ANN CORCORAN writes at Refugee Resettlement Watch:

Here Time magazine reports that trafficking in migrants is part of the new business model used by ISIS to fund their operations.

Migrants pay thousands of dollars to armed groups in Africa and the Middle East on their journey to Europe.

Illegal migrants wait to be rescued off Malta earlier this month.

The movement of migrants across the Middle East and Africa towards Europe has generated up to $323 million for the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) and other jihadist groups, a new report has revealed. (more…)

KARL D. writes:

One of my pet peeves is grown men wearing sneakers as their main footwear choice. I haven’t worn sneakers outside of going to the gym or doing some kind of sport since I was 15 years old. Yet I see so many men these days wearing sneakers all the time and they will often own multiple pairs. They will wear them for all occasions. For work and even worse, with suits! From weddings, to expensive restaurants to even the opera at Lincoln Center. (more…)

ALAN writes:

I am one of those uncool, untrendy people for whom there is no comparison between movies today and those from an age now long gone. What kind of memory do Americans take with them when they walk out of a theater after watching a current movie?  I don’t know the answer to this question, because I don’t watch current motion pictures.  You couldn’t bribe me to do so.  The only movies I have seen over the past 25 years were “Titanic” and two others whose names I prefer to forget.  I saw them with friends who insisted they were worth seeing.  My judgment was quite different:  I found all of them insufferable and not worth a moment or a nickel. (more…)

TUESDAY’S deadly train wreck outside Philadelphia, which killed eight; injured hundreds, some critically, and continues to disrupt the most heavily traveled train corridor in the country, may very well have been caused not by any recklessness on the part of the engineer or by any equipment failure, but by a deliberate attack on the train by vandals from the surrounding neighborhood, according to reports by federal transportation officials.

In other words, just weeks after riots decimated part of a nearby major city, the train wreck may have been caused by the exact same behavior we saw in the riots and that was televised around the world: the malicious tossing of rocks or other hard objects at the remnants of order and authority in their neighborhoods by black vandals whose grievances are daily fanned and inflamed by our major institutions and whose destructiveness is often ignored and justified by irresponsible whites.

Here is the evidence so far that supports the theory, downplayed by the major media since it first emerged soon after the crash, that the train was hit by a projectile and careened out of control: (more…)

FASHION magazines have yet to report this latest bit of exciting news. The Congressional Armed Services Committee has asked the Army to design special combat boots for women. And we're supposed to believe this is progress.

APPARENTLY, Jorge Bergoglio, not being a Catholic himself, is unaware that Catholics are forbidden to be buddies with Communists, such as Raul Castro, President of Cuba. Communism is, by decree of the Holy Office in 1949, "materialistic and anti-Christian. " See here and here. Here are the words of  Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931: We make this pronouncement: Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth. . . . 120. If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist. In related news, see this interview at Tradition in Action with a former Communist spy who insists the Soviet KGB was the origin of the Liberation Theology movement, which this pseudo-pontiff supports.

THE number of people who consider themselves “homosexuals” is so small, they could never have waged a successful campaign to institutionalize same-sex “marriage” on their own. This campaign needed the support of “protohomosexuals,” argues Tyler Blanski in an excellent piece at Crisis. 

Why are so many straight people pro gay? Because the normalization of homosexuality is the premiere achievement of heterosexual ideology. “Gay” and “straight” are not taxonomies but ideologies. They are not orientations but disorientations: whether bi-, homo-, or hetero-, hyphenated sexuality makes us lose our sense of direction toward the truly sexual, and the victims of such ideology are children. (more…)

WHAT are the odds of a woman giving birth to 13 boys? I don’t know, but it’s extremely rare.

Of course, “Pope” Francis would say these are 13 rabbits. (more…)

FROM Father Frederick Faber’s The Precious Blood (1860):

I reckon failure to be the most universal unhappiness on earth. Almost everybody and every thing are failures — failures in their own estimation, even if they are not so in the estimation of others. Those optimists who always think themselves successful are few in number, and they for the most part fail in this at least, namely, that they cannot persuade the rest of the world of their success. Philanthropy can plainly do nothing here, even if were inclined to try. (more…)

  CONSIDER the meaning of Christ's Ascension. Some brief reflections here. And here is a video marking this feast day. Christ the King has been dethroned on earth. Let us enthrone him in our hearts.

IN AN interview with a women’s magazine, Valerie Jarrett, senior apparatchik to Obama, says:

A lot of good people are turned off by the nastiness of politics. And we need more people, particularly women. Just imagine what we would get done in Congress if it was comprised of a majority of women.”

Ah, more words of wisdom from the Marxist Polytechnic Institute that is the White House today.

Here’s a few words in response:

There is certainly no need for more people in politics. There are plenty of bodies. But more importantly imagine if any male senior cabinet member were to say, “See how much we get done because Congress is comprised of a majority of men.” He would be thrown out of office or publicly thrashed. More women have said arrogant, nasty things about male rule than prominent American men ever said publicly about women in politics in the days when Congress was all male. Men went around opening doors for women and doffing their hats. Men didn’t go around publicly saying, “See how great we are because we are men.” They didn’t go around abandoning their wives with impunity and still hold major office. They didn’t go around saying, “I married without really appreciating how hard divorce would be” — as Jarrett is quoted as formerly saying.

(more…)

SEVEN cultural institutions in New York and Connecticut are preparing to host coordinated art exhibits on the “Seven Deadly Sins.”  The Katonah Museum will focus on gluttony, reports The New York Times, “with ‘Emilie Clark: The Delicacy of Decomposition,’ an installation that comments on consumption and decay. It will contain an arrangement of Ms. Clark‘s family’s preserved food waste, delicate watercolors that echo the moldering fare and an interactive ‘Research Station’ equipped with a microscope, drawing pad, and jarred and stuffed specimens.”

The Times reports:

Does this predominance of sin mirror greater immorality in society today? Bartholomew Bland, deputy director of the Hudson River Museum, doesn’t think so. Mr. Bland’s longstanding fascination with the idea of sin was the seed for the collaboration. “Sin isn’t more prevalent,” he said. “We’re just more accepting of it. It’s more explicit, more visible, more in your face.” (more…)

A READER writes from Ireland:

Some months ago, I returned from a week in France where I had taken a holiday with my brother who has lived in France for quite a few years. My brother took me to several picture-postcard towns in the area, where signs such as ‘A Vendre/For Sale’ or ‘A Louer/For Rent’ were most prevalent. The brother said that in these towns these signs have been on show for some 12 to 15 years now, since he started to come to the area. We arrived in these towns in the middle of the day and the streets were empty at a time when the French go to the bars and restaurants to eat lunch. I saw a few teenagers, but absolutely no children on the streets. I did however see plenty of old people with their little dogs — the new children. This is the same France where “mére” and “pére” will soon be non-PC words, if not illegal words.

But the situation is the same throughout the West. (more…)

IN this heartbreaking profile of a female University of Pennsylvania freshman who committed suicide last year, readers will find many themes discussed at this site, including the phenomenon of weird masculine names for girls, the cult of athletics and success, immodesty and near-nakedness in women, the narcissism of social media and the vitalistic emptiness of modern childhood. This girl died in a calculated act of will, which does not seem that surprising given that her will had been assiduously and expensively cultivated in the sort of hyper-competitive sports that are now pushed on women from all sides, even by the federal government. She clearly wanted out from under the college sports racket. She wanted out, but was seemingly too afraid of disappointing others or shedding the identity of an athlete.

(more…)

A NEW organization, Stop Surrogacy Now, has formed to oppose reproductive surrogacy:

We believe that the practice of commercial surrogacy is indistinguishable from the buying and selling of children. Even when non-commercial (that is, unpaid or “altruistic”), any practice that subjects women and children to such risks must be banned.

No one has a right to a child, whether they are heterosexual, homosexual, or single-by-choice.

We stand together asking national governments of the world and leaders of the international community to work together to end this practice and Stop Surrogacy Now.

(more…)

THE MISSION of the Catholic Church is to save souls. The mission of  Jorge Bergoglio is to market a New World love-a-thon in which the religious consumer is always right. In a clothing store where the saleswoman tells every customer how fabulous she looks, the message conveyed is: “We love you! Come back and spend some more!” The new logo of Francis’s upcoming visit to the U.S. conveys a similar message. This is a shallow, insincere love. Once again, Novus Ordo Watch nails it:

Overall, the logo appears rather sterile, with no clear identity other than the figure that has its back turned toward you. But really, replace the illustration of Francis with one of the Dalai Lama, and it would fit just as much. As well it should, for it might as well be the Dalai Lama that comes to visit — the message preached will substantially be the same. (more…)

SINCE all families can never be good families, all families should be bad families, say two Australian “philosophers,” who also argue for polygamy. They say parents who read books to their children are “unfairly disadvantaging” children who do not have parents who read them books.

They do, however, have standards.

‘We do want to defend the family against complete fragmentation and dissolution,’ [Adam Swift] says. ‘If you start to think about a child having 10 parents, then that’s looking like a committee rearing a child; there aren’t any parents there at all.’ (more…)

ALL eight women in the U.S. Army Ranger School failed to pass the infantry course.

That can mean only one thing. The course must be made easier.

(more…)