Distinction Matter - Subscribed Feeds

  1. Site: Novus Motus Liturgicus
    1 day 18 hours ago
    A splendid announcement to make in Our Lady's Month of May, and on this day dedicated to the Fatima apparitions!Roman-Seraphic Books has created a new edition of the Traditional Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in accordance with the rubrics of the St. Pius X 1910 reform. This edition seeks not only to preserve but to rejuvenate a venerable form of prayer that has been the Marian Prayer Peter Kwasniewskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02068005370670549612noreply@blogger.com0
  2. Site: AsiaNews.it
    1 day 18 hours ago
    Receiving in audience a delegation led by the new Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil, the pontiff publicly expressed his assent to a request made for years by the Churches of the East, especially for their faithful in the Persian Gulf. A new harsh warning on the divisions around the liturgy in Kerala: "Discussing celebratory details while disrespecting unity is incompatible with the Christian faith.
  3. Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
    1 day 18 hours ago
    Author: pcr3
  4. Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
    1 day 18 hours ago
    Author: pcr3

    The Corrupt Department of Justice (sic) is protecting Pfizer from a whistleblower lawsuit

    https://texasscorecard.com/federal/analysis-the-doj-is-trying-to-protect-pfizer-from-a-whistleblower-lawsuit/

  5. Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
    1 day 18 hours ago
    Author: pcr3

    Chris Hedges describes the American university today

    “The mandarins who run Columbia and other universities, corporatists who make salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, oversee academic plantations. They treat their poorly paid adjunct faculty, who often lack health insurance and benefits, like serfs. They slavishly serve the interests of wealthy donors and corporations. They are protected by private security. They despise students, forced into onerous debt peonage for their education, who are non-conformists, who defy their fiefdoms and call out their complicity in genocide.”

    According to Biden, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, and House and Senate Republicans, students protesting genocide are hate groups engaged in lawlessness.

    Columbia University’s president is “a British-Egyptian baroness who built her career at institutions such as the Bank of England, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.”

    https://www.unz.com/article/the-nations-conscience/

  6. Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
    1 day 18 hours ago
    Author: pcr3

    Pfizer made special COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine batches for their employees that were “distinct” from the toxic injections Pfizer sold globally

    https://makismd.substack.com/p/pfizer-made-special-covid-19-mrna?utm_campaign=email-post&r=dx5km&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

  7. Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
    1 day 18 hours ago
    Author: pcr3

    God’s Chosen People

    “Israel expands its attack of Rafah; Biden admin reports that Israeli use of U.S.-provided weapons in Gaza “likely violated international humanitarian law”; food catastrophe looms as Israel continues to block aid trucks; South Africa wants ICJ to intervene in Rafah; UN General Assembly strongly supports Palestine’s quest for statehood; Israel withholds millions it owes Palestinian Authority; UN wants investigation into mass graves in Gaza.”

    https://israelpalestinenews.org/fighter-jets-attack-drones-hammer-rafah-catastrophe-looms/

  8. Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
    1 day 18 hours ago
    Author: pcr3

    Remember: Israel has no influence whatsoever on US policy and it is anti-semitic to think so

    Can that really be Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio whoring after Israel Lobby campaign contributions? America’s descent has hit bottom when remaining in office is the only political value. Integrity has exited the system.

    https://www.unz.com/article/university-an-attack-on-intelligence/

  9. Site: AsiaNews.it
    1 day 18 hours ago
    Refugees, the banking and political crisis have exacerbated the population's social malaise. An association founded in 1986 thanks to the intuition of a widow and a priest responds to the growing needs. Today it supports over 600 families in the northern part of the capital. Nohad Azzi: 'Only faith continues to keep Lebanon on its feet'.
  10. Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
    1 day 18 hours ago
    Author: pcr3

    Major Medical Study Finds that Covid vaccinated persons have much higher risks of death and major illnesses than unvaccinated persons

    Yes, the “authorities” lied to us, and we stupidly believed them.

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/6-major-adverse-reactions-found-among-99-million-vaccine-recipients-new-study-facts-matter-5591300?utm_source=enewsnoe&utm_campaign=etv1-2024-05-12&utm_medium=email&est=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAceE5JjMFys3H%2BbdAvWpUcQzPZ0WlGLZbDFlFfmdQNQ%3D%3D

  11. Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
    1 day 18 hours ago
    Author: pcr3

    Bromelain, Cancer, and Covid spike detox protocol

    Good news for a change

    https://www.globalresearch.ca/bromelain-and-cancer/5856547

  12. Site: RT - News
    1 day 19 hours ago
    Author: RT

    The tech billionaire’s X platform has insisted that Canberra’s order to remove a stabbing video was invalid

    An Australian Federal Court judge has decided not to extend an order banning Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) platform from displaying a video of a stabbing attack in a church in Sydney.

    On Monday, Justice Geoffrey Kennett denied an application by the country’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, to extend restrictions on the clip, which she had deemed to be “class 1” material relating to high-impact violence. The judge hasn’t yet provided explanations for his ruling.

    The initial ban on the video, which was imposed by the Federal Court in Melbourne on April 22, expired on Monday.

    X had refused to comply with the order, which would have made the clip inaccessible to users worldwide. The platform only agreed to block the content in Australia. Musk insisted back then that one country should not have the power to censor the whole internet. The eSafety commissioner argued that a blanket ban was needed as Australians could still access the video through a VPN.

    Read more Tesla and and SpaceX CEO, and X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk Musk takes on Australia over stabbing video

    The clip in question showed a stabbing that took place during a live-streamed sermon at an Assyrian Christian church in the suburbs of Sydney on April 15. Four people, including Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, were injured in what the Australian authorities described as a “terrorist incident.” The footage of the attack was widely shared online and allegedly prompted heated protests near the crime scene.

    During the hearing on Friday, lawyer for the eSafety Commissioner, Tim Begbie, argued that the refusal to comply with the order by X amounted to mockery of the Federal Court. “What that says about the authority of the court is pretty striking,” he said.

    X’s lawyer Bret Walker argued that the platform did not implement the ban on the stabbing video because the commissioner’s initial take-down notice was invalid and “manifestly inadequate” due to the absence of a detailed description of the reasons for the ban.

    The social media company believes that “global removal is reasonable when X does it because X wants to do it, but it becomes unreasonable when it is told to do it by the laws of Australia,” Walker told the judge.

    READ MORE: Australian PM wants to ban memes of himself

    In late April, Bishop Emmanuel supported Musk during a sermon, saying that he wanted the video of the attack against him to remain online because it is “our God-given right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.”

  13. Site: RT - News
    1 day 19 hours ago
    Author: RT

    The tech billionaire’s X platform has insisted that Canberra’s order to remove a stabbing video was invalid

    An Australian Federal Court judge has decided not to extend an order banning Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) platform from displaying a video of a stabbing attack in a church in Sydney.

    On Monday, Justice Geoffrey Kennett denied an application by the country’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, to extend restrictions on the clip, which she had deemed to be “class 1” material relating to high-impact violence. The judge hasn’t yet provided explanations for his ruling.

    The initial ban on the video, which was imposed by the Federal Court in Melbourne on April 22, expired on Monday.

    X had refused to comply with the order, which would have made the clip inaccessible to users worldwide. The platform only agreed to block the content in Australia. Musk insisted back then that one country should not have the power to censor the whole internet. The eSafety commissioner argued that a blanket ban was needed as Australians could still access the video through a VPN.

    Read more Tesla and and SpaceX CEO, and X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk Musk takes on Australia over stabbing video

    The clip in question showed a stabbing that took place during a live-streamed sermon at an Assyrian Christian church in the suburbs of Sydney on April 15. Four people, including Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, were injured in what the Australian authorities described as a “terrorist incident.” The footage of the attack was widely shared online and allegedly prompted heated protests near the crime scene.

    During the hearing on Friday, lawyer for the eSafety Commissioner, Tim Begbie, argued that the refusal to comply with the order by X amounted to mockery of the Federal Court. “What that says about the authority of the court is pretty striking,” he said.

    X’s lawyer Bret Walker argued that the platform did not implement the ban on the stabbing video because the commissioner’s initial take-down notice was invalid and “manifestly inadequate” due to the absence of a detailed description of the reasons for the ban.

    The social media company believes that “global removal is reasonable when X does it because X wants to do it, but it becomes unreasonable when it is told to do it by the laws of Australia,” Walker told the judge.

    READ MORE: Australian PM wants to ban memes of himself

    In late April, Bishop Emmanuel supported Musk during a sermon, saying that he wanted the video of the attack against him to remain online because it is “our God-given right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.”

  14. Site: Zero Hedge
    1 day 19 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Trump Vows To Undo Biden's Pro-Transgender Rules On 'Day One' Of His Administration

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former President Donald Trump has vowed to reverse the Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX protections for transgender students on “day one” of his administration—if he wins the election in November.

    Former President Donald Trump, with attorney Todd Blanche (R), speaks to the press as he arrives for his criminal trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on May 10, 2024. (Curtis Means-Pool/Getty Images)

    President Joe Biden has set a pro-transgender course for his administration, advancing various policies that promote gender ideology and special protections for individuals who identify as something different from their birth sex.

    In a move that sparked widespread controversy and a bevy of lawsuits, the Department of Education (DOE) expanded the decades-old Title IX law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools to now include sexual orientation and “gender identity.” The changes, which stop short of prohibiting schools from banning female-identifying male athletes from competing against females, are slated to go into effect on Aug. 1.

    President Trump, who earlier waded into the transgender debate by pledging to punish doctors who provide so-called “gender-affirming” care to children, on Friday promised to undo the Biden administration’s Title IX changes.

    We’re gonna end it on day one,” President Trump said during a May 10 appearance on a conservative talk radio show in Philadelphia. “Don’t forget, that was done as an order from the president. That came down as an executive order. And we’re gonna change it—on day one it’s gonna be changed.”

    Generally, each administration has taken a different approach to the enforcement of Title IX regulations, which educational institutions must abide by to receive federal funding. President Biden’s executive order, signed on March 8, 2021, formally tasked the Education Department with changing Title IX in a way that includes protections for an educational environment free of “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

    The changes give female-identifying males the right to use female restrooms and locker rooms, and to join female-only organizations, while construing “harassment” as including the use of pronouns that conform to one’s biological sex rather than one’s chosen gender identity.

    President Biden’s move sparked a torrent of conservative backlash, with over a dozen Republican-led states suing the administration and advising schools to ignore the transgender provisions of the new rules.

    During his appearance on the talk show, President Trump said that conservatives concerned about the implications of the Title IX changes on women’s spaces, safety, and privacy, need not worry.

    “It‘ll be signed on day one,” he said of an executive order that would roll back the Title IX transgender provisions. “It’ll be terminated.”

    The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

    Transgender Agenda in Focus

    Transgenderism has become a prominent issue in America’s social and political landscape in recent years, with those on the left tending to support “gender-affirming care” laws that in some cases block parents from having a say in their children’s decisions to get gender-change surgeries and other risky medical procedures.

    Conservatives, by contrast, have backed laws that give parents more authority to prevent their children from undergoing transgender procedures or impose penalties on doctors who perform them without parental consent.

    Nearly half of America’s states have passed legislation banning medical sex-change procedures for minors, according to data compiled by Movement Advance Project.

    While some advocates of “gender-affirming” therapies and surgeries claim that they can help people suffering from gender dysphoria, there is little evidence for this.

    A national organization of pediatricians recently put out a policy statement saying that gender-transition procedures such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones provide no mental health benefit to youth with gender dysphoria.

    There are no long-term studies demonstrating benefits nor studies evaluating risks associated with the medical and surgical interventions” provided to adolescents with gender dysphoria, the American College of Pediatricians said in a Feb. 7 statement.

    The group prepared the statement after reviewing more than 60 studies.

    “There is no long-term evidence that mental health concerns are decreased or alleviated after ‘gender-affirming therapy,’” they wrote.

    Many individuals who have undergone it “later regret those interventions and seek to align their gender identity with their sex,” they said.

    “Because of the risks of social, medical, and surgical interventions, many European countries are now cautioning against these interventions while encouraging mental health therapy,” the group added.

    A 2020 report from Finland raised concerns about the possibility that puberty blocker use “alters the course of gender identity development” and “may consolidate a gender identity that would have otherwise changed in some of the treated adolescents.”

    A May 2022 report from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration stated that there were no studies comparing outcomes between those using puberty blockers and those not using puberty blockers among individuals with gender dysphoria.

    Tyler Durden Mon, 05/13/2024 - 07:20
  15. Site: Mises Institute
    1 day 19 hours ago
    Author: George Ford Smith
    Political and academic elites have successfully convinced the public that they should fear private enterprise. However, people really should fear an out-of-control government.
  16. Site: Zero Hedge
    1 day 19 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Orange Juice Prices Primed For Breakout After Forecast Warns Brazil Set For Worst Harvest In Decades 

    Breakfast lovers are in for another jolt as orange juice prices surge to near-record levels. A new report released on Friday indicates that Brazil, the leading global exporter of OJ, is facing its worst harvest in over three decades. This alarming development compounds existing issues in Florida's citrus groves, which have been plagued by disease and are experiencing collapsing production levels to the lowest in decades. 

    Fundecitrus wrote in a note that Brazil will produce 232.4 million boxes—each weighing about 90 pounds—for the growing season this year. That's a 24% collapse from a year earlier and the lowest production levels in 36 years.

    "Excessive heat brought stress to orange trees during a crucial period of flowering and early fruit formation between September and November last year. Further hurting output is an increase in citrus greening, a disease that causes fruit to prematurely drop from trees," Bloomberg wrote, commenting on the report. 

    The report sparked additional fears about a worsening global OJ shortage. 

    In markets, prices of concentrated OJ futures in New York surged as much as 5% on Friday, closing up about 3% to $394 and only 8% off the record high of $425. 

    Sliding production in Brazil could soon impact US retail prices at the supermarket, considering Florida has yet to stage a significant comeback in production.

    In the last year, the US has ramped up imports of OJ from Brazil to mitigate losses in Florida. 

    Don't worry. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has everything under control on the food inflation front, as the prices of OJ, coffee, eggs, and cocoa have hyperinflated

    Watch OJ futs in NY into the new week. 

    Tyler Durden Mon, 05/13/2024 - 06:55
  17. Site: southern orders
    1 day 19 hours ago

     This is a photo from Vatican News’ website this Monday morning showing a man being carried out of the flood waters in Brazil. Who do you think that is? Please pray for those suffering from natural disasters throughout the world.



  18. Site: Zero Hedge
    1 day 20 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Who Are We Protecting, And From What?

    Authored by Omid Malekan via Medium.com,

    Gambling is increasingly legal in the US: Casinos, sports betting, the lottery, and so on. The economic benefits of most forms of gambling are limited. There is some job creation and collection of additional taxes, but these benefits come at the expense of players.

    Put differently: Casinos are highly profitable and the lottery helps fund the government because players are guaranteed to lose in the long run. Incentives are misaligned.

    Like gambling, investing in startups and “alternatives” like venture capital or hedge funds is also risky. But unlike gambling, this type of risk is economically productive. It provides capital to entrepreneurs and liquidity to markets.

    A big part of America’s economic success is our ability to finance startups and our efficient capital markets, often described as “the envy of the world.”

    Just as importantly, the incentives from this kind of risk taking are aligned. If a startup founder makes money, so do his investors. If a VC fund manager collects carry, it’s because she made her LPs a profit.

    Except for certain age restrictions, gambling in the U.S. is open to the general public. There are no tests for the “sophistication” of a blackjack player or the annual income of a sports bettor.

    The most popular form of gambling is the lottery. It has the worst odds because it is a government monopoly. It’s popular because it is heavily marketed, particularly to poor people. That’s why economists call it a regressive tax.

    Except for certain hard to satisfy (and economically unfeasible) exemptions, investing in startups or alternative investments is restricted to the wealthy. Accredited investor laws require startup founders and fund managers to only accept money from so-called “sophisticated” investors.

    But they don’t require prospective investors to take a test or demonstrate experience, they simply ask how rich they are. Accredited investor laws are based on the classist assumption that rich people are smart and poor people are stupid.

    Never mind the history of Enron, Lehman, Madoff, SVB, and every other major collapse in recent memory, all of which featured one group of affluent people interacting with others.

    The U.S. government assumes that a billionaire boomer who inherited all his wealth is more “sophisticated” when investing in AI startups than a 23 year old with a degree in machine learning.

    That same government has no problem with the 24 year old blowing all his money on fantasy football or the Powerball. There’s now even a lotto app.

    Less than 20% of Americans can qualify as accredited investors, but over 60% of Americans have gambled in the past year.

    Wealth disparity has grown significantly in the past 20 years, in part because investments have outperformed income. Put differently: those who derive their wealth from their assets have outperformed those who do so from their labor.

    Within the investment landscape, so-called “private markets” have outperformed public ones, in part because different government regulations like Sarbanes Oxley incentivized successful startups like Facebook (which 80% of people couldn’t invest in at the outset) to go public later than their predecessors.

    This phenomenon was aided by the growth of venture capital and growth equity funds (which 80% of people can’t become LPs for) and the rise of secondary trading platforms for private shares (which only 20% of people can use).

    Given the demographic breakdown of wealth in America — now skewing in favor of older people — this phenomenon also has an intergenerational component.

    Like most demographic trends, the rise of economic inequality has many contributing factors. But government policy clearly plays a role.

    The U.S. government wants ordinary (and younger) Americans to do risky things that are guaranteed to lose money while simultaneously barring them from doing risky things that may generate a positive return.

    This is not an accident. Everything that I’ve argued here is easy to verify and regularly discussed in policy circles. That makes it a deliberate choice.

    Ironically, the one exception to this phenomenon has been crypto, at least until recently. Coins like Bitcoin and Ether are the only risk assets that were available to the general public and outperformed over the past decade.

    Their orthogonal arrival, technical complexity, and niche communities made them a far more likely investment for a smart 24 year old than a billionaire boomer. Their decentralized nature also meant that access was generally ungated.

    The data shows that younger people — who own disproportionately less equity and real estate — own disproportionately more crypto. The same goes for minorities like blacks.

    The U.S. government is now trying to put an end to all of this. Agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is led by a 66-year old centi-millionaire, are trying to force crypto into the same accredited investor laws that held back a generation.

    Mr. Gensler made most of his wealth becoming a partner at Goldman Sachs at a time when it was a private company. He’s the prototypical winner of the status quo.

    Today, thanks to the SEC’s crackdown, virtually all crypto projects either restrict early investments to accredited investors or exclude Americans altogether.

    Some don’t even let American’s collect airdrops, free money that could make a major difference in the financial life of a young American who is sophisticated enough to deposit Lido staked ETH into EingenLayer, but not Sophisticated enough to be rich.

    This too is by design.

    America’s current disposition towards gambling, investing, and crypto is a socioeconomic disaster. It’s bad economic policy and deeply immoral.

    Tyler Durden Mon, 05/13/2024 - 06:30
  19. Site: RT - News
    1 day 20 hours ago
    Author: RT

    Using NATO air defenses against Russian targets would be “playing with fire,” Rolf Mutzenich believes

    Shooting down Russian missiles over western Ukraine by using air defenses stationed on NATO territory would be extremely dangerous, a top German lawmaker has warned.

    On Saturday, a group of German MPs from the opposition and ruling coalition said they supported targeting Russian missiles and drones over Ukraine by using defenses based in Poland and Romania.

    MPs argued that establishing a 70-km-wide safe zone on the Ukraine-EU border would relieve pressure on Kiev’s air defenses. They added, however, that the West’s current priority must be to supply Ukraine with as many weapons as possible. They also acknowledged that the issue would have to be approved by NATO.

    In an interview with Tagesspiegel on Sunday, Rolf Mutzenich, who chairs the Social Democratic Party (SPD) parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, vehemently opposed the idea.

    Read more The launcher system of the US-made Patriot surface-to-air missile system at the military base of Kaufbeuren in Germany. German MPs want to shoot down Russian missiles over Ukraine

    “A defense of Ukrainian airspace by the Bundeswehr would immediately turn us into a warring party and would require a mandate from the Bundestag,” he explained, adding that the SPD would not support the idea. Mutzenich also argued that using NATO air defenses against Russian targets would be “playing with fire.” 

    Moscow has for decades viewed the US-led military bloc’s creeping expansion towards its borders as an existential threat. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Ukraine’s potential membership in NATO was one of the key reasons for the current conflict, while failed peace talks early into the hostilities revolved around Kiev’s neutrality.

    The debate over deeper NATO involvement in the conflict comes as Russia launches waves of attacks on Ukrainian military and energy infrastructure using long-range missiles and drones. Earlier this month, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba admitted that the strikes had disrupted half of the country’s energy system.

    Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials and media reports suggest that Kiev is finding it increasingly difficult to repel or mitigate the effects of these attacks, in part due to delays in Western arms deliveries.

    On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Kiev was shooting down a far smaller percentage of Russian missiles than earlier in the conflict, citing an analysis of figures provided by the Ukrainian Air Force. According to the data, Ukraine intercepted only about 46% of Russian missiles in the past six months, compared to 73% in the previous such period. In April, that figure dropped to just 30%.

  20. Site: Mundabor's blog
    1 day 20 hours ago
    Author: Mundabor
    As you can read here, it happened again: The patters is always the same: “nutcase group 1 supports nutcase group 2”. Very often, nutcase group 2 will return the favour by supporting nutcase group 1. However, this does not even have to be the case, nor there is any real need to have a high-level […]
  21. Site: non veni pacem
    1 day 20 hours ago
    Author: Mark Docherty

    Today is the Feast of Saint Robert Bellarmine, and the 107th anniversary of the first appearance of the Blessed Virgin to the seers at Fatima.

    – May 13, 1917. When asked by the children who she was and where she came from, the lady said she was “from heaven” and that she would reveal her identity later. She asked the children to come back to the Cova da Iria on the 13th day of the month for the next six months, and she asked them to pray the rosary every day “in order to obtain peace for the world” and the end of World War I.

    Saint Robert Bellarmine battled against the Protestant Revolt of the 16th Century. His rebukes of the heretics through sermons and catechisms earned him the title Doctor of the Church.

    When the great Italian Jesuit, Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), was made a cardinal, Pope Clement VIII said of him: “We elect this man because he has not his equal for learning in the Church of God.” Untiring in his powerful opposition to the Protestant enemies of the Church, St. Robert wrote masterpieces of apologetic literature, as well as two famous catechisms. He also won souls through his sermons and lectures, but above all through his ardent prayer and the example of his holy life.
     
    COLLECT
    “O God, You fortified Your blessed bishop and doctor Robert with remarkable learning and courage to expose the dangers of error and defend the rights of the Holy See. May we grow in love of truth, and may they who have been led astray by falsehood come back to the unity of Your Church through the intercession of Your saint.”
     
    Woe to the Prelates of today, with the truth of an obvious antipapacy set before them, yet shunning “may we grow in love of truth,” instead preferring silence and error as souls are led to Perdition. Consider thy Particular Judgment, Cardinals of the Church, your salvation might just depend on it.
     

    https://tridentine-mass.blogspot.com/

  22. Site: Zero Hedge
    1 day 20 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    'Unusually Aggressive' Anti-Trump Grand Jury In Arizona Went Rogue With Indictments

    The Arizona grand jury that recently indicted 18 people for allegedly trying to help former President Donald Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election with so-called 'fake electors' went completely rogue and took 'aggressive steps to haul in witnesses,' to the point where they 'even brought charges against some' who were told by prosecutors that they weren't under investigation, Politico reports.

    Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D)

    Their efforts ultimately resulted in a 58-page indictment which has ensnared various national and state Republicans - including one of Trump's current top advisers, and several individuals who were previously in his orbit - with felony charges. Trump himself was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator.

    Documents reviewed by POLITICO reveal that at least two of the 18 people charged — former Trump lawyers Jenna Ellis and Christina Bobb — were assured by prosecutors that they were not targets of the probe, only to learn that the grand jury indicted them anyway. In fact, a letter that a prosecutor sent to Ellis just days before the indictment appeared to significantly understate her legal jeopardy.

    One witness who testified before the grand jury said a faction of the panel drove intense questioning that exceeded the limited scope that prosecutors had publicly acknowledged. The probe was led by the office of Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. -Politico

    Mayes, a Democrat who replaced a Republican in January 2023, has been accused of politically motivated lawfare - however Politico's sources say that the grand jury was 'surprisingly independent' of her prosecutors - and 'sometimes even hard for them to predict.'

    "The State Grand Jury was given leeway to conduct an independent investigation, as it is entitled to do by law," said Mayes' spox, Richie Taylor. "I cannot confirm or deny the specifics of grand jury proceedings, and I will note that the investigation remains open and ongoing. I will have to decline to comment further."

    Grand juries are empowered to conduct their own lines of questioning in order to reach conclusions which may not necessarily align with the wishes of prosecutors - though they typically defer.

    That said, in high-profile cases, they've been known to take on more independence.

    "Every high-profile case that I’ve ever had, which is cases that have necessarily attendant publicity, or a public corruption case, or anything else, grand jurors become interested," according to former Arizona prosecutor, Paul Charlton.

    Ultimately, the Arizona grand jury investigating the 2020 election indicted former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, and close Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn. It also indicted the 11 Arizona Republicans who falsely claimed to be the state’s rightful presidential electors.

    Arizona is the fourth state — after Georgia, Michigan and Nevada — to bring criminal charges stemming from the efforts of Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 results in states that Biden won. At the federal level, special counsel Jack Smith has also charged Trump himself for the scheme. -Politico

    "Not a target" (just kidding!)

    Several months after former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty in Georgia to helping Trump overturn the 2020 election, Mayes' prosecutors had questions - and asked her to appear for a so-called "free talk" interview.

    "Ms. Ellis is not a target of the State’s investigation," a prosecutor in Mayes' office wrote to Ellis' attorney on Feb. 20, outlining terms for the interview.

    On April 19, the same prosecutor followed up with another letter along the same lines - reiterating that Ellis was not a target.

    The interview never happened, and Ellis was indicted anyway by the grand jury.

    According to Phoenix criminal attorney Omer Gurion, this is unheard of.

    "I have never seen anything like that in any Arizona criminal case that I can think of," he said. "Not one," adding that for a person to go from a "free talk" interview offer to indicted in just four days is "pretty unusual."

    Former prosecutor Renato Mariotti agrees, telling Politico: "It’s bad form, and something I would never do as a prosecutor," adding "That said, I’ve practiced criminal law across this country and gone up against prosecutors of all stripes, and I’ve learned there are many prosecutors who do things I would not do."

    "A Level Of Aggression That Caught Me Off Guard"

    One of the witnesses interviewed by the grand jury told Politico that there was a serious difference between the tone set by prosecutors, and the grand jury. The witness, who received immunity, was told to expect around an hour of questioning over the boilerplate details of the probe.

    Instead, he got a three-hour grilling that was 'sometimes pointed and accusatory.'

    It was "a level of aggression that caught me off guard," said the witness -adding that one juror "seemed to be the leader of the ‘indict them all crowd’ and asked ‘pointed but specific questions.’"

    Another juror, who made no effort to hide his political bias, asked "more high-level questions" such as "How could you even talk to these people? What were you thinking?"

    Other jurors took a softer tone.

    Another smaller faction of grand jurors consistently reframed the questions of the more aggressive jurors and seemed to be more skeptical of the angle they were taking, the witness recalled, noting that this group was visibly “rolling their eyes, heavy sighing, shifting uncomfortably.”

    One grand juror also wanted to know what the witness could possibly have been thinking in the weeks after Trump’s defeat. The witness wasn’t a target but left the room surprised by the tenor of the grand jury’s questions and feeling like a “punching bag.”

    And after the grilling was over, the witness said, a prosecutor offered a sheepish apology for its unexpected intensity. -Politico

    According to the report, witnesses who plead the 5th are generally excused from appearing, but in this case, grand jurors insisted they appear in person to do so.

    Tyler Durden Mon, 05/13/2024 - 05:45
  23. Site: Crisis Magazine
    1 day 21 hours ago
    Author: Robert R. Reilly

    I hate the news but am invariably drawn toward it for professional reasons. I alleviate the angst by enjoying the absurdity of so much of it. For instance, within the last week, we learned that more student debt will be “canceled” by the Biden administration. It’s only another $6 billion for those who attended the Art Institutes, a system of for-profit colleges. The administration thinks that…

    Source

  24. Site: Crisis Magazine
    1 day 21 hours ago
    Author: Ryan Patrick Budd

    The idea of a national Eucharistic revival is a great thing. We can and should emphasize the Eucharist, the “source and summit” of the Catholic faith (Sacrosanctum Concilium 11, 14). We can and should bear witness to our faith that the Eucharist truly is the presence of Christ, and everything that presence means. But there is a note missing in the national discussion…

    Source

  25. Site: RT - News
    1 day 22 hours ago
    Author: RT

    The incumbent US president is “only good at cheating on elections,” the Republican challenger told supporters

    The White House has been infiltrated by “enemies from within,” former US President Donald Trump has claimed in a campaign speech, while lashing out at “crooked” Joe Biden.

    “Joe is weak. He’s only good at cheating on elections – but it’s not him, he’s surrounded by fascists around the Oval Office,” Trump told a crowd of supporters in Wildwood, New Jersey, on Saturday.

    ”The Democrat Party is becoming radicalized. It’s becoming radical left and they’re going to lose our country,” he predicted.

    Without naming names, Trump said administration’s “enemies from within” are more dangerous for America than foreign adversaries.

    ”Russia and China we can handle, but these lunatics within our government that are going to destroy our country and probably want to,” he claimed.

    The “fascist” label has also been used by high-profile Biden supporters against Trump, with some Democrats suggesting that if he returns to the White House he could push the country toward dictatorship.

    Read more FILE PHOTO Biden faces impeachment over Israel weapons suspension

    Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in the 2016 presidential election, claimed on The View program last year that her former rival was showing “dictatorial” tendencies, remarking that Adolf Hitler “was duly elected” before transforming Germany.

    “Trump is telling us what he intends to do. Take him at his word. The man means to throw people in jail who disagree with him, shut down legitimate press outlets, do what he can to literally undermine the rule of law and our country’s values,” she said.

    Trump’s New Jersey rally served as a change of scenery for Trump, who has been spending much of his time attending court hearings in New York, on charges of using campaign funds to pay hush money to former porn actress Stormy Daniels. The Republican is facing dozens of charges in four separate criminal cases against him.

    He told supporters that “radical left Democrats, Marxists Communists and fascists” were behind the indictments, calling his New York hush money case “a Biden show trial.”

    READ MORE: Trump wants to ‘kill his opposition’ – Hillary Clinton

    Trump has repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was “stolen.” One of the cases against him relates to his alleged attempt to subvert the election. Hearings are currently on hold pending a Supreme Court decision on whether the former president should be immune to prosecution.

  26. Site: RT - News
    1 day 22 hours ago
    Author: RT

    Some of the IDF’s actions have been inconsistent with international humanitarian law, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said

    Israel’s airstrikes and ground offensive in Gaza have left more Palestinian civilians dead than Hamas fighters, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has acknowledged.

    During his appearance on the CBS TV news program Face the Nation on Sunday, Blinken was asked if Washington agreed with the recent claim by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the attacks on Gaza have so far resulted in the death of 14,000 “terrorists” and 16,000 civilians.

    "Yes, we do,” the Secretary of State replied. “Israel has processes, procedures, rules and regulations to try to minimize civilian harm,” but they “have not been applied consistently and effectively. There’s a gap between the stated intent and some of the results we've seen,” he explained.

    Blinken stressed that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are fighting “an enemy that hides in civilian infrastructure, hides behind civilians,” which makes it problematic to determine what actually happened in each of the individual incidents.

    Read more Gaza residents search for survivors in the rubble of a house destroyed in an Israeli strike on Nuseirat Refugee Camp, May 10, 2024 US unveils results of Israel war crimes probe

    “Given the totality of what we’ve seen in terms of civilian suffering, in terms of children, women, men… who’ve been killed or been injured, it’s reasonable to assess that in a number of instances, Israel has not acted in a manner that’s consistent with international humanitarian law,” he said.

    However, the Secretary of State added that it was only an assessment, and that more investigating was needed for the administration of US President Joe Biden to come up with definitive conclusions.

    Last week, the State Department released a report that criticized Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, but didn’t single out any specific violations that would necessitate a ban on US military aid to its ally.

    At least, 35,034 people have been killed and 78,755 others wounded in the IDF’s attacks on Gaza, according to the latest data from the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and militants in its reports. Israel launched its military operation in Gaza in response to a October 7 cross-border incursion by Hamas, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

    READ MORE: Social media to blame for Israel’s Gaza PR failure – Blinken

    The UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said last week that there were 14,500 children and 9,500 women among those who were killed in Gaza. The Jerusalem Post reported on Saturday that the UN has since then halved its estimated number of fatalities among minors and females.

  27. Site: RT - News
    1 day 22 hours ago
    Author: RT

    The US president could be out of the Oval Office if he fails to secure the backing of moderate voters, Mark Penn believes

    US President Joe Biden risks losing a potential election rematch with Donald Trump because his campaign is too focused on courting his left-leaning base, while neglecting swing voters whose support could prove decisive, a former adviser to Bill Clinton has warned.

    In an opinion piece for the New York Times published on Sunday, Mark Penn, who advised the former US leader and his wife, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, from 1995 to 2008, suggested that “Biden is doing it all wrong” when it comes to his reelection campaign.

    According to Penn, many believe that a high turnout should be a priority for any candidate, because swing voters are fewer in number. In the current US political landscape, Biden and Republican frontrunner Trump each enjoy solid support from about 40% of the nation’s population, with only 20% on the fence, the adviser noted.

    However, in a highly polarized political environment, those 20% “have disproportionate power because of their potential to switch,” Penn believes.

    Read more Pro-Palestinian activists denounce the Biden administration's support of Israel on December 8, 2023 in Los Angeles, California ‘Uncommitted’ voters unite against Biden ahead of Super Tuesday

    Despite this, candidates are often convinced that they must feed their bases with “what they want to hear” to get them to the polling stations, the article said. While this may be true in some cases, the Democratic base is highly unlikely to sit idly by at the thought of a Trump victory in November, Penn wrote.

    At the same time, swing voters in battleground states who are concerned about immigration, inflation, and other major issues “are likely to put Mr. Trump back in office if they are not blunted,” according to the former adviser.

    “If Mr. Biden wants to serve another four years, he has to stop being dragged to the left and chart a different course closer to the center that appeals to those voters who favor bipartisan compromises to our core issues, fiscal discipline and a strong America,” he added.

    Penn believes that most of the 101,000 “uncommitted” voters who refused to back Biden over his policy on the Israel-Hamas war would eventually return to the fold because they have nowhere else to go. At the same time, Biden could potentially seek the support of hundreds of thousands of moderate Republicans who chose to vote for former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley over Trump in the GOP primary.

    According to a Wall Street Journal poll last month, Trump retains a lead over Biden in six of seven battleground states. Meanwhile, a recent poll by the Financial Times found that Biden’s reelection prospects are being threatened by inflation concerns, with 58% of respondents disapproving of his handling of the economy.

  28. Site: Craig Murray
    1 day 22 hours ago
    Author: craig

    Incredibly the Israeli genocide in Gaza is now reaching new heights of violence. Casualty figures are not coming in, as the attacks are so bad that bodies cannot be recovered, medics cannot travel and there are almost no medical facilities operational now anyway.

    We now see that the Western injunctions not to attack Rafah were a smokescreen of lies to mask complicity. The final pocket of Gaza is being ruthlessly ethnically cleansed and its infrastructure will be destroyed like all the rest.

    It is striking that this is accompanied by an absolutely shameless doubling down of support for Israel by the Western political and media classes. Any thought that their isolation from the vast breadth of public opinion would give them pause, must be abandoned. Their Zionist lobby paymasters have jerked the chain, and rather than rowing back, we are seeing a redoubling of their efforts to suppress dissent and obscure the truth.

    Some of this shameless distortion is so dissonant with the alleged norms of Western society it is almost impossible to believe it is happening. Here are a few examples.

    1) Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta is a highly respected reconstructive surgeon who continued to work heroically and tirelessly in Al Shifa hospital, carrying out operation after operation, mostly on women and children, as the hospital was shelled, strafed and machine gunned around him.

    He was already a surgeon of great distinction, based in Glasgow where he is now Rector of Glasgow University.

    When Germany banned him from entering to address the conference on Palestine from which Yanis Varoufakis and others were also barred, it appeared perhaps as an one-off action as part of Germany’s extreme and panicked reaction to pro-Palestinian expression.

    We have come to understand that Germany has a vicious hatred of Palestinians, remarkably based on the psychological trauma of inherited guilt from the Holocaust. While this is a muddled national psychosis that is plainly immoral and wrongheaded, at least it is possible to have some understanding of how it occurred.

    But it then turned out that the travel ban slapped on Dr Abu Sitta by Germany has a Schengen-wide effect as he was also banned from France. That appeared again something that was almost a technical accident as regards the rest of Europe.

    But the Western political establishment has now doubled down again by banning him from the Netherlands, and this time the Dutch government has made it clear that it supports the ban, not is just caught by a Schengen restriction.

    So the major governments of the European Union are forbidding a distinguished surgeon from giving first-hand medical evidence of the genocide taking place. I cannot think of anything that more sharply exposes the willingness of the Western political class to abandon the most basic tenets of supposed “Western democracy” in the interests of Israel.

    2) The willingness of the United States to use extreme violence against pro-Palestinian students on college campuses is another demonstration of the same abandonment of the pretence of democracy when it comes to Israel. It also illustrates what has come to be a serious generational divide in Western public opinion, with young people very strongly motivated to oppose the genocide (which is not to say that older people are pro-genocide, just that they are more split, particularly in the USA).

    This is being followed up with yet more crazed pro-Israeli legislation in the United States, seeking to designate anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian expression on campuses as anti-semitic and thus illegal.

    In many ways this typifies the reaction of the ruling class across the West. Their reaction to suddenly being exposed as the paid servants of an Israel which no longer has popular support and now causes public revulsion, is simply to attempt to ban free expression and make it specifically illegal to disagree with them.

    3) The British Labour Party has gone even madder. Keir Starmer’s Genocide Party is an outstanding example of the success of the Israeli lobby in buying up both sides of the aisle and controlling the entire neoliberal uniparty that poses as the repository of democratic “choice” in the West.

    Starmer had been doing his best to conceal his explicitly expressed “unequivocal support for Israel” lately, and to row back from his straightforward assertion that Israel has the right to cut off food and water from the population of Gaza. There had been a fake shift, from refusing to countenance the word “ceasefire” to supporting a temporary ceasefire or a “sustainable” ceasefire – the latter being code for a ceasefire after Israel had achieved all its ethnic cleansing objectives.

    But then David Lammy blew this out of the water with an address to US Republican senators in which he made the totally bonkers assertion that Nelson Mandela would have opposed the college protests for Palestine. Lammy is a truly despicable individual, one of the ultimate examples of the corrupt politician whose voice is bought. But this was a move far beyond the pale.

    4) Even today, the Western media continues to spout out Israeli propaganda at mains pressure. The Guardian, despite the thousands and thousands of dead women and children we have seen on our mobile phones this past seven months, continues to pretend that the genocidal attack is on “Hamas militants”.

    The bombing and shelling of civilians in tents is still described as “clashes”. This propaganda really does not wash any more, though it may reinforce the morale of hardened Zionists. Everybody else has seen through it months ago. Yet still they persist.

    5) The endgame is becoming very apparent. The United States is completing its floating harbour for Gaza, and Israel has gained control of the Rafah crossing into Egypt, giving the US and Israel total control of entry points into Gaza. Israel has announced that the Rafah crossing is to be handed over to a US mercenary force. The US can then say it is complying with Biden’s pledge not to put US forces’ boots on the ground in Gaza, while actually taking control.

    The Israeli attack on Rafah has been justified by the USA as a “limited military operation”, thus claiming it it does not violate Biden’s purported “red line”, even though Israel has ordered over a million displaced people in Rafah to evacuate again, to nowhere.

    Conclusion:

    The only possible conclusion from all of the above is to reinforce my analysis that the Zionist political and media classes in the West, including Biden, Blinken, Trudeau, Macron, Sunak, Starmer, Scholtz, von der Leyen and all, are active and willing participants in a programme of genocide.

    They had numerous opportunities to turn back. We all saw what is happening months ago. They did not take them.

    The endgame remains the processing of the remaining Palestinian population out of Gaza through the US-controlled points of the Rafah crossing and the floating harbour, primarily into camps in the Sinai desert. The Western powers are doubling down on their genocide and on their colonial project.

    I see nothing whatsoever that indicates they can have any other long-term objective in mind than the complete Israeli annexation of Gaza minus its civilian population. What do you see?

     

    ————————————————

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    The post Shameless appeared first on Craig Murray.

  29. Site: AsiaNews.it
    1 day 23 hours ago
    Today's news: The death toll in Afghanistan has risen to over 300 from floods in the north;New tensions over some arrests in the Indian state of Manipur; The Myanmar military junta bombs a monastery where civilians had gathered;The number of Chinese cities that have joined the programme to visit Hong Kong individually has risen to 51.
  30. Site: AsiaNews.it
    1 day 23 hours ago
    In Tbilisi, the leaders of the ruling Georgian Dream party call the demonstrators 'radicals' and even 'Satanists'. The patriarchate openly supports the government, which is committed to fighting 'the imposition of foreign, unusual and dangerous ideologies on the country's population. But the archbishop of Dmanisi, Zenon Iaradžuli, has asked not to approve the law, which could also harm some Church-related NGOs.
  31. Site: Mises Institute
    2 days 37 min ago
    Author: Soham Patil
    Despite statements from Biden and other progressives, profits in a market economy are not a form of plunder. Instead, they represent entrepreneurial gains that mostly benefit consumers.
  32. Site: The Catholic Thing
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Casey Chalk

    The New Testament begins with a story about a humble young woman who willingly submits to the will of  God when He calls her to a momentous vocation. Yet she is also portrayed as a virtuous, contemplative heroine, capable of articulating the desires and expectations of her entire people in poetry so brilliant and beautiful that today, more than 2,000 years removed from that event, it’s daily prayed by millions of Catholics the world over.  The contemporary feminist critique of Catholicism, however, claims it’s a misogynist institution: whether it be the Church telling women what to do with their bodies (abortion and contraception), or prohibiting them from positions of ecclesial authority.

    In response to this criticism, many Catholics claim that, far from being antiquated and sexist, the Church has always been the impetus for religious and social change that elevates the status of women. They’re not wrong. Nevertheless, apologetics that aim to argue that the Church was the first feminist institution – or similar rhetoric approaches – risk adopting the very same false premises that underlie the entire modern feminist project with its emphasis on power, autonomy, equality.

    Bronwen McShea’s otherwise excellent brief history Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know, flirts with this feminist tendency, practically right out of the gate. “This book is also for anyone interested in the history of Catholicism – to demonstrate that the history of the Church’s women is the Church’s history, just as much as the history of her men is.” Fair enough, though who, exactly, has said otherwise? And is this a competition?

    McShea offers fascinating anecdotes of the many Catholic female saints and martyrs from the third-century Perpetua and Felicity (whose Passion is probably the earliest, first-person account from the perspective of a female) to the great medieval monarchs such as Jadwiga of Poland, to modern mystics such as Thérèse of Lisieux. Yet there also seems a forced need to convince the reader of women’s indispensability.

    She argues that without Helena, Constantine’s mother, there wouldn’t have been freedom for Christianity in the late Roman Empire, and no Nicene Creed, given that Constantine called the council that created it. True, but aren’t mothers behind every great person?

    The text is unnecessarily sprinkled with this kind of language. “Women played an important part in the beginnings of Christian monasticism.” Christian queens and noblewomen “played leading roles in establishing new monastic communities.” Isabella of Spain was a “formidable Catholic woman without whom important episodes in the Church’s history cannot be fully understood.” Maria Theresa of Austria was “one of the most powerful figures in the Enlightenment era.”

    This ritualistic reiteration of women’s power and influence is a drag on an otherwise interesting summary of female roles in Christian history. In the preface, McShea admits that as a child she was more drawn to male saints who appeared more “dynamic,” which seems to be an attempt to appeal to feminist readers suspicious of an oppressive, patriarchal Church. The celebrated Catholic writer Patricia Snow underscores that objective in her foreword when she writes, somewhat bizarrely: “the woman moves to the center and the dimensions of the female project become clear.”

    Undoubtedly, McShea is correct regarding women’s critical role throughout Church history. The Bible and the early Church were quite radical in their respect for the human dignity of women, as well as for giving them unprecedented degrees of influence and autonomy. It was women who funded Jesus’ ministry (Luke 8:30); who comprised most of His followers at His crucifixion (Mark 15:40-41); and who first saw the risen Lord (John 20:1-18).

    Controversy notwithstanding, McShea writes beautifully about women – saints and not – across two millennia of Church history. We learn of Dihya, a Berber queen in what is today Algeria, who fought against the armies of the Umayyad Caliphate in an (ultimately losing) action against Muslim conquest. We read of medieval Beguines, who, though not taking solemn religious vows, were informally committed to celibacy, prayer, fasting, manual labor, and charitable work. We are told of Blessed Mary Theresa Ledóchowska, a Polish noblewoman who promoted African missions in the decades around the beginning of the twentieth century.

    But what lesson should we learn from these riveting anecdotes? Is it that these women were powerful, influential, and independent – language that, even if unintentionally, capitulates to modern feminist themes about where human meaning is ultimately found? Or that they courageously lived (and often died) for Christ? The whole presentation seems to imply that modern women need not fear; the Church promotes those feminist values of which they have already been catechized by secular feminists.

    Moreover, such an approach belies the realities of Catholic teaching manifested in that Marian beginning to the Gospels – where a woman humbly surrenders her autonomy for the sake of others.  As sociologist Rodney Stark argues in his impressive The Rise of Christianity, this served as a major impetus for growth in the first five centuries of the Church.

    In a Roman Empire that endorsed a system of abortion and infanticide that disproportionately targeted female babies, Christianity asserted the inherent dignity of all human life, regardless of sex. Christian condemnations of divorce, incest, marital infidelity, and polygamy all served to protect women. Meanwhile, the large percentage of females in Christian communities inevitably led them into positions of privilege rarely accessible in pagan Rome.

    Ironically, the very same Catholic teachings that once fostered female value and status are today perceived to be the greatest obstacles to those goods. What links secular, feminist modernity to the ancient pagan world seems to be an aversion, if not hostility, towards female fertility, which limits human autonomy and power.

    If so, telling women that they will find power, influence, and equality in the Church is clearly not the right message, given that the Church more fundamentally teaches humility and self-abnegation.

    Far better, I’d think, forthrightly to tell the marvelous stories of female Catholics with all the pluck and passion they deserve. At that task, in any case, McShea succeeds.

    The post A Marian or a Feminist Church? appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  33. Site: The Unz Review
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Chris Hedges
    Hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to flee, once again, after more than half of Gaza's population took sanctuary in the border town of Rafah. This is part of Israel's sadistic playbook. Run, the Israelis demand, run for your lives. Run from Rafah the way you ran from Gaza City, the way you...
  34. Site: The Unz Review
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Pepe Escobar
    Get ready for what may well be the geoeconomic bombshell of 2024: the coming of a decentralized monetary ecosystem. Welcome to The Unit – a concept that has already been discussed by the financial services and investments working group set up by the BRICS+ Business Council and has a serious shot at becoming official BRICS+...
  35. Site: The Unz Review
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Ron Unz
    The Israel/Gaza conflict is now well into its eighth month as the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians continues unabated, with many tens of thousands of helpless civilians already dead. Despite occasional bleats of feeble disapproval by members of the Biden Administration, America's government has continued to fully support that massacre, providing all the necessary money...
  36. Site: The Unz Review
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Alastair Crooke
    The young American generation of today says: We will not identify with suspect genocidal tendencies against an indigenous people. The core issues at the heart of release of hostages held in Gaza were two: A complete cessation to the war and full withdrawal of all Israeli forces. Netanyahu’s position was that whatever the hostage outcome,...
  37. Site: The Unz Review
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Keith Woods
    Last Monday, May 6th, Irish people gathered in Dublin for a protest against the government’s immigration policy. This was the second Bank Holiday Monday in a row where an event like this happened, but this crowd was the biggest yet, reaching many thousands of people. There is much that is very impressive about the anti-immigration...
  38. Site: The Catholic Thing
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    At the Vatican this weekend, the great German composer’s ode to joy provided a sublime exhortation to universal brotherhood at the World Meeting on Human Fraternity. The event featured an array of celebrities, including Garth Brooks and Tom Brady, the latter fresh from an obscenity-laced Netflix “roast.” Such “fraternal” encounters can be fraught, but it remains true that culture can give expression to the highest ideals and noblest aspirations.
     

    The post Beethoven’s ‘Ninth’ v. Tom Brady’s obscenities appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  39. Site: The Catholic Thing
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    Yesterday, although you may not know it since the feast of the Ascension was moved to Sunday in many places, was World Communications Day, first celebrated by Pope Paul VI in 1967. Since that time, the rise of the internet, social media, and now artificial intelligence have reinforced the importance of all media in proclaiming the Gospel, especially so at a time when mainstream media have become alarmingly conformist and amoral.

     

     

    The post The key role of media in evangelization appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  40. Site: The Catholic Thing
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    I
    In the doorway of a low grey house,
    built of stones as old as the Crusades,
    a woman of Bruges sits in the sunlight,
    among the flowers, saying her Rosary.
    She seems to be carved out of season walnut
    and polished smooth
    by the constant touch of the hand of God,
    and the beads that twine her crippled fingers
    are scarlet berries on the thorny twigs.
    The running rhythm
    and the repetition
    of the Paters and the Aves
    is like the rhythm that in nature
    moves through the seasons
    from seed to harvest
    with the unity
    and the pause and stress
    of music;
    like the bloodstream of Christ,
    that flows through the seasons
    from Advent to Easter
    in the Liturgy of the Church,
    the ebb and flow of the tide of love
    in the Mystical Body of Christ.

    II
    God has given His children strings of beads,
    as we give strings of beads to our children,
    to teach them to count.
    We do not say,
    “Learn from these the doctrine of numbers,
    the measure of human life,
    the dream of Pythagorus,
    counting the pulse of the world.”
    We do not say
    to a child with a string of beads,
    “learn the perfection of reason in mathematics.”
    We say,
    “Learn to count on the beads,
    small for your hands to hold,
    bright for your eyes to see.”
    And he begins,
    slowly,
    with one, two, three:
    the spark is kindled
    to light the flame of philosophy.
    God has counted in fifteen Mysteries,
    on the fingers of human creatures,
    the singleness of the Undivided Love,
    the simplicity
    that we cannot comprehend
    because our hearts are divided.

    III
    We are not all vessels of gold,
    lifted up in virginal hands,
    empty chalices to receive
    from the perfect vine
    love,
    absolute
    and complete.
    But the old woman of Bruges
    is a round bowl,
    lifted up to be brimmed
    with pure wine.
    and the Mysteries of the Rosary
    concern familiar things
    known in her own life.
    Her mind, like a velvet bee
    droning over a rose,
    gathers the honey of comfort
    from the story of God,
    familiar as the things in her kitchen—
    the shining pots and pans,
    the milk in the jar of earthenware,
    and the flags of the scrubbed floor.
    The story told by the Rosary
    is the story of primitive beauty,
    true as the burden of folksongs.
    It is a song piped on the hills,
    by a shepherd calling his sheep.

    IV
    The cradle of wood,
    the wood of the cross;
    from cradle to cross,
    like a lullaby;
    the wail of an infant,
    lost on the wind—
    the arms of a girl
    in a circle of love,
    rocking to rest;
    a woman’s arms
    in a circle of love,
    the young Man dead
    on His Mother’s breast.
    The jewels that glow
    low in the grass
    on the feet of Christ,
    risen from death,
    touching the flowers
    and touching the dust,
    even in glory.
    The dust of the earth
    on the feet of God,
    walking the soft blue meadows of stars.

    V
    In the doorway of a low grey house,
    built of stones as old as the Crusades,
    a woman of Bruges
    sits in the sunlight, among the flowers,
    saying her Rosary.
    The story of Mary is her own story,
    and her son was her life’s joy
    and her life’s sorrow;
    and for ever
    her son is her life’s glory.
    In a field in Flanders,
    among the red poppies, he is sleeping:
    he will sleep soundly
    until the day of resurrection.
    She has still the patchwork quilt
    made, when her hands were nimble,
    for the wooden cot:
    now he is sleeping, and each year
    he has a new coverlet
    of delicate young grass,
    and at the end of his cot
    a wooden cross.
    The cradle of the wood,
    the wood of the cross:
    from cradle to cross,
    like a lullaby.
    The story of the woman of Bruges
    is the world’s story.
    It is the story
    of human joy and sorrow,
    woven and interlaced,
    like the blue and crimson thread
    in a woven cloth:
    the story of birth and death,
    of war and the rumours of war
    and of peace past understanding,
    peace in the souls that live
    in the life of Christ.
    In the doorway in Bruges,
    sitting among the flowers,
    her mind like a velvet bee
    droning over a rose,
    taking the honey of comfort
    out of the heart of Love,
    the old woman is nodding
    over her Rosary.
    She has lived her meditation,
    like the Mother of God,
    living the life of Christ:
    let her sleep in Christ’s peace.

    VI
    Under the loud din
    of the tramp of metallic feet
    in the armed march of time,
    like a river moving
    under the dark hills,
    the everlasting life
    is flowing, eternally.
    The measured beat of love,
    with pure perfection of music,
    timing the life of Christ
    in the human heart
    goes on.

    The post The Rosary appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  41. Site: The Catholic Thing
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, is accusing President Joe Biden of “making a mockery of our Catholic faith” after he made the sign of the cross while promoting abortion. Making the sign of the cross is one of the most profound gestures a Catholic can make in showing reverence for Christ’s death on the cross and belief in the Holy Trinity as we sign ourselves in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” the bishop said.
     

    The post Bishop: Biden mocks Catholic faith by invoking Christ in pro-abortion message appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  42. Site: The Catholic Thing
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Karen Popp

    In a papal bull, Spes non confundit (“Hope does not disappoint”), Francis, Bishop of Rome, has formally announced the Jubilee Year of 2025. The Jubilee Year will officially begin with the opening of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve 2024. “Christian hope does not deceive or disappoint because it is grounded in the certainty that nothing and no one may ever separate us from God’s love . . .”
     

     

    The post Pope proclaims bull appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

  43. Site: The Unz Review
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Ron Unz
    What follows is a Q and A conducted by James Edwards with Anke Van dermeersch, a former Miss Belgium, Miss Universe finalist, and current Senator of Belgium. James Edwards: You first made a name for yourself as a model who was crowned Miss Belgium and who went on to become a top finalist in the...
  44. Site: AntiWar.com
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Ted Snider

    There are plenty of very real things to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin for, not least of which is invading Ukraine. But lying (in this instance) may not be one of them. Putin lied when he said Russia was not going to invade Ukraine. But, wrong though the invasion may have been, it is not … Continue reading "Biden Said Putin Killed Navalny; He Didn’t"

    The post Biden Said Putin Killed Navalny; He Didn’t appeared first on Antiwar.com.

  45. Site: The Unz Review
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Ron Paul
    According to new reports from the Social Security and Medicare trustees, Social Security and a Medicare fund that pays for hospital expenses will both begin running deficits in 2035 and 2036. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, Congress was too preoccupied spending billions more on military aid for foreign countries and banning TikTok to pay attention to...
  46. Site: AntiWar.com
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Thomas Knapp

    On May 1, the US House of Representatives passed the fraudulently titled “Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023.” It’s not yet law, pending Senate passage and a presidential signature, but the lopsided House vote (320 to 91) should worry all Americans, including the country’s 7.6 million Jews. In theory, the bill merely clarifies how the US … Continue reading "We’ve Already Got an ‘Antisemitism Awareness Act.’ It’s Called the First Amendment."

    The post We’ve Already Got an ‘Antisemitism Awareness Act.’ It’s Called the First Amendment. appeared first on Antiwar.com.

  47. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 3 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    CFTC Aims To Ban Derivatives Based On Elections, Athletic Competitions And Awards Contests

    Previously enjoyed betting on the outcome of an event, like a Presidential election? The CFTC wants to make sure that doesn't happen again.

    According to the Wall Street Journal, the regulator is now targeting "derivatives contracts based on political elections, athletic competitions and awards contests" to try and draw more prominent lines between investing and gambling. 

    The Commodity Futures Trading Commission proposed a regulation to oversee event contracts, a rapidly growing market where investors bet on event outcomes, the report said. 

    The proposed regulation won’t affect sports betting through traditional sportsbooks regulated by state commissions or popular online platforms like DraftKings. Nor will it impact offshore platforms like Betfair, which currently allows U.S. election bets.

    The proposal, approved 3-2 along party lines, will undergo public review before a final vote in the coming months. Democratic commissioners emphasized the potential threat to election integrity posed by political event contracts, particularly with a Biden-Trump rematch looming.

    Christy Goldsmith Romero, a Democratic commissioner, said: “Never before has the sanctity of elections been so critical or so under threat. The CFTC should not allow products in our markets with an unacceptable risk of unchecked abuse and manipulation that could threaten the sanctity of elections, thereby threatening democracy and national security.”

    Yet the proposal was called “grossly overbroad” by Summer Mersinger, a Republican commissioner, the report noted. 

    One company that offers "yes" or "no" betting questions has been Kalshi. Event contracts, though small compared to stocks or futures, have grown rapidly since Kalshi launched in 2021. Recent Kalshi contracts included wagers on whether "Oppenheimer" would win Best Picture and if Columbia University's president would be ousted. 

    CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam, a Democrat supporting the proposal, noted that more event contracts were listed in 2021 than in the previous 15 years combined. 

    The CFTC has previously blocked U.S. trading platforms from launching political betting markets. Last year, it prevented Kalshi from offering contracts based on which party controls Congress, prompting Kalshi to sue the agency in November over the rejection.

    “We look forward to continuing to engage with our regulators and Congress, as we have always done, to ensure that our customers can participate in legitimate trading with legitimate use cases on a legitimate, regulated exchange and not on offshore and illegal markets where there is no customer protection or market integrity,”  Mansour told WSJ. 

    CFTC regulations established after the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act prohibit event contracts involving terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or illegal activities, but the lack of a clear definition of “gaming” led to disputes over whether it applies to sports and political contracts, prompting Friday's proposal to explicitly ban wagers on elections, sports, or awards contests.

    Tyler Durden Sun, 05/12/2024 - 23:00
  48. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 4 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    The New York Times Denounces Cancel Culture... After Fueling Cancel Culture For Years

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    For those of us who have criticized the cancel culture in higher education for years, the attacks and shunning have been unrelenting. The media has played a role in that culture and none more prominently than the New York Times. Recently, however, the mob came for liberal professors and media who have remained silent for years as conservatives and others were targeted on campus.

    Suddenly, there is a new interest in free speech and academic freedom, including by the Times editors who blamed cancel culture for the recent demonstrations and disruptions on campus.

    Until good liberals were targeted on campus, cancel culture was treated as free speech. It did not matter that preventing others from speaking or being heard is the very antithesis of free speech.

    The New York Times reached true infamy in the controversy over publishing Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R., Ark.) op-ed where he argued for the possible use of national guard to quell violent riots around the White House.

    It was one of the lowest points in the history of modern American journalism. Cotton was calling for the use of the troops to restore order in Washington after days of rioting around the White House.  While Congress would “call in the troops” six months later to quell the rioting at the Capitol on January 6th, New York Times reporters and columnists called the column historically inaccurate and politically inciteful.

    Reporters insisted that Cotton was even endangering them by suggesting the use of troops and insisted that the newspaper cannot feature people who advocate political violence. One year later, the New York Times published a column by an academic who had previously declared that there is nothing wrong with murdering conservatives and Republicans.

    Later, former editors came forward to denounce the cancel culture at the Times and the censorship of opposing views.

    At the same time, the Times has embraced “advocacy journalism.” Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for advocacy journalism. Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared “all journalism is activism.”

    Now, however, liberal professors and writers are being targeted. After years of turning a blind eye to conservative and libertarian figures being purged from faculties or canceled in events, the Times is alarmed that

    …students and other demonstrators disrupting college campuses this spring are being taught the wrong lesson — for as admirable as it can be to stand up for your beliefs, there are no guarantees that doing so will be without consequence.

    What is most striking is how the editors chastise administrators for lacking the courage that they have not shown for years in standing up to their cultural warriors:

    For several years, many university leaders have failed to act as their students and faculty have shown ever greater readiness to block an expanding range of views that they deem wrong or beyond the pale. Some scholars report that this has had a chilling effect on their work, making them less willing to participate in the academy or in the wider world of public discourse. The price of pushing boundaries, particularly with more conservative ideas, has become higher and higher…

    It has not gone unnoticed — on campuses but also by members of Congress and by the public writ large — that many of those who are now demanding the right to protest have previously sought to curtail the speech of those whom they declared hateful.

    It is certainly good to see the “Old Gray Lady” have second thoughts about cancel culture. However, she might want to look inwardly before casting more cultural stones.

    Tyler Durden Sun, 05/12/2024 - 22:30
  49. Site: RT - News
    2 days 4 hours ago
    Author: RT

    Gerard Larcher believes the French president is failing to tackle key domestic issues

    The leader of the French Senate has openly criticized Emmanuel Macron’s leadership, claiming the president is out of touch with reality and the daily concerns of the population.

    In an interview with La Tribune newspaper on Sunday, Gerard Larcher was asked to assess Macron’s track record, almost seven years into his presidency.

    “It’s disappointing. I have the impression that we don’t perceive the same country, that we don’t feel same France,” the politician responded, listing several issues to “illustrate Emmanuel Macron’s denial of reality.”

    He noted a significant decline in school teaching quality, citing the latest PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) study which ranked French teenagers 26th in science and mathematics, and 29th in reading comprehension.

    “It’s not just a story of money and resources. There is a problem of transmission of values, respect for the authority of the teacher, preservation of secularism, particularly among the public,” Larcher argued.

    Read more  French President Emmanuel Macron waits to greet Lithuania's president prior to their meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris on March 12, 2024. Timofey Bordachev: Emmanuel Macron might be a clown, but he’s a dangerous clown

    He also pointed to healthcare, saying it remains “a very big concern for the French” with the hospital system becoming increasingly “bureaucratized.”

    “Although we are the country with the highest rate of public spending, our health system has deteriorated profoundly,” the Senate president noted, adding that with hospitals staffed with 34% non-medical administrative personnel, millions of French people are forced to seek private medical care every year.

    Larcher also pointed to a lack of “state authority,” with an escalation of street violence, urban unrest, drug trafficking, defiance of law enforcement, and an overall deterioration of the country’s crime landscape.

    “All of this creates distrust. I’m not saying the government hasn’t tried. I’m not saying it’s simple. But this prohibits any exercise of self-satisfaction,” the Senate leader concluded.

    Read more RT Macron ‘hopes’ France won’t go to war with Russia

    Emmanuel Macron first came to power in 2017, defeating right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen. He was re-elected in 2022, promising “a new method of governance,” arguing that the French are “tired of reforms which come from above.”

    His tenure has seen frequent waves of public unrest, notably the 2023 protests against pension reforms that raised the retirement age from 62 to 64.

  50. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 5 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Coffee Is Anti-Aging, Linked To Prevention Of Dementia And Sarcopenia: Study

    Authored by Ellen Wan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Enjoying a cup of joe can offer more than just a pick-me-up: It has been shown to have numerous health benefits, especially for older people. Research has found that the natural molecule in coffee, trigonelline, can help improve sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss) and maintain muscle function during aging.

    (portumen/Shutterstock)

    Muscle mass and function gradually decline as we age, potentially leading to sarcopenia. This can hinder mobility and even result in dependence and disability. The hallmarks of sarcopenia include a decline in nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) levels and mitochondrial dysfunction.

    Recent Research

    A study published in Nature Metabolism in March found that trigonelline is a precursor to NAD+. Increasing the therapeutic dose of trigonelline can raise the levels of NAD+ in the cells of sarcopenia patients. Supplementing trigonelline also enhanced mitochondrial activity, NAD+ levels, and muscle function in aged mice. Furthermore, long-term supplementation of trigonelline significantly increased grip strength in the forelimbs of aged mice.

    However, the study also pointed out that sarcopenia is a multifactorial disease, and trigonelline cannot reverse all its causes. It must be combined with other nutrients that help maintain muscle, such as protein, vitamin D, or omega-3 fatty acids.

    Nutrition and physical activity are important for older people to maintain healthy muscles. Assistant professor Vincenzo Sorrentino from the Health Longevity Translational Research Program at the National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, who participated in the study, stated in a press release that this research on trigonelline has increased the potential for achieving healthy longevity and addressing age-related diseases.

    Trigonelline is found in plant-based foods such as coffee beans and fenugreek seeds.

    A study involving 1,781 older Korean men indicated that coffee consumption was associated with a reduced risk of sarcopenia. Compared to those who drank less than one cup of coffee per day, individuals who drank at least three cups of coffee per day had a significantly lower probability of developing sarcopenia. However, the risk reduction was less pronounced among those who consumed one or two cups of coffee daily.

    Understanding the Benefits and Drawbacks of Coffee Consumption

    Many people drink coffee without considering its health benefits or risks. However, debates about coffee have been ongoing for a long time.

    Coffee is a complex mixture containing approximately 1,000 chemicals. Human reactions to coffee or caffeine vary, and the effects can vary significantly depending on the amount consumed.

    One study found that drinking three to five cups of coffee per day in midlife was associated with a 65 percent lower risk of developing dementia or Alzheimer’s disease in old age. Another study found that compared to light coffee drinkers (one to two cups per day), heavy coffee drinkers (more than six cups per day), non-coffee drinkers, and those who drank decaffeinated coffee had higher odds of developing dementia.

    A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2020 showed that consuming three to five cups of coffee daily was associated with a reduced risk of several chronic diseases. However, considering that excessive caffeine intake may have some adverse effects, it is recommended that adults who are not pregnant or breastfeeding limit their daily caffeine intake to 400 milligrams, while pregnant and breastfeeding women should limit their daily caffeine intake to 200 milligrams. Additionally, research has found that very high caffeine intake (more than 1,000 milligrams per week) is a risk factor for anxiety and depression.

    Due to the differences in coffee bean varieties and extraction methods, the caffeine content can vary significantly. Therefore, when consuming coffee daily, checking the actual caffeine content listed on the product packaging is recommended.

    It is also important to note that many commercially available coffees are often mixed with heavy cream and flavored syrups, which can add extra calories, sugar, and saturated fat, diminishing the health benefits of black coffee.

    Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte

    Johns Hopkins Medicine shared an easy-to-make and healthy coffee recipe on its website:

    Ingredients:

    • 1 cup brewed coffee
    • ½ cup canned plain pumpkin
    • ½ cup milk
    • 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (or ½ teaspoon each of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice)
    • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
    • 4 ice cubes

    Preparation: Blend all ingredients for a seasonally-inspired beverage. Adding pumpkin helps increase fiber intake, which is beneficial for gut health.

    Note: It is advisable to use as little sugar as possible. If you must add a sweetener, consider using a small amount of pure maple syrup.

    Tyler Durden Sun, 05/12/2024 - 21:30

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