For many people today, practical atheism is the normal rule of life...If this attitude becomes a general existential position, then freedom no longer has any standards, then everyting is possible and permissible.
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Site: LifeNews
A majority of the British public opposes attempts to decriminalise abortion and believes that the criminal law provides “clear boundaries” and protects “everyone involved” finds a major new poll from Whitestone Insight.
Asked if “Having an illegal abortion should continue to be a criminal offence to protect both the unborn and vulnerable women who could be coerced into losing a baby they may have wanted, for example by an abusive partner”, more than six in 10 (62 per cent) agreed, while less than one in five (17 per cent) disagreed.
A similar number (64 per cent) agreed with the statement that “Abortion is a matter of life and death and it is therefore appropriate that the criminal law provides a clear boundary to protect everyone involved”. Just 14 per cent of those surveyed disagreed.
The poll of more than 2,000 members of the public, commissioned by the pro-life group SPUC, is the first test of public opinion since plans to decriminalise abortion were put forward as amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill, which is currently in Parliament.
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It found the public massively under-estimates the number of terminations carried out in the UK each year with one in three (33 per cent) saying fewer than 50,000 and fully one-half (50 per cent) fewer than 100,000, nearly two-thirds of those questioned supported the idea of extending criminal sanctions to abortion providers. Asked if they agreed with the following statement: “It is unjust that pregnant women alone, and not those who prescribe or dispense women abortion pills, are liable for any misuse of those pills” 64 per cent agreed with just 17 per cent disagreeing.
Michael Robinson, Executive Director of SPUC, said the poll shows that the British public, has a better understanding of the complexities around abortion than those “championing abortion on demand”. He said: “The polling, the first since the publication of proposed amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill, clearly shows that the British public doesn’t support abortion on demand and rejects the deeply flawed arguments from the abortion lobby that it should be removed from the criminal law. While believing that the law should be rarely applied, the public recognises that criminal sanction should be applied in some cases and wants the law extended to cover those abortion providers who act in a reckless fashion endangering the lives of mothers and their babies.”
Asked: “The criminal law should continue to be applied in cases of illegal abortion, but only where a woman could not reasonably have known how far through the pregnancy she was when the abortion pills were taken”, half (49 per cent) agreed with one in seven (15 per cent) disagreeing and one third (34 per cent) unsure or not answering.
Testing public opinion further, the survey asked: “Seeking an illegal abortion should not be a criminal offence”. Of those who expressed an opinion nearly six in 10 (58 per cent) disagreed and four in 10 agreed.
Mr Robinson concluded: “While the Great British public massively underestimates the number of abortions each year with half of those surveyed wrongly thinking it’s 100,000 or less, the true figure is nearly 300,000, they recognise a baby’s life is precious and abortion is not like having a bunion removed, it’s the termination of a baby’s life. This is why there must be reserve powers in the criminal law that protect both mother and child. Those peddling abortion on demand and without consequences are step with public opinion and I would urge MPs to reject these amendments and instead look at ways to extend criminal responsibility to those providers who recklessly endanger the health and lives of vulnerable women.”
Poll Methodology:
Methodology note: Whitestone interviewed 2109 UK adults on 28-29 May 2025. Data were weighted to be representative of all adults. Whitestone is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.
The post New Poll Shows Majority of UK Residents Oppose Legalizing Abortions Up to Birth appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: LifeNews
The FBI has yet to solve at least five cases it opened into arson attacks targeting pro-life pregnancy centers in 2022, according to an investigation by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Biden FBI offered cash rewards in 2022 for information on suspects responsible for firebombings around the country, mainly directed at pro-life facilities, after the preemptive May 2 leak of a Supreme Court ruling that overturned the abortion precedent established by Roe v. Wade. Five local FBI field offices told the DCNF that the bureau is still offering the incentive for cases in Colorado, North Carolina, Washington state, Oregon and New York, indicating suspects were never found or convicted.
The FBI’s Seattle field office told the DCNF that it’s typical for the bureau to update or delete the bulletins asking the public for information if suspects are caught, and if they’re on the website, the FBI is still looking for answers. The FBI’s national press office did not respond to a request for comment.
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‘Enforce The Law Equally’
One targeted facility’s CEO, Jim Harden, told the DCNF he got a phone call from an employee around two in the morning on June 7, 2022, that changed his life. The Amherst, New York, building that was home to his organization CompassCare was set ablaze in what was eventually determined to be arson. The FBI released footage showing what it said were two suspects arriving in a car at night and throwing Molotov cocktails at the building.
Harden’s team had been on high alert that summer, having already contacted the FBI over concerns about a heightened risk of violence. Soon after the fire, he moved with his wife and children to flee an onslaught of threats against them as extremists lashed out at CompassCare, a Christian nonprofit providing free medical care to pregnant mothers to steer them away from abortion.
“Our lives are very different now,” he said in an interview with the DCNF. “We had to relocate our family … we had people riding past our house pointing guns at our kids.”
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said in April that there were more than 200 cases of pregnancy resource centers “violently attacked by activists with no action by law enforcement, federal or state” in the past several years. Family Research Council documented almost 50 instances of vandalism and other attacks on pregnancy centers and pro-life organization buildings from May through June 2022.
“I can say we are taking them seriously now and will be for the duration,” Dhillon told the DCNF about such cases. Dillon declined to comment about any specific prosecutions that may be ongoing or forthcoming.
“This Department of Justice is committed to protecting crisis pregnancy centers, pro-life organizations and places of worship from targeted acts of violence and will work to ensure justice is served to criminals who engage in this unlawful behavior,” a DOJ spokesperson said in response to questions about the unsolved cases.
The spree of violence even resulted in arson at a Portland pregnancy center run by a self-professed pro-choice woman in July 2022. As in the five cases involving pro-life groups, the FBI told the DCNF it is still offering a reward for information. The Dobbs opinion leak, which was investigated but never solved, also inspired an assassination attempt on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh near his home.
The Portland facility did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The other pregnancy centers with unsolved cases in Longmont, Colorado and Portland did not respond to multiple requests for comment, while one in Seattle declined to comment.
Harden, the CompassCare CEO, said the pro-abortion Biden administration seemed apathetic about solving the cases, despite the FBI interviewing him about the Amherst bombing. He recalled reaching out and asking urgently for updates, leading to a moment when he said an FBI agent “was screaming” over the phone that the bureau was not required to update him.
“Their job was to enforce the law equally, and it did not appear as if they were doing so,” Harden said.
‘Mountain Of Evidence’
While announcements about pro-abortion vandalism cases were scarce, the Biden administration boasted in press releases about several prosecutions of pro-life activists under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for protesting at abortion clinics. On his first week in office, President Donald Trump pardoned nearly two dozen pro-lifers accused of federal crimes.
Former Attorney General Merrick Garland explained the discrepancy in March 2023 by telling Congress that “it is quite easy” to identify and charge pro-lifers protesting in daylight.
“Those who are attacking the pregnancy resources centers, which is a hard thing to do, are doing this at night in the dark,” Garland said.
Harden did not — and does not — buy Garland’s explanation whatsoever.
“There’s a mountain of evidence,” Harden said of the vandals, noting that the authorities can search for license plate numbers, body mechanic imagery and cell phone IP addresses. “It’s just not possible they don’t know who they are. The FBI [is] the most technically advanced law enforcement agency on the planet.”
Some attacks on pro-life centers in 2022 were linked to a leftist group called Jane’s Revenge, with activists posting online threats in response to news about the leaked Dobbs decision. The FBI said the CompassCare vandals left the spray-painted message, “Jane was here.”
Harden told the DCNF his Amherst building was repaired at “miraculous” speed in 52 days thanks in part to volunteer workers, but the damage cost millions of dollars.
The attack inspired Harden to become more outspoken about political issues via media interviews. He also launched a campaign on a pro-life platform to fill Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik’s House seat in a New York special election. Stefanik announced she would remain in her role in April after Trump pulled her nomination to represent the U.S. in the United Nations.
‘Heart Problem’
Paula McSwain, executive director of the Crisis Pregnancy Center in Lincolnton, North Carolina, told the DCNF she received a letter from the FBI in August 2024 saying its investigation into arson at her building in June 2022 was closed. Surveillance footage showed someone at nighttime throwing what the FBI said was a Molotov cocktail.
The Lincolnton case is one of several for which the FBI is still offering a reward for information on any suspects, according to the bureau’s Charlotte field office.
McSwain said she was fortunate enough to get the pregnancy center up and running fairly easily.
“If they wanted to destroy the building, they could have done a better job,” McSwain told the DCNF.
The pro-life leader decided to respond to her ordeal by limiting public outcry.
“That’s what they were seeking, was attention,” McSwain said of the vandals.
Harden and McSwain said that if they could give any message to their attackers, it would be one of forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
“If you throw fire at any building, you’ve got a heart problem and there’s something not right with your life … We don’t seek revenge, we just pray for them,” McSwain said.
“The only reason I can forgive you is because forgiveness has been made available to me, and so I would encourage you to come out of the darkness and into the light,” Harden said his words to the criminals would be.
“Nothing is going to go unpunished if it’s sin,” Harden said.
LifeNews Note: Hudson Crozier writes for Daily Caller. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience.
The post Pro-Life Pregnancy Center Still Awaiting Justice 3 Years After Firebombing appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: LifeNews
A growing number of young men are turning away from the Democratic Party, citing perceptions that it is weak, out of touch, and dismissive of their concerns, according to new findings from a major research initiative reported by Politico.
The “Speaking with American Men” (SAM) project, a two-year, $20 million effort, released its first wave of findings June 4, drawing from 30 focus groups and a national media consumption survey.
According to Politico, “Participants described the Democratic Party as overly-scripted and cautious, while Republicans are seen as confident and unafraid to offend.”
“Democrats are seen as weak, whereas Republicans are seen as strong,” Ilyse Hogue, co-founder of the SAM project, told Politico. “Young men also spoke of being invisible to the Democratic coalition, and so you’ve got this weak problem and then you’ve got this, ‘I don’t think they care about me’ problem, and I think the combination is kind of a killer.”
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SAM’s national survey also revealed just 27% of young men view the Democratic Party favorably, while 43% hold a positive view of Republicans — a stark indicator of the ongoing political shift among younger male voters.
Focus groups also revealed deeper frustrations with how Democrats frame masculinity. One participant noted that Democrats promote “fluid masculinity,” while Republicans embrace “traditional masculinity of a provider.”
Others criticized Democratic campaigns for prioritizing celebrity appearances over real policy solutions. One Latino man from Las Vegas pointed to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign, which featured appearances with Beyoncé and Lady Gaga.
“It just kind of felt like, what does that have to do with me? I’m trying to move up in life,” the participant said, according to Politico.
By contrast, President Donald Trump’s direct policy promises — such as eliminating taxes on tips and overtime — reportedly resonated with voters as practical and action-oriented.
The SAM findings align with broader national trends. A CNN poll released June 1 found that 40% of Americans identify Republicans as the party of strong leadership, compared to just 16% for Democrats. Republicans also led by wide margins as the party that “gets things done” and drives “change.”
Additional polling underscores growing Democratic disillusionment. A survey last month found that only one-third of Democratic voters felt optimistic about the future of their party — a sharp drop from nearly 60% in July 2024.
LifeNews Note: Elise DeGeeter writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
The post Young Men are Abandoning the Democrat Party appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: LifeNews
A 32-year-old man from the state of Washington has been charged with materially supporting the man who bombed a fertility clinic in California on May 17, federal authorities announced June 4. He faces up to 15 years in federal prison.
Daniel Jongyon Park, of Kent, was arrested June 3 and charged with providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, according to a DOJ news release. He appeared in court June 4 in the Eastern District of New York.
The release said, citing an affidavit filed with the federal criminal complaint, that Park shipped and paid for about 270 pounds of ammonium nitrate — an explosive precursor — for Guy Edward Bartkus the 25-year-old man from Twentynine Palms, California, who drove a car that contained a bomb to a clinic in Palm Springs.
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According to a May 23 press release from FBI Los Angeles’ office, Bartkus’ vehicle, a silver 2010 Ford Fusion sedan, exploded in front of the American Reproductive Centers, killing one person who was in or near the vehicle and causing non-life-threatening injuries to four people who were nearby. Power was restored quickly and no embryos were lost in the attack, the release said.
American Reproductive Centers does not perform abortions, the release said. According to the clinic’s website, its services include in vitro fertilization (IVF), intrauterine insemination (IUI), pre-implantation genetic testing (PGT), in-house egg donation, surrogacy, fertility evaluations, egg freezing, elective single embryo transfer, “LGBTQ family building,” and endoscopic surgery.
The DOJ release confirmed that Bartkus killed himself, injured people, destroyed the building, and damaged nearby buildings in the bombing.
“Bartkus’s attack was motivated by his pro-mortalism, anti-natalism, and anti-pro-life ideology, which is the belief that individuals should not be born without their consent and that non-existence is best,” the release said. “Park — who shares Bartkus’s extremist views — shipped large quantities of explosive precursor materials to Bartkus.”
Park flew to Europe a few days after Bartkus bombed the facility, according to the release. He was detained in Poland on May 30 and later was deported to the US. Law enforcement picked him up shortly after he flew into John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
Park and Bartkus spent time at Bartkus’ residence and its garage “running experiments,” the affidavit said, according to the release. Law enforcement found in the garage chemicals commonly used in the creation of homemade bombs.
“This defendant is charged with facilitating the horrific attack on a fertility center in California. Bringing chaos and violence to a facility that exists to help women and mothers is a particularly cruel, disgusting crime that strikes at the very heart of our shared humanity,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in the release. “We are grateful to our partners in Poland who helped get this man back to America and we will prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law.”
The FBI’s Inland Empire Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating. The Palm Springs Police Department; the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department; the FBI’s legal attaché in Warsaw, Poland; officials in Poland; and FBI field office personnel in Seattle, New York, San Diego, Las Vegas, and Portland assisted.
Sarah E. Gerdes and Anna P. Boylan, who are assistant US attorneys for the Central District of California, and Patrick J. Cashman, a trial attorney for the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section, are prosecuting the case.
LifeNews Note: Mary Stroka writes for CatholicVote, a pro-life group.
The post Man Charged With Helping Abortion Activist Who Bombed Fertility Clinic, Faces 15 years in Prison appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
Putin’s Non-response to Provocations Is a Direct Road to Nuclear War
PCR On Target with Larry Sparano
Putin avoided the dire consequences mandated by Russian war doctrine by labeling the attack on Russia’s strategic triad a “terrorist act,” not an act of war. This has delayed, but not prevented a wider and more dangerous war, because what Putin has actually done is to eviscerate Russian war doctrine. If the President of Russia can refuse to acknowledge acts of war against Russia, the country has no defense. What can Putin do now to restore deterrence?
It is extraordinary that the US foreign policy community, the Trump administration, every European government, and Putin himself have zero comprehension of the seriousness of the attack on Russian strategic forces. Putin saved the day by denying any such attack. But the consequence is that the next attack on Russia will be even more provocative. At some point Putin will be forced to stop denying reality.
It is increasingly likely that Putin’s unwillingness to use sufficient force to terminate the conflict with the West in Ukraine will result in nuclear war.
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Site: Zero HedgeFutures Rise Ahead Of US-China TalksTyler Durden Mon, 06/09/2025 - 08:16
US equity futures reverse earlier losses and trade near session highs, with small cap/Russell outperformance pointing to a further potential squeeze in high-beta names as investors monitor talks between the US and China in London to defuse tensions over rare-earth minerals and advanced technology. As of 8:00AM, S&P futures rose 0.2% after the main gauge broke through the 6,000 level for the first time since February at the end of last week. Nasdaq 100 futs gained 0.1%, with Mag7 names mixed premarket, Semis are higher, and cyclicals poised to outperform Defensives. Chinese shares trading in Hong Kong entered a bull market. European stocks barely budged, while a gauge for emerging-market equities was set for its highest close in more than three years. Bond yields are lower, and USD is weaker as commodities are led by Energy and precious metals; silver continues to close the gap to gold, although today it is platinum and palladium's turn to shine. Today’s focus is the US/China trade mtg in London: overnight, HK and HSTECH performed well into the summit. Macro data prints include NY Fed’s 1-year inflation expectations (3.63% prior print) which could affect the yield curve as the Fed is in its blackout window.
In premarket trading, Mag 7 were mostly higher with the exception of Tesla which isdown 2.3% after Baird downgraded the stock to neutral, noting that the recent share price rally followed a fundamentally poor quarter for the EV maker. Other names traded flat to up: Nvidia +0.4%, Apple +0.6%, Alphabet +0.6%, Amazon +0.4%, Meta Platforms +0.04%, Microsoft -0.1%. Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) rose 4% after saying it will separate the company into two publicly traded businesses, splitting its streaming and studios business and its TV networks operations by the middle of next year. Here are some other notable premarket movers:
- Air mobility stocks are set to extend gains after President Donald Trump signed an executive action establishing an electric “Vertical Takeoff and Landing” integration pilot program, according to a White House fact sheet.
- Archer Aviation (ACHR) +9%, Joby Aviation (JOBY) +9%, Vertical Aerospace (EVTL) +7%
- EchoStar (SATS) falls 9% after the Wall Street Journal reported the company is weighing a potential chapter 11 bankruptcy filing amid a Federal Communications Commission review of certain of its wireless and satellite spectrum rights, citing people familiar with the matter.
- Etoro Group (ETOR) rises 3.3% after Mizuho, Jefferies and Citizens initiate the investment platform with a buy-equivalent rating, citing a growing retail-investor client base and potential for further growth in Europe and the US.
- Grab Holdings Ltd. (GRAB) inches 1% lower after the company said it isn’t in talks to acquire Southeast Asia internet peer GoTo Group “at this time,” signaling it’s halting or at least pausing a planned $7 billion acquisition of its Southeast Asia internet peer.
- Opendoor Technologies (OPEN) drops 13% after the company announced plans to seek holder permission for a reverse stock split between 1-for-10 and 1-for-50 at its special meeting on July 28.
- Robinhood (HOOD) falls 4% and AppLovin (APP) is down 4% after S&P Dow Jones Indices left the S&P 500 unchanged in its latest round of quarterly rebalancing on Friday.
- Sunnova Energy International Inc. (NOVA), one of the largest US rooftop solar companies, falls 33% after filing for bankruptcy in Texas following struggles with mounting debt and diminishing sales prospects.
As if the past two months never happened, the S&P is nearing all-time highs after shaking off the volatility that followed President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff announcements in early April. Still, traders are searching for catalysts for sustained advances, as the full economic impact of the trade war has yet to fully manifest and key trade-related questions remain unresolved.
“We will break to new highs eventually,” Keith Lerner, co-chief investment officer at Truist Advisory Services, told Bloomberg TV. “The market is dealing with uncertainty around tariffs, it matters but it’s not the only thing that matters. Technology is back at the forefront.”
At a time when global investors are pushing back against long-term government debt, a $22 billion auction of 30-year bonds on Thursday is bound to be one of Wall Street’s most anticipated events this week. Traders will also focus on Wednesday’s US inflation report for May. Consumers probably saw a slightly faster pace of price increases as companies gradually pass along higher import duties, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists.
“In May, when the 30-year went above 5%, we have seen buyers buying the dip,” Vasiliki Pachatouridi, head of BlackRock’s iShares fixed-income product strategy for EMEA, told Bloomberg TV. “We are underweight the long end of the curve, but there are people out there that still see value in US Treasuries at the right price.”
In Europe, the Stoxx 600 is little changed as stocks tread water with gains in real estate, leisure and travel being offset by losses in technology and banks. The DAX falls 0.5% as SAP shares provide a notable drag on the index. Among individual movers, Alphawave advances after Qualcomm agreed to buy the semiconductor company for about $2.4 billion in cash. Markets in Denmark, Switzerland, Turkey, Hungary and Norway are closed for a holiday. Here are the most notable European movers:
- Alphawave shares gain as much as 23.3% to reach 183.9 pence, after the semiconductor firm said US chipmaker Qualcomm agreed to take over the company for a price equating to 183p per share.
- The Blockchain Group rises as much as 25% after the company launched a €300m capital increase in a deal with asset management firm TOBAM.
- M&G shares rises as much as 2.8% as UBS raises its recommendation to buy from neutral, saying it expects the company to continue to deliver growth within asset management.
- Ageas shares gain as much as 3.2% to the highest since October 2008 after BofA raised its rating on the life insurance firm to buy.
- Carel shares rise as much as 5.5% to the highest since February 2024 after UBS initiated coverage on the HVAC and humidification manufacturercndes with a buy rating.
- European defense stocks are losing ground on Monday, dropping for a second consecutive session, as they fall further from recent record highs.
- Trustpilot Group’s shares fall as much as 8.9%, their biggest drop in two months, after Panmure Liberum resumed coverage with a sell recommendation, noting the consumer-review site faces high execution risk amid a complex multi-year business transition.
- Gaztransport et Technigaz shares drop as much as 9.5% after being given a new underweight rating from Morgan Stanley, while SBM Offshore gains as much as 2.3% after being initiated at overweight.
- Dunelm drops as much as 6.3%, the most in almost three months, as RBC downgrades to sector perform and says the homeware retailer’s qualities now seem reflected in the stock.
In FX, the dollar dropped 0.3%, pushing the currency to fresh two-year lows. New Zealand, Australian dollars led G10 gains; NZD/USD rose 0.8% to 0.6063, AUD/USD rose 0.6% to 0.6532; Australian financial market was closed on holiday. GBP/USD rose 0.3% to 1.3572, EUR/USD rose 0.3% to 1.1426. USD/JPY fell 0.5% to 144.07 before recouping losses to rise back to 144.50.
In rates, treasury yields are slightly lower across the curve, unwinding a small portion of Friday’s steep losses caused by May jobs report, ahead of the sale of 3-, 10- and 30-year Treasuries later this week. US front-end yields are richer by about 2bp, outperforming longer maturities and steepening 5s30s curve by about 1bp; 10-year around 4.49% is about 1bp lower on the day, German counterpart about 2bp lower. Italian government bonds are leading gains in European debt, with Italian 10-year borrowing costs falling 6 bps and further narrowing the spread with Germany to around 92 bps. Treasury auctions include $58 billion 3-year new issue Tuesday and $39 billion 10-year and $22 billion 30-year reopenings Wednesday and Thursday. This week’s focal points include May CPI data on Wednesday and Treasury auction cycle starting Tuesday. Fed officials are in an external communications blackout ahead of the June 18 policy announcement.
In commodities, spot gold rises $8 to around $3,318/oz, while platinum breaks out to multi-year highs. Oil prices are steady with WTI near $64.60 a barrel.
Looking at today's calendar, we have April wholesale inventories (10am) and May NY Fed 1-year inflation expectations (11am). Also ahead this week are May CPI. PPI and the grotesquely laughable University of Michigan sentiment (of democrats).
Market Snapshot
- S&P 500 mini little changed
- Nasdaq 100 mini little changed
- Russell 2000 mini +0.8%
- Stoxx Europe 600 little changed
- DAX -0.5%, CAC 40 little changed
- 10-year Treasury yield -2 basis points at 4.48%
- VIX +0.8 points at 17.61
- Bloomberg Dollar Index -0.3% at 1207.96
- euro +0.4% at $1.1437
- WTI crude little changed at $64.64/barrel
Top Overnight News
- The US and China will resume trade talks today in London, with tariffs, rare-earth minerals and advanced technology at the top of the agenda. Each country has accused the other of reneging on a deal made in Geneva in May. BBG
- US President Trump thinks support has solidified for the tax bill over the last 24 hours and will take a look at Elon Musk’s government contracts, while he has no plans to speak to Musk and noted that DOGE helped a lot. Trump stated he is thinking about the next Fed Chair and it is coming out very soon, as well as suggested a good Fed Chair would lower rates.
- Trump warned Elon Musk of serious consequences if he backs Democrats who oppose the Republican tax bill. The president told NBC he’s “very confident” the bill will pass by July 4. BBG
- US Defense Secretary Hegseth said active-duty troops will be mobilised if violence continues in Los Angeles, while President Trump deployed the National Guard to LA immigration ‘riots’ after claiming state officials cannot do their jobs, according to Sky News. Furthermore, reports noted that as many as 500 Marines are “in a prepared-to-deploy status” should they be needed to protect federal property and personnel and US President Trump posted on Truth Social "Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!"
- China’s trade numbers for May fall a bit short, including exports +4.8% (vs. the Street +6%) and imports -3.4% (vs. the Street -0.8%), w/exports to the US slumping by the most since the start of COVID. FT
- China's producer deflation deepened to its worst level in almost two years in May while consumer prices extended declines, as the economy grappled with trade tensions and a prolonged housing downturn. PPI (-3.3% vs. the Street -3.2% and vs. -2.7% in Apr) and CPI (-0.1% vs. the Street -0.2% and vs. -0.1% in Apr). RTRS
- Japan is considering buying back some super-long government bonds issued in the past at low interest rates, two sources with direct knowledge of the plan said on Monday, underscoring its focus on reining in any abrupt rise in bond yields. The move would come on top of an expected government plan to trim issuance of super-long bonds -- such as those with 20-, 30- or 40-year maturities -- in the wake of sharp rises in their yields. RTRS
- A US trade team currently in India for trade discussions has extended its stay, a sign talks are progressing ahead of a July deadline. BBG
- Iran will send a counteroffer “in the coming days” via Oman in response to a US proposal on Tehran’s nuclear program, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. BBG
- Canadian PM Carney is to announce Canada's national defence spending will meet the 2% of GDP NATO goal: Globe & Mail.
- US state and local governments are selling municipal bonds at a record pace on fears that Congress could partially pay for President Trump’s “big beautiful bill” by cutting a tax break for airports, hospitals, and affordable housing projects. FT
- Apple’s WWDC gets underway today, with a focus on new software interfaces for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Watch. But only minor AI changes are expected, offering little to investors worried it’s lagging behind in that space. BBG
- Citi expects the Fed to deliver 75bps of rate cuts this year, 25bps in September, October and December, comes after Friday's NFP data; expects Fed to deliver 50bps in 2026, via 25bps in Jan and March.
- Fed’s Musalem (voter) said he sees a 50-50 chance that Trump tariffs could either boost inflation for a quarter or two, or cause sustained inflation, according to an FT interview. Musalem said this means the Fed will likely face uncertainty right through the summer and political interference could make it harder for the Fed to lower interest rates.
A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk
APAC stocks traded mostly higher following last Friday's gains on Wall St, but with trade somewhat quietened amid the holiday closure in Australia and as participants digested mixed Chinese data. Nikkei 225 reclaimed the 38,000 level after last week's currency weakness and with upward revisions to Japanese GDP data. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp gained amid some trade-related optimism with officials from the US and China set to meet in London today, although the gains in the mainland are capped as participants also digested key data releases which showed a continued deflation and mostly softer trade data.
Top Asian News
- BoJ Deputy Governor Uchida said central banks are shrinking their balance sheet but many of them are unlikely to return to conventional monetary adjustment methods, while he added that many central banks are likely to use interest payment on reserves to guide short-term interest rates while maintaining the balance sheet size that meets market demand.
- China sold 1.96mln passenger cars in May, +13.9% Y/Y, according to China's auto industry body CPCA.
- China to raise minimum wage standard and expand coverage of social insurance, via Xinhua.
European bourses (STOXX600 -0.1%) are broadly modestly lower across the board and with price action fairly muted, given parts of Europe are off today on account of Whit Monday. European sectors mixed and with the breadth of the market exceptionally narrow, given the holiday-thinned conditions for some parts of Europe. Real Estate leads given the relatively lower yield environment in Europe; Travel & Leisure follows closely behind.
Top European News
- NATO Secretary General Rutte will reportedly call for a 400% increase in air and missile defence in his London speech.
- UK Chancellor Reeves is to announce a transformative GBP 86bln in the Spending Review to turbo-charge the fastest growing sectors, from tech and life sciences to advanced manufacturing and defence, as part of the government’s plan to invest in Britain’s renewal through the Modern Industrial Strategy.
- BoE’s Greene said the disinflation process is ongoing and expects inflation to continue to come down to the target over the medium-term, while she noted their view is they can look through it but added there is a pretty big risk.
- ECB's Kazimir says he thinks the bank is nearly done with, if not already at the end of the easing cycle; sees clear downside risks to growth but would be a mistake to ignore upside inflation risks. Need to keep all options open. Data over the summer will indicate whether additional fine-tuning is required.
- ECB President Lagarde reiterated that the central bank is in a good position on rates and to deal with uncertainties ahead.
- ECB’s Escriva said the path of monetary policy easing in the eurozone could require further adjustments if the current macroeconomic and inflation outlooks are confirmed, while he added the central scenario of GDP growth around 1% and inflation of 2% could require some fine-tuning, according to Reuters.
- ECB’s Nagel said the ECB can take its time on interest rates with monetary policy now set at a neutral level that is no longer restrictive and that the central bank has maximum flexibility on rates.
- ECB’s Schnabel said do not expect a sustained decoupling between the ECB and the Fed, while she expects the trade conflict to play out as a global shock that’s working through both lower demand and supply.
- ECB’s Vujcic said a small deviation on either side of the 2% inflation target is not a problem and the central bank should not overreact to inflation edging below the target, while he added the bar for QE will be higher in light of past experience.
- EU was urged to exempt more companies from supply chain law although rules on curbing environmental and rights abuses should not be scrapped, according to Swedish conservative MEP Warborn cited by FT.
- Fitch cut Austria’s sovereign rating from AA+ to AA; Outlook Stable, while it affirmed Hungary at BBB: Outlook Stable, while S&P raised Slovenia’s rating from AA- to AA; Outlook Stable.
FX
- DXY has kicked the week off on the backfoot after being boosted on Friday post-NFP. Focus at the start of the week has been on the trade front ahead of an anticipated meeting between US-China officials in London to discuss the trade situation; note, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman avoided a question on the matter at a briefing today. Elsewhere, whilst the Fed is in its blackout period, US President Trump has teased over a potential imminent decision on who will replace Fed Chair Powell when his term expires next year. DXY has delved as low as 98.81 but is holding above Friday's trough at 98.65.
- EUR/USD has moved back onto a 1.14 handle following last Friday's NFP-induced selling. Fresh macro drivers for the Eurozone are lacking following the hawkish reaction to last week's ECB policy announcement. We have seen further commentary from Bank officials over the weekend with Nagel noting that the central bank has maximum flexibility on rates, whilst Schnabel stated we should not expect a sustained decoupling between the ECB and the Fed. EUR/USD has ventured as high as 1.1429 but is yet to approach Friday's 1.1457 peak.
- JPY is firmer vs. the USD and towards the top of the G10 leaderboard after suffering in the wake of last Friday's US jobs report. Newsflow out of Japan has been on the light side aside from an upwards revision to Q1 GDP and Japanese Economy Minister Akazawa continuing to urge the US again to reconsider tariff measures, whilst suggesting that further progress has been made in trade talks with the US. USD/JPY has crossed back below its 50DMA at 144.43 and is currently holding above the 144 mark.
- As is the case across G10 FX, GBP is firmer vs. the USD in a reversal of the price action seen post-NFP on Friday. Over the weekend, BoE's Greene remarked that the disinflation process is ongoing and expects inflation to continue to come down to the target over the medium-term. Cable remains on a 1.35 handle but sub-Friday's 1.3585 peak.
- Antipodeans are both firmer vs. the USD and towards the top of the G10 leaderboard. Newsflow for Australia and New Zealand has been light over the weekend, with the former away from market. Of note for both however, was the latest round of Chinese trade which saw both imports and exports fall short of expectations on account of the trade war.
Fixed Income
- US paper is attempting to atone for Friday's losses which were brought about by the firmer-than-expected US jobs report, which avoided the soft outcome that some in the market had been positioning for. Quiet schedule today, but focus will be on the US-China meeting in London today; time still not disclosed. Sep'25 UST contract has been as high as 110.05+ but is some way off Friday's peak at 110.29+.
- Bunds have very much started the week off on the front foot and are leading global fixed income markets higher. From a fundamental perspective, fresh macro drivers for the Eurozone are lacking following the hawkish reaction to last week's ECB policy announcement. We have seen further commentary from Bank officials over the weekend with Nagel noting that the central bank has maximum flexibility on rates, whilst Schnabel stated we should not expect a sustained decoupling between the ECB and the Fed. Sep'25 Bunds have eclipsed Friday's best at 130.77 with focus on a test of 131.00.
- Gilts are higher, being dragged up by the moves in German paper with fresh UK drivers lacking. Over the weekend, BoE's Greene remarked that the disinflation process is ongoing and expects inflation to continue to come down to the target over the medium-term. UK docket today is light, more focus on Wednesday's UK spending review. Sep'25 Gilts have moved back onto a 92 handle but thus far are respecting Friday's peak at 92.36.
- Japanese government is considering buying back some super-long JGBs issued in the past, according to Reuters sources.
Commodities
- Crude benchmarks are flat, with price action fairly muted in catalyst thin trade thus far. Some modest upticks on commentary out of Iran, which noted that Tehran will be proposing a counter offer to the US nuclear proposal by tomorrow (Tuesday). WTI and Brent reside within tight USD 64.20-64.86 and 66.07-66.69/bbl ranges respectively, and currently rest within the middle of these bounds.
- Spot gold is firmer, and benefitting from the softer dollar (DXY -0.3%), and subdued risk environment. The yellow-metal saw fleeting support on the aforementioned news from Iran, which pushed the metal towards session highs of USD 3,328/oz, before it faced resistance at this level.
- Copper is on the front foot, shrugging off mixed Chinese data, which showed Y/Y CPI remaining in deflationary territory. Elsewhere, LME data showed copper stocks fell 10k. The industrial metal was choppy on this update, though ultimately rose after ten minutes. 3M LME copper trades within a range of USD 9,670.75-9,738.1/t.
- Venezuela is planning to increase gasoline prices by 50% as it braces for a decline in oil revenue following the suspension of operations by Chevron (CVX) and other foreign energy firms, according to Bloomberg citing people familiar with the decision.
Geopolitics: Middle East
- Iran will reportedly propose a counter offer to the US nuclear proposal soon, according to state TV; will be sent by tomorrow.
- Israel’s military said it struck a Hamas member in southern Syria.
- US-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said it did not distribute aid on Saturday because Hamas made direct threats against its operations, while a Hamas official said he had no knowledge of alleged threats to the US-backed aid group in Gaza. Furthermore, Al Jazeera reported that Israeli attacks killed more than 40 in Gaza as aid seekers were shot dead.
- Israeli Defence Minister Katz threatened to “take all necessary measures” to prevent a humanitarian ship carrying climate campaigner Greta Thunberg from reaching Gaza, according to The Guardian. It was later reported that the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said it ship was 'under assault' and the Israeli Army had boarded the Gaza-bound ship.
Geopolitics: Ukraine
- Russian forces captured Zoria in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and reached the Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine, according to TASS and Interfax. However, it was later reported that Ukrainian General Staff spokesman Kovalev denied claims by the Russian Defence Ministry that its forces advanced into Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time since it launched its full-scale invasion.
- Head of the Russian delegation at talks with Ukraine in Istanbul said Russia handed over to Ukraine the first list of 640 POWs for exchange, according to TASS. Furthermore, the Russian Defence Ministry said Russia launched a large-scale humanitarian operation to repatriate more than 6,000 bodies of deceased Ukrainian military personnel and exchange prisoners of war, while Ukrainian officials rejected Russian claims that Ukraine was delaying the exchange of soldiers’ bodies.
- Ukrainian drone attack sparked a short-lived fire at the Azot chemical plant in Russia’s Tula region, although there was no threat to air quality near the plant, according to the regional governor.
- US believes Russian retaliation for Ukraine’s drone attack is not over yet and it expects a multi-pronged strike.
- Poland scrambled aircraft to ensure airspace security after Russia launches strikes on Ukraine.
Geopolitics: Other
- US expressed concern to the UK government about allowing China to build a large embassy in London that security officials believe would pose a risk to sensitive communications infrastructure serving the City, according to FT. It was also reported that the UK government promised to assess any security concerns related to the construction of a Chinese embassy near the City of London, which is an issue that could potentially complicate trade talks with the US, according to Bloomberg.
- Thai army said provocations by Cambodia and buildup of military forces show a clear intent to use force, and the Thai army is to control the opening and closing of all border checkpoints along the Thailand-Cambodia border, while it added that Cambodia enforced its military presence, equipment and constructed fortifications.
US Event Calendar
- 10:00 am: Apr F Wholesale Inventories MoM, est. 0%, prior 0%
DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap
This morning we've just published our latest annual default study, a document I first published in 1999. Over the years, it has evolved into a framework for presenting our structural, multi-year view on the default outlook. For over a decade until 2022, that structural view held that—aside from cyclical spikes—we were living in an ultra-low default environment. This was driven by factors such as low nominal and real yields, aggressive monetary intervention (e.g., QE), and a persistent global savings glut.
However, our 2022 edition marked a turning point. We argued that the ultra-low default world was ending, as inflation and term premia were pushing nominal and real yields structurally higher. While we haven’t yet seen a cyclical spike in defaults—largely due to the avoidance of a US recession—there are clear signs that higher-for-longer funding costs, especially in the U.S., are taking a toll. Leveraged loan issuer-weighted default rates are not far off COVID-era levels, and issuer-weighted defaults in the B and CCC rating buckets are now running above their post-2004 averages, even after two years of solid economic growth. In short, regardless of the cyclical backdrop, we believe the ultra-low default era that characterised much of this study’s first 25 years is now behind us.
After leading this report since its inception, I’ve handed the reins to Steve Caprio and his team, who have compiled this year’s edition. While the authorship has changed, the structural conclusions remain consistent. Marrying these with a cyclical view, Steve’s team projects that US spec-grade default rates should decline modestly from 4.7% today to 4.4% by year-end 2025, before rising again to an above consensus 4.8% by Q2 2026—with potential upside risk toward 5–5.5%. While Europe’s outlook is more benign, the region will not be immune to the structural shift underway. See the full report here including all the usual charts and tables showing how credit spreads compare to that required to compensate for default risk.
The highlight this week will be US CPI on Wednesday and a resumption of trade talks between the US and China today in London. Bessent, Lutnick and Greer are set to meet Chinese representatives at the meeting today. So it's all the big guns from the US administration. The monthly 30-yr UST auction on Thursday will also be a heavy focus with all the attention on the long-end in recent weeks. There's a 10yr auction the day before as well. So a good test of demand as the fiscal bill meanders its way through Congress. Before we preview the CPI release the other main highlights this week are the NY Fed 1-yr inflation expectations today; US NFIB small business optimism, UK employment data and Danish and Norwegian CPI tomorrow; that CPI, the 10yr UST auction and the UK Spending Review on Wednesday; US PPI, US jobless claims, UK monthly GDP, the 30yr UST auction and my birthday on Thursday; and the UoM consumer sentiment (including inflation expectations) on Friday. A fuller day-by-day diary of events is at the end as usual.
With regards to US CPI, our US economists expect weak seasonally adjusted gas prices to again keep the headline rate (+0.20% forecast vs. +0.22% previous) gain below that of core (+0.31% vs. +0.24%). This should help the YoY rate for both headline and core to rise two-tenths to 2.5% and 3.0%, respectively. Shorter-term trends for core would be mixed with the three-month annualised rate rising by three-tenths to 2.4% while the six-month rate would remain steady at 3.0%. Our economists do expect tariffs to begin to impact core goods prices, especially in categories like household furnishings and supplies where we saw potential preliminary tariff impacts in the April data. On the services side, our economists will be most attuned to the volatile categories like lodging away and airline fares that have been a meaningful drag of late. For PPI the following day, our economists expect a +0.27% increase in May which would reduce the YoY rate by a couple of tenths. As ever, how the subcomponents that feed into core PCE come out will be the most interesting part of the release. Note that the Fed are now on media blackout ahead of next Wednesday's (18th) FOMC.
It's not clear that the Fed will have learnt too much more than they already knew from Friday's payrolls data. May headline (+139k vs. 147k) and private (140k vs. 146k) payrolls were slightly above the 126k consensus but -95k of net revisions to the two previous months softened the beat. Our economists point out that we now have very stable private sector hiring trends over the past three (133k), six (146k) and twelve (122k) months. However they also point out the narrow breadth in job growth as health care / social assistance (+78k) and leisure / hospitality (+48k) continued to drive the majority of private sector job gains in May and have accounted for 75% of private job growth over the past twelve months. See our economists US employment chart book here that came out after the report on Friday for much more. Staying on employment there will be increased attention on claims this week given the recent tick up. It's not clear whether its seasonals or evidence that there is some real time slipping in employment trends.
Asian equity markets are building on Friday’s gains on Wall Street driven by optimism surrounding high-level trade discussions between China and the United States scheduled for later today. The lack of major weakness in payrolls is also helping. Across the region, the KOSPI (+1.51%) is outpacing its regional peers, extending last week’s rally after the Liberal Party won the presidential election. The Nikkei (+1.05%) is also strong after a positive revision in Q1 GDP data. Elsewhere, the Hang Seng (+1.02%) is also trading noticeably higher, driven by gains in technology shares, particularly following Meta's weekend announcement of plans to invest $10 billion in startup Scale AI, which focuses on data labeling to support the expansion of AI models as part of its broader AI development strategy. Elsewhere, Chinese stocks are more subdued after soft inflation data (more below), with the CSI (+0.22%) and the Shanghai Composite (+0.23%) both underperforming. S&P 500 (-0.22%) and NASDAQ 100 (-0.25%) futures are reversing some of Friday's gains though.
Coming back to China, consumer prices have decreased for the fourth consecutive month in May, registering a decline of -0.1% y/y (compared to an expected -0.2% and -0.1% in April). This trend might suggest that Beijing's stimulus measures have not yet been sufficient to enhance domestic consumption amid ongoing trade tensions. Furthermore, deflationary pressures are intensifying on some measures as the PPI fell by -3.3% year-on-year in May, surpassing the expected -3.2% and marking the most significant drop in nearly two years, exceeding April’s decline of -2.7%.
Interestingly Chinese exports to the US fell -34.4% in May whilst rising 11% to the RoW, showing that exports didn't recover that well to the US after the trade truce and also that China are finding other avenues to export goods.
In FX, the Japanese yen (+0.25%) is strengthening, trading at 144.49 against the dollar, recovering after two days of losses in response to an upward revision of Japan's Q1 GDP figures. 30yr JGBs are +4bps higher.Recapping last week now and the risk-on move continued as the news of further US-China talks and a decent US jobs report boosted investor optimism. So that helped to outweigh the weak data from earlier in the week, and meant the S&P 500 rose +1.50% (+1.03% Friday), whilst Europe’s STOXX 600 was up +0.91% (+0.32% Friday). In fact, the Friday move took the S&P into technical bull market territory, having now gained +20.42% since its closing low on April 8. The jobs report contrasted with the ADP report on Wednesday, which hit a two-year low, as well as the contractionary ISM services print. And even though nonfarm payrolls saw downward revisions of -95k to the previous two months, those were mostly in March, before Liberation Day occurred.
The jobs report meant investors priced out the likelihood of Fed rate cuts this year, with just 44bps now priced in by December, down -10.6bps on the week (-9.4bps Friday). That’s the fewest cuts priced since February (we'd priced 60bps immediately after the weak claims data the day before), and it triggered a significant flattening in the US Treasury curve. For instance, the 2yr Treasury yield was up +13.9bps (+11.6bps Friday) to 4.04%, whilst the 30yr yield was only up +3.7bps (+9.0bps Friday) to 4.97%. The 10-year Treasury yield also rose +10.5bps (+11.5bps Friday) to 4.51%. Similar movements were echoed in Europe, as the 10-year Bund yield ended the week up +7.4bps (-0.6bps) at 2.57%. That also came as ECB President Lagarde indicated on Thursday that they were approaching the end of their easing cycle.
Elsewhere, oil prices performed strongly last week, as OPEC+ announced a production increase of 411,000 barrels per day, which was less than some had expected. This led to a rally in crude oil, with WTI posting its biggest weekly gain of 2025, up +6.23% (+1.91% Friday) to $64.58/bbl, whilst Brent crude was up +4.02% (+1.73% Friday) to $66.47/bbl.
Meanwhile, US credit spreads ended the week tighter, with IG tightening -3bps (-3bps Friday) to 85bps, its tightest in 3 months. And HY spreads tightened -15bps (-9bps Friday) to 300bps. European sovereign bond spreads also tightened, with the 10yr Italian-German spread down -5.4bps (-1.8bps Friday) to just 93bps, the tightest since February 2021.
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Site: AsiaNews.itIndonesia has temporarily blocked activities in a natural paradise in West Papua after protests from local communities and environmentalists. Greenpeace reports serious violations and irreversible damage to the legally protected ecosystems of the small islands. The area is home to 75 per cent of the world's coral reefs and relies on ecotourism.
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Site: Novus Motus LiturgicusChant Camp for Singers Ages 8-17, August 4-8, at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California.Early bird pricing through June 25th | Discounts available for multiple children from the same family.More information and registration available here. Discover the joy of singing the Church’s sacred music!The Catholic Institute of Sacred Music launches its choral program for young singers with an Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Zero HedgeUS, China Gear Up For High-Stakes Meeting In LondonTyler Durden Mon, 06/09/2025 - 07:45
U.S. and Chinese delegations have arrived in the U.K. for talks aimed at patching up a fraying truce in an ongoing trade war between the world's two biggest economies. The US team leby The U.S. team led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are due to meet with a Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng in London in a renewed effort to break the deadlock after last month’s Geneva talks failed to produce meaningful results.
The high-stakes meeting follows President Donald Trump’s call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on June 5, after which Trump announced that the dispute over China’s rare earth export restrictions—a key obstacle in trade talks—had been resolved.
“There should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of Rare Earth products,” Trump said on Truth Social following the call. “Our respective teams will be meeting shortly at a location to be determined.”
The hour-and-a-half-long conversation came after Trump publicly expressed frustration over Beijing’s negotiating tactics, calling Xi “very tough” and “extremely hard to make a deal with” in a Truth Social post the day before.
As Emel Akan reports for The Epoch Times, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, the U.S. trade officials will press their Chinese counterparts to fully comply with the terms of the May 12 trade agreement reached in Geneva, which included reciprocal tariff reductions. Under the deal, both countries agreed to reduce tariffs by 115 percent while maintaining an additional 10 percent levy.
“The administration has been monitoring China’s compliance with the deal, and we hope that this will move forward to have more comprehensive trade talks,” Leavitt told Fox News on June 8.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will lead the American delegation in London.
Rare Earths Still in Focus
Despite Trump’s declaration that the rare earths dispute has been resolved, his officials remain cautious.
According to National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, while rare earth exports have resumed, they are still below the levels previously agreed upon.
“Those exports of critical minerals have been getting released at a rate that is higher than it was but not as high as we believe we agreed to in Geneva,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on June 8.
“We want the rare earths, the magnets that are crucial for cell phones and everything else, to flow just as they did before the week of April, and we don’t want any technical details to slow that down, and that’s clear to them.”
In response to Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs, Beijing introduced export restrictions on critical rare earth elements, metals, and magnets effective April 4. Beijing has tightened export controls on seven rare earth elements—samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium—straining supply chains critical to America’s defense, aerospace, and automotive sectors.
The latest restrictions follow a December 2024 export ban on three key minerals—antimony, gallium, and germanium—imposed in retaliation for former President Joe Biden’s technology curbs targeting the Chinese communist regime.
China dominates global rare earths supply chains, accounting for nearly 60 percent of worldwide production and almost 85 percent of processing capacity. The Chinese regime has turned that dominance into a strategic weapon against other countries in recent years.
While the terms of the deal are still being worked out, Hassett expressed optimism about the London meeting.
“I’m very comfortable that this deal is about to be closed,” he said.
Deeper trade issues continue to loom over the talks.
China’s Longstanding Trade Violations
In May, the U.S. Commerce Department issued a new rule banning the use of Huawei Technologies’ Ascend computer chips worldwide, arguing they were developed in violation of American export controls.
The move drew backlash from Beijing, which urged the U.S. government to undo the action.
The recent dispute reflected broader U.S. concerns over Beijing’s long-standing abusive trade practices that disadvantage American businesses and workers.
Communist China’s rise since joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 has been mainly fueled by such controversial trade policies, which include stealing intellectual property, attacking foreign firms operating in the country, manipulating its currency, and massively subsidizing domestic companies.
Some China hawks in Washington believe that Beijing is determined to maintain these mercantilist trade practices.
Even if Beijing comes to the negotiation table, it’s unwilling to bargain on these core problems that the United States wants resolved, according to Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a science and technology think tank.
“They’ve never been willing to even acknowledge that these are problems,” he told The Epoch Times in an April interview.
It remains unclear to what extent Beijing’s unfair trade practices will be addressed or resolved during the London talks.
Beijing initially denied having violated the Geneva trade agreement on May 30. The regime escalated its rhetoric on June 2, when a spokesperson for the Chinese Commerce Ministry issued a statement through state media attacking Washington’s decision to revoke visas for Chinese students with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
“The United States and China have strategic interests in one another’s markets, and the President is always going to put American workers and industries first,” Leavitt said during the Fox News interview. “And the talks in Geneva really set the table for that, but we need China to comply with their side of the deal. And so that’s what the trade team will be discussing tomorrow.”
The U.S. team will issue a readout after the meeting, she said.
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Site: AsiaNews.itThere are over 300,000 young people from the subcontinent studying in the United States, a number almost double that of ten years ago.What drives them towards the US are the shortcomings of a university system that is still uncompetitive also because it is excessively centralised.Thus in contrast with their government (and to avoid competition from Europe) some US universities are starting new partnerships to open campuses in India.
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Site: La Salette Journey
Make no mistake about it, what's happening in Los Angeles is a far-left insurrection. See here.
I have written before that Revolution is coming. But it will only come when the social order has been sufficiently destabilized, and then, the opportunity for a new political order is possible.That destabilization is the goal of the radical left. Far from a speculation, several popes have been warning for decades that such a revolution has been the intention all along of secret societies working parallel to governments...Leftists know that with the collapse of the United States, the door will be open for a new super-power—or super-world government—to assert a mode of governance that does not place the intrinsic freedom and dignity of the human person at its center, but instead profitability, efficiency, ecology, the environment, and technology as its primary goal."Make no mistake about it, these people hate America. They hate what she stands for. These socialists are waiting for the most opportune moment to overthrow this government and to install a tyrannical regime.It was Pope John Paul II who reminded us that, "..the fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socioeconomic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil. Man is thus reduced to a series of social relationships, and the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decision disappears, the very subject whose decisions build the social order. From this mistaken conception of the person there arise both a distortion of law, which defines the sphere of the exercise of freedom, and an opposition to private property. A person who is deprived of something he can call 'his own,' and of the possibility of earning a living through his own initiative, comes to depend on the social machine and on those who control it. This makes it much more difficult for him to recognize his dignity as a person, and hinders progress toward the building up of an authentic human community." (Centesimus Annus, No. 13)."Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill."Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." - Alexis de Tocqueville."Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it." - Thomas Sowell.Related reading here -
Site: AsiaNews.itFounder of Radio Jyoti (Light), the first Catholic radio station in the country, he was 75 years old.The funeral took place in Natore, his hometown.Author also of plays, he was director of the Christian Communication Centre of the Bangladesh Bishops' Conference.Fr Dilip S. Costa: "He used every means to proclaim the Gospel".
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Site: Mises InstituteModern macroeconomic theory claims that government spending, taxation, and monetary creation is essential for economic growth. Austrian Economists, however, note that government stifles the economy.
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Site: Zero HedgeUS Electric Vehicle Adoption PlummetsTyler Durden Mon, 06/09/2025 - 06:30
Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,
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EV interest among U.S. drivers has dropped to 16%, the lowest since 2019.
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Key deterrents include high upfront costs, limited charging infrastructure, and concerns over long-distance suitability.
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Hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles are gaining favor as more practical alternatives.
Just 16% of American drivers say they are likely to buy an electric vehicle (EV) as their next car—the lowest share recorded in AAA’s annual surveys since 2019.
High battery maintenance costs, high purchase prices, and concerns about range continue to be major deterrents for U.S. consumers to consider buying an EV, according to AAA’s latest survey released earlier this month.
These key barriers have remained more or less the same in recent years.
But this year three other factors have also played a role to result in the smallest share of American drivers considering an EV purchase—lower gasoline prices, the increasingly uncertain future of EV incentives such as tax credits and rebates, and politics.
Only 16% of U.S. adults reported in AAA’s 2025 survey that they are “very likely” or “likely” to purchase a fully EV as their next car. This compares to 25% in 2022, when gasoline prices of $5 per gallon incentivized more buyers to consider an EV purchase.
This year, the percentage of consumers indicating they would be “unlikely” or “very unlikely” to purchase an EV rose to 63%, up from 51% last year.
“While the automotive industry is committed to long-term electrification and providing a diverse range of models, underlying consumer hesitation remains,” said Greg Brannon, director of automotive engineering for AAA.
Consumers cited high battery repair costs and purchase prices as key barriers to go fully electric, at 62% and 59%, respectively. Other top concerns identified in this year’s survey were the perceived unsuitability of EVs for long-distance travel (57%), a lack of convenient public charging stations (56%), and fear of running out of charge while driving (55%).
Other barriers cited by the Americans unlikely to buy an EV include safety concerns cited by 31%, challenges installing charging stations at their residences for 27%, and 12% who are concerned that the tax credits and rebates will be reduced or eliminated.
Saving on gasoline costs is a key reason for interest in EVs this year—77% of Americans likely to buy an EV cited gas savings as their top motivation to purchase.
The reason, of course, is quite simple. Gasoline prices this spring hit their lowest level ahead of Memorial Day weekend in four years. A large part of the strong demand over Memorial Day weekend was due to the fact that the typical seasonal spike in the spring didn’t materialize, because oil prices – the single-biggest driver of gasoline prices—have lingered in the low $60s per barrel for weeks.
Uncertainty about incentives for EV purchases has started to play a larger role in drivers’ hesitancy to consider fully-electric vehicle purchases. Interest in EVs to take advantage of tax credits and rebates has plummeted—from 60% of those saying last year they are likely to buy an EV to 39% this year, per the AAA survey.
Moreover, fewer Americans now believe that most passenger cars would be EVs within a decade. The share of U.S. drivers who believe that most cars will be electric within the next ten years has plunged from 40% in 2022 to 23% this year.
Despite the fact that the availability of EV models in the U.S. market has soared in recent years, with many legacy carmakers seeking to compete with Tesla, Americans remain hesitant about purchasing electric cars.
Public perception about the future of EVs remains uncertain, AAA says, despite the more than 75 EV models introduced in the past four years.
For many drivers, hybrid or plug-in hybrid vehicles could be more appealing than full battery EVs as they combine the advantages of traditional internal combustion engines with electric power, reducing range anxiety while providing an environmentally friendly alternative, AAA says.
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Site: Rorate CaeliLive now:New Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04118576661605931910noreply@blogger.com
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Site: Catholic ConclaveTraditionalist Pentecost Pilgrimage: "A Church is not a liturgical self-service facility," according to the Bishop of ChartresThe Bishop is a member of the Emmanuel CommunityA few days before its launch, the traditionalist Pentecost pilgrimage, which will take place between Paris and Chartres from June 7 to 9, is already causing controversy. The Bishop of Chartres is asking the organizers to Catholic Conclavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06227218883606585321noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Zero HedgeUS Manufacturing By State: Who Gains Most From 'Made In America'?Tyler Durden Mon, 06/09/2025 - 05:45
President Trump has championed the idea that a key part of making America great again is bringing back industries that left the country in recent decades. With his tariff-driven trade policy, the White House has promoted “Made in America” as a way to create jobs and boost the economy.
Based on April 2025 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this map, via Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti, highlights the U.S. states leading and lagging in manufacturing employment.
California Leads in Manufacturing
Manufacturing remains geographically diverse across the U.S., with major hubs on both coasts and in the interior.
In terms of absolute numbers, California leads the nation, with 1.22 million manufacturing jobs. Texas follows with 970,600 jobs, while Ohio and Michigan maintain their traditional industrial strength with 687,500 and 597,600 jobs, respectively.
State Manufacturing Jobs Jobs per 100k California 1,222.9K 3094.0 Texas 970.6K 3101.9 Ohio 687.5K 5785.4 Michigan 597.6K 5893.2 Illinois 574.7K 4521.6 Pennsylvania 561.5K 4293.2 Indiana 523.3K 7557.5 Wisconsin 462.8K 7763.8 North Carolina 459.3K 4158.1 Florida 434.6K 1859.5 Georgia 426.5K 3814.5 New York 412.0K 2073.8 Tennessee 364.3K 5040.3 Minnesota 323.5K 5584.2 Alabama 287.5K 5574.2 Missouri 283.9K 4545.7 Washington 274.2K 3445.5 South Carolina 263.0K 4800.3 Kentucky 260.6K 5679.6 New Jersey 255.4K 2688.2 Virginia 243.5K 2763.5 Massachusetts 229.8K 3220.2 Iowa 217.2K 6700.6 Arizona 193.8K 2555.9 Oregon 181.7K 4252.9 Kansas 173.0K 5823.7 Arkansas 165.0K 5342.7 Utah 155.3K 4432.6 Connecticut 154.2K 4195.8 Colorado 150.1K 2519.5 Louisiana 143.8K 3127.6 Mississippi 140.8K 4784.2 Oklahoma 139.5K 3406.3 Maryland 110.4K 1762.7 Nebraska 103.3K 5150.9 Idaho 77.4K 3866.9 New Hampshire 68.2K 4840.2 Nevada 67.7K 2071.9 Maine 51.7K 3679.7 West Virginia 46.7K 2638.4 South Dakota 44.3K 4790.9 Rhode Island 40.1K 3605.1 New Mexico 29.5K 1384.8 North Dakota 27.9K 3502.5 Vermont 27.2K 4194.3 Delaware 26.7K 2538.2 Montana 20.8K 1829.0 Hawaii 13.1K 905.9 Alaska 11.9K 1607.8 Wyoming 10.6K 1803.9 District of Columbia 1.2K 170.9Several Southern states have also built strong manufacturing bases. North Carolina (459,300), Georgia (426,500), and Tennessee (364,300) each rank among the top states, supported by industries such as automotive, aerospace, and food processing.
Wisconsin, ranked in the top 10 for total manufacturing employment, stands out for outperforming its size. Although it’s only the 20th most populous state, its manufacturing base remains strong, thanks in part to food and dairy processing. In per capita terms, it’s number one in the nation with 7,763.8 manufacturing jobs for every 100,000 people.
Florida, another top 10 state, has emerged as a growth story. Between 2019 and 2023, the state’s manufacturing employment grew by nearly 10%, highlighting the sector’s expansion in one of the country’s largest economies.
At the other end of the spectrum, Wyoming (10,600 jobs), Alaska (11,900), and Washington, D.C. (1,200) recorded the lowest levels of manufacturing employment. The latter (D.C.) also has the lowest numbers per capita.
To learn more about Trump’s impact in his first 100 days, check out this graphic that compares S&P 500 returns during post-WWII presidents’ first 100 days.
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Site: Catholic ConclaveScroll down for today'sSaint of the Day/ FeastReading of the MartyrologyDedication of the MonthDedication of the DayRosaryFive Wounds Rosary in LatinSeven Sorrows Rosary in EnglishLatin Monastic OfficeReading of the Rule of Saint BenedictCelebration of MassReading from the School of Jesus CrucifiedFeast of Blessed Anna-Maria TaigiAnna Maria Taigi (née Giannetti; 29 May 1769 – 9 June 1837) was an Catholic Conclavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06227218883606585321noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Crisis Magazine
Translation is a tricky thing, especially if you’re translating a word that has a seemingly direct equivalent in English. Sometimes the equivalent translation fits, sometimes it doesn’t. Often, it’s a mixed bag. That brings me to the Third Person of the Trinity. I don’t know when and why the Latin phrase Sanctus Spiritus switched from being translated as “Holy Ghost” to “Holy Spirit.
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Site: Crisis Magazine
A lot of ink has been spilled over the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) and whether Traditionis Custodes might be modified under Pope Leo XIV. While not necessarily a partisan of the TLM—though I believe the Novus Ordo should be modified to adopt an ad orientem posture—let me share some tidbits of liturgical history regarding the Roman Canon that have analogical bearing on the TLM question.
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Site: Zero HedgeThe Fed Is Very Worried About Tariff Passthrough Onto PricesTyler Durden Mon, 06/09/2025 - 05:00
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
The Fed, businesses, and consumers are all concerned over price hikes.
Worried About Prices?
Please consider the Atlanta Fed research article Worried about Tariff Passthrough onto Prices? So Are Business Execs.
Over the past couple of months, newswires have focused on the potential for elevated tariff rates to feed through into higher inflation and potentially affect output growth as well. Indeed, Chair Powell, in his last post-FOMC meeting press conference said, “What looks likely, given the scope and scale of the tariffs, is that…the risks to higher inflation, higher unemployment have increased.“
Recent research from economists at the Atlanta Fed suggests that if firms are able to pass through all the costs of tariffs, retail prices would increase significantly―as much as 1.6 percent (depending on how effective tariff rates evolve from here).
And even at a 50 percent passthrough rate, the impact on prices would be large enough to be felt in the aggregate (0.8 percent increase in retail prices). How plausible is full passthrough? Going back to the last episode with rising tariffs in 2018, research icon denoting destination link is offsite showed that the cost of the tariffs was almost entirely passed through onto domestic prices.
In this environment, where policy changes lead to sharp increases in costs for many firms, we were curious about how firms would respond, especially in light of a potential reduction in demand that typically accompanies a price hike. So, we turned to the Atlanta Fed’s Business Inflation Expectations survey (BIE), a monthly survey of Sixth District firms that is well positioned to ask timely questions on economic conditions facing firms. In gathering information for the April 2025 BIE survey, we asked firms about their ability to pass through increased costs caused by a new economic policy without a resulting reduction in demand.
The interesting twist in this line of questioning is the inclusion of the phrase “Based on current levels of demand.” The interpretation here is that firms are telling us how much of the cost increase they would be able to pass through to customers before it had a negative impact on demand for that good or service.
Although a diversity of views is apparent, on average firms tell us they expect to be able to pass through 51.1 percent of a 10 percent cost increase, and 47.3 percent of a 25 percent cost increase, without reducing current levels of demand.
In sum, firms with about normal or greater-than-normal sales expect to be able to pass through more of the cost increases while maintaining the same levels of demand for their goods or services. And figure 3 shows us that those firms are more likely to be larger firms, due to their smaller sales gap compared to “normal.” In the aggregate, business executives see their current sales levels as about 8 percentage points below “normal,” which is much weaker than firms’ relative position entering 2018. In this environment, firms on average anticipate passing through a little more than half of a 10 percent cost increase without damaging demand. It’s not yet clear where the average tariff rate will ultimately settle, or how firms’ passthrough rates will evolve from here. However, it does appear that most firms anticipate sacrificing demand should they choose to fully pass a tariff-related cost increase on to customers.
Only Three Things Can Happen
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Corporations can pass on the tariffs
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Corporations can eat the cost
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A combination of the above
The Results
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To the extent corporations pass on the costs, consumers will pay the tariff. That means consumers will cut back somewhere else, exhaust savings, or go into debt.
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To the extent corporations eat the costs, that’s a direct hit on corporate profits.
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If corporations misjudge how much they can pass on, they will also take a hit on profits.
Corporate Profits
If you are thinking tariffs are a huge drain on aggregate corporate profits, then you are thinking correctly.
Fed Beige Book Shows Only 3 of 12 Regions Growing, 6 Declining
On June 5, 2025, I noted Fed Beige Book Shows Only 3 of 12 Regions Growing, 6 Declining
This report reeks of stagflation, defined as rising prices and recession simultaneously.
Prices
Prices have increased at a moderate pace since the previous report. There were widespread reports of contacts expecting costs and prices to rise at a faster rate going forward. A few Districts described these expected cost increases as strong, significant, or substantial. All District reports indicated that higher tariff rates were putting upward pressure on costs and prices.
ISM Services Dips Into Contraction as New Orders and Backlogs Plunge
On June 4, I noted ISM Services Dips Into Contraction as New Orders and Backlogs Plunge
“The Prices Index registered 68.7 percent in May, a 3.6-percentage point increase from April’s reading of 65.1 percent; the index has elevated 7.8 percentage points in the last two months to reach its highest level since November 2022 (69.4 percent). This is the first time the index has recorded this high of a two-month increase since a 9.2-percentage point gain in February and March 2021. The May reading is also its sixth in a row above 60 percent.”
What caught my eye was a plunge in new orders and backlog of orders, yet prices rose 96 consecutive months and just accelerated.
Should the Fed Cut? Hike? Do Anything?
Many say the Fed should cut because jobs are slowing and so is inflation.
But on the basis of tariffs and general disagreement about the rate of inflation, many others stating the Fed should hike rates.
Those who are open to either stagflation or economic collapse don’t think the Fed should do anything.
I am in that camp with the side note the free market should set rates, not the Fed, not Congress, not the President.
Is the Fed in a Good Spot?
That’s what the Fed says. I am not in that camp.
The economy can tip either way suddenly and severely. And Trump’s tariff whipsaws don’t make the Fed’s life easy.
Fear of Making Mistakes
The Fed does not want to make a policy error in the wrong direction especially after blowing the massive inflation response to Congressional free money coupled with inane QE by the Fed.
So, the Fed cannot be proactive now, even if it wants to, due to FOMMtm
Trumpian Howls
The Fed has its Covid mistake in the back of its mind but a howling Trump in the foreground.
Trump howled about Jerome Powell again on June 4, as noted in Trump Demands Fed Rate Cut After Weakest ADP Payroll Report in 2 Years
ADP reported a slim 37,000 private payroll rise for May.
The payroll report on Friday temporarily halted the howls.
For discussion, please see Nonfarm Payrolls Rise by 139,000 Employment Declines by 696,000
The Fed may easily overreact or underreact. Right now the Fed looks like a deer in headlights.
Finally, the Fed will take a lot of criticism no matter what it does. And it will still have its recent policy mistakes in mind, while also having to deal with Trump.
Is this really a good place for the Fed?
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Site: OnePeterFive
Above: Jesus Christ and Nicodemus by Matthias Stom (c. 1600 – after 1652) From the Roman office. ℣. Grant, Lord, a blessing. Benediction. May the Gospel’s holy lection Be our safety and protection. ℟. Amen. Reading 1 Continuation of the Holy Gospel according to John John 3:16-21 At that time, Jesus said unto Nicodemus: God so loved the world that He gave His Only-begotten Son…
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Site: Zero Hedge'No ID, No Nudes': Pornhub Pulls Out Of France In Spat Over Age ChecksTyler Durden Mon, 06/09/2025 - 04:15
Vive la resistance - in reverse. Pornhub and its sister sites YouPorn and RedTube have gone dark in France, yanking access to their content Wednesday in a dramatic protest over a government crackdown on underage users.
A screen displays a “no under-18s” sign in front of the logo of a pornographic website as regulators consider requiring such sites to ensure they are preventing minors from being exposed to their content. Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images
The move comes after Aylo - the firm behind the trio of X-rated titans - hit pause on its French operations rather than comply with a new law requiring porn platforms to verify users are 18 or older.
“I can confirm that Aylo has made the difficult decision to suspend access to its user-uploaded platforms... in France,” a Pornhub spokesperson said Tuesday. “We will be using our platforms to directly address the French public tomorrow.”
Aylo, which operates some of the world’s most trafficked adult sites, is now in a standoff with France’s digital watchdog, Arcom, which has the power to block sites and fine operators who fail to screen out minors.
French officials aren’t exactly begging them to stay.
“If Aylo would rather leave France than apply our laws, they are free to do so,” Clara Chappaz, France’s junior minister for artificial intelligence and digital technology, posted bluntly on X.
According to Arcom, some 2.3 million minors access porn sites every month in France - a clear violation of laws requiring age gating. The government has demanded stricter controls, like government ID or verified digital passports.
But Aylo claims the measures would compromise user privacy and create security risks, setting up a classic clash between data protection and content regulation.
Now, French users clicking over to Pornhub are getting nothing but a cold shower - a sudden blackout that leaves millions of adults scrambling for alternatives.
Whether the blackout is a temporary gambit or a long-term exit remains unclear. But one thing’s for sure: in France, the liberté to browse adult content just got a whole lot harder to come by.
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Site: southern orders
Pope Francis would not do it, but Pope Leo has corrected the situation!Press title for Crux article:
Vatican website removes pictures of artwork created by priest accused of abuse
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Site: AsiaNews.itToday's news: Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning entersJapan's exclusive economic zone;Thailand and Cambodia movetheir border troops back to their previous positions;Malaysia has restricted travel for a cartoonist;More than half of mobilised population from one Siberian city killed onUkraine front.
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Site: AsiaNews.itThe Berdymukhamedov government is mobilising to counter 'foreign centres of ideological sabotage' which, in its view, are fuelling protests. Public officials will have to go door to door in villages to gather stories about how well people live in the country. They will be accompanied by artists who will demonstrate their skills by singing or playing traditional instruments.
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Site: Zero HedgeBulgaria Set To Join Eurozone In 2026Tyler Durden Mon, 06/09/2025 - 03:30
Authored by RFE/RL staff via OilPrice.com,
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The European Commission has given Bulgaria the green light to adopt the euro as of January 1, 2026, following a positive assessment of the country's economic convergence.
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Bulgaria's approval to join the eurozone represents a significant milestone in its broader integration into the European Union, following its recent entry into the Schengen Agreement.
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Despite facing political and economic challenges, Bulgaria has met the necessary criteria for euro adoption, with final decisions to be made by the Council of the EU.
The European Commission has given Bulgaria the go-ahead to join the eurozone single currency region as of January 1, 2026, the country's second major step in just one year on its path to full integration into the European Union.
The commission, which met on June 4 to convey its decision on the issue, said Bulgaria fulfils the four nominal convergence criteria that are used to evaluate whether a country is ready for euro adoption.
"The euro is a tangible symbol of European strength and unity," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The European Central Bank (ECB) also gave a positive assessment of Bulgaria's application, saying it met the criteria of currency stability, inflation, public finances, and interest rates.
“This positive assessment of convergence paves the way for Bulgaria to introduce the euro as of 1 January 2026 and become the 21st EU Member State to join the euro area,” Philip Lane, a member of the ECB Executive Board, said.
“I wish to congratulate Bulgaria on its tremendous dedication to making the adjustments needed.”
The Council of the EU will take the final decisions on euro adoption for Bulgaria, basing its decision on the opinions of the EC and the ECB, as well as from talks with the Eurogroup and European Council.
While adoption of the euro was a condition for joining the European Union, legislative failures, including reforms to combat money laundering, concerns over inflation, and political gridlock -- Bulgaria has had seven elections in the past four years -- have made the path difficult for the country.
Mass protests took place in Sofia and other cities across the country last week, and politicians said after the decision that the task now is to make sure adoption provides benefits, not disruption.
Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov said the government would work to make "the process of introducing the euro smooth, predictable, predictable" and to dispel "the fears that are instilled in people and that are used for political abuse."
Added Boyko Borisov, leader of the GERB party and a former prime minister: "A huge amount of work lies ahead, especially next year, because Bulgarians should feel the benefits of the eurozone."
The decision in favor of adoption is Bulgaria’s second big step in just one year on its path to full integration into the European Union.
In January, Sofia became a full member of Schengen agreement -- and Bulgaria’s borders with neighboring Greece and Romania are now fully open.
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Site: Mises InstituteAlex Pollock has questions for the Federal Reserve in the Financial Times.
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Site: Mises InstituteCritics of the Free State Project should direct animosity, not at those moving to their state, but to the other 49 states for failing to be freer. The Free State Project migrants are not moving to New Hampshire to exert coercion on the existing population, but to live under less coercion.
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Site: Zero Hedge73% Of Indonesian Men Smoke...Tyler Durden Mon, 06/09/2025 - 02:45
In 2025, smoking remains a persistent public health concern, with sharp disparities visible not only across countries but also between genders.
The World Health Organization estimates that tobacco use causes over 8 million premature deaths each year. Of these, more than 7 million are due to direct tobacco use, while around 1.3 million non-smokers die from exposure to second-hand smoke.
The graphic below, via Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu, highlights the male and female smoking rates in ten major countries. The data is based on projections compiled by Statista.
Gender Disparities in Global Smoking Rates
The most striking contrast is seen in Indonesia, where nearly three-quarters (72.8%) of men are smokers, while just 1.8% of women partake.
This gender gap is also present in China (44.4% vs. 1.4%) and India (10.9% vs. 0.9%), reflecting cultural norms and targeted marketing practices.
In contrast, countries like France and Germany show much narrower disparities. France stands out with almost equal smoking rates among men (35.2%) and women (34.0%), suggesting a more gender-neutral culture around tobacco use.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Japan fall in the mid-range, with moderate gender gaps and relatively lower overall smoking prevalence compared to Asian and European counterparts.
In Russia, 31.4% of men and 5.7% of women smoke, while in Brazil, smoking rates are lower, with 14.1% of men and 8.1% of women who smoke.
Raw tobacco production is a huge industry. In 2022 alone, around 5.8 million tons of tobacco were produced worldwide, roughly a third of which was in China. Learn more about tobacco production in this graphic on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.
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Site: Zero HedgeEU Farmer Protests Far From Over As They Battle Threats From Mercosur Trade Agreement And Ukraine
Farmers in Spain and France were again protesting agricultural imports from Ukraine and South America under the Mercosur trade agreement ahead of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visiting France and the expiration of a free trade agreement with Ukraine, writes TopAgrar.pl.
Da Silva wants to convince President Emmanuel Macron to drop his opposition to the EU-Mercosur Agreement, and at a press conference with the French head of state, told press that he would not “leave the Mercosur presidency without having concluded the trade deal,” a position he will be taking up in a few weeks.
Meanwhile, the French Federation of Agricultural Unions (FNSEA) has once again called on Macron to take action to create a minority in the EU to block the ratification of the Mercosur Agreement by the Council of the European Union.
In a statement quoted by Reuters, the French organization warned that the agreement will be “devastating for the beef, poultry and sugar industries and compromise the EU’s ambitions in terms of food sovereignty.”
“We are raising the alarm!” said Alain Carre, head of the French sugar industry group AIBS.
If an agreement with Mercosur is reached, the French are demanding clear trade rules: “Our demands (for an EU-Mercosur deal) are simple: reciprocity of regulations, traceability of products abroad and much clearer labeling,” said Jean-Michel Schaeffer, head of French poultry industry group Anvol.
In Spain, hundreds of farmers gathered in Madrid to protest excessive grain imports from Ukraine, which have resulted in grain prices below production costs.
“Spanish farmers will lose €1 billion this year,” Javier Fatas, leader of the farmers’ union COAG from the Aragon region in northeastern Spain, said.
Spaniards also refuse to import genetically modified grain from Mercosur, which is cheaper than Spanish grain, into the EU.
Similar sentiments are prevalent in Poland. In June, farmers took to the streets again to express opposition to trade liberalization with Ukraine, the Mercosur agreement, and the Green Deal, reminds TopAgrar.
“Our position should be firm and clear: the customs and limits from before the war must return. Otherwise, we will not be able to compete on the European market, and especially in Poland,” said Stanisław Barna from the grassroots All-Poland Farmers’ Protest.
At the protest in Krążkowy in Wielkopolska, another OOPR representative, Krzysztof Olejnik, called the provisions of the EU-Mercosur Agreement a “spit in the face” of farmers: “If we are talking about Mercosur, we still do not have detailed information about the terms of this agreement. We assume that the terms of this agreement will probably not be favorable for us,” said Krzysztof Olejnik.
The lack of hope for economic improvement in agriculture is combined with a sense of lack of action on the part of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Government and the European Commission. Maciej Zawadzki from the Association of Farmers of Southern Wielkopolska said, “We decided to take to the streets because our issues that were supposed to be resolved are still unresolved. The government remains passive. (…) Unfortunately, we do not see any actions that would improve our position and situation. Quite the opposite: what is happening is working to our disadvantage.”
Stanisław Barna says the only option for farmers now is to put pressure on decision-makers via protests.
“We want to work with dignity, have a stable situation. Have a decent salary for our work (…) This is what we are reduced to, to make our farms fail. If you do not fight for yourselves, no one will do it for you! Thank you and God bless you for your determination and showing strength today. Let the government see, and Minister Siekierski will finally get down to work, because he has been talking to us for a year and a half, saying that he will prepare a position, but let him finally come to West Pomerania and talk,” he said.
Farmers also hope the newly elected president, Karol Nawrocki, will come through for them. “Mr. President, we are here, we are watching, we are waiting for your decision,” Barna added. “We farmers would like these promises to be fulfilled and not forgotten.”
Macron and Lula did not appear to make much headway on EU-Mercosur trade deal. Macron clearly wants to boost trade and relations with Brazil but he also made clear that he cannot accept the deal in its current form, emphasizing the need for “either mirror clauses or safeguard measures” to ensure Brazilian products conform with EU production standards.
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Site: The Unz ReviewI have never understood why rioters, protestors, whatever you want to call them, burn people’s cars. Insurance seldom covers such events. Violent protests harm innocents. I also don’t understand why the National Guard is called out as they are not permitted to use their weapons. Try to imagine the National Guard using deadly force to...
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Site: The Unz ReviewPresident Donald Trump is threatening to launch air strikes on Iran for activities that are approved under the terms of Iran's treaty obligations. This is not a matter on which there should be any debate. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) explicitly grants all parties, including Iran, the “inalienable right” to develop,...
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Site: AntiWar.comRecent reports say that US AID is considering giving $500 million to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – an “aid” initiative launched at Israel’s request. At first glance, that might sound like a generous effort to help desperate Palestinians in Gaza. But peel back even one layer, and you’ll find a deadly political scheme masquerading … Continue reading "Don’t Fund the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: It’s a Genocidal Smokescreen"
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Site: The Unz ReviewPutin avoided the dire consequences mandated by Russian war doctrine by labeling the attack on Russia’s strategic triad a “terrorist act,” not an act of war. This has delayed, but not prevented a wider and more dangerous war, because what Putin has actually done is to eviscerate Russian war doctrine. If the President of Russia...
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Site: The Unz ReviewThe silence of the bears will soon be ended and we will know more about Russian resolve. Russia’s leadership is in ‘conclave’ determining its riposte. Trump has been silent for two days. Unprecedented. In the last days, Ukraine and its facilitators attempted a massive attack on Russia’s strategic nuclear bomber-force; succeeded in collapsing two bridges...
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Site: The Unz ReviewAbout a year ago, I first began exploring the powerful new AI systems that had been receiving so much public attention, and incorporated some of their features into our website. For myself and many of our other writers, I added focused chatbots that used the corpus of the written works hosted on our website to...
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Site: AntiWar.comThe European Union thought the 2023 election of Donald Tusk as Prime Minister of Poland solved their Poland problem. But the June 2 election of Karol Nawrocki as President shows they were wrong. Nawrocki is a Euro-skeptic who has aligned himself with U.S. President Donald Trump’s agenda more than with the EU’s agenda. He is … Continue reading "Does Ukraine Now Have a Poland Problem?"
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Site: AntiWar.comScott Horton’s speech to the Tbilisi Summer Forum on June 6th No offense, but Georgia’s interests are just none of my affair. It’s such a long way from here. I know my government has been messing around there since the 1990s, picking winners and losers, making big promises and causing lots of trouble. Keeping Russia … Continue reading "A Message to Georgians: America Will Not Protect You"
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Site: Zero HedgeRestoring American Maritime Dominance: A National ImperativeTyler Durden Sun, 06/08/2025 - 23:20
Authored by Andy Thaxton via RealClearWire,
As a career Naval intelligence officer, I spent years observing China’s maritime ascent. Briefing after briefing warned of China’s increasingly aggressive intentions of seapower, and yet, all that analytical churn has had negligible impact on U.S. naval posture. Now, watching from the sidelines, I remain alarmed by the widening gap between the naval and shipbuilding capabilities of the United States and the People’s Republic of China. What once was a slow, methodical buildup by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has accelerated into a rapidly growing strategic threat to U.S. maritime supremacy—both commercially and militarily. Without exaggeration, the United States is facing an urgent national security crisis.
While the U.S. rested on the laurels of its past naval dominance, China has systematically executed a comprehensive, state-directed maritime strategy that is now reshaping the global balance of naval power.
If the U.S. fails to respond with urgency and scale, we risk ceding control of the seas—and with it, the geopolitical influence that flows from maritime power.
The data is staggering. According to the April 2025 Report to Congress on Chinese Naval Modernization, China’s navy currently operates over 370 battle force ships, a number projected to grow to 435 by 2030. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy is struggling to maintain around 290 ships, with ambitions—still largely unfunded—of reaching 316 by 2053. Equally alarming, China’s shipyards possess more than 230 times the shipbuilding capacity of the U.S. According to a recent report by The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), China “built more commercial vessels by tonnage in 2024 than the entire U.S. shipbuilding industry has built since the end of World War II.” You might want to read that sentence again.
But the disparity is not merely in tonnage or hulls. China’s state-supported shipbuilding industry benefits from over 150 shipyards, including eight major naval production sites capable of building large warships, aircraft carriers, and amphibious assault ships in parallel. In stark contrast, the U.S. Navy is dependent on just seven private shipyards, several of which are overburdened, outdated, and struggling with workforce shortages. Further, the Congressional Report on U.S. Navy Force Structure indicated that nearly every major U.S. shipbuilding program is behind schedule and over budget.
Meanwhile, China’s maritime ambitions have expanded beyond the Indo-Pacific. As documented in the December 2024 U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, China’s global maritime reach now spans 10,000 miles beyond Taiwan, including permanent naval bases in Djibouti and increasing influence in ports across Pakistan, Cambodia, and Equatorial Guinea. The foundation of this expansion is China’s merchant fleet—the world’s largest—which can be rapidly converted to military use in a real-world shooting war. Again, by contrast, the U.S. merchant fleet has dwindled to fewer than 180 international trading ships, severely limiting sealift capacity in a contested environment.
Taken together, this paints a picture of a maritime balance that is tipping rapidly and dangerously toward Beijing. Initiatives such as President Trump’s Executive Order on Restoring Maritime Dominance and the reintroduction of the SHIPS Act signal a growing recognition of the problem, but they are insufficient in both scale and urgency. Rebuilding a competitive naval force cannot be done incrementally or through bureaucratic half-measures.
The United States must enact a modern-day Marshall Plan for shipbuilding, one rooted in the understanding that maritime supremacy is the backbone of American global power. The plan must be bold, multifaceted, and sustained. Five critical priorities stand out:
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Massive Industrial Investment: As proposed in the SHIPS Act, Congress must allocate $20–30 billion over the next decade to modernize and expand U.S. shipyards—revitalizing dry docks, increasing capacity, and restoring tiered supplier networks. Geographic diversification of shipyards is also critical to ensure resilience in a conflict.
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Workforce Development: The U.S. faces a massive shortage of skilled labor in shipbuilding. The government should launch a unified Maritime Workforce Initiative, partnering with trade schools, unions, and community colleges to train tens of thousands of welders, electricians, engineers, and naval architects.
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Procurement Reform: The Navy’s acquisition system must be radically—let me repeat, radically—overhauled. The complex, inefficient cost-plus contract system has made U.S. shipbuilding painfully slow and expensive. The Navy should adopt simpler, modular designs that speed up production, reduce costs, and make the fleet more adaptable.
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Dual-Use Shipbuilding: The U.S. should incentivize the construction of commercial ships—tankers and container vessels—at domestic yards. This will boost shipyard throughput, maintain a steady workforce, and provide an auxiliary fleet in times of war.
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Strategic Messaging and Public Buy-In: Maritime security is fundamental to national prosperity and defense. A public campaign, similar to the WWII-era “Victory Ship” program, could make shipbuilding a patriotic endeavor and reinvigorate public support for maritime dominance.
This is not hyperbole; the situation is dire. U.S. naval leaders have privately acknowledged a “worst-case scenario” in which the Navy may not be able to reliably contest Chinese aggression in the Western Pacific within the next five years. If the U.S. fails to act now, or fails to act boldly, we will not only lose our naval edge but forfeit our ability to shape the international order.
The oceans have always been the lifeblood of American power. In the 20th century, our shipbuilding might help win world wars and deter Soviet aggression. In the 21st century, it will determine whether we remain on the field as a superpower, or, like me, retire to the sidelines as an observer, in an era defined by Chinese maritime dominance. The time for incremental fixes is over. The clock is ticking—and only an “all-hands-on-deck” national response will suffice.
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Site: Zero HedgeWashington DC Dominates The US Gun-Deaths LeagueTyler Durden Sun, 06/08/2025 - 22:45
Gun violence remains one of the most pressing public health issues in the United States.
But as Visual Capitalist;s Bruno Venditti shws in the following chart, according to data from USAFacts as of December 2023, gun-related deaths vary significantly across states, reflecting long-standing regional and demographic differences.
Preliminary numbers show that between January and August 2024, an estimated 30,100 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., 5% fewer than during the same period in 2023.
The rate of gun-related deaths in the U.S. has shifted over time. In the early 1990s, the rate fluctuated between 14.5 and 15.0 deaths per 100,000 people. From 2000 to 2014, however, that figure declined and remained below 10.5 deaths per 100,000.
By 2023, the rate rose again to 13.7 per 100,000—still 8% lower than its peak in 1993.
States With the Highest Gun Death Rates
Washington, DC recorded the highest rate in the country in 2023, with 28.5 deaths per 100,000 residents, more than 60% above the next highest state.
States With the Lowest Gun Death Rates
At the other end of the spectrum, several states reported significantly lower rates. Those include Hawaii, Utah, and Nebraska.
Although they receive less public attention than gun-related homicides, suicides have consistently made up the majority of gun deaths in the United States. In 2023, suicides accounted for 58% of all gun-related fatalities, totaling 27,300 deaths, according to CDC data. By comparison, 38% were classified as murders (17,927 deaths).
The U.S. has more guns than people, with nearly 400 million in civilian possession. In this map, we rank states by the highest percentage of gun ownership for adults.
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Site: Euthanasia Prevention CoalitionAlex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
New York, assisted suicide Bill A136/S138 passed in the New York Assembly by a vote of 81 to 67 on April 29 and may soon be debated in the state Senate. We have urged supporters to contact the members of the New York State Senate.
The New York bill is particularly loose in it's language. But what makes New York's bill even more egregious is that:
1. The bill does not have a reflecton period. A person's bad day can be their last day.
The bill requires the person to have the assessor confirm that there is a "terminal condition" with a 6 month prognosis to die. "Terminal condition" includes diabetes and eating disorders. Without a reflection period, there is no opportunity to rethink the deadly irreversible decision.
2. There is no residency requirement. The New York bill allows anyone from anywhere to die by assisted suicide in New York.The New York assisted suicide bill may come up as early as TOMORROW (Monday) for a floor vote.Senator Name Email Albany OfficeAndrea Stewart-Cousins scousins@nysenate.gov 518-455-2585Andrew Gounardes gounardes@nysenate.gov 518-455-3270Brian Kavanagh kavanagh@nysenate.gov 518-455-2625Jamaal Bailey senatorjbailey@nysenate.gov 518-455-2061John Liu liu@nysenate.gov 518-455-2210Joseph Addabbo addabbo@nysenate.gov 518-455-2322Kevin Parker parker@nysenate.gov 518-455-2580Patricia Fahy Fahy@nysenate.gov 518-455-2225Shelley Mayer smayer@nysenate.gov 518-455-2031Toby Ann Stavisky stavisky@nysenate.gov 518-455-3461Tell them that you oppose assisted suicide and this assisted suicide bill is particularly dangerous because it lacks a reflection period and there is no residency requirement.Because the New York bill does not have a residency requirement, all of our loved ones are at risk from the dangers of assisted suicide passing in New York State even if they don't live there. Remember, when assisted suicide bills pass, it is often by just one or two votes. Your voice really does make a difference!As bad as the New York assisted suicide bill is the assisted suicide lobby has expanded existing assisted suicide legislation in nearly every state that has legalized assisted suicide.Oregon allows physicians to wave the waiting period and Oregon has also eliminated the residency requirement. Vermont is permitting assisted suicide by telehealth, they are forcing medical practitioners who oppose assisted suicide to refer patients and they eliminated the residency requirement. Washington state, California, Colorado and Hawaii have also expanded their assisted suicide laws.
Once assisted suicide is legal, the assisted suicide lobby will work to further expand the law. The original assisted suicide bill is designed to pass in the legislature, once passed incremental extensions will follow.
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Site: Zero HedgeAI Is Taking Thousands Of Jobs; Is Yours At Risk?Tyler Durden Sun, 06/08/2025 - 21:00
Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times,
Just as the internet radically changed how America conducts business, artificial intelligence (AI) is also making waves in the workplace by taking thousands of jobs. It’s an outcome that industry experts have warned would happen, and professionals across multiple employment sectors have already been affected.
Beyond artists and content creators, AI is also impacting professionals in marketing, technology, translation, various levels of administration, and management. It has been a silent and ongoing trend for two years, but tech insiders say this is just the beginning.
A senior software engineer at Microsoft, Nandita Giri, shared her thoughts with The Epoch Times on what kind of near-term changes Americans can expect as a result of ramped-up workplace AI integration.
“AI is particularly effective at replacing routine, predictable tasks ... jobs in data entry, customer support, transcription, and logistics are the most vulnerable,” Giri said. “In software engineering, even some junior [developer] testing roles are being replaced or reshaped with AI-driven tooling. Back-office operations across health care, finance, and legal are also at high risk.”
Giri has observed a shift away from human workers in favor of AI in enterprise software development, where she said companies are quietly removing what they call “coordination overhead.” She said this is happening as AI tools become more reliable for things like task triage, scheduling, and summarization.
“AI agents have enabled a single engineer to manage what used to be a multi-person workflow, especially in automation pipelines and internal support tasks,” she said.
Restructuring Workflow
Cahyo Subroto, founder of the AI-powered data extraction platform MrScraper, agrees with this perspective.
“I’ve spent the last few years building systems that automate work, so I’ve seen firsthand where AI adds value and where it quietly pushes people out of the picture,” Subroto told The Epoch Times.
Like Giri, Subroto said that the jobs most in danger of AI replacement are those that rely heavily on structured, repetitive digital labor.
“That includes early-stage analysts, junior QA [quality assurance] testers, data entry staff, and even support roles in HR and customer service,” he said.
Subroto explained that when AI can learn workflow patterns, it can perform them faster and without the payroll cost. “At my last company, I watched a client eliminate three QA positions after switching to a tool that could auto-generate test cases and report bugs in real time.”
These decisions are based strictly on efficiency, he added. “That’s what makes this shift so difficult to stop.”
In January, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released a report that estimated 92 million jobs would be displaced by AI by 2030. The think tank surveyed more than 1,000 of the world’s largest employers, accounting for 22 industry groups and more than 14 million workers.
There is a silver lining, however. The WEF—and many others—predict that AI will also create new jobs and reshape existing positions, allowing current employees in various sectors to focus on more high-value tasks instead of routine work.
A robot sprinkles cheese over a pizza at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence of the University of Bremen, Germany, on March 8, 2017. Ingo Wagner/dpa/AFP via Getty Images
Jobs with declining demand include customer service representatives, claims adjusters, bank tellers, graphic designers, accountants, and auditors, the WEF report said.
Subroto believes much of the shift toward AI will be subtle. “Instead of replacing people, we’re restructuring the workflow to rely on AI for the mechanical parts, while humans take on broader accountability.”
“That’s a harder conversation because it’s not about job loss. It’s about job transformation, and not everyone will be equipped and ready to make that jump,” he said.
Big Changes Ahead
In May, Microsoft announced plans to lay off 3 percent of its employees across the board, affecting roughly 6,000 people. In a statement to CNBC, a spokesperson for the tech giant said, “We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace.” The spokesperson confirmed that the job cuts weren’t related to worker performance.
It’s reportedly the largest series of layoffs at Microsoft since 2023.
This arrives on the heels of reported cuts at Amazon, which in January said it would lay off what it called a “small number” of its communications and sustainability employees. It followed that by announcing in March plans to eliminate 14,000 managerial positions by early next year.
Among those who lost their job at Microsoft is former senior data scientist Tatiana Teppoeva, founder and CEO of One Nonverbal Ecosystem. She told The Epoch Times that increased tech layoffs alongside the rise of AI integration is an industry red flag.
“This has sparked genuine concerns over the future need for human programmers and signals a real, accelerating shift in how companies evaluate which human roles are essential,” Teppoeva said.
Like Giri and Subroto, Teppoeva identified industries that have a lot of unchanging, rules-based tasks like back-end software development, data entry, finance, and logistics as areas with a high probability of AI job replacement.
“The most realistic near-term disruption is task-level automation, not full job replacement,” she said. “For example, in sales, AI tools can draft outreach emails or analyze deal data, but they cannot replicate the human-to-human trust, nonverbal signals, and presence that close high-ticket deals.”
Teppoeva said the human-AI gap is now a point of focus for her business. “Helping sales teams, executives, and companies align their human communication, body language, voice, [and] nonverbal presence [is] what advanced AI tools still can’t do,” she said, then added, “At least not yet.”
On June 2, a Midwest-based web content manager for a major U.S. company—who asked to be identified only as “Tom”—was laid off with the rest of his department and most of the company’s marketing staff. Tom requested the company not be identified out of fear it could affect his severance.
Having worked in web development for more than 15 years, Tom said he saw the “AI blitz” coming and had a gut hunch it would only be a matter of time before he was made redundant.
“The worst part is the lack of honesty,” Tom said. “Companies aren’t being straight with people, they’re just saying things like ’sales are down‘ or ’we need to improve efficiency,' but the reality is it’s about increasing profit by any means.”
Tom said he has a friend who spent nearly two decades working in marketing and kept up with changing industry trends before being laid off a year ago because of AI integration.
“There are entire careers with university degrees behind them that are ending now,” Tom said.
“It’s not necessarily a one-to-one ratio,” he added. “Maybe an AI tool automates half of a department’s workload. That means you can redistribute the remaining work amongst a smaller team.”
Since the Hollywood writers’ strike in 2023, the potential for AI to disrupt careers has been under a microscope, and it’s easy to see why. Out of more than 80,000 jobs cut in May 2023, nearly 4,000 were due to AI, according to a layoffs report from the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc.
The trend continued last year. In 2024, the Society of Authors surveyed 12,500 workers in different creative industries, revealing many had already lost work to AI. According to the survey, 26 percent of illustrators and 36 percent of translators had already lost work because of generative AI.
Tesla co-founder Elon Musk also shared his views on AI job replacement during the Viva Technology conference in Paris in 2024, following news that Tesla planned to lay off 10 percent of its workforce.
A 3D-printed miniature model of Elon Musk and the Tesla logo are seen in this image from Jan. 23, 2025. Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters
“If the computer and robot can do everything better than you, what meaning does your life have? ... In a negative scenario ... we’re in deep trouble,” Musk said.
Other tech insiders share this point of view. During an episode of “The Artificial Intelligence” show, Marketing AI Institute founder Paul Roetzer said AI is fundamentally reshaping the human workforce.
“It’s not like we’re drawing some difficult-to-find conclusion here,” Roetzer said when discussing Microsoft’s most recent layoffs. “If the CTO [chief technology officer] of the company is saying that within five years we expect 95 percent of all code to be written by AI, then what do you need a bunch of engineers for?”
Subroto used an example from his work, describing the use of AI for “task sequencing and code generation,” which allowed his company to launch features faster and fix bugs before users even saw them. However, he said the improved work efficiency came at the cost of no longer needing manual testers checking outputs line by line.
“These were smart, capable people, and yet the structure of the work changed so much that their role no longer made sense,” he said.
The current phase-out of human work roles due to increased AI efficiency is nuanced, but some don’t think it will stay that way for much longer.
A McKinsey Global Institute analysis from July 2023 predicted that 30 percent of total hours worked could be absorbed by generative AI by 2030. Researchers estimated that 11.8 million employees working in sectors with shrinking demand may need to shift into other departments, while roughly 9 million may need to change careers entirely.
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Site: Zero HedgeLost To History: The Forgotten Thermonuclear Near-Disaster On Big Savage MountainTyler Durden Sun, 06/08/2025 - 20:25
Six decades ago, in a near-nuclear disaster erased from public memory, a U.S. Air Force B-52D Stratofortress—carrying two thermonuclear bombs—was torn apart six miles above the Appalachian Mountains. The aircraft's vertical stabilizer snapped off mid-flight, sending the bomber into an uncontrollable dive before it slammed into Big Savage Mountain in Western Maryland. The crash marked one of the closest nuclear near-misses on U.S. soil during the Cold War.
On January 13, 1964, a B-52D Stratofortress took off from Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts en route to Turner Air Force Base in Georgia as part of a Strategic Air Command mission called "Operation Chrome Dome." On board were five crew members and two thermonuclear bombs.
A heavily redacted USAF report on the mid-air accident of the nuclear-laden B-52D specified that a bulkhead structural failure occurred during severe turbulence that caused the vertical fin to separate.
As the bomber broke up in mid-air, the pilot, Major Thomas McCormick, and co-pilot Captain Parker Peedin ejected and survived. However, three other crew members perished:
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Major Robert Townley (died in the crash)
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Tech Sgt. Melvin Wooten (died from injuries and exposure)
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Major Robert Payne (died from exposure after ejecting)
The crash drew national attention and mobilized hundreds of local volunteers for search and rescue efforts despite dangerous blizzard conditions across the Big Savage Mountain.
In 2014, Politico interviewed Gerald Beachy of the Grantsville Community Museum, which amassed a collection of crash memorabilia and wreckage from the bomber, who said it took USAF salvage operations several days to recover the thermonuclear bombs from the remote crash site.
The incident in the remote mountains of Western Maryland has been largely erased from public memory. It occurred at the height of the Cold War—just two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis. This wasn't merely an air crash; it stands as one of the most serious nuclear weapons-related accidents on U.S. soil, even though the warheads were unarmed.
Reminders of the past are crucial as the nation braces for the 2030s—a decade in which the world is expected to fracture into a dangerous bipolar state, accelerating at an unprecedented pace.
Meanwhile, Europe is unleashing massive efforts to rebuild weapons stockpiles and scale up war readiness amid the ongoing war in Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Trump administration is accelerating plans to expand defense capabilities and bolster hemispheric defense. The arms and technology race with China is no longer in snail mode—it's in full-blown hyperdrive, and with that comes many risks.
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Site: Public Discourse
We’ve seen it all before. The Canadian Conservative Party squanders a commanding lead as the liberals quietly adopt its core economic policies—lower taxes, modest spending restraint, skepticism toward the carbon tax—while taking a slightly more moderate tack on social issues. Donald Trump was a key factor in the election outcome this round, but the reality is that Liberal Party leader Mark Carney’s platform mirrored the core of what the right typically campaigns on, and as has been the case in the past, a slight nod in that direction is often enough to see the conservatives’ distinctiveness evaporate. The shallowness of the conservative offering becomes painfully apparent. As John Ibbitson recently noted, the parties ended up looking like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. This reality has been borne out in the first few actions of the new liberal government, both in the mandate letter (whose priorities include balancing the budget, reducing immigration levels, and eliminating interprovincial trade barriers) and the Speech from the Throne, which committed to meeting NATO’s 2 percent defense spending target, to public safety messaging, and to enhancing national sovereignty through military and Arctic investments. It shows that the so-called conservative position was never deeply conservative at all—it is merely a variation on liberalism, as it was ten or twenty years ago.
If Canadian conservatism is to become anything more than a periodic managerial alternative, it must cultivate a long game to change culture and the courage to offer a truly differentiated vision; otherwise it will continue to be seen by Canadians for what it is: liberalism with a lag.
Liberalism in Conservative Clothing: A Century of Failed Imitation
Canada’s century-long political trajectory proves the point. Conservatives in Canada have never been natural cultural or political leaders. From free trade and multiculturalism to same-sex marriage, from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to enthusiastic support for high levels of immigration and qualified endorsement of diversity initiatives, conservatives have not resisted liberal ideas but merely endorsed them after a delay.
This is not a criticism of the party’s performance in this election, as it earned its highest share of the popular vote as the modern conservative party. And regardless of how you feel about any of these issues, the point is that if you zoom out, you can see the problem is more systemic.
Part of the failure stems from an excessive emphasis within conservatism on libertarian social freedom—the exaltation of personal choice and autonomy as supreme goods. Postwar “fusionism” attempted to combine these instincts with traditional moral foundations but never fully resolved their contradictions. Friedrich Hayek—a hero to many conservatives—is illustrative of this tension; he insisted that he was not a conservative and warned of the inherent difficulties in combining such principles. In “Why I Am Not a Conservative,” Hayek wrote that the conservatives’ respect for and deference to established authority troubles him, and that conservatives must feel as though someone is supervising change and keeping it orderly. He writes that they often rely on figures like Tocqueville, Lord Acton, and Burke to justify their positions—who themselves would have “shuddered” to be seen as Tories. Indeed, this heavy liberal influence is all too common among self-described conservatives, although often unbeknownst to them.
Liberalism’s Logical End: From Autonomy to Alienation
Unchecked liberalism has frayed civic and family life. It’s contributed to declining birth rates, splintered social fabric, and lower social trust from excessive immigration and unwieldy diversity, widespread loneliness, and a moral relativism that corrodes the pursuit of a coherent common good. After a century of emphasizing autonomy, the human person is today rootless and atomized.
Some argue that the solution is a more serious classical liberalism. But classical liberalism grew up within a thick cultural matrix—shared faith, strong family and social ties, a communitarian environment, and common national identity—that it has since eroded. Without that rich cultural soil, liberalism alone morphs into relativism. Moreover, what we are seeing today is not a betrayal of liberalism by “wokeness,” but liberalism arriving at its logical endpoint. A political and moral order that treats individual autonomy as the highest good must continually validate ever more divergent and incompatible lifestyles. If not properly balanced by other values, liberalism’s internal logic inevitably leads not to stable pluralism, but to balkanization and the dilution of shared principles and common life.
Focusing myopically on winning elections by tacking either more socially progressive or conservative guarantees only minor, temporary adjustments. Without cultural strategy, conservatism merely manages liberal decline without changing the long-term trajectory.
It is beyond question that the cultural excesses we see today are not failures of liberalism, but its logical conclusions. Hyper-individualism, instantaneous, unfiltered and constant communication, uninhibited social mores, postmodern relativism, and celebration of selfish desire—all of these were promised by progressives as paths to liberation and fulfillment. Instead, they have become sources of alienation, confusion, and cultural decay.
Decadent Status Quo: When Progressivism Becomes the Establishment
This is not just a Canadian problem. Hyper-individualistic liberalism is now the dominant culture across the West. Conservatives are no longer conserving traditional values and a more conservative society—they are conserving the remnants left behind by an overemphasis on some of liberalism’s core tenets, without appropriate balance from values equally important to human well-being: loyalty, reverence, moral vision, patriotism, and social trust rooted in shared commitments and beliefs.
Ironically, Donald Trump—a lifelong Democrat, a Manhattan social liberal on nearly every issue—is himself a product of this cultural milieu. He embodies rather than rejects the post-1960s order. His persona, rooted in self-promotion, celebrity, and the rejection of norms, mirrors the very values the cultural left has celebrated for decades.
In many ways, Trump represents the culmination of postmodernism’s ethos: the triumph of subjectivity over truth, power over principle, and narrative performance over moral integrity. He is not a conservative; he is the logical product of a culture that treats all identities, impulses, and truths as equally valid. And while his administration achieved more in 100 days than decades of lukewarm conservatism, that is more a testament to the failures of establishment conservatism and Trump’s outsider and entrepreneurial instincts than to his philosophical coherence.
Demographic shifts, such as the working-class realignment and the rightward movement of younger voters, point to the fact that we are undergoing a social shift, an inversion of what’s been typical. Defending the status quo—a procedurally conservative action—is a now a vote for liberalism and liberals. Those who favor the status quo are the wealthy, established, and older demographics, and those on the outside (the working class and younger voters) advocate change, which is now, paradoxically, to advocate conservative principles and likely to vote Conservative.
Traditionally non-conservative classes of people are waking up to the fact that the status quo is not working for them, due to the excesses of hyper-individualistic liberalism. The time is ripe for change. A conservatism of ideals must reject Trump-style decadent cultural populism just as it rejects the ideological excesses of progressive liberalism. It must be rooted not in personality or performance, but in truth, virtue, and the common good.
The Case for a Conservatism of Ideals
First, conservatives can strive to emulate serious long-term cultural efforts, like the Federalist Society’s reshaping of legal philosophy in the United States, Britain’s Policy Exchange, or France’s Cercle Aristote. These institutions patiently shaped professions, policy, and national narratives, not just electoral wins. In Canada, there is an opportunity in existing organizations like the Canada Strong and Free Network, which consistently underperforms in this regard. It could make much more of its “Conservative values tomorrow” mentoring program that I helped start, to have long-term, multigenerational impact.
Second, this conservatism must be communitarian and virtue-oriented. It must affirm the family as the first polity, the neighborhood as the beginnings of solidarity, and virtue—not just credentials and quantified results—as the currency of trust. People are profoundly hungry for these things, as antidotes to rootlessness, anomie, and increasing social isolation and loneliness.
Third, it must be genuinely progressive in the true sense: aiming to fulfill the unrealized human potential to live well, according to objective norms that we know are good for people—things like seeking transcendent experiences through faith and philosophy, cultivating family and friendships, balancing work and life, and imbuing both with a sense of vocation. It must recognize not an endless array of choices and diversity, but that there are certain things that are conducive to our well-being, and that, conversely, other things are objectively damaging to both individuals and communities. Liberalism’s attitude of “to each their own” leaves us in a dark place when people want to overdose on opioids, instruct a doctor to take their life, or mutilate their undeveloped body. In contrast to these plainly destructive policies springing out of the excesses of liberalism, conservatism should show that human life has a clear and understandable purpose, meaning, and a telos beyond itself.
This is the conservatism we need: not nostalgia and anachronistic social conservatism, not progressive liberalism with better branding, but a bold conservatism of clearly articulated ideals for human flourishing. Canada—and the West—desperately need such a vision. The only question is whether conservatives will have the courage to embrace it, and the wherewithal to see it through in the long term.
Image licensed via Adobe Stock.
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Site: Euthanasia Prevention CoalitionAlex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention CoalitionRoger Foley lives at the LHSC
Last week, a friend and I visited Roger Foley, who has been living at the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) for more than 9 years. Roger lives with cerebellar ataxia, a degenerative neurological condition.Living in a hospital means that Roger lives in a small room without the freedom to control his environment. To make matters worse, the hospital staff have asked him, on several occasions, about MAiD and they have regularly broached the topic of suicide.Roger, who I have been communicating with for several years, does not want to live in the hospital. Roger has served his time and deserves to be sent home. The catch is that based on his disability he needs significant care.Roger proposed, from the beginning, that he be sent home with self-directed care, meaning that Roger would hire the care team to provide for his needs. Self-directed care is a program that exists in Ontario, but Roger has been denied access to the program.Roger was offered care that would be provided through a "care agency". In the past when Roger's care was provided by a care agency he was not in control of his care team which resulted in several horrific experiences including food poisoning and a care giver falling to sleep while he was in the bath, to name a few. Remember, he can't get out of the bath without assistance.Further to that, when you do the math, self-directed care is the least expensive and preferable option for care.
The hospital is an incredibly expensive place to care for Roger and he does not want to be there. "Care agencies" bill the government for the cost of the care and the costs associated with the agency.
Self-directed care, whereby Roger would hire his own care team, is the least expensive and the preferable option since most of the cost is limited to the cost of the care team.
It is time to release Roger from the confinement of the hospital room and send him home with self-directed care. Roger has already created a proposed model of care that outlines the requirements of his team and the cost associated with his care.
Roger deserves to be sent home and be approved for self-directed care. -
Site: non veni pacem
Traveling relentlessly all weekend. But Pentecost at St James, West End (SSPX) was glorious. Happy feast!
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Site: Zero HedgeWe Need A 'Kill Switch' On Foreign Powers Tampering With Our Electric GridTyler Durden Sun, 06/08/2025 - 19:50
Authored by Gary Abernathy via The Empowerment Alliance,
It has long been acknowledged that the United States’ energy infrastructure isn’t particularly secure, a concern exacerbated by the lack of a central planning process for our nation’s piecemeal electric grid. Presidential administrations and Congress have been slow to address the problem, apparently daunted by the mere size and scope of the challenges the needed upgrades would present.
That needs to change now. The recent news that China apparently installed hidden “kill switches” in solar equipment sold to the U.S. was the latest in a long list of reasons to be concerned about our electricity infrastructure and the foolhardy rush to replace traditional energy sources with so-called “renewables” using technology that is often sourced from China.
As Reuters reported, “Rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by U.S experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues … Using the rogue communication devices to skirt firewalls and switch off inverters remotely, or change their settings, could destabilize power grids, damage energy infrastructure, and trigger widespread blackouts, experts said.”
As one source summarized it, “That effectively means there is a built-in way to physically destroy the grid.” Or, to put it in even simpler terms, the U.S. is purchasing Chinese equipment complete with a “kill switch” that would allow China to disable the U.S. power grid at any moment.
Even more concerning, the problem is not relegated to the United States. Britain’s GB News reported, “Chinese companies dominate the market for power inverters, with firms like Huawei and Sungrow controlling more than half the market in 2023, according to Wood Mackenzie research. The European Solar Manufacturing Council estimates that more than 200 gigawatts of European solar power capacity relies on Chinese-made inverters.” (One gigawatt is equal to one billion watts.)
As Christoph Podewils, the council’s secretary general, put it, “This means Europe has effectively surrendered remote control of a vast portion of its electricity infrastructure.”
The Chinese embassy in Washington dismissed the allegation.
The relatively sparse news coverage of this startling discovery is evidence of either the mainstream media’s complacency, or its intentional effort to downplay any development that might contradict its radical climate change narrative. Surely, this item led the evening newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC, right? Sadly, no.
If ever there was a wakeup call regarding the urgent need for the U.S. to be even more committed to energy independence, it has arrived in the form of China’s ability to remotely turn off the U.S. power grid.
Fortunately, President Trump is working hard to reverse the Biden administration’s disastrous mandates that would have replaced affordable, reliable and increasingly clean traditional energy sources with untrustworthy and costly alternatives. Trump’s early declaration of a national energy emergency defined the dangers of relying on foreign sources of energy and spelled out several needed steps, including upgrades to our energy infrastructure.
But the added knowledge of Chinese subterfuge embedded within crucial components being installed in the U.S. electric grid adds even more urgency to the need to not only produce more domestic energy, but also to domestically develop more technology and manufacture more of the parts we currently import from outside U.S. borders.
While U.S. security experts should be lauded for discovering the Chinese “kill switches,” how many security threats have gone undetected? So-called “renewable” technologies like wind and solar were already suspect in regard to their reliability, as evidenced by the recent massive grid failure in Spain, Portugal and parts of France. We should be all the more wary of “alternatives” when the parts used to connect them to our power grids are sourced from foreign adversaries.
The episode again highlights the vital need for tougher regulations to ensure our nation’s energy security. The Empowerment Alliance’s model legislation – the Affordable, Reliable and Clean Energy Security act (ARC-ES) – would require “energy sources that are primarily produced within the U.S. and infrastructure that will reduce our reliance on foreign nations for critical materials and manufacturing.”
The time has passed for any reasonable argument suggesting that such legislation is not urgently needed, both at the federal and state levels. The notion of attacks from foreign adversaries on America’s energy infrastructure has often been the stuff of fantasy and “what-if” scenarios. Those have now been replaced with concrete evidence of nefarious, embedded components from a foreign superpower, just waiting for someone in Beijing to flip a switch and send Americans hurtling into a powerless abyss.
Let it sink in: China was secretly embedding technology in components shipped to the U.S. that could have triggered a massive power outage.
It’s time for Congress to embed a “kill switch” of its own on the ability of foreign countries to disable the U.S. power grid. That assurance can only come when we take America’s energy independence from being a worthy goal to a mandated reality.
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Site: Unam Sanctam CatholicamHappy Feast of Pentecost to one and all! On this holy day upon which we commemorate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to the Church, may the same Spirit dwell richly in your hearts, that through His goodness you may abound in the fruits of grace and every good work. Amen.On the day of Pentecost, the Church, by a singular miracle of God, spoke to the nations in one speech. By this manifestation of the Spirit was undone the sundering of peoples begun at Babel. By this miracle did God demonstrate the catholicity of the Church, which was birthed to embrace people of every tribe and tongue. As Augustine memorably wrote:Whoever has the holy Spirit is in the Church, which is speaking in all the languages. Whoever is outside this Church, does not have the holy Spirit. For that reason indeed the holy Spirit deemed to reveal itself in the languages of all the nations, so the one that perceives to have the holy Spirit itself, that person is sustained in the unity of the Church, which is speaking in all the languages. (Sermon 268)In today's Church, the subjects of language, unity, and catholicity undoubtedly call to mind the issue of the Western Church's universal tongue, Latin, and the sad state of liturgical Latin within the Catholic Church. It is a tragedy that Latin has been all but banished from the Latin rite, the latest example coming from Bishop Michael Martin of the Diocese of Charlotte, whose leaked draft of a planned pastoral letter would have banned the use of Latin entirely in the Diocese of Charlotte's liturgies.The opinon of Martin and those like him is grounded in a slavish adherence to the principle of "active participation," one of the sacred cows of the Second Vatican Council. In Martin's letter, for example, he begins his broadside against liturgical Latin by implying that liturgical Latin hinders active participation. He says:...the faithful's full, conscious, and active participation is hindered wherever Latin is employed. Most of our faithful do not understand and will never comprehend the Latin language...It is fallacious to think that if we employ Latin more frequently, the faithful will get used to it and finally understand it. Our ancestors “heard” the Mass in Latin every Sunday but never understood it...I find it disturbing that so many pastors and celebrants are inclined to force an unknown language on their congregation when the Lord’s mission is to engage the lost. The Church’s teaching on evangelization and missionary efforts cry to us for sensitivity on the part of pastoral leaders to engage people where they are to bring them to Christ. Full, conscious, and active participation in a liturgy that uses Latin would require each person to learn the Latin language, which is an impossible request. So many of our faithful simply walk away when they don’t understand the language and then miss out on the other beautiful aspects of the liturgical celebration.The bolded sections demonstrate that Bishop Martin, like most progressives, interprets "active participation" narrowly, in a manner that is excessively cerebral—in other words, unless the faithful can literally translate Latin word for word in their head in real time, they are not actively participating. It is a strange thing to insist on, but not surprising, as for progressives the Mass is primarily didactic (about teaching), and even then under the dullest, most tiresome form: talking. Everything is explained away; nothing is left implicit. We have to be told what everything represents, told what everything means, told what the priest is doing at every moment. We can't appreciate the symbol as symbol; it has to be instructional, turned into a teaching lesson. There's no place for anything that creates ritual opacity, certainly not a sacred language like Latin. The current ecclesial zeitgeist is obsessed with the liturgy as pedagogy. It is so prevalent I am not sure some clergy can even think of it otherwise. I am reminded of the late Pope Francis's story about the Cardinal who forbade his priest from learning Latin because Latin didn't have a plain pedagocial value. (see "Our Barren Garden of Symbols," USC, Nov. 3, 2024) I found it telling that Martin's letter prohibits the use of Latin because it is too opaque, but allows the installation and use of projectors and massive screens. Any idiot could tell you that the presence of a massive screen is an eyesore and distraction from the integrity of the liturgy, but Martin doesn't care; the screen serves a pedagogical purpose and therefore it is permitted, regardless of how destructive it is to the liturgy in other ways.Ultimately, progressives have an impoverished view of what it means to understand the liturgy. If you reread Martin's comments, you will see that his conception of the faculty of understanding is purely verbal; i.e., one can only "understand" the liturgy if they can accurately interpret every word. He assumes that people who don't know Latin can't possibly fathom what is going on. He literally believes that the Latin liturgy is completely inaccessible to someone without degrees in Latin (he states as much in the document: "A place for using Latin in the liturgy would be, to name a few examples, a specific gathering of scholars, clergy, or those trained in classical music").Obviously, this is not how human understanding works. A great deal of our understanding comes from contextual clues that are spatial and non-verbal. If I watch footage of a primitive tribe celebrating a successful hunt, dancing around a fire and waving their spear aloft in festive joy, it is not necessary for me to understand their language nor each gesture of the ritual to get what's happening; I understand that what's going on is a celebration of a successful hunt. If I observe a traditional Japanese wedding performed according to Shinto rites, I need not understand the Japanese language nor the particularities of Shinto mythology to figure it out; I understand what is happening—two people are getting married. And there's plenty of particulars I can tease out from context, decorum, and ritual alone. This occurs on the extra-rational plane, through perception and intuition, but it is no less a form of authentic understanding. Most ceremonies—at least those with ritual integrity—are highly accessible to people through context. This is why anecdotes suggest that even the homeless prefer the Traditional Latin Mass.Bishop Martin and those like him take an extremely narrow view of understanding that neither reflects human psychology nor grasps the purpose of ritual. To suggest that pre-Vatican II Catholics attending the Traditional Latin Mass "never understood" the Mass is ridiculous. They may not have understood it on a word for word basis, but they certainly understood what was going on. They knew what was most important (but even on the didactic level, progressives seem to forget that people had access to prayer books, cards, and materials that gave side by side vernacular translations, much like today's prayer books). And even if one does not know the literal word for word translation of certain prayers, one can still know what they mean. Even today, most Novus Ordo Catholics know what liturgical prayers like the Agnus Dei or Gloria mean.I have been attending liturgies in Latin for almost two decades now, both in the Ordinary and Extraordinary Form, and while I have studied Latin a bit, I certainly don't "know" it. But I, like many millions of Catholics today and throughout history, have found great solace in the Latin liturgy. I'm not stupid; I don't want a liturgy that talks to me like I'm a baby and thinks I am too much of a dullard for symbol and ritual opacity. For all the bloviating progressives do about the laity rising up, it's telling that they don't even trust us to understand our own cultural patrimony. That's because progressives don't actually care about the spiritual growth of the laity, our aspirations, or our struggles . They treat us the way Democrats treat black voters—as a monolithic bloc whose invocation gives justice and cover to all their abominations.Let ruin come upon them unawares! And let the net which they hid ensnare them; let them fall therein to ruin! Then my soul shall rejoice in the LORD, exulting in his deliverance. (Ps. 35:8-9)
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Site: The Orthosphere
“At length corruption, like a general flood,
(So long by watchful Ministers withstood,)
Shall deluge all; and avarice creeping on,
Spread like a low-born mist, and blot the sun;”Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-1735)
To corrupt is literally to break, break down, or decompose; but in use the word most often denotes the degradation and destruction of a person, an office, an institution, by its being turned from its natural purpose or proper end.
It has been said, for instance, that luxury corrupts a young man because it removes the conditions that would otherwise impart to him the manly virtues of diligence, hardihood, resilience and a capacity to remain cheerful under discomfort and deprivation. Here, for example, is a line from Henry James in which a tycoon resolves that his wealth will not turn his son from that son’s proper end of growing into a manly man.
“He remembered the fruit had not dropped ripe from the tree into his own mouth, and determined it should be no fault of his if the boy was corrupted by luxury.”*
The corruption of a girl was historically understood as a chain of events that lured, lead, or forced her into prostitution. Her natural feminine modesty and virtue was broken down by corrupting precepts, examples, and experiences. The pioneering sociologist Jane Addams for instance described the corrupting cultivation of unchastity in young girls by the experience familial rape:
“A surprising number of little girls have first become involved in [sexual] wrongdoing through the men of their own households. A recent inquire among 130 girls living in a sordid red light district disclosed the fact that a majority of them had thus been victimized at the wrong had come to them so early that they had been despoiled at an average age of eight years.”**
Addams said that poor young women in cities were also easily corrupted because they were surrounded by dazzling treats they greatly desired but could by no legitimate means afford.
“Because they [twelve- to fourteen-year-old girls] are childishly eager for amusement and totally unable to pay for a ride on the scenic railway or for a ticket to an entertainment, these disappointed children easily accept many favors from the young men who are standing near the entrances for the express purpose of ruining them. The hideous reward which is demanded from them later in the evening, after they have enjoyed the many ‘treats’ which the amusement park offers, apparently seems of little moment.”**
Any relaxation of individual probity is a species of personal corruption, but personal corruption becomes social corruption because the example of relaxed probity is contagious. We are most of us satisfied to think ourselves slightly above the moral average, so when the average relaxes we tend to relax with it.
* * * * *
An office is corrupt when it is turned away from performance of its official purpose or proper end by jobbery or bribery. Jobbery is use of a public office primarily to benefit the purse and position of the office holder. This very often involves the officeholder performing or neglecting to perform his official duties in exchange for bribes of one sort or another. It may also involve the outright theft or misuse of public property and funds.
An office is also corrupt when it is obtained by fraud, intrigue, or purchase. The historic corruption of Christian churches was often tied to the sale of benefices, bishoprics, and even St. Peter’s throne (Benedict VIII, John XIX, Benedict IX). Tocqueville tells us that purchase of office is the typical corruption of aristocratic government, where the officers are wealthy men who use their riches to obtain political power (and the voters they must bribe are not numerous). Jobbery and bribery on the other hand are the typical corruption of democratic government, where the officers are poor men who use their political power to obtain riches (and the voters they would have to bribe are numerous indeed.
“In aristocracies, as those who are desirous of arriving at the head of affairs are possessed of considerable wealth, and as the number of persons by whose assistance they may rise is comparatively small, the government is, if I may use the expression, put up to a sort of auction. In democracies, on the contrary, those who are covetous of power are very seldom wealthy . . . . If, then, the men who conduct the government of an aristocracy sometimes endeavor to corrupt the people [by offering bribes], the heads of a democracy are themselves corrupt [because of their bribe-taking].”***
The larcenous legislators of Southern states under Reconstruction offer a chastening epitome of the corruption of office under democracy. In the words of the great jurist James Bryce:
“Such a saturnalia of robbery and jobbery has seldom been seen in any civilized country, and certainly never before under the forms of free government.”†
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An institution is likewise corrupt when it has been usurped and turned away from its founding purpose or proper end, so that it overtly or covertly serves some other purpose and new master. A church is thus corrupt when it has been usurped by the state and turned into an instrument of political control. A university is corrupt when it has been usurped by the state and turned into an instrument of propaganda and power. A representative assembly is corrupt when it has been usurped by the permanent bureaucracy (the “deep state”), or by oligarchs, or by demagogues, or by political gangsters.
Here is a nice passage from Frank Norris’s novel The Octopus (1901) describing the last gasp of an honest legislature before it is usurped and perverted into something worse and new. Magnus is an honest senator of the Old School who with magnificent futility has just denounced the snaky skullduggery of the New Order of Things.
“In that brief instant of silence following upon Magnus’s outburst, and while he held them subdued and overmastered, the fabric of their scheme of corruption and dishonesty trembled to its base. It was the last protest of the Old School, rising up there in denunciation of the new order of things, the statesman opposed to the politician; honesty, rectitude, uncompromising integrity, prevailing for the last time against the devious maneuvering, the evil communications, the rotten expediency of a corrupted institution.”††
An institution is also corrupt when its primary function is to ensure its own survival, defend its own perquisites, and furnish its officers with generous salaries, pompous titles, and genteel status. This sort of corruption flourishes in bloated state bureaucracies, in obsolete organizations underwritten by large private endowments, and in any outfit armored and haloed with historic prestige (e.g. toy armies that cannot fight wars, dotard churches that cannot fill pews). William James described this sort of entrenched and elegant corruption in a letter
“Millionaires and syndicates have their immediate cash to pay, but they have no intrenched prestige to work with, like the church sentiment, the army sentiment, the aristocracy and royalty sentiment, which here [in Europe] can be brought to bear in favor of every kind of individual and collective crime — appealing not only to the immediate pocket of the persons to be corrupted, but to the ideals of their imagination as well . . .”†††
Or as James puts it in another letter
“Talk of corruption! We don’t know what the word corruption means at home, with our improvised and shifting agencies of crude pecuniary bribery, compared with the solidly intrenched and permanently organized corruptive geniuses of monarchy, nobility, church, army, that penetrate the very bosom of the higher kind as well as the lower kind of people in all the European states . . ∞
In the century since James wrote these lines, this sort of entrenched and elegant corruption crossed the Atlantic and penetrated the very bosom of this land.
*) Henry James, Roderick Hudson (Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1876), p. 11.
**) Jane Addams, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (New York: Macmillan, 1912), pp. 109-110.
***) Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve (New York: Colonial Press, 1899), vol. 1, p. 228.
†) James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, third ed., two vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1895), vol. 2, p. 476. In the 1888 edition, Bryce wrote: “The lowest point was reached in some of the Southern States shortly after the war, when, the negroes having received the suffrage, the white inhabitants were still excluded as rebels, and the executive government was conducted by Northern carpet-baggers under the protection of Federal troops. In some States the treasury was pilfered; huge State debts were run up; negroes voted farms to themselves; all kinds of robbery and jobbery went on unchecked. South Carolina, for instance, was a perfect Tartarus of corruption, as much below the Hades of Illinois or Missouri as the heaven of ideal purity is above the ordinary carth of Boston and Westminster.! In its legislature there was an old darkey, jet black and with venerable white hair, a Methodist preacher, and influential among his brother states- men, who kept a stall for legislation, where he dealt in statutes at prices varying from $100 to $400.”
††) Frank Norris, The Octopus: A Story of California, two vols. (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1901), p. 122.
†††) Letter of William James to William M. Salter, Sep. 11, 1899, in Henry James, ed., The Letters of William James, two vols. (Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920), vol. 2, pp. 100-101.
∞) Letter of William James to Mrs. Francis R. Morse, Sep. 17, 1899, in Henry James, ed., The Letters of William James, two vols. (Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920), vol. 2, pp. 102.
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