5 Hidden Facts That Prove Baltimore Bridge Collapse Was an Inside Job
The second busiest infrastructure corridor in the United States, Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, was just destroyed before our very eyes, and the mainstream media and government immediately declared that it was nothing more than […]
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Doctors Alarmed at Mysterious Cancer Epidemic: “Something Diabolical Is Happening”
Some of the world’s top doctors are highlighting the ‘alarming’ trend of cancer cases spreading like wildfire among patients aged under 50. Details of the turbo cancer epidemic are still being suppressed by the mainstream […]
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NYC Schools Caught Teaching 4-Year-Olds That ‘Some Boys DON’T Have Penises’
New York schools are now teaching children as young as four that “some boys have a penis but not all boys do.” The New York Post reports that the transgender ideology is being promoted to children in […]
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Polish PM Fires Military Commander, Warns of Escalation of Ukraine War
Poland’s military faced the surprise dismissal of a senior commander in charge of Eurocorps—an EU-backed rapid reaction force—over an alleged intelligence leak. Lieutenant General Jarosław Gromadziński was recalled to Warsaw after the military counterintelligence service opened an investigation regarding his “personal security clearance.”
Polish Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz commented that the sacking came “in connection with the acquisition of new information about the officer”.
The dismissal coincided with Poland’s embattled Prime Minister Donald Tusk telling an interviewer this week that “war is no longer a concept of the past” as he warned that there is a risk of the Russo-Ukrainian war escalating in the months ahead.
Tusk also made it clear that the Islamist attack in Moscow last week and hypersonic missiles reportedly having breached Kyiv’s defence system were turning points in a war in which, according to most military pundits, Russia has a growing advantage.
In his first major foreign interview since becoming PM, Tusk called for “parallel structures” to be created within NATO among European nations in time for November’s U.S. elections. Regardless of who is in the White House, Europe needs to become more self-sufficient militarily, he said. Poland is regarded as a major pro-American geopolitical bulwark against Russia.
Gromadziński’s removal from his role managing the EU’s rapid response force has not been linked publically to the political power struggle currently engulfing Polish politics, most recently dragging in Poland’s Central Bank. Multiple scandals during October’s election campaign involving the Polish military may add to current speculation, at a time when Tusk and his newly installed liberal coalition government aims to increase its control of the military and intelligence apparatus.
Poland plans to increase its military spending from 3% of GDP in 2023 to 4% this year, increasing its importance within NATO.
Survey Shows Growing Number of People Are Leaving Organized Religions Over LGBTQIAAP2+ Disputes
(LifeSiteNews) — I first became interested in Christian apologetics while at university. My first-year philosophy prof was a sneering atheist who used plenty of class time to make snide remarks about theism, and atheism, at the time, was of the triumphalist sort.
Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion in 2006; the Christopher Hitchens screed God is Not Great came out in 2007; Bill Maher released the documentary Religulousmocking the faithful in 2008. On campus, the New Atheist movement thrived, and we had plenty of debates over the problem of evil, the historicity of the Resurrection, and the veracity of the Bible.
These days, however, the New Atheist movement is dead, and its chief proponents have found themselves targets of various woke movements — Dawkins, Maher, and Sam Harris have all discovered that a post-Christian civilization isn’t the enlightened liberal paradise they had hoped it would be. But the Christian apologetics movement, too, has faced challenges. One of the most prominent of these is that most young people no longer reject Christianity because they have quibbles about the historicity of Scripture or the nature of God. These days, it is often because LGBT ideology is the new orthodoxy.
A new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) affirms this. The survey found that 26% of Americans now identify as “religiously unaffiliated,” the largest single group in the U.S.; those calling themselves explicitly atheist has doubled from 2% to 4%; those identifying as agnostic have gone from 2% to 5%. Post-Christian America is not post-spiritual America; most still claim to hold vague spiritual beliefs of one sort or another but reject “organized religion.” The Catholic Church, for example, is losing more members than it is gaining, while black Protestants and religious Jews are least likely to leave.
Melissa Deckman, PRRI’s CEO, broke down the growing “religiously unaffiliated” group in an interview: “Thirty-five percent were former Catholics, 35% were former mainline Protestants, only about 16% were former evangelicals. And really not many of those Americans are, in fact, looking for an organized religion that would be right for them. We just found it was 9%.” Why are people leaving their churches or, as PRRI put it, “faith traditions?” Because, according to the survey, “two-thirds (67%) of people … say they did so because they simply stopped believing in that religion’s teachings.”
A full 47% of survey respondents specifically cited religious teaching on “LGBTQ people,” which is to say, sexuality and prohibitions on certain sexual behaviors and lifestyles. According to Deckman: “Religion’s negative teaching about LGBTQ people are driving younger Americans to leave church. We found that about 60% of Americans who are under the age of 30 who have left religion say they left because of their religious traditions teaching, which is a much higher rate than for older Americans.” In fact, a third of “religiously unaffiliated” Americans say that they left the faith of their childhood because it was “bad for their mental health,” a particularly common response from those identifying as LGBT.
This survey re-emphasizes a challenge for churches in the post-Christian West: How do we reach out to people and compassionately yet uncompromisingly defend fundamental truths about God’s design, sexuality, and what it means to be human? How do we reach people who are no longer skeptical about Christianity for the more “traditional” reasons (if I can put I that way) — issues of philosophy and theology? When the questions are no longer “how do I know Jesus rose from the dead?” but, instead, “Why do you refuse to recognize Steve and Tom’s relationship as ‘marriage?’”
One thing is certain: if we do not do better, young people will continue to leave the churches, and many Christian apologists will have to pivot.
Bill Gates, GMO Potatoes and McDonald’s French Fries — What’s the Story?
Fact-checkers swooped in after social media memes claiming Bill Gates owns a farm that produces genetically modified organism (GMO) potatoes for McDonald’s started gaining traction.
A March 25 Snopes “fact-check” verified that Gates does own a farm in Washington that grows potatoes for McDonald’s. But Snopes said statements made by other memes — claiming Gates supplies McDonald’s with all of its french fries and that they are grown at a “genetically modified potato farm” — were untrue.
None of the memes — or fact-checkers — addressed Gates’ growing investments in U.S. farmland or the use of pesticides on non-organic potatoes.
And none questioned why someone who promotes himself as concerned about global health — largely through global vaccine campaigns — would supply ingredients for a product known to contribute to cardiovascular conditions and weight gain and that contains 19 ingredients, including canola oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, dimethylpolysiloxane, tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, and citric acid.
Gates still scooping up farmland — through 20 holding companies
But while Gates may not own the other farms that supply potatoes to McDonald’s, by 2021 he had become the largest single owner of farmland in the U.S. according to The Land Report — albeit through a web of holding companies. By January 2021, Gates owned 268,984 acres of U.S. farmland in 18 states.
According to VNExpress, these holdings also make Gates the 42nd largest overall landowner in the U.S., “with most of those ranked above him owning mostly timberland.”
According to British fact-checker Full Fact:
“McDonald’s potatoes are sourced from farms all over the world. One potato supplier listed on the McDonald’s USA website is owned by Bill Gates’ investment firm, but it’s not true to say all potatoes used by the fast food chain are from Mr Gates.”
That “one” supplier, 100 Circle Farms, “is not the only potato supplier to McDonald’s USA.” The farm “is located near the Columbia River in Patteson, Washington, and grows potatoes in rotation with other crops such as sweet corn and wheat.”
According to Snopes, 100 Circle Farms “is part of a large tract of farmland in Washington, near the Oregon-border, that Gates purchased through holding companies in 2018.”
McDonald’s claims that “100 Circle Farms grows potatoes in circles so big they’re visible from space. Then our trusted processor, Lamb Weston, cuts them into fries at 70 miles per hour.”
According to The Land Report, 100 Circle Farm’s acreage includes 10,500 acres of irrigated farmland, 3,900 acres of rangeland, and 140 acres of other land. The tract is located in a” highly productive agricultural region known as Horse Heaven Hills.” The land’s prior owner, John Hancock Life Insurance, paid $75 million in 2010 for the land.
A Tri-City Herald report highlighting the tangled web of holding companies that obfuscates Gates’ farmland ownership, 100 Circle Farm was sold in 2018 to a Louisiana company, Angelina Agriculture Company.
Angelina Ag is a subsidiary company of Oak River Farms, a company that manages agricultural holdings for Cascade Investment — which operates as Gates’ private investment firm.
According to The Land Report:
“Though domiciled in Louisiana, Angelina Ag Company shares the same corporate mailing address as Gates’s Cottonwood Ag Management in Kirkland, Washington. Cottonwood Ag did not respond to inquiries from The Land Report.”
“Cascade, according to its website, does not publicly discuss its assets,” Snopes reported. Full Fact“contacted both Cascade Asset Management Company and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundationconcerning these land holdings” but said they declined to comment publicly.
Gates’ network of holding companies ‘tangled and opaque’
Gates has continued to buy farmland since The Land Report story was published in 2021.
In January, Investigate Midwest reported that Gates “spent $113 million on Nebraska farmland” between 2018 and 2022.
The Investigate Midwest report also shed more light on the web of companies connected to Gates that have purchased farmland across the U.S.:
“Gates’ farmland is held by more than 20 shell companies spread across the country. Some lead back to a P.O. Box in Kirkland, Washington, the city where Cascade Asset Management, which manages all Gates’ investments, is headquartered.
“Others are linked to Lenexa, Kansas, and Monterey, Louisiana, population 371, where reporters have previously traced Gates’ operations.
“These limited liability companies, buried under layers of business names, overlapping employees and addresses in at least three states, form a network more tangled and opaque than the one created by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is buying a giant amount of Nebraska ranch land.”
According to the report, if Gates turns over ownership of the land to a nonprofit organization — like the Gates Foundation — he could potentially make the land “exempt from property taxes.”
Nebraska state Sen. Tom Brewer, a Republican, told Investigate Midwest if that were to happen, it would “decimate” the counties where Gates’ holdings are located. “It would force action from the Legislature to protect the counties,” Brewer said.
Why is Gates buying farmland? ‘Because he can.’
Controversy over Gates’ growing ownership of farmland is not new.
During a March 2021 Reddit AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) session, Gates explained why he was “buying so much farmland”:
“My investment group chose to do this. It is not connected to climate. The agriculture sector is important. With more productive seeds we can avoid deforestation and help Africa deal with the climate difficulty they already face.
“It is unclear how cheap biofuels can be but if they are cheap it can solve the aviation and truck emissions.”
And in a 2023 Reddit AMA session, Gates made similar claims:
“I own less than 1/4000 of the farmland in the U.S. I have invested in these farms to make them more productive and create more jobs. There isn’t some grand scheme involved. In fact, all these decisions are made by a professional investment team.”
Mark Kastel, director of OrganicEye, is not convinced. He told The Defender:
“The danger is exploiting the environment and the people (workers) involved in the operations. There could be downsides for society if these enterprises fail after squeezing out more sustainable competitors. The potential for a deterioration in the safety and/or nutritional density in our food certainly exists.”
Kastel said Gates’ strategy appears to reflect a desire for consolidating control over land ownership.
“The humorist Will Rogers said in the 1930s, ‘Buy land — they aren’t making any more of it!’ And his messaging was to individuals, not corporate landholders. It’s disturbing when an industry sector, so important to our well-being, is being viewed as an ‘investment,’” Kastel said.
Why is Gates buying farmland? “Because he can,” said Howard Vlieger, a member of the board of advisers of GMO/Toxin Free USA. “The Department of Justice has allowed too many monopolies to occur in numerous marketplaces in our country.”
Vlieger said industry consolidation “favors a select few and stacks the deck against those who believe in playing by the rules. Those who will cut every corner and don’t have morals or ethics seem to be rewarded.”
Kastel also likened Gates’ growing stake in U.S. farmland to the former Soviet Union’s centralized agriculture system:
“Centralized or corporate control of farming has proven to be a failure. That was tried in the Soviet Union and led to starvation.
“Farmers have a unique and broad skill set that’s not easily replicated. The work is arduous with long hours. And it’s hard to fairly and adequately compensate someone when they don’t have an equity stake.”
According to Kastel, mass concentrated ownership of farmland comes at the expense of care and stewardship of farmland.
“An attachment to the land fosters long-term stewardship priorities and we risk doing permanent ecological and economic damage if farm ground is exploited,” he said.
Vlieger drew comparisons with the livestock and meatpacking industry, which he said is similarly concentrated in the hands of a small number of owners.
“The concerns about the abuses of market concentration and subsequent market power are easy to see by looking at the overall agriculture and food production sector,” Vlieger said. “Eighty-five percent of the livestock are slaughtered by four packers. This has forced thousands of independent cattle producers out of business.”
This can lead to supply chain disruptions and market shortages, Vlieger added. He cited the empty grocery store shelves at the beginning of the pandemic as an example.
“If this isn’t a prime example of the dangers of consolidation, I don’t know what is. The more diverse network you have for locally produced food, the more food security you will have for all,” he said.
Gates’ non-GMO potatoes ‘contaminated with agrochemical residues’
Full Fact said the Gates-McDonald’s french fry memes got it wrong on the issue of genetically modified potatoes. “None of the potatoes from 100 Circles Farm are genetically modified,” Full Fact said.
But the fact-checker also said, “There have been reports of other GM ingredients being used in the McDonald’s supply chain, such as soybeans for oil or corn to feed animal stock.”
Kastel said this argument is misleading, “because genetically engineered potatoes are not common.”
“Even non-GMO crops, unless they’re certified organic, typically are contaminated with agrochemical residues and potentially other compounds — spreading sewage sludge, contaminated with industrial chemicals, is forbidden in organic production but a common practice in conventional agriculture,” Kastel said.
Vlieger advised consumers to pay close attention to food product labels:
“If food products in the grocery store do not contain the Non-GMO certification seal, it is best to presume that it is GMO. I personally will not eat any potato product unless I know where and how it is produced. I know how conventional potatoes are raised and I don’t care to consume foreign proteins from GMOs or the chemical residues that come along with it. Potatoes are very efficient at removing chemical residues form the soil.
“I think it might be a good idea if people would read the complete ingredient list before consuming any food item. There is a trustworthy saying, if you cannot pronounce it or you don’t know what it is, don’t eat it.”
Vlieger said “Mass-produced commodity crop production is dependent upon chemical intensive, industrial agriculture. This is not good for the health of the environment, the plants, the animals or the people.”