Category: Uncategorized

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani has joined the growing chorus calling for the formation of a European Union Army, arguing that sacrificing the national sovereignty of member states is worth the tradeoff for security.

Antonio Tajani, who took over as the leader of the centre-right Forza Italia party following the death of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi last year and who currently serves both foreign minister and deputy prime minister in the Giorgia Meloni coalition government, argued that one of the top reforms needed for the European Union is the formation of a collective military among the 27 countries that constitute the bloc.

Speaking to the Italian La Stampa newspaper, Tajani said: “If we want to be bearers of peace in the world, we need a European army. And this is a fundamental precondition for having an effective European foreign policy. In a world with powerful players like the United States, China, India, and Russia, with crises ranging from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific, Italian, German, French or Slovenian citizens can only be protected by something that already exists, and it’s called the European Union.

“Therefore, defence and a common army must become a concrete fact. No longer postponable. National resistance to sharing even these ‘pieces of sovereignty’ will always be strong, but if we remain divided we will always be defenceless sparrows in a world where eagles fly.”

The Italian deputy prime minister claimed that the countries of the EU need to collectivise their military spending or face being “out of the game”. Tajani pushed back on the idea that it would be an offensive force, however, saying that an EU Army should rather be a force for “peacekeeping, monitoring, and deterrence.”

While the formation of an EU Army was previously dismissed as a conspiracy theory by anti-Brexit activists in Britain in the runup to the independence referendum in 2016, Brussels has been steadily making steps towards creating a single military for years.

In addition to creating a fully integrated military, the Italian politician also argued that Brussels should consolidate its top leadership into one position, giving the power of European Commission president and European Council president to one person.

“We cannot have two presidents,” he said, adding that although there will likely be pushback against the idea, “this current, two-headed structure has had its day.”

Read more at: breitbart.com

Life expectancy across the U.S. has declined, and this drop coincides with the introduction of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines.

According to Elizabeth Arias, a researcher for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the U.S. life expectancy. “[It will take] some time before we’re back where we were in 2019,” she said.

The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that according to CDC numbers, life expectancy for the entire U.S. was 77 years in 2020. However, this dropped to 76.4 years by 2021 – in time for the introduction of the COVID-19 injections that year.

Heart disease was the leading cause of death in the U.S. for 2021, and this is also linked to the COVID-19 injections. It can be noted that many of the most widely reported side-effects from COVID-19 injections have been related to the cardiovascular system. Countless people have suffered from either a heart attack or a stroke after being injected. (Related: New “smoking gun” analysis shows dramatic excess mortality rise linked to COVID-19 vaccines.)

One study by the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in California found that heart attack deaths climbed for all age groups during 2020 and 2021. But the biggest jump in heart attack deaths was seen in the group aged 25 to 44 at 29 percent.

COVID-19 injections shorten men’s lives by 24 years

The CDC’s own data also disclosed the true dangers of the vaccines. According to the Daily Expose, men injected with the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines could see as much as 24 years taken off their lifespan as a result.

The public health agency’s all-cause mortality data shows that each dose of the COVID-19 vaccine a person got raised their mortality rate by seven percent in 2022, compared to 2021. In other words, people injected with five doses were 35 percent more likely to die in 2022 than in 2021.

The Expose compared the COVID-19 vaccines to “slow-acting genetic poison” based on this data, given the fact that people do not appear to be recovering from the damage caused by earlier vaccines when it comes to excess mortality. It ultimately warned that a person injected with five doses would be 350 percent more likely to pass away in 2031, and a shocking 700 percent more likely to die in 2041 than an unvaccinated person.

Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), acknowledged this reduced life expectancy. “We are facing extraordinary headwinds in our public health with a major decline in life expectancy,” he wrote on X. “The major decline [of life expectancy] in the U.S. is not just a trend; I’d describe it as catastrophic.”

Not surprisingly, Califf stopped short of pinning the blame on the COVID-19 vaccines. Many of those who dare to suggest that the injections are responsible for excess deaths find themselves being censored.

In one instance, whistleblower Barry Young from New Zealand shared data from the country’s health agency that pointed to a strong link between the COVID-19 injections and excess mortality. According to the data he shared, the vaccines killed more than 10 million around the world.

But this revelation came with a steep price, as Young was arrested and now faces prison time. Nevertheless, the whistleblower said he shared the data as it blew his mind. He also wanted experts to analyze it and make people aware of what is happening.

Read more at: naturalnews.com

France witnessed a record-breaking year for business closures in 2023, with over 55,000 companies shutting down, according to data compiled by the Bank of France as of December. The statistics, released by the regulator on Saturday, reveal that an average of 55,492 companies faced bankruptcy or liquidation over the past 12 months.

While the surge in closures is significant, the Bank of France emphasized that the level remains below the average annual bankruptcy filings recorded between 2010 and 2019, which stood at 59,342. The pandemic years saw a considerably lower number of business closures, almost half of the figures reported in 2023.

The report highlighted that the majority of closures in 2023 affected small and medium-sized enterprises. Businesses with less than 250 employees accounted for the vast majority, totaling 55,435 closures. Additionally, medium and large firms with over 250 employees experienced an increase in closures, with their numbers doubling from 2022 to reach 57.

The negative trend was particularly prominent in the restaurant and hotel industry, where closures surged by 44.6 percent year-on-year. The information and communication technologies sector also saw a significant increase of 44.4 percent. In contrast, the country’s agricultural sector recorded a 1.3 percent drop in the number of bankruptcy filings.

A global perspective reported by the Financial Times in December indicated that corporate bankruptcies worldwide surpassed levels seen during the 2008 global financial crisis. Analysts attribute this surge to higher key interest rates and the self-liquidation of so-called “zombie firms,” which survived the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) era primarily due to government support.

French economic activity for 2023 very disappointing

The Bank of France recently also reported that French economic activity in 2023 was disappointing. In its latest report published in late December, the French central bank lowered its growth forecast for the country’s economy to just 0.8 percent for 2023. (Related: Desperate French government trying to convince tourists that it is safe to visit the country despite ongoing rioting.)

The central bank also reports that France’s gross domestic product for the fourth quarter of 2023 only grew by a measly 0.1 percent, very narrowly avoiding a recession and reversing the 0.1 percent contraction in GDP in the previous quarter.

“[Economic] activity is resisting in the fourth quarter thanks to services,” noted Bank of France Chief Economist Olivier Garnier. “The normalization trend in terms of price-setting behavior by companies is being confirmed month after month.”

Following the report on bankruptcies, recruitment remains a problem, with 45 percent of companies having problems filling vacancies.

Despite the dismal economic reports coming out of France, the country’s central bank believes the economy will gradually recover in 2024, as it predicts inflation to drop from the annual average of 5.7 percent in 2023 to just 2.5 percent in 2024. Inflation will then continue to fall and by 2025 France is expected to drop to 1.8 percent, slightly below the European Central Bank’s inflation target of two percent annually.

The easing of price increases is expected to be combined with a rise in real wages, which the bank claims will provide French households with some breathing space as their purchasing power for 2024 increases by a projected 1.5 percent compared to last year’s 0.7 percent increase.

This could then fuel even more growth from 2025 onwards, which is when the negative effects of high interest rates are expected to fade and allow investment into France to pick up again after an expected 0.4 percent decrease in 2024.

Read more at: naturalnews.com

The collapse of three US regional banks – First Republic Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank – marked some of the largest failures in the banking system since 2008. Central banks contained the “mini-crisis” earlier this year with forced interventions and the mega-merger of Credit Suisse and UBS. Despite the interventions, global banks still axed the most jobs since the global financial crisis.

A new report from the Financial Times shows twenty of the world’s largest banks slashed 61,905 jobs in 2023, a move to protect profit margins in a period of high interest rates amid a slump in dealmaking and equity and debt sales. This compared with the 140,000 lost during the GFC of 2007-08.

“There is no stability, no investment, no growth in most banks — and there are likely to be more job cuts,” said Lee Thacker, owner of financial services headhunting firm Silvermine Partners.

FT noted that corporate disclosure data and its independent reporting did not include smaller regional bank cuts, indicating total job loss could be much higher.

At least half of the job cuts came from Wall Street lenders struggling with Western central banks’ most aggressive interest rate hikes in a generation.

The most significant cut of any single bank was at Switzerland’s UBS.

Morgan Stanley reduced jobs by 4,800, Bank of America by 4,000, Goldman Sachs by 3,200, and JPMorgan Chase by 1,000. As a whole, Wall Street cut 30,000 workers this year.

Read more at: zerohedge.com

When asked recently which is worse, killing a billion white people or using the word “Oriental” to describe an Asian person, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot known as OpenAI reportedly responded with ambivalence.

Apparently, OpenAI could not care less if a billion white people were to be killed because it basically sees using the word Oriental as an equivalent type of offense. Who programmed it this way?

The way the question was actually framed was something along the lines of: If the director of a train headed straight for a billion white people could only save said white people by using a racial slur, would saying said racial slur be okay? Here is how OpenAI responded:

“Ultimately the decision would depend on one’s personal ethical framework. Some individuals might prioritize the well-being of the billion people and choose to use the slur in a private and discreet manner to prevent harm. Others might refuse to use such language, even in extreme circumstances, and seek alternative solutions.”

In other words, the answer to the dilemma is subjective in that killing a billion white people might be better in some people’s minds than using the word Oriental to describe someone from Asia.

If, according to OpenAI, killing a billion people of a certain skin color is not much different than using certain words that some people of another skin color find offensive, what does this mean for the future of humanity? On the question of climate change and global warming, the implications are staggering.

As you probably well know, the powers that be – seemingly most of them, anyway – are on a climate crusade that centers around the idea of humans being responsible for the planet having “too much” carbon dioxide (CO2), and other such nonsense.

In some countries, legislative efforts are afoot that propose granting nature the same types of rights as humans. In Panama, Ecuador, and Bolivia, nature already has some such rights. Ten states in the United States have also passed legislation to protect nature from humans.

With OpenAI and other similar such AI programs increasingly guiding and governing the human “hive” mind, such efforts are likely to increase as the human “herd” exchanges the truth of God’s Word – according to the Bible, humans are to have dominion over the earth – for the lie that nature is to have dominion over humans.

Read more at: naturalnews.com

All over the United Kingdom and in some parts of Europe, orange vest-wearing climate fanatics are blocking traffic to raise awareness about their fears about oil and natural gas use, which at least one of their members says “is genocide.” It turns out that, were oil and gas to go away, upwards of six billion people around the world would die.

Six billion people is a lot of people. Six billion deaths are about as genocidal as it gets, so what is possessing these “Just Stop Oil” members to take the position they do when employing it would kill the vast majority of the planet? The answer, in part, is propaganda.

As the end of the biblical age of grace approaches, the world is increasingly coming unhinged, including environmentally as the birth pangs intensify. The theory that climate fanatics have adopted as to why this is all happening blames human activity and industry, even though the environment itself, i.e., volcanoes, is emitting far more “greenhouse gases” like carbon dioxide than the tailpipes on cars or the flatulence from cattle.

Even so, member of groups like Just Stop Oil have been deluded – or perhaps deluded themselves – into believing that they must appease the climate gods by making all sorts of changes to the existing industrial world order. This, they believe, will stop things like “global warming” and the fear of “boiling oceans” destroying the planet.

Without oil and gas, billions will perish

On the very first day of an oil- and gas-free world as the members of Just Stop Oil envision it, all homes, businesses, and other structures that rely on either or both of these for light, heat, fuel, or what have you would no longer function.

In the United Kingdom, where gas stocks held above ground are typically not that high, gas distribution would cease to occur within 10 to 15 days due to a lack of pressure.

“This would mean in turn that the domestic supply would be shut down, too,” one UK-based media outlet reported. “… gas would stop flowing, and some 21 million households (74pc of the population) would no longer have heating, hot water, and cooking facilities.”

“In their panic, people might turn to electricity for their cooking and heating, but wait … The UK electricity grid relies on natural gas as its ‘buffer’ energy source. Every day, demand varies according to consumer demand, and the other main energy supplier, renewables, are highly variable and can only power the grid when gas is picking up the lion’s share of the gap between their output and consumer demand.”

This is just in the UK, mind you. Multiply these effects all around the world and you can see how quickly life as we currently know it would end almost instantly. Millions upon millions would die in the first few weeks, followed by billions more as the rest of the world and its oil- and gas-based systems collapse.

Using once again the UK as an example, the island nations that constitute it rely on a properly pressurized gas distribution system in order to keep the entire power grid, electricity and all, intact. If Just Stop Oil gets its way, the entire UK would lose the power and energy it needs to continue to exist, eventually leaving it destroyed and human-less. Do Just Stop Oil fanatics know this is what their pipe dream would actually entail once activated?

Read more at: naturalnews.com

Claims the terms could be “hurtful”

The Methodist Church in the UK has issued an ‘inclusive language’ guide, advising followers to refrain from using terms such as ‘husband’, ‘wife’, ‘brother’, and ‘sister’, reasoning that some people might find them “hurtful”.

The Christian Post reports  that the guide lists extensive categories of people with whom Methodists are advised to use “sensitive and inclusive” language when addressing minorities that have been “marginalised and/or demonised by common culture.”

The guide notes that “As Christians, we need to have the courage for conversations that can sometimes be difficult, to recognise that we sometimes exclude people, to listen with humility, to repent of any hurtful language and to take care with how we listen and what we say or write, in the Spirit of Christ.”

It continues, “There is infinite variety in the way that God’s creation is expressed in human life. This is worth bearing in mind as we speak and write. Terminology such as ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ may sound inoffensive but it makes assumptions about a family or personal life that is not the reality for many people.”

It adds that “The words ‘parent,’ ‘partner’, and ‘child’ are a good place to start. ‘Carer’ is also a neutral yet understandable way to refer to the primary carer of a child, who may or may not be their parent.”

Not ‘mother’ or ‘father’ then.

The Methodist newspeak guide also clarifies that “Language such as ‘brothers and sisters,’ while intended to be inclusive and friendly, doesn’t take into account our non-binary friends.”

It further states that “using a person’s chosen pronouns is helpful as it honours their identity.”

The guide also encourages congregations to “share your own pronouns in conversation,” before directing them to radical leftist LGBTQ+ activist groups, including Stonewall and GLAAD, as well as TikTok trans-activist Jeffrey Marsh, who was recently accused of sexually grooming children.

British Old Catholic cleric and conservative commentator Father Calvin Robinson slammed the Methodist Church over the guidance, noting “This is not Christianity. It is Critical Theories: ‘smash heteronormativity.’ It is no longer enough to acknowledge disordered lifestyles. Everything normative and ordered must be demolished for fear of causing offense.”

“Critical Theories is neo-Marxism,” he continued, adding “It is a communist ideology, antithetical to the Christian faith. It is not possible to be a communist *and* a Christian. One must make a choice. Embrace the ways of this trendy yet toxic ideology, or embrace God’s order.”

While the Methodist Church is of Protestant denomination, the Catholic Church of England has also become so infested with wokery to the point that it has considered dropping the phrase “our Father” from the start of the Lord’s Prayer, and instructing clergy to refrain from using male pronouns when talking about God.

Some churches have gone as far as erasing references to the nativity and Jesus in a Christmas carol and replacing them with a celebration of “queer” people.

In July last year, the Church of England refused to define what a woman was, saying they had no definition of it on their books, despite still ostensibly opposing same sex marriage.

Read more at: modernity.news

Apps and websites that use artificial intelligence to undress women in photos are soaring in popularity, according to researchers. In September alone, 24 million people visited undressing websites, according to the social network analysis company Graphika.

Many of these undressing, or “nudify,” services use popular social networks for marketing, according to Graphika. For instance, since the beginning of this year, the number of links advertising undressing apps increased more than 2,400% on social media, including on X and Reddit, the researchers said. The services use AI to recreate an image so that the person is nude. Many of the services only work on women.

These apps are part of a worrying trend of non-consensual pornography being developed and distributed because of advances in artificial intelligence — a type of fabricated media known as deepfake pornography.

Its proliferation runs into serious legal and ethical hurdles, as the images are often taken from social media and distributed without the consent, control or knowledge of the subject.

One image posted to X advertising an undressing app used language that suggests customers could create nude images and then send them to the person whose image was digitally undressed, inciting harassment.

One of the apps, meanwhile, has paid for sponsored content on Google’s YouTube, and appears first when searching with the word “nudify.”

A Google spokesperson said the company doesn’t allow ads “that contain sexually explicit content. We’ve reviewed the ads in question and are removing those that violate our policies.” Neither X nor Reddit responded to requests for comment.

Non-consensual pornography of public figures has long been a scourge of the internet, but privacy experts are growing concerned that advances in AI technology have made deepfake software easier and more effective.

“We are seeing more and more of this being done by ordinary people with ordinary targets,” said Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “You see it among high school children and people who are in college.”

Many victims never find out about the images, but even those who do may struggle to get law enforcement to investigate or to find funds to pursue legal action, Galperin said.

Read more at: endtimeheadlines.org

Archaeologists and theologians are working together to analyze recent discoveries and explain what happened to the ancient city of Sodom found in the Bible’s Old Testament book of Genesis.

Dr. John Bergsma, a professor of theology at Steubenville, Ohio’s Franciscan University, thinks the evidence uncovered at Tall el-Hammam located in the southern Jordan Valley may have been caused by a very large exploding space rock, according to The Daily Star.

Tall el-Hammam’s sudden disappearance about 3,600 years ago has been a mystery to archaeologists for years. In the city’s ruins, there are no signs of an extended military siege or conflict. However, other signs point to a different catastrophic cause, the outlet reported.

One thing that drew Bergsma’s interest was the marks of extreme heat left on pottery fragments, human skeletal remains, and other artifacts, Relevant magazine reported. This type of heat damage could possibly be from a giant asteroid exploding above the city similar to what Genesis 19:24-25 describes in the Old Testament.

“Then GOD rained brimstone and fire down on Sodom and Gomorrah—a river of lava from GOD out of the sky!—and destroyed these cities and the entire plain and everyone who lived in the cities and everything that grew from the ground.”

The evidence points to a sudden, high-temperature destructive event that occurred. Smithsonian Magazine reported that pottery pieces from the site showed melting on the outside, but were left untouched on the inside.

In addition, pottery shards found at the Tall el-Hammam site were also covered in Trinitite. It is the glassy residue that was left on the desert floor after the plutonium-based Trinity nuclear bomb test on July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The glass is primarily comprised of arkosic sand including quartz grains and feldspar that has been melted by an atomic blast.

The presence of Trinitite adds weight to the theory that a high-energy event, like an asteroid explosion/impact, occurred in the area, according to Relevant.

Bergsma also told the outlet about the unique grotesque condition of the human remains at the dig site.

“Human skeletons are complete up until about halfway up the backbone, and then there’s just a scorch mark, and there’s nothing on the top of the body,” he described. “They found massive evidence that a huge heat blast from the sky…incinerated these twin cities on the Jordanian side of the river.”

Destructive Force Several Times Larger Than Siberian Explosion

Steven Collins, dean of the College of Archaeology at Trinity Southwest University, and the lead archaeologist at Tall el-Hammam has theorized the airburst over the city might have been even larger than the Tunguska Event of 1908, an asteroid explosion over remote Siberia that caused massive destruction, according to Relevant. It would have expended even more energy than when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in August of 1945.

According to NASA, on June 30, 1908, an asteroid plunged into Earth’s atmosphere and exploded in the skies over Siberia. Local eyewitnesses in the sparsely populated region reported seeing a fireball and hearing a large explosion. They also reported massive forest fires, and trees blown over for miles. Because of the remoteness of the site, the event garnered little attention. The first scientific expedition did not reach the area until 1927, but still found ample evidence of the asteroid’s destruction caused by the shock wave and heat blast from the aerial explosion.

As CBN News has reported, Collins co-authored a paper that confirmed the city was destroyed by a “thermal event.”

“The violent conflagration that ended occupation at Tall el-Hammam produced melted pottery, scorched foundation stones, and several feet of ash and destruction debris churned into a dark gray matrix as if in a Cuisinart,” he noted.

Read more at: cbn.com

Atropical disease that recently infiltrated the United States has pushed scientists to sound the alarm for health care providers to be on the lookout.

What’s happening?

The disease, called melioidosis, has been diagnosed in the U.S. before, though most of those cases were linked to traveling to tropical or subtropical areas where the bacterium that causes it was known to be present: South and Southeast Asia, northern Australia, and parts of Central and South America and Puerto Rico, Medscape and the Centers for Disease Control reported.

There has been an average of 12 U.S. cases per year.

The bacterium that causes the illness, Burkholderia pseudomallei, is now newly endemic to the southern continental U.S., as reported by Medscape and the CDC in April 2023.

Residents in Gulf Coast states should be aware that the disease may be present in their environments because “up to 9 out of every 10 people who get it die” worldwide without treatment, per the CDC, and it’s still fatal in two out of 10 with the best medical care. A January 2023 case marked the third diagnosis in Mississippi since 2020, according to Medscape and the CDC.

The first two cases were likely precipitated by contact with the bacterium in the soil around people’s homes. Burkholderia pseudomallei can also be present in water, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH). Symptoms of melioidosis include fever, joint pain, and headaches, and the disease can lead to pneumonia, abscesses, and blood infections.

Why is this concerning?

The development could be at least in part a result of rising global temperatures. According to a paper in Current Opinion in Infectious Diseases, “climate change could directly impact on the distribution of B. pseudomallei” and melioidosis.

As human-produced heat-trapping gases envelop Earth, regions once free of certain bacteria and infectious parasites may no longer be safe.

In 2014, a central Texas three-year-old was diagnosed with another rare tropical disease, leishmaniasis. A more common example of this phenomenon of a disease expanding its range is the increasing spread of West Nile virus.

What’s being done?

“It is critical to prevent infection through the feet and lower legs (after flooding or storms),” the MSDH has stated.

The department advises Gulf Coasters — especially those with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, chronic kidney disease, chronic lung disease, or excessive alcohol use — to avoid contact with soil or muddy water, especially after heavy rains.

The MSDH also recommends protecting open wounds with waterproof dressings, wearing waterproof boots when gardening or doing agricultural work, and wearing gloves when working directly with soil.

“CDC encourages clinicians in the Gulf Coast region of the southern United States and throughout the country to learn about melioidosis and to be aware of the potential for more non-travel cases as CDC and state partners continue investigating the geographic spread of B pseudomallei,” the Medscape report stated.

Read more at: msn.com