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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: The Catholic Thing
    5 hours 21 min ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    The controversy it stirred in the Church in the West by the DDF’s “blessings” document has somewhat abated, but opposition to it and how it was implemented continues apace. Even some supporters of the Vatican document are disappointed that it seemed to lack synodality, in that it “appeared to circumvent the entire synodal process,” suddenly handing down the declaration “from above.” One Jesuit notes the document’s “Jesuitical” trait of forbidding the blessing of a union while at the same time approving “a joint blessing of a couple in that same union.” 

     

    The post Assessing ‘Fiducia supplicans’: the first 100 days appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  9. Site: The Catholic Thing
    5 hours 21 min ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    Love me in my willingness to suffer
    Love me in the gifts I wish to offer
    Teach me how you love and have to die
    And I will try
    Somehow to forget myself and give
    Life and joy so dead things start to live.
    Let me show now an untrammelled joy,
    Gold without alloy.

    You know I have no cross but want to learn,
    How to change and to the poor world turn.
    I can almost worship stars and moon
    And the sun at noon

    But when I’m low I only beg you to
    Ask me anything, I’ll try to do
    What you need. I trust your energy.
    Share it then with me.

    The post Prayer for Holy Week appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  10. Site: The Catholic Thing
    5 hours 21 min ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    The Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Apostleship of the Sea will minister to the crew of the Dali. The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed at about 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday after the Dali, a 900-foot container ship, collided with one of its major support pilings. Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori said he was saddened by the loss of life and asked for prayers for all involved. Apostleship volunteers, many of whom are Knights of Columbus, visit merchant ships at the Port of Baltimore Monday through Saturday, dropping off rosaries, scapulars, and prayer cards.

     

    The post Archdiocese of Baltimore ministers to Key Bridge collapse crew appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  11. Site: The Catholic Thing
    5 hours 22 min ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    Abortion advocates tell us that abortion is safe. By becoming legal, so the story goes, hidden violence is made safe, and it must be protected because, without abortion access, women will die. But medical abortions (the abortion pill) induce an unnatural process, one in which up to 20 percent of women experience a complication – four times the complication rate of surgical abortion.
     

    The post The case against the abortion pill appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  12. Site: The Catholic Thing
    5 hours 22 min ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    Cardinal Mario Grech, the Secretary General of the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops, used an interview with a Swiss newspaper last week to lay out a vision for the Church. He believes synodality can help the Church move from “uniformity of thought” to “unity in difference,” while reshaping the exercise of authority within global Catholicism. “I always imagine the Church as a rainbow, with the colors that are not excluded but, together, create harmony.”
     

    The post Maltese cardinal “over the rainbow” for synodality appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  13. Site: The Catholic Thing
    5 hours 22 min ago
    Author: Fr. Robert P. Imbelli

    One of Saint John Henry Newman’s best-known sermons is entitled “The Invisible World.” In it he articulates one of the core convictions of his life and thought. He says of this invisible world: “though unseen, it is present; present, not future; it is now and here; the kingdom of God is among us.” Unseen, yet present, because intimations of this other dimension abound everywhere. Indeed, in his Apologia, he speaks of the “sacramental principle,” “the doctrine that material phenomena are both the types and instruments of real things unseen.”

    Nowhere is this truth more actual than in the sacraments themselves, and, to a surpassing degree, in the Eucharist, “the sacrament of sacraments.” Here the gifts of earth and the work of human hands are not spurned much less annihilated, but are transformed, transubstantiated into the very body and blood of the Son of God. In its unduly neglected “Decree on the Life and Ministry of Priests,” the Second Vatican Council proclaims the Church’s rich Eucharistic faith:

    The other sacraments, as well as every ministry of the Church and every work of the apostolate, are joined with the Eucharist and are directed toward it. For the Holy Eucharist contains the entire spiritual treasure of the Church that is, Christ himself, our passover and living bread. Christ, through his flesh, made alive and life-giving by the Holy Spirit, offers life to men and women who are thus invited and led to offer themselves, their labors, indeed all created things, in union with Christ. Hence, the Eucharist shows itself to be the font and the goal of all preaching of the Gospel. (no. 5).

    Yet, one of the sad marks of our secular age is a paradoxical double loss. Not only do we struggle to find access to the other dimension, that is, the spiritual, but we also seem impervious to the true sense of the material. Our sacramental sense has atrophied. Indeed, these two losses may be intricately connected.

    Charles Taylor, whose A Secular Age magisterially traced its emergence and accomplishments, has also diagnosed its perils. He speaks tellingly of the constricted horizon of its “immanent frame” – absent any sense of transcendence. He goes beyond detached analysis to lament “buffered selves” who flee community and relational commitment to one another.

    But Taylor also employs another term, even more suggestive and troubling: excarnation. To a great extent secular men and women, for all their surface materialism, live deeply disembodied, disincarnate lives. They often disdain the very tradition that bore them. They disaffiliate from communities that nourished them. They fantasize in the virtual sphere of the Internet, rather than risk face-to-face bodily encounters that alone can foster fulfillment. And, finally, in a last desperate attempt at excarnation, they strive to marginalize vulnerability and death to the point of destroying the body by drugs or suicide.

    Then, venturing beyond the philosopher’s ordinary purview, Taylor recommends to his fellow Christians the one true remedy. He writes: “[I]n a world where objectification and excarnation reign, where death undermines meaning. . .we have to struggle to recover a sense of what the Incarnation can mean.”

    To recover the true sense of the spiritual, we must rediscover the mystery of the material, its sacramental reality. It may be our failure to enter deeply and respectfully into the material that inhibits our discernment of the spiritual. For, as Tertullian taught centuries ago: “caro salutis cardo” – salvation hinges on the flesh. The only salvation from ex-carnation is in-carnation.

    Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio, 1606 [Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan]

    In the final chapter of his book, significantly entitled “Conversions,” Taylor celebrates those “pioneers” who discovered new paths to transcendence beyond modernity’s stunted imagination. Among them is Gerard Manley Hopkins, priest and poet, whom Newman himself had received into the Church. Hopkins’s poetry is a sustained paean to the multi-dimensional richness of concrete particulars. Without once devaluing their material grandeur, he records the signals of transcendence they emanate, he espies the intimations of the Creator their very being broadcasts.

    His poem, “Hurrahing in Harvest,” recapitulates his intense appropriation of Newman’s sacramental principle:

    I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
    Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
    And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
    Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

    And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
    Majestic – as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! –
    These things, these things were here and but the beholder
    Wanting; which two when they once meet,
    The heart rears wings bold and bolder
    And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

    In Luke’s account of the encounter of the two disciples with the risen, but unrecognized Lord, the revelatory actions are all bodily. Jesus walks with them, he incorporates them into the history of their people, he transforms their fear of bodily suffering and sits with them in fellowship. Then “he took bread and blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.” (Luke 24:30) And, only at this supreme sign of incarnational communion, were “their eyes opened.” (24:31) At the end of a long mystagogy, no longer is the beholder wanting.

    Perhaps today we need to behold yet more boldly, cast our gaze even farther. The sacramental reach of the Eucharist extends beyond even Hopkins’ imaginative powers. Its scope is caught by Pope Francis towards the conclusion of his encyclical Laudato si’. Francis confesses:

    It is in the Eucharist that all that has been created finds its greatest exaltation. Grace, which tends to manifest itself tangibly, found unsurpassable expression when God himself became man and gave himself as food for his creatures. The Lord, in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter. He comes not from above, but from within, he comes that we might find him in this world of ours. In the Eucharist, fullness is already achieved; it is the living center of the universe, the overflowing core of love and of inexhaustible life. Joined to the incarnate Son, present in the Eucharist, the whole cosmos gives thanks to God (236).

    No hint of excarnation here.

    The post ‘But the Beholder Wanting’ appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  14. Site: AntiWar.com
    5 hours 24 min ago
    Author: Ted Snider

    “Unipolar” used to mean that the United States was, at least in theory, alone in leading the world. Now “unipolar” means that the United States is alone and isolated in opposition to the world. In global affairs, a hegemon is a nation that leads because it has the consent of the other nations who believe … Continue reading "Is America a Rogue Superpower?"

    The post Is America a Rogue Superpower? appeared first on Antiwar.com.

  15. Site: AntiWar.com
    5 hours 24 min ago
    Author: Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr.

    On March 14, Sen. Charles Schumer, the majority leader in the U.S. Senate, gave a major speech on the Senate floor saying the Israeli government under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been “too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows.” Schumer … Continue reading "Gaza War Is Pushing Support for Israel to Historic Lows"

    The post Gaza War Is Pushing Support for Israel to Historic Lows appeared first on Antiwar.com.

  16. Site: The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network
    6 hours 27 min ago
    Author: Kallie Fell, Executive Director

    For Gloria, “once contracts were completed” the intended parents, “very quickly changed their personality” and Gloria wanted to back out, reaching out to her caseworker (recall the support person) multiple times, but Gloria felt nothing but pressure to keep going:  

    And as much as I wanted to back out, the agency then starts to pressure you into not backing out… I had called the caseworker multiple times saying, you know, I just don’t think I can go through with this and I was constantly threatened with breach of contract and ‘you’re going to have to pay this back. You’re going to have to pay the lawyer fees, the health insurance policy, and the medical clearance back’. So, I mean, I felt like I had no choice but to continue. That only got worse as the pregnancy progressed.

    Feeling pressured, Gloria continued and an embryo created from a “donor” egg and the intended father’s sperm was transferred into Gloria’s womb. The perfect example of third-party reproduction where two different women are used to create a child for someone else, truly muddying the waters of lineage and origin for the child in question and increasing the risk of health complications in life for both women. This article won’t get into specific risks  for egg-donors or the ethical problems of such a practice, but readers should be well aware that women have lost their fertility and lives “donating” eggs to “families in need”. Further, surrogate mothers are often ill-informed about the risks of carrying a child from a “donated” egg. 

    Two things stick out to Gloria about the embryo transfer. First, she was misled about the number of available embryos the IPs had available. Some IPs have more than one embryo transferred at a time into the womb of the surrogate to improve success, increasing the chance for multiples and also  increasing the risk of complications to the surrogate mother and children she carries. Other IPs only transfer one embryo at a time, but have embryos waiting on ice to use in case of failure.  “It’s always nerve wracking, and it was more nerve wracking because I hadn’t been told that this couple only had two embryos created.”  In other words, there were only two chances for Gloria to become pregnant; Gloria was told they had six. Therefore, if the IPs needed to create more embryos, Gloria would have to wait and be locked into a contract while waiting, a process that can take up to a year or more. Bottom line, Gloria was lied to.

     Secondly, “embryo transfer day was the first time meeting the intended father in person” and although the transfer went well, a private interaction with the intended father left her “mortified”, “violated” and “uncomfortable”.

     And that is really the moment I truly realized that I should have gone with my gut. Like this journey is only going to get worse. I immediately came home and I called the caseworker, aka my support person, and she laughed it off. She said, ‘he’s just being silly. Ignore it.’

    Gloria certainly didn’t laugh it off, but she had no choice but to continue. The transfer was a success. She was pregnant. 

    This is part three of a five part series. Over the several weeks we will be releasing a write-up based off of our exclusive interview with Gloria. 

    Watch the full interview with Gloria on our YouTube channel.

    The post Gloria’s Surrogacy Story: From Contract to Conception appeared first on The Center for Bioethics & Culture Network.

  17. Site: Public Discourse
    9 hours 25 min ago
    Author: Christopher O. Tollefsen

    Today, I answer one of four questions sent in by a single reader. It is a timely but complex question, and answering it precludes answering that reader’s other interesting questions, or the questions sent in by others, some of which I hope to address in the future. 

    The reader writes:  

    Are there any circumstances in which pregnancy termination could be acceptable if the baby is pre-viable/unviable and termination protects or preserves the mother’s health? 

    The most common example of this is ectopic pregnancy. But the scenario I see often as well is pre-viable premature rupture of membranes, or PROM (meaning the mother’s water breaks before the baby can survive outside of the womb) at seventeen weeks, for example. 

    There is no clear path forward for women in this situation. Generally, women are counseled with different “options,” including terminating the pregnancy or inducing labor at that time, versus expectant management under close surveillance (i.e., doing nothing and waiting to see what happens). I feel more comfortable with the latter option because of the small chance that this pregnancy could reach viability and thus the baby could survive. 

    My question is: if mom began to exhibit signs of sepsis during this time while the baby still had a heartbeat, would it be acceptable to induce her labor and thus end the baby’s life (as it would likely not survive the labor process and definitely not live outside the womb)? There are other, less common, medical circumstances that present this same ethical dilemma, but I guess my question is essentially the same. Is it okay to prioritize mom’s life and health in these situations? 

    The author describes two situations. In the first, a pre-viable child faces a very high risk of death because of premature rupture of membranes (PROM), but the mother’s life and health are not yet at high risk. In the second case, in which the mother begins to show signs of sepsis, the risk to the mother is increasing. The most significant of such cases are sometimes called “vital conflict” cases. Both the mother’s and the child’s life or health are at serious risk and only the risk to the mother can be mitigated. How should these situations be ethically addressed?   

    An important guide for thinking about this question is “Concluding Pregnancy Ethically,” issued by AAPLOG, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. In writing about the variety of difficulties that can be faced in pregnancy, the authors say that “many women’s health advocates and . . . many physicians do not seek alternative paths that could support maternal health during a pregnancy, but instead choose to end the pregnancy out of fear or blind adherence to what they are taught.”  

    So, for example, in the first situation described by the reader, where the child is at risk but the mother is not (or not yet), the mother might be encouraged to undergo an abortion on grounds that continuing the pregnancy until its natural resolution might be emotionally or psychologically difficult. Similar approaches are advocated when the child has an abnormality that threatens to shorten his or her life. Rather than carry the pregnancy to its natural resolution (when sometimes, at least, the child will live for a few hours, days, or even longer after delivery), the mother will be encouraged to abort in order to resolve the situation.  

    Likewise, in vital conflict situations, mothers are encouraged to undergo surgical abortion rather than what AAPLOG calls “artificial separation,” typically induced delivery, which will save the mother but probably result in the child’s death. The child is likely to die in either case; does it matter how that death is brought about? 

    The starting point for all deliberations on this issue should be this: it is always morally wrong to intend the death of an innocent human being. Thus, any intervention in the pregnancy that seeks to end the fetus’s life, even for the sake of protecting the mother’s life or health, is not to be chosen. Many interventions that I have described above do seem to fail in this regard: they involve ending the pregnancy by ending the child’s life. Those should not be chosen. But they do not cover all the possibilities. 

    I won’t here give in-depth attention to the question of ectopic pregnancy, on which much has been written. But the principle that guides the treatment of ectopic pregnancy is essential to considering the author’s question. A common way of treating ectopic pregnancy, in which the embryo is implanted in the fallopian tube, creating a lethal threat of tubal rupture, is to remove part of the tube with the embryo inside it (salpingectomy). This inevitably results in fetal demise. Is this also ruled out by our just-mentioned starting point? 

    It is not: the death of the embryonic child is not intended in the removal of that child from a location in which he or she will be unable to mature to viability and at which his or her presence creates grave risks to the mother’s health. Morally speaking, the death is a side effect. So removal is not automatically ruled out of moral consideration. 

    Of course, the removal of a child from her environment, with death as a side effect, does not automatically make removal morally correct; doing anything that has a lethal effect on another must also be fair if it is to be morally upright. And so one must ask: is a mother who has her ectopic pregnancy addressed by salpingectomy being unfair to her child? And the answer again seems to be negative: the mother could reasonably say to her child, “If I could save you, I would; but I cannot, and am pursuing the only path available in which only one of us perishes.” There seems to be no violation of the Golden Rule here. 

    I’ll suggest below that there are additional ways in which fairness plays a role in these contexts, but this is a good start: when both the mother’s and child’s life are at risk, and only the mother’s life can be saved, it is not unfair to do so, and is morally permissible so long as the child’s death is not intended. 

    So let’s now consider cases of premature rupture of membranes (PROM) and other cases where both mother and child are at risk (such as extreme hypertension, partial molar pregnancy, and others; see “Concluding Pregnancy Ethically,” page 11, for a more comprehensive list). Medical professionals must act as soon as there are signs of sepsis in order to protect the life of the mother. Does it matter whether her life is saved by an intervention upon the body of the child, such as in dilation and curettage (D&C) or dilation and extraction (D&E) methods, both of which dismember the fetus, as opposed to induced labor, which takes longer but will result in an intact, though deceased or dying, fetus? 

    Most of the philosophical literature on this topic by pro-life authors is concerned with the question of intention: is the death of the child intended if a method of extraction is used that physically and lethally impacts that child directly? Arguments about the well-known “Phoenix” abortion case, in which a placentectomy (detaching the placenta) was performed and the child dismembered in the course of extraction, have divided Catholic and other pro-life thinkers over whether the child’s death was intended. 

    Similarly, one might worry that a D&C or D&E to remove a pre-viable child from a mother suffering blood loss from hemorrhage would involve intentional killing, because of the direct and lethal impact of the intervention upon the child.  

    I have expressed doubts about such analyses of intention elsewhere, and do not propose to rehearse them here. Reflection on the AAPLOG document has led me to see an important potential shared ground between those who do and those who do not think that these surgical procedures inevitably involve an intention to harm or kill the child. 

    Consider what AAPLOG says in response to the question, When is it acceptable to induce labor for a life-limiting fetal anomaly? AAPLOG questions the use of the common description of such an anomaly as “incompatible with life,” because, in the case in question, the fetus is alive. The anomaly, such as trisomy 13, trisomy 18, or anencephaly, will, however, certainly limit the child’s life, bringing it to an untimely end, and so should be described as a “life-limiting” anomaly. 

    But consider what steps we would take for a child of two, or five, or nine, who had developed a life-limiting condition such as cancer. Let us suppose we know that cancer is incurable and inevitably lethal. The remaining days, weeks, or years of the child’s life will be a time of both immense grief and of celebration of the life that is still present in our child. They are also, to some extent, days of hope. While we would not unreasonably prolong life through the use of expensive and invasive medical interventions, we also would not hasten death, even as a side effect. And so, by extension, when expectant waiting is possible for a pregnancy’s natural resolution, that seems like the fair response to the value of our child’s life: what we would not do to our born children (hasten their demise), it would be unfair to do to our unborn children. 

    And further: what parents would not, even at some cost of time, convenience, and personal risk, attempt to preserve their born children from a violent form of death, even when a more peaceful form of death was inevitable? 

    The parallel to vital conflict cases is clear: do not too quickly assume that death is inevitable. Do not too quickly assume that active rather than passive harm needs to be inflicted, even as a side effect. Do not too quickly assume that an intact corpse is impossible. These are all assumptions we would avoid in thinking about our born children. 

    It is wrong, even when the mother’s life is endangered, to treat that mother’s child as a hostile intruder or a malignant bit of tissue in need of removal.

     

    Similarly, the approach taken by the physician can either reflect or fail to reflect such concerns. It is wrong, even when the mother’s life is endangered, to treat that mother’s child as a hostile intruder or a malignant bit of tissue in need of removal. Much more respectful, I think, is the doctor who says: “We need to act fast to save you and I’m afraid your baby won’t make it. Who would you like to come in to say goodbye to the baby with you?”

    We are extraordinarily fortunate in the developed world that we have the medical resources to make the patience that such approaches require possible. As AAPLOG notes, 

    In countries with modern healthcare infrastructure, medical science is usually advanced enough to support the maternal patient through the 24 hours or less typically required for such inductions. If need be, blood product replacement and intensive care can be employed to protect the maternal life to achieve successful induction of an intact fetal body without resorting to fetal dismemberment. 

    The question of intention remains important in places without such resources: what are the limits to the permissible treatment of vital conflict cases when a delay in extraction will mean the death of both child and mother? But such cases (we should be grateful) are rare to nonexistent for us. 

    To return, then, to our reader’s question: there do seem to be reasons, especially reasons of fairness and parental love, not to hasten the process of inevitable but natural separation when a pregnancy is in distress but the mother’s life and health are not yet compromised. This seems true even when there is very little likelihood of the pregnancy’s proceeding to viability. And when things progress further, toward the existence of a genuine vital conflict case, there are reasons to prefer induced labor, when possible and safe, over surgical removal regardless of one’s views on surgical removal and intention. The sacrifices we would make for our born children to prevent a hastened, although inevitable, death, or to ensure an intact rather than a compromised body of a loved child, point the way for us here. 

    Submit your own ethical questions to Chris! 

    Image by Feng Yu and licensed via Adobe Stock

  18. Site: Zero Hedge
    10 hours 45 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    US, Japan To Initiate Huge Defense Treaty Upgrade With Eye On China

    The United States and Japan are poised to unveil their largest defense treaty revision in decades. The FT has reported that President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are soon to "announce plans to reorganize the U.S. armed forces in Japan to strengthen the development of operational plans and training of the U.S.-Japan at the summit in Washington D.C. on the 10th of next month."

    Crucially the new agreement is expected to invest the three-star commander of the US Forces in Japan with more operational authority. As it currently stands, and following the development of the US-Japan Security Treaty first signed in 1960, the US commander is required to coordinate approval for operations with US Indo-Pacific Command based out of Hawaii. 

    US Indo-Pacific Command/Flickr

    All of this comes amid the backdrop of China-Taiwan tensions being continually on the rise, and as North Korea flexes its military might in response to joint US-South Korea drills on the peninsula.

    Japan currently hosts an estimated 54,000 US military troops plus another at least 8,000 US civilian contractors. Recently there were fears that a Western troop presence would be expanded in Japan with the proposed opening of a NATO office there, but the plan was nixed after strong protestations from Beijing.

    Analyzing the coming upgrade to the US-Japan defense treaty, one regional report explains: "This review responds to criticisms that it is inconvenient for rapid response in case of emergency because of the distance between the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii and the Japan Self-Defense Forces, which are 3850 miles away and have a 19-hour time difference."

    Prime Minister Kishida has made it a theme of the past couple years that Tokyo is committed to making great strides at becoming an unambiguous regional and "strategic leader" as a "security provider in the Indo-Pacific." However, Japan officials have long emphasized a stronger armed forces primarily for the sake of 'deterrence' - something which Washington has encouraged. Naturally, China doesn't see these developments as merely for deterrence.

    President Joe Biden has nominated Air Force Maj. Gen. Stephen F. Jost to take command of U.S. Forces Japan, according to a Pentagon news release Monday.https://t.co/84Q2tSBKqp

    — Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) March 27, 2024

    The past two years has also witnessed a flurry of activity between the US and Japan at numerous levels of government especially focusing on an overhaul in the U.S.–Japan defense posture and strategy. There's also been a plan in motion for a restructuring Marine Corps forces stationed on and around Okinawa.

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 18:40
  19. Site: Zero Hedge
    11 hours 5 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Baltimore Coal Exports Blocked After Bridge Collapse

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

    Baltimore Port’s coal exports are likely to be blocked for weeks after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge on Tuesday, according to a Pennsylvania coal trading firm.  

    The bridge collapsed early on Tuesday after a cargo ship lost power and slammed into the construction, which crumbled within seconds and will disrupt navigation near the Baltimore port, which is one of the biggest coal export terminals in America.

    Baltimore is the nation’s second-largest coal exporting port after Norfolk, Virginia, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). In 2022, about one-fifth of U.S. coal exports left through Baltimore.

    The port of Baltimore is also one of the 20 largest ports in the U.S. and handles both coal and petroleum products.

    Following the bridge collapse, up to 2.5 million tons of coal exports from Baltimore could be blocked for up to six weeks, Ernie Thrasher, CEO at Pennsylvania coal trading firm Xcoal Energy & Resources, told Bloomberg.

    “You’ll see some diversion to other ports but the other ports are pretty busy,” Thrasher added. 

    “There’s a limit on how much you can divert,” said the executive, whose firm works with several coal suppliers. 

    Globally, the disrupted exports are unlikely to have a huge impact on coal prices, but many coal cargoes from Baltimore are typically headed for India, so there the impact could be felt along the supply chain, Thrasher told Bloomberg.

    At any rate, the bridge collapse has already disrupted coal shipments and delivery times.

    For example, rail company CSX, which owns the Curtis Bay coal pier in Baltimore, told Reuters on Tuesday that existing coal customers should expect “potential shipment delays.”

    Coal producer CONSOL Energy said vessel access in and out of the CONSOL Marine Terminal, located in the Port of Baltimore, has been delayed. As of Tuesday morning, the company did not have a definitive timeline of when vessel access or normal operations will resume.

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 18:20
  20. Site: Henrymakow.com
    11 hours 23 min ago

    Adolf_Stoecker.jpg(Left, Adolf Stoecker (1835 -1909) was the court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm II, a politician, 

    and a German Lutheran theologian who founded the Christian Social Party and attempted to
     roll back Jewish control. He helped organize the 1882 "Anti-Jewish Conference.") 

    Is this why Dresden was so maliciously destroyed Feb. 14, 1945? 
     
     
     
      A Dresden conference shows how Jewish hegemony was a fait accompli 142 years ago and explains why the West's racial cohesion and Christian heritage are under vicious satanist attack. 

    Read this and ask yourself, "Could Hitler have come to power without Masonic Jewish complicity?" 




    (Note - This is a key article I re-post every year as I have many new readers.) 

     


    --The Secret Masonry is setting up "our own, to all appearance, off position which in at least one of its organs [Nazis] will present what looks like the very antipodes to us. Our real opponents at heart will accept this simulated opposition as their own and will show us their cards." (Protocols of Zion, 12.11)
     
    ---But no man said anything about him [Jesus] openly for fear of the Jews. (John 7:13)
     

     

     
     
     
    (Slightly revised from Jan 6, 2016 & July 22 2022 ) 

    by Henry Makow Ph.D.


    The last significant effort to defend Christian national values was the "First International Anti-Jewish Conference" held in Dresden in September 1882.

    The conference attracted 300 prominent businessmen, aristocrats, politicians, clergy, lawyers, physicians, farmers and intellectuals from Germany, Austria, Hungry and Russia. They produced a manifesto addressed to "the Governments and Peoples of Christian Nations Threatened by Judaism" which shows how Jewish hegemony was a fait accompli 142 years ago, and explains why the West's racial cohesion and Christian heritagehave been destroyed. 

    FINANCIAL AND CULTURAL INVASION

    The Manifesto begins by saying Europe has been invaded by a foreign race more dangerous and insidious than Arabs, Tartars or Turks in the past because of "its means and objectives."

    Jewish "emancipation" following the French Revolution ("Equality, Fraternity, Liberty") removed protections against "a race whose first and foremost thoughts and energies are everywhere aimed at putting other nations in the moral and material shackles of slaves..."

    "According to the Jews' religious and national traditions, all of these peoples were created merely to serve them. The principle of equality was also applied to a race that does not wish to be equal with us, that considers itself a people privileged by God and [regards] the rest of mankind as lower beings, impure animals. The principle of fraternity was also applied to a race that does not even acknowledge non-Jews as neighbors and fellow human beings and according to whose Talmud non-Jews are enemies destined for eradication."

    merkel-b-nai-b-rith.jpgLeft. Merkel receives an award from her masters.
     
    "Moreover, cheating, stealing from them, bleeding them dry, bringing ruin upon them, perjuring against them, dishonoring, and even killing them constitutes an activity pleasing to their God. Small wonder, therefore, if modern liberalism, identifying more and more with the ascendant Jews, has taken the shape of pseudo-liberalism. In the Jews' hands, it has turned into a convenient tool for realizing their plans for world domination and putting irons on the European peoples."

    As a result of Jewish monopoly on government and finance, "the farmer, the big landowner, the industrialist, the artisan, the merchant, etc. , have all gotten caught up in material dependency upon Jews...they were forced to turn into their obedient servants, their train bearers. What's more, the Jews hire influential men who are active in public life to fill well-paid positions at banks, railways, insurance companies, etc. These individuals are thus virtually kept as Jewish vassals and are the most zealous and influential supporters of Jewish power in the legislatures and governments. "

    As a result of Illuminati Jewish instigated wars, "the governments of some indebted countries have become nothing more than Jewish institutions, Jewish collection agencies. This explains the complete inactivity of these governments with respect to the Jewish question and also their hostile behavior against their own populations in favor of Jewry."

    THE MASS MEDIA

    Due to media ownership, "until recently no newspaper in Central Europe would have dared to speak the truth vis - à - vis Jewry. Thus the Jews have become absolute masters, fabricators of public opinion. Any complaint raised against them, however, justified it may be, is suppressed. Any article that addresses the subject of Jewish dominance to the slightest extent is done away with."

    Political advancement "is dependent upon the favorable position of the Jewish press...As a result, intellectual slavery and moral cowardice vis - à - vis Jewry is one of the most characteristic features of our age." 
     
    Ambitious Christians  "become train bearers of Jewish power; they turn into traitors to their own nation and race and thus to their own blood relations. In many countries, the Jews have adulterated the system of [Freemason] lodges, stripped it of its essence, and degraded it into one of the most dangerous and effective instruments of Jewish power."

    "Mainly by means of the press, Jewry increasingly undermines the Christian religion, which ... during Roman times,... saved the European Aryan race from moral bankruptcy, on the one hand, and semi-civilized barbarity, on the other, and also regenerated it. It did so by setting the civilization and culture of the European Aryan race on firm religious, moral, and social foundations."

    "Christian religion is the most powerful reaction against Jewish tendencies to achieve world domination. It is an insurmountable protest against the elevation of the Semitic above the Aryan race, and so it is only natural that the Jewish clan is a sworn mortal enemy of both the founder of this religion and the Christian religion itself.

    Accordingly, Jewry can only firmly establish the superiority and rule of the Semitic race when it has managed to defeat the natural reaction opposing it and to destroy the institution of Christianity."

    CONCLUSION

    The 1882 Manifesto deftly describes the impotence of Christian leadership which is just as obvious today. There was no "Second International Anti Jewish Conference." The participants recognized they were fighting a lost cause. They did not propose measures because "this nation of parasites has become much too deeply ingrained in the body of our societal and state life for this first congress to operate under the delusion that its potentially detailed propositions could be carried out today."

    during.jpegThis was in spite of the fact that Eugen Duhring, left, laid out a detailed program the previous year (1881) in his book "On the Jews." Ironically, it required the Illuminati Jewish-sponsored Nazis to enact many of Duhring's proposals which were similar to racial policies in effect in Israel today.

    The rise of the Nazis led to the genocide of about six million German antisemites (i.e. Nazis) in WW2 and some 50 million other non-Jews. Given the 1882 assessment, do you think the Nazis could have achieved power without Illuminati Jewish sponsorship? As in chess, often you sacrifice a player (i.e. non-Zionist Jews) to win the game. 

    Generally, the tone of the Manifesto gets more petty and racist, tarring all Jews with the same brush, saying all Jews are cosmopolitans with no loyalty to country or attachment to land, incapable of honesty, hard work or scientific and creative originality, driving farmers to destitution with their usury. 
     
    While I agree with the Manifesto's description of Organized Jewry, & its goals, many if not most ordinary Jews were patriotic, hard-working and wanted to assimilate. An estimated 100,000 Jews served in the German army in WW1, and 18,000 won the Iron Cross. 12,000 died in action. In the 1930's, 60% of all German Jewish marriages were interracial. The Illuminati had to create Hitler to force them to go to Israel.

    Christian leaders should have encouraged the process of Jewish assimilation already underway. Instead, the 1882 Conference concluded that the only solution was expulsion. 
     
    "Europe belongs to the Christian peoples and therefore should not be the testing ground for the hunger for power of any hostile, domineering, non-Christian national element. The history of past centuries amply proves that legal decrees restricting the Jewish race - no matter how strict they are - do not achieve the desired result."

    Whatever we think of this Manifesto, it does provide a unique historical perspective on our world today. We live in the twilight of Christian civilization which has suffered a series of colossal failures and defeats disguised as just wars, civil rights, diversity, sexual liberation, feminism, gay rights, migration, etc. But this perspective can strengthen our resolve to oppose the further degradation of society by the satanist Illuminati.


    --------
    RELATED - German Jews Would Have Backed Hitler 
    ------------- 25% of Germans, 42% of children are from Migrant Backgrounds
    Makow -  Anti Semitism has Respectable Pedigree
    ---------    World War One- First Christian Holocaust 


     
  21. Site: Zero Hedge
    11 hours 25 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Trump Hits Back Against NY Gag Order -- Turley Says: "Appeal"

    Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday responded to a gag order issued in his "hush money" case, slamming both the judge and his daughter - who allegedly posted a picture of Trump behind bars on social media.

    Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the case in which Trump is accused of making 'hush money' payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the 2016 election, issued a gag order blocking Trump fromm making public comments about the court staff, jurors, witnesses, or prosecutors in the case.

    "Given that the eve of trial is upon us, it is without question that the imminency of the risk of harm is now paramount," Merchan wrote.

    Trump Responds

    On Wednesday, Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, claiming that the decision imperils his First Amendment rights. Trump also took aim at Merchan's adult daughter.

    Merchan, Trump wrote, "is suffering from an acute case of Trump Derangement Syndrome," adding that Merchan's "daughter represents Crooked Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, and other Radical Liberals," adding that she allegedly "has just posted a picture of me behind bars, her obvious goal, and makes it completely impossible for me to get a fair trial."

    "This Judge, by issuing a vicious ‘Gag Order,’ is wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement, including the fact that Crooked Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and their Hacks and Thugs are tracking and following me all across the Country, obsessively trying to persecute me, while everyone knows I have done nothing wrong!" the post continues.

    Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley suggests appealing the order, writing on his blog;

    New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan this week became the latest court to impose a gag order on former president Donald Trump with a stinging order that found a history of Trump attacks that threatened the administration of justice. The order will bar public criticism of figures who are at the center of the public debate over this trial and the allegation of the weaponization of the legal system for political purposes, including former Trump counsel Michael Cohen, former stripper Stormy Daniels, and lead prosecutor Matthew Colangelo. Trump is still able to criticize Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Merchan himself.  What is most striking is the protection of Cohen who continues to goad Trump in public attacks.

    While many of us have criticized past attacks by the former president of judges and staff associated with cases, theses gag orders raise very serious free speech questions in my view. Prosecutors like Special Counsel Jack Smith and Bragg have pushed for a trial before the election. (Recently, Smith even stated that he may force Trump into a trial running up to or even through the election).

    After these charges were delayed until just before an election, they have maintained that it is essential to try Trump before November.  The timing of charges and proposed trial dates were the choice of these prosecutors. If judges are inclined to facilitate the effort for a pre-election trial, they should show some recognition of the unique context for such prosecution. Yet, judges like federal District Judge Tanya Chutkan have stated that she will not make any accommodation for the fact that Trump is the leading candidate for the presidency.

    I was previously highly critical of the efforts of Smith to gag Trump before the election. In my view, the order issued by Judge Chutkan was unconstitutional. I have opposed gag orders in many cases for decades as inimical to constitutional free speech rights.

    The barring of Trump from criticizing jurors or court staff (or family members) is largely uncontroversial. However, Cohen and Daniels have long been part of the political campaigns going back to 2016. Indeed, I was highly critical of Cohen when he was still the thuggish lawyer for Trump. He is now one of the loudest critics of his former client and has made continual media appearances, including on his expected appearance in this case.

    Cohen’s appearance on the stand will only add to the lawfare claims given the recent view of a judge that he is a serial perjurer who appears to be continuing to game the legal system.

    Cohen ironically went public to criticize Trump and celebrate the gagging of him:

    “I want to thank Judge Merchan for imposing the gag order as I have been under relentless assault from Donald’s MAGA supporters. Nevertheless, knowing Donald as well as I do, he will seek to defy the gag order by employing others within his circle to do his bidding, regardless of consequence.”

    Many Americans view the Bragg case as a raw political effort and many experts (including myself) view the case as legally flawed. Some polls show that a majority now believe the Trump prosecutions generally are “politically motivated.”

    This election could well turn on the allegation of lawfare. However, Merchan has now largely bagged the leading candidate (and alleged target of this weaponization) from being able to criticize key figures behind the effort.

    The inclusion of Colangelo in the order is equally problematic. Trump has campaigned on his involvement in a variety of cases targeting him in his federal and state systems. His movement between cases is viewed by many as evidence of a “get Trump” campaign of prosecutors. He is currently the most talked about figure that many, including Trump, view as showing coordination between these cases and investigations.

    My opposition to past gag orders was based on the constitutional right of defendants to criticize their prosecutions. Courts have gradually expanded both the scope and use of such orders. It has gone from being relatively rare to commonplace.  However, the use to gag the leading candidate for the presidency in the final months of the campaign only magnifies those concerns.

    There is a division on courts in dealing with such challenges involving politicians. For example, a court struggled with those issues in the corruption trial of Rep. Harold E. Ford Sr. (D–Tenn.). The district court barred Ford from making any “extrajudicial statement that a reasonable person would expect to be disseminated by means of public communication,” including criticism of the motives of the government or basis, merits, or evidence of the prosecution.

    The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected the gag order as overbroad and stressed that any such limits on free speech should be treated as “presumptively void and may be upheld only on the basis of a clear showing that an exercise of First Amendment rights will interfere with the rights of the parties to a fair trial.”

    This order allows for criticism of the case and both Merchan and Bragg. However, you have key figures like Cohen and Coangelo who are already central figures in this political campaign. In Cohen’s case, he has actively engaged in a campaign to block Trump politically and has done countless interviews on this case as part of the legal campaign.

    While courts routinely rubber stamp such orders (and Trump’s history will reinforce the basis of the Merchan order), I would still try to appeal it.  The odds always run against challenging such orders and appellate courts are disinclined to even review such orders. However, there is a legitimate free speech concern raised by this order that should be reviewed by higher courts.

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 18:00
  22. Site: Zero Hedge
    11 hours 45 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Law And Order Is A Killer Problem For Democrats

    Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClear Politics,

    Polling data shows Democrats are in deep trouble on the issues of domestic safety and unbiased justice. Voters say they want law and order and aren’t getting it. They want enforcement of criminal statutes duly passed by their representatives. They abhor favoritism for some and targeting for others. They want personal safety and basic fairness. They deserve them. And they are angry.

    They resent the wide-open border, street shootings, street-corner gangs dealing drugs, carjackings, and unchecked shoplifting. They are stunned that squatters can simply take over houses from their rightful owners. They are troubled by the aggressive prosecution of Donald Trump, while Joe Biden skips away from his family’s extensive grifting operation and a garage full of classified documents.

    Although these issues are usually considered separately, they are also important together. The concerns overlap and reinforce each other, harming Biden and his political party. Democrats are seen as weak on crime and feckless on border security, but relentless in prosecuting their principal election opponent and trying to bankrupt him.

    Any consideration of law and order as a political issue should begin with the basic obligation of governments at all levels. In liberal democracies, the state should provide that safety with due respect for each citizen’s constitutional rights, without undue force, and without favoritism or political bias. The goal is to let citizens pursue their own private goals in peace, feeling secure in their lives, property, and home life. In democracies like ours, that order must be secured by enforcing statutes and rulings by courts. When disputes arise, as they often do, they should be settled by neutral third parties, either courts or arbiters, using well-established laws and procedures. When state prosecutors are involved, their responsibility is to act without bias, partisanship, or favoritism. Remember, they are part of the executive branch. They are not legislative monarchs. They don’t get to make laws themselves or disregard those that have been passed.

    When does government fail to meet those obligations? It fails when the executive branch:

    • Exceeds its discretionary authority to ignore the enforcement of some laws against some people but vigorously enforces them against others; and
    • Flouts the basic obligation to enforce laws fairly, without partisanship and within constitutional limits.

    This failure is particularly noxious when the state targets political enemies or disfavored people, such as African Americans in the segregationist South – or conservative populists and their leaders today.

    What Americans feel today is a mounting sense that these violations are piling up and that they harm safety, property, and civil rights of citizens in a democracy.

    First, they see an erosion of social order. That’s not a problem caused entirely by government. Local communities are also responsible. Violent crime is concentrated among the poor, particularly in black communities because of a breakdown in family life, the disintegration of social norms, and the lack of decent schooling and job opportunities. They don’t trust the police because of hard experience: decades of brutal mistreatment.

    These problems have been amplified because of atrocious public policies that go uncorrected after years of failure. Public schools are dreadful in almost every major U.S. city. They are really employment programs for teachers protected by powerful unions. They don’t prepare students for the modern workforce or instill the knowledge and values needed for citizenship. (That failure is why Republican-controlled states are now moving rapidly to give parents school choice, including the funds to educate their children in private schools.)

    Progressive cities and states have been unwilling to enforce laws protecting people and property on the specious grounds that doing so would jail too many minorities and thus undermine “social justice.” But don’t people in impoverished communities have as much right to live in peace and safety as people in middle-class neighborhoods? Shouldn’t they have a chance to shop in local stores, rather than see them closed because of rampant organized shoplifting and strong-armed robberies which go unprosecuted and, hence, undeterred? Shouldn’t they be able to stop at the gas station and fill up their cars without fear of carjacking? Shouldn’t they be able to walk the streets or sit on their front porch, rather than huddle inside, afraid of street-corner drug gangs and random shootings? It’s a perversion of language to call these dysfunctional public policies “progressive.”

    The breakdown of civic order was obvious in the rioting and arson that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020. Almost no one was punished. The Democratic National Convention, held that summer, spent far more time genuflecting to the rioters’ grievances than condemning the riots themselves. Many speakers focused their outrage on police forces across the country.

    The most “progressive” politicians advocated the outright abolition of local police forces. The effects on public safety were utterly predictable. Surprisingly, it wasn’t butterflies, rainbows, and unicorns. If there was a pot of gold, it was looted.

    Second, voters see a president and a party utterly unwilling to enforce border laws. Controlling entry into the country is a basic feature of every country’s sovereignty. Citizens know it. They also know Joe Biden inherited a border that was largely (but not completely) secure. In his first week as president, Biden systematically dismantled the policies that ensured border control.

    We are living with the consequences of this president’s catastrophic decisions. Since he took office, between 7 and 10 million people have crossed the border illegally. With them have come vast quantities of illegal drugs, manufactured in Mexico from precursor chemicals sent from China. Those drugs kill some 100,000 Americans each year. No one has any idea how many spies and terrorists have also infiltrated. When the state of Texas, fed up with an open border, erected its own barbed wire barrier (it worked), the Biden administration’s Department of Justice sued to have it removed without offering any substitute.

    The massive influx of illegal immigrants is crushing city and state budgets. Those jurisdictions simply don’t have the money to provide housing, schooling, food, or medical care for this huge population of indigents. They can’t cope with the violent criminal gangs that have immigrated (some from as far away as Chile), have enriched themselves with drug sales and human trafficking, and have become entrenched across the U.S.

    Some financial effects of this influx are currently hidden but will be felt soon. I was privately informed that a major research hospital, far from the southern border, is now losing over $1 billion per year in uncompensated medical care for illegal aliens. Numbers like that will soon break the hospital and others like it across America. If Washington picks up the tab, it will be another massive hit to the deficit.

    Democrats have become so entrapped by these problems that they can no longer speak straight. They cannot say the plain words, “illegal immigration.” They faint at the words “illegal alien,” a term used in statutes for decades. Today’s Democrats condemn that language and try to mask the harsh reality with gooey phrases like “asylum seekers” (very few qualify), “irregular immigration,” and even “newcomers.”

    Evasive phrases like these may be popular in toney Greenwich, Connecticut, but not in Gary, Indiana. The growing anger in poor, minority communities about crime and illegal immigration is a serious problem for Democrats, who can’t win without overwhelming support and turnout from African Americans. They are none too happy about competing with illegal immigrants for lower-skilled jobs and public resources.

    Democrats didn’t expect that problem with their core constituency. Nor did they expect it from Hispanics, who voted overwhelming for Biden in 2020 but are now slipping away. Whether that shift among Hispanics is temporary or permanent will affect elections for years to come. In either case, it will affect the outcome in 2024.

    Third, while the federal government and blue states are steadfastly refusing to enforce basic laws on immigration, theft, squatting, and so on, they are simultaneously mounting zealous legal attacks on Biden’s general election opponent. Several states tried to keep him off the 2024 ballot until the Supreme Court stopped them. Prosecutors in New York and Georgia, plus Biden’s Department of Justice, are now trying to imprison Donald Trump, tie him down in court during the campaign season for alleged misdeeds that happened years ago, while also hoping to break him financially, a process led by local prosecutors who campaigned on the promise to “get Trump.” As Letitia James once told a supporter, “We’re definitely gonna sue him, we’re gonna be a real pain in the a--."

    In fulfilling that promise, James and fellow partisan prosecutors (and, alas, judges) have trampled on his basic constitutional protections and their own duties as officers of the court. Honest legal systems do not operate under the principle of “Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime” a dictum popularized behind the Iron Curtain during the reign of terror by Stalin’s secret police. It should be anathema in a democracy, not the best explanation for actions by Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis, or local New York judge Arthur Engoron. Nor should their actions be cheered by rabid partisans, much as they hate Trump. Yet that is exactly what they are saying on social media. They want vengeance.

    Independent voters want something else. They want fairness. Many are not in love with Trump’s candidacy, but they still think he is being manhandled by prosecutors and judges. And they think that is fundamentally wrong. It will drive some of them to vote for him, or at least against his opponent.

    Our Constitution is supposed to protect citizens against biased, politicized law enforcement. There are explicit constitutional protections against excessive fines, for instance. Those shouldn’t just be meaningless words on paper. Yet Judge Engoron, who oversaw the bench trial concerning Trump’s bank loans, ordered the former president to post a half-billion dollar bond simply to appeal the questionable legal decision. (On the final day to post it, a state appeals court cut the bond in half and eased a few restrictions the trial judge imposed on the Trump Organization’s business.)

    Trump has said he will abide by the appellate decision. He has little choice. If he doesn’t post the bond, he loses even the right to appeal. Meanwhile, James blasts out another a taunting tweet each day, gleefully observing that Trump owes another $100,000 in interest. She loves it and says so brazenly.

    James and Judge Engoron are attempting to break the former president financially before he can appeal a court decision. Whether Trump wins or loses on appeal, he should have the right to raise his legal arguments without overwhelming financial impediments. The judge could have easily accommodated that appeal, but he refused. He could have easily accepted a lower bond, such as the $100 million proffered by Trump, but he refused. Meanwhile, James was gleefully preparing to seize Trump’s properties and force a fire sale until the state appellate court lowered Trump’s bond and gave him 10 more days to comply.

    These were shameful exercises of partisan power, done under the color of law. They may end up helping Trump politically, but that’s not the point here. The crucial point is that they undermine the unbiased, non-partisan rule of law, a foundational principle in any true democracy.

    Voters can see the fundamental unfairness. So can investors, who are worried by what looks like the arbitrary loss of Trump’s property rights. When that happens in Manhattan, the capital of world finance, there will be consequences.

    Each of these issues – massive illegal immigration, biased law enforcement, the erosion of property rights, and “Get Trump” lawfare – is important in its own right. Together, they are even more important. Taken together, they reinforce Americans’ sense of unease, social division, and betrayal by a justice system tilted against political enemies. They are frustrated by governments at all levels that seem arbitrary, inept, and unwilling to meet their most basic obligations.

    If the polls are right, voters will make their frustration felt in November.

    Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 17:40
  23. Site: Zero Hedge
    12 hours 5 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    California's Sac-Town Becomes 'Transgender Sanctuary'

    The city of Sacramento, California has passed a resolution declaring itself a "sanctuary city" for transgender individuals, who apparently don't have sufficient 'sanctuary' in women's lockers, bathrooms, or sports.

    The resolution prohibits city employees fromm using "staff time" and "resources" to prevent individuals from getting transgender medical procedures, or cooperating "with jurisdictions seeking to enforce laws criminalizing gender-affirming care in other jurisdictions."

    The resolution was passed by unanimous vote after dozens of city residents voiced support for, and against, the measure, CBS News reports.

    According to the resolution:

    California has been a leader in protecting the rights of transgender individuals to access care, but many states across the nation are moving in the opposite direction.

    In preparation of future legislation that may criminalize those providing or seeking gender-affirming care and given the Council’s stated values of equity and inclusion, it is important for the City of Sacramento to be proactive in reiterating our commitment to transgender rights and equal protections for transgender people by declaring ourselves a sanctuary city and a place of safety for transgender people.

    During the debate stage of the meeting to consider the resolution, Vice Mayor Caity Maple said that she had grown up with someone who left home "at a young age" because their parents were not "affirming," and therefore the measure was "very personal," the Daily Caller reports.

    Councilmember Mai Vang thanked supporters for coming out, saying that transgender and nonbinary youth should be "treated with respect and dignity," and that "ensuring they are able to be their authentic self is so important."

    Legislation banning sex-change medical procedures on minors has been passed in 23 states, including Utah and Idaho - which are closest to California. On Tuesday, the ACLU sued the state of Ohio on behalf of two 12-year-old children over its ban.

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 17:20
  24. Site: Zero Hedge
    12 hours 25 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Gold Vs. Bitcoin: Comparing The Top 10 Monetary Characteristics

    Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

    Given the characteristics of gold and Bitcoin, which is best suited for sending value through time and space?

    Below, I’ll analyze the ten most decisive monetary attributes and see whether gold or Bitcoin has an advantage.

    Monetary Attribute #1: Scarcity

    The World Gold Council estimates there are 6.8 billion ounces of mined gold globally, and annual production averages around 118 million ounces.

    That much is what is known. However, we don’t know how much gold will be discovered and mined in the future.

    For example, how many mined ounces of gold will be available on June 1, 2031?

    We can probably make a pretty accurate projection, but nobody can know.

    What will the Bitcoin supply be on June 1, 2031?

    It will be around 20,589,121 Bitcoins.

    With Bitcoin, the current and future supply is finite and known to all.

    There will never be more than 21 million Bitcoins, and there is nothing anyone can do to change that.

    Today, the Bitcoin supply is about 19.6 million, meaning the vast majority—over 93%—of the total Bitcoin supply has already been created.

    The remaining 1.4 million BTC will come onto the market at a preset, ever-decreasing rate until the last Bitcoin is created 116 years from now, in 2140.

    In other words, Bitcoin’s supply will only grow about 7% in the next 116 years.

    The supply of Bitcoin won’t grow much at all from here.

    By 2030, over 98% of all Bitcoins will have already been created.

    Bitcoin_apex, a German Bitcoin advocate, describes Bitcoin’s scarcity like this:

    8 billion people, 21 million Bitcoin.

    That is proportionally as if:

    80,000 people had to share $210.

    8,000 people spread out on a bus with 21 seats.

    800 people would share 2.1kg of bread.

    80 people sharing 0.21 liters of water.

    8 people would have to live in an apartment with 0.021 square meters.

    Here’s another way to think of it.

    Owning 1 BTC is like owning 324 ounces of the global gold supply; each would give you ownership over about 0.00000476% of the overall supply.

    Owning 1.236 BTC is like owning a 400-ounce Good Delivery gold bullion bar; each would give you ownership over about 0.0000059% of the overall supply.

    Here’s the bottom line.

    Gold is scarce, but only Bitcoin is absolutely scarce.

    Verdict: Bitcoin Wins

    Monetary Attribute #2: Hardness

    In my view, hardness is the most important monetary attribute.

    Hardness does not mean something that is necessarily tangible or physically hard, like metal. Instead, it means “hard to produce.” By contrast, “easy money” is easy to produce.

    The best way to think of hardness is “resistance to debasement,” which helps make it a good store of value—an essential function of money.

    All other monetary characteristics are meaningless if the money is easy for someone to produce.

    What is desirable in a good money is something that someone else cannot make easily.

    For example, imagine the price of copper going 5x or 10x.

    You can be sure that would spur increased production, eventually expanding the copper supply. Of course, the same is true of any other commodity.

    That’s why there is a famous saying in mining: “The cure for high prices is high prices.”

    The dynamic of higher prices incentivizing more production and ultimately more supply, bringing prices down, exists with every physical commodity. However, gold is the most resistant to this process.

    That supply response is why most commodity prices tend to revert around the cost of production over time.

    This dynamic is even more profound with money.

    When an asset obtains monetary properties, the natural reaction is for people to make more of it—a lot more of it.

    This is known as the easy money trap.

    Historically, gold was always the hardest asset, the one most resistant to the easy money trap… until Bitcoin.

    Bitcoin is the first—and only—monetary asset with a supply entirely unaffected by increased demand.

    That is an astonishing and game-changing characteristic.

    That means the only way Bitcoin can respond to an increase in demand is for the price to go up. Unlike gold and every other commodity, increasing the supply in response to increased demand is not an option.

    The stock-to-flow (S2F) ratio measures an asset’s hardness.

    S2F Ratio = Stock / Flow

    The “stock” part refers to the amount of something available, like current stockpiles. It’s the supply already mined. It’s available right away.

    The “flow” part refers to the new supply added from production and other sources each year.

    A high S2F ratio means that annual supply growth is small relative to the existing supply, which indicates a hard asset resistant to debasement.

    A low S2F ratio indicates the opposite. This means that new annual production can easily influence the overall supply and prices, which is not desirable for something that functions as a store of value.

    Before I move on, it’s important to clarify that hardness is not the same as scarcity. They are related concepts but not the same thing.

    For example, platinum and palladium are scarcer than gold but not hard assets. Current production is high relative to existing stockpiles.

    Unlike gold, stockpiles of platinum and palladium have not built up over thousands of years. It’s the primary reason why new supply can easily rock the market.

    Because of their low S2F ratios, platinum (0.4x) and palladium (1.1x) are not suitable as money. Their low S2F ratios indicate they are primarily industrial metals, corresponding to how people use them today. Almost nobody uses platinum and palladium as money.

    Gold has an S2F ratio of 60x. That means it would take about 60 years of the current production rate to equal the existing gold supply.

    Today, Bitcoin’s S2F ratio is about 57x, slightly below gold’s.

    According to its fixed protocol, we know precisely how Bitcoin’s supply will grow in the future.

    A key feature is that the new supply gets cut in half every four years, which causes Bitcoin’s hardness to double every four years. This process is known as the “halving.”

    The next time Bitcoin’s supply growth will be cut in half will be in April 2024.

    But this coming halving will be very different…

    That’s because Bitcoin’s hardness will be almost twice that of gold’s when that happens.

    That’s how Bitcoin will soon become the hardest money the world has ever known. And it will keep getting harder as its S2F ratio approaches infinity.

    For thousands of years, gold has always been mankind’s hardest money. That is all set to change in a few weeks, and most people have no idea.

    Verdict: Bitcoin Wins

    Monetary Attribute #3: Liquidity

    Having a large global pool of buyers and sellers—liquidity—is critically important for any serious money.

    With a market cap of around $14.6 trillion, gold has a large pool of global liquidity.

    At around $1.3 trillion, Bitcoin has a much smaller pool of global liquidity.

    However, it is growing quickly.

    If the Bitcoin price goes up 10x—which it has done many times in its history, and I expect it will do again soon—Bitcoin’s pool of global liquidity will be within spitting distance of gold’s.

    If Bitcoin’s market cap and pool of liquidity continue to grow faster than gold’s, it will erode gold’s advantage. But for now, gold wins.

    Verdict: Gold Wins

    Monetary Attribute #4: Portability

    If you send $1 billion worth of physical gold from New York to Beijing, complicated and expensive logistics are required.

    $1 billion of gold weighs about 14,300 kilograms (or about 31,500 pounds). Transporting that much gold would likely involve multiple cargo flights and then armored trucks moving it from the destination airport to the destination vault.

    It would also require insurance, navigating regulations, paying import or export taxes, clearing customs, and thorough verification of the gold’s purity, among other things.

    It would also take considerable time; It wouldn’t happen overnight.

    Transporting smaller amounts of gold is also problematic. For example, going through airport security with gold coins and bars will likely generate unwanted attention.

    These are some of the issues with gold’s portability.

    Physical gold is vulnerable to seizure in part because of the problems with transporting it.

    Bitcoin, on the other hand, is the most portable asset in the world.

    It is a digital bearer asset that can achieve final international settlement in 10 minutes for pennies.

    You can send $1 billion worth of Bitcoin from New York to Beijing for less than $10 in fees. It will arrive in around 10 minutes.

    The transaction has no credit risk and no counterparty risk. You don’t need to get anyone’s permission or need to use—or trust—any third party whatsoever. And there’s nothing anybody can do to block, freeze, reverse, or censor the transaction.

    The recipient can instantly verify the Bitcoin’s authenticity at no cost.

    Going through airports and crossing borders with Bitcoin is also much more practical than other forms of wealth.

    If you hold Bitcoin on your phone, laptop, or flash drive, it can be accessible to border agents if they search you and you reveal your password. However, those things are much less conspicuous than physical gold.

    Further, many popular Bitcoin wallets use a 12-word phrase to recover your funds. If you can memorize the 12-word phrase, you can potentially store billions of dollars worth of value just in your head with nothing else.

    When it comes to portability, Bitcoin isn’t just slightly better. It’s an upgrade orders of magnitude better than gold.

    It’s an even more profound upgrade than when mankind moved from using horse carriages for travel to using Boeing 747 airliners. It’s more like going from horse carriages to futuristic teleportation machines that can instantly beam you from one location to another.

    Verdict: Bitcoin Wins

    Monetary Attribute #5: Verifiability

    Do you really know that the gold you own is authentic?

    It could look something like this on the inside.

    Chances are the gold you own is indeed authentic… but you can never know for sure unless you test it yourself with specialized equipment. Otherwise, you’ll have to trust a third-party auditor and appraiser.

    If you want 100% certainty, you’ll probably need to melt the gold down and recast it.

    No matter how you do it, verifying gold’s authenticity is infrequent, slow, people-intensive, costly, and potentially unreliable. It also doesn’t scale.

    With Bitcoin, counterfeiting is practically impossible. Simple mathematics can instantly verify a Bitcoin transaction’s authenticity at no cost.

    If you doubt it, try to send some fake Bitcoin and see what happens.

    I don’t see any reason to believe Bitcoin’s resistance to counterfeiting would be eroded.

    Further, imagine if the average person could instantly audit and verify the entire global gold supply’s authenticity—without relying on any third party. That’s what anyone can do with Bitcoin.

    In short, Bitcoin users have a level of certainty that has never previously existed for any other monetary asset.

    Verdict: Bitcoin Wins

    Monetary Attribute #6: Fungibility and Privacy

    Anyone can go to a website with details of the public Bitcoin blockchain to analyze and view the entire transaction history.

    The information on Bitcoin’s blockchain doesn’t explicitly show your name, address, and other personal information. However, suppose it became known that a particular Bitcoin address was associated with you. In that case, outsiders could track your balance and every transaction you make.

    Particular Bitcoins could also become “tainted” through transactions that governments don’t like. For example, suppose you received a Bitcoin with a transaction history linking it to someone in North Korea, Iran, or another sanctioned entity. It might cause complications.

    All of this raises a fundamental question.

    How do you obtain privacy on Bitcoin’s public blockchain?

    It’s a good question that confuses many people.

    The answer involves hiding in crowds.

    Obtaining privacy on Bitcoin has been likened to the scene in the movie V for Vendetta in which thousands of masked people marched in the street. They were all engaged in a public act, but their identities were concealed because they all wore the same mask, allowing them to hide in a crowd.

    Privacy in Bitcoin works similarly.

    Several excellent privacy tools are available to anyone right now on Bitcoin, and they are getting better every day.

    For example, you can find a typical JoinMarket transaction, a special Bitcoin transaction optimized for privacy, at the link below.

    Can you tell who the sender and receiver are?

    https://mempool.space/tx/a56d23da7df68eb49d3665452bf7085c07a79be62f29f19e588240f02eb94c76

    On the other hand, physical gold doesn’t retain a transaction history for anyone to view at any time. Further, you can always melt down a gold bar or coin and recast it to destroy any previous associations.

    I expect developments in the next few years to significantly increase Bitcoin’s fungibility and privacy for all users.

    In the meantime, gold has an advantage.

    Verdict: Gold Wins

    Monetary Attribute #7: Durability

    Gold is indestructible. It doesn’t decay or corrode. That’s why most of the gold people produced even thousands of years ago is still around today.

    With Bitcoin, all aspects are genuinely decentralized and robust.

    Even if the US and Russia engaged in an all-out nuclear war, destroying most of the Northern Hemisphere, Bitcoin wouldn’t miss a beat in the Southern Hemisphere.

    Barring an inescapable, global return to the Stone Age that lasts into eternity, Bitcoin is durable… but not as durable as physical gold.

    Verdict: Gold Wins

    Monetary Attribute #8: Divisibility

    Physical gold is generally inconvenient and impractical to use for small transactions.

    A one-gram bar—around the size of a pushpin—is about the smallest practical size. As of writing, one gram of gold is worth about $65. Transactions worth anything less than that will be problematic.

    Each of the 21 million Bitcoins can be divided into 100,000,000 units called satoshis (or sats). Each sat is worth 0.00000001 of one Bitcoin.

    As of writing, it takes about 1,500 sats to make a dollar, which means a penny is worth 15 sats, and each sat is worth 1/15 of a penny.

    In short, Bitcoin’s extreme divisibility allows for transactions of any size—from fractions of a penny to billions.

    Verdict: Bitcoin Wins

    Monetary Attribute #9: Scalability

    If gold or Bitcoin becomes the world’s dominant money, how can it be scaled to billions of people?

    That’s a key question.

    With gold, settling all transactions in physical payments—especially small ones—is not practical.

    Trusted third parties, like mints, vaults, banks, transportation companies, and others, are necessary for gold to function as a practical medium of exchange at scale. These entities must follow all laws and regulations, or governments will quickly shut them down.

    In short, trusted third parties are centralized vulnerabilities. Governments can capture and coerce them.

    This is exactly how governments used the gold standard to bootstrap the fiat currency system into existence.

    First, people used physical gold as money. Then, to scale, they necessarily turned to third parties, like banks, that stored gold and issued gold IOUs to facilitate trade. Governments captured those third parties and gradually removed the gold backing from the IOUs until they were nothing more than confetti. In short, that is how the fiat currency system was born.

    Here’s the bottom line.

    Gold’s biggest flaw as money is that for it to function at scale, it requires IOUs and third parties beholden to governments.

    With Bitcoin, anyone can send and receive value—from fractions of a penny to billions—worldwide without relying on any third party and achieve final international settlement within minutes, 24/7/365.

    However, the base layer of the Bitcoin network can only process about 576,000 transactions a day.

    Every day, there are over 2,000,000,000 consumer transactions around the world. That means Bitcoin can only process about 0.029% of them. That’s why recording every Starbucks or McDonald’s transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain was never possible.

    It was also never desirable.

    If Bitcoin needed to record every consumer transaction on its blockchain—or even a fraction of them—it would require an industrial-scale operation with expensive data centers. The average computer would no longer be able to run the Bitcoin software.

    In this scenario, Bitcoin might as well be another PayPal, Visa, or another centralized financial service where you need to ask for permission to do anything.

    Remember, Bitcoin’s entire value proposition depends on it being neutral, censorship-resistant, accessible to everyone, and controlled by nobody.

    To have these properties, it’s essential that the average person can run the Bitcoin software. That’s why Bitcoin has a hard limit on the transactions it can handle each day. It needs to be this way so that the average computer—and soon the average smartphone—can easily handle running Bitcoin. That makes Bitcoin genuinely decentralized and incorruptible, giving it unique monetary properties.

    It’s crucial to emphasize that Bitcoin, without decentralization, would be worthless.

    Scaling Bitcoin by compromising its decentralization would defeat its entire purpose.

    Does that mean Bitcoin will never be able to scale and achieve widespread adoption?

    Absolutely not.

    Numerous scaling solutions for Bitcoin will inevitably emerge. However, the Lightning Network is the most dominant one.

    The Lightning Network is an open, peer-to-peer network built on top of Bitcoin.

    Anyone can use the Lightning Network, and nobody can be prevented from using it.

    On the Lightning Network, people can perform an unlimited number of transactions without needing to add them to the Bitcoin blockchain. Delegating custody of funds to a third party is unnecessary—you can always remain in control.

    The Lightning Network can eventually allow Bitcoin to scale up and handle every consumer transaction in the world.

    Verdict: Bitcoin Wins

    Monetary Attribute #10: Recognition

    While gold is an established money, Bitcoin is an emerging one.

    Gold has over 5,000 years of history as money. You can take gold to any country in the world, and most will instantly recognize it.

    Bitcoin doesn’t have this established history and recognition. It’s only been around since 2009.

    It took gold centuries to achieve monetization. Bitcoin has a good chance of undergoing monetization in a much shorter period—and it’s already well on its way.

    In the meantime, gold has the advantage.

    Verdict: Gold Wins

    *  *  *

    Historically, Bitcoin’s biggest moves to the upside happen very quickly… and the next big move could happen imminently. That’s why I’ve just released an urgent PDF report revealing three crucial Bitcoin techniques to ensure you avoid the most common—sometimes fatal—mistakes. Check it out as soon as possible because it could soon be too late to take action. Click here to get it now.

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 17:00
  25. Site: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
    12 hours 35 min ago
    Jersey proposal will lead to similar horrific euthanasia deaths as has happened in Canada.

    Alex Schadenberg

    Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

    On March 22, 2024 a proposal for legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide in Jersey was released in preparation for a debate on the proposal that is scheduled to occur on May 21, 2-24. 

    The proposal claims to be limited to people in certain limited circumstances but upon further examination, it is clear that the proposal is not limited to terminally ill people and the definitions within the proposal would open the door to a Canadian style law.

    The Jersey proposal states:

    The law will set out the eligibility criteria for accessing assisted dying.

    A person must meet all the eligibility criteria. They must:have been diagnosed with either:
    • a terminal physical medical condition, known as Route 1 - terminal illness
    • an incurable physical condition, causing unbearable suffering, known as Route 2 - unbearable suffering
    • have decision-making capacity
    • have a voluntary, settled and informed wish to end their own life 
    • be at least 18 years of age
    • have been ordinarily resident in Jersey for at least 12 months
    Route 1: terminal illness

    To be eligible under Route 1, the person must have been diagnosed with a terminal physical medical condition that: 
    • is expected to cause death within 6 months, or within 12 months if diagnosed with a neurodegenerative condition such as Parkinson’s disease or Motor Neurone Disease
    • is causing, or is expected to cause unbearable suffering that cannot be alleviated in a manner the person deems tolerable
    Route 2: unbearable suffering
    • To be eligible under Route 2, the person must have been diagnosed with an incurable physical medical condition that is causing unbearable suffering that cannot be alleviated in a manner the person deems tolerable.
    Route 1 is not necessarily based on having a terminal illness since, similar to other western jurisdictions, a person is not required to try effective medical treatment. Therefore a person who is an insulin dependent diabetic would qualify to be killed.

    Route 2 opens the door to Canadian style euthanasia because the person is not terminally ill be is experiencing unbearable suffering. The Route 2 definition (diagnosed with an incurable physical medical condition) includes nearly everyone with a chronic disability.

    When reading the proposal it states:
    • (iii) that, further to the provisions of paragraph (b) where a person has a terminal physical medication condition, ‘Route 1 – terminal illness’, the minimum timeframe between a person’s first formal request for an assisted death and the administration of the assisted dying substance will be 14 days, except for when the person’s life expectancy is less than 14 days when there will be no minimum timeframe; 
    • (iv) that, further to the provisions of paragraph (c), where assisted dying is permitted for people who have an incurable physical condition but where there is no reasonable expectation of death within the specified timeframe - ‘Route 2 – unbearable suffering’, the minimum timeframe between a person’s first formal request for an assisted death and the administration of the assisted dying substance will be 90 days; 
    Canadians with disabilities are being approved for euthanasia based on having an incurable physical condition that is causing suffering. These people are often asking for euthanasia based on poverty, homelessness or an inability to receive medical treatment, but they are being approved for euthanasia based on having an incurable physical condition. Similar to Canada, the Jersey proposal is suggesting a 90 day waiting period for killing people who are not terminally ill.

    The recent case of the 27-year-old autistic woman who was approved for euthanasia is another example of the flaws within the law that could happen in Jersey, if this proposal is accepted. The 27-year-old autistic woman was originally turned down for euthanasia but when she requested a second time she included within her request that she was experiencing unbearable suffering. It is impossible to determine if someone is not experiencing unbearable suffering.

    The term unbearable suffering is completely subjective.

    The Jersey proposal does recommend that a Tribunal should approve euthanasia for people who are not terminally ill. A Tribunal seems better than the Canadian law, nonetheless, it is equally impossible for a Tribunal to determine if a person has suicidal ideation and claiming to have unbearable suffering to be approved for death or a person actually has unbearable suffering.

    The Jersey proposal clearly advocates for both euthanasia (homicide) and assisted suicide. The proposal states:
    (x) the assisted dying substance that ends a person’s life may be – i. self-administered by the person; or 
    ii. administered by the Administering Practitioner; 
    Administered by the practitioner means the practitioner directly causes the death (homicide). 

    The Jersey States Assembly needs to understand why the Canadian law has become so extreme and then to reject the Jersey euthanasia proposal.

    Some might say that Jersey should simply amend their proposal, but when considering the Canadian experience, once the door opens to killing by euthanasia, that based on equality and discrimination, the law will quickly expand to ensure that every Jersey citizen has equal access to being killed.
  26. Site: LifeNews
    12 hours 44 min ago
    Author: Steven Ertelt

    Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi blasted Joe Biden’s abortion travel funding policy yesterday. He says forcing Americans to fund abortion travel for members of the military doesn’t actually help the military because killing babies doesn’t improve military readiness.

    Unpopular and likely illegal, the Biden policy requires taxpayers to fund travel costs and paid time off for military service members and their families to abort their unborn babies in elective abortions.

    “Wicker suggested that recently-revealed data casts doubt on the Biden administration’s justifications for the policies. The Department of Defense has said the abortion travel policy is important for ensuring troop readiness,” according to Fox News. “In a letter sent on Monday, the senator requested evidence from the Pentagon on how its abortion travel allowances are necessary for force readiness in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s reversal, as Austin previously claimed.”

    Biden officials have been claiming the policy is sorely needed but its own figures show 12 military members used the policy.

    Still, that is 12 babies killed in abortions and $40,800 in taxpayer funding to facilitate it.

    Click here to sign up for pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com

    “Still, with today’s news, the fact remains: This administration has recklessly politicized the military with this farce of a policy,” said Wicker in a statement to Fox News Digital. “The Department even admitted today that those that use the policy may not have even used it for an abortion. The reality is that access to abortions is not a threat to readiness.”

    Wicker also complained that the Biden admin provided the new figures to the media but denied his request for information.

    In the letter, Wicker slammed the department for providing only “incomplete, evasive, or outright non-answers” when he prompted it on three separate occasions in 2023 for information to justify the abortion policy and how it affects force readiness.

    He noted that in response to his most recent letter in December, the department focused on fertilization services and avoided discussing the “provision of non-covered abortion services that end the lives of unborn babies.”

    Wicker further criticized the department’s response for refusing to provide information on the usage of the policies and the amount of money that was being spent, prompting him to obtain the information elsewhere. He claimed the response, “is contradicted by the Army’s data which clearly provided the number of service members who have claimed reimbursement of travel expenses using the policy.”

    Biden’s policy is illegal.

    Federal law (10 U.S.C. § 1093) has long prevented the Department of Defense (DOD) from using funds to perform elective abortions and prevented the DOD from using its facilities to provide abortions. On October 20, 2022, the Biden Administration’s DOD published a memorandum directing the DOD to pay the travel and transportation costs for military members and dependents who travel to obtain elective abortions.

    The federal prohibition against DOD funding of elective abortion clearly extends to funding for any item related to abortion, such as travel and transportation, which has been the case for the entire life of the funding prohibition.

    Polls consistently show strong public opposition to taxpayer-funded abortionsA new Marist poll found 60 percent of Americans oppose using tax dollars to fund abortions in the U.S. Additionally, 78 percent oppose using tax dollars to fund abortions in other countries.

    Bans on taxpayer funding for elective abortions used to have strong bipartisan support in Congress. Only recently did Democrat leaders abandon the American people on the issue and begin supporting taxpayer funding for elective abortions – a goal of the abortion industry, which spends huge amounts of money on elections.

    The post Senator Blasts Biden’s Abortion Travel Funding: Killing Babies Doesn’t Help the Military appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  27. Site: Zero Hedge
    12 hours 45 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Ex-CBS Journo Catherine Herridge In Talks To Join X

    Award-winning journalist Catherine Herridge - whose controversial firing by CBS News in February made headlines over the fact that they confiscated her personal files amid an ongoing investigation onto the Hunter Biden laptop story, is in talks to join Elon Musk's X, the NY Post reports, characterizing the talks as 'preliminary.'

    A potential deal could see Herridge — known for her aggressive reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal — helm an investigative unit that she could help put together, according to a source close to the situation. -NY Post

    "We are in discussions with many content creators who are interested in joining X in various ways. Catherine Herridge is a great journalist who strongly supports free speech," X said in a statement to the outlet.

    Wouldn't it be hilarious if Musk gave Herridge the exact deal Don Lemon demanded? As a reminder, he wanted:

    • A $5 million up-front payment from X

    • An $8 million salary

    • Equity in X

    • The right to approve any changes in X policy related to news content

    • - A Tesla Cybertruck.

    According to the report, joining X would allow Herridge the journalistic freedom to pursue a wide variety of stories.

    X has been trying to build a high-profile roster of journalists to bring to its platform. It hired former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, and hired ex-CNN host Don Lemon. Lemon’s agreement with the platform was canceled by X boss Elon Musk, however, following a contentious interview with him earlier this month.

    Lemon continues to post episodes of his show on X and YouTube, but viewership has cratered from his first buzzy interview with the Tesla CEO.

    "Herridge is weighing a number of opportunities," one source told The Post.

    Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee is considering an investigation into CBS News for confiscating Herridge's files, which the network called "nothing unusual."

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 16:40
  28. Site: Zero Hedge
    13 hours 5 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    The Many Ways A Porous Border Means Crime Without Boundaries

    Authored by James Varney & Abigail Degnan via RealClear Politics,

    When President Biden’s supporters attacked him for describing the man who allegedly murdered Georgia co-ed Laken Reilly as an “illegal,” they shined a light on one of the most contested words in American politics.

    The progressive push to describe border crossers as undocumented or unauthorized can also serve to downplay and obscure the massive issue of crime perpetrated and spawned by the influx of millions of migrants since Biden was elected – often in ways that leave the migrants themselves as victims.

    While migrant advocates argue that illegal arrivals commit crimes at lower rates than Americans, the claim is unverifiable because the federal government and most states do not break down crimes by immigration status.

    Criminologists also note that it ignores the vast web of statutory crimes concurrent with illegal immigration – drug smuggling, human trafficking, child labor violations, prostitution, the black market in employment, and so on.

    What remains undeniable by the law of averages is that the massive surge in immigration since the Biden administration relaxed border policies – a surge that it puts at more than 4 million people, but other sources millions more – has been accompanied by much more crime, however unquantifiable.

    Millions of migrants, though not all, run afoul of laws by their situation more than by overtly malign criminal intent. But their first step across the border is a lawbreaking one, and it is often followed by life on the law’s margins: living in the U.S. without insurance or proper work papers, providing illicit labor for unscrupulous or blasé employers, turning to black markets for counterfeit Social Security cards, and often becoming targets for robbers or extortionists. Their desire to come to America creates a vast pool of criminality involving them or those illegally profiting from them.

    “On some criminal matters, like homicides, we’ve got a good sense of the scale there whether we solve them all or not,” said Alex Nowrasteh, a vice president at the Cato Institute who studies the economic impact of immigration. “But some of this other stuff is like all black markets in that it is opaque behavior. We don’t know how much crime there might be and in a sense I think it’s sort of unknowable.”

    An outer layer of this criminal onion is the so-called “coyotes” who smuggle migrants to the southern border. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which is sympathetic to the plight of refugees, paints a brutally stark picture of the  exploitive lawbreakers who lurk behind the caravans and trucks and trains heading north.

    Some criminal groups view migrants as simply one of many commodities to be smuggled, alongside drugs and firearms,” it noted in a 2018 report. “Since the smuggling of migrants is a highly profitable illicit activity with a relatively low risk of detection, it is attractive to criminals.”

    The United Nations also acknowledges the near impossibility of quantifying these criminal enterprises. “Assessing the real size of this crime is a complex matter, owing to its underground nature and the difficulty of identifying when irregular migration is being facilitated by smugglers,” it said.

    In order to pay back these smugglers or the people willing to “host” them in the U.S., many migrants – no one knows how many – are often dragooned into illicit behavior.

    "Even people who may come here with no criminal intent at all may find themselves involved in some sort of criminal activity because the cartels that control the immigration channels are going to get their money one way or another,” said Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation of American Immigration Reform, which seeks policies to seal the border from illegal penetrations. “Going to work for the cartels is one way they can pay off their debts. Others may find themselves pressed into indentured servitude or, even worse, being trafficked in the sex trades.”

    Although they gets little attention in the United States, the crimes associated with migration begin south of the border. Since Joe Biden sent a clear signal while running for president that he would welcome mass immigration, tens of thousands of people along the Central American isthmus have been inspired to migrate and have become victims too. Vulnerable and poor people making the more than 2,000-mile trek from the Darién Gap in Panama to the Texas border have been preyed upon physically and economically, contributing to the enormous human cost.

    As millions of people have put themselves needlessly in the hands of cartels and smugglers to make the journey to the Southwest border, an untold number have suffered violence, degradation, and abuse at the hands of these ruthless organizations, while countless others have perished or simply been left to die in the jungles and deserts along the way,” according to the majority report from the House Committee on Homeland Security last October.

    Todd Bensman, a writer with the conservative Center for Immigration Studies who has traveled extensively along the northward immigration routes, said travelers are frequently victimized and crime has exploded along with record increases in the numbers of people on the move.

    “It’s not all about killings – they are getting raped and robbed, too,” Bensman said. “There are loan sharks who let victims know they know where family members are located – that’s a crime. And people are desperate, they are forced to steal food, there have been assaults on police, and recently a camp in Panama was burned down.”

    Criminologists say part of the problem in measuring migrant-related crime in the United States is “sanctuary” jurisdictions that do not cooperate with federal immigration agencies. Sanctuary enforcement is also not a category traditionally tracked by law enforcement agencies. Nowrasteh said that several years ago he sent Freedom of Information Act requests to all 50 states seeking data on crime committed by or on immigrants and only Texas offered a response. Since then, he believes, Georgia has begun amassing statistics, but the state has not yet issued any public reports.

    Grim arithmetic suggests the human costs of the unprecedented tide of illegal immigration under Biden, according to multiple reports and congressional testimony. A case in point is the hundreds of thousands of “unaccompanied alien children,” the innocuous-sounding phrase employed by a bureaucracy focused on avoiding the use of “illegals” who are newly arrived in the Biden years. Their oversight and handling has been mishandled, unintentionally or otherwise, by federal agencies, with the results of minors being trafficked and U.S. child labor laws being violated.

    A 2023 report by the conservative Heritage Foundation found arrests for human trafficking rose by 50% and convictions for the crime by 80% in federal fiscal year 2022. Of those trafficked, 72% were immigrants, most here illegally, the report concluded. There was bipartisan outrage last July when the Labor Department revealed illegal child labor cases had risen by 44% in the last year.

    The impacts are seen across the United States. The New York Post reports that “a street in Corona, Queens, has been transformed “into the city’s boldest open-air market for sex – one so popular with pervs that it’s advertised on YouTube. As police enforcement wanes and immigration surges nearly a dozen brothels have [also] set up shop along Roosevelt Avenue near Junction Boulevard.”

    RealClearInvestigations has reported that many of the drug dealers who have turned San Francisco’s Tenderloin district into an open-air drug market are migrants connected to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. “The drug pushers are easy to spot: Unlike the users, they look healthy and wear clean clothes,” Leighton Woodhouse reported. “They’re almost universally young men, mostly Honduran (on the streets of San Francisco they’re called “Hondos”).”

    Describing the plight of “twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee,” “underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina, and “children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota,” the New York Times has reported that “migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country.”

    Millions of migrants working for legal businesses are also breaking the law. RCI has reported that “the historic surge of illegal immigrants across America’s southern border is fueling a hidden crime spree few in Washington seem willing or able to address: widespread identity theft victimizing unwitting Americans perpetrated by migrants who need U.S. credentials to work. … Federal authorities have found that well over 1 million are using Social Security numbers belonging to someone else – i.e. stolen or “shared” with a relative or acquaintance – or numbers that are fabricated.”

    Such theft implicates many American citizens, who hire migrants with no such documents or who turn a blind eye to potentially stolen IDs.

    Other Americans fall victim to crime connected to migration. For example, seizures of fentanyl, the synthetic painkiller the Centers for Disease Control blamed for a record 112,000 overdose deaths in 2023, have skyrocketed. In 2021, law enforcement agencies seized some 11.2 thousand pounds of the lethal drug, but in just two years the Chinese-abetted trade through Mexico has more than doubled, hitting 27,000 pounds last year, according to Customs and Border Patrol figures. Some immigration and drug experts believe the vast numbers of people crossing the border make it harder to interdict the flow of narcotics into the U.S.

    Just two days before Biden used the description of “illegal” to describe Jose Antonio Ibarra, the 26-year-old suspected Venezuelan gang member accused of killing Laken Riley after entering the U.S. illegally in Texas in 2022, the Texas Department of Public Safety heralded the third anniversary of its “Operation Lone Star.” The figures offered a window into the law enforcement situation on what is something like Ground Zero of the illegal immigration to the U.S.

    Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott described the operation as a direct consequence of the Biden administration’s deliberate failure to enforce existing U.S. immigration law. As of March, Operation Lone Star has resulted in “over 503,800 illegal immigrant apprehensions and more than 40,400 criminal arrests, with more than 36,100 felony charges,” the state’s Department of Public Safety said. In addition, authorities reported seizing “over 469 million lethal doses of fentanyl during this border mission.”

    Disputed, and Elusive, Crime Stats

    Despite all this, many immigration advocates continue to insist that immigrants tend to commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans.

    The news and social media may be filled with headline-grabbing incidents, such as the gang of migrants in New York City who beat police officers in Times Square. But Nan Wu, research director of the liberal American Immigration Council, told RCI the idea the U.S. is under some tidal crime wave due to the millions of illegal immigrants that have poured into the country during Biden’s first term is a sensationalist myth.

    Perhaps the most widely cited study of this kind is one based on Texas statistics from 2012 to 2018 published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

    Relative to undocumented immigrants,” the study reported, “US-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes.

    But not all experts agree. Jason Richwine and Steven Caramota of CIS have criticized the PNAS study for failing to take into account further discoveries made by Texas authorities. “It is a misleading claim for several reasons,” the two claimed. “First, studies claiming it as fact are inescapably flawed, because most cities and states do not keep or publish data on criminals’ immigration status, rendering suspect any conclusions drawn from what data is available.”

    Because the rates increase when the immigration status of people already serving time in Texas jails is taken into account, PNAS did not capture the full extent of the problem, Richwine told RCI.

    “People have been way too hasty to draw firm conclusions because it’s not clear that Texas’ [statistics] are definitive – it’s not,” he said. “More states should do what Texas does and Texas should be more transparent about what they’re doing.”

    The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions from RCI about migrant crime, nor did the Texas Department of Public Safety. But the dispute underscores the truth, acknowledged by all sides, that the paucity of reliable information leaves the only certain conclusion that there is more crime, regardless of perpetrator, because of the influx of more than 7 million people in three years.

    With law enforcement agencies in some cases it is willful blindness because they refuse to cooperate in any meaningful way,” Mehlman said. “If they acknowledge the extent of the crime committed by illegal aliens, they would have to explain to the public why they continue to maintain sanctuary policies that shield criminal aliens.”

    There are also other problems with the widely cited figures on crime rates. One that plagues all crime research, as Herrmann told RCI, is that crimes are under-reported. Experts must rely on available law enforcement data and it is understood that for various reasons such figures are not comprehensive.

    'Intellectual Fraud'

    The numbers are misleading for another reason, too. Border Patrol agents told RCI that most people coming across illegally give themselves up quickly, knowing that current policies will allow them to be released into the U.S. with an expectation they appear for a court date years later. But the border crossers looking to stay in the shadows are more likely to be those with criminal pasts or inclinations, meaning a higher percentage of them would be among the at least 1.6 million “gotaways” Customs and Border Protection estimates have entered the U.S. illegally since 2021.

    In fiscal 2023, it said in its most recent annual report, U.S. Enforcement and Removal Operations “removed 3,406 known or suspected gang members, an increase of 27.7% over FY2022, and 139 known or suspected terrorists, a 148.2% increase over FY2022.” It elaborated: “ERO officials made 170,590 administrative arrests, representing a 19.5% increase in overall arrests from FY2022. Of the total arrests ICE conducted in FY2023, 43% of those arrested had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, up from 32.5% in FY2022.”

    The House Committee on Homeland Security majority report in October said Border Patrol had “recorded 35,450 arrests of illegal aliens with criminal backgrounds, approximately 14,000 more total such arrests than the previous four fiscal years combined.”

    Those apprehended with prior convictions had been found to have committed a wide range of crimes including assault, battery, domestic violence, and other sexual offenses, as well as driving under the influence, burglary, and theft, the report noted.

    The committee’s Republican members were harshly critical of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ handling of immigration, and their report was one more reason Mayorkas was impeached in February.

    The harsh reality, one often voiced by survivors – Laken Riley’s parents among them – is that the horrific migrant crimes that draw national outrage might not have happened at all if laws were enforced.

    “We have no idea if that would have changed anything, but he’s here illegally,” Laken Riley’s heartbroken father, Jason, said Mar. 18. “That he might not have been here had we had secure borders.”

    In the aftermath of Riley’s shocking abduction and killing, her parents and others were incredulous that a man with prior arrests since his illegal entry to the U.S. and alleged ties to Venezuelan criminal gangs was in the country at all. The Border Patrol Union laid the blame squarely on Biden’s border policies.

    Christopher Herrmann, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said such anguish is understandable, and said that trying to view the incidents dispassionately offers “nothing that will be satisfying to any victim.” Yet he said the same argument could be extended to other horrible murders – gun crimes, for instance, in which so often the lethal weapon was illegally obtained and possessed. The crime should never have happened, in other words, if laws were properly observed.

    But Bensman finds that logic unpersuasive. Because opening the border has been a deliberate, sustained policy of the Biden administration, it has introduced the criminal, rather than his tools, into the equation.

    “You can’t compare ‘illegal crimes’ to crimes by illegals – it’s the wrong comparison because the second one is 100% preventable and unnecessary whereas we’re stuck, as it were, with U.S. crime. The whole ‘they’re not as bad’ argument about illegal immigrants is an intellectual fraud, it’s giving them an escape hatch when here it’s clear: the perpetrator should have been deported.”

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 16:20
  29. Site: Zero Hedge
    13 hours 25 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Trump'n'Pump Continues As Massive Squeeze Lifts Small Caps Into Month-End; Gold Closes At Record High

    The month-/quarter-end rebalance-fest continued with a giant short-squeeze offsetting the $32 billion in US equities to sell given the moves in stocks and bonds in Q1...

    Stocks up large (and non-stop in Q1) while bond (prices) drifted lower (yields higher)...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Which may explain why bonds were bid today (given the absence of macro data), with 10Y Yields back at their lowest in two weeks...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Nasdaq lagged again on the day (relabalancing) but Small Caps face-ripped higher on the day. Today saw a late-day buying panic (as opposed to the last two days of dumping in the last 30 minutes) which lifted nasdaq green and small caps to a giant day...

    Sell, Sell, Sell, Buy!!!!

    Thanks in large part to a gigantic short-squeeze - the biggest low-to-high rip for 'most shorted' stocks since the end of February...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Mag7 stocks staged a very late-day comeback today to close green barely...

    Source: Bloomberg

    And Trump-mania continued with DJT up another 15% today...

    Yesterday saw a big resurgent net inflow (over $417mm) into BTC ETFs...

    Source: Bloomberg

    And that helped lift bitcoin early on but SEC vs COIN headlines prompted some selling which was immediately pounced upon by futures sellers, dragging bitcoin back below $69,000...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Away from the headlines that are usually front and center on CNBC, the FX market had quite a day as USDJPY tested a key level and was desperately jawboned by every Japanese official that could fog a mirror that "we'll do something really big, don't make us!!".

    152 is the weakest for the yen against the dollar since 1990... and is the same level that prompted intervention in 2022...

    Source: Bloomberg

    It may not look like much but that level is make or break and Tokyo knows it.

    But the dollar looked like it did nothing on the day...

     

    Source: Bloomberg

    Oil prices rebounded on the day, erasing the post-API losses (as official data came in with a much smaller build)...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Gold continues to drift higher, testing back up towards $2200 today...

    Source: Bloomberg

    But closing at a record high in USD...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, if you're Japanese, gold has been a great bet...

    Source: Bloomberg

    ...and so has bitcoin...

    Source: Bloomberg

    ...protection from government incompetence.

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 16:00
  30. Site: AsiaNews.it
    13 hours 31 min ago
    Plans for the structure were announced earlier this year, but a government committee has now approved its budget. The project includes a series of parallel and feeder roads to connect some of India's main military bases to the border. The government fears that the influx of refugees could destabilise the local inter-ethnic balance.
  31. Site: Zero Hedge
    13 hours 40 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    US 'Backed Itself Into Corner' By Blaming ISIS For Moscow Attack As Fires Burned: Kremlin

    Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Wednesday gave an interview to Russian state-run English language media wherein she continued to advance the Kremlin's claims that the Ukrainian government or its Western partners likely had something to do with the the Crocus City Hall terror attack.

    She described that it was strange that a Western media narrative coalesced around ISIS being behind the attack even as the mall and concert hall was still on fire and emergency crews were still responding. She said the US government has backed itself "into a corner" given that officials made bold statements too quickly in the aftermath.

    "The very fact that within the first 24 hours [after the attack], even before the fire was put out, the Americans started screaming that it wasn't Ukraine, I think, is a piece of incriminating evidence. I can't classify it otherwise; it is evidence in and of itself," Zakharova told Sputnik

    Moscow News Agency via AP

    "The second fact to note concerns the clamor by the US that this assuredly was the work of ISIS," Zakharova emphasized. "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."

    She underscored that all of this demonstrates that US officials "boxed themselves into a corner" because it allowed independent analysts to "[remind] everyone else what ISIS really is." By that, she meant the recent history of the US/Gulf alliance in Syria having fueled the rise of ISIS:

    "You are behind all those ISIS-type structures; you – the United States, Great Britain – yourselves brought them into being," she concluded.

    During the decade-long proxy war in Syria, the West backed the side that produced the Islamic State. In many instances, the US was even paying the salaries of "Free Syrian Army" (FSA) commanders who were openly cooperating and fighting alongside ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorists.

    Kremlin officials have strongly suggested that ISIS militants were used as proxies for the Friday attack in Moscow on behalf of the Ukrainian or possibly Western governments or intelligence agencies.

    On Wednesday the official death toll from Russian authorities in the wake of the terror attack on the Moscow concert hall has reached 140 killed, after more people succumbed to their wounds in the hospital.

    In the days following the Crocus City Hall attack, Russian state media has been featuring stories on the 'rise of ISIS' and the West-sponsored jihad in Syria:

    The US - Godfather Of ISIS?

    While Washington firmly pins blame for the Crocus City Hall attack on ISIS, apparently shielding Ukraine from accusations, RT reveals how Islamic State's targets over the last few years have raised some interesting questions… pic.twitter.com/aNmIWVy1HH

    — RT_India (@RT_India_news) March 27, 2024

    President Vladimir Putin in addressing the terror attack over the weekend vowed to hunt down and punish all perpetrators while also charging that Ukraine prepared a "window" to help the terrorists escape. Since then several more arrests of alleged collaborators and plotter have been made. As for the culprits possibly receiving assistance from Ukraine or Western governments, there's as yet been no clear evidence presented that demonstrates a connection.

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 15:45
  32. Site: LifeNews
    13 hours 40 min ago
    Author: Mary Margaret Olohan

    The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case dealing with the Food and Drug Administration’s removal of safeguards on chemical abortion drugs.

    Represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, four national medical associations and four individual doctors sued the FDA for removing almost all safety standards for pregnant women taking the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol.

    Safeguards formerly included initial in-person visits to make sure the mother did not have an ectopic pregnancy or other serious medical condition, as well as follow-up check-up visits for internal bleeding and infection.

    Activists rally in front of the Supreme Court building while the case's oral arguments occur inside. (Photo by Noah Slayter/The Daily Signal)Activists rally in front of the Supreme Court building while the case’s oral arguments occur inside. (Photo by Noah Slayter/The Daily Signal)

    Pro-abortion advocates gathered at the Supreme Court on Tuesday to rally in support of unrestricted chemical abortion drugs. Multiple pro-abortion protesters who spoke with The Daily Signal said they wanted women to have unfettered access to the drugs and pushed back against the idea that safeguards were necessary.

    Click Like if you are pro-life to like the LifeNews Facebook page!

    (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.10"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

    Pro-life advocates who spoke with The Daily Signal emphasized the need to protect women’s health, sharing stories of women who have suffered severe medical complications from taking the drugs without proper medical supervision.

    “Today, I argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of doctors and medical associations who are witnessing firsthand the harm to women caused by the FDA’s recklessness,” Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Erin Hawley said in a press statement on Tuesday.

    Hawley accused the FDA of violating federal law and its duty to keep women safe by removing crucial safeguards.

    “Regardless of one’s views about abortion, we should all agree that women’s health matters,” she emphasized. “Women deserve for the FDA to do its job. Women deserve for the federal government to look out for their health and safety.”

    At the Supreme Court on Tuesday, The Daily Signal spoke with Catherine Herring, a woman whose husband allegedly sought to drug her seven times after he found out she was pregnant. Herring said she became violently ill after the first attempt to abort her baby, and then kept watch until she ultimately caught him on video putting abortion drugs in her drinks.

    Outside the Supreme Court this morning, abortion pill victim Catherine Herring tells @DailySignal that her husband “poisoned” her “seven times with abortion pills in attempts to kill” her daughter Josephine.

    “He said the pregnancy would ruin his plans.”
    pic.twitter.com/NGxztO2UOs

    — Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) March 26, 2024

    “I was the victim of abortion pill poisoning in Texas,” Herring said. “My husband poisoned me seven times with abortion pills, in attempt to kill my daughter, Josephine.”

    “He said the pregnancy would … make him look like a jerk,” she said.

    “He was using an enormous amount of powder each poisoning,” Herring told the The Daily Signal. “I got violently ill. I ended up in an emergency room, with a urine sample that was black in color.”

    Regarding the child Herring was pregnant with when poisoned, she said “Josephine is the sweetest little 18-month-old. She has a lot of health issues, a lot of developmental delays. She has spent many months in the hospital, in ICU. She has a feeding tube in her abdomen… I’m so grateful she’s alive.”

    Kelly Lester, a rape victim, post-abortive mother, and former abortion clinic worker, also shared her experience with the rally attendees.

    Lester, who aborted her unborn baby through a chemical abortion, explained that she felt her traumatic experience must have been unique since she never heard anyone else discussing how isolated and terrifying it was.

    “If this was the norm, we would hear about it, there would be people out there talking about how dangerous it was, how painful it was, how traumatic it was,” she said. “But I wasn’t hearing that, so I thought that my experience must have been isolated.”

    “While working in the abortion industry as the receptionist, I dispensed the abortion drug regimen,” Lester shared, “I handed these women a bag and I told them the same lies that had been told to me. I told them it’s going to be like a heavy period, you’re going to have light cramping. It’s going to be simple and easy. It’s the best thing for you.”

    “I believed the lies that I was fed,” Lester said.

    LifeNews Note: Mary Margaret Olohan writes for Daily Signal, where this article originally appeared. 

    The post Woman’s Husband Poisoned Her Seven Times With Abortion Pills to Kill Their Baby, But He Failed appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  33. Site: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
    13 hours 58 min ago

    This Zoom event will focus on Oregon, California, Washington state and Hawaii.

    Alex Schadenberg
    Alex Schadenberg, the Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition will be providing a Western US assisted suicide Zoom event update on April 8 at 7:15 pm (Pacific Time).

    Register in advance for this meeting (Registration Link). 

    After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. 

    This event will uncover the incremental growth of assisted suicide, a reality that the assisted suicide lobby denies in states when they are trying to legalize assisted suicide.

    Alex Schadenberg will examine the increasing number of assisted suicide deaths and the expansions to the assisted suicide laws in Oregon, California, Washington state and Hawaii and provide an analysis of the data and the assisted suicide expansion bills.

    There will be a specific focus on recent legislation such as Oregon removing it's assisted suicide law residency requirement to permit suicide tourism and California Bill HB 1196, a bill that would blur the distinction between assisted suicide and euthanasia (homicide) in California.

    Register in advance for this meeting (Registration Link).

    Links to recent articles on these topics:

  34. Site: Zero Hedge
    14 hours 9 sec ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Baltimore Port Closure Puts Truck Drivers Who Haul Autos In A Bind

    By John Kingston of FreightWaves

    With the closure of the Port of Baltimore for the foreseeable future, the question of which truck drivers are most affected inevitably focuses first on drayage.

    But Baltimore is not a major intermodal port, with estimates that its share of U.S. intermodal traffic is in the low single digits.

    What the Port of Baltimore is, however, is a huge gateway for automobile imports and, to a lesser extent, car exports. And that fact is likely to shake up the niche truck segment of auto haulers.

    Source: Bloomerg

    Guy Young is the general manager of the Auto Haulers Association of America. Reached by phone Monday, the day of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, he assessed his members’ industry as it suddenly deals with the loss of its biggest import point.

    “What car haulers need that not necessarily any of the other types of container shippers need are places to store the cars until the auto haul trucks come in and pick them up,” Young said.

    That means parking lots — big ones — and not every port has them. And if they do, there is not necessarily spare capacity beyond what they are utilizing now.

    “Containers require a space to put them, too, but you can stack them,” Young said. That obviously isn’t possible with cars.

    He noted that the East Coast also has a significant auto import site at the Port of Brunswick, Georgia, not far from Savannah.

    In an article published in Forbes, Ken Roberts, who analyzes trade data, said he believed that the Georgia port would be the best location to take in auto carriers diverted from Baltimore. In the article, Roberts said the leading import partners at Brunswick “align most closely with those of the Port of Baltimore.”

    Movin’ out?

    But that raises a question. Drivers of auto haulers who are located in the Baltimore region to service that port would need to move their base of operations at least temporarily to Brunswick or other ports — Roberts and Young both mentioned Newark, New Jersey, and Jacksonville, Florida, as leading car import sites — to make the increased operations there work. Will they make that move?

    Most auto haulers are home at night, Young said. Companies that specialize in auto hauling “probably have drivers that are based in Baltimore or live close by. You can’t necessarily just send them out anywhere because they don’t have a home to get back to.”

    Auto hauling is “not really like over-the-road driving,” Young said. “It’s more regional.”

    If the drivers who move autos out of Baltimore to the mid-Atlantic or Northeast are doing so in a day’s time, and now will have to tack on additional over-the-road hours to get cars out of a port like Brunswick, “that’s going to affect hours of service,” Young said.

    Possible HOS waiver looms

    And online chatter Monday was focusing on the possibility of a more generalized HOS waiver from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. 

    Governors have the  power to declare states of emergency that include state waivers of HOS for a certain period of time, but ultimately, a federal waiver is needed. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore did declare a general state of emergency, but the wording has no specific reference to hours of service.

    Auto import data for Baltimore is described in terms of tonnage. In January, according to Maryland data, auto imports were 56,332 tons. The monthly average for 2023 was 68,871 tons. A year earlier it was 71,332 tons. And in 2013, it was 91,191 tons. Specific port by port data was not immediately available, but Baltimore has been described as the largest auto port by several sources. 

    Auto exports were 5,064 tons in January, averaged 8,883 tons per month in 2023 and averaged 19,783 tons in 2013. 

    The impact on the number of drayage carriers now staring into a demand for their services is impossible to quantify precisely but is undoubtedly huge.

    But Louis Campion, the president and CEO of the Maryland Motor Truck Association, told FreightWaves in an email that his organization has about 75 companies that provide intermodal services to Baltimore’s port.

    Although the port is technically open to service freight on the docks and in the terminals, the collapsed bridge serves as a barrier for entry and exit from those facilities, which are all inside the site of the catastrophe.

    Source: Bloomberg 

    Campion noted that activity can continue at terminals. “However, unless the waterways are reopened, it will serve as a blockade to the Port and effectively choke off economic activity,” he said. “If the waterways are not cleared so that ships can continue to access the Port, we would see the impact in literally a few days.  It may already be difficult as some shippers will most certainly start to re-route to other ports.”

    News reports have noted shipping officials who are already rerouting freight.

    Drayage drivers would face the same dilemma as the auto haulers Young discussed: They can possibly move their trucks to other ports to service diverted freight, but what becomes their home base? 

    Campion’s group issued a statement on the bridge collapse that discussed some of the numbers affected by its fallout.

    “We know that the Port itself is responsible for 20,000 direct jobs, and thousands of other indirect jobs it creates in industries like trucking,” the statement said. “The Key Bridge is a critical route for trucking into and out of the Port of Baltimore. In 2022 the Bridge carried over 4,800 trucks per day.”

    Traffic that had crossed the bridge has three alternative routes. Two are through tunnels that cross under the Port of Baltimore, one on Interstate 95 and the other on Interstate 895, but hazardous materials cannot travel through either tunnel.

    Source: Bloomberg 

    The second is the western side of the 695 loop around Baltimore. The eastern side of 695 includes the Key Bridge.

    Limited intermodal impact

    An irony in the bridge collapse is that it was caused by a container ship, though Baltimore is not a significant intermodal port.

    In a commentary about the impact of the bridge collapse on East Coast railroad CSX, the transportation team at Deutsche Bank led by Amit Mehrotra said Baltimore last year handled about 300,000 inbound twenty-foot equivalent units, far fewer than New York/New Jersey (2.4 million) and more than 900,000 in Norfolk, Virginia. However, it was more than the 240,000 units handled in Philadelphia, which has been spoken of as a possible alternate destination for cargo routed away from Baltimore.

    That small amount of intermodal service is one reason why the Key Bridge collapse is not viewed as a significant incident for the rail intermodal industry, though it could have more impact on coal traffic. Baltimore is a key export site for coal.

    “The temporarily displaced imports should be able to easily reroute to nearby ports of entry,” Deutsche Bank wrote. “There is also plenty of available outbound capacity to divert the 200k+ loaded exports that leave Baltimore each year.”

    The bank added that the coal slowdown could impact CSX. The Curtis Bay Coal Piers has export capacity of 14 million tons of coal. “At full capacity this would account for about one third of CSX’s annual export (metallurgical) coal volume (40 million tons), though we estimate the actual volume is much less than this,” Deutsche Bank wrote. “The bottom line is CSX’s weekly coal volumes are likely to be down a lot in the coming weeks; if we assume an impact for 2 months, we see max potential for about 30k lower coal carloads.”

    On the energy front, recent records show Baltimore importing minor amounts of petroleum. In December, it was one shipment of asphalt and one shipment of biomass-based diesel, which could be either renewable diesel or biodiesel.

    The liquefied natural gas export port at Cove Point, Maryland, is outside the port and is not affected by the collapse, according to a spokesman for the facility.

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 15:25
  35. Site: LifeNews
    14 hours 5 min ago
    Author: Right to Life UK

    A paper published in the Irish Medical Journal has revealed that a woman almost died from an ectopic pregnancy after having a medical abortion.

    The paper, released on 21 March 2024, reveals that a woman from Limerick had a medical abortion two weeks prior to being admitted to hospital for an ectopic pregnancy. The paper states that this episode “could have been prevented by an ultrasound for location of pregnancy”.

    Under normal circumstances, the early embryo should implant in the uterus. However, an ectopic pregnancy occurs when the embryo implants somewhere other than the uterus, usually in one of the fallopian tubes.

    The paper explains that “Offering an ultrasound to confirm IUP [intrauterine pregnancy] to patients requesting abortifacients is not routine & this practice may result in masking symptoms & signs of EP [ectopic pregnancy] in patients having abortion and result in mortality due to misdiagnosis and overlap in symptoms of EP and abortion”.

    The paper goes on to add that confirming pregnancy location before a medical abortion has the merit of “reducing morbidity and mortality”.

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    Eilís Mulroy, spokesperson for the Irish pro-life group, the Pro Life Campaign, said “Telemedicine has removed the requirement that a woman even meet her GP before receiving the abortion pills, which precludes the possibility of an examination let alone an ultrasound. Notably, this alarming case in Limerick happened under the current telemedicine regime”.

    At Home Early Medical Abortion (Review) Bill

    In December last year, Carla Lockhart, MP for Upper Bann, tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) to reinstate in-person appointments before a medical abortion as an important safeguard for the safety of women and to help prevent abortion coercion.

    In an apparent reference to the recent tragic case of Carla Foster, who had an illegal abortion at between 32 and 34 weeks gestation, the EDM notes that “recent illegal late-term abortions of viable unborn babies would not have been able to occur had in-person appointments to accurately assess gestational age been required”.

    The EDM was launched in support of the At Home Early Medical Abortion (Review) Bill currently making its way through the House of Lords. The Bill specifically requires the Government to review whether in-person medical appointments, during which the gestational age of the pregnancy can be accurately determined before an at-home abortion occurs, should be reinstated.

    Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “Thankfully the woman in this case did not die, but, as the medical report makes clear, this whole episode could have been avoided if an ultrasound had been carried out ahead of time”.

    “With the introduction of telemedicine abortion, there is no requirement for a woman seeking an abortion to see a medical professional in person at any stage of the process. Reinstating in-person appointments ahead of an abortion would make these situations less likely to occur”.

    LifeNews Note: Republished with permission from Right to Life UK.

    The post Abortion Pill Almost Kills Woman With Undiagnosed Ectopic Pregnancy appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  36. Site: The Orthosphere
    14 hours 20 min ago
    Author: JMSmith

    “The kingship of Satan in the under world and upper world are Bible statements; his kingship in the world about us is a Bible fact confirmed by human testimony.”

    C. F. Wimberly, Is the Devil a Myth (1913)*

    It may be tactless to mention this on Holy Week, but I dislike the increasingly popular slogan “Christ is King!” The most obvious objection is that, if Christ is King, and we presently reside in his kingdom, Christ has a great deal to answer for.  The problem of evil is a real problem, and it appears unreal only when one is well fed and comfortably toasting one’s toes before a fragrant fire.

    Men in every other degree of terror, grief and vexation see that this world is under the thumb of the dark lord known as Satan.  While this world certainly affords some highly suggestive flashes of beauty, love, and joy, the king of this world shows us who is boss by smashing these glimpses of eternity in fairly short order.

    You may protest that Christ is King, in spite of all this terror, grief, vexation, and smashing; to which I can only reply that this is a hell of a way to run a kingdom.  You may observe that all this terror, grief, vexation and smashing is for my own good, to which I can only reply that I hope you don’t scorch your little pink toes with that nice warm fire.  You may point to Christ’s declaration, in John 16:33, that he had “overcome the world,” to which I can only reply that I have overcome many things from which countless others still painfully suffer.

    Christ is not under the thumb of Satan, but Satan is undoubtedly King of this world.

    That Satan is king of the underworld we know from Revelation 9, where we are told he rules as “king” over the demons of the “bottomless pit.”  That Satan is king of the overworld we know from Ephesians 2:2, where he is called “the prince of the power of the air,” and said to have “the children of disobedience” for his subjects.  That Satan is king of this world about us is implied by Ephesians 4:12, since he is, no doubt, supreme among “the rulers of the darkness of this world.”

    The phrase “prince of the power of the air” is by some through ambiguous.  The key to this riddle is found in the story of Job, in which we are told that the children of that unhappy man were crushed when “a great wind” flattened the house in which they were eating and drinking.  This calamity came directly on the heels of the destruction of Job’s sheep and shepherds by “the fire of God . . . fallen from heaven.”  But it was not God who unleashed that whirlwind and roasted those muttons.

    It was the malicious meteorological menace who rules this world.

    “And the Lord said unto Satan, all that he [Job] hath is in thy power . . . ” Job 1: 12

    Job is, of course, the type of everyman, so everything that you and I have has been given over to the power of the Dark Lord.  He is not king of our souls until we submit them, but he is certainly king of everything else.

    I do not deny that there is a sense in which the slogan Christ is King is true, or that the slogan can cheer a faint heart in a dark place; but we must never forget the more immediate sense in which the slogan is untrue, or the danger to faith when cheap cheer is disappointed by the malice of Satan.

    *) F. Wimberly, Is the Devil a Myth (New York: F. H. Revell Co., 1913), p. 104.

  37. Site: Zero Hedge
    14 hours 20 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    "Queer Princeton Alumni" President Arrested On Child Porn Charges

    The President of the "Queer Princeton Alumni" and the Princeton and Harvard Glee Clubs, who also sits on the board of the New York Philharmonic, was charged and arrested over possession of child pornography, according to the Mercer County, NJ Prosecutor's Office.

    Roy "Trey" Farmer, 53, a 1993 Princeton grad, was arrested on Friday at a condo he owns in Princeton, across from the university's main entrance. He faces one count of possession of child sexual abuse material, a third-degree felony.

    BREAKING: Prominent LGBTQ activist Trey Farmer arrested on child p*rn charges.

    Trey is an alumni of Princeton and is President of the “Queer Princeton Alumni” organization. pic.twitter.com/t7GcyZ2e6Z

    — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 27, 2024

    In January, 2024 detectives with the prosecutor's Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Unit received information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that an individual in Mercer County had uploaded an item that portrayed child sexual abuse material, the Daily Voice reports. Following an investigation, Roy D. Farmer was identified as a subject.

    On Friday, March 22, members of the Mercer County Tactical Response Team, with assistance from the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations Trenton, executed a search warrant at an apartment in Princeton owned by Farmer, where detectives seized multiple items of evidentiary value, the prosecutor's office said. -Daily Voice

    Farmer has remained in the Mercer County jail since his arrest, and will face a detention hearing on Wednesday in Superior Court of Mercer County in Trenton. The prosecutor's office will argue he be detained pending trial, according to NJ.com.

    Farmer has previously served on the boards of the Classic Chamber Concerts, Istanbul State Opera and Ballet, London Symphony Orchestra, Naples Music Club, Opera Naples, the and the StayInMay Festival, according to his bio on the Queer Princeton Alumni website.

    According to his bio for the Harvard Glee Club cited by the Daily Voice, he's an 'entrepreneur' who operates companies in the US, Europe and the Middle East.

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 15:05
  38. Site: Zero Hedge
    14 hours 40 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Trump Selling $60 Bibles To 'Make America Pray Again'

    Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

    Former President Donald Trump announced on March 26 his collaboration with country singer Lee Greenwood to promote the “God Bless The USA Bible,” encouraging people to buy it and “make America pray again.”

    “All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” the Republican presidential candidate said in a video posted to his Truth Social account on March 26.

    “I think you all should get a copy of God Bless the U.S.A. Bible now and help spread our Christian values with others. There you have it. Let’s make America pray again,” he added.

    “God Bless The USA Bible” features the King James Version translation, costing $59.99. It includes the handwritten chorus of Mr. Greenwood’s famous “God Bless The USA” song, the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Pledge of Allegiance.

    President Trump said that many Americans “don’t know the liberties and rights” they have as U.S. citizens, nor are they aware of “how they are being threatened to lose those rights.”

    “It’s happening all the time,” he remarked. “It’s a very sad thing that’s going on in our country, but we’re going to get it turned around.”

    The former president said that “religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country,” which resulted in the country “going haywire.”

    “I truly believe that we need to bring them back here and we have to bring them back fast. I think it’s one of the biggest problems we have,” President Trump said.

    “Our Founding Fathers did a tremendous thing when they built America on Judeo-Christian values. Now, that foundation is under attack, perhaps as never before. What can we do? Stand up, speak out, and pray that God will bless America again,” he added.

    ‘Nothing to Do With Any Political Campaign’

    Billing itself as “the only Bible endorsed by President Trump,” the new venture’s website describes it as “easy-to-read” with “large print” and a “slim design” that “invites you to explore God’s Word anywhere, any time.”

    It claims the product “is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign.”

    “GodBlessTheUSABible.com is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Ventures LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates,” the website states, adding that “GodBlessTheUSABible.com uses Donald J. Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”

    CIC Ventures LLC is a company that President Trump reported owning in his 2023 financial disclosure.

    Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump delivers remarks while introducing a new line of signature shoes at Sneaker Con at the Philadelphia Convention Center, in Philadelphia, Pa., on Feb. 17, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    The Bible is the latest commercial venture that President Trump has pursued while campaigning.

    Last month, he debuted a new line of Trump-branded sneakers, including the $399 gold “Never Surrender High-Tops,” at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia. The venture behind the shoes, 45Footwear, also sells other Trump-branded footwear, cologne, and perfume.

    The Bible sale comes as President Trump has faced a serious money crunch amid mounting legal bills while he fights four criminal indictments and a series of civil charges.

    The former president was given a reprieve on March 25 when a New York appeals court agreed to hold off on collecting the more than $454 million he owes following a civil fraud judgment if he puts up $175 million within 10 days. President Trump has already posted a $92 million bond in connection with defamation cases brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of sexual assault.

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 14:45
  39. Site: LifeNews
    14 hours 56 min ago
    Author: Sarah Holliday

    Katelynn Perry took the abortion pill when she was pregnant with her fifth child. “I found out that I was pregnant with Aubrey on Christmas Day of 2021,” she said. She and her husband told their friends and family how excited they were to have another baby, but it didn’t take long until the cheer of the holiday season ended, and the Perrys were confronted with financial hardship. They began to have doubts about the pregnancy and sought advice from the abortion giant, Planned Parenthood.

    Perry thought Planned Parenthood would walk them through all of their options, only to quickly discover that abortion was their top priority. She told The Daily Signal, “When I tried to ask questions, they were kind of shot down. They weren’t really answered in full,” adding “they used a lot of medical terms” she didn’t understand.

    Planned Parenthood staff rushed her to the back, separating Perry from her husband. “With no support system back there with me, I just made what I thought was the best decision at the time,” she explained. “They told me that I was already … eight weeks along, and I wouldn’t be able to do the chemical abortion if I waited too much longer.” And so, right there in the abortion mecca, she took the first set of pills.

    “I was up all night long pondering what I had done,” she remembered, and it was while Perry was restless in bed that she decided not to go forward with taking any more abortion pills. The next morning, she looked to find a way to reverse what she started.

    Click Like if you are pro-life to like the LifeNews Facebook page!

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    Perry stumbled on the pro-life organization, Heartbeat International (HI), who outlined ways to stop the procedure. Once she got ahold of a nurse through HI’s Abortion Pill Rescue Network hotline, she was informed she had 72 hours from taking the abortion drug to reverse its effects. As such, the nurse quickly worked to connect Perry to a pregnancy resource center in Lynchburg, Virginia. Unlike the regret she experienced taking the drug, she described her decision to try and reverse it as “a leap of faith in joy.” She added, “It felt like a miracle. It felt like God was leading me. It felt like He was making a way.”

    After a series of “miracles,” as Perry described it, her pregnancy was saved. Today, she has a beautiful, healthy, one-year-old girl named Aubry Lynn.

    This is a story that the pro-life movement is hoping to replicate with the Second Chance for Moms Act introduced Tuesday by Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) to the House of Representatives on Tuesday. The purpose of the bill is to “amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to require a warning label advising that the effects of mifepristone can be counteracted, to amend the Public Health Service Act to establish a hotline to provide information to women seeking to counteract the effects of mifepristone, and for other purposes.”

    In comments to The Washington Stand, Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, explained why this act matters. “The abortion industry is constantly telling women that it is impossible to be a mom and succeed,” she observed. “Regardless of a woman’s age, position in society, or career, those who are pro-abortion say that having children and having a good life are incompatible. And instead of challenging the status quo, pro-abortion groups reinforce the barriers pregnant moms face.”

    Szoch added, “With all this pressure, it’s not shocking that some women take the abortion drug mifepristone without fully processing that that drug will kill their unborn child.” She concluded, “The Second Chance for Moms Act would give moms desperate to save their baby the chance to do that, and it would save countless women the heartbreak of knowing their child was a victim of the abortion industry.”

    In a statement to TWS, Rep. Miller reiterated, “As a mom of seven and grandmother to 20, life is nothing short of a miracle from God. At the very least, women should be fully informed of the miracle God has entrusted to them, and my bill ensures exactly that.”

    The post Pro-Life Congresswoman Introduces Bill to Save Babies From Abortion Pills appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  40. Site: LifeNews
    15 hours 12 min ago
    Author: Steven Ertelt

    Across America yesterday, thousands of pro-life Americans protested at Walgreens and CVS stores now that the pharmacy chains sell abortion drugs.

    Eric Shceidler of the Pro-Life Action League coordinated the protests and explained to LifeNews what happened yesterday.

    “Yesterday, as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the abortion pill case FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, pro-life advocates protested at 78 different Walgreens and CVS stores across the country, as well as at their national headquarters in Deerfield, Illinois, and Woonsocket, Rhode Island, respectively,” he said.

    Schediler complained the “Food and Drug Administration caved in to political pressure and failed in its responsibility to protect American women from the dangerous drug mifepristone, even going so far as to quit tracking non-fatal complications.”

    “And now Walgreens and CVS are doing the same: caving to political pressure, and exposing their customers to the unspeakable horrors of the abortion pill,” he told LifeNews.

    Scheidler notes that mifepristone abortions are four times more dangerous than surgical abortions, with complications occurring in one out of five cases. More than half of women describe the pain of undergoing a medication abortion as “severe,” Scheidler said, with social media platforms overflowing with horrifying abortion pill experiences.”

    “One woman who underwent one of these abortions said, ‘Clots the size of lemons were coming out of me,’ while another called it, ‘the most painful experience ever in my life,’” Scheidler recounted.

    ACTION ALERT: Contact Walgreens and CVS and let them know you will boycott their stores until they stop selling the abortion pill.

    Scheidler challenged the pharmacy chains, “What are you going to say when distraught women call up your stores asking what to do with the tiny dead embryo floating in the toilet after being expelled by the drugs you sold them?”

    The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved new regulations last year allowing brick and mortar retailers to offer chemical abortion. Leading pro-life groups condemned the decision, saying that the pills end the lives of babies before birth and that chemical abortion poses greater risks for women than surgical procedures – even as high as four times the risk.

    Up to one in five women will experience complications from the abortion pill and women are flooding ERs across the country with medical and physical damage from abortion pills.

    On March 26 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and Danco v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, petitions in the landmark case in which a group of doctors are challenging the FDA’s reckless rubber-stamping of mail-order abortion pills. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously found that the FDA’s actions likely violated the law.

    “As two of the world’s largest, most trusted ‘health’ brands, the decision by CVS and Walgreens to sell dangerous abortion drugs is shameful, and the harm to unborn babies and their mothers incalculable. This reckless policy was made possible by the Biden administration, which is pushing to turn every pharmacy and post office in America into an abortion center for the sake of abortion industry greed,” said SBA Pro-Life America’s State Policy Director Katie Daniel. “Even when used under the strongest safeguards, abortion drugs send roughly one in 25 women to the emergency room, according to the FDA’s own label. Yet under Democrat presidents, the FDA has illegally rolled back basic safety standards, like in-person doctor visits, even allowing these deadly drugs to be sent through the mail.

    “Just weeks from now the Supreme Court is set to hear a landmark case brought by doctors who routinely witness the fallout for women and girls who turn up in ERs with severe pain, heavy bleeding, infections and other serious complications – not to mention the trauma some experience when they deliver their own aborted child alone in the bathroom. The truth about abortion drugs is being exposed and we hope the FDA will finally be held accountable for failing to protect Americans.”

    Ingrid Skop, M.D., F.A.C.O.G., a board-certified OB-GYN who serves as vice president and director of medical affairs at Charlotte Lozier Institute, shared her reaction:

    “Pharmacists, who do not receive clinical training, should not be distributing these dangerous drugs. By pushing these medically unsupervised abortions, the FDA and abortion advocates continue down the slippery slope of chipping away at medical standards for women seeking abortion. This is not health care. This is an ideology that prioritizes destruction of unborn human life and does not care that the women injured by these abortions, whom I see in the ER on a regular basis, are collateral damage.”

    In-depth polling conducted by CRC Research for SBA Pro-Life America shows that Americans do not believe the FDA’s assertions that mail-order abortion drugs are safe. For more information about the dangers of abortion drugs, visit abortiondrugfacts.com.

    First approved under the Clinton administration, mifepristone is used to abort unborn babies up to about 10 weeks of pregnancy – although some abortionists use it later.

    Along with millions of unborn babies’ deaths, the FDA has linked mifepristone to at least 28 women’s deaths and 4,000 serious complications. However, under President Barack Obama, the FDA stopped requiring that non-fatal complications from mifepristone be reported. So the numbers almost certainly are much higher.

    Studies indicate the risks of the abortion drug are more common than what abortion activists often claim, with as many as one in 17 women requiring hospital treatment. A recent study by the Charlotte Lozier Institute found that the rate of abortion-related emergency room visits by women taking the abortion drug increased more than 500 percent between 2002 and 2015.

    Another new study from the University of Toronto, “Short-Term Adverse Outcomes After Mifepristone–Misoprostol Versus Procedural Induced Abortion,” published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that one in ten women who took the abortion pill had to go to the emergency room, according to Pregnancy Help News.

    In 2023, reports surfaced of a woman in Canada who also died from the abortion pill and septic shock associated with it.

    A 19-year-old Canadian woman died along with her unborn baby after taking the abortion pill. The tragic news comes as abortion activists push to expand the abortion drug mifepristone across the U.S. and Canada, claiming it’s “safer than Tylenol.” In actuality, the drug has been linked to the deaths of millions of unborn babies and dozens of mothers.

    Meanwhile, Alyona Dixon, 24, died on September 28, 2022 after complications from the abortion forced her to seek emergency medical treatment four days after the abortion at Planned Parenthood. Her family is now suing the Las Vegas hospital that treated her, saying it did not provide adequate medical care for the abortion complications.

    At the Planned Parenthood abortion center, Dixon received the dangerous mifepristone abortion pill that has killed dozens of other women and injured thousands. The pill has been linked to sepsis, which has killed other women taking the abortion drug, including Dixon.

    In England, which began allowing mail-order abortion drugs around the same time as the U.S., new investigations show a huge increase in ambulance calls and reports of coercion and abuse. There also have been reports of late-term babies being born alive at home as a result of mail-order abortion drugs because their mothers did not realize how far along they were.

    Coercion and abuse also are concerns. LifeNews has reported a number of stories in recent years about sex traffickers, abusive partners and parents forcing or tricking pregnant women and girls into aborting their unborn babies. A midwife with the abortion chain MSI Reproductive Health recently told the BBC that recognizing coercion is a big problem among abortion providers, and the new mail-order abortion practice makes it even worse.

    The post Americans Protest at 78 Walgreens, CVS Stores to Condemn Abortion Drug Sales appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  41. Site: Zero Hedge
    15 hours 20 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    New York Starts Handing Out Prepaid Debit Cards To Illegal Immigrants

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

    New York City officials on Monday started handing out pre-paid debit cards to illegal immigrants as part of a $53 million pilot program that has drawn criticism over whether the prospect of “free money” is incentivizing more unlawful border crossings.

    The first batch of the cards were given out on March 25 to a handful of families and that will expand to roughly 460 people by next week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ office confirmed to Fox News.

    The Epoch Times previously reported on the pre-paid card program, under which New York City awarded a $53 million contract to a company called Mobility Capital Finance to create and distribute the pre-paid cards, called immediate response cards.

    Under the program, the cards would first be delivered to the Roosevelt Hotel, the first touchpoint for illegal immigrants arriving in the city, with records indicating that the first to receive the cards will be families with children under the care of NYC’s Housing Preservation and Development agency.

    City Hall said that the pre-paid cards can only be used at bodegas, grocery stores, supermarkets, and convenience stores and recipients will have to sign a pledge promising to use the cards only to buy food and baby supplies.

    The program has faced criticism, including over the use of taxpayer funds to provide services to people who entered the country by flouting the law, and over fears that they would incentivize illegal immigration.

    Mixed Messages?

    New York City Mayor Eric Adams defended the use of the prepaid cards during an in-person media availability in Albany on March 26.

    Mr. Adams was asked by a reporter whether the prepaid cards provide potential migrants an appealing reason to come to the United States and so whether the program sends a mixed message, given the mayor’s stated attempts to dissuade illegal immigrants from coming to New York City.

    “No, it sends a mixed message when it’s distorted,” the mayor replied. He said he gave his team a clear directive to bring down costs related to the provision of services to illegal immigrants in the Big Apple by 30 percent—and that the cards are part of that initiative.

    Mr. Adams called the cards a “cost-effective” win-win that saves taxpayers over $600,000 per month, or $7.2 million per year.

    “We’re going to do away with food waste and we’re going to put money back into the local economy,” he said.

    Mr. Adams argued that criticism isn’t a good enough reason not to press ahead with the program.

    “If we didn’t do things because poeple are going to critique us, we wouldn’t have gotten thousands of people off our streets that are homeless, we would not have removed our encampments, we would not have taken thousands of guns off the street,” he said. “We’ve got to do it right.”

    He was then asked a follow-up question about the problem of word getting back to the border or further south that basically “free money” is being made available to families and therefore incentivizing more illegal immigration.

    Mr. Adams said it’s unavoidable that information will get back to friends and family in South American countries that even rudimentary conditions in New York shelters are better than the dire conditions some people are fleeing.

    “That’s going to go back,” he said, adding that, “we have to find the right combination—delivery of services, with the same level of dignity, and do it in a way that’s cost effective.”

    “And I’m not hearing from my colleagues down in Ecuador or Columbia or Mexico that everybody is running to New York because they’re going to get a food card,” he added. “I’m not hearing that.”

    Febien Levy, the deputy mayor for communications at Mr. Adams’ office, added that there’s an effort underway to inform people at the border by handing out flyers that there are no unlimited free services for people once they cross into the United States.

    “There’s no free money. These are not ATM cards, you can’t take cash out. If anyone has that idea, they’re wrong,” Mr. Levy said. “This is for food and baby supplies only.”

    A U.S. Border Patrol agent speaks with illegal immigrants at a transit center near the U.S.–Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Dec. 19, 2023. (John Moore/Getty Images)

    The prepaid card program comes as taxpayers in New York City face sharp cuts to services such as policing and education because the city has had to divert money to cover expenses associated with the influx of illegal immigrants.

    New York City Councilman Joe Borelli criticized the program, telling Fox 5 NY when the program was first announced that providing illegal immigrants with services on the taxpayer dime sends the wrong message.

    “We’re just giving this migrant population more free stuff at the expense of New York City taxpayers,” he told the outlet.

    Mr. Adams has pushed back on this message, arguing that the program would save New York around $7 million per year compared to New York officials physically handing out food to illegal immigrants, where logistics and waste would add to the cost.

    New York Mayor Eric Adams speaks during his weekly press conference at New York City Hall on Nov. 14, 2023. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

    The mayor insisted at the briefing that the assistance is justified to alleviate a “humanitarian crisis” that has gripped the city as around 180,000 asylum-seekers have come since last spring.

    Amid the influx, Mr. Adams has walked a fine line between empathy and criticism. For instance, he warned in September 2023 that the unending influx of illegal immigrants would “destroy New York City.”

    He has also pleaded for federal help, lamenting that the Biden administration’s lack of action was leaving cities to fend for themselves.

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 14:05
  42. Site: AsiaNews.it
    15 hours 30 min ago
    The church, symbol of the row over the liturgy, was closed for 486 days due to violence that broke out when Archbishop Andrew Thazhath tried to enforce compliance with the Synod's decision on the "uniform liturgy'. For now, to avoid tensions, the Holy Qurbana will not be celebrated. 'The reopening during Holy Week is a positive step,' said a Syro-Malabar Church spokesman.
  43. Site: Zero Hedge
    15 hours 40 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    One Man Dead After (Yet Another) Shooting At Philadelphia SEPTA Bus Stop

    Another day, another shooting at or near Philadelphia's mass transit system. 

    Just weeks after a deadly shooting near a SEPTA stop injured 8 people, another man is dead after a shooting at a bus stop in Northeast Philadelphia. 

    The shooting took place at the Arrott Transportation Center, according to reports from KYW Newsradio. The report says that "one man was shot in the chest and taken to a nearby hospital where he later died".

    Another man was shot in the leg and is in stable condition. The victim is a 33 year old Philadelphia resident, the report says. And, of course, no arrests have been made as of the time of the article's writing. 

    Earlier this month 8 teens were shot near a SEPTA bus, also in Northeast Philadelphia. That report came just hours after a prior shooting injured four and killed one involving mass transit in Philadelphia was reported.

    The incident earlier this month happened near Northeast High School at Cottman and Rising Sun avenues, where students were waiting for a bus. Three assailants opened fire, shooting over 30 rounds from across the street, wounding eight teenagers.

    Mayor Cherelle Parker commented at the time: "The purpose of our being here today is to inform you all that enough is enough. That every law enforcement partner that we have here in the city of Philadelphia is actively engaged in working together to ensure that every resource that is needed is readily available so that the work can be done to solve crimes."

    Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel added: “It’s hard to sit here in three days and have 11 juveniles shot who are going and coming from school. The cowardly acts that we’ve seen over the last three days are unacceptable, The downstream impacts if we do not address gun violence and we do not address guns is what we see today.”

    “We cannot ignore what we’re seeing over the last three days. I will not sit here and people call me and tell me what I should or should not be doing," Bethel continued.

    "This is what we see when we give guns in the hands of juveniles and what they do with them. Telling kids they should not carry guns because they’re scared. Really? This is the end results of what we see. So we’re going to work hard and continue with the men and women behind me and my team to get these guns off the street and stop this from happening.”

    But, as KYW notes, this week's shooting marks the fifth shooting on or near SEPTA busses this month. So, it appears the mayor and Police Commissioner have more work to do than just jawboning...

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 13:45
  44. Site: LifeNews
    15 hours 53 min ago
    Author: Ben Johnson

    Bureaucratic regulators recklessly ignored women’s safety when they approved the abortion drug mifepristone, violating federal law and conscience rights in the process, pro-life physicians argued at the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The Biden administration responded that justices should not overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the life-taking chemical, because doing so “harms women,” “harms the pharmaceutical industry,” and would violate left-wing principles of equity.

    The alliance of pro-life doctors and medical professionals who sued the FDA say the abortion approval process violated standard processes and subsequently reduced requirements to report adverse events to the federal government. The Supreme Court justices weighed both sides’ contentions for 93 minutes Tuesday morning during oral arguments in FDA v. Alliance Hippocratic Medicine, with rhetoric sometimes becoming intense.

    “Do you think the FDA is infallible?” asked Justice Samuel Alito.

    The pro-life doctors, who mostly prevailed in lower courts, said the abortion pill harms women by leaving fetal tissue behind that can induce severe bleeding. In some 3.1% of those cases, the child will survive, requiring pro-life emergency room physicians to carry out an abortion to save the woman’s life or health.

    Under questioning from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar admitted, “There was some evidence that there were increased ER visits” after the Obama and Biden administrations removed any requirement for an in-person visit, which would screen mothers for ectopic pregnancy and other health concerns.

    Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor confessed, “That did trouble me.”

    HELP LIFENEWS SAVE BABIES FROM ABORTION! Please help LifeNews.com with a donation!

    The Biden administration responded by minimizing women’s suffering. “Half of the women who went to the emergency room didn’t get any treatment at all. Many women might go because they’re experiencing heavy bleeding, which mimics a miscarriage, and they might just need to know whether or not they’re having a complication,” said Prelogar.

    That’s a weak argument, countered pro-life advocates. “My question for her would be, ‘How is a woman who is not a physician supposed to know if her heavy bleeding is hemorrhaging? How is she supposed to know if she’s in a life-threatening situation? Shouldn’t that burden be on the person who gave her that abortion drug?’” asked Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, on Tuesday’s episode of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.”

    “The FDA’s own label lists that between 2.9 and 4.6% of women who take mifepristone will need to go to the ER following the use of that drug,” Szoch continued.

    That would mean 18,638 and 29,564 of the 642,700 chemical abortions carried out last year ended in an emergency room visit, according to numbers furnished by the Guttmacher Institute’s Monthly Abortion Provision Study.

    “That’s not something that’s ‘as safe as Tylenol,’” as abortion activists regularly assert, Szoch told Perkins. “Of course, we know that every use of the abortion drug is tragic because it takes an unborn child’s life. But this removal of the safety standard makes it especially tragic.”

    Prelogar parried these questions by invoking the abortion industry’s low standards of care in other areas. “The FDA explained even in person, you’re not necessarily getting an ultrasound” before women consume an abortion-inducing drug and administer their own abortions, frequently on the toilet.

    Planned Parenthood has sued multiple states that required abortionists to provide women with an ultrasound, portraying the proponents of “transvaginal ultrasound” bills as akin to rapists.

    It’s impossible to know the full extent of the abortion pill’s harms, as the Obama administration watered down federal mandates to report any adverse effects except death.

    Justices also asked the abortion pill manufacturer why they sued to block tighter reporting requirements of women’s pain and suffering. “Why would that be a bad thing?” Justice Alito inquired of Jessica Ellsworth, who represented mifepristone manufacturer Danco Laboratories. “You don’t want to sell a product that causes very serious harm to the people who take your product, relying on your tests and the FDA’s tests. Wouldn’t you want that data?”

    Ellsworth replied, “That data is certainly something that we are looking for all the time,” so Danco lists “a 1-800 number on our website” for people to report adverse events to the manufacturer. But that claim is just “smoke and mirrors,” retorted Tony Perkins. “They’re just trying to cover the tracks,” because few people issue complaints directly with drugmakers. Mifepristone maker GenBioPro also registered its objections to the lawsuit.

    Both Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas pressed the Biden administration about whether the FDA violated applicable federal law by allowing abortionists to mail mifepristone to mothers. “Shouldn’t the FDA have at least considered the application of 18 U.S.C. 1461?” asked Alito. That portion of the U.S. Code, known as The Comstock Act, bars individuals from sending any “article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion” through the U.S. mail.

    “I think that the Comstock provisions don’t fall within FDA’s lane,” replied Prelogar, adding the law’s rare enforcement rendered it moot. But Erin Hawley of Alliance Defending Freedom, who represents the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, responded, “We think that the plain text of that [law], Your Honor, is pretty clear.”

    Pro-life doctors also sued out of concerns that they may have to take part in an abortion, if healing a woman suffering from an incomplete abortion required an emergency room physician to carry out a dilation and curettage (D&C) surgical abortion. Liberal Justice Elena Kagan asked why pro-life ER staff could not simply lodge a conscience complaint and refuse to take part — something Hawley said is impractical. “Doctors don’t necessarily know until they scrub into that operating room whether this may or may not be abortion drug harm. It could be a miscarriage; it could be an ectopic pregnancy or it could be an elective abortion,” said Hawley. “These are life-threatening situations in which the choice for a doctor is either to scrub out and try to find someone else or to treat the woman who’s hemorrhaging.”

    Conservative-leaning justices parsed that question. “The fact that she performed a D&C does not necessarily mean that there was a living embryo or a fetus because you can have a D&C after, you know, a miscarriage,” asked Justice Barrett. But Hawley said the FDA’s own numbers bore out the pro-life cause.

    “If you look at the numbers of the increase from 7 to 10 weeks in gestational age, that means that 3.1% of pregnancies will be ongoing, requiring a D&C,” Hawley replied, and “55% of those D&Cs occur in the emergency room.”

    “This is a substantial number of women suffering abortion drug harm,” Hawley.

    Much of the case revolved around the more mundane issue of whether the plaintiffs had legal standing to lodge the case. “Is there anybody who could challenge in court the lawfulness of what the FDA did here?” Alito asked Prelogar. The Biden administration argued it enjoyed “sovereign immunity” from any number of plaintiffs, including doctors and women who suffered side effects from chemical abortions.

    The profits of the abortion industry, and the pharmaceutical industry in general, took up a surprisingly large proportion of both sides’ arguments. At one point, Alito asked Danco’s lawyer, “You think you’re going to sell more [abortion pills] if the restrictions that previously were in place were lifted?”

    “Yes,” Ellsworth replied.

    “So, you’re going to make more money?” Alito continued.

    In her closing argument, Solicitor General Prelogar pleaded with judges not to overturn FDA approval of the abortion drug, despite its injuring tens of thousands of women, because “it harms the pharmaceutical industry.”

    Ultimately, though, the Biden administration made clear it objects to the lawsuit, because it constricts the abortion industry’s autonomy. “It harms women who need access to medication abortion,” alleged Prelogar. “The court should reject that profoundly inequitable result.”

    In a sign that concerned some pro-life observers, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch seemed reticent to issue a universal injunction against the distribution of the abortion pill. “There are exactly zero universal injunctions that were issued during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 12 years in office,” Gorsuch noted. “Over the last four years or so, the number is something like 60,” mostly from the lower courts. “They’re a relatively new thing.”

    He interrupted Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson at one point to hint at a narrower ruling tailored to the plaintiffs, saying the court should “provide a remedy sufficient to address the plaintiff’s asserted injuries and go no further.”

    The Supreme Court usually takes several months to draft an opinion. Its last major abortion decision, in the 2022 Dobbs case, was leaked by a Supreme Court staffer, triggering a flurry of attacks on pro-life pregnancy care centers and churches that continue to this day.

    LifeNews Note: Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

    The post Supreme Court Hearing Confirms They’re Pro-Abortion, Not Pro-Woman appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  45. Site: Zero Hedge
    16 hours 9 sec ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    The Roberts Court May Force You To Drive An EV

    Authored by Thomas McArdle via The Epoch Times,

    The Biden administration has just required that the majority of automotive vehicles manufactured be electric by 2032, inflicting upon the American people troublesome cars whose price is an exorbitant $53,500 on average and that cost a fortune to repair. House Speaker Mike Johnson warned that the move will “devastate auto manufacturers.”

    While electric vehicles (EVs) totaled less than 8 percent of sales of new cars last year, the Biden rule demands they reach as much as 56 percent in less than a decade, and as much as 36 percent for plug-in hybrid vehicles. The regulatory method to be employed is mandating that automakers cut carbon dioxide emissions by more than half by eight years from now. Far sooner than that as a result, just several years down the road, Americans may no longer be able to afford an ordinary gasoline-powered vehicle.

    The extremism of the new regulations is a direct result of something many Americans likely didn’t think had anything to do with revolutionizing and dictating the ways they get themselves from point A to point B—2022’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

    While doing nothing to reduce inflation, the law acted as step one of the implementation of President Joe Biden’s Green New Deal, giving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) explicit powers regarding greenhouse gases and in forcing solar, wind, and other expensive alternatives to fossil fuels on the private sector. The IRA’s Title VI amended the Clean Air Act to identify by name pollutants, including CO2, so the EPA would have congressional authorization to regulate them and shift to pricier green forms of energy.

    Overlaid on the new powers were massive amounts of new taxpayer cash, with the act spending approximately $370 billion in incentives for solar panels, EVs, and other environmentalist wares that can’t make it in the market. Demand for electric transportation, meanwhile, looks unpromising, with Ford reducing EV manufacturing to the tune of the withdrawal of $12 billion, and Toyota looking more to hybrids than EVs.

    The Biden regs set the stage for a battle royale in the Supreme Court, but to know why, let’s back up.

    Congress had in 2010 settled the issue of whether carbon emissions from coal plants could be capped, deciding in favor of coal and thus saving an industry that directly provides livelihoods for tens of thousands of Americans. President Barack Obama responded by issuing EPA regulations that imposed such a cap, his administration’s Clean Power Plan of 2015. This ended the constraint against the EPA’s imposing emission reduction methods that would put coal plants out of business.

    In effect, President Obama took it upon himself to rewrite the 1970 Clean Air Act via the use of an obscure, vague provision within it and force coal plants that reached the carbon emissions cap to stop operations, finance new plants classified as clean, or buy their way out via emissions allowances—anesthetizingly referred to as “cap and trade.” His autocratic scheme had the obvious goal of shutting down the nation’s coal industry in stark defiance of Congress’s wishes, using established statutory language to exercise new powers not authorized or intended by those old laws.

    Not surprisingly, coal industry states such as West Virginia sued the EPA. And in 2022 in a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in favor of the Mountain State, and 19 others, against the environmental agency and its “expert” bureaucrats in exercising these powers not granted by lawmakers.

    Quoting Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s statement in a 2017 case, Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out in the majority opinion that the justices “presume that ‘Congress intends to make major policy decisions itself, not leave those decisions to agencies.’”

    “Thus, in certain extraordinary cases, both separation of powers principles and a practical understanding of legislative intent make us ‘reluctant to read into ambiguous statutory text’ the delegation claimed to be lurking there,” he wrote.

    An agency such as the EPA “must point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ for the power it claims.”

    The misnamed Inflation Reduction Act was written by Democrats to function as that clear legislative license the chief justice demanded; one Harvard law professor predicted it would strongly discourage future lawsuits against the EPA. But the new powers the IRA gives the EPA still do not go as far as President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which imposed exacting carbon emission reductions upon individual states based on their various energy consumption levels, each state being required to submit a plan or have the EPA force its own plan on them.

    Despite the Harvard professor’s soothsaying, litigation against the agency is sure to materialize. Will the West Virginia v. EPA majority hold and view President Biden’s new plan to wreck the American automotive industry as another executive branch power grab that extends beyond Congress’s intentions? Will Chief Justice Roberts be flattered that federal legislators provided the “clear congressional authorization” he suggested, if indeed he determines that is what it is? Or might others among the six SCOTUS conservatives making up the West Virginia majority peel away?

    If Congress really does want to de-industrialize the United States of America in the name of global warming, it seems reasonable to insist that it does so in language that cannot be interpreted otherwise. Whether the Supreme Court chooses to demand that standard will determine whether auto transport is soon taken out of financial reach for millions of Americans.

    Tyler Durden Wed, 03/27/2024 - 13:25
  46. Site: Henrymakow.com
    16 hours 19 min ago
    zel.coccaine.jpg
    Please send links and comments to hmakow@gmail.com


    Zelensky's flight smuggled 300 kg of cocaine out when the President of Ukraine came for Argentina's Zio-Nazi Leader, Milei's inauguration



    "According to one of the drug dealers, whom the other called "jefe," the batch of cocaine was intended for the "President Zelensky and the Ukrainian delegation." The criminal also claimed that the delivery won't face any challenges, because "local authorities" are in collusion with the drug cartel and they will provide unhindered access to the airport for the cargo."

    -

    Lara Logan on the Francis Scott Key Bridge: "It Is a Financial and Economic Attack"



    -
    Trump Says Israel Has To 'Finish The War' As It's 'Losing A Lot Of Support'


    Former President Trump said in an interview with Israel Hayom over the weekend that Israel made a "big mistake" by broadcasting images and videos of the destruction in the Gaza Strip, saying it's losing Israel "a lot of support."

    Trump said he would have done the same thing as Israel in response to the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel but said it was time to "finish your war" as global opinion is turning on Israel.

    --

    sharrett-invent-dangers.jpg
    Israel walks away from Gaza truce talks
    The Israeli prime minister has, again, referred to Hamas' main terms as 'delusional'



    --


    US Military Retiree Recall Proves Americans Won't Fight For A 'Woke Military' & Marxist Worldviews Such As Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Or For A Government That Terrorizes Americans


    In a video, Colonel Larry Wilkerson (retired) tells high school students bluntly: "I recommend none of you 18 and 19 year olds go into the military, because all your military is doing today is being led by people who are insane, infested with lust for money, who want to get out of the military and make seven, eight figures with defense contractors, [and] want war after war after war."


    -
    What REALLY Happened on October 7th? | Al Jazeera Filmmaker Richard Sanders


    Richard Sanders is an award winning journalist and film director with over 25 years experience. He was Senior Producer on Al Jazeera's The Labour Files, and his latest film with Al Jazeera's Investigation Unit, October 7, has just been released. Al Jazeera says, "the I-Unit reveals widespread human rights abuses by Hamas fighters and others who followed them through the fence from Gaza into Israel."
     
    But the investigations also finds that "many of the worst stories that came out in the days following the attack were false. This was especially true of atrocities that were used repeatedly by politicians in Israel and the West to justify the ferocity of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, such as the mass killing of babies and allegations of widespread and systematic rape." 

    -

    Gilbert Doctorow is a careful analyst never overstating a situation. In this interview he says that the FSB statement implicating the US and UK governments in the Crocus attack had to have been approved by Putin and that implicating the US and UK in the Crocus attack has brought us to the level of danger of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

    Doctorow reports that Russian television has undergone a massive change following the Crocus attack. Commentators are unwilling to accept any longer Putin's nonresponse to attacks on Russians. Television talk is suddenly very violent with talk of flattening Kharkiv and Kiev and bringing a quick end to the conflict that has been permitted to endure for far too long.  It seems that a fatal red line has been crossed.


    -
    sbu.jpeg
    Kiev's SBU chief hints at assassinations, boasts of terror attacks on Russian infrastructure, during interview on Ukrainian TV


    --

    RFK Jr. Veers Left in VP Choice

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is Just Another Trojan Horse Candidate

    Shanahan had previously donated $4 million to the SuperPAC supporting Robert Kennedy Jr and given thousands of dollars to the Soros funded progressives in politics and activism circles. Shanahan was previously married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, one of the wealthiest men in the world; the financial windfall from their divorce funded her ability to contribute heavily to far-left causes.


    Should have chosen Tulsi Gabbard. Kiss him goodbye. Trump must be elated.

    --
    Leonard Ulrich - Signs the hamas Attack was Staged With Israeli Cooperation


    Start at 15 min. 

    It was a "mass Hannibal event." Israeli helicopters shot at anything that was moving. As with holocaust, Zionists needed to make a case for retaliation. 

    -
    CRA (Canada's IRS) fires 232 people for falsely claiming $2,000 monthly pandemic benefit

    https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/cra-fires-232-people-for-falsely-claiming-2-000-monthly-pandemic-benefit-1.2051991

    The Canada Revenue Agency has now fired more than 200 people for falsely claiming a federal income benefit during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The CRA says as of March 15, 232 employees "inappropriately applied for and received" the Canada Emergency Response Benefit and have been terminated, an increase of 47 since December.

    --
    swift.jpg


    Lena Petrova- SWIFT is launching a CBDC Platform Within Two years

    -
    Dr.Sucharit Bhakdi - German Parliament speech (Nov.12, 2023)

    "Anyone who praises RNA vaccines as safe and effective, Anyone who claims that vaccination rarely causes serious side effects is either incredibly ignorant or infinitely evil. And they ar committing a crime. Just like everyone who actively or passively pursues and supports this vaccination. Because it is now scientifically proven that vaccination can only have negative effects and this to a life-threatening extent."




    -


    JARED KUSHNER WANTS ALL PALESTINIANS DEAD RIGHT NOW!




    -

    Dr-Trozzi-clinical-photo-768x1024.jpg
    (left, Mark Trozzi, hero)

    Why do some stand and fight, when so many submit?

    Michelle Leduc's investigation of this question in the case of one Canadian ER doctor who chose to fight.


    "Under the covid psyop and agenda, the number of doctors and nurses who have fully maintained our oaths and duties is a sadly tiny percentage. The number is so small, that we know them by name within the truth and freedom movement.

    Canada has almost one hundred thousand licensed practicing medical doctors, yet the number who refused to participate in the covid-crimes-against-humanity or to remain silent while people were harmed is counted in the dozens.

    -

    SWIFT planning launch of new central bank digital currency platform in 12-24 months


    Global bank messaging network SWIFT is planning a new platform in the next one to two years to connect the wave of central bank digital currencies now in development to the existing finance system, it has told Reuters.

    -

    G. Edward Griffin Interview: The One World Government Is Exposed. What Now?



    New World Order expert G. Edward Griffin discusses the history of the one-world government, how the financial/banking system is a lie and is about to collapse, and what people need to do now that "they" have been exposed.

    --
    grifter.jpeg
    An Israeli grifter? I'm in shock

    Israeli propagandist behind Hamas 'mass rape' narrative exposed as grifter, fraud


    Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the Israeli lawyer at the center of the campaign accusing Hamas of systematic sexual violence on October 7, now stands accused by Israeli media of scamming donors and spreading misinformation. The allegations appeared just days after Elkayam-Levy received the prestigious Israel Prize.
     

  47. Site: AsiaNews.it
    16 hours 27 min ago
    The Catholic Commission for Interreligious Dialogue and Ecumenism organised an Iftar, the dinner that breaks the Ramadan fast, together with other minorities. For Archbishop Benny Mario Travas, the event is a testament to the values of compassion, empathy, and mutual respect that bind everyone.
  48. Site: Zero Hedge
    17 hours 20 min ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Return Of The 'Knockout Game'? Women Punched By "Strangers" In New York City

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

    The New York Post is speculating that the infamous ‘knockout game’ could have made a return after numerous women reported being punched in the head by “strangers” in New York City.

    Over the course of the last two weeks, multiple women have released viral TikTok videos explaining how they were taken by surprise and assaulted on the street.

    “You guys, I was literally just walking, and a man came up and punched me in the face,” Halley Kate, an influencer who has 1.1 million followers on TikTok told her fans.

    “Oh my God, it was so bad, I can’t even talk,” she added.

    Mikayla Toninato told a similar story of how she “just got punched in the face, walking home.”

    “I was literally like leaving class, I turned the corner and I was looking down and I was looking at my phone, and like texting, and then, out of nowhere, this man just came up and hit me in the face,” she said.

    Another woman named Oliva Brand said, “I literally got punched in the head on the sidewalk. He goes, ‘Sorry,’ and then punches me — in the head.”

    The NY Post reports that that attacks “appear similar to the “knockout game,” where young people encourage each other to randomly sucker-punch strangers.”

    What they didn’t report is that a large portion of ‘the knockout game’ attacks involved black people punching white people.

    Just like the victims in their initial TikTok videos failed to say what the culprit looked like, the New York Post article contains no description of the actual perpetrators, describing them only as “strangers”.

    As we document in the video above, according to at least two of the victims who later responded to innumerable comments asking for a description, the culprit was a black man.

    None of them pointed that out to begin with probably because they didn’t want to be seen as racist, which apparently is worse than punching random white girls in the head.

    *  *  *

    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 Wed, 03/27/2024 - 12:05
  49. Site: Mises Institute
    17 hours 25 min ago
    Author: David Brady, Jr.
    The recent raid on an Amish family farm is the direct result of government protectionism of big agriculture through needless and cumbersome regulations.
  50. Site: Novus Motus Liturgicus
    17 hours 25 min ago
    As I noted in articles published yesterday and the day before, the Gospel of Holy Monday was originally John 12, 1-36, and that of Holy Tuesday was originally John 13, 1-32. This meant that the Passion of St Luke, which has always been the Gospel of Spy Wednesday, would originally have been the first retelling of the Passion during the Roman Holy Week, after the Mass of Palm Sunday. (As I have Gregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0

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