For many people today, practical atheism is the normal rule of life...If this attitude becomes a general existential position, then freedom no longer has any standards, then everyting is possible and permissible.
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Site: Zero HedgeTrump Admin Targets Journal's "Proximal Origin" Paper Which Dismissed Possible Wuhan Lab AccidentTyler Durden Tue, 05/13/2025 - 21:45
Authored by Paul D. Thacker via the DisInformation Chronicle,
A brief flurry of media reports last month criticized letters sent to medical journals by Edward R. Martin Jr., the former interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who questioned whether journals have become “partisans in various scientific debates.” One liberal academic called the letters “fascist tactics” designed “to intimidate academic journals” triggering similar allegations across the media.
“Experts worry this will have a chilling effect on publications,” reported the New York Times, noting that an obscure journal called CHEST had been targeted.
“DOJ questions science journal about bias, triggering free-speech concerns,” reported the Washington Post, adding that three major publishers of medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and Health Affairs, said they had not received letters, while publisher Springer Nature chose not to comment. NPR reported last week that the New England Journal of Medicine had in fact received a letter as had the American Medical Association’s journal JAMA.
The DisInformation Chronicle has learned that the actual target of Martin’s letters is the Nature Springer journal Nature Medicine, publisher of a highly controversial paper “Proximal Origin” which has faced charges of corruption and calls for retraction. A source inside the Department of Health and Human Services said Trump officials suspect the paper is a quid pro quo, written by the authors to dismiss the possibility of a lab accident and who then received a large grant months later from Tony Fauci.
The existence of the Nature Medicine letter has not been previously reported and is being made public for the first time. After Martin lost support among Republicans to be confirmed as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, President Trump picked him to head a new Weaponization Working Group inside the Justice Department.
Follow the science
Published in the third month of the COVID pandemic and arguing “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible,” the “Proximal Origin” paper became a handy tool for NIH officials and virologists attempting to dismiss as a “conspiracy theory” claims that the pandemic could have started in a Wuhan lab funded by Fauci. Nature Medicine’s editor-in-chief, Joao Monteiro, tweeted that the paper “put conspiracy theories” about the pandemic’s possible lab origin to rest.
NIH Director Francis Collins promoted the “Proximal Origin” paper weeks after Nature Medicine published it on his March 2020 NIH Director's Blog, and Fauci then seized upon the paper during a televised White House briefing a month afterwards.
“There was a study recently that we can make available to you,” Fauci said during the White House briefing, “where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists look at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve and the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of species from an animal to a human.”
The paper would go on to become one of the most heavily cited scientific papers in 2020. The Nation reported in 2023 that “Proximal Origin” had been accessed online more than 5.7 million times and more than 2,000 media outlets had cited it. ABC News, for instance, ran an article titled “Sorry, Conspiracy Theorists. Study Concludes Covid-19 ‘Is Not a Laboratory Construct.’”
But by then, cracks had already appeared.
Follow the money, follow the documents
Emails made public through freedom of information act requests and by congressional investigators in 2022 showed that the papers’ authors had run it past funders—Francis Collins and Tony Fauci at the NIH, as well as with Jeremy Farrar, who was then at the Wellcome Trust. In one example, lead author Kristian Andersen with the Scripps Research Institute emailed the three funders thanking them for their “advice and leadership” and offering them a right to comment and give suggestions.
Further emails and internal slack discussions calling into question the credibility of “Proximal Origin” became public in the summer of 2023 following a congressional hearing. During the hearing, Republicans charged that Tony Fauci had helped orchestrate the paper’s publication. However, Democrats countered by releasing a report that found Wellcome Trust’s Jeremy Farrar helped “organize and facilitate” and “led the drafting process of the paper.”
“Jeremy, Dr. Farrar has been an amazing leader,” wrote “Proximal Origin” co-author Robert Garry of Tulane University in an email released by House Democrats. “Should be author.”
When questioned about his email during a House deposition, Garry agreed that Farrar should have been listed as an author.
According to Nature’s editorial policy, “A specific role for the funder in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, should be disclosed.” However, the paper failed to note the involvement of either Fauci or Farrar, and Nature Medicine has refused to follow its own ethics guidelines.
News sites the Racket and Public co-published a slack message Andersen sent to his “Proximal Origin” co-authors on April 16, 2020, a month after Nature Medicine published the paper in March 2020.
“I’m still not fully convinced that no culture was involved,” Andersen wrote his co-authors, a month after publishing the paper that concluded the virus was not a laboratory construct. “We also can't fully rule out engineering (for basic research).”
Days after the congressional hearing, the group BioSafety Now wrote a letter to Nature Medicine, signed by over 50 scientists, demanding retraction of “Proximal Origin.” The letter cited an investigation published by The Nation reporting on internal emails by the “Proximal Origin” authors that showed they didn’t even believe what they wrote in the paper.
“The main issue is that accidental release is in fact highly likely,” the Nation reported that Andersen wrote in a message to co-authors some weeks before Nature Medicine published the paper. An online campaign by BioSafety Now has since garnered over 5,700 signatures petitioning Nature Medicine to retract the paper.
In his letter to Nature Medicine, Martin wrote that he has been told that some journals “have a position for which they are advocating due to advertisement (under postal code) or sponsorship (under relevant fraud regulations).”
The letter also asks, “How do you clearly articulate to the public when you have certain viewpoints that are influenced by your ongoing relations with supporters, funders, advertisers, and others?”
A source close to the investigation said this question pertains to a grant Fauci awarded Andersen and Garry several months after they published “Proximal Origin” dismissing the possibility of a lab accident. Allegations that this grant was a bribe from Fauci have dogged Andersen for several years, accusations which he dismissed under oath during the July 2023 congressional hearing.
“There is no connection between the grant and the conclusions we reached about the origin of the pandemic,” Andersen wrote in sworn testimony to Congress. “We applied for this grant in June 2019, and it was scored and reviewed by independent experts in November 2019.”
The Intercept later reported that Andersen “knew that was false.” NIH records show the grant to Andersen wasn’t finalized until May 21, 2020, two months after Andersen published “Proximal Origin” in Nature Medicine.
In a guest essay earlier this month for The DisInformation Chronicle, an NIH infectious disease researcher wrote that the “Proximal Origin” authors left a gaping hole in their analysis by failing to account for a common method to manipulate viruses called “serial passaging.”
“And because they didn’t discuss this very common laboratory practice, they did not ‘disprove’ a laboratory origin for the virus,” the NIH research official wrote. “I have no idea how ignoring something so obvious could make it pass peer review and get published in a prestigious journal like Nature Medicine.”
Subscribe to The DisInformation Chronicle here...
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Site: RT - News
Kiev has no capacity to reclaim the regions that have become part of Russia since 2014, according to the French president
The Ukrainians are well aware that they do not have the means to retake all the territory they claim that is held by Russia, French President Emmanuel Macron has said.
Ukraine has rejected Russia’s demand that it renounce its claim to the lost territories. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky said in April, however, that Kiev “did not have enough weapons” to retake Crimea by force.
“The war must end, and Ukraine must be in the best possible position to enter into negotiations … that will make it possible to address territorial issues,” Macron told TF1 on Tuesday.
“Even Ukrainians themselves have the lucidity to acknowledge … that they will not have the capacity to reclaim everything that has been taken [by Russia] since 2014.”
“We can’t leave Ukraine on its own,” the French president added. “Since it will not be joining NATO, we are proposing reassurance forces. In other words, the allies who are willing … will deploy forces far from the front line, in key locations, to conduct joint operations and demonstrate our solidarity.”
France and the UK have proposed sending peacekeepers to Ukraine following a ceasefire but have provided few details. Russia has warned that any foreign troops stationed in Ukraine without its permission – especially those from NATO countries – would be treated as enemy targets.
Read more
Moscow names topics for Istanbul talks with Kiev
Crimea, which is populated predominantly by ethnic Russians, voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia shortly after the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev. The largely Russian-speaking Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, along with the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye, did the same after holding referendums in September 2022.
US President Donald Trump told Time magazine last month that “Crimea will stay with Russia,” claiming that Zelensky understood this as well. Trump’s peace plan reportedly envisions freezing the conflict along the current front line and recognizing Russian sovereignty over the peninsula. The president has repeatedly stressed that he wants to end the bloodshed as soon as possible.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said that Moscow seeks to discuss a “sustainable settlement” with Kiev during potential talks in Istanbul on May 15.
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Site: Public Discourse
Among its other conclusions, the new Global Flourishing Study, a massive study of 200,000 individuals in more than twenty countries, finds that “in general, attendance in religious services is associated with greater flourishing.” Given my views of human nature and philosophical anthropology, I’m not surprised to discover that the social science corresponds with established tradition and experience of the ages. Modernity promised liberation, prosperity, and happiness but delivered fragility and loneliness in a world bereft of meaning and purpose.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the modern understanding of pain. As Byung-Chul Han notes in The Palliative Society: Pain Today, “our relation to pain reveals what kind of society we are.” As he sees it, “pain is a cipher,” a key to understanding what a society values and fears. And we inhabitants of the contemporary West fear pain. Han writes: “Today, a universal algophobia rules: a generalized fear of pain. . . . The consequence of this algophobia is a permanent anaesthesia. All painful conditions are avoided.” Fear of pain extends even into politics, he suggests, where there is pressure to conform rather than to argue and engage in hard discussions about difficult choices. (The American refusal to even think about, let alone act on, our bankrupt entitlement programs serves as an example.) Consequently, “palliative democracy is spreading” with its preference for “quick-acting analgesics, which only mask systematic dysfunctionality and distortion.” We prefer what is pleasant, nice, and stupefying.
As Pierre Manent has noted, our modern obsession with mastering rather than enduring all problems and trials results in a sense of self-satisfaction or contentment. Ours is not an age producing saints, sages, or heroes since those characters are dissatisfied, wanting more, and willing to endure and struggle. Our desire for the good, conversely, “will be necessarily lukewarm as well, since it will already be essentially satisfied.” Humanity wishes for no more than its immanent contentment and judges that contentment is within reach. Citing Nietzsche, Manent reminds us that the modern goal ends in enervation—“we have invented happiness”— no longer knowing the meaning of “to love” or “to long for.”
Han explores this further, suggesting that our understanding of happiness is “self-optimization” in which pain and suffering “has no place.” Certainly, we find it very odd, bizarre even, to imagine that pain might be “enlivened into a passion, to be given a language” or ritual, in the manner religion tends to do.
The biohacker Bryan Johnson, who spends $2 million a year in a quest to live forever, and for whom the entire point of life seems to be captured in the simple motto, “don’t die,” spends his time in “protocol,” including “hyper-specific food intake . . . 50-plus vitamins, minerals, and supplements, comprehensive exercise routines, regimented sleep routines, red light therapy, blood testing, various monitors . . . plus edgier things like a gene therapy not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and . . . receiving a plasma transfusion from his teenage son.” He exhibits a sort of passion, or at least a negative passion of what he doesn’t want, namely pain and death, but this is a form of life lacking a language of suffering, having no way to include its inevitability into a positive vision. Death, pain, suffering, all of which are inevitable, are viewed, and cannot but be viewed in such a world, as entirely pointless, as meaningless negation, and as an affront, even an injustice.
Such an endless life, with its endless monitoring of heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, sleep time, and more, is a life of measuring and calculation. Han aptly describes it:
Life is reduced to a biological process that must be optimized. It loses any meta-physical dimension. . . . Digital hypochondria, constant self-measurement with the aid of health and fitness apps, degrades life into a mere function. Life is divested of any narrative that could give it meaning. Life is no longer a matter of what can be recounted but a matter of what can be counted, measured.”
This is bare life, merely existing, rather than the good life, living well.
I am not celebrating pain, and my own religion affirms, in the words of Julian of Norwich, that “all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.” Pain is not an end in itself. Of course, pain should be ameliorated, avoided, or cured when it is possible, reasonable, and just to do so, and pain should never be inflicted unjustifiably. But for all of us, inevitably, pain will come.
For some, pain will be infrequent, short, and relatively easy; for others, pain is constant and intense, either physically, mentally, or socially. But pain will come. Most of us know someone who suffers in a more than usual way, perhaps with illness or from the actions of others. Most know someone for whom pain seems to relentlessly stalk, with any respite soon followed by another challenge, another tragedy, often through no fault of their own. Some endure pain with stoical passivity, some take arms against their sea of troubles, and others, bearing witness to a graciousness of their very being, display nobility, charity, courage, and steadfastness. They do not seek pain recklessly or unreasonably, but when it comes to them, their virtue is more evident than their grimace. They are admirable, and how pointless would it be to tell them to take more supplements, try harder, measure more, and “don’t die.”
Such people have lives that can be recounted. They deserve to be remembered for their character, to be emulated, praised, and noted. Parents should tell stories of such people to their own children: be like that man, be like that woman, for she showed dignity; he showed grace in the midst of pain.
Han argues that we have become a society that counts but does not recount, that lacks a story of the meaning of suffering and pain, a way for pain to be redeemed, caught up in meaning, sanctified, and engaged in the language and rituals of hope and longing. For Christians, for example, now still celebrating Easter, Scripture is clear that the resurrected Jesus, even with a glorified body, has still a wounded body, and Thomas is able to see and touch those wounds.
Sound religion overcomes and cures pain and suffering when it can justly be solved, but sound religion notes the inevitability of suffering, the moral inadmissibility of some “solutions,” and does not think pain renders a good life impossible. Suffering can be redeemed and caught up into a pattern of goodness, beauty, and purpose; even into a flourishing life, as the Global Study finds.
For those seeking something less than goodness and flourishing, life is reduced essentially to the satisfaction of a sentient animal, for whom pain is only and always negative and nothing more. A society based on that account, perhaps our own society, according to Han, will see even minor pain as unbearable, for it lacks “networks of meaning, narration and higher authorities and purposes that could capture our pain and make it bearable.” Such a society will be full of those like in The Princess and the Pea, Han concludes, for whom once the “pea is taken away, the mattress will begin to chafe.”
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Site: Saint Louis Catholic
Not the best singer of it, but it speaks to me. Steve, you’re welcome.
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Site: The Remnant Newspaper - Remnant ArticlesAlmost a week after his acceptance, Pope Leo is inevitably already sparking discussions in media outlets around the world. Maintaining a balanced perspective, it is fair to say that it is still too early to offer a historical or even theological interpretation of his pontificate. However, we can gradually highlight some indicative details of his ecclesiastical leadership that have already emerged in these first few days.
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Site: LifeNews
Planned Parenthood released its latest annual report the day after Mother’s Day. For 2023-2024, abortions are at an all-time high. So is government funding.
Nearly three years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and many states enacted strong pro-life protections, business is still booming. Congress and President Donald Trump can take action—but will they?
Here are the key takeaways you need to know.
In the medical data section, Planned Parenthood reported:
- 402,230 abortions, an all-time high, and up from last year’s 392,715 abortions.
- 367,594 breast cancer screenings and Pap tests, down from 410,272 the previous year.
- 129,594 preventive care visits, roughly the same as last year’s 129,216.
- 2,148 adoption referrals, up from 1,721 the previous year but half the referrals made just five years ago.
- 2,223,680 contraceptive services, down from 2,250,913 the previous year.
- 2.08 million patients, slightly up from last year’s 2.05 million, but quite a drop-off from the 2.4 million reported five years ago.
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For every adoption referral made last year, Planned Parenthood performed 187 abortions.
Planned Parenthood highlights a new telehealth platform it is using in 42 states and Washington, D.C., for many services—including providing abortion pills to women who have never seen a doctor in person to be screened for complications.
For the second year in a row, Planned Parenthood also touted how it helps women from pro-life states travel elsewhere to get abortions. The abortion giant reports assisting more than 100,000 women seeking abortions in the past year. More than 12,500 women received on average $275 to go toward travel costs. That’s more than $3.4 million in direct funding for abortion travel.
What about gender services such as cross-sex hormones? More than 430 clinics offer it. Out of 49 affiliates, 23 offer telehealth for gender services. Unlike other types of categories in the report, Planned Parenthood has never specified how many gender services it provides. That information is buried in an “other” category that includes several kinds of services.
The first year Planned Parenthood mentioned gender in the “other category” a decade ago, there were 8,153 services reported. This year there were 77,858. Different accounting mechanisms may be the source of the dramatically different numbers we saw in 2021 and 2022, but there’s no way to know for sure based on this report alone.
Here’s what we do know. Planned Parenthood is, by its own admission, “the second-largest provider of hormone therapy” in the nation. Thanks to other publicly available reporting we can reasonably infer that gender services in particular have caused a spike in this category.
A recent Manhattan Institute investigation found that in 2023 alone nearly 40,000 people went to Planned Parenthood for cross-sex hormones—about 40% of them between the ages of 18 and 22.
In the financial data section, Planned Parenthood reported:
- $2.522 billion in net assets, up from $2.517 billion the previous year.
- $792.2 million in government funding, up from $699.3 the previous year.
- More than $2 billion in total revenue, almost equal to the previous year.
- $27.4 million in excess revenue (calculated by subtracting total expenses from total revenues, down from 178.6 million the previous year).
- $684.1 million in private contributions and bequests, down from $997.5 million reported the previous year.
There’s no denying that as far as abortion and gender services are concerned, business is booming at Planned Parenthood. This is despite the wave of pro-life laws enacted in roughly half the states in 2022. Dangerous abortion pills—specifically the Obama and Biden administrations’ reckless disregard of long-standing safety protocols—are largely to blame. It’s easier than ever to access abortion pills online and through the mail, without ever seeing a doctor in person, despite the well-documented health risks.
It’s no coincidence that Planned Parenthood jumped into the gender drugs game right around the time the Obama administration started loosening safety regulations for abortion drugs. As fewer women needed surgical abortions and opted for pills instead, Planned Parenthood shifted gears and expanded its offerings.
Fewer (expensive) surgical abortions and more (less expensive) pill-induced abortions cutting into profits? No problem when there’s new gender services getting new people into the door, too.
Pro-life states will have to continue fighting for life. But there’s more that federal policymakers can do, too. The reconciliation bill making its way through Congress currently includes a provision to defund Planned Parenthood of Medicaid funding, its prime source of government money.
Trump can reinstate a regulation regarding the Title X Family Planning Program, which requires grantees to physically and financially separate Title X activity from abortion activity and not refer Title X clients for abortions. When this policy was in place during Trump’s first term, Planned Parenthood refused to comply and walked away from more than $60 million. Self-defunding, if you will.
Planned Parenthood should not receive a dime of taxpayer funding—clinics that offer real health care should. In fact, new analysis shows that community health centers outnumber Planned Parenthood clinics 15-to-1.
A pro-life Congress and a pro-life administration have a chance to strike a blow for real women’s health care. Will they deliver?
LifeNews Note: Melanie Israel writes for The Daily Signal, where this column originally appeared.
The post Planned Parenthood Abortions and Taxpayer Funding Hit All-Time High appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeStudent Loan Delinquencies Surge, Hammer Credit Scores - Southern States Hit HardestTyler Durden Tue, 05/13/2025 - 18:50
The party is over for millions of Americans who paused payments on their federal student loans over the last several years through pandemic-era forbearance programs. Many had hoped for sweeping loan forgiveness under the Biden-Harris administration, But with the federal government officially resuming collections on defaulted loans this month—for the first time in over five years—borrowers now face sliding credit scores as delinquencies soar, while in April we warned the restart could drain as much as $63 billion from the economy.
On Tuesday, the Center for Microeconomic Data at the New York Fed released its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, updated through the first quarter of 2025.
Within the report is a snapshot of consumer credit profiles, including the sharp rise in delinquent student loan debt that's now piling up.
Starting with a 10,000-foot view; in the first quarter of 2025 the aggregate U.S. delinquency rate climbed to 4.3% of outstanding debt in some stage of delinquency - up from 3.6% in the fourth quarter of 2024. Total aggregate household debt increased by $167 billion in the quarter, up .9% from 4Q24, while overall, America's consumer debt balance now stands at a whopping $18.20 trillion - an increase of more than $4 trillion since 4Q19.
Narrowing it down, while early-stage delinquency rates remained stable across most debt categories, student loans bucked the trend, posting a sharp increase as the federal government resumed credit reporting on missed payments for the first time in nearly five years.
"Transition into early delinquency held steady for nearly all debt types; the exception was for student loans, which saw a large uptick in the rate at which balances went from current to delinquent due to the resumption of reporting of delinquent student loans on credit reports after a nearly 5-year pause due to the pandemic," the quarterly report said.
The shift comes amid the expiration of pandemic-era forbearance, exposing millions of borrowers to renewed repayment obligations.
Last month, Education Secretary Linda McMahon told President Trump at a Cabinet meeting:
"We're going to start getting it back," adding "For those people who have borrowed money and have not been paying -- that's just not to be punitive, there are many ways that they can go online to understand how they can get back into the right payment structure. Because when they're in default, they can't buy a house, they can't buy a car, their credit scores go down."
Also reported last month (full note available to premium subs), student-loan delinquencies have increased since the pandemic-era forbearance on repayment ended in September 2023. The Biden administration allowed a year for payments to fully ramp back up, which temporarily suppressed delinquency rates. Now, though, missed payments are crossing the 90-day threshold and showing up on borrowers' credit reports.
Transition rates into serious delinquency (90+ days past due) held steady for auto loans and credit cards, but rose for mortgages, HELOCs, and, notably, student loans, reflecting growing financial strain among consumers.
Bloomberg noted:
Transitioning into serious delinquency (90-plus days late) for student loans rose to tie a 10-year-old record for those age 50 and older. Among that cohort, 11.23%, or around one in nine households, is now seriously delinquent on their student loan debt. Americans age 50 and older held $418.5 billion in student loan debt, split among 9.2 million borrowers. The ratios of serious delinquency for younger age groups was lower but still rose sharply. The average age of a delinquent borrower ticked up to 40.4.
The Fed's data shows that the credit hit is substantial for newly delinquent student loan borrowers. Among the 7.5% who had a relatively high credit score of at least 720 before the delinquency, their scores dropped by 177 points on average. Overall, the Fed found that 2.2 million borrowers saw their credit scores drop by at least 100 points.
Data from Bloomberg shows the student debt bubble stood at a record high of $1.63 trillion.
New York Fed economists via Liberty Street Economics published a note with more color about the student loan turmoil unfolding, indicating "more than twenty million federal borrowers were not in repayment and five million federal borrowers had a zero dollar monthly payment," adding, "Among borrowers who were required to make payments, nearly one in four student loan borrowers (23.7 percent) were behind on their student loans in the first quarter of 2025."
The economists noted that seven states have a conditional borrower delinquency rate over 30%: Mississippi (44.6%), Alabama (34.1%), West Virginia (34.0%), Kentucky (33.6%), Oklahoma (33.6%), Arkansas (33.5%), and Louisiana (31.8%). These states are located in the heartland and are primarily Trump states.
The economists offered their take on the grave situation:
After a five-year hiatus, student loan delinquency has returned to the pre-pandemic "normal" with more than 10 percent of balances and roughly six million borrowers either past due or in default. The ramifications of student loan delinquency are severe.
The U.S. Department of Education, in concert with the U.S. Treasury, began collection efforts for defaulted loans in May, which includes the garnishment of wages, tax returns, and Social Security payments.
Additionally, millions of borrowers face steep declines in their credit standing which will increase borrowing costs or seriously limit their access to credit like mortgages and auto loans. It is unclear whether these penalties will spill over into payment difficulties in other credit products, but we will continue to monitor this space in the coming months.
Millennials and GenX feeling the brunt of student debt woes.
Credit score downgrades begin...
More:
What's critical to understand is that delinquent student loan debt continues to pile up quickly, increasingly hitting borrowers' credit reports. This growing wave of defaults could trigger a domino effect on consumer spending, potentially dragging down GDP by as much as $63 billion—a risk we warned about in our note titled The Next Economic Shock: Student Loan Default Wave = $63 Billion GDP Hit ...
. . .
View the full report here:
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Site: LifeNews
Oregon senators on Tuesday voted to approve a bill that will establish August 25 as “Oregon Adoption Day.”
The Oregon Senate approved the bill, HB 2019, in a unanimous vote Tuesday afternoon. Republican Representative Lucetta Elmer, the carrier and presenting sponsor of the bipartisan bill, said the date chosen reflects the day Rep. Elmer herself had been adopted.
“The day this bill recognizes is not just a date on a calendar: It’s my day,” Rep. Elmer said on the House Floor in April. “The day that forever changed my story, gave me a future, and placed me in the arms of a mother who chose me as her own, and ultimately led me here today, talking to you.”
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“I’m delighted to see the Oregon legislature so enthusiastically welcome Rep. Elmer’s bill to honor and celebrate adoption,” Oregon Right to Life Executive Director Lois Anderson said in response to the May 13 vote. “This bill sends a powerful message that every human life is a unique gift, regardless of the circumstances. It’s a message we desperately need here in Oregon, where abortion is tragically legal up to the moment of birth.”
“I want to express my gratitude for Rep. Elmer’s vulnerability in sharing her story and her courage in presenting this important piece of legislation,” Anderson continued. “I look forward to celebrating Oregon Adoption Day this year, and hope that the bipartisan support for HB 2019 sets a precedent for the passage of many life-affirming bills in the future.”
The unanimous vote, which follows a similarly unanimous approval by the state House of Representatives last month, will send the bill to the desk of Democratic Governor Tina Kotek for a signature.
Oregon Right to Life believes in the sanctity of all human life from the moment of conception to natural death. Abortion ends the life of a genetically distinct, growing human being. We oppose abortion at any point of gestation.
The post Oregon Legislature Passes Bill Making August 25th Oregon Adoption Day appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: LifeNews
On Monday, May 12, the City Council of Albany, Texas, heard from citizens wanting to see their city pass a Sanctuary City for the Unborn (SCFTU) ordinance further outlawing abortion. This was the second time the city council heard from a room full of citizens in support of the measure.
Prior to the council meeting last month on April 14, the Mayor and City Council received several documents in support of the proposed Albany SCFTU Ordinance, including: a (1) Key Points Fact Sheet, (2) a Medical Concerns Fact Sheet, (3) letters from Senators and Representatives from across Texas and New Mexico addressing the problem of abortion trafficking and encouraging city and county governments to pass the proposed measure, (4) an opinion from the Texas Attorney General’s Office in support of the City of Lubbock’s SCFTU Ordinance, and (5) a list of cities and counties that had passed similar ordinances across the United States. A total of 74 cities and 10 counties, of which 57 cities and 8 counties are in Texas, have passed Sanctuary for the Unborn ordinances.
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Everyone who spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting, with the exception of one, spoke in favor of the proposed measure. The only person who spoke in opposition to the measure was Albany resident Megaen Birdwell, who shared, “Well, I wasn’t really prepared to speak, but [Mayor] Susan kinda called me, so here I am.” While Birdwell shared that she was not for abortion, she was also not for Albany passing the SCFTU ordinance.
During her public comment, Birdwell made several statements which inaccurately represented the ordinance. For instance, Birdwell stated, “As a community, if we are as Christian-based as we have all just promoted, why would we want to prosecute a woman who has been raped?” However, the ordinance is clear that the mother of the unborn child cannot be prosecuted. The proposed ordinance states, “Under no circumstance may the mother of the unborn child that has been aborted, or the pregnant woman who seeks to abort her unborn child, be subject to prosecution or penalty or civil liability.”
Birdwell also stated, “As far as I can read, in the ordinance there’s no exceptions. I know that tubal pregnancies do and can kill women on a daily basis. Without a DNC the woman can and often does die, along with the child, and that is tragic. So if that woman is put in that situation and goes to a place where she is even medically allowed in the state of Texas to save her own life she will be prosecuted.” In making these claims, Birdwell was mistaken. For starters, the proposed ordinance is clear that the term “abortion” does not include “an act performed with the purpose to… Remove an ectopic pregnancy, the implantation of a fertilized egg or embryo outside of the uterus.” The removal of an ectopic pregnancy, also called a tubal pregnancy, is not considered an abortion in regards to any SCFTU ordinance.
Furthermore, the proposed ordinance does not prevent women from receiving abortions in cases determined to be medical emergencies. The proposed ordinance states, in the second declaration, “abortion at all times and at all stages of pregnancy is an unlawful act, unless the abortion is performed to save the life of the pregnant woman in a medical emergency.” The term “medical emergency” is defined in the ordinance to mean “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that, as certified by a physician, places the woman in danger of death or a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless an abortion is performed.”
Birdwell’s main argument, however, focused on the fact that abortion is already outlawed in Texas. Birdwell asked, “Is Albany in the State of Texas?” Mayor Susan Montgomery responded, “Yes.” Birdwell continued, “We all believe in the State of Texas and our government in Texas to govern us. To show us the way. They have already made this decision . . . It is illegal to have an abortion anywhere in Texas.” Throughout the meeting Mayor Montgomery repeated Birdwell’s statements that Texas had the issue covered. Such a statement appeared to ignore the letter the Mayor had received from Senators and Representatives across the state. The letter stated:
“While it is true that abortion is outlawed in the entire State of Texas, from the point of conception, our work is far from over. Right now, throughout the State of Texas, women are being trafficked across our borders by abortion traffickers funded by abortion trafficking organizations still operating in our state. As a result, these women are being abused and traumatized by abortion across our Texas-New Mexico border and sent back to Texas for our cities and counties to deal with the aftermath taking place in our homes, our schools, our churches, and our hospitals. The Sanctuary for the Unborn ordinances seek to protect these institutions by putting safeguards in place to protect men, women, and their children for years to come.”
In her concluding remarks, Mayor Montgomery stated, “these five individuals are not going to be responsible for making this decision, so therefore, it will not be brought to the council. These individuals are not in a position and it will not be brought to their vote.” While several council members had expressed a desire to vote on the measure, the Mayor claimed that she had sole authority to place items on the agenda for a vote and that she was not going to allow the measure to be voted on.
While City Manager Billy Holson proposed that the City of Albany pass a resolution to put the proposed ordinance on the ballot for voters to decide, the State of Texas does not give the City of Albany the authority to take such an action. This is because Albany is not a home rule city but a general law city. The State of Texas only gives home rule cities with city charters outlining a citizen initiative process, the authority to call for such an election.
Alphabet Soup: Types of Texas Cities, a document produced by Texas Municipal League’s legal department, states, “Citizen referendum and initiative are powers that only home rule cities possess, and then only if the city’s charter provides for it. Thus, a city council of a home rule city would have the authority to call for a referendum on an issue, including an ordinance, if the city’s charter allowed for such an election . . . For general law cities, the answer is different because the calling of an election is something that must be authorized by a particular state statute . . . because there is no state statute or Election Code provision that authorizes general law city councils to submit general ordinances to the electorate through a referendum election, a general law city may not do so.”
Despite the Mayor’s opposition to the measure, residents of Albany are optimistic for the ordinance’s passage in the future.
LifeNews Note: Mark Lee Dickson lives in Texas and is the founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn Initiative.
The post Residents of Albany, Texas Urge Leaders to Make Their City a “Sanctuary for the Unborn” appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeThe Deep State Goes ViralTyler Durden Tue, 05/13/2025 - 18:25
The following is Jeffrey Tucker’s Foreword introduction to Debbie Lerman’s new book, The Deep State Goes Viral: Pandemic Planning and the Covid Coup.
It was about a month into lockdowns, April 2020, and my phone rang with an unusual number. I picked up and the caller identified himself as Rajeev Venkayya, a name I knew from my writings on the 2005 pandemic scare. Now the head of a vaccine company, he once served as Special Assistant to the President for Biodefense, and claimed to be the inventor of pandemic planning.
Venkayya was a primary author of “A National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza” as issued by the George W. Bush administration in 2005.
It was the first document that mapped out a nascent version of lockdowns, designed for global deployment.
“A flu pandemic would have global consequences,” said Bush, “so no nation can afford to ignore this threat, and every nation has responsibilities to detect and stop its spread.”
It was always a strange document because it stood in constant contradiction to public health orthodoxies dating back decades and even a century.
With it, there were two alternative paths in place in the event of a new virus: the normal path that everyone is taught in medical school (therapeutics for the sick, caution with social disturbances, calm and reason, quarantines only in extreme cases) and a biosecurity path that invoked totalitarian measures.
Those two paths existed side-by-side for a decade and a half before the lockdowns.
Now I found myself speaking with the guy who claims credit for having mapped out the biosecurity approach, which contradicted all public health wisdom and experience. His plan was finally being implemented. Not too many voices dissented, partially due to fear but also due to censorship, which was already very tight. He told me to stop objecting to the lockdowns because they have everything under control.
I asked a basic question. Let’s say we all hunker down, hide under the sofa, eschew physical meetings with family and friends, stop all gatherings of all kinds, and keep businesses and schools closed. What, I asked, happens to the virus itself? Does it jump in a hole in the ground or head to Mars for fear of another press conference by Andrew Cuomo or Anthony Fauci?
After some fallacy-filled banter about the R-naught, I could tell he was getting exasperated with me, and finally, with some hesitation, he told me the plan. There would be a vaccine. I balked and said that no vaccine can sterilize against a fast-mutating respiratory pathogen with a zoonotic reservoir. Even if such a thing did appear, it would take 10 years of trials and testing before it was safe to release to the general population. Are we going to stay locked down for a decade?
“It will come much faster,” he said. “You watch. You will be surprised.”
Hanging up, I recall dismissing him as a crank, a has-been with nothing better to do than call up poor writers and bug them.
I had entirely misread the meaning, simply because I was not prepared to understand the sheer depth and vastness of the operation now in play. All that was taking place struck me as obviously destructive and fundamentally flawed but rooted in a kind of intellectual error: a loss of understanding of virology basics.
Around the same time, the New York Times posted without fanfare a new document called PanCAP-A: Pandemic Crisis Action Plan – Adapted. It was Venkayya’s plan, only intensified, as released on March 13, 2020, three days before President Trump’s press conference announcing the lockdowns. I read through it, reposted it, but had no idea what it meant. I hoped someone could come along to explain it, interpret it, and tease out its implications, all in the interest of getting to the bottom of the who, what, and why of this fundamental attack on civilization itself.
That person did come along. She is Debbie Lerman, intrepid author of this wonderful book that so beautifully presents the best thoughts on all the questions that had eluded me. She took the document apart and discovered a fundamental truth therein. The rule-making authority for the pandemic response was not vested in public-health agencies but the National Security Council.
This was stated as plain as day in the document; I had somehow missed that. This was not public health. It was national security. The antidote under development with the label vaccine was really a military countermeasure. In other words, this was Venkayya’s plan times ten, and the idea was precisely to override all tradition and public health concerns and replace them with national security measures.
Realizing this fundamentally changes the structure of the story of the last five years. This is not a story of a world that mysteriously forgot about natural immunity and made some intellectual error in thinking that governments could shut down economies and turn them back on again, scaring a pathogen back to where it came from. What we experienced in a very real sense was quasi-martial law, a deep-state coup not only on a national but on an international level.
These are terrifying thoughts and hardly anyone is prepared to discuss them, which is why Lerman’s book is so crucial. In terms of public debate about what happened to us, we are barely at the beginning. There is now a willingness to admit that the lockdowns did more overall harm than good. Even the legacy media has started venturing out to grant permission for such thoughts. But the role of the pharmaceuticals in driving the policy and the role of the national-security state in backing this grand industrial project is still taboo.
In 21st-century journalism and advocacy designed to influence the public mind, the overwhelming concern of all writers and institutions is professional survival. That means fitting into an approved ethos or paradigm regardless of the facts. This is why Lerman’s thesis is not debated; it is hardly spoken of at all in polite society. That said, my work at Brownstone Institute has put me in close contact with many thinkers in high places. This much I can say: what Lerman has written in this book is not disputed but admitted in private.
Strange isn’t it? We saw during the Covid years how professional aspiration incentivized silence even in the face of egregious violations of human rights, including mandatory school closures that robbed children of education, followed by face-covering requirements and forced injections for the whole population. The near-silence was deafening even if anyone with a brain and a conscience knew that all of this was wrong. Not even the excuse that “We didn’t know” works anymore because we did know.
This same dynamic of social and cultural control is fully in operation now that we are through that stage and onto another one, which is precisely why Lerman’s findings have not yet made their way to polite society, to say nothing of mainstream media. Will we get there? Maybe. This book can help; at least it is now available for everyone brave enough to confront the facts. You will find herein the most well-documented and coherent presentation of answers to the core questions (what, how, why) that all of us have been asking since this hell was first visited upon us.
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Site: ChurchPOP
Controversy is nothing new when it comes to the Fatima apparitions.
But did you know someone once hijacked a plane and demanded that Pope John Paul II release the Third Secret?
Yes, that really happened.
First, a bit of background on the Third Secret of Fatima:
Lúcia dos Santos was one of three shepherd children the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. In a 1941 memoir, she revealed that Mary gave them three secrets.
Though she published the first two secrets, she chose not to disclose the third secret. Instead, she wrote it down and gave it to her local bishop. She asked him to deliver it to the pope and ensure the secret was revealed publicly by 1960.
The secret was delivered to Rome in 1957, but in 1960, the Vatican decided not to release it, saying it was “most probable the Secret would remain, forever, under absolute seal.”
The Vatican finally released the Third Secret in the year 2000 (though some claim they only released part of it, with the Vatican insisting they released the full text). But in the intervening 40 years, the secret was a constant source of controversy.
However, one can probably safely say the controversy reached its peak in 1981.
Laurence James Downey, a 55-year-old Australian, was on a flight from Dublin to London with 113 passengers when he went to the lavatory and doused himself with gasoline he had smuggled onboard. He then threatened the passengers with what he claimed were vials of cyanide gas and then stormed the cockpit.
He ordered the pilots to change course to France, where he wanted them to refuel and continue to Tehran, Iran. While on the ground in France, he had one of the pilots throw a nine-page statement from the cockpit window.
Now, with more than a hundred hostages on board, what was his demand? That Pope John Paul II release the Third Secret of Fatima.
He had even titled his statement “The Third Secret of Fatima.” Calling it “the greatest secret of all time,” he hoped that his hostage situation, amplified by the press, would successfully pressure the pontiff to release the secret.
Of course, Pope John Paul II didn’t comply (it’s not clear he was even notified before the situation was resolved). Before the plane took off again, French police subdued Downey without any harm to the hostages.
In his statement, Downey, who was the father of five children, also explained that he had been a Trappist monk in the 1950s but was expelled after punching his superior in the face. After that, he had worked as a tour guide at a Fatima shrine in Portugal.
He served 5 years in prison for the incident, after which he said he was sorry for his actions, but remained adamant that the Vatican release the secret.
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Site: ChurchPOP
Controversy is nothing new when it comes to the Fatima apparitions.
But did you know someone once hijacked a plane and demanded that Pope John Paul II release the Third Secret?
Yes, that really happened.
First, a bit of background on the Third Secret of Fatima:
Lúcia dos Santos was one of three shepherd children the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. In a 1941 memoir, she revealed that Mary gave them three secrets.
Though she published the first two secrets, she chose not to disclose the third secret. Instead, she wrote it down and gave it to her local bishop. She asked him to deliver it to the pope and ensure the secret was revealed publicly by 1960.
The secret was delivered to Rome in 1957, but in 1960, the Vatican decided not to release it, saying it was “most probable the Secret would remain, forever, under absolute seal.”
The Vatican finally released the Third Secret in the year 2000 (though some claim they only released part of it, with the Vatican insisting they released the full text). But in the intervening 40 years, the secret was a constant source of controversy.
However, one can probably safely say the controversy reached its peak in 1981.
Laurence James Downey, a 55-year-old Australian, was on a flight from Dublin to London with 113 passengers when he went to the lavatory and doused himself with gasoline he had smuggled onboard. He then threatened the passengers with what he claimed were vials of cyanide gas and then stormed the cockpit.
He ordered the pilots to change course to France, where he wanted them to refuel and continue to Tehran, Iran. While on the ground in France, he had one of the pilots throw a nine-page statement from the cockpit window.
Now, with more than a hundred hostages on board, what was his demand? That Pope John Paul II release the Third Secret of Fatima.
He had even titled his statement “The Third Secret of Fatima.” Calling it “the greatest secret of all time,” he hoped that his hostage situation, amplified by the press, would successfully pressure the pontiff to release the secret.
Of course, Pope John Paul II didn’t comply (it’s not clear he was even notified before the situation was resolved). Before the plane took off again, French police subdued Downey without any harm to the hostages.
In his statement, Downey, who was the father of five children, also explained that he had been a Trappist monk in the 1950s but was expelled after punching his superior in the face. After that, he had worked as a tour guide at a Fatima shrine in Portugal.
He served 5 years in prison for the incident, after which he said he was sorry for his actions, but remained adamant that the Vatican release the secret.
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Site: Henrymakow.com
Please send links and comments to hmakow@gmail.comA horse will sometimes roll on its back to remove the scent of its rider.Similarly Donald is trying to dispel rumors he is a Chabad member dedicated to genocide of goyim using contrived world war are a pretext. He is pretending to distance himself from his Chabad handler Satanyahu.Russ Winter--"There are also reports that Trump is not taking the calls of the (((donors))). His Middle East state visits will not include Israel.In typical corrupto fashion Trump accepts a $400 million flying palace from the royal family of Qatar.Starvation may be in play, and will definitely reflect negatively on the US. This may be finally driving the distancing. Gaza's Palestinians face growing hunger as supplies run out and charity kitchens shut down under Israel's ongoing blockade."--Over 550 retired senior Israeli security officials write to Trump urging him not to listen to Netanyahu on the war in Gaza--While pretending to rein in Satanyahu, Trump is delivering more sophisticated arms to IsraelTrump's delivery of advanced arms to Israel without scrutinyhttps://www.tehrantimes.com/news/512930/Trump-s-delivery-of-advanced-arms-to-Israel-without-scrutinyBuilding on his administration's close ties with Israel, Trump has reversed many of the Biden-era restrictions on arms transfers and aid, accelerating the flow of advanced weaponry and munitions to bolster Israel's military capabilities amid the regime's genocidal acts in Gaza. This renewed support extends beyond military assistance, encompassing robust diplomatic backing at the United Nations and strategic cooperation aimed at maintaining Israel's military edge in the region.In March 2025, the Trump administration used emergency authorities to accelerate approximately $4 billion in military assistance to Israel, avoiding the standard congressional notification period and signaling a clear break from the Biden administration failures to manage arms transfers. The $4 billion in assistance was part of a broader pattern in which Trump had authorized nearly $12 billion in Foreign Military Sales to Israel since taking office, indicating a significant commitment to protect and strengthen Israel's military.---
Communism and Zionism are two sides of the same Masonic Jewish Left-Right coinThe genocide continues.Satanyahu says the decision has been made to complete the genocide--A horrific massacre in the center of Gaza City: Israeli airstrikes targeted several restaurants...--How Can Any Still Support Trojan Trump?
Dark abyss: How Israeli settler society became a sanctuary for rapists, pedophiles"A recent incident of incest involving Israel's minister of illegal settlements, Orit Strook, shocked the world. Strook, a member of the far-right Jewish Power Party and a staunch supporter of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, was accused by her daughter, Shoshana Strook, of incest.Shoshana has filed a police complaint in Italy, claiming sexual assault by her parents and a brother."Hi, I wanted to share something after a long time of carrying it with me. My name is Shoshana Strook, and I was sexually abused as a child by both of my parents.-Michael Snyder - The Truth About The "Trade Deal" With ChinaFirst of all, we don't actually have a "trade deal" with China. What we have is a 90 day "cooling off period" during which we could potentially negotiate a "trade deal" with China.According to Miller, "we have 50 percent tariffs on China, they have 10 percent on us".He got to that figure by adding the 10 percent baseline tariff rate plus the 20 percent fentanyl tariff rate plus the 20 percent tariff rate from Trump's first term.And this is actually confirmed on the official White House website. It states that the only tariffs that are being removed by the United States are the "additional tariffs" that were imposed on April 8th and April 9th...According to CBS News, even after accounting for lower tariffs on Chinese goods "Americans today face an overall effective tariff rate of 17.8%"...Even with the contours of a U.S-China deal potentially in place, Americans today face an overall effective tariff rate of 17.8%, the highest since 1934, according to the nonpartisan Yale Budget Lab.The bottom line is that we should definitely be glad that the U.S. and China have dramatically reduced tariff rates for a period of 90 days.If this had not happened, we would have soon been facing empty shelves and shortages. But a 50 percent tariff rate on Chinese imports is still really going to sting."--
(Poilieve didn't nail Carnage because they belong to the same satanic cult)The election was a battle for Canada's soul. Canada's Conservatives once again betrayed Canadians by appealing to their material interests instead of their social values..The Conservative Party's Mistakes During the Election by Real Women of CanadaThe Conservative Party has been successful in expanding its reach by gaining the support of the working-class and new immigrants (east Asian, Chinese and Middle East newcomers). As a result, Conservatives gained seats in the former NDP strongholds of Hamilton, Windsor and Durham Region. Also, millennials appear to have abandoned the Liberals and are shifting their support to the Conservatives.Unfortunately, this shift was not sufficient for the Conservatives to win the election. This is due to the fact that the party made some serious mistakes during the election. These included: Poilievre's failure to vigorously address Donald Trump; his failure to engage with social media outlets such as Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan, and his failure to re-engage with Jordan Peterson, to get his message out to a much wider audience than what legacy media can reach; his failure to object to transgenders destroying women's sports; his failure to clearly stand for parents' rights with respect to their children's education, health and safely; his failure to defend freedom of speech and a truly free press; his adamant support for abortion; and his failure to object to the horrors of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). Even the legacy media was raising concerns about MAiD. Poilievre falsely referred to abortion and MAiD as "rights", which is totally not the case in Canadian law.Prior to the election, Poilievre boldly spoke out against illegal drugs, the presence of uncontrolled crime, the insanity of the carbon tax and the demands for renewable energy (wind and solar). During the election, however, Poilievre appeared less outspoken, less forthright and more timid. An explanation for this change may have been caused by the poor direction from his Red Tory advisors. The latter included the National Campaign Manager, Jenni Byrne, a pro-abortion, feminist Red Tory. Ms Byrne is a voice from a past era, who has long overstayed her "best before" date. She and other Red Tory advisors caused Poilievre to follow a safe Red Tory agenda which had been promoted by previous Conservative leaders such as Erin O'Toole. That is, Poilievre persistently talked about the safe issues of housing, inflation, the carbon tax, but did not support prolife issues.The Conservatives have lost yet another election because they refused to move forward with the changing times. Why has the Conservative party failed to have a genuine Conservative as leader to confidently and manfully stride forward defending life, family and faith, without weak knees, ignoring the Red Tory's claims that these issues are politically toxic? The claim that "social conservative" issues are "toxic" is completely incorrect as evidenced by the election of 46 prolife MPs. The Conservative party continues to be an enfeebled pink reflection of the Liberal party. It did not help the party when Ontario Premier, Doug Ford, an uncertain Conservative, continually criticized Poilievre."
See also their analysis of Jagmeat Singh's Betrayal-1,000 Troops Who Identify As Transgender Being Discharged: Pentagon-
Under feminism's watch, women went from being wives and mothers to broadcasting porn shows from their bedrooms.Women have been dehumanized and turned into a sexual commodity. Communism always sought to turn women into a public utility.This is Satanism. Their hatred of marriage and the nuclear family is pathological.Women who bought into feminism are basically roadkill.-ARREST Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates.A staggering 3328%increase in Child Mortality inAlberta, Canada without explanation. Children are dying en masse."We couldn't believe it...it's actually increased by 3328%..."-
"No, that is not my niece. All my sister's children were martyred. This is the daughter of my brother who was martyred in Gaza with his wife, and this one is left alone without a father or mother, and I am responsible for her now.There are reports that the crossings will open in a few days for those who want to escape and leave Gaza. My sister and I want to leave here and escape the killing and destruction by any means and at any cost. However, we are required to pay a coordination fee of $8,000 for each person who wants to leave. I ask you, with full confidence and hope, that you will help me pay this cost so that my sister, my little niece, and I can escape death. Please spread the word and help me by donating."-Alberta population boomGo West: Alberta just passed the 5 million mark when it comes to the number of people living in the province according to Statistics Canada's live population clock. This real-time model shows that Alberta crossed the milestone last night, adding 1 million residents in just over a decade according to Rob Roach of ATB Economics. "International migration contributed the most over this period, but Alberta's faster population growth relative to other provinces was driven by interprovincial gains and natural increase (births minus deaths)," wrote Roach. While the population in all of Canada is increasing because of international migration, Alberta has benefitted disproportionately from people leaving another province to move to Alberta. "It's the most volatile source of growth, but interprovincial migration is expected to be the second largest contributor to population increase," said Roach. Alberta could soon over take British Columbia as the third most populous province.--AUSTRALIAN-JEWISH HISTORIAN GIDEON POLYA GAUGES THE DEATH-TOLL OF GAZA HOLOCAUST: 680,000"Polya bases his estimate on LANCET data showing 136,000 violent deaths, but 4 times that (544,000) nonviolent deaths. UN studies show that the factor between violent and nonviolent deaths varies from war to war. In Iraq it was about 2, in Afghanistan it was about 10, and in the Gaza Holocaust it is about 4.Hence, Polya estimates that the Japhetic Khazars have genocided a TOTAL of 680,000 Arabic Semites so far.But other estimate that the death-toll of the Gaza Holocaust is AT LEAST 1 million. Polya cites polling data by the Antichrist State of Israel that show 95 percent of Israelis AGREE with this genocide of Arabic Semites in the Gaza Holocaust, but 5 percent are unhappy with it but "still agree with attacking Gaza". That is proof-positive that the Antichrist State of Israel is Anti-Semitic, racist, psychopathic, and just plain evil."--
Luna Introduces Bill to Repeal Patriot Act, Restore Privacy"Announcing the bill, Luna mentioned that the Patriot Act has over the last decades been used to interfere in elections, violate innocent Americans' privacy by spying on them, and even "settle personal scores." -
Site: Zero HedgeThe Manipulators' PlaybookTyler Durden Tue, 05/13/2025 - 17:40
Authored by Gigi Foster via The Brownstone Institute,
[Here is the text of my TedX talk in Australia, October 2024, which the sponsor refused to post]
Every four years, when I was growing up in the US, my mother and father would go to the polling booths and cancel each other out. They’d come home and say as much, with a smirk. Then they’d clink their glasses and have “cocktail hour” together, and enjoy the end of another day of married life in each other’s arms.
Mom was a lifelong Democrat and Dad a lifelong Republican. Back then, people firmly positioned on opposing sides of politics could talk to one another – and even, apparently, marry each other and produce kids! Do you think that is common today? The “cancellation” my parents joked about 30 years ago has, today, become no laughing matter.
Diversity is one of humanity’s greatest gifts. Despite outward appearances, the person right next to us typically does NOT share exactly the same beliefs, perspectives, or assumptions that we hold. Look at that person now, being aware of this reality. Shock horror! You are not sitting next to a mental clone of yourself! Well, thank god for that, some of you may be saying. How boring would the world be if no one we met could teach us anything new?
I have grown all my life, as have you, by being exposed to new and different ideas, methods, and mindsets. At a societal level, all growth in quality of life ultimately comes from innovation. Innovation in turn can be seen as the manifested potential of diversity: the discovery of an idea or an approach that’s different from what is circulating in the mainstream. This is one of the crowning lessons of my home discipline of economics.
Yet individual and societal access to the potent and progressive power of diversity of thought was acutely damaged during the Covid era.
This damage was done by the mainstreaming – by politicians, bureaucracies, large companies, the media, whole professions, academic disciplines, and even families – of a single accepted view on many Covid topics. On the subjects of lockdowns, masks, and vaccines, it was made very clear by those in authority that one way was correct, and alternatives were wrong. Not only were other views wrong, but anyone who challenged the mainstream view on lockdowns, masking, or especially mass Covid vaccination was labelled as a danger to public health, a tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorist wedded to wacko, fringe ideas. Probably a prepper. Or a cooker. Maybe a “religious nut-job.” Almost surely a “far-right” adherent, and probably racist to boot.
In short, there was denigration, gaslighting, and suppression of dissenting (that is, diverse) voices on those topics, with this suppression of a core societal strength done in the name of preserving the health and strength of society.
That sounds ironic, but actually it’s a well-worn playbook from history.
This is the same trick that has been pulled in other historical tragedies, from the Cultural Revolution to the rise of the Third Reich.
In the case of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese citizens were urged by those in authority to “smash the four olds” – referring to old habits, old customs, old culture, and old ideas – and instead to “cultivate the four new,” which allegedly would rejuvenate the great nation of China by accelerating the “proletariat revolution” after the tragic failure of the Great Leap Forward that left tens of millions dead or starving. The Great Leap itself was the ideological progeny of the Chinese authorities, rather than a grassroots movement – and naturally those authorities never directly admitted its failure.
During the Cultural Revolution, Chinese citizens – weakened by the tragedy of the Great Leap – dutifully sacrificed what they and their ancestors had previously been taught for centuries to revere. Ancient temples were destroyed, shopkeepers and others associated with “old ideas” like capitalism were denigrated and abused, and even elderly people were assaulted and killed, just for being old.
Such actions ran strongly against traditional Chinese values, so performing such actions and aiding and abetting those who performed them was a significant sacrifice in terms of morality, and even personal identity, for many Chinese people. Individuals who did not conform with the mainstream line were socially excluded or punished in other ways. Of course, the result of the Cultural Revolution was not a successful, nationally rejuvenating revolution, but even more death and destruction.
In the case of the rise of the Third Reich, those in authority preyed upon the economic and moral suffering of the German people after the Great War. As National Socialism rose to prominence in Germany, Jewish people, those with sympathies for communism, and others were demonised as “enemies of the state.”
The sacrifice eventually asked of the suffering German citizens, allegedly in order to strengthen the “fatherland” that they loved, was essentially to dehumanise other human beings. The Biblical phrase “He who is not with us is against us” was used to implicitly encourage the quashing of dissident views and those who held them.
This nudge to see dissenters as dangerous was coupled with heavy censorship, such as book-burning and criminalising the act of listening to foreign radio stations, and the creation and promotion of state propaganda that mainstreamed the accepted viewpoint, including through films like Triumph of the Will. Of course, the result of the Nazis’ reign was not a strengthening of Germany but rather total defeat, moral bankruptcy, and international humiliation.
In both of these tragic historical cases and in the more recent tragic case of Covid policy, the pattern is this: People in authority assert that the many sacrifices they are proposing are necessary to preserve and enhance the nation, simultaneously quashing any alternative views. Those who object are denigrated and despised as not caring about the nation, or about whoever or whatever is supposedly receiving the benefits of the sacrifice.
Think about how this pattern played out in the Covid era.
Do you remember calling anyone a ‘granny killer’ in the Covid era – or being called one yourself? I do. From March 2020 onwards, I advocated against lockdowns, seeing how costly they were to health and wealth, and seeing no scientific evidence of their medical efficacy.
But for years, I was insulted and denigrated in mainstream circles by those following the standard Covid policy lines. I was called a granny-killer and a “neoliberal Trumpkinaut death cult warrior.” I received death threats and, worse, people made memes about me. (I don’t really know what this one means, but the Harry Potter fans in the audience might.)
I was defamed on Twitter even though I’ve never had a Twitter account. I was smeared as being anti-health and anti-“saving lives,” and these smears were used in attempts to get me to shut up about the costs of the lockdown policy that was being promoted in the mainstream as the ONLY way to preserve health and save lives.
Well, I didn’t shut up, and four years on after the start of the madness, hundreds of books, academic papers, and tragic personal stories now confirm I was right: the Covid lockdowns didn’t save lives, but were instead a massive human sacrifice induced by fear, politics, and money. The lockdowns did not lead to victory over Covid, but rather to a weakened nation with more debt, less societal strength and cohesion, and less health than before Covid. I’ve written here in detail about the massive damage inflicted on Australia, and particularly Australian youth, by Covid lockdowns.
The well-worn playbook is as follows: when populations are weakened, such as by severe economic distress or a great fear of some external threat, the people in charge advocate for policies that happen to be good for them politically and turn out also to be destructive to society (something often admitted in history books only much later), while wrapping their policies at the time in the “red threads” of altruism, pro-sociality, strengthening the nation, or preserving health, as a sales pitch to the weakened population. The implicit message is “If you really love something, you should be willing to sacrifice for it, and this is the sacrifice that is now required.”
Why does this work? For two reasons: fear and love.
First, it works because fear makes us forget about everything except the feared object, weakening our ability to reason and think for ourselves, making us easy targets.
Second, it works because our love for things outside ourselves – including our country, our parents, our children, and our gods – is a powerful motivator of our thoughts and our actions, and so we are vulnerable to being manipulated by it.
Understanding love is crucial in explaining human behaviour, which is why I co-wrote a book about it over a decade ago. Love is the most important thing in the world: it is the building block of societies, and the ultimate source of joy and meaning. If we are not careful, we can be manipulated by our loves when we are fooled into believing that some sacrifice is needed in order to preserve the welfare of something we love. If we can be convinced of that, then we will often willingly make the sacrifice.
People’s fear, combined with their pro-social connection to one another and to their society, was used during the Covid era as it has been at so many other points in history to manipulate them into supporting policies that actually, in the long run, harmed that society. When told that we had to lock down, mask up, pull our children out of schools, and mass-vaccinate against Covid, many Australians willingly went along with these enormous sacrifices, because of their fear and their love.
That is a testament not only to the power of fear, but to how much we love each other. Yet tragically, our loves – including our children, our parents, and the nation of Australia – were greatly harmed by these policies. If you’re interested in exploring this topic further, I have co-authored this book with Paul Frijters and Michael Baker, The Great Covid Panic: What happened, why, and what to do next, published in 2021.
My loving advice to you today – the one thing I want you to take away from my talk – is to be alert to those in authority who would manipulate you by exploiting your loves. This manipulation usually starts with an implicit request that you sacrifice some moral principle, some right, or some assumption that you previously took for granted as patently obvious, with that sacrifice supposedly going to benefit something that is universally loved.
That universally-loved beneficiary might be planet Earth – in the case of green energy subsidies, the “net-zero transition,” and the sacrifice of ignoring the fact that cheap, dense fuels are critical to human thriving and a key ingredient in lifting people out of poverty. It might be people’s desire to find the truth – in the case of internet censorship and denigrating some views as “misinformation” or “disinformation,” thereby ironically sacrificing the right to decide for yourself what is true. It might even be women as a group – in the case of the #metoo movement and the sacrifice of denigrating half the human race as dangerous sex predators whose “toxic masculinity” threatens women.
In all such cases, ask yourself: Is the proposed sacrifice truly going to help the alleged and universally loved recipient? Would people in power directly benefit in some way from this sacrifice, politically or monetarily? Am I being manipulated by my loves into being just another nodding head, helping those in positions of authority to weaken my society?
The most powerful antidote to this clear and present danger is the seeking out, preservation, and uplifting of diversity of thought. Allowing dissent holds the power to reveal false promises for what they are.
How can you personally promote diversity of thought, and nurture an environment in which open dissent is possible?
You can promote and celebrate forums where people are allowed and encouraged to think, discuss, critically analyse, and ponder aloud together, respectfully, confidently, and joyfully, becoming closer to one another as they do, sharing their common humanity without the crutch of also sharing beliefs and perspectives.
You can support alternative schools of thought, like this one called Academia Libera Mentis that has just started up in Belgium.
You can be part of Big Dialogues about contemporary social, economic, and political issues, dialogues that help us rebuild a society capable of discussing meaningful ideas with one another, across aisles of perspective, belief, experience, and mindset.
You can join a grassroots movement focused on restoring the respect that used to be embedded in Western culture for individual freedom – including expressive and academic freedom – and the scientific method, using which people have horse-raced competing ideas since the Enlightenment.
Initiatives like these help restore our societies by honouring our deep and powerful diversity. They help to fend off and thwart the constant manipulation attempts of elites hungry for power, while building respect and nurturing progress for all. They help us build robust red threads – bonds of love for one another based not on conformity with “right-think,” but on the joy of discovering who others truly are, and expanding ourselves by contemplating and revelling in their differentness.
What will always win in the end is love, joy, confidence, tolerance, and an unshakeable belief in the infinite potential of every unique individual in the human species. But these precious things will only win in our lifetimes if we live and breathe that love, joy, confidence, tolerance, and belief, while purposefully rejecting the attempts of the powerful to manipulate and divide us by destroying our diversity. This is what eternal vigilance looks like.
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Site: Catholic ConclaveGerman Bishop Strotmann knows Pope Leo XIV from his time in Peru and considers him neither conservative nor progressive but pragmatic The former Secretary General of the Peruvian Bishops' Conference, Bishop Norbert Strotmann (78), who comes from Germany, is tempering expectations of reform from the new Pope Leo XIV. Both know each other from Leo's time in Peru, including as Bishop of Catholic Conclavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06227218883606585321noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Zero HedgeTaiwan's Legislature Passes Bill Easing Restrictions On Nuclear PowerTyler Durden Tue, 05/13/2025 - 17:20
It looks like nuclear power is once again becoming popular not just in the U.S., but globally.
This morning it was reported that Taiwan’s legislature passed a bill Tuesday easing restrictions on nuclear power, signaling a policy shift driven by rising energy needs and growing geopolitical tensions, according to Bloomberg.
The amended law allows nuclear plants—previously capped at 40 years of operation—to renew licenses for up to 20 years at a time, either before or after expiration, according to Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu.
Energy security has become critical for Taiwan as it struggles to reduce reliance on nuclear power while meeting the soaring demands of its chip industry and managing dependence on imported fossil fuels amid escalating pressure from Beijing.
Bloomberg writes that just days before Taiwan’s last reactor is set to shut down on May 17, lawmakers passed a bill signaling a potential return to nuclear power. While the closure will proceed, the move reflects a global shift back to nuclear energy as a low-carbon solution to rising demand.
Premier Cho Jung-tai said his cabinet wouldn’t oppose restarting decommissioned reactors if the law passes, but safety reviews—estimated at 3.5 years by state-owned Taipower—would delay any restarts.
Reviving nuclear power could reduce Taiwan’s dependence on imported liquefied natural gas, which is vulnerable to disruption amid rising tensions with Beijing, and help meet a projected 13% increase in power demand by 2030, driven by AI growth.
As we have continued to report, accelerating power demand growth from AI data centers has sparked a nuclear power revival in the US.
For those who missed it, in our note "The Next AI Trade" from April 2024, more than one year ago, we outlined various investment opportunities for powering up America, most of which have dramatically outperformed the market since then.
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Site: Zero HedgeDOGE's Second ActTyler Durden Tue, 05/13/2025 - 17:00
Via OpenTheBooks.substack.com,
As Elon Musk steps back, Congress, agencies and We the People need to step up...
When Elon Musk announced on a less-than-stellar Tesla earnings call that “starting probably next month, May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,” DOGE critics rejoiced.
Yet, as Teddy Roosevelt so aptly said, it’s not the critic who counts, but the person who enters the arena.
President Trump praised Musk at his cabinet meeting marking his first 100 days and said Musk “opened up a lot of eyes as to what could be done.”
Trump signaled DOGE’s first act was coming to a close, and its second act was about to begin.
At Open the Books, we’re committed to transparency and helping taxpayers understand what DOGE has uncovered. Taxpayers deserve to know what cuts have been made and what remains to be done. Critics have raised concerns in both good and bad faith, in my view, and we’re committed to a reality-based conversation about the data and results.
I’m appreciative of Musk’s effort because I know first-hand what it’s like to be demonized for trying to downsize the modern administrative state. As the long-time Communications Director and co-author for the late U.S. Representative and Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), I spent nearly 15 years in constant combat with people who treated commonsense restraint as a crime against humanity.
Coburn, a practicing physician and citizen legislator, believed in radical concepts like reading bills before you voted on them and paying for bills that spent new money by spending less money elsewhere. He believed the Senate, the world’s greatest deliberative body, needed more debate not less. Instead of bending the knee to Senate norms like passing “non-controversial” bills by unanimous consent, Coburn would hold bills until savings could be discovered or at least debated. Some of his colleagues derided his desire for open debate as “obstructionism” and called him “Dr. No.”
In 2008, Coburn’s commitment to deliberation and spending offsets pushed then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) over the edge. Reid bundled 36 of Coburn’s “holds” on bills ranging from the “Captive Primate Safety Act” to the “Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act” into one package called the “Advancing America’s Priorities Act.”
During one demagogic tirade, Reid declared, “You go home and tell people in a wheelchair you voted against moving forward on something that could get them out of their wheelchair.”
In Reid’s view, wanting basic research to be fiscally sustainable and financed by cuts to lower-priority items meant you were pro-paralysis. Today, it’s DOGE’s turn to endure the ire and moral condescension of scorned spenders. If DOGE’s critics in Congress hated government waste half as much as they hate Musk our debt and deficits would have been erased long ago.
To his credit, Musk often said DOGE would make mistakes but would try to correct them as quickly as possible. His admission of fallibility was refreshing and rare in politics and could have been taken as an invitation for collaboration. Sadly, partisan tribalism blinded Musk’s critics from seeing openings to find common ground.
DOGE’s second act can succeed by focusing on two key priorities that build on lessons learned in a rapid-fire first hundred days.
First, enact real-time transparency by creating “America’s Checkbook.” The most important achievement of DOGE’s first act was arguably gaining access to the Treasury Payment system, which is the administrative state’s Holy of Holies. Opening the payment temple to all taxpayers and letting them see federal expenditures in real-time would lock in a permanent and revolutionary win. Doing so would also remove much of the uncertainty on which DOGE’s critics rely – and stoke. And why not? Ordinary Americans have the same right to see America’s bank account as they do their own. After all, it’s their money.
Our founders understood that transparency was a powerful, relentless, and subversive force for freedom. Transparency cuts through government like water cuts through stone. When its steady flow finds cracks, it can wash away mighty walls of opposition. That’s why they wrote transparency into Article I of the Constitution. Their language demanding a “regular accounting” of expenditures precedes the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment and freedom of speech. They understood that in the public square transparency is like oxygen. We can’t speak if we can’t breathe.
If Madison and our framers had access to today’s technology, they would demand real-time transparency. Fortunately, the framework for real-time transparency already exists. In 2006, Coburn teamed up with an ambitious young Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama to put all federal spending online for the first time. Our dream was to create an ecosystem of organizations and citizen activists who would crowdsource oversight and put permanent downward pressure on spending.
The Coburn-Obama bill created USASpending.gov, a platform to search past federal spending. It helped enable organizations like Open the Books, which I run, to exist along with thousands of other individual accounts on platforms like X. DOGE should urgently close the gap, and lag time, between what they can see on the Treasury Payment System and what is visible to everyone else on USASpending.gov. Leaving this gap open asks taxpayers to take DOGE’s word for it. “Trust us, we’re with the government” isn’t a winning strategy whether you’re wearing a blue jersey or red jersey. In DOGE’s defense, the lack of clarity in accounting isn’t easy to correct if it’s at the source of spending. Taxpayers and Congress need much greater clarity and insight into the nature of the problem that only transparency can correct.
DOGE’s second act also should feature much closer collaboration with legislators who have the authority to enact smart and durable cuts. We already have a permanent standing deficit reduction commission. It’s called Congress. What DOGE can do is deliver its findings to Congress, and the American people, with the same level of clarity, transparency and rigor as a prosecutor would make a case in court. Then, members of Congress will have the support they need to achieve durable savings with the force of law. Cancelling contracts and Executive Orders are reversible actions. Congress has the power to make DOGE’s actions and recommendations much harder to reverse.
DOGE has a window of opportunity to work with allies in Congress who are willing to do the work necessary to achieve savings. I recently testified before the House DOGE Subcommittee during their hearing on the federal real estate portfolio. My testimony focused on a “broken windows” argument that spending less lavishly to decorate and redecorate the administrative state’s mostly vacant buildings can usher in greater savings. When DOGE, Congress and outside groups focus on commonsense savings targets the wisdom of crowds – democracy – can prevail over the bureaucracy.
Real spending cuts are achievable in Washington. Between 2011-2013, Coburn and Tea Party-era members helped achieve the first two-year spending reductions since the end of the Korean War and saved taxpayers $150 billion; we enacted a ban on earmarks that saved about $140 billion; and we leveraged debt limit negotiations to force the Government Accountability Office to publish an annual report on duplicative programs. GAO claims those have resulted in $667 billion in savings. That comes to $957 billion saved. Had we had someone of Musk’s stature in our corner we could have accomplished so much more.
As Musk transitions away from a day-to-day role, he can still invest the currency of his celebrity in serious reform efforts and challenge the country to dream big. Rather than scaling back the scope of what DOGE can accomplish and settling for $160 billion in savings, he should go back to the much more ambitious target of more than $2 trillion in savings.
This is a realistic and necessary target. President Reagan’s Grace Commission found that one in three tax dollars is wasted. In today’s budget numbers, one-third of $6.75 trillion (last year’s spending total) is $2.25 trillion. DOGE is right to investigate fraud, and their work on that front can lead to enormous savings, but hitting this larger $2 trillion target will require Congress and the administration to reimagine how mandatory programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security can better serve lower and middle-income Americans. Musk can challenge the bipartisan surrender caucus that would rather see these 90 and 60-year-old programs collapse than be renovated. When members pledge to “not touch” entitlements they are protecting themselves, not seniors or poor people. Not touching these programs guarantees their demise, American decline and weakness, and unimaginable economic suffering.
Today’s political conditions are much more favorable for fiscal reform than during the Reagan years and Tea Party era when we still made gains. In the past, demagogic attacks about hurting poor people and “keeping people in wheelchairs,” as Reid claimed, had more potency. With today’s political realignment, the GOP is now the working-class party.
Now is the time to be bold. This is a 1989 moment for America – a chance to tear down the bureaucratic wall that has separated We the People from their government for 100 years.
DOGE may be the most unifying Trump administration initiative. People hope Trump’s tariff gambit works, but they know DOGE, which is a movement more than a rebranded department, can deliver lasting change. Politicians define themselves by the hills they die on and DOGE is the high ground.
DOGE is popular because it’s rooted not just in common sense but American constitutional first principles. As Thomas Jefferson said, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
As the president said, eyes have been opened. Now it’s time to look, learn and act.
Every dollar saved in Washington is a dream realized somewhere in America. DOGE’s second act can be a time to dream new dreams and deliver real growth and opportunity.
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Site: RT - News
The US president has warned of crippling sanctions on the Tehran’s oil industry if it rejects Washington’s “olive branch”
US President Donald Trump has threatened to reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero if ongoing talks in Oman fail, which are aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal. In 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord that eased sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
“If Iran’s leadership rejects this olive branch... we will have no choice but to inflict massive maximum pressure, drive Iranian oil exports to zero,” Trump said at the Saudi-US Investment Forum in Riyadh on Tuesday.
The US president reminded the audience of the crippling sanctions he imposed in 2018, which he claimed left Iran’s economy on the brink of collapse. “They were a virtually bankrupt country because of what I did,” he claimed.
In 2023, the UN Human Rights Council reported that Washington’s sanctions prevented Iranians from receiving vital medical care. The report noted that producers, shippers, insurers, or banks are reluctant to do business with Iran, fearing “aggressive US sanctions enforcement and penalties.” This has led to “fear, pain and premature death,” it added.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reported progress in the negotiations with the US, noting that the two sides have reached “a better understanding.”
Read more
Iran rejects ‘unacceptable’ US nuclear demand
Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 UN-backed deal on Iran’s nuclear program during his first term in office, accusing the Islamic Republic of secretly violating the agreement. Tehran has denied any wrongdoing but has since rolled back its own commitments under the deal and increased its stockpile of enriched uranium.
The US and its allies have expressed concern about Iran’s enrichment activities, which they fear could provide the country with a head start to quickly produce weapons-grade uranium.
On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian rejected a key US demand to dismantle his country’s nuclear infrastructure.
Tehran has insisted that its nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes only and has repeatedly dismissed the allegations that it is seeking to create a nuclear bomb.
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Site: Zero Hedge'Biggest Untold Story in Tech': Explosive Book Reveals How Apple Sold Out America To ChinaTyler Durden Tue, 05/13/2025 - 16:40
Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee has released a gripping new book that meticulously exposes Apple’s deeply troubling ties with China, revealing how these connections fueled the communist regime’s rise to a global manufacturing powerhouse.
(Nikkei Montage / Reuters)
In an interview with The Free Press founder Bari Weiss, McGee revealed key insights from his new book, Apple in China, detailing Apple’s complex relationship with the country.
Presently, approximately 155 million Americans own an iPhone - a remarkable figure that McGee contends would have been unattainable without Apple’s substantial investments in China.
“I think it’s fairly straightforward that China is the only place on the planet that has the tech competence in terms of manufacturing capability, certainly the price, the cost, the quantity, the scale,” McGee told Weiss. My novel argument is that it has those skills because Apple built them there, right? It’s not that China offered something to Apple. Apple didn’t find these skills in China; it shipped people over by the plane load and created them.”
.@PatrickMcGee_ lays out how Apple helped China become a manufacturing superpower:
— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) May 13, 2025
"The number of people they trained in China since 2008 is 28 million people—larger than California's labor force."
"Apple is investing in China at twice the annual spend of the Marshall Plan." pic.twitter.com/PHDHLSBHKz“And so it’s this another layer of nuance that Apple is dependent on the very capabilities that it created. And I think this is like the biggest untold story in tech over the last 25 years. And like, my jaw was on the floor as I talked to 200 people and sort of unraveled it all. But I mean, some of the numbers— anytime you’re dealing with Apple, the numbers are just crazy. And so the two numbers that really stick out at me are that the number of people they have trained in China since 2008 is 28 million,” the Apple in China authored continued.”
“That’s larger than the labor force of California. And the investments they were making in China by 2015 were $55 billion a year. And that’s such a large number that I couldn’t find any corporate equivalent,” he added. “I had to go to nation-building efforts, and I took the Marshall Plan, the most famous nation-building effort ever, converted it to 2015 dollars, and you realize that Apple’s investing in China twice that of the annual spend of the Marshall Plan. And the Marshall Plan was for 16 countries.”
McGee outlines Apple's production hurdles and economic incentives that propelled this transformative shift, which he compares to a geopolitical event as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“I have these chapters in the book where they're trying to build iPods and the Sunflower iMac. You might remember it; it sort of looks anthropomorphic, like a Pixar lamp. It's really sexy, and my God, is it a complicated product to build,” McGee said. “And so Apple's trying to do it in Taiwan, but with the help of Singapore, Japan—you know, basically all of Southeast Asia, including China. But the more you're doing things a little bit in China and comparing the costs, the flexible demand of labor, and just the armies of affordable labor, the more it looks like China is the way to go. And they just rapidly begin to consolidate in 2003.”
Author @PatrickMcGee_: The West “sleepwalked” into making China a global powerhouse.
— Honestly with Bari Weiss (@thehonestlypod) May 13, 2025
Corporations like Apple “were setting up the world’s most sophisticated supply chain—and made the rookie and calamitous mistake of putting all their eggs in one basket. And that basket… pic.twitter.com/ASZTatTikm“So, the sort of fun line I have is that in 1999, zero products from Apple were being made in China. By 2009, virtually all of them were. And that transition, I compare to a geopolitical event, like the fall of the Berlin Wall. But it took place over many years. And it's one that I don't think we've really grappled with or understood,” the author added.
Under Tim Cook’s leadership, Apple has significantly deepened its investment in China, most notably through a secretive $275 billion, five-year agreement signed in 2016 with Chinese officials to bolster the country’s economy and technological capabilities, The Information reported in 2021. The deal, aimed at mitigating regulatory threats, included commitments to build new retail stores, research and development centers, and renewable energy projects, while fostering partnerships with local suppliers like Foxconn and enhancing China’s supply chain infrastructure.
President Donald Trump has been pushing Apple to move its manufacturing away from China, primarily through aggressive tariff policies aimed at incentivizing U.S.-based production. Since his first term, Trump has consistently advocated for Apple to bring iPhone and other product manufacturing to the United States, famously vowing in 2016, “I’m going to get Apple to start making their computers and their iPhones on our land, not in China.”
Apple has responded by shifting production for U.S.-bound iPhones to India and iPads, Apple Watches, and other products to Vietnam, with Cook confirming that by 2026, most iPhones sold in the U.S. will be made in India.
In February 2025, Apple announced a commitment to invest over $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, aimed at strengthening domestic manufacturing and advancing semiconductor production.
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Site: ChurchPOP
After one of the shortest conclaves in recent history, Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected the 267th successor to Saint Peter. He took the name Leo XIV.
During his first address, the Holy Father briefly explained his spiritual background, saying,
“I am a son of Saint Augustine, an Augustinian. He said, ‘With you I am a Christian, for you a bishop.’ So may we all walk together towards that homeland that God has prepared for us.”
Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP As we pray for the Holy Father, let us turn to the inspirational wisdom of his friend in heaven, Saint Augustine, Doctor of the Church:
Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.” - Saint Augustine
Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“Patience is the companion of wisdom.” - Saint Augustine
Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP "To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek Him is the greatest adventure; to find Him, the greatest human achievement." - Saint Augustine
Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.” - Saint Augustine
Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” - Saint Augustine
Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.” - Saint Augustine
Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“There is something in humility which strangely exalts the heart.” - Saint Augustine
Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” - Saint Augustine
Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” - Saint Augustine
Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“If you believe what you like in the Gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.” - Saint Augustine
Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“For you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” - Saint AugustineSaint Augustine of Hippo is a magnificent saint in the Catholic Church.
As a theologian and philosopher, he laid the framework for the doctrine of original sin and salvation. He is also known for his miraculous conversion, detailed in one of his most notable works, “Confessions,” among many other writings that largely impacted Western Christianity as we know it today.
You can learn more about Saint Augustine here.
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Site: ChurchPOP
After one of the shortest conclaves in recent history, Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected the 267th successor to Saint Peter. He took the name Leo XIV.
During his first address, the Holy Father briefly explained his spiritual background, saying,
“I am a son of Saint Augustine, an Augustinian. He said, ‘With you I am a Christian, for you a bishop.’ So may we all walk together towards that homeland that God has prepared for us.”Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP As we pray for the Holy Father, let us turn to the inspirational wisdom of his friend in heaven, Saint Augustine, Doctor of the Church:
Caroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.” - Saint AugustineCaroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“Patience is the companion of wisdom.” - Saint AugustineCaroline Perkins, ChurchPOP "To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek Him is the greatest adventure; to find Him, the greatest human achievement." - Saint AugustineCaroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.” - Saint AugustineCaroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” - Saint AugustineCaroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.” - Saint AugustineCaroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“There is something in humility which strangely exalts the heart.” - Saint AugustineCaroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” - Saint AugustineCaroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” - Saint AugustineCaroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“If you believe what you like in the Gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.” - Saint AugustineCaroline Perkins, ChurchPOP“For you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” - Saint AugustineSaint Augustine of Hippo is a magnificent saint in the Catholic Church.
As a theologian and philosopher, he laid the framework for the doctrine of original sin and salvation. He is also known for his miraculous conversion, detailed in one of his most notable works, “Confessions,” among many other writings that largely impacted Western Christianity as we know it today.
You can learn more about Saint Augustine here.
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Site: Zero HedgeNodule Found In Biden's Prostate During Routine ExamTyler Durden Tue, 05/13/2025 - 16:20
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
A small nodule was found in former President Joe Biden’s prostate during an exam, a spokesperson told news outlets on May 13.
“In a routine physical exam, a small nodule was found in the prostate, which necessitated further evaluation,” the Biden spokesperson said.
It’s not clear whether the additional evaluation has already taken place and, if it has, what it showed.
A nodule could indicate the presence of prostate cancer.
Out of every 100 men in America, about 13 will suffer from prostate cancer during their lifetime, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Early treatment can eliminate the cancer, which is fatal in a minority of cases.
The most common risk factor is age. Biden is 82.
Biden wrote in an Aug. 20, 2024, proclamation during National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month that “we mourn all the courageous men we have tragically lost too soon to prostate cancer” and “we honor the extraordinary resilience of those currently living with and surviving this disease.”
Biden left office in January after a single term. He initially launched a reelection bid, but later dropped out under pressure from some fellow Democrats due to his advanced age. President Donald Trump, 78, beat former Vice President Kamala Harris, 60, in the 2024 election.
Dr. Kevin O‘Connor, Biden’s physician, reported in 2023 that Biden had a cancerous lesion removed from his chest. The area around the biopsy site was treated, O’Connor said, and no further treatment was required.
“The site of the biopsy has healed nicely and the President will continue dermatologic surveillance as part of his ongoing comprehensive healthcare,” he wrote at the time.
O'Connor also said in 2019 that Biden had a polyp removed from his colon, describing the polyp as “potentially pre-cancerous.”
One of Biden’s sons, Beau, died in 2015 from brain cancer.
Ahead of the election in 2024, O'Connor said that an examination showed that Biden was healthy and active.
Biden “remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” O'Connor wrote in a summary of the exam.
In his first interview since Trump was sworn in, Biden said recently that he did not have any cognitive issues and that he understands the concerns about his age.
“I get it,” Biden said. “I understand the concern. I really do. But the point of the matter is that I would offer specific evidence, if we had time, [of] exactly what I got done when I supposedly lost my cognitive capability.”
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Site: Euthanasia Prevention CoalitionAlex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention CoalitionMadeline Grant was published in the Telegraph on May 13, 2025 in response to the vote on the Scottish assisted suicide bill. Sadly, the Scottish parliament passed the assisted suicide bill (at second reading) by a vote of 70 - 56.
Grant's article titled: In the name of progress: eugenics then, euthanasia now, states that in the past, eugenics was considered progressive and look at the atrocities associated with eugenics. Today euthanasia is considered progressive. Grant writes:
It was in the name of progress that the Fabian and socialist eugenicists – from Beatrice and Sidney Webb to Bertrand Russell and Marie Stopes – advocated the sterilisation of the disabled and sick during the 20th century. It was in the name of progress that George Bernard Shaw supported “the socialisation of the selective breeding of man”, even, chillingly, proposing the euthanasia of the mentally ill and other members of the “unfit” classes via “extensive use of the lethal chamber”. In short; a very dangerous word indeed. This isn’t just a history lesson either; the groups these people supported still exist. Dignity in Dying, the main advocacy group for assisted dying, was founded by a member of the Eugenics Society and was known until 2006 as The Voluntary Euthanasia Society.Grant then comments on the current assisted suicide debate in the UK:
In our own day, the same concept is being invoked once more as a sort of unanswerable force. The debate over assisted suicide is intensifying on both sides of the Border this week, as Kim Leadbeater’s Private Members’ Bill returns to Parliament and Holyrood MSPs voted in favour of a similar Bill proposed by Lib Dem Liam McArthur. In her efforts to champion her Bill on social media, the former is emerging as someone with Van Gogh’s ear for diplomacy; both tactless and self-aggrandising. This week she dismissed opponents as “scaremongering and ideological”, while quoting praise of herself from a supporter, describing her as a “social reformer”. At least irony hasn’t been assisted with its death.Grant explains how the assisted suicide campaign refers to its goals as progressive and the opponents as scare mongers:
The inconvenient truth is that, in this case progress involves the sidelining and rejection of the very people whose needs it claims to advance. The Royal College of Physicians recently published a statement warning that the Bill’s “deficiencies” render it unsafe for patients and doctors. Was this “scaremongering”? Every user-led disability group opposes the change, as do a majority of palliative care professionals. Are they “ideologues” too?Grant then refers to the former Scottish Tory Leader, Ruth Davidson support ofr assisted suicide because she wants to be on the "right side of history":
It is telling that despite supporting assisted suicide in principle, former Scots Tory Leader Ruth Davidson couldn’t quite endorse the parallel Bill before Holyrood in its current form. Instead, in a column this week, she urges MSPs simply to trust that they will be able to iron out any problems at a later date. She also cites the number of countries around the world offering assisted suicide as if this, in itself, constituted an argument. What many of these jurisdictions actually show is quite the opposite to Davidson’s Panglossian faith that everything will work itself out.Grant then comments on the language of the debate:
A particularly invidious aspect of this debate has been the manipulation of language. Not only is there a tendency to imply, per Leadbeater, that the pro-side has a monopoly on compassion, relatives’ understandable efforts to prevent their loved ones from taking their own lives have sometimes been reframed as “coercion”. During the “expert” witness testimony, one Australian MP referred to “assisted dying” in exquisitely Orwellian fashion, as a form of “suicide prevention”. There has even been some squeamishness about using the word “suicide” at all, though the Bill would by definition amend the 1961 Suicide Act. It’s as if they fear this serious change to the social fabric will be impossible without annexing language to limit what their opponents may say. And now, showing tragedy and farce are far closer than we think, Kim Leadbeater is apparently a “social reformer”.The social reformers will not consult the people they supposedly support. Grant writes:
The irony is that Leadbeater and her allies no doubt think of themselves and their actions as progressive. Yet each of them is simultaneously engaged in the business of ignoring the voices of the poor and the vulnerable.Grant concludes her article by arguing that Leadbeater is doing more to undo social healthcare than Thatcher did with privatisation.This Bill is so comprehensively at odds with the principles of previous social reform that enacting it will mean rewriting the Bill on which the National Health Service was forged. The legislation is so far-sweeping that the Bill’s proponents may become the first people to undo the basic healthcare principle that life should be preserved. This is worth restating for all the “sensibles” out there; it wasn’t Mrs Thatcher or “Tory privatisation”, but a Labour backbencher who will fundamentally change the stated purpose of the NHS – and in a final irony, will do so not in the name of profit but of progress.More articles on this topic:- Rush to legalize assisted suicide (UK) - Have the vulnerable become expendable (Link)?
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Site: Crisis Magazine
The corporate media is already spilling tons of ink to paint a picture of a pope and a U.S. president with nothing in common. Reports even goad Pope Leo XIV and President Donald Trump against each other. And to the pro-war ruling classes and their agents in the media, there’s an urgent reason to drive a wedge between the two men: They are almost totally aligned on the bedrock moral issue of our…
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Site: Zero HedgeBitcoin Treasury Exposure Goes Mainstream As Coinbase Soars On Joining The S&P 500Tyler Durden Tue, 05/13/2025 - 15:52
On May 19, 2025, Coinbase will officially join the S&P 500 - widely regarded as the most trusted, most tracked equity index in the world. With over $5 trillion in assets benchmarked to it, the S&P 500 isn’t just a measure of corporate strength - it’s a gravitational center of global capital allocation.
And starting next week, it will include a Bitcoin treasury company.
Coinbase currently holds 9,267 BTC on its balance sheet, valued at $963.8 million at today’s price of $104,000 per Bitcoin, making it the 9th largest public corporate Bitcoin holder globally.
As Nick Ward reports for BitcoinMagazine.com, this marks a quiet turning point for Bitcoin in capital markets - one that reframes the treasury conversation and reshapes how companies think about index eligibility, institutional flows, and balance sheet strategy.
The Most Passive Flows in Finance Just Found Bitcoin
Coinbase’s addition to the index means something profound: millions of investors will soon have indirect exposure to Bitcoin—and they didn’t choose it.
Because the S&P 500 is tracked by passive strategies, funds and institutions must purchase Coinbase stock in proportion to its index weight. If Coinbase is assigned even a 0.20% weighting, that implies more than $10 billion in net inflows from index-tracking vehicles.
This is not speculative capital. This is mandatory exposure—capital governed by rules, not conviction.
And for the first time, those rules lead directly to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Treasuries Are Now Index-Eligible
For years, Bitcoin on the corporate balance sheet was treated as a novelty—or worse, a liability. But Coinbase’s inclusion signals something different: Bitcoin exposure is now compatible with the highest standards of institutional eligibility.
It’s a powerful validation for public companies already holding Bitcoin—and a strategic consideration for those that aren’t. Index inclusion is not reserved for fiat-only treasuries. Coinbase’s addition confirms that sound operations and a Bitcoin-aligned balance sheet are not mutually exclusive.
In fact, they may now be complementary.
Strategy May Be Next to Join The S&P 500
Coinbase may be the first S&P 500 company with a Bitcoin treasury—but it likely won’t be the last.
Strategy ($MSTR), formerly MicroStrategy, is widely viewed as the next potential candidate. The company meets many of the S&P 500’s baseline criteria:
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It is U.S.-based and publicly listed on the Nasdaq.
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It has sufficient free float and market capitalization.
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Its last four quarters of GAAP earnings are positive.
And perhaps most notably: Strategy is the largest corporate Bitcoin holder in the world—by far.
As of today, it holds 568,840 BTC, currently worth $59.16 billion.
Its balance sheet is no longer just Bitcoin-heavy - it is Bitcoin-native. If admitted, Strategy would represent an even deeper exposure to Bitcoin inside the world’s most influential index.
This matters. Because it signals that Bitcoin is becoming a foundational component of corporate capital formation—not an outlier.
From Signal to Strategy: A New Corporate Playbook
Coinbase’s entry - and Strategy’s potential follow-on - reinforces an emerging thesis: a Bitcoin treasury can enhance a company’s capital profile—not detract from it.
Here’s why:
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Visibility: Index inclusion provides perpetual exposure to new capital.
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Flows: Passive funds are forced buyers—providing liquidity and price support.
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Perception: Bitcoin is no longer a reputational liability—it’s becoming a marker of long-term vision and resilience.
In this context, treasury strategy becomes a capital markets strategy. Holding Bitcoin isn’t just about hedging inflation or diversifying reserves—it’s about aligning your company with where capital is flowing.
BFC Perspective: The Bridge Has Been Crossed
From a Bitcoin For Corporations standpoint, this is not just news—it’s a case study in what institutional acceptance looks like.
Coinbase has:
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Navigated the public markets as a Bitcoin-native company,
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Maintained a material Bitcoin treasury position, and
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Demonstrated that such positioning is not a barrier to index inclusion—it can be a feature.
And Strategy, with its commanding treasury and growing influence, may soon follow—cementing Bitcoin’s place at the core of U.S. corporate indices.
This should embolden public companies and pre-IPO candidates alike. It’s proof that Bitcoin alignment doesn’t isolate you from the traditional system—it can embed you deeper into it.
This is the BFC thesis in action: Bitcoin-native capital structures are compatible with institutional legitimacy.
What Comes Next: Bitcoin Is Entering the Core Portfolio
With Coinbase’s S&P 500 inclusion and Strategy potentially next, the implications are clear:
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Bitcoin is no longer confined to speculative portfolios.
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Bitcoin treasuries are now appearing in default asset allocations.
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The passive indexing era is now passively onboarding Bitcoin—whether the end investor realizes it or not.
For CFOs and capital allocators, the takeaway is simple: Bitcoin on the balance sheet is no longer a bet - it’s a bridge. To the index. To the allocators. To the long game.
With Coinbase joining the S&P 500, Bitcoin exposure is entering the core of institutional portfolios—not through a financial product, but via a public company’s balance sheet. As Strategy positions to follow, this marks a broader shift: Bitcoin treasury strategy is becoming part of the mainstream capital structure.
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Site: Fr. Z's BlogSunrise in Rome was at 5:50 and sunset will be at 20:24. The Ave Maria is in the 20:45 cycle. It is the traditional Feast of St. Robert Bellarmine and the Feast of the Dedication of Santa Maris “ad Martyres” … Read More →
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Site: LifeNews
Liam McArthur’s assisted suicide Bill is in doubt, after the Bill passed Stage One by only 14 votes.This means only seven MSPs need to change their vote for Bill to fall at the final (Stage Three) vote.
The Bill was widely predicted to comfortably pass Stage One, so the result will come as a major shock to assisted suicide campaigners supportive of the Bill.
Ahead of and during the debate, several MSPs made it clear that they were only voting in favour at Stage One to continue the debate around the Bill, and would only vote for the Bill at Stage Three on condition that there are significant improvements to the Bill before it comes back for its final vote in the Scottish Parliament.
This means that the McArthur assisted suicide Bill could well have insufficient numbers to pass the final Stage Three vote.
Last year, the Leadbeater Bill in Westminster passed by 55 votes, a much larger margin, proportionally, than on the McArthur Bill this evening, but following Committee Stage scrutiny, there are growing doubts that it will pass the final vote in the Commons, even after its margin of 55 at the first vote at Westminster.
A large number of MSPs from across the political spectrum came together to give powerful speeches against the Bill during the debate today. They made it clear that this dangerous and extreme change to Scottish law would put the vulnerable at risk and see the ending of many lives through assisted suicide.
Although the Bill has passed Stage One, the vote was far closer than supporters predicted, and the Bill still has a long way to go. MSPs on the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee will be able to debate and approve amendments to the Bill at Stage Two before the amended Bill is voted upon once more by all MSPs at Stage Three.
Campaigners have vowed to redouble efforts to ensure that the Bill is defeated and will have many opportunities to persuade MSPs to abandon this dangerous legislation.
Serious concerns remain about how this legislation would operate in practice, and the strong response from MSPs across all parties shows these issues won’t simply disappear.
Significant concerns remain around the definition of “terminal illness” as defined in the Bill – “advanced and progressive disease, illness or condition from which they are unable to recover and that can reasonably be expected to cause their premature death”.
Under the Bill, anyone with a terminal condition that could foreseeably end their lives, even many decades in the future, would qualify for an assisted death, including those with conditions such as anorexia, Down’s syndrome, and people with disabilities.
New Scottish polling shows that only 8% of Scots view assisted dying as a priority for Holyrood. In fact, it came bottom of 20 possible priority areas for MSPs the public were asked about. The NHS and social care, where real end-of-life care happens, are the first and third priorities.
In addition, a poll of 1,088 adults conducted by Whitestone Insight found that 61% of Scots are concerned that victims of domestic abuse “would feel pressured into ending their lives if assisted suicide were to be legalised” in Scotland. Concern was greatest among pensioners, with 83% of those over 75 saying that they were worried about domestic abuse victims being pressured into ending their own lives if assisted suicide is made legal.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said:
“The Bill was widely predicted to comfortably pass Stage One, so the result will come as a major shock to assisted suicide campaigners supportive of the Bill”.
“Ahead of and during the debate, several MSPs made it clear that they were only voting in favour at Stage One to continue the debate around the Bill, and would only vote for the Bill at Stage Three on condition that there are significant improvements to the Bill before it comes back for its final vote in the Scottish Parliament”.
“This means that the McArthur assisted suicide Bill could well have insufficient numbers to pass the final Stage Three vote”.
“Last year, the Leadbeater Bill in Westminster passed by 55 votes, a much larger margin, proportionally, than on the McArthur Bill this evening, but following Committee Stage scrutiny, there are growing doubts that it will pass the final vote in the Commons, even after its margin of 55 at the first vote at Westminster.”
“This is just the first stage of a long journey through the Scottish Parliament for this dangerous assisted suicide Bill. We are now going to redouble our efforts to ensure we fight this Bill at every stage and ensure that it is defeated to protect the most vulnerable”.
“A very large number of MSPs spoke out against this extreme proposal in Holyrood today. They made it clear that this dangerous and extreme change to our laws would put the vulnerable at risk and see the ending of many lives through assisted suicide”.
“Serious concerns remain about how this legislation would operate in practice, and the strong response from MSPs across all parties shows these issues won’t simply disappear”.
“This Bill can and must be defeated. It still has a long way to go and presents an acute threat to vulnerable people, especially in the context of an overstretched healthcare system”.
The post Scotland Bill Legalizing Assisted Suicide Will Die if 7 Members Change Their Votes appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: southern orders
I just discovered that the last public Mass presided over by Pope Francis was the Jubilee Year Mass for the Armed Forces, Police and Security Personnel on February 9, 2025. The main celebrant, though, and hold on, was Pope Leo XIV, aka, Robert Cardinal Prevost.I had a clairvoyant experience when I watched that Mass. It was cold outside at St. Peter’s Square and a bit windy. I thought to myself that the pope did not look well. I wondered if he had a death wish being out there in the cold.
The next day, Pope Francis was admitted to the hospital and thus continued his journey to death and new life.
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Site: OnePeterFive
Dear OnePeterFive Donors, Supporters and readers, Christ is risen! The heart and soul of our organisation is the Crusade of Eucharistic Reparation. After the whirlwind of conclave news, we are only a few weeks away from June, the month of the Sacred Heart. This is a particularly important month for our editorial stance, which is “unite the clan to rebuild Christendom.” The heart and soul…
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Site: LifeNews
On Friday, in a packed courtroom filled with family, supporters, and fellow pro-life sidewalk counselors, justice prevailed.
Zachary Knotts – joined by his wife, Lindsay – stood ready to defend himself against what had clearly become a politically motivated prosecution. After months of preparation and with unwavering resolve, the Knotts and their ACLJ legal team were fully prepared to face and defeat the charges stemming from a peaceful pro-life protest outside an abortion clinic in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.
Instead, the government blinked.
As the trial began, prosecutors abruptly tried to change their theory of the case – an 11th-hour maneuver that amounted to rewriting the charges on the spot. We immediately objected to the bait-and-switch. The prosecution then tried to have the trial rescheduled for a later date. We held firm. Enough was enough. Zack had waited too long to have his day in court, and we weren’t going to allow the government to continue delaying this matter, which amounted to little more than a trumped-up noise ordinance violation. Our client had a right to a speedy trial to clear his name, and justice couldn’t wait another day.
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In the end, with a packed courtroom watching, the prosecution folded. They dismissed the charges entirely. But let’s be clear: This prosecution should never have been brought in the first place.
A Pattern of Harassment and Weaponized Law Enforcement
The facts are straightforward. On the morning of December 28, 2024, Zack and Lindsay Knotts stood peacefully on a public sidewalk outside the Northeast Ohio Women’s Center (NEOWC) abortion clinic to express their constitutionally protected, pro-life views. Like many sidewalk counselors across the country, they brought a megaphone, which the Supreme Court has called “indispensable instruments of effective political speech” in the modern era. The Knotts began peacefully speaking out against abortion and advocating for the lives of preborn children.
They were met by abortion clinic escorts using umbrellas, whistles, and kazoos to harass and drown out their message. These same escorts escalated their behavior, yelling threats like “Kiss a shotgun” and worse. After learning that Lindsay’s life was saved after her mother had considered an abortion, and she “should be dead,” an abortion escort snapped back: “We can fix that.”
Despite the vile and dangerous threats directed at the Knotts, the loud instruments, and the shouting, it was the Knotts who were targeted by the authorities. The Cuyahoga Falls Police Department, which had been present and witnessed much of the interaction, later responded to a supposed complaint – after Zack’s megaphone had already run out of batteries. Officers took a statement from only one person: a fellow CFPD officer moonlighting as private security for the abortion clinic. They ignored other witnesses, disregarded the Knotts’ video evidence, and failed to corroborate any claim against Zack.
Even more troubling, Sgt. Dobney – the lead officer – admitted he never personally witnessed Zack use the megaphone and that he’d relied on alleged “recordings” never shown to Zack or his counsel. That’s not right; government officials are prohibited from retaliation because of the exercise of protected speech. The facts made it clear: That’s exactly what happened.
Zack and Lindsay never left the public sidewalk. They never blocked access to the abortion clinic. They never threatened anyone. The same cannot be said for those who tried to silence them. What happened here wasn’t just a mistake – it was a warning shot to pro-lifers everywhere: Speak out, and we’ll come for you. But today’s dismissal shows what can happen when you refuse to back down.
This Isn’t Over: What You Can Do Now
We’re grateful that this bogus prosecution is finally behind the Knotts family. But the injustice they endured – months of uncertainty, possible fines, and stress for simply exercising their First Amendment rights – demands accountability.
We’re currently evaluating all available legal remedies, including filing a federal civil rights lawsuit. What happened to the Knotts wasn’t right, and that’s why we’re asking for your support to continue this battle in the federal courts. Government officials and law enforcement must be held accountable when they abuse their authority to punish protected speech.
The ACLJ will never stop fighting for the rights of pro-life Americans to speak the truth about abortion and defend the unborn – on sidewalks, in courts, and across the country.
LifeNews Note: Liam R. Harrell is Associate Counsel at the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) Washington, D.C., office.
The post Bogus Charges Dropped Against Pro-Life Father Who Protested at Abortion Clinic appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: The Orthosphere
“So I inquisitive, and young and vain,
Willingly listened even at the Church
When Doubt began to catechize me thus:
‘How know ye this is true?””W. R. Thayer, “The Confessions of Hermes” (1884)
In a recent post Bonald suggests that the “primary job” of the new Pope is to “assist” parents, parochial staff and apologists in their struggle, presently failing, to stanch the bleeding wound of apostasy. As the father of children who are, I believe, approaching those perilous years when the siren song of the world is most enchanting, Bonald is particularly anxious that the Pope do nothing to open that wound, or to amplify or sweeten that siren song. As Bonald puts it,
“He should think about people like me who are trying to keep teenage children in the faith, and he should ask himself whether what he’s about to do will make our job easier or harder.”
Now everyone here knows that Bonald is exceptionally knowledgeable, articulate and devout. This is not flattery but simple statement of fact. He is also a professional educator who has spent years explaining abstruse notions to relative dunces, so he knows a thing or two about the art of elucidation. The only thing Pope Leo can do to make Bonald’s job of effectively catechizing his children easier is therefore to do nothing that will make it harder.
And even for a man as gifted as Bonald, effectively catechizing his children is hard. The siren song of the world has never been louder or sweeter. And never has an anxiously devout parent been so entirely left to his own devices.
Let me digress for a moment to remark that our world swarms with experts who sell advice that is of no use at all. When my own children were passing through those siren-song years, an expert advised me to “establish clear boundaries.” Yet, as every parent knows, the means to enforce clearly established boundaries is what a parent wants. A means of enforcement, that is, that will not permanently alienate the child or attract the attention of Child Protective Services.
If you today ask an expert how to minimize the likelihood of apostasy in your children, you will almost certainly be told something that reduces to the suggestion that you take care they do not apostatize. This is akin to the advice of those experts who tell you the key to happiness is not to be sad (and who for this useless advice will charge you one hundred dollars an hour).
In my comment on Bonald’s post, I said I was surprised that the Roman Catholic Church seemed to take teenage apostasy so much less seriously than the secular authorities take teenage pregnancy or teenage venereal disease. I know I was never given a helpful pamphlet filled with best practices and “evidence based” results. I was instead given the pious platitudes of the failing status quo, and was therefore left entirely to my own devices.
Bonald hopes Pope Leo will not make it harder for parents to keep their teenage children in the Church. Now one obvious way he (Leo) could do this is to make the Church into a thing in which teenage children will not find it so irksome, embarrassing, and/or tedious to be kept. I should say continue making the Church into such a thing because the suits in the C-suite have been making the Roman Catholic Church into such a thing for a very long time. Their idea is that teenage children will find being kept in the Church less irksome, embarrassing, and/or tedious the more being “Catholic” means being, of all people, the most unctuously concerned with worldly concerns like social justice, climate change, and human rights.
(This was, in fact, the tone of the textbook I was given in my brief and long-ago stint as a teacher of religious education. It resembled a sixth-grade social studies textbook apart from the brief and incongruous hagiographies that were here and there interleaved.)
Such syncretism may make it easier for parents to keep their teenage children in the Church, but it is not clear that such syncretism will make it easier for parents to keep their teenage children in the Faith. And the more the Faith of the Church becomes faith in social justice, climate change, and human rights, I daresay the harder it will be to keep teenage children in the Church. Many may find a maudlin homily on the sad travails of miserable migrants easy to swallow, but very few will find it so tasty as the same dish served up elsewhere.
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Site: AsiaNews.itThe young daughter of a mix couple is among the victims of the Easter 2019 bombings. The Archdiocese of Colombo included her name in the list of martyrs of the 21st century sent to the Jubilee Committee. She was preparing for her baptism when she was killed in the church blast. She was buried in an Islamic cemetery. Her mother told AsiaNews that she invited others to pray, but 'God took her'.
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Site: Catholic ConclaveThe new Head of the International Union of Superiors General, a Sister of Our Lady of Sion. I hope she remembers to dress properly when she meets the Pope, to give him the respect he is due. pic.twitter.com/TbAC3onmP0— Catholic Conclave (@cathconclave) May 13, 2025 Catholic Conclavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06227218883606585321noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Rorate Caeliby Fr. Jay FinelliToday is the 108th Anniversary of the First Apparition of Our Lady of Fatima. Let us examine the prophetic link between Fatima, Pope Leo XIII, and Pope Leo XIV.On May 13, 1917, in a remote field in Cova da Iria, three shepherd children were visited by a radiant Lady from Heaven—Our Lady of the Rosary. That encounter would mark the beginning of one of the most important Father Kevin M Cusick http://www.blogger.com/profile/04460394747724581336noreply@blogger.com
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Site: Novus Motus LiturgicusMay 13th is now occupied by two different feasts on the general calendar, one in the Ordinary Form, and one in the Extraordinary Form. For most of the history of the Roman Rite, it was not occupied by any feast of general observance at all, but an interesting collection of local feasts and observances is kept on this date. St Robert Bellarmine, the second Jesuit to be made a cardinal, and one Gregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: LifeNews
House Republicans seeking to end federal funding of abortion businesses received two enormous boosts to their efforts on Monday, as a legislative provision inched closer to adoption and Planned Parenthood released an annual report showing it received more taxpayer funding than any time in history. The report has pro-life experts telling The Washington Stand, “Planned Parenthood must be defunded.”
Planned Parenthood committed 402,230 abortions and received $792.2 million in taxpayer funding in 2024, according to its 2024 annual report, released Monday. Last year, U.S. taxpayers became Planned Parenthood’s largest financial contributor, supplying 39% of the organization’s $2 billion in revenue — up from 34% in the last report.
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“Planned Parenthood carries out over 1,100 abortions per day and receives over $2 million a day in taxpayer funding. This should absolutely disgust Americans. Our hard-earned dollars should not be going towards the slaughter of innocent unborn children. The federal government must end this horrific use of funds,” Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “It’s past time for Congress to say, ‘American taxpayers will not be forced to pad the wallets of Planned Parenthood executives while women receive shoddy treatment in unsanitary conditions and their unborn children are killed.’”
“Planned Parenthood must be defunded,” Szoch remarked.
Planned Parenthood had net revenue of $2 billion and ended the year with total net assets of $2.52 billion. More than a dozen Planned Parenthood executives make more money than Anthony Fauci. Yet financial data remain murky, co-mingling multiple years and not including all affiliates.
The report indicates a massive increase in both abortions and taxation extraction since last year. Planned Parenthood committed 392,712 abortions and received a $699.3 million in 2023. Taxpayers were “forced to give them a 13% increase in funding while most of America received only a 3 to 5% increase,” SFLAction President Kristan Hawkins told TWS via email. The abortion business carried out 374,155 abortions and received $670.4 million in taxpayer funding during its 2021-2022 fiscal year — itself an increase of 9,252 abortions over pre-Dobbs levels.
“Leave it to Planned Parenthood to reveal their billions of dollars in abortion income on the heels of Mother’s Day weekend,” observed American Life League (ALL) Director Katie Brown Xavios. Planned Parenthood’s actions “included 402,230 abortions, sex education for young children, cross sex hormone distribution, and of course, the distribution of the deadly abortion pill.” ALL noted the report did not specify the number of abortions carried out by telehealth medication abortion.
Planned Parenthood increased its promotion of transgender procedures, primarily cross-sex hormone injections, introducing “Virtual Health Centers” at 23 Planned Parenthood affiliates. But as it did last year, Planned Parenthood lumped in the number of “transgender services” with “other procedures,” which fell dramatically to 77,858 from 177,237 in the 2023 report.
At least one Planned Parenthood affiliate has begun advertising transgender surgeries. “Planned Parenthood also offers some gender affirming surgeries to patients in the St. Louis area and refers to other providers when needed,” proclaims Planned Parenthood Great Rivers (PPGR) in Missouri.
“For yet another year, pregnant women seeking help at Planned Parenthood are sold an abortion 97% of the time, while prenatal services, miscarriage care and adoption referrals make up a minuscule minority of the options they offer. Meanwhile their priorities include their assault on parental rights, transgender ‘treatments’ and political spending to defeat Republicans,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America told TWS. “This report heightens the urgency to defund Big Abortion and stop forcing taxpayers to fund an industry that destroys unborn lives and preys on women and girls.”
Planned Parenthood employs 90 “patient navigators” whose actions “potentially break laws in pro-life states,” noted SFLAction.
Yet the “health care provider” reduced its health care services sharply since last year: Cancer screenings decreased 8.1%, pap tests fell 12.3%, and primary care visits declined by 13.7%, according to Michael New, a professor at The Catholic University of America.
Planned Parenthood: Undergoing STI Testing Is a Time of ‘Hope’
The nation’s largest abortion business styled its work as inspiring hope. “Every time a patient walks through the doors of a Planned Parenthood health center, it is an act of hope,” begins Planned Parenthood’s annual report. “Every time someone … goes with their partner for STI testing, they are filled with hope that the future they plan is possible.”
The report boasts of its ties to partisan political figures in the Democratic Party, noting Democrat Kamala Harris became the first sitting vice president to visit an abortion business, choosing a Minnesota Planned Parenthood. It vows to continue its activism “to educate people about sexual and reproductive health and rights” — a concept Planned Parenthood believes endows all American minors and illegal immigrants with the right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand for any reason through all nine months of pregnancy, as well as transgender procedures.
Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson also vowed Planned Parenthood will continue to promote “abortion care” to “communities of color, low-income communities, those without documentation.” Her promise would cheer Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a eugenicist who once attended a Ku Klux Klan rally. “That’s who Planned Parenthood is and who we’ll continue to be,” promised Johnson.
House Committee Moves to Defund Planned Parenthood
The report came as the House Energy and Commerce (E&C) Committee, chaired by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), approved language to end federal funding to any entity that carries out abortions. On Monday, 183 legislators from almost every state urged Congress to defund Planned Parenthood.
“We commend our House Republican allies for working hard on a budget reconciliation process that finally gets taxpayers out of the abortion business and we encourage them to persevere,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America told TWS. “Now more than ever, we can hardly wait to see the ‘one big beautiful bill’ advance in Congress.”
Yet defunding efforts are reportedly opposed by Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Penn.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), and Jen Kiggans (R-Va.).
“Demanding that Americans prop up an organization that sells wrong-sex hormone treatments, that sterilizes minors, and that ends precious lives in the womb violates the consciences of many Americans,” Hawkins told TWS. “Planned Parenthood is a case study in how access to power equals wealth, and for those in the GOP who are inclined to support them, remember at election time they are coming for you!”
Until the bill passes, pro-life advocates vowed to fight on. “The fight isn’t over,” said an email sent Monday night by FRC Action, urging recipients to take action. “In fact, it’s really just begun.”
“As Congress looks to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, it’s high time that we end taxpayer funding of gender transition procedures and abortion providers,” says the FRC Action letter.
LifeNews Note: Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
The post Planned Parenthood Kills 1,100 Babies Every Day. Defund It Now appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Mises InstituteThere are no “good wars,” rather, there are wars with varying degrees of destructiveness. The American War Between the States was especially destructive, and the scars have not fully healed 160 years after it ended.
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Site: RT - News
A prominent Jewish restaurant in Berlin chose to celebrate Israel Day with a joke about the slaughter of Palestinians
A single, small, low-quality do-it-yourself poster recently displayed in the center of Germany’s capital Berlin has caused a minor scandal that has gone against the grain of the country’s usually unshakable support for Israel while the latter is committing genocide.
The essence of the incident is simple: in late April, the Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft (DIG) – “German-Israeli Society” – held one of its “Israel Days” in Berlin. In Germany, the DIG is a prominent and powerful organization. Its main source of funding, according to the country’s official lobbying register for 2023, is the German state. The latter’s Federal Agency for Civic Education – in essence, Germany’s office of Centrist ideological orthodoxy and indoctrination – describes it as the country’s “central organization […] where friends of Israel come together in non-partisan cooperation.”
“Israel Day” in Berlin was a largely informal event, really a street party with speeches. To make things even more fun, there was catering by the restaurant Feinberg’s. In particular, Feinberg’s, specializing in what it calls Israeli cuisine – Palestinians recognize many dishes as plagiarized from their tradition – offered a very special melon smoothie.
The poster advertising the drink showed a lion (used by Israelis as a national symbol) wearing an apron emblazoned with the Israeli flag (just to make sure). The lion held two large glass tumblers, one with pieces of melon (an already traditional and well-known symbol of Palestine and its resistance), the other with the finished smoothie and a small Israeli flag.
The background consisted of a pile of melons, often cut open, many featuring instantly recognizable baby faces. The poster’s text said (partly in English and partly in German): “Watermelon meets Zion. Israeli-style watermelon, shredded, mashed, and hacked to pieces.”
An Israeli restaurant in Berlin offers “Israeli-style blended Watermelon, puréed, and chopped to pieces” at an Israel lobby event with faces on the watermelons. Many are interpreting this as a violent fantasy pic.twitter.com/AEHFPmZbBd
— James Jackson (@derJamesJackson) April 27, 2025The watermelons evoked what is known as “Kindchenschema” or “cuteness” (in the scientific sense): an almost universally recognized pattern of features that signals babies and children and – with psychologically normal individuals – stirring deep hormonal and neurological responses of sympathy and care or at least restraint.
The message was obvious and not at all funny: The Israeli “lion” was crushing the Palestinian “watermelons” into an enjoyably refreshing ice-cold and blood-red pulp, available with a “shot” of – presumably celebratory – vodka, too. That the faces on the anthropomorphized “melons” were childlike made everything even more repulsive: clearly, whoever felt this picture was a good idea is not normal enough for the Kindchenschema to work on them.
Read more
Israel issues warning over Palestine recognition
Those who study genocide have long agreed that the deliberate dehumanizing of the victims by propaganda and indoctrination is one of its elementary methods and signs. Those who pretend to fail to recognize a textbook case of such dehumanization in this poster are deliberately obtuse.
The poster was, of course, an unmistakable allusion to Israel’s ongoing combined genocide-ethnic cleansing operation, with its main (though not sole) target the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. That is the place where the majority of Israel’s victims, many of them babies and children, have literally been “shredded” and “cut to pieces” by air raids and bombing as well as systematically starved and deprived of housing and vital infrastructure, especially medical institutions, and, not to forget, their caretakers: it is Gaza under Israeli assault for which doctors had to invent a new abbreviation: WCNSF – wounded child, no surviving family.
In the words of Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN humanitarian office responsible for Gaza, Israel is practicing “deprivation by design” and the “deliberate dismantling of Palestinian life.”
The latest - de facto minimum - death toll among the Palestinians is approaching 63,000. Almost 112,000 victims have been injured, often severely, leading to lifelong consequences, such as amputated limbs. Horrifying as they are, these figures, generated by Gaza’s health ministry – which, contrary to Israeli and Western propaganda, is conservative in its counting – are only the tip of the iceberg. For one thing, a study in the authoritative medical journal The Lancet has long maintained that the real figures are likely to be substantially higher.
Read more
US aid mission in Gaza more disastrous than acknowledged – investigation
Killing, injuring, and maiming are, of course, only one part of Israeli violence. Mass displacement and the literal razing of the Gaza Strip, much of which has been pounded into toxic dust, and deep and pervasive psychological trauma are others. There is no room here to even sketch all the vicious methods of Israel’s genocide or all its horrendous consequences. And as with genocides before, there is also a limit to language: It is hard to even accommodate in ordinary words both what the Israeli perpetrators have been doing, together with their Western accomplices, and the vicious sadism that not a few but many Israelis, in and out of uniform, are proudly displaying.
Yet this is, after all, what Amnesty International – and many others – have rightly identified as a “live-streamed genocide.” Due to the stunning shamelessness of many Israeli perpetrators and the development of modern media and especially social media, this is a genocide in the global public eye as never before.
That is why it is entirely impossible to believe the silly attempts to obfuscate and backpedal now made by the clearly anything but “leonine” creators of the poster. Obviously stung by protests and afraid of possible legal consequences, Yorai Feinberg, owner of Feinberg’s, has retreated to claiming that the melons were meant to stand for – drum roll – “antisemitism,” and that the whole thing was just satire anyhow.
Both claims are offensively absurd: Everyone knows that watermelons stand for Palestine, Palestinians, and their resistance, not “antisemitism.” It may, of course, be that in the unwell minds of the poster’s creators those two things appear to be the same. That would be a classical Zionist delusion as well as a propaganda trick. And still, obviously, a lie.
Read more
US-Israeli hostage released by Hamas
Also, it is very, very hard to explain why things now allegedly representing merely “antisemitism” needed to be drawn with cute, childlike faces. No, this is, let’s print it, for-crying-out-loud bullshit, nonsense of the same evil, brazen sort as the Israeli genociders’ endless, daft lies about Hamas here and Hamas there, whenever they feel – which is often – like bombing yet another hospital, tent encampment, or residential building.
Regarding “satire” – a cop-out publicly endorsed by (surprise, surprise) the DIG – where to even start? If the makers of this revolting picture really felt that they were producing something akin to a “witty” or “edgy” statement, a kind of “joke,” then that simply means that they find “joking” about genocide and especially the mass murder of children “normal.” And there can’t be anything less normal and more morally rotten than such a sense of “humor.” Seriously boasting of mass murder or “just kidding”? You know what: It does not matter – either means you are a monster.
But this scandal involves more than the bloody bigotry of one German and Israeli restaurant. Consider that this was an official DIG event, attended by both its president Volker Beck and the Israeli ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor. They cannot have been unaware of the ‘lion-exterminates-melons’ poster: an Instagram picture showed both of them in front of the stand displaying it.
Beck is a major – if past his prime – politician from Germany’s Green Party, a fanatical supporter of Israel, and, as it happens, also a figure with a less than shining past. He has argued for the decriminalization of “pedosexuality,” that is, de facto the unpunished sexual abuse of minors, a fact he later tried to conceal without success; he has also been caught with serious drugs. Prosor is a veteran Israeli diplomat who does what Israeli diplomats do: Past highlights include attacking UNRWA, a signature move of Israeli aggression against Palestinians designed to cut them off from any support that might disturb Israeli siege and starvation operations. Indeed, Israeli assaults on UNRWA are currently the subject of yet another case against it at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Read more
‘Israel cannot beat Hamas’: Afshin Rattansi challenges Jerusalem Center President Dr. Dan Diker
Recently, Prosor has sought to suppress critical voices in Germany, including Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm, and, for good measure, police German universities by defaming resistance to Israeli crimes and German complicity as “new antisemitism.” How original.
It’s not hard to imagine that both gentlemen saw nothing wrong with that melon-shredding lion and may even have enjoyed a splash of genocide-’joke’ smoothie. And they won’t face any consequences, of course. For – and this is the widest and saddest context of this vile affair – Germany has chosen to side with Israel with a ‘to-the-bitter-end’ obstinacy reminiscent of that other very disappointing Germany that failed to ever stop being loyal to – and fighting for – Nazism until finally stopped by others, mostly the Soviets.
Berlin, the capital, has been at the forefront of this new, as it were, transferred nationalism-without-restraint and Nibelungentreue for pure, obvious evil. Its mayor Kai Wegner has acquired a reputation for genocide denial; its police for brutality against those showing solidarity with Israel’s Palestinian victims. And it is the city where an anti-genocide protester has just been convicted for “trivializing the Holocaust” simply for peacefully holding up a sign saying “Have we learned nothing from the Holocaust?” Clearly, that judge has not.
Against this background of pervasive, dominant ethical perversion, a poster viciously dehumanizing Palestinians came as no surprise. What is intriguing is that this time there has been some protest even, if all too faintly, in some mainstream media outlets. Maybe Germany is not entirely lost yet. Or is it, as before in German history, only a minority that shows decency but cannot change the deeply indecent course of the country’s morally and intellectually kaput elites and the majority still following them?
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Site: AsiaNews.itAlmost 70 million voters cast their ballot in midterm elections for Congress and local government. The outgoing majority in Congress should consolidate its hold. Local elections are a mixed bag with differences and divisions, with local coalition building the name of the game.
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Site: Zero Hedge"A Complete Surrender" - Germany Stops Spying On AfD Party After US PressureTyler Durden Tue, 05/13/2025 - 12:45
Germany’s domestic spy agency has suspended authoritarian surveillance methods of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, and U.S. pressure may have played a role.
The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country’s powerful domestic spy agency, had labeled the AfD a “confirmed far-right organization” before suspending this designation last week. The main reason presented was that the AfD is appealing the designation in court and the agency would wait until this appeal is concluded to decide whether to keep the designation.
However, Germany’s ally, the United States, immediately criticized the designation in some of the harshest language possible, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling it “tyranny in disguise.” That was not all, though. U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the powerful U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, then asked Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (DNI) to suspend intelligence cooperation between the United States and Germany.
According to Cotton, the German authorities’ politically motivated surveillance activities resemble methods used by dictatorships that are unbecoming of a democratic ally.
“Rather than trying to undermine the AfD using the tools of authoritarian states, Germany’s incoming government might be better advised to consider why the AfD continues to gain electoral ground,” he wrote.
I asked @DNIGabbard to ensure that no American intelligence agencies cooperate with German authorities involved in surveiling domestic political opponents.
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) May 7, 2025
These police state tactics are more suited for Russia or Communist China, not Western Europe’s largest country.…This would have represented a drastic break between the two allies and even a threat to Germany’s national security, which raised the stakes in Germany’s authoritarian move to stifle the political opposition. Currently, the AfD is the largest opposition party in the country and for the first time ever, polled in first place last month.
The developments have also caused a major stir in Germany. Alice Weidel, co-chair of the AfD, said American pressure was behind the BfV’s withdrawal of its designation label on the AfD. In addition, Joachim Steinhöfel, a lawyer defending freedom of speech, told NIUS that the move by the BfV is “a complete surrender by the German domestic intelligence service.” He also noted that U.S. influence was vital.
“We also have to thank the Americans for exerting massive pressure,” he added.
Germany often relies on external partners to spy on its own citizens, as Germany features very strict privacy laws. The NSA is thought to be especially active watching Germans. As a result, any U.S. withdrawal from intelligence sharing could have been disastrous for Germany.
The temporary removal of the designation was warmly welcomed by the AfD, as it gives the party breathing room. For one, a vote on the ban of the party has little chance of moving forward without the designation. Second, the designation offered the BfV the legal means to surveil the entire party and its membership without a warrant, including reading emails and chats, as well as flood the party with informants.
"I think it's really too late for a ban. The AfD is already too strong."
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) March 3, 2025
Despite ongoing fears of an AfD ban, @Dieter_Stein, the EIC of the influential @Junge_Freiheit, says it would be "ludicrous."
In fact, he predicts an end to the firewall against the AfD within 1-2 years. pic.twitter.com/We7hIQZrjSNow, German intelligence is being forced to rethink its surveillance policy as political divisions grow. However, if the appeal court agrees with the BfV that the AfD can be labeled right-wing extremist, the same issue may rear its head again. It is unclear how long this appeals process will take, whether months or even years; however, there is a growing chorus from Germany’s left, as well as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), to ban the entire AfD party.
If that happens, tensions between the U.S. and Germany could soar to new heights.
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Site: LifeNews
President Trump’s U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reached out to the ACLJ after learning from our article about how a hospital was forcing medical professionals to participate in abortions, and now HHS has just launched a federal investigation of the hospital.
The ACLJ is pleased to report a critical development in the ongoing fight to protect the rights of pro-life medical professionals. After we took action on behalf of five ultrasound technicians in New Mexico who were concerned that they would soon be compelled to participate in abortion procedures despite their deeply held religious beliefs, the federal government has now launched a formal investigation into the hospital’s conduct.
This move by HHS marks a major step forward in ensuring that the conscience rights of healthcare workers are respected under the law.
Get the latest pro-life news and information on X (Twitter). Follow @LifeNewsHQ//
As we previously shared, Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque changed its policies in late 2024 to require participation in abortion procedures – even for longtime employees with religious objections. When these five ultrasound technicians expressed their concern about the hospital’s new direction, they were told that refusing to comply could lead to reassignment or even termination.
That’s when the ACLJ stepped in. We sent a demand letter outlining the hospital’s obligations under federal law – including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Church Amendments – which prohibit employers from discriminating against employees who object to participating in abortions on religious grounds.
Soon after, the hospital reversed course and granted religious accommodations to each of our clients.
But that’s not where the story ends.
As a follow-up to our legal action, President Trump’s HHS Office for Civil Rights just announced that it is initiating a compliance review into the hospital’s actions and its adherence to federal conscience protection laws.
This kind of enforcement action is both rare and significant. It sends a powerful message to healthcare institutions across the country: You cannot force medical professionals to choose between their careers and their faith.
We commend the Trump Administration for taking this issue seriously and moving to protect religious liberty in the healthcare context. This review reinforces what we’ve long argued – that federal law means what it says when it promises protection for those who refuse to take part in the destruction of human life.
The Biden Administration rolled back conscience protections in 2022, leaving religious medical workers vulnerable. But this action by HHS shows that federal agencies still have a role to play in enforcing the law when religious medical professionals are targeted for their beliefs.
It also demonstrates the power of strategic legal advocacy. Without our intervention, these five workers may have had to choose between their jobs and following their religious convictions. Because we acted – and because the law is on their side – they kept their positions and their integrity. But not only that – because these brave ultrasound technicians stood up and we defended them, the Trump Administration is now able to take the next step to ensure this kind of thing never happens again. The Trump Administration’s action is only possible because our clients were willing to work with us to take a stand.
The ACLJ will continue defending the rights of pro-life professionals around the country. If you or someone you know is being pressured to participate in abortions or any procedure that violates their faith, we are here to help.
This is a victory not just for five brave ultrasound techs in New Mexico – but also for every person who believes that no American should be forced to violate their conscience to keep their job.
LifeNews Note: Jordan Sekulow is the Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).
The post Trump Launches Investigation After Presbyterian Hospital Forces Staff to Do Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
This article was published by National Review on May 13, 2025.
By Wesley J Smith
New York is close to passing a bill to legalize assisted suicide. Having passed the assembly, it is currently being considered in the senate.
I read the bill, and much of it consists of the usual obfuscating definitions and pretenses seen in all such proposals. But a few of the provisions struck me as particularly mendacious. First, it defines prescribing poison as a “medical practice.” From S. 138:
“Medical aid in dying” means the medical practice of a physician prescribing medication to a qualified individual that the individual may choose to self-administer to bring about death.
Facilitating suicide is not, and never has been, “medical.” I could prescribe sufficient barbiturates to cause death by overdose. You could too. The only difference is the MD has the right to use the pad and lay people don’t. Indeed, as the Estonian supreme court recently noted while (lamentably) creating a civil right to suicide for any reason, assisted suicide “intentionally causes harm” to the person who dies and “causing death cannot be considered the provision of a healthcare service.”
The bill also engages in blatant language reengineering:
§ 2899-n. Relation to other laws and contracts. 1. (a) A patient who requests medication under this article shall not, because of that request, be considered to be a person who is suicidal, and self-administering medication under this article shall not be deemed to be suicide, for any purpose.
But that is precisely what it is! Death by “medical aid in dying” isn’t natural. It is self killing, intentionally ending one’s own life, i.e. suicide.
And this means that some suicidal people will not be offered suicide prevention — which all suicidal people deserve regardless of the reason for wanting to end it all — even if the actual suicidal ideation is caused by something other than the underlying illness.
More:
Action taken in accordance with this article shall not be construed for any purpose to constitute suicide, assisted suicide, attempted suicide, promoting a suicide attempt, euthanasia, mercy killing, or homicide under the law, including as an accomplice or accessory or otherwise.
The law can redefine a dung beetle into a butterfly, but it still can’t fly and doesn’t consume nectar!
Of course, the legislation requires falsifying vital statistics:
§ 2899-p. Death certificate. 1. If otherwise authorized by law, theattending physician may sign the qualified individual’s death certificate.
Thee cause of death listed on a qualified individual’s death certificate who dies after self-administering medication under this article will be the underlying terminal illness or condition.
But disease will not be the actual cause of death. And remember, sometimes people diagnosed with a terminal illness never die from that condition.
Falsifying death certificates serves two purposes. First, it prevents transparency. Investigators will be unable to access the information they need to conduct independent studies. And second, pretending that some suicides are natural deaths distorts suicide statistics by making it appear as if fewer people killed themselves than actually did.
Dr Lydia Dugdale
I’ll close by recommending an excellent critique of the bill by the physician author of The Lost Art of Dying, published by the New York Times (of all places). From, “There Are Ways to Die With Dignity, but Not Like This,” by L. S. Dugdale:When it comes to conventional suicide, it’s no secret that people who suffer from depression are at greater risk. There is no reason to think that depression is any less of a factor when it comes to physician-assisted suicide. Yet the New York bill, which is modeled on the Death With Dignity law enacted in Oregon in 1997, does not even require a mental health professional to screen patients for depression unless one of the doctors involved determines that the patient’s judgment may be impaired by a psychiatric or psychological disorder.
This is a major oversight that fails to protect depressed people from making flawed decisions. Depression is not just a mood; it distorts perception, often convincing people that their lives are worthless, their loved ones are better off without them and death is their only option.
Indeed. And I know of several cases of terminally ill people backing away from the ledge when they received proper social interventions and were very glad to still be alive.
Here is Dr. Dugdale’s powerful conclusion:
This is not a compassionate policy — not in Canada, not in Oregon and not, should the bill become law, in New York. Instead of investing in the infrastructure of support for the lonely, the depressed, the disabled and the poor, we offer them a prescription for death. We call it autonomy, but it’s abandonment.
The art of dying well cannot be severed from the art of living well, and that includes caring for one another, especially when it is hard, inconvenient or costly. It is not enough to offer the dying control. We must offer them dignity — not by affirming their despair but by affirming their worth. Even when they are suffering. Even when they are vulnerable. Even when they are, in worldly terms, a burden. [Emphasis added.]
I urge you to read the whole piece. And I urge the New York State Senate to vote no on abandonment and yes on greater care. Assisted suicide is bad “medicine” and worse public policy.
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Site: RT - News
The US president has also offered to personally attend the potential peace negotiations in Istanbul
US President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to send his senior envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg to Türkiye this week to attend the potential talks between Moscow and Kiev, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources.
The talks, which are expected to be held in Istanbul on Thursday, were originally proposed last week by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who offered to resume direct negotiations between Moscow and Kiev without any preconditions in order to reach a lasting settlement to the Ukraine conflict.
Vladimir Zelensky has expressed his readiness to engage in dialogue with the Russian side, but has insisted that it be preceded by an unconditional 30-day ceasefire – a demand Moscow has repeatedly rejected. Zelensky has also said that he would only attend the meeting in Istanbul if Putin comes in person.
Trump has also supported the proposal to renew talks between Moscow and Kiev. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday ahead of his Middle East tour, the US President stated that he might even personally attend the negotiations in Türkiye, especially if Putin decides to attend.
Read more
Not talking to Putin illogical – Trump envoy
“I was thinking about actually flying over there. There’s a possibility of it, I guess, if I think things can happen,” Trump said. “Don’t underestimate Thursday in Turkey,” he added.
Moscow has not commented on the possibility of Putin traveling to Istanbul. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also has yet to confirm who would be representing Moscow during the talks, stating that the Russian president’s decision on the matter will be announced in due time.
According to Reuters, regardless of whether Putin, Zelensky or Trump decide to take part in the talks, Kellogg and Witkoff have been ordered to go to Istanbul on Thursday to attend the meeting. The outlet noted that the two senior advisers will not actually take direct part in the negotiations and will only play the role of observers.
While it’s still unclear if the talks will actually take place and in what form, Peskov has stated that preparations for Thursday’s negotiations are underway. He has also ruled out the possibility of any of Kiev’s Western European backers taking part in the process, arguing that they are “entirely on Ukraine’s side” and “rather pro-war,” which excludes them from being considered “unbiased.”
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Site: LifeNews
Planned Parenthood’s affiliates spent $3.4 million helping women travel for abortion last year, according to a new report from the organization.
Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider. Nationwide, its facilities aborted more than 400,000 unborn children last year. Planned Parenthood’s annual report for 2024 brags that its affiliates spent $3.4 million helping more than 12,500 women travel for abortion under its “patient navigation program.”
Planned Parenthood’s regional affiliate owns facilities in Little Rock and Rogers. However, Arkansas’ good, pro-life laws generally prevent those facilities from performing abortions.
But last summer, Family Council learned Planned Parenthood had secretly acquired a facility in Pittsburg, Kansas — a small town within driving distance of Northwest Arkansas.
LifeNews is on GETTR. Please follow us for the latest pro-life news
The new location in Southeast Kansas opened in August. At the time, Family Council and others expressed concerns that the facility would make it easier for Planned Parenthood to promote abortions regionally to women in states that all have very strong, pro-life laws.
Since then, news outlets have confirmed this new Planned Parenthood facility primarily performs abortions on women from Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Abortion hurts women, and it ends the lives of unborn children. Its risks and its consequences are deathly serious.
Women and families deserve better than abortion. It’s important to prohibit abortion through legislation, but we need to work to eliminate the demand for abortion as well.
One way Arkansans can do that is by supporting pro-life organizations that empower women with real options besides abortion.
Arkansas is home to more than 60 organizations that assist pregnant women — including some 45 pregnancy resource centers that help women with unplanned pregnancies.
The State of Arkansas recently voted to award $2 million in grants to pregnancy-help organizations for the 2025-2026 budget cycle.
That money is going to help a lot of women and children in the coming months — and hopefully it will encourage women not to travel to Planned Parenthood facilities in other states for abortions.
LifeNews Note: Jerry Cox is the president of the Arkansas Family Council.
The post Planned Parenthood Spent Millions Taking Women and Teens to Other States to Kill Their Babies in Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: RT - News
The ex-Philippines president is currently facing trial at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity
Former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has won a mayoral race in his home city, according to unofficial election results released on Tuesday. The apparent win comes even as he remains in custody at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, facing charges of crimes against humanity.
Duterte, 80, was arrested by Philippine authorities at Manila’s international airport in March and flown to The Hague, where he is facing trial over his ‘war on drugs’ policy. Under Philippine law, candidates facing criminal charges may run for office unless convicted and all appeals have been exhausted.
Preliminary results showed Duterte had secured more than half a million votes in Davao City – nearly eight times more than his nearest rival. He served as the city’s mayor for two decades before winning the presidency in 2016. Official results are expected within a week.
“Duterte landslide in Davao!” his youngest daughter Veronica posted on Facebook.
The “overwhelming” support Duterte received shows the public’s “total rejection” of efforts to “attempt to stamp out” his legacy, his lawyer said, as quoted by ABS-CBN news agency.
Supporters reportedly chanted his name as early tallies were announced.
Read more
Duterte’s son vows to ‘fight back’ against father’s ICC arrest
The ICC alleges that from 2016 to 2022, Duterte oversaw “death squads” responsible for killing suspected drug dealers and users. He has denied wrongdoing but admitted the crackdown was violent.
Government records show at least 6,200 people were killed in police operations. Rights groups say the real toll could be far higher.
Some human rights advocates have called Duterte’s arrest illegal, noting the Philippines withdrew from the ICC in 2019 on his orders. The court argues it retains jurisdiction over crimes committed while the country was still a member.
His lawyers have filed a petition accusing the Philippine government of “kidnapping” and say the extradition violated both domestic and international law.
Vice President Sara Duterte, his eldest daughter, told reporters after voting this week that she was in talks with her father’s lawyers about how he might take his oath as mayor while in detention. She is widely seen as a leading contender for the 2028 presidential race, despite an impending Senate impeachment trial in July.
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Site: Euthanasia Prevention CoalitionAlex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention CoalitionEleanor Hayward reported for the Times that a poll by Whitestone Insight, a member of the British Polling Council, asked 103 out of 650 MP's how they planned to vote on the Kim Leadbeater assisted suicide bill at final reading.
The bill returns to parliament, from committee, on May 16.
The poll indicated that 42% of the MP's where planning to vote against the assisted suicide bill, 36% supported the bill, while the others were undecided or planning to abstain from the vote.
The Leadbeater assisted suicide bill passed, on November 29, 2024, at second reading by a vote of 330 to 275. This new poll suggests that the vote has shifted.
The Times reported that:
Some MPs have turned against the bill as it has gone through the committee stage, during which the bill lost its requirement for a High Court judge to sign off each assisted dying application. Dozens of MPs are thought to have only backed the bill at its second reading because of this requirement.
Gordon MacdonaldDr. Gordon Macdonald, the chief executive of Care Not Killing, told the Times that:
“The more MPs hear about assisted suicide and what it entails, the less likely they are to support changing the law.
“Clearly MPs recognise that removing the requirement for every application to be overseen by the High Court — part of a formal judicial process with the duty to consider all views and the power to summon witnesses — makes the bill much less safe, while the rejection of amendments aimed at protecting the most vulnerable people in our society is making many people think again.
“This bill was sold to parliament and to members of the public as being the safest in the world, yet the truth is this bill if it became law would put the lives of vulnerable people at risk, exactly as we see in every jurisdiction that has legalised assisted suicide or euthanasia.”To gain back support for her assisted suicide bill, Kim Leadbeater recently urged MPs to back an amendment to the assisted dying bill which would commission a new assessment on the state of palliative care, a move first proposed by the bill’s opponents.Leadbeater doesn't need to amend the bill in order to commission an assessment on the state of palliative care, nonetheless, this is an attempt by her to convince more MP's to support her assisted suicide bill. -
Site: AsiaNews.itThe Election Commission has suspended the registration of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's party over allegations of crimes against humanity after her government cracked down on student protests last summer. The current head of government, Muhammad Yunus, has delayed the vote, while Jamaat-e-Islami and Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh National Party are putting pressure for an early poll.
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Site: Zero HedgeTrump Not Going To Istanbul, As Kremlin Downplays 'Direct' Ukraine Peace TalksTyler Durden Tue, 05/13/2025 - 11:45
The Kremlin on Tuesday affirmed that "the Russian side continues to prepare for the negotiations that are scheduled to take place on Thursday." This after on Sunday Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to resume direct negotiations with Kiev, and proposed the Istanbul talks.
Ukrainian President Zelensky then made a performative gesture - likely more meant to prove to the White House that he's 'willing' - saying he's ready to fly to Istanbul in person and urged Putin to do the same.
Putin spokesman Dimitry Peskov when grilled by reporters on Tuesday downplayed the whole event, describing that direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul later this week are merely "still possible".
As for revealing the line-up for the Russian delegation, and who is expected lead, Peskov said "we will announce it as soon as the president [Putin] deems it necessary."
Despite some sensational recent headlines and statements, one thing we can be sure will not happen is President Putin's personal presence. And per the latest from Reuters, President Trump is not going to be there in Turkey either (after on Monday he actually floated the possibility):
- KELLOGG, WITKOFF ARE HEADING TO ISTANBUL THIS WEEK: REUTERS
- FORMAT OF TALKS IN TURKEY WITH KELLOGG, WITKOFF UNCLEAR: REUTERS
"All of us in Ukraine would appreciate it if President Trump could be there with us at this meeting in Turkey. This is the right idea. We can change a lot," Zelensky had said.
And Trump had responded by saying he was "thinking about actually flying over" – which would have to happen immediately on the heels of his big Gulf visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE.
Zelensky has meanwhile insisted that any talks should be preceded by the start of a 30-day ceasefire – which Washington appears to be backing, but which the Kremlin has already rejected.
Really, all the talk of pushing to get Putin in Istanbul to negotiate in person was about generating mainstream media headlines like the following:
Moscow worries that such a lengthy pause in fighting would only be used by Ukrainian forces to rearm and regroup along the front lines, at a moment they are exhausted and steadily losing ground.
Peskov told reporters further, "[Western] Europe is, after all, entirely on Ukraine’s side. It cannot claim to have an unbiased approach… Its approach is not balanced, it is rather pro-war, aimed at continuing the fighting, which is in sharp contrast to the approach demonstrated, for example, by Moscow or Washington," according to Russian media.
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Site: RT - News
The decision includes potential delivery of Taurus cruise missiles, a government spokesman has said
Germany wants to maintain a “low profile” on future arms deliveries to Ukraine and has refused to publicly discuss the potential delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Kiev, according to a German government spokesperson on Monday.
Extensive public debate of arms deliveries helps Russia, according to Stefan Cornelius, spokesman for new Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Previous deliveries to Kiev under Olaf Scholz were widely debated in public.
“We will also no longer comment on any plans regarding the supply of Taurus cruise missiles,” Cornelius said, “Information about what weapons and ammunition we are supplying should remain open. The situation is different when it comes to such details as the number of specific missiles. This information is not so important for the public, but the Russian aggressor can draw conclusions from it.”
Read more
Western Europe’s efforts a ‘complete fiasco’ – Moscow
The official silence could precipitate the long-debated delivery of the Swedish-German Taurus missiles to Ukraine, which Scholz opposed, citing escalation of the conflict, but which Merz is open to supplying.
Taurus missiles have a 500km operational range, meaning they could be used to attack targets deep inside Russian territory. Moscow has repeatedly warned Berlin that deliveries to Ukraine would make Germany a direct participant in the conflict.
“Since live-firing these cruise missiles is impossible without the direct assistance of Bundeswehr servicemen, a strike on any Russian facilities, critical transport infrastructure... all this will be regarded as direct German participation in military operations,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last month.
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Site: Henrymakow.comAre nuclear bombs a hoax?Makow Disclaimer - I reserve judgmentby Patrick O'Carroll(henrymakow.com)At circa 53 minutes into this video, Scottish nuclear physicist Steven Young lists his TOP TEN NUCLEAR HOAXES (these being his favorite ten from a whole gamut of even more nuclear hoaxes).Steven notes, "They take you into the quantum world in order to bamboozle you".1. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were non-atomic attacks that were "achieved" using a combo of Firebombs, Napalm, and Mustard Gas, as also shown by Dr Michael Palmer in his 2023 book "Hiroshima Revisited".There was no nuclear fallout at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and no uranium was used in the attacks.2. Nuclear power is based on most likely HARMLESS radiant energy and certainly not "hazardous radioactive decay". In reality, harmless uranium heats water, causing steam from which electricity is generated. The only known "chain reaction" is when something burns. There is no such thing as a "nuclear chain reaction".3. The "Atomic Age" is a hoax based on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki hoax (which was an ad for it). Part of this hoax was the "cold" war, and its bogus threat and artificial atomic "dilemma". "Team Antichrist" made 5 trillion USD dollars off the wholly-staged "cold" war, mostly by selling untested non-nuclear weapons like TRIDENT.
4. The "Radium Girls" was a media hoax dated 1917-24 in which factory workers "suffered bodily disintegration" after close contact with radium they had been painting on the dials of watches and clocks.5. "Cold Fusion" was a 1989 media hoax in which Fleischmann and Pons fused two nuclei together and got a flash. But it was really a flash-in-the-pan that was never reproduced.6. "Hot Fusion" is a hoax about supposedly-imminent "over-unity power generation" that will never materialize and is hence another case of VAPORWARE (i.e. always promised or "on its way" but never actually arriving).7. The Fukushima Hoax was a well-funded and calculated disinformation campaign (and this was often pointed out by James Corbett, who himself lives in Japan).8. The Chernobyl Hoax yet was more disinformation. The reactor kept operating for 14 years after the 1986 disaster. There is no evidence of any nuclear fallout or radioactivity at Chernobyl, but there is some evidence of iodine poisoning. Today's residents of Chernobyl can explain the hysteria in greater detail.9. Particle accelerators are a hoax that do not accelerate particles, but are instead just glorified "giant cathode ray tubes". There are no particles, i.e. this is just electricity. Particle accelerators are also very expensive, yet useless, machines.10. The hoax claiming that stars are "nuclear reactors that manufacture matter in outer space", which is really a claim from the bizarre field of astrophysics, which is basically bogus nuclear theory applied to space, and happens to also be one of the most boring subjects in all of Freemasonic "Science".The graphic (below) suggests that nuclear accidents may in fact be yet another technique (boondoggle) used to rob taxpayer money (the cost of Fukushima being 260 billion USD, and that of Chernobyl being 200 billion USD).SOME HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS THINGS ABOUT ATOMIC PHYSICS1. Nuclear physics is based on the bogus claim that "God Made A Mistake", i.e. that a "bug" in God's System meant that the entire world could be destroyed by "splitting" God's tiniest building-block. It is MUCH more likely that this is a satanic boast by Freemasonic "Science" that their "Prince" Satan "can destroy Creation". This is also akin to Freemasonic "Science" adopting "Big Bang" Theory as essentially "Satan's Own Creation Narrative", which is highly nihilistic since nihilism takes the view that everything happens because of nothing. In addition, Freemasonic "Science" deployed fake-"scientist" Oppenheimer (whose colleagues confirmed "he could not even run a hamburger stand") to make the terrifying (or terrorist) claim, "Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds", which is a line from the Bhagavad Gita, one of the four most-revered books in 33rd-Degree Freemasonry, the full list of four being: The (faulty or incorrectly-translated) KJV Bible; the Koran; the Bhagavad Gita along with the Four Vedas; and "The Book of the Law" by British Satanist Aleister Crowley.2. The theory of "sub-particles" was "proved right the very first time". That is unlikely since the reality of human endeavor mostly involves "two steps forward, and one step back". Originally, atoms were indivisible building blocks (from the Greek "átomos" meaning undivided). Around 1850, fake-"scientists" still referred to atoms as being "like tiny little billiard balls". But then, fake-"scientists" started claiming that atoms could be broken down into "sub-particles". However, the fact that this "sub-particle" theory was then proved to be "true", "right", or "correct" immediately (the very first time and with no setbacks) is massively suspicious, especially since, to this day, no one has ever seen "particles" or "sub-particles" such as atoms, electrons, protons ... More oddly, Freemasonic "Science" claims that 99.99 percent of formerly-"full" atoms is now "empty space".
3. The "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle" was invented as a SUPER-COVER-UP. Basically, this "principle" states: "No one can see any of our bogus, invented 'particles' or 'sub-particles' because shining any light on them would 'naturally' cause them to immediately vamoose, or depart, or disappear".4. Similarly to the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle", Quantum Physics claims the very act of measurement will cause the "quantum-ness" to totally vanish. This implies that when you look away from Quantum Physics, it is "all quantum" but, when you look back at it, it is "obliged" to become real or to hastily re-comply with reality.5. The concept of the "random universe" is false, nihilistic, and a cop-out because Freemasonic "Science" can not claim to be scientific if it keeps asserting that everything happens because of nothing.6. Atomic Physics leads to SOLIPSISM (from Latin "solus" for alone and "ipse" for self), or the idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. Worse still, solipsism bolsters satanic concepts such as "there is no truth" or "truth is in the eye of the beholder", i.e. bogus ideas that were made fashionable by the "Enlightenment" (which may really be a satanic inversion for "En-Darken-ment"). Steven says there is no proof of "alpha particles" (helium nuclei), which unfortunately means that Ernest Rutherford's "discovery" of the nucleus is yet another HOAX. Also, in all of nuclear physics, there is still no evidence whatsoever of any "atom splitting" going on.7. Freemasonic "Science" based its fake theory of the Cosmos on its fake theory of the atom.- to be continued..
(Nikkei Montage / Reuters)
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