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“‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God’” (Matthew 5:9). The apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace” (2:13-14). He also told the Colossians, “It was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross” (1:19–20). How did the cross bring peace? At the cross all of man’s hatred and...

The cost of Russia's invasion of Ukraine will become a lot clearer this week, with a previously unthinkable sovereign default looming, more emergency central bank measures likely and a stock market crash guaranteed if it reopens. Moscow's "special operation" in its former Soviet neighbour has cut Russia off from key parts of the global financial markets by the West, triggering its worst economic crisis since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. Wednesday could mark another low. The government is due to pay $117 million on two of its dollar-denominated bonds. But it has been signalling it will not, or...

Zoltan! Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozsar wrote an interesting research note on how the Russia invasion of Ukraine and the G7’s response is causing a major upheaval of the global financial order. The Russian-Ukrainian war will create a new world financial order from which Bitcoin is set to benefit, according to Credit Suisse. Zoltan Pozsar, global head of short-term interest rate strategy at the giant investment bank, wrote in a Monday report that Western sanctions on Russia are likely to cause a paradigm shift in the way the world organizes money and reserves, a “Bretton Woods III” kind of scenario. “We...

The European Union should "do more" for Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday, after European leaders poured cold water on the country quickly joining the bloc. "We need to go harder. This is not what we expect," Ukraine's president said in a video on his Telegram channel. "The decisions of politicians must coincide with the mood of their people, the people of Europe (...) The European Union must do more for us, for Ukraine." Zelenskyy demanded last week that Brussels create a "new special procedure" to grant Ukraine "immediate membership". His appeal on Thursday came a day after EU leaders...

A British biotech firm this week got the green light from U.S. regulators to release over 2 million genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida and California as part of an expanded effort to combat transmission of diseases like Zika, dengue fever and canine heartworm. The experimental public health effort, which still requires final approval from state regulators, follows the 2021 release of 144,000 genetically modified mosquitoes in the Florida Keys by British biotech firm Oxitec. Oxitec said its genetically modified male, and thus non-biting, mosquitoes "find and mate with invasive female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, mediating a reduction of the target population...

New Zealand’s ruling class has released data showing that those who are fully “vaccinated” are getting acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or AIDS. The newly released data is showing a major degradation of the immune system.But just like Public Health Scotland originally did before they were exposed, and just like the Government of Canada is doing now, the New Zealand Ministry of Health only provides a cumulative total of COVID “cases” from the 16th of August 2021.This is both irritating and extremely misleading when you consider New Zealand is currently experiencing its largest wave of Covid-19 to date.But that isn’t the only...

The World Health Organization (WHO) is moving to create an international Pandemic Treaty which could impose more restrictive and legally binding pandemic policies among its 194 member nations, essentially given the WHO the power to preempt the national sovereignty of member States, and by implication, the civil liberties and health rights of the world’s citizens. Back in December 2021, the World Health Assembly – the WHO’s 194 member health policy forum – agreed to initiate a global process of drafting a new “pandemic treaty,” building off of the already existing international legal instrument regulating the global spread of disease known...

Much Wants More And Loses AllThe collective post-West has been running amok for the last two weeks. The powers that be make believe that they did not expect that events would unfold the way they are unfolding now (though they did their best to make things happen as they are happening) and they make a show imposing sanctions on the aggressor and assuring the populace that the aggressor sooner or later will cave in. There is yet a third aspect to the phenomenon: the same powers that be want the people to forget that merely twenty years back they themselves...

Below is the text of a complaint we filed today with the Florida Public Service Commission: This electric utility contacted us a month ago and informed us that power usage in our residence had increased over the past 12 months (How--and Why? We are a couple in our 70's and have lived in this house for 38 years. Nothing has changed. If anything, we have been upgrading to more energy efficient appliances as needed!) At the time of the "notice", our bill under TECO's "averaging" program was a whopping $164.00 per month. If we were ever a day late in...

Andrei Kozyrev, Yeltsin’s first top diplomat, speaks about Putin’s ‘disastrous’ war in Ukraine and why the revisionist history about NATO enlargement is all wrong... I ask Kozyrev about a debate that has roiled the American foreign policy establishment in the leadup to this war. Did NATO go too far? On the contrary, he thinks it didn’t go far enough... Where America erred, Kozyrev insists, was in not investing as a matter of “strategic necessity” in Russia’s nascent and fragile democracy, which he and Yeltsin — at least in the earlier phase of his career — represented.... "We were ready to...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Top Democrats are pleading for President Joe Biden to act alone on some of the party’s core legislative priorities, viewing executive action as their best hope of delivering on their promises and energizing liberal voters they worry are going to sit out the elections in November. In areas like voting rights, police reform and immigration where Democratic bills have been thwarted by GOP opposition in the Senate, the leaders of the influential Black and Asian American caucuses made their requests directly to Biden during a recent meeting at the White House, urging him to issue executive orders...

Two decades of space cooperation between the U.S. and Russia could be coming to an end after the U.S. and its allies imposed crippling sanctions on the country. The Russian government announced Friday that it might abandon a U.S. astronaut set to return to Earth.Fox News reports that the Russian Space Agency head, Dmitry Rogozin, has “threatened to leave” U.S. astronaut Mark Vande Hei aboard the International Space Station (ISS), who is scheduled to return to Earth on a Russian spacecraft by the end of the month. JUST IN: Russia threatens to abandon ‘American Astronaut’ in spacepic.twitter.com/ybTrf8TR8e — Insider Paper...

The Bible In Paintings 2 ENCOURAGEMENT FOR APPRECIATING AND APPLYING GOD'S MESSAGE E X O D U SCHAPTER 32 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their...

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces pounding the port city of Mariupol shelled a mosque sheltering more than 80 people, including children, the Ukrainian government said Saturday as fighting also raged on the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv. There was no immediate word of casualties from the shelling of the elegant, city-center mosque. Mariupol has suffered some of the greatest misery from Russia’s war in Ukraine, with unceasing barrages thwarting repeated attempts to bring in food and water, evacuate trapped civilians and to bury all of the dead. The Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey said 86 Turkish nationals, including 34 children,...

One hundred women have graduated from the U.S. Army’s esteemed Ranger School as of Friday, Task & Purpose has learned. “The Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade confirmed that the 100th woman graduated the course with Ranger Class 03-22,” said Col. Antwan L. Dunmyer, Commander of the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade at Fort Benning, Georgia. “She was the only woman to graduate with that class.”..... The first women graduated Ranger School in August 2015, and since then women have continued breaking barriers. Capt. Kristen Griest, one of the very first women to earn the Ranger tab, became the first female...

Berlin (AFP) – Up to the final hours before Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, former chancellor Angela Merkel had been touted as the person favoured by Germans to try to talk President Vladimir Putin out of the conflict. But as Russian bombs fell on Ukrainian cities, a shadow has fallen on Merkel's 16 years in office, with some observers now questioning if her detente policies with Putin had in fact left Germany, and Europe, vulnerable. Once hailed as the leader of the free world, the veteran centre-right leader has been accused by some of increasing Europe's reliance on Russian...

In a Washington riven by discord, it can seem like a throwback to a gentler time.

Monthly Prepping & Self Sufficiency ThreadI've been meaning to do a prepper thread for a while now and will do my best to start one the first Saturday of each month from here out. When you start prepping, it's about stocking up on food, water and supplies and maybe having a BOB(Bug Out Bag) and a retreat to bug out to. That leads to moving to that retreat which is usually away from the cities and your retreat likely is larger than the typical city/suburb home lot. In fact, you probably have room to produce some of your needs. Basic...

As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its third week, President Vladimir Putin is cracking down on his favorite agency — the FSB. Journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, who have long specialized in covering Russia’s security services, report that the FSB’s foreign intelligence arm, the so-called Fifth Service, has become the target of repressions. According to Soldatov and Borogan’s sources, its leadership has been placed under house arrest. There is no official confirmation of these reports as yet. For Meduza, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan explain how the FSB’s Ukraine intel got this bad. The Fifth Service — or, as...

Anyone watching the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, right now, cannot help but be impressed… by her utter ineptitude. Harris went to Poland in an attempt to be the face of the Biden administration – especially in the wake of the MIG-29 fighter jet deal that Joe Biden personally killed – and was tasked with smoothing over relations between the United States and Poland, while showing the countries of Eastern Europe that the United States cared enough to send their very best the vice president.Kamala Harris failed to do much of anything, and the impression she left...