International
Euthanasia advocates use deception to affect public’s perception of assisted suicide
From LifeSiteNews
Politicians claim that moral opposition to assisted suicide (or suicide in general) and euthanasia is religiously motivated and then make the leap to insisting that this means such opposition should be ignored.
Euthanasia activists are currently doing what they do best: the bait and switch.
As the debate heats up in the U.K., all of the familiar tactics are on display. First, of course, there is the relentless lying. Despite the case study of Canada, the Netherlands, and Belgium – and despite disability activists, judges, palliative physicians, and the secretaries of health and justice warning that no “safeguards” will hold – U.K. euthanasia activists are insisting that this time everything will be different.
The response to these critiques has been predictable but infuriating. Euthanasia activists insist that all of this is about religion – that those nasty Christians are, once again, seeking to impose their suffering-based theology on the country. (This despite the fact that even Ann Furedi, who heads up the U.K.’s second largest abortion provider, opposes the proposed assisted suicide law.) One good microcosmic example of this tactic comes from UK writer Julie Street, who posted to X (formerly Twitter):
Just walked out of Mass bloody fuming – our priest used the homily to read a letter from the Catholic bishops telling people to oppose the Assisted Dying Bill then handed out cards with our local MP’s details on to lobby them. Religion has no place in politics or women’s rights.
There is much to say in response, of course. Why is Street so surprised to discover that her Catholic priest and bishops are, in fact, Catholic? Is she ignorant of the religion that she at least appears to practice? How airtight does one’s mind have to be not to see assisted suicide and euthanasia as religious issues? Indeed, “euthanasia” is Greek for “good death” – the theological premises are baked right into the term. Or does Street think that religious people should shut their mouths in the political arena and voluntarily disenfranchise themselves as the fates of the weak are decided?
Is Street also ignorant of the fact that it was largely due to the Catholic Church’s public opposition that Adolf Hitler moved the Nazi’s euthanasia operation underground? (We now know, of course, that the Nazis only claimed to have disbanded the T-4 program.) I thought progressives wanted a Church that stood up for the weak, vulnerable, and dispossessed – and who qualifies more than the sick, elderly, and those with disabilities? Christians are accused of not being loving enough, and then rebuked when they stand up for the victims the political class deems expendable – first the unborn, now those on the other end of life’s spectrum.
But there’s more to this tactic than grating ignorance. Progressives like to play both sides of the fence. Take abortion, for example. Politicians like to claim that it is a religious issue, and that thus they cannot legislate against it due to the fact that we live in pluralistic societies. Many religious leaders are quite happy to follow this logic, claiming that since abortion is a political issue, it cannot be discussed in church. And all the while, the countless corpses of the aborted unborn pile up in the No Man’s Land between.
The assisted suicide debate is unfolding along similar lines. Politicians claim that moral opposition to assisted suicide (or suicide in general) and euthanasia is religiously motivated and then make the leap to insisting that this means such opposition should be ignored. Meanwhile, because politicians are debating the issue, folks like Street can claim that because this is now a political issue, priests and pastors should keep their traps shut. See what they did there? It’s a neat trick, and despite how farcical and illogical it is, it seems to work with maddening regularity.
In fact, the priest Julie Street had the good fortune to hear was standing in the tradition of the clergy who stood up against Adolf Hitler and his eugenicist gang – and fighting the same evil being advanced under many of the same premises, to boot. She should be grateful. If she can’t manage that, she should at least be better educated.
Washington Moves Against El Mayo’s Cartel Network, Accusing It of Bribery, Political Capture, and Cross-Border Fentanyl Trade
The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has announced sweeping sanctions on the Los Mayos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, a move that highlights the group’s violent war with El Chapo Guzmán’s heirs for control of a multibillion-dollar fentanyl empire entrenched in more than 40 nations including Canada. The sanctions also pointed to deep corruption of political and security offices on Mexico’s northwest border.
“The Sinaloa Cartel is a foreign terrorist organization that continues to traffic narcotics, launder its proceeds, and corrupt local officials,” said John K. Hurley, Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. “Today’s actions cut at the heart of the political and commercial infrastructure that Los Mayos relies upon to poison Americans with fentanyl and maintain control of territory in Baja California.”
Once a monolithic enterprise spanning cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana, and now fentanyl routes across the Americas, the Sinaloa Cartel has fractured since the imprisonment of co-founders Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García. Their successors — Guzmán’s sons, collectively called Los Chapitos, and the Zambada loyalists known as Los Mayos — have plunged northwest Mexico into open war.
A sign of the Mayo faction’s foreign reach emerged in British Columbia months ago, when court filings revealed that a fortified compound in Surrey, south of Vancouver, housed a trafficking syndicate tied directly to El Mayo’s network. According to the government’s civil-forfeiture suit, the group negotiated cocaine shipments with Zambada’s emissaries and stockpiled a cache of weapons, opioids, and counterfeit pharmaceuticals. When the RCMP raided the mansion, they found Hikvision surveillance systems, encrypted phones, and nearly a kilogram of Ecstasy alongside fentanyl pills and counterfeit Xanax. The property — minutes from the Peace Arch border crossing — is now the subject of a multimillion-dollar forfeiture case.
After years of tense coexistence, hostilities between the Chapo and Mayo factions erupted last year, and the human toll has been staggering. Reuters and the Associated Press reported that homicides in Sinaloa surged to 883 in the first half of 2025, up from 224 a year earlier. Entire towns have been emptied and convoys of gunmen have left highways strewn with burned-out vehicles.
OFAC, in its designation notice, confirmed: “Turf wars between Los Mayos and Los Chapitos have resulted in the deaths of over a thousand people in the Mexican state of Sinaloa.”
At the center of today’s sanctions is Juan José Ponce Félix, better known as El Ruso. OFAC identified him as “the founder and leader of the primary armed wing of Los Mayos,” controlling routes in Baja California and extending the faction’s fentanyl operations north. A 2015 indictment from the Southern District of California described El Ruso as the commander of “a fleet of soldiers” responsible for kidnappings, hostage-taking, torture, and murder in furtherance of Sinaloa Cartel interests. Now, OFAC says, his dominance in Baja has become a key pillar of Los Mayos’ trafficking empire. Earlier this week, the State Department offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest.
The designations go beyond gunmen. OFAC spotlighted Rosarito, a coastal town just 15 miles south of San Diego, as a laboratory of cartel political capture. Los Mayos, it said, operated through the Arzate brothers — Alfonso and René — and their financial lieutenant, Jesús González Lomelí, who owned bars, restaurants, and resorts across Mexico, used to launder millions in cartel proceeds.
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These commercial fronts were paired with direct political influence. Candelario Arcega Aguirre, a cartel operative with close ties to Rosarito’s then-mayor, Hilda Araceli Brown Figueredo, leveraged his relationship to place allies in the municipal Department of Public Security. According to OFAC, Arcega, González, and Brown “collected extortion payments for the Arzates, assisted in managing the Arzate brothers’ operations, and ensured protection for the Arzates’ criminal activities by the Department of Public Security in Rosarito.”
The network extended to a transportation company, Transporte Urbano y Suburbano del V Municipio S.A. de C.V., which OFAC identified as a laundering vehicle for Arcega. All told, the sanctions designated not just traffickers but a matrix of businessmen and public officials accused of entwining Rosarito’s government with cartel command.
U.S. officials describe the cartel as a global enterprise, with distribution and laundering nodes in more than 40 countries and thousands of operatives and facilitators. Canada has been deeply saturated in that network, a surge that accelerated after former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau eased immigration requirements for Mexican citizens.
Court filings in the British Columbia case alleged that the Surrey-based network had the clout to negotiate supply terms directly with El Mayo until his arrest by U.S. law enforcement in July 2024. That capture “disrupted the DTO’s efforts to import and distribute cocaine in Canada,” the documents said, forcing the group to seek new contacts in Mexico. The cache discovered at the mansion included 400 grams of counterfeit Xanax, 810 oxycodone pills, 5.5 grams of fentanyl, and sophisticated video surveillance equipment designed to fortify the property against raids.
The Canadian government formally listed the Sinaloa Cartel as a terrorist entity in February 2025, following the State Department’s U.S. designation. By June, OFAC had moved to sanction the Chapitos wing of the cartel. With today’s action, both sides of the cartel’s civil war are now under U.S. financial blockade.
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Quick Hit:
President Trump announced Wednesday he will designate Antifa a “MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” calling it a “sick, dangerous, radical left disaster” and vowing to investigate its funders. The move follows Charlie Kirk’s assassination by a suspect tied to extremist leftist ideology.
Key Details:
- On Truth Social, Trump wrote: “I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.”
- Trump added that he would recommend “those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices.”
- Antifa, short for “anti-fascist,” has no formal leadership structure but is known for violent clashes with police and for stoking riots at protests. Trump said earlier this week he was “100%” in favor of labeling the group as a terror organization.
Diving Deeper:
President Trump on Wednesday escalated his administration’s push against violent left-wing groups by declaring that Antifa will be designated as a “major terrorist organization.” Posting the announcement on Truth Social, Trump described the group as “a sick, dangerous, radical left disaster” and emphasized that investigations into Antifa’s backers should begin immediately. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices,” Trump said.
The decision follows mounting calls for action in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination last week. Authorities have identified the suspect, Tyler Robinson, as a 22-year-old who was “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.” The tragedy has intensified pressure on the administration to act against groups viewed as fueling extremist violence.
Antifa, which stands for “anti-fascist,” is less a formal organization than a loose movement. Its members, often dressed in black and masked, are notorious for showing up at protests to provoke violent clashes with law enforcement and political opponents. While its supporters describe the group as anti-authoritarian, critics point out its consistent record of property destruction, rioting, and violent confrontations.
Trump had previewed the move earlier in the week, telling reporters he was “100%” supportive of officially designating the group as a terrorist organization. The announcement also aligns with Trump’s longstanding campaign promise to crack down on lawlessness and protect communities from radical ideologies.
By targeting Antifa not just in name but by directing legal scrutiny toward its funding networks, Trump is signaling a more aggressive federal posture toward violent left-wing movements. The designation would allow federal authorities to treat Antifa’s activities with the same severity reserved for foreign terrorist groups, widening the scope of investigations and penalties against those linked to its operations.
(AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)
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