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Two bills recently introduced in the Florida Legislature that would allow volunteer chaplains to provide counseling services in public schools have prompted The Satanic Temple to threaten legal action if its members are barred from participating.

Senate Bill 1044 and its companion House Bill 931, which already passed the Florida House of Representatives last month, would also mandate that principals in schools with volunteer chaplains tell parents about it and offer them a list of the volunteers, all of whom will be subject to a background check.

Parents will be allowed to choose from the list of chaplains and allow their children to receive counseling with written permission, though representatives from The Satanic Temple have expressed a desire for their chaplains to be included in such offerings.

“Any opportunity that exists for ministers or chaplains in the public sector must not discriminate based on religious affiliation,” Penemue Grigori, who serves as The Satanic Temple’s director of ministry, told The Tallahassee Democrat.

“Our ministers look forward to participating in opportunities to do good in the community, including the opportunities created by this bill, right alongside the clergy of other religions.”

Lucien Greaves, co-founder of The Satanic Temple, spoke out against what he described as the legislation’s attempt to allow a back door for religious instruction and “proselytizing evangelism” in Florida’s public schools, according to Fox News Digital.

“In an effort to dismiss concerns about bringing religious viewpoints into schools, advocates for chaplain bills have a scripted response that insists their interest is in merely providing additional ’emotional support’ for potentially troubled youth,” Greaves told the outlet.

“If that were true, they could simply be calling upon volunteers who hold licensure as counselors to offer their services in the schools in their communities.”

Greaves also said that school districts can expect legal action if satanic priests are prohibited from participating in the chaplain program, which would go into effect on July 1 and largely be left for individual districts to govern, according to local Fox 35.

“They should also not want to waste public funds on a lawsuit that’s certainly going to lose because of some superfluous effort to put chaplains in schools on a false rationale,” Greaves told the outlet.

Florida state Sen. Erin Grall, a Republican who represents Vero Beach, did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment but said she is concerned about the potential of satanic priests taking advantage of the legislation she sponsored.

“But I think that as soon as we get in the middle of defining what is religion and what is not, and whether or not someone can be available and be on a list, we start to run up to constitutional problems,” Grall said, according to The Tallahassee Democrat.

“So I think that us making sure that it’s open and available to anybody who wants to put themselves through the background screening, and let parents know they’re available for that service, is the best way to go,” she added.

The Satanic Temple of Iowa also made news in the lead-up to Christmas last December when they prompted fierce debate even among Republican lawmakers by erecting a statue of Baphomet near a Nativity scene in the Iowa state Capitol.

Read more at: christianpost.com

Federal debt is up $100 billion in just four days. We’re on track for $37 trillion by the end of this year. And $40 trillion by the end of next, Peter St. Onge warns.

A prominent Wharton professor is warning of a “meltdown” as early as 2025 as debt swamps financial markets.

At some point, the US will crash, probably sooner than later.

“Juan Gomez Wharton, senior vice Dean of Research at Wharton, warns the $34 trillion debt, soon to be 35 trillion, could trigger a spiral like we saw in Britain in 2022 when national debt fears spiked interest rates, sparking panic selling in bonds that threatened to crash the economy and bankrupt banks and even pensions…”

St. Onge said, “The CEO’s of Bank of America and JP Morgan, the two biggest in the country recently warned of a quote market rebellion over debt as we careen towards a $5 trillion quote fiscal Cliff at the end of next year.

“Keep in mind that’s all counting current projections. In other words, it assumes no new trillion dollar spending surprises and it also assumes no recession, so the fabled soft landing, if instead a recession does hit, then going by history, the deficit grows potentially by another couple trillion as social spending spikes and tax collection slump.

“Even without recession and those new spending surprises, we’re looking at 37 trillion in debt by the end of this year and 40 trillion by the end of next year. It’s worth noting that’s about twice the pace that the Congressional Budget Office forecast…

“$144 trillion…Yes, that was the forecast that said we’ll have $144 trillion in federal debt by 2053. Now, when it came out, that 144 trillion was met with an audible gasp. After all, that is more than literally all the money in the world. It’s about one-third of the accumulated assets of humanity, and at the moment, we’re actually going a lot faster…

“Washington has lost all semblance of fiscal sanity at this point. They’re competing for who can drain the treasury fastest…”

Read more at: independentsentinel.com

Joe Biden‘s administration has admitted transporting migrants on secret flights into the U.S. and lawyers for its immigration agencies claim revealing the locations could create national security ‘vulnerabilities’.

Customs and Border Protection has refused to disclose crucial information about a program last year arranging flights for thousands of undocumented immigrants from foreign airports directly to U.S. cities.

It means that while record numbers of migrants were flowing over the southern border last year, the Biden White House was also directly transporting them into the country.

Use of a cell phone app has allowed for the near undetected arrival by air of 320,000 aliens with no legal rights to enter the United States.

It comes after a controversy over a 2022 transportation program in which the administration used taxpayers money to move migrants throughout the country on overnight flights.

Included in details of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit first reported by Todd Bensman, the Center for Immigration Studies found Biden’s CBP approved the latest secretive flights that transported hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from foreign countries into at least 43 different American airports from January through December 2023.

The program was part of Biden’s expansion of the CBP One app, which kicked off at the start of last year.

Migrants were able, under Biden’s expansion, to apply for asylum using the app from their home countries.

But the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) notes that the transportation of these migrants directly to the U.S. is one of the lesser known uses of the app.

Aliens who cannot legally enter the U.S. use CBP One to apply for travel authorization and temporary humanitarian release from those airports.

Under this parole release, migrants are able to remain in the U.S. for two years without obtaining legal status and meanwhile are eligible for work authorization.

The administration first said it would not reveal which airports the undocumented aliens were transported, citing a ‘law enforcement exception’ in the refusal to hand over information.

But new information from CIS lawsuit reveals the locations were not disclosed due to fear ‘bad actors’ would inflict harm on public safety or the information would create law enforcement vulnerabilities.

CBP lawyers wrote that revealing the airports would ‘reveal information about the relative number of individuals arriving, and thus resources expended at particular airports.’

That would in turn reveal ‘operational vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors altering their patterns of conduct, adopting new methods of operation, and taking other countermeasures.’

Read more at: dailymail.co.uk

King Charles has reportedly begun work on his succession plan, sparking fears his cancer diagnosis may be ‘more dangerous than we have been led to believe.’

Earlier this month Charles revealed he had been diagnosed with cancer after being admitted to hospital for a separate issue regarding an enlarged prostate.

The type of cancer has not been revealed to the public, but it was reportedly caught early and the King has been undergoing ‘regular treatments’ ever since.

Nevertheless, the issue has reportedly prompted the King to start formalising his succession plans earlier than intended and ensure that Prince William is at the heart of them, sparking rumours that his illness could be more serious than we have been led to believe.

Tom Quinn, a Royal expert and author, told the Mirror: ‘Charles is also aware that, as future king, William is at the heart of the succession planning that is taking place right now – officials had assumed Charles would remain healthy at least into his mid-eighties before succession planning would need to begin but in fact it has now begun and indicates perhaps that Charles’ cancer is more dangerous than we have been led to believe.

‘Succession planning is highly secret and no one trusts Harry to be part of it for the simple reason that if he feels in any way slighted or not given what he feels he deserves he will run straight to the media.’

Prince Harry’s autobiography, Spare, caused major friction in the royal household following its release in January 2023 after the Duke of Sussex made a series of bombshell claims about his family members and took swipes at his father and brother.

Read more at: metro.co.uk

From the academic who warns of a robot uprising to the workers worried for their future – is it time we started paying attention to the tech sceptics?

Eliezer Yudkowsky, a 44-year-old academic wearing a grey polo shirt, rocks slowly on his office chair and explains with real patience – taking things slowly for a novice like me – that every single person we know and love will soon be dead. They will be murdered by rebellious self-aware machines. “The difficulty is, people do not realise,” Yudkowsky says mildly, maybe sounding just a bit frustrated, as if irritated by a neighbour’s leaf blower or let down by the last pages of a novel. “We have a shred of a chance that humanity survives.”

It’s January. I have set out to meet and talk to a small but growing band of luddites, doomsayers, disruptors and other AI-era sceptics who see only the bad in the way our spyware-steeped, infinitely doomscrolling world is tending. I want to find out why these techno-pessimists think the way they do. I want to know how they would render change. Out of all of those I speak to, Yudkowsky is the most pessimistic, the least convinced that civilisation has a hope. He is the lead researcher at a nonprofit called the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, California, and you could boil down the results of years of Yudkowsky’s theorising there to a couple of vowel sounds: “Oh fuuuuu–!”

“If you put me to a wall,” he continues, “and forced me to put probabilities on things, I have a sense that our current remaining timeline looks more like five years than 50 years. Could be two years, could be 10.” By “remaining timeline”, Yudkowsky means: until we face the machine-wrought end of all things. Think Terminator-like apocalypse. Think Matrix hellscape. Yudkowsky was once a founding figure in the development of human-made artificial intelligences – AIs. He has come to believe that these same AIs will soon evolve from their current state of “Ooh, look at that!” smartness, assuming an advanced, God-level super-intelligence, too fast and too ambitious for humans to contain or curtail. Don’t imagine a human-made brain in one box, Yudkowsky advises. To grasp where things are heading, he says, try to picture “an alien civilisation that thinks a thousand times faster than us”, in lots and lots of boxes, almost too many for us to feasibly dismantle, should we even decide to.

Trying to shake humanity from its complacency about this, Yudkowsky published an op-ed in Time last spring that advised shutting down the computer farms where AIs are grown and trained. In clear, crisp prose, he speculated about the possible need for airstrikes targeted own datacentres; perhaps even nuclear exchange. Was he on to something?

Read more at: theguardian.com

Egypt warned on Tuesday that Israel’s planned ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza would have “catastrophic repercussions” for peace in the Middle East.

Foreign ministers from Arab League countries told the United Nations Human Rights Council that some nations were turning a blind eye to the suffering in Gaza.

Dengue fever, carried by mosquitoes, is swamping the populations of Brazil and Peru, Argentina, Laos and causing major concerns in other parts of the world.

It has spiked fourfold in Brazil just this year following the release of millions of gene-edited mosquitos by the World Mosquito Program run by the United Nations.

Vaccines are being produced and distributed on a timetable pushed by the urgency of the events, and multiple deaths already are being reported.

The Guardian reported there have been nearly a million cases in Brazil, and almost the same number in Peru.

Government officials say there already have been dozens of deaths.

“Brazil has bought 5.2m doses of the dengue vaccine Qdenga, developed by Japanese drugmaker Takeda, with another 1.32m doses provided at no cost to the government,” the report said, explaining three Brazilian states are in a state of emergency.

The ailment is spread by mosquitoes, which were described in an International Business Times report as the “most dangerous animal in the world.”

It was the United Nations that previously cited a World Health Organization warning that more than half of the world was at risk from mosquito-transmitted dengue fever.

The U.N.’s response was to work with technology to create millions of “sterilized pests” and then release them, a campaign which reached Brazil only months ago.

“Countries have already started like Italy, Greece and Mauritius, and others are on the point of doing it, for example the United States, France and Brazil,” said Jeremy Bouyer, medical entomologist at the Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, a joint International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) / Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) initiative.

Read more at: wnd.com

The government loves putting people on “lists.”  They want a list of the vaccinated.  A list of gun-owners.  A list of individuals who make purchases involving the terms “MAGA” and “Trump”.  And now, in Michigan, legislators and the attorney general are pushing for a list of parents who homeschool their children.  But even more Orwellian, the dog-whistle is the possibility of “warrantless searches” for those who decide to homeschool their children in the Great Lakes State, according to one State Board of Education member.

On February 13th, the Michigan State Board of Education met for their monthly meeting.  Towards the end of the meeting, prior to closing, Board Member Tom McMillin of Oakland Township added his comments regarding a push to require registration requirements for homeschooling.

McMillin’s issue with creating a registration has been a contentious subject in Michigan dating back to at least 2015.  However, recently the proposed “list” idea has thrust itself back into the spotlight after a case in Clinton County, where two couples are accused of adopting “nearly 30 children, some of whom the [couples] are accused of abusing.”

In response to the case, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in an X post that “implementing monitoring mechanisms is crucial to ensure that all children, including those homeschooled, receive necessary protections.”  McMillin believes that “a mere registration, a list of people…will not help prevent what AG Nessel is talking about.”  He believes the list is nothing more than a pathway to monitoring and said that Nessel is “saying the quiet part out loud”:

“She basically said we want this list so we can have…warrantless home entry into this particular targeted group…but we have a legal system that says you have to have a warrant before you go in.

However, because of this one instance, some in the state want to be able to barge in and bust the door down….It’s not hyperbolic.  If they knock on the door and they say “no, I don’t want you to come in”…and there’s all kinds of reasons not to have them in…there’s a book called “Three Felonies a Day”…if the government wants to get you, there going to find something.  Without a warrant, they shouldn’t be coming into your house.

I just think…it’s going to go beyond registration.  They’re either naive or they’re being disingenous for anybody to say ‘all we want to do is have a list.’  It’s going to go significantly further than that.  They’re going to either want to know exactly what’s being taught or they’re going to want entry into the houses.  And so I think that this is a real problem.  I guess I just wish that the debate would be sincere.

Read more at: thegatewaypundit.com

Racism has ‘distorted’ Christianity since Jesus’ time, theologian says

White supremacy remains so prevalent in Christianity today because it took root in the early church, theologian Anthony Reddie told a Baylor University conference this month.

Reddie, a professor of black theology at Oxford University in England, said in his Feb. 15 speech that white supremacy has “distorted” Christianity since the time of Jesus Christ, according to Baptist News Global.

The conference, hosted by Baylor’s Truett Seminary, focused on racism in the world church.

“The most egregious thing that we have to wrestle with is the normalization of white supremacy,” Reddie said.

Although Christianity “was created as a movement for those who are marginalized and oppressed,” he said white leaders quickly began using the religion as a weapon to seize land and oppress other cultures.

Reddie traced the distortion back to the early Christians who blamed the Jews for killing Jesus, instead of Roman leader Pontius Pilate, according to the report.

“Pilate represents white supremacy, and white supremacy now becomes normalized and effectively becomes the religion of Jesus, the religion of God,” the professor said.

As time went on, more and more people began to believe Jesus was a white European, like them, Reddie said.

Read more at: thecollegefix.com

The market for 3D-printed products includes homes, furniture, and footwear. Now we can add salmon to the list, at least in Europe.

The foodtech startup Revo Foods in September became the first company to sell 3D-printed vegan salmon filets in select grocery stores in Vienna, Austria, and opened an online shop that ships the product to most European countries this month.

“It flakes very nicely into layers just like salmon,” Robin Simsa, the CEO of Revo Foods, told Insider. “It also has a similar taste, but like any meat alternative, it’s not 100% the same.”

This marks a milestone for the nascent alternative-seafood industry, which is testing an array of ingredients and technologies to make products that don’t harm ocean ecosystems. Some startups are developing plant-based options, while others are growing fish cells in a lab. For its part, Revo Foods’ 3D printer layers “mycoprotein” made from mushroom roots with plant-based fats to mimic the texture of real salmon.

Investors have poured upward of $400 million into the alternative-seafood startups in recent years — including $7 million in Revo Foods. But no company is making massive amounts of it yet. And the biggest question remains largely untested: Will people buy it?

Over the past several weeks, Simsa said Revo Foods’ vegan salmon has sold out within hours of hitting store shelves. But many of the comments below a YouTube promotional video were critical of the premium price and the idea of printing food.

Revo Foods sells 130 grams, or about 4 ½ ounces, of its vegan salmon for 7 euros, or about $7.

“​​Why would I eat fake salmon that’s more expensive than real salmon?” one commenter asked. Another said they’d rather be in a nuclear apocalypse than eat the vegan filets. The reactions were more positive on Instagram, however.

Simsa said the price will drop as Revo Foods automates more steps in the process outside of 3D printing and produces larger volumes. He acknowledged that people are skeptical of the technology but said it isn’t unlike other industrial machinery that already makes chocolate and snacks. Barilla is already selling 3D-printed pasta.

Read more at: businessinsider.com