Plans to Slaughter 200,000 Farting Cows to Save Planet from ‘Global Warming’ Inbox

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It starts with cows..

Who’s next?

if this kind of inhumanity and carnage is heralded as some kind of ‘benefit to planet’, their is a madness afoot. The ruling class has lost its collective mind and they mean to take us down.

Ireland Looking To Kill 200,000 Cows To Fight Climate Change; Are US Herds Next?

In the latest effort to reduce emissions from agriculture, Ireland said it may kill 200,000 cows. Meanwhile, climate activists have American farms and ranches in the crosshairs.

By: Kevin Killough, Cowboy State Daily, June 02, 2023:

Climate activists are coming for livestock producers and farmers.

European governments have been targeting the agriculture industry for several years. The Telegraph reports that Ireland’s government may need to reduce that country’s cattle herds by 200,000 cows over the next three years to meet climate targets.

In an effort to reduce nitrogen pollution, Reuters reported the European Union last month approved a $1.6 billion Dutch plan to buy out livestock farmers.

Front And Center

Now the Biden administration is targeting American agriculture.

Special President Envoy For Climate John Kerry recently warned at a climate summit for the U.S. Department of Agriculture that the human race’s need to produce food to survive creates 33% of the world’s total greenhouse gasses.

“We can’t get to net-zero. We don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution,” Kerry said.

Microsoft Billionaire Bill Gates also is obsessing about cattle emissions, providing financial support to companies that are developing seaweed supplements and gas masks for cows.

It’s ‘Groupthink’

Katy Atkinson, an agricultural advocate who raises cattle in Albany County, told Cowboy State Daily that this conversation on emissions from the industry isn’t considering the beneficial impacts of cattle to the environment and the climate.

“Groupthink happens a lot around the climate change conversation. We get tunnel visioned on one piece of it without considering the full ramifications of what’s going to happen if we remove cattle from the land,” Atkinson said.

She said cattle contribute to drought resistance, soil health and wildfire reduction. Just before cattle were introduced to North America and the industry began raising them, Atkinson said there were thousands of buffalo roaming the plains.

Cows and buffalo are both ruminants, which is a type of animal that brings back food from its stomach and chews it again. These animals’ digestive systems produce methane emissions. Today’s cattle population is similar in numbers to that of the buffalo herds.

“So, the methane emissions from ruminant animals aren’t anything new,” Atkinson said.

Trapping Carbon

Cattle also benefit plant life, Atkinson said.

“You need ruminant animals to forage grasses, because they’re the only things that can,” she explained.

Pigs, for example, are monogastric and can’t break down high fiber content in grasses. Cow’s digestive system can break the grasses down, and then they fertilize the ground.

So, through proper cattle grazing management, Atkinson said the cattle she’s raising are helping plants to grow.

In the atmosphere, the methane they burp out — most of it is released through the mouth of the animal — breaks down in 10 to 15 years into carbon dioxide and water. The plants that cattle help to grow use that carbon dioxide. The carbon then gets put back into the soil through the grasses’ roots.

“So the cattle are essential in helping to keep that carbon trapped in the ground,” Atkinson said.

Atkinson said cattle have other benefits to the climate that are being ignored in the focus on just their emissions. Whenever soil cracks or fissures, it releases carbon into the air.

The animals walking upon the soil compacts it and helps keep the carbon trapped in the soil.

She said one study done by the University of Florida found that between 10% and 30% of the world’s carbon storage is found under the feet of U.S. cattle.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED TWEET:

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Children’s Choir Singing the Star Spangled Banner Forced to Stop by Capital Police ‘Because It Was Considered a Demonstration’

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So BLM and Antifa can burn down cities, murder innocent people, loot and riot and it’s righteous raising tens of millions of dollars from America’s biggest corporations but children singing the National Anthem pose a threat. Drag shows for children are promoted by the Democrat government but children singing the National Anthem pose a threat.

It’s revolution time.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLE: J6 Patriot John Strand’s Story of Persecution and Prosecution for Doing Nothing Wrong

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Rebranding flags as rainbows dissolves the ties that bind our countries together

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When national flags are inverted into mere utopian abstractions, they become little more than concrete symbols of coercive oppression.

The advent of June means annual Gay Pride Season is here, that one month of the year (apart from the other eleven) when homosexuality is officially promoted by the State all across the Western world. You can’t move for LGBTQ rainbow flags of one sort or another out in public these days, the symbol’s new-found all-pervasiveness leading some sceptics to compare it to a Nazi swastika.

During last year’s Pride Month, UK actor turned politician Laurence Fox, leader of the small anti-woke Reclaim Party and former candidate for London Mayor, marked the occasion by posting the mocking refrain “Oh blessed and most holy month!” together with the following doctored image of Pride flags to his 300,000-plus followers on Twitter.

Fox was speedily criticised by Jewish and Holocaust Memorial groups, as well as being temporarily Twitter-banned for causing offence. But, as Fox argued, the freedom to cause offence is just one aspect of freedom of speech. Furthermore, by suspending him, the pre-Elon Musk social media giant was demonstrating clear double-standards, as “You can openly call the [Union Jack] a symbol of fascism and totalitarianism” on the site but “You cannot criticise the holy flags” of Gay Pride.

As if to prove this, Fox’s then-Deputy Leader in the Reclaim Party, Martin Daubney, posted the following tweet, recasting Britain’s flag as a mashed-up Nazi swastika too.

“So, is this worthy of a ban?” he asked. As far as I am aware, the answer was “no”, and so Daubney kept his account. Unlike gays, patriots can be compared to fascists with total impunity.

Fox’s Book of Martyrs

Pride 2022 came not long after the Platinum Jubilee celebrations marking 70 years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, an occasion marked both by an outbreak of mass Union Jack flag-waving amongst the patriotic general public, and an equal outbreak of flag-hating amongst the ostentatiously unpatriotic hard-left.

Again hoping to illustrate his opponents’ double-standards here, Fox retweeted the following contribution from conservative-leaning political commentator Dominique Samuels, showing Pride flags arrayed all down what was actually central London, but looked rather more like some hypothetical gay Nuremberg.

Some people may find the Nazi comparison overblown. Yet it is not that Fox or his allies were literally claiming that Gay Pride Month is as bad as actual Nazism here, as some critics chose to misinterpret matters, more that the Pride flag and the swastika were similar in a generic sense, i.e., as very visible symbols of enforced ideological conformity. Fox could have digitally added the Communist hammer and sickle to the flag instead and made his point equally as well.

As Fox said, public “acceptance and celebration” of the flag were now ruthlessly “enforced with a sense of hectoring authoritarianism.” It was not as if Queer Quislings were about to start another Holocaust or invade Poland, but they might well try and get you sacked, cancelled or even imprisoned.

As if to prove this, one of Fox’s rival metropolitan politicians, Green Party London Assembly Member Caroline Russell, used her position of political influence to plead with the police to arrest the brazen thought-criminal, an appeal Fox quickly responded to:

The Fascistic Mr Fox?

Fox may not have been arrested by the thought-police himself, but a private citizen with a much less awkwardly prominent national media profile soon was. Darren Brady, a 51-year-old British Army veteran from Aldershot, retweeted Laurence’s original rainbow swastika meme, then found himself placed in handcuffs by Hampshire Police on the grounds his action had “caused anxiety” to some unnamed complainant.

Hampshire Police had offered to downgrade Brady’s “offence” from a full-blown criminal incident to a mere “non-crime” (which it already was anyway), if he had only agreed to remove his post and pay them £80 to attend an in-house Maoist gay re-education course. Brady bravely refused, instead informing Laurence Fox directly about what was going on.

Fox then turned up at Brady’s home together with ex-policeman Harry Miller of the Bad Law Project campaign group, who was then himself also arrested for obstructing the police in their duties. Fox captured all this on film, accusing the cops of acting “like the Gestapo”, no doubt prompting more complaints from left-wingers angry about precisely the wrong thing here.

Political football

Britain is hardly alone in its increasing public replacement of the national flag with the rainbow one. During the 2022 FIFA World Cup held over in Qatar, the US soccer team made headlines after redesigning their badge so the usual red and white of the Stars and Stripes was replaced with garish gay rainbow colours instead, on the walls of their training-base and media branding.

Objecting to their Qatari hosts’ highly negative legal attitudes towards homosexuality, “Be The Change” now became the US team’s main slogan rather than, say, “Kick The Ball”, which is what they’re supposed to be paid to do, pure and simple, nothing else. “ONE NATION”, reads the US rainbow badge’s accompanying slogan. No: TWO NATIONS, by specific design.

By transforming their badge into blatant ideological propaganda, US Soccer recklessly subverted the formerly largely neutral and uniting image of the national flag and replaced it with the contentious, fragmenting political emblem of an agenda which is clearly not agreed upon by all. The message is as clear as it is queer: unless you, too, support the specific partisan line being pushed here, then you’re not truly an American, and your support is just not wanted. And yet, despite this, “We are a group that believes in inclusivity,” the team’s Newspeak-fluent goalkeeper Sean Johnson claimed.

Apart from all those who disagree with your agenda, of course, Sean: they are not true Americans at all, just worthless Far-Right bigots. They must be excluded, not included. Homosexuals were perfectly free to support national sports teams before their players all suddenly became swathed in rainbows for no good reason, you know: persons of any sexuality could, it was a complete and utter irrelevancy to all concerned. But no longer, it would appear.

The US soccer team “isn’t representing America” any more, one irritated fan accurately complained online. “America’s colors aren’t rainbow.” Indeed not, but that is the whole point.

Flags of convenience

Liberals of today wish to dismantle their countries’ national flags as a proxy for dismantling their nations themselves, in a much wider sense. The flag, as microcosmic symbol of a macrocosmic nation state, embodies a real, particular, settled physical community with borders, based upon timeless things such as a shared language, culture, traditions, religions and ethnicity.

Contemporary Western liberals – both progressive, transnationalism-loving left-wing social ones and GDP-worshipping right-wing economic ones alike – would much prefer to replace this very concrete and limited concept with something much more abstract and limitless instead, a more homogenised, borderless, truly global society based on allegiance to supposedly “universal” human values, not traditional particularist ones – like Gay Pride, for example.

The rainbow flag stands as a proxy for this impossible dream. It is a flag not of any actual existing nation, but of the desired imaginary, non-existent, progressive, universalist non-nation of tomorrow: that is, the flag of Utopia. And the word “utopia”, etymologically speaking, means, quite literally, “no-place”. That is what you are really being forced to salute when paying enforced obeisance to the gaybow flag – the intended (but never actually to be achieved) perpetual liberal-enforced global moral dictatorship or New Jerusalem of tomorrow.

In the disingenuous name of freedom, all soon-to-be non-nations must be forced to kneel to this flag: even non-Western ones which do not belong to us, like the Muslim nations of the Middle East, the majority of whose populations and rulers simply do not share our own present rulers’ supposedly “universal” values at all. Under other, non-gay-related circumstances, this process would surely be labelled pejoratively as “colonialism”, would it not?

One nation under God

Another flag-related controversy to hit during the 2022 World Cup came when US Soccer, advertising an upcoming match between USA and Iran, posted an image of the Iranian national flag which had been doctored to remove the large red emblem which normally sits in its centre.

Significantly, the emblem in question is actually a written word: “Allah”, the holy Muslim name for God. US Soccer said they had erased God’s name to show solidarity with the women of Iran who were then being persecuted by the ruling extremist clerics simply for, as US Soccer put it, “fighting for [their] basic human rights”. I have some personal sympathy for the oppressed females of Iran myself, but the unspoken symbolism of this act was very telling.

Here is a particularist local or national value – belief in the Muslim God – being erased in favour of a transnational globalist abstraction – human rights. However, human rights are not universal, because, whatever progressives might say to the contrary, many human values are not universal either. Most people over here in the West might think it awful the women of Iran don’t have full political rights and freedoms; but, likewise, most people over there in Iran might think it equally appalling women in the West have the freedom and right to marry one another and raise children.

Like alchemy in reverse

No culture’s values are entirely universal. Each particular set of human values is particular to each particular nation, empire, culture or civilisation. Ironically, those traditions and values which do seem closest to being genuinely near-universal in nature – ones relating to core things like family structure, sexuality, gender binaries, crime and punishment, in-group ethnic allegiance, and so forth – are precisely the ones our own utopian universalists are currently doing their very best to try and dissolve along with our traditional flags.

There is a saying of the alchemists of old: “solve et coagula”, or “dissolve and then coagulate”, used to describe the melting down of separate chemical substances and then re-amalgamation of them all together into one large, undifferentiated mass within the furnaces and alembics of their demon-haunted laboratories, in impossible pursuit of making gold.

When the flags of all nations, with their multifarious separate colours and patterns, begin to be melted down by globalists and then reconstituted anew into more generic multicoloured rainbow ones intended to be flown in every nation under the sun instead, even those that don’t want to, like Iran and Qatar, forging all that was once separate and different into one generic and eye-offending lumpen mass, then an analogously similar process is at work.

Coincidentally, the classic alchemical process was said to have several distinct separate stages to it, each bearing a different colour, like green, yellow or red: the colours, in fact, of the rainbow. (And, in terms of the common alchemical stages of whiteness, blackness, etc, those of the new extended Progress Pride flag so easily transformed into a swastika by parodists online.)

Yet literal-minded alchemists, both then and now, have always proved themselves sadly deluded. What results from today’s process of enforced political alchemy will surely not be a utopian world of purest gold. Instead, it is more likely to be a dystopian dictatorial realm of basest lead. A world, for instance, in which innocent military veterans can be arrested for posting harmless, but politically incorrect, joke images online.

Instead of doctoring his rainbow flags into swastikas last year, perhaps Laurence Fox should actually have defaced them all with hermetic occult sigils of the Philosophers’ Stone instead.

AUTHOR

Steven Tucker is a UK-based writer with over ten books to his name. His next, Hitler’s & Stalin’s Misuse of Science, comparing the woke pseudoscience of today to the totalitarian pseudoscience… More by Steven Tucker

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America’

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An unspoken social contract used to link community to the existence of strong authority.

As a long-time former editor of Governing magazine, Alan Ehrenhalt is an expert on local political and governance issues in America. More than a quarter of a century ago, he wrote a little-known classic which is essential reading for all those interested in community.

“The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America“ focuses on the city where Ehrenhalt grew up, Chicago, and the era which many Americans of various backgrounds look back on with fondness – the 1950s.

In the years following the release of “The Lost City,” the extraordinary strength of civic life in mid-20th century America was brought to a far larger audience by Professor Robert Putnam.

Here, Ehrenhalt takes the reader on a tour of Chicago (and by extension, America) by focusing on the lives of the parishioners in St Nicholas of Tolentine parish, the people in the African-American urban ghetto of Bronzeville and those living in the new and prosperous suburb of Elmhurst.

Ehrenhalt’s analysis also demonstrates the greater social harmony enjoyed by those labouring under the various constraints of the unspoken social contract which linked community to the existence of strong authority.

Across all three communities, a strong religious pervaded, but particularly in St Nick’s parish, as it was affectionately known.

Here, we get a sense of what urban Catholicism in America was really like. Chicago, Ehrenhalt writes, was the largest American archdiocese, containing more than two million practising Catholics, along with 400 parishes (a number that was then growing by six parishes on average each year) and 300,000 parochial school students.

Here as elsewhere, Irish priests presided over a diverse range of European ethnicities. Not only did the church draw together the great bulk of parishioners each Sunday, it was also the centre for most of the social activity.

For the men, the Holy Name Society reigned supreme, with activities ranging from bowling leagues and golf outings to Eucharistic Adoration and attendance at packed monthly talks.

For women – here as elsewhere the more religiously committed of the sexes – there was the Altar and Rosary Society, whose members cleaned the church, prepared food for parish meetings and promoted Marian devotions within every family home.

In this setting, the source of the authority was clear. The saintly Monsignor Fennessy strode through the parish in his cassock, imparting wisdom in his Irish brogue, while at the same time, his intimidating and authoritarian curate Father Lynch – who had served as a Marine chaplain on the bloodiest beaches during the Pacific campaign – handled the day-to-day running of such a large parish.

Aside from the religious conformism within a pre-Vatican II parish, Ehrenhalt details the various ways in which those living inside the parish’s boundaries had fewer choices than their modern counterparts: including when it came to the jobs they did or the stores they shopped in.

Some were far less fortunate. Black Chicagoans had far less say over where they could live, let alone what they could do with their lives.

In this community known as Bronzeville, institutions such as black churches, black businesses and social institutions (such as the Chicago Defender newspaper) and the Democratic Party machine were of paramount importance.

The exodus to suburbia was one of the most consequential social processes in the 20th century, and Ehrenhalt’s third profile is of one such community to the west of the city, where many World War II veterans flocked to raise their families in peace and prosperity.

In Elmhurst, civic society had to be created almost from scratch, and the spirit of this epoch allowed for this: indeed, it necessitated it.

“The new suburbanites were not fleeing community, or even the particular communities they were leaving behind… But they believed, with the faith of the 1950s, that community was something they could simply recreate in the place they were moving to. And they did everything they could to recreate it, with an energy that sometimes bordered on compulsiveness,” the author writes.

Throughout the book, Ehrenhalt is at pains to avoid engaging in a nostalgia-driven argument, and he freely acknowledges that the near-universal popularity of social clubs, functions and organisations carried with it disadvantages for those who would have preferred a more detached or independent life.

There were also real limits to the meaningfulness of much of this togetherness. One burst of enthusiasm in Elmhurst led to the creation of a new Presbyterian church which quickly developed into a large congregation.

This new suburban religiosity, though, had clear parallels with the rise of popular preachers who Ehrenhalt suggests “seemed to offer religion as something comfortable and almost effortless, a pleasant reassurance against personal doubt and insecurity.”

Ehrenhalt cannot be fairly accused of looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses, and he also makes clear that the restoration of a greater sense of community (which most people today likely aspire to) can hardly come about with the restoration of social authority (which most people today would likely recoil from).

“Authority and community have in fact unravelled together, but few mourn the passing of authority,” he reflects.

Disciplinarian teachers, stern parents and harsh clerics who preached an uncompromising Gospel were never popular, but they played an important role in preserving an orderly way of life.

Indeed, Ehrenhalt notes the way in which the common perception of widespread social repression prior to the social revolution of the 60s (including in popular history and literature) often comes directly from the pen of those who were disgruntled with their minority status within a broadly contented social milieu.

“Much of the image of American Catholic life in those years comes from the work of former Catholics who considered the church they grew up in not only authoritarian but destructive of their free choices and creative instincts,” Ehrenhalt explains, before adding that “[i]f you visit a working-class Catholic parish in a big city, and ask the older parishioners what they think of the church in the days before Vatican II, they don’t tell you that it was tyrannical or that it destroyed their individuality. They tell you they wish they could have it back.”

Ehrenhalt vivid description of Chicago’s neighbourhoods in the heyday of civic engagement and the subsequent decline ties in neatly with the work of other authors who have focused on community, and in particular the ground-breaking work of Robert Nisbet.

As with the central argument of “The Lost City,” Nisbet’s criteria for defining community made clear that some form of authority had to exist – which he observed came about through habit or custom.

Even more striking (and to some, off-putting) than Ehrenhalt’s emphasis on moral authority is the stress which he places on sin: the common belief that it truly existed, and that it had to be resisted.

Towards the end of “The Lost City,” Ehrenhalt revisits the three communities to show how much had changed. Gone are the lines outside the confessionals of the much more sparsely attended St Nick’s and gone are the cassocks which the priests once wore.

In Elmhurst, the close-knit and geographically based ties which were established so quickly had fallen apart to be replaced by much looser connections, with one of the key driving forces being the rise of two-job families where neither parent had the time needed “at home for the gestures of community that bound the original residents together.”

And while the residents of what was Bronzeville now had immeasurably more freedom in a racially integrated city, many of the more affluent black citizens had exercised that freedom to leave to find new homes in areas less plagued by social dysfunction and crime.

Ehrenhalt’s analysis is profound and has relevance far beyond Chicago. A similar decline to what occurred in St Nick’s parish can be witnessed in more extreme form in a country like Ireland, where the moral authority of the Catholic priesthood had been even more elevated, and where its fall from grace has been even more precipitous.

The author’s wise reflections on the false and ahistorical narrative which has been created about the recent past certainly deserves the attention of those aspiring to set right the historical record in time.

There is little hope of a sudden return to community, but Ehrenhalt notes the various examples in recent history (such as Victorian Britain) where ordered liberty was restored after a period of social disorder.

“For that to happen anytime soon,” he concludes, “the generations that launched the rebellion will have to force itself to rethink some of the unexamined ‘truths’ with which it has lived its entire adult life. It will have to recognise that privacy, individuality, and choice are not free goods, and that the society that places no restrictions on them pays a high price for that decision.”

Everything that has occurred since the publication of this book in 1996 suggests that those who have led the liberal charge towards ever greater permissiveness will not pause to consider what has been lost, as well as what has been gained.

Those who recognise the value of a communitarian bargain that places limits on our behaviour can still learn from Ehrenhalt and take heart from the prospect that what was torn down could yet again be recreated.

AUTHOR

James Bradshaw

James Bradshaw writes on topics including history, culture, film and literature. More by James Bradshaw

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Lab-grown ‘meat’ worse for environment than retail beef: Study

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The lab-grown meat industry is propped up more by hopeful modelling than favourable data.

The high-tech utopia we keep hearing about will have to wait, if a recent pre-print study on laboratory-cultured meat products is to be believed.

According to researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of California, Holtville, “sustainable” meat alternatives have a carbon footprint that is likely “orders of magnitude” higher than retail beef based on current and near-term production methods.

Cultured meat production may be pumping out between four and 25 times more carbon dioxide per kilogram than regular beef, according to the new research, which assessed energy use and greenhouse gas emissions through all stages of production.

If the study passes peer review, its conclusion would be damning: lab-grown meat, long touted as a clean, green alternative to the traditional butcher process, could be harming the planet more than the industry it’s trying to displace.

Truly, who could have guessed that growing meat in giant steel bioreactors using highly-processed pharmaceutical products would be worse for the environment than a herd of cows chewing grass?

The researchers did not rule out the possibility that technological advances that enable a move from using pharmaceutical-grade ingredients to their food-grade equivalents could eventually tip the scales in favour of artificially grown meat.

“It’s possible we could reduce its environmental impact in the future, but it will require significant technical advancement to simultaneously increase the performance and decrease the cost of the cell culture media,” according to UCD food scientist Edward Spang.

However, the team’s findings suggest that in its current state, the lab-grown meat sector is propped up more by hopeful modelling (read: wishful thinking) than favourable present-day data.

Derrick Risner is another of the UCD food scientists who worked on the study. He wrote that their findings were important “given that investment dollars have specifically been allocated to this sector with the thesis that this product will be more environmentally friendly than beef,” adding, “my concern would just be scaling this up too quickly and doing something harmful for the environment”.

According to Science Alert, which reported on the pre-print study:

While cultured meat uses less land than herds of cattle or flocks of sheep, not to mention less water and antibiotics, environmental costs of the highly specific nutrients required to grow the product rapidly add up.

These include running laboratories to extract growth factors from animal serums, as well as growing crops for sugars and vitamins.

Then there’s the energy required to purify all of these broth ingredients to a high standard before they can be fed to the growing meat lumps. This energy-intensive, extreme level of purification is needed to prevent introducing microbes to the culture.

In their research, the California-based team also reviewed the most climate-friendly beef production systems already in operation today. They found that these outperformed even the best synthetic meat processes available.

The California researchers are not the first to have reached the conclusion that real beef is better for the planet than artificial alternatives.

A 2019 University of Oxford study published in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems likewise found that the energy used to make cultivated meat could release more greenhouse gases than traditional farming.

Modelling traditional versus lab-grown meat options 1,000 years into the future, the team in Oxford concluded that synthetic meat would only be “climactically superior” depending on “the availability of decarbonized energy generation and the specific production systems that are realized”.

Reporting on the 2019 research, Vox summarised: “Yes, cows produce a lot of methane, and methane is very bad for global warming. Yet it only lasts in the atmosphere for a dozen years. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, lasts more than a century. And you know what releases a lot of CO2? Labs — including those that make cultured meat.”

So while start-ups in Silicon Valley continue to pour millions of investment capital into poor substitutes with a bigger carbon footprint than Betsy, do your part for the environment and order your favourite fillet next time you dine out.

AUTHOR

Kurt Mahlburg

Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate… More by Kurt Mahlburg

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

AWED MEDIA BALANCED NEWS: We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.

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Welcome! We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.

Here is the link for this issue, so please share it on social media.

Bookmark or make Favorite the 2023, 2022, 2021 & 2020 Newsletter Archives.

Particularly note the ***asterisked*** items below…

— This Newsletter’s Articles, by Topic —

If You Only Have Time to Read a Few Select Articles:

*** The Foulness of “Social Emotional Learning” (SEL)

*** NC Gov. Roy Cooper declares ‘state of emergency’ over school choice bill

*** Drain The Swamp from the School House to the White House & the Classroom to the Boardroom

*** A Devastating Expose of America’s Colleges

*** Drain The Swamp from the School House to the White House & the Classroom to the Boardroom

*** How to Think Critically

*** In Texas, a Clean-Energy Pioneer, the Tide Turns Against Renewables

*** FERC Warns Congress Electricity Grid Facing ‘Catastrophic’ Failure

*** Offshore wind may not reduce CO2 emissions

*** Alternative Energy Projects Are Bankrupting The Energy Grid

*** Why Small Modular Reactors Herald a Nuclear Energy Renaissance

*** The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC

*** The Corruption of Climate Science

*** The Leftist Green Agenda Is Buying Its Way Into The News

*** Study: California Wildfires in One Year Erased 16 Years of Emissions Cuts

*** It’s Not About Politics!

*** Why Are You Still a Democrat?

*** The Great Awakening Trailer

*** The Jig is Up — We the People Own the Truth

*** MIT Report: How We Voted in 2022

*** University of NC med school renounces its own DEI framework

*** The Woke Plot

*** Information Warfare in New York

*** Freedom Is at Stake This Memorial Day: We Are at War Again

*** June 6th is the anniversary of D-DAY: We Remember Those Brave Allied and American Heroes Who Saved The Free World

*** Happiness is fleeting. Aim for fulfillment.

*** Emotional Health in the Age of Disconnection

*** Churches MUST NOT criticize the government!

*** It’s Not About Politics!

*** ProtectYoungEyes.com

*** Study: Risk of Contracting COVID-19 Goes UP With Every mRNA Shot You Take

*** Four Pillars of Pandemic Response

*** Cataloging a tsunami of Covid scandals

*** Dr. David Martin’s Address at the International COVID Summit

*** NIH study identifies features of Long COVID neurological symptoms

General Education Related:

*** A Devastating Expose of America’s Colleges

*** How to Think Critically

*** Drain The Swamp from the School House to the White House & the Classroom to the Boardroom

Science Should Leave the University

Secondary Education Related:

*** Report: The Key to Fixing the US Education System

*** The Foulness of “Social Emotional Learning” (SEL)

*** NC Gov. Roy Cooper declares ‘state of emergency’ over school choice bill

*** John Taylor Gatto – The Purpose Of Schooling

JINGDI Academy And School Teaching System

Eye on Education: Prussia model influences American public school system

Renewables (General):

*** In Texas, a Clean-Energy Pioneer, the Tide Turns Against Renewables

*** Alternative Energy Projects Are Bankrupting The Energy Grid

*** Fallacies About Nuclear, Wind, and Solar

Big Wind’s US Renewable Rejection Database tally hits 523

Proposed NY legislative action to stop the “transition” until a fossil fuel replacement is identified

Wind Energy — Offshore:

*** Offshore wind may not reduce CO2 emissions

Cape Cod to Rhode Island Tourists Expect A Summer Of Whales Washing Up

Cape May County Fights Back Against Offshore Wind Project

Wind Energy — Other:

*** Taking the Wind Out of Climate Change (referencing 60± studies)

*** The True Cost of Energy Generated From Wind Turbines

Solar Energy:

Hidden Impact of Solar Projects: Residents and Wildlife Affected, Aquifers Threatened

How solar projects took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’

Nuclear Energy:

*** Why Small Modular Reactors Herald a Nuclear Energy Renaissance

*** Electricity Prices Plunge By 75% As Finland Opens New Nuclear Power Plant

Virginia’s not the only place exploring small modular nuclear reactors

WTF Happened to Nuclear Energy?

Emails Reveal: Bureaucrats censor radiation risk science fraud by cancelling whistleblowers; Huge implications for nuclear power and more

Nuclear reactors are key to sustainable energy

Fossil Fuel Energy:

Archive: Life Without Oil Is Not As Simple As You May Think

Germany’s proposed ban on new gas home heating systems meets fierce resistance

Electric Vehicles (EVs):

*** The Auto Industry In Jonestown

*** I love electric vehicles – and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped

The $200 Billion Electric School Bus Bust

Misc Energy:

*** FERC Warns Congress Electricity Grid Facing ‘Catastrophic’ Failure

*** ExxonMobil, Shell Explode A Pair Of Energy Transition Myths

Manmade Global Warming — Some Deceptions:

*** The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC

*** The Corruption of Climate Science

*** The Leftist Green Agenda Is Buying Its Way Into The News

Study: Global Warming Trend Is ‘Only One-Half of the Climate Model Simulations

That’s a big climate surprise: Frost season growing longer across Australia (and for years!)

The Social Cost of Carbon game

Effects of Deliberately Exaggerating the Risks of Climate Change

Manmade Global Warming — Misc:

*** Study: California Wildfires in One Year Erased 16 Years of Emissions Cuts

*** 46 ‘Climate Change Denying’ Statements Made by Former IPCC Scientists

The climate war on food

Video: What Climate Catastrophe?

New study reveals Antarctic ice shelf area has grown by 5305 km2 from 2009-2019

German climate activists raided for forming ‘criminal group’

New York Virtue Signaling on Climate Gets Bad Reviews

US Election:

Election-Integrity.info (10 major election reports by our team of experts, plus much more!)

*** Foreign Interference? How Non-Citizens Are Voting in American Elections

*** MIT Report: How We Voted in 2022

Former Deputy Nat’l Security Adviser Claims CIA, FBI, DOJ Will Rig 2024 Election

More ballots cast means more conservatives will win

US Election — State Issues:

*** First Dead Voter…GONE!

*** Information Warfare in New York

NC Lawmakers Expected to Roll Out Major Election Law Changes!

Former Kentucky Secretary of State Fined $10,000 For Unethical Conduct

Catastrophic “Loss of Control” Data Breach in NY Elections

Election integrity advocates say sentences for voter fraud too lenient to serve as deterrence

US Freedom:

*** Freedom Is at Stake This Memorial Day: We Are at War Again

*** June 6th is the anniversary of D-DAY: We Remember Those Brave Allied and American Heroes Who Saved The Free World

Misc US Politics:

*** Why Are You Still a Democrat?

*** The Great Awakening Trailer

*** The Jig is Up — We the People Own the Truth

*** Taxpayers Protection Alliance Weighs in on Debt Ceiling Deal

*** The FCC Consumer Inquiries and Complaint Center — it worked for me!

The Local Activist Accelerator

The Very Strange New Respect for Authoritarian Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Societally US:

*** University of NC med school renounces its own DEI framework

*** The Woke Plot

Unwoke Inc. (PragerU video)

160+ Retired Military Brass Urge Congress To Root Out DOD’s Poisonous ‘Diversity’ And ‘Equity’ Programs

American Pravda: The Limits of Media Corruption

US Politics and Socialism:

*** Program Grouping Christians And Republicans With Nazis Granted DHS Funding

Hold the line: House Republicans must not cave on commonsense debt ceiling bill

Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT) Rears Its Ugly Head Again

USDA Now Asking People to Register Their Vegetable Gardens for National Database

The End of Free Speech Will Be the End of America

Globalism:

Eco-Colonialism: The Green Man’s Burden

Global Takeover: The United Nations Pushes for a Disturbing Power Grab

Religion Related:

*** Churches MUST NOT criticize the government!

*** It’s Not About Politics!

*** ProtectYoungEyes.com

CatholicVote launches $1M campaign calling for LA Dodgers boycott over anti-Catholic drag queens

Enough with fossil fuels, Pope says in latest climate appeal

Corporate America has Launched a Religious War. It’s Time to Choose Your Side

Science:

*** Happiness is fleeting. Aim for fulfillment.

*** Emotional Health in the Age of Disconnection

The New Inquisition of Scientism

Rejecting False Narratives: Pragmatic Uncertainty Approach

Scientists Warn Genetically Engineered Insects Could Be Easily Weaponized

Artificial Intelligence:

*** A.I. poses existential risk of people being ‘harmed or killed,’ ex-Google CEO says

*** AI Poses ‘Extinction’ Risk, Say Experts

*** America’s Math Coach is Teaching Fifth-Graders to Outsmart AI

Mind-Reading Technology: Orwell Warned Us. Now It’s Here.

Ukraine:

*** Pray for the safety of the Ukrainian people

*** A well-rated source to make a Ukraine donation

*** Latest Developments in Ukraine: June 3rd

COVID-19 — Injections:

*** Study: Risk of Contracting COVID-19 Goes UP With Every mRNA Shot You Take

Top Insurance Analyst Says 600,000 Americans per Year are Dying from COVID Shots

COVID Shots Are Still One Giant Experiment

Dr. Naomi Wolf: Pfizer’s Depopulation Agenda, As Evidenced by Its Own Documents

Documentary: The Unseen Crisis: Vaccine Stories You Were Never Told

COVID-19 — Misc:

*** Four Pillars of Pandemic Response

*** Cataloging a tsunami of Covid scandals

*** NIH study identifies features of Long COVID neurological symptoms

*** What Made Some Doctors Do the Right Thing During COVID-19?

*** Dr. David Martin’s Address at the International COVID Summit

The Alienation of COVID

Facebook admits COVID Vaccines destroy Immune System & cause new form of AIDS

COVID-19 — Repeated Important Information:

My webpage (C19Science.info) with dozens of Science-based COVID-19 reports

*** Study: Measuring the COVID Mandates

*** World Council of Health: Early COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines

*** FLCCC Long COVID Treatment Protocol

*** COVID-19: What You Need To Know (Physicians for Informed Consent)

*** If you have received a COVID-19 injection, here’s how to Detox

*** Place Your US Order for Free At-Home COVID-19 Tests

Please use social media, etc. to pass on this Newsletter to other open-minded citizens…If you’d like to be added to (or unsubscribe from) the distribution of our popular, free, worldwide Media Balance Newsletter, simply send me an email saying that.

Note 1: We recommend reading the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone, as some documents (e.g., PDFs) are much easier to read on a large computer screen… We’ve tried to use common fonts, etc. to minimize display issues.

Note 2: For past Newsletter issues see the archives from: 2020 & 2021 & 2022 & 2023. To accommodate numerous requests received about prior articles over all thirteen plus years of the Newsletter, we’ve put this together — where you can search ALL prior issues, by year. For a background about how the Newsletter is put together, etc., please read this.

Note 3: See this extensive list of reasonable books on climate change. As a parallel effort, we have also put together a list of some good books related to industrial wind energy. Both topics are also extensively covered on my website: WiseEnergy.org.

Note 4: I am not an attorney or a physician, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or any of my websites) should be construed as giving legal or medical advice. My recommendation has always been: consult a competent, licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues, and consult a competent physician regarding medical matters.

Copyright © 2023; Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (see WiseEnergy.org).

J6 Patriot John Strand’s Story of Persecution and Prosecution for Doing Nothing Wrong

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“They destroyed my life for a lie—now they’re threatening me with 24 years potential prison over January 6. But it’s not just me on trial, not just me they want to crush—it’s all of us.” — John Strand, Artist • Activist • American. 

If you have not heard the story of John Strand then please visit his website to understand why he is being targeted. Watch what really happened on January 6th, 2021 at the Capitol.

What happened to him can happen to all of us. #We’reNext!

Here is John Strand’s compelling story:

Read John’s statement on his website:

On September 27th, 2022, a Washington, D.C. jury declared me guilty of all five J6 charges brought against me by the federal government.

I will appeal every charge.

I am completely innocent of these charges, both as a legal matter and as a moral matter before God.

I know this with absolutely certainty, because the law requires mens rea[sic] to convict a person of these charges; I alone know my true intent and my state of mind during the events of January 6th, and they were never inappropriate or criminal. As I testified at my trial, my sole purpose for being in D.C. that week and in the vicinity of the Capitol that day was to protect and support my employer in fulfilling her prearranged and permitted speaking obligations.

I did not condone or encourage any of the violent or criminal activities at the time, and now that I have learned much more specifically of the trauma and damages inflicted on brave officers and other innocent persons, I am even more deeply grieved and angered by the terrible actions of some that caused so much pain and destruction for so many. This unlawful and inexcusable behavior greatly undermined the noble pursuit of upholding the rule of law, which was the primary purpose of many prior protests in 2020 leading up to January 6, and of the protest scheduled on that day as well.

I am grateful to the judge presiding over my case for handling the courtroom in a fair and reasonable manner, and for kindly permitting me to remain on pre-trial release conditions pending my sentencing.

It is with immense gratitude that I acknowledge the Herculean efforts of Mr. Stephen Brennwald and my entire legal defense team, as well as the fervent prayers and support of my family and many American citizens across the nation. I humbly request your continued prayers as I follow God’s calling in my life to stand for truth and pursue justice, both on my own behalf and for every American.

To God be the glory.

🇺🇸 #WeAreJ6

THE TRUTH IS ON TRIAL

John writes,

Corruption and selective prosecution are the hallmarks of a totalitarian regime; they excuse their behavior by classifying it as “lawful”…but they arbitrarily determine when, where, and who to apply only those laws that advance their agenda, and they maliciously change and control both definitions and access to information. Thanks to Tucker Carlson, we can see they knowingly lied, and actively hid exculpatory evidence–an explicit and outrageous violation of the law.

In reality, this is a complete subversion of the rule of law, violating the sacred Constitutional principle of Equal Protection. They operate using lies and confusion to keep the public compliant—and to crush any dissent.

RULE OF LAW IS ON TRIAL

J6 is just the most recent political opportunity instigated and weaponized to target anyone departing from the regime’s approved narrative and their ruthless agenda, and to further terrorize and demoralize the public into instinctive self-censorship—intimidating them from even the thought of exercising independence and free speech.

FREE SPEECH IS ON TRIAL

Sadly, it has largely succeeded—most Americans, even those generally committed to classical values and Constitutional integrity, have wilted into silence and apathetic disassociation, abandoning the hundreds of innocent citizens caught in the tyrannical machinery.  Most defendants have succumbed to the intense pressures of a completely biased and weaponized DOJ, accepting abhorrent plea deals under threat of certain conviction by an utterly dishonest and politicized kangaroo court circus.

IT MUST STOP.

Which means, it must BE stopped, by a choice—an intentional decision to disrupt the endless momentum of the runaway totalitarian bureaucratic state.

Amen. May God protect John and the many others who have been falsely imprisoned for simply attending a mostly peaceful rally in Washington, D.C. on January 6th, 2021.

The only violence done on J6 was done by the Capitol police and others who killed Ashly Babbit. This violence continues and is aimed at “we the people” by our own government.

Who will speak for we the people?

The only way to free John and the other J6 political prisoners is to elect a patriot to become president.

©2023. John Strand. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Security Footage from J6 Confirms Over 300 Protesters Entered Capitol Through Open Door

VIDEO CLIPS: President Donald J. Trump’s Townhall with Sean Hannity

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The following are video clips from the Townhall hosted by Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

WATCH:

‘SO BAD, SO EVIL!’ Trump Says Biden Family ‘Being Protected’ by ‘Corrupt’ DOJ

Trump: Putin believed me 10% and that is all he needed

Trump on why he name-calls: I have to fight back

Trump touts success of his energy policies: ‘We have liquid gold’

Trump: The Biden family is being protected

©2023. Fox News. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: DeS COMEDY JAM: Ron Wishes Joe A Speedy Recovery —But Can’t Resist a Little Joke

DOCTORED EVIDENCE: Democrat-Led J6 Panel Added Audio to Silent Security Video for Primetime Hearings

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It was a show. Hollywood produced, remember?

This is textbook, how to stage a coup. Every totalitarian movement used these same tactics for destruction.

Hollywood Show Trials

Doctored evidence? Democrat-led J6 panel added audio to silent security video for primetime hearings

J6 Unmasked: Silent Capitol Police security footage altered by adding audio from another source during a montage that aired at the select committee’s first primetime hearing last June.

By: John Solomon and Nicholas Ballasy, Just The News, June 2, 2023:

The Democrat-led House Select Committee to Investigate Jan. 6 doctored a key piece of its evidence, adding audio to silent U.S. Capitol Police security footage used to create a dramatic video montage for the opening of its primetime hearings last summer, according to a Just the News review of the original raw footage and interviews.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED TWEET:

RELATED VIDEO: ‘SO BAD, SO EVIL!’ Trump Says Biden Family ‘Being Protected’ by ‘Corrupt’ DOJ

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Totally Fine’: Far-Left, America-Hating Enemedia Cover for Biden After Fall

Jordan: DOJ’s investigation of Trump may be ‘poisoned’ by ‘the FBI’s documented political bias’

‘The trajectory of the FBI, its mission seemed to have stayed the same on paper, but it changed drastically’

Massive Hunter Biden Laptop Photo Archive with Nearly 10,000 Pix Published on New Website

Watch Now: “What Is A Woman?”

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

 

 

South Dakota Farmers Face Land Theft By Climate Hoaxers

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Appalling and terrifying. When John Kerry said US farm confiscations were not off the table, he meant it.

Read through this thread.

South Dakota Farmers Face Carbon-capture Land Theft

By: Rebecca Terrell June 1, 2023

Farmers in South Dakota are facing egregious intimidation tactics by a private company that wants to use eminent domain to confiscate valuable farmland for carbon-capture pipelines.

Summit Carbon Solutions requested a restraining order against Brown County farmer Jerad Bossly.

The company claims he threatened the lives of its representatives who showed up unannounced to survey his property, a farm that has been in his family for four generations.

He told The New American that when they arrived, he was about 12 miles away, working in a field. His wife was home, recovering from gallbladder surgery, and was taking a shower when the Summit surveyors knocked at her door. They entered the house, but finding no one there, they proceeded to an outbuilding where one of them walked in. In the tweet below you can see footage from one of Bossly’s security cameras, which captured all of this movement.

Next, the Summit staff walked out onto the Bossly’s property and started setting up a tripod. By that time, Mrs. Bossly, with Jerad on the phone, confronted them and asked them to leave. Jerad said that the sheriff should be present if the company wanted access to his land. So the surveyors left.

His wife called Jerad back later that day to say a detective had just left the farm. Summit had reported Bossly for threatening to kill the surveyors. They also charged him with contempt of court for interfering with their survey activities.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLE: DAVID BLACKMON: Is Texas Turning Its Back On Renewable Energy?

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

U.S. Birth Rate Falling Below Biden’s Migrant Invasion Numbers

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This is the definition of replacement.

US birthrate is still flat compared to pre-pandemic levels: CDC

The total number of births in the United States remained flat in 2022 compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC reported 3,661,220 provisional births in the United States in 2022, which is about 3,000 fewer births than in 2021 in what the CDC calls a “nonsignificant decline. The total number of births in 2022 also remained below pre-pandemic levels after the birthrate slightly rebounded in 2021 following the initial year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of births in dropped in 2020 from pre-pandemic levels in 2019, when the CDC recorded more than 3.7 million births. In 2020, that number dropped to 3,613,647 births before rebounding slightly in 2021 to 3,664,292 births, according to CDC data.

The CDC noted that the number of births from 2014 to 2020 was declining an average of 2 percent each year, which included a drop of 4 percent from 2019 to 2020. From 2020 to 2021, the birth rate rose about 1 percent, the CDC added.

While the total number of births in the U.S. remained flat from 2021 to 2022, birth rates among teenagers and young women hit a record low in 2022. The birth rate among 15- to 19-year-olds decreased by 3 percent to about 13.5 births per 1,000 women.

Read more.

US birth rates remain stubbornly low

The Associated Press leads off this report with the rather milquetoast observation that birth rates in the United States last year “didn’t return to pre-pandemic levels.” That’s true, but it obviously doesn’t tell the entire story. The birth rate in the United States had been steadily declining with only a few exceptions for well over a decade. A very slight increase was recorded in 2021, but it was largely attributed to couples who had decided to postpone pregnancies during the early, uncertain days of the pandemic in 2020 when a significant drop was registered. Over this same decade, there was also a very measurable shift in the demographics of age in terms of who is having children. And all of this could have serious, long-term consequences for the country.

U.S. births were flat last year, as the nation saw fewer babies born than it did before the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.

Births to moms 35 and older continued to rise, with the highest rates in that age group since the 1960s. But those gains were offset by record-low birth rates to moms in their teens and early 20s, the CDC found. Its report is based on a review of more than 99% of birth certificates issued last year.

A little under 3.7 million babies were born in the U.S. last year, about 3,000 fewer than the year before.

Simply looking at the raw number of successful births doesn’t tell the whole story. The reality is that the average number of births per woman in any society that’s required to maintain a stable population over the long run (known as the replacement rate) is roughly 2.1 births per woman. We have now dropped below 1.7. That’s not quite as bad as what we’re seeing in Japan, which is in the middle of an actual population crisis, but that’s the direction we appear to be heading in.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden Cuts Off Health Care to Poor Women in Tennessee Because It Protects Babies From Abortions

Illegal Migrant Encounters at Southern Border Hit 1,000,000 Mark for FY 2023, Outpacing Prior Year

Record 2.4 million Migrants Illegally Crossed Border in FY2022, Almost 4 Million total Under Biden

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Jill Biden Snubs Israel on First Visit to Middle East as First Lady

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In 2021, the Muslim Brotherhood praised Democrats for siding with jihad terrorists against Zionist attacks. Their gratitude wasn’t far fetched. For the first time, Gallup has found this year that “Democrats’ sympathies in Middle East shift to Palestinians.” In fact, the Palestinian “resistance” has become a key element of the Democrat platform.

To reflect that fact, Jill Biden, on her first trip to the region as First Lady, included Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco on her tour agenda, but she snubbed Israel.

The Zionist Organization of America has blasted the Biden Administration’s “phony, dangerous antisemitism strategy” that the ZOA says enables antisemitism.

Jill Biden to Skip Israel on Middle East Trip

by Luca Cacciatore, Newsmax, June 1, 2023:

First Lady Jill Biden plans to avoid Israel during her trip to the Middle East, North Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula.

In a Tuesday thread on Twitter, the president’s wife revealed that she is visiting the Muslim-majority countries “to build on our longstanding partnerships and meet with young people across the region” to discuss the future.

She highlighted attending the wedding of Jordanian King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein’s son, Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah, who is set to marry Saudi-born Rajwa Al Saif on June 1 at Zahran Palace.

Jill Biden’s trip will also include Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Portugal, The Associated Press reported.

“Government to government, people to people, and heart to heart, we will continue to strengthen our relationships in the region and reaffirm our commitment to the future of young people around the world,” the first lady stated….

Read more.

AUTHOR

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

RELATED ARTICLES:

Israel: Victim of Sbarro pizzeria jihad massacre dies after 22 years in coma

India authorities discover Islamic State plan to turn the country into an Islamic State by 2050

Austria: Muslim migrant attacks police with knife, then tries to punch them, violently resisting arrest

Cameroon: Islamic jihadis attack security post, murder two customs officers, a policeman and a civilian

Denmark: Muslim migrant accused of sexual abuse and beating of daughters, also beat his wife

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

U.S. Surgeon General: Social media presents ‘profound risk of harm’ for kids

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Surgeon General Issues New Advisory About Effects Social Media Use Has on Youth Mental Health

Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy Urges Action to Ensure Social Media Environments are Healthy and Safe, as Previously-Advised National Youth Mental Health Crisis Continues

Today, United States Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released a new Surgeon General’s Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health – PDF. While social media may offer some benefits, there are ample indicators that social media can also pose a risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents. Social media use by young people is nearly universal, with up to 95% of young people ages 13-17 reporting using a social media platform and more than a third saying they use social media “almost constantly.”

With adolescence and childhood representing a critical stage in brain development that can make young people more vulnerable to harms from social media, the Surgeon General is issuing a call for urgent action by policymakers, technology companies, researchers, families, and young people alike to gain a better understanding of the full impact of social media use, maximize the benefits and minimize the harms of social media platforms, and create safer, healthier online environments to protect children. The Surgeon General’s Advisory is a part of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) ongoing efforts to support President Joe Biden’s whole-of-government strategy to transform mental health care for all Americans.

“The most common question parents ask me is, ‘is social media safe for my kids’. The answer is that we don’t have enough evidence to say it’s safe, and in fact, there is growing evidence that social media use is associated with harm to young people’s mental health,” said U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. “Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content, to bullying and harassment. And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis – one that we must urgently address.”

Usage of social media can become harmful depending on the amount of time children spend on the platforms, the type of content they consume or are otherwise exposed to, and the degree to which it disrupts activities that are essential for health like sleep and physical activity. Importantly, different children are affected by social media in different ways, including based on cultural, historical, and socio-economic factors. Among the benefits, adolescents report that social media helps them feel more accepted (58%), like they have people who can support them through tough times (67%), like they have a place to show their creative side (71%), and more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives (80%).

However, social media use can be excessive and problematic for some children. Recent research shows that adolescents who spend more than three hours per day on social media face double the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes, such as symptoms of depression and anxiety; yet one 2021 survey of teenagers found that, on average, they spend 3.5 hours a day on social media. Social media may also perpetuate body dissatisfaction, disordered eating behaviors, social comparison, and low self-esteem, especially among adolescent girls. One-third or more of girls aged 11-15 say they feel “addicted” to certain social media platforms and over half of teenagers report that it would be hard to give up social media. When asked about the impact of social media on their body image, 46% of adolescents aged 13-17 said social media makes them feel worse, 40% said it makes them feel neither better nor worse, and only 14% said it makes them feel better. Additionally, 64% of adolescents are “often” or “sometimes” exposed to hate-based content through social media. Studies have also shown a relationship between social media use and poor sleep quality, reduced sleep duration, sleep difficulties, and depression among youth.

While more research is needed to determine the full impact social media use has on nearly every teenager across the country, children and adolescents don’t have the luxury of waiting years until we know the full extent of social media’s effects. The Surgeon General’s Advisory offers recommendations stakeholders can take to help ensure children and their families have the information and tools necessary to make social media safer for children:

  • Policymakers can take steps to strengthen safety standards and limit access in ways that make social media safer for children of all ages, better protect children’s privacy, support digital and media literacy, and fund additional research.
  • Technology companies can better and more transparently assess the impact of their products on children, share data with independent researchers to increase our collective understanding of the impacts, make design and development decisions that prioritize safety and health – including protecting children’s privacy and better adhering to age minimums – and improve systems to provide effective and timely responses to complaints.
  • Parents and caregivers can make plans in their households such as establishing tech-free zones that better foster in-person relationships, teach kids about responsible online behavior and model that behavior, and report problematic content and activity.
  • Children and adolescents can adopt healthy practices like limiting time on platforms, blocking unwanted content, being careful about sharing personal information, and reaching out if they or a friend need help or see harassment or abuse on the platforms.
  • Researchers can further prioritize social media and youth mental health research that can support the establishment of standards and evaluation of best practices to support children’s health.

In concert with the Surgeon General’s Advisory, leaders at six of the nation’s medical organizations have expressed their concern on social media’s effects on youth mental health:

“Social media can be a powerful tool for connection, but it can also lead to increased feelings of depression and anxiety – particularly among adolescents. Family physicians are often the first stop for parents and families concerned about the physical and emotional health of young people in their lives, and we confront the mental health crisis among youth every day. The American Academy of Family Physicians commends the Surgeon General for identifying this risk for America’s youth and joins our colleagues across the health care community in equipping young people and their families with the resources necessary to live healthy, balanced lives.” – Tochi Iroku-Malize, M.D., MPH, MBA, FAAFP, President, American Academy of Family Physicians

“Today’s children and teens do not know a world without digital technology, but the digital world wasn’t built with children’s healthy mental development in mind. We need an approach to help children both on and offline that meets each child where they are while also working to make the digital spaces they inhabit safer and healthier. The Surgeon General’s Advisory calls for just that approach. The American Academy of Pediatrics looks forward to working with the Surgeon General and other federal leaders on Youth Mental Health and Social Media on this important work.” – Sandy Chung, M.D., FAAP, President, American Academy of Pediatrics

“With near universal social media use by America’s young people, these apps and sites introduce profound risk and mental health harms in ways we are only now beginning to fully understand. As physicians, we see firsthand the impact of social media, particularly during adolescence – a critical period of brain development. As we grapple with the growing, but still insufficient, research and evidence in this area, we applaud the Surgeon General for issuing this important Advisory to highlight this issue and enumerate concrete steps stakeholders can take to address concerns and protect the mental health and wellbeing of children and adolescents. We continue to believe in the positive benefits of social media, but we also urge safeguards and additional study of the positive and negative biological, psychological, and social effects of social media.”— Jack Resneck Jr., M.D., President, American Medical Association

“The first principle of health care is to do no harm – that’s the same standard we need to start holding social media platforms to. As the Surgeon General has pointed out throughout his tenure, we all have a role to play in addressing the youth mental health crisis that we now face as a nation. We have the responsibility to ensure social media keeps young people safe. And as this Surgeon General’s Advisory makes clear, we as physicians and healers have a responsibility to be part of the effort to do so.” – Saul Levin, M.D., M.P.A., CEO and Medical Director, American Psychiatric Association

“The American Psychological Association applauds the Surgeon General’s Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, affirming the use of psychological science to reach clear-eyed recommendations that will help keep our youth safe online. Psychological research shows that young people mature at different rates, with some more vulnerable than others to the content and features on many social media platforms. We support the advisory’s recommendations and pledge to work with the Surgeon General’s Office to help build the healthy digital environment that our kids need and deserve.” – Arthur Evans, Jr., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer and Executive Vice President, American Psychological Association.

“Social media use by young people is pervasive. It can help them, and all of us, live more connected lives – if, and only if, the appropriate oversight, regulation and guardrails are applied. Now is the moment for policymakers, companies and experts to come together and ensure social media is set up safety-first, to help young users grow and thrive. The Surgeon General’s Advisory about the effects of social media on youth mental health issued today lays out a roadmap for us to do so, and it’s critical that we undertake this collective effort with care and urgency to help today’s youth.” – Susan L. Polan, Ph.D., Associate Executive Director, Public Affairs and Advocacy, American Public Health Association

The National Parent Teacher Association shared the following:

“Every parent’s top priority for their child is for them to be happy, healthy and safe. We have heard from families who say they need and want information about using social media and devices. This Advisory from the Surgeon General confirms that family engagement on this topic is vital and continues to be one of the core solutions to keeping children safe online and supporting their mental health and well-being.” – Anna King, President of the National Parent Teacher Association.

In December 2021, Dr. Murthy issued a Surgeon General’s Advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health – PDF calling attention to our national crisis of youth mental health and well-being. Earlier this month, he released a Surgeon General’s Advisory on Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation – PDF, where he outlined the profound health consequences of social disconnection and laid out six pillars to increase connection across the country, one of which being the need to reform our digital environments. The new Surgeon General’s Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health – PDF is a continuation of his work to enhance the mental health and well-being of young people across the country.

The full Surgeon General’s Advisory can be read here – PDF.

For more information about the Office of the Surgeon General, visit www.surgeongeneral.gov/priorities.

In a CNN Health column titled Social media presents ‘profound risk of harm’ for kids, surgeon general says, calling attention to lack of research Meg Tirrell reported,

There’s not enough evidence to determine whether social media is safe enough for children and adolescents when it comes to their mental health, according to a new advisory from the US surgeon general.

Tuesday’s advisory notes that although there are some benefits, social media use presents “a profound risk of harm” for kids. It calls for increased research into social media’s impact on youth mental health, as well as action from policymakers and technology companies.

The 25-page advisory comes as a growing number of states are aiming to tighten regulations on social media platforms, including efforts in Montana to ban TikTok.

Surgeon general advisories are designed to call attention to urgent public health issues and provide recommendations for how they should be addressed, the new report notes. Previous advisories have focused on youth mental health more broadly, health misinformation and use of the opioid overdose antidote naloxone.

“We’re in the middle of a youth mental health crisis, and I’m concerned that social media is contributing to the harm that kids are experiencing,” Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told CNN.

“For too long, we have placed the entire burden of managing social media on the shoulders of parents and kids, despite the fact that these platforms are designed by some of the most talented engineers and designers in the world to maximize the amount of time that our kids spend on them,” he said. “So that is not a fair fight. It’s time for us to have the backs of parents and kids.”

The advisory includes a review of the available evidence on the effects of social media on youth mental health, noting that social media use among kids is “nearly universal”: Up to 95% of kids ages 13 to 17 report using social media, with more than a third saying they use it “almost constantly.” And although 13 is commonly the minimum age to use social media sites in the US (an age Murthy has previously said is too young, the advisory notes that nearly 40% of kids ages 8 to 12 use the platforms, as well.

“We must acknowledge the growing body of research about potential harms, increase our collective understanding of the risks associated with social media use, and urgently take action to create safe and healthy digital environments,” the advisory says.

©2023. CNN Health. All rights reserved.

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence

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Anthony Esolen: Jeannine Gramick, a nun, indulges men who dress up as Catholic nuns. Does she also condone their grooming, enticing, and seducing?

Ever quick to embarrass faithful Catholics who do the hard and thankless work of attempting to reintroduce sanity to a society gone mad with sexual sin, and rendered lonely and embittered amidst the madness, Sister Jeannine Gramick – co-founder of the heretical New Ways Ministry, probably the most notorious pro-LGBT+ group that claims to be Catholic – has written a letter to the management of the Los Angeles Dodgers, praising them for honoring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at the club’s forthcoming “Pride Night.”

The Sisters will be honored, says Sister Gramick, for their “financial assistance to those in need.”  The Sisters are gay men got up in sexually fetishistic garb, mocking the dress of Catholic women religious. But, says Sister, even though their “choice of clothing” may be “offensive to some,” though not offensive to her, that offensiveness, which Sister does not take seriously, must not be allowed to “trump the works of mercy.”

I’ll wager that many a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan provided monetary assistance to the poor, so long as they were white.  No doubt the Roman legions took care of the widows and orphans of their fellow legionnaires.  King Leopold of Belgium had a heart for the Congolese, and they paid for his care in blood.  Crocodiles were said to shed tears before they devoured their prey, and doctors who shoulder people out of this world with an easy needle full of poison claim to have soft hearts too. And I can well imagine their shedding a public tear while they pack their bags and leave the grieving family with the task, sometimes not entirely unpleasant, of settling the details of the funeral and the disposal of the beloved remains.

If you say that the comparisons are unfair, I ask, “Why are there Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at all?”  They have defined themselves by the evil they do, though they do not see it as such, or they do see it, but they choose it anyway.  Why should there have been a Ku Klux Klan, if not for terrorizing blacks (and later on, because it is hard to keep the acid of evil contained, Catholics and others)?  Why should there be assisters of suicide in the first place?

If you say that the Sisters are harmless, I wonder what world you are living in, or, supposing that you are in possession of ordinary faculties of observation and judgment, how you can live in this one with such ease.  Your soft head does not so much astonish me as your hard heart.

In the world I live in, in the nation we share, many millions of children grow up without a married mother and father.

In the world I live in, children and young people have been visited with a plague of sexual confusion which, as to its scope and the madness and the destructiveness of its character, is unprecedented in human history.

In the world I live in, unless they possess a heroic commitment to virtue, most young people will bring to their marriages, if they marry at all, a sorry series of sexual train wrecks, betrayals, and acts of animal indulgence, not boding well for their married future.

In the world I live in, the innocence of children is attacked on all sides, even in places where they should be held safest, such as schools, libraries, and parks.

The Klan gave all they had to prolonging, propagating, and making more profound the evil of racism.  The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, though they do not, in themselves, possess the sheer numbers that the Klan once boasted, do the like.  They exist to prolong, propagate, and make more profound the evils of the Lonely Revolution.

It is easy to oppose racism here and now, when everyone understands and takes for granted that segregation was evil and stupid.  What’s hard was to be someone like the novelist and reformer George Washington Cable, who wrote against the habits and feelings of many of his own people in the postbellum South, for the sake of justice and for their own moral and social welfare.

It was easy to oppose sexual vice at the Harvard of the Puritans.  What’s hard is to do so at Harvard now, when you know that if you do, you are likely to make your name odious to your fellow students, your professors, and prospective employers.

We may therefore turn Sister Gramick’s words back at her.  Why does she have no mercy for the children – in this case, mainly the boys, to whom she seems never to give a second thought – who must be spectators of the fetish?  Why does she have no mercy for the many and various victims of a world gone mad with sexual selfishness?

Even if she does not take seriously the many warnings against sexual sin that Scripture sounds, from Genesis through the prophets, from the Gospels to the letters of Paul to Revelation, why is she numb to the vast social and personal harm that it has caused?  Why should little children be burdened with broken families, parades of sex interests in and out of their homes, and the lewd and the vile and the chaotic everywhere in public?

And what about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence?  Where is their mercy?  Where is their simple human decency?  Someone who actually thinks about other people and their welfare would never do what they do, or appear as they appear, in front of children and young people – and that is quite aside from the thoughtless coarsening of public morals.

But the answer to my question is in plain sight.  They want people to see them, especially children and young people.  Grooming, enticing, seducing; the message is clear.  “Look at us!  Aren’t we great?  Come join us someday, and have a lot of fun!”

I daresay that Sister Gramick knows very well that that is the message.  She does not care.  If that message gets to a young person and lures him into that life, she will be ready to cheer.  Easiest thing in the world.

You may also enjoy:

Fr. Gerald E. Murray’s Pope Francis Must Stop the Madness

Brad Miner’s Homosexuality in Scripture

AUTHOR

Anthony Esolen

Anthony Esolen is a lecturer, translator, and writer. Among his books are Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, and Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World, and most recently The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord. He is a professor and writer in residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts, in Warner, New Hampshire. Be sure to visit his new website, Word and Song.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2023 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

D-DAY: We Remember Those Brave Allied and American Heroes Who Saved The Free World

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Seventy-nine years ago on June 6, 1944, more than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France.

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which, “we will accept nothing less than full victory.”

More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end, the Allies gained a foot-hold in Continental Europe. The cost in lives on D-Day was high. More than 9,000 Allied Soldiers were killed or wounded, but their sacrifice allowed more than 100,000 Soldiers to begin the slow, hard slog across Europe, to defeat Adolf Hitler’s crack troops. The Allies overcame grave initial setbacks and took all five Normandy beaches by nightfall on June 6. The first waves of landing forces suffered terrible losses, particularly the U.S. troops at Omaha beach.

Beach Name Nation Total Landed Total Casualties
Omaha Beach USA 43,250 3,000
Juno Beach Canada 21,400 946
Sword Beach Britain 28,845 426
Gold Beach Britain 25,000 413
Utah Beach USA 21,000 197
Totals 139,495 4,982

The Truly Great

BY STEPHEN SPENDER

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious, is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Stephen Spender, “The Truly Great” from Collected Poems 1928-1953. Copyright © 1955 by Stephen Spender.

©2023. REPUBLICAN EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF VOLUSIA COUNTY. All rights reserved.