Distinction Matter - Subscribed Feeds

  1. Site: The Unz Review
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Andrew Anglin
    This is hardly a big win. The UK just keeps trying to kick this can, while Julian continues to rot in prison. Reuters: That is indeed utterly bizarre. I assume it’s unprecedented as well. It’s clearly ridiculous to assert that the US would hold to any assurances they provide. The US lies about absolu
  2. Site: AntiWar.com
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Rick Sterling

    The book Gaza Writes Back is a collection of short stories from twenty young Gazans. Although published in 2013, the book is highly relevant today.  The stories reveal how the last five months is the culmination of a process which has been going on for decades. The title is curious: “Gaza Writes Back”.  Perhaps it … Continue reading "Gazans Tell What Its Like To Live Under the Israeli Siege"

    The post Gazans Tell What Its Like To Live Under the Israeli Siege appeared first on Antiwar.com.

  3. Site: AntiWar.com
    2 days 2 hours ago
    Author: Ariel Gold

    According to legend, the organization I lead, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, was founded in August 1914 when a British Quaker and a German Lutheran shook hands at a railway station in Cologne. With England on the cusp of joining World War I, they pledged, “We are one in Christ and can never be at war.” … Continue reading "Israel’s Conscientious Objectors Stand on the Shoulders of Giants"

    The post Israel’s Conscientious Objectors Stand on the Shoulders of Giants appeared first on Antiwar.com.

  4. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 3 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    China's 'Unrestricted Warfare': Is It Here Already?

    Authored by Pete Hoekstra via The Gatestone Institute,

    • China-linked hackers appear to be looking to attack U.S. infrastructure, especially key components such as the electrical grid, water reservoirs and treatment plants, pipelines, and transportation and communications systems, among other targets.

    • The goal is seemingly to disrupt the U.S. everything critical to life – if you have no electricity, your cellphone will not work; no water will come out of the tap; gas pumps will not pump gas; flights and trains will stop, and disease from disabled sewage treatment plants will spread. There will be havoc and panic. The government and military will be unable to protect the nation. That is what is meant by "unrestricted warfare." Not a bullet was fired. It did not have to be. According to Sun Tzu's The Art of War, it is perfect.

    • What are some of the steps that should be taken?

    • The West has correctly identified the CCP as the malign threat that it is; now we have a responsibility to put into place the measures and deterrents to prevent it from attacking us through cyberspace or any other way. Let us not wait until we experience a 9/11-scale cyberattack that could be far more damaging to the U.S. than what took place on that dark day more than 20 years ago.

    The West has correctly identified the Chinese Communist Party as the malign threat that it is; now we have a responsibility to put into place the measures and deterrents to prevent it from attacking us through cyberspace or any other way. Let us not wait until we experience a 9/11-scale cyberattack that could be far more damaging to the U.S. than what took place on that dark day more than 20 years ago. (Image source: iStock)

    If there is one thing FBI Director Christopher Wray has been consistent on, it is the threat of Communist China across a wide range of fronts. At an unprecedented event on July 6, 2022, Wray and his British counterpart, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum, held a joint public appearance – the first ever -- to discuss the growing security challenge posed by China. Evidently, they saw the matter as urgent.

    In this joint appearance, the two men highlighted the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the CCP's civil-military fusion state -- specifically, that the CCP is intent on acquiring and stealing technology and business secrets from the West. Targeted areas include advanced materials, data and artificial intelligence (AI). China's President Xi Jinping has made it clear that he intends China to not only catch-up to, but surpass, the West.

    More recently, Wray highlighted how the CCP and those affiliated with it apparently plan to use its technological capabilities to target the West.

    China-linked hackers appear to be looking to attack U.S. infrastructure, especially key components such as the electrical grid, water reservoirs and treatment plants, pipelines, and transportation and communications systems, among other targets.

    The goal is seemingly to disrupt the U.S. everything critical to life – if you have no electricity, your cellphone will not work; no water will come out of the tap; gas pumps will not pump gas; flights and trains will stop, and disease from disabled sewage treatment plants will spread. There will be havoc and panic. The government and military will be unable to protect the nation. That is what is meant by "unrestricted warfare." Not a bullet was fired. It did not have to be. According to Sun Tzu's The Art of War, it is perfect.

    Jen Easterly, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), testified before the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party that the threats posed by China are not imaginary: they are real. Her agency already has discovered CCP penetrations into the telecommunications industry, aviation, energy and water infrastructure. As the threat from China continues to grow, the global security environment requires the U.S. and our allies to act now to harden our infrastructure and systems to mitigate the threat.

    The problem is one of supreme urgency.

    No one knows who will win the U.S. presidential election on November 5. If I were head of the Chinese Communist Party, I would probably be saying to myself, "I am stuck with a weak economy, more than a billion people who will not be happy with that, and just more seven months with an American president who calls me a 'competitor,' as if the US-Chinese relationship were about EV car dealerships -- although that, too. What are my choices? a) Use this opportunity, which will soon be closing, to choke off Taiwan and take over the world's supply of semiconductor chips. If the U.S. tries to stop us, we could threaten them with mayhem or simply go ahead and make some. b) Instead of Taiwan, why not just go straight for the U.S. while it is bogged down in Ukraine, the Middle East and its election? Or c) We can wait and see who wins (with our help) and if it is the wrong person, we still have two-and-a-half months until the new president is inaugurated."

    What are some of the steps that should be taken?

    First, stop all investments in China and reroute essentials, such as the manufacture of medicines, to other nations. Any investment, even in paper cocktail umbrellas, goes toward strengthening the People's Liberation Army against us. We can hear the screeching of Wall Street and their Augustinian cry: "But not yet!" The threat, however, should be viewed in terms of national security. No one will ring a bell when the lights go out.

    The U.S. will also need to impose secondary sanctions, so that any country preferring to do business with China is prohibited from doing business with the U.S.

    In addition, China -- for poisoning to death roughly 100,000 Americans each year with fentanyl and other opiates, a mass-murder equivalent to one large plane crash every day -- should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism. China should also be barred from using the international banking system, or SWIFT, "a secure network that allows more than 10,000 financial institutions in 212 different countries to send and receive information about financial transactions to each other."

    Second, companies and universities also need to get serious about their security systems to make the theft of intellectual property more difficult to perpetrate but easier to detect. We cannot allow our enemies to short-circuit the difficult and expensive process of technological innovation by simply walking out the door with the plans.

    This precaution, sadly, would do well to include a moratorium, at least for the time being, on students from Communist China attending U.S. universities. Again, there will be more screeching from academic institutions that are fond of holding out their tin cups, but are we really interested in educating our "competitors" to take us over or kill us?

    Third, the U.S. needs to cooperate with its allies to protect the intellectual property and technological advances of our countries' respective corporations as a national security priority. One excellent example where this cooperation has been successful is between the U.S. and the Netherlands. The governments of the two countries have worked together closely to protect against technology transfer to the CCP. While each country has the decision as to its own trade policies, sharing intelligence and threat assessments enables both countries to make better decisions regarding joint security concerns.

    Fourth, companies must be willing to notify the government if their systems have been attacked or compromised by outside entities. Under current law, publicly-traded companies have four days to report a cyber incident to regulators. Businesses sometimes have been understandably reluctant to acknowledge that their systems have been compromised: there is the risk of reputational damage and unpleasant repercussions. Organizations, however, need to be confident that sharing this information with the government will only be used to help address the specific incident. Tragically, our government has not quite been doing all it can to inspire trust. There might be some extremely unpleasant repercussions from that.

    Finally, there must be a coordinated strategy between our national, state and local governments on the CCP threat, including prime examples of where this system has failed, as in the production of EV batteries in the U.S. by CCP firms; the CCP buying up American farmland, especially near military bases, and the government's failure to hold the CCP to account for its lies about COVID's human-to-human transmissibility, which caused the unnecessary deaths of more than a million Americans, and the CCP's mass-poisoning of Americans with fentanyl, which in itself is an act of war.

    While the federal government has warned "that Chinese EVs could collect your data and send it back to China," states and local governments are welcoming Chinese EV battery manufacturing plants into their communities, frequently with massive government subsidies. This lack of coordination is a serious vulnerability in our national security posture.

    Wray and McCallum were correct in highlighting the threat from the CCP in 2022. Wray has reemphasized the growing threat.

    The evidence is clear, and the time has come for our elected leaders and public servants — at all levels of government — to respond in a coordinated fashion to this threat.

    The West has correctly identified the CCP as the malign threat that it is; now we have a responsibility to put into place the measures and deterrents to prevent it from attacking us through cyberspace or any other way. Let us not wait until we experience a 9/11-scale cyberattack that could be far more damaging to the U.S. than what took place on that dark day more than 20 years ago.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 23:40
  5. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 3 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Which Countries Are Really The Richest?

    Ranking countries by the size of their economies and their overall net wealth, the U.S. is usually at the top of the list, followed by countries like China, Japan or Germany.

    But, as Statista's Katharina Buchholz details below, sorting countries for their per-capita average wealth – or even for their median per-capita wealth – other countries come out on top.

    Using the two metrics, Switzerland was the richest country in the world with the highest average per-capita wealth of around US$685,000 per adult.

    Looking at median per-capita wealth - the wealth of the person that shares their country with an equal number of richer and poorer people - Iceland tops the ranking with around $413,000 in wealth being held by this (imaginary) person.

     Which Countries Are Really the Richest? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Per-capita assets arguably show a more balanced picture of a country’s wealth by acknowledging that smaller countries with less citizens will of course accumulate less wealth in total.

    Yet, calculating averages does not take into account how wealth is distributed in a society.

    Median wealth, on the other hand, increases the more equal a country’s assets are allocated. Iceland and other Scandinavian countries are known for their more equal wealth distribution and data by Credit Suisse reflects this to a degree. Denmark comes in rank 7 and Norway in rank 10 for per-capita median wealth.

    The U.S. is the third-wealthiest country on a per-capita average basis, yet Americans are only in rank 15 for median wealth.

    The situation in Belgium is the other way round: It is listed 13th for average wealth, but third for median wealth, showing that it is a more egalitarian country in terms of wealth distribution.

    Looking at the size of the gap between mean and median wealth, the U.S. comes in rank 7 with an average wealth more than five times or 512% as high as the median wealth. This is exceeded by no major country in the world except Brazil, where this number stands at 517%.

    Some of the smallest relative gaps between mean and median wealth were registered in the countries topping the median wealth list: Iceland, Luxembourg and Belgium. Other countries which might not have the highest mean wealth rates but do have some of the smallest gaps are Eastern European nations Slovakia and Slovenia. Poorer countries which nevertheless have big gaps between average and median wealth include the aforementioned Brazil as well as South Africa, Russia and Nigeria.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 23:20
  6. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 3 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    New Details Emerge In Death Of Sen. McConnell's Sister-In-Law

    Authored by Steve Ispas and Lear Zhou via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Angela Chao, the sister-in-law of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), died on Feb. 11 after backing her vehicle into a pond.

    Angela Chao, CEO and chair of her family's shipping business, the Foremost Group, in this undated photo. (Courtesy of Foremost Group via AP)

    More details have since emerged, including that Ms. Chao was on the phone with a friend for eight minutes after her car hit the pond and was sinking, according to the Blanco County Sheriff’s incident report obtained by The Epoch Times.

    The report also revealed Ms. Chao had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.233 percent, almost three times higher than the legal threshold of 0.08 percent for driving in Texas.

    Ms. Chao, 50, was CEO of the U.S.-based family business, Foremost Group, and a previous top executive for a Chinese shipping giant and board member of China’s World Bank.

    On February 10, Ms. Chao and seven female friends—many with home addresses in New York—had gathered for dinner and drinks at the guest lodge located on Ms. Chao’s private ranch, JW Ranch, in Blanco County, Texas.

    “They had good conversation throughout the night and all were in good spirits,” the incident report states, according to statements from those present.

    As the evening wrapped up, Ms. Chao decided to drive to the main lodge rather than take the short walk from the guest house.

    Security cameras on the exterior of the lodge captured the moment Ms. Chao drove her car into the pond, according to two videos from different angles that were provided to investigators by the property manager.

    The video from the south side camera shows Ms. Chao come into view alone at 11:37:02 p.m. as she “continues to walk unsteadily to her vehicle while continuing to hold her cellular phone in her right hand,” the police report states.

    At 11:38:06 p.m. the vehicle lurches forward toward a wooden barrier, then reverses to the left and over the top of a limestone block wall, entering the water at 11:38:15 p.m.

    The video from the west side camera showed the vehicle floating and spinning after entering water, at 11:41:52 pm the headlight disappears and reappears at 11:42:37 pm.

    The report says at approximately 11:42 pm, Ms. Chao’s friend Amber Landeau-Keinan received a telephone call from Ms. Chao, who told her “in a calm voice” that she was in the “lake,” which was a stock tank, or pond, near the guest house.

    Ms. Chao said she had put the car, a 2020 Tesla model X SUV, in reverse instead of drive while making a three-point turn.

    A Tesla Model X is displayed during an event in Indian Wells, Calif., on March 5, 2018. (Rich Fury/Getty Images for AYS Sports Marketing)

    At the time, Ms. Landeau-Keinan was in bed, and as she remained on the phone with Ms. Chao, she got dressed, and knocked on Heela Tsuzuki’s door who was in the next room, to inform her that Ms. Chao was in the pond, the report states.

    The west side camera captures Ms. Landeau-Keinan rushing outside to look for the vehicle at 11:43:21 p.m., while on the phone with Ms. Chao.

    She told Ms. Chao to get out of the vehicle after Ms. Chao said her feet were under water.

    Ms. Chao informs Ms. Landeau-Keinan she’s not able to get out of the vehicle, the report states. Ms. Chao told Landeau-Keinan the water was rising and she was going to die and said “I love you” prior to the vehicle submerging, the report states.

    Another friend, Victoria Garcia, got into the water and swam to the vehicle, while Ms. Landeau-Keinan got into a kayak and paddled toward the vehicle.

    Ms. Tsuzuki notified others about the incident. She tried multiple times to find the ranch manager, Michael Galster and his wife Hill, for assistance, and called 911 but she couldn’t provide the exact location due to a poor carrier signal.

    Call records from AT&T per a subpoena recorded the time of the first 911 call at 11:47:59 p.m., the police report notes.

    The next 911 call, that provided the location, was made at 11:52:53 pm, and by this time Mr. Galster had been located.

    Dispatch called a rescue team at 11:53.04 p.m., and two sheriff’s deputies arrived at the scene at 12:10 a.m.

    When Blanco County Sheriff’s deputy Ryan Bible arrived, he saw the manager standing on top of the “fully submerged vehicle located in the [stock] tank about 25 yards from the north bank,” and “a female in a red dress on a kayak paddling toward the shore,” according to his statement.

    When the medic team arrived at 12:12 a.m., Mr. Bible and deputy Randall Mathew entered the water trying to locate the entrapped Ms. Chao.

    Mr. Galster told them the back passenger door of the vehicle was open, and the two deputies attempted multiple times to get to Ms. Chao through that door but were unable to.

    During our time in the water there were several females screaming at us frantically on the bank.” Mr. Bible wrote in his statement.

    Mr. Bible swam back to shore to retrieve a breaker bar and tried to break the windshield but failed. With the help of two medics, he eventually broke the driver’s side window.

    Once the window was busted I swam down and felt a hand.” Mr. Bible said.

    “Medic Ben Collie then was able to pull the hand out from the vehicle and we were then able to extract the female from the vehicle,” he wrote.

    Ms. Chao was out of the water at 12:56 a.m., 1 hour and 8 minutes after the car plunged into the pond. She was pronounced dead at 1:40 a.m.

    Lt. Adam Acosta, an investigator with the Sheriff’s Office, telephoned Ms. Chao’s husband, Jim Breyer, about the incident.

    Jim Breyer and Angela Chao attend an awards luncheon in Los Angeles on Jan. 12, 2024. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

    “Breyer informed me for religious reasons they didn’t want an autopsy conducted.” Mr. Acosta wrote.

    “This is not an uncommon request from family.”

    Texas Rangers and FBI agents met with the Blanco County Sheriff’s Office on February 15, according to the report.

    After viewing everything they [Texas Rangers and the FBI] felt this incident was nothing more than an unfortunate accident.” the report concluded.

    However, the case remained open until the toxicology report and telephone records for Keinan and Tsuzuki were obtained, stated the report, which was released on March 20.

    The vehicle was pulled from the pond the night of the accident and released back to the ranch manager later the same day.

    About Angela Chao

    Ms. Chao has five sisters, one of whom, Elaine Chao, is married to Mr. McConnell. Ms. Elaine Chao was Secretary of Transportation in the Trump administration.

    Ms. Chao and her husband, who were married in 2012, both have extensive ties to China. Both are Harvard alumni and Mr. Breyer also attended Stanford.

    Mr. Breyer is a venture capitalist and longtime investor in China via his company Breyer Capital and as the former co-chair of Beijing-based IDG Capital.

    Ms. Chao was one of six independent board members of the Bank of China from Jan. 4, 2017, to June 30, 2022.

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, stand in the Old Senate Chambers at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 3, 2021. (Samuel Corum/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

    “The re-election of Chao as an independent non-executive board member of the bank will help the board to improve its ability to analyze and judge the international situation,” states a document from the bank’s 2018 shareholders meeting.

    The Bank of China has 14 board members; Four executive members, four non-executive members, and six independent members, according to an official document.

    The Bank of China is managed and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with most members on the board also members of the CCP. During her tenure, Ms. Chao was the only board member outside of China.

    From May 2009 to June 2011, Ms. Chao was also a board member of state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), which builds ships for the People’s Liberation Army and Navy.

    The United Steelworkers Union and several other unions filed a petition on March 12 with the United States Trade Representative to investigate China’s maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding sector, including CSSC.

    Mr. Breyer has invested heavily in China for many years.

    As co-chair of IDG Capital from 2005 to January 2019, Mr. Breyer helped expand the company and invest in significant Chinese companies.

    IDG touts itself as “the first global investment firm to enter China” on LinkedIn. “IDG Capital has funded more than half of all Chinese unicorns in early rounds.”

    A pedestrian walks past the People's Bank of China, also known as China's Central Bank, in Beijing on Aug. 22, 2007. (Teh Eng Koon/AFP via Getty Images)

    A report from the U.S. China Commission calls IDG’s investment track record in China “legendary.”

    According to the report, IDG’s China investments include Qihoo 360, which has been flagged by the U.S. Department of Commerce for “activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”

    Other companies, such as ASR Microelectronics contribute to military-civil fusion programs in China.

    According to the U.S. State Department, military-civil fusion is an aggressive strategy that the CCP uses to develop a first-class military by removing barriers between civilian and commercial sectors and its military. The State Department says the CCP gains ground in this strategy by also “acquiring and diverting the world’s cutting-edge technologies—including through theft—in order to achieve military dominance.”

    Mr. Breyer also sits as a member of an independent task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank.

    The task force is assembled to “assess issues of critical importance to U.S. foreign policy,” according to the website.

    “Task Force members aim to reach a meaningful consensus on policy.”

    In a 2022 interview with Techcrunch, Mr. Breyer said he has been very happy to invest in China over the past 16 years, “and I fully am passionate about continuing that for many years.”

    Mr. Breyer was chairman of the advisory committee of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management until 2021.

    “I’m involved with the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management Advisory Board, which is really a wonderful who’s-who list of American executives. I was the chair until a year ago, and Tim Cook is now the chair,” he told Techcrunch.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 23:00
  7. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 4 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Gov. Al Smith And The Anti-Trump Republicans: Gingrich

    Authored by Newt Gingrich via RealClear Politics,

    As I’ve watched some of President Donald Trump’s former appointees and allies say they can’t support him in 2024, I was reminded of a similar scenario in American history. 

    In 1936, Former New York Gov. Al Smith decided that he could not support President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s re-election.

    Smith was a popular reform Democrat who had been elected Governor of New York four times. In 1928, he became the first Catholic ever nominated for President by a major party. To strengthen his campaign, Smith convinced Roosevelt, who was then recovering from polio at Warm Springs, Georgia, to come back and run for governor. Smith lost the presidential race to Herbert Hoover, but Roosevelt became Governor of New York.

    When Roosevelt’s New Deal embraced government activism, powerful measures of intervening in the economy, and creating government programs for the poor and unemployed, Smith was alienated. He had been part of the eastern conservative wing of the Democratic Party, which had fought against William Jennings Bryan and his western populism.

    Gov. Smith was closer to the business establishment than to radical college professors.

    Finally, Smith could no longer support the man he had previously recruited. On Jan. 26, 1936, Smith said at the American Liberty League Dinner:

    I must make a confession. It is not easy for me to stand up here tonight and talk to the American people against the Democratic administration. This is not easy. It hurts me. But I can call upon innumerable witnesses to testify to the fact that during my whole public life I put patriotism above partisanship. And when I see danger – I say ‘danger,’ that is, the ‘Stop, look, and listen’ to the fundamental principles upon which this government of ours was organized – it is difficult for me to refrain from speaking up.”

    Despite Smith’s defection, the Roosevelt New Deal coalition was massive (Roosevelt defeated Republican Kansas Gov. Alf Landon by 523 electoral votes and received 60.8 percent of the vote). Landon carried only Maine and Vermont.

    I tell that story to say this: The anti-Trump Republicans resemble the anti-Roosevelt Democrats of 1936. They yearn for a party which has disappeared. They advocate policies which are no longer realistic or viable. They are repelled by President Trump’s aggressive style and his dramatic shifts in policy.

    They are rapidly becoming a fossilized reminder of a party which no longer exists – and wants to operate in a world which no longer exists.

    Some have begun to harken back to the President Ronald Reagan years as a golden time. They wish the GOP could return to them. It is impossible to return to the 1980s, because the world has changed. The problems have changed. The politics have changed. And the institutions are sicker and more destructive than they were under Reagan.

    I first spent time with then Gov. Reagan in 1974. I worked to create the first Capitol Steps event – and really the first Contract with America – for candidate Reagan in 1980. For eight years, I served in the House as an active ally of President Reagan on nearly every issue. President Reagan was bold in his visionary approach but careful and cautious in taking risks. While he said the ultimate outcome of the Cold War would be “we win they lose,” he did not risk military confrontation with the Soviet Union.

    Reagan would have been appalled at a 22-year war in Afghanistan, which the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs admitted this week was a strategic defeat.

    Reagan warned in his farewell address that we were losing ground to a cultural effort to undermine our history, destroy the spirit of patriotism and eliminate learning what it meant to be an American. He would be much bolder and more radical today – faced with collapsing inner-city schools and radical anti-Americanism on college campuses. The Gov. Reagan who took on the counterculture at Berkeley was a much tougher and more intense opponent than the Morning in America Reagan from the 1984 campaign.

    People who object to President Trump’s aggressiveness and hide behind a sanitized, phony memory of Reagan forget that it was Governor Reagan who said of the Berkeley protests, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with, no more appeasement.”

    As Matthew Continetti recently wrote for the National Review, “If Donald Trump is elected president in November, he will have assembled a coalition unlike any Republican nominee in my lifetime.”

    Citing research from the American Enterprise Institute, Continetti pointed out that President Trump’s favorability is growing. His popularity is now at the highest points since he left office, and he is making steady gains with white and black Americans – and big gains with Hispanic Americans.

    Continetti captured the current challenge for the anti-Trump Republicans: “We aren't used to a politics where the party of the ‘Left’ represents the establishment, and the party of the ‘Right’ represents an insurgent movement against the settled way of doing things.”

    In short, traditional Republicans who wanted to be part of the establishment are being alienated by new Republicans who want to change that establishment.

    The traditional Republican leadership (largely the Bush wing of the party) came from Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and had similar pedigrees. They see themselves as governing within the right wing of the old order. They are naturally repelled by the boisterous, noisy emergence of a working-class Republican movement which includes Latinos, African Americans, and blue collar whites. It doesn’t help that the new Republicans want to shatter the old order – not join it.

    Think of the anti-Trump Republicans as the Al Smith branch of the GOP. Their complaints will tell you more about them than President Trump – and they will also lose.

    For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also, subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 22:20
  8. Site: 4Christum
    2 days 4 hours ago
  9. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 5 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Chicago Board Of Elections 'Mistakenly' Left Out Over 9,000 Mail-In Ballots In Primary Election

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

    A Chicago Board of Elections official said Sunday that he had “mistakenly” left out over 9,000 mail-in ballots from one of the races in last week’s Illinois state primary election, sparking renewed scrutiny around voting by mail in the run-up to the November presidential election.

    “In adding up the total number of Vote By Mail ballots the Board had received back so far, I mistakenly left out additional ballots” that came in by mail on the evening of March 18, a day prior to Election Day, according to a March 23 statement by Max Bever, Director of Public Information at the Chicago Board of Elections.

    The race in which the apparent tabulation error took place is between two Democrat candidates for state’s attorney in Chicago’s Cook County, Eileen O’Neill Burke and Clayton Harris III.

    A voter at a voting location at the Humboldt Park Branch of the Chicago Public Library in Chicago, Illinois, on March 19, 2024 (Nathan Worcester/The Epoch Times).

    Ms. O'Neill Burke, a former appellate judge who trails by roughly 14,000 votes, is widely seen as the more tough-on-crime candidate of the two.

    We should be booming, and we’re not because of crime,” Ms. O’Neill Burke told The Associated Press. “This is something we can fix.”

    Mr. Harris, a professor and former prosecutor who’s the more progressive candidate of the two, has said punishments should consider racial disparities.

    The Chicago race is open because the current State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who faced criticism for being soft on crime, declined to run a third time.

    ‘I Traded Speed for Accuracy’

    One of the campaign issues in the Cook County state’s attorney race has been the future of Ms. Foxx’s controversial policy not to prosecute retail theft as a felony if the value of the stolen goods is below $1,000.

    Ms. O'Neill Burke has been critical of the policy.

    It doesn’t deter crime, it promotes it,” she said.

    By contrast, Mr. Harris has vowed to keep it in place, if elected.

    “If someone came and took my cellphone, is that cellphone worth a felony on your record? I do not think so,” he told AP. “We look at recidivism. We charge everyone appropriately.”

    The Cook County state’s attorney’s office is the second largest in the country, after Los Angeles.

    Mr. Bever said in a March 24 update that the attorneys for both candidates met earlier that day and agreed that ballot counting and ballot signature verification would continue through Sunday, with poll watchers present.

    He said that election judges would be processing and counting roughly 13,086 mail-in ballots that had already been reviewed for timeliness, signature verification, and voter histories, with the vast majority of these received back via drop box on Election Day (March 19).

    Around 9,000 of these hadn’t been counted in the initial tally, with Mr. Bever providing an update on the fate of the initially missing ballots.

    “I made an error in reporting the number of Vote By Mail ballots received back on Monday, March 18 before Election Day that should have been included in the ‘received by Election Day’ numbers,” Mr. Bever said in the March 24 update.

    Approximately 9,143 Vote By Mail additional ballots received back on Monday should have been included in this ‘received by Election Day’ number that would be processed and counted after Election Day, March 19,” he continued.

    The elections official said that the missing ballots had been secured in a receiving cage until they could be processed by scanning machines for signature verification and to rule out possible double-voting.

    He added that the missing ballots were inspected, processed, and counted by election judges between March 22 and March 23, and are already reflected in the unofficial results.

    Preliminary results, as of 6 p.m. on March 24, show Mr. Harris in the lead with 164,371 votes (52.14 percent) and Ms. O'Neill Burke trailing with 150,900 votes (47.86 percent).

    The final tally could still change as the counting period lasts through April 2, with official results to be announced on April 9.

    ‘Sounds Fishy’

    The incident drew scrutiny and criticism on social media, where a report about it was shared by the End Wokeness account, which pointed out that many of the ballots were from dropboxes, where postmarks aren’t required.

    “Sounds fishy,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to the post.

    Mail in dropbox elections are a joke,” the KanekoaTheGreat account, which has over 750,000 followers, posted.

    “Chicago keeps having more problems. There’s no way to have confidence in election results when ballots are ‘found’ later,” internet personality and former candidate for the U.S. Senate, Paul Szypula, said in a post on X.

    “Drop boxes also are sketchy and just invite cheating and mistakes. Democrat-run elections are rife with fraud and we see it happening more and more,” he added.

    Voting by mail has been the subject of increased scrutiny and criticism following the 2020 presidential election, which former President Donald Trump claims was marred by irregularities and fraud that he says cost him a win.

    A recent study exploring the likely impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots had in the 2020 election found that the outcome would “almost certainly” have been different without the massive expansion of absentee ballots.

    The study was based on data obtained from a Heartland/Rasmussen survey conducted in December 2023, which revealed that roughly one in five mail-in voters, or 20 percent, admitted to actions that could be potentially fraudulent in the presidential election.

    After the researchers carried out additional analyses of the raw data, they concluded that there was a higher percentage of fraudulent mail-in ballots. They now believe that 28.2 percent of people who voted by mail in 2020 committed at least one type of behavior that is, “under most circumstances, illegal,” and so potentially amounts to voter fraud.

    A Heartland Institute research editor and research fellow who was involved in the study explained to The Epoch Times that there are narrow exceptions where a surveyed behavior may be legal, like filling out a mail-in ballot on behalf of another voter if that person is blind, illiterate, or disabled, and needs assistance.

    However, research fellow Jack McPherrin said such cases were within the margin of error and not statistically significant.

    The new study found that, absent the huge expansion of mail-in ballots during the pandemic, President Trump would most likely have won.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 21:00
  10. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 6 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Home-Flipping Plummets As Profits Slump

    By Michael Tucker of the Mortgage Bankers Association

    Home flipping fell nearly 30% in 2023 compared to the year before, according to ATTOM.

    The ATTOM year-end 2023 U.S. Home Flipping Report said 308,922 single-family homes and condos in the United States were flipped last year, down 29.3% from 436,807 in 2022 and the largest annual drop since 2008.

    “In 2023, the landscape for home flipping across the U.S. became increasingly challenging,” ATTOM CEO Rob Barber said. “Whether the overall market has soared or seen just modest gains in recent years, investors have missed out on the action.”

    Barber added that the sharp decline in the number of home flips likely reflected a combination of a tight supply of homes for sale as well as dwindling returns. “Either way, it will take some significant reworking of the financials for home flipping fortunes to turn back around,” he said.

    The report also revealed that as the number of homes flipped by investors declined, so did flips as a portion of all home sales, from 8.6% in 2022 to 8.1 percent last year.

    In another sign of down times for the home-flipping industry, profits and profit margins also sank on quick “buy-renovate-and-resell” projects. Gross profits on typical home flips in 2023 dropped to $66,000 nationwide (the difference between the median sales price and the median amount originally paid by investors). That was down from $70,100 in 2022 and translated into just a 27.5 percent return on investment compared to the original acquisition price.

    The latest nationwide ROI (before accounting for mortgage interest, property taxes, renovation expenses and other holding costs) was down from 28.1 percent in 2022 and 35.7 percent in 2021, ATTOM said; the worst level since 2007.

    Investors saw their profit margins decrease for the sixth time in the past seven years as the median price of the homes they flipped dipped slightly faster than the median price they had paid to purchase properties – 4.4 percent versus 4 percent.

    Nationally, the percentage of flipped homes originally purchased by investors with financing increased in 2023 to 36.5%, up from 35.7% in 2022 and from 36.2% in 2021, ATTOM said. Meanwhile, 63.5 percent of homes flipped in 2023 were originally bought with cash only, down from 64.3 percent in 2022 and from 63.8 percent two years earlier.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 20:20
  11. Site: Public Discourse
    2 days 6 hours ago
    Author: John F. Doherty

    In its Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, the Catholic Church gave its answer to the question whether the force of civil law may make baptized Christians, or anyone, conform to Catholic teaching.

    In the Middle Ages, many bishops endorsed such means, including the execution of heretics and bloody religious warfare. More recently, and in keeping with the more ancient view of the Church, popes have taught forcefully that, although temporal government must acknowledge God’s supreme authority over human affairs, it is not its place to enforce prohibitions of sins beyond murder, theft, and other crimes against the natural law.

    Dignitatis Humanae took the latter position. It reaffirmed that the “unique true Religion subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church,” and that every person and society is bound to seek truth “and once it is known, to embrace and keep it.” Nevertheless, it pointed out that “the truth does not impose itself otherwise [than] by the force of the truth itself” on “the conscience of men.” Therefore, “for a public authority, through force or fear or other means to impose on citizens the profession or rejection of any religion, or to impede anyone from entering or leaving a religious community” is, in the original Latin, nefas or “absolutely forbidden,” as the official English translation of canon law translates the word. (Canon law applies the word nefas to certain especially grave sins, such as a priest’s divulging publicly a penitent’s confession or his consecrating the Eucharist outside the Mass.)

    Much ink has been spilled over the Declaration’s philosophical argument. But perhaps more interesting, and compelling, is its argument from the deeds and words of the founder of Christianity himself. Anyone who has studied the Gospels—or read any of the many popular commentaries on them—cannot but conclude that Jesus intended to build his kingdom only, as Dignitatis Humanae says, “by witnessing to the truth” and “by the love whereby [he], lifted up on the cross, draws all men to Himself.”

    Few instances in Jesus’ life exemplify his rejection of the use of force, even against those who break faith, than his treatment of the greatest apostate from Christianity, Judas, whose betrayal Christians traditionally remember today. That pivotal drama of the Gospels has much to teach us about the Christian understanding of religious freedom.

    The Suffering Servant

    Throughout his life, Jesus refused to present his Church as a kingdom like those of the earth. He distinguished the “things of God” from the “things of Caesar.” At his trial he told the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” When the people tried to proclaim him king after he miraculously multiplied bread and fish, he fled and hid himself.

    He let himself be publicly called “king” only as he hung dying on the Cross, under a sign that read, “The King of the Jews.” The model of kingship he gave his Church on earth—in the age before his Second Coming—was not of glory and triumph, but of the prophet Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. Jesus, seeking to fulfill Israel’s calling to redeem the world through suffering, said he came “not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

    That Christians throughout history have found it difficult to accept their master’s rejection of earthly kingship is no surprise. It was a struggle even for those with whom he lived.

    At the time of Jesus’ public ministry, his own Jewish people had been living for seventy-five years under Roman rule—the latest in a long history of humiliating foreign occupations. Many were eager to throw off pagan rule for good. The Galilean rabbi’s miracles, teaching, and power over the minds and hearts of the masses, suggested he might be the promised Messiah, the one to lead Israel’s armies to victory over the kingdoms of the world.

    His own chosen Apostles shared this hope. During their journey to Jerusalem before his death, James and John urged their teacher to destroy by fire the heretical Samaritans who refused to receive him—and he rebuked them. At the Last Supper the Apostles fought over which of them would be greatest in the coming kingdom, and their leader reminded them that true power is shown in humble service.

    The Traitor

    Most of the Apostles loved their master more than their dreams of earthly glory; they never thought of abandoning him for the more politically ambitious parties of Israel. But Judas was different. Perhaps more savvy than the others, he became disillusioned with Jesus’ non-political message and decided he wanted out. Probably wanting recompense for the years he had given to the Nazarene’s cause, apparently to no use, he made a deal with the authorities who feared Jesus’ influence over the people: for a price, Judas would show them where to find their quarry, apart from the crowds who would have fought off his arrest.

    Christians believe that the man they call Christ, being the omniscient God, could tell the moment when Judas had begun to turn down the road to sin; but Jesus did not expel him then, or publicly single him out. He warned Judas by declaring to the Apostles, “Have I not chosen you all, and yet one of you is a devil?”—a statement too general to raise suspicions against any particular person, but enough to prick the guilty man’s conscience. Even when Judas was about to leave the Last Supper to round up the guards for the arrest, Jesus simply said, “What you are going to do, do quickly,” and none of the Apostles suspected anything. The approach of the creator of the Christian faith to this man, who eventually became the greatest of infidels, was not to threaten him, but to draw him away from evil through the power of truth over his heart, and by appeal to their friendship. Although he had power over this small-minded man’s very being, he left him free, to win him through love.

    At the fatal moment in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Master and his Apostle met for the last time, in front of the other Apostles and the soldiers who had come for the arrest. Jesus tried to get Judas to reconsider, saying ambiguously “For what have you come?” to offer a way out of the sin his disciple was about to commit. Even at that late stage Judas could have gone back on his agreement with the authorities, returned to his teacher, and escaped the certain vengeance of the accompanying mob. After all, Israel’s most talented preacher in centuries had already shown his ability to get himself and his friends out of such difficult situations. Once before he had pacified guards sent to arrest him in the Temple, speaking words so profound that those men, rough as they were, said, “No man has spoken that way before.”

    But Judas did not change course. And when his betrayal was done—by kissing the man he once called “Rabbi” to point him out in the dark—Jesus finally spoke plainly. Even then he did not condemn, but still appealed to Judas’s conscience, now calling him to repent, by drawing attention to the profound evil of what he had done: “Do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?”

    Alas, a few hours later Judas took the path from which Jesus wanted to save him. Crushed by unimaginable guilt, he hanged himself, and his name became a synonym for “traitor” to this day. Had he not despaired of God’s love for him—had he waited until Jesus’ Resurrection and begged his pardon—his master would have forgiven him, and Judas might instead have become known as the Apostle of the Mercy of God, history’s greatest witness to the truth that God can absolve even the greatest sins.

    The Scandal of the Sword

    Judas was not the only Apostle through whom the Church’s founder, on that dark night, was to teach the world the nature of his rule.

    Simon Peter was one of the most enthusiastic and loyal Apostles. Repeatedly and sincerely he professed his love for his Lord, with a fidelity so strong that Jesus named him “rock.” He chose Peter as the foundation of his Church, praying that his faith would never fail.

    Doubtless driven by his enthusiasm, and taken by surprise at Judas’s desertion, Peter tried to fight off Jesus’ arrest. He took out a sword and began to swing furiously in the dark, cutting off the ear of the high priest’s servant.

    But now, the man who once said, “Before Abraham came to be, I AM,” having allowed those he claimed as his creatures to do with him as they wished, uncharacteristically began to assert visible control over them. By a mere word he stopped the incipient mêlée and rebuked Peter: “Turn your sword back into its place; for all that take up the sword shall be destroyed in the sword.” And to remind Peter that he knew what he was doing, and that he had means stronger than man’s weapons of war, he added, “Or do you not think that I can call upon my Father, and he will give me right now more than twelve legions of angels?”

    Then he reattached the wounded servant’s ear. This act, too, was uncharacteristic, even unprecedented: it was the first time he healed someone who ostensibly had no faith in him—who indeed was bent on undoing him. It was also the last recorded healing miracle of his earthly life.

    Jesus was taking extraordinary measures to demonstrate how scandalous Peter’s behavior was. He had to make sure, for the sake of all future generations, to condemn the action of the man whom he had entrusted with tending his flock. It was a reprise of the chastisement he had spoken long before (after Peter had himself chastised his master for predicting his crucifixion): “Get behind me Satan, for you are an obstacle to me: you are thinking about things not as God does but as men do.”

    Peter and the other Apostles learned the lesson. After Jesus departed this world, they too eschewed the sword and all other political means to the Church’s spiritual ends. Like their master, they spread the Gospel by their example of charity and their preaching. They evaded the wrath of their persecutors for as long as they could, but eventually their opponents got hold of them. Then, when death was inevitable, rather than fight back they accepted martyrdom as their Lord had. It was their blood freely shed, and the blood of the martyrs who followed them—not political power—that sowed the seeds of faith in the world and, over time, converted millions to Christianity. 

    The early Church that the Apostles oversaw knew apostates and sinners in her midst; yet she did not seek to punish them by means of the state. The Church expelled them from membership if their offenses were especially grave and public, but in the hope that they would come around freely to repentance.

    Sadly, many of the Apostles’ successors in the Middle Ages forgot the lesson of the ancient Church’s experience. Like Peter in Gethsemane, they called upon the state’s sword to punish those who, like Judas, had betrayed their faith in their Lord. The consequence of their policies was the same as of Peter’s rashness: the least culpable among the opponents of the Church, like the lowly servant, suffered most. And they, like the servant, suffered by losing their hearing––not the power to hear sound, but to hear the Word of God: they could not trust the preachers of that Word who sanctioned violence against them in God’s name. Thankfully, God’s grace can make up for his ministers’ sins, as Jesus healed the servant’s ear; but nevertheless, woe to them through whom such scandal comes.

    God’s kingdom is not a kingdom of this world. It is a kingdom of the heart, whose law is the perfect law: the law of freedom.

     

    To Conquer by Dying

    Today, the man whom Christians call king would have us be convinced that God seeks not power over us, which he always has, but our love, which we ourselves must freely give. He will not force us to come to him, nor force us to stay. Once we have let him into our hearts, he prefers to leave himself helpless in our hands, even if he runs the risk of being hurt by our infidelity. Indeed, precisely when they suffer evil against themselves do Jesus and his followers conquer it, passing through death to an eternal, triumphant Resurrection.

    This has been the message of the Gospel from the beginning. If we cast God out of our souls, as Judas did, God does not demand to be let back in whether we want him or not. He will indeed pursue us, out of his boundless love, but not with armies, police, or fines. He seeks us through the call of conscience and his Holy Spirit; through the natural suffering that sin causes the sinner; through the supernatural suffering of the withdrawal of grace; and, if the sinner is especially stubborn, and if the protection of other souls demands it, through spiritual (not political) sanctions like excommunication, or temporal punishments proper to the Church (not the state), like removal from Church office. And if such punishments do not bring men to repent in this life, there remain afterward the eternal pains of damnation—freely chosen by sinners—to make up for their selfish choices. But God will give to sinners, as he gave to Judas, every chance to reconsider before that agonizing end.

    Let Caesar punish offenses against earthly society by his sword; but let the God who is love—infinitely just and infinitely merciful—deal with men’s offenses against the spiritual society he himself established, which will be consummated only in heaven. God’s kingdom is not a kingdom of this world. It is a kingdom of the heart, whose law is the perfect law: the law of freedom.

    Image by stuart and licensed via Adobe Stock.

  12. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 6 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Florida Bans Social Media For Minors Under 14

    Florida has just passed a new law prohibiting children under 14-years-old from having social media accounts regardless of parental consent.

    Governor DeSantis was at the Cornerstone Classical Academy in Jacksonville, FL Monday, March 25, 2024, along with local and state leaders to sign into law Florida House Bill 3. Bob Self/Florida Times-Union

    Under the law which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2025, social media companies must close accounts they believe to be used by minors under 14 - and must cancel accounts at the request of parents or minors. All information from the accounts must then be deleted, the Wall Street Journal reports.

    Minors who are 14 or 15 will be able to obtain a social media account with parental consent. If a parent does not consent, accounts already belonging to teens within that age range must be deleted.

    "Being buried in those devices all day is not the best way to grow up—it’s not the best way to get a good education," Governor Ron DeSantis (R) said on Monday during an event to celebrate the signing of the bill.

    The new law doesn't name which platforms it applies to, however social media sites which rely on features such as notification alerts and autoplay videos are subject to it.

    Supporters of the law have pointed to recent studies linking social-media use among young adults to a higher risk of depression and mental-health challenges. It can also make them vulnerable to online bullying and predators. -WSJ

    "A child, in their brain development, doesn’t have the ability to know that they’re being sucked into these addictive technologies, and to see the harm and step away from it," said Florida House Speaker Paul Renner (R) at the same event. "And because of that, we have to step in for them."

    In response to the law, TikTok says it has policies to protect teens, and will continue to work to keep the platform safe. Snapchat and X didn't respond to a WSJ request for comment.

    Other states have seen similar legislation proposed, however the bills all stop short of Florida's total ban. In Arkansas, a federal judge blocked an age verification law for social media users and parental consent for minors' accounts.

    In response to the Arkansas law, social media trade association NetChoice, of which Facebook parent Meta, TikTok and Snap, sued the state to halt the law. It has brought similar legal challenges in California and Ohio.

    According to NetChoice VP and general counsel Carl Szabo, the Florida law "forces Floridians to hand over sensitive personal information to websites or lose their access to critical information channels," adding "his infringes on Floridians’ First Amendment rights to share and access speech online."

    "There are better ways to keep Floridians, their families and their data safe and secure online without violating their freedoms," he added.

    Florida expects to be sued over the new law, however Speaker Renner says he's confident it will withstand legal scrutiny.

    "We’re gonna beat them, and we’re never, ever gonna stop," he said.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 20:00
  13. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 7 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Gen Z Males Are Rejecting Feminist-Friendly Ideologies

    Authored by John Mac Ghlionn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    In “All the Rebel Women: The Rise of the Fourth Wave of Feminism,“ the author, Kira Cochrane, suggested that this particular wave of feminism ”isn’t about making everyone around the table feel comfortable.”

    Feminist activists take part in a choreographed performance on Dec. 7, 2019. (Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images)

    It’s about being disruptive, challenging, and changing the terms of the debate,” Ms. Cochrane said.

    What debate is she referencing? One that largely revolves around men. More specifically, how toxic they have become. Not surprisingly, many men (and women) haven’t taken too kindly to this particular narrative. Young men are especially repulsed, and so they should be.

    Last year, a report titled “The State of American Men 2023: From Confusion and Crisis to Hope” found that more than half of young males believe that men have it harder today than women. The report further unveiled significant levels of contempt for modern-day feminism, especially among male members of Generation Z. Yes, some in the “wokest” generation in the history of mankind are actively rejecting a core ingredient of wokeness. And who can blame them? Feminism, in its most current form, specializes in the demonization of masculinity. It regularly equates men with trash.

    Some feminists would have us believe that men, especially straight, white men, are a danger to society, one that must be addressed and, in some cases, attacked.

    Common sense (remember when it was a little more common?) tells us that if you keep bashing, berating, and belittling an entire group of individuals—or, in this case, half the country’s population—a response is inevitable.

    A recent survey out of King’s College London clearly demonstrates this fact. On both sides of the Atlantic, it seems, millions of Gen Z men have had enough of feminist-friendly narratives.

    Interestingly, however, the survey revealed that older males, when compared to younger generations, have a greater inclination toward progressive and feminist perspectives. In short, Gen Z males are more inclined than older baby boomers to believe that feminism has had a negative impact on broader society. In the UK, for example, one out of every four males aged 16 to 29 believes that being a man is more challenging than being a woman.

    This data sharply contrast with the prevailing perception of men today in comparison to their “pale, stale, and male” predecessors. The research indicates that the general public tends to assume that it would be the oldest group of men who believe that women have already achieved sufficient equality. However, this assumption is clearly incorrect. Approximately 20 percent of Gen Z males believe that being a man will be significantly more difficult than being a woman in the next two decades, echoing the sentiments of young men in the United States. In contrast, this sentiment drops to only 9 percent for males older than the age of 60.

    As the survey points out, when considering the age group of 16 to 29, 46 percent of women in this category believe that feminism has had a more beneficial impact on society than harm. This percentage is 10 points higher than the proportion of young men who share the same perspective (36 percent). Moreover, the survey notes that “among this age group, one in six (16%) men say feminism has done more harm than good, compared with one in 11 (9%) women.”

    What is going on here? Why are so many Gen Z males—again, on both sides of the pond—rejecting feminist-friendly ideologies?

    According to the academics responsible for the surprising survey, it may have something to do with the rise of Andrew Tate, a controversial, American British influencer who, in recent times, has become popular. A fifth of the Gen Z men surveyed hold a favorable view of Mr. Tate, who has a huge following in both the UK and the United States.

    On a recent episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher,” social psychologist Jean Twenge discussed Mr. Tate, suggesting that his influence has had—and continues to have—an impact on young men. In particular, Ms. Twenge suggested that Mr. Tate’s influence has contributed to Gen Z males’ rejection of left-wing politics.

    However, CNN’s Van Jones was quick to push back, arguing that this particular form of rejection has less to do with the pull of Mr. Tate and considerably more to do with the push of the left; to be more specific, the left’s effort, be it conscious or otherwise, to push young men away. Mr. Maher agreed with Mr. Jones, saying that just being a man today is considered “a little suspect.”

    It’s important to note that being a man, in both the UK and the United States, was considered “a little suspect” long before Mr. Tate shot to fame. Sure, he was the most Googled man in the world in 2022, but prior to this, most people were not familiar with his philosophies and overall mindset. Even The Guardian, no fan of Mr. Tate, conceded that he should be viewed as a “symptom” of a much broader problem.

    Commenting on the abovementioned survey, professor Rosie Campbell, director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, said:

    “This data shows it’s not just young men’s attitudes that stand out. For example, young women are much more likely than any other group to think ‘toxic masculinity’ is a helpful term, and are most pessimistic about the prospect of future progress on gender equality.

    Let that percolate for a minute: Young women are “most pessimistic” about the future of gender equality and consider “toxic masculinity”—a truly heinous term—to be helpful.

    From Birmingham, Alabama, to Birmingham, England, name one thing men are allowed to do that women are not. If you find yourself scratching your head, struggling to think of an answer, that’s because there’s nothing to name. Gender equality already exists, but young women, many of whom are blinded by illogical ideologies, can’t separate the facts from fictitious narratives.

    Moreover, the term “toxic masculinity,” which was around a long time before Mr. Tate took the world by storm, is in no way constructive. On the contrary, it only serves to demonize an inescapable part of being a man. There was a time, not that long ago, when being a man and exhibiting masculine traits was something worth celebrating. However, in both the UK and the United States, those days appear to be long gone. To compound matters, the ideological divide between Gen Z men and women is fast becoming a gaping chasm.

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

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 19:40
  14. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 7 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Israel Unleashes Major Airstrikes On Syria & Deep Inside Lebanon

    The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed on Tuesday another rare strike conducted deep into Lebanese territory. The strikes targeted "a military compound used by Hezbollah’s aerial unit" in the Baalbek District which is in the northeast of the country.

    This marks the deepest Israeli strike inside Lebanon since the war began in the wake of the Oct.7 Hamas terror attack, at more than 110km from Israel's border.

    Illustrative IAF file image: Flash90

    The extent of casualties or damage remains unclear, but it follows a similar February strike on the Bekaa Valley some 100km from the Israeli border, which killed at least two people. There are growing fears that if such strikes become more regular, it will signify a bigger regional war could be opening up.

    Hezbollah has lobbed several missiles against northern Israeli communities as well as the IDF base atop Mount Meron over the past days. The Mount Meron surveillance base is about 8km from the Lebanese border and has come under repeat attack over several months.

    In the overnight and early morning hours there were also large-scale strikes against areas of eastern Syria. While Israel frequently attacks Syria, some Syrian government-affiliated sources laid blame on the United States. According to regional outlet The Cradle

    Airstrikes targeted a number of areas in Syria’s eastern city of Deir Ezzor and its countryside on 26 March, resulting in numerous deaths and injuries. "At 1:49 AM, American aircraft carried out several simultaneous air strikes targeting a number of areas in the governorate and its countryside," Syria’s government-affiliated National Defense Forces (NDF) said, according to Sputnik.

    The strikes targeted the Salhiya area in Al-Bukamal near the Iraqi border and residential areas in the Al-Mayadin and Al-Qusour areas in Deir Ezzor. 

    But Israeli media has identified the IDF air force as behind the eastern Syria attack, reportedly targeting 'pro-Iran' assets. According to details in The Times of Israel:

    The Israeli Air Force carried out airstrikes in the predawn hours of Tuesday morning in eastern Syria, targeting Iranian assets and operatives involved in a recent plot to smuggle advanced arms to West Bank terrorists, The Times of Israel has learned.

    More than 15 people were reportedly killed in the strikes in the Deir Ezzor and al-Bukamal areas, close to Syria’s border with Iraq.

    The strikes targeted assets belonging to Iran’s Unit 4000, the Special Operations Division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Intelligence Organization, and the special operations unit of the IRGC’s Quds Force in Syria, known as Unit 18840, according to Israeli defense sources.

    Various international reports have cited different casualty figures, but what is clear is that there were a series of large airstrikes. Iranian media said a Revolutionary Guard member was killed in Syria overnight.

    Below: Israeli strikes in northeast Lebanon...

    غارة عنيفة على بوداي في #بعلبك pic.twitter.com/FM7WQptCze

    — kataeb.org (@kataeb_Ar) March 26, 2024

    According to The Associated Press, civilians were among the dead, including women, children, and a World Health Organization (WHO) official

    Dama Post, a pro-government media outlet in Syria, said the strikes targeted the provincial capital of Deir el-Zour that carries the same name, and the towns of Mayadeen and Boukamal. It said 20 people, including women and children, were among the dead.

    The World Health Organization said one of its team members, engineer Emad Shehab, was killed in one of the strikes that hit his building. It said Shehab, 42, served as a WHO focal point for water, sanitation, and hygiene in the province since 2022.

    Iran-linked insurgent attacks against US bases in Iraq and Syria have mostly quieted down of late, compared to their frequency and weekly occurrence last year in the wake of Oct.7.

    In the meantime, any potential scenario where Israel were to move ground troops into southern Lebanon would likely spark a bigger war with Hezbollah, which could engulf all of Lebanon.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 19:20
  15. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 7 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    'Serious Concerns' Raised About NY Judge's Trump Judgment

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    After a New York court reduced former President Donald Trump’s bond to appeal his civil fraud case, several legal analysts weighed in on the decision.

    On Monday, a state appeals court agreed to hold off collection of the former president’s more than $454 million civil fraud judgment if he puts up $175 million within 10 days. If he does, it will stop the clock on collection and prevent the state from seizing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s assets while he appeals.

    Greg Germain, a law professor at Syracuse University in New York, said that President Trump may have a strong case to challenge Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling in February that he must pay $455 million in his civil fraud case.

    I think the $175 million reduction ... shows that the appellate division has serious concerns about the validity of Judge Engoron’s decision,” Mr. Germain told Newsweek.

    While he believes the judgment was “seriously flawed,” the professor said that President Trump will have a difficult time overturning the judge’s “findings that his financial statement was grossly overstated.”

    The standard for the appeals court to review factual findings is ‘clearly erroneous,’ which means that there was no evidence in the record to support the judge’s findings. Engoron was very careful to cite to the record for his factual findings, which were very solid,” Mr. Germain said.

    But the judge, he added, “made no attempt to determine what portion of the profit was solely due to the financial statement as opposed to other factors” before handing down his ruling.

    The former president “has some strong legal arguments to make on appeal,” Mr. Germain added. “Unfortunately for him, I think he’s so focused on denying that he did anything wrong that the strong legal arguments may be lost in his unwinnable arguments on the facts.”

    The former president has said he did nothing wrong, adding that he actually undervalued his net worth when communicating with banks and insurers at the center of the civil fraud lawsuit. He said that the case is politically motivated, and that both the New York attorney general and Judge Engoron are biased against him.

    Meanwhile, a constitutional scholar said that the bond for an appeal should be been reduced to basically nothing.

    “The Court of Appeals may have felt that they can’t prejudge the evidence, and so to reduce the bond further would have been heavy-handed,” George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News on Monday. “I actually think they could have reduced this bond to virtually nothing, because the amount set by [Judge Arthur] Engoron was absurd.

    In a post on social media, Mr. Turley wrote that the New York appellate court may “restore a degree of objectivity and restraint missing on the trial level,” referring to the Engoron decision. “Both Engoron and [New York Attorney General Letitia] James would have gained greater credibility if they recognized the obvious unreasonableness of the original demand,” he continued.

    A former federal prosecutor now in private practice said that “judgments of this size are rare,” referring to the penalties imposed against President Trump. “What makes this one unusual is someone who is subject to an enormous amount of money and has to come up with it himself,” Joshua Naftalis said.

    President Trump hailed the ruling and said he would post a bond, securities, or cash to cover the $175 million sum in the civil case. Ms. James’s office, meanwhile, noted that the judgment still stands, even if collection is paused.

    Previously, the former president’s lawyers pleaded for a state appeals court to halt collection, claiming it was “a practical impossibility” to get an underwriter to sign off on a bond for such a large sum, which grows daily because of interest. The Trump attorneys had earlier proposed a $100 million bond, but an appellate judge had said no late last month.

    Monday’s ruling came from a five-judge panel in the state’s intermediate appeals court, called the Appellate Division, where President Trump is fighting to overturn Judge Engoron’s Feb. 16 decision. Trump attorneys Alina Habba and Christopher Kise characterized Monday’s ruling as a key first step.

    “We won,” Ms. Habba told Fox News on Monday. “You know, no ... we didn’t win. You know when we’ll win? When we get this all reversed, which is what’s gonna happen.”

    The Trump attorney added that she was “so proud” of the appeals court’s decision because it gave her “a little bit of faith” in the U.S. justice system.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 19:00
  16. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 8 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Taiwan Conducts Drills Deploying US Patriot Systems In Face Of Chinese Intrusions

    The Taiwanese armed forces on Tuesday conducted highly provocative anti-aircraft defense exercises in the face of Chinese military "intrusions" which have been occurring on a weekly basis. 

    Importantly, the drills centered on deploying and operating US-made Patriot missiles and anti-aircraft artillery systems provided by Washington

    Image via Asia Times

    A military statement said the drills are a response to "incursions by Chinese Communist Party aircraft and ships into the sea and airspace around Taiwan" and added that "the air force will continue to increase the intensity of drills."

    "The aim was to verify the command and control of joint air defense operations among the three branches of the military," the armed forces described.

    Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has meanwhile ramped up defense spending, and attended a ceremony Tuesday for the handover of two domestically made warships at Suao port.

    "Over the past few years, we have steadily implemented defense autonomy with Taiwan-made warships being named, launched, and commissioned one after another at an increasingly rapid pace," Tsai announced at the event.

    "These achievements repeatedly demonstrate Taiwan's capacity for domestic shipbuilding and proves our determination to safeguard our democracy and freedom," she added.

    In the United States, lawmakers are taking steps to prepare for a potential future invasion by China's military of the self-ruled island backed by the US.

    "Fears of possible conflict across the Taiwan Strait are spurring state-level legislation aimed to identify and mitigate the potential local impact of hostilities," Politico reported last weekend.

    "Since the beginning of the year, lawmakers in Arizona, Nebraska and Illinois have introduced versions of the Pacific Conflict Stress Test Act — bills that impose checklists of potential local vulnerabilities in supply chains and infrastructure security if Beijing eventually uses force to 'reunify' with Taiwan," the report said.

    #Taiwan, M109A7 155 mm tracked self-propelled howitzers on the move and Patriot battery stations being set up. pic.twitter.com/KaovVd6m3X

    — Globe Sentinel (@GlobeSentinels) March 18, 2024

    The Chinese government, for its part, has long maintained that it desires the island to be reunited through peaceful, political means; however, at the same time frequent PLA military drills have projected the threat of force in regional waters.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 18:40
  17. Site: LifeNews
    2 days 8 hours ago
    Author: Right to Life UK

    An MP has tabled an amendment that would bring an end to the current situation where abortion is available between 24 weeks and birth for babies with Down’s syndrome.

    Sir Liam Fox, former GP, cabinet minister and defence secretary, announced his amendment to the Government’s Criminal Justice Bill last week and tabled it earlier today. The amendment has been signed by 40 MPs, and intends to bring the abortion time limit for babies with Down’s syndrome in line with the time limit for babies that do not have disabilities.

    Under the Abortion Act 1967, the current abortion limit is 24 weeks, but for cases in which a baby is diagnosed with a disability, including Down’s syndrome, abortion is currently available up to birth.

    The amendment has cross-party support from MPs from the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party and the Democratic Unionist Party. This includes former shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John McDonnell, former health minister Maggie Throup, former Conservative Party leader and cabinet minister, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, and former cabinet minister Sir David Davis.

    Fox’s amendment will likely be debated and voted on as part of the Criminal Justice Bill, which is expected to return to the Commons for Report Stage following the Easter recess.

    On announcing his Bill, Sir Liam Fox said “There is considerable cross-party support to remove an anomaly in UK law which allows those with Down’s syndrome to be aborted up until 40 weeks. Many of us believe this is utterly against the purpose of our equality legislation and treats those with Down’s syndrome as second-class citizens when it comes to their rights”.

    REACH PRO-LIFE PEOPLE WORLDWIDE! Advertise with LifeNews to reach hundreds of thousands of pro-life readers every week. Contact us today.

    “My amendment would remove an anomaly which many were not aware even existed and send a signal about the values that we share across the political system in our country”.

    Spokesperson for Don’t Screen Us Out Lynn Murray, whose daughter, Rachel, has Down’s syndrome, said “This is an important change to the law and it’s fantastic to see so many MPs are getting behind this change. Very few people are aware of this discriminatory part of our law that singles out babies with disabilities including Down’s syndrome allowing them to be screened out by abortion up to birth”.

    “As a mother of a 24-year-old daughter who has Down’s syndrome, I see every day the unique value she brings to our family and the positive impact she has on others around her”.

    “By having a different time limit for babies with disabilities including Down’s syndrome, section 1(1)(d) of the Abortion Act, promotes inequality and perpetuates negative stereotypes. This law sends a message that people with Down’s syndrome are less worthy of life and protection than others”.

    “The provision in the Abortion Act harks back to a time when we thought it was better for people with disabilities not to be part of our society. We live in a far more inclusive and progressive society now, where we celebrate diversity, and all of our laws should reflect that”.

    The amendment will be debated alongside a vote on Caroline Ansell’s landmark amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill to lower the abortion limit to 22 weeks.

    Scotland may end discriminatory Down’s syndrome abortion

    Ministers in Scotland are also considering reforming abortion law in Scotland, which could involve changing the abortion law in relation to Down’s syndrome abortion.

    As part of a review of abortion law to be carried out before the end of the current parliament in 2026, a ministerial working group is being set up to examine the issue.

    A spokesperson for the Scottish Government said “We have committed to taking forward a review of the law on abortion and will consider options for reform to ensure that it is first and foremost a healthcare matter”.

    “That review will include consideration of whether or not there should be any changes to the current law in Scotland in relation to abortions where a fetal anomaly has been diagnosed. We would need to wait for the outcomes of that review before considering any changes to abortion law”.

    869 abortions for Down’s syndrome in 2021

    The latest available full-year abortion statistics, for the year ending 31 December 2021, show there were 859 abortions where a baby had Down’s syndrome in 2021, an increase of 24% from 2020.

    However, there is evidence that the actual numbers are higher than reported due to underreporting of disability abortion statistics. A review in 2013 showed there were 886 abortions for Down’s syndrome in England and Wales in 2010 but only 482 were reported in abortion statistics from the Department of Health and Social Care. The underreporting was confirmed by a 2014 Department of Health and Social Care review.

    There has been growing momentum for a change in the law in this area after Heidi Crowter, a 28-year-old woman from Coventry who has Down’s syndrome, took a landmark case against the UK Government over the disability clause in the current law. Her case has been heard in the High Court and Court of Appeal.

    Heidi has been joined in her fight for a change in the law by Máire Lea-Wilson from Brentford, West London, whose four-year-old son, Aidan, has Down’s syndrome. Máire Lea-Wilson was placed under pressure to have an abortion when a 34-week scan revealed her son had Down’s syndrome. There has been widespread coverage of Heidi and Máire’s case across major media outlets.

    The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has consistently criticised countries that provide for abortion in a way that distinguishes between foetuses on the basis of disability.

    The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’ concluding observations on the initial report of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland made a key recommendation that the UK change its abortion law so that it does not single out babies with disabilities. The Government has decided to ignore this recommendation.

    The 2013 Parliamentary Inquiry into Abortion for Disability found the vast majority of those who gave evidence believed allowing abortion up to birth on the grounds of disability is discriminatory, contrary to the spirit of the Equality Act 2010 and that it affects wider public attitudes towards discrimination. The Inquiry recommended Parliament review the question of allowing abortion on the grounds of disability and should consider repealing section 1(1)(d) of the Abortion Act which allows for it.

    Polling has shown that the majority of people in England, Wales and Scotland feel that disability should not be grounds for abortion at all, with only one in three people thinking it is acceptable to ban abortion for gender or race but allow it for disability.

    Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “The law clearly discriminates against people with Down’s syndrome and does not provide the same protections for babies with Down’s syndrome that other unborn babies have”.

    “Heidi Crowter’s landmark case against the UK Government over the disability clause in the current law has put this issue on the national stage. MPs are now moving to ensure that babies with Down’s syndrome cannot have their lives deliberately ended between 24 weeks and birth”.

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

    The post British MP Files Bill to Stop Abortions Up to Birth on babies With Down Syndrome appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  18. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 8 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    The State Of The Media's Double Standard

    Authored by Frank Miele via RealClear Politics,

    I’m sure everyone has heard enough about President Biden’s recent State of the Union address, certainly enough to know that the mainstream media thought it was admirable of Biden to scream at the top of his lungs that Republicans are detestable worms.

    You also probably heard enough from the media to be certain that Sen. Katie Britt, who delivered the response to Biden, is a lying, detestable Republican worm. But as humorist Will Rogers noted, if all you know is what you read in the newspapers (or in updated form, what you see on cable news), then you are woefully misinformed.

    Take the media’s coverage of Biden’s extemporaneous remarks about the murder of Laken Riley that were prompted by a challenge from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

    First of all, Biden got Riley’s name wrong, twice calling her “Lincoln” Riley. That was embarrassing and drew attention to the cognitive issues Biden has exhibited throughout his first term. But somehow, the mainstream media glossed over that and quickly focused on an entirely manufactured “news” story that seemed intended to reassure Democrats that Biden wasn’t channeling Trump’s border rhetoric.

    As everyone knows by now, Biden referred to the man arrested for Riley’s murder as an “illegal,” which angered members of the radical left “Squad,” who insisted that Jose Antonio Ibarra should properly be referred to as “undocumented.” This was just a silly moment of political correctness, as both words mean the same thing: Ibarra had no immigration documents because he was in the country illegally.

    Yet the mainstream media went to great trouble to explain that Biden “regretted” using the word illegal. Chances are most of the Democrat-leaning reporters who cover the White House sympathized with the Squad and were happy to see Biden essentially apologizing for the word he used to describe the alleged murderer.

    Much more importantly, the media’s attention on the linguistic sideshow meant that virtually no news outlet covered Biden’s truly offensive reference to Laken Riley’s murder in the State of the Union. Here’s exactly what he said.

    BIDEN: Lincoln – Lincoln  Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed.

    GREENE: By an illegal!

    BIDEN: By an illegal. That’s right. But how many of thousands of people are being killed by legals?

    Do you see what he did there in that last line? He minimizes and devalues the murder of Riley by suggesting that her life is not important when compared to the “many… thousands” of murders committed by legal immigrants or other Americans. This is the latest, albeit incredibly awkward, manifestation of a Democratic Party talking point: The immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. The social science on this is sketchy, and in any event, it begs the question of how many more violent crime victims exist because of the Democrats’ lenient criminal justice “reforms.”

    Leaving that aside, Biden’s rejoinder was offensive for another reason. We simply don’t dismiss the brutal murder of one person by proclaiming that it is statistically irrelevant. Each precious human life has untold value to God, as it should to presidents, and Laken Riley, a vibrant nursing student beloved by her family and friends, would still be alive if Biden and his political party had not made it easy for Ibarra to be in the country illegally.

    It was another story about the human toll of illegal immigration that caused outrage in the media about Britt’s response to the State of the Union.

    If you were to listen to the talking heads, Britt’s speech was the worst act of political suicide since Alexander Hamilton agreed to a duel with Aaron Burr. It was certainly one in a long line of responses that brought humiliation on a well-intended speaker. Britt’s performance was cringeworthy as she tried to emote rather than orate her response, and she was effectively reduced to a caricature in a brilliant performance by Scarlett Johansson on “Saturday Night Live.”

    If the media hacks had simply gone after Britt because of her awkward delivery of a speech that reads fine on paper, they would have met no opposition from me. But with their usual overreach and partisan slant, the finest minds in journalism instead attacked Britt for what they called her “misleading” anecdote of sexual abuse suffered by women who depend on the Mexican cartels to get them across the border.

    The story itself is quite short:

    “When I first took office… I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas, where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped. The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoebox of a room, and they sent men through that door, over and over again, for hours and hours on end. We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America, and it’s past time we start acting like it.”

    When the media discovered the identity of the victim who spoke to Britt, they claimed that Britt had tried to make it seem like President Biden’s policies were responsible for the woman’s abuse. But if any reporter could pass a simple reading comprehension test, he or she would see that Britt talked to a full-grown woman who revealed what had happened to her when she was 12. Since Britt talked to her sometime after her own election in 2023, and assuming that the woman was of the bare minimum adult age of 18, that would mean her abuse would have occurred no later than 2017, four years before Joe Biden took office.

    In other words, there was no attempt by Britt to blame Biden for this woman’s plight. Instead, she was hoping to elicit heart-felt sympathy from her audience for the plight of young women who fall victim to sex trafficking as they make their way to the U.S. border.

    Who could disagree with her? Only Democrats and media personalities who hate Republicans and Donald Trump. The fact that Trump was supposedly eyeing Britt as a potential vice presidential pick probably made her an irresistible target.

    Now, to be clear, there was one implicit error in the story Britt told. The abuse that Britt recounted actually took place in Mexico, and Britt’s reference to a “third-world country” suggests she didn’t know that. If so, that’s on her. It should have been obvious that most, but not all, of the sex trafficking of women making their way north from Colombia takes place before they arrive in the United States. But that is no reason to try to deflect attention away from the truth of what Britt was saying about the dangers facing women who are enticed north by Biden’s open-border policy.

    Instead of condemning the cartels, however, the legacy media went after Britt. When she responded by explaining that her anecdote was accurate, and that the timeline proved she never intended to claim Biden was responsible for the woman’s rapes, the media was ready with its all-purpose continuation of the smear. As NBC reported it, “Sen. Katie Britt attempts to clean up her misleading State of the Union response.” But it wasn’t misleading at all, and she wasn’t attempting to “clean up” anything; she was attempting to educate the Fake News Media. An impossible task.

    So, if you want to know what the State of the Union is, you don’t have to look any further than the double standard the media used in reporting the speeches by Biden and Britt. As we enter the 2024 election season, we citizens must pledge to look beyond the biased headlines and treat the national media with the distrust they have richly earned. Remember, if all you know is what you read in the newspapers or saw on cable news, you are being played for a fool. Get the facts for yourself, and then make up your own mind.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 18:20
  19. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 8 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Pump-Prices To Hit $4 A Gallon As "Real Sleeper Risk" For Oil Market Looms

    US oil prices have recently jumped above the $80 a barrel mark - the highest level since late 2023, sending worrying signals to the Federal Reserve and overly anxious White House. 

    The surge in WTI has pushed wholesales gasoline prices up...

    And worse, pump prices are set to accelerate even higher in the coming months to an average of $4 a gallon, which would be the highest level since the summer of 2022, according to Bloomberg, citing new data from AAA Automobile Club. 

    A combination of issues is pressuring futures and pump prices higher, including the transition to summer-grade gasoline and strained domestic refineries, as well as concerns about shrinking global crude product supplies while Ukraine attacks Russian refineries. 

    As we explained in the note titled "Dominoes Falling As Biden Admin Deals With Twin Energy Crisis In Russia, Middle East," traders have been spooked by refinery outages across Russia due to Ukranian drone attacks. In the Middle East, traders are increasingly worried that Iran-backed Houthis could be several steps away from targeting Saudi refineries.

    And now it should make a whole lot of sense why the Biden administration pleaded with Ukrainians to stop drone attacks, along with the White House pushing Vice President Kamala Harris out on ABC News on Sunday to warn Israel publicly not to launch a counteroffensive against Hamas in Rafah - because increased chaos on that side of the world would stoke higher crude prices - and bad timing for the administration, just ahead of the US presidential election in November. 

    Devin Gladden, a spokesperson for AAA, which tracks gasoline prices, warned higher pump prices will force the working poor to make "lifestyle changes and be a focus in November's presidential election." Higher pump prices will also make Americans realize how much Bidenomics has failed. 

    Higher pump prices will also complicate the Fed's fight against the inflation monster and likely delay rate cuts this summer, which would undoubtedly upset markets. 

    This comes as the administration is trying to refill the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserves after releasing a record amount to control last year's summertime gasoline price surge. 

    Since the administration is busy refilling reserves, it has exhausted some of its war chest to control price spikes this spring and summer. 

    "If pump prices keep rising, SPR refills will stop automatically. While one cannot rule out another SPR release, the real sleeper risk is the Biden administration would revive threats to restrain US gasoline and diesel exports, especially if a storm disrupted refining capacity. The market, policy, and geopolitical implications of restricting product exports would dwarf those of the LNG pause. Supersize it and add fries," Scott Modell, CEO at Rapidan Energy Advisors, wrote in a statement. 

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 18:00
  20. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 9 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    "The Squad" Earmarked $224 Million Since 2023 – Led By AOC, It's Pork Barrel Spending By The Democratic Socialists

    Authored by Adam Andrzejewski via OpenTheBooks substack,

    “The Squad’ is a group of ultra-left wing Congressional socialists which has been the toast of so-called “progressives” for the last several years.

    Its members might promise a worker’s paradise, in which government “withers away,” in the words of Vladimir Lenin, but for now they are only too happy to direct government largesse to the folks back home.

    In fact, The Squad members have earmarked $224 million and many absurd pet projects since 2023. 

    Download the full database of The Squad’s 2023 and 2024 earmarks here.

    Our figures include the earmarks in the most recent $1.2 trillion spending bill from last week.

    It’s a stunning display of logrolling – deep inside the status quo – they say they hate as a tool of capitalist oppression.

    The Squad maxed out their pork in 2023 and 2024. Their 215 earmarked projects cost the rest of us (overwhelmingly non-socialist) U.S. taxpayers $224.1 million. Every dime was borrowed against our national debt.

    New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), AKA, “AOC,” who last week did not know that “RICO” names a crime, is The Squad’s most prominent voice. She is celebrated as a “socialist superstar” by the Democratic Socialists of America.

    Representative Ocasio-Cortez earmarked $1.2 million for a new building for the International Muslim Women’s Empowerment Project. Its founder teaches a “hijab grab” self-defense move involving a “kick to the groin.”

    And then there’s the $500,000 for the Billion Oyster project in her district. Rich people eat oysters. However, the law prohibits anyone from either fishing or eating oysters in the Hudson River. So, this is only an engineering project for eco-marginalized people in Queens.

    Other Squad members are Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Cori Bush (D-MO), Greg Casar (D-TX), Summer Lee (D-PA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

    The Squad Practices Race-based Earmarking

    Squad members shoveled some pretty stinky stuff into spending bills. It appears race-based legislating is OK if a progressive does it:

    • $850,000 to create jobs for the Black community near George Floyd Square, whose death in 2020 “added to the stress faced by the community and increased the need for support and stability in housing and commerce.” Patron: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

    • $1.7 million to help the Environmental Leaders of Color build a “green tech park.” The group’s goal is to “assist marginalized communities in preparing for climate change’s adverse effects … so that they can thrive like healthy plants in their natural ecosystem.” Patron: Congressman Jamaal Bowman.

    • $1 million for the Immigrant Opportunity Center expansion. It’s run by CAPI USA, a nonprofit that “guides refugees and immigrants in their journey toward self-determination and social equality.” Patron: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

    • $1.35 million to New Immigrant Community Empowerment, a nonprofit that advocates for citizenship for all illegal immigrants. Patron: Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez ($500,000). The group received another $850,000 this year from Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY).

    • $1.5 million to build special grocery stores and education facilities for Black farmers in the community of St. Louis. Patron: Congresswoman Cori Bush.

    • $1 million for the San Antonio College Empowerment Center, which runs an Undocumented Student Support Program to help immigrants enroll in the school. Patron: Congressman Greg Casar.

    The Squad’s Green Earmarks

    Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez introduced her Green New Deal, in 2019. It’s the focus of 21 earmarks to build green infrastructure, move away from fossil fuels, and involve minority communities in climate policy. She and her colleagues find ways to get us to pay for their policy preference, such as:

    • $1 million to build “a network of intergenerational, trauma-informed waterfront green spaces.” The project already received $792,000 in 2022 earmark funding. Patron: Congresswoman Ayanna Presley

    • $466,000 to improve the energy efficiency of a St. Louis homeless shelter. Patron: Congresswoman Cori Bush.

    • $4 million to build an “industrial green beltway” in Dearborn, Michigan. Patron: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.

    • $500,000 from Ocasio-Cortez will build an oyster reef to “address longstanding environmental justice inequities facing underrepresented communities in Queens.” Oyster habitats in New York have been damaged by pollution and harvesting them for food is illegal.

    • $850,000 to repair a bridge that “connects minority environmental justice communities” in Pennsylvania. Patron: Congresswoman Summer Lee.

    • $2 million for Everett, Mass. to build a park for “low-income BIPOC residents” to “stay cool during increasingly hot summers.” (“BIPOC” is an acronym for “Black, indigenous and other people of color.”) Patron: Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.

    Stopping Insane Earmarks. Or Not.

    In 2024, when it got too insane, Republican members of the House finally got serious and cut a few of the whacky earmarks.

    For example, Rep. Pressley’s earmark to build affordable housing for LGBTQ seniors did not make it into the final House bill.

    However, in the second minibus bill, Pressley was able to add back $850,000 for LGBTQ “The Pryde” senior housing by moving the earmark to the U.S. Senate. Pressley called Republicans homophobic for attempting to eliminate her LGBTQ earmarks.

    Background

    From time immemorial, politicians of every stripe have used their positions to benefit those who sent them to D.C., while sticking taxpayers with the tab.

    Congresspeople all play together in the sandbox, promising not to rat each other out for some strikingly goofy – or downright weird – local spending. Things got so out of hand 15 years ago, that a bi-partisan coalition led by former U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and President Barack Obama actually banned earmarking for ten years.

    It didn’t last.

    Regardless of what you may have heard about GOP hate for former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), three years ago, the House Republican caucus, in a secret vote, joined Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats to reinstate earmarks.

    That moment of fiscal fealty was replaced by the naked need for pork, and in the instance, a new alliance with the Speaker.

    And so, we have more tabs to face than a diet soda aisle at a big Costco.

    In 2024, the so-called “minibus measures” contained 8,051 earmarks totaling $15.7 BILLION TAXPAYER DOLLARS. In 2023, the year-end omnibus was stuffed with 7,510 earmarks worth just over $16 BILLION TAXPAYER DOLLARS.

    Congress must disclose earmarks online. However, it posts them in hard-to-review PDF files. (Our team at OpenTheBooks.com converts those files into Excel spreadsheets to more effectively parse what they are hiding.)

    When Congress knows what it is doing is wrong, it always makes it a bit harder to find.

    In all too many ways, earmarks – from both Democrats and Republicans -- are no exception.

    Next week – “The Freedom Caucus Decides It Is Free to Earmark”

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 17:40
  21. Site: LifeNews
    2 days 9 hours ago
    Author: Dave Andrusko

    It should come as no surprise that the race between pro-life former President Donald Trump and pro-abortion President Joe Biden has ebbs and flows. Before moving into some of the details, it’s worth remembering that the public is deeply skeptical that the President is up to leading the country for four more years and that on the major issues Mr. Biden trails Mr. Trump, in some cases by huge margins [immigration and leadership].

    Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden “by 5 points (41%-36%) over a five-candidate field in the poll, and his presidential approval rating tops that of Biden right now: 55% say they approve of the job Trump did as president, a figure that is 10 points higher than Biden’s current approval rating of 45%,” Newsmax reports. The headline for Eric Mack’s story is “Harvard Poll: Trump Leads by 5; 63% Say Biden Too Old.”

    On the other hand, Trump led by “just 2 points over Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head, with roughly 9 percent of voters undecided.”

    Mack offers several other important topline findings:

    • A 58% majority said the U.S. is on the wrong track under the Biden administration, compared to 34% who said it is on the right track.
    • 56% said the U.S. economy is weak under Biden.
    • A plurality of 47% said their personal finances are getting worse under Biden.
    • Biden’s State of the Union speech provided no increase on his 45% approval rating since the last poll.
    • A majority of 52% had an unfavorable opinion of Biden’s State of the Union speech, with majorities saying he did not address the issues their family cares most about (54%) and “failed” to present solutions of their family’s issues (55%).
    • 56% said the Democrats are using “lawfare” to take out their chief political opponent.

    REACH PRO-LIFE PEOPLE WORLDWIDE! Advertise with LifeNews to reach hundreds of thousands of pro-life readers every week. Contact us today.

    But “President Biden has narrowed the gap against former President Trump in six out of seven key battleground states over the past month, according to a poll that hints at a likely close general election race between the two men in November,” Brett Samuels reported. “A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll published Tuesday found Biden still trailing Trump overall among all voters in the seven battleground states likely to determine the outcome of the election.”

    Byron York interviewed Mr. Trump and came away with some telling comments. “At any given moment, there are lots of subjects in the news one could ask Trump about, but I decided to focus on a longer-term story — how he managed to come back from the disastrous end of his presidency in early 2021 to become the 2024 Republican Party presidential nominee. “It’s really a story about the intensity gap between Trump’s supporters and everybody else,” York wrote.

    “At any given moment, there are lots of subjects in the news one could ask Trump about, but I decided to focus on a longer-term story — how he managed to come back from the disastrous end of his presidency in early 2021 to become the 2024 Republican Party presidential nominee. It’s really a story about the intensity gap between Trump’s supporters and everybody else.”

    Remember that after Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021, he was still awaiting a Senate impeachment trial (his second), Washington was reeling after a series of failed election challenges and Jan. 6, he was facing all sorts of investigations, and much of the political world had written him off for dead, “rebuked by many in his own party and exiled at his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago,” in the words of a recent New York Times story. 

    But Trump saw, and felt, something completely different. Here’s the short version of what he told me during our conversation in Florida: He never felt politically dead. He knew he could run again. He was already planning it when he returned to Mar-a-Lago. He knew he had the support to do it because he could feel the emotional engagement of his voters.

    “I feel the crowd, and I feel a love,” Trump said. “I never felt that [I was finished politically]. Just never felt it.” …

    What Trump was feeling was an intensity gap. In the Republican primary race, more GOP voters were emotionally committed to him than to any GOP challenger. And now, in a general election matchup, those same Republican voters are more enthusiastic about supporting his candidacy than Democrats are about supporting his Democratic opponent, President Joe Biden.

    You can read the full interview at The Washington Examiner.

    LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.

    The post Poll Shows Republicans More Excited About Voting for Trump Than Democrats About Voting for Biden appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  22. Site: LifeNews
    2 days 9 hours ago
    Author: Maria Gallagher

    It has probably happened to you at some point in your life’s journey—you have to excuse yourself from a meeting, a party, or some other event because of a family crisis. There really is no need to explain, because virtually everyone can relate. An incident comes up that is dire, that requires immediate attention in order to be resolved.

    Merriam-Webster offers a definition of the word “crisis” which I feel is particularly instructive: “a situation that has reached a critical phase.”

    If 2,400 people are dying each day from a preventable cause, would not that constitute a crisis? If thousands of women everyday are left to grieve children lost to death, is that not a crisis? If boys and girls are losing brothers and sisters, friends and companions, without having an opportunity to mourn, is that not a crisis?

    Pro-lifers believe in education, in changing hearts and minds. How do we reach those who seemingly are unable—or unwilling– to grasp the scope of this tragedy?

    It depends on where they are on the spectrum.

    For example, there are people in this world who, sadly, do not recognize the humanity of the unborn child, who are so removed from what is happening to unborn children and their mothers they actually celebrate abortion.

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

    We must work diligently to educate them so that they can see with their mind’s eye what abortion really is: the taking of an innocent, unrepeatable life.

    Others do not go this far. They seem to recognize abortion as something negative and undesirable. Yet, by their words and actions, they fail to recognize abortion as the crisis it is.

    Yes, it is regrettable, they seem to say, but so are a variety of other social ills. They appear reluctant to take the immediate, life-affirming action that is necessary to combat it. They are the lukewarm.

    So how do we reach the lukewarm? I believe we need to be consistently sharing stories—stories of women and men who survived botched abortions…women who have undergone abortions, but now regret them…women who were saved from abortion by the intervention of love.

    Here is another category. Those who may believe that legal abortion in this country has gone on for so long, it no longer constitutes a crisis or is beyond remedy. But I disagree.

    Whenever someone’s life hangs in the balance, it is a crisis—a critical moment in history that demands loving, peaceful action.

    Speaking for myself, I go through each day behaving as if abortion was just legalized yesterday. For 2,400 little ones, today is their death date.

    Yet because there is an army of pro-life volunteers working unceasingly, I look forward with hope to the day when a far greater number of government officials, community leaders, and clergy will see the abortion crisis for what it is: a massive tragedy that demands immediate attention and a concrete compassionate response.

    LifeNews.com Note: Maria Gallagher is the Legislative Director and Political Action Committee Director for the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation and she has written and reported for various broadcast and print media outlets, including National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and AP Radio.

    The post 2,400 Babies are Killed in Abortions Every Day. We Must End Abortion appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  23. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 9 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    State Farm Insurance Drops 72,000 California Properties

    State Farm will not renew approximately 72,000 property and commercial apartment policies, of which approximately 30,000 will be for 'homeowner, rental, rental, residential community and business owner insurance,' and the remainder of which are for commercial apartment policies, the Sacramento Bee reports.

    Last May the company announced that it would stop accepting applications for property and business properties due to higher construction costs, growing risks from wildfires and other catastrophic events, and challenges related to how it insures its own business.

    Last week, the company cited those challenges in an announcement, along with "the limitations of working within decades-old insurance regulations."

    California says it's fixing the issues, with Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara announcing upcoming regulatory changes that his office says "will improve conditions for the overall market."

    According to spokesman Michael Stoller, State Farm's decision "raises serious questions about its financial situation — questions the company must answer to regulators."

    The action was taken by State Farm General Insurance Company, which sells homeowners insurance in California. The company acknowledged the department’s proposed changes and vowed to continue to work with the agency to “establish an environment in which insurance rates are better aligned with risk.”

    In December, the department approved a 20% average rate hike for the company’s homeowner insurance policies. -Sacramento Bee

    The insurer says it will begin canceling policies in July for homeowners, and August for commercial properties, which will occur on a rolling basis over the next year. 

    The move comes two years after AIG pulled out of the Golden State over wildfire risk.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 17:20
  24. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 9 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    The Predictable 2024 Biden Non-Campaign

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

    Joe Biden reportedly is weirdly asking the Ukrainians not to strike Russian oil facilities, despite the military utility of such attacks.

    Why?

    Not because he fears a wider war since he sent no such request in the prior two years of fighting.

    Apparently, it is the same reason why on the eve of the 2022 midterm elections, Biden began draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (down to 360,000 million barrels, from a high of 631,000 at his inauguration) to get cheaper gas prices right before the voting.

    Biden further campaigned in 2020 blasting Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” nation. But by early 2022, he was courting the Saudis, the Venezuelans, the Iranians, and by default the Russians to pump more oil.

    The message?

    In non-election years, Biden & Co. blast fossil fuels as doomed and dirty. In election years they beg others to pump the icky goo to surfeit.

    So at least until November 2024, expect surreal petroleum-fueled restraint as Iranian surrogates freely hit more U.S. targets.

    Venezuela without worry will threaten its neighbors.

    “Pariah” Saudis for a while longer stay our new old “strategic” partner.

    The “murderer” Putin’s oil is off-limits.

    Secondly, the “ultra-MAGA” and “semi-fascist” Trump becomes “broke Don” who is foreclosed upon and who planned an “insurrection” and “civil war” on January 6, after “praising” racists in Charlottesville, and damning dead GIs as “suckers”.

    Thirdly, Biden will give lots of free stuff to win votes.

    So despite a $35 trillion national debt, expect massive new student loan debt cancellations and amnesties before November.

    After 10 million illegal entries, anticipate sudden tough but otherwise empty Biden gibberish, about “securing the border.”

    There will be louder cries for Israel to stand down and essentially resuscitate Hamas.

    So here again are the Biden’s talking points in 2024:

    • Gloat that Trump is broke and a crook and headed to jail—at least according to legal geniuses like Alvin Bragg, E. Jean Carroll, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis.

    • Blame Trump for all the things Biden did that wrecked the country in 2021-4.

    • Hand out amnesties, pardons, free stuff, and windfalls to the electorate in “you get it now, they pay later” fashion.

    • Assure wavering blacks, Latinos, and Jews that Trump is a racist and an anti-Semite.

    • Do not mention soaring food and gas prices, a destroyed border and a stampede of illegal aliens, high interest rates and mortgages, an epidemic of homelessness and violent crime, and the world turned upside down in Ukraine, the Middle East, the Red Sea, the Philippines, Haiti, and Taiwan.

    • Claim a “feisty” and “supercharged” Joe is “raring to go” and “can’t wait” to hit the campaign trail to “take on” Trump because he has never been more “in charge,” more “dynamic”, and more “cocky”.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 17:00
  25. Site: Community in Mission
    2 days 9 hours ago
    Author: Msgr. Charles Pope

    Two momentous days have passed: On Monday there was the cleansing of the Temple and the laments over Jerusalem’s lack of faith; Tuesday featured exhaustive teachings by Jesus and interrogations by His opponents.

    Today, Wednesday, it would seem that Jesus stays in Bethany. According to Matthew’s Gospel, the day begins with an ominous warning:

    When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, “As you know, the Passover is two days away—and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified” (Matthew 26:1-2).

    The scene then shifts across the Kidron valley, where we “overhear” this conversation:

    Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they schemed to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. “But not during the festival,” they said, “or there may be a riot among the people” (Matthew 26:3-5).

    It is interesting that they say, “not during the festival,” because according to the Synoptic Gospels that is exactly when it ended up happening. This serves as a reminder that things unfold according to the Lord’s authority. Nothing is out of His control. No one takes the Jesus’ life; He lays it down freely. Even if one considers the Johannine tradition, which uses a different Jewish calendar to date the Passover (one day later), this all takes place right in the thick of the Passover. Why? Because the Lord is fulfilling Passover. The priests and elders can plan all they want, but God is in control.

    The Lord Jesus and the Twelve likely spent a quiet sort of day and it is now later in the afternoon. Matthew’s Gospel places Jesus in Bethany, at the home of Simon the Leper (Matthew 26:6-7). According to Luke (7:36), Simon was a Pharisee. His leprosy was in remission and he had been readmitted to the community. Could he have been one of the lepers Jesus cured? We do not know. The story here is complex; there are significant differences among the various Gospel accounts. Matthew records it as follows:

    A woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table. When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.” Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her” (Matthew 26:7-13).

    The act of anointing Jesus may have happened more than once; in the four accounts of it there are differences in both the details and the timeframes.

    Luke presents this story (or a similar one) much earlier in his Gospel (Chapter 7). In his account it is Jesus’ feet not His head that are anointed. Further, Luke portrays Simon in a bad light.

    Mark and Matthew place the incident on Wednesday of Holy Week, but report that it is those at the dinner (likely the apostles) who take offense at the anointing.

    John’s Gospel places this event six days before Passover, but at the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. In John’s account it is Mary who anoints the Lord (His feet, not His head) and Judas alone who takes offense.

    For our purposes on this Wednesday of Holy Week, it is enough to note that Jesus sets the meaning of this woman’s action as anointing His body for burial. Jesus is clearly moved by her act of devotion and insight.

    Jesus does not slight the poor in His response, but He teaches that the worship of God and obedience to His truth are higher goods than even the care of the poor. Serving the poor is not to be set in opposition to serving God. They are related, but God always comes first. For example, one cannot skip sacred worship on Sunday simply to serve the poor (except in a grave and urgent situation); serving the poor is not a substitute for worship. The worship of God comes first and is meant to fuel our charitable and just works. Further, set in the light of the looming passion, the dying One takes precedence over the poor ones.

    One of the Twelve, Judas, has become increasingly disaffected. He has not been featured prominently among the Twelve; mention of him in the Gospels is minimal. Now he emerges, as if from the shadows, to betray Jesus. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all seem to place Judas’ plans to betray Jesus as set into motion at some point on this day. The Gospel of Matthew recounts,

    Then one of the Twelve—the one called Judas Iscariot—went to the chief priests and asked, “What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?” So they counted out for him thirty pieces of silver. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over (Matt 26:14-16).

    Why did he do it? There were storm clouds gathering for Judas, by which he may have opened the door to Satan. Scripture reveals that he was a thief, stealing from the common money bag (Jn 12:6). Jesus also hints that Judas was grieved by the Bread of Life discourse, which led many to abandon Jesus when He insisted that they must eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. Jesus said, “Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot … (Jn 6:70-71).

    We can only guess at Judas’ motivations. The most likely explanation is that he was disillusion when Jesus did not measure up to the common Jewish conception of the Messiah as a revolutionary warrior who would overthrow Roman power and reestablish the Kingdom of David. Judas may have been a member of the Zealot Party or at least influenced by them in this regard. Zealots are seldom interested in hearing of their own need for personal healing and repentance, let alone the call to love their enemies. This is obviously only speculative; Judas’ motivations remain to a large degree shrouded in the mystery of iniquity.

    Yes, Judas betrayed Jesus for money—a significant amount—but compared to his salvation and his soul, it was but “a mess of pottage for his birthright” (see Gen 25:34). What will it profit a man that he should gain the whole world and lose his soul? (Mk 8:36)

    The widespread belief that Judas might be in Heaven may be just a tad optimistic. The Church does not declare that any particular person is in Hell, however Jesus said the following about Judas: The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born. (Matt 26:24). It is hard to imagine Jesus saying this of any human person who ultimately makes it to Heaven.

    The more likely biblical judgment on Judas is that he died in sin, despairing of God’s mercy on His terms. One is free to hope for a different outcome for Judas, but while the story of Judas and his possible repentance does generate some sympathy in many people today, the judgment belongs to God.

    It is the saddest story never told: The repentance of Judas and his restoration by Jesus. Think of all the churches that were never built: “The Church of St. Judas, Penitent.” Think of the feast day never celebrated: “The Repentance of Judas.”

    Judas goes his way, freely. God did not force him to play this role. He only knew what Judas would do beforehand and based His plans on Judas’ free choice.

    Thus ends this Wednesday of Holy Week. It was a calmer day, a day spent among friends, yet a day on which Satan entered one man, who set a betrayal in motion. The storm clouds gather.

    The post What Was the Lord Doing on Wednesday of Holy Week? appeared first on Community in Mission.

  26. Site: Taylor Marshall
    2 days 10 hours ago
    Author: Daniel K

    Dr. Taylor Marshall tackles the recent debate over “Christ is King” as hate speech.

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

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

    Watch this new podcast episode by clicking here:

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

    The post 1071: CHRIST IS KING is NOT Hate Speech! [Podcast] appeared first on Taylor Marshall.

  27. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 10 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    WTI Extends Losses After API Reports Large Crude Build

    Oil prices dipped lower today, consolidating just off five-month highs.

    "WTI crude oil and Brent crude oil front month futures trade steady after both climbing 1.6% on Monday as Ukrainian drones hit another Russian oil refinery, adding to the list of casualties of Russian refining infrastructure, which according to (Goldman Sachs) has knocked out an estimated 900,000 barrels per day of refining capacity," Saxo Bank noted.

    Expectations were for a third weekly crude draw in a row and an eighth weekly decline in gasoline stocks...

    API

    • Crude +9.34mm (-1.2mm exp) - biggest build in six weeks

    • Cushing +2.39mm

    • Gasoline -4.437mm (-1.7mm exp) - 8th straight weekly draw

    • Distillates +531k (+100k exp)

    Against expectations of a small draw, API reported a surprise significantly large crude build and stocks at the Cushing Hub rose notably. Gasoline stocks fell for the 8th week in a row..

    Source: Bloomberg

    WTI was hovering around $81.50 ahead of the API print and legged lower on the surprise crude build...

    And finally, as gasoline stocks decline, wholesale gasoline prices imply pump prices are going much higher...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Not a good sign for Powell or Biden...

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 16:40
  28. Site: Henrymakow.com
    2 days 10 hours ago


    moscov-concert-hall-attack-cover-2.jpg

    "In conclusion, the currently available video evidence 
    and some additional evidence concerning the March 22 Moscow 
    concert hall attack is consistent with or even suggestive 
    of a staged event run by Russian security forces. 
    The motivation may have been to create a pretext for an escalation 
    of the Ukraine War. Additional evidence may either confirm 
    or refute this preliminary assessment."





    Makow- The fact that the security at the concert was unarmed is very suspicious since the US Embassy warned of just such an attack just a few weeks earlier. This article
    suggests that the victim's bodies were dummies. However, I don't believe Russia needed any pretext to escalate the conflict. Terrorism is the kind of thing Israeli-backed Ukraine
    would resort to as their prospects deteriorate. They have threatened as much.  




    by Swiss Policy Research
    (Excerpt by henrymakow.com)


    Russian authorities stated that the Moscow concert hall attack was perpetrated by Tajik militants who were hired and paid by Ukrainian intelligence. Thus, if Russian security forces staged (or orchestrated) the attack themselves, the motivation may have been to blame it on Ukraine and use it as a pretext to escalate Russia's stalling "Special Military Operation" in Ukraine.

    This would be very similar to how the false-flag 1999 Moscow apartment bombings (which may have been real or staged) were used by then-Prime Minister Putin to escalate the Chechen War.

    Such a scenario would also explain why the supposed attackers were seemingly fleeing towards Ukraine, despite the fact that trying to cross the Russian-controlled border into Ukraine would not make much sense from the perspective of real assailants or their Ukrainian sponsors.

    nato-terrorism.jpg
    The Western sponsors of Ukraine cannot expose a potential Russian false-flag or staged operation since they themselves routinely use staged terrorist attacks to justify wars and other actions. These Western and Israeli false-flag operations, in turn, have never been exposed by Russian intelligence services; in some cases, Russia even contributed to the official narrative (e.g. in Boston).

    Rather, Western intelligence services could only try to direct the blame away from Ukraine and onto the synthetic "ISIS" terrorist group controlled by Western intelligence services themselves. This would explain why the US in early March issued a "warning" of a potential terrorist attack in Moscow and why "ISIS" reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack.

    Intriguingly, in the photos released by the "ISIS-linked" Amaq News Agency, the alleged perpetrators used the finger on their left hand to do the "Shahada" Islamic oath, which is strictly forbidden in Islam. Moreover, Amaq blurred their faces and never mentioned their names.

    Nevertheless, it remains an open question how the nebulous "Amaq" media agency acquired the supposed "beheading video" shot inside the Moscow concert hall. In this video, too, the faces of the assailants were blurred and the assailants did not refer to "ISIS" in any way.

    In the past, many alleged "Al Qaeda" and "ISIS" videos, including the forged "Bin Laden videos", were discovered and released by the Israeli-American SITE Intelligence Group. In a 2011 German court trial against members of a supposed "Al Qaeda" platform called "Global Islamic Media Front" (GIMF), it was revealed that SITE not only "discovered" these videos, but helped produce them.

    In the wake of the Moscow attack, names and portraits of victims were published (both dead and injured), but this is the case after every staged terrorist attack. Previous events showed that victim identities can both be real or virtual. If they are real, they may or may not have died; if they died or were injured, it occurred in other circumstances. Severely injured victims are often played by so-called amputee actors (e.g. in Boston). In some cases, bodies of dead people were used in staged events (e.g. in the 1994 Sarajevo "marketplace massacre" and the 1999 "Racak massacre").

    As a matter of fact, staging terrorist attacks and plane crashes with entire school classes, including subsequent state funerals, was already feasible in the 1960s, as declassified documents pertaining to "Operation Northwoods" show. Moreover, even events with thousands of alleged victims, such as the "Timisoara massacre" in 1989 and the "Srebrenica genocide" in 1995, were already fabricated.

    PURIM

    Some Russian analysts have claimed that the attack occurred on the day of the Jewish Purim festival and that the owner of the Crocus City Hall is a Jewish oligarch. Both claims are incorrect.

    Nevertheless, the question is important because Israeli or rather "Zionist" operatives and advisers play a leading role in state-run and staged false-flag terrorism, likely due to their preeminent role in Hollywood and their decades-long battle against Palestinian and Arab militant groups. Several Mossad whistleblowers have revealed the use of such Israeli "black operations".

    An early example of an Israeli false-flag terrorist operation is the failed and exposed 1954 Operation Susannah, in which Jewish-Arab operatives prepared false-flag bombings in Cairo. Another classic example is the 1967 USS Liberty incident, when unmarked Israeli aircraft attacked a US intelligence ship to provide an incentive for a US entry into the Six Day War against Egypt.

    During the staged 2013 Kenya shopping mall attack, Israeli advisers were on site and the shopping mall itself was indeed owned by Australian-Israeli billionaire Frank Lowy. Back in June 2001, three months before 9/11, Frank Lowy and Larry Silverstein famously acquired the lease of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. In 2017, Lowy was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

    It is true that the number "22" has often shown up in staged terrorist attacks. Examples include the Oslo attack on 22 July 2011, the "Brussels bombings" on 22 March 2016, the "Westminister attack" on 22 March 2017, or of course the "Manchester Arena bombing" on 22 May 2017, in which a 22-year-old "suicide bomber" allegedly killed 22 people after 22 Ariana Grande songs. The use of such numbers in staged events may be an inside joke or a coded message by the directors.

    The Moscow concert hall attack also occurred on a March 22, which might be a further indication of a staged event. But March 22 wasn't the date of the Jewish Purim festival, which in 2024 was on March 23 and 24. Thus, the Moscow attack occurred on the eve of the Purim festival.

    The owner of the Crocus City Hall is Azerbaijani billionaire Aras Agalarov. Agalarov is not Jewish, but his wife, Irina Agalarova (born Irina Iosifovna Gril), is Jewish. The Jewish Forward claimed that their son, Emin Agalarov, identifies as Jewish, but other sources disagree. Until 2015, Emin Agalarov was married to the daughter of Azerbaijani President, Ilham Aliyev.

    In 2013, Aras Agalarov hosted Donald Trump's "Miss Universe" contest in the Crocus City Hall in Moscow and, in the same year, received the Russian "Order of Honor" from President Putin. In 2016, Emin Agalarov asked his American-Jewish music producer, Rob Goldstone, to organize the notorious "Trump Tower meeting" that played a role in the infamous "Russiagate" deception.

    Thus, in terms of the date and the concert hall ownership, there might be an indirect "Zionist connection", but it is certainly not as compelling as in some other staged terrorist attacks. In contrast, the owner of the Crocus City Hall is certainly linked to President Putin, and the date of the attack, March 22, may be suggestive of a simulated terrorist attack.



    ***


  29. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 10 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Global CBDC Rollout Continues Apace

    Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

    Terror attacks in Moscow, ongoing genocide in Gaza, and cancer in the Royal family are dominating the headlines.

    Meanwhile, on the financial back pages, all over the world the implementation of Central Bank Digital Currencies draws nearer.

    China, whose digital Yuan was the major flagship CBDC, is in the middle of an immense trial covering over 25 million people. This week they released new guidelines for tourists using CBDCs for the first time.

    A journalist for the crypto-focused DLNews wrote of her experience using it, and while functionality might seem limited right now we should note that she talks up the “de-dollarization” aspect of CBDCs, aligning digital currency with the “multilateral world” plan.

    Hong Kong has its own CBDC program, the second trial stage of which launched last week. They are developing the ability to use “tokenised deposits” to add $160bn to their GDP.

    In Europe, following late February’s Digital Euro Conference (DEC24), the European Central Bank has announced the development of the “digital euro rulebook”.

    In Sweden, the Riksbank’s e-Krona program published its final report on its CBDC pilot a few days ago. Coin Telegraph reports they working on making its CBDC available offline.

    The Central Bank of the UAE announced they are launching their own CBDC pilot a few days ago.

    That’s just the technical developments, saying nothing of the ongoing propaganda campaign.

    As I already said, in order to appeal to the anti-Imperialist left, we’re being told that CBDCs will help the world “de-dollarize”.

    Another angle is that CBDCs will help developing nations prosper.

    For example, BusinessMagnates.com reports that CBDCs will help “revive Latin American economies”.

    All this is just from the past week. It goes on and on and on.

    The only slight hold-out seems to be the US, where CBDCs remain somewhat contentious.

    The e-dollar has stuttered along in progress compared to the rest of the world, with contradictory reports from officials emerging all the time.

    This could be genuine opposition from US Imperialists due to the threat of de-dollarisation, it could be a natural response to a far more cash-based economy than most of the developed world, or it could be a deliberate propaganda campaign designed to promote CBDCs in anti-America quarters.

    Of course, it’s an election year state-side, and Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr have both come out against CBDCs. While RFK jr is doubtless sincere, this would not be the first time the “deep state” has tried to discredit an opinion by having Trump endorse it.

    But America or no America, the global CBDC roll-out is coming.

    According to the Atlantic Council’s CBDC Tracker, 134 countries representing 98% of global GDP are currently working on their own digital currency.

    While an Atlantic Council report from March 14th underlines the importance of “interoperability”:

    Central banks and international financial institutions are realizing that uneven and dispersed technological advancements in digital currencies could actually create further fragmentation of the financial system, deepen digital divides, and create systemic risks. This would undercut the premise of digital currencies, which are supposed to create more efficiency in the existing system. Fortunately, there are some new models of interoperability across borders.

    Interoperability isn’t just an important part of the CBDC plan, according to the Atlantic Council, it is the whole point.

    Just yesterday, reported by Business Wire, SWIFT published their findings on “Seamless Introduction of CBDCs for Cross-Border Transactions”:

    Interoperability is critical to Swift’s strategy for instant and frictionless transactions. The cooperative has focused its innovation agenda on interoperability between digital currencies and tokenised assets to overcome the potential risk of fragmentation, caused by the development of digital currencies on different technologies and with different standards and protocols. Swift’s solution has already been shown to enable cross-border transfers and connect CBDCs on different networks with each other, as well as with fiat currencies.

    As we wrote in 2024: The Year Global Government Takes Shape, interoperability is the name of the game – there is no real practical difference between 195 interoperable digital currencies and one global currency.

    Global currency is coming. It’s not on the front pages, but that’s hardly surprising.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 16:20
  30. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 10 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Stocks Drop As 'Soft' Data Slumps, Trump's 'Wealth' Pumps'n'Dumps

    'Soft' data slumped today: Consumer confidence crumbled and there was a regional Fed rout - Philly Fed Services was really ugly, Richmond Fed Manufacturing was ugly, and Texas Services was negative for the 22nd straight month...

    ...as 'hard' data improved with durable goods orders rebounding and home prices accelerated once again (but that is offset by a decline in core shipments, which will weigh on GDP)...

    Source: Bloomberg

    The STIRs market focused on the bad news and pushed rate-cut expectations modestly higher (dovish)...

    Source: Bloomberg

    The stock market initially loved it either way - bad was good and good was good - but the majors could not hold on to their overnight highs and late-day sell programs took all the majors red on the day...

    That is the 3rd down day for the S&P 500 in a row.

    There were two sell programs in the last 30 mins...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Another day, another opening short-squeeze faded...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Mag7 stocks were dumped late on spoiling the party...

    Source: Bloomberg

    The longer-end of the bond curve outperformed today (with the short-end modestly higher in yield) with 30Y -2bps on the day, helped by a strong 5Y (record size) auction. The stronger than expected durable goods orders print snapped yields to yesterday's highs but the soft-date weakness (and the auction) wore yields lower as the day went on...

    Source: Bloomberg

    After yesterday's big surge (on net zero ETF inflows), bitcoin held on to the $70,000 level today...

    Source: Bloomberg

    The dollar ended practically unchanged, rallying back from modest weakness overnight...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Spot gold prices surged up to $2200 intraday before giving a lot of the gains back to end marginally higher....

    Source: Bloomberg

    Oil prices dipped ahead of tonight's API inventory data...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) rocketed higher today... only to be dumped late on, erasing half of the day's gains...

    Source: Bloomberg

    ...with the company with barely any revenues now worth almost $10BN at its peak today, according to Bloomberg data...

    Source: Bloomberg

    ...and Trump owns 69% of it (but is unable to sell... yet).

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 16:00
  31. Site: The Remnant Newspaper
    2 days 11 hours ago
  32. Site: LifeNews
    2 days 11 hours ago
    Author: Gayle Irwin

    Coming alongside women in need of housing and community resource connections became a focus for House of Ruth Pregnancy Care Center, and nearly a year later, several women have received significant assistance to help them continue their pregnancies and change their lives.

    “We realized several years ago, housing was definitely an issue,” said House of Ruth Executive Director Stephanie Richey.

    The house is not considered a maternity home, she added, because certain aspects of that classification didn’t fit the clientele seen at the center. Therefore, Richey and her team have embraced a model that aligns more closely with what their clients need, including allowing more than one child to live in the house.

    “We consider each on a case-by-case basis and with what [rooms] we have available,” Richey said.

    A fitting name

    The five-bedroom, four-bath home purchased in 2022 was christened The Carpenter’s House. The location is on Carpenter Lane; Jesus was a carpenter by trade, and He “is constantly building and re-building the broken,” says the narrator of a video created about the home. Interestingly, the house mother’s maiden name is Carpenter, Richey said.

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    The vision for starting a home for women came during a conference Richey and her staff hosted for other Arizona pregnancy center staff, inspired by Abby Johnson’s Pro-Love Ministries, which mentored them in making plans for the house.

    Offering resources

    Case management is a program component, and Liberty Handis, R.N., B.S.N., was hired to fulfill that role. She also serves as the Abortion Pill Reversal nurse for House of Ruth. As a case manager, she meets with all pregnancy center clients, not just the ones in need of housing.

    “I do an assessment with them, find out where they are in their life, what needs they have, how we can best serve them,” Handis told Pregnancy Help News. “And I follow-up with them, seeing if they’ve applied for jobs and things like that.”

    She maintains relationships with community agencies and nonprofit organizations that can help pregnancy clients in different ways as well as with other pregnancy centers in northern Arizona.

    Entering the world of housing

    Before the 4,000-square-foot house on Carpenter Lane was purchased, a different home was chosen for the purpose of providing shelter to pregnant women and single moms. That house went all the way to escrow, Richey said, however, it ended up falling through. Massey and her husband found the house on Carpenter Lane, and the center purchased the home in December 2022.

    Although work was needed to accommodate single women with and without children, supporters of the Cottonwood, Ariz., pregnancy medical clinic came together and donated materials, labor, and time. The first woman moved into the home in February of 2023, Richey said.

    “The home is a split-level,” she said. “We began work on the bottom level about the same time [as the first mom arrived]. It’s a place for moms to start over and start working on the goals they have.”

    Four women received housing help through The Carpenter’s House, and more will be served once the bottom floor has been refinished and refurnished.

    Items remain needed for the home and House of Ruth has an Amazon Wishlist for those items.

    One woman who began living in the home a year ago remains living there, Massey said.

    “She had her baby last October, and she’s working at a job,” she said. “She received her certification as a CNA, and she’s doing very, very well. She was our first Embrace Grace girl, too.”

    She accepted Christ and was also baptized not long ago, Richey added.

    The other resident, who recently moved in, expects the birth of her child in April, Massey said.

    “This house belongs to God totally,” she said.

    God makes paths straight

    Starting case management and housing programs brings both joy and anxiety, the women said. However, they also agree that God makes His will known.

    “When you first meet [potential residents], it’s a bit scary,” Handis said. “You wonder if they’re going to make it, if they’ll start making good choices, and then when we see them doing the right things, like getting a job, and we meet their babies, it’s so joyful.”

    The growth is a two-way street.

    “Our own faith has grown,” Richey said. “God placed this on our hearts, and He saw it to fruition. God is faithful, and He is good, and even though it’s been scary and stressful and all those things, it’s brought us tremendous joy. It’s been a faith-growth experience for all of us.”

    The post Arizona Pregnancy Center Opens New Home to Provide Housing for Pregnant Women appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  33. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 11 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Activist California Judge Tosses Musk's X Censorship Lawsuit Against Dark Money 'Anti-Hate' Group

    A California judge has tossed out a lawsuit from social media platform X against the Center or Countering Digital Hate, contending that X is not entitled to seek restitution against the organization because third-party advertisers left the platform following CCDH's campaign against it.

    The lawsuit alleged that CCDH had unlawfully accessed and scraped data from X in order to conduct misleading studies that found a rise in hate speech following Elon Musk's acquisition of the social media platform in late 2022. The company says CCDH has "cherry-picked" posts ot drive advertisers away, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in losses.

    "This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech," said judge Charles Breyer in California, citing a Nov. 2023 Reuters survey that found "social media researchers have canceled, suspended or changed more than 100 studies about X" as a result of Musk's policies as CEO.

    Breyer also insinuated that X filed the suit "perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism."

    CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed celebrated his win, saying in a post-decision statement that "The courts today have affirmed our fundamental right to research, to speak, to advocate, and to hold accountable social media companies for decisions they make behind closed doors that affect our kids, our democracy, and our fundamental human rights and civil liberties."

    CCDH is a dark money nonprofit with an outsized influence over the digital advertising space and political sphere, which popped up seemingly out of nowhere.

    X responded to the ruling, posting: "Today a federal court in San Francisco issued a decision in the case X brought against the Center for Countering Digital Hate for illegally obtaining platform data to create misleading research. X disagrees with the court's decision and plans to appeal."

    Today a federal court in San Francisco issued a decision in the case X brought against the Center for Countering Digital Hate for illegally obtaining platform data to create misleading research. X disagrees with the court's decision and plans to appeal.

    — News (@XNews) March 25, 2024

    Meanwhile, Musk - who has called CCDH a "truly evil organization that just wants to destroy the first amendment under the guise of doing good!" did not immediately respond.

    As Paul Thacker noted in October in Tablet, Ahmed - a former British Labour party operative, released a report in 2021 about online misinformation that quickly reached the pre-Musk Twitter regime, and was used to silence divergent opinions - including those of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who the report named as one of "The Disinformation Dozen." The report was then cited by by the Biden administration.

    CCDH also targeted ZeroHedge with a false report initially claiming that we were demonetized by Google for peddling hate speech, when in fact the CCDH took passages from our comments section and claimed they were the views of ZH. The report was laundered through NBC's "verify" fact check unit. NBC News was internationally condemned for going after a rival using CCDH research, and written by a 25-year-old (trust fund) UK journalist who has since bounced around various outlets without much in the way of actual journalism to show for it.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 15:45
  34. Site: LifeNews
    2 days 11 hours ago
    Author: Alex Schadenberg

    CBC News reporter, Meghan Grant published an article yesterday explaining that a Calgary judge ruled that a 27-year-old can go ahead with MAID death despite her father’s concerns. There is a publication ban on the names of the participants.

    This case is very close to me since I have an autistic son.

    The judge removed the temporary injunction on January 31, 2024 that prevented the 27-year-old autistic woman in Calgary who lives with her parents. Grant reports:

    While Justice Colin Feasby acknowledged the “profound grief” that W.V. would suffer with the death of his child, he ruled the loss of M.V.’s autonomy was more important.

    “M.V.’s dignity and right to self-determination outweighs the important matters raised by W.V. and the harm that he will suffer in losing M.V.,” wrote Feasby in his 34-page written decision issued Monday.

    “Though I find that W.V. has raised serious issues, I conclude that M.V.’s autonomy and dignity interests outweigh competing considerations.”

    Justice Feasby decided that an interim injunction would be held for another 30 days to provide time for a possible appeal. Grant reported:

    Feasby’s decision sets aside an interim injunction the father was granted the day before M.V.’s assisted death was set to take place in the family’s home.

    But the judge also issued a 30-day stay of his decision so that W.V. can take the case to the Alberta Court of Appeal, which means the interim injunction will remain in place for the next month.

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    The daughter did not bring forth evidence proving that her health condition would qualify her for euthanasia since her defence was based on that it is none of her father’s business.

    The father brought evidence to the court to prove that the daughter is generally healthy. Grant reported.

    But W.V. believes his daughter “is vulnerable and is not competent to make the decision to take her own life,” according to Feasby’s summary of the father’s position.

    “He says that she is generally healthy and believes that her physical symptoms, to the extent that she has any, result from undiagnosed psychological conditions.”

    Her only known diagnoses described in court earlier this month are autism and ADHD.

    The daughter had been approved for euthanasia by one doctor and turned down by another doctor. The father took issue with the role of the Alberta Health Service in finding the second doctor to approve the death. Grant reports:

    Her father took issue with the third doctor who signed off on M.V.’s MAID approval “because he was not independent or objective.”

    At the March 11 hearing, Sarah Miller, counsel for the father, called the situation “a novel issue for Alberta” because the province operates a system where there is no appeal process and no means of reviewing a person’s MAID approval.

    Justice Feasby did order an assessment of the Alberta Health Service’s role. Grant reports:

    While Feasby found the “court cannot review a MAID applicant’s decision-making or the clinical judgment of the doctors and nurse practitioners,” he did rule the actions of the MAID navigator — a person who works for AHS and helps co-ordinate a patient’s eligibility assessment — can be examined.

    Feasby ruled the courts can review whether the AHS MAID navigator followed its own policy.

    “There can be no doubt that it is a serious issue,” wrote Feasby. “The AHS MAID policy is part of the legal framework governing medical assistance in dying and, as such, is a matter of life and death.”

    Nonetheless, Feasby only granted a 30 day continuance of the injunction based on a possible appeal, he did not extend the injunction until the role of the Alberta Health Service is examined.

    Canada’s euthanasia law was not designed to protect vulnerable people. The law is designed to protect the doctors who are willing to kill.

    LifeNews.com Note: Alex Schadenberg is the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and you can read his blog here. File photo.

    The post Judge Rules 27-Year-Old Woman With Autism Can be Euthanized appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  35. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 11 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    'Haven For Illicit Money-Laundering' - DoJ Charges Crypto Exchange KuCoin Over Billions In Criminal Funds

    United States Justice Department (DoJ) officials unsealed an indictment against cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin and two of its founders for "conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business" and violations of the Bank Secrecy Act.

    As CoinDesk reports, the DoJ said in an indictment that KuCoin and founders Chun Gan and Ke Tang operated KuCoin as a money-transmitting business with over 30 million customers but did not implement a know-your-customer (KYC) or AML program until 2023 – and even then, its KYC program did not apply to existing customers.

    Neither Gan nor Tang were arrested, the DOJ said in a press release.

    U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said:

    “As today’s Indictment alleges, KuCoin and its founders deliberately sought to conceal the fact that substantial numbers of U.S. users were trading on KuCoin’s platform. 

    Indeed, KuCoin allegedly took advantage of its sizeable U.S. customer base to become one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency derivatives and spot exchanges, with billions of dollars of daily trades and trillions of dollars of annual trade volume.  But financial institutions like KuCoin that take advantage of the unique opportunities available in the United States must also comply with U.S. law to help identify and drive out crime and corrupt financing schemes.  KuCoin allegedly deliberately chose not to do so. 

    As alleged, in failing to implement even basic anti-money laundering policies, the defendants allowed KuCoin to operate in the shadows of the financial markets and be used as a haven for illicit money laundering, with KuCoin receiving over $5 billion and sending over $4 billion of suspicious and criminal funds. 

    Crypto exchanges like KuCoin cannot have it both ways.  Today’s Indictment should send a clear message to other crypto exchanges: if you plan to serve U.S. customers, you must follow U.S. law, plain and simple.”

    The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also filed a suit against KuCoin Tuesday, alleging the company, which offers both spot and futures trading services, did not register as a futures commission merchant, swap execution facility or designated contract market. Its suit also charged that KuCoin didn't implement the CFTC's equivalent of a KYC program.

    With bitcoin having reached up to new record highs, it is worth noting today's action marks the first time that the DOJ has targeted a crypto exchange since it announced a multi-billion dollar settlement with Binance late last year, perhaps in a refreshed playbook to spread FUD back into the crypto ecosystem.

    Finally, KuCoin claims that its users' assets are safe amid the series of criminal and civil allegations:

    "KuCoin is operating well, and the assets of our users are absolutely safe," the exchange wrote.

    "We are aware of the related reports and are currently investigating the details through our lawyers. KuCoin respect the laws and regulations of various countries and strictly adheres to compliance standards."

    At the same time, KuCoin's native token, KCS, has lost 12% of its value over the past 24 hours and is currently trading at $12.64 at the time of publication.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 15:05
  36. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 12 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Tesla Cooperates With CATL On Faster-Charging Battery Technology

    Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

    Tesla and battery manufacturer CATL are working together on the development of new battery technologies that could lead to faster-charging electric vehicle batteries, the founder of the Chinese battery manufacturer, the world’s biggest, told Bloomberg in an interview published on Monday.

    Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., as CATL is officially known, has a large supply deal with the U.S. EV manufacturer, and is also a battery supplier to big automakers including BMW and the Mercedes-Benz Group AG. 

    Amid the U.S.-China trade and technology spats and U.S. restrictions on Chinese technology used in America-made products, CATL is effectively banned from selling its batteries directly in the United States. But the company is working under so-called licensing, royalty, and services (LRS) agreements with partners, allowing them to license the battery technology, for a fee.  

    Last year, one of Detroit’s Big Three, Ford, said it had reached an agreement with CATL, under which a wholly owned subsidiary of Ford would manufacture the battery cells using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cell knowledge and services provided by CATL.   

    Currently, CATL is in discussions with up to 20 U.S. and European carmakers to potentially reach licensing deals similar to the one with Ford, CATL’s founder, Chinese billionaire Robin Zeng, told Bloomberg.

    Separately, CATL and Tesla are working together on new electrochemical technology aiming to make faster-charging batteries, he added.

    Tesla is looking to preserve its market share in the growing global EV battery market and to manufacture a vehicle that would cost less than $25,000.

    “There’s always room for cost reduction depending on what the $25,000 car’s aim is,” CATL’s Zeng told Bloomberg in the interview.

    The Chinese businessman also confirmed an earlier Bloomberg report from January this year that Tesla plans to open a small battery-manufacturing plant in Nevada using idle CATL equipment, with minimal involvement of the Chinese company, whose staff would only work on setting up the equipment.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 14:50
  37. Site: LifeNews
    2 days 12 hours ago
    Author: Mary Szoch

    On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine vs. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), determining whether the FDA must reinstate the safety standards for the abortion drug mifepristone.

    Because mifepristone carries life-threatening risks such as hemorrhage, infection, retained fetal parts, the need for emergency surgery, and even death, after its FDA approval in 2000, the pro-abortion Clinton administration placed certain safety requirements around the drug. Later known as the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS), these safety requirements stated that mifepristone was approved for use up to seven weeks, mandated that the abortion drug only be dispensed in certain health care settings under the supervision of a certified licensed physician who could diagnose pregnancy complications and determine the gestational age, and required the manufacturer to report all complications to the FDA.

    Changes by the Obama administration in 2016 and the Biden administration in 2021 approved the drug up to 10 weeks — no longer required in-person dispensing by a physician, but instead, allowed any “health care provider” to dispense (and to do so even through the mail), and removed the adverse complication reporting requirement.

    The FDA’s reckless endangerment of women is based on three major myths. Here are the facts:

    Myth #1: Women who take chemical abortion drugs do not experience serious complications.

    According to the FDA’s own label, approximately 1 in 25 women visit the ER due to complications from mifepristone abortions. That means roughly 20,000 women each year visit the ER following a mifepristone abortion. That’s a lot.

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    The abortion industry perpetuates the myth that mifepristone abortion is safe by relying on faulty data. Between 2000 and 2021,4,207 adverse events related to chemical abortions were reported to the FDA, but that number only includes those voluntarily reported, as in 2016 the FDA removed the requirement for prescribers to report non-fatal adverse events.

    Despite this change in reporting requirements — the FDA label has continued to state that 2.9-4.6% of women visit the ER following a mifepristone abortion.

    The FDA has always known this drug is dangerous for women and their children, and the agency removed safety precautions anyway.

    Myth #2: Mifepristone can legally and safely be distributed through the mail.

    Federal law prohibits the mailing of any “article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion.”

    So, mailing mifepristone is very clearly illegal.

    Moreover, the original safety measure requiring in-person dispensing of the drug by a licensed physician was meant to protect women’s health and safety, and here’s how:

    Ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg, rather than implanting to the lining of his or her mother’s uterus, instead implants and begins to develop outside of the womb. In all of these pregnancies, the embryo will die.

    Ectopic pregnancies occur in 2% of pregnancies but account for 13% of all maternal deaths. Half of women with ectopic pregnancies have no risk factors, and ectopic pregnancies that go undiagnosed may rupture, leading to life-threatening hemorrhage. Ectopic pregnancy can only be ruled out with ultrasound. When a mother takes mifepristone without knowing that her pregnancy is ectopic, the drug regimen does not affect the embryo, and the embryo will continue to grow. A mother experiencing the severe pain caused by fallopian tube rupture may mistakenly think it is a consequence of her abortion — not a sign of a life-threatening complication of ectopic pregnancy. Sending mifepristone through the mail puts the lives of women with ectopic pregnancies in grave danger.

    Additionally, Rh negative pregnant women who do not receive prophylactic Rhogam and undergo an abortion using mifepristone may experience isoimmunization, a condition where the mother’s immune system attacks future pregnancies. Left untreated, 14% of affected infants conceived by mothers with isoimmunization are stillborn, and half suffer neonatal death or brain injury. While an in-person visit would easily detect if a woman is Rh negative, sending pills through the mail prevents this.

    Finally, there is a great potential for drugs sent through the mail to be misused because there is no way to verify who is consuming the medication and whether they are doing so willingly. There is substantial evidence indicating that some women are either forced to take the medication or do so unknowingly. From a mother who attempted to force her daughter to take mifepristone, to abusive boyfriends pressuring, forcing, or secretly making their girlfriend take mifepristone, to an adulterous husband attempting to trick his wife into taking the drug multiple times, without an in-person dispensing requirement mifepristone has been used as a tool of abusers.

    Myth #3: The gestational age at which a woman has a chemical abortion doesn’t matter.

    Planned Parenthood’s own website indicates that at eight weeks of pregnancy or less, mifepristone works 94-98% of the time. By 10-11 weeks, the website indicates that 13% of women will have an incomplete abortion.

    While Planned Parenthood brushes off this complication, the truth is, if using mifepristone before 11 weeks, 6 to 13% of women will require a surgical procedure to “complete” their abortion. Later in pregnancy, the dangers for women are even greater.

    In addition to the physical dangers of taking mifepristone, the emotional scars caused by the drug cannot be overstated. At eight to 10 weeks gestation, the baby is approximately the size and shape of a gummy bear. The abortion industry says this is just a clump of cells. But women tell the heartbreaking stories of delivering their clearly recognizable baby and not knowing what to do with the child’s remains.

    LifeNews Note: Mary Szoch is the Director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council.

    The post The Abortion Drug Mifepristone is Harming Women, Here’s Proof appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  38. Site: Novus Motus Liturgicus
    2 days 12 hours ago
    In the oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, ca. 650 AD [1], the Gospel of Holy Tuesday is not the Passion of St Mark, as it is today, but John 13, 1-32: Christ’s washing of the disciples’ feet (1-11), His words to them immediately afterwards (12-20), the revelation of Judas as the betrayer (21-30), and Christ’s declaration that “Now the Son of man is glorified, etc.” The Divine Office preserves aGregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0
  39. Site: PeakProsperity
    2 days 13 hours ago
    Author: Chris Martenson
    Whether intentional or not, the Baltimore Bridge disaster will result in huge costs and disruptions both locally and up and down the East Coast. And some important updates on both the migrant invasion and solar energy.
  40. Site: AsiaNews.it
    2 days 13 hours ago
    For Fr Romanelli, "something is moving" in the quagmire of international diplomacy, but an "effective" truce and "humanitarian aid" are needed. Yesterday's UN vote is a positive step, but it must be accompanied by the delivery of food and medicine and the stop of the invasion of southern Gaza. This year's Holy Week celebrations are a mixture of 'bitterness and joy'.
  41. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 13 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    PIMCO Pulls Back On US Treasury Exposure: Fears Inflation, Fiscal Folly

    PIMCO CIO Andrew Balls told The FT that the giant bond fund is holding a smaller than usual position in US Treasuries, preferring the bonds of countries such as the UK and Canada, as he fears re-igniting inflation will pressure The Fed to act considerably less dovish than even the latest 'dot-plot' suggests.

    “Outside of the US . . . we are seeing more evidence of inflation correcting,” Balls said.

    “I think you see the balance of risks on the Fed going slower [in cutting rates] than is priced in but outside the US there is some risk of central banks delivering more than is priced in.”

    While long-dated inflation expectations are lower in the US, they remain notably elevated relative to the big declines from 20923's peak that we have seen in UK and Europe....

    Source: Bloomberg

    The $1.9-Trillion-assets-under-management firm's view is similar to consensus on Fed rate-cut expectations, but Balls fears “the risks towards stronger activity and sticky inflation" in the US, adding that "you have an ongoing US exceptionalism theme."

    Rate-cut expectations have plunged in the past three months for The Fed, BoE, and ECB (higher in the chart) with Europe pricing in four cuts in 2024 while UK and US are pricing in three cuts...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Long-dated yields on US and UK bonds are basically the same, and both dramatically higher than equivalent maturity Bunds...

    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, Balls fears a replay of the surge in yields that occurred last fall, when markets were worried about bigger than expected government borrowing plans.

    “You can imagine that happening again,” Balls said, referring to the rise in yields last autumn.

    Both the Democrats and the Republicans seem unconcerned about the level of the fiscal deficit... It does seem likely that without having something exciting happening [like the UK’s 2022 gilts crisis] you could have a slow grind to higher term premia.”

    The PIMCO CIO said his preferred places to have exposure to bonds more sensitive to changes in interest rates were in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

    In December the FT reported that Pimco’s chief investment officer believed the UK was at risk of a serious economic downturn and that he had been running larger than usual bets on gilts.

    Not exactly a good back ground for ever-increasing auctions due in the US.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 13:50
  42. Site: Mises Institute
    2 days 13 hours ago
    Author: J. Michael Oliver
    The Murray N. Rothbard Memorial Lecture. Sponsored by Steven and Cassandra Torello.
  43. Site: LifeNews
    2 days 13 hours ago
    Author: Joshua Arnold

    The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) sweeping deregulation of chemical abortion in 2016 and 2021. A coalition of doctors convinced “all six judges that have opined on the merits of this case” (FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine) that “FDA’s 2016 Major Changes and 2021 actions were unlawful,” according to the respondents’ (the alliance of doctors) brief.

    FDA Changes

    When the FDA first approved chemical abortion in 2000, it required, among other safeguards, that the drugs must be “be dispensed in person by or under the supervision of a doctor,” petitioners (the FDA) acknowledged. Respondents noted that chemical abortion’s approval was conditioned upon these safeguards “because the drug could not safely be approved without restrictions.”

    “These pills take the life of a child every single time,” Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) told The Washington Stand, “but it can also take the life of the mom or cause major side effects.”

    However, in 2016, the FDA announced “major” changes to deregulate the abortion pill. Respondents pointed out that these changes were made “at Danco’s request.” Danco is the pharmaceutical company which manufactures abortion pills and was party to a separate lawsuit, which the courts consolidated with this one.

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

    In the 2016 revisions, the FDA made 10 changes to the administration of chemical abortions. These changes included:

    • “Increasing the maximum gestational age from seven weeks to ten,”
    • “Allowing nondoctors to prescribe and administer chemical abortions,”
    • “Removing the Day 3 in-person administration requirement for misoprostol,”
    • “Eliminating the Day 14 in-person follow-up examination to identify complications,” and
    • “Removing the requirement that prescribers report non-fatal adverse events.”

    “In 2016, FDA stripped away many safeguards, failing to explain why it was proper to eliminate them all without a study showing their cumulative safety,” Respondents argued. “In 2021, FDA removed the last-remaining doctor’s visit, allowing mail-order chemical abortions despite admitting the safety studies on which it relied were ‘insufficient.’”

    Procedural History

    The coalition of doctors challenged these chemical abortion rule changes in 2022, as well as the FDA’s initial approval in 2000 and a few other administrative actions. The district court ruled against the FDA on all counts, holding that their actions were “arbitrary and capricious” and declaring a “stay” against their approval of chemical abortion pills.

    On appeal, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that it was too late to challenge the initial approval of chemical abortion in 2000 but they upheld the district court’s ruling against the FDA’s more recent actions. The FDA and Danco then appealed to the Supreme Court, which temporarily put the district court’s order on hold without writing an opinion.

    However, “after further briefing and argument” at the Fifth Circuit, that appellate court again suspended the FDA’s 2016 and 2021 actions, leading to another appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday on three questions, respectively reviewing 1) standing, 2) the FDA’s actions, and 3) the district court’s order.

    Chemical Abortion Context

    The chemical abortion method has expanded rapidly in recent years to the point that, “today, more than half of American women who … terminate their pregnancies rely on mifepristone to do so,” as the petitioners’ brief put it.

    The expansion of chemical abortion “was actually prior to” and “unrelated to Dobbs,” Lankford explained, but rather was due to “its being promoted online,” “its accessibility,” and “the fact that individuals can receive these drugs to do it at home.”

    However, the Biden administration has worked to aggressively expand chemical abortion in the aftermath of Dobbs, acknowledged Lankford, who has pressured the Biden administration and pharmacies over chemical abortion. “What the Biden administration is doing is saying, ‘We want to get these chemical drugs to as many people as we possibly can. Even if they’re in states that do not allow abortion, we still want to be able to go around the state laws.’”

    Dangers of Chemical Abortion

    Besides circumventing state laws, the FDA is also omitting critical safety checks, Lankford argued. As evidenced by the drug’s conditional approval in 2000, “there are serious issues” with mifepristone “that just require a basic doctor check-in, just a basic sonogram,” he said. For instance, he said with an ectopic pregnancy or incorrect estimate of gestational age, a woman taking chemical abortion pills can wind up with severe complications or possibly even die.

    “The FDA’s own label for mifepristone and misoprostol says that roughly one in 25 women who take the drug will end up in the emergency room,” warned Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer Erin Hawley, who represents the doctors’ coalition.

    “If you take this pill, and you have an ectopic pregnancy, you’re going to really have a lot of hemorrhaging, and you’re going to end up in the emergency room. And if you don’t get there fast enough, it could take your life,” warned Lankford. This is one reason to require women to have an in-person visit with a doctor before commencing a chemical abortion, he argued. “If you don’t ever see a doctor, you can’t determine if you have an ectopic pregnancy.”

    Additionally, “we need to know how far along the woman is,” Lankford said. The FDA previously approved mifepristone for a maximum gestational age of seven weeks, extended to 10 weeks in 2016, beyond which the drug is deemed unsafe for the mother. Beyond this point, the unborn baby grows rapidly, increasing the risk of severe complications. “If she miscounts the number of weeks she is pregnant, and she is actually farther along than she thought, then there’s a dramatic increase in the side effects, and … it could lead to death for her,” stated Lankford.

    Lankford also objected to the FDA changing the rules to no longer require the reporting of adverse effects unless they are fatal. Such adverse effects could include severe bleeding, requiring an emergency room visit or a blood transfusion. “It is undisputed that complications result in emergency room visits for 2.9%–4.6% of women,” the respondents’ brief noted.

    The FDA is charged with approving drugs that are safe and effective, its brief acknowledged, but with this change it is willfully ignoring evidence that chemical abortion drugs are not safe, Lankford argued. “It allows the Biden administration, the FDA, to say, ‘We don’t have any record of any bad side effects from this,’ when really what FDA is saying is, ‘Don’t tell us if there are any side effects unless she dies,’” he said.

    “The challenge seems to be right now for the Biden administration is, how can they get abortions into states that don’t allow surgical abortions?” stated Lankford. “They’re looking for ways to say, ‘We’ll just mail you an abortion kit, and you can do it at home. And we’re not going to tell you about the possible side effects. We’re not going to tell you about the risks. In fact, we don’t even track those things.’”

    “The focus of this administration has been very strong into increasing the number of abortions in America,” Lankford observed. “Whereas the past administrations — Republican and Democrat — were talking about decreasing the number of abortions, this administration is literally the opposite of that. … That’s ghastly in a million ways, but especially when it puts people at risk.”

    LifeNews Note: Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand, contributing both news and commentary from a biblical worldview. Originally published by The Washington Stand.

    The post FDA Put Women at Risk in 2016 by Removing Abortion Pill Safeguards, Now Thousands are Being Injured appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  44. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 13 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    MS-13 Gang Leader On FBI's Most-Wanted List Arrested At Border In San Diego

    Authored by Brad Jones via The Epoch Times,

    A high-ranking leader of the international Mara Salvatrucha gang, better known as MS-13, was arrested on narco-terrorism charges at the U.S.-Mexican border in San Diego earlier this month.

    Fredy Ivan Jandres-Parada, a leader of the international MS-13 gang, was arrested at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego on March 7, 2024. (Courtesy of FBI)

    Federal authorities arrested Fredy Ivan Jandres-Parada, 48, also known as “Lucky De Park View“ at the San Ysidro Port of Entry March 7.

    He has been charged for his alleged role in ordering numerous acts of violence against civilians, law enforcement, and rival gang members, as well as transnational drug distribution and extortion schemes.

    The San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Ysidro, Calif., on Feb. 2, 2024. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    The suspect ranks among the senior leaders of MS-13’s Ranfla Nacional leadership council, formerly known as the Twelve Apostles of the Devil, which controls thousands of MS-13 members worldwide, according to the FBI.

    The U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, issued a federal warrant for his arrest in late December 2020, charging him with conspiracy to provide and conceal support and resources to terrorists, conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, conspiracy to finance terrorism, and narco-terrorism conspiracy.

    An indictment unsealed a month later reveals the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) strategy to target the upper echelon of MS-13 leadership—the Ranfla Nacional—in El Salvador to dismantle its command and ability to direct cliques in the U.S.

    Such cliques are known to be in various Los Angeles neighborhoods known by an area or street including Hollywood, Park View, Normandie, Francis, Fulton, and Coronado, according to the 31-page indictment.

    Trump’s Crackdown

    A 2020 DOJ report on the department’s efforts to combat MS-13 estimated the gang had 10,000 members across the U.S. and tens of thousands more worldwide and is “responsible for violent crimes in the United States, including murders, extortion, arms and drug trafficking, assaults, rapes, human trafficking, robberies, and kidnappings.”

    Less than a month after he was sworn into office, then-President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing “the whole-of-government” to develop and execute a comprehensive and decisive approach to dismantle transnational criminal organizations, including MS-13, to “restore safety for the American people,” the DOJ report states.

    “For decades, MS-13 has exploited weaknesses in U.S. immigration enforcement policies to move its members in and out of the United States and to recruit new members who have arrived in the United States illegally,” according to the report.

    It has infiltrated American cities and suburbs and established cliques in California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, according to the DOJ report.

    The San Ysidro border entryway near San Diego, Calif., on May 31, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    MS-13 members are mostly Salvadoran nationals or first-generation Salvadoran Americans, as well as Hondurans, Guatemalans, Mexicans, and other Central and South American immigrants, according to the FBI.

    And a 2008 report from the agency deemed MS-13 a high-level threat in some parts of the U.S. and a medium threat nationwide, saying it often targets middle and high school students for recruitment.

    But, in May 2018, then-President Trump took flak from political adversaries who accused him of calling illegal immigrants “animals,” while criticizing California’s sanctuary state policy at an immigration roundtable in Washington.

    “We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in—and we’re stopping a lot of them,” President Trump said. “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals.”

    He made the remark in response to a question about gangs from a sheriff—and later said he was referring to MS-13, but at a National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., a month later, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, former House Speaker, chastised him over the remark.

    “This is the first time in recent history where we have had a president who does not respect the dignity and worth of every person coming into our country, the recognition that immigration is the constant reinvigoration of America,” Ms. Pelosi said. “America has always been a nation of immigrants, enriched and blessed by each wave of newcomers to our shores. We truly believe, as people of faith, that we are all God’s children.”

    Former President Donald Trump attends a border security briefing to discuss further plans in securing the southern border wall in Weslaco, Texas, on June 30, 2021. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

    Ms. Pelosi also received public backlash for saying there is “a spark of divinity” in every immigrant that demands “respect for every person—not animals, not inhuman, but children of God.”

    “Immigrants keep faith in America’s promise of opportunity and we must keep faith with them by respecting … the dignity and worth of every person. We must reject language that calls them animals,” she said.

    Meanwhile, CBS News reported March 24, that U.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens has called the southern border a “national security threat” citing 140,000 known “gotaways” who were detected by cameras and sensors crossing into the U.S. illegally, but evaded apprehension in the last five months.

    Mr. Owens told CBS the Border Patrol is “closing in” on one million apprehensions of migrants in between ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border in the 2024 fiscal year, which began in October.

    President Trump, who is again running for president, continues to stress at his rallies the danger of MS-13 gangs, including their brutal machete attacks and other violent tactics.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 13:30
  45. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 13 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Stellar Demand For 5Y TSY Auction Despite Record $67BN For Sale To Fund Gargantuan Budget Deficit

    After a solid, if tailing, record big 2Y auction to start the week on Monday, moments ago the Treasury sold another record-sized batch of paper, this time in the form of 5Y notes, or specifically $67 billion of them, the largest such auction on record.

    While - as CNBC's Steve Liesman said this morning - it is remarkable that there was any buyers for this size paper, what is just as remarkable is that there was rather solid demand for this debt: the auction stopped at a yield of 4.235%, below last month's 4.320% and stopping through the 4.245% When Issued, the first stop through following 2 months of tails.

    The Bid to Cover was 2.41, identical to last month and just below the recent auction average of 2.43.

    The internals were especially strong with Indirects surging to a 2024 high of 70.45% from 63.53% last month, and far above the 65.5% recent average. And with Directs awarded 16.8%, just below the recent average of 18.0%, Dealers were left holding just 12.8%, the lowest since June 2023.

    Overall, this was a remarkably strong auction which was especially notable since it was also the biggest 5Y auction on record, with yields sliding across the curve after news of the auction pricing hit...

    ... and indicates that there is a growing disconnect between supply (surging) and demand (also surging) which will continue until one day there is a violent repricing as demand finally pulls back from the infinitely growing supply at which point it will be game over for the western financial system. Until then, just BTFD if you can find any D that is...

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 13:23
  46. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 13 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Saving Democracy From Itself: The Democratic National Committee Moves To Block Third Party Candidates

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column in the New York Post on reported plan of the Democratic National Committee and allied groups to try to block third-party candidates from the 2024 ballot. The contradiction is stunning as these groups raise money to “save democracy” by limiting democratic choice.

    Here is the column:

    The last time that the Chicago Democratic Convention was held in Chicago in 1968, the resulting riots led to one of the greatest Freudian slips in American politics. Mayor Richard Daley declared “the policeman isn’t there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve disorder.”

    The Democratic National Committee has now added its own gem: the Democratic Party is not here to preserve democracy, it is here to prevent democracy.

    That’s because the DNC is seeking to block third party candidates from ballots — Robert Kennedy Jr., Cornell West, and Jill Stein. All three are liberal and are considered a threat to Joe Biden.

    This effort will likely include any ticket put forward by the No Labels group, seeking a moderate alternative to the two parties.

    Mary Beth Cahill, the former interim DNC CEO, and long-time DNC staffer Ramsey Reid  will lead this effort. According to media reports, former Buttigieg campaign aide to Lis Smith will lead the effort with another Buttigieg alumni, Matt Corridoni. This effort includes not just a public campaign against Kennedy and Stein as spoilers, but “legal action” to solve the problem by denying voters a choice.

    The media does not appear at all alarmed or critical of the effort to limit democratic choice. The Washington Post stated clinically “Democrats are taking third-party threats seriously this time.” Taking it seriously appears to mean using legal means to keep them from the ballots.

    It is true that the main political parties have challenged qualification signatures and paperwork in the past. However, the reports indicate a systemic effort geared toward reducing the choices for voters. What is striking is that this is coming from democratic groups and the DNC, which are raising money on the “save democracy” narrative.

    The contradiction is spellbinding. On the same sites promising to oppose the third party candidates, the DNC and other groups push the narrative that only the Democrats are working to protect the right to vote.

    The Post reports that Democrats have studied the Hillary Clinton campaign and vowed not to allow third party candidates to drain away millions of voters as they did in 2016. Of course, the comparison is particularly telling because in both 2016 and 2024, the DNC had the least popular Democratic candidates. Polls showed that Clinton was the worst possible candidate for the party, but the Clintons had control over the DNC and state party organizations.

    Of particular concern is the fact that Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan by only 67,000 votes. In just those states, Libertarian Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Stein received more than half a million votes.

    Rather than actually pick a candidate that most citizens want, the DNC wants to replay the 2016 strategy of forcing the choice between two evils in a Biden-Trump choice. That can only work reliably if there is no other choice for citizens tired of the duopoly and the political (and media) establishment. So Kennedy, Cornell, and Stein just have to go.

    I am one of those misguided voters. Years ago, I wrote a column saying that I was tired of voting for the lesser of two evils — leaving every election as a moral hazard. I am prepared to vote for candidates from the two main parties in any given election, but I will only vote for the candidate who I believe is the best of candidates to be president. We are played as chumps by a political and media establishment in every election system. Over two decades ago, I pledged to vote for the best candidate, even if they are with a third party.

    The DNC is reportedly to be joined in this effort by a well-financed array of groups including the liberal think tank Third Way (which has filed complaints with secretaries of states); American Bridge (a Democratic opposition operation), and Clear Choice (a super PAC composed of “allies of President Biden”).

    While these groups work to limit the choice of voters, the effort continues in Florida, Georgia, Washington, and New York to keep Trump in court until the election, including a possible trial running up to or even through the election.

    There is hope that this multi-front effort will be the winning ticket, particularly if the ultimate ticket denies voters any other choice.

    The open discussion of these efforts in the media illustrates the contempt for voters, who need to be protected from their bad choices. I have previously compared the underlying assumptions to a type of electoral Big Gulp law. Before they were also struck down, these laws sought to take away the dietary choices of citizens because they were making the wrong choice in the view of experts.

    Now activists are now big gulping the election. Voters cannot be trusted with something as important as democracy.

    President Biden has said “make no mistake: Democracy is on the ballot for all of us.” Of course, he could end this effort by denouncing further ballot cleansing (something he refused to do when Trump was removed by the Colorado and Maine ballots). It appears that the last thing that democracy needs is free democratic choice.

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 13:05
  47. Site: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
    2 days 13 hours ago

    Her father claims that she is otherwise healthy and does not qualify to be killed under the law.Alex Schadenberg
    Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

    CBC News reporter, Meghan Grant published an article yesterday explaining that a Calgary judge ruled that a 27-year-old can go ahead with MAID death despite her father's concerns. There is a publication ban on the names of the participants.

    This case is very close to me since I have an autistic son.

    The judge removed the temporary injunction on January 31, 2024 that prevented the 27-year-old autistic woman in Calgary who lives with her parents. Grant reports:

    While Justice Colin Feasby acknowledged the "profound grief" that W.V. would suffer with the death of his child, he ruled the loss of M.V.'s autonomy was more important.

    "M.V.'s dignity and right to self-determination outweighs the important matters raised by W.V. and the harm that he will suffer in losing M.V.," wrote Feasby in his 34-page written decision issued Monday.

    "Though I find that W.V. has raised serious issues, I conclude that M.V.'s autonomy and dignity interests outweigh competing considerations."

    Justice Feasby decided that an interim injunction would be held for another 30 days to provide time for a possible appeal. Grant reported:

    Feasby's decision sets aside an interim injunction the father was granted the day before M.V.'s assisted death was set to take place in the family's home.

    But the judge also issued a 30-day stay of his decision so that W.V. can take the case to the Alberta Court of Appeal, which means the interim injunction will remain in place for the next month.

    The daughter did not bring forth evidence proving that her health condition would qualify her for euthanasia since her defence was based on that it is none of her father's business.

    The father brought evidence to the court to prove that the daughter is generally healthy. Grant reported.

    But W.V. believes his daughter "is vulnerable and is not competent to make the decision to take her own life," according to Feasby's summary of the father's position. 

    "He says that she is generally healthy and believes that her physical symptoms, to the extent that she has any, result from undiagnosed psychological conditions."

    Her only known diagnoses described in court earlier this month are autism and ADHD.

    The daughter had been approved for euthanasia by one doctor and turned down by another doctor. The father took issue with the role of the Alberta Health Service in finding the second doctor to approve the death. Grant reports:

    Her father took issue with the third doctor who signed off on M.V.'s MAID approval "because he was not independent or objective."

    At the March 11 hearing, Sarah Miller, counsel for the father, called the situation "a novel issue for Alberta" because the province operates a system where there is no appeal process and no means of reviewing a person's MAID approval.

    Justice Feasby did order an assessment of the Alberta Health Service's role. Grant reports:

    While Feasby found the "court cannot review a MAID applicant's decision-making or the clinical judgment of the doctors and nurse practitioners," he did rule the actions of the MAID navigator — a person who works for AHS and helps co-ordinate a patient's eligibility assessment — can be examined. 

    Feasby ruled the courts can review whether the AHS MAID navigator followed its own policy. 

    "There can be no doubt that it is a serious issue," wrote Feasby. "The AHS MAID policy is part of the legal framework governing medical assistance in dying and, as such, is a matter of life and death."

    Nonetheless, Feasby only granted a 30 day continuance of the injunction based on a possible appeal, he did not extend the injunction until the role of the Alberta Health Service is examined.

    Canada's euthanasia law was not designed to protect vulnerable people. The law is designed to protect the doctors who are willing to kill.

  48. Site: LifeNews
    2 days 13 hours ago
    Author: ProLife Campaign

    A paper published in the Irish Medical Journal on 21st March 2024 has revealed that a woman almost died from an ectopic pregnancy three days after having a medical abortion in Limerick.[1] The absence of an ultrasound allowed a situation where the 24-year-old woman in question had a medical termination and was experiencing an undetected ectopic pregnancy. Three days later she was treated in hospital.

    Pro Life Campaign spokesperson Eilís Mulroy said:

    “This shocking story from Limerick shows the disastrous impact of the decision by the Government in 2018, and by then-Minister for Health Simon Harris in particular, to reject out of hand an amendment which would have mandated an ultrasound before an abortion could be carried out. The amendment tabled in 2018 would have meant that issues like the existence of an ectopic pregnancy would’ve been caught before the woman had an abortion, which would’ve avoided such dangerous and life-threatening outcomes. As the WHO describe, medical abortion can make undiagnosed ectopic pregnancies particularly difficult to identify, since the symptoms of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy and a medical abortion can be so similar.[2]

    “In 2018, Minister Harris rejected the proposed amendment out of hand and dismissively described it as ‘subject[ing] every woman to an ultrasound.’ He rejected the amendment on the spurious grounds that ‘this is about choice’.[3] Now we are seeing the consequences of his reckless decision which leaves women at increased risk of an unidentified ectopic pregnancy, which can rupture, resulting in life-threatening internal haemorrhage.

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

    “The problem has been further exacerbated by the introduction of telemedicine abortion under Simon Harris’s watch in early 2020, despite having made a commitment in 2018 that ‘absolutely, termination of pregnancy services in Ireland is not going to be done by telemedicine.’[4] Telemedicine has removed the requirement that a woman even meet her GP before receiving the abortion pills, which precludes the possibility of an examination let alone an ultrasound. Notably, this alarming case in Limerick happened under the current telemedicine regime.

    “The Government needs to immediately end telemedicine abortion and make provision for the widespread use of ultrasound before the termination of pregnancy.”

    [1] https://imj.ie/medical-termination-of-pregnancy-an-emerging-risk-for-maternal-mortality/

    [2] World Health Organization, 2012. Safe abortion: technical and policy guidance for health systems. 2nd ed. Geneva: World Health Organization.

    [3] https://www.oireachtas.ie/ga/debates/debate/dail/2018-11-29/37/

    [4] https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/select_committee_on_health/2018-11-06/2/

    The post Irish Woman Nearly Dies From Ectopic Pregnancy Three Days After Having Abortion appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  49. Site: LifeNews
    2 days 14 hours ago
    Author: Laura Echevarria

    The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument today regarding the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decisions in 2016 and 2021 to loosen regulations of the abortion drug mifepristone and whether the challengers have standing to bring their case.

    “We hope that the justices will reconsider the approval of this dangerous drug or at least reinstate the long-standing safety protocols,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “Tragically, every mifepristone abortion takes the life of an unborn baby and places her mother in harm’s way.”

    “Bowing to pressure from the abortion industry, the FDA loosened the safety requirements of mifepristone which still has a black box warning,” said Tobias. “Drugs that come with black box warnings have the most dangerous side effects and safety concerns, yet the FDA is okay with mifepristone being prescribed and even mailed to women without an in-person exam.”

    The consolidated cases the Court heard today are FDA, et al. v. Alliance Hippocratic Medicine, et al. and Danco Laboratories, L.L.C. v. Alliance Hippocratic Medicine, et al.

    According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the government agency that tracks the nation’s abortions, approximately 56% of all abortions are done using chemical abortion methods like mifepristone and misoprostol. In a recent report, the Guttmacher Institute, a research arm of the abortion industry, claimed that this number has risen to 63%.

    LifeNews is on TruthSocial. Please follow us here.

    “Mifepristone abortions by telehealth and third-party online sites are like the Wild West with a network of suppliers who are willing to break the few rules that exist,” said Tobias. “The current Wild West of abortion drug distribution is the direct fault of the Biden Administration and its allies who have pushed for fewer and fewer rules and safety precautions for the abortion drugs.”

    Mifepristone is used in combination with misoprostol, a prostaglandin, to cause an abortion. Mifepristone blocks progesterone, leading to the death of the unborn baby, while the second drug, misoprostol, causes powerful, painful uterine contractions to expel the dead or dying baby.

    The FDA recently weakened the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) requirements for the drug combination to allow it to be dispensed and even mailed by pharmacies.

    “When hundreds of thousands of women take these pills, even a couple of percentage points of women hemorrhaging, dealing with infections, or ectopic pregnancy, means thousands of women desperately seeking emergency treatment, which may or may not be nearby,” said Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., director of Education and Research for National Right to Life. “The FDA itself warns that these abortion drugs have the potential to send one out of every 25 women to the emergency room.  In studies from other countries that actually track complications, unlike the FDA, the number of women who go to the emergency room after taking these drugs is estimated to be as many as one out of every 10.”

    Dr. O’Bannon addressed the complication rates of mifepristone in the article, Mifepristone Complications Less Than One Percent? The article can be found here.

    In September 2023, National Right to Life released a white paper entitled What the Media Missed in Its Coverage of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Decision Regarding Mifepristone which addressed many of the issues that were before the Fifth Circuit and are now before the U.S. Supreme Court. That special report can be accessed here.

    A factsheet about the safety and efficacy of mifepristone can be found here.

    The post Supreme Court Should Protect Women From Dangerous Abortion Pills appeared first on LifeNews.com.

  50. Site: Zero Hedge
    2 days 14 hours ago
    Author: Tyler Durden
    Trump To Own Nearly 80 Million 'DJT' Shares - Here's What Price Makes Him The World's First Trillionaire

    Following the merger between Digital World Acquisition Corp and Trump Media & Technology Group, former President Donald Trump is expected to own 78,750,000 shares of the combined company, which is trading under the symbol "DJT."

    Assuming maximum redemptions by DWAC shareholders, this would represent 69.4% of outstanding shares, according to the latest S-4 filing with the SEC, MarketWatch reports.

    Trump would be by far the largest shareholder. Why not, the company's stock ticker post-merger will be his initials, "DJT."

    ARC Global Investments, which is the investment vehicle of former Chief Executive Patrick Orlando. is expected to be the second-largest shareholder, with 10,790,415 shares, or 9.3% of the shares outstanding.

    Devin Nunes, CEO, is slated to own 115,000 shares, or less than 1%.

    Trillionaire?

    This week's merger added roughly $3.5 billion to Trump's net worth, bringing it up to $6.4 billion. The boost was enough to include Trump in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which tracks the top 500 wealthiest people in the world.

    So as a fun thought experiment (why not?), what price does $DJT need to hit to make Trump the world's first (documented) trillionaire?

    $1 trillion / 78,750,000 shares = $12,700

    So, just $12,635 or so to go!

    Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2024 - 12:45

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