Lee Ardis

Connecticut man accused of drowning his mother to silence ‘the demons’ is found dead in his cell

A Connecticut man who told police he killed his mother in order to silence “demons” that were hounding him was found dead in his cell on Monday.

34-year-old Eric Meagan was arrested in June after calling police and telling them that he had killed 56-year-old Victoria Palmer, his mother. Her lifeless body was found in the Still River near Harrybroke Park in New Milford.

Meagan was found dead in his cell at about 3:30 in the morning at the Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown, according to officials from the Connecticut Department of Correction.

The man was alone in his cell and was found with a ligature around his neck.

Paramedics attempted to revive him but were unsuccessful, a CDC official said.

A criminal complaint had previously documented what Meagan told police about the death of his mother. He allegedly said that he was on a walk with her when he got her into a headlock and submerged her head in the Still River for about ten minutes until she died.

“I had to do it to make the demons stop,” he allegedly told police later.

Meagan had a history of mental illness and allegedly told police that he had been “tormented” by demons before he killed his mother.

Read more at: www.theblaze.com

Across Europe Deaths Are Far Higher Now Than They Were in the ‘Pandemic Years’ of 2020 and 2021

In the year from week ending June 5th 2022 to week ending June 4th 2023 the U.K. recorded 1,059 excess death per million people. The odd thing about this is that excess deaths in the U.K. in 2023 are higher than the excess deaths in the same period in 2020-21 in 13 of the 27 EU nations!

If the people of Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands and Sweden were so worried about the likelihood of dying that they acquiesced in locking themselves up, voluntarily trashed their economies and stopped their kids going to school back in 2020-21 (well, Sweden didn’t, but the rest did), why don’t we feel the need to do the same now? We have more excess deaths now than they had then.

If YouGov did a poll tomorrow asking whether or not we should, right now, go back into lockdown, how many thumbs up would it receive? Very few, I should hope. But if U.K. citizens don’t think it’s a good idea now, why did the Germans or the Finns or the Greeks think it was a good idea in 2020 and 2021? Could it be that they were manipulated? That they weren’t given the whole picture? That they were ‘had’?

Let’s try and put some perspective on this number. We can think of 1,059 excess deaths per 1,000,000 of population in several ways. As a straight percentage let’s round it down to 0.1%. This means that we expect 0.1% of the population to die in addition to the number of people we might ordinarily expect to die in the year. Or, if you prefer, an additional one person in a 1,000 will die in the year.

In the U.K. roughly one person in 100 dies every year, i.e., 1% of the population. But if we’re experiencing excess deaths at a level of 0.1% then we can expect that about 1.1% of the population will die this year. Let’s take the example of a large town or small city with 100,000 inhabitants. In a normal year we’d expect 1,000 deaths. With this year’s higher level of excess deaths, the funeral directors would expect to see 1,100 deaths. That’s all very straightforward.

In case you’d forgotten, let’s remind ourselves that the period from April 5th 2020 to April 4th 2021 included the two big spikes in fatality in Spring 2020 and winter 2020-21. It’s also the period that ended before the vaccine rollout was in any way complete. While about 50% of the U.K. population had received one dose of vaccine by then, in the EU the figure was only about 20%. This period was very much the year when we would have expected to see peak ‘all-cause’ pandemic excess deaths in the U.K. and across Europe with very little amelioration from vaccines or prior infection.

Biden Administration To Send Cluster Bombs To Ukraine, Bypassing U.S. Law

Ukraine, which is now engaged in a counter-offensive against Russian forces, is set to receive a round of cluster bombs from the Biden administration in a drawdown of weapons that bypasses U.S. law.

Despite American law prohibiting the production, use, or transfer of cluster munitions with a failure rate of more than 1%, President Joe Biden is able to bypass the law through a rarely used provision of the Foreign Assistance Act, The Washington Post reported.

Cluster bombs, first developed and used during World War II, are banned by most countries in the world due to the view that they are inhumane because of high failure rates and unexploded fragments that can linger for years, according to the BBC.

Biden approved sending the controversial weapons to Ukraine after a “unanimous” recommendation from his national security team, according to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who said on Friday it was a “difficult” decision made “in consultation with allies and partners and in consultation with members of Congress.”

The president is using the Foreign Assistance Act to approve the cluster munitions for Ukraine, which allows him to bypass arms export restrictions as long as he determines the move is vital to U.S. national security, The Washington Post reported. U.S. officials said the cluster bombs that will make their way to Ukraine have a failure rate of less than 3%.

The weapons pose a heightened risk to civilians as they explode in the air and release dozens of smaller submunitions, also called “bomblets,” over a wide area. The bombs, intended to destroy multiple targets at once, have been sought after by the Ukrainians as their ammunition runs low, according to The New York Times.

The U.S., Ukraine, and Russia did not join the 120 countries that banned the use of cluster bombs. Russia has been using the munitions in its war against Ukraine, according to the Pentagon, and the United Nations also believes Ukraine has already been using cluster bombs, although the country denies it.

According to the Associated Press, the transfer of cluster bombs to Ukraine will come out of Pentagon stocks in a fresh batch of military aid that also includes armored vehicles and more ammunition.

Soaring UK Inflation Leads To Record Deposit Run

While the US deposit fight that started with the failure of three major US banks in March, has alternated between a bank jog, run and a sprint, depending on whether one uses actual data or the Fed’s politically-mandated seasonal adjustments to deposit outflows…

… the rest of the “developed world” has so far avoided a similar cascade of bank failures (who knew that injecting trillions in reserves to artificially preserve bank viability would make them beyond brittle and terminally fragile the moment liquidity was withdrawn) and by extensions, a sweeping bank run.

Or maybe not, because while no other western nation suffered a recent bank crisis as painful as that of the US, it doesn’t mean that other nations are immune to deposit flight.

Consider the UK, where households just withdrew a record amount from bank accounts last month; and while in lieu of a bank failure panic that would suggest consumers are looking elsewhere for higher interest rates, the reason why deposits are fleeing banks in the US may have a much simpler reason: tapping savings to pay bills.

As the FT reported, a net £4.6bn was taken out from banks and building societies in May, the highest level of withdrawals since monthly records began in 1997, according to the Bank of England data published on Thursday.

And since the large net withdrawals from instant-access accounts were only partially offset by net inflows into fixed-term accounts, which typically pay higher rates, and individual savings accounts, which offer tax-free dividends and interest on shares or cash, this suggests that the deposit flight wasn’t the result of rate arbitrage.

BoE figures showed the effective rate on instant-access accounts dropped 8 basis points to 1.33 per cent in May. That lags considerably both the central bank’s benchmark rate, now at a 15-year high of 5 per cent, and rates for two-year fixed mortgage deals, which are above 6 per cent.

In its latest report, the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee noted that “the pass-through [of higher interest rates]” to these accounts had “been unusually weak” since it began raising rates in December 2021.

So if not merely moving deposits from Bank A to Bank B, what’s going on? According to Ashley Webb, UK economist at consultancy Capital Economics, some of the fall to “people moving money into other investments outside of the banking sector, such as UK gilts”. But he added: “It’s possible that households’ pandemic savings are being depleted to support spending.”

UK households are contending with high inflation, which stood at 8.7% in May, and many have complained that bank savings rates are failing to catch up with the BoE’s rate hikes. Yields on UK 10-year gilts stand at about 4.3%, up from 3.3% in March, while two-year government bonds have a yield of 5.2% up from 3.2% in March, reflecting the changing outlook for interest rates.

Daniel Mahoney, UK economist at Handelsbanken, said the record £4.6bn figure provided “strong evidence” that people were “dipping into excess savings built up during the pandemic to sustain living standards” amid the cost of living squeeze.

Roving gang of baseball bat-wielding kids targets mothers and nannies on school runs in San Francisco

Democratic Mayor London Breed recently took issue with the characterization of her city as a dangerous cesspool that is fast driving away business, stating, “San Francisco is a major city and it has challenges.”

Among the leftist-controlled city’s latest challenges is a roving gang of baseball bat-wielding kids that targets mothers and nannies trying to pick up children from school.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a group of adolescents is likely responsible for the attacks on at least 11 women in the city’s Noe Valley, also called “stroller valley” on account of the preponderance of young families still living there.

Thomas Harvey, captain of the San Francisco Police Department’s Mission Station, indicated that the ski mask-clad suspects smashed and robbed their victims in broad daylight then used a stolen car as a getaway vehicle.

A woman who identified herself only as CW told the Telegraph that police — whose force is greatly understaffed — appeared to have “zero interest” in investigating her attack. She had been thrown to the ground and robbed while attempting to pick up her daughter from the nursery.

One juvenile male was detained Thursday, though the others remain at large.

Rafael Mandelman, a Democratic member of the city’s governing San Francisco Board of Supervisors, attributed the trend of children “doing these really awful things” in part to kids’ removal from schools during the pandemic, which teachers’ unions pushed for.

Read more at: www.theblaze.com

‘We Need to Act Fast’: Disney+ Green Lights New Show About Girl Falling in Love With the Devil

The family-friendly entertainment organization MovieGuide is sounding the alarm about a new campaign against an upcoming Disney+ that features a teenage girl’s love affair with Satan.

The streaming platform has given the green light to start production on a new German original series titled Pauline. According to Deadline, the series follows an 18-year-old girl becomes pregnant after a one-night stand with the devil.

The series’ creators, who are behind Netflix’s “How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast),” say the project is “very close” to their hearts.

“For a long time, the series has been and still remains a project very close to our hearts,” Philipp Käßbohrer and Matthias Murmann said. “We’re thrilled that Disney+ loves this coming-of-age story as much as we do and that we’ve now been able to begin filming with such an amazing cast and crew.”

Lately, Disney’s “coming-of-age” films have been out of touch with what parents want their kids to watch. They often push content with themes around witchcraft, sex, and violence.

Last year, the company lost over $100 million each for their animated movies, “Light Year” and “Strange World,” which depicted same-sex relationships on screen.

Movieguide chairman and founder Ted Baehr, is calling on parents to petition Disney+ to stop the release of “Pauline” on the platform.

“We can’t let this twisted and disturbing content corrupt our children’s values and beliefs,” he shared.

“Let me be clear. Pauline is not just another piece of entertainment,” Baehr added. “Horrifically, this series even portrays Satan as a romantic partner! By normalizing and promoting such a relationship, Pauline sends a dangerous message to young viewers that associating with demons, Satan, and evil is acceptable and even desirable!”

‘It’s the Devil Masquerading’: Ex-Psychic Warns of Bizarre, Spiritually Dangerous ‘Starseeds’ Phenomenon Reportedly Sweeping Social Media

An ex-psychic medium is addressing yet another occultic phenomenon spreading across social media: the concept of so-called “starseeds.”

Jenn Nizza, host of “Ex-Psychic Saved Podcast,” tackled the issue on the most recent episode of her show, noting the hashtag for starseeds has more than 950 million views.

Nizza, who brought on a guest named Hannah (@mustardseedhannah on TikTok) to discuss the matter, encouraged people to “mark and avoid” anything affiliated with starseeds. Like Nizza, Hannah also has an occultic background, having been taught palm reading and divination at an early age.

Now a Christian, Hannah speaks out against these practices and warns Christians to avoid such trends.

“First of all, let’s address what a starseed is,” Nizza said. “They believe [they are] an advanced spiritual being from other planets and realms.”

Hannah said the starseed paradigm is one in which people are told they have a “spark and it’s part of the universe and you can change the universe through this spark.” She said starseed ideology is akin to Scientology, claiming they “share doctrinal similarities.”

“The starseed ideology is so dangerous because it pulls in people who already feel lost and it gives them a place to think they can flourish and … walk into their identity, ascend, grow,” Hannah said. “What they’re looking for, they don’t know it, but it’s sanctification. But, instead, they found the counterfeit, which is ascension.”

The power people believe they contain within the starseed paradigm is dependent upon “other entities and frequencies,” with Hannah noting these individuals might point to chakras and negative energies to explain what might be unfolding in a person’s life.

Hannah specifically warned kids who have been “parented poorly” and don’t have a biblical worldview might seek out counterfeit lies and the New Age to try and find power and protection, making the starseed paradigm attractive to these individuals.

“When you don’t have a foundation on Christ Jesus, you are susceptible to all of the lies of the evil one,” Nizza added. “And he loves to prey on vulnerability.”

The largest teachers union in America recommended educators include ‘Gender Queer’ in their summer reading

The National Education Association (NEA) on Monday recommended that teachers include the controversial book “Gender Queer” on their summer reading lists.

The book was featured in the NEA’s “Great Summer Reads for Educators!” list that showcased 11 books.

Among those books are “White Fragility,” a book that insists that White Americans use anger, shame and guilt to avoid taking responsibility for racial inequality.

Other sections included “books to help you forget about work” and “books to celebrate or help you understand Junetheenth.”

Under the “banned books” section, Gender Queer is recommended as a reading.

“Gender Queer” has as courted major controversy among America parents for being in public school libraries throughout the US and has been challenged for its depictions and descriptions of oral sex as well as discussions on masturbation.

Fox News Digital previously reported on Gender Queer’s author, Maia Kobabe, defending the sexually explicit graphic images in the memoir during an interview with NPR in January.

“And I honestly think the book is a lot less explicit than it could be,” Kobabe told NPR.

“The topic of gender touches on identity… and it touches on sexuality,” Kobabe continued.

“And it’s hard to fully explain I think what like how a gender identity can impact every facet of life as an adult without touching at least a little bit of sexuality. And I wanted to at least not to like shy away from that.”

The book also discusses Kobabe’s journey of self-discovery towards identifying outside the “gender binary.”

This list of books comes after the president of the National Education Association declared that racial and social justice is a “Pillar of the NEA’s efforts.”

Trans Barbie dolls? Hollywood braces for another woke disaster at the box office

On July 21, the new “Barbie” live action movie will hit theaters across the country.

Featuring Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, the highly anticipated Warner Bros film is projected to earn over $80 million just on opening day.

But, there’s been a trend of movies flopping at the box office lately.

Not just any movies though — woke movies specifically.

Take Pixar’s film “Elemental.” It resulted in the second-lowest three-day opening in the history of the studio.

Why did it flop when it had a $200 million budget and was expected to earn $40 million on opening weekend?

Might it have had something to do with the fact that one of the characters is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns?

What about Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” remake?

Its box office performance was also deemed a failure.

Could it be related to the fact that Ariel’s iconic flaming red hair was suddenly … replaced?

Regardless, numbers are indisputable, and the numbers for many of these overtly woke movies are abysmal.

It won’t be shocking, then, if the new Barbie movie follows suit because it, too, has a woke agenda, and Dave Rubin, for one, is far from thrilled about it.

The film “includes a biologically male actor who identifies as a woman playing a female doctor,” tweeted Mary Margaret Olohan next to a picture of Hari Nef, the actor chosen for the role.

“I don’t have a problem with the trans person being an actor,” Rubin says.

But “there’s a gajillion girls out there who would love to be in the ‘Barbie’ movie as a girl, so why do they go out of their way to have a biological boy play a girl who’s supposed to be completely a girl in the ‘Barbie’ movie unless they’re trying to confuse kids?” he asks.

Read more at: www.theblaze.com

6,000 congregations are leaving the United Methodist church in a split over LGBTQ agenda

About a fifth of the congregations in the second-largest Protestant church in the U.S. are splitting away over a schism about the inclusion of the LGBTQ agenda in Christianity.

That comes to about 6,000 communities in the United Methodist Church, according to a report in the Chicago Tribune.

“I don’t think any of us want to see any of our churches leave,” said UMC Council of Bishops president Bishop Thomas Bickerton.

“We’re called to be the body of Christ, we’re called to be unified,” he added. “There’s never been a time when the church has not been without conflict, but there’s been a way we’ve worked through that.”

The mass exodus was the latest development in the years-long debate over LGBTQ inclusion in Methodist theology. Traditional Protestant teaching forbids gay relationships and marriages, but some members and churches are opposing the biblical teaching.

Many of the 6,000 congregations leaving are planning to join the Global Methodist Church, a new organization that will neither ordain or marry LGBTQ people.

Rev. Keith Boyette, the chairman of the council guiding the creation of the new denomination, said in March that many churches are frustrated with the actions of the UMC.

“Theologically conservative local churches and annual conferences want to be free of divisive and destructive debates and to have the freedom to move forward together,” said Boyette.

Read more at: www.theblaze.com