PRO-CHOICE BOSSES – "A GENEROUS OFFER" TO OUR PREGNANT EMPLOYEES
from: LiveAction News

(16 Dec.) WATCH THESE VIDEOS! This week, Live Action released two NEW pro-life satirical videos, and they want to make sure you get the chance to see them.

These two new videos compose a series called "Pro-Choice Bosses" that calls out the hypocrisy of corporations incentivizing abortions for their female employees. In "A Generous Offer," a female employee is offered paid leave for an abortion as soon as her supervisor hears she is pregnant.

You can watch "A Generous Offer" here: https://www.liveaction.org/pro-choice-bosses-generous-offer/

In "NBD," you can see on a broader scale how disgraceful and off-putting the tactics of abortion-promoting companies really are. Watch it now: https://www.liveaction.org/not-baby-daddy-consulting/

These satirical videos portray real-life scenarios that are sadly happening all over the country, now that Roe v. Wade is overturned. Women in the workplace are being lied to by their employers, who are claiming "female empowerment" by offering to pay a mother to end the life of her child. In fact, it is the most demeaning and degrading thing to happen to someone.

Companies including Amazon, Starbucks, CNN, and Netflix (to name just a few) have chosen to subsidize abortion travel for employees in pro-life states, while many corporations are quietly cutting back on maternity leave benefits.

Satire is a powerful tool that reveals the truth in a more accessible way, ridiculing harmful principles while bringing hidden agendas to light. Live Action is branching into another form of content to reach a wider audience with persuasive, mind-changing content.

Abortion is accepted by our culture and made palatable through euphemisms and lies. In order to influence our entire culture, we have to address the gap in pro-life education by appealing to those who are not immediately convinced when presented with the raw truth.

We are seeing an incredible response. Many women commented that they were treated poorly or even fired when they informed their employers of their pregnancies. We also have seen comments from self-proclaimed pro-abortion people saying the video "made me think about things."

According to a survey we conducted, 43 percent of those who view our content said they changed their minds about abortion, making them pro-life. This is how we can end abortion and change our culture—by reaching individual hearts and minds.

You can help make America pro-life by viewing and sharing these videos, and supporting their work. I hope you will join LiveAction in this critical fight as they work to save even more lives in 2023. [read more...]

COMMENTARY: Watch the second video to see a list of dozens upon dozens of U.S. businesses that will pay their female workers' expenses to kill their babies. Businessmen can be very short-sighted when they only think of "the bottom line" – how big the profit will be at the end of the current quarter. But that's not the real bottom line: where will we all be when there's not enough youth to fill the vacant jobs? What will the bottom line mean when there are no people to make use of those piles of money? Short-term profit is outweighed by long-term loss. Being all alone at age 65 or 75 with a nice pension and nobody to take care of you is not worth living for.

4 WOMEN DIE IN INDIAN STERILIZATION CAMP. AUTHORITIES VERY SORRY.
from: BioEdge.org

(29 Nov.) Double-puncture laparoscopy procedures are very popular amongst Indian women who want permanent sterilization. "The surgery is preferred over other sterilisation techniques because it is highly acceptable among patients as they can get discharged on the same day and can resume their activities immediately," according to the director of public health in the state of Telangana, G Srinivasa Rao.

Popular does not mean safe. Four women died in late August following the procedure after they had participated in a mass sterilisation camp on the outskirts of state capital of Hyderabad.

Various doctors have been suspended and an expert committee has been appointed to investigate the deaths. "Very rarely such incidents of botched up surgeries take place," Dr Rao told The Hindu. "We shall disclose the exact reasons how the women developed complications."

The Telangana government will compensate the women's next-of-kin with a one-off payment of about US$6,000, as well as a double-bedroom house and free education for their surviving children in residential schools.

According to a 2014 article in The Conversation by Sabu Padmadas, of the University of Southampton, sterilization camps are common in India:

"Since the 1980s, sterilisation programmes have focused solely on women. Now, more than two-thirds of contraceptive use in India is female sterilisation. In some southern and western states, as many as 50% of women have been sterilised. The method has been widely used, mostly by young women, across India for more than three generations. In most cases, women have few options and rely directly on sterilisation as the first method of contraception they ever use. Although the government removed family planning targets in 1998, there is still evidence of coercion in sterilisation camps in many parts of India." [read more...]

COMMENTARY: What can I say? This leaves me speechless. It is merely another form of killing off the next generation. China has finally realized, after decades of their "one child" policy, that there aren't enough young workers now to take care of the elderly generation, or to fill the job openings in factories, to fill the orders for inexpensive goods to ship to the U.S. and Western Europe. Of course, demand from those countries is drying up as there are fewer and fewer people to buy those Chinese wares... although the few people who are left have nice incomes and pensions! "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath" could be rephrased as "The profits are made for continuing to have people to use them, and people are not made merely to produce profits."

MEDICALLY ASSISTED DEATHS COULD SAVE MILLIONS IN HEALTH CARE SPENDING: REPORT
from: Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

(23 Jan. 2017) New research suggests medically assisted dying could result in substantial savings across Canada's health-care system.

Doctor-assisted death could reduce annual health-care spending across the country by between $34.7 million and $136.8 million, according to a report published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Monday. The savings exceedingly outweigh the estimated $1.5 to $14.8 million in direct costs associated with implementing medically assisted dying.

"The take-away point is that there may be some upfront costs associated with offering medical assisted dying to Canadians, but there may also be a reduction in spending elsewhere in the system and therefore offering medical assistance in dying to Canadians will not cost the health care system anything extra," said Aaron Trachtenberg, an author of the report and a resident in internal medicine at the University of Calgary.

The researchers used numbers from the Netherlands and Belgium, where medically assisted death is legal, combined with Canadian spending data from Ontario. Trachtenberg stressed that means the work is theoretical and needs to be readdressed when Canada starts collecting large scale data at home.

After June 17, 2016 when Bill C-14 became law, provinces began rolling out their plans to deal with requests for doctor-assisted death. Manitoba has set up a Medical Assistance in Dying team (MAID). More than 100 patients have contacted MAID, with 24 receiving medically assisted deaths as of Jan. 6, 2017.

"In a resource-limited health care system, anytime we roll out a large intervention there has to be a certain amount of planning and preparation and cost has to be a part of that discussion," Trachtenberg said, adding the provinces' differing plans could impact the cost structure of implementation. "It's just the reality of working in a system of finite resources." [read more...]

COMMENTARY: "Finite resources" – a fine way of saying it costs so much to keep sick, disabled, and elderly people around, so let's just kill them. One thing that's not finite, though, is a man's soul: how do you weigh an infinite soul against a finite amount of money? "What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?" This report is from 2017, but it has only gotten worse in the intervening five years. It's one thing to realize that there's nothing more to do to save people's lives so just keep them comfortable using morphine, and totally another thing to actively end that life by giving them an overdose. This whole grisly, ghoulish idea of "euthanasia" – killing the helpless – is merely a euphemism for murder.

FEDERAL PANEL’S SHIFT TO 'NEUTRAL' AUTISM LANGUAGE PROMPTS BACKLASH
from: Disability Scoop

(15 Dec.) As an influential federal autism committee considers moving to "neutral, strengths-based" language, some advocates are pushing back arguing that stripping words will merely "sanitize" the realities many families face.

Every year, the government’s Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee – a panel of government officials and members of the autism community that’s charged with advising the secretary of health and human services and coordinating federal autism activities – is tasked with updating its strategic plan. The plan guides priorities for autism research, services and supports and is relied on by both federal agencies and private organizations.

With work underway on the latest iteration, committee leaders have signaled their intention to shift the type of language that’s included. The updates were incorporated in response to feedback in a survey of IACC members earlier this year.

"There were some comments on language considerations, which we summarized as moving away from deficits-based language and towards more neutral, strengths-based, inclusive language while also balancing the importance of maintaining accuracy when referring to issues that may be scientific, medical or clinical in nature," Susan Daniels, executive secretary of IACC, said during the committee’s spring meeting.

Sam Crane, legal director at the Quality Trust for Individuals with Disabilities and a member of the IACC, said that the current draft the committee is considering contains "significant changes," many of which are "for the purpose of reducing stigma and reflecting the community's prioritization of well-being over a 'cure.'" She noted that the changes are in line with efforts to refocus research on improving quality of life.

Now, however, some advocates are not on board. The National Council on Severe Autism recently wrote to the IACC criticizing the plan.

"There is nothing inclusive about neutral or strengths-based language that specifically excludes or denies realities of autism, particularly severe autism," the group wrote. "While the IACC neutralizes language about autism, families on the other hand rely on medical necessity, and the neural and behavioral impairments, disorders and pathologies underlying it, to attain desperately needed supports. For most of us in the real world, impairments, dysfunctions, deficits, disorders, dependency, and not 'strengths,' define the daily experience of autism." [read more...]

COMMENTARY: Sugar-coating a problem with nice, warm-fuzzy, "positive" verbiage does not solve the problem, it only buries the problem and lets it fester before it bursts out in a worse form. Pollyanna phrases and platitudes aren't helpful when people are suffering.

MORE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UOC-MP SANCTIONED
from: Religious Information Service of Ukraine

(12 Dec.) President Volodymyr Zelensky has put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine of December 11, 2022, "On the application of personal special economic and other restrictive measures (sanctions)" against seven other representatives of the UOC-MP.

On December 2, President Volodymyr Zelensky put into effect the decision of the national security and Defense Council of December 1 on sanctions against religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in Russia.

On December 3, the SBU published a list of 10 people put on the "church list" of NSDC sanctions. they include, in particular, a clergyman of the UOC-MP, ex-MP Vadym Novinsky and Vicar of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra Pavlo Lebid.

As stated on the website of the Presidential Office, the December 11 decree comes into force from the date of its publication.

The annex to the decree states that the sanctions are imposed on:
- Metropolitan of Zaporizhzhya and Melitopol Luka Kovalenko;
- Metropolitan of Luhansk and Alchevsk Patelimon Povoroznyuk;
- Rector of Melitopol St. Savinsky Monastery Oleksandr Prokopenko;
- Rector of the Holy Assumption Cathedral of Kherson Oleksandr Fedorov;
- Metropolitan Anthony Pakanych of Boryspil and Brovary;
- Metropolitan Meletiy Yegorenko of Chernivtsi and Bukovyna;
- Archbishop Paisiy Shynkarev of Kostyantyniv.

In recent weeks, the SBU has been conducting searches of the UOC-MP facilities all over Ukraine. As a result of investigative actions, among other things, law enforcement officers found "a large amount of anti-Ukrainian materials" as well as documents confirming the presence of Russian citizenship in the leadership of diocesan structures. [read more...]

COMMENTARY: This makes it clear that the UOC-MP – the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate" – is really just Moscow's "mole" organization burrowing into Ukrainian society in an effort to undermine and overthrow it. Earlier this year, the UOC-MP declared it was severing its ties with Moscow, but these latest investigations indicate that was merely a ruse so they could continue supporting Moscow's drive to take over or else destroy Ukraine.

BROTHER ANDRÉ'S CAFE SERVES COFFEE AND A PURPOSE IN UPTOWN
from: Next Pittsburgh

(7 Dec) It's a Friday afternoon around lunchtime, and there's a line at the counter at Brother André's Cafe. Staff supervisor/occupational therapist Bridgette Loiselle is holding down the fort, so the rest of the staff can assist at Friday Mass upstairs at the Church of the Epiphany. Despite the rush, she's smiling as she takes orders for lattes, wraps and cookies.

"We get a lot of support," she says.

As she speaks, a few groups of Duquesne University students set up laptops at the round banquet tables. Moms with toddlers chat together on a nearby couch. A half-built Christmas tree stands nearby; volunteers unpack ornaments and unfurl tinsel. Employee Shay Moffatt, just back from Mass, makes a beeline over to one of the Duquesne tables, arms thrown wide for hugs.

Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., the crew at Brother André's serves coffee both plain and fancy, along with homemade cookies, local bagels and lunch items.

Almost all of the employees have intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. Aides and interns from nearby colleges are onsite as well, as are a few moms and dads. But Moffatt and her colleagues do most of the work.

Brother André's Cafe is the brainchild of Mike and Terri Fitzgerald, parents of Patrick, 26, who is on the autism spectrum. After finishing high school in 2018, Patrick earned a food service certificate from the Community College of Allegheny County, but finding work was a challenge.

"Businesses just thought it would be too much trouble to hire him," says his dad. Patrick loves to bake: "He was a legend" in the neighborhood for his cookies, his dad says.

Mike and Terri considered starting an online shop for Patrick's cookies, but they knew he wasn't the work-from-home type. "So I put together an idea" for a cafe that could employ adults with disabilities, Mike recalls.

Terri and Patrick knew Rev. Chris Donley from their volunteer work at the Red Door, handing out meals to people in need Downtown. Father Chris is the pastor at Divine Mercy Parish, overseeing both the Church of the Epiphany and St. Mary of Mercy Church, home of the Red Door.

He remembered Patrick's hard work as a volunteer and agreed to convert the Church of the Epiphany's basement into Brother André's Cafe. It's named after St. André Bessette (1845-1937), a French Canadian brother who ministered to hundreds in Montreal, despite lifelong physical frailty. [read more...]

COMMENTARY: This story is from right here in our city of Pittsburgh! In fact, the Church of the Epiphany is just a few blocks from our church, where we also have a program of various social ministries. It is really encouraging to see that more people are beginning to understand that keeping the faith is more than just going to worship services. The word "liturgy" means the ministry of the people!

My websites have been experiencing "brute force" or DDOS attacks for the past several weeks. Finally, my monitoring service Jetpack sent me this message showing a total 118 lifetime brute force attacks on just one of my three websites, so you can likely multiply 118 by three = about 348 attacks. Each attack lasts from 5 to 15 or 20 minutes. "DDOS" stands for "Distributed Denial Of Service" which means some rogue actors have infected unwary people's computers with botnet malware that turns their computers into robots which send a rapid stream of requests to a disliked website. Then the botnet controller, most often a hacker in Russia or Bulgaria, transmits a command to the botnet to bring down my server by brute force, flooding it with thousands upon thousands of connection requests per second. The result is that my server can't respond to so many connection requests and it crashes temporarily.

As you can see here (click to see it larger), I received 46 messages from Jetpack just from 6 Dec. through 12 Dec., one telling me that my website is down and the next telling me that the website is up again. The downtime intervals can be computed by the times between these messages. What this all means is that some person or persons most likely in Russia strongly disagree with what I've been writing about Moscow's invasion and destruction of Ukraine, so they are trying to keep visitors from readimg my online reporting.

This is just one kind of "electronic warfare" – there are several varieties, such as "spoofing" email messages that might appear to be from me and contain salacious or just plain dishonest content: "disinformation." Or a state actor can jam the electronic airwaves so that radio, TV, cellphone towers, internet traffic, or even GPS signals can't get through. Or an army might broadcast fake commands to its soldiers to mislead the enemy into believing that an attack is aiming in one direction when actually the attack will aim in another direction. Thank the Lord that so far, the attacks on my websites have just been of the electronic variety!

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