“Physicians, researchers and ethicists are grappling with the copycat effect of suicide and rising U.S. suicide rates as jurisdictions enact laws to allow the terminally ill to take their own lives with the help of a doctor. Dr. William Toffler, national director of Physicians for Compassionate Care, says suicides do not occur in a vacuum but among others who might be moved to imitate the act, a phenomenon called the “Werther effect.” An increase in suicides should be expected where assisted suicide is legal because society is sending the unmistakable message that killing oneself is a proper response to life’s challenges, he says. “Essentially the message is, ‘I’ll avoid these problems by killing myself,’” says Dr. Toffler, a practicing physician for more than 35 years in Oregon, which became the first state to implement an assisted suicide law in 1997.” –Source
Amazing how they talk about this as if it’s all just an unfortunate phenomenon wherein if one person does it another will follow. How many of us recall our mothers saying, “If Johnny jumped in the lake, would you jump too?” That’s right, most people today will say, huh? Mom never said that! But in my generation it was the favored comeback of moms all over America when you got caught doing something wrong with your friends. I know, this was a regular occurrence in my home seeing how we were the largest family in the State, if not the nation. (I am one of 11 children) Continue reading
“Three sources from different conservative groups said that Heritage employees have been soliciting, stockpiling and vetting résumés for months with an eye on stacking Trump’s administration with conservative appointees across the government. One source described the efforts as a “shadow transition team” and “an effort to have the right kind of people in there. …Ultimately, Trump won 81 percent of the evangelical vote, a higher percentage than even George W. Bush — himself a devout born-again Christian earned in 2004. Part of the reason the list made such a splash was because Heritage and DeMint are hugely influential in deeply conservative circles, often appearing at the nexus of conservative power structures. …It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement. And daylight between traditionally conservative policy prescriptions and some of Trump’s campaign rhetoric is especially apparent on the issue of foreign policy.” –
(AFP) – A town in eastern France has been ordered to remove a statue of the Virgin Mary to comply with a national ban on religious symbols in public, the local mayor said Saturday.
— The highest ranking Chinese Catholic has stated that if Pope Francis allows Communist China to have a hand in the selection of the nation’s Catholic bishops it would be “betraying Jesus Christ.”
The Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) have renewed their support of the European Pillar of Social Rights, an EU document on labor, education, and other social issues.
“Germany’s record on free speech leaves a lot to be desired. Vacillating from one extreme to another, from simulcasting Nazi propaganda to criminalizing Holocaust-denial, it has long struggled to protect the civil liberty of free speech while quelling the tides of authoritarianism. In an attempt to control the recent uptick in xenophobia and racism, largely exacerbated by sudden demographic shifts linked to Berlin’s refugee-intake program, German authorities are now prosecuting arbitrarily-defined “hate speech,” otherwise known as free speech, with what appears to be de facto blasphemy laws. On Wednesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel backed a federal program to monitor and police internet activity on popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. ” –
The powers that be under direction of their dying God are working overtime to try and get the people so scared and so confused that they will seek the protection of their government leaders as well as direction on what to do from their religious leaders. All sorts of strange sights and sounds are happening the world over. (
“AppNexus Inc., operator of one of the biggest digital advertising services, has barred Breitbart News from using its ad-serving tools because the conservative online publisher violated its hate speech rules. AppNexus scrutinized Breitbart’s website after U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump tapped Steve Bannon, 
The parents of a 4-year-old girl, who suffered severe burns in a terror attack on a church in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province, have forgiven the accused, identified as a former convicted terrorist linked to the Islamic State group, and have said they will not even ask God to punish him.