New Artificial Eye Mimics a Retina’s Natural Curve

From Scientific American.com (May 20, 2020):

The human eye is a sophisticated instrument: images enter through a curved lens at the front of the sphere and pass through its gooey, vitreous liquid before reaching the light-sensitive retina—which relays the signal to the optic nerve that carries the picture to the brain. Engineers have attempted to replicate this structure for about a decade. Now a new artificial eye successfully mimics the natural instrument’s spherical shape. Researchers hope this achievement could lead to sharper robotic vision and prosthetic devices. A paper on the development was published on Wednesday in Nature.

The research built on the fact that perovskite, a conductive and light-sensitive material used in solar cells, can be used to create extremely thin nanowires several thousandths of a millimeter in length. These wires mimic the structure of the eye’s long, thin photoreceptor cells, says study co-author Zhiyong Fan, an electronic and computer engineer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “But the difficulty is: How can we fabricate an array of the nanowires in a hemispherical substrate to form this hemispherical retina?” he adds. Constructing a curved retina is important because light only hits it after passing through a curved lens. “When you try to image something, the image that forms after the lens is actually curved,” says Hongrui Jiang, an electrical engineer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who reviewed the new paper but was not directly involved in the work. “If you have a flat sensor, then the image cannot be focused very sharply.” The retina is curved, but electronic light sensors are rigid and flat.

To solve the problem, Fan and his colleagues deformed soft aluminum foil into a hemispherical shape. Then they treated the metal with an electrochemical process that converted it into an insulator called aluminum oxide. This process also left the material studded with nanoscale pores. As a result, the researchers were left with a curved hemisphere that had convenient densely clustered holes in which they could “grow” perovskite nanowires. “The density of the nanowires is very high,” Jiang says. “It’s comparable—it’s actually even higher—than the density of the photoreceptors in human eyes.”

Once they had their curved “retina,” the scientists incorporated it into an artificial eye that included a curved lens at the front. Inspired by the specialized liquid in a real eye, the team filled its biomimetic version with an ionic liquid, a type of liquid salt in which charged particles can move. “One very important component inside is in the cavity we filled [with] ionic liquids,” Fan says. “Once these nanowires generate charges, the charge will be exchanged with some ions.” This electrical exchange allows the perovskite nanowires to perform the electrochemical function of detecting light and sending that signal to external image-processing electronics.

When the team tested the artificial eye, it managed to process patterns of light in as little as 19 milliseconds—half the time required by a human eye. And it produced images that had a greater contrast and clearer edges than those generated by a flat image sensor with a similar number of pixels. In some ways, the artificial eye improved on natural vision: it could pick up a greater range of wavelengths and lacked a blind spot.

Fan hopes to work with medical researchers to build prosthetic devices based on his team’s design. Doing so could require much more development, however. The artificial eye is “really elegant; it looks like amazing work,” says Jessy Dorn, vice president of clinical and scientific affairs at biomedical company Second Sight, who was not involved in the research. “But [the study authors] don’t talk about how it could possibly be connected to the human visual system.” She works on blindness-treating devices, including a retinal prosthesis called the Argus II, and points out that developing the electronic interface is only the first step. Such a device will need to interact with the human brain to produce images. “That’s one of the bigger challenges: how to get any kind of high-resolution interface safely and reliably implanted and then [to] work with the human visual system.”

Furthermore, there are different types of blindness, and perfect eyes may not always produce perfect vision. For example, brain development during infancy and childhood is crucial to processing visual input—so a person who is born blind may never have the brain wiring required to see through prosthetic eyes later in life. Dorn notes that recipients of the Argus II implant are all adults who lost their vision much later. And even they have different levels of success: some only gain the ability to differentiate light and shadow, while others can process shapes. Still, she says that any visual connection to the environment can result in more independence and greater freedom of movement. And prostheses are not the only valuable application of artificial eyes: such devices could have immediate applications in robotic vision.

“Mimicking the natural eyes has been a dream for many optical engineers,” Jiang says, noting that some researchers seek to imitate mammalian eyes and that others work with insectlike compound ones. The field is finally beginning to have real breakthroughs, he adds. “I think in about 10 years, we should see some very tangible practical applications of these bionic eyes.” [source]

Nice. Great for people, cyborgs and robots.

Who Is Edan Alexander, the Israeli-American Hostage Released by Hamas?

From Newsmax.com (May 12, 2025):

JERUSALEM (AP) — Edan Alexander was 19 when Hamas militants stormed the Israeli military base where the American-Israeli from New Jersey was a soldier and dragged him into the Gaza Strip.

Hamas released Alexander, the last living American hostage in Gaza, on Monday ahead of President Donald Trump's visit to the region this week. The militant group called it a goodwill gesture aimed at reviving mediated efforts to end the 19-month war.

Alexander was among 251 people taken hostage in Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war. Fifty-eight remain in Gaza. Around a third are believed to be alive. Most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.

After Hamas announced on Sunday he would be released, Alexander's family said it “received the greatest gift imaginable — news that our beautiful son Edan is returning home after 583 days in captivity in Gaza.”

Alexander’s parents flew to Israel on Monday. Trump’s hostage negotiator, Adam Boehler, posted a picture on social media showing Alexander's mother, Yael, aboard the flight.

A native of Tenafly, a suburb of New York City, Edan Alexander moved to Israel in 2022 after high school and enlisted in the military. Hamas militants seized him from his military base after he volunteered to stay there over the Jewish Sabbath.

In a video Hamas released of Alexander over Thanksgiving weekend in November 2024, he cried and pleaded for help. Though the video was difficult to watch, his family said, it came as a relief to see he was alive.

Hostages freed since then have given the family more news, his father said. Some said Alexander had lost a lot of weight. Others said he’d been an advocate for fellow hostages, standing up for captive Thai workers and telling their captors that the workers weren't involved in the conflict and should be freed.

Alexander, like other male soldiers held in Gaza, was not included among hostages released during a ceasefire earlier this year. Hamas released 25 Israeli hostages and the bodies of eight others in January and February in return for nearly 1,800 Palestinian prisoners. The sight of some emaciated hostages among those freed brought fresh despair to families whose loved ones remained in Gaza.

Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, along with the release of more Palestinian prisoners. Israel has rejected those terms, saying it will continue the war until all the hostages are freed and Hamas is defeated.

Hamas said in March it would release Alexander and the bodies of four other hostages if Israel recommitted to the stalled ceasefire agreement. Alexander’s father, Adi, said at the time he was speaking with Trump’s hostage negotiators almost daily, pressing for his son's release.

Days later, Israel shattered the truce with a surprise bombardment that killed hundreds of Palestinians. Israel called the renewed bombardment a tactic to pressure Hamas to negotiate different ceasefire terms. Hamas said the offensive puts remaining hostages at risk.

In April, Hamas published another video of Alexander in which he spoke from a dark room. His family believes he has been held in Hamas' vast tunnel network.

Days later, Hamas said it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after an Israeli airstrike targeted their location. Israeli officials have not commented on the claim.

The Alexander family Monday urged the Israeli government to continue efforts to free all the hostages — a plea that other families have echoed since the Hamas announcement on Sunday.

“Please don’t stop," Alexander's family said. "We hope our son’s release begins negotiations for all 58 remaining hostages, ending this nightmare for them and their families.” [source]

Great news!  Glad he's back home.

Another article about Edan Alexander:

Edan Alexander's Grandmother Calls Trump 'Messenger From God'

Is Math Racist?

From Breakpoint.org (June 29, 2023):

Few subjects seem less political than math. There is little room for subjective judgment because its truths are universal. No matter what you look like or where you’re from or how you feel about it, two plus two will always equal four, and the area of a circle will always be π r². Math is so objective, in fact, some scientists have theorized that prime numbers could offer the basis of communication with supposed intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos.

However, even if aliens know that math has no racial or gender bias, some educators on Earth seem to think otherwise. Even amid plummeting math scores in the latest Nation’s Report Card data, a growing chorus of progressive voices insists that racism and sexism are the biggest problems we face in how to teach math.

A couple years ago, in an article in the Scientific American, Rachel Crowell complained about the racial and gender disparities among those who make a career out of mathematics. She pointed out, for instance, that “fewer than 1 percent of doctorates in math are awarded to African Americans” and that only 29.1 percent “were awarded to women.” More mathematicians, she writes, have been pushing to discuss these issues and “force the field to confront the racism, sexism and other harmful bias it sometimes harbors.”

Though, undoubtedly, examples of identity-group bias in all fields exist, Crowell chose to root her complaint in intangibles: Math doctorates are not “earned” or “received” or “completed;” they are “awarded,” a word choice that not so subtly reinforces her conclusion that something about math education is racist.

Writing at Newsweek, Jason Rantz cited examples of public schools teaching students that math itself, and the way it has always been taught, is oppressive. In Seattle, recently introduced guidelines for K-12 math teachers in several pilot schools claim that “mathematical knowledge has been appropriated by Western culture” and that “math has been and continues to be used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color.”

In 2021, Oregon’s Department of Education introduced a new toolkit called A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, created by what Rantz calls “a coalition of left-wing educators.” The toolkit promises “an integrated approach to mathematics that centers Black, Latinx, and [m]ultilingual students in grades 6-8.” It also warns teachers that “[t]he concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” and that “[u]pholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”

This ideological trend in which everything is read through lenses of oppression and victimhood is not isolated in extreme, left-wing enclaves but has become widespread in education. Given the “Critical Theory mood” inflicting Western culture today, it is only likely to grow in the coming years.

One of the many problems with this obsession with racism and oppression in math is that it inevitably leaves students worse at math. In the case of the Seattle pilot schools, for example, performance among black students in the state math exam plummeted after implementing the woke curriculum. Bad ideas with good intentions are still bad ideas. In an effort to empower students, they are instead radically disempowered.

The wonder of mathematics lies precisely in its objectivity, as Melissa Cain Travis describes in Thinking God’s Thoughts, in the miraculous way that math corresponds to and describes the world around us. In her book, Travis chronicles how the beauty and objectivity of numbers led 16th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler to discover the three laws of planetary motion and to correctly describe the structure of our solar system. Kepler, as much a student of God as he was a scientist, believed that the truths of numbers were eternal, existing eternally in the mind of God and structuring all of reality. Our minds—as beings made in God’s image—are uniquely suited to unlock those mysteries.

Students who are taught that answers to algebra problems depend on the color of their skin and that calculus professors are oppressors are not only not going to unlock the mysteries of the universe, but they will also believe what is not true about who they are and the world in which they live. Woke educators may hope to liberate students. But by depriving them of objective truths they are subjugating them to bad ideas. It’s a tragically ironic and disastrous miscalculation. [source]

I don’t think these 11 famous African American mathematicians thinks math is racist. I also don’t believe the black women in the Hidden Figures movie (a true story) thinks math is racist either.

Excerpts from the book "Reflections on the Failure of Socialism" Part 3

In his speeches before he seized power, Lenin promised the same wonderful things, and even more wonderful than [Robert] Owen [an English utopian socialist] had promised at New Harmony:

“Democracy from below!” he shouted. “Democracy without an officialdom, without police, without a standing army . . . Immediate preparation for a state of things where all shall fulfill the functions of control and superintendence, so that none shall have the opportunity of becoming bureaucrats at all. . . . The state itself will wither away, by virtue of the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from the innumerable horrors, savagery, absurdities and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to the observation of the elementary rules of social life, known for centuries, repeated for thousands of years in all sermons. They will become accustomed to their observance without constraint, without subjection, without the special apparatus for compulsion which is called the State!”

Source: Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955) by Max Eastman.

What’s in the US military’s historic lost and found: nukes, jets, and drones

From Pop Sci.com (Sept. 20, 2023):

For roughly 24 hours, between the afternoon of September 17 and the evening of September 18, the United States Marine Corps couldn’t find one of its F-35B stealth fighter jets. The pilot had ejected, but it took the military a spell to find the jet, and in the process it put out a call for the public to keep their eyes peeled for the plane. Joint Base Charleston confirmed Monday evening that a debris field was found two hours northeast of the base, believed to be the crashed plane.

So how does the military lose a stealth jet? That’s the $100-million question. F-35 unit prices vary by model and the lot in which they are purchased; recent F-35B purchases have cost a high of $108 million per jet and a low of $78.3 million. On the other hand, F-35A models, which the Air Force fly, cost around $69.9 million now, though older lots cost up to $89.2 million.

The nature of stealth helps explain how it’s possible, in 2023, for the Department of Defense to lose track of one of its own jets, prompting a call for citizens to help search. Stealth is a technology designed to hide planes from radar, so that stealth fighters and bombers can attack buildings, ships, vehicles, and other targets in war with less fear of getting detected and shot down by enemy aircraft and anti-air missiles. To achieve this sort of radar-invisibility, stealth planes have physical shapes that reduce radar signature, along with special coatings that dampen the reflectivity of radio waves.

Because the stealth characteristics are built into jets like the F-35 series, as well as the F-22 fighter, and the B-2 and B-21 bombers, they are just harder for radars to track. One way to keep track of where planes are is a transponder, which sends out a signal announcing the aircraft’s location. Transponders are useful for commercial and military aircraft, and required for almost all flights in US skies, as they allow aircraft to avoid each other. The Washington Post reported that the F-35B’s transponder was not working at the time the pilot ejected, leading the military to ask the public for help locating the plane.

Another way to make stealth jets more visible, and to conceal the true ability of their radar-avoiding shape, is to include high-radar-visibility augmentation, as is sometimes done at air shows. The military sometimes augments the F-35′s cross-section during public or semi-public flights so they will look different on a radar from how it would during an actual combat mission, retired Air Force General Hawk Carlisle told Defense News.

Public transponder records, as reported by the War Zone (which is owned by PopSci’s parent company, Recurrent), show the search pattern the Air Force used to try to locate the lost F-35B before finding the debris field. If other techniques were used to find the plane beyond visual search, it is likely the military will want to keep those secret, as details about how to find a stealth plane could undermine the massive investment already put into stealth jets.

Even if it briefly created a flurry of media attention, the case of the temporarily missing F-35B is just the latest incident of the US military losing control of something powerful and important. Here are several others.

Lost drones

For as long as the military has operated drones, some of those drones have gotten lost. Both of these instances have some similarity to this week’s wild F-35 hunt.

A plane called the Kettering Bug was built during World War I as an “aerial torpedo,” or a flying uncrewed bomb that would, in the fixed trench combat of the time, travel a set distance and then shed its wings to crash into an enemy position with explosive force. The war ended before the Bug could see action, but this predecessor of both drones and cruise missiles was tested as a secret weapon in the United States.

On October 4, 1918, the biplane bomb took off, and then flew off track. The US Army searched the area near its Dayton, Ohio launch site, asking the public if they had seen a missing plane. Several of the witnesses reported what appeared to be a plane with a drunk pilot, and the Army went along with those stories, saying the pilot had jumped out and was being treated. The plane, as an uncrewed weapon, had no human pilot on board. Rather than reveal the secret weapon, the Army let witnesses believe they had seen something other than the aerial torpedo. The Army found the wreckage of the Bug, recovered its reusable mechanical parts, and burned the wrecked fuselage on the spot.

Almost a century later in 2017, the US Army lost an RQ-7B Shadow drone, which was launched from a base in southern Arizona on January 31, then discovered over a week later on February 9, having crashed into a tree outside of Denver. The Shadow drone has a stated range of under 80 miles, though that range is how far it can fly while remaining in contact with the ground station used by human operators. Shadow drones can also fly for nine hours, with a cruising speed of 81 mph, so the 630-mile journey was within the distance the drone could technically cover. While drones like the Shadow are programmed to search for lost communications signals, autonomous flight features mean that a failure to connect can lead to unusual journeys, like the one the Shadow took. [read more]

Not good. The military should be more mindful.

EXCLUSIVE: Second-Largest Foreign Owner Of US Land Is A Chinese Communist Party Member

From Daily Caller.com (Jan. 11, 2024):

The second-largest foreign landowner in the U.S. is a Chinese billionaire who it has been determined is a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of Chinese-language news reports.

Chen Tianqiao, the founder, chairman and CEO of global investment firm Shanda Group, owns approximately 200,000 acres of land in Oregon, according to Land Report. Chen also has extensive ties to the Chinese government, ranging from CCP membership to executive roles in CCP-affiliated organizations, according to a DCNF review of Chinese-language media reports.

In 2015, Chen acquired 198,000 acres in Oregon, according to Land Report. The $85 million purchase made the Chinese national the 82nd-largest property owner in the U.S. and the second-largest foreign U.S. land owner, Bloomberg reported, second only to a Canadian family who owns over 1 million acres of Maine.

Oregon’s Bull Springs Skyline Forest accounts for approximately 33,000 of Chen’s acreage, according to Land Report. The forest is located west of Bend, Oregon, and is home to springs, creeks, timberland and wildlife, according to the Bull Springs Skyline Forest website.

Oregon Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer said she was “deeply concerned that individuals tied to the Chinese Communist Party are buying up timberland, which is one of our most precious and finite resources.”

“Foreign ownership of United States lands is a serious problem that has rightfully sparked unease among farmers, ranchers and foresters across the country,” Chavez-DeRemer told the DCNF.

Chen also owns several urban properties in the U.S., including the Vanderbilt Mansion in Manhattan, the Seeley Mudd Estate near Los Angeles and a 150,000 square-foot research facility at Caltech called the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience — each worth tens of millions of dollars, according to Land Report.

Chinese ownership of U.S. land, in particular agricultural land, has come under increased scrutiny from GOP governors, who see it as a potential national security threat. Several states, including Florida, have taken legislative and executive action to ban Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland, the most recent being Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s January 2024 executive order banning such purchases near military installations.

“One of the Chinese Communist Party’s goals is to undermine and weaken America,” Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio told the DCNF. “This includes instances where our greatest adversary continues to buy land — whether its farmland or near our installations.” [read more]

Not surprising. It's what the Chi-Coms do. And with the previous admin. why not try to spy on America?

More Chi-Coms suspicious activity:

• Report: China Owns Farmland Next to 19 Military Bases
• Despite Known Risks, Chinese Scientists Develop New Lethal Coronavirus
• US-Funded Experiments in China Could Secretly Manipulate Viruses: Email
• Gangsters, Money and Murder: How Chinese Organized Crime Is Dominating America’s Illegal Marijuana Market
• FT: Materials for Fentanyl Come From China
• ‘There Are Chinese Spies At Stanford’: Bombshell Report Reveals CCP Student Espionage
• Third Chinese Scientist Charged With Smuggling Bio-Agent Into US
• Chinese hackers impersonated senior U.S. lawmaker as a way to influence trade talks

OpenAI wants to make a walking, talking humanoid robot smarter

From Pop Sci.com (Feb. 29, 2024):

Just a few years ago, attempts at autonomous, human-shaped bipedal robots were laughable and far-fetched. Two-legged robots competing in high-profile Pentagon challenges famously stumbled and fell their way through obstacle courses like an inebriated pub-crawler while Tesla’s highly-hyped humanoid bot, years later, turned out to be nothing more than a man dancing in a skin-tight bodysuit.

But, despite those gaffs, robotics firms pressed on and now several believe their walking machines could work alongside human manufacturing workers in only a few short years. Figure, one of the more prominent companies in the humanoid robot space, this week told PopSci it raised $675 million in funding from some of the tech industry’s biggest players, including Microsoft, Nvidia, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The company also announced it has struck a new agreement with generative AI giant, OpenAI to “develop next generation AI models for humanoid robots.” The partnership marks one of the most significant examples yet of an AI software company working to integrate its tools into physical robots.

Figure Founder and CEO Brett Adcock described the partnership as a “huge milestone for robotics.” Eventually, Adcock hopes the partnership with OpenAI will lead to a robot that can work side-by-side with humans completing tasks and holding a conversation. By working with OpenAI, creators of the world’s most popular large language model, Adcock says Figure will be able to further improve the robot’s “semantic” understanding which should make it more useful in work scenarios.

“I think it’s getting more clear that this [humanoid robotics] are becoming more and more an engineering problem than it is a research problem,” Adcock said. “Actually being able to build a humanoid [robot] and put it into the world of useful work is actually starting to be possible.”

Why is OpenAI working with a humanoid robotics company?

Founded in 2021, Figure is developing a 5 ‘6, 130-pound bipedal “general purpose” robot it claims can lift objects around 45 pounds and walk 2.7 miles per hour. Figure believes its robots could one day help address possible labor shortages in manufacturing jobs and generally “enable the automation of difficult, unsafe, or tedious tasks.” Though it’s unclear just how reliably current humanoid robots can actually execute those types of tasks, Figure recently released a video showing its Figure 01 model slowly walking towards a stack of create, grabbing one with its two hands and loading it into a conveyor belt. The company claims the robot performed the entire job autonomously.

Supporters of humanoid-style robots say their bi-pedal form-factor makes them more adept at climbing stairs and navigating uneven or unpredictable ground compared to the more typical wheeled or tracked alternatives. The technology underpinning these types of robots has notably come a long way from the embarrassing stumbles of previous years. Speaking with Wired last year, Figure Chief Technology Officer Jerry Pratt said Figure’s robots could complete the Pentagon’s test course in a quarter of the time it took machines to finish it back in 2015, thanks in part to advances in computer vision technology. Other bipedal robots, like Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, can already perform backflips and chuck large objects. 

Figure says its new “collaboration agreement” with OpenAI will combine OpenAI’s research with it’s own experience in robotics hardware and software. If successful, Figure believes the partnership will enhance its robot’s ability to “process and reason from language.” That ability to understand language and act on it could, in theory, allow the robots to better work alongside a human warehouse worker or take verbal commands.

“We see a tremendous advantage of having a large language model or multi models model on the robot so that we can interact with it and give what we call ‘semantic understanding,’” Adcock said.

Over the long-term, Adcock said people interacting with the Figure should be able to speak with the robot in plain language. The robot can then create a list of tasks and complete them autonomously. The partnership with OpenAI could also help the Figure robot self-correct and learn from its past mistakes, which should lead to quicker improvements in tasks. The Figure robot already possesses the ability to speak, Adcock said, and can use its cameras to describe what it “sees” in front of it. It can also describe what may have happened in a given area over a period of time.

“We’ve always planned to come back to robotics and we see a path with Figure to explore what humanoid robots can achieve when powered by highly capable multimodal models,” Open AI VP of Product and Partnerships Peter Welinder said in a statement sent to PopSci.

OpenAI and Figure aren’t the only ones trying to integrate language models into human-looking robots. Last year, Elon Musk biography Walter Isaacson wrote an article for Time claiming the Tesla CEO was exploring ways to integrate his company’s improving Optimus humanoid robot and its “Dojo” supercomputer with the goal of creating so-called artificial general intelligence, a term some researchers use to describe a machine capable of performing above human level capability at many tasks. [read more]

As long as they are not killer robots I'm fine with it.

More OpenAI news:

• OpenAI wants to devour a huge chunk of the internet. Who’s going to stop them?
• OpenAI says it’s working on AI that mimics human voices
• OpenAI takes down covert operations tied to China and other countries
• OpenAI dissolved its team dedicated to preventing rogue AI

Disgraced New Mexico Judge, Wife Arrested After Allegedly Harboring Tren de Aragua Gang Members

From Breitbart.com (Apr. 24):

ICE law enforcement officials arrested recently resigned Magistrate Judge Joel Cano and his wife, Nancy, at their home in Las Cruces, New Mexico, on Thursday. ICE officials executed a search warrant and probable cause warrant and took them into custody, Fox 14 El Paso reported. Joel Cano is currently charged with tampering with evidence and his wife is charged with conspiracy to tamper, the report states.

The Cano couple were booked into the Dona Ana County Detention Center between 6:30 and 7 p..m. on Thursday, the Albuquerque Journal reported. They are currently being held without bond. Before being elected to the magistrate judge position in 2010, Joel Cano served for nearly 23 years in the Las Cruces Police Department.

Joel Cano resigned from his position as a magistrate judge in Dona Ana County, New Mexico, after ICE agents raided his home and took 23-year-old Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, a Venezuelan migrant who illegally entered the U.S. in December 2023 and is suspected of being a member of the Tren de Aragua gang, into custody on firearms-related charges, Breitbart Texas reported.

Federal prosecutors in the District of New Mexico allege that Ortega-Lopez was illegally in possession of a firearm and has ties to the hyperviolent Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump and the U.S. State Department declared the gang to be a foreign terrorist organization.

Police arrested Orgega-Lopez while executing a search warrant on February 28 at the home of Dona Ana County, New Mexico, Magistrate Judge Joel Cano and his wife, Nancy, the Albuquerque Journal reported this week. The report follows a detention hearing where prosecutors claim the illegal alien is a flight risk and an alleged Tren de Aragua gang member.

Court records obtained by revealed that Ortega-Lopez, a Venezuelan national, entered the United States illegally in Eagle Pass, Texas, during the peak of the Biden Border Crisis in December 2023. Due to overcrowding in the Eagle Pass detention facility, he was released three days later.

Social media posts obtained by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico showed Ortega-Lopez and other illegal aliens at a shooting range. They appeared to be in possession of multiple firearms and a large quantity of handgun and rifle ammunition. In one image, the man is holding an AR-15-style rifle in one hand and a semi-automatic pistol in the other. A video showed the Venezuelan migrant in possession of another AR-15 equipped with a suppressor. He fired the rifle until it was empty and then reloaded it with a new magazine, which he continued to fire, prosecutors stated.

The photos and videos showed Ortega-Lopez displaying Tren de Aragua gang tattoos. The United States government recently declared this violent gang to be a Transnational Criminal Organization.

Investigators found additional firearms in a neighboring home owned by Nancy Cano’s daughter. Ortega-Lopez was seen in possession of several of these firearms.

On Tuesday, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that Cano may never again hold a judicial office in New Mexico, Fox 14 revealed. The local Fox News/CBS affiliate was on the scene as the couple were arrested and placed in handcuffs.

Ortega-Lopez remains in custody at the jail ahead of a detention hearing. He is scheduled to appear in the New Mexico District Court on April 30.

It is not clear if Judge Cano or his wife, Nancy, will be charged with harboring an illegal alien or providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. [source]

Stupid, crazy and potentially dangerous.  I wonder if this couple had fantasies of being wannabe gang-bangers. Who knows. Definitely interfering with ICE's efforts of getting dangerous illegal criminals off the streets.

More articles on the couple:

• WATCH: Attorney General Pam Bondi Drops Extremely Damning New Details on New Mexico Judge Arrested for Harboring Tren de Aragua Gangster in His Home
• JUST IN: Bondi Reveals Shocking Lengths Rogue Judge Went To Defend Violent Illegals: ‘Beat It With A Hammer’
• Dem judge resigns after ICE arrests suspected Tren de Aragua gangster at his home

Ex-gay Muslim man turned Christian ministry leader shares how he came to faith in Jesus

From Christian Post.com (June 16, 2023):

A formerly gay Muslim man who is now a Christian serving in ministry says Jesus radically transformed his life after he had a supernatural encounter with the Lord in a dream.

Donovan Archie shared his testimony in a June 8 episode by Delafé Testimonies, a global evangelistic project on YouTube with over 378,000 subscribers that aims to "create the world's largest archive of Jesus testimonies."

Archie spoke about growing up practicing Islam, his father's religion, while also living a homosexual lifestyle, noting that he struggled to find satisfaction in life. Islam, he added, was based on "performance" and felt he was constantly “performing” and experiencing no transforming revelations or changes in the process. 

“I could do things to try and get into the presence of God, that I could try to facilitate my way to get God to accept me and love me. And I found no avail in it; I found no satisfaction. There was no deep feeling or deep conviction about who God was, as I was practicing Islam as a gay person,” Archie continued. “There was no change in my heart. It was just me living my lifestyle and me performing for God. Oftentimes, I think of a dog that I once had. And my dog would perform to get treats.”

Same-sex attraction

Archie was born in Detroit, Michigan. His father was a practicing Muslim, which led him to adopt Islam as his religious identity. According to Archie, he was aware of his same-sex attraction from a young age and was bullied in elementary and middle school for being more effeminate.

By the time he went to college, he was already working as a professional dancer and had been hired to dance ballet and modern dance. In his junior year, however, he was invited to attend church and participate in a dance performance.

“I told them, ‘Well, you know, don't expect me to become a Christian or anything like that or pray or to do anything else that you all do at church.’ Because at that time, I identified as Muslim ... but then, I also had these struggles with my identity and sexuality,” Archie said. “I didn't want them to preach to me or to pray for me or anything. I just wanted to go there and dance.”

During the church service, Archie recalled that as he waited for his turn to dance, he heard a message the pastor was preaching that changed his perspective on Jesus.

“The message [was] ‘restoration of the gatekeepers,’" Archie recalled. "The pastor is talking about how God is calling people back to God’s Self and is beginning to restore people who have God's name. God is actively looking for people to respond to His love in the world. God is after our hearts and is calling for people who are gatekeepers in His kingdom."

"He's restoring them, and He's bringing them out of dark places. He's provided for them this lifestyle of transformation.'"

Although the sermon "intrigued" Archie, he remembers thinking that he "wasn't ready to experience Jesus yet." [read more]

Why the Alliance between Stalin and Hitler Must Never Be Forgotten

From FEE.org (July 23, 2023):

World War II was one of the most catastrophic periods in human history, marked by unprecedented violence, genocide, and destruction. Yet, while the war’s narrative is dominated by the Axis and western Allied powers, the role of the Soviet Union, particularly under Joseph Stalin, in indirectly supporting Nazi Germany’s campaign of terror and conquest, often goes underreported. Drawing on several historical excerpts, this article will unpack the Soviet Union’s involvement in Nazi war efforts and their failure to protect or inform their Jewish population of impending atrocities.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed in the early hours of August 24, 1939, in a surreal ceremony where swastikas fluttered alongside the hammer and sickle. The swastika flags purportedly came from a movie studio, where they had been used for anti-Nazi propaganda films. The ten-year non-aggression pact between the USSR and Germany was accompanied by a secret protocol outlining the spheres of influence for each power in Eastern Europe, including the partition of Poland and the granting of the Baltic States and Bessarabia to the Soviets.

Stalin made a closing toast, stating, “I know how much the German nation loves its Führer; I should therefore like to drink to his health.” The toast was ironic considering the hostile stance the USSR had previously maintained towards Nazi Germany. Stalin’s first gift after the pact was awarding Germany around 600 German Communists, most of whom were Jews. He had them extradited to the Gestapo in Brest-Litovsk, a symbolic location steeped in historical implications. Among the extradited was Hans David, a gifted composer, who later perished in the gas chambers of Majdanek, a fate shared by many others. This process of handing over Jewish and/or communist prisoners to the Nazis persisted beyond 1939.

Margarete Buber-Neumann, a former communist turned staunch anti-communist, was one such individual transferred from Soviet imprisonment to the hands of the Gestapo in 1940. Surviving the brutal conditions of both a Soviet prison and a Nazi concentration camp, Buber-Neumann later penned the memoir “Under Two Dictators,” detailing the harsh realities of life under the totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Hitler.

In the initial stages of World War II, after signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany embarked on a diplomatic relationship that allowed for territorial expansion and political maneuvering. The two totalitarian socialist regimes formed an uneasy partnership characterized by economic cooperation, information withholding, and non-aggression. This alliance’s impact on the Jewish population, particularly in the Soviet-occupied zone of Poland, was severe and catastrophic.

The ideological calculus of Stalin’s foreign policy became apparent in his anticipation of the imminent German attack on Poland. Recognizing the inevitability of British and French intervention, Stalin saw a unique opportunity to advance the cause of communism. From his perspective, a protracted conflict between capitalist powers presented an ideal scenario, sowing discord and creating opportunities for the spread of Soviet influence.

Stalin was explicit in his machinations, expressing that the USSR, the Land of the Toilers, would stand to gain from a drawn-out war that would weaken both the Reich and the Anglo-French bloc. Fearing a swift conclusion to the war, Stalin stressed the importance of aiding Germany to ensure a long and costly conflict. Despite the ongoing tensions with Japan in the Far East, Stalin envisioned the USSR’s eventual entry into the European theater at a time most advantageous to Soviet interests. The Soviet leader’s strategic vision underlined a ruthless pragmatism and an uncompromising commitment to the communist cause.

The mass deportation of approximately one million Polish refugees initiated by Lavrentiy Beria’s NKVD in February 1940, half of whom were Jews, highlights the first disturbing aspect of the Soviet-Nazi collaboration. The deportees, categorized under various labels such as ‘The Jewish National Counterrevolution’ were sent to Siberia under horrendous conditions that led to many deaths en route. Notably, many Jewish leaders and activists were among the arrested, including Menachem Begin, a young Zionist leader, and Henryk Ehrlich and Viktor Alter, founders of the Polish Bund, Poland’s largest Jewish party. This mass deportation represented the “chief administrative method of Sovietization.”

At the same time, the Soviet authorities kept the Jewish population uninformed about the ongoing Nazi atrocities just across the border, maintaining a deliberate silence that enabled the Holocaust. As part of the non-aggression pact, Soviet organs did not report the genocidal massacres conducted by the Nazis between 1939 and 1941. Those aforementioned anti-Nazi films were no longer being produced. Soviet newspapers like Pravda scarcely even used the word “fascist” from 1939 to 1941. This silence continued even after the Nazis broke the pact and invaded the USSR, a move that precipitated the extermination of 1.5 million Jews in White Russia and Ukraine. In essence, Stalin’s silence and inaction allowed the Holocaust to unfold without any meaningful resistance or counteraction.

Moreover, Soviet complicity contributed to the normalization of Nazi violence. Jewish victims of mass executions were routinely referred to as “Poles” or “Ukrainians” in Soviet media, obscuring the specific anti-Semitic nature of the Nazi pogroms. The Soviet population, despite constant indoctrination, was not educated about Nazi anti-Semitism or their genocide plan, fostering ignorance that ultimately led to widespread collaboration against Jewish populations.

In tandem with these policies, the Soviet Union also provided economic support to Nazi Germany, which was instrumental in facilitating Hitler’s war of conquest. The importance of this assistance cannot be underestimated as the USSR supplied significant quantities of food and raw materials to the Nazis. For instance, during the invasion of France and the Low Countries, the USSR supplied the Reich with 163,000 tons of petroleum and 243,000 tons of Ukrainian wheat in May and June of 1940 alone. As German demand increased during critical battles, such as at Dunkirk, Soviet oil deliveries surged to meet the needs, effectively fueling Hitler’s conquest of Western Europe.

Publicly, the Soviet Union even supported the German invasion of France and the Low Countries. The French Communist Party was instructed not to resist the Germans, leading to a wave of defections and further weakening France’s ability to withstand the German onslaught. Despite internal dissension and resistance, the Soviets continued to propagate defeatist slogans, actively undermining the war effort against the Nazis.

In today’s discourse, there is a tendency among Soviet apologists to laud the USSR as the singular force that ultimately toppled the Nazi regime in 1945. This, of course, ignores the critical support that came from the US via Lend-Lease. Even Stalin admitted “Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.” While the sacrifices made by millions of Soviet soldiers should not be forgotten or swept under the rug, it is vital for us to simultaneously illuminate the darker corners of this past.

We should resist the call to ignore the sobering reality of the Soviet Union’s complicity. One cannot forget that the initial alliance forged between Stalin and Hitler was rooted not in necessity but sprouted from the soil of Stalin’s socialist ideology. Such was the poison entwined within this political tapestry that, had Hitler not invaded the USSR in 1941, or had he chosen to altogether forgo this path, the Soviet Union might have continued to stand in silence and support. Their eyes turned away, they could have remained an observer and accomplice as the monstrous Nazi regime crept across Europe.

As we peer into the past, a shadow of sorrow is cast, an echo of lament for the once voiceless victims, resonating with a plea that history might not repeat its darkest hours. Our duty to memory requires us to hold these bitter truths close and learn from them if we are to honor the legacies of those who suffered and died under the shadow of totalitarian regimes. [source]

Stalin and Hitler (both evil megalomaniac socialistic psychopaths) were also anti-Semantic.

The International Criminal Court was hit with a cyberattack

From Pop Sci.com (Sept. 20, 2023):

The International Criminal Court revealed malicious actors illegally accessed its computer systems late last week, posing potentially dangerous ramifications for the world’s only permanent war crimes tribunal.

“The International Criminal Court’s services detected anomalous activity affecting its information systems,” the ICC said Monday in a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter. “Immediate measures were adopted to respond to this cybersecurity incident and to mitigate its impact.” These measures are reportedly ongoing, and include assistance from authorities in the Netherlands, where the ICC is based.

As Reuters notes, “highly sensitive documents” under the ICC’s purview could potentially include protected witnesses’ identities, and detailed criminal evidence of war crimes. The ICC has not offered detail on what system areas and information may be potentially compromised.

Established in 2002 in The Hague to hold world leaders and countries accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity, the ICC is currently investigating multiple allegations across Afghanistan, the Philippines, Uganda, Venezuela, and Ukraine. In March, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on charges of illegally deporting Ukrainian children. Although neither Ukraine nor Russia are ICC members, Kyiv granted the ICC the right to prosecute crimes committed within the territory. At the time, Russian authorities declared the arrest warrant “null and void.”

In an August article for the quarterly publication, Foreign Policy Analytics, ICC lead prosecutor Karim Khan announced in August the court would commit to investigating cybercrimes potentially violating the Rome Statute. First adopted in 1998, the legal treaty grants the ICC authority to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. As of 2019, 123 nations are party to the agreement.

“Cyber warfare does not play out in the abstract. Rather, it can have a profound impact on people’s lives,” Khan wrote in August. “Attempts to impact critical infrastructure such as medical facilities or control systems for power generation may result in immediate consequences for many, particularly the most vulnerable. Consequently, as part of its investigations, my Office will collect and review evidence of such conduct.”

This isn’t the first time the ICC’s cybersecurity has been compromised. In 2011, a controversial Kenyan journalist was accused and arrested by the ICC for allegedly leaking protected witnesses’ identities online. He was later released. [source]

BRAVE NEW WORLD? Credit Card Companies To Use Special Code To Track Gun Purchases

From The Gateway Pundit.com (Sept. 10, 2022):

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, along with other elected officials and state pension fund trustees, have requested that major credit card companies implement a weapon code for the purchase of firearms and ammunition.

Officials in New York City and the state of New York have asked American Express, MasterCard, and Visa to make a four-digit merchant category code (MCC) like the ones used for other retail categories to better identify and report suspicious behavior, such as large purchases of firearms.

“The creation of a new code would help financial institutions detect and report suspicious activity, such as unusually large purchases of firearms or ammunition, or purchases from multiple stores, that may be used for criminal purposes,” it claimed.

According to the news release, “credit card companies use a four-digit merchant category code to classify businesses by the types of goods and services sold. Merchant category codes are set by the International Organization on Standardization (ISO). Unique merchant category codes exist for grocery stores, sporting goods stores, bicycle shops, and many other retailers — but not for gun and ammunition stores.”

On Friday, the International Organization for Standardization –the organization in charge of setting standards for business transactions — voted to create a “merchant category code” for gun purchases.

This will allow banks that process payments from gun retailers to assign the new code to the gun stores.

Reuters reported:

An international standards body has approved creation of a merchant code for gun retailers, a representative said on Friday, following pressure from activists who say it will help track suspicious weapons purchases.

At a meeting this week, a subcommittee of the International Organization for Standardization approved what is known as a “merchant category code” for firearms stores, a spokeswoman said.

…

It clears the way for banks that process gun retailers’ payments to decide whether to assign the new code to merchants. The code would help monitors track where an individual spends money, but would not show what specific items were purchased.

The move has been criticized by gun groups.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation and the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action both blasted the decision.

Epoch Times reported:

Some groups have criticized the ISO approval. Mark Oliva, the managing director for public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a U.S. trade association for the firearms industry, told The Center Square that the code’s creation was “flawed on its premise.”

…

He separately told Gothamist: “This decision chills the free exercise of constitutionally protected rights and does nothing to assist law enforcement with crime prevention or holding criminals accountable. Attaching codes specific to firearm and ammunition purchases casts a dark pall by gun control advocates who are only interested in disarming lawful gun owners.”

…

Lars Dalseide, a spokesperson for the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), the lobbying arm of the gun rights advocacy group NRA, told The Center Square: “Implying that firearm purchases are suspicious demonstrates an obvious bias these attorneys general hold against anyone who chooses to exercise a fundamental constitutional right.

“Creating specific credit card codes for firearms lays the groundwork for a de facto firearm registration. Suggesting otherwise is either shortsighted or deceptive,” Dalseide added. “The true travesty is that New Yorkers and Californians must continue facing the violent criminals pushed back on the streets thanks to these two attorneys general reckless soft-on-crime policies.”

Robby Starbuck issued a warning on Twitter about the new special code.

Over the past week @GovKathyHochul @SenWarren @TishJames & many other far left activists coordinated messaging asking credit card companies to track all gun purchases. A week later the ISO creates a special code to track gun purchases. Democrats will use it to make lists. Watch. pic.twitter.com/9D6YoNwwoA

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) September 9, 2022 [source]

Brave new world indeed.

Whistleblower who exposed Texas hospital’s trans surgeries on kids indicted by DOJ

From The Christian Post.com (June 7, 2024):

The United States Department of Justice has indicted a surgeon who blew the whistle on a Texas hospital secretly performing trans surgeries and gender medicalization of minors.

Dr. Eithan Haim, a surgeon at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, who leaked evidence of the body-mutilating procedures to journalist Christopher Rufo, was indicted earlier this week on four felony counts of allegedly violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Haim is scheduled to appear in court on June 17, the National Review reported Thursday, with his legal team reportedly being unaware of the full nature of the charges.

“My client is anxious to get to trial to get his side of the story told,” Marcella Burke, an attorney for Haim, told National Review. “I am confident this will result in the correct decision being made.”

The Christian Post reached out to both the law firm representing Haim and the Department of Justice for more information. This article will be updated when their responses are received.

In February 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a formal opinion that described sex-change procedures being performed on minors as "child abuse," with Gov. Greg Abbott later issuing an order instructing state agencies to investigate them as such.

Although Texas Children’s Hospital announced in March 2022 that it was ending the practice of performing such procedures on children and youth in response to the state government, Haim leaked evidence that the hospital was doing so in secret.

Based on the leaked evidence provided by Haim, Rufo wrote an article in City Journal that was published on May 16, 2023, which claimed that the hospital "secretly continued to perform transgender medical interventions, including the use of implantable puberty blockers, on minor children."

In response to the story, a state investigation was launched into Texas Children’s Hospital, with the facility finally shutting down its practice of gender medicalization of minors suffering from gender dysphoria.

In June of last year, Abbott signed Senate Bill 14 into law, which banned cosmetic and irreversible sex-change surgeries and hormonal interventions for trans-identified youth. 

Even before outing himself as the whistleblower in January, Haim was the subject of a federal investigation, with him reportedly being labeled a target of an investigation soon after the Rufo story ran.

"These people are corrupt," Haim told CP in an interview published in January. "And the only way to expose it is to not play into this Kabuki theater, like these people are practitioners of justice. Because if we were to collude with them, we would be sanctioning our own destruction."

"Because these people are just petty tyrants and neurotic bureaucrats. And what that boils down to is that these people are simply bullies. When you're fearful, when you're afraid, that's when they're most effective. So to be fearful and scared is to seal your own death warrant." [source]

Abuse of power. All because the whistleblower wants to protect the young. The case should be thrown out. Glad the DOJ isn’t corrupt in this current administration.

More articles on the story:

• We Had Another Creepy Incident Where FBI Agents Accosted Law-Abiding Americans Again
• Whistleblower nurse claims FBI threatened her after she accused children’s hospital of illegally billing taxpayers for ‘transgender medicine’
• Texas Children's Hospital CEO Denies Wrongdoing
• Doctors Protecting Children Declaration
• The remarkable courage of whistleblowers exposing trans-medical crimes
  

FOUR takeaways from Fauci's hearing

From Glenn Beck.com (June 5, 2024):

Did Dr. Anthony Fauci answer for the mismanagement of the Covid pandemic?

On Monday, Fauci sat before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability to answer lingering questions about how the pandemic was handled. Many of us, Glenn included, have serious concerns, such as:

• Why did he lie about gain-of-function research?
• Why did he try to cover up all the chatter among scientists that the virus DID come from a lab?
• Did he know the U.S. government cut a deal with Moderna on vaccines before the pandemic?

While some of these questions were partially answered, Fauci's lack of credibility and Congress's lack of direct questioning left much to be desired. The American people deserve the truth, but it's being kept from us.

……….

Here are the top FIVE takeaways from Fauci's hearing:

Social distancing was BUNK

After a closed-door hearing in January where Fauci admitted that the 6-foot social distancing rule imposed on all Americans allegedly for our safety "wasn’t based on data," Fauci tried to distance himself from the controversial edict. Fauci shifted the blame to the CDC, claiming that he had little to nothing to do with the order.

Fauci is "open" to Covid origin possibilities

For YEARS we were told COVID-19 originated from bats in China, and anyone who dared to offer any other suggestions—like the theory that COVID-19 leaked from the massive virology lab that worked on Coronaviruses and happened to be in the same city the pandemic originated in—was ridiculed as a conspiracy theorist. Now that the lab leak theory has been all but confirmed, Fauci is singing a different tune. On Monday, Fauci claimed he has always kept an "open mind" about the origin of the virus.

Deleted emails and FOIA evasions

A series of emails released by the House Oversight Committee indicate that some NIH officials, including Fauci, were attempting to avoid public record laws by deleting emails and sending information to personal email addresses. In one such released email sent to Fauci from Dr. David Morens suggested they use personal emails so “there is no worry about FOIAs” [Freedom of Information Act].

MTG outburst

The infamous Georgia congresswoman was arguably the star of the hearing, taking the opportunity to make her criticisms of Fauci known. Rep. Greene called for Fauci's medical license to be revoked and to throw him in jail. Throughout her time on the microphone, Greene refused to refer to Fauci as "doctor," instead calling him "Mr. Fauci." [source]

The social distancing was really a hoax. How does a virus measure six feet? It doesn't. It's like the China virus dies when it reaches six feet. 

Other articles on the hearing:

• Fauci admits he 'never' read research grant applications before approving them
• Fauci adviser hid emails from FOIA requests by using personal account: records
• Lawmaker: ‘It Is Not Anti-Science’ to Hold NIH Accountable for Coverup
• NIH scientists made $710M in royalties from drug makers — a fact they tried to hide
• 'NIAID cannot be trusted': Fauci's agency planned to make monkeypox more deadly, says congressional report

Is teaching patriotism bad?

From Jerry Newcombe on Christian Post.com (June 16, 2023):

There is a vital battle over education nowadays. And if we lose it, we could ultimately lose the country.

It would seem that the Left views the idea of teaching children a love of country as an undesirable goal.

In The Federalist, Joy Pullman called attention recently to a critique from the Left of classics-oriented charter schools. The Washington Post wrote the critique, and it implies that teaching patriotism is suspect.

According to The Washington Post, schools that focused on personal responsibility, love of God and country, America’s founders and the like are “designed to attract Christian nationalists with specific imagery and curriculum.”

The newspaper cites one example: “‘Back to basic schools’ use red, white and blue school colors, patriotic logos and pictures of the Founding Fathers, and use terms such as virtue, patriotism and, sometimes, outright references to religion.”

Talk positively about America’s founders, and you are sending a bad message — especially to our youth, according to the Left.

I have studied much about the settling and the founding eras of American history and the American experiment. I have written books and produced documentaries on the subject. The sacrifices of so many of those who created this great country are so amazing. We should be grateful for the freedoms they bestowed on us.

They famously wrote in the preamble to the Constitution, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution.”

George Washington led a ragtag army of farmers and merchants who were determined, with God’s help, to defend their God-given rights. And to teach the next generation of their many sacrifices on behalf of freedom should be curtailed?

During the American War for Independence, George Washington and his army had to flee from Philadelphia. They spent the winter of 1777-1778 in Valley Forge, about 25 miles away. Many of them had no shoes or boots in the freezing cold. Some of them left bloody footprints in the snow. George Washington led them and prayed for them. And his prayers were ultimately answered.

But to tell future children about these sacrifices of our nation’s founders is essentially, according to the Washington Post, part of “a strategy by right-wing Christians to undermine secular public education”?

Why do so many elites hate America?

Because of slavery at the beginning of our country? It was indeed a great evil. But it was an evil that existed virtually everywhere in the known world to that point. What’s truly astounding is not that America had slavery like everyone else, but that it got rid of it. Even now — today — there are an estimated 50 million people in slavery around the world. But in America, slavery is long gone. The founders enshrined the principles of God-given rights that ultimately overthrew slavery. And it was those principles to which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. appealed to during the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.

America’s founders declared that our rights come from the Creator. In 1955, President Eisenhower said, “Without God, there could be no American form of Government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first — the most basic — expression of Americanism.”

Even when America doesn’t live up to its creed that our Creator has endowed us with certain unalienable rights, it’s still a good creed. As Dr. King said in his classic speech: “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.’” Surely, we have made great advances since he uttered those words in 1963.

In a different context, the great British Christian writer, C.S. Lewis, observed: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

If we mock love of country, then we shouldn’t be surprised to see so many young Americans basically hating America.

And yet, think of those who literally risk their lives to try and get here. Some will risk their lives to leave Cuba, going through shark-infested waters, to reach America and her freedoms.

Those who would discourage teaching patriotism to future generations are ultimately sowing bad seeds, the fruit of which we see in many burned out cities overrun by crime, homelessness, and chaos. [source]

Good points.

Excerpts from the book "Reflections on the Failure of Socialism" Part 2

The Communists believe in man not as an independent power, but as a constituent part of the superhumanly ordained movement of the universe. That dialectic movement is their God, and it is that God who exempts them from the laws of morality. The difference between Christianity and Communism—the difference, I [the author] mean, that is vital in this connection—is between a religion which teaches personal salvation through sympathy and loving-kindness and a religion which teaches social salvation through bringing the morals of war into the peacetime relations of men.

Marx was so sure that the world was going to be redeemed by its own dialectic evolution that he would not permit his disciples to invoke the guidance of moral ideals. He really meant it when he said the workers have “no ideal to realize,” they have only to participate in the contemporary struggle. He expelled people from his Communist party for mentioning programmatically such things as “love,” “justice,” “humanity,” even “morality” itself. “Soulful ravings,” “sloppy sentimentality,” he called such expressions, and purged the astonished authors as though they had committed the most dastardly crimes.

Later in life, when Marx founded the First International, he felt compelled for the sake of a big membership to soft-pedal his highbrow insight into the purposes of the universe. He wrote privately to Engels: “I was obliged to insert in the preamble two phrases about ‘duty and right,’ ditto ‘truth, morality, and justice.’” But these lamentable phrases—he assured his friend—“are placed in such a way that they can do no harm.”

This mystic faith in evolution set Marx’s mind free, and, alas, his natural disposition, to replace the honest campaign of public persuasion by which other gospels have been propagated, with schemes for deceiving the public and tricking his way into positions of power. It was Marx, not Lenin, who invented the technique of the “front organization,” the device of pretending to be a democrat in order to destroy democracy*, the ruthless purging of dissident party members, the employment of false personal slander in this task.

It was Marx and Engels who adopted “scorn and contempt” as the major key in which to attack the opponents of socialism, introducing a literature of vituperation that has few parallels in history. Even the political masterstroke of giving the land to the peasants “initially” in order to take it away from them when the power is secure came from the same source.^ The introduction of such unprincipled behavior into a movement toward the highest ends of man was entirely the work of Marx and Engels. Lenin added nothing to it but skill, and Stalin nothing but total instinctive indifference to the ends.

Source: Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955) by Max Eastman.

 

* So, that’s where the Left came with this deceptive tactic. Faking to the right.

^ Evil bastards!

IRS agents use fake names to ‘harass and intimidate’ taxpayers, report reveals

From Washington Times.com (Oct. 27, 2023):

The IRS allows its agents to use fake names when they contact taxpayers, according to a congressional report Friday that found the pseudonyms can create a tense and potentially harassing system.

The House Judiciary Committee documented a case in Ohio where an IRS agent showed up at a taxpayer’s home unannounced, lied about his name and the reason for his visit, refused to leave when told to do so by the woman’s lawyer, threatened to freeze the taxpayer’s assets and then filed a complaint against the police when they responded.

Police found the man’s behavior so strange that they initially concluded he was an impostor. It was only after they contacted the IRS’ inspector general that they learned the man was a real agent using a fake name, “Agent Bill Haus.”

Making the situation more bizarre, the woman didn’t actually owe anything — a fact the IRS confirmed to her after the intrusive visit.

A major in the Marion Police Department told the committee he “found this entire situation odd.”

The woman was so traumatized that she thought the agent might “break into her house,” the major reported to Congress.

“She is truly in fear of this man. What is more concerning, she had contacted the IRS, verified she has a zero balance and she indicates that the person she spoke with on the phone has no idea why an agent would be coming to her home,” said the major, whose name was redacted in the report.

The Judiciary Committee released the account of the visit as part of an inquiry into “weaponization” of the IRS.

The investigation explored another unannounced IRS visit paid to Matt Taibbi, a journalist who exposed government efforts to censor opposing viewpoints made on social media. That unannounced visit came the same day Mr. Taibbi testified to Congress.

The Republican investigation also revealed that the IRS was so eager to target Mr. Taibbi that it opened its investigation on Christmas Eve, which was also a Saturday, just three weeks after he broke his first story about what has come to be known as the “Twitter Files.”

As with the woman in Ohio, it turned out Mr. Taibbi didn’t owe the IRS anything and in fact was due a refund he had not yet been paid.

In the Ohio case, the agent first claimed he was checking up on an estate of a deceased person for which the woman was the fiduciary and said she owed a substantial amount of money. The taxpayer showed that the taxes had been paid, and the agent then said he was actually there about delinquent returns.

The committee report said those stories should be concerning given the tens of billions of dollars Democrats in Congress pumped into the IRS in last year’s budget-climate bill.

IRS officials have already made some changes to policy, including an order generally prohibiting revenue agents from making unannounced visits.

Congressional Republicans said that policy change was a result of the GOP’s investigation.

“Pressure and oversight about these abusive field visits led the IRS to repeal its policy of allowing its agents to conduct unannounced field visits to taxpayers’ homes. The IRS is no longer able to weaponize its field visits to target, harass and intimidate taxpayers,” the report said.

New IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel said banning the visits would “improve overall safety for taxpayers and IRS employees.”

But the committee report questioned that, saying the IRS has never produced evidence that its own agents were endangered. [source]

Not good at all. The IRS shouldn't be using intimidating taxpayers. Hopefully, the IRS will stop this terrible behavior in the Trump admin.

John Kennedy Asks Kash Patel Point-Blank If Jeffrey Epstein Killed Himself

From Daily Caller.com (May 8):

Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana pressed FBI Director Kash Patel on Thursday about whether convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Epstein, who pled guilty to sex charges in 2008, committed suicide while awaiting trial after he was arrested in 2019 on new charges. Kennedy asked Patel if he would see the release about what happened to Epstein in his lifetime during a hearing held by the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies.

“Did Jeffrey Epstein hang himself or did somebody kill him?” Kennedy asked Patel, who responded. “Senator, I believe he hung himself in a cell in the Metropolitan Detention Center.”

“Are you going to release all the information about that?” Kennedy asked in response. “Senator, we are working through that right now with the Department of Justice.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters Wednesday that the FBI is still reviewing “tens of thousands” of videos in the possession of Jeffrey Epstein, some of which she described as “child porn.” Kennedy asked about the timeframe.

“When you think you’ll have it done, Kash?” Kennedy asked, with Patel responding, “I think… in the near future?”

“Like before I die?” Kennedy asked, drawing a chuckle from the FBI director, who said, “Senator… we are, we’ve been working on that and we are doing it in a way that protects victims and also doesn’t put out into the ether information that is irrelevant for production for the public, such as CSAM [child sexual abuse material].”

Epstein had extensive ties to celebrities, politicians and business executives, such as L Brands founder Lex Wexner, director Woody Allen, and Prince Andrew, even after his 2008 guilty plea to the sex charges. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also met with Epstein a number of times, as did employees of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with Gates meeting with the disgraced financier as late as 2019 despite concerns his then-wife, Melinda, expressed according to a May 2021 report by the Wall Street Journal.

“I don’t know, I’ll speak to the attorney general about that. I really don’t know,” President Donald Trump told Daily Caller White House correspondent Reagan Reese when she asked about the delay in releasing the files during an April 22 White House event. “I know that we’ve done the RFK, the Kennedy, Martin Luther King is out there very shortly, so we’ll find out. But … we’ve really, really announced, we’re doing them in full transparency.” [source]

A potentially more important question: Can the American public get the unredacted Epstein client list released before President Trump's term is up? Because after he becomes a private citizen, the next administration may not release it especially if they are on the Left or part of the Establishment.

The Epstein saga continues:

• Epstein File Controversy
• Glenn: 5 disturbing takeaways from the Epstein memo
• Dershowitz claims he's seen Epstein files, docs suppressed to protect elites
• Dershowitz to Newsmax: Courts, Not Bondi or DOJ, Have Epstein File Jurisdiction
• The Epstein disappointment
• Are Epstein's "Blackmail Videos" Being Used for Leverage RIGHT NOW? [video]
• RELEASE the Epstein Files … with a caveat [video]
• Withholding the Truth
• This Epstein Situation
• Bill O'Reilly reveals how Trump can END Epstein files nightmare overnight! [video]
• Was he a spy? Epstein and Maxwell's eerie intel agency connections
• Wait, What? If There Was No Epstein Client List Then Why Did NY Court Refuse The Gateway Pundit’s Legal Request for the List Based on an Anonymous ‘John Doe’ Who Was On the List?
• How Did Jeffrey Epstein Make His Money? We Still Don’t Seem To Know
• Biden Adviser Tanden Blames Garland for Epstein File Dithering
• EXCLUSIVE: Leaked FBI Document Reveals Jeffrey Epstein's Secret History as an FBI Informant
• Ghislaine Maxwell Clears Trump in DOJ Interview
• Maxwell: ‘I do not believe’ Epstein ‘died by suicide’
• Breaking: DOJ Releases Audios of Two-Day Interview With Ghislaine Maxwell – Confirms Trump ‘Never’ Acted Inappropriately (LISTEN TO IT)
• Inside Jeffrey Epstein's Spy Industry Connections
• Trump Sues WSJ, Murdoch for $10 Billion Over 'Fake' Epstein Letter