DL

Yale / Ave Maria University / Catholic University of America | Cemeteries, Operations, and Theology.

[🇬🇧💥𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕱𝖔𝖗 𝕭𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖆𝖎𝖓💥🇦🇺 @Maxwellpainn]

🇨🇦 Another historic church reduced to ashes.

At 3:30 AM Monday, the Saint-Simon Catholic Church ,the largest wooden church in New Brunswick and the heart of this Acadian community , was completely destroyed by fire.

Authorities are treating it as arson. Motion detectors went off. Flames started in the sacristy.

By morning, a century of baptisms, weddings, funerals and community life was gone.

This isn’t “just a fire.” It’s the latest in a long line of Canadian churches going up in flames while politicians look the other way.

Our Christian and cultural heritage is under open attack, and the silence from Ottawa is deafening.

The people of Canada deserve answers, justice, and a full Notre-Dame level rebuild not excuses.

[DL @DLenshek]

Seems about right https://t.co/AV4cr1Aloh

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Six weeks before a TWA 727 flew into a Virginia mountain and killed all 92 people on board, a United crew made the exact same mistake on the exact same approach and missed the ridge by a few hundred feet. United wrote it up internally. Nobody outside United ever saw the memo.

The crash was December 1, 1974. The controller said "cleared for the approach." The TWA crew took that as permission to descend to 1,800 feet. The controller assumed they knew to stay high until the published approach began. Pilots and controllers across the country were using the same words to mean different things, and the plane hit Mount Weather at 1,670 feet.

When the NTSB found the United near miss sitting in a company file, the question wrote itself. Why did the second crew have to die to learn what the first crew already knew?

Incentives. A pilot who admitted a mistake to the FAA was handing the regulator evidence against his own license. So nobody admitted anything. Every airline kept its own quiet incident folder, and none of them talked to each other.

The fix, launched in April 1976, is the strangest institution in American transportation. The FAA handed the confession box to NASA, a completely different agency, because pilots would never trust the cop. File a report within 10 days of screwing up and the FAA cannot use it against you. No fine, no suspension. NASA strips your name before anyone at the FAA reads a word.

Fifty years in, the system has taken more than 2 million reports and never leaked a single identity. Close to 100,000 arrive every year. Wrong altitudes, missed clearances, two planes nearly sharing a runway, fatigue nobody wants on their record. NASA reads all of it, spots the patterns, and pushes alerts back out to every carrier before the pattern kills anyone.

That is the machine behind the chart. 6,581 deaths per billion passengers in 1970. 42 in 2023. At the 1970 rate, 2023's passengers would have produced around 29,000 funerals. The actual number was under 200.

Every industry says it wants people to report their mistakes. Aviation is the one that made confessing cheaper than hiding.

[Fiona goddard @fionagoddarduk]

This morning, I received a phone call from my Victim Liaison Officer confirming that my abusers are still going to be released after serving just 50% of their sentences.
Mohammed Usman is due to be released on 24 August, just next week, 7.5 years before the end of his 15-year sentence.
Because my abusers were sentenced in 2019, they fall under the rules that applied before the changes introduced in 2020. They therefore aren't subject to the 67% threshold that applies to many offenders sentenced later. By mere months, they avoided those changes.
I am grateful that they are no longer being considered for release after just 33%. But I cannot pretend that serving 50% of a 15–20 year sentence is justice.
Over the next 12 months, five violent sexual offenders who were convicted in relation to my abuse will be released having served only half of their sentences.
There is nothing I can do now to prevent those releases. And I have had to accept that, however difficult that is.
But this isn't where the fight ends.
We are already working on a campaign to make sure that when these offenders are released, any breach of their licence conditions is taken seriously and met with the full force of the law.
Violent sexual offenders should never walk out of prison believing they have simply "got away with it." Victims should never be left feeling that a 15 year sentence, or more, actually means serving only half of it.
I have spent years fighting for justice, not just for myself, but for thousands of victims whose lives were permanently changed by these men and other abusers like them.
I am grateful that the rules have moved away from the possibility of release after 33% and that many are serving longer behind bars, but 50% still leaves a very bitter pill to swallow.
This cannot continue.
Justice has to be about victims and public safety, nothing else.

[DL @DLenshek]

@BGOnTheScene Protesting surrogacy, I expect?

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

‘Imagine a Rip Van Winkle who had fallen asleep in, say, the mid-1990s, waking up today and trying to understand what was going on. “So these refugees. They’re mainly women and children, I suppose?”
“No, they’re almost all young men.”
“Oh. But they’re fleeing some dreadful warzone?”
“No, not exactly. They’re coming from France.”
“So how do they sneak past our coastguard?”
“That’s the odd thing. UK Border Force picks them up in the Channel and then lands them in Britain.”
“Well, I suppose they must make some great contribution once they arrive, then?”
“They’re not allowed to work. But they’re very active when it comes to crime, especially sexual assaults. In fact, the Home Office has just brought out a leaflet asking them not to molest women and children...”’
https://t.co/lXAV2LpqjC

[Claire Adams @claire_adams694]

People often ask me why I speak publicly about grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation, and why I hold MPs to account regardless of party.

This is why.

In 1998, my teenage sister was abducted and subjected to hours of rapes and sodomy, he left her for dead. What was done to her changed the course of her life. She lives with severe mental illness and addiction, which are recognised consequences of prolonged childhood sexual trauma. She has received no meaningful, consistent support since the offence occurred.

Because of that trauma, her children were removed from her care. I know this intimately, because I fostered two of them. They are my niece and nephews. Our family has lived with the impact of this crime for more than 27 years.

The man responsible was convicted of multiple offences involving underage girls. At the time of sentencing, in open court, he shouted that he would come back and sexually assault every woman and child in our family. That threat was made while judgment was being passed.

He was given a lengthy prison sentence.

Since then, I have been repeatedly drawn back into the justice system through parole reviews. During the pandemic, Humberside Police’s serious crime unit contacted me to inform me he was again being considered for release.

I provided a victim impact statement on my sister’s behalf, because she is not well enough to do so herself.

What is less often understood is that the harm did not end with my sister.

Because of the threats made in court, and further conduct over time, I required legal protection. A non-molestation order and an exclusion zone were put in place to protect me, my children, and other women in our family.

I am now also formally recognised as a victim of his actions.

After serving over two decades in custody, he was released and then recalled to prison within months for breaching his licence conditions. He is currently back in custody. I am never told the full details. I am simply summoned again, year after year, to repeat the same process.

This is not a political position I have adopted.
This is not something I have joined late.
This is my family’s lived reality.

This is why I speak.
This is why I refuse silence.
This is why safeguarding and accountability matter to me.

When I talk about child sexual exploitation, I am not speculating. I am describing a life my family has lived for more than two decades.

My position is clear.

Life should mean life, I will continue to fight for life without parole for child rapists.

[Fr. Thomas Petri OP @PetriOP]

This Sunday’s Gospel is Matthew 16. Christ knew Peter would sink, misunderstand, protest, boast, and deny Him.

He gave him the keys anyway.

That’s one of the consolations of the Gospel: God’s purposes are not thwarted by the weakness of those He chooses.

“I will build My Church.”

[Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry @pegobry_en]

Imagine if, in 2005, some bayou swamp white nationalist wrote a science fiction novel where, in 2026
- A black man who brags about being mentally retarded is made a full professor at Cambridge to universal acclaim
- The only one brave enough to expose him is a race scientist
- Who is then persecuted by his superior, a male gynaecologist turned transvestite who is, like the black guy, ALSO a fraudster

I would have thrown it at the wall

I would have called it the most ridiculous thing I'd ever read

I guess in the book the hero would have been named Hans Herrenrasse and be 7' tall and blonde and blue eyed, instead of being a soft-spoken Ashkenazi Jew

[Slava Akhmechet @spakhm]

There are unspoken rules in American business that are inscrutable to outsiders (immigrants, poor kids, etc.) They're not made inscrutable maliciously; rather they're so ingrained it wouldn't occur to anyone to explicitly state them. One of the most important ones is: you don't ask a business associate for something you couldn't get on an open market yourself.

e.g. you don't expect your most loyal investor to fund you if you can't raise elsewhere. You don't develop a good relationship with your boss and expect them to give you a raise if no one else will hire you at that price. Doing these things is experienced as undue familiarity that fractures the relationship.

But you do the exact opposite in low trust cultures like eastern europe. In that world the whole point of associates is patronage-- a means to extract something you couldn't obtain on the dysfunctional market by yourself. And if someone refuses such a request despite having ability to grant it, that would be a relationship-fracturing breach of norms.

Roughly, in high-trust societies business relationships are a mechanism to preempt the market, in low-trust societies they're a mechanism to defeat the market. I suspect this is why despite being overrepresented in the lower tech rungs, eastern europeans are underrepresented as the rungs move up. People are unable to parse or adapt to new rules, and so their careers begin to lag and eventually stall.

(Someone should write "High-trust norms for dummies" or something. Likely a very high leverage activity to unblock a lot of talent.)

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

This is truly one of the most insane cases the FSU has seen in our six-year history.

A retired police officer who gave 30 years of public service to his community had a knock at the door after his neighbour complained about some posts he had reposted on Facebook.

In April, Stephen was found guilty by a district judge over one of these posts — unsurprisingly, the one about Islam — of sending a “grossly offensive” communication, an offence under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.

The Facebook post featured an image of a rasher of bacon and a man in a turban, accompanied by the text: “Fun facts about bacon! People who eat bacon have a lower chance of marrying a 9 year old!”

While giving evidence, Stephen explained that the post was a reference to the marriage between the Prophet Mohammed and Aisha, which was consummated, according to traditional Islamic sources, when she was nine years old, after he married her when she was six.

But the district judge wasn’t having any of it. Stephen was ordered to pay £1,100 in fines, plus legal costs and now has a criminal conviction.

The Free Speech Union is supporting Stephen in appealing his conviction.

If you are still in any doubt that Britain’s blasphemy laws have returned, 18 years after Parliament voted to abolish them — for Islam alone — take a look at Stephen’s case.

Watch Stephen Gray on @TalkTV with @JuliaHB1 👇

[Eldur - The Icelandic Gay Guy @justgayice]

I am Eldur, a gay man from Iceland who has spent years speaking out against the sexualisation, medicalisation and sterilisation of gender-non-conforming children, and against the erosion of gay rights, women’s rights and free expression.
I am currently facing a lawsuit in Héraðsdómur Reykjavíkur (Reykjavík District Court) brought by Ugla Stefanía Kristjónudóttir Jónsdóttir — co-author of the notorious Dentons “playbook” and Reykjavík City’s “transgender issues specialist” — simply because I called puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors what they are: child abuse.
The second preliminary hearing is this Thursday, 20 August. The case is moving forward. I am approximately €2,000 short of the target, and my legal fees are due at the end of August. Without this sum, my defence is at risk.
This is not just about me. It is a SLAPP-style attempt to bankrupt and silence a gay man who refuses to lie about sex, biology, and the safeguarding of children. Ugla’s lawsuit is designed to scare anyone who dares question the current orthodoxy. If it succeeds, it sets a dangerous precedent: that critics of gender ideology can be dragged through the courts and financially ruined for telling the truth.
I have no large organisation behind me. I am an ordinary Icelander relying on the goodwill of people worldwide who still believe in evidence-based safeguarding, free speech, and the right of gay men to say that men are not women and that children need protection.
£2,000 is needed now to cover the next tranche of legal costs and keep this fight alive.
Every donation, no matter how small, makes a real difference. If you believe children should not be sterilised, that women’s spaces should remain sex-based, and that gay people should not be cancelled for defending biological reality, please stand with me.
Donate here to my legal fundraiser:

https://t.co/NlnvYhSByT

[FrJosh 💯 @tweetmobb]

LONG THREAD:

Mulling over this a bit over several years, I do think that there is a deeply rooted sociological reality at play here, which most people don’t consider: historically, the priesthood is a leisure class and really does function that way in US/western society.

[1/?]

[DL @DLenshek]

@MassimoFaggioli @commonwealmag Faggioli critiques Douthat's "need for an antagonist—to use “the friend-enemy” distinction as a compass. This is difficult to square with contemporary Catholic teaching." I wonder if the St. Michael prayer is subject to the same critique? In Faggioli world, there are no enemies?

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

This was me as a little girl, forced into hijab. And this is me after I broke free.

In Iran, I was told: wear the hijab or be kicked out of school. Resist, and you can be arrested, beaten, lashed, or imprisoned, or killed it in the hand of morality Police.

Then I came to the West and was told: be careful telling your story, it might cause “Islamophobia.”

I am a woman from the Middle East. I have lived under Islamist ideology. I have every right to fear it, criticize it, and speak about it.

Don’t silence us in the name of tolerance. Let us talk.

[Casey Mattox @CaseyMattox_]

14 years ago today I was an ADF campus free speech attorney. We temporarily had space on the 6th floor of the Family Research Council building in DC. After a meeting that morning I had just come up the elevator. Suddenly there were sirens, police cars and fire trucks everywhere.

[PoIiMath @politicalmath]

Surrogacy is already a bit of a Handmaid's Tale situation but demanding the pregnant women go to jail for refusing an abortion is so on the nose, I have to applaud it

[DL @DLenshek]

Texts reveal Fauci privately said COVID-19 vaccine could in theory pose miscarriage risk, before he denied it publicly https://t.co/9ocDLU8oN2

[DL @DLenshek]

@Joeinblack Heard it is bad in Wisconsin too. I've had meetings changed to video from in person because they were charging the rental car

[Live Action News @LiveActionNews]

A convicted sex offender obtained a baby boy by surrogacy.

Nobody stopped him.

Logan Riley and Brandon Keith Mitchell launched a GoFundMe to hire a surrogate to carry a baby boy for them. They paid for an egg donor, and through IVF created four embryos. One was implanted in the surrogate who gave birth to a little boy.

Some time after, Brandon and Logan took the baby into their home and shared a video celebrating their baby’s first year of life.

The video quickly went viral, and internet sleuths discovered that Brandon is a registered sex offender in the state of Pennsylvania.

Brandon had been convicted for child sexual abuse and possession of child sexual abuse materials.

Prosecutors found over 12,000 messages between Mitchell and his victim, who was a 16-year-old boy at the time of the events, which began in 2013. Mitchell was the child’s 27-year-old chemistry teacher at the time:

“The messages – sent on a non-school-issued cellphone and personal laptop – began in May 2013 when the boy was just 16 years old. The conversations turned sexual in the summer of 2013 and, according to the criminal complaint, included messages from Mitchell that read, ‘you can give me a bj after you graduate’ and ‘Do you have naked pictures [of] yourself on your phone?’

… Besides sexual messages, Mitchell and the boy also exchanged nude photographs, including more than a dozen of Mitchell’s penis, according to investigators. The boy sent a sexually explicit video to Mitchell, who allegedly told the boy he wanted to see him masturbate, said police.”

Pennsylvania law bars sex offenders from adopting children — but not from having children through surrogacy.

Children are not products to be purchased and sold, especially to criminal sex offenders.

Pray for this precious little boy.

We must ban surrogacy.