O envolvimento dos EUA com grupos extremistas na Síria não é novidade. Há anos, especialistas e jornalistas afirmam que Washington colaborou diretamente com grupos extremistas para derrubar o governo de Bashar al-Assad. Apesar das claras evidências que comprovam essas alegações, … The post EUA e Israel apoiaram terroristas na Síria – Joe Kent appeared first on Global Research.

Executive Summary: On March 15, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation organized the shipment of eight cargo exports via the Lapis Lazuli Corridor to Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Australia, and the European Union (Ariana News, March 15). The Lapis Lazuli Corridor, which runs from Afghanistan to Europe, was launched in 2018 and The post Turkic States Work to Develop Lapis Lazuli Corridor appeared first on Jamestown.

Pakistan’s PM Sharif has offered to broker a peace deal between the US and Iran (Israel is not a part of this). The post Trump’s War Games Strategy Poised for WWIII Long War appeared first on Global Research.

Executive Summary: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on March 27 that the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense had signed a cooperation agreement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defense. The agreement will open a path for technological cooperation, joint defense projects, and military production. According to Zelenskyy, it could be mutually beneficial for both The post Ukraine–Saudi Arabia Defense Agreement Highlights Demand for Battle-Tested Expertise appeared first on Jamestown.

Até mesmo as autoridades ucranianas começam a admitir a grave crise que afeta o país. Recentemente, o chefe do setor financeiro do regime de Kiev confirmou que o país atravessa uma situação catastrófica, demonstrando profunda preocupação com o futuro do … The post Economia ucraniana ’em colapso’ appeared first on Global Research.

The Litani River, located entirely within Lebanon, extends approximately 170 kilometres, making it one of the country’s longest rivers. It originates in the Bekaa Valley and flows south and west before discharging into the Mediterranean Sea near Tyre. The river … The post Lebanon’s Litani River Water System Has Become a Militarized Hydropolitical Frontier appeared first on Global Research.

A Miami-Dade plea deal closed the 2023 case after an emotional hearing filled with grief from friends and family of 21-year-old Eric Contreras. MIAMI — David Contreras, a 54-year-old Miami-Dade man, pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter and was sentenced to 12 years in prison for fatally shooting his 21-year-old son, Eric, in Kendall in 2023 after the family returned from a trip to Walt Disney World. The plea ended a second-degree murder case that had ... Read more

Pugh left football in 2023 and later spoke publicly about depression and substance abuse, and the university said he earned his UW-Madison degree in 2025. MADISON, Wis. — Former Wisconsin tight end Jack Pugh has died, the university’s football program said Tuesday night in a social media statement, bringing renewed attention to a player whose career ended in 2023 after he spoke publicly about his mental health. The announcement carried weight beyond a normal team ... Read more

Realistic views of the actual battlefield situation in the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict have been sorely lacking in media outlets run by the mainstream propaganda machine. They even set up numerous supposedly “unbiased” sources, including the so-called OSINT websites such as … The post Western Commanders Acknowledge Russia’s Gains in NATO-occupied Ukraine. “Has Russia Already Won”? appeared first on Global Research.

For both Russia and Africa, the time has arrived to face emerging geopolitical realities. With Africa’s engagement, Russia has absolutely adequate information necessary for concrete economic collaboration, well-researched information on wide range of issues currently facing the African continent, as … The post Russia-Africa Summit: Russia’s New Chapter on African Trade and Economic Collaboration appeared first on Global Research.

After one month of sustained attacks — launched under Operation Epic Fury on February 28, 2026 — the tone among critics has shifted dramatically. The post No Kings Day: Knowing Without Feeling appeared first on Global Research.

The European Union continues to consistently implement a course of comprehensive support for Kyiv. The post Brussels, Through the Hands of Kyiv: Trying to Change the Political Balance in Budapest appeared first on Global Research.

Without energy and without a strategic partner, Cuba is currently fighting for its survival. While the population is literally sitting in the dark, the Trump administration is trying to definitively break the socialist project through economic blackmail. What lies ahead … The post Bend or Break: Will Cuba Become Donald Trump’s Next Trophy? appeared first on Global Research.

Under the Trump Administration, the language of empire has also been imbued with a religious fervor that recasts Jesus Christ—not as a peacemaker—but as a mascot for power, conquest and control. The post Hijacking Religion: How the Pentagon Turned the Sermon on the Mount into a War Manual appeared first on Global Research.

Swine that stink and grow larger as they age have small eyes and tend to stare at people The post Surveilling Swine. George Orwell and Real Fake News appeared first on Global Research.

On March 20, 2026, US District Senior Judge Paul Friedman found for The New York Times in a ruling deeming the Pentagon’s media access policy in breach of the US Constitution. Central to the policy was the requirement that all … The post Inspiring the Authentic Journalist: The Pentagon’s Renewed Attack on Press Credentials appeared first on Global Research.

Why are many Latin American countries shutting down nonprofit organizations? Amnesty International claims it has the answer: in every case, it’s part of a drive to restrict human rights and “tear up the social fabric.”  To read this … The post Amnesty International Defends US Regime-change NGOs: Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba appeared first on Global Research.

What follows is a plausible, multi-layered geo-political hypothesis, intended to stimulate and facilitate respectful dialogue about the War against Iran. To read this article in the following languages, click the Translate Website button below the author’s name. Farsi, Русский, Español, … The post The US-Israel War Against Iran: The Need for a New Economic Model appeared first on Global Research.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio have been persistently working to put the US-Indian relationship back on track. Their conversation on Friday on the sidelines of the G7 meeting at Abbaye des Vaux-de-Cernay, … The post US Offers India Pivotal Role in Hormuz Strait. G-7 Plan appeared first on Global Research.

America’s largest labor federation is calling on the global private equity firm Apollo Global Management to investigate worker surveillance, wrongful terminations, and intimidation of immigrant workers at its subsidiaries. The union is also sounding the alarm over Apollo CEO Mark Rowan’s connections to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, as well as to President Donald Trump’s

The effort to lift sanctions on a Russian civil organization gained new momentum after a parliamentary delegation from Moscow met with members of the United States Congress in Washington. The focus of the discussions was on removing restrictions imposed on … The post Dialogue with the US on Unsanctioning Russian NGO a Timely Step Towards Normalization appeared first on Global Research.

The past several decades have been turbulent ones for the world system: the financial crisis, the rise of new middle powers in the Global South, and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, to name a few, have placed greater strain on the postwar order than at any other time in its history. Yet despite growing

The Strait of Hormuz remains shuttered from every western country with perhaps the exception of Spain. As officials walk out of military pow-wows shaking their heads in disgust, it appears Hegseth’s advisors have zero strategy with regard to a ground … The post The Trump Economic Effect: “Make America’s Billionaires Bigger Again” (MABBA) appeared first on Global Research.

Just a few hours ago, President Trump has announced he will shortly speak to the Nation about progress in Iran. What will he talk about? Could it be about a possible US invasion of Kharg Island, where most of Iran’s … The post Iran – A Failed Strategy and Economics of War appeared first on Global Research.

The Slavneft-YANOS oil refinery in Russia’s Yaroslavl Region, which is among its top five largest and capable of refining 15 million tons of oil per year, was reportedly hit by Ukrainian drones early Saturday morning. This follows last week’s bombing … The post Ukraine’s Strikes Against Russian Oil Refineries Risk Worsening the Global Energy Crisis appeared first on Global Research.

Countries that once dismissed Israeli warnings about Iran are now reassessing the threat, the prime minister said. The post Netanyahu says Israel forming regional alliances with Arab states to counter Iran appeared first on World Israel News.

Countries that once dismissed Israeli warnings about Iran are now reassessing the threat, the prime minister said. The post Netanyahu says Israel forming regional alliances with Arab states to counter Iran appeared first on World Israel News.

In her high-profile campaign for Michigan’s Democratic Senate nomination, Mallory McMorrow has suddenly gone viral with an explainer video depicting herself as a crusader against surveillance pricing. It’s a solid video boosted by legacy media and online lefty groups, and it touts a crucial cause pioneered by leaders like former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan as well as by state

Pappert rejected constitutional challenges raised against the request and dismissed comparisons to historical persecution as 'unfortunate and inappropriate.' The post U of Penn must comply with Trump’s request for information on Jewish groups, judge rules appeared first on World Israel News.

Pappert rejected constitutional challenges raised against the request and dismissed comparisons to historical persecution as 'unfortunate and inappropriate.' The post U of Penn must comply with Trump’s request for information on Jewish groups, judge rules appeared first on World Israel News.

Bethlehem-born writer-director Annemarie Jacir is at the cutting edge of a new generation of Palestinian filmmakers breaking through to Western audiences and beyond with undeniably powerful movies. Jacir’s 2008 Salt of this Sea received two nominations at the Cannes Film Festival, while her 2012 Palestinian refugee drama, When I Saw You, costarring Saleh Bakri, won

The IRGC identified 18 companies in its threat, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel, IBM, Tesla, and Boeing The post IRGC threatens to attack major US companies appeared first on World Israel News.

The IRGC identified 18 companies in its threat, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel, IBM, Tesla, and Boeing The post IRGC threatens to attack major US companies appeared first on World Israel News.

On Holy Wednesday, the day prior to the Last Supper, Jesus lodged in Bethany at the home of Simon the Leper on the southern slope of the Mount of Olives. While there, a woman, probably Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, anointed Jesus with spikenard—gesturing to and declaring Jesus’ messianic and kingly character. There’s some confusion as to precisely who all the key players are, including the actual identity of the woman and whether Simon and Lazarus are really one and the same. There are also questions as to just how many anointings Jesus enjoyed—or was subjected to—in Bethany over the course of his various sojourns there and how—and also whether-—to reconcile similar accounts across the gospels of what might be the same events. Whatever the truth of the various details, one of Holy Wednesday’s most significant features is that it is the day Judas decided to betray Jesus. Also, and because of this, Holy Wednesday provides a profound testimony of the depths of Divine love. Because of this betrayal, Holy Wednesday is also known as Spy Wednesday, gesturing to an apparent etymological correspondence between “spy” and “ambush,” or “ensnarement” and highlighting Judas’ clandestine designs. The woman’s anointing of Jesus appears to have been a trigger for Judas. Indignant, perhaps, at what he perceived Jesus’ indulgence of Mary and the wasteful misuse of precious oil—or, maybe more likely, because of his annoyance that he wouldn’t be able to embezzle the proceeds—Judas slipped away to the chief priests and offered to help them arrest Jesus. Jesus knew all this of course. That he knew this is evidenced in several things he will say at the Last Supper, indications that he knows Judas has already decided to turn him over, despite surely knowing that the chief priests would have Jesus killed. That Jesus knows all this and yet will still clean Judas’ feet prior to their last meal together is striking. No, staggering is probably closer to the mark. I stressed in Holy Monday’s reflection that Jesus is no pacifist, but he surely is, as many warriors are, a man of peace. Taking this further, or rather all the way back, we realize we’ve seen such things before. In the beginning, as wrought form and content from what was formless and void, it is shocking to consider that God—omniscient—would nevertheless choose to bring humanity into being despite knowing human beings would betray his son, slander him, condemn him, beat him, flail the flesh from his frame, and torment him in near-countless other ways before finally, almost mercifully, nailing him to a tree until dead. I have always found the depths of that kind of love difficult to comprehend. Outside of depictions drawn directly from the gospels, possibly the best comprehensive depiction of this aspect of divine love that I have encountered is found in an unexpected place: Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 film Arrival. The storyline is straightforward: gigantic, watermelon-seed-shaped spaceships touch down at 12 locations across the globe and a team of linguists race against time to unravel the purpose of the aliens’ arrival before increasingly panicked world governments lash out in a global conflagration. I accept that on the surface this seems a strange vehicle for the depiction of divine love. Sure, Arrival is a sci-fi flick about squid-like inter-planetary visitors who come to earth and try to communicate with humanity for the purpose of bestowing upon us some kind of gift—whether some wonderous technology or terrible weapon we do not know. But that’s only a gross description of its major plot devices. Arrival is no more about those things than The Martian was about a poor chump who missed his ride home. Arrival is about grief—an asphyxiating, crippling, overwhelming kind of grief—and about time, communication, empathy, free will, and, most emphatically, love. A love so profoundly abiding that it breaks your heart. Given its source material is a Ted Chiang short novella, it might not be entirely inadvertent that the film provides a God’s eye view of the world. It’s a difficult film to discuss without spoilers—and the great reveal of Arrival really deserves to be experienced raw. I will only say that at center stage is the brilliant heroine Louise Banks, a linguist tasked with communicating with the visitors sufficiently enough to answer a simple question: What do they want? And while it turns out that the aliens have no interest in colonizing or harvesting or harming us in any way, Louise really is a heroine: as in, for a reason I won’t reveal, she’s possibly the most courageous character I’ve ever seen portrayed in film. In the course of interacting with the aliens, Louise’s efforts to learn their language re-wires her brain and gives her an extraordinary capacity to slip beyond sequential time. She doesn’t gain omniscience exactly, but a profound kind of foreknowledge—though that is probably exactly the wrong word. She develops something more like…precognitive memories of things that haven’t happened yet. In any case, she discovers enough—remembers enough—about what lies ahead that she knows she will someday confront a terrible choice. On offer will be the extraordinary joy of a relationship with someone who will mean so very much to her and who will then be terribly ripped away. Faced with the prospect of such an admixture of intoxicating joy and soul-shattering sorrow, Louise bravely chooses to enter into that joyful grief rather than to spare herself—deprive herself really—and walk away. She chooses the Good over the secure. While we already have it on good authority that not all tears are an evil, I cannot reflect on her courage without swallowing hard on the grief that threatens to rise in my throat. I flatter myself to hope I could have such courage within me. This is the point of connection. In the cradle garden, God created human beings so that we might love as He loves—both one another and God Himself. To make this love possible, God was required to construct humanity with moral freedom—for love is free or it is not love. Because the actions of free beings can never be perfectly determined by anything else, this love came with a cost: risk. The risk was the possibility that human beings might revolt against God’s love. Spoiler: we did. I did. So did you. That we did is mirrored in the ongoing tug between two fundamentally conflicting kinds of human desire: cupiditas, which enshrines a form of self-love and tends toward the domination of others, and caritas, an orientation to the good and love of the neighbor. As Jean Elshtain used to put it, this latter kind of love includes a recognition of one’s own interdependencies, an admission able to be made without fear by also recognizing that dependence on others is not a diminution but rather an enrichment of self. To love anything is to risk heartbreak. To love deeply is to hazard being busted in half and to choke in despair. Augustine knew this. He knew that human relationships are fraught with peril. “Who would be capable of listing the number and the gravity of the ills,” he rhetorically asked, “which abound in human society?” These perils, Augustine understood, quoting from a then-popular comedy, maximize within the family sphere: “I married a wife; and misery I found! Children were born; and they increased my cares.” It is not that a wife and children jeopardize happiness. It is that the wife and the children help create that happiness and the prospect of their loss means the carting away of that happiness as well. To love is to risk. And the willingness to risk is a measure of love. At the heart of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt posits her fundamental claim that the opposite of totalitarianism is love of the other; not a love that loves the value of the object in view—nor only so long as it remains valuable—but a love that simply loves absolutely. She attributes the insight to Augustine: This mere existence, that is, all that which is mysteriously given to us at birth and which includes the shape of our bodies and the talents of our minds, can be adequately dealt with only by the unpredictable hazards of friend-ship and sympathy, or by the great and incalculable grace of love, which says with Augustine, ‘Volo ut sis’ [I want you to be], without being able to give any particular reason for such supreme and unsurpassable affirmation. “I want you to be” is a profound affirmation of love. It endorses the ontological distance between subject and object. I want you to be. Love is not satisfied with a replication of the self. Love desires that the other exists, independent and free. It is a heavy mandate not just for personal relationships, but for the character of pluralistic political communities as well. In antipodal opposition to this is the totalitarian will. Elsewhere in her book, Arendt will describe totalitarianism as a will to “domination” striving to “make people anonymous” and “interchangeable.” It is a solipsistic hunger seeking the “destruction of individuality.” In the totalitarian appetite, there can be no “you” to love. Holy Week confirms that Divine Love isn’t sentimental. God “wants us to be” whatever the costs—even as He knew the costs. Of course, He also loves us far too much to let us “be” just any old way. He knows that human beings require a particular kind of moral ecology in order to flourish. In his ruminations on 1st John, Augustine makes this assertion this way: You must above all avoid thinking of love as a poor, inactive thing, wanting no more than a sort of gentle mildness for its keeping, or even a careless indifference…. You are not to suppose that you… love your son when you relax your discipline over him, or love your neighbor when you never find fault with him. That is not love. From this we gather that correction—punishment—can be consistent with love. All of classical Christian just war thinking hinges on this. War can be an expression of love in the last resort. How we fight those we fight can express this love as well. The Eastern Orthodox theologian Thomas Hopko put the same thoughts this way: “The almighty God reveals Himself as an infinitely humble, totally self-emptying and absolutely ruthless and relentless lover of sinners.” And yet it remains the measure of this love that God will not overrule us. He wants us to be and He wants us to want Him to be. But he will not force it. The great Czech priest, philosopher, and dissident Tomáš Halík—who stood against the totalitarian will—says it well: [God’s] respect for the gift of freedom—the greatest gift that we receive from our nature—means that his explicit presence in my life (my encounter with him in faith and dwelling with him in love) presupposes and requires that yearning “I want.” God has no wish to break his way into our hearts like an uninvited guest. He wants to enter through the gate of freedom, the gate of yearning love. As the mystics would say: God himself yearns for our yearning. The catechetical inquiry regarding the chief end of man is properly resolved with the assertion that man’s primary purpose is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. We can safely presuppose however that this is only true when humanity is the subject. When we are speaking of the Divine perspective it is surely more true to say that our chief purpose—the end for which we were created—is, in the first place, so that God might enjoy us and know us forever. A part of me trembles to say this, lest the lighting strike—I know it might smack of blasphemy—but I cannot see it any other way. This has nothing immediately to do with our own worth—we do not directly deserve this Holy regard (though the fact of the crucifixion suggests God finds us very valuable indeed). Rather, God loves us because God loves to love. And His love makes us worthy of being loved. I think that’s just how love works. I do not know how much divine omniscience makes any of this easier to bear. Precisely how all-knowingness and human freedom intersect is a mystery too deep for me to plumb. And I cannot know what can be known for certain and how much is only an endless knowing of all the near limitless possibilities. In any case, whether Jesus had any certainty in Judas’ final end when they broke their embrace in the Garden—or for that matter, whether he had any certainty in my own when he hung on that cross for me—we are not told. But I can only conclude that while we have it on good authority that there is no greater love than when a man lays down his life for a friend, Christ’s treatment of his enemies suggests that strictly speaking this might not be precisely true.

Hidden on the eighth floor of a white-gray building, with a massive “For Rent” sign above the door, is Welcome Collective, one of Montreal’s many clinics dedicated to supporting the thousands of refugee claimants who call the city home. It is also where Sara, a mother of three originally from Morocco, sought help after the

Millions of Jews around the world wait in earnest as the holiday of Passover approaches, commemmorating the exodus of the Israelites from their enslavement in Egypt thousands of years ago. The post WATCH: AI video shows the story of Exodus like never before appeared first on World Israel News.

Millions of Jews around the world wait in earnest as the holiday of Passover approaches, commemmorating the exodus of the Israelites from their enslavement in Egypt thousands of years ago. The post WATCH: AI video shows the story of Exodus like never before appeared first on World Israel News.

Law enforcement has deemed the fires an antisemitic attack. The post Mayor of Bath, England, resigns after amplifying idea that Jewish ambulance arson was a ‘false flag’ attack appeared first on World Israel News.

Law enforcement has deemed the fires an antisemitic attack. The post Mayor of Bath, England, resigns after amplifying idea that Jewish ambulance arson was a ‘false flag’ attack appeared first on World Israel News.

But adaptation has its limits. How does anyone truly adapt to sirens after midnight? The post Between sirens and coffee cups, Jerusalem refuses to stop moving appeared first on World Israel News.

But adaptation has its limits. How does anyone truly adapt to sirens after midnight? The post Between sirens and coffee cups, Jerusalem refuses to stop moving appeared first on World Israel News.

The media is a pillar of democracy; without it, accountability becomes almost impossible. It is the public’s eyes and ears, the foremost critic of power and the vanguard of truth. But what happens when the media is co-opted by the … The post Your Support Keeps Truth Alive. Donate to Global Research appeared first on Global Research.

U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee wished a Happy Passover to Jews around the world, highlighting their attentiveness to history and what that means for their future. The post WATCH: Huckabee sends Passover greetings to Jews worldwide appeared first on World Israel News.

U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee wished a Happy Passover to Jews around the world, highlighting their attentiveness to history and what that means for their future. The post WATCH: Huckabee sends Passover greetings to Jews worldwide appeared first on World Israel News.

Syrian president says his country will not get involved in Iran war unless directly attacked, claims border talks with Israel were on the verge of a breakthrough until Israel abruptly cut negotiations short. The post Syria: Israel drops out of border talks just before breakthrough appeared first on World Israel News.

Syrian president says his country will not get involved in Iran war unless directly attacked, claims border talks with Israel were on the verge of a breakthrough until Israel abruptly cut negotiations short. The post Syria: Israel drops out of border talks just before breakthrough appeared first on World Israel News.

One of the most appalling aspects of the Gaza genocide — besides its near-unprecedented slaughter of children and other innocents and its near-obliteration from existence of an entire society, unpparalleled in the modern era — is that officials in both the United States and Israel were overtly hoping to make it the new, horrifying standard

The U.S. military has struck more than 11,000 targets over the past 30 days. The post Iranian missile strikes fall to lowest level seen during war, Hegseth says appeared first on World Israel News.

The U.S. military has struck more than 11,000 targets over the past 30 days. The post Iranian missile strikes fall to lowest level seen during war, Hegseth says appeared first on World Israel News.

IDF troops have begun pushing farther into Lebanon, destroying Hezbollah infrastructure, eliminating terror cells, and confiscating weapons, which soldiers report they find in nearly every home. The post WATCH: IDF troops begin expanding security zone in south Lebanon appeared first on World Israel News.

IDF troops have begun pushing farther into Lebanon, destroying Hezbollah infrastructure, eliminating terror cells, and confiscating weapons, which soldiers report they find in nearly every home. The post WATCH: IDF troops begin expanding security zone in south Lebanon appeared first on World Israel News.

Star-studded think tank launches, defection rumours and ‘growing pains’ – a week inside the ascendant Green Party

Authorities say it will be restricted to 50 men in person and broadcast live on the internet. The post Passover priestly blessing at Western Wall restricted due to war appeared first on World Israel News.

Authorities say it will be restricted to 50 men in person and broadcast live on the internet. The post Passover priestly blessing at Western Wall restricted due to war appeared first on World Israel News.

President Trump slams French government for barring US planes carrying weapons to Israel as Spain and Italy block shipments for Iran war. The post Trump rips France for blocking arms shipments to Israel appeared first on World Israel News.

President Trump slams French government for barring US planes carrying weapons to Israel as Spain and Italy block shipments for Iran war. The post Trump rips France for blocking arms shipments to Israel appeared first on World Israel News.

Jewish New Yorkers and supporters of Israel have been worried that Mamdani will weaponize his power as mayor to enact anti-Israel and antisemitic policies. The post New York’s Bruce Blakeman vows to protect Jews, combat anti-Israel policies if elected governor appeared first on World Israel News.

Jewish New Yorkers and supporters of Israel have been worried that Mamdani will weaponize his power as mayor to enact anti-Israel and antisemitic policies. The post New York’s Bruce Blakeman vows to protect Jews, combat anti-Israel policies if elected governor appeared first on World Israel News.

Sharona, the mother of fallen IDF Captain Noam Madmoni, 22, delivered a heart-wrenching eulogy recounting the agonizing moment she refused to open her door to IDF notification officers. The post WATCH: Bereaved mother recalls moment she learned of her son’s death appeared first on World Israel News.

Sharona, the mother of fallen IDF Captain Noam Madmoni, 22, delivered a heart-wrenching eulogy recounting the agonizing moment she refused to open her door to IDF notification officers. The post WATCH: Bereaved mother recalls moment she learned of her son’s death appeared first on World Israel News.

The U.S. blames Kataib Hezbollah, which is an Iranian-aligned militia operating in Iraq, as the group believed to be behind the abduction. The post Iran-linked militia kidnaps American journalist in Baghdad appeared first on World Israel News.

The U.S. blames Kataib Hezbollah, which is an Iranian-aligned militia operating in Iraq, as the group believed to be behind the abduction. The post Iran-linked militia kidnaps American journalist in Baghdad appeared first on World Israel News.

On Tuesday morning alone, Iran launched some 10 ballistic missiles at Israel. The post Iranian missile fragment hits near Ukrainian Embassy in Tel Aviv appeared first on World Israel News.

On Tuesday morning alone, Iran launched some 10 ballistic missiles at Israel. The post Iranian missile fragment hits near Ukrainian Embassy in Tel Aviv appeared first on World Israel News.

To turn the tide and address AI threats, African copyright frameworks need to be revised.

[This article by CRG Research Associate F. William Engdahl was first published by GR in December 2021.] Amid the 2020 global covid lockdowns and economic dislocations it has caused, Klaus Schwab, a previously low-profile founder of a Swiss-based business … The post The Sinister Convergence of Klaus Schwab’s “Great Reset” with the Vatican and “Liberation Theology” appeared first on Global Research.

[We repost this article by the late Prof. Joseph H. Chung, first published by GR in February 2023. Prof. Chung was an indefatigable voice on the politics of Asia-Pacific, especially on the dynamics of the Korean Peninsula.] *** This book … The post Power and Primacy: A History of Western Intervention in the Asia-Pacific appeared first on Global Research.

Beneath the “shock and awe” geopolitics of the Bush- Blair “humanitarian crusade”, Felicity Arbuthnot reflects on the indescribable barbarity of the 2004 Fallujah massacre, resulting in countless deaths and destruction. And it has happened ever since. They are killing our … The post “God’s Wars”: “Looking into the Silence to Find the Answers” appeared first on Global Research.

Global Research is a reader-supported independent media. Our longstanding commitment is to convey the truth.  Today, independent media is under attack. Global Research is particularly excluded from search engines and shadow-banned on major social media platforms. To broaden our reach, … The post Global Research Is Looking for Volunteers appeared first on Global Research.

Police say Molly Richards, 31, vanished after a trip linked to South Dakota, and investigators are tracing evidence across Texas, Oklahoma and South Dakota while her remains have not been found. DENTON, Texas — A 53-year-old North Texas man has been charged with murder in the disappearance of 31-year-old Molly Richards, a woman police say had been living with him before she vanished late last year during a trip tied to South Dakota. The charge ... Read more

As part of Global Research’s projects, the GR Archives contain some of our very first and oldest news articles, in-depth reports and analyses since 2001, barely covered by the mainstream media.  The GR Archives provide a rich and accessible source … The post More Articles in GR Archives appeared first on Global Research.

Authorities say the 15-year-old brought a .357 revolver from home, and investigators are still trying to determine a motive. BULVERDE, Texas — A 15-year-old student shot a teacher at Hill Country College Preparatory High School on Monday morning, then fatally shot himself before classes began, authorities said, sending the small Comal ISD campus into lockdown and parents into a long wait for reunification. The shooting shook a campus built around advanced academics and college preparation ... Read more

Executive Summary: On March 5, the Investigative Committee of Russia detained Ruslan Tsalikov, the former first deputy minister of defense of Russia. Tsalikov has arguably been Russian Secretary of the Security Council Sergei Shoigu’s closest associate throughout his career. The committee is charging him with organizing a criminal organization whose members embezzled state funds between The post Tsalikov’s Detention Marks Major Blow to Shoigu’s Inner Circle  appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: The effect of the conflict in Iran has widened beyond the combatants to Central Asia and the South Caucasus. For years, these countries have been pursuing overland transport links with Iran. Iran has been intensifying its transport diplomacy with Central Asia for more than a decade to mitigate international sanctions and strengthen cooperation, The post Iran Conflict Derails Eurasian Transport Development appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: Russia’s once powerful railways once dominated both the entire Soviet space and the Soviet empire abroad. They are now at the point of collapse, however, both domestically and internationally. Within the Russian Federation, Russian Rail is suffering from sanctions, aging equipment, and a lack of investment that is reducing its effectiveness in tying The post Russia at Risk of Losing Control of Railways in Armenia appeared first on Jamestown.

At the 2026 Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a rousing speech that was well-received both by his fellow Republicans and the Europeans. The civilizational themes hit upon by Rubio were grandiose as possible, emphasizing the unbreakable bonds between Europe and the United States “Forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.”  Less well-received was Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s appearances in Germany that same week, where, among other remarks, she derided Rubio’s speech as “a pure appeal to Western culture.” She went on,  “I think it’s also important to note how thin that foundation is. Culture is changing. Culture [has] always changed. Culture for the entire history of human civilization has been a fluid, evolving thing that is a response to the conditions that we live in. And so they want to take this mantle of culture. At the end of the day though, you know, it is very thin. And so the response that we have to have is again—it’s material. It’s class-based.” When it comes to AOC’s assertion that Western civilization is an unhelpful myth which must be put aside in favor of her materialist vision of politics, there are two seemingly contradictory truths to be held in tension:  The concept of “Western civilization” really does lack a firm definition. I’m not pedantically referring here to the way that designers of Western civ curricula will inevitably quibble around the margins. Instead, I mean that there is no political program or set of moral beliefs that obviously follow any such curricula.   Even as Western civilization defies precise definition, it is still immensely useful as an aesthetic signifier and rallying cry for people with very different philosophical precepts to nevertheless be united by their shared devotion to a set of practical policy goals. To be blunt, when conservatives appeal to “Western civilization,” they are referring to everything they like to ever come out of Europe and nothing they don’t like, with the line drawn by working backwards from predetermined ideological conclusions.  To prove this point, we can observe the difficulty of selecting a representative group of Western thinkers and delineating between those we value for the sake of intellectual growth and those whose ideas we actually want to inform the moral and political conscience of our nation. This is to say, whom do we read for pedagogical purposes versus whom do we read but also lionize as integral to our civilizational self-understanding? Over the last several hundred years we might take Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Gramsci, Sartre, and MacIntyre as a representative set of intellectuals without which the Western canon could not be complete. And yet, for some of these thinkers their ideas have an ambivalent relationship at best to Rubio’s description of the West (Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Sartre) while others (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Gramsci) would be actively opposed to it. In MacIntyre’s case, he was a Catholic steeped in Thomism, yet also an avowed Marxist who wanted nothing to do with “the West”—MacIntyre may be on the syllabus, but does he get a building named after him? To take another edge case, we might ask: Is Russia part of Western civilization? On one hand, it’s impossible to imagine the canon without Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Andrei Rublev. Yet, Russia has always had an oppressive, autocratic government inimical to the freedom and equality integral to the West. Do thinkers who have upheld Russian authoritarianism such as Ivan Ilyin, Vladimir Lenin, and Alexander Dugin count as legitimate representatives of Western civilization? How can we be consistent in claiming all the Russians we like as part of the West while excluding all those we don’t?  There are yet more yawning chasms of disagreement over the rightful heirs to the West (integralists, postliberals, neo-reactionaries), but suffice to say that, from a purely analytical perspective, this phrase is so capacious as to verge on meaningless. Does Western civilization lend itself to democracy and liberalism or authoritarianism and theocracy? All of the above, and then some. F.A. Hayek, noted libertarian economist, once described conservatives (Western civilization appreciators), in contrast to classical liberals, as being forced to resort “so frequently” to “mysticism” to defend their positions, a critique conservatives would do well to consider.  Defenders of the West face a double bind. One option entails acknowledging that, by “Western civilization,” what’s really meant is Anglo-American classical liberalism, an admission which significantly truncates the horizon of acceptable discourse. The other is to embrace an understanding of Western civilization that is, to use a Chestertonian phrase, so open-minded that our brains fall out. While the former necessarily comes with certain self-imposed epistemic limitations, the latter creates an ouroboros situation where it’s not even clear why the West is worth preserving.  One solution to this problem is to take Christianity specifically as the essence of Western civilization—preferring terms like Christendom, Christian civilization, and Judeo-Christian civilization which strike nearly the same tone but with greater clarity. Morally, at the heart of these various phrases is a Christian humanism that can be summarized by two contentions.  First, that persons cannot be reduced to their material circumstances or biological functioning and therefore cannot be absolved of moral responsibility. Whether God worked through Darwinian evolution or some other means, we are not merely animals as such but beings imprinted with the image of divinity (imago dei) and thus possess free will and moral responsibility. The second follows from the first: that collectivism, whether communist or fascist, is categorically wrong because it treats persons as means to the end of a better world instead of ends in themselves. This all having been said, there is a sense in which the capaciousness of Western civilization is actually a strength rather than a weakness. While terms like Christian humanism or Christian civilization may be preferable, the truth is that these terms are not broad enough to sustain the ecumenism necessary for a broad political movement. This is evident by the fact that donors are not rushing to empty their wallets in defense of “Christian humanism,” and if someone wants to support “Christian civilization” they will probably just donate to their church.  “Western civilization,” in contrast, functions as a Rorschach test to many different groups: to libertarians, anti-collectivism and small government; to foreign policy hawks (like Rubio), a means of uniting disparate nations against a common foe; to Christians, a positive reference to their spiritual heritage; and to Jews, a way to relate to European civilization that respects their contributions without asking them to convert. Each of these groups is attracted to the idea of Western civilization from different philosophical precepts, yet in practice arrive at many of the same conclusions. There are others in the conservative movement who, without necessarily being religious, still ascribe to something close to the imago dei—a perspective which leads them to be good coalition partners, if not coreligionists. C.S. Lewis once analogized Christianity to a house with a hallway connecting to many rooms, the hallway representing “mere Christianity” and the rooms particular denominations. A similar analogy could be drawn for Western civilization, where one should not be a Western civilizationist as such, but rather acknowledge their particular beliefs under the roof of Western civ. There’s something to be said about this conception of Western civilization as mirroring the notion of “fusionism” known to many on the center-right. The more one studies the history of National Review and its founder, Bill Buckley, along with Frank Meyer, Brent Bozell, Russell Kirk, and others, the more one realizes how stark the disagreements among these people were over the meaning of Western conservatism. Nevertheless, they persisted in their coalition because it was apparent that, whatever their differences, there was more to unite than to divide them. The same could be said of the American founding, whose laborers included orthodox Christians, heterodox Christians, and deists—and yet, even from significantly different starting points, they still designed a form of government currently in operation longer than any other. Whether we’re discussing the idea of Western civilization or the essence of America, it works better in practice than in theory.  In conclusion, Western civilization deserves two cheers, not for its clarity of meaning but for its usefulness. Even so, Christians must bear in mind the ways in which their religion is and is not synonymous with Western civilization—recalling how in St. Augustine’s own time he witnessed the demise of Rome, and yet did not despair owing to his faith in God. Amen.

Executive Summary: The notion that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) remains excessively dependent on foreign energy imports has gained continued traction in Western policy discourse. Some analysts argue that U.S. military action against Iran would significantly undermine the PRC’s energy security, while others suggest that a U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Malacca The post The Myth of the PRC’s Overseas Energy Vulnerability appeared first on Jamestown.

Sentencing is set for June after prosecutors said DNA linked him to the baby born to his 11-year-old stepdaughter. MUSKOGEE, Okla. — Dustin Joel Walker pleaded guilty March 26 to sexually abusing his 11-year-old stepdaughter and neglecting children in his home after prosecutors said the girl gave birth to a full-term baby there without prenatal care, leaving a judge to decide how long he will serve in prison. The guilty plea, entered without a sentencing ... Read more

Investigators say a Harnett County math teacher was arrested after deputies received a report about illegal substances at Overhills High School. SPRING LAKE, N.C. — A 33-year-old math teacher at Overhills High School has been charged after Harnett County deputies said they found marijuana, related paraphernalia and a weapon on educational property following a report of illegal substances on campus. The case has drawn unusual attention because it involves a teacher, an active high school ... Read more

The Wisconsin case grew from a school report to police into multiple criminal charges, a suspension without pay and an ongoing investigation. EAU CLAIRE, Wis. — A 22-year-old North High School special education teacher has been charged after investigators said she had sexual contact with two minor students, a case that began with a school report and now includes multiple felony counts, a cash bond and a May court hearing. The case matters beyond one ... Read more

There is a certain kind of man who, upon being told that people are marching in the streets with signs reading “No Kings,” responds by announcing plans to build a glittering glass skyscraper-palace, complete with golden idols of himself. Civilization may yet survive, but irony clearly has not. That man is, of course, President Donald

In his inaugural speech on March 12, Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, announced that “new fronts” would be opened in Tehran’s war against the United States and Israel. Khamenei singled out Yemen’s “brave and faithful” Houthi movement, which forms part of a now-reduced resistance coalition of Iraqi and Lebanese militia fighting to “shorten the

While international attention is focused on the US-Israeli war on Iran, violence and displacement in the West Bank continue to intensify, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza persists. One of the major groups documenting this violence is the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, which has denounced an ongoing genocide against Palestinians. In an interview with

The events of Holy Tuesday follow directly from Monday’s temple clearing, during which, among much else, Jesus manifest his messianic claims. Questioning his right to do such things, the Pharisees strove to discredit his authority. Holy Tuesday depicts the multiple conspiracies to entangle Jesus, efforts to find him in contempt of legal, theological, or scriptural norms. Jesus dealt deftly with each. On the question of to whom allegiance is owed—Caesar or God—Jesus reminded his challengers that spheres of authority, both political and spiritual, had long been established by God thereby giving the people of God duo obligations, concrete responsibilities in each sphere. On other questions touching doctrinal issues, Jesus turned the tables to reveal his challengers’ own lack of theological understanding and their basic ignorance of scripture. At every turn, Christ proved that it was these Pharisees, and not himself, who were the baddies, peddling a false faith focused on individual piety and privilege to the neglect of loving God and neighbor. I have written elsewhere of the idea of sonship in scripture. T,L,D,R: sonship in the Hebraic mind suggests that someone possesses the characteristics of the thing signified. When in the Sermon on the Mount peacemakers are called the “sons of God,” the idea is that peacemakers manifest the character of the Divine. With this in mind, and in view of the aggression of Jesus’ detractors on this day, Holy Tuesday can be understood as the beginning of the final demarcation of sides, separating those who in their love of God could genuinely be called His people, and those who in their intractable devotion to self-love could, finally, only be understood as His enemies. That anyone would choose enmity against him was a source of grief to the Messiah, as clearly evidenced by his lamentation over the capital city: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Christ understood that the people’s lack of faith would render them subject to a judgment they were neither prepared to endure nor capable of imagining. He prophesied to his disciples that his own clearing of the temple was nothing compared to what the Romans would do a short time hence. On that grim day—it would be in the year 70 AD—the Romans would besiege the city of Jerusalem. It would be a catastrophe for the people of God. When the city finally fell, the historians tell us that the triumphant Romans rushed through streets in which the Jewish dead were stacked like cordwood. The looting, and raping, and killing were devastating. If the Jewish historian Josephus’ tally is accurate, more than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed. Bitterly, a part of the reason so many were killed is that destruction took place over Passover when, once again, and despite ongoing war between the Romans and the Jews, pilgrims from the Jewish diaspora nevertheless journeyed to Jerusalem to visit the temple and were trapped by the siege. When the city was subdued, armed rebels and frail citizens alike were put to death. Nearly 100,000 were enslaved. The temple would be taken down stone by stone and the entirety of the Temple Mount set ablaze. In the aftermath, of the city itself, Josephus writes: And truly, the very view itself was a melancholy thing; for those places which were adorned with trees and pleasant gardens, were now become desolate country every way, and its trees were all cut down. Nor could any foreigner that had formerly seen Judaea and the most beautiful suburbs of the city, and now saw it as a desert, but lament and mourn sadly at so great a change. For the war had laid all signs of beauty quite waste. Nor had anyone who had known the place before, had come on a sudden to it now, would he have known it again. But though he [a foreigner] were at the city itself, yet would he have inquired for it. And thus began a second period of exile. For the next 1900 years, no Jewish authority would hold sway over the land given to Abraham. Of the catastrophe, a traditional Jewish prayer recognizes—consistent with biblical precedence—that the punishment of Rome was but a proxy for Divine judgment: “Because of our sins we were exiled from our country and banished from our land.” Following this dire prophecy, Jesus and his disciples retreated to the Mount of Olives, where he instructed them through a number of parables, each illustrating the need for his disciples to be prepared for what was facing them, both in the immediate days to come and in the longer—if truncated—reach of their own lives. Despite the horrors that were to befall them, Jesus implores them to endure, anchoring their hope in the prospects of his own future return. After these parabolic exhortations, and lest they not fully apprehend the criticality of what he is saying, Jesus finally makes plain to them his own impending death: “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man is to be delivered up for crucifixion.” In the shadow of this terrible news, his purposes this day are revealed: preparation, endurance, and hope are three of the great themes of Holy Tuesday. These have been enduring themes throughout Jewish history. One might think of the prophet Jeremiah. More than 500 years before the destruction of the second temple of Jesus’ day, the first was about to fall. Jeremiah was in besieged Jerusalem, only this time it was Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian army surrounding the city. They had overrun the countryside and would soon overrun the city. Jerusalem would burn, its walls and temple brought down. The Jews would be scattered. Jeremiah knew all this. The Lord had spoken the judgment clearly. And so, with the din of the invading hordes growing closer just beyond the city walls, what did Jeremiah do? Well, in obedience to a Divine command he bought land in Anathoth, a stone’s throw from Jerusalem and already in Chaldean hands. Entirely sober, Jeremiah agreed to the terms of the purchase, signed the deed, put his seal on the contract, paid his shekels, and sealed the deed in a clay jar. Yes, God had promised Jeremiah that the Jews would someday return to the land. No, God did not promise Jeremiah he would. And he never did. The imagery surrounding Jeremiah’s purchase reminds me of the revolt of Sonderkommando—or special detail—in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The special detail was a group of Jewish prisoners forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria. In the fall of 1944, Auschwitz was operating at its greatest capacity as it strove to engulf the final remnants of Hungarian Jews, the last of European Jewry to be given up to the Nazis. In October of that year, the Sonderkommando responsible for the Krematoria IV decided to revolt. “Secret bearers,” they knew they would follow the last victims in certain death. And, so, like Jeremiah, they sealed documents in jars and buried them in the earth. In this case, the documents were important descriptions of camp life and records of Nazi atrocities. They then gathered together stolen explosives they had stockpiled and destroyed their crematorium. Over 250 prisoners would be killed, in relatively quick fashion, in the brief revolt that followed. Another 200 were killed in reprisal. Krematoria IV would never operate again. Not incidentally, a transport of Jews who were at that moment of the uprising being crammed into the gas chamber of Krematoria III were removed from the chamber and put on lockdown. At least some of those Jews survived the holocaust (a story told here). Some time after the war’s end, the buried jar was uncovered. Some time shortly after that, a Jewish nation again returned to the promised land. Salient in both cases is the quality of hope on display. Hope is a compound, made up of both expectation and desire. To expect something to happen but to have no desire for it is not, of course, hope—it is something more like dread. On the other hand, to desire something but to have no real expectation that you will ever possess it is also not hope, but either despair or wishful thinking. Nor is it a matter of hope to strive for something easily gotten. Hope, according to Thomas Aquinas, is born from the desire for something good that is “difficult but possible to attain.” Thomas further observed that the prospects for hope on these narrow terms are amplified when we do not strive alone. Sometimes, friends make attainment of our aspirations possible in ways we that might not have been possible if we were on our own. Everything depends on the power of the thing in which we set our hope to deliver. For Jeremiah, his hope was rooted in a God who keeps His promises. Because the Lord had promised Abraham land and a people, Jeremiah knew—whatever the seemingly contrary testimony of the events around him—that there would indeed be a land and a people to inhabit it—however far off in the future. Hope, in this sense, is very nearly synonymous with faith. C.S. Lewis touches on something like this in Christian Reflections. There, Lewis is discussing how it is possible to continue believing things when reasonable testimony seems to render such things patently impossible. About the role of faith in this Lewis writes: When we exhort people to Faith as a virtue, to the settled intention of continuing to believe certain things, we are not exhorting them to fight against reason. The intention of continuing to believe is required because, though Reason is divine, human reasoners are not. When once passion takes part in the game, the human reason, unassisted by Grace, has about as much chance of retaining its hold on truths already gained as a snowflake has of retaining its consistency in the mouth of a blast furnace. The sort of arguments against Christianity which our reason can be persuaded to accept at the moment of yielding to temptation are often preposterous. Reason may win truths; without Faith she will retain them just so long as Satan pleases. There is nothing we cannot be made to believe or disbelieve. If we wish to be rational, not now and then, but constantly, we must pray for the gift of Faith, for the power to go on believing not in the teeth of reason but in the teeth of lust and terror and jealousy and boredom and indifference that which reason, authority, or experience, or all three, have once delivered to us for truth. Christian realism is rooted in precisely this kind of hope, this kind of faithfulness. We know, for instance, that we will not eradicate evil in our time. To believe that we can make a paradise on earth on our own is, on Lewis’ terms, to believe something that neither reason, nor authority, nor the experience of history can give us any reason to believe. But, on the witness of those same terms, we can reasonably believe we can eradicate some evils and at least diminish others. And so there is work to be done. There’s a story that goes around that Martin Luther was once asked what he would do if he were absolutely certain the world was going to end the next day. Supposedly he said, “Probably plant a tree.” I suspect Jeremiah would smile at that. Looking back on the Tuesday of that first Holy Week, I do not know what confidence the disciples had, nor what comfort they could rely on as they sat on the Mount of Olives listening to their teacher proclaim his own coming slaughter. It does not seem any of them had yet seen enough to rest securely in the hope of a future day when all things would be made right. That steel would not enter their spines until Easter morning. Jesus for his part, it’s important to remember, would rest everything on his own hope. As we will see, the agony he experienced in the garden was very real. It would take everything he had faith in to see himself through. The writer of Hebrews tells us that it was this hope alone that readied him to endure the cross. As we will see, the content of this hope is extraordinary. In light of all this, how might the Christian live despite the horrors that seem, always, to array around us, poised to strike loved ones and strangers near and far, and that, seemingly, are increasing by the day? Well, one way is probably to not get too dramatic and overstate the case. The world has always been a perilous place. To turn again to Lewis, he was once asked how Christians ought to live in an age in which atomic weaponry, newly arrived in the human story, could snuff out life in an instant. His answer, still apropos to the present times, would be glib were it not true: Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents. In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty. This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds. Meanwhile, our minds can meditate on that future day when, all these things past, we will rest in the shade of trees we did not plant in promised soil we did not dig.

There are few things that have been so consistently political as football. This is true of the sport’s early folk origins, in which village-wide kick-abouts became an excuse to destroy fences threatening to enclose common agricultural land. It is true of the mid-nineteenth century when — expunged of its plebeian elements and codified along a

Discussions of inequality in contemporary societies often revolve around a familiar distinction between injustices rooted in status and those rooted in class. On one side stand struggles for recognition, aimed at securing respect and social standing for particular groups. On the other stand struggles over material distribution, aimed at transforming the economic structures that produce

It was the first genocide of the twentieth century. In January 1904, the Herero people of Southwest Africa (today’s Namibia), who had been under German rule for just twenty years and who were losing control of their lands and cattle to German settlers, rose up against the colonizers, killing about a hundred Germans. The German

Police say a 19-year-old man was charged after officers found two suitcases containing human remains in a remote area known as the Compound. PALM BAY, Fla. — A 19-year-old Brevard County man was arrested after Palm Bay police found human remains in two suitcases in the remote area known as the Compound, a weekend discovery that quickly grew into a broader death investigation still awaiting autopsy results. The case drew immediate attention because of the ... Read more

Complaint says a rushed transfer at a West Virginia airport left a 24-year-old passenger with injuries he did not survive. LAS VEGAS, Nev. — The father of a 24-year-old West Virginia man who used a power wheelchair has sued Allegiant, alleging the airline failed to provide safe boarding help after his son fell while entering a flight at Huntington Tri-State Airport and died the next day. The lawsuit puts a personal tragedy into a wider ... Read more

After nearly a full month, Iran’s Houthi proxies have finally entered the latest Middle East war. On Saturday, the militant group in Yemen fired missiles at Israeli military sites. The attack came after weeks of hostile rhetoric from Houthi leaders, including threats not just to military targets but also civilian shipping in the Red Sea. Funded and armed by the Islamic Republic, these Shiite extremists are expanding the war at the behest of their masters in Tehran.  It is somewhat surprising, though, that the Houthis took so long to join the fight. In the conflicts sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror attacks against Israel, the Houthis have always been eager participants in Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” proxy network. But in a recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Harvard University instructor Asher Orkaby argues that President Donald Trump’s actions since 2025 have successfully reestablished deterrence. The terrorists in Sanaa see what is happening to their counterparts in Iran and want to avoid such a fate themselves.  Perceptive as this insight is, though, Orkaby goes too far in recommending the United States formally recognize the Houthis as rightful governors of Yemen. As this weekend’s strikes prove, the United States and her regional allies simply cannot be reconciled to these brutal terrorists. They may not be as powerful as their Iranian partners, but they are just as ideologically committed to anti-American jihad. Furthermore, such a move would alienate important Gulf allies such as Saudi Arabia—and right when America needs them most.  The best way to handle the Houthi threat is exactly how we have dealt with the dangers posed by other Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas: decapitate the leadership, disarm the militants, and partner with sane actors in the region to reimpose order and stability. Just as appeasement could not put a stop to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, we must recognize that diplomacy is by no means the simple solution to the problems in Yemen. Even if elements of the Houthi leadership remain in power, negotiations will only succeed if they are backed by American might. In the first place, we must understand the threat posed by an occupied Yemen. Throughout the proxy war with Israel during the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, Houthi aggression against Western shipping in the Red Sea majorly disrupted international trade to the benefit of Tehran. Their missile and drone attacks cost the global economy millions, if not billions. The geographic chokepoints around the Arabian Peninsula, from the Strait of Hormuz to the Bab-el-Mandeb, are major strategic vulnerabilities not just for the West, but the entire world. Keeping them open to maintain the freedom of the seas is a vital American interest. A Houthi-controlled Yemen is also a clear and present danger not just to Israel, but also the Gulf Arab states that the United States needs as partners. The Islamic Republic has sponsored the terror group in no small measure because it is a convenient proxy for its conflict with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers. Tehran’s entire strategy for decades has been to pursue regional hegemony by building what it calls an “axis of resistance.” While this plot for revolution across the whole Middle East has been forestalled by bold U.S. and Israeli military action, the Houthis remain one of the Islamic Republic’s most successful franchises of terror. Unfortunately, the Biden administration failed to deter the Houthis during its time in power. Its State Department delisted them from the designated terror organizations list in 2021—much to the consternation of Gulf partners—only belatedly reversing the decision four years later under pressure from Congress. After this flip-flopping, Biden committed to a lackluster military campaign to stop the harassment of shipping in the Red Sea. Ultimately, all his administration’s dealing with the Houthis proved was that concessions to terror groups cannot bring peace to the Middle East. The Trump administration’s approach to the Houthi problem has been superior, though not without its own shortcomings. Upon taking office, the President ordered a series of actions against the terror group, Operation Rough Rider, that killed over 500 fighters and substantially degraded its military infrastructure. And yet instead of finishing the job, Trump ended the campaign after receiving assurances from Houthi leaders that they would cease targeting Western vessels. Despite those promises, Trump’s truce was no real victory—the Houthis continued launching missiles at Israel, and remain a looming threat in the Red Sea. Beyond these particular policy failures, the persistent inability of successive administrations to put a stop to Houthi terror reveals the bipartisan folly of Washington’s Middle East strategy. Politicians in both parties would rather turn away from the region entirely to focus on other issues, from great power competition to domestic policy. Salutary as a shift in attention may seem, terrorists remain on the prowl. Washington cannot unilaterally end the “forever war” by ignoring it. Stability requires more than simplistic campaign promises and facile slogans. At the moment, the Trump administration is rightly focused on the war in Iran. But since the Houthis decided to join with Tehran, the President should realize that a deal with these fanatics is impossible. Defeating the Islamic Republic means more than just killing more ayatollahs; it requires deconstructing its whole empire of terror.

In its splendor, the second temple in Jerusalem that Jesus would have seen was far more magnificent than the more modest edifice—however miraculous in provenance—constructed by those Jewish exiles whose return to Jerusalem from Babylon is retold in the closing chapters of Second Chronicles and in Ezra and Nehemiah. The temple of Jesus’ day was one element of a reconstruction plan of astonishing ambition undertaken by Herod the Great, the polarizing—at least some think his monstrous rule was offset by positives—client king of Rome. Herod’s expansion of the temple wasn’t exactly a study in pious magnanimity. Rather, he wanted to possess a capital city worthy, as he said, of his own “dignity and grandeur.” Apparently the significance of even the modest temple being the dwelling place of God was lost on him. In any case, the building project and completed structure were by all accounts extraordinary. The engineering marvels began with the massive expansion of the Temple Mount itself, which was more than doubled in area from seven to fourteen-and-half hectares, or about thirty-five acres. Of the completed temple complex, it was said in the ancient world that if you had not seen the Temple of Herod then you had never truly seen a beautiful building. Set within an array of courts and structures, the holy place or sanctuary, within which was the Holy of Holies, formed the heart of the Court of the Priests. Here, with the altar and butchering place, the conflicting odors of the sacred and profane would have clashed into a marbled thing of incense, roasting flesh, and the humid-iron scent of slaughtered animals. From there, three additional courts extended out toward the entry. Israelite men could enter the court nearest the Court of the Priests. Israelite men and women together could occupy the next, much larger, court. Known as the Court of the Women, the bulk of New Testament stories described as taking place within the temple area would have happened here. Beyond this, was the Court of the Gentiles, the largest court of all and the only place non-Jews could come. By design they came in order to pray to the God of Israel. It did not always work out this way and, for this reason, it is here that a great drama observed on the Monday of Holy Week occurred. From near and far, first-century Jews came to the temple at Passover to sacrifice to the Lord. Impractical as it was to travel significant distances with sacrificial animals, provision was made to allow their acquisition in Jerusalem. Enterprising vendors set up shop in the Court of the Gentiles. The court was filled with merchants selling animals to worshippers and money changers who exchanged Roman coins for shekels that had no image of the emperor on them and thus were fit for payment of the temple tax. Giving us some sense of the scale of the operation, the first-century historian Josephus reports that a quarter-million lambs alone might be sacrificed during the Passover. Exorbitant sums would sometimes be charged for both animals and exchange rates, placing additionally gratuitous burdens on the poor. Because of the activity and the crush of stalls, creatures, and humanity, anyone with any intention of praying in the court would have found the prospect, well, a beast of a challenge. Whether by simple disregard or by design, the merchants, and the temple authorities who allowed their activities, seemed to care nothing for the unhindered worship of neither the destitute Jew nor the devoted gentile. The Messiah wasn’t good with any of this: Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, “It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you making it a den of robbers.” Photo Credit: Cleansing of the Temple, by Edward Knippers, 1991 (please visit: www.edwardknippers.com). The concerns at play in the temple cleansing are multiple. Among them, the sheer chutzpah of Jesus claiming the authority to judge and purify the activities in the temple would presumably have shocked those who witnessed it. A clear proclamation of messianic purpose, Jesus’ actions would have confirmed the opposition of the Sanhedrin against him. Christ’s demands for pure worship, for the unimpeded witness of the people of God to the gentile world, and for the care of the poor would all have been motivating factors in his kinetic zeal. I don’t (quite) want to suggest that the temple cleansing can also provide the Christian with any kind of comprehensive statement on the use of force. It doesn’t. But this isn’t to say that nothing on the subject can be gleamed from it. At the risk of making too much out of very little, I want to ruminate on a few things.   First, while it might describe another, earlier, temple clearing, the version of the event written about in the Book of John provides a few interesting details not described in the synoptic gospels: The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Possibly, the fact that Jesus took the time to make a whip of cords suggests at least some level of premeditation that dismisses any notion of a purely spontaneous act. While no one should imagine the Messiah at risk of flying off the handle, and while the assembly of a whip made of cords might have been a simple and crude design, the obviously intentional use of force is notable. Excursus: if I were I were to film the scene, I’d have Jesus sit in the midst of the throng with his cords and braid the thing—at least a handle—all the while casting his eyes over the obscenities around him and visibly growing in (controlled) wrath. While I’m not going to pretend that we have here a gospel-based argument in favor of a military industrial complex, I only want to emphasize that the Christian use of force is characterized by deliberation, preparation, and control. If it’s right to use necessary, proportionate, and discriminate force, in the last resort, when nothing else is likely to successfully defend the innocent, right wrongs, or punish evil, then it is also right to build the capacities—including materiel, training, and virtue—to do so. NOTE: While I’ve failed to see it in time for this year’s Holy Week Reader, I have it on good authority that the temple clearing scene in part one of The Chosen: The Last Supper depicts the event in a manner very close to my cinematic fantasy. If so: huzzah! These values are also suggested in the discrimination Jesus displays. It’s interesting that in the midst of the overturning tables and whipping, he takes a minute to tell those selling the pigeons to “take these things away.” Now, again, this might be making much of out nothing, but while he drove out the sheep and oxen, he apparently does not shatter the cages that contain the birds. Why? I’ve heard it suggested that whereas it would be a relatively easy matter to recover a stock of sheep or cattle, the recovery of lost birds would have been another matter. Perhaps it was not so much the selling of the animals that was the problem—the provision of sacrificial animals presumably was a genuinely valued service. If Jesus’ anger was focused more on the manner of or intent behind the sales and the fact that they inhibited gentile worship, perhaps he did not want to disproportionality harm the dove sellers or overly-handicap the ability to purchase them in a more appropriate manner elsewhere and later. By telling them to grab their stock and leave, Jesus perhaps purposefully avoided destroying both their own source of income and their ability to render needed services—especially because the doves would have been all the very poor could have afforded. NOTE: I’m told The Chosen gives the scene a sharper edge than I’m suggesting here. Apparently Jesus does release the birds and vendors can heard begging him to stop with cries of “This is my livelihood.” Regardless of the contingency of certain details, what I find most reassuring in the whole temple-clearing narrative, is the simple and obvious fact that we worship a God who is willing to overturn tables when tables need to be overturned and who knows that the controlled application of force is sometimes necessary to protect the innocent and to vindicate justice and to punish wrongdoing. The presence of a similar understanding among those who worship that God is not always quite so obvious. We too often fail to be properly angry at sufficiently gross injustices so as to be moved to action, or we allow our anger to boil over into uncontrollable rage and so cause a disproportionate degree of destruction rather than restoration. Another excursus: I wrestled with my kids throughout their early childhood (and sometimes still–if less successfully). By the time my daughter was a scrappy seven, she had pretty well mastered the tactic of punching for the solar plexus. On more than one occasion, I started to wonder whether I’d over-taught her. By the time my son was eleven, he was really making me work hard at not getting maimed or permanently disabled. Apparently as boys grow, they start pumping all kinds of bio-chemical cocktails through their bodies that result in things like muscle, the capacity for efficacious aggression, and a healthy dose of cocksuredness that would humble Han Solo. That I considered then, and consider, now all of this absolutely fantastic is a problem for some. I once heard a sermon about the third chapter of Colossians in which husbands are commanded to love their wives and to “not be harsh with them.” Somewhat oddly, the preacher’s message focused on the idea that husbands shouldn’t use their physical strength to threaten or intimidate their wives—neither willfully nor unintentionally. Well, okay, fair enough. Taken in itself there’s nothing in that message to complain about. But it’s what wasn’t said that bothered me. The preacher said nothing about the better purposes for which the husband’s physical strength might be rightly employed. He said nothing about the protection and defense of the family or the greater good of the surrounding community or nation. I imagined what my son—thankfully tucked away in Sunday school and safely protected from the pulpit—might have picked up from the message had he been sitting with me. Just beginning to become aware of his own growing strength and that strength’s potential, he would have learned only that a man’s strength is something to be feared and stowed away. He would have been unintentionally deprived of both the great things that the Hebraic tradition has to say about power and its uses and of the great joy he could take in the tradition saying so. God did not create men with muscles only to tell them to mortify their ambitions to use them—he created them to use their strength properly. Why did the pastor not expound on that? That would have been a sermon worth hearing. Instead, from the pulpit to the classroom and so many other places, boys, we too-often hear it said—implicitly or explicitly—are problems. This once caught me flat footed. When I first heard the phrase “toxic masculinity” I assumed it was a clever bit of sarcastic snark coined to mock those few who sincerely seemed to think boys are weapons of mass destruction that pose existential threats to humanity unless they are gelded. But, of course, I was wrong. An essay a few years back at The Federalist—an excellent reflection about raising boys to be ready for war—turned my attention to a series of less-excellent articles posted at The Cut, a magazine for women “with stylish minds” intersecting the focal categories of “Style, Self, Culture, and Power”. The series is all about how to raise boys. It’s a fascinating series, mostly because it’s a primer on how people I really disagree with think about a subject of not just personal passion but that resonates with the charter of Providence as well. The series was written as a response to the #metoo movement, the Parkland shootings, and, well, then-president later-former-president now-president-again Donald Trump. There’s a desperate honesty in the pieces, they really do think everything is at stake in how we raise our boys. Of course, on that point we are in agreement. There’s a wonderful anecdote that I’ve retold many times that was originally told in the conclusion of When Character Was King, Peggy Noonan’s biography of Ronald Reagan. She tells of the time when one of the staffers was walking his three-year-old son through the halls of the White House. The boy had brought with him a plastic sword—which, it occurs to me now, might never be allowed past security these days. But, as Noonan tells it, back then at one point in the tour of the hallway a secret service agent stopped the little boy and playfully inquired, “What’s the sword for?” Without missing a beat, the little man said, “I want to fight bad men.” Noonan approves the zealous sentiment. She reflects: The little bodies of children are the repositories of the greatness of a future age. And they must be encouraged, must eat from the tales of those who’ve gone before, and brandished their swords, and slayed their dragons. That children are constantly being encouraged in any way isn’t, of course, the problem. The problem is that they are not being encouraged toward the good things of Noonan’s prescription. In one of the essays at The Cut, the writer Will Leitch appears to want his sons to know that this world “is a zero-sum game.” He laments his own “aggressiveness and entitlement” by which he means the advice he’s given to his children “to be whatever they want.” This advice, he insists, has been “weaponized over the generations” and comes “at a cost, someone else’s cost.” He explains: This lesson of self-reliance is not only an illusion, it brings with it its own privilege. I can tell myself that any “success” I’ve had has been because of “hard work” and “perseverance,” but I’m kidding myself. I’m a middle-class white kid who was encouraged to go his own way, to be his own person, in a way nobody even bothered to question; being America’s default on the form meant I was never expected to stand in or up for anything other than myself. I do not know the America this guy grew up in. When I was a child, no significant authority figure in my life—I’d be hard-pressed to think of any authority figure at all—ever told me the American default was to fight for yourself and no one else. The most relevant men—and women—in my life would have pounded me into sand if I suggested aloud that looking out for number one was worthy of a life or an appropriate philosophy for jus ad vim.   The America I grew up in was formed by the consciousness found in the great Westerns. The convention of the genre is usually some take on the necessary—and typically reluctant—use of force in defense of some great good. Often enough, a weary gunslinger enters into a community struggling to become a civilized place of law and order but hamstrung in doing so by the self-serving ambitions of a remorseless villain. The gunslinger, trying to leave behind a life of violence, avoids getting involved until it is made plain that remaining aloof will mean that the innocent will be destroyed by the violent, and that only the application of a greater and more lethal counter-violence will save them. The greatest Westerns do not celebrate the violence. They only celebrate that which the violence defends. Indeed, the greatest Westerns are nothing like carnage-as-entertainment, rather they meditate on the terrible price exacted by even the just deployment of force—not centrally on those who suffer that violence, but on those who necessarily have to deploy it. My three favorite Westerns, in no particular order, are Once Upon a Time in the West, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and Logan—the 2017 film concluding the Wolverine franchise. If you doubt whether Logan is a Western, read my review and rejoice in being corrected. Germane to our current topic, one of the themes of Logan, and the particular Westerns that helped inspire it, suggest that violence—force—is not something that most be stowed away in order to prevent reckless harm. Rage, in fact, is something that can be nurtured. A peripatetic virtue that is taken up and clarified in the Hebraic tradition, proper rage can be cultivated. One can learn to be angry at the right things, in the right way, at the right time, to the right degree, and with the right intention. Lit up by that kind anger, one can learn to act accordingly—that is to say justly, with proportion, with discrimination, and for peace. That’s to say, one can learn to be angry in love. Moreover, films such as Logan further insist that this love, too, can—and must—be nurtured. In bringing violence and love together, such films follow the just war tradition’s chivalric grounding. Chivalry molded men into composite beings: ferocious to the nth degree, and gentle to the nth degree—each manifest in its proper time and, in proper proportions sometimes very hard to see, always qualified by the other. I expand on all this in an essay on C.S. Lewis and chivalry, which is a reflection of the characteristics necessary for the cultivation of just warriors—hint: they’re knights! Hint, hint: knights slayed dragons! Indirectly, the essay is a meditation on raising sons for war. Yes, yes, it’s a mediation on raising sons and daughters tout court; but, it’s a particularly salient message for boys struggling to grow up in an emasculated culture that no longer seems to know what to do with them. (Hint: channel them.) The cleansing of the temple, then, is one small reminder, among many, that Jesus did not save us from the Old Testament God. To be sure, the cleansing does not render plain a great many complex questions—such as discerning the mind of Christ on war. Questions regarding war and peace conceived as social and political issues were never the specific topic of his ministry. The cleansing does display the Messiah’s concern for justice, mercy, and the love and unfettered worship of God. It ought also to put to rest any question, as the theologian DA Carson puts it, of “God as implacably opposed to us and full of wrath, but somehow mollified by Jesus, who loves us.” It is continually important to recall that themes of extraordinary mercy, grace, gentleness, and unabashed love are found throughout the Old Testament in God’s dealing both with those within and those without his Covenant. Additionally, we must observe the aspects of divine wrath found throughout the New Testament–where even a Savior overturns tables. Regarding the divine response to evil, the Testaments are a continuum, Carson notes: Both God’s love and God’s wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the old covenant to the new. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax—in the cross. Do you wish to see God’s love? Look at the cross. Do you wish to see God’s wrath? Look at the cross. And then rejoice—and tremble—in the zeal of our Lord.

Officials said the Robinson R44 was on an instructional flight when it struck a vacant building near South Congress Avenue. BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. — A training helicopter crashed through the roof of a vacant Boynton Beach warehouse around 12:30 p.m. March 23, killing the instructor and student on board and drawing a federal investigation to a busy South Florida industrial strip. The crash drew immediate attention because the aircraft went down beside active businesses in ... Read more

Executive Summary: Ukraine has significantly increased the number of strikes in Russian territory. In mid-March, Ukraine’s armed forces launched a hundred rocket and drone attacks on Russia over the course of one week. Oil depots, microelectronics facilities, and energy infrastructure sites were attacked. According to independent military experts, this intensification is linked to the increase The post Kremlin Inadequately Responds to Increased Ukrainian Strikes appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: The effect of the ongoing conflict in the Persian Gulf on Russia’s war against Ukraine grows more complex as the parties of both conflicts experience attrition of various kinds. Russian commentators tend to exaggerate Iran’s capacity to withstand air assaults, but also suggest that the U.S. leadership cannot accept anything less than a The post Putin’s War Calculus Keeps Oscillating as Spring Offensive Stumbles appeared first on Jamestown.

Over the weekend, Pope Leo XIV celebrated Palm Sunday Mass at the Vatican by condemning those who “wage war” and insisting that God unequivocally rejects war and the prayers of those who wage it. In recent weeks, other influential Catholic leaders have loudly voiced opposition to Operation Epic Fury; amid an academic conference at the Vatican Apostolic Library on March 26, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, a figure known for spearheading the highly controversial Sino-Vatican deal of 2018, told reporters that the U.S.-Israel war against the Islamic Republic of Iran “does not seem to meet the conditions” for a just war. Parolin cited a consequential Catholic Standard interview earlier in the month as justification for his claim, in which Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, archbishop of Washington, stated that the United States’ decision to strike Iran fails to meet the just war threshold “in at least three requirements.”  First, McElroy erroneously claims the strikes are not in response to an “existing or imminent and objectively verifiable attack by Iran.” This is unsupported by decades of attacks on American warfighters and civilians perpetrated by the Islamic Republic either directly or via Iran’s numerous terror proxies. McElroy is wrong to insinuate that Iran has not attacked the United States or Israel. That Iran attacks the U.S. and our allies via thinly veiled proxies instead of directly does not absolve the regime of responsibility for the devastation of its malign activities.  Next, McElroy asserts that, by lacking a clearly defined intention, the U.S.-led strikes “cannot satisfy the just war tradition’s criterion of right intention,” claiming the stated objectives have ranged from the destruction of Iran’s military to the overthrow of the regime. Here, McElroy confuses strategic objectives with moral intentions. The intent of U.S. and Israeli military action is to eliminate Iran’s ability to field offensive military capabilities to harm civilians, as well as U.S. and allied soldiers. Achieving this goal can include the simultaneous pursuit of several strategic objectives in service of the broader end goal. The dynamic and escalatory nature of war can sometimes require the reevaluation of the original strategic objectives or the addition of new ones. Such rational and deliberate recalculation does not inhibit the right intention of a just war; in fact, it is a necessary characteristic of one.  Finally, McElroy states, “It is far from clear that the benefits of this war will outweigh the harm which will be done.” But this is not the standard the Catholic Catechism uses in determining just war. As the Catechism declares, “There must be serious prospects of success” and “the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.” U.S. and Israeli strikes have met both these strict conditions, with chances of success increasing by the day, and the clear common good achieved of Iran’s diminishing ability to launch offensive attacks with precise, targeted, and proportional military action by the U.S. and its allies.  In his own words, Cardinal Parolin condemned U.S. and Israeli strikes, saying, “it is complex to determine who is right and who is wrong.” This statement ignores the almost five decades Iran has spent undermining regional stability, sowing destruction through its proxies, and massacring its own people. Since 1979, the Islamic Republic and its proxies have targeted, wounded, and killed Americans while championing the “Death to America” slogan that was first popularized during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In recent years, the regime has systematically advanced its nuclear weapons program while violating its international obligations, using diplomacy as a stalling tactic rather than a genuine path to resolution.   Just War Doctrine, as meticulously developed by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, has long provided a framework for discerning when force is not only permissible, but morally obligatory. Rooted in natural law, it stipulates criteria such as just cause, right intention, and proportionality, allowing for defensive wars against aggression and the protection of innocent lives. When entrenched aggressors perpetuate cycles of violence, pacifism isn’t a virtue; it’s a dereliction of duty. It equates the aggressor with the defender, and ultimately, cedes the moral high ground to those who wield power without restraint.  President Donald Trump made it clear when he took office that a nuclear Iran poses an unacceptable threat to the United States and our allies. In June 2025, Tehran’s rapidly advancing program reached a critical juncture, resulting in decisive action by Israel and the United States after prolonged negotiation attempts failed. In February 2026, Trump resumed negotiations in Oman and Geneva in an attempt to bring an end to the theocratic regime’s nuclear program once and for all. These negotiations followed the Islamic Republic’s brutal murder of more than 30,000 of its own citizens for protesting against the regime’s oppression. When the talks failed again, Trump took decisive action to ensure the world would never be subjected to an Iranian nuclear umbrella: an intelligible (and moral) goal as necessitated by just war doctrine.   Suggesting multilateralism and dialogue as the only legitimate solutions myopically ignores how authoritarian regimes routinely exploit such approaches to buy time and wage further destruction. As Winston Churchill once quipped about appeasement, it’s like feeding the crocodile in the hopes that it will eat you last. Such policies don’t foster peace; they enable oppression.  Meanwhile, Church leadership has been notably silent on the fact that the Pax Americana has presided over an unprecedented era in which the number of interstate wars has plummeted, global trade has exploded, and billions have been lifted out of poverty—all thanks to the security deterrent provided by American military power.  The Church’s teachings on war and peace demand careful discernment as well as decisive action. History has repeatedly demonstrated that conflicts can sometimes only be resolved by confronting evil through the use of force. The Holy See, under Pope Leo XIV’s leadership, must pursue a different approach to navigating geopolitical turmoil, one which emphasizes the morality of lawful self-defense, recognizing that endless dialogue with murderous and bad-faith regimes is futile. This would bring the Church’s public statements more in line with what the Catechism prescribes, which calls legitimate defense not only a right but a “grave duty” and states clearly, “the defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm.” This is precisely what the U.S. and Israeli military strikes are directed toward: the disarming of Iran’s offensive capabilities and the safeguarding the world from the whims of a nuclear-armed terror state.

Yes, new CMA chair Doug Gurr has downplayed links to Big Tech. But that’s not why experts are worried

Winston Churchill titled the fourth volume of his history of the Second World War The Hinge of Fate because it covered a time period in 1942-43 when events and decisions created a turning point in the war. Looking back 80 years ago, it is arguable that 1946 was the hinge of fate for the post-World War II world. Events and decisions of that year set the course for the Cold War and, ultimately, the post-Cold War world.  The essential decision-makers in 1946 were Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, China’s communist leader Mao Zedong, and U.S. President Harry Truman. The key events included the communization of Eastern Europe, a showdown in Iran, the resumption of China’s civil war, and a belated recognition by the Truman administration that the Soviets were not interested in peaceful co-existence except on their terms.  During the Second World War, there had been warning signs that the postwar world would be one of ongoing geopolitical turmoil. In the early stages of the war, the Soviets annexed half of Poland, the Baltic states and parts of Finland. Later, the discovery of the Katyn massacre, Moscow’s conduct during the Warsaw uprising in 1944, and the negotiations at Yalta evidenced Soviet intentions to install “friendly” regimes in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Some lonely voices in the United States, such as roving ambassador William Bullitt, Office of Strategic Services (OSS) analyst James Burnham, and Time magazine’s foreign news editor Whittaker Chambers, had attempted to warn the Roosevelt administration of Soviet perfidy, to no avail. Burnham noted in a 1944 paper for the OSS that anti-Axis communist resistance forces in Greece, Yugoslavia, and China had turned against non-communist resistance forces even before Germany and Japan had been defeated, signaling that the Cold War had begun during the latter stages of World War II. FDR, however, placed his faith for the future in his ability to persuade Stalin and the promise of the United Nations. In late 1945, some of Truman’s advisers began to question Soviet motives. Admiral William Leahy and Ambassador Averell Harriman criticized Truman’s Secretary of State, James Byrnes, for his accommodationist attitude toward the Soviets. Republican foreign policy spokesman John Foster Dulles joined that criticism by accusing Byrnes, and therefore the Truman administration, of repeatedly yielding to Soviet demands since the end of the war. In February 1946, George F. Kennan sent his “Long Telegram” from the Moscow Embassy warning that there could be no modus vivendi between the Washington and Moscow, and Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, who had been a chief critic of the Yalta Agreement, spoke in the Senate to denounce Truman’s lack of sufficient responses to Soviet actions in the Baltics, Balkans, Manchuria, Eastern Europe, eastern Mediterranean, and Japan. Vandenberg condemned what he called a “miserable fiction, often encouraged by our own fellow-travelers, that we somehow jeopardize peace if our candor is as firm as Russia’s always is.”  Truman eventually replaced Byrnes and toughened the administration’s approach to Soviet actions in Europe and the Middle East. In March 1946, after missing a deadline to remove its troops from northern Iran, the Soviet Union announced that the troops would be withdrawn in six weeks. They did so in return for favorable oil concessions, though Truman later recalled that he had threatened military moves if the Soviets did not leave. But in China the story was different. In his excellent book A Preponderance of Power,which detailed the Truman administration’s actions during the early Cold War period, historian Melvyn Leffler notes that in China in 1946, Truman’s government “pulled out most of the U.S. Marines, cut . . . military assistance, and distanced itself from Chiang Kai-shek.” Truman had dispatched George Marshall to China in December 1945 to mediate between Chaing’s Nationalists and Mao’s Communists instead of pledging full support to Chiang, our wartime ally against Japan. Truman curtailed U.S. military assistance to Chiang, while Stalin increased Soviet support for Mao. Top U.S. military officials were appalled. So was Navy Secretary James Forrestal who argued within the administration that U.S. exclusion from China would effectively surrender it to the Soviet-backed Communist forces. The State Department, however, supported Marshall’s mediation efforts and its pressure on Chiang. In the end, Mao’s Communists won the civil war and took power in October 1949.  In September 1946, Truman advisers Clark Clifford and George Elsey wrote what Leffler called “the first comprehensive interdepartmental effort to assess Soviet intentions and capabilities, analyze the Kremlin’s motivations, evaluate Russian behavior, and prescribe American measures.” The Clifford-Elsey Report was titled “American Relations with the Soviet Union.” It declared that the goal of Soviet power was “eventual world domination.” The Soviets, the report said, were violating agreements made at Tehran in late 1943, Yalta in February 1945, and Berlin in Summer 1945. Soviet ideology held that peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world is impossible. The Clifford-Elsey Report quoted extensively from Kennan’s Long Telegram. It reiterated the warnings of Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech. It warned about communist subversive activities in Western Europe and the United States. The report concluded that the United States needed to militarily, economically, and politically counter Soviet expansionist policies; in other words, containment. The Clifford-Elsey Report included a few paragraphs on China and the Far East, but its focus was on the Soviet threat to Europe. It had, in other words, an Atlanticist outlook, which dominated Truman’s foreign policy until events in Korea and Vietnam reoriented Truman. But during the crucial period of the Chinese civil war, Truman’s focus was more on Europe than on Asia. The “hinge of fate” in 1946 meant that the most populous country in the world fell to the Communists. Thankfully, the Sino-Soviet split, which the Nixon administration brilliantly exploited, separated the two communist Eurasian giants, thereby enabling the United States under the Reagan administration to eventually win the Cold War. But the events in China in 1946 also set the stage for the current U.S.-China rivalry.  The Truman administration usually gets high marks for its foreign policy: containment, the Berlin airlift, the Truman Doctrine, NATO, NSC-68. But those achievements were limited to Europe. In Asia, however, the Truman administration’s record was mostly one of failure. And its greatest failure was in China. The most immediate victims of that failure were and are the Chinese people, who suffered through the unspeakable horrors of purges, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the genocide of the Uyghurs, and “ordinary” communist repression. But that failure also had geopolitical consequences that the United States is dealing with today in the South China Sea and the broader Indo-Pacific. 

In probably the most famous futurist artwork, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), Umberto Boccioni depicted an erect man thrusting forward with velocity, abstracted into intersecting bronze planes and fluid surfaces, as if shaped by momentum. He has no arms and his head is a helmet; man and machine are merged. The idealizer of

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The last decade has seen a number of progressive municipal leaders gain victory in major cities across the West. Over the weekend, two new mayors swelled their ranks: the Socialist Party’s Emmanuel Grégoire won a clear victory in Paris, while Green Party member Dominik Krause defeated the social democratic incumbent in Munich. These victories follow

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Last month, it emerged that high schools in Siberia were teaching students an unexpected text as part of “anti-terrorism awareness” lessons—1984 by George Orwell. Most Western readers automatically assume the novel’s main protagonist, Winston Smith, is something of a hero for doing his best to resist the totalitarian regime depicted within the book’s pages. In Putin’s Russia, though, Smith is now presented to children as a dangerous radical, not to be emulated. This contrasts to the last time Russian appreciation of 1984 appeared in Western headlines when, following the outbreak of Putin’s war against Ukraine, it was reported that Orwell’s masterpiece had become the bestselling e-book in Russia for 2022. The next year, it also achieved the distinction of becoming the most-stolen text from Russia’s leading bookstore chain; yet more proof, from a Kremlin perspective, that only criminal no-goodniks ever read the thing.  Reading Between the Lines Once banned in Soviet-era Russia due to its ‘subversive’ depiction of Stalinist-inspired tyranny, 1984 was officially legalized in 1988 as part of liberalizing glasnost measures, although it had already been circulating in illegal samizdat form for decades by this point. As Winston Smith reads forbidden literature in the novel, and Soviet dissidents were likewise by definition also reading forbidden literature when perusing their underground samizdat copies, they saw in the character an admirable mirror of themselves, drawing courage from his fictional example.   Following the recent, post-Ukraine upsurge in popularity for 1984, Western media sources largely interpreted the phenomenon as a recapitulation of the above sentiments, a hopeful sign Russia was full of unannounced anti-war rebels who saw a bit of themselves in Winston’s struggle with totalitarianism. In 2024, Britain’s BBC dispatched a correspondent to visit an obscure institution called The George Orwell Library in the equally obscure town of Ivanovo, outside Moscow.  A small building with a large billboard of Orwell looking down at visitors from its frontage, the Library contained a selection of dystopian sci-fi novels of the broad 1984 model, like Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, about future government censors who burn all books. The Library also carried non-fiction about topics like Stalin’s purges, the mass murders of the Russian Revolution, and failed post-Soviet attempts to transform Russia into a fully-fledged democracy.  Founded by a local businessman, Dmitry Silin, who was later forced to flee the country after painting “No to the war!” on walls, and handing out free copies of Orwell’s text to passers-by, the BBC’s implication was that such bravery was likely to be contagious amongst the wider citizenry, with officials forcing the place out of its current premises and into much smaller offices instead. Yet, rather than state persecution, it seems more likely the Library suffered merely from state indifference: the chief librarian, Alexandra Karaseva, admitted her library had “few visitors.” Rather than banning books, as Stalin once did, Putin and his own commissars often prefer simply to ignore them, which in a way is much more devastating. Those courageous Soviet-era souls who once passed one another dog-eared photocopies of Orwell’s text down dark back alleyways to avoid the attentions of the KGB sincerely believed in the power of literature to change the world. The more skeptical President Putin, for his own part, appears to have noticed that, despite Doctor Strangelove and On the Beach, nuclear weapons still exist, and, regardless of The Camp of the Saints and Submission, uncontrolled mass immigration into Europe continues unabated.  You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Coverage       Western coverage which sees in 1984’s present popularity a harbinger of potential mass public uprising against Putin and his war may be just another form of outsider Wrongthink. Although 1984 is no longer banned, the editions on open sale are all officially approved by Putin’s Ministry of Culture.  As such, the versions of Orwell’s text that are now proving such domestic bestsellers are couched, via introductions and notes, within a strict Kremlin-approved interpretative framework designed, like the syllabus of Siberian schools, to cause readers to understand the book in a certain specific manner. Rather than being a condemnation of the totalitarian excesses of Josef Stalin (and thus by extension of Stalin’s enthusiastic admirer Vladimir Putin), the Ministry-approved editions push the line that, in fact, Orwell was condemning the excesses of the liberal West, which was not truly terribly liberal at all, but a dictatorship in disguise. To a certain limited extent this may be somewhat true. During WWII, Orwell endured an unhappy spell working for the BBC, where he was forced into self-censoring his own radio news stories prior to transmission, which is very much like the job Winston Smith endures, clipping regime-embarrassing items out from newspapers before consigning them forever into the ‘Memory-Hole’.  Yet current Russian editions of 1984 go much further than making this legitimate point, implausibly implying Orwell somehow managed to predict the contemporary post-Cold War world of what the book’s new editors call “liberal totalitarianism,” or extreme wokeness. Bizarre and self-evidently untrue Western media and political lies that trans-women are women, or that diversity is our strength, are indeed rather Orwellian in their own way. However, so is the blatantly untrue notion that Orwell himself, who wrote his book in 1948 and died two years later, could possibly ever have foreseen them. Of course, many Russian readers will not fall for the above lies, it being pretty obvious most Putinista apparatchiks are hardly literary experts themselves; Putin’s foreign media spokeswoman Maria Zakharova infamously once referred to the book as “1982” in a press conference. Nonetheless, the co-option of 1984 as a piece of pro-totalitarian propaganda, not anti-totalitarian propaganda, does represent a certain form of genius. The novel now stands presented as an early precursor of a new Russian sci-fi genre called ‘liberpunk,’ or ‘liberal cyber-punk,’ in which the West is depicted as a hyper-liberal hellhole ruled over by an intolerant rainbow dictatorship of gay Cultural Marxists, blue-haired hyper-feminists, BLM radicals and suchlike; an alternative means of consuming such material might simply be to subscribe to the New York Times. Capitalist Swine Yet Russia is not the only place where Orwell’s texts are being inverted in a laughably obvious fashion for dubious political means right now. Later this year, a new American CGI movie version of Animal Farm is being released … in which the oppressed animals rise up not against Marxist pigs, but against evil capitalist billionaire human overlords instead, Marxism being thought quite fashionable these days amongst Hollywood types, even though they themselves do tend to be very rich.  According to early preview-screening reviews from last year, the animation, directed by actor Andy Serkis, isn’t very good, filling the run-time with childish jokes about animals breaking wind and people falling over a lot. More fundamentally, the main enemies of the piece are not the Stalinist pigs, but the humans, who work for banks, and try to buy the animals off with “magic paper,” also known as “money.” One billionaire character drives a Tesla truck-type vehicle, and seems to represent a gender-swapped Elon Musk, who is evidently today’s extremist neo-Stalin to the average left-wing 2020s Hollywood scriptwriter: they don’t seem to realize Stalin aimed to suppress free speech, not facilitate it, unlike Elon with his remodeled Twitter/X. Once again, Winston Smith would only be a hero to persons of this topsy-turvy moral mindset because of his diligent office-hours censorship efforts upon behalf of Big Brother, not his attempted later rebellion against him.  The movie even now has a happy ending in which, capitalism being successfully overthrown, the liberated Trotskyite livestock plan to create a “brighter future” for all. So did Pol Pot, once. As Variety warned its readers, “Woe to the student who tries watching this ‘toon instead of doing the reading.” The producers say they simply want to update Orwell’s classic text to “make it relevant to a broad-based, values-centric, family-friendly audience”, but that sounds like pure Leftist Newspeak in and of itself. Putin’s propagandists don’t need to doctor Orwell to make the West look bad anymore at all, then; today, the West is quite capable of doing the very same thing independently.     

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A month into the war with Iran, many Americans are wondering how it will end. As public support declines, President Trump himself is no doubt asking the same question.  The problem is not one of tactics or objectives, but of strategic clarity. Most analysis focuses on specific targets—enriched uranium, missile capabilities, regime change—but those things, by themselves, won’t win the day. Victory in a modern war, especially in a democracy, is ultimately in the eye of the beholder. American presidents lose wars politically because they forget that. What this war lacks is a clear story that resonates with the American people. That story must begin with a recognition that there are only two ways to win a war: either break the enemy’s capacity to fight, or break his will to fight. Every objective, every doctrine, every campaign fits into one of these two categories. Consider a simple example: If someone wants to kill me, I can prevent him from achieving that goal by destroying his weapons, strengthening my defenses, or killing him first; or I can convince or coerce him to abandon that goal. In either case, I survive. But the strategies, and the victories they produce, are very different. The two approaches can overlap, but one must predominate. Confusing them is the surest path to defeat. One of the greatest strategic problems facing the United States today is that successive administrations keep conflating these two kinds of victory. We declare grand ambitions that imply the breaking of will, but craft strategies that focus on breaking capacity. We know the result well: impressive military performance followed by political frustration. This has been the pattern of American warfighting since 2001. Our military achieves its operational goals, but the adversary continues to fight. In the end, we return home believing we’ve lost. In this war, President Trump has repeated the old pattern, implying goals of “unconditional surrender” and regime change but ordering stand-off airstrikes on infrastructure and personnel. Such tactics are effective at reducing capacity; but they won’t compel surrender. It’s a distinctly American pathology. When it comes to war, we either avoid it entirely or seek total victory at the cost of a trillion dollars—“go big or go home.” We remember the definitive outcomes of World War II, the Cold War, and Desert Storm, believing that anything short of that is unsatisfactory. We forget that most wars don’t end that way, and indeed don’t need to. Many wars are limited, inconclusive, and temporary in their results, yet achieve something real without resolving everything. The Israeli experience is instructive in this regard. Lacking America’s decisive power, and accustomed to perpetual hatred from neighbors, Israelis have accepted periodic destruction of an enemy’s capacity—“mowing the grass,” as they say—as an acceptable outcome. They know conflict will break out again, but walk away content having earned a few years’ reprieve. We, by contrast, enter wars expecting finality—expecting “peace.” When we instead find ambiguity, we interpret the war as a loss even though we’ve achieved substantial results. The lesson of 21st-century warfare is not that American power is ineffective. It’s that military success and political victory are not the same thing. A country can achieve its objectives on the battlefield and still feel defeated at home. The upshot isn’t that America should avoid war, but that we should carefully define what kind of victory we seek and communicate that to the American people. In the case of Iran, that means recognizing a painful reality: there was never a serious chance of breaking the regime’s will, short of a massive ground war and military occupation. Religious ideology is a powerful thing. But it is entirely possible to destroy, or at least massively degrade, the regime’s capacity to threaten Americans, Israelis, Arabs, and its own people. That’s not total victory, but it’s real—and we can be proud of it. And if explained clearly to the public, it may be enough. For now.

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“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.” – Abraham Lincoln Typically, since World War II, most Americans have supported U.S. military actions at their beginning. So, the lack of majority support for the Iran War at the start is unusual. A Reuters poll shows only 37 percent of Americans supporting with 59 percent disapproving. Other polls show approval at about 40 percent with the remaining undecided or opposed. By contrast the Iraq War began in 2003 with over 70 percent approving.  By 2018, after 15 years of U.S. military presence in Iraq, only 43 percent approved. The 1991 Persian Gulf War, which lasted six weeks, got nearly 80% approval.  Over seventy percent approved of the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada and the 1986 strikes on Libya. Sixty five percent backed the 1992 humanitarian intervention in Somalia. A majority approved the 1999 strikes on Serbia. A plurality but not a majority approved the 2011 strikes on Libya.   The U.S. entered the Vietnam War in a big way in 1965 with about 60 percent approval and left the war in 1973 with about 30 percent approval. That war, which killed over 50,000 Americans, tore the country apart and ended badly. The Korean War began with 65 percent approval, which fell as the war became a seesawing quagmire. Support for U.S. military action is nearly always at its highest at the war’s start. Nearly all U.S. military actions over the last 80 years began as a bipartisan project, with direct approval by or at least substantive consultation with Congress, accompanied by public explanations appealing to national bipartisan support. One of the most successful presidential appeals for war support was President Nixon’s 1969 “Great Silent Majority” speech that explained his goal of gradual Vietnamization of the war, as native forces replaced U.S. troops. Nixon had been elected the year before with only 43 percent. But 77 percent approved of his speech. Nixon explained: I believe that one of the reasons for the deep division about Vietnam is that many Americans have lost confidence in what their government has told them about our policy. The American people cannot and should not be asked to support a policy which involves the overriding issues of war and peace unless they know the truth about that policy. And he concluded: And so tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support. I pledged in my campaign for the presidency to end the war in a way that we could win the peace. I have initiated a plan of action which will enable me to keep that pledge. The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed, for the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris. Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that. Across the last 80 years, generally most Americans have rallied behind military and overseas actions, at least initially, because the objectives and stakes were explained to them on a nonpartisan basis. In today’s polarized America, appealing beyond the political base is more difficult but not impossible. Nixon’s era and the Vietnam era were also highly polarized, if in different ways. New acts of statecraft are needed to navigate and transcend today’s divisions. Waging war with only a partisan base comprising a minority of the population further amplifies domestic polarization. And it obviously weakens American resolve for strong actions on the world stage. No democracy, however adamant, can long wage war or sustain an international policy absent majority support. Nor should a responsible democracy even try. The arguments must be made to persuade the majority. War is government’s most important and dangerous vocation. It’s often said that democracies fight the most ferocious wars because their wars are backed by public opinion, which makes them rare but intense. Dictatorships of course are never confident in public opinion, which is suppressed. Russia’s fiasco in Ukraine illustrates the difference. Putin started a war capriciously without public conversation. Russia has recklessly suffered over one million casualties, including possibly 300,000 dead, with few accomplishments and no end in sight. Dissenters in Russia stay silent or flee the country. Ukraine, even under assault, continues its public debates, which ensures a public consensus in their remarkable fight for national survival. Democracies persuade and ultimately trust the judgment of their people. America is the greatest of democracies. Our 340 million people love liberty and pulsate with energy. We are not as a people cajoled easily. We must be persuaded. We expect our judgement to be respected. All of us count. Hopefully, the Iran War achieves its objectives quickly. But the lack of public persuasion and bipartisanship sets a dangerous precedent. And if the war persists, the lack of public support will become a great liability obvious to our enemies. America has won great wars because most people backed them. Where support was lost, or barely appeared even at the start, the wars became feckless or tragic. Lincoln understood both war and public opinion. And he intuited that American public opinion was a great, almost irresistible tide that can carry all before it, and should not be trifled with. Most importantly, Lincoln knew the American people, including even many of his adversaries, merited respect, and collectively were often wiser than their leaders.

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