Atlantic plankton all but wiped out in catastrophic loss of life

Mark Howarth – July 17, 2022

Scientists have discovered a catastrophic loss of life in our oceans, we can reveal.

An Edinburgh-based research team fears plankton, the tiny organisms that sustain life in our seas, has all but been wiped out after spending two years collecting water samples from the Atlantic.

The landmark research blames chemical pollution from plastics, farm fertilisers and pharmaceuticals in the water. Previously, it was thought the amount of plankton had halved since the 1940s, but the evidence gathered by the Scots suggest 90% has now vanished.

The scientists warn there are only a few years left before the consequences become catastrophically clear when fish, whales and dolphins become extinct, with grave implications for the planet. In the report, the researchers from the Global Oceanic Environmental Survey Foundation (Goes) state: “An environmental catastrophe is unfolding. We believe humanity could adapt to global warming and extreme weather changes. It is our view that humanity will not survive the extinction of most marine plants and animals.”

The findings have prompted calls for urgent action on a number of fronts as observers warn the promises of Cop26 to ease the climate crisis have, so far, amounted to little.

Fiona Nicholls, an oceans campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said: “Our oceans can be our allies in fighting climate change, but there is simply no time to waste.”

Goes – based at Edinburgh University’s Roslin Innovation Centre in Midlothian – has been collecting samples from the Atlantic and the Caribbean from its yacht, Copepod. Setting out from Scotland, it sailed along French and Portuguese coasts before crossing the Atlantic. The yacht is currently moored in Cartagena, Colombia, before setting sail for Panama this week.

In addition to their own samples, the Goes researchers have provided monitoring equipment to other sailing boat crews so that they can perform the same trawls and report back with their results.

https://www.sundaypost.com

Francis Forgives Everyone

William Kilpatrick – July 20, 2022

In a recent article I made the case that the main thrust of the Francis papacy is to deemphasize sin.  Whatever he might say about a moral issue such as abortion, same-sex marriage, or adultery, Francis has consistently given his support and praise to those on the permissive side of the issue.

By contrast, his harshest criticisms have always been reserved for traditional Catholics who worry about moral decay in the Church and society.  Francis frequently attacks these “rigid fundamentalists” as the modern-day counterparts of the pharisees.

Judging by Francis’s actions, one might think that the Church was just emerging from a long dark night of narrow-minded puritanism—a real life Handmaid’s Tale.  But the opposite is true.

Starting in the early sixties, Church leaders increasingly took their moral cues from secular sources—particularly from psychologists. Middle-school religious studies texts were peppered with the theories of humanistic psychologists. In California, an entire order of 600 nuns left the Church in search of self-fulfillment. With the coming of the self-esteem movement, feelings of guilt were replaced with feelings of OK-ness.  Almost overnight the long lines outside the confessional booths disappeared.  Newly enlightened Catholics couldn’t think of any sins to confess.  The new gospel was all about self-acceptance and self-love.

Many couldn’t think of any reason to attend Mass, either.  The Son of Man came to save sinners; but since the label “sinner” no longer applied to those who had learned to esteem themselves, thousands upon thousands simply stopped going to church.

This doesn’t mean that they lost their faith entirely.  Many simply re-adjusted their faith to bring it into conformity with the changing times.  One Catholic writer recounts that until her mid-twenties, “I saw God as a permissive parent who was too ‘loving’ to enforce His own boundaries.”

This slide into permissiveness was slowed during the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI; however, the Church, at least in the West, continued to lose members.

https://www.frontpagemag.com

Texas Sues HHS, Says Biden Admin. Trying to ‘Transform Every Emergency Room in the Country into Walk-In Abortion Clinic’

Ben Kelley – July 21, 2022

The State of Texas, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, has sued the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over its attempt to “transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.”

The lawsuit, filed on July 14th, claims that “the Biden Administration’s response to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 142 S. Ct. 2228 (2022), which ended the terrible regime of Roe v. Wade, is to attempt to use federal law to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.”

The administration’s directive, released on July 11th, is a clarification of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), a law that forces hospitals to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay and protects doctors from being prosecuted under state laws if they perform a procedure that they deem necessary to save a patient from death or serious injury in an emergency situation.

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra’s letter says that “emergency medical conditions involving pregnant patients may include, but are not limited to, ectopic pregnancy, complications of pregnancy loss, or emergent hypertensive disorders, such as preeclampsia with severe features.”

Becerra’s letter goes on to state that an abortion may be an appropriate stabilizing treatment for pregnant patients with an emergency medical condition:

“When a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life and health of the pregnant person – or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition – that state law is preempted.”

Paxton’s lawsuit disagrees with this assertion: “To the contrary, EMTALA ‘do[es] not preempt any State or local law requirement, except to the extent that the requirement directly conflicts with a requirement of EMTALA.’”

EMTALA does not codify any right or access to abortion, so there is no direct conflict between EMTALA and a state law banning abortion, the suit alleges.

https://www.cnsnews.com

The ‘Disrespect of Marriage Act’: Democratic Bill Would Redefine Marriage

Ben Johnson – July 19, 2022

With economic pressures squeezing middle-class families tighter than any time in a generation, congressional Democrats have decided to ram through a series of laws that would write left-wing positions on social issues into law, including a national bill establishing same-sex marriage.

On Monday, Democrats in both chambers of Congress introduced a bill to redefine marriage in national law, which they have dubbed the Respect for Marriage Act. The bill would prevent any state from exclusively protecting the natural family in law, in the (unlikely) event the Supreme Court overturns Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 opinion which created the constitutional “right” to same-sex marriage.

“The far-right Supreme Court is on a rampage against the freedoms of the American people,” asserted Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), a democratic socialist who identifies as gay. “We will not sit idly by as Republicans and their activist judges take our country backward,” insisted Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), who also identifies as LGBT. “I look forward to bringing it to the [f]loor for a vote this week,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (R-Md.) on Monday.

“It really should be the Disrespect for Marriage Act,” Quena Gonzalez, senior director of Government Affairs at the Family Research Council, told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Monday. The bill merely says that “an individual shall be considered married if that individual’s marriage is valid in the [s]tate where the marriage was entered into.” At no point does it limit marriage to two partners. Democrats plan to pass legislation preventing states from criminalizing interracial marriage or contraception, positions that have no political constituency in any state. This follows the House passing two bills to expand abortion nationwide last Friday, although one or both bills appears poised to die in the Senate.

https://www.washingtonstand.com

NYC Mayor Warns Residents To Be Ready For A Nuclear Attack

– July 15, 2022

Do the rulers know something we don’t, or is this just another distraction and attempt to panic the masses? “There are no imminent threats to the city that we know about, but we always have to be prepared as New Yorkers,” he said.

What is also strange is the language used to discourage any questions:

In the new clip released Monday, the city’s Office of Emergency Management tells New Yorkers: “So there’s been a nuclear attack. Don’t ask me how or why. Just know that the big one has hit. OK. So what do we do?” –The Daily Mail

“I’m a big believer in better safe than sorry,” he stated before the press. Because Putin invaded Ukraine, Adams went on to say, preparing for nuclear war in NYC is just “taking necessary steps.” These nuclear preparedness PSAs put out by the rulers in New York seem to be following a Russian warning from May of 2022. Russian state media issued a chilling new nuclear threat to the US, boasting that Putin could wipe out the entire East and West Coasts with just four missiles.

In response, US state media has resorted to ratcheting up the fear or using predictive programming because they know it’ll happen. Either way, it is best to use discernment, and critical thinking, and be prepared, especially if you live in areas being warned of nuclear attacks.

The Russian warning stated: “Four missiles, and there will be nothing left. They think the mushroom cloud will be taller than a high rise. That mushroom cloud will be visible from Mexico. Don’t delude yourselves. What should be said is that there’ll be nothing left, no one harbors any illusions about it, that everyone will be fine in case of nuclear war. No one will be fine, but calculate it correctly,” Alexei Zhuravlev, a member of Putin’s parliament said.

https://www.shtfplan.com

Al-Qaida’s power base in Afghanistan now ‘worse’ than before 9/11

WND Staff – July 12, 2022

When Joe Biden abruptly withdrew all American troops from Afghanistan last year, he left behind billions of dollars worth of American war machinery for the Taliban – the terror organization then taking over the country – to have and to use.

He also left behind hundreds of Americans, despite his promise that he would see to it that every one got out.

Further, there were thousands of nationals who had worked with the U.S. during its years-long presence there, and who were likely to face the wrath of the terrorists who took control of the nation, and installed themselves as the government.

The U.S., of course, originally had gone in because of the Islamic extremists who were threatening and killing people and destabilizing that part of the world. And carrying out 9/11.

Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of the Long War Journal, said in a report at Just the News that now the Taliban controls all 34 provinces – as opposed to about three-quarters as of the 9/11 date when Muslim extremists commandeered four jets and created terror in Washington and New York, costing nearly 3,000 American residents their lives.

“The State Department’s policy essentially normalizes Taliban control of Afghanistan,” he explained. “This is absolutely insane. If the U.S. is unwilling to support the Afghan resistance, then it’s effectively ceding Taliban control to Afghanistan.”

https://www.wnd.com

A Supervolcano in New Zealand Is Rumbling So Much It’s Shifting The Ground Above It

JESS COCKERILL –  July 12, 2022

The vast expanse of Lake Taupō’s sky blue waters, crowned by hazy, mountainous horizons, invokes an extreme sense of tranquility.

And yet, deep in the ground below, geological unrest is brewing, according to a new paper in the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics.

Lake Taupō is the largest freshwater lake in Australasia, located at the center of New Zealand’s north island. And while it appears peaceful today, the lake has a violent origin story.

The lake’s waters sit within a prehistoric caldera – a word based on the Spanish for ‘cauldron’ or ‘boiling pot’ – formed during Earth’s most recent supereruption, the Oruanui eruption, 25,400 years ago.

When magma is released from a supervolcano (defined as having released at least 1,000 cubic kilometers of material in any one eruption) in an event like the Oruanui eruption, the depleted magma vents cave in, Earth’s surface sinks, and the landscape is permanently changed into a caldera.

In the last 12,000 years, the Taupō volcano has been active 25 times. Its most recent eruption in 232 AD is described by authors of the new paper as “one of the Earth’s most explosive eruptions in historic times”. Since then, the volcano has had at least four documented “episodes of unrest”, causing destructive earthquakes and, in 1922, a massive ground subsidence.

It’s the supervolcano’s more modern periods of unrest that the researchers have studied, analyzing up to 42 years of data collected at 22 sites dotted around and across the lake. And there’s evidence that the supervolcano is still rumbling.

https://www.sciencealert.com

CDC: US infants are falling sick with a life-threatening virus that triggers fever, delirium, seizures, and sepsis

Hilary Brueck – July 13, 2022

Federal health officials in the US are warning doctors and parents that a dangerous virus is spreading across the US causing fevers, seizures, confusion and other “sepsis-like” issues that can be life-threatening for young infants.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Tuesday that parechovirus is currently circulating in “multiple” US states. So far, the CDC has only collected positive samples of PeV-A3, which is the specific type of parechovirus that is most often associated with severe disease. At least one newborn is dead in Connecticut.

Baby Ronan was less than two weeks old when his mom starting noticing he was becoming “very angry,” and “crying a lot,” WTNH New Haven reported.

His chest turned red, and then his face too, and at 14 days old he was admitted to the hospital, where he started having seizures. At 34 days old, the child died.

There is no known treatment for parechovirus. Older children who get infected may “only have mild illness,” like a cold, while others may remain completely asymptomatic during their infection, and feel nothing at all, the CDC says.

https://www.insider.com

Disney Doesn’t Want Christians in their Parks, Says Ex-Employee

– July 13, 2022

A former Walt Disney World employee claims the company doesn’t want Christians in their parks or on their payroll.

In an interview with Fox News, Barbara Andreas, who was let go in March, said, “We’ve been very vocal that it feels like Disney is getting closer and closer to not wanting Christians there. Not on their parks, not on their payroll.”

This comes after two other former Disney employees were fired after giving religious exemptions for the vaccine; they are now suing the company for religious discrimination.

Barbara Andreas, says she was called out by a general manager, “made to feel like a bad person, a bad leader, and totally singled out.”Both employees claim to have reached out multiple times about the status of their exemptions but were ignored by their higher-ups at Disney. When Stephen Cribb, the other employee, asked to have an attorney present, they allegedly refused further conversations regarding his exemption.

Carroll Sanders, the attorney representing them, “spent a great deal of time reaching out” as well and was met with similar silence before filling the lawsuit. He continued to say they have “at least a dozen more plaintiffs in the pipeline” meaning the lawsuit could grow to a larger problem for Disney.

“We want to be valued; we want to be accepted… Disney just thinks they are above the law,” said Andreas.

Disney’s decision to jump into the culture wars has caused significant debate with the nation’s Christian community.

https://www.toddstarnes.com

US House Passes Abortion Defense Bill in Response to End of Roe Protections

Ilya Tsukanov – July 15, 2022

Democratic Party lawmakers in both houses of Congress have vowed action to protect women’s ability to travel across state lines to get an abortion after Republican states rushed to criminalize the procedure. The legislative rush has come in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to abolish federal abortion protections last month.

The House of Representatives passed two bills Friday aimed at safeguarding abortion access, including a measure allowing women to travel across state lines to get the procedure if it is banned in their home state.

The first bill, entitled the ‘Ensuring Access to Abortion Act’, was passed by a margin of 223-205, with three Republicans, including never Trumper Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, joining all 220 Democrats to vote in favor of the measure.

The bill proposes making it illegal for states where abortion is lawful to bar women from out of state from getting the procedure at a registered clinic, introduces legal protections for those who assist women getting an abortion, and provides for the legalization of the interstate transportation of Food and Drug Administration-approved abortion drugs.

The second bill, the ‘Women’s Health Protection Act’, was passed 219-201, with Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas the only Democrat to vote against. That bill has already been around the block of congressional debate, and was passed by the House last September, but thrown out twice by the Senate, which is split 50/50 between Republicans and Democrats.

Senate Democrats drafted legislation similar to the ‘Ensuring Access to Abortion Act’ earlier this week, calling it the ‘Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act of 2022′. That bill proposes protections for non-profits which assist women traveling to states where abortion is permitted to get the procedure.

The fate of both of the House bills passed Friday remains uncertain amid the possibility that rogue Democrat Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema could block their Senate versions. The two lawmakers already dashed Democrats’ hopes for a filibuster change to codify federal abortion rights late last month, despite paying lip service of their support for Roe v Wade.

Lawmakers also face time constraints, with the House going on a month-long recess at the end of July, and the Senate following suit a week later in early August.

https://sputniknews.com