NAFTA, Qui Bono?

“Neither side of the border has seen the benefits it was promised,” Helen Andrews at The American Conservative writes — The Long Shadow of NAFTA. Some highlights:

“Wages today in Mexico are lower in real terms than they were in 1994….

“The U.S. lost 5 million manufacturing jobs between 1995 and 2015….

“NAFTA made Mexico fat…. [and] also made Mexico liberal.”

Some did benefit. “It helped to create a globalized elite whose fortunes were not tied to the country of their birth, who were happy to see factories move to Mexico and China if that was best for the global economy.”

“Military Rule”

“We just got our clearest evidence yet that Americans are being censored and manipulated at the highest levels of government,” the husband-wife duo at Redacted explain. “Tucker Carlson interviewed a former State Department cyber employee who exposed how the Pentagon essentially censors and manipulates the American people.”

Ola Gjeilo’s Serenity (O Magnum Mysterium) Performed by Viktor Nordliden & Voices of Scandinavia, Directed by Robert Bennesh

Angélica Chong as Queen of Mexico, Empress of Americas

Walter Sanchez Silva at Catholic News Agency has the story of the new documentary — ‘Guadalupe: Mother of Humanity’ opens Feb. 22 in U.S. theaters.

“This New Christ Is Not Christ”

Leila Miller at Crisis Magazine debunks the “wildly popular TV soap opera” with its “Jesus” as “presented by Mormons and anti-Catholic Protestants who admit to fictionalizing Jesus and the Gospels” and argues that “we should not be okay with heresy, blasphemy, and misleading anachronisms just because a series makes us laugh and cry” — The False Christ of The Chosen.

“The show has infiltrated the imaginations of countless Catholics, many of whom should know better,” she writes. “This time, the open promotion of relatable, bro-Jesus is not fueled by ‘progressive,’ dissenting Catholics only, but by faithful, traditional Catholics as well.”

Biology Denialism in the U.S. Senate

“All Democrats voted in unison against an amendment defining pregnancy as occurring only in biological women,” RT reports — US senators battle over who can get pregnant.

Rogue Agency

“If only the CIA’s rogue operations had been consigned to history as a result of the crimes exposed by the Church Committee, or at the least had brought the CIA under the rule of law and public accountability,” Jeffrey D. Sachs at Common Dreams laments — How the CIA Destabilizes the World .

Eritreans Bring Their Civil War With Them

The Telegraph and Fox News respectively — Police cars torched as rival Eritreans fight running battles in Netherlands and Charlotte protesters attack officers, set tractor-trailer on fire in riot at Eritrean ‘cultural event’: police.

William Byrd’s Ad Dominum cum Tribularer Sung by The Marian Consort, Directed by Rory McCleery

I cried unto the Lord in my distress, and he heard me.
Lord, Deliver thou my soul from falsehood’s lip and a deceitful tongue.
What should be served unto you, or to what should you be put, to a deceitful tongue?
Sharp arrows of the mighty, and coals that lay waste.
Woe is me! That my sojourn was prolonged; I have lived amongst the inhabitants of Cedar. Much has my soul dwelt there.
With those who hate peace, I was a peacemaker.
I spake peace, and together they shouted for war.

Edward Elgar’s Death on the Hills Sung by Nederlands Kamerkoor, Directed by Peter Dijkstra