As rumors swirl about the Pope retiring, Pope Francis names new cardinals.

– August 26, 2022

Pope Francis, who recently raised the possibility of retiring due to his declining health, will create 20 new cardinals on Saturday — many of whom could one day choose his successor.

It is the eighth consistory since the 85-year-old was elected in 2013, but is being particularly closely watched for signs of the kind of Catholic Church he hopes to leave behind.

The new cardinals include men known for their progressive views and their pastoral work, and they hail from around the world: from Brazil to Nigeria, India, Singapore, and East Timor. After Saturday’s swearing-in at St Peter’s Basilica, they will join a two-day meeting of all cardinals starting Monday.

The gathering was called earlier this year to discuss the pope’s new constitution for the governance of the church — but has only fuelled speculation he is on his way out.

Francis, who has canceled numerous events in recent months and been forced to use a wheelchair due to knee pain, said last month that “the door is open” to stepping down.

If he did follow his predecessor Benedict XVI and resign, a conclave involving all cardinals aged under 80 would be called to choose a successor. After this weekend, Francis will have chosen around 90 out of the 132 cardinals eligible to elect a new pope, around two-thirds of the total — precisely the percentage needed for any proposed name to pass.

The naming of cardinals, normally an annual event, is always scrutinized as an indication of the future direction of the Catholic Church and its priorities for its 1.3 billion faithful.

But Francis’s choices for cardinals do not automatically guarantee that the next pope would be someone reflecting his own priorities, Vatican specialist Bernard Lecomte told AFP.

https://endtimeheadlines.org

Report: The Gay-Straight Alliance Network Now Operates in More than 4,000 U.S. Schools

– August 26, 2022

The Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) Network, which promotes radical gender theory in elementary, middle, and high schools, now operates over 4,000 “gender and sexuality alliances” under the guise of student “clubs,” reports Christopher Rufo at City Journal.

A senior fellow and director of the Initiative on Critical Race Theory (CRT) at the Manhattan Institute, Rufo explained the GSA Network is a “professionally staffed nonprofit with a multimillion-dollar annual budget. GSA Network serves as an umbrella organization for more than 4,000 “gender and sexuality alliances” across 40 states.”

After rebranding itself in 2016 as the Genders & Sexualities Alliance, GSA Co-Executive Director Ginna Brelsford noted:

The name change has been a long time coming.  We have heard from countless youth leaders who understand their genders and sexualities to be uniquely theirs and have moved beyond the labels of gay and straight, and the limits of a binary gender system. For several years, students have been naming their individual school-based clubs in a way that reflects the values and identity of its members.

Brelsford further explained the “function” of school GSA clubs had “evolved.”

“For a generation, since the late 1980s, GSAs have served as safe spaces for LGBTQ youth to build awareness and community as well as prevent discrimination and harassment in schools,” the co-executive director wrote. “More recently, however, these student-led clubs have transcended their traditional role and served as important vehicles for deeper social change both on school campuses and local or statewide educational policy.”

That “social change” focused on joining with a political movement for the “needs of “trans, queer and allied students across the nation,” Brelsford added.

The GSA Network has now taken a decidedly Marxist turn, Rufo observed, endorsing the “abolition of police” and borders, payment of “reparations” to minorities, the “decolonization” of native lands, and a focus on anti-capitalism.

Under the cover of a “club” that seeks to end “bullying” of LGBTQ youth, the GSA Network advises its adult leaders to keep children’s involvement in the club confidential from parents, working with young people to push the use of pronouns and support trans, queer, nonbinary, and similar projects.

In the GSA handbook, Brelsford and fellow co-executive director Geoffrey Winder wrote:

We’re excited to share resources and tools that will support you – GSA club advisors – to create and sustain thriving GSAs in partnership with students, schools, and communities, as we move closer to our vision of trans and queer liberation.

Rufo wrote about how to manage school districts that allow staff to discuss sexuality with children, a system that can easily lead to grooming…

https://thestarnewsnetwork.com

UN General Assembly moves closer to adopting resolution declaring abortion a ‘human right’

Samantha Kamman – August 24, 2022

Delegates at the United Nations General Assembly are finalizing negotiations on a resolution that would require all U.N. agencies to declare abortion a human right, reportedly due to pressure from the European Union and the Biden administration.

The resolution contains language about abortion that has reportedly been rejected in other resolutions over the past decade. As the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) earlier reported, it’s being considered for adoption by the end of the month.

According to C-Fam, the resolution declares that governments should secure “access to safe abortion” as a matter of policy and “ensure the promotion and protection of the human rights of all women and their sexual and reproductive health.”

Western countries backing the resolution reportedly forced the inclusion of this language. Although a Japanese diplomat leading the negotiations stated that delegations could not alter the language on abortion, it remained despite repeat objections, according to C-Fam.

The resolution’s language does not outright declare abortion an international human right and includes the caveat “where such services are permitted by law.”

“The European Union and the U.S. government are trying to undermine the long-standing consensus of the General Assembly that abortion is an issue that should be decided at the national level without external interference from the United Nations,” Stefano Gennarini, vice president for legal studies at C-Fam, said in an emailed statement to The Christian Post on Monday.

Gennarini said that both had done this “intermittently” for over 30 years, but he believes they have made it a priority now due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in June.

https://www.christianpost.com

END OF DAYS Scientists reveal the best places to survive a nuclear apocalypse amid fears FIVE BILLION would die

– August 16, 2022

MORE than five billion people would die following a nuclear war between the US and Russia in a battle for food, a study claims.

Scientists believe the fallout from a mega nuke apocalypse would have a disastrous impact on food production – wiping out whole populations from starvation.

Boffins at Rutgers University have completed details analysis of the impact of a nuclear winter – and the results are chilling.

They believe the catastrophic repercussion of a nuke battle would see more than five billion people starve to death globally in the years after, on top of the vast numbers killed in the war.

Countries including the UK, US, Germany, France and China would see sheer devastation, with almost everyone dead by the second year, according to the study.

On the flip side, countries such as Argentina and Australia would thrive in comparison, with zero deaths despite the assumption all livestock would be dead and there would be no trade with other nations.

Professor Alan Robuck, of Rutgers University in New Jersey, said: “Everybody understands that the direct effects of nuclear war would be horrific, as we saw in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“Our work shows that more than ten times as many people could die in the rest of the world because of the impacts on climate and agriculture.”

https://www.thesun.co.uk

Shame of the Nation

David Horowitz – August 5, 2022

Everyone can sense that the political situation we find ourselves in is anything but normal. Yet the language we use to describe current conflicts is a language designed to frame them in the category of politics as usual – only perhaps more so. In speaking about current conflicts, we focus on the surface “issues” that divide us – a record inflation, off-the-charts crime waves in our urban centers, a humanitarian crisis at our southern border. Sometimes we sum it up as a double standard in the justice system that treats violent leftists as “peaceful protesters” and public school parents concerned about the abuse of their children as “domestic terrorists.” That juxtaposition gets us closer to the true nature of the conflict. But it is still inadequate to the gravity of the political moment, suggesting that progressives simply fail to understand the issues at hand.

But they understand them very well. For progressives the issue is never the issue. The issue is always the “revolution” – the “re-imagining” and transformation of American society into a future where genders are selected and “social justice” prevails. That goal is so worthy and so necessary, it justifies any and all means to achieve it. Once this is understood, one can see that under the surface of the crises we face is a sinister force that poses an existential threat to our way of life – a threat far more immediate than the so-called climate apocalypse.

Morality is about following rules that ensure virtuous ends. Detach the means from the ends and what you get are the totalitarian regimes that have blighted the modern era. At the root of the current American crisis is what can only be described as the moral depravity of the “woke” progressives and their radical agenda.

https://www.frontpagemag.com

Drought Impacts Both The Food and Energy Supply

– August 17, 2022

Low water levels in the Western states are causing a problematic crop yield. But they also impact our energy supply and push the power grid to the brink.

When temperatures rise and water levels drop, the energy sector gets squeezed hard. The consequences of water shortages are playing out now in swaths of the American West, where an expansive, decades-long drought is forcing drastic cuts in hydroelectric power generation. At the same time, exceptional heat has pushed energy demand to record highs.

According to a report by Vox, the flow of water is critical to the flow of electrons and heat. About 40 percent of water withdrawals — water taken out of groundwater or surface sources — in the United States go toward energy production. The large majority of that share is used to cool power plants. In turn, it requires energy to extract, purify, transport, and deliver water.

The United Nations Environment Programme warned this month that if drought conditions persist, the two largest hydroelectric reservoirs in the US — Lake Mead and Lake Powell —could eventually reach “dead pool status,” where water levels fall too low to flow downstream. Lake Mead fuels the Hoover Dam, which has a power capacity topping 2,000 megawatts while Lake Powell drives generators that peak at 1,300 megawatts at the Glen Canyon Dam.

This is all going to compound into a major problem that we are all going to be facing in the coming months, as the cold weather approaches.

“Water supplies for agriculture, fisheries, ecosystems, industry, cities, and energy are no longer stable given anthropogenic climate change,” Camille Calimlim Touton, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, told Congress in June.

Almost all crops are under a threat of a horrifically low yield. A lack of water and extreme heat is making farming incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

https://www.shtfplan.com

The WHO’s Pandemic Treaty: The End of National Sovereignty and Freedom

– June 2, 2022

Even as much of the world continues to move past the covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) is already looking ahead and preparing for the emergence of “other pandemics and other major health emergencies.” To ensure that the world is adequately prepared for future pandemics, “the World Health Assembly” held a special session, on December 1, 2021, entitled The World Together.

The World Health Assembly is “the decision-making body of WHO” and “is attended by delegations from all WHO Member States and focuses on a specific health agenda prepared by the Executive Board.” In this special session, which was actually only “the second-ever since WHO’s founding in 1948,” participants agreed to “draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument under the Constitution of the World Health Organization to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.” This would come to be known as the Pandemic Treaty, which was the main focus of discussions at the Seventy-Fifth World Health Assembly, which was held in Geneva during May 22–28, 2022.

According to Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the first director-general of the WHO and who is not actually a medical doctor, this treaty represents an “opportunity to strengthen the global health architecture to protect and promote the well-being of all people.” If passed, the Pandemic Treaty will allow the WHO to make radical changes to the healthcare systems of its member countries starting in 2024.

In particular, this agreement will grant the WHO the power to declare a pandemic, based on its own vaguely defined criteria, in any of its 194 member countries at any point in the future. It will also permit the WHO to unilaterally determine what measures will be imposed in response to these future declared pandemics, including lockdown policies, mandatory masking, social distancing, and coercing the population into undergoing medical treatments and vaccinations.

Contrary to popular opinion, the WHO is not an independent, unbiased, and ethical organization that aims to achieve the common good. In reality, its goals and agendas are set by its donors, including some of the world’s richest countries and most influential philanthropists. For decades, “philanthropists and their foundations have [gained] increasing influence” when it comes to shaping the global health agenda by “placing people in international organisations, and gaining privileged access to scientific, business and political elites.”

https://mises.org

Evil Roe Reaction: Witches, Warlocks Attack Christians with ‘Guttural Growls,’ ‘Demonic Curses’; Satanists to Create Own ‘Abortion Facilities’ | CBN News

Andrea Morris – June 26, 2022

A cadre of witches, Satanists, and devil worshippers have crept out of the darkness to display their rage over the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Some of these evil activists have been summoning demonic forces, engaging in spiritual attacks and verbal assaults against pro-life advocates and Christians outside of the High Court as they have prayed for peace for the nation.

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, a non-profit Christian religious rights law firm, said the witch-like protesters attempted to scare members from his D.C. office as they held a prayer vigil outside the Supreme Court.

“Black-robed men and women began arriving on the scene, screaming obscenities over the prayers,” Staver said. “A pro-abortion demonstrator brought a wagon carrying a large boom box blaring satanic ‘music’ and noise. A woman walked right up to our podium and stood next to the pro-life speaker.”

Staver continued, “Every time the pro-lifer spoke, the woman would scream unmentionable curses into a megaphone pointed at the podium microphone. The pro-abortion crowd began cursing the Justices, the people praying, and vehemently cursing God.”

He noted that the witches and warlocks were persistent in their efforts to drown out the Christians praying, but the intercessors would not give up.

Staver reports a man dressed like a warlock targeted senior women who were praying on the steps of the Supreme Court.

“The warlock would crowd one woman at a time, making the sign of Satan over each woman’s head. As he made the sign, guttural growls and a language our staff could not understand issued from his throat as he spat his demonic curses over the women. One by one, he tried to corner and curse them,” Staver said.

https://www1.cbn.com

Planned Parenthood to Spend Record $50 Million on 2022 Midterm Elections

Milton Quintanilla – August 18, 2022

Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, plans to donate $50 million towards the 2022 midterm elections in an effort to elect pro-choice candidates this November.

The abortion giant first announced its massive spending plan and the launch of its new electoral spending program, “Take Control,” in a press release on Wednesday.

The group explained that the funds “will be strategically used to elect abortion rights champions across the country who are critical to protecting abortion access in a post-Roe world.” According to Fox News, Planned Parenthood’s initiative will first focus on buying ad space in Georgia, Nevada, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The organization hopes to contact roughly 6 million people through various means, including digital advertising, television ads, phone banking, and more, in designated pro-life states.

“This is an election about power and control,” Jenny Lawson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes, wrote in the press release.

“The Supreme Court and anti-abortion rights politicians have stripped people of their constitutional right to abortion and the ability to make personal health care decisions. Should these out-of-touch politicians gain or stay in power, they will continue doing everything they can to ban all abortion, throw health care providers and pregnant people in jail, and endanger the health and lives of pregnant people across the country. This is not what the American people want,” Lawson said.

“This November, voters are going to take control by electing reproductive health care champions, up and down the ballot, who trust us to make our own decisions about our bodies, our lives, and our futures.”

Planned Parenthood’s campaign follows the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe V. Wade, which sent the abortion issue back to the states.

The pro-life advocacy organization, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said that Planned Parenthood’s campaign reveals their desperation to preserve abortion access across the country.

https://www.christianheadlines.com

Scientists have created the world’s first lab-grown “Synthetic Embryo,”

– August 6, 2022

Scientists have created the world’s first lab-grown “synthetic embryo,” a groundbreaking moment in science that has reignited a fierce ethical debate. Led by molecular geneticist Joseph Hanna, a team of researchers at Israel’s Wizemann Institute of Science managed to create a synthetic mouse “embryo” in a lab without fertilized eggs or a uterus, potentially allowing us to get a glimpse of what happens in the early stages of human pregnancy as well.

This new embryo model, as detailed in the team’s paper published this week in the journal Cell, was able to mimic all the makings of an early body, “including precursors of heart, blood, brain and other organs” as well as “the ‘support’ cells like those found in the placenta and other tissues required to establish and maintain a pregnancy,” as University of Melbourne stem cell researcher Megan Munsie, who was not involved in the research, wrote in a piece for The Conversation.

The research could have major implications. “This is a crucial stage: in humans, many pregnancies are lost around this stage, and we don’t really know why,” Munsie wrote. “Having models provides a way to better understand what can go wrong, and possibly insights into what we may be able to do about it.”

The embryo model, however, only survived eight out of the 20-day mouse embryonic cycle, a critical drawback that, given the stated goal of Renewal Bio, the company founded by Hanna to commercially fund this research.

The startup’s goal is to develop synthetic human stem cells in an attempt to “solve” human health crises, a science which experts say won’t be ready for decades. In short, Bio Renewal wants to create embryo-stage versions of humans so that it can harvest tissues for transplants.

Critics who spoke with MIT Technology Review said that it wasn’t time to talk about the creation of synthetic human embryos, especially given the greater political context and controversy surrounding the research. “It’s absolutely not necessary,” Nicolas Rivron, a stem-cell scientist at Vienna’s Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, told the magazine, “so why would you do it?”

https://endtimeheadlines.org