside 23 U.S. states, numerous pro-life groups, and the West Virginia attorney general, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to uphold the state’s Unborn Child Protection Act (UCPA).
With limited exceptions (i.e.: nonviability, ectopic pregnancy and medical emergency), the UCPA makes it illegal to perform, induce or attempt to perform or induce an abortion, as Heartbeat’s brief in GenBioPro v. Raynes states, and further, it “expressly includes abortions performed or induced via “medicine” or “drug.””
Chemical abortion drug manufacturer GenBioPro is seeking in the case to invalidate West Virginia’s ban on chemical abortion by arguing that the state law is “preempted” by the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.
West Virginia replaced its earlier abortion regulation with the Unborn Child Protection Act in 2022 following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision. The Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs that states may regulate abortion for “legitimate state interests” including, among others, “respect for and preservation of prenatal life at all stages of development,” “the protection of maternal health and safety.”
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, along with attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), petitioned a federal district court in February 2023 to uphold the state’s UCPA and other pro-life legal provisions, ADF reports. In August 2023 the court partially dismissed the lawsuit, upholding the UCPA, and then GenBioPro appealed the case to the 4th Circuit.
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GenBioPro makes the generic version of mifepristone, the first of two drugs in the chemical abortion regimen. Mifepristone blocks progesterone in a pregnant woman’s system, depriving her unborn child of necessary nutrients. The second drug, misoprostol, taken a day or so later, causes her to go into labor and deliver her presumably deceased child.
GenBioPro, along with abortion pill manufacturer Danco, has funded groups behind clinical trials and studies of the abortion pill that claim the drug is both safe and effective, Live Action News reports.
Both drug companies have weighed in on the FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine case before the Supreme Court in which pro-life doctors are challenging the FDA’s questionable approval of mifepristone and subsequent loosening of its own safety standards for the drug, the drug manufacturers filing briefs or petitioning in support of the FDA and/or against the pro-life medical professionals seeking to protect women from chemical abortion drugs.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in FDA v. AHM March 26 and a ruling is expected before the Supreme Court breaks in June for the summer.
Heartbeat International, the largest network of pregnancy help organizations in the U.S. and globally, had filed an amicus brief in FDA v. AHM as well, arguing the FDA lowered the standard of care for women in relaxing its abortion pill safety standards.
Heartbeat’s General Counsel noted regarding GenBioPro v. Raynes how the abortion industry frames FDA authority to meet its needs in each scenario.
“Just a few weeks ago, we heard oral argument in FDA v. AHM, where those in favor of abortion contended that no one would have standing to challenge the FDA’s removal of safety protections for women,” Danielle White said. “Now, the abortion industry claims that those same unelected bureaucrats at the FDA can overrule a state’s elected representatives and prevent them from protecting women and their unborn children from the dangers of chemical abortion.”
“The Fourth Circuit should affirm the district court’s dismissal of this case,” White said.
Heartbeat, represented by legal non-profit Thomas More Society, argued in its April 15 brief for GenBioPro v. Raynes that the district court correctly determined that FDA regulations related to mifepristone do not preempt the UCPA and other state law, and that the FDA’s regulations leave significant gaps in protections for pregnant women, and asked the court to affirm the parts of the earlier district court’s ruling granting the State of West Virginia’s motion to dismiss.
Heartbeat International President Jor-El Godsey called on the courts to uphold the law over abortion special interests and to respect the right of states to protect women and children through the abortion regulation.
“We trust the courts will see clearly that we are the United States of America and not the United States of Abortion,” Godsey said.
“Big Pharma and Big Abortion are working hand in hand to thwart the will of the people,” said Godsey. “West Virginia, or any state in the union, should have the right to protect the health and well-being of its women and its smallest residents, the babies in the womb.”
LifeNews Note: Lisa Bourne is Managing Editor of Pregnancy Help News and Content Writer for Heartbeat International. This originally appeared at Pregnancy Help News.
The post Pro-Life Group Fights Abortion Drug Maker That Just Wants to Sell More Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: LifeNews
Like many young married couples, Kansas residents Roy and Emily Schmeidler were excited to learn about Emily’s pregnancy, their first child. However, at the 20-week ultrasound, their excitement turned to fear and uncertainty. They courageously chose life for their child despite doctors’ recommendations for abortion.
“My husband and I were blessed to get pregnant, and at our 20-week ultrasound we got some pretty devastating news,” Emily recently told Pregnancy Help News.
The baby had a cyst on her brain and one arm appeared to be shorter than the other with the possibility of missing bones. Additionally, the medical team said they couldn’t tell if the baby had all her fingers. The cyst could be an indication of various difficulties, including intellectual disabilities.
“She was incredibly small,” Emily recalled. “She was in the fourth percentile of growth.”
The doctor was concerned about the possibility of the baby dying in utero or within the first year of her life. He asked Emily and her husband to consider abortion. They declined and the doctor referred them to a large children’s hospital in the area for further testing.
“The news was shocking,” Emily said, “but my composure was like, ‘I have to keep it together,’ but it was really hard. I wanted to just burst out crying.”
She and her husband returned to their car, absorbing the news together.
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“My husband and I left that doctor’s office and just wept together in the car,” Emily said. “You never think it’s going to happen to you and then it just does, out of the blue with your first child. All we knew what to do in that moment was to pray. It started a really hard road and journey for us.”
Referral and more testing
Upon transferring care to a different medical team, Emily underwent additional ultrasounds and a heart echocardiogram.
“Oftentimes if there’s something wrong with both arms, there’s a 99 percent chance the baby is going to have some pretty severe heart problems,” she explained.
However, no heart issues were discovered.
“That was shocking,” Emily stated. “So, we’re praying every day. We know we have to lean into God – we really didn’t know what else we can do.”
Others came alongside the couple, including family members, church friends, work colleagues, and one of Emily’s best friends, a nun with the Sisters of Life.
“She and her fellow sisters prayed for us … and [she] also prayed with me and spoke with me over the phone several times too. That was such a gift!” Emily said.
“She and her fellow sisters prayed for us … and [she] also prayed with me and spoke with me over the phone several times too. That was such a gift!” Emily said.
Emily Schmeidler
Emily Schmeidler
Emily went to the hospital every week for an ultrasound. Soon, improvements began to be seen, including the disappearance of the brain cyst.
“I only connect that to God – it miraculously disappeared,” Emily told Pregnancy Help News. “It can disappear in some babies but the fact that everything else was going on and it just disappeared – that was pretty crazy.”
Abortion was again presented due to the uncertainty of the baby’s physical and mental setbacks and her survival chances, even outside the womb. Again, Emily and Roy declined.
“Abortion wasn’t an option for us,” she said.
She often fought discouragement, however.
Emily Schmeidler
“The culture of death was very imminent around me, and it was honestly really hard as a pro-life person to continue to remain positive and trust in God and keep going,” Emily said.
Eventually, growth was detected via ultrasound.
“She got to the 11th percentile and then to the 14th percentile, which is no longer growth-restricted,” Emily said.
Another medical transfer and more miracles
Emily grew weary of listening to the medical providers constantly talking about risks, ‘want-ifs,’ and termination of the pregnancy. So, she asked friends and family for other hospital and doctor recommendations.
“I was tired of having people tell me ‘There’s something wrong with your baby, you have to be afraid of all of these things that could happen,’” Emily said. “I just wanted to have a somewhat normal birth, where people were going to give me choices and be with a doctor that was going to be just a little bit more understanding of what I was going through … and be pro-life as well.”
She transferred to a regional hospital when she was 31 weeks along. Her original due date was given as February 11, 2023, another sign she and her husband embraced.
“It’s the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, who is known for miraculous healings,” Emily said.
Emily Schmeidler
Emily’s labor was induced, and after 36 hours of labor, she needed a C-section because the cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck. Emily called her daughter “perfect.” She and her husband named their baby Juliette Lourdes Schmeidler.
“The only thing different is that her right arm only has one bone in her forearm instead of two, and it’s a little bit shorter and she only has two fingers on that arm – it kind of looks like a peace sign,” Emily said. “Her left arm is normal length, and she has a thumb and her pointer finger and her middle finger.”
“So, she does have some differences … but she is so determined!” said Emily. “When she was first born, her shorter arm just kind of hung there, and as she continued to grow, we praise the Lord for free occupational therapy from the state, and now she likes to use her shorter arm as her dominant arm. She can do everything with that arm! She can’t really grasp things so that’s one downside to it, but she is just thriving as a baby.”
Emily Schmeidler
Juliette is now a toddler at just over a year-old, and her presence impacts people, Emily said.
“She has been the most social little baby! She smiled so early. She does not know a stranger,” Emily shared.
Emily Schmeidler
Prior to the pregnancy, she was hired by Choose Life Marketing, a pro-life marketing company that works with pregnancy resource centers and other pro-life organizations. After Juliette’s birth, Emily traveled to conferences with her daughter and shared the amazing story of her child with others.
“This is God’s story,” she said. “Juliette is a light to so many people and is always smiling. She is such an inspiration to me as a mom to see so clearly that she is going have a purpose on this earth. She has a story, and she’s going to share that story because she’s so spunky and determined.”
LifeNews Note: Gayle Irwin writes for PregnancyHelpNews, where this originally appeared.
The post Couple Chooses Life for Disabled Baby Despite Pressure to Have Abortion appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: LifeNews
Planned Parenthood’s 2022-2023 annual report is out. Unlike last year’s annual report, now we’re finally able to see how the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade is affecting Planned Parenthood’s abortion numbers and bottom line.
Spoiler alert: Abortions and government funding are at all-time highs. Actual health care for things such as cancer screening and preventive care continues to decline. More affiliates than ever are providing “transgender services.”
Here are the key takeaways:
In the medical data section, Planned Parenthood reported:
- 392,715 abortions, an all-time high, and up from last year’s 374,155 abortions.
- 410,272 breast cancer screenings and Pap tests, down from 470,419 the previous year.
- 129,216 preventive care visits, down from 187,234 the previous year.
- 1,721 adoption referrals, down from 1,803 the previous year and less than half of the 4,279 reported just four years ago.
- 2,250,913 million contraceptive services, down from 2,348,275 the previous year.
- 2.05 million unique patients, down from 2.13 million the previous year.
Planned Parenthood performed 228 abortions for every one adoption referral.
In a nod to the reality that women in pro-life states are still traveling out of state to get abortions, Planned Parenthood reports that demand in pro-abortion states rose up to 700%. Some 33,000 people have gotten travel and financial assistance.
In the long term, the trend of more abortions and fewer health services is even more stark. Pro-life scholar Michael New points out that “in the past 10 years, the number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood has increased by 20%. Meanwhile, cancer screenings fell by more than 58%, and prenatal services declined by more than 67%.”
After going all-in on “gender-affirming hormone therapy” starting in the 2015-2016 reporting year, Planned Parenthood reports an all-time high of 45 clinics offering such services. Planned Parenthood buries the specific number of services in an “other” category in the medical data tables. We can reasonably infer that gender services drove a noticeable spike in the category. It went from 8,153 in 2015 to 177,237 in this year’s report.
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Now take a look at the financial side of things. Planned Parenthood reported:
- $2.5 billion in net assets, up from $2.3 billion the previous year.
- $699 million in government funding, up from $670 million the previous year.
- $2 billion in total revenue, up from $1.9 billion the previous year.
- $178.6 million in excess revenue (calculated by subtracting total expenses from total revenues), a decrease from $204.7 million the previous year.
- $977.5 million in private contributions and bequests, including from 576,000 active individual contributors. Last year in those categories, Planned Parenthood reported $694.9 million and 727,000, respectively. That means that fewer people are contributing, but the ones who are writing checks are writing very, very big ones.
The sobering reality is that Planned Parenthood is swimming in cash and aborting more unborn children than ever before.
That’s despite more than a dozen states protecting unborn children with beating hearts, despite abortion clinics in pro-life states closing up shop or moving to abortion-friendly states, and despite Planned Parenthood laying off roughly 100 employees in the national office.
The pro-life movement has racked up lifesaving wins since Dobbs. But Planned Parenthood’s cold, hard data shows that the pro-life movement still has a lot of work to do to build a culture of life.
Take Planned Parenthood’s government funding, for example. Why such a dramatic increase? One culprit is the federal Title X family-planning program.
The Trump administration issued a regulation that required, among other things, that participants physically and financially separate any abortion activity from Title X activity. Rather than comply with the rule, Planned Parenthood clinics sided with abortion and pulled out of the program. But the Biden administration changed the regulation, and starting in 2022, Title X funding flowed to abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, once again.
Government funding isn’t the only place executive action is having an impact. Why are Planned Parenthood’s abortion numbers continuing to rise despite nearly two dozen states passing robust pro-life laws after the Dobbs decision? Planned Parenthood can thank the Food and Drug Administration.
In the spring of 2021, under the cover of containing COVID-19, the FDA stopped requiring that chemical abortion drugs be dispensed in person in limited health care settings, opening the door to telemedicine abortion and abortion pills being shipped by mail.
Then, in December 2021, the FDA announced it would make that policy permanent and create a process for retail pharmacies to dispense these pills without a doctor’s visit. In January 2023, the FDA officially updated the regulations for the abortion pill.
What does this mean in practice for an organization like Planned Parenthood?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest abortion numbers, abortion pills are now used in at least 56% of all abortions. And thanks to President Joe Biden and the FDA, it’s never been easier for Planned Parenthood to get dangerous do-it-yourself abortion pills into the hands of women and girls across the country.
These executive policy choices should not go unanswered. Congress’ federal role over the power of the purse provides a path forward. Congress can and should defund Planned Parenthood and redirect funding to real women’s health care.
It should restore the Trump-era pro-life Title X rule. It should prohibit the FDA’s reckless disregard for women’s health and safety that opened the door to dangerous DIY abortion pills.
All of this could be accomplished through the appropriations process through policy riders. In fact, each of these solutions was proposed for fiscal 2024 appropriations, but didn’t make it across the finish line. For the sake of women, girls, and unborn children everywhere, let’s hope pro-life policymakers in Congress hold the line as Congress begins considering fiscal 2025 appropriations.
LifeNews Note: Melanie Israel writes for The Daily Signal, where this column originally appeared. She is a research associate for the DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.
The post Planned Parenthood Made $2 Billion Killing Babies in Abortions, It Doesn’t Need Our Tax Money appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeLiving On Uneasy StreetTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 17:20
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
It's nice to anticipate sunny weather, but it's a good idea to carry an umbrella just in case the forecasts prove overly optimistic.
Yes, the market will rally if World War III didn't start last night. The market will also rally if World War III does start, because the Federal Reserve will surely lower interest rates.
We chuckle uneasily at gallows humor here on Uneasy Street because we're still required to maintain an upbeat veneer of endlessly cheerful optimism even as we sense that the forces currently in play are beyond the control of individuals or groups, no matter how powerful they may be, and that these forces will follow a course to an end no one can predict with any degree of upbeat confidence.
Back when we lived on Easy Street, things were getting better for everyone in varying degrees and the ladder of social mobility was available to all: anyone could improve their prospects by putting in the effort.
Fortunes were being minted, lists of reasons to be optimistic proliferated like overfed rabbits and spots of bother ran off the road on their own, requiring nothing of us.
Life on Uneasy Street is, well, different. The lists of reasons to be optimistic are still everywhere, but they now ring hollow, as those conjuring the lists sound increasingly frantic: come on, people, get with the program, it's all gonna be wunnerful, AI, AI, AI, Roaring 20s, blah blah blah.
The only true believers are those paid to shill the optimism by those seeking to maximize their profits via selling the sizzle rather than the actual steak. The entire exercise of trying to convince us that we still live on Easy Street is simply more evidence that Easy Street is a figment of imagination.
Now that various forces have been unleashed, gravity and the lay of the land will dictate the course of history. Yes, yes, our technological powers are god-like, we're going to Mars, there's a new (and immensely profitable, of course) technological solution to every problem, so just buy, buy, buy the latest gadget or med: imagine that, you can talk to your refrigerator! Wow. That solves a ton of pressing problems.
Too bad the fridge fails in a few years and has to be replaced, the med must be taken forever or your ill health returns, the side effects require a couple more meds, each of which has their own side effects, and going to Mars has no causal connection to actually solving problems here on Earth with some new technology.
Cycles play out despite our cheerleading inspirational rah-rah. Humans respond the same old way to the tightening of various screws: they start hoarding what's scarce, start seeing conquest and war as the go-to solutions to scarcities and rivalries, reasons to cooperate wither under the relentless sun of crisis while reasons to disagree proliferate most disagreeably like noxious weeds.
Just like all the other creatures on the planet, humans expand their consumption and numbers in times of plenty and are unprepared for the inevitable asymmetries of supply (stagnant or declining) and demand--forever rising, as growth is the one essential for the status quo, regardless of ideological type or label.
As supplies no longer exceed demand, inflation (loss of purchasing power of wages) eats the bottom 90% alive, while the rise of debt that so wondrously expanded the asset wealth of the top 10% starts eating its own tail, as interest rises faster than wages or actual production.
Various grandiose solutions are promoted that claim to fix the pressing problems. Some are absurd techno-fantasies (huge mirrors to deflect solar radiation--never mind the increasingly untenable cloud of space junk orbiting Earth), and some sound appealing but are not as painless as advertised, for example, the clearing away of all debt with a jubilee in which all debts are instantly forgiven.
A debt jubilee is certainly appealing to debtors and those who see the cliff ahead, but recall that all debt is an asset that is holding up an asset class far larger than the debt itself: mortgage debt is what props up the entire global real estate market, and what happens to valuations when debt ceases to exist?
Those who see jubilee as a solution also tend to ignore that all this debt is an asset of which 90% is owned by the wealthy class who run the status quo. Every bond, every mortgage-backed security and every bundled student loan / auto loan is an asset owned by someone or some entity who depends on that asset and its income stream for their wealth and thus their political power.
To hazard a guess based on human history, the wealthy / powerful will probably not be too keen to surrender the vast majority of their wealth and thus their power in the laudable pursuit of eliminating all debt and starting over.
Again based on the usual human responses to decay, decline, scarcities and threats to "what's mine," we can anticipate the elite's preference for a messy, chaotic form of jubilee in which various borrowers default and the underlying assets that provided collateral for the loan will be liquidated.
The elite hope that this messy, chaotic form of jubilee will reduce the debt so gradually that the system that benefits them will continue on its merry way. This hope is misplaced, however, for when collateral gets auctioned off at bargain prices, the value of all other similar assets drops accordingly.
And since nobody wants to catch the falling knife of crashing valuations, buyers are scarce, so the selling begets more selling and prices are pressured lower. Those who reckoned they were "buying the bottom" are wiped out, increasing the reluctance of survivors to take the risk of buying assets which could get much cheaper.
Soaring defaults tend to self-reinforce via feedback as the herd gets skittish and the appetite for risk vanishes like early morning mist in Death Valley. As buyers of crashing assets are carried out on stretchers, those who still own the sinking assets are watching their treasured wealth disappear, so they sell--at first with high expectations, and eventually in pure panic.
The future looks cloudy here on Uneasy Street, and everyone's still hoping for sunny days rather than a deluge. It's nice to anticipate sunny weather, but it's a good idea to carry an umbrella just in case the forecasts prove overly optimistic.
Here are three snapshots of what we're told is Easy Street: global debt skyrocketing:
Federal debt skyrocketing:
Financial wealth of the bottom 50% plummeting:
But think of the opportunities pre-cliff-dive:
As assets are liquidated, look for "likes" and upbeat Yelp reviews:
* * *
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Site: Zero HedgeLiving On Uneasy StreetTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 17:20
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
It's nice to anticipate sunny weather, but it's a good idea to carry an umbrella just in case the forecasts prove overly optimistic.
Yes, the market will rally if World War III didn't start last night. The market will also rally if World War III does start, because the Federal Reserve will surely lower interest rates.
We chuckle uneasily at gallows humor here on Uneasy Street because we're still required to maintain an upbeat veneer of endlessly cheerful optimism even as we sense that the forces currently in play are beyond the control of individuals or groups, no matter how powerful they may be, and that these forces will follow a course to an end no one can predict with any degree of upbeat confidence.
Back when we lived on Easy Street, things were getting better for everyone in varying degrees and the ladder of social mobility was available to all: anyone could improve their prospects by putting in the effort.
Fortunes were being minted, lists of reasons to be optimistic proliferated like overfed rabbits and spots of bother ran off the road on their own, requiring nothing of us.
Life on Uneasy Street is, well, different. The lists of reasons to be optimistic are still everywhere, but they now ring hollow, as those conjuring the lists sound increasingly frantic: come on, people, get with the program, it's all gonna be wunnerful, AI, AI, AI, Roaring 20s, blah blah blah.
The only true believers are those paid to shill the optimism by those seeking to maximize their profits via selling the sizzle rather than the actual steak. The entire exercise of trying to convince us that we still live on Easy Street is simply more evidence that Easy Street is a figment of imagination.
Now that various forces have been unleashed, gravity and the lay of the land will dictate the course of history. Yes, yes, our technological powers are god-like, we're going to Mars, there's a new (and immensely profitable, of course) technological solution to every problem, so just buy, buy, buy the latest gadget or med: imagine that, you can talk to your refrigerator! Wow. That solves a ton of pressing problems.
Too bad the fridge fails in a few years and has to be replaced, the med must be taken forever or your ill health returns, the side effects require a couple more meds, each of which has their own side effects, and going to Mars has no causal connection to actually solving problems here on Earth with some new technology.
Cycles play out despite our cheerleading inspirational rah-rah. Humans respond the same old way to the tightening of various screws: they start hoarding what's scarce, start seeing conquest and war as the go-to solutions to scarcities and rivalries, reasons to cooperate wither under the relentless sun of crisis while reasons to disagree proliferate most disagreeably like noxious weeds.
Just like all the other creatures on the planet, humans expand their consumption and numbers in times of plenty and are unprepared for the inevitable asymmetries of supply (stagnant or declining) and demand--forever rising, as growth is the one essential for the status quo, regardless of ideological type or label.
As supplies no longer exceed demand, inflation (loss of purchasing power of wages) eats the bottom 90% alive, while the rise of debt that so wondrously expanded the asset wealth of the top 10% starts eating its own tail, as interest rises faster than wages or actual production.
Various grandiose solutions are promoted that claim to fix the pressing problems. Some are absurd techno-fantasies (huge mirrors to deflect solar radiation--never mind the increasingly untenable cloud of space junk orbiting Earth), and some sound appealing but are not as painless as advertised, for example, the clearing away of all debt with a jubilee in which all debts are instantly forgiven.
A debt jubilee is certainly appealing to debtors and those who see the cliff ahead, but recall that all debt is an asset that is holding up an asset class far larger than the debt itself: mortgage debt is what props up the entire global real estate market, and what happens to valuations when debt ceases to exist?
Those who see jubilee as a solution also tend to ignore that all this debt is an asset of which 90% is owned by the wealthy class who run the status quo. Every bond, every mortgage-backed security and every bundled student loan / auto loan is an asset owned by someone or some entity who depends on that asset and its income stream for their wealth and thus their political power.
To hazard a guess based on human history, the wealthy / powerful will probably not be too keen to surrender the vast majority of their wealth and thus their power in the laudable pursuit of eliminating all debt and starting over.
Again based on the usual human responses to decay, decline, scarcities and threats to "what's mine," we can anticipate the elite's preference for a messy, chaotic form of jubilee in which various borrowers default and the underlying assets that provided collateral for the loan will be liquidated.
The elite hope that this messy, chaotic form of jubilee will reduce the debt so gradually that the system that benefits them will continue on its merry way. This hope is misplaced, however, for when collateral gets auctioned off at bargain prices, the value of all other similar assets drops accordingly.
And since nobody wants to catch the falling knife of crashing valuations, buyers are scarce, so the selling begets more selling and prices are pressured lower. Those who reckoned they were "buying the bottom" are wiped out, increasing the reluctance of survivors to take the risk of buying assets which could get much cheaper.
Soaring defaults tend to self-reinforce via feedback as the herd gets skittish and the appetite for risk vanishes like early morning mist in Death Valley. As buyers of crashing assets are carried out on stretchers, those who still own the sinking assets are watching their treasured wealth disappear, so they sell--at first with high expectations, and eventually in pure panic.
The future looks cloudy here on Uneasy Street, and everyone's still hoping for sunny days rather than a deluge. It's nice to anticipate sunny weather, but it's a good idea to carry an umbrella just in case the forecasts prove overly optimistic.
Here are three snapshots of what we're told is Easy Street: global debt skyrocketing:
Federal debt skyrocketing:
Financial wealth of the bottom 50% plummeting:
But think of the opportunities pre-cliff-dive:
As assets are liquidated, look for "likes" and upbeat Yelp reviews:
* * *
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Site: LifeNews
While abortion advocates often claim that pro-life Americans don’t support adoption, it’s a pro-abortion Democrat governor who made it clear that she doesn’t support adoptive families and children.
Governor Laura Kelly’s abortion extremism was on full display today as she vetoed life-affirming tax policies in House Bill 2465.
That’s legislation that, had she signed it, would have promoted adoption in Kansas.
The Democrat governor used her veto pen to block existing resources giving financial relief to families longing to adopt children and support to organizations that assist moms who want to choose life for their babies.
HB 2465 would establish adoption savings accounts and increase tax credits for adoptive families, eliminate the sales tax burden for pregnancy resource centers, and create tax credits for donors to those organizations.
Get the latest pro-life news and information on X (Twitter). Follow @LifeNewsHQ//
Instead, Governor Kelly made it more financially difficult for families to provide loving homes for adoptive children.
Kansans for Life told LifeNews.com it was very disappointed with Kelly’s veto.
“By her heartless veto, Governor Kelly has shown once again that her only allegiance is to the profit-driven abortion industry, and not to vulnerable Kansas women, children, and families. KFL calls on legislators to override the governor’s veto of HB 2465 when they return to Topeka next week,” said Jeanne Gawdun, KFL Director of Government Relations.
The post Kansas Gov Laura Kelly Vetoes Bill to Support Adoptive Families, But Promotes Abortions Up to Birth appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeWatch Live: Countdown To The Most Important 'Halving' In Bitcoin HistoryTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 17:00
We've previewed the shit out of this 'halving' (here, here, here, and here most recently) and now it's here.
As Bitcoin Magazine notes, this halving event – projected to occur within the next few hours – will occur as Bitcoin reaches block 840,000, marking the point at which its relative supply issuance will drop below that of gold for the first time.
Previous halvings have historically acted as a turning point in the market as the reduction in newly issued coins has been met with surging demand for the currency throughout each prior halving cycle.
As a reminder, this is part of Bitcoin’s design, which is hard-coded into the protocol, limiting the total Bitcoin supply to 21,000,000 BTC. New Bitcoin is issued through mining rewards that have been reducing roughly every four years. In the latest, 4th halving episode, the mining reward will be cut from the 6.25 BTC per block to 3.125 BTC.
This time around, the halving has been preceded by a new all-time high, an occurrence that has never happened since Bitcoin’s inception in January 2009.
Between the launch of Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States (arguably the most successful ETF debut in history) by major financial institutions, and a potential resurgence in inflation, the Bitcoin bulls are on parade driving the market higher into uncharted territory.
Net flows into the spot Bitcoin ETFs have become more balanced. Overall, the magnitude of fresh inflows/outflows and the net flows have fallen over the course of last month.
But, as Goldman Sachs points out, the impact of US Spot Bitcoin ETFs on BTC supply is notable.
At present, the US Bitcoin ETFs are holding about $53b in assets (Bloomberg), which is about 835k Bitcoin.
This corresponds to the US Spot BTC ETFs holding :
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4.25% of total Bitcoin supply
-
6.20% of Bitcoin supply that was active in the last 5 years
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12.40% of Bitcoin supply that was active in the last year
In celebration of the historic fourth Bitcoin halving and to ring in a new epoch in sound money, Bitcoin Magazine and Kraken are Livestreaming the event.
This event will bring together prominent voices in the Bitcoin space including Barstool CEO Dave Portnoy, Strike CEO Jack Mallers, Bitcoin Magazine Institutional Lead Dylan LeClair, and Ten31 Managing Partner Matt Odell.
Other guests slated to appear on the livestream are Bitcoin Magazine Chief Content Officer Pete Rizzo, Human Rights Foundation Director of Financial Freedom Christian Keroles, Simply Bitcoin Founder Nico Moran, Bitcoin Magazine Correspondent Isabella Santos, and Pomp Investments Founder Anthony Pompliano.
In the countdown to Bitcoin’s fourth epoch, Livestream guests will review the Top 21 Moments of the past four years, as voted on by Bitcoin Magazine readers.
Top moments include the rise of the Laser Eyes meme, MicroStrategy unveiling of its bitcoin-based treasury strategy, and the notorious rise and fall of disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. In partnership with Nitrobetting, Bitcoin Magazine will be awarding a 1 BTC prize pool for the Bitcoin Halving Challenge to contestants who most closely predict the price of the currency at Block 840,000.
Viewers will be able to count down to the halving with some of the biggest names in the space and commemorate the growth of Bitcoin with a New Year’s Eve-style celebration with Bitcoiners from around the world.
The full roster of Livestream participants can be seen on www.BitcoinHalving.com and viewers can tune in on the Bitcoin Magazine YouTube channel, Twitter (X), LinkedIn, Rumble and Facebook.
Watch the Livestream here (due to begin when the block height reaches 839,974):
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Site: Zero HedgeWatch Live: Countdown To The Most Important 'Halving' In Bitcoin HistoryTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 17:00
We've previewed the shit out of this 'halving' (here, here, here, and here most recently) and now it's here.
As Bitcoin Magazine notes, this halving event – projected to occur within the next few hours – will occur as Bitcoin reaches block 840,000, marking the point at which its relative supply issuance will drop below that of gold for the first time.
Previous halvings have historically acted as a turning point in the market as the reduction in newly issued coins has been met with surging demand for the currency throughout each prior halving cycle.
As a reminder, this is part of Bitcoin’s design, which is hard-coded into the protocol, limiting the total Bitcoin supply to 21,000,000 BTC. New Bitcoin is issued through mining rewards that have been reducing roughly every four years. In the latest, 4th halving episode, the mining reward will be cut from the 6.25 BTC per block to 3.125 BTC.
This time around, the halving has been preceded by a new all-time high, an occurrence that has never happened since Bitcoin’s inception in January 2009.
Between the launch of Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States (arguably the most successful ETF debut in history) by major financial institutions, and a potential resurgence in inflation, the Bitcoin bulls are on parade driving the market higher into uncharted territory.
Net flows into the spot Bitcoin ETFs have become more balanced. Overall, the magnitude of fresh inflows/outflows and the net flows have fallen over the course of last month.
But, as Goldman Sachs points out, the impact of US Spot Bitcoin ETFs on BTC supply is notable.
At present, the US Bitcoin ETFs are holding about $53b in assets (Bloomberg), which is about 835k Bitcoin.
This corresponds to the US Spot BTC ETFs holding :
-
4.25% of total Bitcoin supply
-
6.20% of Bitcoin supply that was active in the last 5 years
-
12.40% of Bitcoin supply that was active in the last year
In celebration of the historic fourth Bitcoin halving and to ring in a new epoch in sound money, Bitcoin Magazine and Kraken are Livestreaming the event.
This event will bring together prominent voices in the Bitcoin space including Barstool CEO Dave Portnoy, Strike CEO Jack Mallers, Bitcoin Magazine Institutional Lead Dylan LeClair, and Ten31 Managing Partner Matt Odell.
Other guests slated to appear on the livestream are Bitcoin Magazine Chief Content Officer Pete Rizzo, Human Rights Foundation Director of Financial Freedom Christian Keroles, Simply Bitcoin Founder Nico Moran, Bitcoin Magazine Correspondent Isabella Santos, and Pomp Investments Founder Anthony Pompliano.
In the countdown to Bitcoin’s fourth epoch, Livestream guests will review the Top 21 Moments of the past four years, as voted on by Bitcoin Magazine readers.
Top moments include the rise of the Laser Eyes meme, MicroStrategy unveiling of its bitcoin-based treasury strategy, and the notorious rise and fall of disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. In partnership with Nitrobetting, Bitcoin Magazine will be awarding a 1 BTC prize pool for the Bitcoin Halving Challenge to contestants who most closely predict the price of the currency at Block 840,000.
Viewers will be able to count down to the halving with some of the biggest names in the space and commemorate the growth of Bitcoin with a New Year’s Eve-style celebration with Bitcoiners from around the world.
The full roster of Livestream participants can be seen on www.BitcoinHalving.com and viewers can tune in on the Bitcoin Magazine YouTube channel, Twitter (X), LinkedIn, Rumble and Facebook.
Watch the Livestream here (due to begin when the block height reaches 839,974):
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Site: Zero HedgeUS Domestic Bank Deposits Drop For Second Straight WeekTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 16:44
On the heels of a major deposit outflow the week before, and a huge (record) money-market fund outflow last week, all eyes are back on the banks again on Friday evening to see if this 'flight' continues as Tax-Day drags cash away from its comfy-5%-earnings-spots.
On a seasonally-adjusted basis, total US bank deposits declined for the second straight week (though only $2.4BN) after reaching back to pre-SVB levels...
Source: Bloomberg
And once again - like last week, and rather oddly giving the tax-day' timing - non-seasonally-adjusted bank deposits rose $16BN, now well above pre-SVB levels...
Source: Bloomberg
Is some of the money-market cash being moved (temporarily) into bank deposits before heading out to tax man?
Source: Bloomberg
Historically, it appears NEXT week is when we see the Tax-Day decline in the NSA data...
Source: Bloomberg
Excluding foreign deposits, domestic bank deposits did fall on both an SA (-$2.9BN - large banks -$14.8BN, small banks +11.9BN) and NSA (-$12bn - large banks -$24BN, small banks +12BN) basis.
Source: Bloomberg
But, unlike last week when deposits dropped, we saw bank loan volumes rise (not fall) in the week ending 4/10 with large bank voilumes rising 0.65BN and small bank volumes rising $7.3BN...
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, as we detailed earlier, it appears the reality of bank reserves at The Fed is slowly (but surely) catching up with US equity market cap...
Source: Bloomberg
That's going to get awkward in an election year...
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Site: Novus Motus LiturgicusWe recently noted that the façade of the FSSP church in Rome, Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, has been beautifully restored to its original appearance, after a cleaning project of several month’ duration. Our friend Jacob Stein, author of the blog Crux Stationalis, was on hand yesterday for the official unveiling, and has graciously shared with us some photos, as well of a video of the moment Gregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Zero HedgeDown With Big Brother: Warrantless Surveillance Makes A Mockery Of The ConstitutionTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 16:20
Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference ... The Thought Police would get him just the same ... the arrests invariably happened at night ... In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.”
- George Orwell, 1984
The government long ago sold us out to the highest bidder.
The highest bidder, by the way, has always been the Deep State.
What’s playing out now with the highly politicized tug-of-war over whether Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act gets reauthorized by Congress doesn’t just sell us out, it makes us slaves of the Deep State.
Read the fine print: it’s a doozy.
Just as the USA Patriot was perverted from its stated intent to fight terrorism abroad and was instead used to covertly crack down on the American people (allowing government agencies to secretly track Americans’ financial activities, monitor their communications, and carry out wide-ranging surveillance on them), Section 702 has been used as an end-run around the Constitution to allow the government to collect the actual content of your conversations (phone calls, text messages, video chats, emails and other electronic communication) without a warrant.
Now intelligence officials are pushing to dramatically expand the government’s spying powers, effectively giving the government unbridled authority to force millions of Americans to spy on its behalf.
Basically, the Deep State wants to turn the American people into extensions of Big Brother.
As Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) explains:
“If you have access to any communications, the government can force you to help it spy. That means anyone with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a Wi-Fi router, a phone, or a computer. So think for a moment about the millions of Americans who work in buildings and offices in which communications are stored or pass through.
After all, every office building in America has data cables running through it. The people are not just the engineers who install, maintain, and repair our communications infrastructure; there are countless others who could be forced to help the government spy, including those who clean offices and guard buildings. If this provision is enacted, the government can deputize any of these people against their will, and force them in effect to become what amounts to an agent for Big Brother—for example, by forcing an employee to insert a USB thumb drive into a server at an office they clean or guard at night.
This could all happen without any oversight whatsoever: The FISA Court won't know about it, Congress won't know about it. Americans who are handed these directives will be forbidden from talking about it. Unless they can afford high-priced lawyers with security clearances who know their way around the FISA Court, they will have no recourse at all.”
This is how an effort to reform Section 702 has quickly steamrollered into an expansion of the government’s surveillance powers.
We should have seen this coming.
After all, the Police State doesn’t relinquish power easily, the Surveillance State doesn’t look favorably on anything that might weaken its control, and Big Brother doesn’t like to be restricted.
What most Americans don’t get is that even without Section 702 in play, the government will still target the populace for warrantless, suspicionless mass surveillance, because that’s how the police state maintains its stranglehold on power.
These maneuvers are just the tip of the iceberg.
For all intents and purposes, we now have a fourth branch of government.
This fourth branch came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military.
It is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful.
It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC.
The government’s “technotyranny” surveillance apparatus has become so entrenched and entangled with its police state apparatus that it’s hard to know anymore where law enforcement ends and surveillance begins. They have become one and the same entity.
The police state has passed the baton to the surveillance state.
On any given day, the average American is now monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.
Every second of every day, the American people are being spied on by the U.S. government’s vast network of digital Peeping Toms, electronic eavesdroppers and robotic snoops.
Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it will all be recorded, stored and used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing.
Privacy, as we have known it, is dead.
Whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking you. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine. These corporate trackers monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere and share the data with the government.
Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to collect data and spy on the American people. Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies—the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.—and make it accessible for all those in power.
These government snoops are constantly combing through and harvesting vast quantities of our communications, then storing it in massive databases for years. Once this information—collected illegally and without any probable cause—is ingested into NSA servers, other government agencies can often search through the databases to make criminal cases against Americans that have nothing to do with terrorism or anything national security-related.
Empowered by advances in surveillance technology and emboldened by rapidly expanding public-private partnerships between law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, and the private sector, police have become particularly adept at sidestepping the Fourth Amendment.
Talk about a system rife for abuse.
Now, the government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from its mass spying program because they’re only looking to get the “bad” guys who are overseas.
Don’t believe it.
The government’s definition of a “bad” guy is extraordinarily broad, and it results in the warrantless surveillance of innocent, law-abiding Americans on a staggering scale.
Indeed, the government has become the biggest lawbreaker of all.
It’s telling that even after it was revealed that the FBI, one of the most power-hungry and corrupt agencies within the police state’s vast complex of power-hungry and corrupt agencies, misused a massive government surveillance database more than 300,000 times in order to target American citizens, we’re still debating whether they should be allowed to continue to sidestep the Fourth Amendment.
This is how the government operates, after all: our objections are routinely overruled and our rights trampled underfoot.
It works the same every time.
First, the government seeks out extraordinary powers acquired in the wake of some national crisis—in this case, warrantless surveillance powers intended to help the government spy on foreign targets suspected of engaging in terrorism—and then they use those powers against the American people.
According to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the FBI repeatedly misused Section 702 in order to spy on the communications of two vastly disparate groups of Americans: those involved in the George Floyd protests and those who may have taken part in the Jan. 6, 2021, protests at the Capitol.
This abuse of its so-called national security powers is par for the course for the government.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, intelligence agencies conduct roughly 200,000 of these warrantless “backdoor” searches for Americans’ private communications each year.
No one is spared.
Many of the targets of these searches have done nothing wrong.
Government agents have spied on the communications of protesters, members of Congress, crime victims, journalists, and political donors, among many others.
The government has claimed that its spying on Americans is simply “incidental,” as though it were an accident, but it fully intends to collect this information.
As journalist Jake Johnson warns, under an expanded Section 702, U.S. intelligence agencies “could, without a warrant, compel gyms, grocery stores, barber shops, and other businesses to hand over communications data.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, “The Securities and Exchange Commission is deploying a massive government database—the Consolidated Audit Trail, or CAT—that monitors in real time the identity, transactions and investment portfolio of everyone who invests in the stock market.”
Journalist Leo Hohmann reports that the government is also handing out $20 million in grants to police, mental health networks, universities, churches and school districts to enlist their help in identifying Americans who might be political dissidents or potential “extremists.”
Ask the government why it’s carrying out this far-reaching surveillance on American citizens, and you’ll get the same Orwellian answer the government has been trotting in response to every so-called crisis to justify its assaults on our civil liberties: to keep America safe.
What this is really all about, however, is control.
What we are dealing with is a government so power-hungry, paranoid and afraid of losing its stranglehold on power that it is conspiring to wage war on anyone who dares to challenge its authority.
When the FBI is asking banks and other financial institutions to carry out dragnet searches of customer transactions—warrantlessly and without probable cause—for “extremism” indicators broadly based on where you shop, what you read, and how you travel, we’re all in trouble.
You don’t have to do anything illegal.
For that matter, you don’t even have to challenge the government’s authority.
Frankly, you don’t even have to care about politics or know anything about your rights.
All you really need to do in order to be tagged as a suspicious character, flagged for surveillance, and eventually placed on a government watch list is live in the United States.
As long as the government is allowed to weaponize its 360 degree surveillance technologies to flag you as a threat to national security, whether or not you’ve done anything wrong, it’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it won’t be long before Big Brother’s Thought Police are locking us up to “protect us” from ourselves.
At that point, we will disappear.
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Site: LifeNews
392,715.
It’s just a number until you realize it is the number of abortions completed by Planned Parenthood according to their 2023 annual report.
When that realization sinks in one can’t help but wonder if 70-75% of those abortions were on Black women.
Why? Because in 2012, Protecting Black Life published information revealing that 78% of Planned Parenthood’s surgical facilities were within a two-mile radius of black and Latino neighborhoods.
25.
It’s just a number until you realize “… Planned Parenthood has located a stunning 86 percent of its abortion facilities in or near minority neighborhoods in 25 U.S. counties with the most abortions.”
Get the latest pro-life news and information on X (Twitter). Follow @LifeNewsHQ//
These 25 counties are just 1% of all the counties in America, but accounted for 30% of all the abortions in 2014 and house 28% of all black Americans. In fact, in these counties nearly 25% of the targeted zip codes within 5 miles of a Planned Parenthood have an average black population of 55%. Planned Parenthood increased the number of their facilities in these 25 counties by 35% between 2010 and 2018.
34%.
Again, just another number until you realize it represents the $699.3 million taxpayer dollars of the over $2 billion dollars of revenue Planned Parenthood reported. These numbers alone would not trigger alarm because they are just numbers.
But when you put them in context, they are not only alarming but rise to the level of genocide due to Planned Parenthood’s specific targeting of black women and their babies. As they carry out the tenets of the Negro Project their founder launched in 1939 these numbers represent the success of Alan Guttmacher’s (Margaret Sanger’s successor) efforts to legalize abortion in order to deal with the population explosion he saw on a Johns Hopkins segregated ward in the 1940’s.
Yes, Planned Parenthood has sought to control the black birth rate in America since 1939. They have pursued, shamelessly, black ministers, leaders, and politicians in their efforts to “exterminate” those they consider dysgenic. Cloaking their eugenic ideals in words that evoke an emotional response, they claim they are providing black women with access to what they call a woman’s right, what they call healthcare. Five decades of lies cannot make black children in the womb a disease, or objects to be gotten rid of. The lie stops here as we say no more.
LifeNews Note: Catherine Davis is the head of the Restoration Project.
The post Planned Parenthood Puts 86% of Its Abortion Centers in Black Communities to Kill Black Babies appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeTech Wrecks As FedSpeak F**ks FOMO-Followers; Gold Hits New Record HighTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 16:00
Well, that escalated quickly...
In a week characterized by data supporting 'no landing' from a growth perspective and disappointment from a disinflation perspective...
Source: Bloomberg
FedSpeak that was without exception - hawkish!
As they suddenly realized that all that 'pivot' optimism did nothing but dramatically ease financial conditions and fuck their 'best laid plans' for a rate-cut and soft landing...
Source: Bloomberg
Even the dove-est of the doves - Austan Goolsbee - bent the knee today:
“So far in 2024, that progress on inflation has stalled,” Goolsbee said Friday in remarks prepared for an event in Chicago.
“You never want to make too much of any one month’s data, especially inflation, which is a noisy series, but after three months of this, it can’t be dismissed.”
“Right now, it makes sense to wait and get more clarity before moving,” Goolsbee said.
And sure enough, rate-cut expectations for 2024 and 2025 have both plunged this week...
Source: Bloomberg
...and that has finally started to weigh on investors' risk appetites (that's a long way to catch down to reality)...
Source: Bloomberg
Most traders thought the worst was over last night as the panic-puke in futures was BTFD'd back to unchanged ahead of the cash open, but then the selling started (on Nasdaq) and never really stopped. On the day, Nasdaq was down over 2% while The Dow managed to gain 0.5%. Small Caps were almost unchanged by the end of the day with the S&P lagging...
But, all the majors ended the week red (with The Dow desperately trying to get back to even). Nasdaq was down over 5.5% on the week! S&P and Small Caps down around 3%...
Nasdaq is down for six straight days for its biggest weekly drop since Nov 2022, breaking below its 100DMA as CTA 'sell threshold's were crosed. Goldman's trading desk noted:
"The NDX now pacing for its worst week in over a year (down 6 of 7 weeks) as a complicated technical backdrop (CTAs, lower retail participation, NDX now testing 100-dma, seasonality), sideways earnings revisions thus far (ASML, TSM and even Sheridan’s NFLX EPS revisions were only 1-2% last night), a tense geopolitical backdrop (overnight headlines) and elevated positioning are testing conviction into a busy week of earnings … some debate if this all ‘helps’ the set-up into FAAMG prints or if the market is just read to ‘take a breather’ and sell any good news..."
The MAG7 basket broke below its 50DMA this week - the first time since October, when The Fed 'pivoted' and save the world. The market cap of the MAG7 is now down over $1 Trillion from its highs a week ago...
Source: Bloomberg
AI Leaders crashed relative to firms 'at risk from AI', plunging to their lowest in two months...
Source: Bloomberg
Of note is that the AI Leaders are perfectly back to their prior peak in 2021 (which was driven by chip demand for crypto mining and COVID disruptions), breaking down to the 100DMA and through the medium-term uptrend...
Source: Bloomberg
Semis were slaughtered this week...
Source: Bloomberg
NVDA plunged 10% today back to two month lows, closing below its 50DMA for the first time since Nov 2023...
... now in bear market (down over 22% from its highs) and the CSCO analog doesn't look so crazy anymore...
Source: Bloomberg
Interestingly, amid all this carnage, banks had a decent week with WFC and MS outperforming (JPM still lagging from its drop on last Friday's earnings)...
Source: Bloomberg
The Russell 2000, Nasdaq, and Dow are all back below their 100DMA, and the S&P 500 is pushing down towards its 100DMA (having blow thru the CTA 'sell' thresholds)...
Goldman's trading desk warns, it could get worse: "CTA supply is building – our team’s work shows this group sold $25B globally this week ($9B in SPX) with next week expected to bring another $27B globally (and $10B SPX) in a flat tape scenario. Reminder the medium term threshold (aka most important) level is 4886 – less than 100 handles away from spot."
Next week brings 43% of SPX set to report earnings highlighted by META/MSFT/GOOGL (aka $6.1T of mkt cap) reporting on Thurs night...on the macro front, key reports include 1Q GDP on Thurs & March PCE on Fri.
VIX soared this week to six-month highs, and credit markets also - finally - started to crack...
Source: Bloomberg
Treasury yields ended the week higher, but not before plunging overnight on a flight-to-quality bid as Israeli missiles hit Iran, taking yields lower on the week. By the close of the week, the belly slightly underperformed but yields were all up by around 8-10bps....
Source: Bloomberg
The dollar rallied for the second straight week, hitting its highest since early Nov 2023 last night on the mid-east attacks before sliding back...
Source: Bloomberg
Heading into today's 'halving' - likely to occur within the next few hours - Bitcoin was down, puking once again overnight on geopolitical chaos like it did last weekend, only to see buying come right back (after testing below $60,000 for the first time since early March)...
Source: Bloomberg
5.00% remains a key level for the 2Y Yield...
Source: Bloomberg
Despite two major attacks in the Middle East, oil prices ended lower for the second week in a row (well WW3 hasn't started yet). Some knock-on effects from an evaporation of hope for demand-sponsoring rate-cuts also weighed on sentiment as WTI
Source: Bloomberg
Spot Gold prices spiked overnight on the Israel attack, pulled back, then rallied up to $2400 once again to close at the highs...
Source: Bloomberg
Gold closed the week at a new record high...
Source: Bloomberg
Silver soared 3% on the week to new cycle highs (its highest since Feb 2021)...
Source: Bloomberg
Silver has been broadly speaking outperforming gold in recent weeks after peaking at a gold-to-silver ratio of around 92x in January, it is ow down to 83 (still well above the 65x average since 1980... implying silver remains 'cheap' to gold)...
Source: Bloomberg
...and then there's Cocoa...
Source: Bloomberg
And finally, are bank reserves at The Fed still the driving force for reality?
Source: Bloomberg
We saw the reality check from Aug-Oct last year; are we about to get another?
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Site: Zero HedgeClimate Worries Are Non-Credible, Luxury Beliefs That Harm Civilization ItselfTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 15:43
Authored by Joakim Book via The Mises Institute,
I live in a small village at the edge of lands surrounded by very harsh nature. Those who occupied these valleys in ages past lived ruthlessly dangerous lives, where starvation was a constant worry, the sea just as often nurtured as it took away, and the winters were long and perilous. Nowadays, while I’m walking the desolate mountains or admiring the fierce storms from inside my nice, sheltered existence, echoing in my head is Thomas Hobbes’s descriptions of man’s precivilizational life: “Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
In the 2020s, we live fairly comfortable lives here, my fellow villagers and I. Our hearths are warm, our command over economic goods excellent. We live long, safe lives, where nobody starves and where almost nobody perishes in outbursts of nature’s wrath. We use machines—constructed far, far away using materials we don’t have, that run on fossil fuels that these lands don’t contain—to move away the snow that frequently and predictably lands on our doorsteps and otherwise would have made our roads impassable and our houses prisons. We use different machines—constructed far, far away using materials we don’t have, that run on fossil fuels that these lands don’t contain—to get ourselves out of our valley and transport goods and services back, including exotic fruits and vegetables that never grow here (certainly not in winter!).
It truly is fascinating to behold the astonishing things that globalized trade and capitalism can accomplish. Stepping back and thinking about the miracles of modern trade, innovation, and division of labor is so humbling.
Yet we well-off moderns worry about our collective existence to the point that kids have nightmares, and survey respondents overwhelmingly say climate change will end the human race.
Something like one-third of young people say they don’t want kids for fear of worsening the climate condition or how they’d fare in that brave, new world. “Climate anxiety is widespread among youth,” reports National Geographic. “How can we help kids cope with ‘eco-anxiety’?” asks the British Broadcasting Corporation. The vast majority of respondents in a global ten thousand–person study published in the Lancet in 2021 admitted to be very or extremely worried. Vox writers worry about the ethics of raising children. A new study, reported on by Phys.org, pointed to how many young people won’t have kids because of climate change: it’d be unfair to “bring a child into the world,” who’d have to live with the constant “feeling of impending doom, every day, for their whole life,” says one interviewed would-be parent.
Many of my fellow villagers entertain all these global ideas—melting glaciers and parts per million–numbers, floods and ethical dilemmas about us vulgar humans making earth inhospitable or uninhabitable.
It’s a strange thing to worry about obsessively, while the vicious storm raging outside the double-glazed windows affect nothing about our food supply, electricity use, heating, or ability to participate in the global division of labor—whether in our offices or remotely via high-speed internet. It somehow seems contradictory to passionately rally against capitalism from the comforts of very capitalistically built and maintained houses, hotels, and pubs; to inveigh against the burning of fossil fuels that literally keeps one alive.
It has me thinking about the action axiom, the starting point of Ludwig von Mises’s praxeology and the pillar-stone upon which Austrian economics rests. The colloquial version of this foundational Austrian maxim is “put your money where your mouth is” or “actions speak louder than words.” We demonstrate by our actions where our preferences and values lie; we reveal them to the world (act them into existence, really) when we do one thing instead of another, when we purchase one good instead of another, when we work instead of relax. All of this is wrapped in uncertainty and hopes and subjective human desires trading off against other such desires; in hindsight we can regret the choices we made. Still, says Murray Rothbard, a man’s “preferences are deducible from what he has chosen in action.”
Perhaps all this climate complaining is simply virtue signaling, in a world where feelings matter more than facts. The detachment from the physical processes of basic living—energy, materials, transportation, and in complicated monetary economies, money—has made many people ignorant, taking for granted the lifestyles we live and the standards of living we have. It has allowed us to start thinking foundational and civilization-carrying systems like money, fossil fuels, or commercial institutions are optional—a mere matter of ideological choice between good and evil people. They’re not.
I’m reminded too of luxury beliefs, a somewhat hyped concept coined by Rob Henderson, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge and author of the recent book Troubled. Henderson transfers Thorstein Veblen’s “conspicuous consumption”—the purchasing of expensive, often seemingly useless goods with the purpose of flaunting one’s wealth—to the moral and political domain. A luxury belief, like a conspicuous good, is acquired in order to impress others, and is designed to “confer status on the upper class at very little cost, while inflicting costs upon the lower classes.”
Luxury beliefs don’t make much sense and don’t have staying power in the real world of atoms and temperature, of nature and starvation. But we’re so far detached from the world that physically supports us—so rich, so deluded, so well off—that we’re willing to believe (and by extension willing to experiment with) the very systems that uphold our existence.
Cue environmental concerns and anticapitalism.
Taken literally, enacting policies based on such follies into place, we’re on a path to horror and poverty, with brutish and short lives to follow.
The good news is that those systems are remarkably resilient and these voices might still be all “tawk,” as Nassim Taleb would say.
The popular energy-finance Substack Doomberg made a similar observation in February, listing two paragraphs’ worth of major events that happened from 1971: oil crisis, Iran-Iraq, Kuwait wars, Middle Eastern conflicts, the Asian and peso and ruble financial collapses, the terrorist attacks, Libya-Syria-Ukraine, the global financial crisis, and covid.
Through all of them, as tumultuous as they seemed at the time and as relevant as they remain in the political consciousness, the world’s total energy consumption is a straight line through all of it.
Here’s their graph:
BP Statistical Review global total energy consumption
Source: Doomberg
Socioeconomic events as radical as women’s rights or racial equality; left-wing or right-wing leaders; crises and recessions, inflations and boom years; generations of scholars and scientists and political movements . . . and there’s no impact on the basic thing that powers our civilization.
Eighty-five percent of the globe’s primary energy consumption comes directly from fossil fuels—the same it was over thirty years ago when I was born. You can speak beliefs about climate change, about noncredible, net-zero policy goals (always with years suspiciously ending in zero or five), about reducing reliance on fossil fuels, or about how “clean” renewable energy is. You can throw government money at it, pass laws, or pontificate in the high courts, legislative auditoriums, or the public square, but you’re just not changing that. You can’t change that.
Cypherpunks write code. Clever people ignore politics. You should get out of the house, stop worrying too much about the lunatics running the asylum, and instead admire nature.
That’s what I’m doing.
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Site: Catholic ConclaveCatholic Conclavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06227218883606585321noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: LifeNews
The Nevada Supreme Court stopped a challenge to a state amendment that would allow abortions up to birth in the Western state. As a result of the ruling, Nevada voters will vote this November on the radical amendment.
The Nevada Supreme Court unanimously approved the pro-abortion language after a district court judge has blocked it from moving forward — finding that it contained multiple subjects and was misleading.
The supreme court reversed, claiming that the amendment only addressed “reproductive freedom.”
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The campaign must submit at least 102,362 signatures for it to appear on the ballot. If it passes, voters will have to approve it again in 2026 for it to appear in the state constitution.
In a decision handed down November 21, Judge James T. Russell concluded that a proposed ballot initiative that would have embedded abortion in the Nevada constitution is too broad, contains a “misleading description of effect” and has an unfunded mandate.
“This is probably the clearest case I have seen that I think there is a violation of the single-subject rule,” Russell said, according to KOLO-TV Reno. “I’ve seen a lot of them over the years and in respect to this particular matter, there are too many subjects. Not all of which are functionally related to each other.”
The post Nevada Supreme Court Approves Ballot Amendment for Abortions Up to Birth appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeNike "Permanently" Laying Off 740 Employees At World HeadquartersTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 15:20
US athletic footwear and apparel company Nike announced late in the cash session on Friday that it is undergoing a restructuring effort to trim costs at its World Headquarters (WHQ) located in Beaverton, Oregon.
Michele Adams, VP of People Solutions at Nike, might be the most hated person at the company this afternoon. In a letter to staff, she wrote that "approximately 740 employees at WHQ" will be "permanently" laid off by late June.
"As a result of a second phase of impacts, which will take effect by June 28, 2024, approximately 740 employees at WHQ will have been impacted by this and the recent prior permanent reduction of the workforce," Adams said.
In December, Chief Executive Officer John Donahoe said the company would reduce its global headcount by 2% as management moves forward with a cost-savings program of as much as $2 billion over the next three years.
Data from Bloomberg shows that Nike's total headcount stood at around 83,700 as of the end of 2023. The company has been dramatically hiring over the last decade and a half - those efforts appear to have just stalled.
Nike shares have stumbled into a correction as of late March.
Yet another sign consumers are pulling back on clothing apparel and other sporting goods merchandise?
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Site: Zero HedgeHow Big Tech Is Consuming America's Electricity And WaterTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 15:00
Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
As federal net-zero policies attempt to shift transportation, heating, and other essentials onto the electric grid, one of the hottest growth sectors of America’s economy is poised to increase electricity demand exponentially, further straining an energy infrastructure that is being pushed into the red.
(Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock)
Data centers, the so-called “brains of the internet,” are industrial warehouses packed with rows upon rows of servers. They process, communicate, and store the data behind everything from bank records, online retailers, and social media platforms to Netflix shows and your personal iPhone videos.
“Data centers are essential to cloud computing and its ability to give users remote access to data,” a 2023 Federal Reserve report states, quoting a Science article that calls them the “information backbone of an increasingly digitalized world.”
Many analysts laud data centers as one of the fastest-growing sectors of the real estate market, but the industry may soon find itself hitting a wall as local communities put up increasing resistance to the industry’s seemingly insatiable appetite for power and water.
“While other commercial real estate sectors are experiencing a decline in construction pipelines, data center development has reached an all-time high,” according to a January report by Newmark, a commercial real estate advisory.
“However, growth is increasingly constrained by land and power availability, supply chain challenges and construction delays, not to mention increasing resistance from some local jurisdictions.”
The report said the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies is fueling the demand.
The industry is led by cloud computing behemoths like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Meta. It also includes digital landlords, called co-location companies, which rent storage space out to third parties. These include Equinix, Digital Realty, and CyrusOne.
Electricity Demand From Data to Double by 2030
Data warehouses consumed 17 gigawatts of electricity in 2022, or about 4 percent of total U.S. consumption. This is projected to double to 35 gigawatts by 2030.
Eric Woodell, who holds a doctorate of science in information systems and communications and is the founder of Amerruss, a tech infrastructure management company, referred to data centers as “energy hogs.”
“But now your data center for AI applications is no longer a hog, it’s an elephant and it’s living in your backyard,” he told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Woodell has been managing data centers for 25 years, formerly for Vanguard, the world’s second-largest asset manager.
A mere 10-foot-square space within the average data center consumes about 10 times as much electricity as the average home, he said.
The NSA's Utah data collection center has Salt Lake City in the background, in Bluffdale, Utah, on March 17, 2017. The $1.5 billion data center is thought to be the worlds largest
“While conventional data centers are already pulling an enormous amount of power, AI computing doesn’t use CPUs [central processing units], but GPU-based systems instead, as the GPUs [graphics processing units] are tailored to better handle complex mathematical functions,” he said. “But there’s a catch: they draw between five and 10 times more power than similarly equipped CPU systems.”
This hefty increase in electricity demand strains a grid that is already predicted to feature power shortages and routine rolling blackouts in the coming years. This is due to more demands being placed on the grid at a time when utilities are aggressively shutting down coal and gas plants in their transition to wind and solar energy.
According to a February case study of one large regional electric utility, PJM, by Quanta Technologies, the next several years will feature “equipment overloads that trigger as much as 6,826 MW of load shedding during average winter peak demand.”
Load shedding means cutting power to consumers, also known as blackouts, to prevent a system collapse.
PJM serves a dozen eastern Mid-Atlantic states as a wholesale provider.
“The analysis reveals the expected overload of 30 bulk transmission facilities (230 kV and higher) in the 2028 summer due primarily to high load growth associated mostly with new data centers,” the report states.
A man sits in the shade of his umbrella while dogs play in the park under high tension power lines in Redondo Beach, Calif., on Aug. 16, 2020. California has ordered rolling power outages as a heat wave strains its electrical system. (Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images)
Curiously, given that the transition to renewable energy is ostensibly to fight rising temperatures, the Quanta report finds that “electric demand is peaking less in summer and more in winter.” This is particularly worrisome as states on the West Coast and in the northeast, representing nearly one-third of natural gas consumers across the United States, are banning gas heating in new homes, forcing those households to rely on electricity for essential heating.
PJM forecasts new data center load growth of 7,500 MW by 2028, while deactivating 11,100 MW of fossil fuel production, leaving an 18.6 Gigawatt gap between new demand and remaining supply in this sector, according to Mr. Woodell.
“18.6 Gigawatts would power roughly 3 million homes or New York City three times over,” he stated. “The ramifications are massive.”
Data Center Alley
Globally, data centers consume about 3 percent of the world’s electricity, according to Ryan Yonk, an economist at the American Institute for Economic Research. This consumption tends to be steady and predictable, and utilities can expand to accommodate it, he said.
However, problems arise when centers become concentrated in a single area, especially if that area is transitioning away from fossil fuels.
“For individual communities, there are some real questions about data centers going in, particularly if they’re going to be clustered, and they often are,” Mr. Yonk told The Epoch Times.
“Data centers end up having consistent power requirements, which means that the grid can be pretty well expanded so long as production capacity is high enough,” he said. “But as we transition more to renewables ... the greater the baseline demand, the more problematic it can be.”
The region covered by PJM and the Quanta study is significant because it includes the world’s largest data hub, where about half of all U.S. data centers are located and through which an estimated 70 percent of the world’s internet traffic passes.
For anyone who conducts a Google search or makes an Amazon purchase, that transaction will likely be processed in what is known as Data Center Alley, home to about 150 data warehouses in Loudoun County, northern Virginia.
Data Center Alley had its beginnings in the 1980s when America Online (AOL) located its headquarters there. It quickly drew in others due to its proximity to Washington, its construction of the “world’s densest” fiber optic network, a supply of relatively cheap electricity, and local tax incentives.
“This is the area where you want to locate to connect up to everything else,” Julie Bolthouse, director of land use at the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), told The Epoch Times.
“Everybody is building off of each other in these data centers; you have to think about it as one giant network that is all communicating with each other,” she said.
“What’s happened from the ‘90s to now is that we’ve supersized them. We’ve gone from a small building that was part of a larger business campus and was only five megawatts, to these hyper-scale warehouse-type buildings that are now 200,000 square feet, and they’re using up to 90 megawatts per building.”
For scale, 90 megawatts is about the electricity consumption of 22,000 homes, according to a PEC report.
Read more here...
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Site: Zero HedgeCocoa Hyperinflation Accelerates As Grindings Show No Demand DestructionTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 14:40
Cocoa hyperinflation is insane. The latest data from the futures market shows that cocoa prices in New York surged above the $12,000 per ton level today as the pace of processing in factories remains robust. This indicates that demand destruction has yet to emerge despite the massive multi-month parabolic price surge.
Cocoa futures surged 18% in the last two days to a record high of $12,125. Prices are up more than 190% year-to-date and are in breakout territory.
Bloomberg says the news today about grindings—where cocoa transforms into butter and powder used in candy—only dropped 2% in Europe and marginally lower in Asia for the first quarter compared with the same quarter one year ago.
Source: Bloomberg
John Goodwin, a senior commodity analyst at ArrowStream, said the grindings numbers are "nowhere near the deterioration we needed to end this rally," adding, "It's crazy how resilient those numbers were."
In other words, despite cocoa prices skyrocketing to the moon, there has yet to be noticeable demand destruction among consumers that would derail this rally.
"The market is watching processing data to get an idea of whether the rally is starting to hurt demand and how hard it's becoming for chocolatiers to obtain beans, though the data risks becoming a less reliable gauge of demand as shortfalls make it more difficult to source cocoa," Bloomberg pointed out.
Paul Joules, an analyst at Rabobank, wrote in a note that grindings figures are "an indication that for now demand is holding up despite current pricing," adding that "demand destruction will come, but clearly it's taking longer to filter into grind data than the market was anticipating."
Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that famed commodity trader Pierre Andurand opened a "small, long position" in cocoa futures in early March. Since then, prices have erupted. In an email, he told the media outlet that his price target is "$20,000 later this year" amid worsening continued drought and disease across West Africa, denting production at cocoa farms.
If cocoa prices rise, chocolate makers like the US Hershey Company will see demand destruction. However, this has yet to happen, and consumers are not complaining about higher prices (yet).
On Google Search, we looked at various key phrases a consumer would ask online about why prices were rising. Still, there is no search trend explosion.
However, as cocoa prices soar, the number of headlines about "chocolate prices" has hit a record high.
Perhaps Andurand's $20,000 price target is correct. Still, we have no idea where the price must go before demand destruction strikes.
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Site: Zero HedgeA Chart To Think AboutTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 14:20
Authored by Peter Tchir via Academy Securities,
For all the “big tech”, momentum, hype; for all the “all-time highs”; this has not been a great year for tech...
Based on closing prices, the only day since January 19th, that you could have bought the Nasdaq 100 index and be profitable, is January 31st (and unless I type quickly, that might not even be true).
Had you came into the year long the Nasdaq 100, you would be up just over 2%.
Think about how many people got “FOMO’d” into buying markets at levels they weren’t comfortable with?
Now with yields rising, the Fed potentially on hold until after the election, valuation concerns mounting, and the “reaction function” to earnings, seems to be looking for negatives rather than positives, will people stay in this market?
Not great for 60/40 accounts and not sure when risk parity has to reduce exposures (they’ve been helped by commodities), but should be soon, if not already (changing correlations is as important for their models as individual asset class volatility – none going the “right” direction at the moment).
Finally, and for those who have been reading T-Reports for a long time, know that I like to say “flash crashes” and “massive overnight moves” are like criminals, they tend to return to the scene of the crime, which does not bode well for equity risk (and therefore credit risk – credit is moving due to that far more than anything wrong in credit fundamentals).
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Site: LifeNews
As previously reported, Operation Rescue has seen an increase in medical emergencies since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, especially in leftist cities and states that have turned into abortion destinations – such as Illinois.
This time, on-site pro-life eyewitnesses saw two emergencies on the same day at the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The information was provided by Abortion Free New Mexico.
First Emergency:
According to eyewitnesses, a woman was taken to an ambulance on a gurney around 2:30 p.m. on April 10, 2024. Another ambulance, a police car and a fire engine were also on the scene.
LifeNews is on GETTR. Please follow us for the latest pro-life news
Second Emergency:
That same day, less than two hours later, at around 4 p.m., a second ambulance was seen at the abortion facility to transport another woman to the emergency room.
Unknowns:
The condition of both women remains unknown.
Operation Rescue is trying to obtain 911 records for both emergencies from the city of Albuquerque and the Albuquerque Fire Department. Nevertheless, based on previous requests, a total or partial denial of records is expected. Operation Rescue’s team has seen this pattern in many abortion destination cities where the abortion cartel is not held accountable.
Over and over again, women are injured – or worse – by abortion. Yet what happens to them gets covered up, swept away, and quietly erased in a disappearing act. The public deserves to know how dangerous abortion is, and yet public records frequently are withheld, denied, or mysteriously missing.
This silence costs women and babies.
“We continue to see an increase in medical emergencies like these while the traditional media, liberal groups, and their allies remain silent,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “Meanwhile women keep getting hurt. But we will move forward with our work exposing the truth of what the abortion cartel does not want the public to know about abortion. We pray for these women who were injured, though the condition of each remains unclear. And, we will keep fighting by all legal means for life.”
LifeNews Note: Ricardo Pinedo writes for Operation Rescue.
The post Abortion Clinic Sends Two Women to ER in Less Than Two Hours After Botched Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Community in Mission
The Gospel from last Saturday’s daily Mass (Saturday of the 2nd Week of Easter) describes troubles rising and demonstrates how to endure them:
When it was evening, the disciples of Jesus went down to the sea, embarked in a boat, and went across the sea to Capernaum. It had already grown dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea was stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were afraid. But he said to them, “It is I. Do not be afraid.” They wanted to take him into the boat, but the boat immediately arrived at the shore to which they were heading (John 6:16-21).
The images in this passage are reminiscent of the journey of life. The disciples have set out in a boat to cross to the other shore. We, too, have set out for another shore in our life. Darkness grows for them as it often does for us. The winds are contrary, and the sea becomes choppy. The must row because the sails are useless. So it is for us also. We would rather let the wind carry us effortlessly to the other shore, but while life has many pleasant moments when we can do this, there are other times when the storms and winds assail us and make our journey difficult.
The disciples are a few miles into their journey when the crisis arises—or is it a blessing? They see Jesus walking on the water. Although He is their blessing, they don’t see it that way. Other gospel passages say that they thought they were seeing a ghost (e.g., Matt 14:26).
Life can be like this. Our blessing, our solution, our healing can be right in front of us, yet we are terrified. I remember one time when my cat was trapped in the attic of the rectory (I have no idea how she got up there). We made an opening in the ceiling to get her out, but she was too terrified to come near enough that I could let her down. It took a long time (and some kitty snacks) to lure her. Although I was her rescuer, she saw me as her tormenter. We are often like this, fearing the very Savior sent to us. We are like children who scream in fright as the doctor approaches with the shot that will cure or prevent sickness. The Lord God once said of us,
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son. But the more I called them, the farther they ran from Me …. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them in My arms, but they never realized that it was I who healed them … [who] bent down to feed them (Hosea 11:1-4).
Yes, we often fear the very source or means of our blessing.
The text says, “… and they were afraid.” They are looking right at Jesus, their savior, yet they do not realize it; they do not recognize Him and are afraid. We, too, are like this. Why do we sometimes fear Jesus, the very source of our salvation? Because He does not always heal us on our terms. He talks of strange remedies like the cross. Strangely, He permits storms in our life and we are both fearful and resentful. However, the very cross and storms we fear are often the means by which He saves us! We need some degree of suffering and storms to keep us humble, to help us to grow in wisdom, to trust Him, and to keep calling on Him. Jesus talks of unsettling things like taking up our cross and following Him, losing our life so as to find it and save it. Jesus Himself won the victory hanging on a cross, not astride a war-horse slaughtering His enemies.
We see Jesus coming toward us in a storm, but rather than simply stopping the storm, He tells us not to be afraid. Why doesn’t He just take away the storm? I don’t know; He simply says, Do not be afraid. It is I. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, In this world you will have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world (Jn 16:33).
Jesus wants His presence to be enough for us. He is with us, so why are we afraid? There are going to be storms; that’s a promise—but He will be with us; that, too, is a promise. There’s a saying that’s particularly: “Don’t tell God how big your storm is. Tell the storm how big your God is.”
The gospel passage we are discussing ends abruptly by saying, They wanted to take him into the boat, but the boat immediately arrived at the shore to which they were heading. Well, what do you know, they finally understand that it is Jesus and they reach the shore!
Note that there is no indication in the passage that the storm ended. The winds may have still been blowing, the seas still rough, but none of that matters once they have reached their destination. One may think that this destination merely refers to the boat docks at Capernaum, but that would be worldly, limited, and erroneous. The shore to which we all sail is none other than the Lord Himself. He is our peace, our goal, our destination.
At times His solutions may involve paradox. The cross is strange medicine to the worldly—but loss can usher in gain, a door may close only that another may open, death can bring life. Do not be afraid; He is near. That is not a ghost approaching you in the storm, it is the Lord! All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28).
This is a vignette, an essay on life. Storms will come, but the solution is near: Do not be afraid. It is I.
Help me, Lord, to know that you are the source of my peace. You are always near; Help me to hear your voice, saying, Do not be afraid. It is I.
There is an old gospel song that has these lyrics:
I love the Lord;
He heard my cry;
And he pitied every groan.
Long as I live;
And troubles rise;
I’ll hasten to his throne.The storm described here is a storm that came to them. There are other storms in our life that can be avoided. Monday’s post will deal with that.
The post Overcoming Fear on a Stormy Night in Galilee appeared first on Community in Mission.
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Site: Zero HedgeFreedom Caucus Posts Rotating Guard To Block Sneaky Leadership MovesTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 13:45
In a sign of growing discord among House Republicans, members of the Freedom Caucus are taking turns monitoring the House floor to prevent the GOP leadership from using sneaky procedural tactics to sap the power of increasingly rebellious conservatives.
Specifically, they're wary that party leaders and their allies will, without prior announcement, bring measures to the floor and seek their passage via "unanimous consent." With that approach, the presiding officer simply states, "If there is no objection, the motion will be adopted." After a pause to allow for objections, the officer declares, "Since there is no objection, the motion is adopted."
The U.S. House is now officially in an alternate universe where the Speaker shares procedural power with Democrats.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) April 19, 2024
It’s unfortunate our Speaker has chosen this route. Just to maintain control of the floor, he will need to rely on dozens of democrats tomorrow. https://t.co/BKpJjABFCYThat's where the Freedom Caucus's Floor Action Response Team (yes, "FART") comes in. With their round-the-legislative-clock presence, they always have a member positioned to object to unanimous consent motions, forcing proposals to go through a more arduous procedure.
House conservatives both inside and outside the Freedom Caucus are increasingly irate over Speaker Mike Johnson's actions, from pushing foreign aid for Ukraine, allowing omnibus spending bills that kick the fiscal can down the road, and personally casting the tie-breaking vote against adding a warrant requirement to the extension Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. All the while, he's pushed border security to the back burner.
The Freedom Caucus and its allies are on particular alert for moves that would reverse concessions made by Johnson's predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, as part of his negotiations with conservatives pursuant to ascending to the speakership. For example, establishment Republicans could try to:
- Remove three conservatives from the powerful Rules Committee, which exerts a variety of controls over the flow of legislation through the House, and is therefore in position to expedite or thwart the progress of a bill. The targeted conservatives are Thomas Massie (KY), Chip Roy (TX) and Ralph Norman (SC), Politico reports.
- Raise the required number of members who must back a motion to oust the speaker before it can be put to a vote. Today, it only requires one. Last month, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene filed such a "motion to vacate the chair." On Tuesday, Massie announced he would co-sponsor the motion, telling Johnson to his face, "You're not going to be speaker much longer."
The three members who refuse to support the Speaker’s agenda should resign from the Rules Committee immediately. If they refuse, they should be removed immediately. They are there on behalf of the conference, not themselves. https://t.co/dV0LUKrpoR
— Mike Lawler (@lawler4ny) April 18, 2024After a tense meeting with Johnson, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who introduced the successful motion to oust McCarthy, issued a public warning against changing the rules. “Talking about changing the threshold to the motion to vacate is likely to induce the motion to vacate,” he told reporters.
Greene issued her own admonition: "Mike Johnson owes our entire conference a meeting. And if he wants to change the motion to vacate he needs to come before the Republican Conference that elected him and tell us of his intentions and tell us what this rule change … is going to be.”
Johnson has been deflecting questions about whether he was contemplating such a move, both with media and with Gaetz and others. When Gaetz was asked on Thursday if he would back a motion to vacate, he hinted that he was moving in that direction, coyly saying, "You know I woke up today and I didn't." At the same time, he said Johnson's ouster would be "sub-optimal," and that he'd prefer to see Johnson come around and "govern in accordance with the commitments we made."
Gaetz marveled at Johnson's rapid conversion to establishment puppet once the gavel was in his hand:
"When we voted for Mike Johnson for speaker, he was fresh off of a vote against Ukraine aid, he was publicly advocating for a warrant requirement on FISA, and the central thesis of his campaign for speaker was single-subject spending bills...[Now] look where we are."
News -- Matt Gaetz tells us he engaged in a 'tense' conversation with Johnson, who didn't rule out changing motion to vacate now in upcoming rule
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) April 18, 2024
(Also got into it with Rep. Van Orden who was daring them to move ahead with vacate vote - which Gaetz doesn't support w Johnson) pic.twitter.com/VyBdpSlN9y -
Site: Zero HedgeWatch: Migrants Complain That New Yorkers Don't Learn African LanguagesTyler Durden Fri, 04/19/2024 - 13:25
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
A hearing held earlier this week in New York by the Council’s immigration and hospital committees saw black migrants who have arrived in the city airing their grievances about public services they have been provided, including food and accommodation, with one woman even complaining that New Yorkers won’t learn Congolese languages.
The hearing drew over a thousand immigrants, mostly from countries in Africa, and many illegally in the country, with some claiming that they had been promised money, green cards or work visas if they attended.
Over 1,000 African migrants swarm NYC’s City Hall over supposed falsely promised green cards https://t.co/EnOA6ETrWJ
— New York Post (@nypost) April 16, 2024While only 250 of them were allowed inside, the rest congregated outside in a park protesting.
Over 1,000 African migrants swarm NYC’s City Hall over supposed falsely promised green cards
— blue pill red pill your choice (@andred928) April 16, 2024
The crowd was mostly made up of new arrivals from Guinea, in West Africa, and were apparently drawn to City Hall by an activist group.— Article pic.twitter.com/h2LwjXyLGQThe hearing was touted in a press release as aimed at African migrants in shelters to “understand how the [Adams] Administration is addressing language access barriers, cultural competency challenges, health needs, and other roadblocks.”
At one point during the hearing, which lasted for over SIX HOURS, the conversation turned to language services offered by the state, with some migrants complaining that Spanish and English speakers are given priority, and African immigrants are unfairly excluded.
It was then pointed out that many immigrants are illiterate and can only speak their native language and further suggested that New Yorkers “refuse to accommodate” by not learning those languages.
There are 3,000 languages spoken across Africa, with many having hundreds of different dialects.
Migrants in NYC complain that people who live there and provide them with free services are not willing to learn hundreds of different African languages. They go on to call NYC "racist" and "shameful." Full report: https://t.co/rIRTpbL3IZ pic.twitter.com/1hFQXga0HK
— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) April 18, 2024At another point in the hearing migrants began complaining about the free food and housing they have been provided, saying it isn’t good enough.
They described the situation as “unacceptable,” and “shameful,” and even calling New York City “Anti-African, racist and Xeonophobic,” charging that the council is “responsible for this pain and suffering” that will affect migrants “for generations to come.”
"This is shameful time for NYC. IT IS ANTI-AFRICAN AND XENOPHOBIC!"
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 17, 2024
Another migrant complains about the free accommodations provided to black illegal immigrants in NYC: pic.twitter.com/OVNlvBCFGfAt another point in the hearing, City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino challenged the complaints, noting “I’ve been listening to everybody speak and making demands on New York City to do MORE MORE MORE.”
“How much more are we supposed to do?” she urged, adding “this system is so overworked and overburdened. We don’t have the resources.”
NY City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino responds to migrants complaining about the free food, housing and other services provided to them. "What motivated you to come here thinking the streets are paved in gold? They are not." Full report here: https://t.co/rIRTpbL3IZ pic.twitter.com/rF0KGMtB7B
— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) April 18, 2024“I have to ask you all, what motivated you to come here thinking the streets are paved in gold? They are not,” Paladino continued adding “people have come across the border illegally,” before other council members interrupted her and demanded she ask a pertinent question.
Here is the full exchange, with Paladino’s comments:
I sat on the New York City Council Committee on Hospitals jointly with the Committee on Immigration to discuss the experience of black migrants in New York City.
— Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (@CMvpaladino) April 17, 2024
It truly pains me to hear the experiences these people are going through, I am extremely sympathetic to their… pic.twitter.com/4MzJIerSCLMayor Eric Adams responded to the protests and complaints, stating that it is the Federal government’s responsibility to “finish the job they started.”
“As we have said repeatedly, the federal government needs to finish the job they started by providing an immediate pathway to work for the tens of thousands of migrants they let into this country,” Adam’s office stated.
It added that “We are exceptionally proud of the dignity and respect we’ve been able to provide these migrants, as well as everyone else in our care, but, make no mistake, New York City should have never been left largely on its own to manage this national humanitarian crisis.”
Eric Adams' office hits back at 1,000 African migrants who descended on City Hall in protest, claiming NYC does enough for them https://t.co/SQi1J5cSJk pic.twitter.com/pqDyvHtTPB
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) April 17, 2024* * *
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: Ron Paul Institute - Featured Articles
Speaker Johnson’s ignominious betrayal of fiscal sanity might well be the death knell for the GOP. He is apparently risking his speakership on behalf of $95 billion of foreign aid boondoggles that Uncle Sam cannot remotely afford, and which actually provide zero benefit to the homeland security of America. And we do mean zero, as in nothing, nichts, nada, nyet and nugatory, as we amplify below.
What Johnson’s impending Waterloo means, therefore, is not merely the prospect of another wild and wooly succession battle, but actually that there is no point at all in the preservation of a Republican majority and GOP House Speaker. After all, the Washington GOP has become so infected with neocon warmongers and careerist pols who spend a lifetime basking in the imperial projects and pretensions of the world’s War Capital that apparently the best the House GOP caucus could do when it ejected the previous careerist deep-stater from the Speaker’s chair was to tap the dim-witted nincompoop who currently occupies it.
The Republican party is thus truly beyond redemption. As JFK once said about the CIA, its needs to be splintered into a thousand pieces and swept into the dustbin of history.
Indeed, when you look at the calamitous fiscal trajectory embedded in the CBO’s latest 30-year fiscal outlook, you truly have to wonder about what miniature minds like Congressman Johnson’s are actually thinking. That is to say, the latest CBO report published in March presumes that there will never be another recession and no inflation flare-up, interest rate spike, global energy dislocation, prolonged Forever War or any other imaginable crisis ever again—just smooth economic sailing for the next 30 years.
And yet, and then. Even by the math of this Rosy Scenario on steroids the public debt will reach $140 trillion at minimum by 2054. In turn, that would cause interest payments on the public debt with rates no higher than those which prevailed between 1986 and1997 to reach $10 trillion per year.
You simply don’t need paragraphs, pages and whole monographs worth of analysis and amplification to understand where that is going. The nation’s fisc is now on the cusp of descending into the maws of a doomsday machine. So how in the world do these elements of Johnson’s offering make even the remotest sense?
Speaker Johnson’s Foreign Aid Boondoggle:
Indo-Pacific aid: $8.1 billion.
Israel: $26.4 billion.
Ukraine: $60.8 billion.
Total: $95.3 billion.Apparently, it’s because Johnson and a good share of the Washington GOP have succumbed wholesale to neocon paranoia, stupidity, lies and hollow excuses for warmongering. For crying out loud, Putin has no interest in molesting the Poles, to say nothing of storming the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. He is certainly no Ghandi, but well more than smart enough to recognize that with Russia’s GDP of $2.2 trillion and war budget of $80 billion there would be no point in going to war with NATO’s $45 trillion of GDP and combined war budgets in excess of $1.2 trillion.
Likewise, China’s $50 trillion debt-ridden Ponzi would collapse in months if its $3.5 trillion flow of export earnings were disrupted after attempting to land its single modern aircraft carrier on the California coast. And Iran has no nukes, no intercontinental range missiles and a GDP equal to 130 hours of US annual output.
So, some Axis of evil!
Yet that’s exactly what the Speaker said this morning after going to too many Deep State briefings and apparently having his own johnson yanked once too often. The Swamp creatures surely see the lad’s naivete and blithering ignorance as a gift that doesn’t stop giving. That is to say, a “mark” who knows nothing at all about the world from sources not stamped, “Top Secret (lies)”.
Speaker Mike Johnson: “We’re going to stand for freedom and make sure that Putin doesn’t march through Europe… we’re the greatest Nation on the planet, and we have to act like it”, This is a critical time right now, a critical time on the world stage. I can make a selfish decision and do something that’s different but I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing. “I think providing lethal aid to Ukraine right now is critically important. I really do. I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten.
I believe Xi, Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil. I think they’re in coordination on it. “So I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. I think he might go to the Balkans next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland or one of our NATO allies.
To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys. My son is going to begin in the Naval Academy this fall. This is a live-fire exercise for me as it is so many American families. This is not a game, this is not a joke.Needless to say, our dufus Speaker doesn’t know the “Baltics” from the “Balkans” where Serbia and other Russian friendlies are definitely not quaking in their boots about Putin. In point of fact, however, it is not hard to see that the civil war and territorial dispute between Kiev and Moscow over the Donbas and rim of the Black Sea from Mariupol to Odessa is a one-off of Russian and regional history and Washington’s mindless push of NATO eastward to Russia’s very doorstep.
The light-yellow area of this 1897 map gave an unmistakable message: To wit, in the late Russian Empire there was no doubt as to the paternity of the Donbas and the lands adjacent to the Azov Sea and the Black Sea. Already then, they were part of the 125 years-old New Russia, which had been assembled by purchase and conquest during the reign of Catherine the Great.
Indeed, it was only in 1922 that the yellow area—essentially demarcating the four provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which recently voted to rejoin Russia—was appended to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by the great humanitarian and map-maker, V. Lenin.And yet Speaker Johnson now wants to crash the Republican Party on enforcing a map drawn by one of history’s bloodiest monsters. It’s come down to that.
That is to say, the war in Ukraine would stop tomorrow without another dime of aid from the US taxpayers if Washington agreed to partition the wholly artificial polity assembled by Lenin, Stalin (parts of Poland) and Khruschev (Crimea). In every presidential election in “Ukraine” since 1991 the electorate has essentially voted for separation via 80/20 pluralities in Novorossiya and Crimea for the pro-Russian candidate and 80/20 pluralities in the center and west for the Ukrainian nationalist.
That is, America’s national security would be undermined not one bit by a new map showing two countries and no war: That is, Novorossiya (New Russia) in the east and south, on the one hand, and the parts and pieces of Poland, Galicia-Austria and the Cossack Hetmanates in the center and west, on the other. Agree to keep NATO out of this rump state of Ukraine and it’s all over except the shouting.
Nevertheless, the insanity of the Russophobia which keeps knuckleheads like Johnson from having an even rudimentary grasp of the matter reveals an even larger issue. Namely, it explains why Washington’s hegemonic foreign policy is a dysfunctional disaster, which unceasingly spawns madness like today’s $95 billion foreign aid boondoggle.
To wit, it encourages the Empire’s client and allied states to take bellicose positions vis a vis Washington designated rivals and enemies because it brings aid to their treasuries, weapons to their militaries and prestige and self-importance to their politicians and diplomats.
Thus, would Poland’s rightwing politicians always be barking at Russia, Russia, Russia in the absence of its NATO membership and US military and diplomatic shield? We sincerely doubt they would be poking the bear, but instead would be seeking friendly accommodation with a natural trading partner.
Likewise with Germany. The latter was apparently so petrified by a rescendant Russia that as recently as 2019 it spent the grand sum of just $50 billion and 1.3% of GDP on defense, while quite logically fueling its booming industrial and export economy with cheap Russian gas.
What has changed since then is not remotely Germany’s assessment of the Russian threat. What changed is client state politics. The Green Party entered the government coalition with the Social Democrats by beating the war-drums because they saw attacking Russia and Russian gas as a way to promote their hideous crusade against fossil fuel. And they did so with impunity, knowing that Washington’s military shield had their backs.
As to Taiwan’s client state politics, it’s not even a close call. Announce that Washington’s archaic “strategic ambiguity” policy– left over from the time of two departed demons, Mao Zedong and Chaing Kai Chek—has now also departed into the “inoperative” realm of Nixon-speak and you wouldn’t need any “Indo-Pacific” aid boondoggles, either.
To the contrary, Taiwan’s leaders would be scampering to Beijing for discussions of a “Hong Kong” transition in short order. America’s homeland security, of course, would be no worse for the wear except for saving the cost of 100,000 servicemen in the Far East and the multi-trillion cost over time of patrolling the Pacific for the benefit of exactly what?
Then, of course, we get to the $26.4 billion for Israel. That’s about 4.5% of its GDP and should come out of its own war taxes, not Uncle Sam’s credit card. Moreover, it’s proof positive of the baleful impact of the Empire’s military shield and checkbook on client state politics. As we recently showed, Israel’s defense spending has been steadily plunging to less than 5% of GDP, even as its voters have repeatedly elected bellicose governments consisting of rightwing warmongers and fanatical religious factions.
These Netanyahu governments have consistently undermined a two-state solution to the Palestine problem, even going so far as to bless the transfer of billions of cash in suitcases to Hamas in order to undermine the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority. Likewise, Netanyahu has wantonly demonized Iran mainly for the purpose of domestic politics and as a means to assemble 60+ vote coalitions in the Knesset.
Absent the US Navy and Air Force shield in the region, however, no Israeli government would have ever conducted unending assassination raids on that country or sabotaged on Capitol Hill Washington’s attempts at constructive arrangements with Iran like Obama’s nuke deal.
Indeed, absent Uncle Sam’s $4 billion annual gift and even more valuable regional military shield, Netanyahu and his extremist coalitions would have needed to raise taxes massively in Israel in order to fund their Garrison State war policies. We doubt the Israeli electorate would have tolerated the true cost of Netanyahu’s madness for very long.
At the end of the day, what Washington now needs is a break-up of the GOP and the formation of a Peace and Freedom party from the remnants of the conservative GOP and the dovish left. Both have been ejected from the UniParty by today’s Republican and Democrat denizens of the world’s War Capital.
So perhaps Johnson’s hari-kari act will bear some fruit, after all. Not as he intended, but in the good way that American democracy desperately needs at this fraught juncture.
Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
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Site: AntiWar.com
Speaker Johnson’s ignominious betrayal of fiscal sanity might well be the death knell for the GOP. He is apparently risking his speakership on behalf of $95 billion of foreign aid boondoggles that Uncle Sam cannot remotely afford, and which actually provide zero benefit to the homeland security of America. And we do mean zero, as … Continue reading "Speaker Johnson’s Ignominious Betrayal of Americans on Behalf of the War Party"
The post Speaker Johnson’s Ignominious Betrayal of Americans on Behalf of the War Party appeared first on Antiwar.com.
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Site: AsiaNews.itAccording to a media investigation, the number of operations carried out abroad by the Research & Analysis Wing has increased since 2020. The agency reports directly to the Prime Minister's Office. Islamabad has been reluctant to talk about it because the people targeted are terrorists or militants of groups Pakistan has always denied hosting.
Emily Schmeidler
Emily Schmeidler
Emily Schmeidler
(Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock)
The NSA's Utah data collection center has Salt Lake City in the background, in Bluffdale, Utah, on March 17, 2017. The $1.5 billion data center is thought to be the worlds largest
A man sits in the shade of his umbrella while dogs play in the park under high tension power lines in Redondo Beach, Calif., on Aug. 16, 2020. California has ordered rolling power outages as a heat wave strains its electrical system. (Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images)
Source: Bloomberg
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