Every member of the Idaho Congressional delegation has released a joint statement urging the Supreme Court to stop Joe Biden from forcing Idaho to turn its ERs into abortion centers.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hold a hearing on the case to stop Biden.

As LifeNews.com reported previously, the Supreme Court ruled in January that Joe Biden can’t force Idaho to turn its emergency rooms into abortion centers. The nation’s highest court ruled that Joe Biden can’t exploit a federal law to try to weaken Idaho’s abortion ban by allowing emergency room doctors to do abortions.

But that decision was a temporary victory and Idaho officials are fighting in court to win the entire case, Idaho v United States. This is the first case to be heard by the Supreme Court directly relating to the Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade.

Below are quotes from Idaho’s congressional delegation asking the nation’s highest court to stop Biden’s radical abortion agenda.

“The Biden Administration’s attempt to preempt Idaho’s pro-life laws with a false interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTLA) would set a precedence that is harmful to America’s women and children. EMTLA was deliberately created to protect women and children in active labor. Every American has the fundamental right to life, including the unborn, and Idaho has strong laws in place to ensure innocent lives are protected. I have faith our justice system will stop this blatant use of federal overreach and put an end to Biden’s harmful abortion agenda.” — Senator Crapo

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“Idahoans have passed a strong law to protect the lives of mothers and the unborn, yet the Biden administration is seeking every opportunity to expand abortion. This administration cherry-picked pieces of existing statute and wrongfully reinterpreted it to fit their agenda. Their manipulation of federal law cannot usurp state law, and there is no federal right to an abortion. I submitted an amicus brief that demonstrates how the administration’s substantial federal overreach is aimed at undermining pro-life protections not only in Idaho but around the nation. I hope the Court stands with us in our fight to protect Idaho’s law and life itself.” — Senator Risch

“The Biden administration’s overreaching efforts to expand abortion nationwide is an attempt to take power away from the American people. The Supreme Court rightfully ruled that states have the right to protect life, yet this administration continues to undermine that decision. I strongly support the right of all states to protect the unborn, and I reaffirm this priority by joining this amicus brief.” — Congressman Simpson

“The Biden Administration’s attempt to preempt Idaho’s pro-life laws with a false interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTLA) would set a precedence that is harmful to America’s women and children. EMTLA was deliberately created to protect women and children in active labor. Every American has the fundamental right to life, including the unborn, and Idaho has strong laws in place to ensure innocent lives are protected. I have faith our justice system will stop this blatant use of federal overreach and put an end to Biden’s harmful abortion agenda.” — Congressman Fulcher

Last year, the Justice Department filed suit Aug. 2 against the state of Idaho, hoping to undermine its new law prohibiting most abortions by claiming that the state law conflicts with EMTALA and medical treatment for pregnant women in emergency rooms.

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit that challenges Idaho’s protective law — arguing that it would prevent supposedly medically necessary abortions. Despite false reports that abortion bans would prevent doctors from treating pregnant women for miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies, pro-life doctors confirm that is not the case. Some 35 states have laws making it clear that miscarriage is not abortion and every state with an abortion ban allows treatment for both.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill found that Idaho’s law conflicts with the federal law because it bans abortions in nearly all circumstances. But the state argued the any emergency abortion is allowed under its abortion ban on elective abortions.

The nation’s highest court will hear oral arguments on Wednesday.

Brandi Swindell, Founder and CEO of Stanton Healthcare, which provides medical care and provides support for pregnant women in need, told LifeNews that the Supreme Court should side with her state.

“It is deeply troubling to see President Biden ignore and disrespect the voices of Idaho’s women as he attempts to advance a radical abortion agenda through federal regulations,” she said. “The Dobbs decision made it clear there is no federal or constitutional right to abortion. Our hope and prayer is the Supreme Court will respect the rights of Idaho’s voters and not allow our emergency rooms to be turned into abortion clinics by the federal government.”

The case involves the Biden administration’s unlawful attempt to use a law that ensures indigent patients receive emergency room care to force doctors to perform abortions that are illegal under Idaho law.

Idaho’s pro-life law imposes penalties on physicians who perform prohibited abortions unless doing so is necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman or other exceptions apply. The federal government claims—and the lower court ruled—that EMTALA requires abortions in violation of this law if an emergency room doctor thinks it is appropriate.

“Hospitals—especially emergency rooms—are centers for preserving life. The government has no business transforming them into abortion clinics,” said ADF Senior Counsel Erin Hawley, vice president of the Center for Life and regulatory practice. “Emergency room physicians can, and do, treat ectopic pregnancies and other life-threatening conditions. But elective abortion is not life-saving care—it ends the life of the unborn child—and the government has no authority to override Idaho’s law barring these procedures. We urge the Supreme Court to halt the lower court’s injunction and allow Idaho emergency rooms to fulfill their primary function—saving lives.”

After the Supreme Court returned the issue of abortion to the states in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the federal government sued the state of Idaho, claiming that EMTALA, an ancillary provision of the Medicare statute, preempts Idaho’s pro-life law. But as explained in the emergency application, “EMTALA is silent on abortion and actually requires stabilizing treatment for the unborn children of pregnant women.”

“The United States’ position conflicts with the universal agreement of federal courts of appeal that EMTALA does not dictate a federal standard of care or displace state medical standards. The district court accepted the United States’ revisionist, post-Dobbs reading of EMTALA and enjoined Idaho’s Defense of Life Act in emergency rooms. The district court’s injunction effectively turns EMTALA’s protection for the uninsured into a federal super-statute on the issue of abortion, one that strips Idaho of its sovereign interest in protecting innocent, human life and turns emergency rooms into a federal enclave where state standards of care do not apply,” Hawley notes.

Idaho’s abortion ban permits a physician who does an abortion to raise the affirmative defense that the abortion was necessary to save the mother’s life or that the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest that was reported. In both cases, the physician must choose a procedure that is most likely to save the life of the baby and protect the mother. The law explicitly excludes contraception from the definition of abortion, and women upon whom abortions are performed may not be prosecuted.

The pro-life laws in Idaho and other states include clearly defined exceptions that allow abortions in the cases when a mother’s life is at risk. Because the pro-life movement cares about the lives of both mother and child and there are rare cases in which only the mother’s life can be saved, it supports such exceptions.

But these exceptions mean the Biden administration’s guidance is unnecessary. Undermining Idaho’s life-saving efforts and expanding abortions appear to be the administration’s real goal.

The post Pro-Life Congressmen Ask Supreme Court to Stop Biden Form Turning ERs Into Abortion Centers appeared first on LifeNews.com.

(This paper is the basis of a talk to be given at the 25th Yasin (April) International Academic Event on Economic and Social Development, HSE University, Moscow, April 2024)

In the summer following Israel’s 2006 (unsuccessful) war on Hizbullah, Dick Cheney sat in his office loudly bemoaning Hizbullah’s continuing strength; and worse still, that it seemed to him that Iran had been the primary beneficiary from the US 2003 Iraq war.

Cheney’s guest – the then Saudi Intelligence Chief, Prince Bandar – vigorously concurred (as chronicled by John Hannah, who participated in the meeting) and, to general surprise, Prince Bandar proclaimed that Iran yet could be cut to size: Syria was the “weak” link between Iran and Hizbullah that could be collapsed via an Islamist insurgency, Bandar proposed. Cheney’s initial scepticism turned to elation as Bandar said that US involvement would be unnecessary: He, Prince Bandar, would orchestrate and manage the project. “Leave it to me,” he said.

Bandar separately told John Hannah: “The King knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.”

Thus began a new phase of attrition on Iran. The regional balance of power was to be decisively shifted towards Sunni Islam – and the region’s monarchies.

That old balance from the Shah’s time in which Persia enjoyed regional primacy was to be ended: conclusively, the US, Israel and the Saudi King hoped.

Iran – already badly bruised by the “imposed” Iran-Iraq war – resolved never again to be so vulnerable. Iran aimed to find a path to strategic deterrence in the context of a region dominated by the overwhelming air dominance enjoyed by its adversaries.

What occurred this Saturday 14 April – some 18 years later – therefore was of utmost importance.

Despite the bruhaha and distraction following Iran’s attack, Israel and the US know the truth: Iran’s missiles were able to penetrate directly into Israel’s two most sensitive and highly defended air bases and sites. Behind the whooping western rhetoric lies Israeli shock and fear. Their bases are no longer “untouchable.”

Israel also knows – but cannot admit – that the so-called “assault” was no assault but an Iranian message to assert the new strategic equation: That any Israeli attack on Iran or its personnel will result in retribution from Iran into Israel.

This act of setting the new “balance of power equation” unites the diverse Fronts against the US’ “connivance with Israeli actions in the Middle East, that are at the core of Washington’s policy – and in many ways the root-cause of new tragedies” – in the words of Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Ryabkov.

The equation represents a key “Front” – together with Russia’s war against NATO in Ukraine – for persuading the West that its exceptionalist and redemptive myth has proved to be a fatal conceit; that it must be discarded; and that deep cultural change in the West needs to happen.

The roots to this wider cultural conflict are deep – but finally have been made explicit.

Prince Bandar’s post-2006 playing of the Sunni “card” was a flop (in no small part thanks to Russia’s intervention in Syria). AndIran, has come in from the cold and is firmly anchored as a primary regional power. It is the strategic partner to Russia and China. And Gulf States today have switched focus instead to money, “business” and Tech, rather than Salafist jurisprudence.

Syria, then targeted by the West and ostracised, has not only survived all that the West could “throw at it” but has been warmly embraced by the Arab League and rehabilitated. And Syria is now slowly finding its way to being itself again.

Yet even during the Syrian crisis, unforeseen dynamics to Prince Bandar’s playing of Islamist identity versus Arab socialist secular identity were playing out:

I wrote then in 2012:

“Over recent years we have heard the Israelis emphasise their demand for recognition of a specifically Jewish nation-state, rather than for an Israeli State, per se”;

– a state that would enshrine Jewish political, legal, and military exceptional rights.

“[At that time] … Muslim nations [were] seeking the “undoing” of the last remnants of the colonial era. Will we see the struggle increasingly epitomised as a primordial struggle between Jewish and Islamic religious symbols – between al-Aqsa and the Temple Mount?”

To be plain, what was apparent even then – in 2012 – was “that both Israel and its surrounding terrain are marching in step toward language which takes them far away from the underlying, largely secular concepts by which this conflict traditionally has been conceptualised. What [would] be the consequence – as the conflict, by its own logic, becomes a clash of religious poles?”

If, twelve years ago, the protagonists were explicitly moving away from the underlying secular concepts by which the West conceptualised the conflict, we, by contrast, are still trying to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of secular, rationalist concepts – even as Israel quite evidently is seized by an increasingly Apocalyptic frenzy.

And by extension, we are stuck in trying to address the conflict through our habitual utilitarian, rationalist policy tool-set. And we wonder why it is not working. It is not working because all parties have moved beyond mechanical rationalism to a different plane.

The Conflict Becomes Eschatalogical

Last year’s election in Israel saw a revolutionary change: The Mizrahim walked into the Prime Minister’s office. These Jews coming from the Arab and North African sphere – now possibly the majority – and, with their political allies on the right, embraced a radical agenda: To complete the founding of Israel on the Land of Israel (i.e. no Palestinian State); to build the Third Temple (in place of Al-Aqsa); and to institute Halachic Law (in place of secular law).

None of this is what might be termed “secular” or liberal. It was intended as the revolutionary overthrow of the Ashkenazi élite. It was Begin who tied the Mizrahi firstly to the Irgun and then to Likud. The Mizrahim now in power have a vision of themselves as the true representatives of Judaism, with the Old Testament as their blueprint. And condescend to the European Ashkenazi liberals.

If we think we can put Biblical myths and injunctions behind us in our secular age – where much of contemporary western thinking makes a point of ignoring such dimensions, dismissing them as either confused, or irrelevant – we would be mistaken.

As one commentator writes:

At every turn, political figures in Israel now soak their proclamations in Biblical reference and allegory. The foremost of which [is] Netanyahu … You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible, and we do remember – and we are fighting…’Here [Netanyahu] not only invokes the prophecy of Isaiah, but frames the conflict as that of “light” versus “darkness’ and good versus evil, painting the Palestinians as the Children of Darkness to be vanquished by the Chosen Ones: The Lord ordered King Saul to destroy the enemy and all his people: ‘Now go and defeat Amalek and destroy all that he has; and give him no mercy; but put to death both husband and wife; from youth to infant; from ox to sheep; from camel to donkey’ (15:3).

We might term this “hot eschatology” – a mode that is running wild amongst the young Israeli military cadres, to the point that the Israeli high command is losing control on the ground (lacking any mid-layer NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer) class).

On the other hand –

The uprising launched from Gaza is not called Al-Aqsa Flood for nothing. Al-Aqsa is both a symbol of a storied Islamic civlisation, and it is also the bulwark against the building of the Third Temple, for which preparations are underway. The point here is that Al-Aqsa represents Islam in aggregate — neither Shi’i, nor Sunni, nor ideological Islam.

Then, at another level, we have, as it were, “dispassionate eschatology”: When Yahyah Sinwar writes of “Victory or Martyrdom”for his people in Gaza; when Hizbullah speaks of sacrifice; and when the Iranian Supreme Leader speaks of Hussain bin Ali (the grandson of the Prophet) and some 70 companions in 680 CE, standing before inexorable slaughter against an 1,000 strong army, in the name of Justice, these sentiments simply are beyond the reach of western Utilitarian comprehension.

We cannot easily rationalise the latter “way of being” in western modes of thought. However, as Hubert Védrine, France’s former Foreign Minister, observes – though titularly secular – the West nonetheless is “consumed by the spirit of proselytism.” That Saint Paul’s “go and evangelize all nations” has become “go and spread human rights to all the world”… And that this proselytism is extremely deep in [western DNA]: “Even the very least religious, totally atheists, they still have this in mind, [even though] they don’t know where it comes from.”

We might term this secular eschatology, as it were. It is certainly consequential.

A Military Revolution: We’re Ready Now

Iran, through all the West’s attrition, has pursued its astute strategy of “strategic patience” – keeping conflicts away from its borders. A strategy that focused heavily on diplomacy and trade; and soft power to engage positively with near and far neighbors alike.

Behind this quietist front of stage, however, lay the evolution to “active deterrence” which required long military preparation and the nurturing of allies.

Our understanding of the world became antiquated

Just occasionally, very occasionally, a military revolution can upend the prevailing strategic paradigm. This was Qasem Suleimani’s key insight. This is what “active deterrence” implies. The switch to a strategy that could upend prevailing paradigms.

Both Israel and the US have armies that are conventionally far more powerful than their adversaries which are mostly composed of small non-state rebels or revolutionaries. The latter are treated more as mutineers within the traditionalist colonial framing, and for whom a whiff of firepower generally is considered sufficient.

The West, however, has not fully assimilated the military revolutions now underway. There has been a radical shift in the balance of power between low-tech improvisation and expensive complex (and less robust) weapons platforms.

The Additional Ingredients

What makes Iran’s new military approach truly transformative have been two additional factors: One was the appearance of an outstanding military strategist (now assassinated); and secondly, his ability to mix and apply these new tools in a wholly novel matrix. The fusion of these two factors – together with low-tech drones and cruise missiles – completed the revolution.

The philosophy driving this military strategy is clear: the West is over-invested in air dominance and in its carpet fire power. It prioritises “shock and awe” thrusts, but quickly exhausts itself early in the encounter. This rarely can be sustained for long. The Resistance aim is to exhaust the enemy.

The second key principle driving this new military approach concerns the careful calibration of the intensity of conflict, upping and lowering the flames as appropriate; and, at the same time, keeping escalatory dominance within the Resistance’s control.

In Lebanon, in 2006, Hizbullah remained deep underground whilst the Israeli air assault swept across overhead. The physical surface damage was huge, yet their forces were unaffected and emerged from deep tunnels – only afterwards. Then came the 33 days of Hizbullah’s missile barrage – until Israel called it quits.

So, is there any strategic point to an Israeli military response to Iran?

Israelis widely believe that without deterrence – without the world fearing them – they cannot survive. October 7 set this existential fear burning through Israeli society. Hezbollah’s very presence only exacerbates it – and now Iran has rained missiles down into Israel directly.

The opening of the Iranian front, in a certain way, initially may have benefited Netanyahu: the IDF defeat in the Gaza war; the hostage release impasse; the continuing displacement of Israelis from the north; and even the murder of the World Kitchen aid workers – all are temporarily forgotten. The West has grouped at Israel’s – and Netanyahu’s – side again. Arab states are again co-operating. And attention has moved from Gaza to Iran.

So far, so good (from Netanyahu’s perspective, no doubt). Netanyahu has been angling to draw the US into war with Israel against Iran for two decades (albeit with successive US Presidents declining the dangerous prospect).

But to cut Iran down to size would require US military assistance.

Netanyahu senses Biden’s weakness and has the tools and knowhow by which he can manipulate US politics: Indeed, worked in this way, Netanyahu might force Biden to continue to arm Israel, and even to embrace his widening of the war to Hizbullah in Lebanon.

Conclusion

Israel’s strategy from past decades will continue with its hope of achieving some Chimeric transformative “de-radicalisation” of Palestinians that will make “Israel safe.”

A former Israeli Ambassador to the US argues that Israel can have no peace without such “transformative de-radicalisation.” “If we do it right,” Ron Dermer insists, “it will make Israel stronger – and the US too.” It is in this context that the War Cabinet’s insistence on retaliation against Iran should be understood.

Rational argument advocating moderation is read as inviting defeat.

All of which is to say that Israelis are psychologically very far from being able to reconsider the content to the Zionist project of Jewish special rights. For now, they are on a completely different path, trusting to a Biblical reading that many Israelis have come to view as mandatory injunctions under Halachic Law.

Hubert Védrine asks us the supplementary question: “Can we imagine a West that manages to preserve the societies it has birthed – and yet “is not proselytizing, not-interventionist? In other words, a West that can accept alterity, that can live with others – and accept them for who they are.”

Védrine says this “is not a problem of the diplomatic machines: it’s a question of profound soul-searching, a deep cultural change that needs to happen in western society.”

A “trial of strength” between Israel and the Resistance Fronts ranged against it likely cannot be avoided.

The die has been deliberately cast this way.

Netanyahu is gambling big with Israel’s – and America’s – future. And he may lose.

If there is a regional war, and Israel suffers defeat, then what?

When exhaustion (and defeat) finally settles in, and the parties “scrabble in the drawer” for new solutions to their strategic distress, the truly transformative solution would be for an Israeli leader to think the “unthinkable” – to think of one state between the River and the Sea.

And, for Israel – tasting the bitter herbs of “things fallen apart” – to talk directly with Iran.

Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Russia’s free running in the Ukraine war in the most recent months is about to end as the Biden Administration has met with success, finally, in the US Congress on the long-stalled Ukraine aid bill. The aid approved by the House on Saturday would send $60.8 billion to Ukraine.

Senate approval is expected as soon as Tuesday. President Biden has promised, “I will immediately sign this law to send a signal to the whole world: we support our friends and will not allow Iran or Russia to succeed,” 

To be sure, the US is doubling down to frustrate Russia’s perceived plans for an outright Russian military victory in Ukraine through this year. Unsurprisingly, Washington’s transatlantic allies are also rallying, which is the message coming out of the virtual meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council at the level of Allied Defence Ministers chaired by Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at Brussels on Saturday. 

The sense of relief in Kiev is palpable with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy telling NBC, “I think this support will really strengthen the armed forces of Ukraine, and we will have a chance for victory.” He said the US lawmakers moved to keep “history on the right track.” 

On the other hand, the Russian foreign ministry reaction has been rather polemical — as if Moscow was anticipating the development. What seems to perturb Moscow most in the US aid bill is the thinking favouring the confiscation of frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine, which, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov singled out “because this is essentially the destruction of all the foundations of the economic system. This is an encroachment on state property, on state assets and on private property. By no means should this be perceived as legal action — it is illegal. And accordingly, it will be subject to retaliatory actions and legal proceedings.”

Moscow would sense that the American intention is, first, to force the EU too onto a similar trajectory and thereby destroy whatever residual prospects remain for reconciliation between Russia and Europe for a long time to come; second, provide the wherewithal to ultimately utilise the Russian frozen assets to generate business for the US military-industrial complex; and, three, in geopolitical terms, create a precedent in any future showdown between the West and China.

Suffice to say, Moscow is right in estimating that in a longer term perspective, the 21st Century Peace through Strength Act, which was also passed by the US House of Representatives with a bipartisan vote of 360-58 on Saturday empowering empowering the US executive branch to seize and transfer frozen Russian assets held in the US to Ukraine is fraught with consequences far more devastating than the $60 billion financial aid for Ukraine. Curiously, they complement each other too.

Make no mistake about the bipartisan consensus in the Congress in this regard. This is important to know as Donald Trump has apparently shed his ambivalence and decided to be supportive of the Ukraine aid bill. The meeting between Trump and the Republican House speaker Mike Johnson in the run-up to the vote in the House on Saturday would suggest that Johnson might not be ousted, after all, by his far-right House Republican colleagues.

Beijing understands the diabolical play perfectly well. A commentary in the Global Times on Sunday said, “If the bill [on Russian assets] ultimately becomes law and goes into effect, it will set a disastrous precedent against the existing international financial order.”

Of course, the Russian military moves going forward will be keenly watched. For, in such fluid circumstances, actions will speak better than words. At any rate, an inflection point has come since, evidently with an eye on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forthcoming visit to Beijing, the Biden Administration is also shifting gear to explicitly threaten China for allegedly supporting the Russian defence industry. The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is paying a 3-day visit to China on Wednesday.  

Taken together, what emerges is that the Biden Administration is doubling down on the Ukraine war, contrary to earlier prognosis that war fatigue is setting in. Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder has disclosed to Politico in a statement that the Biden Administration is considering sending additional military advisers to Ukraine, since “security conditions have evolved.” 

These additional personnel “would not be in a combat role, but rather would advise and support the Ukrainian government and military.” The specific numbers of personnel remain confidential “for operational security and force protection reasons.” They will support logistics and oversight efforts for the weapons the US is sending Ukraine and “new contingent will also help the Ukrainian military with weapons maintenance.” 

Indeed, the sophistry of non-combat role apart, what is in the cards is an incremental expansion of the US military presence in Ukraine, notwithstanding Biden’s repeated assertions that US troops wouldn’t participate in the war on Ukraine’s behalf, as doing so would increase the risk of a direct Russian-American military confrontation. 

Citing sources, Politico further reported that “One of the tasks the advisers will tackle is helping the Ukrainians plan sustainment of complex equipment donated by the US as the summer fighting is expected to ramp up.” 

How does the new US $60.75 billionaid package add up? It includes $23.2 billion intended to replenish US weapons stocks; $13.8 billion for the purchase of advanced weapons systems for Ukraine; and another $11.3 billion for “ongoing US military operations in the region.” 

That is to say, in effect, the direct military assistance to Ukraine will actually amount to about $13.8 billion till end-2024. The Russian experts estimate that this allocation rules out another Ukrainian “counteroffensive.” But that is small comfort, since the increased flow of US weaponry will beef up the Ukrainian military capability to withstand the Russian offensive, which cannot but impact the present balance of forces at the front. 

From a military angle, in immediate terms, the cutting edge of the aid bill lies in the fact that it opens the gateway for the transfer to Ukraine of tactical missile systems [ATACMS] capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 300 km, which brings Crimea within its range. Reportedly, French troops are already on the ground in Odessa numbering 1000 and another contingent is expected shortly. This was  of course forecast a few weeks ago by the Russian foreign intelligence but Paris had flatly denied it. (here and here)

The bottom line here is that the aid package aims on the one hand to avoid a catastrophic military situation arising at the front in the coming months, which could be politically damaging for Biden’s re-election bid, while on the other hand, the bulk of funds actually goes to the US arms manufacturers in some key “swing states” and gratifies the influential military-industrial complex and the Deep State. 

Biden told Wall Street Journal, “We will send military equipment from our own stocks, and then use the money authorised by Congress to replenish these stocks by buying them from American suppliers. This includes Patriot missiles made in Arizona, Javelin missiles made in Alabama, and artillery shells made in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas.” 

To be sure, the triumphalist narrative of the Ukraine war by the US state department is on a comeback trail.

Reprinted with permission from Indian Punchline.

Fighting to the Last Ukrainian

Paul Craig Roberts

Ukraine has lost almost half a million troops
https://www.rt.com/russia/596458-ukraine-lost-almost-half-million-troops-shoigu/

And it looks like US/UK/EU “aid” packages will cost Ukraine another half-million soldiers. https://www.rt.com/news/596436-uk-largest-ever-military-aid-ukraine/

The UK PM justifies the destruction of Ukraine with this mindless reason: “Defending Ukraine against Russia’s brutal ambitions is vital for our security and for all of Europe. If Putin is allowed to succeed in this war of aggression, he will not stop at the Polish border.”

Why is the UK PM lying through his teeth? Or is it possible that he really is completely stupid? No intelligence agency anywhere has provided a scrap of evidence that Russia has an expansionist policy toward Europe. Moreover, as the Russian government has repeatedly made clear by words and deeds, there is no Russian invasion of Ukraine. There is a limited military operation to clear Ukrainian forces out of the Russian populated territories that seceded from Ukraine after the US coup that overthrew the Ukrainian government and installed an anti-Russian government that persecuted Ukraine’s Russian population. Everyone knows this, but the West pretends it is an invasion.

It is the US, UK, and EU that are turning a limited operation into a general war. Putin did not realize that this would be the consequence of his limited operation. Putin misjudged the West and blundered. He should have knocked out Ukraine immediately and got it over before the West had time to intervene.

So, who is destroying Ukraine? Russia or the West?

What would cause a man (and in almost every case it is a man) to burn himself alive? Two men in recent months have publicly done so: one protesting the Israeli assault on Hamas, the other’s motive somewhat unclear but somehow connected to the trial of Donald Trump. In the Roman Martyrology, we often read of the faithful being burned alive by authorities who feared Christ and His ability to…

Source

A few years ago, my dad got a notification on his computer that it had a virus. He followed the notification’s prompts to protect his computer and dialed the number flashing on his screen. The person who answered the phone expressed deep concern and asked my dad a few questions to gain remote access to the apparently sick computer in a ruse to assist him. Unsurprisingly for most readers…

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Cardinal Gerhard Müller has rebuked local Belgian authorities who tried to shut down a conference he spoke at this week, comparing them to “absolutist rulers of the past.” The former head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office strongly criticized the mayor of Brussels and his supporters for their attempt to cancel the National Conservatism conference that took place April 16-17, calling them political activists who desired the withdrawal of the “fundamental right to freedom of assembly.”

The post Cardinal Müller rebukes Belgian mayor: Politics is about ‘dignity of man in the Image of God’ appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

Of the approximately 4,800 employees in Vatican City, more than half work for the Holy See, i.e. in the authorities, media, or embassies of the Church’s administration. The others are employees of the 44-hectare Vatican State: gardeners, shop assistants in the supermarket or at the post office, museum attendants, and cleaners. A full-time work week is 36 hours.
 

The post The Vatican’s 36-hour week appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

Elementarz etyczyny (“The Ethics Primer”) is an underappreciated part of Karol Wojtyła’s pre-papal corpus.  Which is unfortunate, because it says much that’s quite important for us to hear today. It’s a collection of twenty essays – really columns – he wrote in 1957-58 for the Kraków Catholic newspaper, Tygodnik Powszechny.  They deal with a range of philosophical questions, from the source of morality to the role of struggle in social ethics, from asceticism to the compatibility of Christian ethics with authentic humanism.  Many of the essays are Christian jabs at the postulates of Marxism, though no small number also criticize Kant, whose ethics were then taken quite seriously in various European quarters.

Philosophical assumptions guide a culture, and Wojtyła examined several that were regularly served up in Communist-occupied Poland.  But Wojtyła also identified the deeper truth that philosophy can lead (or mislead) a culture. And so – unlike superficial American dismissals of “philosophizing” as an abstract waste of time – he showed that philosophy, real philosophy, is worth the time and effort.

Several of the essays probe a basic human experience: the experience of obligation.  We all feel “obliged” at some point in life to someone or something. What significance, what meaning, does that experience have?

Wojtyła observes that we all experience that there are things we should do and things we should not.  He adds another thing we all experience: some of the things we should do we don’t, while those we shouldn’t we do.

His point is to insist that man is not the author, the auto-creator of moral norms.  If that were true, Wojtyła argues, man could waive his self-imposed rules. But we all also have the experience that our sense of obligation endures even when we engage in (vain) self-dispensation.  That suggests we are not the source of those moral norms or the sense of obligation flowing from them.

Wojtyła was writing in a particular context; his immediate opponent was the oxymoronic “socialist morality.”  But his observations are still very pertinent to our current condition in the free societies of the West. Let me offer three relevant contemporary applications.

First, the sense of obligation of which Wojtyła speaks is not a time-and-culture-conditioned phenomenon unique to some people behind the Iron Curtain a decade or so after World War II.  Any person honest with himself must admit that the experience Wojtyła analyzes is a universal one: all human beings at some point in their lives experience “I ought to do that,” even when they really don’t want to. Even when they confess that they cannot circumvent its demand.

But that experience stands in direct opposition to the many variants of “self-autonomy” Western societies worship.  The sense of an obligation not of my authorship challenges all claims of “rights” to “define meaning, the universe, and human life.” It therefore calls into question every project built on assumptions of self-made morality, “autonomous ethics,” “self-definition,” or a subjective vision of moral norms that are neither grounded in nor needing any objective anchor.

A deeper reckoning with the truth of that insight would save us, not just from a lot of superficial sloganeering but especially from the disastrous policies masquerading as deep “thought” – the laws and cultural expectations that flow as a result from those shibboleths. And that reckoning does not require a profound and learned ethical analysis. It just requires us to examine a basic and common experience: “I ought.”

Second, the nagging persistence of the sense of “obligation,” despite our attempts to talk ourselves out of it, or our “autonomous” will trying to dispense with it, leads to another experience: responsibility.  If in good faith I find I really can’t rationalize that obligation away and still feel accountable to its demands, it means I have a responsibility towards it.  It’s a responsibility not of my making because – as with obligation – if it really was just my own doing, I could dismiss it. But I can’t.

I sense that responsibility comes not from me but from the obligation, and that it holds me – perhaps even against my will – to account.

Responsibility, then, is not just a self-assumed yoke, the mark of the morally “mature” (but autonomous) actor.  Even when I don’t embrace them out of principle, I recognize there are “shoulds” that hold me to account.  Responsibility, then, is not just a matter of my choice.

That leads us to a third insight, especially valuable for our times: the value of guilt.  Contrary to current assumptions: “guilt can be good.” That’s not to say it’s good if it’s paralyzing or obsessive, but it is to say that not every manifestation of guilt is paralyzing, much less obsessive.

Guilt is not always pathological, something to suppress or flee.  Humans sense obligation – a “should” – towards which they are responsible.  They also have the experience of not being responsible, of not having done what they “should” or done what they “shouldn’t.”  That non-self-imposed responsibility then assumes a new form: guilt.  I failed my responsibility by betraying my obligation.  That experience is not simply bad, because it reveals an accountability to the good, independent of my will.

In traditional Catholic terms, it recognizes conscience.  Conscience is a source of moral guidance before we act and of judgment after we act.  Conscience is a healthy sense of recognition that not all my acts comport with what I “should” do, failings for which I bear obligation.  It is healthy because it acknowledges that first principles lie outside my sovereign will: “good is to be done and evil avoided.”

Wojtyła’s analysis of obligation certainly aligned with an older Catholic understanding of conscience, but it broke fresh ground in forcing everyone to reckon with the implications of primordial and universal human experiences – that we have obligations for which we are responsible towards which we can fail – which leads to a state of affairs that requires fixing.  As a common human experience, it grounds objective morality independently of particular religious commitments.

Isn’t that a very relevant need of the contemporary West?

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When future historians go searching for the final nail in the US coffin, they may well settle on the date April 20, 2024. On that day Congress passed legislation to fund two and a half wars, hand what’s left of our privacy over to the CIA and NSA, and give the US president the power … Continue reading "April 20, 2024: Final Nail in America’s Coffin?"

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