Queer S&M “Cutter” Member of Forum Cited by Leading Transgender Health Group WPATH

Content Notice: This article contains graphic descriptions of genital mutilation which may not be considered safe for work. Reader discretion is appreciated.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) cited a castration forum in their most recent standards of care, which hosts child sexual exploitation fantasies and videos of “gender affirming” surgeries used as pornography. One of the members of the forum, known only as “Gelding,” performed clandestine genital surgeries for sexual pleasure.

As previously revealed by Reduxx, WPATH, which creates medical guidelines for the ‘transitioning’ of children, previously collaborated with academics involved in a castration fetish forum known as the Eunuch Archive. The online community hosts and produces sadomasochistic erotica featuring the castration, sexual torture, and rape of children.

Reduxx has also seen video footage of castration surgeries offered for sale through the community. Transgender lobby group WPATH linked directly to the site’s Fiction Archive in a 2021 release of their Standards of Care version 8, but had been working with academics representing the interests of forum members since as early as 2009. The video footage is often used by members for sexual gratification in the same manner as pornography.

Photo of “Gelding” circa 1997.

One notable member of the Eunuch Archive community had himself performed castrations for fetishistic reasons, while filming and circulating footage of the procedures as pornographic content.

According to an interview published in 2000 by the Miami New Times, Gelding, a former computer consultant for the U.S. Air Force and Vietnam war veteran, was motivated by his participation in sadomasochism (S&M) communities to perform genital surgeries free of charge, which led to him becoming a “legendary figure” in his circles, and a “den mother for the genitally obsessed.”

In the interview, Gelding said: “One of the reasons why I am doing this is to help other guys avoid the problems. In that respect it is humanitarian. In another respect, I will admit to a certain amount of sexual excitement from the whole idea.” He would also film the genital surgeries as pornographic content in order to fulfill a sexual fantasy.

Leading up to his sexual obsession with castration, Gelding produced “graphic sexual writing” for the gay BDSM magazine Drummer, which currently continues to operate online as a pornographic fetish site featuring fictional stories.

In a section of the site titled “Origins,” the publication describes itself as “the most successful of the American leather magazines and sold overseas. The publication had a major impact on spreading gay leather as a lifestyle and masculinity as a gay ideal.”

Gelding was himself castrated in 1994 after sharing drinks with a “leather couple” in San Francisco.

“They asked me to tell them about what I had gotten into, and I told them I liked butt play and also bondage and ball play. I volunteered information that I liked to tie up my own balls and even put hypodermic needles into them as I played with mental fantasies about castration,” he recalled in an explicit 1997 interview with Body Modification Ezine (BME), which contained photos of his genitals.

“These two both asked if I had frequent jerk off fantasies about castration. I admitted I did, that the whole idea somehow turned me on. One felt me up and found I was hard in my jeans. They invited me to come to their playroom with them, then handcuffed me and blindfolded me for the drive home.”

The men then gave Gelding amyl nitrate, known in slang as ‘poppers,’ and strapped him naked to a table before performing the procedure. After sewing the sutures, they engaged in intercourse while taunting him by calling him “a harem boy toy, a eunuch made for pleasuring males.”

Gelding told BME that following the illicit procedure, he was in “complete mental shock,” continuing: “I was mellow due to what drugs they had given me. I had experienced a realization of a deeply felt though publicly hidden and suppressed sexual fantasy. Feelings of loss fought with feelings of accomplishment.”

At the time of the Miami New Times interview published in 2000, Gelding claimed to have performed approximately 50 clandestine fetishistic surgeries, in addition to allegedly having “counseled” an estimated 4,000 men, acting as a liason between “cutters” and potential eunuchs. During this period, practicing medicine without a license was a third-degree felony in the state of Florida, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Describing regret in his role in castrating an unwilling man he refers to as an S&M slave at the behest of the slave’s master, Gelding said, “In this case it was the master’s idea, and he had set up the whole scene, the whole situation. He explained in a logical, plausible manner that it was the boy’s idea, that he wanted to make the ultimate sacrifice to bond their relationship.”

Gelding’s 1999 Geocities website.

While it is unclear how long Gelding was active in the community due to the use of private chat systems, his earliest posts in the Eunuch Archive’s public Usenet forum indicate he began offering to castrate men beginning in March 2000.

In January that year, one user called “GayandOK” addressed a message to Gelding asking if he could “help potential slaves” find a “master” via surgical removal of the penis.

“If you want to be castrated, perhaps I can help,” he replied. Gelding would also respond to another man soon after inquiring as to whether anyone in the group was “serious” about going forward with the procedures.

“It’s a matter of getting candidate and cutter together at the planned moment. It’s often quite difficult to arrange this. Once castrated, males are often suddenly reluctant to discuss their castration. I’ve done many and found this to be generally true. One exception of my eunuchs is the one nullo in Michigan,” Gelding remarked.

The following year, a participant called Kerry Max Cook of Plano, Texas, wrote, “I am seeking castration. I am non-fantasy-oriented and ask that only serious cutters reply. I have autographed my sac so that it can be kept as a ‘trophy.’ Please, only a serious cutter reply. I have tried to do it myself twice but it
has only ended up with me having to go to the hospital. If it were humanly possible I would like a full penectomy, but I realize that requires an experienced cutter.”

Another individual replied with Gelding’s contact information, and suggested that “he is what you are looking for… he is a very experienced cutter, and is also a eunuch.”

Last year, Reduxx unmasked another member of the Eunuch Archive community as a sadistic pedophile who had performed a makeshift “gender reassignment surgery” on a young man and claimed to have conducted over 100 similar procedures. Jack Wayne Rogers is currently incarcerated at the Federal Corrections Institute in Miami after investigators discovered child pornography on his devices that included sadistic abuse of prepubescent children.

Rogers was found to have been sharing, via e-mail attachments, materials “showing male children engaged in sexually explicit content, including photographs of children chained and bound by ropes,” according to court records. But upon further examination, investigators discovered numerous additional photographs of Rogers “posing with severed male genitals, wearing them on his head, placing them in his mouth and apparently chewing them, placing them in a coffee cup or on a plate, and attaching severed penises together.”

But while Gelding and Rogers were among the men in the forum conducting illegal surgeries, many participants had historically recommended a doctor in Philadelphia willing to perform the fetishistic surgeries. Dr. Felix Spector, now deceased, had advertised his services on his website, where he stated that he specialized in “the treatment of the transgendered and those with overactive sex drive,” and boasted of decades of experience working with “the transgendered and those in need of libido control.”

Some Eunuch Archive members estimated the total number of such surgeries as between 4,000 to 5,000. According to a 2008 obituary for Dr. Spector, 40-50% of his practice consisted of “voluntary eunuchs.”

“Although a number of men who have been castrated talk about achieving a “eunuch calm”—a state of pleasant enjoyment of the world, undistracted by aggressive tendencies and sexual urges—the outcomes of castration were another cause of controversy,” reads the obituary.

“A few of the men went on to commit murders, some were depressed, and others didn’t necessarily end up with the sought-after lessening or termination of sexuality they desired; medical reviews showed that some eunuchs continued to have full erections and considerable sexual interests long after castration.”

One man who was castrated by Dr. Spector has since gone on to become a psychiatrist and registered member of WPATH.

Dr. Jame Agapoff.

Dr. James ‘Jame’ Agapoff said, in a video he published to YouTube, that as an adolescent, aged “less than fifteen,” when he began participating in the Eunuch Archive forum. Through the website, Agapoff initiated an email correspondence with Spector, who wrote him a prescription for Medroxyprogesterone, and stated that he believed Agapoff would be a “good candidate” for a castration procedure in the future.

EXCLUSIVE: Queer S&M “Cutter” Member of Forum Cited by Leading Transgender Health Group WPATH – Reduxx

France: A Senegalese migrant was arrested on Easter Eve for threatening to set fire to a church. Elhadji N., who claims to be a Muslim, is living in the country illegally

A Senegalese illegal immigrant claiming to be a Muslim was arrested for glorifying terrorism and threatening to burn down the Notre Dame de la Voie church in Athis Mons in the Essonne department on the Saturday before Easter, according to a police source.

Shortly before 7pm, he forced his way into the church, approached a parishioner, claimed to be a Muslim, claimed to have visions and warned her that the church building would burn down within three months before leaving the place. The suspect, who had been arrested in the immediate neighbourhood for glorifying terrorism, threatening destruction by arson and inciting a crime on religious grounds, spoke threateningly and incoherently.

The 34-year-old Elhadji N., who was born in Senegal and already had a criminal record (Traitement d’antécédents judiciaires – TAJ), was taken into police custody.

His psychiatric examination did not reveal any indication of impaired culpability and a search of his home in Paris did not reveal any signs of radicalisation.

The accused’s police custody was extended.

Athis-Mons (91) : un migrant sénégalais interpellé la veille de Pâques, il a menacé de brûler une église. Elhadji N., se disant musulman, est en situation irrégulière – Fdesouche / Athis-Mons (91) : un migrant sénégalais interpellé la veille de Pâques, il a menacé de brûler une église. Elhadji N., se disant musulman, est en situation irrégulière – Fdesouche

The globalist French regime wants to destroy the oppositional website Riposte Laïque

For years, the Riposte Laïque website has always put in place top-level IT security at great expense, which has protected our website from thousands of attacks that have come from all over the world to bring it down.

But late on Thursday night, extraordinary means were used that could not have been the work of simple hackers. One of our mailboxes was misappropriated, allowing a redirection from the Riposte Laïque website and Pierre Cassen’s channel to a page of the Elysée Palace with the head of state’s photo. And this on the eve of a long Easter weekend, which makes it difficult for our technicians to save the site and restore it as quickly as possible.

We can only conclude that this attack of unprecedented scale is not taking place in any random context.

Two of our collaborators, Charles Demassieux and Pierre Cassen, have been subjected to severe intimidation by the judiciary and the police in recent weeks. The former was twice held in police custody for 48 hours, followed by a trial in which only charges were brought against him and in which he was found guilty. The founder of our website, Pierre Cassen, was himself the victim of a house search (the second in seven years) during which his computer equipment and telephone were confiscated. Regardless of all the precautions taken, one can only wonder why the state authorities have the computer equipment of two of our contributors in their power…

The legal harassment against Riposte Laïque has gathered pace, with three heavy sentences totalling 50,000 euros, together with suspended prison sentences against the chairman. And thirteen other cases are pending, with complaints that are often more grotesque than the others, but which are nevertheless being investigated and, despite a few victories, all too often lead to increasingly severe convictions.

Nosta Lgia

Convinced that the Riposte Laïque website could not withstand such financial pressure, the site’s leaders had decided to end a soon-to-be 17-year endeavour unless readers provided the funds to continue this fight. Within a week, an overwhelming wave of solidarity had reached half of the target, which was very promising.

Is it really a coincidence that this bad blow hit us just as we were about to save the site?

In the same context, Eric Zemmour announced on Thursday that he too, with 18 lawsuits, is facing legal harassment with only one goal: to silence him.

Every day, patriotic activists are persecuted by the French state, arrested, hounded by judges and sometimes imprisoned, while dealers, thugs and leftists enjoy complete impunity. This bankrupt regime knows that its real enemies are those who defend France against a regime that is destroying the country more and more every day, with the complicity of the immigration-driving left.

Every reader, every contributor is now dependent on the efforts of our computer scientists who are trying to save our website. This will most likely take several days. But this huge deployment of resources to silence our newspaper and Pierre Cassen’s daily video will only strengthen our team’s resolve. We have no doubt that our readers and all patriots will take the will to save Riposte Laïque even more to heart in the face of all those who want to silence our site for good.

Des moyens exceptionnels mis en place pour pirater et détruire Riposte Laïque – Résistance Républicaine (resistancerepublicaine.com)

J.K. Rowling Dares Scottish Police to Arrest Her over Transgender Criticism as Hate Crime Law Comes into Effect

screen grab youtube

Author and outspoken feminist J.K. Rowling has dared police in Scotland to arrest her for criticising transgender ideology as the country’s controversial hate crime legislation came into effect on Monday.

Rowling, who resides in Scotland, has warned that the leftist-separatist Scottish National Party government’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Act will have a stifling effect on freedom of speech and vowed to continue espousing her belief that men cannot become women.

“Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal,” she wrote on social media.

“I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”

The Harry Potter author argued that in passing the hate crime legislation, the local Scottish parliament put a “higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls.”

“The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex.”

Rowling, once a darling of the left for her liberal politics and success as a female writer before riling the woke mob over her criticisms of transgenderism, went on to post a series of biological males whom she mocked for claiming to be women.

These included Adam Graham, a convicted double rapist who claimed to be a transgender woman named Isla Bryson after being charged with sex crimes and who was initially placed in a female prison.  The move to place an accused rapist sparked an international scandal, which many attributed as a cause for the downfall of former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon after she was unable to say whether Graham was a woman or not.

The Harry Potter author also shared transgender television personality India Willoughby as an example of someone who is “not a woman at all”. Rowling previously faced attempts by activists to have her arrested after she publicly declared Willoughby a male.

Concluding the series of prominent biological males claiming to be women, Rowling urged her supporters to share the post with the hashtag “#ArrestMe”.

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act came into force on Monday after years of debate. The new law criminalises “stirring up hatred” based on age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, and transgender identity. Notably, the law did not cover biological sex, meaning that biological women were not included as a protected class.

Far-left First Minister of Scotland, Humza Yousaf, has claimed that the bill does not infringe upon freedom of speech and that there will be protections against it being weaponised for political purposes. However, critics have pointed to the vague language of the bill — which includes “insulting” behaviour — as being prone to abuse. Prosecutors also do not need to prove that a statement was intended to stir up hatred but merely that it was a “likely” result.

Those found guilty of violating the new speech code face up to seven years in prison.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/04/01/j-k-rowling-dares-scottish-police-to-arrest-her-over-transgender-criticism-as-new-hate-crime-law-comes-into-effect/

Turkish Television Discusses Hitting Greece

A Turkish Air Force F-16D , Wikimedia Commons , Staff Sgt. Jonathan Snyder,PD US Air Force

On Turkey’s pro-government TV channel AHaber, political analysts and national security specialists on February 28 enthusiastically discussed how the Turkish Air Force could strike Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.

Speaking in front of a map of Turkey and Greece, Mesut Hakkı Caşın, a professor of international law and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s advisor for security and foreign policy, spoke about the Turkish Kaan fighter jet, which is currently under development, and said:

“This [Kaan] plane won’t be spotted by Greek radars. As this plane hits the main targets [Aegean islands] here, the other plane accompanying it, [the UAV Bayraktar] Akıncı, can destroy all the radars here [on the islands], leaving the Greeks blind…

“Add to that our other unmanned combat aerial vehicles, Greek squares will be devastated in less than 3 hours…

“If the Greeks enter a war with us, all the weapons in all those islands will be war booty for us.”

Another analyst said:

“The Turkish nation has a dream regarding the islands, but the official policy can’t be expressed publicly.”

Another said:

“We will not invade the islands. We will use our right to move freely. We will be a member of the European Union. And then the islands will demographically pass to the Turkish people in a generation. In a generation, all the islands will be majority Turkish.”

“Conquest without a war,” he added, “happens like this [through demographic domination].”

The other analyst disagreed:

“Those islands were under Ottoman rule for 500 years, but they were 95 percent demographically Greek. Even the Ottoman Empire could not Turkify them. Also, I don’t believe Turkey will ever be a member of the EU. [The conquest of the islands] will happen only through war.”

So, the Turkish government aims to conquer the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea – either militarily or demographically. The goal is the same: the islands’ capture.

Such conversations are frequent in Turkey’s pro-government media. On February 6, Turkish analysts proudly discussed the prospects of Turkey striking Greece with missiles.

On CNN Turk, pro-government analysts said that the Tayfun, the first Turkish-made short-range ballistic missile, could easily hit Greece from Turkey. “If we fire it from Edirne or Izmir, we can hit Athens,” they concluded.

These threats are not new. For at least the past five years, Turkey’s government has threatened to invade and annex the Greek islands in the Aegean.

On the official X (Twitter) account of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) a video was posted on April 22, 2023, claiming some Greek islands and the Western Thrace region of Greece as part of Turkish territory.

The Turkish media also falsely and repeatedly claims that “152 Greek islands and islets in the Aegean belong to Turkey”. These islands, however, historically and legally, belong to Greece, mainly through the 1924 Treaty of Lausanne, 1932 Turkish-Italian Agreements and the 1947 Paris Treaty.

Erdogan’s Islamist government apparently aims to annex Greek territory for two main reasons. The first stems from a belief in neo-Ottomanism and the Islamic concept of conquest, or “fetih,” from the Arabic word “fath”. The second reason stems from the government’s proud denial of its past crimes against Christians.

Conquest is part of Islamic jihad (warfare in the service of Islam) which, according to Islamic scriptures, is a communal obligation. As author Dr. Mark Durie explains:

“The Islamic ideology of conquest demands that a land, once conquered for Islam, belongs in perpetuity to Muslims. After conquest, previous occupants became tolerated clients of the Muslim occupiers, and, according to Islamic law, they were allowed to survive as long as they paid tribute.

“Connected to the idea that conquered land belongs to Muslims is the Quranic concept of mustakhlafīn (‘successors’). [Qur’anic] Sura 24:55 says, ‘God has promised those of you who believe and do righteous deeds that He will surely make you successors in the land.’

“In the Qur’an, ‘successors’ are believers who take over the properties of a people whom Allah has destroyed, including by conquest at the hands of believers. By this logic, Muslims become the ‘successors’ – the rightful owners – of conquered lands.”

The ideology of conquest in the name of jihad is what drove Ottoman Turks to invade and conquer lands stretching across Asia, Europe and Africa for more than 600 years. At its height, the Ottoman Empire occupied most of southeastern Europe to the gates of Vienna, including present-day Hungary, the Balkan region, Greece, and parts of Ukraine; parts of the Middle East (including present-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel); North Africa and large parts of the Arabian Peninsula.

According to Islamists, Muslim military expansion is an act of Allah’s favor because Allah bestows those places upon Muslim conquerors.

In conquering Constantinople for instance, Islamists claim that according to a hadith (Ahmad; Hakim, al-Mustadrak), Islam’s prophet Mohammed (b. 570 – d. 632) encouraged Muslims to conquer the city.

Muslim Turks, led by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, also known as Muhammed bin Murad, invaded and captured Constantinople from the Greek Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire on May 29, 1453. The city had been built and ruled by Greeks for millennia. Turks call the Sultan “Mehmed the Conqueror” (Fatih).

According to Professor Mustafa Sabri Küçükaşçı, a specialist in Islamic history:

“It was through the Hudaybiya Treaty (April, 628) that the general concept of conquest, with its spiritual dimension of reaching out to hearts and minds, entered Islamic culture. Prophet Muhammad taught his Companions (Sahaba) that conquest could occur both through war and through preaching the message of the faith.”

According to what Islamic scholars, including Küçükaşçı, call “conquest hadith”, Islam’s prophet Mohammed said: “

Verily, you shall conquer Constantinople. What a wonderful army will that army be, and what a wonderful commander will that conqueror be.”

Küçükaşçı writes:

“These types of hadith, and especially the conquest hadith, frequently referred to concepts like conquest, war, and jihad; in addition, the Companions and the Muslims who came after them brought the conquest hadith to the fore as the most defining component of the motivation for the conquest of Constantinople.”

What followed the fall of Constantinople was bloodshed and the rape of Christians by Muslim Turks, among other atrocities, as described by the historian Raymond Ibrahim, from reports by eyewitnesses at the time:

“Once inside the city on that fateful May 29, 1453, the ‘enraged Turkish soldiers . . . gave no quarter’:

“‘When they had massacred and there was no longer any resistance, they were intent on pillage and roamed through the town stealing, disrobing, pillaging, killing, raping, taking captive men, women, children, old men, young men, monks, priests, people of all sorts and conditions… There were virgins who awoke from troubled sleep to find those brigands standing over them with bloody hands and faces full of abject fury… [The Turks] dragged them, tore them, forced them, dishonored them, raped them at the cross-roads and made them submit to the most terrible outrages… Tender children were brutally snatched from their mothers’ breasts and girls were pitilessly given up to strange and horrible unions, and a thousand other terrible things happened. . .'”

Mehmed II converted Hagia Sophia Cathedral, then the world’s greatest church, into a mosque. In 1934, the government of Turkey turned Hagia Sophia into a museum, then, in 2020, back into a mosque. The latest transformation fully displayed the government’s disrespect for religious liberty, particularly for Christianity.

A possible second reason for Turkey’s aggression against its neighbors (including Greece and Armenia) is its self-satisfied denial of the 1913-23 Christian genocide in Ottoman Turkey.

The pride that Turkish authorities take in the genocide, during which over three million Christians were killed, and the rejection of any accountability, enables the government of Turkey to commit similar crimes with ease. As Turkey’s Human Rights Association noted in 2016, “When a crime goes unpunished, it continues to be committed. Denial perpetuates genocide.”

Turkish citizens who publicly acknowledge Turkey’s genocide can, to this day, be tried in Turkish courts for “insulting the Turkish state”. Since the government of Turkey smugly and aggressively denies Ottoman Turkey’s genocide of Christians and has faced no consequences, its threats continue against Greece.

On January 27, Erdogan said at a public meeting of the ruling AKP party:

“Our struggle did not end with expelling the enemy [Greeks] from our lands and throwing them into the sea from Izmir.”

Erdogan was referring to the 1922 Turkish massacre against indigenous Greeks, Armenians, and other Christians in Smyrna (Izmir), which brought an end to that city’s millennia-long Greek civilization. Smyrna had been a majority-Greek city from ancient times until the 1922 massacre.

Lou Ureneck, a professor of journalism, went to Smyrna, did extensive research there on the city’s history, and wrote a book about the massacre. According to his research:

“In September 1922, the richest city of the Mediterranean was burned, and countless numbers of Christian refugees killed. The city was Smyrna, and the event was the final episode of the 20th Century’s first genocide — the slaughter of three million Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians by the Ottoman Empire. The slaughter at Smyrna occurred as warships of the great powers stood by — the United States, Great Britain, France and Italy.”

Many survivors fled to neighboring Greece. Property and land that the victims had left behind were seized by Turks.

The Turkish government’s stance on the genocide is a bizarre combination of denial and conceit. First, they say that their ancestors did not commit genocide and that it was merely a war of self-defense. Then, they proclaim “they [Christians] deserved it” and “if need be, we could do it again”.

Erdogan spoke at a rally prior to the March 31, 2019 local elections in Izmir, referring to 1922 and proudly said: “Izmir, which threw the kafirs [infidels] into the sea.”

Emphatic denial of the genocide or blaming the victims is the mainstream position across Turkey, including in schools, media, academia, politics and elsewhere.

Turkey’s genocide-denial can be clearly seen in its foreign policy issues. How is the government of Turkey supposed to respect international human rights law when it takes pride in having wiped out entire nations, such as the Armenians, Assyrians and Anatolian Greeks, and has taken no step toward restorative justice?

The foreign policy of the Islamist government of Turkey is, in fact, mainly shaped by its genocide denial in addition to its ideology of Ottoman-style violent conquests and territorial expansion, an approach which has created wars and massive instability in the region, as in CyprusSyriaIraq, and Armenia.

Despite these practices of the Turkish government, on January 27, the US government approved the $23 billion sale of 40 new F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, after Ankara ratified Sweden’s accession to NATO. On March 1, US Senators declined to block the sale, despite strong opposition voicing deep disdain for Turkey’s conduct as an ally.

The US government seems to ignore that Turkey – acting as if it is the successor to the Ottoman Empire – does not stop threatening Greece, Cyprus and Armenia with military invasion.

Azerbaijan – with the support of Turkey – has been falsely referring to the entire country of Armenia as “Western Azerbaijan” and has been demanding that it either surrender or suffer a military invasion by Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan did in fact invade the Armenian Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) in September 2023.

Azerbaijan apparently now wants to conquer the Republic of Armenia as well. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev falsely calls Armenia’s capital Yerevan “historical Azeri land,” even though the Republic of Armenia has never been under Turkish or Azeri rule.

Turkey also denies the sovereignty and Greek identity of the Republic of Cyprus, 36% of which it illegally invaded and has been occupying since 1974. Cyprus had been a demographically Greek island for millennia, had also been occupied by the Ottomans from 1571 to 1878.

Erdogan, furthermore, has long been referring to Jerusalem, which was under Ottoman occupation from 1516 and 1917, as a Turkish city. “Jerusalem,” he announced in 2020, “is our city.”

Erdogan also announced that Turkey “firmly” backs terror group Hamas, which aims to destroy Israel and exterminate the Jews. Erdogan’s government indeed provides Hamas with military, financial, political and diplomatic support, and hosts its terrorist leaders, as Qatar does.

“Turkey is a US ally,” a recent report noted, “but should not be a trusted one.”

The US Congress would be well advised to reconsider its decision regarding F-16 sales to Turkey and this alliance altogether.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20531/turkish-tv-discusses-hitting-greece

So why are church pews still so packed on Easter? Cardinal Dolan explains why

By Monica Showalter

Amid all the gloomy trends of Americans no longer embracing religion, it’s curious that the churches, both Catholic and Protestant, remain packed on Easter. It’s also the same for those of the Jewish faith on the high holy days, too.

Mine was packed to the max last night for the Easter Vigil, and that mass was four hours long counting rehearsal time, and nobody got bored and left. Standing room only. Was yours? I bet it was, because every church I go to is that way, whether it’s the exquisite Catholic parish community in Beverly Hills, or my fascinating multi-ethnic Catholic church in San Diego. They still pack them in on Easter, no matter what else goes on during the year or what the public tells the pollsters.

Timothy, Cardinal Dolan, of New York, had some terrific insights about what he thought was going on in a beautiful essay in today’s Wall Street Journal, which appears to be freed from its paywall:

True, on Easter Sunday the pews will be jammed. Christians of wavering commitment frequently “come home” for Easter and Christmas, much as many Jews return to synagogue for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. While some of my fellow pastors might wonder out loud where these people are the other 50 Sundays of the year, or refer with mild irritation to the “birth-and-resurrection club,” I am always heartened to see them.

I do worry, though, as I note people drifting from the family of the church. Faith is deeply personal, but it isn’t private. By its nature, faith is communal. A congregation is a spiritual family. Many use that word “family” loosely to mean any group of like-minded friends, from which any member can part ways for any reason. A biological family doesn’t work like that—it’s unchosen, it’s permanent, and loyalty to it doesn’t wane with preference or mood. Members of a spiritual family likewise bear an obligation to remain a part of it.

That isn’t my opinion alone. In the Scriptures it’s clear God prefers to form a people, a community, and not simply a collection of atomized individuals. Faith must always be internalized, but it is always expressed, strengthened and lived out with others. In the ancient Near East the Lord called “a people,” the descendants of Abraham. In the first century, Jesus—in Christian teaching, that same Lord—formed the church, a people, no longer bound by race but united by his blood.

So in this age of cell phones, Zoom meetings, online classes, and other atomizers, there’s something incredibly powerful about being a community gathering together. And like the good cardinal, I don’t care if people have been away for awhile, I’m glad they came too.

In the Catholic faith, there is nothing … on Earth … quite like the Easter Vigil, it resounds with you for hours after you have gone, it’s the only thing still rolling through my mind.

A couple of things stand out that make it so powerful to me — that the service begins in pitch darkness and then one procession candle is used to light up a thousand tiny candles held by parishioners throughout the church making the interior almost as bright as day. It’s like ‘the wave’ at stadiums, but more intense since, well, actual fire is used, and the message is about the community united in light by the candle of the Resurrection.

Another is the Church’s grasp of time as well as space. The Litany of Saints is read — some 25 saint names, starting with the earliest and most important ones, like St. Michael and St. Joseph and St. Peter and St. Paul (which makes me snicker slightly since the pair of them didn’t get along), but then goes into the martyrs of the Roman empire — Agnes, Perpetua and Felicity, people of intense faith willing to die gruesome deaths because of it. Moving along, it brings up the great faith spreaders and reformers of the rack and ruin of the Church, like St. Francis and St. Dominic. They are relevant now because of the shambles we see at the top levels of the Church these days. It moves on to the great missionary, St. Francis Xavier, which is significant because a huge and dynamic part of our parish church is Vietnamese. People often mistakenly think that the Catholic community formed in Vietnam because of the French colonizers. But Vietnamese people I know say that’s garbage, they were always Catholic, the French turned up later. They are St. Francis Xavier’s people and chose their faith freely, not by some colonial boot, but because they embraced the message. The Litany also brings up the great educational and charity workers like St. John Vianney whom we see now. It ends with our most modern of saints, little St. Therese of Lisieux, whose memoirs were intended to provide us all with a an elevator, not a long staircase, to heaven, just like we like it.

I love the Litany of Saints, and in its beauty, can feel the community of time as well as the span of space, just as Dolan explains.

The third beautiful thing is the baptism and confirmation of the catechumens, which is big and joyful as a ceremony with splashing water and always something comical as converts get water poured on their heads and flinch. We had a lot of young people getting baptized and confirmed. How beautiful it was that the Church is attracting the young, or their parents are moving back towards it. It seems so miraculous when it happens.

At my Beverly Hills church, there was one other thing that knocked us flat in recognizing the glory of community and God — the singing of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus by professional singers who otherwise work in the film and recording industry. One almosts faint at the beauty of such an expression.

Dolan doesn’t offer a lot in the way of what it will take to bring people back to churches all the time, but he does recognize why they come. It’s worth reading to consider why we do go to church all the time and have a relationship with God and how it is inseparable with our relationship with our community. It’s well worth reading here.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/so_why_are_church_pews_still_so_packed_on_easter_cardinal_dolan_explains_why.html

Spain’s Amnesty Law Galvanizes the Opposition

Pro-Constitucionalist march in Barcelona in 2017 “Recuperem el seny” (Let’s recover the common sense), Wikimedia Commons, HazteOir.org, CC-BY-SA-2.0

There seems to be broad agreement among legal experts that Spain’s recent Amnesty Law, approved by the Justice Commission of the Congress without meeting basic legal requirements, is, in fact, unconstitutional, and does not meet European Union standards. 

In particular, it violates the principle of equality before the law and the separation of powers. 

To push the law through, the government relied on the vaguely worded opinion of the “Comisión de Venecia” saying that such a Law could be legal, while of course ignoring one of its most important requisites: the need for a broad social consensus (as there was in the case of the 1977 Amnesty Law pertaining to Spain’s political transition). 

As it happens, there is broad consensus on this issue, even among Socialist party voters, but it is against the amnesty.

The Law amnesties crimes and misdemeanors committed by the entire pro-independence movement since November 1, 2011. It even pardons the children of former Catalan President Pujol for corruption.

This is hard to stomach, even in a society that has accepted parliamentary over-representation of certain regions and their separatist parties within these, thorough administrative decentralization, and the obviating of Catalonia’s historic debt to the rest of Spain. 

The amnesty will cover everything from the violence of “Tsunami Democrático” to the apparent link between Catalan separatism and Moscow. Crucially, it will likewise pardon embezzlement of public funds, as long as it was done to support Catalonia breaking away from Spain or organizing referendums for independence.

The Law foresees the lifting of relevant search and arrest warrants and prison sentences within a maximum period of 2 months.

Spain’s “preliminary ruling” is now before the European Court of Justice, raising the question of the primacy of EU law. 

The leader of the opposition People’s Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, wants the European Union to intervene. He suggests having an extraordinary dialogue in which the position of Spain’s politicians would be put on the record in order to highlight the legal excesses of the Socialist-led government.

Proposing measures to stop the judiciary from being politicized in the future has now become a major plank of the PP’s electoral message.

For his part, Feijóo considers the Amnesty Law unconstitutional and has stated that he will repeal it if he becomes prime minister (although he hopes the European Courts will do that job for him).

The situation is ambiguous, in any case, because Feijóo has also suggested that it may not be possible to charge the pardoned criminals afterwards, even if the original amnesty is repealed, which leaves the issue of repeal somewhat moot.

It would not apply going forward or serve as legal precedent, in other words, but would conceivably, leave the damage done, done

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/analysis/spains-amnesty-law-galvanizes-the-opposition/