By Lydia Doye, The Sun

VICTORIA Roshchyna, 27, was a Ukrainian journalist who reported on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Siege of Mariupol. 

Roshchyna won awards for her reporting – winning the Courage in Journalism Award in 2022.

The journalist vanished into Putin’s penal hell in the summer of 2023 while reporting in Ukraine’s occupied territories.

Former prisoners of war held alongside Roshchyna said she was detained in Energodar in Summer 2023.

Three days after being captured she was transported to Melitopol, where she was held captive for four months and subjected to ruthless torture.

In critical condition, she was then sent to Taganrog’s notorious SIZO-2 – where she was brutally murdered.

Roshchyna’s body was returned to Ukraine in a body bag, but her eyes, brain and even larynx were missing.

It was returned as part of an exchange involving 757 dead Ukrainians in February.

Her body bag was wrongly marked as “unidentified male” who had died of heart failure.

DNA testing later confirmed that the emaciated body, with a shaved head and broken neck bone, was Roshchyna’s.

Now, prosecutors have revealed that she likely suffered unbearable torture prior to her tragic death. 

Sizo number 2 is one of Putin’s most notorious torture prisons – dubbed by many as a “concentration camp”.

Before the war broke out it held juvenile inmates and mothers with young children.

But it now serves a much more sinister purpose as a barbaric torture centre for Ukrainian captives, some of which are civilians.

The terrified prisoners are tied up and blindfolded onboard military trucks daubed with the Z symbol before being transported to the centre, according to the Guardian.

Upon arrival many receive a “welcoming” procedure known as “reception”, where guards punch, kick and beat them relentlessly with batons.

The chief medic of a Ukrainian marine brigade who arrived at the prison in 2022, Volodymyr Labuzov, said: “This is a sacred ritual for them.

“Blindfolded, with your hands tied and your head bowed low, you are ordered to walk, and every dog standing there considers it necessary to hit you with something.”

But Labuzov said this was just the start of a string of regular beatings for prisoners – during the twice-daily cell searches and interrogations.

The exact layout of the site is unknown but former inmates have identified two buildings as the main torture sites – as they recalled harrowing screams coming from them.

The site reportedly includes various torture chambers containing an array pain-inducing tools including an electric chair.

Another room is said to have been used to hang handcuffed detainees upside down in a foetal position with their knees strapped to a bar while being severely beaten. 

Former prisoners recalled the horrific “Putin’s phone” treatment – where wires are attached to earlobes, the nose or genitals before shocks are sent via a Soviet-era battery-powered field phone called a TA-57.

Many also go hungry inside the barbaric prison with a typical meal in the prison reportedly being around four and a half spoonfuls of food.

And the food they receive is sometimes mixed with bones and entrails.

Former prisoners said that some inmates would not eat during the day and instead chose to save their rations for a single evening meal just to feel full enough to sleep.

They also reported a twisted ban on speaking Ukrainian and recalled being forced reciting of patriotic Russian poems.

While prison staff oversee the day-to-day running of the facility, officers from Russia’s FSB security service are in charge of the torture system and conduct the most important interrogations. 

Viktoria Roschyna vanished into Putin‘s penal hell in the summer of 2023 while reporting in Ukraine‘s occupied territories.

She was held captive in Taganrog’s SIZO-2 where she is thought to have been tortured and brutally murdered.

Ukrainian prosecutors revealed that the award-winning reporter was likely tortured prior to her tragic death.

Prosecutors said the forensic examination exposed “numerous signs of torture and ill-treatment… including abrasions and haemorrhages on various parts of the body, a broken rib and possible traces of electric shock”.

Head of the war crimes department at the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office Yuriy Belousov said that experts had confirmed the injuries were sustained while Roshchyna was still alive.

Belousov said that the state of the body made it impossible to determine the cause of death.

But he added that Ukraine was working with international forensic experts to find answers.

Officials in Kyiv also claim that the removal of her eyes, brain and larynx is likely further evidence of the atrocious torture she suffered in captivity, according to the DailMail.

It is known to be a common practice in Russia to remove the body parts of prisoners who have been tortured beyond the limits to hide human rights violations.

An expert told Important Stories: “The larynx can be important evidence in cases of strangulation.

“When a person is strangled, the hyoid bone [in the neck] is often broken.”

The expert continued: “Haemorrhages can be found in the whites of the eyes, and oxygen deprivation can be detected in the brain.”

Roschyna’s body was returned as part of an exchange involving 757 dead Ukrainians in February.

Her body bag was wrongly marked as “unidentified male” who had died of heart failure.

DNA testing later confirmed that the emaciated body, with its eyes, brain and larynx removed, was Roshchyna’s.

Roshchyna worked for digital media organisation Hromadske TV among other outlets.

Lydia Doye, The Sun

Russian forces managed to capture around 68 square miles of Ukraine in April. But it cost them 4,800 vehicles and more than 36,600 dead and wounded troops, according to one statistician who collects data mostly from official Ukrainian sources including the general staff in Kyiv.

In the same month, Ukrainian losses were “minimal,” concluded analyst Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting in Poland.

Ukraine sprawls across 233,000 square miles, 19% of which is under Russian occupation. At the current rates of advance and loss, the Russians would capture the rest of Ukraine in the year 2256 at the cost of 101 million casualties. The current population of Russia is 144 million.

Incredibly, staggering losses in people and equipment haven’t yet crippled the Russian military in Ukraine. The Kremlin is equipping its forces with thousands of civilian vehicles, including scooters, compact cars and even at least one bus.

Meanwhile, it’s recruiting 30,000 troops per month, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, told U.S. lawmakers on April 3. Since many of the wounded eventually return to the front line, the Russian armed forces recruit more people every month than they lose.

As a result, Cavoli said, the Russian force in Ukraine is actually growing. It now numbers no fewer than 600,000 troops, “the highest level over the course of the war and almost double the size of the initial invasion force” in February 2022, Cavoli said.

How the Kremlin has managed to sustain and even expand its recruitment effort comes down to two things: money and mood. Record enlistments are “driven by high sign-on bonuses and speculation that the war will soon be over,” explained Janis Kluge, deputy head of the Eastern Europe and Eurasia Division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Whether the money and good vibes are sustainable is an open question. “All told, Russia’s defense budget will account for 40% of all government expenditures which is at its highest level since the Cold War,” Cavoli said. By comparison, the United States spends just 13% of its federal budget on the military.

The spending has buoyed Russians’ attitude toward the war, even as total casualties exceeded 800,000 earlier this year. “As a direct result of its defense spending, Russian investments in its industrial base have reduced national unemployment to 2.4%,” Cavoli said. “The Russian economy is on a war footing and will remain so for the foreseeable future.”

But a war footing isn’t always very efficient. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has vowed to maintain the elevated military spending even as plummeting oil prices and the damage from Ukrainian drone attacks squeeze revenue from energy exports, cutting economic growth in Russia by more than half compared to a year ago.

Whether the money and good vibes are sustainable is an open question. “All told, Russia’s defense budget will account for 40% of all government expenditures which is at its highest level since the Cold War,” Cavoli said. By comparison, the United States spends just 13% of its federal budget on the military.

The spending has buoyed Russians’ attitude toward the war, even as total casualties exceeded 800,000 earlier this year. “As a direct result of its defense spending, Russian investments in its industrial base have reduced national unemployment to 2.4%,” Cavoli said. “The Russian economy is on a war footing and will remain so for the foreseeable future.”

David Axe is a journalist and filmmaker based in Columbia, South Carolina. He joined Forbes in 2020, and currently focuses on Ukraine. 

Workers throughout China are flooding the streets in revolt as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs slam the fragile Chinese export economy.

From the cramped streets of Sichuan in the southwest to the cold outskirts of Inner Mongolia in the northeast, furious workers are demanding back pay and protesting mass layoffs as factories shutter under pressure from Trump’s tariffs.

Outside a LED light manufacturing plant near Shanghai, thousands of unpaid workers shouted furiously at company managers over wages that haven’t been paid since January.

In central China’s Dao County, a similar scene unfolded outside a sporting goods store after the company abruptly shut down last week without paying employees.

In the northeast city of Tongliao, construction workers climbed onto rooftops and threatened to jump if their wages were not paid.

The wave of unrest follows a brutal plunge in China’s export orders, now at their lowest since the COVID lockdowns. Goldman Sachs estimates up to 16 million Chinese jobs could vanish as Trump’s tariffs bite deeper into the regime’s weak underbelly.

Trump said the tariffs placed on China are having their intended effect.

“They were making from us a trillion dollars a year. They were ripping us off like nobody’s ever ripped us off,” he stated. “They’re not doing that anymore.”

Huang Deming, a garment exporter in southern China, has already sidelined 30% of his workforce after three major U.S. clients walked away, the Wall Street Journal reported. Textile manager Qian Xichao said the internal market is so bleak that Chinese factories are locked in suicidal price wars just to stay afloat.

“To be frank, personally speaking, all we can do is go out and look for new opportunities,” Qian told the Journal.

The wave of anger sweeping across China today echoes the uprising in 2022 when Chinese citizens protested President Xi Jinping’s COVID lockdown orders. Xi’s forces quickly cracked down on dissent, leading to violent clashes across the country. China watchers anticipate Xi will take action again.

“Xi today has the same mentality.  His bottom line is that no major crisis will be allowed to endanger his hold on power,” an adviser to the Chinese government told the Journal.

Floyd Buford, Daily Caller

What do you get when you take a 40 percent out-of-wedlock birthrate, mix it with a 25 percent absentee-father rate, and sprinkle some social media on top?

You get feral kids.

Raised by their devices and peers, and educated not in the school of virtue but of virality, most of them are in their late teens to early twenties. Anybody living in our nation’s largest cities has become acquainted with these kids in recent years — from the teen takeovers in Chicago and illegal house parties in Nashville to the drag racing in Florida and the storming of malls in California. These kids have reached the age of majority, and they have been sicced on the world.

What crimes do they commit? Looting, assault, damage to property, illegal drag racing, setting off fireworks, obstructing traffic, violating curfew, arson, evading arrest — the works. On March 28, a 15-year-old boy was shot during a teen takeover in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood. On March 29, a hundred-strong mob vandalized police cars in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens. That same day, motorists on three-wheelers staged a takeover of Washington Avenue in Houston.

On February 28, some 200 teenagers broke into a newly built home in East Nashville and threw a party with booze and drugs. Owner Kyle Grasser was alerted and called the police, only to learn that no officers were available. He was forced to break up the party himself. The teenagers caused $100,000 in damage.

In the last three months of 2024, Los Angeles County witnessed an increase of 88 street takeovers. In September of that year, the Ohio cities of Columbus and Cleveland endured street takeovers within weeks of each other. Police in Columbus arrested almost two hundred people in a single night.

These are a few examples. Teen takeovers have plagued several other cities. For the most part, police officers have been unable to curtail the mayhem. For poorer residents unable to move to greener pastures, they’ve been forced to sit back and enjoy the fireworks, skid marks, gunshots, and broken windows.

How did an entire generation turn feral? What can be done about this?

As for the first question, one of the biggest indicators of future criminality in children is family structure. How were they raised? Did they live in stable families? Where are the parents during these takeovers?

Short of interviewing the kids themselves, we can rely on statistics and studies. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, one in four U.S. children live without a father in the home. That includes biological, step, and adoptive fathers. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 40 percent of all births in the U.S. are to unmarried women.

A study referenced by the America First Policy Institute states that 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions are from single-parent households. When the Moynihan Report was published in 1965, the out-of-wedlock birthrate among blacks was 25 percent. According to the Center for Equal Opportunity, it’s 70 percent today. What would the late senator have to say about family structure now?

Obviously, these claims are controversial. Naysayers will argue that teenagers have always acted like teenagers. Besides, this country has a long history of unrest and rebellion. The anti-war protests, Woodstock, the civil rights movement, the anti-nuclear protests, the anti-Apartheid sit-ins. Kids have always taken to the streets and fought against the Man. So, just give them space and let them grow out of it. Right?

There are three differences between the teenagers of yesteryear and the feral kids of today. The first is that many teen gatherings in the past were purpose-driven. Anti-war activists protested the Vietnam War and burned their draft cards. Civil rights organizers marched for racial integration. Concertgoers at Woodstock went to listen to The Who, Hendrix, and the Dead. Today, 17-year-old girls storm Michigan Avenue in Chicago and twerk on top of police cars. What’s the political statement there?

The second difference is that of logistics and technology. Before the internet, it took days, weeks, and months to plan a protest. Organizers had to print fliers, make phone calls, hang up posters, and spread the word. This gave local governments and law enforcement time to prepare. Now, teenagers are able to chat on social media, meet at a specified location, and overwhelm the authorities — all within minutes. When police officers finally do arrive on the scene, most of the troublemakers have already fled.

The third and most important difference lies in family structure. In the 1950s and 1960s, American families were, for the most part, intact. The vast majority of women had children after the wedding night, not before. Their husbands stuck around and helped raise the kids. Some of them were good fathers, some were bad, and most were mediocre. But they put in the time for their families. At the very least, children growing up with bad fathers learned what to avoid when they became parents. Today, our feral kids have no such role models.

What can be done about them? Unfortunately, not much. Their brains are developed, and their habits are set. They grew up on social media, and they’re acting it out as adults. There’s no changing their behavior now. The only recourse left is in the legal system — enforcing law and order by arresting those responsible for these teen takeovers and prosecuting them for their crimes. But to prosecute someone, the police need to catch them. In most of our biggest cities, there aren’t enough cops to go around. The police departments in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Phoenix, Baltimore, and San Francisco have all reported officer shortages.

In the short term, moving away from these crime-ridden areas is the only solution. These teen takeovers have been going on for years and will continue for the foreseeable future. The only way to avoid them is to vote with your feet. In the long term, plenty can be done. Prioritize marriage. Bring back the stigma against out-of-wedlock birth and absentee fathers. Raise your kids without screens until they’re of legal age. Inculcate virtue during their eighteen years in the nest. Otherwise, we will continue to suffer the consequences and produce more feral kids.

James Fritz, The American Spectator

Jonathan Gregory| April 30, 2025 WASHINGTON, D.C. — Corey Booker, a Senator from New Jersey, known for his passionate speeches and suspiciously large collection of frequent flyer miles, is facing backlash this week after reports surfaced that he used campaign funds to bankroll a series of “cultural exchange” trips to Thailand. The senator, who insisted he was “researching international diplomacy through nightlife,” allegedly expensed flights, luxury hotel stays, and something described on receipts only as “VIP enlightenment experiences.” Campaign finance watchdogs were quick to raise eyebrows when over $120,000 in expenditures were labeled “constituent outreach (Bangkok division).” Leaked financial documents included itemized charges from establishments with names like “Temple of Boom” and “The Silk Swing,” alongside a $3,800 bill for “interpretive companionship.” One receipt even featured a handwritten thank you note signed by someone only identified as “Cherry Bomb.” Adding to the controversy, photos and video footage surfaced showing Booker in a silk robe, aviator sunglasses, and what appeared to be body glitter, dancing on a rooftop bar with a flaming cocktail in each hand. When confronted by reporters, the senator responded, “Look, I believe in embracing all cultures… sometimes literally.” He added that these excursions were vital to understanding “human rights, identity, and the importance of tipping generously.” Ethics committees are now reviewing whether campaign money can be used for “soul-searching abroad.” Booker, undeterred, purchased a one-way ticket to Thailand marked on his calender as, “spiritual retreat, Bangkok.” The level of depravity displayed by the D-Party is historic.

Jonathan Gregory

If we don’t insist on the total assimilation and Americanization of our immigrants, we’ll cease to be America and become something else..

If you want to know what mass immigration without assimilation produces in a country, look no further than Scotland. Immigrants from Pakistan now constitute an ethno-religious voting bloc in that country with their very own politicians advocating for nakedly sectarian interests.

Recently, a video clip from 2022 resurfaced on social media of Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar standing in front of the flag of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan claiming that “change is coming” and forthrightly calling for ethnic and Muslim sectarianism in Scottish politics. Sarwar doesn’t mince words: He wants his people to take control of every level of government in Scotland.

“We will only truly get real power, not if we just have more Pakistanis sitting in council chambers and parliaments, but actually having more Pakistanis and South Asians sitting in the corridors of power making the decisions,” said Sarwar.

He went on to declare that the days where “our South Asian community are viewed as a vote bank or a curry bank are well and truly gone. The days where South Asian communities get to lead political parties and get to lead countries is now upon us. The days when South Asian communities get to decide not just at which school our children go to but what they are taught in those schools, is also coming.”

There’s a lot to unpack in his statement. No mention of the Scottish people, or Britain, or any shared national interests or a common good. It was simply an assertion of raw power for his ethnic and religious group over and against all others. It was a call to take over institutions.

Notice, too, the identitarian language. When Sarwar says that the time has come for “South Asian communities” (a euphemism for Pakistani Muslim immigrants) to “lead countries,” he doesn’t mean lead countries in South Asia. He means the time has come for Pakistani Muslims to lead the countries they have culturally and politically colonized through mass immigration — in this case, Scotland and England.

This is sobering stuff, and the main takeaway is that multiculturalism has produced a particularly toxic form of ethno-religious factionalism in Britain that will eventually tear the country apart. Sarwar and his people intend to take over Scotland, and if they can, all of Britain. They are being forthright about it. The vision they have for Britain is shaped primarily by the Islamic religion and Pakistani culture. It is incompatible with and essentially hostile towards British civilization, and Sarwar knows it.

What’s happening in Scotland and England should serve as a cautionary tale for America. Despite what the left claims, multiculturalism doesn’t produce “strength through diversity,” or a common civic culture of shared interests, or any other such platitudes. It produces what we see in Britain and much of Europe: an aggressive species of identity politics which, under conditions of mass immigration from non-western societies, ends up importing entire communities whose customs and way of life are inimical to that of the host country.

For example, when someone like Sarwar talks about the “South Asian community” getting to decide what’s taught in Scottish schools, what he means is that Muslim immigrants from Pakistan will soon get to decide the curriculum — not just for their children but for all schoolchildren in Scotland.

Once they have that power, does anyone seriously think they will refrain from imposing an Islamist agenda, not just in schools but in society at large? Of course they won’t. Sarwar’s own father, Mohammed Sarwar, the first Muslim MP elected in the United Kingdom, gave up his UK citizenship in 2013 to go back to Pakistan and become governor of Punjab. He later called for Islamic blasphemy laws to be promulgated through the United Nations and the European Union.

Despite his stint in the British Parliament, the senior Sarwar never really assimilated to the West. In that, he was typical of his immigrant “community” in Britain: He was never really British. He was always first and foremost a Pakistani Muslim, and hence had no problem using the West’s liberalism to call for the imposition of Islamic dhimmitude and the destruction of liberal society in the West. Multiculturalism allows for this sort of thing, after all, under the misguided notion that diversity and tolerance of imported cultures must be limitless.

But tolerating this kind of foreign sectarianism is national suicide, as anyone can easily observe in Scotland and England, which are now on a probably irreversible trajectory toward civil war. We in America should pay attention because the same thing is happening here, albeit on a smaller scale. Parts of Michigan, for example, now have such concentrations of unassimilated Muslim immigrants that scenes like this have become a commonplace — mass demonstrations of Muslim identity that are fundamentally alien to our American way of life. We saw plenty of that in the pro-Hamas demonstrations that arose immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, and we will keep seeing it as these unassimilated immigrant communities grow and ethno-religious sectarianism becomes a normal part of political life in America.

Democrats, for their part, have embraced this sort of sectarianism. Some, like Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, do so openly. Omar very clearly puts her Somali ethnicity first and sees her job in Congress as representing the interests of Somali and its people, whether in Minnesota or East Africa.

Or consider Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, who issued a statement Monday in response to a simple executive order from the Trump White House that all truck drivers must speak English. This, said Castro, was a “targeted attack on the Spanish-speaking community,” and would “lead to more racial profiling and prevent hard-working Americans from participating in our economy and transportation industry.”

Embedded in this way of speaking is the idea that any requirement that “hard-working Americas” speak English is somehow an “attack” on them, as if even having a national official language in America is itself racist or bigoted.

We have to reject this with all our strength and insist on what the Scots and English have not insisted on: a national identity that immigrants are obliged to adopt if they want to become part of our country. If we fail to do that, we’ll wake up and find ourselves in the position of Scotland, where the leader of a major political party feels free to push ethno-religious sectarianism while the liberal mainstream nods along, oblivious to their own impending destruction.

John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist

Marcus Raskin was co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies and was associated with the Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s

Marcus Raskin was born April 30, 1934 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the second son of Russian Jewish immigrants. At age 16, he left home to study piano at New York’s Juilliard School. In 1954 Raskin graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA in liberal arts, and three years later he earned a JD from the University of Chicago Law School. In 1958 he moved to Washington, D.C. to serve as legislative counsel to a group of Democratic congressmen.

In 1961 Raskin became an assistant (on national security affairs and disarmament) to McGeorge Bundy, national security advisor to President Kennedy. But Raskin’s relationship with Bundy, who supported the escalation of U.S. military engagement in Indochina, was fraught with tension that led eventually to Raskin’s reassignment to the Bureau of the Budget.

Raskin and political activist/rabbi Arthur Waskow co-authored a 1961 paper, later expanded into a book, advocating America’s unilateral disarmament. In 1962 Raskin served as group secretary for a publishing project known as The Liberal Papers, which advocated such measures as United Nations membership for Communist China, East Germany, North Korea, and North Vietnam; America’s unilateral cessation of nuclear testing; the dismantling of NATO; the withdrawal of all American forces from Berlin; and allowing the USSR to access the American DEW early-warning defense system, which had been set up to detect incoming Soviet bombers.

Also in the early Sixties, Raskin was a board-of-directors member with Ramparts magazine, described by the House Committee on Internal Security (HCIS) as a “pro-Hanoi, pro-Castro” publication. Meanwhile, he derided American capitalism as a system in which “the rich, the quick, the clever, the unseen, set out paths which the wretched and mystified must travel.” Having felt powerless to change this system from within the halls of government, Raskin decided to pursue the creation of an independent non-governmental organization to critique official policy and undermine capitalism. Thus did he and his friend Richard Barnet co-found the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in 1963.

In 1965 Raskin and IPS associate fellow Bernard Fall edited The Vietnam Reader, which became a textbook for anti-war teach-ins across the United States. Two years later, Raskin and then-IPS fellow Arthur Waskow co-authored “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority,” a document that helped launch the draft-resistance movement.

Associated with the Radical Education Project of the Students for a Democratic Society, Raskin in 1968 was indicted—along with William Sloane Coffin, Michael Ferber, Mitchell Goodman, and Benjamin Spock—for conspiracy to aid resistance to the military draft. Raskin was ultimately acquitted of these charges.

In 1968 Raskin chaired the Committee for the Formation of a New Party, which created a socialist-oriented political entity advocating the “dismantling of an obsolete, dangerous [American] military establishment that is over-extended and over-reaching.” In the late 60s as well, Raskin became a member of the so-called Committee to Defend the Conspiracy, which was established to aid the defendants who had participated in the violent antiwar disruptions during the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago.

In February 1969 Raskin (along with Barnet) was among the speakers at the national mobilization of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, an organization whose purpose was to deliver medical supplies and equipment to areas of Indochina that had been struck by U.S. military fire. The following year, Raskin told the group Federal Employees for Peace that “government agencies such as the FBI, Secret Service, intelligence services of other government agencies, and the military should be done away with in that order.”

In the spring of 1972, Raskin went to Paris as part of an American delegation that met with North Vietnamese Communist leaders and representatives of the Khmer National United Front of Cambodia. The delegation was sponsored by the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice, which the HCIS characterized as being under the “generally predominant influence” of the Communist Party USA.

In the mid-1970s, Raskin served as an advisory-board member of the Organizing Committee for a Fifth Estate, producer of the anti-CIA publication Counterspy. Also in the Seventies, he was a sponsor of the Political Rights Defense Fund, a front group for the Socialist Workers Party.

In a 1979 New York Times op-ed piece, Raskin and Michigan congressman John Conyers asserted that “government’s responsibility is to revitalize the nation’s economy through creative forms of public ownership.”

In 1982 Raskin served as a board-of-directors member of SANE, a.k.a. the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (now known as Peace Action). Fellow board members included such notables as Tom Harkin, Ramsey Clark, and Edith Tiger. Raskin also helped organize the Progressive Alliance, a coalition of 16 labor unions and some 100 public-interest groups that laid out a progressive political agenda.

In April 1982, Raskin was the principal spokesman for an IPS-sponsored delegation (which included also Robert Borosage) that traveled to Moscow to meet with high-level Soviet officials who were involved with disseminating disinformation and propaganda for U.S. consumption.

During the 1984 presidential primaries, Raskin and Richard Barnet advised Democratic candidates George McGovern and Alan Cranston.

In 2007 Raskin published The Four Freedoms Under Siege, a book that speculates about a transformed America where corporations are controlled by government.

On January 7, 2015 in Washington, Raskin was a guest speaker at an event honoring Rep. John Conyers for his “50 Years of Service” in the U.S. Congress.

The author of more than 20 books, Raskin served variously as a professor at George Washington University’s School of Public Policy, an advisor to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and an editorial-board member of The Nation (along with such notables as Deepak Bhargava, Barbara Ehrenreich, Richard Falk, Eric Foner, Tom Hayden, and Victor Navasky).

Further, Raskin was a board-of-trustees member with IPS, and he directed the Institute’s “Paths for the 21st Century” project, designed to develop “new models of equality and alternatives for the 21st century on questions of peace, economic and social justice, cultural rights, democratic reconstruction, and racial and gender equality.”

Raskin is the father of Maryland activist and political figure Jamie Raskin.

Raskin died on December 26, 2017.

Further Reading: “Marcus Raskin, Think Tank Founder Who Helped Shape Liberal Ideas, Dies at 83” (Washington Post, 12-26-2017); “Institute for Policy Studies” (The Heritage Foundation, 4-19-1977); “The Institute for Policy Studies: Architects of American Decline” (Capital Research Center, 2-4-2011); “Our History” (IPS-dc.org); “Marcus Raskin” (Keywiki.org); “Marcus Raskin” (IPS-dc.org).

Discover the Network

If the next pope is from sub-Saharan Africa, he would be the first in Catholic Church history. Catholic Africans think it is a long shot, though some are cautiously optimistic that Pope Francis’ successor could be a Black cardinal from their continent.

The answer will come soon, as the cardinals eligible to elect the new pope open their conclave next Wednesday at the Sistine Chapel.

At least three African cardinals are among those currently cited as “papabile,” the term used by Vatican observers to describe possible contenders to lead the Catholic Church.

They are Cardinals Robert Sarah of Guinea, Peter Turkson of Ghana and Fridolin Ambongo of Congo.

If any of them is selected, he would be the first African pope in more than 1,500 years and the first ever from sub-Saharan Africa. That historical record makes many in Africa eager for change — but not overly hopeful.

Before the 2005 conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, there was much media attention around Francis Arinze, a highly respected cardinal born in Nigeria, raising questions even then about whether the world was ready for a Black pope from Africa.

Two decades later, Catholicism continues to decline in Europe while it grows in the developing world. The number of Catholics is growing faster in Africa than anywhere else.

At least 20% of global Catholic community is in Africa, which “is characterized by a highly dynamic spread of the Catholic Church,” according to a recent Vatican report.

Some say having a pope from Africa, or Asia — which is also seeing strong Catholic growth — would signal a powerful message of inclusion. But as Francis’ papacy showed, inclusive efforts can alienate many others and even breed dissent.

The three possible papal candidates from Africa — Sarah, Ambongo, and Turkson — are seen as holding orthodox views on some of the hot-button issues that the Catholic Church is grappling with, reflecting wider social conservatism on the continent of 1.3 billion people. Catholic orthodoxy in Africa was at odds with Pope Francis’ pastoral vision of mercy and understanding for all marginalized groups, including LGBTQ+ Catholics.

The real-life situation was reflected in the fictional Oscar-nominated film “Conclave,” in which one of the four contenders vying for the papacy was a socially conservative cardinal from Nigeria.

Congo has the highest number of baptized Catholics in Africa.

Ambongo — the archbishop of Congolese capital, Kinshasa, since 2018 — last year signed a statement by the conference of African bishops rejecting a Vatican declaration to allow priests to offer spontaneous, non-liturgical blessings to same-sex couples seeking God’s grace.

That statement, seen as a rebuke of Francis, asserted that same-sex unions were “contrary to the will of God.” It cited biblical teaching condemning homosexuality and asserted that same-sex relations are “contradictory to cultural norms” in Africa.

But it is Sarah, the Guinean cardinal who is the Vatican’s former liturgy chief, who posed a more public challenge to Francis.

A favorite of traditionalists, Sarah prefers silent prayer and is an adherent of the old Latin Mass. He is a staunch defender of longstanding doctrinal faith.

After Francis in 2021 reimposed restrictions on celebrating the Latin Mass that Benedict had relaxed, Sarah responded with tweets quoting Benedict’s original 2007 law to relax the restrictions. His posts were accompanied by a photo of Benedict wearing the red cape that Francis had eschewed the night of his election.

A year earlier, Sarah had orchestrated a media firestorm by persuading Benedict to co-author a book reaffirming priestly celibacy at a time when Francis was considering ordaining married men to address a clergy shortage in the Amazon. As the scandal grew, Benedict removed himself as a co-author.

Sarah, 79, officially retired in 2021 but remains eligible to attend the conclave. Since the death of Francis on April 21, he has emerged as a favorite of European traditionalists who want to see a reversal of Francis’ progressive policies.

But in Africa, where Francis was widely loved for his engagement with the continent’s crises, many Catholics simply want a pope who will be a faithful leader for everyone.

“For us, it does not matter whether he is African, white, or Black. What matters is having a good, holy pope who can unite Catholics across the world,” said Luka Lawrence Ndenge, an emergency officer with the Catholic charity Caritas in the remote town of Wau in South Sudan.

The father of two said he believes an African can rise to the papacy, especially as “we already have African cardinals who are fully capable.”

Bishop Tesfaselassie Medhin, primate of Adigrat in the Ethiopian region of Tigray, said he hopes the next pope will be as compassionate as Francis, who repeatedly called attention to war in Tigray in 2021 and 2022.

But the prospect of having a Black African pope is exciting, he said.

“For me, having a passionate, dedicated and competent African leading the Catholic Church is very important to me as an African and to see it in my lifetime is my absolute wish,” he said.

Emily Mwaka doesn’t like speculating about the next pope, especially on the color of his skin. So when the head of the Catholic laity in Kampala, Uganda, recently came upon a small group of Christians discussing a newspaper article about possible papal contenders — including some from Africa — she asked them to stop it.

Even if the next pontiff is “green,” she said, he “will be for all of us.

NewsmaxWorld

Will we ever see justice for the top tier of traitors in America? Yes, Hillary Clinton. But also the Biden, Obama, Soros, Fauci and Pelosi crime families? For abusing the highest level of power entrusted to them by setting our Constitution on fire? Or will they continue to live out their seemingly endless lives as wealthy, connected criminals with ZERO accountability for everything they have done?

Another one: Michelle Obama. She says she “lays awake” at night worrying about Trump deportations of violent, savage gang members in the country illegally.

Michelle: We understand. The life of a charlatan is stressful. Your contradictions catch up with you. Being advanced and applauded not for any real intelligence or actual achievements, but for your race, isn’t a recipe for self-respect or inner serenity. Of course you’re full of resentment. Eventually good people do fight back, and you could be a target. If you’re finding your life of crime, deception and tyranny too stressful to handle, Michelle, then you should have made better choices.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason