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More than half of respondents said the rules laid down in the Quran take precedence, in their eyes

The majority of Muslim schoolchildren in the German state of Lower Saxony view religious rules as more important than the law, a new study has found. More than a third of respondents also indicated that they condoned acts of violence against those who insult Islam.

Germany has been the destination of choice for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Türkiye for decades. In 2015, then-chancellor Angela Merkel opened the borders to several million refugees and migrants, predominantly from Muslim nations such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Although the influx has since diminished, people continue to arrive in Germany by the thousands.

According to estimates provided by the country’s interior ministry, there are over five million Muslims currently residing in the country, which translates to nearly 7% of the entire population.

In its report on Sunday, Bild, citing a study by the Lower Saxony Criminology Research Institute, reported that 67.8% of schoolchildren polled said that the “rules of the Quran are more important to me than the laws in Germany”; 45.8% said that Islamic theocratic rule is the best form of state government, with over half contending that it is only their religion that has answers to the “problems of our times.”

According to the study’s findings, 35.3% suggested that insults directed at Islam and its prophet are reason enough for a violent attack. More than a fifth of respondents argued that the “threat to Islam posed by the Western world” justifies a violent response on the part of Muslims.

The researchers surveyed a total of 8,539 people in Lower Saxony, including 300 Muslims. Bild pointed out that the findings thus cannot be extrapolated to the whole of Germany.

Nevertheless, Christoph de Vries from Hamburg, who represents the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the German parliament, told the media outlet that the “study shows how deep the traces are that the political Islam has already left behind in Germany.” The lawmaker attributed the troubling trend to “systematic indoctrination,” adding that “multiculti has long since failed.”

The secretary of education from the neighboring Schleswig-Holstein region, Karin Prien, also from the CDU party, warned that unless “democratic values” are better instilled into students, “social cohesion risks going into a skid.”

More than half of respondents said the rules laid down in the Quran take precedence, in their eyes

The majority of Muslim schoolchildren in the German state of Lower Saxony view religious rules as more important than the law, a new study has found. More than a third of respondents also indicated that they condoned acts of violence against those who insult Islam.

Germany has been the destination of choice for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Türkiye for decades. In 2015, then-chancellor Angela Merkel opened the borders to several million refugees and migrants, predominantly from Muslim nations such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Although the influx has since diminished, people continue to arrive in Germany by the thousands.

According to estimates provided by the country’s interior ministry, there are over five million Muslims currently residing in the country, which translates to nearly 7% of the entire population.

In its report on Sunday, Bild, citing a study by the Lower Saxony Criminology Research Institute, reported that 67.8% of schoolchildren polled said that the “rules of the Quran are more important to me than the laws in Germany”; 45.8% said that Islamic theocratic rule is the best form of state government, with over half contending that it is only their religion that has answers to the “problems of our times.”

According to the study’s findings, 35.3% suggested that insults directed at Islam and its prophet are reason enough for a violent attack. More than a fifth of respondents argued that the “threat to Islam posed by the Western world” justifies a violent response on the part of Muslims.

The researchers surveyed a total of 8,539 people in Lower Saxony, including 300 Muslims. Bild pointed out that the findings thus cannot be extrapolated to the whole of Germany.

Nevertheless, Christoph de Vries from Hamburg, who represents the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the German parliament, told the media outlet that the “study shows how deep the traces are that the political Islam has already left behind in Germany.” The lawmaker attributed the troubling trend to “systematic indoctrination,” adding that “multiculti has long since failed.”

The secretary of education from the neighboring Schleswig-Holstein region, Karin Prien, also from the CDU party, warned that unless “democratic values” are better instilled into students, “social cohesion risks going into a skid.”

Every single state in America with an abortion ban in place allows abortions in emergency circumstances if necessary to save the life of the mother. There is no pro-life state in America that forces pregnant women to put their lives at risk.

But during an abortion debate at the Supreme Court today, Justice Sonia Sotomayor lied about this.

She falsely claimed some states prohibit abortions to save the mother’s life.

During an exchange with Idaho attorney Joshua Turner, who is defending the state’s pro-life law in court from an attack by the Biden administration – which wants to overturn the law to allow all abortions in Idaho – Sotomayor made the false statement.

“What you’re saying is that no state in the nation — and there are some right now that don’t even have that as an exception to their anti-abortion laws — what you’re saying is there is no federal law on the books that prohibits any state from saying even if a woman will die you cannot perform an abortion,” she said.

Turner had to correct the liberal justice.

“I know of no state that doesn’t include a life-saving exception,” he explained.

Turner is correct.

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According to the Charlote Lozier Institute, every pro-life state in America allows abortions in the very rare instance where it might possibly be necessary to protect a woman’s life.

Twenty-five states have one or more strong gestational limits on abortion that are either in effect or are enjoined while in litigation. Each of these states permits abortion in those rare and heartbreaking circumstances when it is necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman.

Physicians can make this determination based on their “reasonable medical judgment,” a standard very common in the medical profession and used for any case involving medical malpractice litigation.

Meanwhile, abortion advocates are spreading the dangerous lie that life-saving care is not or may not be permitted in these states, leading to provider confusion and poor outcomes for women.

The post Justice Sonia Sotomayor Falsely Claims Abortion Bans Don’t Have Life of the Mother Exceptions appeared first on LifeNews.com.

In a recent op-ed, CatholicVote Director of Accountability Tommy Valentine detailed the reasons behind the organization’s decision to send a letter to the Department of Justice calling for a fair application of the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act against pro-lifers and pro-abortion activists.

On April 22, The Hill published Valentine’s op-ed titled: “Biden’s Justice Department hounds elderly concentration camp survivor, ignores serial church arsonist.”

The op-ed comes after CatholicVote sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on April 9 calling for action in defense of Catholic churches and pro-life centers that have been vandalized and attacked in recent years.

In his op-ed Valentine opened with harrowing details about the early life of pro-life activist Eva Edl, who is a survivor of the post-World War II Gakova communist death camp.

“After years of living in hell, facing death daily, Eva’s family finally escaped to the U.S. They believed that America was free, and that their rights would be protected by a government with their best interests at heart,” Valentine wrote:

Today, the government they trusted is fighting to throw 87-year-old Eva into prison for her pro-life advocacy.

Sadly, Eva’s plight perfectly exemplifies how dangerous the weaponization of the U.S. government has become, and how far the left will go to punish anyone who interferes with their radical agenda.

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Edl was recently convicted alongside three other pro-life activists for praying and singing hymns in front of the doors of a Tennessee abortion clinic in 2021. They were convicted under the FACE Act, which, Valentine wrote, “prohibits the use of force, threat of force or physical obstruction to prevent women from obtaining or providing ‘reproductive health care services.’”

“For this, they face up to six months in prison, five years of “supervised release’ and fines up to $10,000,” Valentine continued, noting that the maximum sentence under FACE Act violations is 11 years in prison and fines of $250k.

“Meanwhile, pro-abortion rights extremists firebomb, vandalize and terrorize pro-life centers and Catholic Churches with impunity,” Valentine wrote:

The FBI and Department of Justice have prosecuted nonviolent pro-life offenders with the FACE Act, while turning a blind eye to the violent, ongoing and terrifying attacks on other institutions protected by the FACE Act: churches and pregnancy help centers.

Valentine then highlighted the actions of Elliot Bennett, who, earlier in April, set a Catholic Church on fire in New Jersey–the third act of violence against a church Bennett has committed since 2018.

“Yet the same Justice Department that is fighting to throw Eva in jail failed to prosecute (Bennett) for these multiple and obvious FACE Act violations,” Valentine wrote, noting that the Department has not federally prosecuted any of the 414 vandalisms and attacks against Catholic churches in the United States since May of 2020. The Department also has not substantially addressed the 90 attacks against crisis pregnancy centers that have occurred since May 2022 throughout the States.

The violent pro-abortion protests do not resemble Edl’s prosecuted actions, which were praying and singing in front of the doors of an abortion clinic. These pro-abortion attacks and protests, Valentine wrote, “involved fire-bombings and arson, vandalism of pregnancy clinics and churches, spray painted threats on clinic and church walls, decapitated statues, smashed glass, disrupted masses, blocking of church entrances and even physical attacks on priests and parishioners.”

The inconsistency and double standard in prosecuting under the FACE Act are the central reasons for CatholicVote’s letter to Garland.

“Our letter demanded that the department do its job and defend pro-life Americans from violence,” Valentine wrote. “We have little reason to believe our letter will elicit tangible change. Our past experiences calling on the Justice Department and FBI to fairly enforce the law have been met with stonewalling, empty answers and no meaningful action.”

He concluded, “At the very least, however, we hope that our letter serves as a warning to Americans and to Republicans in Congress who have the opportunity to take a stand against the Biden administration’s weaponized agencies.”

LifeNews Note: McKenna Snow writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

The post Catholic Group Slams Biden for Targeting Pro-Life Americans, Ignoring Pro-Abortion Crimes appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Fake images are misinformation, Anthony Albanese claims

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has once again lashed out at social media, insisting the platforms should be accountable for the content that its users post.

The PM’s remarks come in the wake of a spat with tech billionaire Elon Musk over the reluctance on the part of the Tesla and Space X tycoon to remove footage of the stabbing of a cleric from X (formerly Twitter).

“Social media platforms have a responsibility to make sure that misinformation isn’t got out there,” Albanese told reporters on Wednesday. “I noticed today, for example, on the way up here, they’ve removed various sites that were up containing fake images of myself superimposed on other people,” the PM stated.

“Social media has a responsibility to do the right thing here,” Albanese reiterated.

On Wednesday, the country’s Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Birmingham called on social media companies to use their “immense technological power” to remove violent content from their platforms.

The Australian government has been pushing a so-called misinformation bill, released as a draft last year. The new law would empower the Australian Communications and Media Authority to require online platforms to address content considered “false, misleading or deceptive, and where the provision of that content on the service is reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm.”

The bill was later withdrawn by the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, who promised “refinements,” including additional protections for freedom of speech, greater transparency, and “improved workability.”

However, following the recent Sydney stabbings, Rowland indicated the bill would resurface. The government is yet to outline changes to the initial bill it will introduce to parliament.

The news has been met with opposition. “The PM has caused more division by shamelessly tying a violent video to his agenda to outlaw some types of speech. The basic principle is, if you don’t trust politicians, don’t give them the power to tell you what you can say,” National Party Senator Matt Canavan told Guardian Australia.

He also claimed that the Albanese government was “struggling” due to the Prime Minister’s belief that the “biggest issue” in the country is misinformation.

Musk mocked Albanese’s social media crackdown hours after his platform was again ordered to remove the content, which features last week’s non-fatal knife attack on an Assyrian bishop in a suburb of Sydney, and to remove it for users worldwide.

Musk said the Australian court’s ruling to take down the footage meant that any country could control “the entire internet.” He also used a meme depicting a Wizard of Oz-style path to “freedom” leading to an X logo.

Albanese, in turn, labeled Musk an “arrogant billionaire who thinks he’s above the law, but also above common decency.”

Fake images are misinformation, Anthony Albanese claims

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has once again lashed out at social media, insisting the platforms should be accountable for the content that its users post.

The PM’s remarks come in the wake of a spat with tech billionaire Elon Musk over the reluctance on the part of the Tesla and Space X tycoon to remove footage of the stabbing of a cleric from X (formerly Twitter).

“Social media platforms have a responsibility to make sure that misinformation isn’t got out there,” Albanese told reporters on Wednesday. “I noticed today, for example, on the way up here, they’ve removed various sites that were up containing fake images of myself superimposed on other people,” the PM stated.

“Social media has a responsibility to do the right thing here,” Albanese reiterated.

On Wednesday, the country’s Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Birmingham called on social media companies to use their “immense technological power” to remove violent content from their platforms.

The Australian government has been pushing a so-called misinformation bill, released as a draft last year. The new law would empower the Australian Communications and Media Authority to require online platforms to address content considered “false, misleading or deceptive, and where the provision of that content on the service is reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm.”

The bill was later withdrawn by the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, who promised “refinements,” including additional protections for freedom of speech, greater transparency, and “improved workability.”

However, following the recent Sydney stabbings, Rowland indicated the bill would resurface. The government is yet to outline changes to the initial bill it will introduce to parliament.

The news has been met with opposition. “The PM has caused more division by shamelessly tying a violent video to his agenda to outlaw some types of speech. The basic principle is, if you don’t trust politicians, don’t give them the power to tell you what you can say,” National Party Senator Matt Canavan told Guardian Australia.

He also claimed that the Albanese government was “struggling” due to the Prime Minister’s belief that the “biggest issue” in the country is misinformation.

Musk mocked Albanese’s social media crackdown hours after his platform was again ordered to remove the content, which features last week’s non-fatal knife attack on an Assyrian bishop in a suburb of Sydney, and to remove it for users worldwide.

Musk said the Australian court’s ruling to take down the footage meant that any country could control “the entire internet.” He also used a meme depicting a Wizard of Oz-style path to “freedom” leading to an X logo.

Albanese, in turn, labeled Musk an “arrogant billionaire who thinks he’s above the law, but also above common decency.”

The package includes $61 billion for Ukraine, with funds destined for purchase of weapons and military equipment

US President Joe Biden signed a long-stalled $95-billion foreign aid package on Wednesday, after the Senate voted resoundingly to approve the funds for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

The package, including $61 billion for Ukraine, passed in a 79-18 vote on Tuesday evening, after both Republican and Democratic lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to end a filibuster and advance the measure.

Biden praised congressional leaders and lawmakers for what he called an effort “to answer history’s call at this critical inflection point,” saying he would immediately begin the process of sending much-needed weaponry to Ukraine as early as this week.

”Congress has passed my legislation to strengthen our national security and send a message to the world about the power of American leadership: we stand resolutely for democracy and freedom, and against tyranny and oppression,” Biden stated.

READ MORE: More weapons for Kiev won’t change battlefield dynamics – Kremlin

The president told his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky in a phone call on Monday that weapons shipments would begin rapidly after the bill reaches the Oval Office for his signature. While the White House offered few details on the call, the Ukrainian leader claimed that Kiev would be receiving longer-range ATACMS missiles.

The multibillion-dollar US aid package was requested by the White House months ago, but was only passed by the House of Representatives on Saturday, after Speaker Mike Johnson finally agreed to a vote.

The House also voted on Saturday to approve separate bills providing $26 billion in aid to Israel and $8 billion for Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific region allies. In addition, the emergency spending package includes $9 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza and other war zones.

Biden said the US would start sending weapons and military equipment to Ukraine “in the next few hours.”

“We are going to begin sending equipment to Ukraine for air defense munitions, for artillery, for rocket systems and armored vehicles,” he stated, noting that the package's path to his desk was a difficult one, and “should have gotten there sooner.”

The Pentagon has said weapons worth $1 billion are ready for immediate delivery to Ukraine. According to unnamed US officials, cited by the Associated Press, some of the arms will arrive on the frontline within days, but other items could take longer.

The Kremlin has repeatedly warned that Washington’s lethal aid will not change the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine’s favor. According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, the US government has effectively been funneling billions of dollars into its own military industrial complex through the aid scheme.

The Israeli prime minister has been an “obstacle” to the two-state solution with Palestine for years, Nancy Pelosi has said

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an obstacle to peace in Gaza and “should resign” from his position, former US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said.   

She made the remarks on Monday in an interview with Irish public broadcaster Raidio Teilifis Eireann (RTE) during her visit to the country.   

Pelosi criticized the Israeli leader’s response to the October 7 Hamas attack which saw Palestinian militants kill over 1,100 people on Israeli territory and take around 250 hostages.   

The former House speaker cited the recent resignation of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence chief Major General Aharon Haliva over the failure to prevent the attack, before pointing the finger at Netanyahu.  

“We recognize Israel’s right to protect itself. We reject the policy and the practice of Netanyahu – terrible. What could be worse than what he has done in response?” Pelosi told the outlet.  

“He should resign. He’s ultimately responsible,” she added.  

When asked if Netanyahu is a “block” to peace, Pelosi replied that “he has been for years,” adding that she doesn’t know whether the Israeli leader is “afraid of peace, incapable of peace, or just doesn’t want peace.”   

She went on to argue that Netanyahu been an “obstacle to the two-state solution, I emphasize the word, ‘solution.’”   

Health authorities in Gaza have estimated that more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed amid Israel’s siege of the enclave, which has included extensive bombardment as well as a ground incursion.  

Earlier this month, Pelosi joined more than 30 US Congress members who signed a letter urging President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to halt weapons transfers to Israel.  

The change of tune in Washington, Israel’s key ally, followed the killing of six aid workers from the World Central Kitchen humanitarian organization. The IDF targeted the group’s convoy in what it claimed to be a tragic mistake, despite the food supply mission being closely coordinated with the military.  

Meanwhile, the Senate approved on Tuesday a long-stalled $95 billion emergency spending bill which includes $26 billion in aid to Israel and $61 billion for Ukraine. Biden is expected to sign the bill into law shortly.

Police are investigating an incident of vandalism that took place last week in Oklahoma, where a suspect forcibly toppled and broke a historic statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a statue of the Holy Family outside of a local Catholic church.

The vandalism took place on April 19 at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Upon discovering the toppled statues, the parish reported the vandalism, which was caught on security cameras, to local police.

Three people were seen on camera when the vandalism took place, but only one of them is reportedly seen damaging the statues.

Associate pastor Fr. Robert Dye told local news outlet the Muskogee Phoenix, “It looks like someone came up to both statues and pushed them over… One of them, you can see him pushing hard. It took some effort. It was bolted down.”

The statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which parish members said was more than 100 years old, was found shattered on the sidewalk by the church.

“I just remember how beautiful she is. She just had the most beautiful face ever,” parishioner Susan Lacey told the Muskogee Phoenix, describing the historic Marian statue. “It’s just breaking my heart.”

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The other toppled statue, which depicted Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, was knocked into a flower bed. According to Muskogee Phoenix, the statue of the Holy Family, installed only a few months ago, was “mostly intact.”

The statue of the Holy Family is valued at $1,200, and the historic statue of the Blessed Virgin is valued up to $10,000. Neither statue had any graffiti on them, Fr. Dye noted.

CatholicVote’s Violence Tracker has documented more than 400 attacks and vandalisms against Catholic churches across the United States since May 2020.

LifeNews Note: McKenna Snow writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared. Photo credit: Dcn. Garlick, Chancellor (@HarrisonGarlic1) / Twitter

The post Vandal Destroys Statue of Virgin Mary, 249th Attack on a Catholic Church Since Dobbs Leak appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The former president is at risk of being slapped with a short sentence for contempt of court

The US Secret Service, which is tasked with protecting acting and former US presidents, is considering how to proceed if Donald Trump ends up behind bars, sources have told the New York Times.

On Tuesday, Judge Juan Merchan withheld a decision on whether to hold Trump in contempt of court over alleged gag order violations at his trial. The hearings relate to felony charges of falsifying business records to hide the reimbursement of a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

It is not immediately clear when Merchan will announce a ruling. The NYT stressed in an article on Tuesday that the judge is likely to issue a warning or impose a fine before taking the “extreme step” of jailing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee for a month at a holding cell in the courthouse.

Prosecutors, who claim that Trump attacked witnesses and other people associated with his case at least ten times on social media this month in violation of a gag order, are currently asking for a fine for the 77-year-old.

However, officials from the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies held a meeting last week, focused on how to move and protect Trump if the judge eventually orders him to be put in the court’s holding cell, two people familiar with the matter told the paper.

The issue of how to safely incarcerate the former president if the jury finds him guilty and he is sent to an actual prison “has yet to be addressed directly,” according to dozens of officials of various levels, who talked to the NYT. The paper stressed that if that happens, it will become a “daunting challenge” and a “logistical nightmare” for all agencies involved.

Trump, who is the first ever acting or former US president to go on trial, could face up to 136 years in prison as a result of four criminal cases against him.

According to the officials, if the former head of state is actually imprisoned, he would have to be held separately from other inmates, with all his food and other personal items undergoing screenings. In order to achieve this, a detail of agents would have to work 24/7, rotating in and out of the facility, they said. Firearms are strictly prohibited in US prisons, but those agents “would nonetheless be armed,” according to the sources.

READ MORE: Man dies after setting himself on fire outside Trump trial (GRAPHIC VIDEOS)

A spokesman for the Secret Service confirmed to the NYT that the agency guards former presidents, but declined to discuss any specific “protective operations.”

The threat of a major war in the Middle East has passed because Tehran has decided to bide its time

Iran has again threatened Israel with a harsh response to aggression by the Jewish state. Tehran's army and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will ensure those who cross red lines regret it, Deputy Chief of the Army for Coordination, Habibollah Sayyari has warned.

Israel, meanwhile, has refrained from speaking out against Tehran, instead focusing its political rhetoric on Hamas. In particular, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to increase military and political pressure on the Palestinian group in the near future, in order to motivate it to release hostages, the Times of Israel reports.

The good news is that there will be no Iran-Israel war. At least not at this stage.

Tehran has chosen not to react vociferously to the Israeli air force’s retaliatory strike, dismissing all reports of the destruction of the radar protecting the Natanz nuclear centre as 'Zionist intrigue'. The bottom line is that we have two air raids attributed to Israel and one very large Iranian strike. In the latter case, everything was official and the Islamic Republic can therefore claim an entry in the Guinness Book of Records with an article on the largest number of UAVs and ballistic missiles involved in a single offensive operation.

Incidentally, we do not know what the real effect of the large-scale attack was. Iran, like Israel, is carefully hides damage data. However, the political consequences of such events are far more important. And, as usual in the Middle East, a dozen seemingly unrelated problems have become intertwined. After the Iranian strike, for example, Western countries began to advise Israel not to react, though rumour has it that the Jewish State was negotiating for the right to launch a military operation in Rafah, the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza.

Then in the end, it lost patience and responded.

The Iranians had options. The Ayatollahs could have said that Israel had again crossed all the red lines. This would have led to further escalation, but might have protected Hamas. But Iran, for its own reasons, ignored the Palestinians and reported through the press that nothing serious had happened.

The reason for this peacefulness is probably that they envisaged a working alliance between Israel, Jordan and the Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf. This is precisely the nightmare that the Iranians have done their utmost to prevent. They even restored diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia in 2023. But apparently confrontation with the Shiites is more important to moderate Sunnis than dislike of the Jews.

According to military analysts, if the Israeli Air Force did attack Iranian air defences, it means that they probably flew over Jordan or the Arabian Peninsula, and it is unlikely that this was done without the consent of the Hashemite Kingdom or the Saudis. As a result, the military alliance is not only defensive, which means that virtually all of Iran’s proxies in the region, including Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, are at risk.

For now, however, this is all a hypothetical picture. A three-way alliance requires the normalisation of Israel's relations with Riyadh and, as part of the deal, the signing of a defence agreement with the US, as well as American-Israeli goodwill for the establishment of nuclear capability in Saudi Arabia. 

And all this has to happen before the end of June. Otherwise, Washington will not be able to get the relevant decisions through Congress because of the upcoming election. Obviously, the Iranians believe that further escalation will only accelerate the process described above. That is why they prefer to pretend that they are fighting for peace. The very peace for which no stone should be left unturned on this planet. But that will come later.

This article was first published by Kommersant, translated and edited by the RT team

The last few years can be tracked at two levels: the physical reality around us and the realm of the intellectual, mental, and psychological. 

The first level has presented a chaotic narrative of the previously unthinkable. A killer virus that turned out to be what many people said it was in February 2020: a bad flu with a known demographic risk best treated with known therapeutics. But that template and the ensuing campaign of fear and emergency rule gave rise to astonishing changes in our lives. 

Social functioning was wholly upended as schools, businesses, churches, and travel were ended by force. The entire population of the world was told to mask up, despite vast evidence that doing so achieved nothing in terms of stopping a respiratory virus. 

That was followed by a breathtaking propaganda campaign for a shot that failed to live up to its promise. The cure for the disease itself caused tremendous damage to health including death, a subject about which everyone cared intensely before the shot and then strangely forgot about after. 

Protests against the goings-on were met with media smears, shutdowns, and even the cancellation of bank accounts. However, and simultaneously, other forms of protest were encouraged, insofar as they were motivated by a more proper political agenda against structural injustices in the old system of law and order. That was a strange confluence of events, to say the least. 

In the midst of this, which was wild enough, came new forms of surveillance, censorship, corporate consolidation, an explosion of government spending and power, rampant and global inflation, and hot wars from long-running border conflicts in two crucial regions. 

The old Declarations of rules on the Internet put free speech as a first principle. Today, the hosting website of the most famous one, signed by Amnesty International and the ACLU, is gone, almost as if it never existed. In 2022, it came to be replaced by a White House Declaration on the Future of the Internet, that extols stakeholder control as the central principle. 

All the while, once-trusted sources of information – media, academia, think tanks – have steadfastly refused to report and respond in truthful ways, leading to a further loss of public trust not just in government and politics but also in everything else, including corporate tech and all the higher order sectors of the culture. 

Also part of this has been a political crisis in many nations, including the use of sketchy election strategies justified by epidemiologic emergency: the only safe way to vote (said the CDC) is absentee via the mails. Here we find one of many overlapping parallels to a scenario hardly ever imagined: infectious disease deployed as a cover for political manipulation. 

Crucially and ominously, all of these mind-blowing developments took place in roughly similar ways the world over, and with the same language and model. Everywhere people were told “We are all in this together,” and that social distancing, masking, and vaxxing was the correct way out. Media was also censored everywhere, while anti-lockdown protestors (or even those who simply wanted to worship together in peace) were treated not as dissidents to be tolerated but irresponsible spreaders of disease. 

Can we really pretend that all of this is normal, much less justified? The exhortation we receive daily is that we can and must. 

Really? At what point did you realize that you had to start thinking for yourself? 

We all have a different starting place and journey but each of us has the following in common. We’ve realized that official sources, the ones we’ve trusted in the past, are not going to make any sense of the above for us. We have to seek out alternatives and put the story together ourselves. And this we must do because the only other choice is to accept that all of the above consists of a random series of disconnected and pointless events, which is surely not true. 

That leads to the second layer of comprehension; the intellectual, mental, and psychological. Here is where we find the real drama and incalculable difficulties. 

At the dawn of lockdowns, what appeared to be a primitive public health error seemed to be taking place. It seemed like some scientists at the top, who gained an implausible amount of influence over government policy, had forgotten about natural immunity and were under the impression that it was good for health to stay home, be personally isolated, avoid exercise, and eat only takeout food. Surely such preposterous advice would be revealed soon as the nonsense it was. 

How in the world could they be so stupid? How did they gain so much influence, not just nationally but all over the world? Did the whole of humanity suddenly forget about all known science in every field from virology to economics to psychology? 

As time went on, more and more anomalies appeared that made that judgment seem naive. As it turns out, what was actually taking place had something to do with a move on the part of security and intelligence services. It was they who were given rule-making authority on March 13, 2020, and that’s why so much of what we needed to know was and is considered classified. 

There were early initial reports that the virus itself might have been leaked from a US-backed lab in Wuhan, which introduces the entire subject of the US bioweapons program. This is a very deep rabbit hole itself, thoroughly exposed in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s The Wuhan Cover-Up. There was a reason that topic was censored: it was all true. And as it turns out, the vaccine itself was able to bypass the normal approval process by slipping through under the cover of emergency. In effect, it came pre-approved by the military. 

As the evidence continues to roll in, more and more rabbit holes appear, thousands of them. Each has a name: Pharma, CCP, WHO, Big Tech, Big Media, CBDCs, WEF, Deep State, Great Reset, Censorship, FTX, CISA, EVs, Climate Change, DEI, BlackRock, and many more besides. Each of these subject areas has threads or thousands of them, each connecting to more and to each other. At this point, it is simply not possible for a single person to follow it all. 

To those of us who have been steeped in following the revelations day by day, and trying to keep up with putting them together into a coherent model of what happened to us, and what is still going on, the ominous reality is that the traditional understanding of rights, liberties, law, business, media, and science were dramatically overthrown in the course of just a few months and years. 

Nothing operates today as it did in 2019. It’s not just that functioning broke. It was broken and then replaced. And the surreptitious coup d’etat with no shots fired is still ongoing, even if that is not the headline. 

Of this fact, many of us today are certain. But how common is this knowledge? Is it a vague intuition held by many members of the public or is it known in more detail? There are no reliable polls. We are left to guess. If any of us in 2019 believed we had our finger on the pulse of the national mood or public opinion generally, we certainly do not anymore. 

Nor do we have access to the inner workings of government at the highest levels, much less the conversations going on among the winners of our age, the well-connected ruling elites who seemed to have gamed the entire system for their own benefit. 

It’s so much easier to regard the whole thing as a giant confusion or accident on grounds that only cranks and crazies believe in conspiracy theories. The trouble with that outlook is that it posits something even more implausible; that something this gigantic, far-reaching, and dramatic could have happened with no real intentionality or purpose or that it all fell together as a huge accident. 

Brownstone Institute has published more than 2,000 articles and 10 books exploring all over the above topics. Other venues and friends are out there helping us with this research and discovery, issue by issue. Even so, a great deal of responsibility falls on this one institution, the main work of which is providing support for dissident and displaced voices, which is implausible since it was only founded three years ago. We are deeply grateful for our supporters and would welcome you to join them.

As for the intellectuals we once revered for their curiosity and wisdom, most seem to have gone into hiding, either unable to adapt to the new realities or just unwilling to risk their careers by exploring hard topics. It’s understandable but still tragic. Most are happy to pretend like nothing happened or celebrate the change as nothing but progress. As for journalists, the New York Times publishes daily commentaries dismissing the Constitution as a dated anachronism that has to go and no one thinks much about it. 

There is a lot to sort out. So much has changed so quickly. No sooner than the dust seems to be settling from one upheaval, there is another and then another. Keeping up with it all causes a level of psychological brain scramble on a scale we’ve never previously experienced. 

It’s easier to wait for the historians to tell the next generation what happened. But maybe, just maybe, by stepping up and telling the story as we see it in real time, we can make a difference in stopping this madness and restoring some sane and normal freedom back to the world.

Reprinted with permission from Brownstone Institute.