Luc FerrandezHopper reported that Fernandez also stated that:
Quebec should enshrine “comité de sages” (committees of experts) to authorize assisted suicide “in cases where, for example, someone no longer has any parents, people who were abandoned … people who no longer receive visits … no longer have any joy in life, they have no more interest in living, who live in permanent suffering.”Montréal disability rights group RAPLIQ responded by accusing Ferrandez of promoting a eugenic ideology and stated:
“To speak of euthanasia with logistical calm, as if it were a measure of social efficiency, is to deny the value of different lives,”This is not the first time Ferrandez has made comments about euthanasia. The Post Millennial reported on December 3, 2019 that Ferrandez wrote on his facebook page, concerning euthanasia for climate change that:
“Could we, for environmental, social and economic reasons, decide that we want to receive help to die so as not to be a burden for our family and society in general?”Ferrandez's recent comments were madewhile discussing the story of "Florence" an intellectually disabled 24-year-old woman who was profiled in a story by Le Presse. Hopper reports:
Florence, not her real name, was held in solitary confinement for eight days at Quebec’s Leclerc Institution following a perennial failure by Quebec health authorities to place her in an institution that suited her needs.
Florence is described as having the mental capacity of a small child, and suffers from Prader–Willi syndrome, a rare genetic condition in which the sufferer always feels hungry.
Florence's story outlines the abusive care that she receives in Québec.
Hopper explains how Ferrandez responded to the "Florence" story:
Mid-way through Thursday’s segment on the case, Ferrandez suggests that Florence’s mother should have the right to end her daughter’s life via doctor-assisted suicide.
“How does the law have the right to say ‘no’? How does the state have the right to say ‘no’?” he said, to agreement from Normandeau.
He added that in extreme disability cases, the only medical solution is to “freeze” a patient in bed, and that death could be seen as “a way to end their pain.”
RAPLIQ responded by stating:
No to the trivialization of death as a “social solution.”
No to this false compassion that hides a deep contempt.
No to this morbid fantasy of liberation which is nothing but a shameful surrender.
Disability is part of the human condition.
It is not a virus to eradicate.
It is not a problem to be solved through erasure.
To reject disabled people is to reject one’s own humanity.
We choose, for Florence and for all the others:
Solidarity, not suppression.
Adaptation, not abandonment.
Dignity, not disappearance.
Quebec can do better. Quebec must do better.
Solutions exist — here and elsewhere. What’s lacking is courage.
Ferrandez is a former mayor of the Montreal borough of Le Plateau-Mont-Royal. He co-hosts a daily three-hour talk show with Nathalie Normandeau, a former deputy premier under the Quebec Liberal government of Jean Charest.
Canada approved euthanasia for mental illness alone and has scheduled to implement it on March 17, 2027.
On March 21, 2025 the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Committee report urged Canada's federal government to:
Québec has the highest euthanasia rate in Canada at 7.6% of all deaths in 2024. Recently a Québec coroner's inquest has investigated the death of Normand Meunier, a quadriplegic man who died by euthanasia on March 29, 2024 after developing bedsores from a lack of basic medical care. Québec expanded it's euthanasia regime on October 30, 2024 by permitting euthanasia by advance request.
Two prominent US bishops commended Congress this week for advancing budget measures that would cut taxpayer funding to abortion providers and “gender transition” services.
Bishop Daniel E. Thomas, chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Bishop Robert E. Barron, chair of the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, recently voiced strong support for provisions within the House budget reconciliation bill that would redirect funding away from organizations like Planned Parenthood.
CatholicVote reported that the proposed legislation includes provisions to block federal funds for gender procedures for minors under Medicaid, while also cutting off funding for abortion providers that do not comply with the Hyde Amendment, which only allows abortions in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is at risk.
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“For decades, Planned Parenthood has received government money and offered low-income women one terrible option: to end the lives of their babies,” the bishops stated. “More recently, they have used the same taxpayer funds to expand their destructive offerings, by promoting gender ideology and providing puberty blockers and hormones to minors, turning them into lifelong patients in the process.”
The bishops emphasized that federal funding should not be used to support practices that are harmful to human dignity.
“Americans should not be forced to subsidize abortions and ‘gender transition’ services with their tax dollars,” they said.
In addition to praising the House’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, Bishops Thomas and Barron urged lawmakers to redirect funds toward “authentic, life-affirming health care providers that serve mothers and their children in need.”
They also appealed to Congress and the Trump Administration to protect vulnerable populations, especially women and children, from “mutilating ‘gender transition’ services and the scourge of abortion.”
LifeNews Note: Rachel Quackenbush writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
The post Catholic Bishops Support Reconciliation Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood appeared first on LifeNews.com.
President Donald Trump urged House Republicans to unite behind his sweeping “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” Tuesday morning, highlighting the legislation’s major tax cuts, pro-family provisions, and conservative reforms.
“It’s important for the country,” Trump said Tuesday morning. “It’s the biggest tax reduction in history, incredible for Medicaid, Medicare.”
Responding to Democratic claims that the bill would cut core entitlements, Trump added: “The only thing we’re cutting is waste, fraud, and abuse… We’re not changing Medicaid, and we’re not changing Medicare, and we’re not changing Social Security.”
The bill was approved Sunday night by the House Budget Committee, days after a GOP-led block temporarily stalled it due to concerns about its projected impact on the national debt. It includes large tax breaks for working-class Americans, small businesses, and domestic manufacturers, while targeting several Biden-era policies.
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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “the single most pro-small business, pro-family, and pro-American worker legislation ever.” She noted provisions including no taxes on tips, no overtime tax for law enforcement and firefighters, and a large tax deduction for Americans buying American-made cars.
“Despite desperate Democrat lies, the biggest beneficiary of this tax cut will be working-class Americans and their families,” Leavitt said Monday. “Americans earning between $30,000 and 80,000 per year will pay about 15% less in taxes after this bill is passed.”
The bill also advances longtime conservative priorities, including defunding Planned Parenthood, banning taxpayer-funded “gender transition procedures” for minors through Medicaid, and expanding school choice.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, praised the bill’s repeal of over $500 billion in “radical ‘Green New Deal’” funding, calling it a decisive move to end “Biden’s war on American energy.”
White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Steve Miran, citing a new analysis, said the plan could boost GDP by up to 5%, create as many as seven million jobs, and raise the average family’s take-home pay by $8,000-$13,000.
“President Trump’s budget blueprint has a lot of great things in it, not the least of which is stripping federal funding from Planned Parenthood,” said CatholicVote Vice President Joshua Mercer. “That alone is reason enough to support this bill. Factor in the tax breaks for families, pro-worker policies, educational choice, and more, and the ‘big-beautiful bill’ adds up to a major win for Americans.”
A key committee hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, with House leaders aiming for a floor vote soon. If the bill clears the House, it will advance to the Senate, where Republicans are reportedly considering amendments.
LifeNews Note: Elise DeGeeter writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
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Perhaps Putin should tell the Russian people and the Russian Army that his interest in resolving the conflict in Ukraine with peace negotiations lies in the possibility that the negotiations could be used to achieve a Great Power Agreement like what he and Lavrov tried to achieve with the West during the winter of 2021-2022 prior to Russia’s forced intervention in Ukraine. A New Yalta in effect.
Russian foreign affairs commentators have been speaking for some time about the need for a new Yalta agreement. A few years ago I was asked to address the Russian Academy of Sciences on the subject. I told them something that they did not want to hear: that Washington’s claim to hegemony prevented accommodation to Russian sovereignty.
A few thinking people have been perplexed at Putin’s conduct of the conflict in Ukraine. Russia could have ended the war quickly with conquest, but instead has fought a slow, restrained war that has greatly expanded the war with Putin and Lavrov bleating constantly for “peace negotiations.”
Why has Putin done this despite the protests of the Wagner Group and the Chechnya leader of the Muslim troops fighting in the Ukraine conflict? The only answer seems to be that he wants a New Yalta Agreement. If he wins the war, he loses the opportunity. So he drags out the war in the hopes that negotiations will provide a platform for addressing the “root cause of the conflict”–which he sees as the absence of a Great Power Agreement.
One problem Putin’s wishful strategy faces is Washington’s commitment to hegemony. No American president has repudiated the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Another is that the absence of victory goes down poorly with the Russian nationalists and with the troops themselves. There are news reports that Russians are suspicious and resentful of peace negotiations in Ukraine that stop short of victory.
Russian soldiers doing the fighting have told media that as tired as they are and as much as they want to go home, they want to liberate all of the regions that are once again part of Russia so that they don’t have to renew the fight in the future. As one of the soldiers asked, “Otherwise, have all the guys died in vain?”
Russia’s rescue of the Russian territories assigned to Ukraine by Soviet leaders is important to Putin, but more important is to secure a Great Power Agreement, a New Yalta, that accepts Russia as a member county free of sanctions, overthrow attempts, and conflicts.
Putin is so desirous of this agreement that he has risked the ever-widening of the Ukraine conflict to the point that drone attacks now close all Moscow airports and destroy energy infrastructure deep inside Russia. When Putin says that peace negotiations must address the “root cause of the conflict,” he means the absence of a Great Power Agreement.
Putin is not interested in a negotiated end to the conflict in Ukraine. He is hopeful of using negotiation to achieve a New Yalta. The problem that Putin faces is that Washington, wrapped up as it is in its assumed hegemony, has no comprehension of another country’s point of view.
Washington’s approach to all negotiations is to use threats, to look for levers of pressure to force other governments to accept Washington’s “solution” to the “problem,” usually a Washington creation. In other words, Washington doesn’t really negotiate. It imposes its solutions.
Trump expects the Ukrainian negotiations to fail, and has ensured as much, in order to be able to withdraw money and focus from Ukraine and use the resources to bring into operation Trump’s goal of an American Middle East colonial empire which began with Trump’s claim of Gaza as an American possession. This claim is a claim to the undersea gas reserves that run from Gaza’s border with Egypt to northern Syria. Trump’s visit in Saudi Arabia, the last remaining Arab state, was to enlist the rulers as junior partners in Trump’s American Middle East colonial empire. It seems that with Trump’s domestic agenda blocked by the judiciary, Trump will make us great again with the rise of America’s Middle East Empire.
Reprinted with permission from PaulCraigRoberts.org.
The hatred of some in Israel for the people of Gaza – even for little children – is just astounding. If they have even a tiny bit of belief in God, they should pray for forgiveness.
Unfortunately, NPR reported last Thursday (May 15) on “deadly airstrikes, killing more than 150 people in the past day, including dozens of children.”
On May 9 the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and many other publications reported on a meeting of a subcommittee of Israel’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
The hearing in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, was not about concern for children who were starving or who had to have amputations without anesthesia. It was about concern over the public relations harm to Israel.
One of the witnesses was Dr. Sharon Shaul from NATAN, a worldwide humanitarian aid charity.
Dr. Shaul said, “I believe that none of the people sitting around this table are concerned that a suffering child cannot receive painkillers or even minimal medical treatment.”
Then the story said that Knesset member Amit Halevi from Netanyahu’s Likud Party “interrupted her angrily saying, ‘I’m not sure you’re speaking for us when you say we want to treat every child and every woman.’”
The doctor then replied that she hoped the member would not oppose “a four-year-old child” undergoing an amputation receiving pain medication. “I hope you have that compassion,” Dr. Shaul said.
However, Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech “pointed at the doctor and said ‘the only treatment that should be given is to you.’” Another member shouted, “You are the sickest doctor I have ever seen.”
Elad Barashi, a producer at Israel’s Channel 14, surpassed even this hatred by writing on social media in early May: “Good morning. Let there be a holocaust in Gaza.”
In another post, he wrote: “I can’t understand the people here in the State of Israel who don’t want to fill Gaza with gas chambers … or train cars … and finish this story. Let there be a holocaust in Gaza.”
He added: “Men, women and children – by any means necessary we must simply carry out a Shoa against them – yes, read that again – H-O-L-O-C-A-U-S-T!”
He said there were 2.6 million terrorists in Gaza and wrote: “Without fear, without weakness – just Crush. Eliminate. Slaughter. Flatten. Dismantle. Smash. Shatter.”
The fanatic Netanyahu has been indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity, yet he is a hero in our Congress because of campaign contributions. The rest of the world is overwhelmingly against the genocide in Gaza.
In my column two weeks ago, I wrote of the letter signed by the 36 members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which criticized what it called this “most extremist of Israeli governments” and said, “We stand against the war.”
Even more significant – in fact, almost shocking – is the column Thomas Friedman, the longtime New York Times columnist, published on May 9 entitled “This Israeli Government Is Not Our Ally.”
Friedman said Netanyahu has placed personal political survival before his nation’s and U.S. interests and wrote, “Netanyahu is not our friend.”
He added that “a permanent Israeli military occupation, whose unstated goal will be to pressure all Palestinians to leave is a prescription for a permanent insurgency – Vietnam on the Mediterranean.”
Israel has never had any prominent media voice more supportive than Friedman has been over the years. He has been writing for the New York Times since 1981.
President Trump wrote that the release of the American hostage Edan Alexander a few days ago was “a step taken in good faith toward the United States and the efforts … to put an end to this very brutal war…”
Axios reported that “Israel was not directly involved … and initially learned about it from its intelligence services who spy on Hamas.” This gives credence to the many reports that Trump is tired of being manipulated by Netanyahu.
CNN reported on May 12 that Trump “blindsided Israel several times already – announcing talks with Iran, a deal with Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and direct talks with Hamas,” plus not stopping there on the president’s latest Middle East trip.
Maybe Friedman’s column and some of the statements and actions by Trump will finally give some members of Congress the courage to speak out against Israel’s cruelty in Gaza.
Reprinted with author’s permission from the Knoxville Focus.
Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued the order in March 2020 that ultimately killed at least 15,000 nursing home residents. Many senior living centers were flooded with COVID patients thanks to Cuomo’s reckless order putting them in senior living facilities instead of other locations that could have protected elderly people.
Now, the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into Cuomo, probing whether he lied to Congress about his role in a state policy that led to the deaths of thousands of nursing home residents. The investigation, initiated last month, centers on a controversial March 2020 directive that required nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients, a policy critics argue caused a catastrophic loss of life among vulnerable seniors.
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The probe follows a referral from House Oversight Chairman James Comer, who accused Cuomo of making false statements to a House subcommittee investigating his administration’s handling of the pandemic.
Comer’s referral alleges Cuomo was involved in drafting a 2020 New York State Health Department report that downplayed nursing home deaths, despite testifying he had no role in its creation.
Cuomo’s March 25, 2020, order mandated nursing homes to admit or re-admit patients regardless of their COVID status, a decision that pro-life groups and grieving families say endangered elderly residents. The policy, which was revoked on May 10, 2020, is blamed for contributing to the deaths of at least 15,000 nursing home residents, according to reports.
A 2021 investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James found that the state undercounted nursing home deaths by as much as 50%, excluding residents who died after being transferred to hospitals.
This investigation is long overdue for people like Daniel Arbeeny, co-founder of We Care Memorial Wall for COVID nursing home victims, whose father, Norman, died in a Brooklyn nursing home after contracting COVID. Arbeeny, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Cuomo in 2022, called the policy “reckless endangerment” that cost thousands of lives.
He has said Cuomo must be held accountable for forcing nursing homes to accept infected patients when safer alternatives, like hospital ships, were available.
Janice Dean, a Fox News meteorologist who lost both her in-laws to COVID-19 in New York nursing homes, has been a vocal critic as well and says there needs to be accountability for the 15,000 seniors who died alone because of Cuomo’s deadly directive.
Families of nursing home victims see the probe as a step toward justice.
Vivian Zayas, co-founder of Voices for Seniors, whose mother died in a Long Island nursing home, said, has demanded the truth for over 5 years.
The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment, citing a policy of not confirming ongoing investigations. Whether the probe will lead to charges remains unclear, but for pro-life advocates and affected families, it represents a chance to hold Cuomo accountable for policies they believe prioritized politics over human lives.
The post Justice Department Investigating Andrew Cuomo for Killing Thousands of Seniors appeared first on LifeNews.com.
How America Is Being Made Great Again
Paul Craig Roberts
Perhaps Putin should tell the Russian people and the Russian Army that his interest in resolving the conflict in Ukraine with peace negotiations lies in the possibility that the negotiations could be used to achieve a Great Power Agreement like what he and Lavrov tried to achieve with the West during the winter of 2021-2022 prior to Russia’s forced intervention in Ukraine. A New Yalta in effect.
Russian foreign affairs commentators have been speaking for some time about the need for a new Yalta agreement. A few years ago I was asked to address the Russian Academy of Sciences on the subject. I told them something that they did not want to hear: that Washington’s claim to hegemony prevented accommodation to Russian sovereignty.
A few thinking people have been perplexed at Putin’s conduct of the conflict in Ukraine. Russia could have ended the war quickly with conquest, but instead has fought a slow, restrained war that has greatly expanded the war with Putin and Lavrov bleating constantly for “peace negotiations.”
Why has Putin done this despite the protests of the Wagner Group and the Chechnya leader of the Muslim troops fighting in the Ukraine conflict? The only answer seems to be that he wants a New Yalta Agreement. If he wins the war, he loses the opportunity. So he drags out the war in the hopes that negotiations will provide a platform for addressing the “root cause of the conflict”–which he sees as the absence of a Great Power Agreement.
One problem Putin’s wishful strategy faces is Washington’s commitment to hegemony. No American president has repudiated the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Another is that the absence of victory goes down poorly with the Russian nationalists and with the troops themselves. There are news reports that Russians are suspicious and resentful of peace negotiations in Ukraine that stop short of victory.
Russian soldiers doing the fighting have told media that as tired as they are and as much as they want to go home, they want to liberate all of the regions that are once again part of Russia so that they don’t have to renew the fight in the future. As one of the soldiers asked, “Otherwise, have all the guys died in vain?”
Russia’s rescue of the Russian territories assigned to Ukraine by Soviet leaders is important to Putin, but more important is to secure a Great Power Agreement, a New Yalta, that accepts Russia as a member county free of sanctions, overthrow attempts, and conflicts.
Putin is so desirous of this agreement that he has risked the ever-widening of the Ukraine conflict to the point that drone attacks now close all Moscow airports and destroy energy infrastructure deep inside Russia. When Putin says that peace negotiations must address the “root cause of the conflict,” he means the absence of a Great Power Agreement.
Putin is not interested in a negotiated end to the conflict in Ukraine. He is hopeful of using negotiation to achieve a New Yalta. The problem that Putin faces is that Washington, wrapped up as it is in its assumed hegemony, has no comprehension of another country’s point of view.
Washington’s approach to all negotiations is to use threats, to look for levers of pressure to force other governments to accept Washington’s “solution” to the “problem,” usually a Washington creation. In other words, Washington doesn’t really negotiate. It imposes its solutions.
Trump expects the Ukrainian negotiations to fail, and has ensured as much, in order to be able to withdraw money and focus from Ukraine and use the resources to bring into operation Trump’s goal of an American Middle East colonial empire which began with Trump’s claim of Gaza as an American possession. This claim is a claim to the undersea gas reserves that run from Gaza’s border with Egypt to northern Syria. Trump’s visit in Saudi Arabia, the last remaining Arab state, was to enlist the rulers as junior partners in Trump’s American Middle East colonial empire. It seems that with Trump’s domestic agenda blocked by the judiciary, Trump will make us great again with the rise of America’s Middle East Empire.
There are plenty of areas in which to be disappointed (or justified, depending on your level of cynicism) by the current presidential administration. But one has to be grateful to God that Trump is president, if only to be freed from the globalist tyranny of the so-called World Health Organization. Withdrawing our country from the WHO and the oh-so-fraudulently-based Paris Climate Accords are two of the very best moves he has made.
Make no mistake, and you likely already know this, the globalist WHO and the climate scam are nothing more than means of globalist tyranny, the weakening of national sovereignty, and a gigantic tax on US citizens to fund their own destruction.
The global response to the 2020 cold virus “pandemic” was so good for the globalists that they want even more power. The WHO just adopted a “pandemic agreement” that requires member nations to do what it says. Thankfully, our withdrawal from this gang of corrupt and evil bureaucrats was already announced and will soon be over. I get the feeling also that should the gang declare a summer beach and playground pandemic before the literal ending date of US membership that our president would tell them where and how far up to stick their dictates.
Like I said at the time, it isn’t as though we deserve the blessings of the good Lord for anything we have done. But in His goodness He has given us a stay of execution, as it were. Further membership in the WHO might have been a literal death sentence. Good for President Trump.
Now do NATO.
The Camp of the Saints
Paul Craig Roberts
80% Of French Women Want The Army Deployed In French Cities To Protect Them Against Immigrant-Invaders
France has seen an incredible 86 percent increase in sexual violence in the last 10 years, with mass immigration fueling this trend.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/80-french-women-want-army-deployed-french-cities-protect-them
It is the same in Sweden, Norway, Germany, all over Europe.
The French women will not receive the French army’s protection. The French government, like the governments in Norway, Sweden, Germany and all of Western Europe, is committed to the erasure of ethnic nations. French women should have read The Camp of the Saints. They should have voted for Marine Le Pen, the only French political leader who believes in a French ethnic nation.
Now it is too late for the French women. The government of France has framed Le Pen and sentenced her to prison for her defense of a French ethnic nation. She was eliminated for being a French nationalist, not for the alleged fraud used to frame her.
The death of white ethnic nations is the consequence of the use of education by the leftwing to destroy the belief system. White ethnicities have been taught to see themselves negatively and infused with guilt to such an extent that they cannot defend themselves or even recognize their true leaders. They consistently vote for their own destruction.
Democrats Hate White People
Here is the white Democrat Rep. Merkley raising a fuss with Secretary of Defense Rubio–why Rubio?–about white South Africans being allowed into the US.
What more proof do insouciant Americans need that Democrats are anti-white?
https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1924862459623440604
When you take a close look at the US Congress, the media, educators, the judiciary, you have to wonder how the United States can possibly survive.
“Western mass media is extraordinarily effective in fostering within the general public enormous sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel — for example abortion, homosexual lifestyle, euthanasia.” — Fr Robert Prevost OSA (Leo XIV) Johan Bergström-Allen is a “lay pastoral minister at Our Lady’s Church in York” and “chairman of […]
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As we have seen, the British campaign for abortion emerged from the eugenics movement, whose members believed society was “breeding from the wrong end” and that the proliferating “unfit” should be sterilised; however, while eugenicists believed that the “fit” should have more children, and the “unfit” fewer, the equally secular Neo-Malthusians advocated the small “Malthusian […]
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From Divine Intimacy Prelude O Jesus, make me understand that my prayer is of no avail unless it is made in Your Name; that my faith is vain unless I convert it into works. 1 In this Sunday’s Gospel, taken again from the discourse of Jesus after the Last Supper (Jn 16:23–30), the Church continues […]
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Unfortunately it will be on a Sunday rather than the preceding Thursday. Keep in mind that the symbolic meaning of having it on Thursday is to remind us of Holy Thursday and the Institution of the Most Holy Eucharist by our Lord. Hopefully Holy Thursday never gets transferred to the following Sunday like Corpus Christi and the Ascension have.
From Vatican News:
As the Church marks the Solemnity of the Body & Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) on Sunday, June 22, Pope Leo XIV will preside at Mass at 5:00 PM in the Basilica of St. John Lateran and take part in the Eucharistic procession to the Basilica of St. Mary Major.
Monday was a record-setting day. Stocks opened down 1% on news that Moody's downgraded the US credit rating to AA. While some perceived the downgrade as problematic, retail investors, aka individuals, bought stocks at the highest rate ever. Per JP Morgan, retail investors purchased a net of $4.1 billion of US stocks in the first three hours of trading. As their graph below shows, Monday's retail buying stampede dwarfs prior instances.
While the retail net inflow was quite impressive, it does leave the bulls and bears with a consideration. We should ask ourselves who the retail investors bought the stock from. The answer, by default, is institutional investors. This trend of retail buying from institutional investors has been ongoing. As we wrote in Smart Money or Dumb Money: Who Will be Right:
Smart money (institutions and hedge funds) is aggressively selling this market while individual investors, aka dumb money, are aggressively buying. The difference in opinions is stunning.
Typically, institutional investors are right; however, over the last few years, retail has proven to be the smarter money. Is retail out of money? Or will institutions cover?
Earnings
Economy
Yesterday's commentary noted the numerous momentum indicators suggesting higher asset prices ahead. While the markets are indeed short-term overbought and due for a pullback, the bull market remains intact and will likely end the year with higher, rather than lower, prices. However, when markets rally as hard as they have lately, adding exposure to the market as needed becomes difficult.
The subject of this weekend's newsletter will be "Trading An Unstoppable Bull Market." This will not be the first time we have written this article, but every time we get into similar market environments, the challenges remain the same for investors.
There are millions of different ways to approach technical analysis, and investors use millions of combinations of technical indicators to try to decipher market movements. I am only going to discuss how we do it with you.
Notably, technical analysis does NOT predict the future. It is the study of historical price action, which is the purest representation of the psychology of market participants. From that study, we can make statistical observations about the behavior of market participants in the past. Those assumptions can help form a “guess,” assuming similar variables, about how they may act in the near term.
For our portfolio management needs, we keep our analysis very simple. We use one indicator to indicate if prices are overbought or oversold, two moving averages to determine the trend of prices, and Bollinger bands to warn of significant deviations from those moving averages. I show the technical setup in the sample chart below from SimpleVisor.com.
We are looking for either “warning signs” that stocks could be due for a short to intermediate-term, corrective period, or indications that they are oversold and ready to advance. Currently, we are dealing with the former.
Historically, when prices move toward the upper bands of 2- or 3-standard deviations above the 50-day moving average (dma), the Relative Strength Index (RSI) is overbought, and the MACD is crossing lower from a high level, stock prices generally correct to some degree. Such is the potential environment we will likely deal with in the next few weeks as we move into June and stock buybacks begin to fade. This is also why we have suggested taking profits, rebalancing risk, and holding cash for a better entry point.
However, while we are waiting for an entry point to increase exposure, it is essential to remember the most important commandment:
Commandment #1: “Thou Shall Not Trade Against the Trend.” – James P. Arthur Huprich
Let me be very clear. We are discussing risk management. You must understand the market’s overall trend and when it is changing. The negative price trend from April is over, and the market continues to trend positively. That is just what it is.
Currently, we are in a “bull market” advance. As such, we want to maintain our exposure to equity risk. However, this does not mean we should ignore what the market tells us and let the ebbs and flows wash over us. Eventually, another “ebb” will come, and we will want to increase risk accordingly. However, that is not today.
“In a bull market, you can be either long or neutral. In a bear market, you can only be neutral or short.” – Dennis Gartman
While the market could certainly pull back to the lower of those “bands,” corrections will likely remain confined to the 50-dma. As such, we will want to use those opportunities to trade portfolios into higher levels of equity exposure. With the market currently more overbought and extended, we want to remain cautious about committing our cash reserves to the broad market more aggressively.
“Willingness and ability to hold funds uninvested while awaiting real opportunities is a key to success in the battle for investment survival.” – Gerald Loeb
I hope this helps.
The graph below from Trading View provides some context for the level of US Treasury yields. As shown, other than the UK, the US has the highest yields across the maturity spectrum. Other than China, all of the curves slope upward. Thus, short-term yields are lower than longer-term yields. Such a slope is normal. Moreover, it occurs after most of the slopes were inverted.
The notable difference between the curves is the lower short-term rates for all countries but the US and UK. Excluding Japan, their central banks have been more aggressive in cutting rates. While deficit- and tariff-related inflation narratives keep US yields higher than other countries, investors focused on the historical drivers of yields (inflation and economic activity) should find value in the higher yields. However, the battle between narratives and fundamentals favors the narratives for now.
The FIRE movement—short for Financial Independence, Retire Early—has gained popularity among those who want more control over their time and financial future. Unlike traditional retirement models, FIRE encourages aggressive saving and disciplined financial planning to reach financial independence far earlier than the typical retirement age.
Whether you dream of leaving the 9-to-5 grind in your 40s or simply want to build more freedom into your life, understanding the FIRE retirement strategy and how to build a financial independence plan is essential.
“Want to achieve better long-term success in managing your portfolio? Here are our 15-trading rules for managing market risks.”
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Traditional, orthodox Roman Catholic believers ought to be extremely grateful that American Catholics do not vote on Catholic doctrine, moral teaching, and ecclesiology. Because if they did, and if they got their way, much of the historic Roman Catholic Church would be swept away into the dustbin of history. This conclusion screams from the pages of a recent Pew Research Center survey report…
The following paragraph, courtesy of Amazon, reviews the book Death of the Dollar by William Rickenbacker.
Death of the Dollar by William F. Rickenbacker is a critical examination of the economic policies and monetary mismanagement that the author argues are eroding the value of the U.S. dollar and threatening financial stability. Rickenbacker contends that the actions of money managers, including excessive government spending, inflationary policies, and the detachment of the dollar from the gold standard, are systematically devaluing the currency. The book warns of an impending monetary disaster, highlighting how these policies disproportionately harm everyday citizens who rely on the dollar’s stability for savings and investments. Through a blend of economic analysis and historical context, Rickenbacker underscores the dangers of unchecked financial intervention and the potential for a collapse of the dollar’s purchasing power.
Plenty of books, articles, and social media posts herald the same grim forecast as Rickenbacker. For the most part, they rely on similar reasoning. Essentially, lax monetary policy and gross fiscal spending, both deemed to be inflationary, will result in dollar devaluation and ultimately the death of the dollar.
The difference between Rickenbacker’s book and other dollar demise forecasts is that Death of the Dollar was written in 1968! Fifty-seven years later, despite, or possibly because of Rickenbacker’s justifications, the dollar is still the world's reserve currency, and no other sovereign currency, cryptocurrency, or precious metal will replace it anytime soon.
Given the topic's importance and the gross misinformation spread about the dollar’s imminent demise, we review Rickenbacker’s thesis to highlight that today’s warnings have been around for decades and why the odds of them coming to fruition this time are very low, as they were decades ago.
Rickenbacker’s book was published in 1968, three years before President Nixon closed the gold window, essentially making the dollar a fiat currency. While his book accurately predicted that ground-shaking event, it did not correctly anticipate its impact.
He reasoned that without gold regulating the supply of dollars, unchecked monetary policy would result in reckless “money printing.”
He was correct that the Fed would have more flexibility in managing the money supply. Furthermore, with this added power, we have seen reckless behavior, as he theorized. However, Rickenbacker erred on the money printing allegation.
The Fed doesn’t print money. All money is lent into creation by banks. The Fed prints bank reserves, which allow banks to make loans, i.e., print money, if they choose. More importantly, even if the money supply increases due to Fed incentives to lend, it's unclear whether such activity is good or bad for the economy and how it impacts inflation and ultimately the dollar’s value. That is a function of the productivity of debt.
Simply, productive debt drives economic growth, increases the nation's prosperity, and reduces deficits as a percentage of economic activity. Unproductive debt detracts from economic growth and prosperity and worsens deficits. Weaker growth from unproductive debt tends to be disinflationary.
As judged by an increasing debt-to-GDP ratio, aggregate debt has been unproductive, leading to lower inflation growth rates. Thus, if the concern is that “money printing” would lead to inflation, it may lead to disinflation.
In one respect, Rickenbacker correctly said that giving the Fed more flexibility was a curse. Easy money policy has led to periods of gross speculation and crises, such as in 2008.
However, without the gold shackles, the Fed has incredible power to manage economic crises and avoid a currency collapse. In fact, despite the 2008 crisis having roots in the US mortgage market and the prospect of the collapse of the US banking system, the world flocked to dollars during the crisis, as shown below.
Most crises have been accompanied by a stronger dollar, proving that the dollar is the port in the storm foreign investors seek when economic confidence is lacking, and liquidity is paramount.
The book criticizes massive federal expenditures, particularly on social programs and military efforts, which create budget deficits, drive up inflation, and ultimately devalue the dollar. The book was written while Lyndon Johnson spent heavily on the Vietnam War and domestic programs. Again, Rickenbacker was correct in worrying about inflation, a big problem throughout the 1970s.
Despite ever-increasing government spending and an increasing debt-to-GDP ratio, the globalization of trade has expanded rapidly since his book was published. With it, foreigners' demand for dollars has been growing, and in mirror fashion, so is their need to invest the dollars, which helps us fund our deficits.
Even today, with “runaway” deficits making headlines daily, the dollar remains in the upper range of the last 35 years.
Rickenbacker believed that easy money Federal Reserve policies, such as low interest rates and expanding the money supply, would fuel inflation that would erode the dollar’s purchasing power. He was right, as evidenced by comparing what a dollar buys today versus yesteryear. However, the argument provides little context.
For instance, in the 1950s, a hamburger (15 cents), fries (10 cents), and a Coke (10 cents) at McDonald's cost less than 50 cents. Today, the same meal could run nearly $10.
Although decades of inflation have drastically eroded the dollar's value, our standard of living has risen appreciably. To wit, the purchasing power of one dollar in 1947 has eroded to 7 cents. However, as shown below, inflation-adjusted incomes have risen fivefold since 1947. The dollar buys less, but our incomes buy more!
Rickenbacker points to persistent U.S. trade deficits and dollar outflows abroad, which weaken the currency’s global standing. He is correct that trade deficits have steadily increased, resulting in more dollars flowing abroad. However, more dollar outflows are a result of more demand for dollars. Furthermore, those dollars ultimately return to the US through investments and loans to the government and corporations. The larger the global economy, the greater the need for dollars, and the more dollars that need to be invested in the US economy.
The author’s concerns are valid and, in many cases, have proven true. However, the victim has not been the dollar. The victims are larger deficits, lower productivity growth, hollowing out of manufacturing, and a growing wealth divide, to name a few.
While these are big problems, they do not necessarily threaten the dollar's status. As we wrote in Four Reasons The Dollar Is Here To Stay:
The pundits will be right someday. The dollar’s death as the reserve currency will come, and some other nation’s currency, cryptocurrency, gold, shells, or something else will take its place. However, that day is not coming anytime soon. The four reasons we describe in the article leave the world with no alternative.
While China is rapidly growing its economy and global trade footprint, it lacks the rule of law and liquid capital markets to sustain a global currency. It’s difficult to see how a communist country can overcome those challenges.
The Euro is the most viable competitor. They have the rule of law, but their capital markets are not nearly liquid enough to facilitate global trade. They also lack the military might to force the usage of the Euro. Let us also remember its finances are in equally bad or even worse shape than the U.S. There is no reason to suspect the euro could overtake the dollar.
Bitcoin? Forget about it! The government will never relinquish its control over the currency because, with that, they lose control of the nation.
Had Rickenbacker’s Death of the Dollar book solely focused on monetary and fiscal imprudence and its negative implications for the country, he would have been proven a seer. Unfortunately, he was wrong to insist that the dollar would lose its status as the world’s reserve currency.
The graph below, courtesy of the Federal Reserve, shows how the dollar's usage in global transactions has been stable for the last two decades. The index calculation, as detailed at the bottom of the graphic, is based on the primary uses of currencies.
The post Death Of The Dollar: An Eternal Tale appeared first on RIA.
On a recent Tuesday, beneath a wide, blue sky stretched over the French countryside, two Benedictine Sisters of Montmartre led me into a small room to speak with the bishop who had offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. They spoke softly in French to Bishop Pascal Marie Roland, the shepherd of Belley-Ars, who listened in silence, nodding, his gaze fixed on the floor. When he finally looked up…
Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
The response to her social media was phenomenal but it also elicited a response from some euthanasia lobby leaders who accused Sheren of fear mongering and not getting her facts straight.
Sheren responded with a link to a Global news story from February 16, 2023 reporting on the Canadian government Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD) released a report calling for the expansion of euthanasia (MAiD) to include mature minors.
I responded to the February 15, 2023 (AMAD) report by stating:
The report by the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD) was tabled in the House of Commons on February 15, 2023 calling for a drastic expansion of euthanasia (MAiD) in Canada. Among the recommendations, the report recommended that euthanasia be expanded to include children "mature minors."
Recommendation 19 in the report stated:
This means that parents or guardians may or may not be consulted, in the euthanasia death of a child that is deemed to have decision-making capacity.
To understand Recommendation 19 better we need to go back to the draft policy developed by the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto on euthanasia for "mature minors" that was published as a report in the Journal of Medical Ethics in September 2018.
The draft policy by Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children set out what can be expected if Canada permits euthanasia for children (mature minors).
Children who are deemed, by their physician, as competent to make medical decisions would also be deemed competent to decide, with or without the consent of their parents, to be killed by lethal injection.
The Canadian government report suggested that child euthanasia and euthanasia of incompetent people by advance request be permitted. Both of these issues fundamental change the meaning of consent.
Child euthanasia is wrong, based on the meaning of effective consent.
Euthanasia is wrong because it enables doctors and nurse practitioners to literally kill their patients.
White Togetherness
May 20 2025
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Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
In 2025, most people are inseparable from their laptops and smartphones. With that familiarity has come a wariness of the dangers of clicking on unsolicited emails, SMS, or WhatsApp messages.
But there is a growing menace called zero-click attacks, which have previously targeted only VIPs or the very wealthy because of their cost and sophistication.
Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock
A zero-click attack is a cyberattack that hacks a device without the user clicking anything. It can happen just by receiving a message, call, or file. The attacker uses hidden flaws in apps or systems to take control of the device, with no action needed from the user and the user remains unaware of the attack.
“Although public awareness has increased recently, these attacks have steadily evolved over many years, becoming more frequent as smartphones and connected devices proliferated,” Nathan House, CEO of StationX, a UK-based cybersecurity training platform, told The Epoch Times.
“The key vulnerability is in the software, rather than the type of device, meaning any connected device with exploitable weaknesses could potentially be targeted,” he said.
Aras Nazarovas, an information security researcher at Cybernews, told The Epoch Times why zero-click attacks usually target VIPs, rather than ordinary individuals.
“Since finding such zero-click exploits is difficult and expensive, most of the time such exploits are used to gain access to information from key figures, such as politicians or journalists in authoritarian regimes,” he said.
“They are often used in targeted campaigns. Using such exploits to steal money is rare.”
In June 2024, the BBC reported that social media platform TikTok had admitted that a “very limited” number of accounts, including those of media outlet CNN, had been compromised.
While ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, did not confirm the nature of the hack, cybersecurity companies such as Kaspersky and Assured Intelligence suggested it stemmed from a zero-click exploit.
“The part that requires high levels of sophistication is finding bugs that allow such attacks and writing exploits for these bugs,” Nazarovas said.
“It has been a billion-dollar market for years, selling zero-click exploits and exploit chains. Some gray/dark market exploit brokers often offer $500,000 to $1 million for such exploit chains for popular devices and apps.”
An attendee inspects the new iPhone 16 Pro Max during event at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., on Sept. 9, 2024. Experts warn of a rise in zero-click attacks—cyberattacks that compromise devices without any user interaction. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Nazarovas added that while ordinary users have been hit in the past by zero-click ‘drive-by’ attacks. These are attacks that emerge after the unintentional installation of malicious software onto a device, often without the user even realizing it. They have become more infrequent with the growing gray market for such exploits.
House said zero-click exploits often seek out vulnerabilities in software and apps that are expensive to discover, which means the perpetrators are usually “nation-state actors or highly-funded groups.”
Although there have been recent innovations in AI that have made certain cyber crimes, such as voice-cloning or vishing, more prevalent, Nazarovas says there is no evidence yet that it has increased the risk from zero-click attacks.
House said people could use AI to “write zero-click exploit chains for people who would have otherwise lacked the time, experience, or knowledge to be able to discover and write such exploits.”
But, he said, the increase in zero-click attacks in recent years, “stems mainly from expanded spyware markets and greater availability of sophisticated exploits, rather than directly from AI-driven techniques.”
He said zero-click attacks have existed for more than a decade, the most infamous of which was the Pegasus spyware affair.
In July 2021, The Guardian and 16 other media outlets published a series of articles, alleging that foreign governments used the Israeli-based NSO Group’s Pegasus software to surveil at least 180 journalists and numerous other targets around the world.
Alleged targets of Pegasus surveillance included French President Emmanuel Macron, Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, and Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi, who was slain in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018.
A woman checks the website of Israel-made Pegasus spyware at an office in Nicosia, Cyprus, on July 21, 2021. Pegasus has been tied to several high-profile international zero-click attacks in recent years. Mario Goldman/AFP via Getty Images
In a statement at the time, NSO Group said, “As NSO has previously stated, our technology was not associated in any way with the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”
On May 6, a California jury awarded WhatsApp’s parent company, Meta, $444,719 in compensatory damages and $167.3 million in punitive damages, in a privacy case against NSO Group.
The WhatsApp complaint was focused on the Pegasus spyware, which, according to the lawsuit, was developed “to be remotely installed and enable the remote access and control of information—including calls, messages, and location—on mobile devices using the Android, iOS, and BlackBerry operating systems.”
“While ordinary users can occasionally become collateral targets, attackers generally reserve these costly exploits for individuals whose information is especially valuable or sensitive,” Nazarovas said.
According to Nazarovas, corporations offer hackers ‘bug bounties’ to incentivize them to find these exploits and report them to the company, rather than selling them to a broker who then sells them on to parties who use them illegally.
Read the rest here...
