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.”
Study Reveals a Link Between PFAS Exposure And Delayed Puberty in Girls
A recent University of Cincinnati (UC) study reveals a concerning link between exposure to per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and delayed puberty in girls.
PFAS are common environmental pollutants dubbed “forever chemicals.” These harmful chemicals are used to make different environmental and consumer products like firefighting foams and nonstick products. PFAS has long been a cause for concern due to its widespread presence in soil, water, food, and even human blood.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, involves 823 girls aged six to eight years old, with 379 of them coming from the Greater Cincinnati area in Ohio and 444 from the San Francisco Bay area in California.
The study tracks the relationship between PFAS exposure, hormones and puberty onset, particularly the first signs of breast development and pubic hair. Researchers monitored pubertal development, including signs such as breast development and the emergence of pubic hair, while testing their blood for PFAS levels for several years.
Alarmingly, researcher Susan Pinney, from UC’s Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences, found that 85 percent of girls had measurable levels of PFAS in their systems, while 99 percent had PFOA, a PFAS compound. This suggests that PFAS exposure contributes to decreased hormone levels, which results in delayed puberty onset. (Related: Forever chemicals: Study shows exposure to PFAS linked to post-diet weight gain.)
“The study found that in girls with PFAS exposure, puberty is delayed five or six months on average but there will be some girls where it’s delayed a lot more and others that it wasn’t delayed at all. We are especially concerned about the girls at the top end of the spectrum where it’s delayed more,” Pinney said.
Moreover, Pinney warned the public about the long-term implications associated with delayed puberty, including a heightened risk of breast cancer, renal disease and thyroid disease.
“Puberty is a window of susceptibility. Environmental exposures during puberty, not just to PFAS, but anything, have more of a potential for long-term health effects. What these have done is extend the window of susceptibility, and it makes them more vulnerable for a longer period of time,” she said.
Drinking water and most feminine hygiene products contain high levels of PFAS chemicals
Pinney warned that local factors contribute to PFAS exposure in Greater Cincinnati.
For instance, a DuPont plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia, has been releasing PFAS into the Ohio River, the primary source of drinking water in the area, for decades. These PFAS flow downstream to major water intakes on both sides of the river near eastern Hamilton County. Pinney also claims that a firefighter training area near those same water intakes also contributes to PFAS exposure, as they have found PFAS in firefighting foam.
Aside from PFAS in drinking water in the local area, non-toxic family products company Mamavation, in partnership with Environmental Health News, found in a separate investigation in 2022 that PFAS are also present in various tampon brands, including some labeled as organic. The report, released after testing 23 different tampon products in an Environmental Protection Agency-certified lab confirms the contamination of five popular tampon brands with detectable levels of fluorine, indicative of PFAS contamination.
The brands in question are Maxim Hygiene Organic Cotton Cardboard Applicator Tampons, OrganYc Complete Protection Tampons, Playtex SPORT Regular & Super Tampons, Tampax Cardboard Applicator Unscented Tampos and Up & Up Regular Tampons. They contained PFAS levels ranging from 19 to 28 parts per million.
Watch the following video about forever chemicals detected in water systems of nearly 2,800 U.S. cities.
27.6 Million People Are Currently in Forced Labor
27.6 million people were living under the conditions of forced labor around the world on any given day in 2021, according to data published in a report on Tuesday by the International Labor Organization (ILO).
As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, this equates to roughly 3.5 people for every 1,000 people worldwide and is an 11 percent increase since 2016, when there were 24.9 million people living in forced labor (3.4 people per 1,000 population). The vast majority of these are thought to have been in privately-imposed forced labor (23.6 million in 2021), rather than state-imposed forced labor (3.9 million in 2021).
The report, titled ‘Profits and poverty: The economics of forced labor’, reveals the extent to which forced labor is a global issue. At 15.1 million, Asia and the Pacific had by far the highest number of people living in forced labor in 2021, accounting for more than half of the global total. Europe and Central Asia was the region with the second biggest absolute number at 4.1 million people, followed by Africa with 3.8 million, the Americas with 3.6 million and the Arab States with 900,000 people living under these conditions.
When looking at prevalence, a different order emerges: the Arab States were the worst offending group of countries that year (5.3 people in forced labor per 1,000 population), followed by Europe and Central Asia (4.4 people per 1,000 population), Asia and the Pacific (3.5 people per 1,000 population), the Americas (3.5 people per 1,000 population) and Africa (2.9 people per 1,000 population).
And the economic scale of illegal forced labor profits is vast.
Forced labor is estimated to generate illegal profits summing to $236 billion in 2024 alone, with exploiters making at average of $9,995 per victim. This is according to a new report by the International Labor Organization (ILO), released Tuesday. This profit represents the wages that “rightfully belong in the pockets of workers that instead remain in the hands of their exploiters as a result of their coercive practices.” It is even a low estimate, since the ILO does not include further illegal profits made through means such as recruitment fees or the money from avoided taxes. Forced labor is here defined as “work that is both involuntary and under penalty or menace of coercion”.
As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the following chart, sexual exploitation is the biggest driver of forced labor profits, accounting for some $172.6 billion worldwide in 2024. This breaks down to a significant amount in all regions, at $58.6 billion in Europe and Central Asia, $48.4 billion in Asia and the Pacific, $34.9 billion in the Americas, $16.1 billion in Africa and $14.6 billion in the Arab States.
Despite making up nearly three quarters (73 percent) of the total illegal profits from forced labor, sexual exploitation accounts for only 27 percent of all people in privately imposed forced labor (i.e. not including state-imposed forced labor). Some of the other major areas for illegal forced labor are industry (including mines and quarrying, manufacturing, construction and utilities), the services sector (including but not limited to wholesale and trade, accommodation and food service activities, transport and storage), the agriculture sector (forestry, hunting, cultivation of crops, livestock production and fishing) and domestic work (in third party households).
According to the ILO’s calculations, illegal profits for forced labor have increased by some $64 billion since 2014 worldwide. This is the result of both more people in forced labor (23.7 million in 2024 versus 18.7 million in 2014) as well as more illegal profit being generated per victim.
Central European State’s Leader Invited to BRICS Summit
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said he will consider attending the BRICS Summit scheduled for the Russian city of Kazan in October 2024, after learning that he has been invited to the gathering.
During an address to the nation on Friday, Vucic checked the date of the BRICS summit with Foreign Minister Ivica Dacia, who pointed out that the Serbian leader had been offered the opportunity to attend.
“Was I invited as a guest of honor?” Vucic responded with surprise. “Thanks for the invitation, we will consider the possibility when the time comes.”
As chair of BRICS for 2024, Russia will host the group’s annual summit, announced by President Vladimir Putin for the regional capital of Kazan. The “top level” gathering will comprise over 200 political, economic, and public events. The exact dates of the summit have yet to be announced.
Last year, a group of Serbian MPs proposed joining BRICS instead of the EU, arguing that the organization would provide better prospects the country.
Read more Serbian MPs propose abandoning EU ambitions for BRICS
Serbia applied for EU membership in 2009 and was granted candidate status in 2012. However, its application has stalled over the bloc’s demands for “the normalization” of Serbia’s relations with the breakaway province of Kosovo. The Movement of Socialists, which acts as a junior partner to the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, has accused Brussels of using “political blackmail” in an effort to force Serbia to give up its territory.
“The indisputable fact that Serbia’s so-called European path has a clear alternative embodied in… BRICS,” lawmakers said last year, insisting on public dialogue on the matter.
Republika Srpska, the Serb half of Bosnia-Herzegovina, has also expressed a desire to join BRICS, arguing that it is a clear alternative to the EU.
“Since Brussels keeps making new and vague demands, I think Bosnia-Herzegovina should apply to BRICS. I believe it would be admitted faster,” President Milorad Dodik said last August, after BRICS agreed to admit six new members.
READ MORE: Serbian MPs propose abandoning EU ambitions for BRICS
The BRICS group of major emerging economies was created in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, with South Africa joining in 2010. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE become full-fledged members in January 2024, while dozens of other countries have reportedly expressed an interest in joining.