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Thursday, August 3, 2023
Defending human life a priority, says Pope
Defending human life a priority, says Pope
Pope Francis has strong words for a country that is poised to allow euthanasia: Where are you sailing?
St. John Paul II asked us to return to the Prayer to St. Michael
St. John Paul II asked us to return to the Prayer to St. Michael
Learn the Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel
St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits,
who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
Wednesday, August 2, 2023
(1) Fr. Mike Schmitz Reviews "Sound of Freedom" Movie - YouTube
(1) Fr. Mike Schmitz Reviews "Sound of Freedom" Movie - YouTube: Friends, our first reading is from the First Book of Kings, and it's one of my favorite passages in the entire Old Testament. If you're going on a retreat, s...
U.S.-Saudi Deal: Nuclearization of the Middle East Starts Here - Israel News - Haaretz.com
U.S.-Saudi Deal: Nuclearization of the Middle East Starts Here - Israel News - Haaretz.com: The Deal Between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia Wasn't Opposed by Netanyahu, but All Countries Aiming for a Military Nuclear Program Did So Under the Guise of a Civilian Program. Just Look at Iran
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Accepts NuScale Power’s Standard Design Approval Application | Business Wire
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Accepts NuScale Power’s Standard Design Approval Application | Business Wire: NuScale Power announced the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted its Standard Design Approval (SDA) Application for formal review.
James Martin, S.J.: ‘Does God exist?’ and other FAQs about faith and religion | America Magazine
James Martin, S.J.: ‘Does God exist?’ and other FAQs about faith and religion | America Magazine: I spoke with friends who work with young people, and young people themselves, to get the hardest questions about God and religion.
The trouble with telling history as it happens - Responsible Statecraft
The trouble with telling history as it happens - Responsible Statecraft
New on RS today, Geoff Roberts highlights the problem with historians trying to tell the story of the Ukraine war as it unfolds and with unapologetic biases. "Plokhy has no privileged access to sources or material evidence. Like all outside observers of these ongoing events, he must rely on information emerging from a very murky pool fed into by media reports, unsourced anonymous intelligence briefings, uninterrogated witness statements, participants’ post hoc memoirs, internet sources and an incessant stream of propaganda claims."
THE MASK IS OFF - Norman Finkelstein's Official Substack
THE MASK IS OFF - Norman Finkelstein's Official Substack: Why Ukraine Will NEVER Be a NATO Member
Fitch Downgrades U.S. Credit Rating - WSJ
Fitch Downgrades U.S. Credit Rating - WSJ: The agency said that the downgrade reflects an “erosion of governance.” The rating on the U.S. now stands at AA+, or one notch below the top AAA grade.
Biden to Seek Congressional Funding For Taiwan Arms Via Ukraine Budget
Biden to Seek Congressional Funding For Taiwan Arms Via Ukraine Budget: US President Joe Biden intends to ask Congress to finance arms for Taiwan as part of the supplementary budget for Ukraine, the US newspaper has quoted sources familiar with the situation as saying.
Tuesday, August 1, 2023
Military.com Op-Ed Calls for Military Draft - News From Antiwar.com
Military.com Op-Ed Calls for Military Draft - News From Antiwar.com: An op-ed published by Military.com called for the US military to restart the draft amid a recruiting crisis resulting from decades of endless wars in the Middle East and Africa and skyrocketing veteran suicide rates. “The fastest and most effective way to resolve this recruiting crisis is to change how we recruit,” wrote Joe Plenzler, … Continue reading "Military.com Op-Ed Calls for Military Draft"
The Forever War’s Forever Legacy - TomDispatch.com
The Forever War’s Forever Legacy - TomDispatch.com
Karen Greenberg, Guantánamo 21 Years Later
August 1, 2023
For more than 18 years, Karen Greenberg has been writing about the crimes the U.S. committed at its offshore prison of injustice at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It would be, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld assured Americans, "the least worst place" (a phrase Greenberg turned into the title of her book on the subject). Sorry, Don, but that was only true if you were comparing it to the "black sites" the CIA was already running then. From the moment it was set up in 2002, with the Global War on Terror just months old and the first (often already tortured prisoners) sent there, bound, hooded, and in fluorescent orange jumpsuits to be brutally mistreated beyond the shores of American justice, that prison has been a horror beyond compare. And as Greenberg showed in those years, the rest of us could have known just what was happening.
Here's just one Guantánamo quote from the time: “On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more.” That was, in fact, typical of descriptions outraged FBI agents assigned to Gitmo in 2004 sent in memos or emails to their bosses back on the mainland. They confirmed prisoner claims that “military personnel beat and kicked them while they had hoods on their heads and tight shackles on their legs, left them in freezing temperatures and stifling heat, subjected them to repeated, prolonged rectal exams and paraded them naked around the prison as military police snapped pictures,” and so it went.
From that prison's very first day, when the initial 20 prisoners were flown in and, about a week later, the first publicity -- if you dare call it that! -- photo taken of them was released, as New York Times reporter Carol Rosenberg recalled, it looked "like torture." (The full set of photos, available years later, proved to be a first-class horror show.) Today, TomDispatch regular Greenberg, who has visited that prison and covered its horrors for endless years, considers the latest reports on the all-American nightmare that's simply never ended. Tom
THE MASK IS OFF - Norman Finkelstein's Official Substack
THE MASK IS OFF - Norman Finkelstein's Official Substack: Why Ukraine Will NEVER Be a NATO Member
An intriguing but frustrating window into Obama’s West Asia policy | Just World News
An intriguing but frustrating window into Obama’s West Asia policy | Just World News
Now comes (yet another!) book by one of the hordes of nation-security technocrats who dominate West Asian policymaking in Democratic administrations here in Washington. In this case, it is Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East, a recent book by Steven Simon, a guy who has worked as first a career civil servant and then a political appointee in U.S. administrations going back to Pres. Ronald Reagan, and who between government stints has transited through DC’s ever whirling revolving door into presumably lucrative positions in all the “usual” kinds of militaristic think-tanks.
Don’t yawn yet, though. Unlike most of his counterparts in the nat-sec punditocracy who have written memoirs of their times in office, Simon at least started to reflect on “what went wrong” with U.S. policy towards West Asia (the “Middle East.”) And in the chapter on the Obama administration—in which he served as senior NSC director for the Middle East and North Africa—he reveals a number of jaw-dropping details that help to explain the in-bred, reflexively pro-military and pro-Israeli atmosphere of not just the explicitly political class in DC but also wide swathes of the supposedly “policy intellectual” class of DC think-tank-dom.
Niger has suspended the export of gold and uranium to France this Sunday with immediate effect
Niger has suspended the export of gold and uranium to France this Sunday with immediate effect: Niger has suspended the export of gold and uranium to France this Sunday with immediate effect. France suspended aid to Niger after the recent coup. 1 out of every 3 light bulbs in France is powered with uranium from Niger. The recent events between Niger and France are a complex situation with a long history.…
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