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  1. Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
    0 sec ago
    S 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
  2. Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
    0 sec ago
    Lex 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
  3. Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
    0 sec ago
    We 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
  4. Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
    0 sec ago
    The 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
  5. Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
    0 sec ago
    In 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
  6. Site: Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
    0 sec ago
    Since 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
  7. Site: Henrymakow.com
    0 sec ago
    gates-coupon.jpeg
    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 Butler


    Updated from May 4, 2022 and Oct. 6 2023
    by Henry Makow PhD

     
    Few 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.

    henry-david-thoreau-wealth.jpg


    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.

    PERSONAL

    I 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?

  8. Site: Steyn Online
    0 sec ago
    The Gospel according to Mel...
  9. Site: Taylor Marshall
    3 hours 18 min ago
    Author: Daniel K

    Taylor and His Children Talk Holy Week and Easter

    Get the 2024 Traditional Catholic Wall Calendar here: https://store.taylormarshall.com/prod…

    Get Dr. Taylor Marshall’s new book on St Nicholas here: https://amzn.to/4ahcxaF

    Watch this new podcast episode by clicking here:

    If the audio player does not show up in your email or browser, please click here to listen.

    The post 1072: Taylor and His Daughters Talk Holy Week and Easter [Podcast] appeared first on Taylor Marshall.

  10. Site: The Catholic Thing
    4 hours 4 min ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    I see his blood upon the rose
    And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
    His body gleams amid eternal snows,
    His tears fall from the skies.

    I see his face in every flower;
    The thunder and the singing of the birds
    Are but his voice – and carven by his power
    Rocks are his written words.

    All pathways by his feet are worn,
    His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
    His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
    His cross is every tree.

    The post I See His Blood Upon the Rose appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  11. Site: The Catholic Thing
    4 hours 5 min ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    Austria, France, and Italy have all issued warnings of potential terrorist threats to Europe by ISIS following the group’s Moscow concert hall attack that killed 139 people. The French government increased the country’s security alert to its highest level, which means more soldiers will be put on standby and ready to patrol sensitive sites, including schools. Says Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, “During the Easter holidays you will need to be very careful. We will always do the utmost to ensure the safety of citizens and tourists.”
     

    The post European governments issue Easter terror warnings appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  12. Site: The Catholic Thing
    4 hours 5 min ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    Arguably, the Enlightenment gave precedence to the abstract, and withdrew it from the concrete. That vicious assault on the human soul, known as “liberal education,” is the dry wharks of that heritage. God is effaced, we can no longer be in His image. Our race is reduced to animals — to roadkill in the passage of time.
     

     

     

    The post Concrete appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  13. Site: The Catholic Thing
    4 hours 5 min ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    On Tuesday, Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who has lent his name in the past to several products, added a new item to the list: a $60 Bible. Mr. Trump posted a video on his social media platform in which he encouraged his supporters to buy the “God Bless the USA Bible,” named after the ballad by the country singer Lee Greenwood, which Mr. Trump plays as he takes the stage at his rallies.

     

     

    The post Donald Trump: Bible salesman appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  14. Site: The Catholic Thing
    4 hours 5 min ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    Easter faith and the optic on reality it creates suggests that the burden of proof lies with those who imagine that everything from the Eagle Nebula to the mysterious workings of human cognition and human altruism is just accidental.
     

     

    The post Easter, creation, and holiness appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  15. Site: The Catholic Thing
    4 hours 7 min ago
    Author: Michael Pakaluk

    St. Joseph at the Foot of the Cross

    Michael Pakaluk

    In graveyards you have seen ensembles of statues representing the Crucifixion, with Mary standing at the foot of the Cross on one side, and St. John on the other. And many paintings represent the same scene. It seems intended by the Spirit that we contemplate the Crucifixion in this way.

    Now, we know that Mary in that scene is undergoing a kind of passive or vicarious crucifixion, in which we too are invited to share. She is as if God’s instrument for viewing the Crucifixion.

    We know, too, that St. John represents the keenness and quickness of holy purity in attaining to the Lord, his innocence as if a mirror of the innocence of the Lamb. St. John also stands for you and me, because when Our Lord gave his mother to St. John (“Woman, behold your son,” John 19:26), we know that Jesus was giving her not simply to him but also to all of us.

    The Lamentation of Christ by Simon Marmion, ca. 1473 [The MET, New York]

    Therefore, although everyone had fled – and this is how Divine Providence works – Our Lord in His deepest suffering was not without succor, not without His friends. We abandoned Him: we might justly have been, from that time forth, excluded. But in His mercy, He so arranges the scene of His suffering and death that we are there nonetheless – in such a way that it remains in our power, with the greatest naturalness, to return there, and be there, to contemplate his Passion, simply whenever we wish. We now enjoy the great gift: of belonging there.

    But if Mary is there with Him at the foot of the Cross, and really, the whole Church in her person and in the person of St. John, then, is St. Joseph not also there? I mean, not merely as one of us, but rather as the one whom “God made as if the father of the King and steward of the whole household.”

    It seems incredible that he would not be there. Two figures are traditionally placed at the foot of the Cross in the ensemble: one a man and the other a woman. One might squint one’s eyes and imagine, vaguely and generally, that a husband and wife were looking on and encouraging their son, as if in a contest. Yet the father is missing: he has passed. Is that man there, who indeed is a “son,” also some kind of stand-in for him?

    Do not get me wrong: I do not think that St. Joseph was at that time in Heaven. Therefore, he could not have been at the foot of the Cross in the way a saint can be present to us in a particular place, by way of apparition or even by distinct communication.

    I agree, rather, with what seems to be the sententia communis among saints and doctors: They held that, although St. Joseph, like Mary, is now body and soul in Heaven, nevertheless, he did not attain this honor through as great a privilege as Mary’s. His body was not assumed into Heaven at the point of his passing. Nor did he attain to Heaven, like Enoch or Elijah, prior to the saving Passion, by the retrospective application of the merit of that great act of salvation.

    Rather, I believe (as is the common opinion) that St. Joseph was one of those holy men who rose from their graves after the Passion. (Matthew 23:52) His body and soul went to Heaven, but only after the Passion.

    That he was assumed afterwards into Heaven would explain why there is no grave nor any relics of St. Joseph, and not even any legends of relics. He was in “the Hades of the righteous,” a kind of limbo, awaiting liberation at the time of the Passion.  (Indeed, we can personalize Our Lord’s “descent into Hell” and regard it as including the intimate goal of rescuing his foster father.)

    St. Joseph, then, could not have been present at the foot of the Cross in the manner of a saint. But there is something else – call it “intentional presence.” Readers who have lost a child or a spouse will know exactly what I am talking about. What is left is like a hole in the heart, which is actually never filled, and which we never want to be filled. (The absence is not incompatible, indeed, with happiness, but in the midst of happiness it remains as a testament to love – like the wounds of a martyr.)

    People out of sentimentalism confuse “intentional presence” with supernatural life in Heaven. They feel that, if they still dwell on a deceased loved one, then that loved one must be in Heaven and present to them in the manner of a saint. Mustn’t their love have a living object, to whom they are as present, as this person is to them?

    But this is a false inference. Only God’s love makes it so that a person enjoys beatitude. (Matthew 22:32) The presence of a loved one to living persons, in intention, is rather meant to lead them, in faith, to pray for that person’s soul.

    My point is that the many, immediate “canonizations” we see of loved ones at funerals – or the claims of victorious athletes that “Dad was watching and cheering me on” – these, although not well-grounded, are testimonies to the reality and power of what I am calling the “intentional presence” of a deceased loved one.

    But we can set it down, as a rule of Christian inference, that if something belongs to human nature, then it belongs more intensely and to a higher degree to Mary and to Our Lord in His human nature.  The bond that Mary had to Joseph was greater, not less, than what a devoted Christian wife has to her husband.  The human bond that Jesus had to Joseph was greater, not less, than what any devoted son has to a beloved father.  Joseph’s intentional presence to them, the hole left in their hearts, would have been far greater than what we experience.

    He had to have been there, then, one might say, in his absence not in his presence.  He was there because they loved him and never ceased missing him. And just as mothers see one brother in another, or a son in a father, or a father in a son, when Jesus gave St. John to Mary, he invited her also to see St. Joseph in him, standing beside her, at the foot of the Cross.  And if we go to Joseph, we can see him there too.

     

    Good Friday Stigmata

    Fr. Raymond J. de Souza

    Good Friday in St. Peter’s Basilica always has a Franciscan dimension.

    The homily is not given by the Holy Father, but by the preacher to the papal household, by custom the only one permitted to preach to the pope. The office dates to the Counter Reformation (1555), when it was thought necessary to have someone to inspire (harangue?) the Roman Curia to personal and ecclesial reform. Since 1753, the office has been entrusted exclusively to Capuchin friars.

    The current papal preacher, Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap, will deliver his 45th Good Friday sermon this year. His first was in 1980, upon his appointment by St. John Paul II. Reappointed by both Benedict XVI and Francis, he will turn 90 this year. In 2020, Francis made him a Cardinal (non-voting and not a bishop) in honor of his exemplary service. A collection of his Good Friday sermons was issued recently by Word on Fire, The Power of the Cross: Good Friday Sermons from the Papal Preacher.

    The Franciscans are marking a series of octocentenaries in these years: 800 years since the approval of the Rule (1223), the first nativity scene at Greccio (1223), the stigmata of St. Francis (1224), and the death of il Poverello (1226). The stigmata are a fitting subject for meditation on Good Friday. St. Francis received the stigmata near the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14th), which is to Good Friday what Corpus Christi is to Holy Thursday. From now until then, more attention will be paid to the significance of the stigmata.

    St. Francis is held to be the first to receive the stigmata, physical wounds – painful and sometimes bleeding – of the Crucifixion of Jesus. There have been dozens of stigmatists since, the large majority of them female mystics. The two most famous are Francis and Padre Pio.

    Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata by Giotto, c.1297-1299 [Louvre, Paris]

    The word comes from St. Paul, “I bear on my body the marks (stigmata) of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17). Other translations use “brand marks,” suggestive of a cattle brand. The sacred wounds of Christ are our Christian brand.

    Over the centuries there has been speculation about whether Paul the Apostle had the stigmata. Paul writes elsewhere of filling up “in my flesh” (Colossians 1:24) sufferings, but traditionally neither verse has been interpreted to mean the physical stigmata.

    The Collect from the Franciscan Mass for the Feast of the Stigmata (September 17th) explains the spiritual meaning of the painful gift given to St. Francis:

    Lord Jesus Christ, who reproduced in the flesh of the most blessed Francis, the sacred marks of your own sufferings, so that in a world grown cold our hearts might be filled with burning love of you, graciously enable us by his merits and prayers to bear the cross without faltering and to bring forth worthy fruits of penitence.

    Why did Providence appoint St. Francis to receive the stigmata first? Perhaps it was his literalism; he began by repairing the fabric of the church of San Damiano when he heard the Lord speak to him: “Repair my church.” It would seem right that Francis would then imitate Christ Crucified in a physical way. Perhaps the reference to the “fruits of penitence” captures the reason, for Francis undertook formidable penances.

    Cardinal Cantalamessa explained the importance of penance to Francis in his 1983 Good Friday sermon. How long has Cantalamessa been preaching? That year he referred to the 800th anniversary of Francis’ birth. In two years, will be the 800th of his death!

    “On November 11, 1215, Pope Innocent III opened the Fourth Lateran Council,” preached Cantalamessa. “The pope insisted above all on the moral reform of the Church, and especially the reform of the clergy, a theme close to his heart. In fact, Innocent, as old as he was, said that he wanted to go throughout the entire Church – like the man clothed in linen with a writing case at his side of whom Ezekiel spoke – to mark the penitential Tau on the foreheads of those who, like him, sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in the Church and in the world.”

    The prophet Ezekiel spoke of going “throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.” (Ezekiel 9:4) Innocent spoke of this “mark” as a “Tau,” the final letter of the Hebrew alphabet written in Greek (Τ), to look like a Cross.

    Cantalamessa notes the tradition that Francis of Assisi himself was in the Lateran Basilica that day, listening to Innocent.

    “Whether the tradition is historical or not, it is certain that Francis knew the pope’s ardent desire and made it his own,” Cantalamessa continues. “From that day on, his preaching about penance and conversion intensified. He began to mark the sign of the Tau on the foreheads of those who were sincerely converted to Christ. The Tau, the prophetic sign of Christs cross, became Francis’s seal with which he signed his letters and marked the doors of his friars’ cells.”

    The biographical picture of Cardinal Cantalamessa on his website shows him in a chasuble marked by the Tau.

    So devoted was Francis to the sign of the Cross (Tau), that St. Bonaventure would write, “He was given the mission from heaven to call men to sign and groan and shave their heads and put on sackcloth and ashes and imprint the sign of the Tau, the penitential cross, on the foreheads of all those that sigh and groan.” (Legenda Maior, 2)

    The Sign of the Cross – the sign of Good Friday – is the most Catholic of all gestures. We trace the shape of the Latin “t” rather than the Tau, but the meaning is the same. And if the Christian is to be a sign of the Cross, does not Francis, that most literal-minded of saints, lead the way? He did not trace the sign of the Cross upon himself, but rather God traced the actual wounds of the Cross upon his flesh.

    The Christian vocation to be “another Christ” was lived to such an extent by Francis that the very term alter Christus was applied to him early on. The stigmata were a physical manifestation of a spiritual reality witnessed by many.

    We live in an age of “brands” for products, celebrities, politicians. There are two great brands in the world – the bitten Apple and the Cross, the Fall and the Redemption. Christians put the latter in their churches, offices, schools, homes. Francis had it inscribed in his body.

    We adore Thee O Christ and we praise Thee;
    Because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.

    You may also enjoy:

    St. Joseph: Food for Thought Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas

    The Empty Tomb or No Tomb? John M. Grondelski

     

    The post St. Joseph, St. Francis, and the Cross appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  16. Site: AntiWar.com
    4 hours 8 min ago
    Author: Jonathan Cook

    The interminable and abhorrent saga of Julian Assange’s incarceration for the crime of journalism continues. And once again, the headline news is a lie, one designed both to buy our passivity and to buy more time for the British and US establishments to keep the Wikileaks founder permanently disappeared from view. The Guardian – which … Continue reading "Assange’s ‘Reprieve’ Is Another Lie, Hiding the Real Goal of Keeping Him Endlessly Locked Up"

    The post Assange’s ‘Reprieve’ Is Another Lie, Hiding the Real Goal of Keeping Him Endlessly Locked Up appeared first on Antiwar.com.

  17. Site: AntiWar.com
    4 hours 8 min ago
    Author: Julia Gledhill

    It’s true that no nuclear weapon has been used (except in tests) since the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 to end World War II. And yes, we now know that, were there to be a nuclear confrontation on this planet (think: the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 without the … Continue reading "Failure as the Pentagon’s Ultimate Success Story"

    The post Failure as the Pentagon’s Ultimate Success Story appeared first on Antiwar.com.

  18. Site: AntiWar.com
    4 hours 8 min ago
    Author: Sheldon Richman

    This is America, last I checked. Surely, the government would not force the sale of a social-media company or ban its app from the Google and Apple stores. Would it? Well, yes, it would,  could (perhaps), and might. A bill in Congress, backed by the government’s nominal chief executive, could become law. The House of … Continue reading "Leave TikTok Alone"

    The post Leave TikTok Alone appeared first on Antiwar.com.

  19. Site: Real Jew News
    4 hours 41 min ago
    Author: Brother Nathanael

    Saving Time With Brother Nathanael
    March 28 2024

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  20. Site: Novus Motus Liturgicus
    5 hours 38 min ago
    Compared to other ancient liturgies, the Roman Rite is unusual in treating the Mass of Maundy Thursday as a feast of the Lord, vesting the clergy in white, and saying the Gloria in excelsis and the Creed. It is far more unusual in not reading one of the Synoptic accounts of the Lord’s Supper as the Gospel, but rather John 13, 1-15, the washing of the disciples’ feet. In the Ambrosian Rite, for Gregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0
  21. Site: Novus Ordo Watch
    6 hours 45 min ago
    Author: admin

    False pope again preaches mercy without repentance…

    Francis to Women Prisoners: Christ Forgave Judas!

    While professional Novus Ordo apologists like Jimmy Akin and Steve Kellmeyer try to persuade people that one can ‘hope’ for Judas Iscariot’s salvation, the Argentinian apostate Jorge Bergoglio — otherwise known as ‘Pope Francis’ — has already moved beyond that idea and has now indicated that Judas was in fact forgiven by Jesus Christ.

    He made this claim during a mini homily he gave during the ‘Mass of the Lord’s Supper’ (video here) at the Women’s Prison in Rebibbia, Italy. As the Vatican has not yet released an official English translation, we will use DeepL to translate directly from the Italian:

    At this moment of the supper, two episodes attract our attention.

    READ MORE
  22. Site: Novus Ordo Wire – Novus Ordo Watch
    6 hours 45 min ago
    Author: admin

    False pope again preaches mercy without repentance…

    Francis to Women Prisoners: Christ Forgave Judas!

    While professional Novus Ordo apologists like Jimmy Akin and Steve Kellmeyer try to persuade people that one can ‘hope’ for Judas Iscariot’s salvation, the Argentinian apostate Jorge Bergoglio — otherwise known as ‘Pope Francis’ — has already moved beyond that idea and has now indicated that Judas was in fact forgiven by Jesus Christ.

    He made this claim during a mini homily he gave during the ‘Mass of the Lord’s Supper’ (video here) at the Women’s Prison in Rebibbia, Italy. As the Vatican has not yet released an official English translation, we will use DeepL to translate directly from the Italian:

    At this moment of the supper, two episodes attract our attention.

    READ MORE
  23. Site: Public Discourse
    8 hours 8 min ago
    Author: R.J. Snell

    Giving in to anger is less shameful than giving in to appetites, Aristotle suggests, in part because “anger seems to listen to argument” but “to mishear it, as do hasty servants who run out before they have heard the whole of what one says, and then muddle the order.” Anger, it turns out, can be the most nearly rational of the passions, because we ought to have a spirited response in the face of injustice, wrongdoing, or unfair insult. Reason “informs us that we have been insulted or slighted” and it is often good and right to resist or object, but anger, “reasoning as it were,” “boils up” by “reason of the warmth and hastiness of its nature,” and so mishears what reason proposes. Anger is closer to reason than are the appetites but misapprehends what reason and virtue command. 

    As we know all too well, the mood and tone of our society is angry, unreasonably angry, boiling over in anger. 

    Whatever the reasons, our condition is well described by the following set of terms: anxiety, anger, sadness, spite, rage, and contempt, among others, all of which seem true of vast segments of American society without respect for political views or demographics. The kids aren’t well—they’re really not doing well—but neither are many of the adults, who also are really not doing well. Blame it on lockdowns, blame it on the media, on the smartphone, social media, loneliness, family breakdown, student loans—blame it on all of the above and more. People seem brittle, humorless, on a hair-trigger, and ready to blame, deride, criticize, and condemn. (I tend to place much of this on a loss of hope and its replacement with politics.) Like many, I’ve come to dread the new norm of social gatherings and idle party conversation, namely, reciting a litany of complaints against political opponents, religious leaders, and media figures, to name just a few. Our “manners,” such as they are, wink and approvingly nod at stridency, anger, and contempt. 

    I share the sense that much is wrong, that no one is in charge, that things are falling apart, that the adults are not in charge, that the elites are incompetent and self-serving, that religion is not functioning well, and more. The temptation to frustration, despair, exasperation, and an anger I’d like to describe as “righteous” is not unknown to me. 

    Still, during the season when Christians celebrate Easter, it’s worth reflecting on what anger, contempt, and sadness do to us, and finding another, better way, a way that recognizes reality in all its grim aspects, eschewing pollyannish unseriousness while refusing to lose itself in rage. Sorrow is a better way. 

    Contempt is a vile thing, suggesting that others have not only acted badly but are worthless in themselves, outside the community of value, not deserving of respect, no longer bearers of the image of God. Contempt views the other as contemptible, of course, but it does so only at cost to ourselves, rendering us contemptuous. We judge the other against the standard of ourselves, what we would do, who we are, the high opinion we have of ourselves, and find the other person wanting, beneath us, unequal. It is, I think, impossible to find the other contemptible without being guilty of too high a view of our own dignity, wisdom, and worth. There too, but for the grace of God, go I—isn’t that the old saying?—and a wise saying at that.  

    Despair has abandoned hope, rejecting not only the possibility of human action and intelligence but also the reality and possibility of grace, conversion, and divine action. In despair we judge providence as inferior and incompetent, and we set ourselves and our judgments as lord and master. 

    Spite reveals not only dislike and disgust but ill will, hostility, a malignant desire to wound and injure. Spite cannot coexist with charity, civility, or decency. It wishes harm, and it is wrong always and everywhere to intend harm to another. 

    Sadness means more than a temporary emotion but a disposition or state of character, thus a vice. In its most virulent form, sadness was understood as a capital sin, an unwillingness to accept and rejoice in divine things because one was sad at the cost of loss of self, or the weight of conversion, or the offering of divine friendship. Sadness estranges us from God and from others; it’s not worth the effort, and it would be far better to simply be satisfied with ourselves and our lot, as when the rich young ruler departs sadly at the teachings of Jesus (Mt. 10:22) or when Cain is “downcast” when his offering is found wanting (Gen. 4:5). In a more subtle form, sadness gives in to frustration, refuses to rejoice in the many favors and good things we enjoy, and dwells instead on what is absent, missing, muddled, or imperfect. Sadness gives up its hope in God, its anticipation that providence can bring good out of evil, and renders us joyless, morose, and hard of heart. Our sadness cannot but infect others, robbing them of their own sense of willingness and the necessity of trying yet again; it thus results in vice in both ourselves and our neighbors.  

    Sorrow, properly understood, prompts us to self-examination, to patience with others, and to good action.

     

    Sorrow, properly understood, prompts us to self-examination, to patience with others, and to good action. No accident that mourning is a beatitude and not a vice (Lk. 6:21). Some authors describe the sorrow of love in a helpful way. When I offend a stranger on the interstate my contrition is shallow, brief, and not a motive force to change myself; if, however, I were to offend those I most love my contrition is intense, long-lasting, and prompts examination, new effort, and moral conversion. I must do better; I must be better. The more I love the other, the greater the sorrow I have at wronging them, and the more I am moved to action. In an analogous way, when it is not I but the one I love who does wrong—a beloved friend, a child, a spouse—my sorrow is greater but my condemnation is less. I do not ignore or overlook the wrong, but it grieves me for them since I know they too suffer and are wounded by their act. This is, I think, following Alice von Hildebrand, not really them, or not them as they could be if they became what they could and should be. My honest recognition of the wrong done is heightened, not diminished, as, too, my patience, empathy, and willingness to join with them as they repent and develop. The stranger who wrongs me on the interstate? I merely hope they recede in my mirror. But my sorrow at the wrongs done by my friend prompts me to pray, to call, to intervene, to join them in their efforts. 

    Easter is not a time of sorrow but of joy. Good Friday, however, is a day of sorrow. Whether you keep Good Friday or not, whether this religious observance is your own or not, I suggest the practice of sorrow is redemptive. In sorrow we become more attuned to the incompetence, stupidity, injustice, and evil in our world—honestly, forthrightly, unsparingly—but we do not lose ourselves in malice, anger, rage, or gossip. In sorrow we become more attuned to the humanity of the person who is incompetent, stupid, unjust, or evil, and to their own fragility, dependence, and status as free and responsible. Perhaps they need correction, or instruction, or punishment, but they remain always a person, and we correct, instruct, or punish because they are persons, not despite or in spite of their status. In sorrow we are prompted to recognize our own shortcomings, ignorance, stupidity, and sin, and to repent, convert, repay, make amends, change our lives. In sorrow we are moved to grieve the acts of others and to make reparations on their behalf, to assist those they have harmed, to join in the suffering of those who have been wronged and those who have wronged—but to act rather than to chatter, complain, or self-indulgently rage from our position of vanity and self-satisfied anger.  

    It’s a good day for sorrow, a habit sustaining our decency, humanity, patience, and courage for all the other days yet to come. All days bring their challenges, and there is much in our day to bemoan and condemn. Fair enough, but to have the courage and steadfastness needed to continue on, day in and day out, our sorrow serves us well.  

    Far better, at least, than the alternatives, which are ruinous.  

    Image by JavierArtPhotography licensed via Adobe Stock.

  24. Site: Bonfire of the Vanities - Fr. Martin Fox
    8 hours 8 min ago

     A few years ago, I made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land,

    And I walked the real, original Way of the Cross 

    through the streets of Jerusalem.

    I was able to be at the place of the Last Supper, 

    and the Garden of Gethsemane and Golgotha, and the empty tomb.


    I was with other priests, and we had Mass – at Calvary! Right there!

    We had Mass at the empty tomb: 

    the very stone on which Jesus lay was our altar.


    Now, because it is God’s work and not merely a human work,

    the Mass is the Mass is the Mass, wherever and whenever.

    Every Mass brings us to Calvary – every single one.


    Nevertheless, when you and I come to this evening, 

    if we realize what we’re doing, there is something electric about it.


    All of Lent has been a journey to this moment. 

    We have prayed, fasted and shared our blessings with others, 

    so that we, like the Apostles, 

    can prepare to celebrate the Passover with the Lord.


    The Passover, remember, was first celebrated in Egypt.

    God’s People were slaves; and on the night of the Passover, 

    God executed judgment against Egypt, and Israel left in haste.


    To understand fully the Sacrifice of the Mass, 

    it helps to recall what happens when God brings his People to Mt. Sinai.


    There, God not only gives Moses the Ten Commandments, 

    He also explains the details of how they are to worship:  

    how the place of worship is to be arranged, 

    how the altar is to be constructed, and the sacrifices offered.

    After all this, Moses leads the elders of Israel up Sinai, 

    to ratify the covenant. And the Scripture says, 

    “They saw God, and they ate and drank” the sacrifice.

    Think about that in relation to the Last Supper – and the Mass:

    “They saw God and they ate and drank.”


    Did you ever wonder why the altar is traditionally elevated?

    As at Sinai, we go up to meet God.


    In a few minutes, I will go up to this altar, and on your behalf,

    I will address the God of Sinai, our Father.

    When we sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” 

    we are joining the heavenly hosts adoring Almighty God!

    The same angels who gazed on Calvary with amazement.


    When some of us were kids, there was a TV show, 

    “You are there,” and it took you back to some moment in the past.

    But this is way beyond any TV show.

    Brothers and sisters, we are there!

    At Calvary, at the Tomb, and also, in heaven – all at once.


    The priest then says, “Graciously accept this oblation” –

     what is an oblation? 


    An oblation is an offering of food and wine, from the people to God.

    It stands for you. You, and your prayers, works, joys and sufferings, 

    go to the altar in that bread and wine.


    The priest extends his hands like this. 

    That is meant to suggest a dove – that is, the Holy Spirit.

    In the Old Testament, God’s Fire would come down upon the sacrifice. 

    On the Day of Pentecost, God’s Fire came down upon the Church.


    In the Mass, it is the Holy Spirit that makes our offerings

    “become for us the Body and Blood of [the] beloved Son, Jesus Christ.”


    If you wonder why the priest sometimes faces the same way as the people; or, otherwise, seems to be focused upward, or toward the altar, it is because these words, at this point, are addressed to the Father.


    On Thursday evening, that first Mass begins with the Apostles.

    The next day, on the Cross, Jesus the true Priest

    offers his Body and Blood to the Father. 

    His Body is broken; his blood is poured out.


    At the Last Supper, Jesus’ disciples would not have been surprised 

    had the Lord pointed to the body of the lamb – on the table – 

    to talk about covenant and sacrifice.


    But what the Lord did was take in hand, not the flesh of the lamb,

    But rather, the bread and the wine, and said:

    This is my Body, given for you, this is my Blood, 

    of the new and eternal covenant – eat and drink!

    This was new. No one had ever done that before.


    Then on Calvary, on the Cross, he completes the Passover.

    He takes a last sip of wine, offered on a sponge and says, “

    It is finished.”


    And after the Resurrection, he showed himself alive,

    that’s when the Apostles understood; and our Holy Mass is the result.

    We do this sacrifice, as he commanded, in memory of Him.


    Notice the priest lifts up the Body, and then the Blood.

    While this allows you to adore the Lord, that is not the primary reason.

    Rather, the Body and Blood are lifted up to the Father.

    This is a Sacrifice: Christ offered himself to the Father.

    The priest offers Christ – and us, with Him – to the Father.


    The separation of body and blood recalls his death.

    When the priest later puts a part of the Sacred Host into the chalice,

    That signifies Christ’s Body and Blood being “together” – 

    pointing to his Resurrection.


    There’s one more detail worth reflecting on.

    When this happens, the priest sings, “Mystery of Faith.”

    The origin of this part of the prayer is unclear, but – 

    It’s kind of like a big, flashing sign that says,

    “This, this – right here, this! This is the moment!

    This is the mystery; this is pulsing heart of the whole thing!”


    After this the priest begs the Father 

    to accept this “pure victim, this holy victim.”

    Of course the Father will accept this Sacrifice; 

    and yet this summarizes the whole drama of salvation.


    Without Jesus, none of us can be saved. 

    Everything in the Old Testament led to this.

    This moment – I mean, tonight; and I mean, the Mass; 

    and, the moment when Jesus once offered himself;

    all of that is made present for us here at this Mass –


    This moment is the pivot point of all history.

    There are so many people who long to be here, but cannot.

    How sad that many Christians, many Catholics, are oblivious to this.


    Tonight, we are there: in Jerusalem; at the Cross.

    The Blood of the Lamb protects us. 

    The flesh of the Lamb is our salvation.


  25. Site: The Eponymous Flower
    8 hours 9 min ago
  26. Site: Zero Hedge
    9 hours 8 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    The Human Tragedy In Haiti

    Authored by Callista L. Gingrich via RealClear Politics,

    Since late February, gang violence in Haiti has surged, overwhelming government and security forces and plunging the nation into further turmoil. The United Nations estimates that armed gangs now control 80 percent of the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince.

    The recent wave of violence in the Caribbean nation’s ongoing gang wars erupted as multiple armed groups banded together, pledging to oust Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who came to power after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021 and announced postponing Haiti’s elections again last year.

    Citing ongoing gang violence as one of the reasons for staving off elections, Henry flew to Kenya in February to press for the deployment of a U.N-backed police force to support the Haitian National Police in fighting the gangs. The armed groups responded by launching a series of coordinated attacks in Port-au-Prince and preventing Henry’s return to Haiti.

    In the weeks that followed, gangs ravaged two prisons releasing more than 4,000 inmates into the country; destroyed power substations; attacked airports, police stations, and neighborhoods; and took control of major ports and water facilities.

    More than 15,000 people have fled their homes in recent weeks. According to an anonymous woman who spoke with CBS News, “People go inside your house, killing, raping, all those things, burning your house.”

    Americans have been urged to leave the country. Nearly 1,000 have filled out crisis intake forms asking for help or assistance to escape the turmoil. At the time of this writing, hundreds of Americans have not been able to evacuate.

    During a briefing on March 12, the U.S. State Department announced that in addition to pledging a total contribution of $300 million, the United States helped to broker a deal that will form “a new presidential council that will select a new interim prime minister and pave the pathway for elections, as well as the deployment of the Multinational Security Support Mission.” Once the transitional council is established, Kenya will deploy the police force and Henry will step aside.

    Despite this development, the situation on the ground for the people of Haiti remains desperate. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said during a press briefing on Monday, “It is not hyperbole to say that this is one of the most dire humanitarian situations in the world.”

    Tragically, fear and suffering from gang violence in Haiti is not new – but is a daily reality for many Haitians.

    There are an estimated 200 gangs operating in Haiti, and approximately 95 operate near Port-au-Prince. In 2023, more than 8,400 people were reported killed, injured, or kidnapped, more than two times the amount as the previous year. Further, compared to 2022, rape cases skyrocketed by 49 percent from January to August 2023.

    Bringing violence to neighborhoods, gangs demand so-called protection money from residents, and when they can’t pay, threaten impoverished civilians. Twenty-eight-year-old Annie, who fled Port-au-Prince with her family two years ago, told the BBC, “I saw so many awful things I never thought I would see. We were afraid for our lives.”

    She added, “We are living with death on a daily basis.”

    In addition to gang violence, chronic political instability, natural disasters, foreign intervention, and debt have crippled Haiti’s economy, fueled violence, and hindered development.

    Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and more than half of the population lives below the World Bank’s poverty line. In a population of 11.7 million people, approximately 5.5 million Haitians require humanitarian assistance, more than 4 million people are affected by food insecurity, and 19,000 are experiencing famine. 

    "I wake up in the morning and if we have sugar in the house, we make sugar water and put a bit of salt in it, just to drink it and stop the pain of hunger," Kerby, a Haitian who fled Port-au-Prince due to gang threats, recently told the BBC.

    Amid the recent developments, it is unclear what the governance of Haiti will look like and how it will impact the future of the Caribbean nation.

    As gang violence and chaos continue to wreak havoc, the international community must work to bring peace and stability to Haiti.

    For more commentary form Callista Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 19:00
  27. Site: LifeNews
    9 hours 11 min ago
    Author: SPUC

    A patient who received assisted suicide drugs last year in the US state of Oregon took 137 hours to die, nearly six days, an annual report has stated, while also revealing that many people choose death because they cannot afford healthcare.

    Assisted suicide in Oregon leaped by 21% in 2023, according to a state report detailing the 367 Death with Dignity Act (DWDA) deaths that year. Health authorities attribute the rise to patients now coming from outside of Oregon to die.

    Nearly 3,000 people have died through assisted suicide since Oregon legalised the procedure in 1997.

    Of the people who died from assisted suicide in Oregon in 2023, 92% cited loss of autonomy as a reason, as well as a less enjoyable life (88%) and loss of dignity (64%).

    43% also stated that they did not want to be a burden on loved ones, and 8% said they wanted to die because of the cost of their medical expenses.

    Please follow LifeNews.com on Gab for the latest pro-life news and info, free from social media censorship.

    The findings align closely with Oregon’s previous report, which showed that nearly half of assisted suicides in 2022 were because the person perceived themselves to be a “burden”, as reported by SPUC.

    SPUC comment

    A SPUC spokesperson said: “Many vulnerable people think they have no option but to choose assisted suicide when they are abandoned by society or are made to feel that way.

    “It’s also clear that most assisted suicides are not related to pain but to other challenges, and most worryingly, a societal pressure to choose death as many health systems find it easier and cheaper to kill problem patients rather than treat them.

    “Around the world, cancer sufferers, the elderly, the disabled and even the mentally ill, are being abandoned to the thought that they might be better off dead. At a time when the UK is considering its own assisted suicide legislation, we must not allow that to happen here.”

    LifeNews Note: Courtesy of SPUC. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children is a leading pro-life organization in the United Kingdom.

    The post Oregon Residents are Killing Themselves in Assisted Suicides Because They Can’t Afford Health Care appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  28. Site: LifeNews
    9 hours 17 min ago
    Author: SPUC

    MEPs are set to debate adding abortion to its Charter of Fundamental Rights following a proposal by French President Emmanuel Macron.

    After France made abortion a constitutional right last month, President Macron proposed again that the EU should do the same. Members of the European Parliament will now debate the issue in April.

    Macron and EU politicians have previously called for abortion to be enshrined as a right, especially in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade. In July 2022, a majority of MEPs declared that abortion should be added to the Charter, as reported by SPUC.

    However, the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) has warned MEPs that the Charter cannot be amended to make abortion a right since matters of health are supposed to be left to nations to decide.

    The ECLJ added that “no European or international human rights treaty or system establishes abortion as a right”, while “the right to life is protected in various treaties, and there is even international protection for children before birth in the Convention on the Rights of the Child”.

    Follow LifeNews on the MeWe social media network for the latest pro-life news free from Facebook’s censorship!

    Considerable European pressure has been placed on pro-life nations like Malta and Poland in recent years to introduce pro-abortion laws, including a Council of Europe diktat demanding that Malta legalise abortion and outlaw conscientious objection.

    SPUC comment

    A SPUC spokesperson said: “A pro-abortion, undemocratic wave is sweeping across Europe right now as European elites once again threaten the fundamental right to life of unborn children.

    “The way this is taking place, cancelling the human rights of the most vulnerable group in society, the unborn, in the name of ‘rights’ is a gross and shameless perversion of truth and justice, and it shows just how far pro-abortion ideologues will go to impose their will on the European population.

    “But as the EU charter states, Everyone has the right to life… MEPs have a duty to uphold that right without exception.”

    LifeNews Note: Courtesy of SPUC. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children is a leading pro-life organization in the United Kingdom.

    The post EU Considers a Right to Kill Babies in Abortions in Its Charter of Fundamental Rights appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  29. Site: Zero Hedge
    9 hours 28 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Moody's Warns Bridge Collapse Is "Credit Negative" For Baltimore As Economic Shock Emerges 

    Instead of the woke Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott utilizing his precious time by going on corporate media's leftists Joy Reid's MSNBC show and asserting that white conservatives "should be afraid" of the consequences of calling him the 'DEI Mayor,' perhaps the unseasoned youngster who over-promised about fixing imploding Baltimore City (after fifty years of a Democratic-controlled City Hall) should realize the local economy is on the cusp of meltdown and potential negative credit risk event following the bridge collapse and resulting paralyzed port. 

    The Port of Baltimore is a significant economic driver for the city of Baltimore and the state of Maryland, and an extended closure will spread like cancer through the local economy as snarled supply chains will result in job losses, lower warehouse activity, and tax revenue loss for the government. 

    "I would say the Port of Baltimore is the leading economic driver for the region in Baltimore," Anirban Basu, chairman and CEO of Baltimore-based Sage Policy Group Inc., told FreightWaves

    Basu said, "One could argue that the leading driver is Johns Hopkins. It's a difficult comparison, because you're talking about two very different fields of endeavor. But the Baltimore region has been one of the nation's underperformers in recent years. In the Baltimore region, we have had to clawback the jobs lost early during the pandemic."

    Cargo to the paralyzed Port of Baltimore will be diverted to other US East Coast ports. Scott Cowan, president of the International Longshoremen's Association Baltimore local chapter, warned that thousands of port jobs could soon vanish. 

    Source: Bloomberg 

    On Thursday morning, Moody's published a note that said a prolonged closure of the port would ripple through the local economy and could spark negative credit risk events for the city and state:  

    The bridge collapse threatens to disrupt aspects of the State of Maryland (Aaa stable) and City of Baltimore (Aa2 stable) economies. The suspension of shipping traffic to the Port of Baltimore will likely divert cargo to other East Coast ports, which may affect jobs and tax revenue. The accident also has the potential to hurt the transportation and warehousing sector, though that accounts for a small share of state GDP.

    More from Moody's about the credit fallout that could soon hit Baltimore: 

    In recent years, the state and Baltimore County (Aaa stable) have provided incentives and worked with developers to facilitate the redevelopment of Sparrows Point, a more than 3,000-acre contaminated industrial site once home to a Bethlehem Steel plant. Over the last nine years, Sparrows Point has seen almost $2 billion of private investment resulting in the development of 14 million square feet of warehousing and distribution facilities. With the Key Bridge providing the only direct access route between Sparrows Point and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, further development at Sparrows Point could be delayed.

    There is no timetable for how long salvage crews will take to remove the massive bridge blocking the harbor's only entry and exit. Some figures are six weeks, while others are several months. Shippers diverting operations to other East Coast ports will also hit warehousing and trucking businesses in the area. 

    We have described to readers for years that Baltimore has been trending down. It's only in a downward trend when a shock forms that the real troubles begin materializing. And that shock started this week. Sorry, Scott. It's not a race thing like you describe on MSNBC—you're just an inexperienced leader. The persistent crime chaos and failed progressive policies are evidence of this. It's time for new leadership. 

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 18:40
  30. Site: 4Christum
    9 hours 37 min ago

     

    ‘Francis is playing the role of Judas by sacrificing the traditional truths that the Church received from Jesus,’ Father Jesusmary Missigbètò writes. Read More at LifeSiteNews



    Cardinal Müller calls Pope Francis’ homosexual ‘blessings’ an attack on marriage











  31. Site: 4Christum
    9 hours 40 min ago

     Cardinal Müller condemned the killing of the unborn as ‘infanticide’ and likened it to the ‘Nazi times,’ stressing how previous popes and bishops ‘had no fear to excommunicate’ for grave crimes. Read More at LifeSiteNews









  32. Site: Zero Hedge
    9 hours 48 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Bahrain Opposition Activist Arrested For Criticizing McLaren Ownership

    Via Middle East Eye

    A leading opposition activist has been arrested and detained in Bahrain for criticizing on social media the island kingdom’s ownership of the sportscar brand, McLaren.

    Ebrahim Sharif was arrested by Bahraini authorities on Monday morning over social media posts critical of Bahrain’s decision to take full ownership of the McLaren Group, which is involved in Formula One, other motorsports and the manufacture of luxury supercars. 

    The former secretary general of the National Democratic Action Society (Wa’ad), Bahrain’s largest leftist political party, Sharif was arrested and detained for three social media posts he wrote in the wake of the McLaren ownership news. 

    Last Friday, Mumtalakat, Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, which was already McLaren’s biggest shareholder, having first invested in 2007, took over full ownership of the troubled British company, which has been experiencing heavy financial losses.

    Abdulla bin Khalifa al-Khalifa, CEO of Mumtalakat and a member of Bahrain’s ruling royal family, welcomed the deal, heralding "the next phase of the company’s trajectory of growing its leadership position in the luxury super car and motorsports industries."

    Sharif was interviewed by police on Monday following a summons and subsequently referred to Bahrain’s public prosecution, which ordered that he be kept in detention for seven days pending an investigation over "social media posts that allegedly incite hatred against the regime," according to Sharif’s lawyer and family.

    If officially charged, the opposition activist could be imprisoned under Article 165 of the Bahrain Penal Code, which states that "A prison sentence shall be passed against any person who expressly incites others to develop hatred or hostility towards the system of government." Farida Ghulam, Sharif’s wife, confirmed his arrest and the reasons for his detention in a social media post. 

    Middle East Eye asked McLaren if it condoned the arrest and detention of an activist for criticizing its ownership. The company has not yet responded.

    In the first of his contentious social media posts, on March 23 Sharif quoted Karl Marx’s line about history repeating itself first as tragedy, and then as farce. He referenced Bahrain’s prior purchase of Gulf Air, before writing: "With McLaren, we have moved from tragedy to farce. We have completed another cycle of owning failed companies with bottomless losses."

    McLaren recorded a pre-tax loss of $349m in the first nine months of 2023

    The next day, Sharif contrasted Bahrain’s housing projects budget for 2023 (approximately $239m, according to official documentation displayed in the tweet) with the $564m put into McLaren by the sovereign wealth fund. 

    "التاريخ يعيد نفسه مرتين، المرة الأولى كمأساة والثانية كمهزلة"
    (كارل ماركس)

    عندما تملكت البحرين كامل أسهم شركة طيران الخليج (بعد شراء حصتي ابوظبي وقطر) تضاعفت خسائرنا والمبالغ التي نحتاج لضخها سنويا لمنع افلاسها.

    مع #مكلارين انتقلنا من المأساة الى المهزلة. لقد أكملنا دورة أخرى… pic.twitter.com/S8dKmiT3m5

    — Ebrahim Sharif (@ebrahimsharif) March 23, 2024

    In a follow-up post, Sharif wrote that "Denial is an official policy, and the narrative of ‘a happy people’ is promoted by superficial media outlets." And further:

    "Do we believe what officials repeat and find resonance in complicit media, or do we believe what our eyes see, our ears hear, and our feelings sense about citizens living in miserable poverty, chronic unemployment, marginalization, class disparities, and housing waiting lists that extend until the end of their days?

    What the state spent on McLaren Racing last year is multiples of what it spent on housing projects. Do people die... in their overcrowded homes because you prioritize your hobbies and games over the interests of the poor?"

    It was after this last post that Sharif was summoned for an interview by Bahraini police. Commenting on the charges, Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, advocacy director at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (Bird), said: “These accusations are absurd. No one should be arrested for freely expressing their views or questioning how the government is spending public funds. McLaren’s leadership must speak out on his arrest or else their brand will be stained by Bahrain’s abuses.”

    In 2004, Bahrain hosted its inaugural Grand Prix – the first one to take place in the Middle East. While the 20th anniversary of this event was celebrated at the 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix earlier this month, activists told MEE it marked "20 years of sportswashing"

    BREAKING: Leading opposition activist Ebrahim Sharif was arrested this morning over social media posts critical of the Bahraini government, including criticising Bahrain’s ownership of McLaren.

    The public prosecution ordered 7 day detention pending investigation on allegations… pic.twitter.com/N5LgiGf2ms

    — Sayed Ahmed AlWadaei (@SAlwadaei) March 25, 2024

    The deal to take F1 to Bahrain was struck by the motorsport’s then-supremo, Bernie Ecclestone, and the island kingdom’s crown prince, Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa. 

    Over the 20 years it has hosted the Grand Prix, Bahrain has looked to control this publicity, with political protests broken up so as not to disturb the spectacle around the motorsport, and activists harassed, detained and jailed for speaking out.

    "The Grand Prix helps them, it helps them do this," Moosa Satrawi, a Bahraini activist who told MEE he had been detained, abused and tortured for protesting unemployment in the island kingdom, said of Bahrain’s clampdown on human rights.  

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 18:20
  33. Site: The Eponymous Flower
    9 hours 52 min ago




    Edit: Saint John’s Abbey’s Preparatory School has scaled back the use of religious for instruction over the last twenty years. Instead, they’ve hired a Bosnian groomer, Martina Talic, who is suspiciously and scandalously close to a male student. Concerned fellow students and faculty made a statement to the unreliable Stearns County Sheriff.

    According to Behind the Pine Curtain, the report by the witnesses differs from Sterns County.

    Talic was engaging in predatory behavior with the male student.


    “At one point in time, Talic said [redacted] is her “bodyguard” for the day. While [redacted] was sitting on one of the chairs, Talic was sitting on the arm rest nd was constantly touching him.”

     



    On the right with the cleavage 


    “Throughout their investigation, they spoke with three adults and four students, who had the same general complaints and views. They all said Talic and [redacted] were constantly by each other and constantly touching each other.” – Stearns County Sheriff Case #24011260



     AMDG

  34. Site: Zero Hedge
    10 hours 8 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Russia Announces 'Substantiated Evidence' Of Ukraine Link To Crocus Hall Terrorists

    Russian authorities say they have found a firm link between the suspects in last week's terror attack on the Crocus City Hall complex and "Ukrainian nationalists" - according to a Thursday announcement. 

    The Russian Investigative Committee has unveiled preliminary findings, stating that the perpetrators who last Friday killed 140 people and wounded many more had received "significant sums of money" from Ukraine.

    Putin has acknowledged that Islamic extremists were behind the attack, but still maintains accusations of a "Ukraine direction".

    Investigators claim to have in their possession "substantiated evidence" that the attackers received payments from Ukraine in the form of cryptocurrency. 

    President Putin had starting Saturday asserted that the terrorists were apprehended just before trying to cross the Ukrainian border. He alleged that the Ukrainians might have been preparing a "window" for them to cross. There were four gunmen who rampaged through the mall and concert venue on Friday, randomly shooting innocent bystanders, but in total eleven were initially arrested, followed by several more arrests of alleged conspirators.

    Days following Putin's speech the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Aleksandr Bortnikov, told a press briefing that the Kremlin considers that the US, UK and Ukraine may have been involved.

    Importantly, the Kremlin has acknowledged the perpetrators to to be radical Islamic terrorists, and so have said there is some truth to the 'ISIS-K' narrative presented by the West; however, Russian officials have persistently raised the question of another entity, country, or intelligence service ultimately backing the attack. For example on Wednesday foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova had this to say:

    "Of course, the speed with which they were able to [come to such forthright conclusions] is astonishing. It took them only a few hours to get to a microphone, turn on the lights, summon the press, and draw a conclusion about who is to blame for this horribly bloody terrorist attack."

    Russian intelligence (FSB) has meanwhile claimed the terrorists would have been "welcomed as heroes" if they had made it to Ukraine. All four gunmen have since been identified as Tajik nationals - and none of those in detention are Russian citizens, according to Moscow authorities.

    As for the new allegations that they had financial links to Ukraine, no evidence was presented publicly to back the statements. It also remains unclear whether these alleged funding links are connected to Ukrainian government entities or just individuals inside Ukraine.

    How is it that U.S. authorities have yet to determine who was accountable for the Baltimore Bridge collapse, while it only took them 45 minutes to identify the responsible behind the terror attack at the Moscow concert Crocus Hall?

    It's truly astonishing…. https://t.co/Yu1AMlQ6rU

    — Russian Market (@runews) March 26, 2024

    The White House meanwhile is not buying any of this. In response, on Thursday the Biden administration rejected these new Russian claims as "nonsense" and said it was clear that the Islamic State was "solely responsible". White House national security spokesperson John Kirby in a briefing also reiterated that Washington had passed info on to Moscow that a terror attack was imminent. Kirby described this as delivered in the form of a "written warning". The US Embassy in Moscow also issued a public alert calling on Americans to avoid large public venues and gatherings.

    "It is abundantly clear that ISIS (Islamic State) was solely responsible for the horrific attack in Moscow last week. In fact, the United States tried to help prevent this terrorist attack and the Kremlin knows this," Kirby said.

    A NY Times report says, however, that the US side did not share its full intelligence with Moscow. "The adversarial relationship between Washington and Moscow prevented US officials from sharing any information about the plot beyond what was necessary," the Times wrote Thursday. The Americans purportedly did this "out of fear Russian authorities might learn their intelligence sources or methods."

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 18:00
  35. Site: LifeNews
    10 hours 14 min ago
    Author: Sarah Terzo

    Pro-abortion activists often say that when someone is pregnant with a baby expected to die, abortion is the compassionate answer. This isn’t the case for the baby. And studies show it’s also not the case for the parents.

    Is Perinatal Hospice Cruel?

    When discussing a pro-life initiative to inform pregnant people about perinatal hospice, pro-abortion activist Jessica Valenti wrote:

    The activists that decimated abortion rights have quietly rolled out a new initiative to pressure and force American women to carry doomed pregnancies to term.

    It’s difficult to articulate the scale and cruelty of their vision…

    When pro-lifers encourage people pregnant with terminally ill babies to give birth rather than abort, are we being cruel? Not if you look at research. Study after study shows that parents of terminally ill babies who give birth do better psychologically than those who abort.

    Post-abortive parents wrestle with guilt and don’t have the closure of meeting their children and saying goodbye.

    “All My Son Knew Was Love”

    In a study in The Journal of Clinical Ethicsresearchers asked parents who chose birth for dying babies if they had regrets. 97.5% percent said no.

    The researchers wrote:

    Parents valued the baby as a part of their family and had opportunities to love, hold, meet, and cherish their child…

    Although emotionally difficult, parents articulated an empowering, transformative experience…

    Some comments from the parents include:

    “All my son knew was love.”

    “I will always cherish the time I had with her.”

    “We would not trade those six hours for anything in the world.”

    “I got to hold my baby for an hour … no regrets.”

    “I got the chance to see her, hold her and honor her sweet life.”

    Follow LifeNews on the MeWe social media network for the latest pro-life news free from Facebook’s censorship!

    Parents Express Gratitude

    Another study, in the Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Healthfound similar results.

    Researchers found that “After the birth, and at the time of the baby’s death, parents expressed thankfulness that they could spend as much time with their baby as was possible.”

    One woman says spending time with her baby was “wonderful.” Another mother says she was “gloriously happy” when she got to introduce her child to her loved ones. A third mother says, “I wasn’t sad for hours … I just basked in his angel glow.”

    Another mother described her husband carrying their baby’s casket to the gravesite. She says, “He showed more strength and love and sacrifice in that moment than I have ever seen … As awful as it was, there was beauty in that moment.”

    Authors of another study in the Journal of Palliative Medicine were “surprised to find that the majority of parents were so happy to meet their baby, even joyful and at peace, even if he/she was stillborn or died within a few hours.”

    They wrote:

    One surprising finding was that many couples felt that their baby’s birth was joyful, even if the baby was stillborn or died shortly after birth … We were impressed by the parents’ resiliency and ability to find something positive to offer, even in the presence of their grief.

    The authors noted their findings were “consistent with” the results of other studies.

    Parents Who Aborted Their Terminally Ill Babies Suffered

    Parents who carried to term and gave birth grieved the loss of their children. But they found comfort in meeting and loving their babies for the time they had. They found beauty in the experience of meeting and parenting their children, even if only for a short time.

    This stands in contrast to the reactions of parents who aborted terminally ill babies.

    In one study, researchers wrote that women found abortion “traumatic, regardless of the prenatal test revealing the fetal impairment or stage in pregnancy in which the termination occurred.”

    These researchers wrote:

    The strategies women used to reconcile conflicts engendered by selective termination—denying the personhood of the baby, limiting the information they sought about the baby, transferring agency for choice to others, adopting a stance of moral relativity, avoiding disclosing or selectively disclosing the event to others—worked briefly, but the women ultimately felt as if they were betraying themselves and their babies.

    Parents Who Rejected Abortion Did Better Emotionally

    Another study in Prenatal Diagnosis compared women who aborted terminally ill children to women who carried to term.

    The study found those who aborted “reported significantly more despair, avoidance, and depression than women who continued the pregnancy.”

    The study’s authors wrote:

    Pregnancy continuation was also associated with less psychiatric distress in women… [W]omen who continued reported significantly less despair, avoidance, and depression than women who terminated…

    [I]tems related to guilt were significantly associated with termination in women. The active choice involved in termination does appear to increase the likelihood that guilt will be experienced, even in the case of lethal fetal anomalies.

    Painful, but Beautiful Too

    Australian mother Teresa Streckfuss lost two children to anencephaly, Benedict and Charlotte. Streckfuss rejected abortion and held her babies while they were still alive. She says she wouldn’t trade her time with them for anything.

    Saying goodbye to her children, Streckfuss says, was the most painful thing she ever endured, but also “the most beautiful.”

    She says of Benedict, “He cried out, made facial expressions …. His face was so sweet; he looked just like our other children at birth … We marveled at how perfect he was.”

    Streckfuss has no guilt. She says, “Benedict spent his whole life in the arms of people who loved him; who could ask for a better life?”

    After Benedict died, someone asked Streckfuss if giving birth to him had been worth it. She replied:

    Oh, yes! For the chance to hold him, and see him, and love him before letting him go. For the chance for our children to see that we would never stop loving them, regardless of their imperfections? For the chance to give him everything we could?

    Sometimes, Doctors Are Wrong

    Finally, it’s always possible that doctors are wrong. Mothers have been told that their babies would die at birth, only to have them survive.

    Kim Parry was told her daughter Esmay would die at birth, but she survived. Parry says, “She is beautiful – she has a beautiful personality and a great big smile. She lights up the room and makes everyone laugh.”

    Gemma-Sarah McCusker was also told her daughter Karlie would die, but she’s now three and, Gemma-Sarah says, “bright as a button.” According to her mother, Karlie’s favorite things are “Peppa Pig and cheesy pasta ‘noo-noos.’”

    Doctors are sometimes wrong, but abortion destroys all hope.

    LifeNews Note: Sarah Terzo covered the abortion issue for over 13 years as a professional journalist. In this capacity, she has written nearly a thousand articles about abortion and read over 850 books on the topic. She has been researching and writing about abortion since attending The College of New Jersey (class of 1997) where she minored in Women’s Studies. This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here.

    The post Studies Show Parents Who Reject Abortion of Terminally Ill Babies Cope Better Emotionally appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  36. Site: Zero Hedge
    10 hours 23 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Baltimore Leader Says Conservatives "Should Be Afraid" For Calling Him The "DEI Mayor"

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

    Baltimore leader Brandon Scott appeared on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show to assert that white conservatives “should be afraid” of the consequences of calling him the ‘DEI Mayor’ and that his “purpose in life” was to make them uncomfortable.

    Yes, really.

    Professional race-bator Reid angrily asserted that when right-wingers make fun of DEI, they actually mean just “black people,” claiming, “It’s the reason they complained about Critical Race Theory, it’s not fashionable to be openly racist anymore in America.”

    She then welcomed Scott, who dresses and acts like a Black Lives Matter activist, to address the horrifically “racist” fact that right-wingers don’t support DEI in light of the Baltimore bridge collapse.

    The mayor complained about “young black men” being demonized and treated as the “boogeymen” by racist conservatives who think that “only straight, white wealthy men” should have power.

    “We know what they want to say and they don’t have the courage to say the n-word,” he ludicrously added, before appearing to make some kind of veiled threat.

    “The fact that I don’t believe in their untruthful and wrong ideology and I am very proud of my heritage and who I am and where I come from scares them, because me being at my position means that their way of thinking, their way of life of being comfortable while everyone else suffers is going to be at risk and they should be afraid because that’s my purpose in life,” said Scott.

    And there you have it, in his own words.

    Scott’s “purpose in life” is to make white people uncomfortable and afraid.

    But remember, you’re the racist for making fun of him.

    Reid also said the ship was “piloted by a very heroic crew from India” and that it was also racist to criticize them despite them failing to prevent the ship from crashing into and destroying the bridge.

    As we document in the video below, the group that managed the Dali cargo ship and the Maryland Port Commission both appear to have prioritized ‘diversity’ over safety before the ‘accident’ that led to the collapse of the bridge.

    *  *  *

    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.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 17:45
  37. Site: Zero Hedge
    10 hours 28 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    DeSantis Signs Property Rights Bill In Florida That Ends "Squatting Scam"

    Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation into law Wednesday that ends squatters’ rights in the Sunshine State, stating that “squatting” is a scam that violates private property rights.

    After alarming stories about squatters commandeering homes and depriving the owners of their property rights made nationwide news in recent weeks, DeSantis took action.

    “We are in the state of Florida are ending this squatters scam once and for all. And momentarily I’ll be signing HB 621, which will give the homeowner the ability to quickly and legally remove a squatter from a property and which will increase criminal penalties for squatting,” DeSantis said during a press conference on the signing at the Orange County State Attorney’s Office.

    “You are not going to be able to commandeer somebody’s private property and expect to get away with it. We are in the state of Florida are ending this squatters scam once and for all, DeSantis added.

    The common sense law allows property owners to file an affidavit to prove they legally own a property. Squatters will quickly face criminal charges once its proven that they illegally moved into a home.

    If the suspect is unable to produce documents authorizing his residency, the property owner can call on the sheriff’s office to immediately remove the squatter from his home.

    The law establishes harsher penalties for squatting crimes, including “a second-degree felony charge against squatters who damage a home, a first-degree felony charge against those who fraudulently sell or lease a property, and a misdemeanor charge against those who purposefully present a fraudulent lease.”

    Previously, squatters in Florida, as well as other states, were considered tenants after a specific length of time and legal property owners often had to launch lengthy and expensive court battles to legally remove them from their homes.

    “Now, we have not had the same type of issues here, as you’ve seen in California or New York. Nevertheless, our laws were really geared towards this not necessarily being a fad,” DeSantis said.

    The governor said that unlike Democrat-led states that protect squatters, Florida will crackdown on the criminals.

    “They’re siding with the squatters,” he said of the blue states.

    “In fact, we have seen squatters move in and claim residence. This forces a massive, long, drawn-out judicial review before they can even be removed from the property. These are people that never had a right to be in the property to begin with. Earlier this month in New York, a woman returned to a property she inherited to find squatters living there. She changed the locks to get them out, and the state of New York arrested her instead of the squatters.”

    During the signing ceremony in Orlando, Sheriff Dennis M. Lemma said the word “squatter” is too kind and the perpetrators should instead be referred to as “criminals and con artists.”

    “I want to thank our legislative body, both our delegates here in central Florida and abroad, because this received unanimous support, and it’s been long too often where we’ve seen homeowners that have spent their entire life working and earning. Some have inherited homes of parents and to knock on the door and be met with squatters,” Lemma said.

    “Squatters actually is a very, very kind term. These are criminals and con artists that need to be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” he continued.

    Florida, similar to other states across the nation, has seen repeated incidents of squatters fraudulently moving into a home or property, including a squatter in September who moved into a multimillion-dollar home in Bonita Springs and was found wearing the homeowner’s clothing. Another homeowner in June, who was on vacation abroad before returning to his Ocala house, was forced to confront a squatter who trashed his property in his absence.

    While residents in a neighborhood in Winter Park sounded off in September that squatters had turned the area into a “nightmare” because the police department was “handcuffed” from arresting the suspects as it was considered a civil matter.

    DeSantis pointed out that in Florida, there are many seasonal residents who reside in the state for half the year and leave their houses unattended when they return to their home states in the north.

    The governor said those people shouldn’t have to worry that “some rogue person moves in and tries to assert rights against the lawful property owner.”

    DeSantis said that he believes Florida is the first state to decisively handle this problem.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 17:40
  38. Site: Zero Hedge
    10 hours 48 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    NYC Delinquent Property Taxes Approach $1 Billion After Expiration of Tax-Lien Punishment

    While New York City embarks on a program to hand out some $53 million in prepaid debit cards to illegals, the city has estimated that overdue property taxes are set to reach their highest level ever, jumping 30% to over $880 million at the end of the fiscal year in June, vs. three years ago. City officials attribute this to the expiration of a tax-lien sales program that would punished delinquencies by allowing the city to sell liens on single-family homes and condos after three years of nonpayment, according to a Tuesday offering document for a city general obligation bond sale cited by Bloomberg.

    Under the program created by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 1996, and which expired in March 2022, liens slapped on delinquent properties would be discounted and packaged into securities sold to a third-party trust, which borrows money from investors to pay the city upfront, and then assumes responsibility for collecting the outstanding property tax through debt servicing companies (plus fees and interest). After the investors are paid back, the city was entitled to collect additional revenue from fees and interest payments.

    45% of New York's tax revenue and 30% of overall funds for the current $114 billion budget come from property taxes - which is expected to top $32.7 billion in the current fiscal year.

    "It’s not just the absolute dollar amount that I think should worry us all," city Finance Commissioner Preston Niblack said at a March 4 City Council finance committee hearing, adding that people have realized "there are no consequences for not paying your property taxes."

    "That just can't be allowed to continue," he said.

    To be sure, the rise in unpaid property taxes comes as New York’s office market continues to struggle. The overall vacancy rate for Manhattan office space stood at 22.5% in November, the highest on record, according to the city’s January financial plan.

    Rent-regulated apartments are also facing stress after a 2019 law sharply reduced landlords’ ability to raise rents. -Bloomberg

    The tax-lien program faced pushback from community activists and even state Attorney General Letitia James, who said in December 2020 that "additional fees can quickly turn a relatively small tax lien into an overwhelming financial burden, eventually pushing homeowners into foreclosure," referring to a mandatory 5% surcharge, legal fees and a 9% or 18% interest rate that compounds daily.

    Between 2018 and 2022, the city collected $260 million from the tax-lien program, according to the city's bond offering document.

    A better solution?

    Bloomberg further reports that the city's Department of Finance is working on legislation that would reauthorize tax-lien sales, ensuring that homeowners don't face foreclosure or eviction.

    "We look forward to working with the [City] Council on this important issue and look forward to a new, more equitable form of property tax enforcement," said Department of Finance spokesman, Ryan Lavis.

    The City Council, meanwhile, said in a statement that it's working with the "Administration, advocates, impacted communities, and all stakeholders to advance policies that address outstanding charges while supporting the economic health of homeowners, our communities, and the City."

    The biggest offenders include a 16-unit Cobble Hill, Brooklyn rental building which owes $52.2 million of the $880 million estimated delinquency. There's also a 49-unit Bronx apartment building which owes $24.7 million.

    "We have to do something," said City Council Member Gale Brewer, who represents the Upper West Side of Manhattan. "People should pay their taxes."

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 17:20
  39. Site: PeakProsperity
    10 hours 53 min ago
    Author: Chris Martenson
    The US is on a fiscally unsustainable path, which has dire implications. Tough words, but they aren't mine, they are those of the US Treasury Department. Those who can absorb these ideas and respond early tot heir implications have the best chance at a more prosperous future.
  40. Site: LifeNews
    11 hours 53 sec ago
    Author: Alex Christy

    MSNBC’s Joy Reid claims to have no problems with hearing Republican points of view, but when it came to discussing abortion on Wednesday’s edition of The ReidOut, she instead welcomed two Democrats, strategist Juanita Tolliver and former Sen. Doug Jones, to wonder why white women vote for Republicans because pro-lifers are a bunch of white supremacists who view them as vehicles to avoid “race suicide.”

    A confused Reid declared “the sort of trick that has been difficult to get her out how to untie this knot, Juanita, which is that, you know, white women on a majority, do vote Republican even in states where they’re voting away their reproductive rights. I think about Georgia where they voted for Brian Kemp and his six-week abortion ban and so it’s like, what will unlock that fealty that white women have to it.

    

    When Reid wants to learn about pro-lifers, she turns to the lefties at Slate, “I read this thing in Slate that talked about the origins, the white nationalist origins of the anti-abortion movement. It says the following in Slate, ‘In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the movement against abortion mainly included white supremacist who pointed to declining white birthrates believed that legalized abortion would mean race suicide for white Protestants.’”

    Not only is the pro-life movement larger than white Protestants, it is telling that Reid’s desire to project the 19th century on to 2024 only extends to pro-lifers and not her white male, former Democratic senator from Alabama guest.

    Please follow LifeNews on Rumble for the latest pro-life videos.

    Finally getting to a question, Reid asked Tolliver, “You still look at it and you don’t think they want you and me to have more babies. I don’t think they want Latinos to have more babies. How do they get the message to white women that they are the target and should vote accordingly?”

    Tolliver’s solution was to break the scale on the freak out meter, “And we saw white women have a wakeup call when IVF was on the table and that is something that I think when we understand how this is going to impact IVF. Even the list that you had put up from the Heritage Foundation report for 2025, it included same-sex relationships as well.”

    In the 920-page document that is Heritage’s Project 2025, the term to “same-sex marriage” appears only twice. Once is to note that same-sex marriages, on average, last less than half that of heterosexual marriages, which is noteworthy for adoption placements and the second is that people should be protected against having to do things such as bake a cake for a same-sex wedding if they object.

    However, Tolliver rolled right along, lamenting that Heritage does not care for the left’s abortion euphemisms, “This is not isolated and it won’t focus exclusively on abortion or reproductive rights, it is expansive and the other thing that came out of that Heritage report that is a sign of them going too far, as Doug Jones mentioned, is they literally want to delete the language from the books. I’m talking about deleting abortion from federal regulation. Deleting the phrase ‘reproductive rights.’ Deleting DEI, all of it.”

    Eventually, Reid returned to implore viewers to “Watch The Handmaid’s Tale, as much of it as you can stand. That’s what they want to do and by the way, you know how it’s not about babies? They are trying to kill Head Start, which is for the babies.”

    Nothing like a good old-fashioned non-sequitur to end the show.

    LifeNews Note: Alex Christy writes for Newsbusters, where this originally appeared.

    The post Joe Reid Thinks Pro-Life People are White Supremacists appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  41. Site: Zero Hedge
    11 hours 8 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Piketty's Inequality Con

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    If you ask a liberal politician who their favorite economist is, there are three likely responses.

    One response is a panicked change of topic.

    From the slightly more sophisticated politicians who skim the New York Times, you might hear Paul Krugman.

    From the politicians who style themselves intellectuals of the left, you’d hear Thomas Piketty.

    Thomas Piketty is a French economist who is a professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, one of France’s most prestigious schools. In 2013, he released a book called Capital in the Twenty-First Century. It was a bestseller. In the book, Piketty argues that the rate of return on capital is greater than long-run economic growth. He projects that this relationship will continue and a small minority of capital owners will become richer, not just in absolute terms due to economic growth, but also in relative terms, as wages comprise a smaller and smaller share of the economy over time.

    Piketty thinks this is bad for typical left-wing reasons and suggests that massive wealth taxes are an appropriate solution to what he sees as the otherwise inevitable concentration of wealth. The New Yorker has argued that Piketty’s work inspired Senator Elizabeth Warren’s campaign for a wealth tax.

    While Piketty’s claims about the desirability of egalitarianism and wealth taxes are to some extent subjective, his book and his reputation are premised on the claim that he carefully assembled data that showed an increasing return to capital over time.

    He claims to have based his work on three centuries of data.

    Unfortunately, for fans of Piketty and left-wing economists who prefer a more fact-based economics approach, it looks like Piketty’s data work is quite sloppy.

    In 2015, Magness and Murphy pointed to a wide range of flaws or mistakes in the book writing that they found “evidence of pervasive errors of historical fact, opaque methodological choices, and the cherry-picking of sources to construct favorable patterns from ambiguous data. Additional evidence suggests that Piketty used a highly distortive data assumption from the Soviet Union to accentuate one of his main historical claims about global “capitalism” in the twentieth century.” According to Magness and Murphy, Piketty bases his measure of 150 years of the world economy on a sample size of just six individual years and just extrapolates the rest of the data! Yikes!

    The critique was influential but perhaps as Alex Tabarrok suggests it was possible to dismiss because the criticism was published in a libertarian-leaning journal. However further work showed even more problems with the Piketty data.

    In 2018, a report from the left-wing Urban Institute came out that showed that work by Piketty which showed extreme increases in economic inequality was an outlier in the field with other studies, even some by other left-wing economists, showing much smaller effects. This is consistent with Magness and Murphy’s concern that Piketty was cherry-picking results to conjure up an image of an inegalitarian dystopia. In 2023, another study tried to look at the same topic and pointed out what you accounted for the extremely progressive American income tax system and income transfers (welfare programs), there was “little change in after-tax top income shares.”

    Inequality changes over time. Sometimes it rises. Sometimes it falls (as is happening right now).

    Piketty didn’t discover a secret law of economics and now we have the data to show it.

    That probably won’t stop some left-wing politicians from citing him- there are even people who cite Karl Marx unironically- but it might let us know who we don’t have to take seriously.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 17:00
  42. Site: Henrymakow.com
    11 hours 15 min ago


    good-friday-small-1711628338.jpg
    Good Friday--According to the politically correct view now in vogue, 
    the Pharisees of 33 A.D. were more sinned against than sinning.  


    Christ's Crucifixion is still happening today. 
    Christ was crucified because he taught that God is Love; 
    God loves all people equally. 

    Judaism believes Jews are Chosen by God. 
    In fact, they believe they ARE God.

    We know they killed Christ because they never stopped
    defaming him and stamping out his Gospel of Universal Love.


    Christianity believes that all people are intended to express their Divinity. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. (Matt 5:48)

    Jews believe non-Jews were created to serve them! 


    "Nowhere does the Talmud or Moses Maimonides, the supreme halachic authority for western Talmudists, blame the Romans, as do the modern popes, many Protestant "evangelists" and the corporate media. There are literally thousands of spineless academics and clerics on the Left as well as the Right who minimize the role of the Pharisees, the progenitors of the Talmud of Babylon, in the killing of the Son of God, putting the onus instead on the Romans and Pilate."





    by Michael Hoffman
    (abridged by henrymakow.com) 


    According to the politically correct view now in vogue, the Pharisees of 33 A.D. were more sinned against than sinning.  

    oreilley-nap.jpeg
    Among falsifiers on the Right, are two luminaries in the ersatz "Conservative" firmament. Former Fox News talk show host Bill O'Reilly promotes the manifestly ridiculous Romans-are-to-blame-for-the-Crucifixion imposture in his book, The Last Days of Jesus

    He's not alone. Andrew P. Napolitano, better known as "Judge Napolitano," a widely admired figure among "Conservatives," wrote a column on Holy Thursday in which he had the temerity to state: 

    "On the first Good Friday, the Romans executed Jesus because they were persuaded that by claiming to be the Son of God, He might foment a revolution against them...they feared a revolution that would disrupt their worldly power, and so they condemned Him to death by crucifixion." (LewRockwell.com, April 17, 2014). Pharisees are not mentioned anywhere in Mr. Napolitano's column concerning who is culpable for the Crucifixion of Jesus.

    To assert that the Romans bear the lion's share of responsibility is an atrocious fabrication pleasing to the corporate media and the Cryptocracy.

    The fact that Jesus praised a Roman officer above everyone in Israel (Matthew 8:5-13), and the Roman administrator Pilate urgently sought to save Christ's life, calling him a just man, and being threatened by a mob as a result, is washed down the memory hole. 

    silverman.jpeg
    Historic Christianity, faithful to the Gospel narrative, had a very different view of Pontius Pilate. For example, Francis Turretin (1623-1687), was a distinguished professor of theology and the author of the magisterial, three volume Institutio Theologiae Elencticae, ("Institutes of Elenctic Theology" reprinted as recently as 1994), first published In 1679-85. In vol. II, p. 489-490, Dr. Turretin wrote:

     "...the kingdom of Christ...is conducted in a spiritual manner, recognizes no other honors and resources than righteousness, holiness, peace of conscience, salvation and eternal life; no other arms than the Word and the Spirit; no other fortifications than the protection of God. Pilate had this understanding of it. He clearly perceived that no prejudice could be created from it (the kingdom of Christ) against the empire of Caesar; otherwise he would not only have agreed with the accusation of the Jews charging Christ with rebellion against Caesar, but he would have been the first to think of taking Him out of the way. 

    "However, having dismissed this accusation of the Jews and (accepted) Christ's own confession concerning His kingly office, Pilate pronounces Him just and innocent, and desires Him to be cleared from condemnation (for he knew that for envy they had delivered Him, Matthew 27:18)..." (End quote from theologian Francis Turretin).

    The disinformation that renders the Romans the principal malefactors is also undercut by none other than the Babylonian Talmud itself, in Sanhedrin 43a, where it is stated that the Roman " authorities" were favorable toward Jesus and did not want to execute him:

    Babylonian Talmud: Sanhedrin 43a
    "Rather it must be that the case against Jesus was different, because he had close connections with the non-Jewish authorities, and those authorities were interested in his acquittal." -- The Steinsaltz Talmud, volume 17, p. 159 (Random House, 1998).

    What is there to debate? We have God's Word in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15. This is an unambiguous statement. This Scripture was declared by St. Paul without qualifications of any kind. There is also the testimony of Acts 3-13-15.

    Even in our time, one of most authoritative rabbis in the western world is the medieval halakhist Moses Maimonides, "the Rambam." He is honored in Congress with a sculpture, and venerated in media and academia, though few of his enthusiasts have bothered to discover what he actually taught. We regret to report that Maimonides was an unabashed Jesus-despiser. In his magnum opus, the Mishneh Torah, he declared: "The Christians are idol worshippers" (Avodah Zara 9:4). "Idol worshippers" are subject to severe penalties according to the "Noahide Laws" promoted by every American President from Ronald Reagan forward, under the rubric of "Education Day USA."

    Furthermore, Maimonides taught that Jesus was killed "by the court," a reference to the Beth Din (rabbinic court): "Yeshu the Christian, who imagined himself the messiah and was killed by the court..." (Rabbi Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: Laws of the King 11:4). 

    new-covenant.png
    Nowhere does the Talmud or Moses Maimonides, the supreme halachic authority for western Talmudists, blame the Romans, as do the modern popes, many Protestant "evangelists" and the corporate media. There are literally thousands of spineless academics and clerics on the Left as well as the Right who minimize the role of the Pharisees, the progenitors of the Talmud of Babylon, in the killing of the Son of God, putting the onus instead on the Romans and Pilate.

    Talmudism is in higher repute in Christendom now than ever in history and it is to the Pharisaic theology founded upon it--and successive texts possessing halachic authority (such as the Mishneh Torah) --to which our apologetic and educational efforts are centered.

    Nothing we teach is a negative reflection on Judaic people in general. We unconditionally repudiate the disgusting "Christ-killers" imprecation unjustly leveled at all or most Jews. Due to our own dreadful sins, every one of us is guilty of putting Jesus on that Cross of Calvary and being responsible for His death.

    It was from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that our first parents cursed all humanity, and it was from the "tree" of wood upon which Jesus was crucified, that through him the Gospel invites all of humanity to salvation.

    It is incumbent on us as Christians to lovingly correct errors, as did Jesus, John the Baptist and the apostles Peter and Paul. We pray for those who promote the falsehoods of Talmudism. We are not reluctant to proclaim the truth about the Jesus-denying snares and pits into which people fall as a result of the continuing influence of the Pharisaic nullification of Scripture, which was virulent in the first century and which has culminated in the 21st century distortion of the Good Friday narrative.

    Copyright 2024 by Independent History and Research


    Michael Hoffman is the author of the banned 2008 textbook Judaism Discovered (1,102 pages), and nine other volumes of history and literature, including Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare and its sequel, Twilight Language. Also: The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome, and Adolf Hitler: Enemy of the German People, as well as 122 issues of the periodical, Revisionist History®.


  43. Site: Zero Hedge
    11 hours 28 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Trump Overtakes Soros' Net Worth

    Former President Donald Trump's net worth topped $6.4 billion on Monday following the completion of a 29-month-long SPAC deal for his social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group (now trading under symbol $DJT).

    According to Bloomberg's index of the world's richest people, Trump is in 328th place, with a net worth of $7.81 billion. George Soros, the nemesis of Democracy, is sitting in 375th place with a net worth of $7.16 billion.

    While that's cute and all, dick-measuring doesn't matter since the 93-year-old Hungarian investor uses his money as a weapon - and has directly affected both politics, crime, and demographics through financial support - and facilitation, of open-border policies and soft-on-crime elected officials.

    Soros is perhaps best known as the man who 'broke' the Bank of England - when he made roughly $1 billion in profit shorting the British pound sterling during the UK's 1992 Black Wednesday financial crisis.

    In 1991, the Washington Post dubbed Soros an "overt operative" of US-backed regime change in Europe. More recently, as noted above, Soros has poured his resources into organizations that promote a Marxist agenda, including censoring free speech under the guise of combating "disinformation."

    As David Galland and Stephen McBride noted in 2016 - before Soros's widespread support of US District Attorneys kicked into high gear:

    What is this globalist agenda, and where does it come from?

    The Humble Beginnings

    The globalist seed was sowed for young George by his father, Tivadar, a Jewish lawyer who was a strong proponent of Esperanto. Esperanto is a language created in 1887 by L.L. Zamenhof, a Polish eye doctor, for the purpose of “transcending national borders” and “overcoming the natural indifference of mankind.”

    Tivadar taught young George Esperanto and forced him to speak it at home. In 1936, as Hitler was hosting the Olympics in Berlin, Tivadar changed the family name from Schwartz to Soros, an Esperanto word meaning “will soar.”

    George Soros, who was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary, benefited greatly from his father’s decision.

    Allegedly, in 1944, 14-year-old George Soros went to work for the invading Nazis. It is said that until the end of the war in 1945, he worked with a government official, helping him confiscate property from the local Jewish population.

    In an 1998 interview with 60 Minutes, Soros described the year of German occupation as “the happiest time in my life.”

    Soros’s Venture into Finance

    When the war ended, Soros moved to London and in 1947 enrolled in the London School of Economics where he studied under Karl Popper, the Austrian-British philosopher who was one of the first proponents of an “Open Society.”

    Soros then worked at several merchant banks in London before moving to New York in 1963. In 1970, he founded Soros Fund Management and in 1973 created the Quantum Fund in partnership with investor Jim Rogers.

    The fund made annual returns of over 30%, cementing Soros’s reputation and putting him in a position of power—one he utilizes to this day to advance the agenda of his mentors.

    The Currency Speculations That Threw Britain and Asia into Crisis

    In the 1990s, Soros began a string of large bets against national currencies. The first was in 1992, when he sold short the pound sterling and made a $1 billion profit in a single day.

    His next big currency speculation came in 1997. This time Soros singled out the Thai baht and, with heavy short-selling volume, destroyed the baht’s artificial peg to the US dollar, which started the Asian financial crisis.

    “Humanitarian” Efforts

    Today, Soros’s net worth stands at $23 billion. Since taking a back seat in his company, Soros Fund Management, in 2000, Soros has been focusing on his philanthropic efforts, which he carries out through the Open Society Foundations he founded in 1993.

    So who does he donate to, and what causes does he support?

    During the 1980s and 1990s, Soros used his extraordinary wealth to bankroll and fund revolutions in dozens of European nations, including Czechoslovakia, Croatia, and Yugoslavia. He achieved this by funneling money to political opposition parties, publishing houses, and independent media in these nations.

    If you wonder why Soros meddled in these nations’ affairs, part of the answer may lie in the fact that during and after the chaos, he invested heavily in assets in each of the respective countries.

    He then used Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs to advise the fledgling governments to privatize all public assets immediately, thus allowing Soros to sell the assets he had acquired during the turmoil into newly formed open markets.

    Having succeeded in advancing his agenda in Europe through regime change—and profiting in the process—he soon turned his attention to the big stage, the United States.

    The Big Time

    In 2004, Soros stated, “I deeply believe in the values of an open society. For the past 15 years I have been focusing my efforts abroad; now I am doing it in the United States.”

    Since then, Soros has been funding groups such as:

    • The American Institute for Social Justice, whose aim is to “transform poor communities through lobbying for increased government spending on social programs”
    • The New America Foundation, whose aim is to “influence public opinion on such topics as environmentalism and global governance”
    • The Migration Policy Institute, whose aim is to “bring about an illegal immigrant resettlement policy and increase social welfare benefits for illegals”

    Soros also uses his Open Society Foundations to funnel money to the progressive media outlet, Media Matters.

    Soros funnels the money through a number of leftist groups, including the Tides Foundation, Center for American Progress, and the Democracy Alliance in order to circumvent the campaign finance laws he helped lobby for.

    Why has Soros donated so much capital and effort to these organizations? For one simple reason: to buy political power.

    Democratic politicians who go against the progressive narrative will see their funding cut and be attacked in media outlets such as Media Matters, which also directly contribute to mainstream sites such as NBC, Al Jazeera, and The New York Times.

    Apart from the $5 billion Soros’s foundation has donated to groups like those cited above, he has also made huge contributions to the Democratic Party and its most prominent members, like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and of course Bill and Hillary Clinton.

    Best Friends with the Clintons

    Soros’s relationship with the Clintons goes back to 1993, around the time when OSF was founded. They have become close friends, and their enduring relationship goes well beyond donor status.

    According to the book, The Shadow Party, by Horowitz and Poe, at a 2004 “Take Back America” conference where Soros was speaking, the former first lady introduced him saying, “[W]e need people like George Soros, who is fearless and willing to step up when it counts.”

    Soros began supporting Hillary Clinton’s current presidential run in 2013, taking a senior role in the “Ready for Hillary” group. Since then, Soros has donated over $15 million to pro-Clinton groups and Super PACs.

    More recently, Soros has given more than $33 million to the Black Lives Matter group, which has been involved in outbreaks of social unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, in 2015. Both of these incidents contributed to a worsening of race relations across America.

    The same group heavily criticized Democratic contender Bernie Sanders for his alleged track record of supporting racial inequality, helping to undercut him as a competitive threat with one of Hillary Clinton’s most ardent constituencies.

    This, of course, greatly enhances the clout Soros wields through the groups mentioned above. It is safe to assume that he is now able to drive Democratic policy, especially in an administration headed by Hillary Clinton.

    Simply, what Soros wants, he gets. And it’s clear from his history that he wants to smudge away national borders and create the sort of globalist nightmare represented by the European Union.

    In recent years, Soros has turned his attention back to Europe. Is it a coincidence that the continent is currently in economic and social disarray?

    Another Home Run: the Ukrainian Conflict

    There’s no doubt about Soros’s great influence on US foreign policy. In an October 1995 PBS interview with Charlie Rose, he said, “I do now have access [to US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott]. There is no question. We actually work together [on Eastern European policy].”

    Soros’s meddling reared its ugly head again in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which began in early 2014.

    In a May 2014 interview with CNN, Soros stated he was responsible for establishing a foundation in the Ukraine that ultimately led to the overthrow of the country’s elected leader and the installation of a junta handpicked by the US State Department, at the time headed by none other than Hillary Clinton:

    CNN Host: First on Ukraine, one of the things that many people recognized about you was that you during the revolutions of 1989 funded a lot of dissident activities, civil society groups in Eastern Europe and Poland, the Czech Republic. Are you doing similar things in Ukraine?

    Soros: Well, I set up a foundation in Ukraine before Ukraine became independent of Russia. And the foundation has been functioning ever since and played an important part in events now.

    The war that ripped through the Ukrainian region of Donbass resulted in the deaths of over 10,000 people and the displacement of over 1.4 million people. As collateral damage, a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet was shot down, killing all 298 on board.

    But once again Soros was there to profit from the chaos he helped create. His prize in Ukraine was the state-owned energy monopoly Naftogaz.

    Soros again had his US cronies, Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew and US consulting company McKinsey, advise the puppet government of Ukraine to privatize Naftogaz.

    Although Soros’s exact stake in Naftogaz has not been disclosed, in a 2014 memo he pledged to invest up to $1 billion in Ukrainian businesses, but no other Ukrainian holdings have since been reported.

    His Latest Success: the European Refugee Crisis

    Soros’s agenda is fundamentally about the destruction of national borders. This has recently been shown very clearly with his funding of the European refugee crisis.

    The refugee crisis has been blamed on the civil war currently raging in Syria. But did you ever wonder how all these people suddenly knew Europe would open its gates and let them in?

    The refugee crisis is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It coincided with OSF donating money to the US-based Migration Policy Institute and the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, both Soros-sponsored organizations. Both groups advocate the resettlement of third-world Muslims into Europe.

    In 2015, a Sky News reporter found “Migrant Handbooks” on the Greek island of Lesbos. It was later revealed that the handbooks, which are written in Arabic, had been given to refugees before crossing the Mediterranean by a group called “Welcome to the EU.”

    Welcome to the EU is funded by—you guessed it—the Open Society Foundations.

    Soros has not only backed groups that advocate the resettlement of third-world migrants into Europe, he in fact is the architect of the “Merkel Plan.”

    The Merkel Plan was created by the European Stability Initiative whose chairman Gerald Knaus is a senior fellow at none other than the Open Society Foundations.

    The plan proposes that Germany should grant asylum to 500,000 Syrian refugees. It also states that Germany, along with other European nations, should agree to help Turkey, a country that’s 98% Muslim, gain visa-free travel within the EU starting in 2016.

    Political Discourse

    The refugee crisis has raised huge concern in European countries like Hungary.

    In response to 7,000 migrants entering Hungarian territory per day in 2015, the Hungarian government reestablished border control in order to keep the hordes of refugees from entering the country.

    Of course this did not go down well with Soros and his close allies, the Clintons.

    Bill Clinton has since come out and accused both Poland and Hungary of thinking “democracy is too much trouble” and wanting to have a “Putin-like authoritarian dictatorship.”

    Seeing through Clinton’s comments, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán responded by saying, “The remarks made about Hungary and Poland … have a political dimension. These are not accidental slips of the tongue. And these slips or remarks have been multiplying since we are living in the era of the migrant crisis. And we all know that behind the leaders of the Democratic Party, we have to see George Soros.”

    He went on to say that “although the mouth belongs to Clinton, the voice belongs to Soros.”

    Soros has since said of Orbán’s policy toward the migrants: “His plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.”

    It’s hard to imagine that he could be any clearer in his globalist intentions.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 16:40
  44. Site: Zero Hedge
    11 hours 48 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    You Can't Fool All Of The People All Of The Time About Immigration

    Authored by Simon Hankinson via The Epoch Times,

    There’s an old saying attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

    Three years into his presidency, Joe Biden has run into the last sentence of that aphorism as he attempts to fool all Americans into believing that either that he wants to fix the border crisis or that Republicans are to blame for it.

    In his recent State of the Union address to Congress, President Biden was praised as “fiery” and “energetic” by friendly press outlets, but even they had to admit that the speech was more campaign stump speech than national status report. The right-leaning Federalist claimed Mr. Biden lied 30 times. And even Roll Call, which news website and media monitor AllSides calls “center”-leaning, fact-checked the speech and found it “included misleading claims on inflation, crime, clean energy investments, wages.”

    Roll Call’s list of Biden’s false or misleading claims missed the biggest one of all: his attempt to blame Republicans in Congress for the disaster at the border that was actually caused by his executive actions.

    Even so, what bothered the Left was that the president had gone off-script and called Jose Ibarra, the Venezuelan accused of killing college student Laken Riley, an “illegal.” Mr. Biden apologized for that faux pas in an interview with MSNBC two days later, saying, “I shouldn’t have used ‘illegal,’ it’s ‘undocumented.’”

    But, in fact, Ibarra, while illegally in the United States, was indeed documented. Biden’s Department of Homeland Security documented him when it paroled him into the United States “temporarily” and on a “case-by-case” basis, as the law requires, allowing him to enter the country with no criminal background check in his native country. This was despite reports that Ibarra has tattoos indicating membership in a violent gang, which should have triggered further investigation.

    “I am not going to treat any of these people with disrespect,” Mr. Biden told Jonathan Capehart in the interview. “They built this country.”

    Presumably, by “these people,” Mr. Biden meant young men such as the Ibarra brothers. Mr. Biden would like Americans to ignore the distinction between congressionally authorized immigration (which did indeed help build this country) and the mass, illegal migration of unvetted aliens that he has facilitated during his three years in office.

    “We have to control the border … and more orderly flow,” the president told Capehart.

    By “orderly flow,” Mr. Biden means processing into the country as many inadmissible aliens as physically possible. This has been his policy from the very beginning of his administration, as this X compilation of Biden’s statements makes clear:

    Tonight Biden is going to blame Trump and the Republicans for his border crisis.

    Share this far and wide so people know that he is lying. pic.twitter.com/pzaZeElk5r

    — MAZE (@mazemoore) March 7, 2024

    Despite the president’s falsehoods in his speech and protestations to Capeheart, however, a recent CBS poll showed 45 percent of Americans thought the “situation at the U.S.-Mexico border is a crisis.” That has the spin doctors working overtime.

    Defending Biden’s border policy on CNN, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas again claimed, “This system has been broken for decades,” that the administration has been trying to fix it from Day One, and that there is a magical “bipartisan solution” in Congress that Republicans are refusing to pass.

    “Legislation is the enduring solution,” said the man who has deliberately ignored existing legislation for three years. Mayorkas has refused to return asylum applicants to Mexico, detain or deport illegal aliens as he is legally required to do, and has made up programs to mass parole them into the United States, which the law does not authorize.

    Raul Ortiz, the head of the 21,000-strong U.S. Border Patrol until summer 2023, recently said he had never once met with President Biden or “border czar” Kamala Harris. Ortiz said “most definitely” the White House has sent “mixed messages” to would-be illegal migrants.

    Not so. The Biden message has been clear and consistent: Enter the United States illegally, and you have a better than even chance of being allowed to stay indefinitely. You’ll even get in ahead of those who try to lawfully navigate the immigration system and wait their turn in line. Cross without identification, and you can give yourself a new name, date of birth, and history that will never be verified.

    The world heard Biden’s message, and they came. They are coming still, from a greater variety of countries, in greater numbers.

    Keeping the borders open to please Biden’s radical base while blaming Republicans in Congress for the results appears to be the White House communications strategy. “Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends,” Mr. Biden claimed after a visit to the border at the end of February.

    But as Roll Call columnist David Winston wrote, “Simply saying the same things more aggressively won’t convince voters.”

    After three years, Mr. Biden has made his case. He wants billions more tax dollars to facilitate the “smooth flow” of essentially unlimited immigration by foreigners who have no right to enter the country other than what “rights” he confers through stretching executive powers beyond credibility. Mr. Biden owns the consequences and will have to defend this position, not use the smoke screen he attempted to conjure at the State of the Union to conceal it.

    Reprinted by permission from The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation.

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 16:20
  45. Site: Ron Paul Institute for Peace And Prosperity
    11 hours 52 min ago
    Author: Adam Dick

    Say you are planning a big event for which you’ll want to have on hand a bunch of wine. State legal restrictions may allow you to only buy relatively small bottles of wine from a local store. In Florida. the legal maximum amount of wine in wine bottles sold to the public has been set at a gallon, a little less than four liters.

    You could buy every bottle of wine in the store legally, but buying just one bottle of wine that contains over the maximum allowed amount would be verboten. It is one of those irritating “nanny state” restrictions that government so often can’t resist imposing in the name protecting people from themselves.

    On Thursday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law HB 583, a bill to legalize buying larger bottles of wine at stores in the state. It is another step in the 91 years long process of tearing down lingering portions of alcohol prohibition.

    The governor’s press release regarding his signing the bill notes that the bill will legalize the purchase of “many commonly used” wine bottle sizes including Methuselah (6 liters), Salmanazar (9 liters), Balthazar (12 liters), and Nebuchadnezzar (15 liters).

    I propose a toast to Governor DeSantis: “Here’s to the governor taking this step for liberty and to him taking many more in the future.”

  46. Site: LifeNews
    12 hours 4 min ago
    Author: Melissa Barreca

    Coalition Life, the nationally-renowned sidewalk counseling organization, hosted the largest annual public pro-life gathering in the St. Louis region on Saturday, March 23 without a single pro-abortion protester attempting to disrupt the event.

    “We had spent a considerable amount of time planning security for the march, given the threats and intimidation that we have seen in the past, but we didn’t really need it,” said Brian Westbrook, Executive Director of Coalition Life. “The lack of push-back from pro-abortion groups was a surprise, especially with their huge effort to collect petition signatures in Missouri for a ballot initiative that would add abortion to the state constitution. We thought they would be out in full force, but there was absolutely nothing from the other side.”

    The seventh annual March on the Arch took place in downtown St. Louis, beginning at Aloe Plaza across from St. Louis Union Station with hundreds of pro-life people attending a rally and a walk to the St. Louis Arch. The event featured emcee Annie Frey, host of Fox News Radio’s The Annie Frey Show on 97.1 FM Talk, headlining a slate of speakers including: Reagan Barklage, National Field Director for Students for Life; Steve Rupp, President of Missouri Right to Life; Samuel Lee, President of Missouri Stands with Women; Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, President of The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, and Brian Westbrook of Coalition Life.

    The initiative petition was a hot topic among the speakers, who took the rally as an opportunity to galvanize pro-lifers against the dangerous effort to enshrine abortion in Missouri’s constitution.

    “Abortion in the state of Missouri has been banned,” said Steve Rupp of Missouri Right to Life. “We have passed 52 pro-life laws over the past 50 years and now those laws are being threatened by people that want to put killing innocent children into our constitution.”

    Rupp and other speakers educated the crowd about the Decline to Sign effort coordinated by several pro-life organizations in the state to inform the public about the misleading language of those seeking to get enough signatures to add the abortion initiative to the ballot in November. The group is also working in the state capitol on reforms to the initiative petition process.

    Please follow LifeNews on Rumble for the latest pro-life videos.

    “As we stand here advocating for life, dozens of people are standing throughout our state collecting signatures, seeking to take that right away from the most innocent among us,” said Reagan Barklage of Students for Life. “They are being paid by big out-of-state companies trying to reverse all of the progress that has been made to protect life in Missouri. We won’t fall for it!”

    Sam Lee, a founding member of Missouri Stands with Women and a long-time pro-life state lobbyist, rounded out the information about the Decline to Sign initiative and the efforts of his lobbying group to mount a response to the petition effort.

    “Today we face the threat of Missouri’s constitution being altered and perverted by an extreme abortion initiative petition so that our own state’s bill of rights will include a right to abortion that is far more extensive than Roe vs. Wade ever brought us,” said Lee. “What we do over the next 43 days is crucial. If they cannot collect enough signatures, this will never make it to the ballot at all.”

    In addition to practical information to combat the current initiative petition, the crowd was encouraged by the inspirational words of their religious leaders, including Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, President of The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, who compared the post-Dobbs abortion landscape to the Christian understanding of death and resurrection.

    “Roe is gone! But the damage is inestimable. America’s conscience, moral and religious, has died,” said Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, President of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. “I am overcome with sorrow at the events since Roe fell, as once powerfully pro-life states have taken decided turns towards death. I shall weep by the tomb of the moral conscience of Illinois until it rises from the grave. But I shall also rejoice. I am rejoicing for each one of you who realize that while Dobbs rejected a constitutional right to abortion, an unborn child has no constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, even today. I am rejoicing for the state of Missouri, and praying she will not fail.”

    Following the rally, marchers walked one mile to the Gateway Arch to show their support for life and their opposition to efforts to expand abortion.

    While the March on the Arch was planned and organized by Coalition Life, it was actually a joint effort of many sponsoring organizations including Lutherans for LifeThe Archdiocese of St. Louis Respect Life Apostolate, Missouri Stands with Women, Pro-Life Ministry at St. Gianna Catholic Church, Missouri Right to Life, Vitae Foundation and Knights of Columbus Bonnots Mill Council.

    For more information on the initiative petition in Missouri and the pro-life Decline to Sign effort, visit: CoalitionLife.comMissouriLife.org or MoStandsWithWomen.org.

    Coalition Life is a 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Organization with a Mission of ENDING Abortion… Peacefully and Prayerfully. Founded in St. Louis, Missouri in 2011 by Brian Westbrook as Coalition for Life St. Louis, the organization provides sidewalk counseling and pregnancy resources at six sites in Kansas, Missouri and Illinois, and continues to grow as a national leader in the frontline effort to provide alternatives to abortion. Differentiated by its professional staff of sidewalk counselors and proven approach to successfully reach women who desire options and resources, Coalition Life created and perfected “The St. Louis Method” of sidewalk counseling that has resulted in more than 4,000 turnarounds outside of abortion facilities and countless lives saved. For more information visit CoalitionLife.com.

    LifeNews Note: Melissa Barreca does Public Relations for Coalition for Life. Photo Credit: Cameron McCarty – Director of Marketing, Coalition Life. 

    The post Seventh Annual Pro-Life “March on the Arch” Brings Hundreds of Pro-Lifers to Downtown St. Louis appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  47. Site: AsiaNews.it
    12 hours 8 min ago
    Sister Regina, of the Sisters of Repair, offers her testimony. 'Without humanitarian aid, children and the elderly are suffering in the forests because the roads are blocked by the military. Conscription is used to provide human shields to force the rebels to kill their own countrymen. Our sisters remain close to the people, walking with them, even in tears, amid the dangers and the pain.'
  48. Site: Novus Motus Liturgicus
    12 hours 8 min ago
    The mandatum ceremony according to the Ambrosian rite One of the most beautiful features of the traditional Ambrosian Rite is its unique manner of celebrating the Mass of Holy Thursday, which includes a special form of the Canon used only on that day. The Mass takes place ‘inter Vesperas – in the midst of Vespers’, although the Vespers in question are very much simplified, relative to the Gregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0
  49. Site: Zero Hedge
    12 hours 8 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Stocks, Gold, & Crypto Soar In Q1 Despite Rout In Rate-Cut Expectations

    Q1 macro was characterized by a vast divergence between 'soft' surveys crashing as 'hard' data drifting higher...

    Source: Bloomberg

    The strong 'hard' data - and sticky inflation - along with endless jawboning, drove rate-hike expectations drastically lower in Q1. 2024 expectations for The Fed crashed from almost seven cuts to less than three...

    Source: Bloomberg

    ...and stocks did not even blink!

    Source: Bloomberg

    With the S&P 500 surging to its best start to a year since 2019 (outperforming Nasdaq)...

    Source: Bloomberg

    That's the 5th green month in a row...

    Source: Bloomberg

    And stocks are up for 18 of the last 22 weeks (it hasn't done more than that since 1989)...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Notably, and perhaps surprisingly, Q1's best performing sector was not tech... it was Energy (with Real Estate the only sector red in Q1). In fact in March, Energy stocks are up 10% while Tech is unchanged...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Some have argued that Q1's market strength reflects a growing belief that Republicans will win in November...

    Source: Bloomberg

    And don't let anyone tell you this has not been a multiple expansion - tech is now back at over 28x - its post-dot-com bust highs...

    Source: Bloomberg

    MTUM (momentum) saw its best start to a year... ever....

    Source: Bloomberg

    In fact, as Goldman shows in the chart below, High Beta Momo - the big Q1 outperformer - reversed its laggard performance in 2023...

    Thematically, Bitcoin-Sensitive stocks, AI stocks, and anti-obesity drug stocks all outperformed in Q1, continuing the trend of 2023 gains...

    AI-related stocks soared 24% in Q1 while stocks at risk from AI fell around 3% in Q1...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Anti-Obesity stocks soared in Q1, actually outperforming AI stocks and even GLP-1-at-risk stocks (e.g. WW) managed gains in Q1...

    Source: Bloomberg

    'Magnificent 7' stocks added a stunning $1.7 trillion in market cap in Q1...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Notably, the implied vol of the Mag7 is once again very elevated relative to the implied vol of the S&P 500. In July of last year, this signaled a big reversal (demand for hedges). In Jan of this year, it was a signal of chasers buying levered bets on the upside. What does it mean this time?

    Source: Bloomberg

    The strength in stocks and credit has dominated any rise in yields and crushed financial conditions to their loosest since before The Fed started their rate-hiking cycle...

    Source: Bloomberg

    US Treasuries were dumped in Q1 as rate-cut expectations plunged with the short-end modestly underperforming...

    Source: Bloomberg

    And while survey-based inflation expectations (UMich) are sliding, the market's expectation for inflation is anything but...

    Source: Bloomberg

    The dollar rallied in Q1, erasing around half of the Q4 losses...

    Source: Bloomberg

    The dollar's strength was supported by yen weakness as the Japanese currency plunged to its weakest since 1990...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Not to be outdone, the yuan also tumbled in Q1...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Q1 was dominated by bitcoin headlines - as the newly minted ETFs saw unprecedented inflows...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Which helped push Bitcoin to a new record high (in USD)...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Ethereum also soared in Q1 (up 55%) but Solana outperformed...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Another alternate currency - gold - also soared to a new record high in Q1...

    Source: Bloomberg

    And just when you thought NVDA was the big winner, Cocoa hyperinflates in Q1, up 135% YTD!

    Source: Bloomberg

    Oil, wholesale gasoline, and pump-prices all ripped higher in Q1 (especially March)...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, as Goldman's Chris Hussey notes, it's times like these – when 'everything is awesome' – when it is best to assess the risks that swirl around the investment landscape. Here are a few to consider:

    • A strong economic landing becomes a hard landing;

    • Inflation is sticky, not transitory, and the Fed pushes back;

    • The pandemic stimulus surge turns out not to be 'cost-less';

    • Concentration raises 'key company' risk;

    • Elections and geo-political risks.

    And as a reminder, we've seen these 'everything is awesome' moments before...

    Source: Bloomberg

    And they never end well.

    Tyler Durden Thu, 03/28/2024 - 16:00
  50. Site: LifeNews
    12 hours 16 min ago
    Author: Michael New Ph.D.

    On Tuesday, Marilyn Lands, a Democrat, prevailed by 26 points in a special election for a state house seat in Alabama. A Republican had previously won the same seat by seven percentage points. During the campaign, Lands vocally supported legalizing abortion and access to IVF.  Her victory in this state legislative race has received coverage from major media outlets including the New York Times, USA Today, Politico, and NBC News.

    Anytime a Democrat wins a Republican district by a large margin, that is certainly cause for concern. However, some important context is needed. First, this was a very-low-turnout election. In fact, nearly 60 percent fewer votes were cast in this special election than in the 2022 general election for the same state house seat. It seems fair to say that the Republican candidate failed to effectively mobilize Republican and conservative voters.

    Second, Lands outraised her Republican opponent by approximately $80,000. It is unusual for a Democratic candidate to significantly outraise her Republican counterpart for a legislative race in a GOP district. It is safe to say that Democratic candidates will be unable to duplicate this strategy by outspending Republicans in every legislative race.

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    Third, the Republican candidate was Teddy Powell, who served on the city council of Madison, Ala., and worked a budget analyst for the Department of Defense. Powell’s platform focused on economic development, infrastructure, and education. Media accounts indicate that he spent little time discussing sanctity-of-life issues. Pro-life political analysts know that is a poor strategy, as it allows candidates who support legal abortion to control the narrative.

    Fourth, this state house district is located in Madison County, which includes Huntsville, a fast-growing city that attracts many out-of-state professionals. This part of Alabama is more moderate than the rest of the state. Data show that 47 percent of Madison County residents over the age of 25 have college degrees. In comparison, the statewide average is 28 percent. Also, the average income in Madison County is over $20,000 higher than the state average. In short, this is the sort of moderate district that might be sympathetic to a candidate who supports legal abortion.

    Lands’s victory is receiving plenty of sympathetic coverage from mainstream media outlets. Unsurprisingly, the media spin is that the salience of IVF and abortion will help Democrats in other races in 2024. Certainly, the Dobbs decision and the ruling of the Alabama state supreme court on frozen embryos both pose some unique challenges for pro-life candidates. That said, in 2022 many pro-life Republicans won in competitive states and competitive districts. Pro-lifers certainly need to be savvy about the political environment, but there is little reason to despair.

    LifeNews Note: Michael J. New is an assistant professor at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America and is an associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_J_New

    The post Alabama Democrat Only Beat Republican Because the Republican Didn’t Campaign on Pro-Life appeared first on LifeNews.com.

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