Follow NewsClips channel at Brighteon.com for more updatesSubscribe to Brighteon newsletter to get the latest news and more featured videos: https://support.brighteon.com/Subscribe.html

Many news organizations carried the story of the release of Bar Kuperstein two years after he had been kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. Kuperstein was a young security guard at the Nova Festival, the music festival targeted by Hamas for its fat genocidal possibilities, with sides of rape, torture, and kidnapping. After taking some time to begin to reacclimate to freedom and family, Kuperstein began to share his and his family’s experiences. We are all in God’s hands. And this insight pierced the heart of her son’s captor. For one moment, they were on equal ground. Hamas’ strategy to destroy Israel has been based on the perceived weakness of the West for enduring the discomfort of war. As is well attested by their own words, they wish to win by grinding down the political support for the fight against them, both in Israel and in Israel’s supporters in the rest of the world. Protests from the West, and even better, from within Israel itself, are demoralizing to the fighting spirit. In particular, when despairing hostage families protest, demanding that their government capitulate to the demands of the hostage takers, this is prime click bait and especially demoralizing to their hated opponents. Kuperstein explained to the press how Hamas tried to get his family to publicly denounce Israel’s fight to rescue the hostages and end the rule of the hostage-takers. They pushed the despair button — we have your beloved son, and no one can stop us from doing to him whatever we want if you don’t comply. Kuperstein said: During the period I was held captive, one of the terrorists called my mother and told her she was not doing enough to free me and that if she wanted to see me again, she needed to go out, file complaints at The Hague, and really fight. Kuperstein’s captor said to his mother that she had no choice, because her son was in their hands. Kuperstein continued: “She simply told him the following: ‘My son is not in your hands but always in the hands of the Creator — and you are too in the hands of the Creator.” This was not the expected answer. In Kuperstein’s words: “There was a moment of silence because the terrorist did not know what to answer and then he replied, “All honor to you, madam.” Kuperstein showed his interviewer the bracelet his mother had worn all the days of his captivity. On it were inscribed the words: “My son is always in the hands of the Creator.” Kuperstein added: “Since then, we carry that motto with us all the time.” What is most striking about this story is its redemptive core. Redemption is the great theme of the biblical tradition. Egyptian slavery was meant to end. So too the slavery to sin and evil is meant to end. As the West distanced itself from religion, pained by its historical failures and the dreadful sins done in its name, it has lost its grip on what redemption looks and feels like. Estranged from the accumulated experience of the traditions that mapped how to approach it, and inspired us to anticipate it and work for it, redemption has increasingly seemed like so much gaslighting of party propagandists, something only the gullible take seriously. To the post-religious West, it seems something mythical, a fool’s belief. And so, we ditch it as the superordinate goal of our endeavors, the strategic endpoint towards which all things come together, and where coercion is irrelevant, as the powerful direction from within pulls people into a peace that seemed impossible only moments before. In place of the Redeemer, we turn to our own power, alone and unguided, as if it could provide either lasting comfort or guide us towards its applying it in a way that will not destroy us. But power alone can do neither. The fact that Churchill and Roosevelt and Eisenhower all used the religious vision to lead during World War II is telling. They were in the business of applying power, but realized how little power can be used for the good without the redemptive vision lodged in the souls of those who would bear power’s brunt. Civilization trembled in the Thirties before the dictators. Those whose faith had been shattered by the Great War were waiting around dispiritedly to find the place eventually assigned to the tyrants that would at last turn his sights on them. In the Thirties, the young men of Oxford in Britain proposed and passed a resolution that they would not fight for God or country. The spirit in France was listless and defeatist. But leadership arose in Britain and America that grasped the gravity of the moment, and that the redemptive religious tradition of the West as a whole called upon peoples’ souls — and they were equal to the calling. Even Stalin, nearly down for the count in early 1942, invoked God when speaking with Churchill in their Moscow meeting. Glum when informed that an invasion of Europe was not yet possible, his mood changed when Churchill explained the plan of the great North African pincer movement that would capture more enemy soldiers than Russia would at Stalingrad. He said to Churchill: “May God prosper this undertaking.” It would be utter foolishness to think that Stalin had converted. Yet it is foolish as well not to see that the only thing adequate to describe the change from despair to hope is the ancient language of faith, deep in our bones and the words to which we naturally turn. When modern Islamists saw the jaded disregard of religion in the modern West, they saw it as a sign of weakness, of absence of the inspiration necessary to face the crises that are the stuff of human life. People with nothing to die for have nothing to live for. There is nothing they won’t give up just to be left alone. The aggressors smell the fear and they salivate. This was in the mind of the Hamasnik pushing Bar Kuperstein’s mother to betray her cause or else. The Jews, in his mind, are internally weak. Their faith was too life-affirming and when pushed, there would just be mush. Threaten the mother of a child kept for two years in terror tunnels and she will do whatever he pushes her to do. He asserted his control over Bar’s life and hers, aiming to break whatever pitiful resolve might be there. But there was no mush, there was no fear. And even more: she asserted that the captor’s power was illusory. She did that not by braggadocio, but by the humility and reverence of the true power from which our human power entirely derives. She said, no, Bar and you and I are all under the control of God. And the suddenly, there was wholeness. I have no idea if that moment had a lasting effect on the Hamasnik. Perhaps, perhaps not. But there is more redemption in the air today. The worshippers of power, in all the places they believe they control, haven’t got the story yet. But America is being reinvigorated by faith and the role it plays in our souls. We feel its liberty when we know ourselves released from the distortion caused by coercion. We know that our soul is a realm where coercion does not belong. And knowing that, we know we are free. And not only in America. In Arab Middle East, many are choosing to elevate their own faith beyond the reach of the coercers whom they know now to be their enslavers. They find this elevation true to their own religion’s deepest teachings. Anyone who observes the media in Arab lands today and who compares it to what it was 20 years ago can see the magnitude of the change, especially as it works out in places like Morocco, Bahrain, the UAE — and even in Riyadh. Now there are many hopeful signs in Syria. And with the abject, humiliating failure of the coercive project of Iran and its clients, the new wind is blowing stronger. There is no more basic message from our faith tradition than that we are all in God’s hands. This was central to George Washington’s faith, and he often spoke of America being established by the hand of Providence. Lincoln spoke of God having His own purposes, revealed slowly in the terrible events of the Civil War. It is also a great central idea, flowing from the beginning of the shared biblical tradition. In a world created entirely by God, every least occurrence traces back to God’s purpose manifest in His work. Our moral agency alone allows us to fully realize the divine image granted humanity and which is the core of our human identity. By embracing it, we free ourselves from all Pharaoh’s and devote ourselves to the One whose power and beneficence are co-equal. A mother, seemingly powerless, confronted by merciless power over the most precious thing in her life, saw piercingly to the core of this matter. It is the key to every matter in this world. We are all in God’s hands. And this insight pierced the heart of her son’s captor. For one moment, they were on equal ground. And there lies our hope. Seen from the Above, there is nothing to stop peace, plenty, and wholeness. We all have the power to see from Above. We all are in God’s hands. There we are one. READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: In Defense of a Judeo-Christian America The Lie That Destroys Uncompromising Principles, Moderated Souls        

Pope Leo XIV has summoned a second consistory of the College of Cardinals, scheduled for late June. According to Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, the pontiff intends to gather the world’s Catholic cardinals together in consistories annually, a welcome departure from the governing style of the late Pope Francis. It is heartening that Pope Leo XIV has announced annual consistories and full meetings of the whole College of Cardinals. Under the Francis pontificate, meetings of all the world’s cardinals were rare occurrences. Pope Francis convened ten consistories between 2014 and 2024, but these were for the creation of new cardinals and those new cardinals were often the only members of the college present. Only three “extraordinary” consistories were convened, in which all the world’s cardinals met to offer the pontiff advice on particular issues. This presented several key issues for the Catholic Church during Francis’s tenure. First of all, the cardinals rarely had an opportunity to meet and fraternize, depriving these Princes of the Church of the chance to get to know one another, form friendships, and debate matters of importance. This resulted in a seeming fracture, a sense of isolation. The cardinals simply did not know their brethren. This isolation was glaringly evident in the papal conclave which eventually elected Pope Leo XIV: It fell to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, then the long-serving Archbishop of New York, to serve as a bridge between a coalition of cardinals from the Western hemisphere, many of whom did not know each other. Each cardinal had to rely on Dolan to understand his concerns and desires for the Church, convey them accurately to other cardinals, and identify a man who could assuage those concerns and fulfill those desires. The fractured nature of the College of Cardinals under Francis’s rule led to another prominent issue: the pontiff’s autocratic, arbitrary reign. Of course, the pope’s powers are fairly sweeping, but as the Church has expanded over the centuries, the pontiff has often relied upon the counsel of the learned and virtuous men whom his predecessors have elevated to the rank of cardinal. Pope Francis largely eschewed this custom, preferring instead to make his own decisions with little advice, sometimes resulting in damage done to the unity of the Church. One example of this may be found in the implementation of Traditionis Custodes. Pope Francis’s controversial motu proprio effectively relegated the Tridentine Mass — the form of the Mass celebrated prior to the Second Vatican Council, also called the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) and dubbed the Extraordinary Form of the Mass by the late, great Pope Benedict XVI — to second class. Pope Francis cited widespread division and schismatic ideology as the basis for the restrictive motu proprio, but a report following his death revealed that Traditionis Custodes, which stripped hundreds of thousands of faithful Catholics across the globe of the liturgical treasure with which they had fallen in love, had been prompted by only a handful of bishops with modernist sensibilities. Perhaps Pope Francis would have decided against publishing Traditionis Custodes — or at least loosened some of the stringent restrictions it contained — had he heard from his College of Cardinals of the great love that the Tridentine Mass inspired in so many and of their sincere devotion to Holy Mother Church. Perhaps he would have dismissed the cardinals’ advice and issued the motu proprio anyway. Regardless, he did not turn to the cardinals for counsel. The habit of not even seeking the advice of the cardinals led to the moniker of the “Dictator Pope.” It is heartening that Pope Leo XIV has announced annual consistories and full meetings of the whole College of Cardinals. It is not likely that all of the damage which the Francis pontificate inflicted upon the Church, particularly in terms of unity, will be undone under his successor’s pontificate, but fostering fellowship and, frankly, collegiality among the cardinals is a significant step on the path to healing. READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: Is Hostility Against Christians Going to Increase in 2026? What the Left Doesn’t Get Right About Christmas New Archbishop Named for Powerful American Archdiocese

It is unlikely that many of the protestors and agitators — paid and unpaid — on the streets of Minneapolis, Portland, and New York City know the name Carlos Marighella, though the far-left organizers and funders of the protests may be familiar with some of his writings. I learned about Marighella in 1981, when reading Claire Sterling’s The Terror Network. Sterling was one of the best investigative journalists of her time (she died in 1995 at the age of 75), authoring books on international terrorism, the Sicilian mafia, and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, among others. Her study of the revolutionary urban guerilla tactics promoted by Marighella, a Brazilian communist, provides insight into the leftist agitators who are causing such havoc over the enforcement of illegal immigration in some of our larger cities. Although many of the protestors … don’t know it, their actions are generally following the playbook of … urban guerilla warfare strategists. Sterling described Marighella as “an apparatchik in Brazil’s … Communist Party for forty years” who authored a small book titled the Mini-Manual — a how-to book for urban guerillas and a “clinical study of the step-by-step tactics in the strategy of terror.” Marighella proposed using “revolutionary violence to identify with popular causes,” forcing the government to “intensify repression.” The goal is to provoke law enforcement to physically arrest “innocent people” to “make life in the city unbearable.” Meanwhile, leftist political allies portray the police as unjust and blame the authorities for violence and repression. The urban guerillas cause havoc and chaos, forcing the government to act repressively which will result in “the uncontrollable expansion of urban rebellion.” Sterling notes that Marighella’s Mini-Manual became the “strategic blueprint” for terrorist groups throughout the world, including the Tupamaros in South America, the Red Brigades in Italy, the IRA in Ireland and Britain, the ETA in Spain, the Baader-Meinhof gang in West Germany, and the Weather Underground in the United States. One of Marighella’s ideological comrades, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli of Italy, wrote a paper titled “Italy 1968: Political Guerilla Warfare,” which urged urban guerillas to foster “intensive provocation” to reveal “the reactionary essence of the state.” Urban guerillas, he counseled, should “violate the law openly … challenging and outraging institutions and public order in every way.” When law enforcement reacts, he continued, their repressive conduct must be denounced. What we saw in the summer of 2020 in cities like Portland, Minneapolis, and Seattle, and what we are seeing today in Portland, Minneapolis, New York, and other cities, is a form of urban guerilla warfare that mirrors the strategy propounded by Marighella, Feltrinelli and their followers in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Today’s agitators are openly violating the law by impeding and attempting to impede law enforcement operations, disrupting public order, and committing some acts of violence — engaging in what Feltrinelli called “intensive provocation.” Several protestors have been arrested, one was killed and two others were shot. In Minneapolis, one agitator was shot and killed and in Portland two others were shot when they drove their vehicles at law enforcement officers. Leftist spokesmen and officials in those cities and nationally side with the urban guerillas, effectively fueling the fires of agitation. Although many of the protestors and agitators don’t know it, their actions are generally following the playbook of Marighella, Feltrinelli, and other urban guerilla warfare strategists. Leftist media personality Rachel Maddow told a sympathetic Jimmy Kimmel that if three-and-a-half percent of the population protest in the streets — what Marighella called the “uncontrollable expansion of urban rebellion” — they will constitute an unstoppable force against President Trump, who she blames for everything. Other agitators have chanted that Kristi Noem should be hanged. Some leftist public officials and former public officials have called law enforcement actions “murderous.” The left is portraying those who enforce the laws as the lawbreakers whose conduct, to use Feltrinelli’s words, exposes the “reactionary essence of the state.” Claire Sterling would understand. READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: The Experts Were Wrong About Pete Hegseth The ‘Warmth of Collectivism’ Comes to New York Xi Jinping: ‘The Reunification of Our Motherland Is Unstoppable’

The Murder at World’s End By Ross Montgomery (William Morrow, 323 pages, $31) British writer Ross Montgomery has several successful children’s books to his credit. On the evidence of The Murder at World’s End, his first book for grownups, he needn’t return to the children’s table unless he wishes to. This story is in the English tradition of the cozy, thanks to its remote location, its small and isolated cast and the fact that … Montgomery does not linger over the corpse.. World’s End is the most absorbing and satisfying whodunit I’ve read in many a moon. It’s an intelligently rendered, tense, and suspenseful locked-room murder mystery with enough twists and turns to give a snake a backache. The story develops quickly, moves forward relentlessly, giving both characters and readers little time to breathe. Happily, the story is leavened by frequent humor. World’s End is a period piece, taking place at a remote manor house in coastal Cornwall not long after the death of Edward VII in 1910. The master of the house, a self-appointed viscount and soon to be the dearly departed, treats his staff and just about everyone else badly. Tithe Hall ain’t Downton Abbey.  Two amateur detectives, less alike than Felix and Oscar but just as entertaining, finally crack the case. But only after exposing themselves to considerable personal danger while being considered suspects themselves by a caricature Scotland Yard inspector. Our amateurs are obliged to sort a procession of suspects, all with means, motive, and opportunity to have done the deed. When I learned who was responsible for the murder most foul, my reaction was: “How did I miss the clues!?” On a second reading, I found the clues are there. Subtle, but they’re there. Montgomery plays fair with readers. But he pulls off a literary sleight of hand most illusionists would applaud and many readers will fall for. The set up: It’s the spring of 1910 just before the arrival of Halley’s Comet, which is generating fear among various Calamity Janes who, on the basis of no evidence whatever, fear that the comet, which has passed Earth harmlessly countless times, will do much damage to the planet this time. Breathless newspaper stories blame various bad weather events, even the death of King Edward, on the approaching comet. (Does this remind you of the excitables who believe the Earth will burn to a crisp if we don’t abandon fossil fuels? Yeah — me too.) Lord Stockingham-Welt, master of Tithe Hall, who fancies himself a scientist but in fact couldn’t tell the difference between a hypothesis and a meat pie, is in the most extreme wing of the comet calamity crowd. He believes this comet’s passing will bathe the planet in a deadly gas. “This time it will be the end of the world,” he claimed. So he had the household and all of its inhabitants, including himself, sealed, air-tight, into their rooms as the comet passes. When the gas dissipates the following morning, the world, he imagined, would continue with the Tithe Hall survivors. Hardly an impressive gene pool with which to start a planet. Of course the sealed up night is not the end of the world, but it was the end of the viscount, who is found dead in the office the following morning, slain by a bolt from his own crossbow. How could this be as he was in a sealed room by himself all night? But was he? It quickly becomes evident that the Scotland Yard detective assigned to the case would be challenged by attempting to find his own butt with two hands. So our two unlikely detectives assign themselves to finding the murderer. The book’s narrator and one of the detectives is Stephen Pike, not yet 20 and just out of prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and hired just the day before Tithe Hall is sealed against the comet’s imaginary poison gas. He’s an intelligent lad but naïve in some matters. The other unofficial detective is the viscount’s 80 year-old great aunt, Decima Stockingham. Highly intelligent, but imperious and sharp-tongued, she doesn’t suffer fools gladly. And as Tithe Hall, especially among the Viscount’s family, is chock full of fools, all hands steer clear of her. But is one of these a murderer as well as a fool? This story is in the English tradition of the cozy, thanks to its remote location, its small and isolated cast, and the fact that while there is murder, Montgomery does not linger over the corpse. No gore. Only Decima’s potty-mouth keeps the story from a G-rating. Ex-con Stephen remarks: “I’d never heard language like it … and I’d just spent the last month sharing a bunk with a man called Filthy Mick.” (Decima’s conversational style reminds me of my Navy days. I worked for a chief petty officer who could and often did use the f-word in the noun, verb, adjective, and gerund form all in the same sentence. Crude, but impressive.) Decima makes Downton’s Violet Crawley seem like Miss Congeniality by comparison. World’s End is an enjoyable romp from end to end. A cozy — save for Decima’s blue streaks — but more intelligently done than most cozies. More meat and potatoes for readers than stories from the body in the library tradition, or, God forbid, stories in which a cat is the detective. And in the end there are hints there will be future Stingingham & Pike mysteries. Something for savvy detective fiction readers to look forward to. READ MORE from Larry Thornberry: Christmas in the Sub-Tropics Reports of Woke’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated Democrat Policies Are Crazy, but Crazy Still Sells (See NYC)