Catholic League: AIDS Is A “Self-Inflicted Wound”
Catholic League president Bill Donohue called AIDS a “self-inflicted wound” and claimed that if homosexuals followed the teachings of the Church they would not “self-destruct.” Donohue, who annually buys a full-page ad in the New York Times defending pedophile priests, made these statements while attacking artist David Wojnarowicz, whose work is featured in an art exhibit, “HIDE/SEEK” that was censored by the Smithsonian after Catholic protests, but now is about to appear at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (BMA). Donohue is particularly angered by a video titled, “A Fire In My Belly.”
READ:Â Sacrilege Or Censorship? Christians Enraged by Art with Gay, Religious Images
“The fact is that the artist who made the vile video died of self-inflicted wounds: he died of AIDS. The homosexual, David Wojnarowicz, hated the Catholic Church (had he lived by its teachings, he would not have self-destructed),” Donohue said in a statement released last week.
Donohue clearly missed the fact that HIV/AIDS is an equal opportunity disease, and does not solely belong to the LGBT community. It also is not transmitted solely through sexual intercourse. Perhaps if Donohue were actually “Christian,” he would be spending more of his time where Jesus suggested: caring for an helping the poor, the sick, the needy, and he would be more aware of issues like HIV/AIDS, which, contrary to Donohue’s implication, is not a death sentence.
Donohue also misses a little thing called the First Amendment, which, ironically, he waves proudly as he attacks those who are protected by it also. Right Wing Watch notes that the Right is attempting to censor the Brooklyn Museum, as they did the Smithsonian, by withdrawing all public funding from the institution.
Donahue, who earlier this year attacked Lada Gaga by suggesting she wanted to get raped, also in last week’s statement attacked Arnold Lehman, the director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
“For Arnold Lehman, there is no such thing as anti-Catholic art,” Donohue wrote. “Catholics who disagree are apparently too stupid to appreciate the complexities of these masterpieces. For example, in 1999 Lehman said it was not anti-Catholic for an artist to smear elephant dung and pornographic pictures on a portrait of Our Blessed Mother (he loved the “Sensation†exhibition). Now he says that a video featuring large ants crawling all over Jesus on the Cross is actually a statement about ‘human suffering and death.’ Guess us stupid Catholics missed that one, too.”
If there’s one thing you can count on with religious conservatives, it’s their inability to see how their perception of reality are clearly skewed, and how they make no attempt to mask their bigotry.
In an Orwellian twist, the Catholic League claims it is “the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization,” and ironically claims that “the degree of hostility exhibited against the Catholic Church is appalling.”
Anyone looking for reasons why “the Catholic Church” feels it is a victim or why some Catholics feel they experience “hostility” need look no further than the regular, hateful screeds that come from Bill Donohue.
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The White House is reportedly demanding a public apology from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, stating that President Donald Trump’s coveted minerals deal will not proceed without one. Zelenskyy has opposed the proposed “rare earth” agreement, arguing early on that it did not benefit Ukraine, and lacked security guarantees. Instead, President Donald Trump views the deal as a means of settling what he perceives as a debt Ukraine owes the United States for the approximately $175 billion in aid provided to support its defense against Russia’s illegal invasion.
Fox News’s White House correspondent Peter Doocy reported Monday afternoon (video below), “I have been told by senior officials here that nothing’s gonna happen with this minerals deal unless Zelenskyy goes in front of cameras and makes an explicit public apology for the way that he behaved himself, behaved in the Oval Office with that meeting.”
On Friday, to the world’s shock, Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Zelenskyy on-camera in what she called an “attempted mugging,” falsely accusing him of being ungrateful and insufficiently appreciative of all the United States had given his country — which was actually done under their predecessors, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, although that fact was never raised.
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Little more than one week ago, The Guardian reported that “shortly before Trump called him ‘a dictator’, Zelenskyy said he could not ‘sell Ukraine away.’ He was willing to work on ‘a serious document,’ he said, which ensured Russia did not attack Ukraine again.”
“Commentators,” The Guardian report added, “have described Trump’s aggressive ultimatum as ‘mafia imperialism,’ a ‘colonial agreement,’ and reminiscent of what the Europeans did in the 18th century when they carved up Africa.“
“’It’s as if we lost the war to America. This looks to me like reparations,’ Volodymyr Landa, a senior economist at the Centre for Economic Strategy thinktank in Kyiv, said.”
One elderly Ukrainian ice fisherman told The Guardian, “What Trump suggests is blackmail.”
Critics are again blasting the Trump administration.
“Reminder that the minerals deal is *itself* the prize we’re extracting from Ukraine,” reported The Bulwark’s Andrew Egger. “But of course ‘America First’ really means ‘Trump First,’ so the president’s ego must be assuaged before anything else can happen.”
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“Big surprise,” remarked NYU professor of history Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders, “this is part of the authoritarian bullying and ritual humiliation playbooks.”
CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere says that “What Trump is demanding to sign [is] an agreement providing access to Ukraine’s minerals in exchange for standing in Putin’s way.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
Doocy: “I have been told by a senior official here that nothing is gonna happen with this minerals deal until Zelenskyy goes in front of cameras and makes an explicit public apology for the way he behaved in the Oval Office with that meeting.” pic.twitter.com/y3IzXIXdLh
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 3, 2025
RELATED: Kremlin Will ‘Celebrate’: Trump Berates Zelenskyy in Televised Oval Office ‘Ambush’
Image via Reuters
A prominent Republican congressman, the former House Intelligence Committee chair, appeared shocked on national television when he learned that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered a top Pentagon agency, U.S. Cyber Command, to suspend operations and planning against Russia’s cyber offensives.
Secretary Hegseth’s “stand down” order, while allegedly temporary, is expected to “last for the foreseeable future,” according to The Record, a cybersecurity news site which first reported the news.
CNN reported that a senior U.S. official called Hegseth’s order “a major blow.”
According to the network, “planning for such operations takes time and research to carry out. The concern, the official said, is that the pause on offensive cyber operations against Russia will make the U.S. more vulnerable to potential cyberattacks from Moscow, which has a formidable cadre of hackers capable of disrupting U.S. critical infrastructure and collecting sensitive intelligence.”
READ MORE: World Leaders Rush to Support Zelenskyy as Americans Debate Trump’s Allegiance
The development has received widespread coverage over the weekend.
“Russia is not a significant cyber threat to the U.S. anymore, Trump’s new Defense Secretary says,” the science and technology website Gizmodo reported. “The policy shift represents a complete 180-degree turn from America’s posture over the past decade, which has consistently considered Russia one of the top cybersecurity threats. Credible reporting and government investigations have shown that Russia has hacked into U.S. systems countless times.”
Experts were also stunned.
Veteran cyber expert James Lewis, formerly of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said “it’s delusional to think” the stand down order “will turn Russia and the FSB [the Russian security agency] into our friends,” The Guardian reported. “They hate the U.S. and are still mad about losing the cold war. Pretending otherwise won’t change this.”
The order appears to extend past the Department of Defense, suggesting it may have originated at the highest levels of the executive branch.
Analysts at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) received a new priorities directive that included China, but not Russia, The Guardian also reported. One source “said analysts at the agency were verbally informed that they were not to follow or report on Russian threats, even though this had previously been a main focus for the agency.”
“Russia and China are our biggest adversaries,” that source said. “With all the cuts being made to different agencies, a lot of cybersecurity personnel have been fired. Our systems are not going to be protected and our adversaries know this.”
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“People are saying Russia is winning,” they added. “Putin is on the inside now.”
U.S. Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) has decades of defense experience in Congress, having served on several committees on the armed forces and veterans affairs, and as Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence until January—when Speaker Mike Johnson unexpectedly removed him from that critical position. He is a strong supporter of Ukraine and opposes Russia.
At the time of his removal, The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol remarked, “If you’re going to sell out Ukraine to Putin, makes sense to get Turner out of the way first.”
Last year, Turner was also one of a few House Republicans who “were warning about how elements of their party had been infected by Russian propaganda,” The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake noted on Monday. (Video of Turner from last year here.) Turner, he added, “was removed 7 months later as chair of the House intel committee.”
In February 2024, Turner issued a “national security threat” warning on Russia’s activities in space so dire that President Biden’s National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby was forced to deliver a statement from the White House press briefing room.
On Sunday’s “Face the Nation,” CBS News’ Margaret Brennan told Congressman Turner (video below), that “CBS has confirmed these reports that Defense Secretary Hegseth has ordered U.S. Cyber Command to temporarily halt cyber operations and planning against Russia. The Washington Post reports that that’s as long as the negotiations continue. There are no negotiations under way. Does this concern you? Have you been briefed on this?”
A stunned and stammering Rep. Turner delivered his response.
“I can’t – I don’t – no, I’m not – unaware of that. And I don’t believe that that would be – there are too many, I’m certain, considerations there for that to be an accurate statement, so blanket,” he said, according to the official CBS transcript.
“But they have ordered Cyber Command to halt cyber operations,” Brennan reiterated.
“Considering what I know that – that – considering what I know what – what Russia is currently doing against the United States, that would, I’m certain, not be an accurate statement of the current status of the United States’ operations,” Turner insisted, despite multiple news reports confirming the stand down order.
“I’m confident, considering what Russia is currently doing against the United States, that the United States, the status against Russia would not be that, considering what we are facing from Russia operations,” Turner added.
Watch the video below or at this link.
CBS News has confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered U.S. Cyber Command to temporarily halt cyber operations and planning against Russia. Rep. Mike Turner disputes the reporting, telling @margbrennan: “Considering what I know what Russia is currently doing against… pic.twitter.com/dtOAfECFtF
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 2, 2025
READ MORE: ‘Did I Say That? I Can’t Believe I Said That’: Trump’s Remarks Again Fuel Memory Questions
President Donald Trump’s MAGA supporters in the U.S. are cheering his Oval Office ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, declaring they are “proud” of Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
But across the globe, world leaders swiftly reaffirmed their support for President Zelenskyy, his country, and Ukraine’s fight to defend its sovereignty and democracy against Russia’s illegal invasion—making clear their allegiance is with him and his country, effectively icing out Donald Trump and the U.S.
Meanwhile, at home, some Americans—perhaps already weary just weeks into Trump’s presidency—are voicing their belief that the President of the United States is behaving like, and may very well be, a witting or unwitting “Russian asset.”
The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum, who has written numerous books on the Soviet Union and authoritarianism, framed Friday’s events for MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace:
“I think all of Ukraine’s allies, and all of not just Europeans who have a border with Russia or who are near Russia, but Europeans who understand that Russia has coordinated sabotage attacks across the continent engages in sometimes daily cyber attacks on different kinds of institutions, infrastructure all over Europe, whose country, whose propagandists constantly threaten Europe and constantly repeat threats to bomb or even nuke European cities, I think everybody felt today a kind of chill understanding that this was a very different United States.”
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Alexander Vindman, the whistleblower whose warnings led to the first impeachment of Donald Trump, told Wallace that Zelenskyy “looks like a world leader. He’s standing his ground against Vance and Trump and the rampant ignorance about what is going on, on the ground [in Ukraine], who the belligerents are and how to work your way out of it.”
‘RUSSIAN ASSET’?
Several notable Americans made public their thoughts after Friday’s Oval Office attack that the President of the United States might, knowingly or not, be a “Russian asset.”
Noted political scientist, The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, concluded, “Not that we had a bunch doubt before, but Donald Trump is a Russian asset.” He later wrote, “This is one of the saddest days for America in my lifetime.”
Former Tea Party Republican congressman turned podcaster and political commentator, Joe Walsh, wrote: “I said two weeks ago on @CNN that Donald Trump is a Russian asset. I stand by that. The entire world should now know that this is the scary truth.”
Political commentator and SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah added, “We officially have a Russian asset in the White House in Trump. Period.”
Cheri Jacobus, the political strategist, pundit, and frequent cable news guest, wrote: “Trump is a war criminal. A traitor. A Russian asset since the 1980’s. There is now no doubt.”
Earlier this week former Obama White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod, lamenting the Trump administration’s vote at the UN in favor of Russia over Ukraine, wrote: “It would be irresponsible to suggest, without evidence, that Trump is a Russian asset. But ask yourself, if he were a paid agent of the GRU, would he say or do any differently than he is right now?”
On Friday, Axelrod added: “I love my country with all my heart and I’ve never been more embarrassed for America than the spectacle I just witnessed in the Oval Office. Zelensky is fighting for the survival of his country, his people and their democracy. Trump and Vance appear to be completely aligned with Putin, the invader whose aim has been to conquer Ukraine. Zelensky should know that millions and millions of Americans still stand with him and his valiant people.”
U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) struck a balance: “That press conference was choreographed for an audience of one and he sits in Moscow. Once, we fought tyrants. Today Trump and Vance are bending America’s knee. And that weakens us.”
Former Obama Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes offered this take: “The Republican Party enables this every single day. Just the complete trashing of our country’s standing and full capitulation to a playbook that the Kremlin couldn’t script better if they were writing the words.”
WORLD LEADERS RUSH TO SUPPORT UKRAINE
“Russia illegally and unjustifiably invaded Ukraine. For three years now, Ukrainians have fought with courage and resilience,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared. “Their fight for democracy, freedom, and sovereignty is a fight that matters to us all. Canada will continue to stand with Ukraine and Ukrainians in achieving a just and lasting peace.”
READ MORE: ‘What the Hell Is This?’: GOP Group’s Andrew Tate Invitation Draws Bipartisan Outrage
Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, wrote:
“There is an aggressor: Russia. There is a victim: Ukraine. We were right to help Ukraine and sanction Russia three years ago—and to keep doing so. By ‘we,’ I mean the Americans, the Europeans, the Canadians, the Japanese, and many others. Thank you to all who have helped and continue to do so. And respect to those who have been fighting since the beginning—because they are fighting for their dignity, their independence, their children, and the security of Europe.”
“Dear Volodymyr @zelenskyyua,” wrote Friedrich Merz, expected to become the next Chancellor of Germany, “we stand with #Ukraine in good and in testing times. We must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war.”
Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland, wrote: “Dear @ZelenskyyUa, dear Ukrainian friends, you are not alone.”
Luís Montenegro, the Prime Minister of Portugal, declared, “Ukraine can always count on Portugal, @ZelenskyyUa,
Alexander Schallenberg, the acting chancellor of Austria, wrote, “#StandWithUkraine”
Ilie Bolojan, the acting president of Romania, declared: “The security of Ukraine is crucial for the security of Europe. We all need to stand together to fight for our values, freedom, and peace.”
The Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, wrote: “Dear @ZelenskyyUA, Denmark proudly stands with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.”
Petteri Orpo, the Prime Minister of Finland, wrote: “Finland and the Finnish people stand firmly with Ukraine. We will continue our unwavering support and work towards a just and lasting peace.
Kristen Michal, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Estonia, said, “We stand united with @ZelenskyyUa and Ukraine in our fight for freedom. Always. Because it is right, not easy.”
More continued to flood in, including from world leaders in Ireland, Sweden, Latvia, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, and others.
READ MORE: ‘Did I Say That? I Can’t Believe I Said That’: Trump’s Remarks Again Fuel Memory Questions
Image via Reuters
‘Considering What We Are Facing’: US Cyber Defense Halt Against Russia Stuns Republican
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