Lee Ardis

The Ring of Fire Around Israel is Tightening

Hamas has been strengthening its cooperation with the Iran-Hezbollah axis for years and the process only seems to be accelerating. The result is the formation of six fronts of aggression against Israel—a “ring of fire” composed of radical Sunni and Shiite axes.

Previous signs of this cooperation could be found in how the Palestinian Sunni Hamas and the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah helped one another upgrade their capabilities. Hezbollah began digging cross-border tunnels into Israel from Lebanon (though these were demolished by the IDF in 2018), just as Hamas did for years from Gaza.

“They have said, “Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation,That the name of Israel may be remembered no more.” Psalm 83:4

Hamas learned from Hezbollah how to overcome its military inferiority and set up rocket bases in civilian areas. Both terror armies have set up elite cross-border ground infiltration units—Hamas’ Nuhba force and Hezbollah’s Radwan force.

The relationship grew even closer after Saleh Al-Arouri, a senior Hamas official, was expelled from Turkey and relocated to Lebanon several years ago. He began building a Hamas headquarters in Lebanon, from which he both orchestrates terrorism in Judea and Samaria and oversees a growing Hamas presence in Lebanon.

FDA approves 1st pill made from human poop

0The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first pill manufactured from donated human poop, the agency announced Wednesday (April 26). It’s the second human poop-derived treatment ever approved; the first was an enema-based treatment cleared for use in December 2022.

Previously, such “fecal microbiota transplants” were considered investigational treatments and were therefore harder for patients to access and often not covered by insurance.

Like the approved enema treatment, the newly approved pill, called Vowst, also contains live bacteria and has been approved for use in people ages 18 and older as a preventive treatment for recurrent infections with the bacterium Clostridioides difficile . Called C. diff for short, this infection is often acquired in health care settings after patients have taken antibiotics for a different infection.

Antibiotics can disrupt the balance of bacteria that normally populate the gut, and this gives C. diff the opportunity to proliferate. The rapidly replicating bacteria secrete toxins that can lead to diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever and colitis (inflammation of the colon) and, in some cases, organ failure and death. C. diff infections are associated with about 15,000 to 30,000 deaths a year in the U.S., according to the FDA.

Those who recover from C. diff have a roughly 1 in 6 chance of developing the infection again within two to eight weeks of recovery, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . The risk of these recurrent infections increases each time a person gets C. diff , in part because the antibiotics used to treat them further disrupt the gut microbiome, the community of microorganisms in the lower digestive tract.

Oxford ‘Cancels’ England’s Patron Saint George to Appease Islam

Today, April 23, is Saint George’s Day, which used to be widely celebrated, especially in England, as George is that nation’s patron saint.

To underscore just how much things have changed between England and its patron saint, consider the following “what if” scenario offered by English historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794). Had the Muslims won at the pivotal Battle of Tours (732 A.D.), Gibbon predicted that:

Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people [meaning Brits would now be Muslim] the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Muhammad.

Today, of course, not only is the “revelation of Muhammad” being taught and honored at Oxford, but Christianity—including in the guise of Saint George—is being canceled for its sake. Most recently,

A decision by an Oxford university college not to celebrate St George’s Day with a formal dinner has been branded ‘barking mad.’ Magdalen College has decided against continuing an annual pre-pandemic banquet celebrating the English saint that drew together Oxford students, dons and fellows. Instead, the only occasion the college will observe on the day is Eid al-Fitr, the Islamic festival marking the end of Ramadan. The college will hold a formal dinner marking Eid on April 23, honouring a request made by its Muslim students. An email from college vice president Professor Nick Stargardt … outlines plans for a ‘festive dinner’ celebrating the occasion. The invitation, sent to hundreds of students and their lecturers, adds the meal will ‘follow Muslim customs.’ Cooks will prepare a halal meat dish with no alcohol served to diners.

California ‘church’ founded for sole purpose of worshipping abortion

A Los Angeles-based artist and writer, Jackie DesForges, has founded a new “church” for the express purpose of worshipping abortion.

According to Insider, “At a renegade art and literary festival in Bombay Beach, California, Jackie DesForges knelt and prayed with passersby at the inaugural mass of her new church. Reading aloud from a sermon re-written using Supreme Court language, the group didn’t merely celebrate — they worshipped abortion.”

Des Forges is calling her “church” the Church of Potential Life and has co-opted Catholic imagery, motifs, and terminology. She has an “altar” and refers to her service as a “mass.” Behind her altar are figures from Catholic iconography, including Our Lady of Guadalupe — which is particularly ironic, because she is considered to be the patroness of the unborn by faithful Catholics.

DesForges was raised Catholic, but has apparently abandoned that faith. She said, “I used to be so anti-everything Catholic and everything church; I had a lot of complicated feelings for a while without it, and now I’m very much in the place where I can kind of take what I need from it and leave the rest behind.”

Head of Vatican Life Academy Gives Nod to Legal Assisted Suicide

The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life said he is personally opposed to assisted suicide but would not exclude it for others who wish to avail themselves of it.

In an April 21 debate on end-of-life issues at the Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia said that he endorses “accompaniment” and care as the best approach to assisting the terminally ill but recognizes the legitimacy of laws permitting assisted suicide as furthering the common good.

“In our society, a practicable legal mediation allowing assisted suicide cannot be excluded,” Archbishop Paglia said, under the conditions specified by the Italian Constitutional Court.

These conditions stipulate that to be eligible for assisted suicide, the person must be kept alive by life-sustaining treatments and be suffering from an irreversible pathology, which is a source of physical or psychological suffering that he considers intolerable, and he must be fully capable of making free and informed decisions, the archbishop noted.

“Personally, I would not practice assisting suicide, but I understand that legal mediation can constitute the greatest common good concretely possible in the conditions in which we find ourselves,” Paglia added.

Christians in the Holy Land say they’re under attack as Israeli-Palestinian violence soars

Church officials and Christian leaders in Israel blame a minority of Jewish extremists for the attacks. They say Israel’s far-right government has fostered a culture of impunity.

Upstairs in his monastery tucked in the Old City, Brother Matteo Munari heard a commotion at the Church of the Flagellation, along the path where Jesus is said to have carried his cross on the way to his crucifixion.

Munari, 49, went downstairs and found that a 10-foot statue of Jesus had been wrested off its pedestal and thrown to the ground, its face partially destroyed. When the church’s doorman tackled the man suspected of toppling the statue on Feb. 2, Jewish ritual tassels that had been concealed under his clothes emerged, the Franciscan friar said.

“He was kind of crying. Like, ‘We have to destroy all the statues and the idols in Jerusalem,’” Munari told NBC News last week as he gazed at the smashed face of Jesus, now awaiting repair at the church, which was built in 1929 on a site that dates to the 12th century.

“I just felt sad for him,” he added. “I think he wanted to do the right thing. So the problem probably was not the man himself, but who instructed him to think in this violent way.”

Israeli police confirmed that a U.S. citizen in his 40s was arrested at the scene, adding that investigators were “working diligently to maintain security, order and freedom of worship for members of all religions and denominations.”

NASA Is Tracking a Huge, Growing Anomaly in Earth’s Magnetic Field

NASA is actively monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.

This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for years, and perhaps none more so than NASA researchers.

The space agency’s satellites and spacecraft are particularly vulnerable to the weakened magnetic field strength within the anomaly, and the resulting exposure to charged particles from the Sun.

The South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) – likened by NASA to a ‘dent’ in Earth’s magnetic field, or a kind of ‘pothole in space’ – generally doesn’t affect life on Earth, but the same can’t be said for orbital spacecraft (including the International Space Station), which pass directly through the anomaly as they loop around the planet at low-Earth orbit altitudes.

During these encounters, the reduced magnetic field strength inside the anomaly means technological systems onboard satellites can short-circuit and malfunction if they become struck by high-energy protons emanating from the Sun.

Minnesota Legislation Seeks to Normalize Pedophilia as a Sexual Orientation

Earlier this year I noted that the mainstream acceptance of transgenderism would be the precursor to the normalization of pedophilia. The evidence to support this was quite clear. And I’m sorry to say that I was right. The Minnesota legislature is in the process of changing the legal definition of “sexual orientation” that literally opens the door to mainstreaming pedophilia.

Here’s how it’s being done. The bill modifies the existing Minnesota law that designates sexual orientation as a protected category, making it unlawful to discriminate based on sexual orientation within the state.

The first thing it does is adds a definition for gender identity:

Section 1. Minnesota Statutes 2022, section 363A.03, is amended by adding a subdivision to read:

Subd. 50. Gender identity. “Gender identity” means a person’s inherent sense of being a man, woman, both, or neither. A person’s gender identity may or may not correspond to their assigned sex at birth or to their primary or secondary sex characteristics. A person’s gender identity is not necessarily visible to others.

But this is not even the most disturbing part of the legislation. The legislation amends Sec. 2. Minnesota Statutes 2022, section 363A.03, subdivision 44, to read as follows:

Subd. 44. Sexual orientation. “Sexual orientation” means having or being perceived as having an emotional, physical, or sexual attachment to another person without regard to the sex of that person or having or being perceived as having an orientation for such attachment, or having or being perceived as having a self-image or identity not traditionally associated with one’s biological maleness or femaleness. “Sexual orientation” does not include a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult.

That portion striking out the part that reads, “‘Sexual orientation’ does not include a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult,” is not a mistake. The Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has made the decision to eliminate a clause that explicitly excluded pedophilia from being considered a valid sexual orientation.

Arizona Democrat minister lawmaker caught on camera hiding Bibles

It was a holy mystery at the Arizona State Capitol, with Bibles vanishing in the House’s members-only lounge. It prompted the security team to place a camera to catch the most unlikely culprit: an ordained minister who’s also a Democrat state lawmaker.

Video shows Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton swiping two Bibles in minutes. It’s a move that Republican Pro-Tempore Speaker Travis Grantham believes is sinister. “When I’m watching that, I’m thinking, ‘Well, this is obviously someone who’s got some purpose and some intent, and they know they’re doing something bad,” said Grantham.

What’s even more strange is the revelation made by the House’s security team. One of the Holy books was buried in the members-only lounge furniture, and another in the community refrigerator. “For an ordained minister to do that, again, it’s nonsensical. I have no clarity as to why it happened,” said Grantham.

Argentina Shuns U.S. Dollar: Will Pay for China Imports in Yuan

Argentina struck a deal with Beijing on Wednesday to stop using U.S. dollars to pay for Chinese imports and embrace the yuan instead.

The measure, driven by Argentina’s leftist President Alberto Fernández, is designed to relieve the South American country’s dwindling dollar reserves, AP reports.

The deal further enhances China’s rise on the world stage and the diminished role of the U.S. on a host of fronts under President Joe Biden.

After reaching the agreement with various companies, Argentina will use the yuan for imports from China worth about U.S.$1.04 billion from next month, accelerating trade with China as Beijing seeks to gain a further foothold in South America.

In November last year Argentina expanded a currency swap with China by $5 billion in an effort to increase its yuan reserves.