That Christianity gives joy and breadth is also a thread that runs through my whole life. Ultimately someone who is always only in opposition could not endure life at all.
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Site: Ron Paul Institute - Featured Articles
“If it is known that authorities have power to coerce, few people will wait for actual coercion,” economist Friedrich Hayek wrote in the 1956 foreword to his 1944 classic, The Road to Serfdom. Hayek’s insight could be the Rosetta Stone for understanding the Trump administration’s censorship zealotry.
On March 25, six masked federal agents seized a Turkish graduate student on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. Rumeysa Ozturk—who was wearing a hijab—was a Fulbright scholar working on a doctorate at Tufts University. Ozturk was snatched up because she co-authored a student newspaper op-ed a year earlier that criticized Israel, as I discussed here on March 31 (“First They Came for the Op-Ed Writers”).
Secretary of State Marco Rubio denounced Ozturk as a “lunatic” and implied she was guilty of participating “in movements that vandalize universities, harass students, take over buildings, and cause chaos.” Ozturk was shuffled between detention facilities before being taken to Louisiana. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to deport her without any judicial proceedings.
Ozturk’s student visa was secretly revoked several days before she was taken into custody. Did the Trump administration want a high-profile incident in order to deter any other students from writing op-eds or from protesting Middle East policies?
On Sunday night, the Washington Post detonated the Trump case against Ozturk by publishing extracts from a confidential State Department memo. Prior to Ozturk being seized outside of Boston, senior DHS official Andre Watson sent a memo to the State Department stating that, “OZTURK engaged in anti-Israel activism… Specifically, [Ozturk] co-authored an op-ed article” that “called for Tufts to ‘disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.’” But the State Department found that no federal agency had turned up any evidence that Ozturk “engaged in antisemitic activity or made public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization.” Despite Rubio’s vilification of Ozturk, the feds didn’t have squat on her.
DHS wanted Ozturk expelled from the US under a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that entitles the Secretary of State to deport any foreigner if there are reasonable grounds to believe their presence has “adverse policy consequence for the United States.” But there was no such evidence for Ozturk, so the Trump administration instead used a legal authority under which the Secretary of State can deport anyone on his own decree—no evidence required.
Because of her op-ed criticizing Israel, Ozturk vanished into the federal detention system, moved from state to state so the Trump administration could avoid a habeas petition in federal court challenging her detention. She was forced to wear leg shackles and a chain around her waist. She has asthma and had several attacks so far in lockup. At the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, she sleeps with 23 other people in a cell meant for 14. “None of us are able to sleep through the night. They come into the cell often and walk around triggering the fluorescent lights. They shout in the cell to wake up those who work in the kitchen around 3:30 am each day,” she said. Ozturk stated that a federal officer told her: “We are not monsters. We do what the government tells us.” So, of course, federal officials are blameless for any rights that they violate.
Ozturk is one of the most high-profile seizures that Trump’s DHS has made of students who criticized Israeli policies in Gaza. Hundreds of student visas have been revoked and the Trump administration has floated proposals to prohibit all foreign students from attending American universities that fail to fully suppress criticism or protests against Israeli policies.
It would be the height of folly for Americans to presume they face no peril from entitling the feds to seize boundless power to punish students’ speech. Ozturk’s name was provided to the Trump administration by Betar—an organization that the Washington Post characterized as a “militant Zionist group.” US citizens are at risk as well. A spokesman for Betar declared: “We provided hundreds of names to the Trump administration of visa holders and naturalized Middle Easterners and foreigners” who have criticized Israeli policies. The Anti-Defamation League condemned Betar as an extremist organization in February.
Any precedent for blanket censorship will propagate like a covid virus. Many conservatives and libertarians may shrug off Ozturk’s degradation because they have no interest in criticizing the policies of foreign governments. But the Ozturk case hinges on collective guilt—on assuming that anyone who advocates a position is culpable for any crimes committed by any other advocate with the same view.
This was the tacit doctrine that the Biden administration used to legally scourge peaceful January 6 protestors who merely “paraded without a permit” through or near the US Capitol that day. Because a minority of January 6 protestors became violent, the FBI presumed that “trespassing plus thought crimes equal terrorism,” justifying harsh sentences for anyone at the scene (except for the undercover federal agents and informants).
What legal perils will pro-freedom protestors face in the coming years if the Ozturk rule is canonized, entitling federal officials to crush any disfavored opinion? Big-spending Democrats may consecrate Modern Monetary Theory and demonize anyone who criticizes the Federal Reserve. I took this “Kill the Central Bank” photo of Ron Paul supporters at a 2008 Capitol Hill event for his presidential campaign. If the same protestors had peacefully carried the same banner within a half mile of the Capitol on January 6, they likely would have been nailed on a bevy of federal charges. Many politicians have made stark their hatred of libertarians and freedom advocates. A federally-funded Fusion Center tagged Ron Paul supporters as potential terrorist suspects, and another federally-funded center sounded the alarm on anyone “reverent of individual liberty.”
As long as anyone is sitting in shackles in a federal detention center simply for writing an op-ed, freedom of speech is not safe for anyone in the United States. Will Ozturk’s persecution finally wake up people too confident that “it can never happen here”?
Reprinted with permission from Mises.org.
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Site: AsiaNews.itCard Domenico Calcagno read the text of the homily of the Chrism Mass in St Peter's Basilica. In the afternoon, the convalescent pontiff is expected to make a brief visit to the inmates in Rome's Regina Coeli prison. Francis made a financial contribution to the people of Myanmar affected by a recent earthquake.
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Site: RT - News
A Cambridge-led team has found Earth-like gasses in the atmosphere of a planet 124 light-years away
UK researchers have claimed to have found a possible sign of life on a faraway planet. Scientists from the University of Cambridge have announced the detection of a gas that on Earth is only made by living organisms.
The discovery, which was made using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, could be the strongest hint yet of life beyond Earth.
The team studied K2-18 b, a planet about 124 light-years away in the Leo constellation. It is known as a “hycean” planet, meaning it may have a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and liquid water oceans. Such conditions make it a promising candidate for life.
The telescope detected dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide in the planet’s air. On Earth, both gases are made only by living organisms, mainly marine microbes such as phytoplankton. Levels of these compounds on the planet K2-18 b were found to be thousands of times higher than those on Earth.
Dr. Nikku Madhusudhan, a Cambridge University astrophysicist and lead author of the study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on Thursday, said the implications could be profound.
Read more
Putin compares Musk to Russian space pioneer Korolev
The findings “provide new independent evidence for the possibility of a biosphere on K2-18 b,” the study claimed. “What we are finding at this point are hints of possible biological activity outside the solar system,” he told a press conference. “Frankly, I think this is the closest we have come to seeing a feature that we can attribute to life,” he added.
Madhusudhan explained that detecting chemical fingerprints of gases that on Earth are created only through biological processes could point to a potentially inhabited alien world. “This is a revolutionary moment,” he added.
However, the team warned that the detected gases could also be the result of unknown natural processes. Additional telescope observations are needed to determine if living organisms truly are the source.
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Site: RT - News
London’s global influence is dead – only the bluster remains
There are only two countries in the world that have exercised full autonomy over major political decisions for more than 500 years: Russia and Britain. No others come close. That alone makes Moscow and London natural rivals. But now, we can say with confidence that our historical adversary is no longer what it once was. Britain is losing its foreign policy clout and has been reduced to what we might call “Singapore on the Atlantic”: an island trading power, out of sync with the broader trajectory of world affairs.
The fall from global relevance is not without irony. For centuries, Britain caused nothing but harm to the international system. It played France and Germany off one another, betrayed its own allies in Eastern Europe, and exploited its colonies to exhaustion. Even within the European Union, from 1972 until Brexit in 2020, the UK worked tirelessly to undermine the project of integration – first from within, and now from without, with backing from Washington. Today, the British foreign policy establishment still attempts to sabotage European cohesion, acting as an American proxy.
The late historian Edward Carr once mocked the British worldview with a fictional headline: “Fog in Channel – Continent Cut Off.” This egoism, common to island nations, is especially pronounced in Britain, which has always existed beside continental civilization. It borrowed freely from Europe’s culture and political ideas, yet always feared them.
That fear was not unfounded. Britain has long understood that true unification of Europe – especially involving Germany and Russia – would leave it sidelined. Thus, the primary goal of British policy has always been to prevent cooperation between the major continental powers. Even now, no country is more eager than Britain to see the militarization of Germany. The idea of a stable Russia-Germany alliance has always been a nightmare scenario for London.
Whenever peace between Moscow and Berlin looked possible, Britain would intervene to sabotage it. The British approach to international relations mirrors its domestic political thought: atomized, competitive, distrustful of solidarity. While continental Europe produced theories of political community and mutual obligation, Britain gave the world Thomas Hobbes and his “Leviathan,” a grim vision of life without justice between the state and its citizens.
Read more
Fyodor Lukyanov: Here’s what Trump really wants from his trade war
That same combative logic extends to foreign policy. Britain doesn’t cooperate; it divides. It has always preferred enmity among others over engagement with them. But the tools of that strategy are disappearing. Britain today is a power in steep decline, reduced to shouting from the sidelines. Its internal political life is a carousel of increasingly unqualified prime ministers. This is not simply a result of difficult times. It reflects a deeper problem: the absence of serious political leadership in London.
Even the United States, Britain’s closest ally, is now a threat to its autonomy. The Anglosphere no longer needs two powers that speak English and operate under the same oligarchic political order. For a time, Britain found comfort in the Biden administration, which tolerated its role as transatlantic intermediary. London leveraged its anti-Russian stance to stay relevant and inserted itself into US-EU relations.
But that space is narrowing. Today’s American leaders are uninterested in mediators. During a recent trip to Washington, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer could barely answer direct questions on foreign policy. His deference reflected a new reality: even the illusion of independence is fading. Meanwhile, France’s Emmanuel Macron, for all his posturing, at least leads a country that actually controls its nuclear arsenal.
Britain claims to have authority over its nuclear submarines, but many doubt it. In ten years, experts believe it may lose even the technical capacity to manage its nuclear weapons without US support. At that point, London will face a choice: full subservience to Washington or exposure to EU pressures, especially from France.
Recent talk in London of sending “European peacekeepers” to Ukraine is a case in point. Despite the unrealistic nature of such proposals, British and French officials spent weeks debating operational details. Some reports suggest the plan stalled due to lack of funds. The real motive was likely to project relevance and show the world that Britain still has a role to play.
But neither the media spin nor the political theater can change the facts. Britain’s global standing has diminished. It is no longer capable of independent action and has little influence even as a junior partner. Its leaders are consumed by domestic dysfunction and foreign policy fantasy.
Read more
Can Trump reshape the Middle East?
In practical terms, Britain remains dangerous to Russia in two ways. First, by supplying weapons and mercenaries to Ukraine, it increases our costs and casualties. Second, in a moment of desperation, it might try to manufacture a small nuclear crisis. If that happens, one hopes the Americans would take the necessary steps to neutralize the threat – even if that means sinking a British submarine.
There is nothing positive for Russia, or the world, in the continued existence of Britain as a foreign policy actor. Its legacy is one of division, sabotage, and imperial plunder. Now, it lives off the crumbs of a bygone empire, barking from the Atlantic like a chihuahua with memories of being a lion.
The world moves on. Britain does not.
This article was first published by ‘Vzglyad’ newspaper and was translated and edited by the RT team.
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Site: Ron Paul Institute - Featured Articles
“That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.”
— Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)When American colonists were oppressed by British monarchs, the word most frequently uttered in pamphlets, editorials and sermons was not “safety” or “taxes”; it was “freedom.” Yet, two intolerable acts of Parliament so assaulted personal freedom that they broke the bonds with the mother country.
The first was the Stamp Act of 1765, which required colonists to have government stamps on all documents in every household. It was enforced by British agents who used general warrants, issued by a secret court in London, to rummage through colonists’ possessions, ostensibly looking for stamps.
General warrants — like those issued by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, D.C. — authorized government agents to search wherever they wished and seize whatever they found.
The second intolerable act was the Revenue Act of 1767, the proceeds from which the king used to pay the salaries of colonial officials and the king’s clergy, thereby securing their loyalty.
The Stamp Act assaulted the right to be left alone, and the Revenue Act forced colonists to pay for a religious establishment. These two British laws caused many colonists to realize they needed to secede from Britain and form a new country, in which the government would protect freedom, not assault it. Ten years later, they did so and won the American Revolutionary War.
Today, the loss of freedom comes in many forms.
Sometimes it is direct, as when the government arrests people it hates or fears without a warrant and incarcerates them in a foreign prison without due process.
Sometimes it is subtle, as when the president unilaterally imposes a sales tax on imported goods and, as a result, instability erodes the value of our investments.
Sometimes it is secret, as when the government reads emails and text messages and follows the movements of cellphones, all without search warrants; or when it uses drones to kill people the government hates or fears, without a declaration of war or any due process.
Freedom is the ability of every person to make personal choices without a government permission slip — to exercise free will. Free will is the natural characteristic we share in common with God. It is His unconditional gift to us. He created us in His image and likeness. As God is perfectly free, so are we.
When the government takes away freedom — whether by executive order or legislation — it steals a gift we received from God, it violates the natural law and the Constitution, and it prevents us from seeking the truth.
Freedom is the essence of humanity. No one can achieve happiness or truth without it. Government is essentially the negation of freedom.
We know from events 2,000 years ago this week — in the Roman Empire police state of Judea — that freedom is also the essential means to unite with the truth. To Catholics, the incarnation and the perfect manifestation of truth is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
To believe that Jesus is God and man is to take Easter seriously.
Taking Easter seriously also means that on the first Holy Thursday, Jesus attended a traditional Jewish Passover Seder. Catholics believe that at this Last Supper, Jesus performed two miracles so that we could stay united to Him. He transformed ordinary bread and wine into His own body, blood, soul and divinity, and He empowered His disciples and their recognized successors to do the same.
That Jewish Seder was the first Catholic Mass.
The next day — the first Good Friday — the Roman government crucified Jesus because it feared that by claiming to be the Son of God, He might foment a political revolution. He did foment a revolution, but it was in the hearts and minds and souls of men and women.
Taking Easter seriously recognizes that Jesus had the freedom to reject His horrific death, but He exercised His free will to accept it so that we might know the truth. The truth is that He — and we who have faith and hope and perform good works — would rise from the dead.
On Easter, that “far-off divine event,” as Tennyson wrote, Jesus rose from the dead. By doing that, He demonstrated to us that while living, we can liberate our souls from the slavery of sin because, after death, we of faith, hope and selfless good works can rise to be with Him.
Taking Easter seriously recognizes that the Resurrection of Jesus is the linchpin of human existence “to which the whole creation moves.” With it, life is worth living, no matter its painful costs or losses. Without it, life is meaningless, no matter its fleeting joys or triumphs.
Easter has a meaning that is both incomprehensible and simple. It is incomprehensible that a human being rose from the dead. It is simple because that human being was and is God.
Taking Easter seriously means that there’s hope for the dead. If there’s hope for the dead, then there’s hope for the living.
But like the colonists who fought the oppression of the king, we the living can achieve our hopes only if we have freedom. And that requires more than faith and hope and good works. It requires a government that protects freedom, not one that assaults it.
America today is divided and fearful. The government is broke, overbearing, lawless and unworthy of belief. It threatens World War III, has produced wild inflation, destroyed happiness and refuses to obey its own laws.
But, faith in Jesus’ Resurrection — which is also hope for our own — infuses the souls of the faithful with a freedom that only God can give.
Happy Easter!
To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
COPYRIGHT 2025 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
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Site: Mises InstituteIt’s going to take a lot more than some trimming around the edges to change the federal government’s current trajectory into continued $2-trillion-plus annual deficits.
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Site: Mises InstituteApril 2025 Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey: "The index for new orders also fell sharply, from 8.7 in March to -34.2 this month, its lowest reading since April 2020."
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Site: RT - News
Officials believe that even the US president’s closest aides do not have decision-making power, the report says
European officials are seeking to establish a “direct line” of communication with US President Donald Trump, unsure whether his team can make any real decisions or is willing to cooperate at all, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing sources.
The report, based on interviews with numerous unnamed European officials, describes the US president as “the ultimate decision maker” who is often difficult to predict, making the goal of getting Trump’s ear a priority for the Europeans.
Many top-level negotiators in European NATO countries have found traditional diplomatic channels – such as the State Department and embassies – ineffective, the report said. The confusion is compounded by the fact that the most effective interlocutors on the US side are not career diplomats but rather trusted special envoys and advisers, such as Elon Musk and Steve Witkoff, the article said.
The officials also told the NYT that their US counterparts are primarily focused on fulfilling the president’s wishes, showing limited interest in the perspectives of America’s allies.
Read more
Trump aides clash on trusting Moscow – WSJ
The Trump administration is “not terribly interested in what the Europeans have to say,” a NYT source said. “It’s all about unilateralism and they don’t consult much. After all, if they don’t consider us allies to that extent, why would they?”
While senior Trump officials have held “cordial” talks with their European counterparts on a number of issues, “it is never clear to allies” whether they have “real power over foreign policy or trade,” the article said.
”Everyone in D.C. says you have to talk to Trump directly,” a senior European official told the NYT.
However, this has proved difficult even for the highest-ranking EU officials, as Trump “despises the collective power of the European Union and sees many NATO allies as freeloaders,” the paper said, adding that leaders such as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are struggling to get on Trump’s calendar.
The communication breakdown comes at a time of tenuous US-EU relations, marred by Washington’s decision to slap the bloc with tariffs and its push to make European NATO members pay more for their defense. Differences over the Ukraine conflict have also come into play, with Trump pursuing active diplomacy with Russia to end the conflict while the EU insists on supporting Kiev for “as long as it takes.”
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Site: RT - News
Aleksandar Vucic says he is “ready for the whole sky to fall on his head” due to pressure from Brussels
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has confirmed he will travel to Russia for the Victory Day celebrations next month, despite warnings from the European Union that the move could jeopardize Belgrade’s accession hopes.
Moscow will host its annual military parade on Red Square on May 9 to mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. Vucic attended the event in 2020, prior to the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.
EU foreignpolicy chief Kaja Kallas said on Monday that the bloc does “not want any candidate country to take part in the May 9 events in Moscow.” EU officials have even reportedly threatened to derail Serbia’s bid to join the bloc if Vucic attends the celebrations.
“I have not changed my decision... I am ready for the whole sky to fall on my head from the pressure to go to Moscow. Eight months ago, I announced my visit to Moscow, publicly,” Vucic said on Wednesday, as cited by Serbian media.
Read more
EU pressuring Serbia’s Vucic not to visit Moscow – media
According to the president, a unit of the Serbian Army will take part in the parade. During World War II, Serbia, which was then part of Yugoslavia, fell under Nazi occupation and was liberated by Soviet forces in 1944.
Vucic also said that “a period of enormous diplomatic activity is coming,” citing several upcoming meetings with EU officials and a possible visit to the US.
The Russian government extended multiple invitations to the May 9 events, including to the leaders of China, India and Brazil, as well as to EU member Slovakia and to Serbia, which was granted EU candidate status in 2012.
READ MORE: ‘It’s 2025, not 1939’ – Fico challenges EU’s warning against Moscow trip
Belgrade has declined to provide arms to Ukraine and has voiced opposition to the EU’s sanctions against Moscow. Vucic has emphasized the value of maintaining good relations with Russia and has called for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict.
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Site: RT - News
Israel has seized over half of the Palestinian enclave in a renewed offensive after a ceasefire with Hamas collapsed last month
Israeli troops will remain indefinitely in the so-called security zones it has established within Gaza, the defense minister said on Wednesday. He added that their forces will also stay in similar zones in Lebanon and Syria.
West Jerusalem has said the buffer zones are necessary to protect its communities and prevent future attacks by military groups. In Gaza, the military has established corridors to separate areas under Hamas control.
Israel has also refused to withdraw from some areas in Lebanon following a truce with Hezbollah last year, and it seized a buffer zone in southern Syria, following the ousting of former President Bashar Assad.
“Unlike in the past,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “is not evacuating areas that have been cleared and seized,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. The IDF “will remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and [Israeli] communities in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza – as in Lebanon and Syria.”
Israeli forces have taken control of more than half of Gaza in a renewed offensive following the collapse of a ceasefire and the stalling of hostage negotiations last month. The IDF has resumed airstrikes in Gaza to increase pressure on Hamas to release the remaining captives who were taken during the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
Read more
Putin welcomes former Hamas hostages to Kremlin (VIDEO)
Katz also stated that Israel will block any humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.”No humanitarian aid will be allowed into Gaza,” he said on X on Wednesday.
Preventing humanitarian aid from entering the enclave “is one of the main pressure tools that stops Hamas from using this means against the population,” he added.
Israel’s stance could further complicate negotiations with Hamas over a ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave and the release of the remaining hostages. Palestinians, as well as Lebanon and Syria, regard the presence of Israeli troops as a military occupation that violates international law.
On Wednesday, Palestinian health officials reported that Israeli strikes in Gaza killed 22 people, including a girl under the age of one. More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian authorities, since Israel launched its military operation in response to the Hamas attack.
Hamas has stated that it will not release the remaining hostages without a permanent ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The Israeli authorities have reported that 59 hostages remain in the enclave, with 24 believed to be alive. Dozens of others were previously released through ceasefire agreements or separate deals.
The Palestinian organization representing the families of the hostages accused the Israeli government of prioritizing territorial control over the lives of the captives, despite earlier promises to put the hostages first, according to AP.
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Site: Novus Motus LiturgicusThis is the second part of an article by Fr Jean-Pierre Herman on the blessing of oils, which is traditionally celebrated at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, and the recent reforms thereof; the first part was published on Tuesday. The French original was published on Sunday on the website of the Schola Sainte-Cécile as a single article. Fr Herman is professor of liturgy at the Good Shepherd Gregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: southern orders
Saint Pope Paul VI certainly embraces the trappings of the papacy and does so in great humility out of respect for this high office which transcends His Holiness! This synopsis of the consecration is very clear and beautiful as are the Ancient Rites of the Church for this occasion! However, at this period, the Italians assisting the pope act in rather hysterical ways almost like the keystone cops. That seems to have been reformed in Italian culture today.
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Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
UK Supreme Court Rules that the Legal Definition of a Woman Is Biological
Paul Craig Roberts
The UK Supreme Court has ruled that in British Law the terms “woman” and “sex” are biological terms and do not include men who identify as “transgender.” The Court ruled that people with “transgender recognition certificates,” whatever that is, are excludable from biological single-sex spaces.
There are interesting aspects of this case that deserve comment. The case was brought by Scottish women’s rights groups against the Scottish government’s imposition of men who declare themselves to be women on biological women’s spaces. What has become of the Scottish people that they put in office a deranged, crazed government that forces biological women to accept men into their private spaces simply because the deranged man declares himself to be a woman? How did Scotland get a deranged government that in earlier times would have been hung off the nearest lamp posts, if not drawn and quartered in the public square? What has gone wrong with the Scottish people that they are unable to make intelligent and moral choices about those they empower to govern them?
We see a similar collapse of historic peoples in Ireland where the Irish people have put in power a government that forces ethnic Irish citizens who can barely put food on the table to support massive inflows of third-world immigrant invaders who are totally destroying the character and quality of Irish life. What has gone wrong with the Irish people that they put in power a government determined to destroy them?
Another interesting aspect is that the LGBT+ alliance is breaking up. The Scottish lesbians took the side of the women’s rights groups against the alleged “transgenders.” A lesbian spokesperson said that lesbians were tired of being called “far-right bigots” for refusing to accept men into lesbian groups.
The UK Supreme Court has declared “transgender recognition certificates” to be legally meaningless. What precisely is, or was, a “transgender recognition certificate?” It was an effort to use a piece of paper to give authority and reality to a self-declared new sex that does not exist in nature, or if it does only as a freak abnormality.
What the “transgender movement” is, or was, really about is an expansion of the cultural marxist “march through the institutions.” Another normal meaning is destroyed–sex. With the destruction of male/female, chaos is introduced into hospital wards, rape crisis centers, changing rooms, sports teams.
What is extraordinary is the number of Western government officials at every level who fanatically supported the “transgender movement.” For example, in Virginia a public school administration covered up the rape of a young girl in a school female shower/toilet area by a male allowed access because he declared himself to be a female. The corrupt school administrators were so committed to “transgenders rights” that they covered up a rape and tried to destroy the father who complained of the rape of his child.
This demonstrates how deep the hold of evil on Western civilization has grown to be. When liberal public school administrators in America are so corrupt that they aid and abet the rape of the young girls in their schools, and cover it up, we know our society is terminably ill.
Can Trump renew such a sick and despoiled country?
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Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
The Spanish Government, Like All Western Governments, Hates Its Own People
This young woman was sentenced to a year in prison, where she will be raped multiple times, for saying the truth: “This is not migration, it’s an invasion” and “Spain is Christian, not Muslim.”
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Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
Americans Don’t Understand that They Pay Taxes
They think the tax system gives them money. Nearly 68% of federal tax filings resulted in a refund in tax year 2022.
As reported by Axios:
Average tax refund by state, tax year 2022:
Florida (about $3,900), Texas ($3,800) and Wyoming ($3,700) had the biggest average tax refunds for tax year 2022, the latest data available. Maine ($2,700), Wisconsin ($2,700) and Oregon ($2,800) had the smallest.
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Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
Americans Cannot Get the Truth About Anything
Allegedly a free people in a free country with free speech, Americans are kept forever in the dark.
Mel Gibson calls for ‘truth’ about 9/11
The actor has described the 2001 attacks as “the biggest scandal in American history”
https://www.rt.com/pop-culture/615816-mel-gibson-911-truther/
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Site: PaulCraigRoberts.org
Science which has long been eliminating humanity now takes a huge step forward
https://www.unz.com/jtaylor/were-all-eugenicists-now/
https://www.globalresearch.ca/gene-edited-cows-humans/5686682
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Site: RT - News
All Gulf States want to join diplomatic efforts to end the Ukraine conflict, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari has told RT
Qatar advocates for peaceful solutions to global conflicts, including the Ukraine crisis, Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Mohammed Al-Ansari has told RT. According to the diplomat, Doha backs efforts to end the hostilities between Russia and Ukraine and is ready to contribute further.
Al-Ansari spoke to RT ahead of a visit to Russia by Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who arrived in Moscow on Thursday.
“Qatar has always advocated for peaceful resolutions to all conflicts. This stance… reflects Qatar’s belief that all crises should be resolved at the negotiation table, not on the battlefield,” Al-Ansari said in an interview aired on Wednesday.
He praised Gulf states’ diplomatic initiatives, including recent Ukraine-related talks hosted by Saudi Arabia.
“These efforts undertaken by the Gulf states… demonstrate that our region strives to become a center for peaceful resolution rather than a battleground for wars and conflicts,” he said. “We hope to see positive outcomes from these efforts for both our region and the entire world.”
Read more
Qatar ready to mediate Ukraine conflict – Foreign Ministry
Al-Ansari said Qatar is “ready to act as a mediator” and help facilitate dialogue between all sides of the Ukraine conflict. He noted Doha’s past role in reuniting children evacuated from the combat zone with their families and contributing to the now-defunct Black Sea grain deal, which enabled food exports via the freight route early in the conflict. Qatar, he added, wants to play an even “more active role” in resolving the crisis.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the Ukraine conflict and related peace efforts are on the agenda for the meeting between Al Thani and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as bilateral ties and Middle East affairs.
“Qatar plays an important role in attempts to resolve many crises,” Peskov said, adding that Moscow “highly appreciates a trusting dialogue” with Doha on international issues. He said Putin and Al Thani are also expected to discuss expanding cooperation in trade, energy, agriculture, and industry.
“We have good prospects for expanding mutually beneficial trade cooperation,” Peskov stated. “We hope to launch major joint logistics projects soon and broaden cooperation in the transport sector overall.”
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Site: Mises InstituteEconomist Robert Higgs described the “ratchet effect” in which government either creates a crisis or responds to one, leading to a permanent expansion of government power. After the crisis ends, government retreats—but not to the point where is was pre-crisis.
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Site: Mises InstituteTrump demands more easy money and lower interest rates. Powell isn't dovish enough for Trump.
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Site: RT - News
The tycoon intends to personally lead the fight against what he sees as a looming demographic “apocalypse,” the report claims
Elon Musk wants to populate the Earth with a “legion” of high-intelligence children to prevent the collapse of human civilization due to a global decline in birth rates, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing sources.
An investigation by the paper focused on what it described as a “harem drama” surrounding Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency and a close ally of US President Donald Trump. According to the report, the billionaire has had at least 14 known children with four women – although the actual number could be much higher. However, his relationships with the mothers reportedly often involve hush-money payments and heated parental disputes.
At the heart of Musk’s reproductive drive lies his “dark view” of the future in which humanity could perish as a species due to poor demographics, the WSJ claims. “He is driven to correct the historic moment by helping seed the earth with more human beings of high intelligence,” the report says, citing people familiar with the matter.
Read more
Thousands of US protestors rally against ‘Trump-Musk coup’ (VIDEOS)
Ashley St. Clair – one of the women Musk allegedly had an affair with and who claims to be the mother of one of his children – showed the WSJ a message purportedly sent by the billionaire. In it, Musk allegedly referred to his offspring as a “legion” – invoking the ancient Roman military units known for expanding imperial reach – and insisted on making even more babies with other women. “To reach legion-level before the apocalypse,” he reportedly said. “We will need to use surrogates.”
The WSJ claims that Musk has used his platform X to recruit potential mothers, often one whom he has never met in person, but who enjoy a high-profile social status.
In 2021, Musk said that low birth rates were “one of the biggest risks to civilization.” “If people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble,” he said at the time.
However, Musk’s private life has drawn criticism. His daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson, who cut ties with him and has come out as transgender – a move Musk has criticized – has called the billionaire a “serial adulterer.” He is also involved in a custody dispute with Canadian pop star Grimes, who has alleged that he withheld one of their children from visiting family for several months.
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Site: Real Investment Advice
Recent consumer sentiment readings have been horrendous. For instance, the University of Michigan's latest consumer expectations and the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index are at or near their lowest levels in ten years. However, despite poor sentiment and concerning outlooks, recent consumer spending reports show increased spending. We, and many economists, believe this is a function of consumers frontrunning tariffs. If you think that tariffs will increase the price of goods appreciably, frontrunning, or buying more than you need, or in advance of a need, makes sense.
The latest Johnson Redbook weekly retail sales index argues consumers are frontrunning tariffs despite having historically poor sentiment. This odd divergence can be seen on the graph on the right. The Johnson Redbook index measures year-over-year same-store sales growth for a sample of large U.S. general merchandise retailers, covering about 9,000 stores. Because the index is released weekly, it provides one of the most real-time indicators of consumer spending. The change in spending over the last two weeks is near its peak for the last few years. Further confirming the Johnson Redbook data was Wednesday's Retail Sales data, showing the largest gain since January 2023. Motor vehicles, a likely candidate for tariff frontrunning, drove the strong spending.
Remember, the surge in spending today, especially that related to front-running tariffs, will result in less spending tomorrow as consumer needs are sated.
What To Watch Today
Earnings
Economy
Market Trading Update
In yesterday's update, we discussed the decline in the dollar relative to the "bear porn" parade of people trying to get clicks and views by promoting the "death of the dollar." The next "bear porn" headline will be the "death cross" of the S&P 500. It sounds ominous when couched in those terms, but all it means is that the 50-dma has crossed below the 200-dma.
I don't want to dismiss the importance of that negative crossover, as it does provide significant overhead resistance to market prices during its tenure. But also, as is ALWAYS the case, the crossover will end and markets will begin to rise once again. For investors, the "death cross" is the duration during which such negative price pressure will remain applied to the market. Sometimes, the "death cross" is associated with more significant bear markets; however, it usually tends to occur in shorter-term corrections. I will discuss this in more detail in Monday's blog post, but the chart below shows the S&P 500 versus historical "death crosses."
There were three periods when the "death cross" signaled a larger risk-off environment. In 2000, it was the beginning of the Dot.com crash, in 2008, the "Financial Crisis," and in 2022, as the Fed hiked rates. Other than those three periods, the other "death crosses" triggered near correction period lows.
What is important is to separate out the difference between an "event" driven downturn and a "structural" downturn. 2000, 2008, and 2022 were structural in nature as companies collapsed during the dot.com crisis, banks were on the brink of failure in 2008, and recession risks were elevated with high inflation in 2022. Those structural events cause a significant repricing of earnings and valuations, requiring more time for markets to realign with future expectations. "Event-driven" downturns like the 2012 Eurocrisis, Brexit in 2016, and the Fed's taper tantrum in 2018 typically evoke short-term market corrections as the markets quickly return their focus to future expectations once the event passes.
While the current downturn and triggering of the "death cross" are certainly worrisome, this "event-driven" downturn will quickly pass as economic policy uncertainty fades. As the Administration begins repealing tariffs and negotiating deals with China, the relief of tariff fears will become supportive of deeply negative market sentiment and oversold conditions.
The point is not to overreact to the surge in "death cross" stories. They are important, but more often than not, they are indicative of near-term market bottoms rather than the beginning of a larger bear market cycle.
China Trade Restrictions Make NVDA Attractive
Nvidia shares (NVDA) are again under pressure due to tariffs and trade-related restrictions. On Tuesday afternoon, they announced that the US government would indefinitely ban them from selling their H20 chips to China. Consequently, they are taking a substantial charge-off to first-quarter earnings. Per the company:
First quarter results are expected to include up to approximately $5.5 billion of charges associated with H20 products for inventory, purchase commitments, and related reserves.
The graph below shows that 10-15% of Nvidia's revenue is from China. Losing Chinese revenue, even if temporary, will sting. But is the stock price already pricing in the bad news and not factoring in NVDA's growth potential?
While we do not know the ultimate resolution regarding tariffs and trade restrictions, we do know NVDA is cheap. The Tweet of the Day at the bottom of this Commentary shows NVDA valuations are at or below their respective 10-year means. NVDA has a forward P/E of 18, below the S&P 500 (21). Furthermore, NVDA is growing its earnings and revenues at many multiples of the market. Accordingly, NVDA has a PEG ratio of 1.15, less than half of the S&P 500. NVDA shares may stay under pressure for the foreseeable future, but they present investors with the rare opportunity to buy a value stock with high growth potential.
Swaps And Basis Trades Warn Of Mounting Liquidity Problems
Extreme volatility in a highly leveraged financial system inevitably results in liquidity issues. Hence, recent instability is generating mounting signals that liquidity is becoming scarce. This is most evident in the sharp increase in risk-free Treasury yields over the last week. Before the yield surge, liquidity problem warnings appeared in lesser-followed places like Treasury basis trades and interest rate swap spreads.
As we have learned repeatedly, the Fed will take extensive emergency measures if it perceives liquidity problems. Even above their Congressional-mandated objective of managing employment and prices, the Fed’s top priority is preserving the banks. Accordingly, following markets that can provide early notification of liquidity problems will go a long way toward foreshadowing the Fed’s next action and ultimately effectively managing wealth during this volatile period.
Tweet of the Day
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The post Frontrunning Tariffs Boosts Economic Activity appeared first on RIA.
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Site: LES FEMMES - THE TRUTH
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Site: Real Investment Advice
Social Security plays a crucial role in retirement income planning. Making informed decisions about when and how to claim benefits can maximize your Social Security benefits and significantly impact your long-term financial security. Claiming Social Security wisely requires a deep understanding of how benefits are calculated, the impact of different claiming ages, and the strategies available to optimize your payout.
In this guide, we’ll explore how Social Security fits into an overall retirement plan, how to navigate tax implications, and the best ways to strategically claim your benefits for long-term financial stability.
How Are Social Security Benefits Calculated?
The Social Security Administration (SSA) determines your benefit amount based on:
- Lifetime Earnings – Benefits are calculated using your highest 35 years of earnings. Low or zero-earning years can lower your benefit.
- Full Retirement Age (FRA) – The age at which you are entitled to receive 100% of your primary insurance amount (PIA), which varies depending on your birth year.
- Age When You Claim – Claiming before or after your FRA affects your monthly payments.
- Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA) – Benefits adjust annually to account for inflation.
The Impact of Claiming at Different Ages
When you claim Social Security greatly impacts the total amount you receive over your lifetime.
Claiming Age Benefit Adjustment Age 62 (Earliest) Reduces benefits by 25-30%. Full Retirement Age (66-67) Receives 100% of benefits. Age 70 (Latest) Increases benefits by 8% per year past FRA.Claiming Early (Age 62-66)
- Provides immediate income but results in permanently reduced benefits.
- May be necessary for those with health concerns or financial hardship.
- Can impact spousal benefits if married.
Claiming at Full Retirement Age (FRA 66-67)
- You receive 100% of your benefit.
- No reduction in spousal or survivor benefits.
Delaying Until Age 70
- Boosts benefits by 8% per year after FRA
- Provides maximum lifetime benefit if you expect to live longer.
- Can significantly increase survivor benefits for a spouse.
Strategies for Maximizing Social Security Benefits
1. Delay Claiming for Higher Payouts
If you don’t need immediate income, delaying benefits until age 70 can provide substantially higher lifetime earnings.
2. Optimize Spousal Benefits
- Spouses can claim up to 50% of their partner’s FRA benefit.
- This is particularly beneficial when one spouse has lower lifetime earnings.
- Claiming spousal benefits does not reduce the higher-earning spouse’s benefit.
3. Take Advantage of Survivor Benefits
- Widowed spouses can claim the higher of their own benefit or their deceased spouse’s benefit.
- Delaying a claim increases the survivor’s lifetime payout.
4. Minimize Taxes on Benefits
- Up to 85% of Social Security benefits may be taxable depending on total income.
- Consider Roth conversions or tax-efficient withdrawal strategies to lower taxable income.
5. Work While Receiving Benefits? Understand the Limits
- If you claim before FRA and continue working, benefits may be reduced if you earn over $22,320 (2024 earnings limit).
- Once you reach FRA, there’s no penalty for working while receiving benefits.
How Social Security Fits Into Your Retirement Plan
Social Security should be one piece of a diversified retirement income strategy.
- Pair It with Other Retirement Accounts – Combine Social Security with 401(k)s, IRAs, and taxable investments to create a sustainable income stream.
- Manage Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) – Understand how RMDs impact taxable income to avoid unnecessary tax burdens.
- Consider Healthcare Costs – Medicare premiums can be deducted from Social Security benefits, impacting cash flow.
A well-planned Social Security strategy ensures long-term financial stability and helps retirees avoid common pitfalls.
Claiming Social Security Wisely
Deciding when and how to claim Social Security benefits is a critical retirement decision. By understanding the impact of timing, spousal benefits, tax considerations, and overall financial planning, you can make choices that maximize your lifetime income.
At RIA Advisors, we provide expert retirement planning strategies to help you maximize your Social Security benefits and ensure long-term financial security. Contact us today to build a Social Security strategy that aligns with your retirement goals.
FAQs
What is the best age to claim Social Security for maximum benefits?
The best age depends on your health, financial needs, and life expectancy. Delaying until age 70 provides the highest payout, but claiming earlier may be necessary in some cases.
Can I work and collect Social Security at the same time?
Yes, but if you claim before FRA, earnings above the limit ($22,320 for 2024) may temporarily reduce your benefit. Once you reach FRA, there is no earnings limit.
Are Social Security benefits taxable?
Yes, up to 85% of benefits can be taxed depending on your income. Tax-efficient withdrawal strategies can help minimize the tax impact.
What are spousal benefits, and how do they work?
Spouses can receive up to 50% of their partner’s FRA benefit if it’s higher than their own. This strategy is useful when one spouse has lower earnings.
Can I change my mind after claiming Social Security?
Yes! You can withdraw your claim within 12 months and repay benefits to restart at a later date. After FRA, you can also suspend benefits to allow them to grow.
The post The Ultimate Guide to Social Security: When and How to Claim for Maximum Benefits appeared first on RIA.
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Site: RT - News
Incoming Chancellor Friedrich Merz earlier said he wants to supply Taurus missiles to Kiev, despite the outgoing government ruling out the move
The UK would support Germany if it decides to give long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, The Telegraph reported on Wednesday, citing British government sources.
London has long backed arming Kiev with the German-made weapons, which have a 500km range and are capable of striking targets deep into Russian territory, the report stated. Moscow has warned that supplying long-range missiles to Kiev and allowing it to strike Russian territory will be considered an escalation of hostilities.
“We continue to work with our partners, including Germany, to equip Ukraine as best we can to defend its sovereign territory,” a British foreign policy official told the outlet, commenting on the potential Taurus deliveries.
The report follows recent remarks by incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who signaled he was willing to supply Taurus missiles to Kiev.
“I have always said that I would do it,” Merz told German state broadcaster ARD on Sunday.
Read more
Incoming German chancellor will change mind on missiles for Ukraine – SPD
“Our European partners are already supplying cruise missiles… The British are doing it, the French are doing it, and the Americans are doing it,” he added, referencing the UK’s Storm Shadow and France’s Scalp missiles respectively.
The move must be agreed upon with Berlin’s European partners, Merz said. His CDU party has said the missiles could be used to strike Russian command centers and supply routes, including the Kerch Bridge to Crimea.
Merz’s stance contrasts sharply with that of outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has repeatedly refused to give Kiev Taurus missiles and warned that the move could escalate the conflict and draw Germany directly into war with Moscow.
Merz is expected to take office in May, once his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) finalize a coalition agreement. CDU defense spokesman Roderich Kiesewetter told The Telegraph that the missile delivery issue “remains a point of contention” in coalition talks.
Read more
Medvedev brands incoming German chancellor a ‘Nazi’
SPD members have expressed concern over the Taurus’ range and power, arguing it poses a greater escalation risk than British or French systems. Party leader Matthias Miersch this week suggested Merz might change course once he receives classified intelligence on the missiles.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, an SPD member, has previously stated there are “many good arguments” against the delivery, citing confidential national security concerns.Moscow has repeatedly warned that Western arms supplies won’t stop it from achieving its goals in the Ukraine conflict and that such deliveries only drag out the conflict and hinder peace efforts.
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Site: Crisis Magazine
Every year as we approach Holy Week, a story appears in which it is alleged some misguided organization or other has just “cancelled Easter” by removing all official mention of it from their output. Concerned Christians and conservatives then move in to object, calling such measures yet another case of politically correct pandering to hair-trigger minority groups like Muslims or queers. Usually…
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Site: Crisis Magazine
The rooster is, for many of us, a goofy figure: the strutting male of a bird species not known for its brains or courage. And for Christians, the rooster bears the dubious distinction of being the other half of the unfortunate duo involved in denying Christ three times the night of His betrayal. And yet, it seems like chickens were very much on Jesus’ mind in the lead-up to His passion.
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Site: Mises InstituteWhen wars can be started by presidents with no authority granted by Congress, the results can be the kinds of endless military engagements with ever-shifting, unachievable objectives such as we’ve seen in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Site: RT - News
The bloc has reportedly backtracked on the restrictions to retain leverage in trade talks with Washington
EU officials have stepped back from plans to include a ban on Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports in an upcoming sanctions package against Moscow, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
The decision, one official told the agency, was driven by internal opposition, uncertainty over replacing the supply, but also concerns that a ban could weaken the EU’s negotiating power with the US.
The 17th package is part of broader efforts by the EU to pressure Russia over the Ukraine conflict. Sanctioning Russian LNG now could strip the bloc of a key bargaining chip in ongoing trade talks with Washington, an unnamed EU official told Reuters.
The European Commission is reportedly seeking to use energy imports, including LNG, as leverage to persuade the US to lift tariffs on EU goods.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged the EU to increase purchases of American gas. Some EU officials see this as an opportunity to negotiate the rollback of 25% tariffs on EU steel and aluminum, reinstated in February. Enforcement of the tariffs was delayed by a 90-day pause to allow time for negotiations.
Last week, EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic met with US officials in Washington for initial talks. The commission described the meeting as a “scoping exercise” and said the US must still clarify its demands.
The idea of banning Russian LNG was previously floated during talks on the EU’s 16th sanctions package, adopted in February 2025, but was dropped following discussions in January due to reported opposition from member states.
Read more
‘Stop blackmailing’ – China to US
Some countries, including France, Spain, and Belgium, continue to import significant volumes of Russian LNG, accounting for 85% of Europe’s Russian LNG imports, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
While pipeline gas imports from Russia have declined since 2022, the EU’s imports of Russian LNG have increased. In 2024, Russia accounted for 17.5% of the bloc’s LNG supply, making it the second-largest source after the US, which held a 45.3% share.
The European Commission is currently drafting a roadmap to end dependence on Russian energy by 2027, with the plan expected in early May.
In February, Russia’s first deputy energy minister, Pavel Sorokin, told RT during India Energy Week in New Delhi that the country is ramping up its LNG production and exports despite international sanctions. He said Russia could boost LNG shipments to India, noting the “competitive pricing” and stressing that Moscow will continue to trade with its partners despite growing pressure from the US and its allies.
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Site: southern orders
Holy Thursday Chrism Mass at St. Peter’s. Grand Ma Ma, what big urns you have!
Holy Tuesday’s Chrism Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist, Savannah. Can you pick out yours
Mary Clark Rechtiene, photo credit:
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Site: Mises InstituteThe U.S. gov has approved $17.9 bln for Israeli military operations in Gaza and elsewhere since Oct 7, substantially more than in any other year since the U.S. began granting military aid to Israel in 1959.
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Site: RT - News
The bloc must look for new partners as trade tensions with the US increase, the European Commission president has said
The traditional idea of a united West is a thing of the past, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has admitted.
In an interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit published Tuesday, she claimed the EU no longer sees the US as its most important trading partner, after sweeping tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump.
“The West as we knew it no longer exists,” she said. “The world has become a globe also geopolitically, and today our networks of friendship span the globe, as you can see in the debate about tariffs.”
Her comments come after the Trump administration imposed a sweeping 20% tariff on all EU goods and a 25% tariff on all car imports. The EU responded by introducing its own retaliatory 25% tariffs on US imports. Trump later announced a 90-day pause on most global tariffs, pending negotiations with trade partners.
Read more
Trump claims countries ‘kissing my ass’ for tariff deals
According to von der Leyen, tensions with the US have had a “positive side effect” in the form of numerous states attempting to court the EU. “Everyone is asking for more trade with Europe – and it’s not just about economic ties. It is also about establishing common rules and it is about predictability,” she said.
Asked whether her remarks about the West should be interpreted as “a final farewell to the United States,” von der Leyen stressed that she “firmly believe[s]” in the US-EU friendship. “But the new reality also includes the fact that many other states are seeking to draw closer to us. 13% of global trade is with the United States. 87% of the world’s trade is with other countries,” she said.
The EU should therefore “open up new markets for our companies and establish as close a relationship as possible with many countries that have the same interests as us,” von der Leyen added.
As tensions with the US continue to rise – with Trump even suggesting that the EU “was formed in order to screw” America – some leaders in the bloc have called for a review of bilateral ties. Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron urged European firms to halt new investments in the US, asking: “What message would we send by investing billions… while they are hitting us?”
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Site: RT - News
President Trump recently claimed that the country possesses weapons “nobody has any idea” about
The US possesses technology that can “manipulate” and “bend time and space,” White House innovation czar Michael Kratsios has claimed.
Kratsios delivered the remarks at the Endless Frontiers Retreat in Austin, Texas, just weeks after being confirmed as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
He emphasized President Donald Trump’s ambition to usher in a new “golden age of America,” which includes fostering scientific research and the application of cutting-edge technologies. According to Kratsios, the US can emerge as a global leader by making “smart choices” regarding public funding and deregulating innovation.
“Our technologies permit us to manipulate time and space. They leave distance annihilated, cause things to grow, and improve productivity,” he stated, without elaborating. Later in his speech, Kratsios insisted that overcoming the “sclerosis of the state” would enable Americans to achieve “scientific discoveries that will bend time and space, make more with less, and drive us further into the endless frontier.”
Trump himself has recently alluded to advanced technologies not yet revealed to the public. Last week, he claimed China would hesitate to escalate trade tensions with the US partly due to the existence of secret weapons in the American arsenal.
READ MORE: US has secret weapons – Trump
“We have weaponry that nobody has any idea what it is, and it is the most powerful weapons in the world that we have. More powerful than anybody even, not even close,” he told journalists in the Oval Office.
In March, Trump announced the development of a sixth-generation fighter jet, which he described as “the most lethal aircraft ever built.” Boeing was awarded the contract for the project, he noted.
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Site: Mises InstituteStudents and general readers will find in this 201-page book a systematic—yet concise and focused—presentation of the main topics in economic analysis from the perspective of the Austrian School.
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Site: Mises InstituteJamaica has emerged as a prime destination for investment under the leadership of Prime Minister Andrew Holness. The country has fostered a business-friendly environment.
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Site: Mises InstituteECB cuts rates on weak growth, markets bet on more easing: The Fed is addicted to easy money, but the European central bank is even more addicted.
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Site: RT - News
The Jewish state reportedly intended to conduct strikes on nuclear sites next month
US President Donald Trump has rejected Israel’s proposal to strike Iran’s nuclear sites, the New York Times reported on Wednesday evening, citing White House officials and others familiar with the matter. Trump reportedly chose instead to pursue a new deal with Tehran.
According to the NYT, Israel had drafted plans to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in early May, aiming to delay its ability to develop a nuclear weapon by a year or more. After considering a combination of airstrikes and commando raids, the Jewish state reportedly proposed “an extensive bombing campaign” that would have lasted more than a week. Israeli officials had hoped that the US would not only greenlight the operation but also actively support it.
Trump, however, shot down the plan earlier this month, following a “rough consensus” in the White House. Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were among the top administration officials who reportedly raised concerns that the strikes would “spark a wider conflict with Iran.”
Read more
Can Trump reshape the Middle East?
Iran and Israel exchanged strikes in April and October of last year, marking the most dramatic escalation between the regional rivals.
Trump tore up the 2015 UN-backed agreement on Iran’s nuclear program during his first term in office. He accused Tehran of secretly violating the deal and reimposed sanctions. Iran responded by rolling back its own compliance with the accord and accelerating its enrichment of uranium.
Last month, Trump threatened to bomb Iran “if they don’t make a deal,” to which the Islamic Republic vowed not to bow to pressure. Despite the belligerent rhetoric, the US and Iran held the first round of talks in Oman on Saturday. The negotiations took place in a “productive, calm and positive atmosphere,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.
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Site: AntiWar.comReprinted with permission from The Realist Review. Only three months into his second term, Donald Trump’s national security team looks to be seriously divided. As I reported late last year as the administration was taking shape, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who led the transition and is known to have played a major role in vetting … Continue reading "Trump’s National Security Team Is a House Divided Against Itself"
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Site: Novus Ordo Watch
Oh yes, we’ve noticed…
Dr. Kwasniewski Reacts to Novus Ordo Watch Critique: I Don’t Engage Sedevacantists!
Earlier this month, yours truly joined Louie Verrecchio for a video podcast to respond to a recent article by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski regarding papal authority and the Sacred Liturgy. The video was released on Apr. 4 on Verrecchio’s channel and a day later on Novus Ordo Watch’s:
On Apr. 6, Kwasniewski published a comment on Facebook and on Twitter explaining that people had asked him if he was going to respond, which he answered in the negative because “I do not engage sedevacantists.”… READ MORE
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Site: Novus Ordo Wire – Novus Ordo Watch
Oh yes, we’ve noticed…
Dr. Kwasniewski Reacts to Novus Ordo Watch Critique: I Don’t Engage Sedevacantists!
Earlier this month, yours truly joined Louie Verrecchio for a video podcast to respond to a recent article by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski regarding papal authority and the Sacred Liturgy. The video was released on Apr. 4 on Verrecchio’s channel and a day later on Novus Ordo Watch’s:
On Apr. 6, Kwasniewski published a comment on Facebook and on Twitter explaining that people had asked him if he was going to respond, which he answered in the negative because “I do not engage sedevacantists.”… READ MORE
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Site: RT - News
Friedrich Merz should not give Kiev long-range weapons, the leader of the Social Democrats has warned
Incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will be swayed from delivering Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine once he begins to receive classified intelligence briefings on the matter, Matthias Miersch, the leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), has said.
Berlin ruled out giving Ukraine the long-range weapon system, which has a range of 500km, while the SPD led the last German government.
Following an historic election defeat in February which saw the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) surge, Merz's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and Miersch's SPD began talks to form a government.
Speaking to the n-tv news channel on Wednesday, Miersch criticized Merz’s readiness to deliver the Taurus and risk open confrontation with Russia.
“We have always been against it,” Miersch said. “I assume that Friedrich Merz, once fully informed by [intelligence] agencies, will reassess the issue clearly. We will then make the decision together,” he added.
“I assume that we do not want to contribute to an escalation or become a party to the war – the very reason we chose not to deliver the Taurus [to Ukraine]. And I assume it will remain that way,” Miersch said.
Read more
Medvedev brands incoming German chancellor a ‘Nazi’
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, an SPD member, earlier said there are “many good arguments” against sending the missiles, and some of them cannot be discussed in public.
Speaking to ARD on Sunday, Merz confirmed that he would like to supply Taurus missiles to Kiev. “Yes, that was exactly what I meant – not that we would intervene in the war ourselves, but that we would be equipping the Ukrainian army with such a weapon.”
He suggested that Kiev could use it to strike the bridge connecting Crimea with mainland Russia. Roderich Kiesewetter, the CDU’s defense spokesman, argued that the Taurus would help Ukraine “destroy Russian supply lines and command bunkers.”
The missile debate is unfolding as US President Donald Trump works to broker a Russian-Ukrainian ceasefire through shuttle diplomacy.
Moscow has warned that no amount of Western arms deliveries will prevent it from achieving its goals in the conflict. The Taurus will “not bring any changes to the battlefield,” Russia’s ambassador to Germany, Sergey Nechayev, said on Wednesday.
They would, however, make Germany directly involved in the conflict, as “Ukrainian soldiers… cannot operate the long-range weapon” without Berlin’s help, Nechayev said.
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Site: The Remnant Newspaper - Remnant ArticlesBeing a pagan, Pilate’s wife conceives of the Savior’s sacrifice on the Cross in terms of comparison with one of the gods known to the Romans, a thought which clearly fills her with astonishment. In a dream she "suffered many things" becuase Pilate was condemning Jesus to death. What, then, did she dream?
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Site: Public Discourse
Charles Taylor has said (following Max Weber) that a defining feature of our “secular age” is its “disenchantment.” In past ages of faith, religion suffused public culture, so that belief in the supernatural—an “enchanted” realm beyond everyday, sensible reality—was as easy as breathing. Roadside shrines, processions through towns and fields, and bells calling the faithful to prayer made God’s presence evident to everyone. But those days are long gone. Science has unmasked the mysteries of nature, narrowing the field of the miraculous to the vanishing point. The global economy demands more of our attention for work; consumerist marketing inclines our thoughts more to the things we can buy; and we do as we please with the material world thanks to technologies that our forebears never imagined. It is harder for us to find the space in the cosmos where God operates, and temptations to vice press more insistently.
In this disenchanted world, faith might seem almost impossible. Rod Dreher suggests that, through “experiences of wonder,” we must “illuminate [our] religious imagination,” so that once again religious belief will become second nature. Some might conclude that they need to turn away from disenchanted contemporary society—taking up farming to get more in touch with nature, moving to a less secular country, or leaving ordinary life altogether on a quest for mystical experiences. To find where God is hiding, many people consider doing something extraordinary.
But what if we don’t need to go so far? What if God is hiding in plain sight—not in supernatural wonders, but precisely in our world’s disenchantment? That, I submit, is an important lesson of the death of Jesus, which Christians once again commemorate this week.
The Lonely Man
The Gospels might seem to depict the most enchanted moment in history, when a man walked the earth who was closer to God than anyone before or since. The lame walked, the dead came back to life, and men heard the greatest wisdom ever spoken. “God has visited his people!” many exclaimed, as they came in droves to see, hear, and touch the wonderworker of Nazareth.
Jesus’s persona exuded a sense of the divine presence. “I know that you always hear me,” he once prayed aloud to God. In the midst of busyness, he could be seized with joy and shout, “I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” His parables revealed a mind as fascinated with the sublimest truths as with the humblest material realities; he saw God’s influence pervading every corner of the universe. His love for God overflowed into love for his fellow man. He preached and healed for hours, pouring himself out with pity for the multitudes: to him they were “like sheep without a shepherd.”
But occasionally he revealed another side of himself. After seeing countless miracles, sometimes the crowds still would not believe. Then he might complain, “Oh faithless and perverse generation! How long will I be with you? How long am I to put up with you?” At other times, when his Apostles misunderstood one of his sayings—despite knowing him so well for so long—he asked, disheartened, “Do you still not understand?” “Do you still not know me?” And despite his compassion for people, he once admitted to feeling “constrained” in the world.
He found much of humanity disappointing. He chided people for their “little faith,” because they would only believe if they saw “signs and wonders.” He admonished them for not trusting God even though they, “wicked though you be,” knew how to love their own children. He reminded them that they owed it to God to be as holy as they could; so that when they had done his will, they should say, “We are useless servants; we have done what we ought to have done.” He was reluctant to trust men because “he knew what was in man.” True, he “marveled” at the centurion for his faith, and he called Peter “blessed” for the same reason, but these were exceptions that proved the rule.
To the end he was, in the words of Alban Goodier, “a lonely Man,” torn between tender love for his creatures and disgust at their selfishness, in a way no one else fully understood. His heart, with its infinite capacity to give, sought to slake its thirst on the least show of love from others; yet he received indifference or even hatred. “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest!” he pleaded, but he was ignored and cast out. Even his constant vision of God did not save his heart from breaking as he hung dying on a cross, to the point that he cried, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
Far from being enchanting, his death was the greatest tragedy in human history. Today, in light of the later success of Jesus’s message, we might find it hard to imagine how catastrophic his end seemed at the time. One day he arrived in Jerusalem to the acclaim of thousands; a week later he was rejected by the human race, despite the preparation of millennia of prophecies and of the moral law written on men’s hearts.
Jesus of Nazareth, despite his boundless love of God and humanity, did not walk the earth with an unalloyed enjoyment of God’s enchanting action in the world; his joy was always darkened by sorrow.
Descent to Hell: The Path to Life
He did triumph in the end, the story goes, but not by overwhelming men with an unmistakable show of glory; he overcame the dark night of a disenchanted, godless world by entering fully into that darkness—by suffering humiliation and torture. Why did he do this? Because the true obstacle to men’s faith in God was not their lack of spiritual perception or experience, but their knowing, free choices against God and his law—their sins.
This point is hard for us to get. As John Henry Newman said, sin is “natural” and “familiar to us.” Living for pleasure, wealth, and our egos can seem normal, because we all do it all the time (although we might use less embarrassing terms for it, like “self-respect,” “defending my rights,” “giving myself a break,” etc.). To God, however, sin, especially if it be grave and deliberate, is, as Newman says, “woe unutterable.” It “is the mortal enemy of [God’s] All-holy” being. It “is that . . . which, could the Divine Governor of the world cease to be, would be sufficient to bring it about.”
Sin just is to choose to live without God—or rather, to live as though God were absent (no one in fact can exist without God): it is precisely to choose the disenchanted attitude of our age, and we all do so continually. Because man is free, his choices mold his existence; they cannot simply be undone. Although man needs God to exist, now, after sin, he cannot stop turning away from God; he is permanently restless and disoriented.
But Jesus, Christians believe, because of the boundless power of his love, was able to live in that disenchanted nature—feeling “as though” God were absent—and to love God anyway, beyond measure. He did this even though he was saddened by life more than any of us can be: being perfectly conformed to God, his soul was perfectly sensitive and vulnerable, able to suffer more than any of us could. He chose to suffer although, unlike us, he had no obligation to do so; he sought as much suffering as his human frame could take, unlike us who resist all pain, even that which our misdeeds have earned. He lived as we do in every way except sin, so that he could take all that was in man, even his wounds caused by sin, and direct it to God—by loving to the point of being wounded for his love. He “descended to hell,” as the Apostles’ Creed puts it, as part of the new path he forged to heaven—but without ever passing through hell’s gates by doing evil. Our nature was bent toward nothingness by our choice to hate God; by his choice to love God in that nature, Jesus made that bend a turn toward eternal life.
By his death Jesus pioneered a new path to being God’s children—the path of suffering to which he has called his followers ever after. Before the early Christians could convert their neighbors, they had to endure centuries of persecution at their hands. Before the light of the age of St. Francis of Assisi came the darkness of the age of St. Benedict. And the darkness gave way to light because men did not curse it. Rather, through their prayers, penance, and service to others—leaving their comfortable communities to evangelize their worldly neighbors—they learned how to find God where he seemed far off.
God-with-Us
Jesus said, echoing the Jewish scriptures, that friendship with God comes not from extraordinary experiences, but from living with a “pure heart,” as he did, doing God’s will even when one’s feelings point the other way. One must turn away from evil and order one’s life according to truth and charity, no matter the cost, trusting that God will bring our trials to an end when the time is right. If one does not experience the enchantment of God in his life, he should try doing God’s will anyway—as he knows best in conscience (aided by prayer)—and then perhaps he will find God. If the world is far from God, then if we do God’s will in the world, God will be there through us. As John of the Cross, theologian of the “dark night of the soul,” once said, “Where there is no love, put love there, and then you will find love.”
If we wait to give ourselves to God until we experience supernatural enchantment, we risk waiting a lifetime and leaving the world—and ourselves—little better than when we entered it. If we want to leave the best legacy we can in this life, we should follow Jesus’s example by loving the truth and our fellow men, even when we don’t feel like it. That means embracing pain—something especially difficult for us in these times of material abundance, when we flee suffering and the tedium of ordinary life. Resisting excessive love of comfort is a challenge in every age, and a duty for anyone who wants to lead a good life. But we are more likely to give up the fight if we devote our attention more to religious experience than to religion’s essence: giving all our thoughts, desires, and deeds to our Creator.
Christians, as they commemorate Jesus’s death, should particularly examine their consciences on these points. Do they complain resentfully about the world, or do they embrace this disenchanted, secular age as the form in which Jesus has chosen to meet them—hidden in the painful experience of God’s absence? Rather than recoil from the bitterness of living in a godless era, do Christians strive to find God in that bitterness—mercifully coming to meet them when they feel most alone?
God is with us—not just in mystical consolations, but in all our sufferings, even the most mundane. If we took this truth seriously, our secular age would in good time be transformed. From the wounds of its disenchantment, springs of strength, justice, and concord would flow into the world—just as from the wounds of the resurrected Jesus, new life flows into all who answer the call to come, follow him on the way of the Cross.
Image by Renáta Sedmáková and licensed via Adobe Stock.
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Site: RT - News
The previous administration worked to silence dissenting voices, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said
The US has officially shut down a government agency that Secretary of State Marco Rubio said was used by the Biden administration to censor Americans.
Former President Joe Biden set up the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) in 2016 to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation,” according to its mission statement.
On Wednesday, Rubio announced the closure of the GEC, which had been operating as the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) office since December.
“Under the previous administration, this office, which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year, spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving,” Rubio said. “This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America.”
In an interview with conservative activist Mike Benz published on Wednesday, Rubio said the GEC was originally conceived as a tool to fight extremism, such as propaganda from Al-Qaeda and ISIS, but later started “going after individual American voices.”
“We ended government-sponsored censorship in the United States through the State Department,” he said.
Read more
US State Department moves to formally dismantle USAID
The Biden administration backed groups that were “literally tagging and labeling voices in American politics – Ben Shapiro, The Federalist, others – tagging them as foreign agents,” Rubio said.
The GEC had an annual budget of $61 million and employed around 120 workers. In December, congressional Republicans refused to renew its funding.
US President Donald Trump and his allies have long accused the Democrats of weaponizing the government to suppress conservative opinions online. In 2023, tech billionaire Elon Musk slammed the GEC as the “worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation,” and “a threat to our democracy.” Journalist Matt Taibbi argued that the agency had tried suppressing discussions about Covid-19 under the guise of fighting “Russian personas and proxies.”
Last year, a group of House Republicans wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, claiming that the GEC was biased in favor of “American progressives” and worked to silence opinions “deemed to be politically disfavored or inconvenient.”
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Site: Euthanasia Prevention CoalitionAlex Schadenberg
Executive Director,
Euthanasia Prevention CoalitionI was pleased to attend the launch of the book: Unravelling MAiD in Canada in Toronto on April 15.
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition shares the hopes of the editors of the book - that this book will change the Canadian debate.
Unravelling MAiD in Canada is a thorough 530 page book that features chapters by: Ramona Coelho, K. Sonu Gaind, Trudo Lemmens, Mary Shariff, Leonie Herx, Alexander Simpson, Roland Jones, Gabrielle Peters, Hon Graydon Nicholas, Isabel Grant, Derek Ross, Mark Sinyor, Ayal Schaffer, Catherine Ferrier.
EPC has copies of this important book available for purchase. Order the book from EPC for $40 (after tax) + shipping (Order Link).
Unravelling MAiD in Canada was edited by:
- Dr. Ramona Coelho, family physician and Senior Fellow of domestic and health policy, Macdonald-Laurier Institute
- Dr. K. Sonu Gaind, Professor, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto and Chief of Psychiatry, Sunnybrook
- Dr. Trudo Lemmens, Professor and Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
Unravelling MAiD in Canada has chapters that focus on: general medicine, psychiatry, palliative care, Canadian law, health policy, disability rights and ethics.
With the number of (MAiD) euthanasia deaths in Canada and how the law expanded in 2021 (Bill C-7), Unravelling MAiD in Canada is an important book for Canadians and other people in countries that are debating the legalization of euthanasia and/or assisted suicide.
EPC has copies of this important book available for purchase. Order the book from EPC for $40 (after tax) + shipping (Order Link).
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Site: RT - News
The EU country will struggle to meet the higher military spending levels pushed by the US, the budget minister has told FT
Belgium is preparing to raise debt and cut welfare to meet NATO’s minimum military spending target, the EU country’s budget minister has said.
Vincent Van Peteghem told the Financial Times on Wednesday that Brussels recently agreed to lift its 2025 military budget to 2% of GDP through a mix of temporary cash injections, creative accounting, and structural reforms.
The planned hike in military spending could exacerbate the budget crisis as debt mounts. Recent government plans to cut social services have sparked protests, with over 100,000 people rallying in Brussels in February.
Belgium had previously planned to meet the 2% target only by 2029. Military spending currently stands at around 1.31% of GDP, or roughly €8 billion ($8.5 billion), according to Defense Minister Theo Francken.
The shift comes amid pressure from Washington and ahead of a NATO summit in June, where members are expected to consider raising the spending target to above 3% of GDP. US President Donald Trump has urged the bloc members to increase military spending to 5%, warning that countries that fail to do so may no longer be guaranteed American protection.
Higher spending on military budgets would take a toll on the EU’s welfare programs, Van Peteghem warned.
Last month, the European Commission proposed exempting military budgets from fiscal rules and offering €150 billion in loans as part of its ‘ReArm Europe’ plan, which aims to mobilize up to €800 billion through debt and tax incentives for the bloc’s military-industrial complex.
Read more
EU ‘rearmament’ plan meets resistance over debt concerns – Politico
Van Peteghem said Belgium would tap both options to fund additional military spending this year.
To maintain the 2% level, the government plans to raise more debt and may privatize state-owned assets, the minister said. The remaining gap would be filled through spending cuts, including curbs on unemployment benefits, pension reforms, and tax changes.
“But of course, we will need to do more,” Van Peteghem, who also serves as deputy prime minister, said.
France has also announced plans to cut €5 billion from its budget, with some of the savings potentially redirected to military spending.
Moscow has condemned the EU’s military buildup. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it “a matter of deep concern,” noting that it was aimed at Russia.
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Site: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention CoalitionThe Netherlands D66 political party that currently has 9 seats in the Dutch parliament are proposing to remove euthanasia from the criminal code in order to enable euthanasia of people with dementia. The Dutchnews.nl reported on April 16 that:
Opposition party D66 has drawn up draft legislation to remove euthanasia from the criminal code in a move to make it less difficult for doctors to help people with dementia to die at their request.The Dutchnews.nl article reported that the:
D66 leader Rob Jetten said doctors are “afraid of the consequences” and that a new law would “provide more cover for doctors if they agree to perform euthanasia on people with dementia.” The D66 want the Netherlands to completely decriminalizes euthanasia, so that doctors who are willing to kill people who are incompetent and living with dementia could do so. The NL Times reported on April 16 that:Doctors are allowed to grant the requests of people suffering from dementia, but if the illness is advanced, then the thinking ability and capacity to make decisions are limited. This leads to doctors struggling with the requests as the suffering cannot be exactly determined, and an earlier request for euthanasia cannot be re-confirmed. The Dutchnews.nl reported that ChristenUnie MP Mirjam Bikker responded to the D66 proposal by stating:
“D66 keeps moving the goalposts for euthanasia. What used to be an exception is becoming the norm. Vulnerable life deserves care and protection. Let’s put more effort into that instead of a new push towards death,”On March 26, 2025 I published an article concerning the 2024 Dutch euthanasia report. I based my article on the report by Bruno Waterfield that was published in The Times on March 24 which stated that there were 9958 reported euthanasia deaths in 2024 in the Netherlands which was up by 10% from 9068 in 2023.
Waterfield also reported that in 2024 there were 219 psychiatric euthanasia deaths which was up from 138 in 2023 and 115 in 2022.When euthanasia was first legalized it was based on providing euthanasia for competent adults who were freely capable of consenting.
People with dementia are not competent adults who are capable of consenting.
If euthanasia for dementia is accepted, then euthanasia for people with cognitive disabilities will be next.
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Site: RT - News
Washington’s rupture with longtime allies over Ukraine has shattered the global order, Francois Bayrou has said
French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou has accused the US of abandoning the values of the democratic world, saying Washington’s sudden pivot toward closer ties with Russia has undermined the trust of its allies and shaken the global order.
In remarks delivered on Tuesday, Bayrou said the US, once seen as the linchpin of the "alliance of free nations" and a guarantor of international law, had abandoned core Western values. He added it was “shocking” that a country long seen as a pillar of the global order “could suddenly side with the aggressor.”
Moscow and Washington have been engaged in negotiations since US President Donald Trump took office in January. The two countries have held several rounds of high-level talks focused on a possible peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict and also on restoring bilateral relations.
Some EU members and Kiev have expressed concern about what they perceive as Washington being on Russia’s side in the Ukraine conflict. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky claimed this week that “Russian narratives are prevailing” within the Trump administration. The White House, meanwhile, has accused Zelensky of making “absurd” statements.
The French prime minister cited pressure on Ukraine “to surrender immediately to the demands of his aggressor under the threat of being cut off from all military aid” as evidence of a dramatic shift in US policy.
Read more
France helped Zelensky write apology letter to Trump – Politico
Trump publicly clashed with Zelensky in February at the White House, accusing the Ukrainian leader of disrespect, ingratitude for past US aid, reluctance to seek peace with Russia, and “gambling with World War III.”
Trump later claimed Zelensky was attempting to push through a long-term aid deal, and temporarily froze military assistance to Kiev.
In his speech, Bayrou also criticized Trump for dismantling decades of cooperation by launching a global trade war “without warning,” striking both rivals and allies alike with sweeping tariffs.
He described the resulting fallout as a “cyclone” that undermined international law and economic stability.
Bayrou added that the French government urgently needs to reduce its budget deficit to confront a “tsunami of destabilization” caused by Trump’s tariffs.
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Site: Henrymakow.com
Please send links and comments to hmakow@gmail,comUsed to be a government job was synonymous with security. It became a way to recompensesocialists (Communists, Demonrats.) This socialist sinecure is gone."Americans, how do things really look in your day-to-day life after Trump's presidency began?""I work at a seaport, so longshoremen and truck drivers are definitely freaking out as their jobs are vaporizing."I am a federal scientist for NOAA and -although we didn't have high hopes to not get fired- we just found out we're getting dismantled completely sooooo . Other jobs in science fields are getting scarcer by the minute, as well. It sucks!"My wife works for a branch of the EPA and every day is like Russian roulette - That dreaded email or call could come at any time-Mark Carnage is BUSINESS PARTNERS with Elon & Trump?! Canada Is Being SOLD OUTThe question is: "Why would Mark Carney leave a chair position that makes him $100 millions + with Brookfield Asset Management to become Canada's Prime Minister?"Not for Canadians best interests that's for sure!--Bessent's Grand Strategy: Use Tariff Negotiations To Isolate China From The Rest Of The WorldYesterday, president Trump laid out the stakes in the ever-escalating trading war between the US and China, in typical laconic fashion: "We may want countries to choose between us and China" (a topic discussed further here), with the White House adding that "The ball is in China's court. China needs to make a deal with us."--
Eckhart Tolle-- You are the Light of the WorldCultivating ConsciousnessReader- "People are fastidious about what they eat but don't consider the damage done by toxic thinking."-Honda staying in Canada despite Trump's auto tariffs-
Western society has become infantilized. Are we in elementary school? Ridiculing people because of their teeth??--JUST IN: Over 20K IRS Agents Take President Trump's Buyout Offer to RESIGN"Around 22,000 IRS employees have signed up for the resignation offer, which offered incentives to resign.On Friday, IRS employees were notified about the resignation package, which, if they accepted, would put them on paid administrative leave until September, at which point they would stop getting paid and leave their job. It's a pretty sweet deal, let's be honest -- especially for an agency that President Trump wants to replace entirely.--Mind Blowing CV19 Bioweapon Vax Still on Market - Dr. Sherri Tenpenny"A total campaign of fear, masks, social distancing, coercion and medical terror psyop is now over according to Dr. T, but what is coming is far worse. Dr. T says, "The fear part of Covid 19 is over. The part that is not over, and I talk about this in detail in my book, is the travesty of the vaccine injured and the travesty of what is still to come. Those who have had two shots and at least one booster, and at one time the CDC was bragging they were up to 10 (CV19) boosters, none of them stopped transmission. None of them stopped you from getting sick. It was just a bioweapon that they wanted to inject into everyone to make sure they were sick or dead."--
Tucker Carlson interviews Rep. Curt Weldon: It's Time to Finally Tell the Truth About 9-11"After twenty years in congress, Curt Weldon was about to become chairman of the House Armed Services Committee when he publicly questioned the accuracy of the 9-11 report. In retaliation, the Bush administration sent federal agents to his daughter's house and ended his political career. At 77, Weldon has decided to tell the truth about what actually happened on September 11, 2001."Germany: Man with machete killed by 5 men with baseball bats in Berlin mayhem"Unfortunately, we are experiencing more and more often that disputes are carried out with violence and the use of lethal weapons""A man reportedly armed with a machete stormed into a bakery in Berlin-Reinickendorf on Wednesday, sparking a violent confrontation that ended with him being chased down the street and beaten to death by men wielding baseball bats."--
Trump Administration Sues Maine Over Transgenders in Girls' Sports."We have exhausted every other remedy. We tried to get Maine to comply. We don't like standing up here and filing lawsuits, we want to get states to comply with us," U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Wednesday, with the DOJ lawsuit stating: "The undeniable physiological differences between males and females provide boys with inherent advantages in strength, speed, and physicality that pre-determine the outcome of athletic contests."-How North Korea's massive military aid is keeping Putin's war machine runningAccording to a Reuters investigation, North Korea has supplied between 4.2 and 5.8 million artillery shells--enough to account for up to 70% of Russia's frontline ammunition--and dispatched as many as 14,000 troops, many of whom were misled about their mission. Intercepted radio communications, satellite imagery, and Ukrainian intelligence confirm Pyongyang's deep commitment to aiding Moscow, reshaping the battlefield and prolonging a war that has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.--.Whites need not apply -- British police force blocks applications from White people in favor of 'diversity' candidatesCritics argue the recruitment policy adopted by West Yorkshire Police unfairly discriminates against White candidates
Maxime Bernier -Forgotten but not goneBernier vows to end 'imperial federalism', give power back to provincesThe PPC leader argued that Ottawa "interferes in areas where it has no business."Bernier is a classic case of picking your battles. He could have been leader of the Conservative Pafrty but he decided to take on the dairy lobby. He objected to subsidies. The dairy farmers ensured he lost the leadership contest and his own riding. His "Peoples Party" has the right policies but Poilievre is going to win big.--Quote: "The final exile is called 'Galut Edom,' the 'Exile of Edom'. The exile of Edom, who descended from Esau, coincides with the last 2,000 years of history referred to by the Talmud as, the 'Footsteps of Mashiach!'Thus we see that the Mashiach will come at the end of the galut Edom."Reader--"And now the truth: in 70AD, the rebels of Judah were kicked out of the Holy Land and the Israel of God - PERMANENTLYFor 2,000 years, they played the role of Amalek. The elder (Esau - Judaism) served the younger (Jacob - genuine Christianity) by testing people with lies, false religions, and persecution. In 1948, they invaded the Holy Land and destroyed the Christian West. And now, they will be destroyed again by Rome. Moschiach is a delusion." -
Site: RT - News
Doha welcomes the ongoing diplomatic efforts to stop the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev, spokesperson Majed Mohammed Al-Ansari has told RT
Qatar has been working to play a constructive role in resolving the Ukraine conflict and stands ready to act as a mediator, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Majed Mohammed Al-Ansari has told RT.
“From the very beginning, we have said that Qatar is ready to serve as a mediator and a platform to facilitate and create conditions for negotiations between all parties,” Al-Ansari said in an exclusive interview on Tuesday.
Doha supports ongoing diplomatic initiatives, particularly those led by Saudi Arabia, he noted, referencing recent Ukraine-related high-level talks in Riyadh and Jeddah.
“We also back initiatives by other Gulf countries. These efforts show that our region seeks to be a hub for peace, not for war and conflict,” the official added.
Qatar has helped to mediate between Russia and Ukraine in efforts to reunite children evacuated from the combat zone with their families. The humanitarian process is ongoing, Al-Ansari said, adding that “we also hope to play a more active role overall.”
Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani was among the first international officials to visit Moscow following the escalation of hostilities with the aim of exploring how Doha could contribute to peace efforts, the spokesman noted.
“This commitment led to Qatar’s involvement in the grain deal [Black Sea Grain Initiative] and in broader international and regional efforts to help end the war,” Al-Ansari said.
Read more
Why the Middle East is the perfect setting for Russia-US talks
He added that the Qatari leadership remains in “close contact” with its counterparts in the relevant countries and is working toward a diplomatic resolution.
“We are genuinely optimistic about these contacts and support all efforts to move them forward. We welcome any potential role the State of Qatar can play,” he said.
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is scheduled to visit Moscow on Thursday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday. The agenda will include efforts to reach a possible peace agreement, among other issues.
Qatar plays a “very important” role in helping to resolve global conflicts, Peskov added, referring to the Gulf nation’s broader mediation efforts.
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