National Geographic: TikTok Is ‘Fueling Interest’ in Pagan Religions

National Geographic reveals in its most recent issue that the Chinese-owned TikTok video-sharing app is on the front lines promoting pagan religions such as Wicca and druidism.

“Paganism is on the rise,” National Geographic notes approvingly, and TikTok “is fueling interest in this spiritual movement.”

Recently, “a resurgence of interest in Pagan practices — crystals and tarot cards, astrology, and herbal magic — has brought Paganism from the fringes back to the center of pop culture, or at least to the top of your TikTok feed,” the magazine declares.

Specifically, Tiktok has been credited with helping to popularize witchcraft through its #WitchTok hashtag, employed by a community of users to share content related to witchcraft, including spellcasting, divination, and ritual practices.

Some users in the #WitchTok community identify as witches, while others are simply interested in exploring and learning about these practices.

In its article, National Geographic goes on to assert that some 1.5 million people in the United States identify as pagans, up from just 134,000 in 2001.

According to Helen Berger, an author and sociologist of contemporary paganism and witchcraft, growth in paganism is linked to female empowerment, the gay rights movement, the climate crisis, and a desire for a more “life-affirming religion.”

The trend in paganism is also tied to the environmentalist movement, since pagans view the natural world as sacred, and Earth Day is celebrated as a pagan holiday, along with the winter and midsummer solstice, the article notes.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese multinational internet technology company founded by Zhang Yiming in 2012 and headquartered in Beijing. Besides TikTok, ByteDance also owns other popular apps such as Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), Toutiao (a news and information platform), and Xigua Video (a short-form video platform).

TikTok has been tagged by some U.S. policymakers and experts as a potential risk to national security due to its Chinese ownership and data privacy issues. The concerns stem from the fact that TikTok’s parent company could be compelled by the communist Chinese government to hand over user data or censor content that is deemed objectionable by Chinese authorities.

In response to these concerns, the U.S. government has taken several actions, including seeking to ban the use of TikTok by government employees and military personnel and seeking to force the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to an American company.

Along with paganism, TikTok has been accused of actively promoting suicide videos for children as young as 13 years old.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2023/03/25/national-geographic-tiktok-is-fueling-interest-pagan-religions/

Meth-Smoking Satanist Vicar Convicted of Paedophilia, Zoophilia

An Anglican vicar who smoked crystal meth, boasted of corrupting young boys, abused animals, and discussed sacrificing babies to Satan with online paedophiles has been convicted in England.

Reverend David Renshaw, 63, was convicted of “three counts of possessing indecent images of children; three counts of making indecent images of children; possessing prohibited images of children; and possessing extreme pornographic images portraying acts of intercourse with animals, namely dogs and horses,” according to a Sussex Police statement.

Strangely, he does not appear to have faced any charges relating to animal cruelty or neglect, despite police officers finding his vicarage full of dead and dying animals including cats, dogs, and chickens.

“The search of his address was one of the most revolting tasks our officers will ever have to endure,” commented investigating officer Detective Sergeant David Rose. “As well as malnourished living animals, there was also a dead rotting kitten and a dead rotting rat on the floor, in addition to used needles and other drug paraphernalia lying around. It was a deeply unpleasant scene to search.”

In lurid conversations with other child predators, Renshaw had bragged: “I’m a sadistic bastard. Through and fucking through.”

He also referenced his desire to “sacrifice babies to Satan” in these conversations, and urged another paedophile to sacrifice his own three-year-old to the Devil.

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David Renshaw (Sussex Police)

The 22,504 abuse images Renshaw had in his possession are said to have been especially unpleasant, with Detective Sergeant Rose saying it was “a particularly harrowing experience for the officer who had to sift through and grade each image, something that will stay with him for the rest of his life.”

The vicar even attempted to blame his own sons for his online activity, arguing they had access to his computers — without success, as a jury took less than half an hour to convict him on all charges.

Formerly of Christ Church Worthing, which boasts on its website that it “welcome[s] all nationalities, those of any age and sexual preference”, Renshaw was bizarrely added to the Church of England’s National Clergy Register of trustworthy clerics after he had been charged.

A spokeswoman for the Diocese of Chichester admitted that it is “clear” his name should not have been added and claimed that the matter has been “[referred] to the National Safeguarding Team as a matter of urgency [so] they can investigate how this happened.”

Having survived an attempted overdose after his conviction, the vicar has been remanded in custody ahead of his sentencing, with Judge Christine Henson KC telling him she was “considering an immediate custodial term of some length.”

What the British judiciary considers a lengthy prison sentence seldom lines up with what the British public considers a lengthy prison sentence, however, and high-profile paedophiles like Renshaw are frequently spared any time behind bars at all.

Former Labour Party councillor Roger Spackman, for example, was let off with a suspended sentence despite downloading 290,672 indecent images of children, including graphic imagery of children being raped, in 2020.

The same year, a former Member of Parliament (MP) for Labour with a history of assault convictions, Eric Joyce, also got off with a suspended sentence despite being found in possession of videos of the most extreme category of child pornography.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/03/25/meth-smoking-satanist-vicar-convicted-paedophilia-zoophilia/

Local Govt Promises to Stop Placing Kids in Care of Paedophiles After Girl Abused by Convicted Molester

A left-run city council in Britain has vowed that it will never again put a child in the care of a paedophile again after authorities were exposed for doing just that, leading to a young girl being sexually abused for years and ultimately impregnated.

Labour Party-controlled Leeds City Council has been forced to pledge that it will increase safeguards to prevent a repeat of the case of “Ruby”, a vulnerable local girl who was put into the care of a known paedophile by a family court on the advice of the local authority

The scandal was revealed in a report in January.

An outspoken critic of the leftist local government’s handling of the case, Conservative councillor Ryan Stephenson put forward a motion this week to guarantee that such carelessness does not occur again.

Stephenson, who said that he was forced to introduce the measure as a last resort, according to the Telegraph and Argus newspaper, told a silent chamber: “The abuse inflicted on Ruby was both predictable and preventable.”

“A number of us have been pursuing the lessons and responses from this case for over a year now. It didn’t need to come before full council today,” the Conservative councillor complained. “It’s only doing so because there’s been a co-ordinated attempt to block democratic scrutiny.”

The Labour Party-controlled administration’s executive member for children’s social care, Councillor Fiona Venner, attempted to point towards a recent inquiry by Ofsted, which gave Leeds an “outstanding” rating for child services for the second year in a row last May — despite the abuse of “Ruby” coming to light prior to the grading.

“In their recent visit Ofsted didn’t find any serious issues of concern with the safeguarding of children in Leeds,” Councillor Venner insisted, going on to claim that the council and its partners have an “open and reflective culture”.

However, Conservative councillor Dan Cohen said this week that the Ofsted rating should not be used as “a shield to deflect legitimate criticism”.

The local Conservative Party leader, Councillor Andrew Carter, went on to say that he had been “seriously misled” by the local Labour-run administration, accusing fellow councillors of being “more concerned with reputation than what had gone wrong in a very clearly tragic case”.

As a result of Stephenson forcing the debate, all parties within the local council voted in favour of adopting a white paper which said: “This council believes there should be no circumstances in which convicted child sex offenders are given custody of a child”.

According to the report from the Leeds Safeguarding Children Partnership that uncovered the case, a convicted child sex offender was granted legal custody over Ruby despite concerns about his suitability given his history as a paedophile, and nothing was done to stop it.

After being granted custody of the child, he was arrested over allegations of illicit photographs being on his computer, although he was ultimately released without charge for lack of evidence.

The abuse Ruby suffered at the hands of the convicted paedophile was only uncovered after she became pregnant and sought to have an abortion while she was still a minor. As she was still below the legal age of consent — 16 in England — Ruby was referred to social services who later revealed, through testing, that her paedophile guardian was in fact the father.

When interviewed after being saved from her abuser, Ruby said that she hadn’t realised that she was being victimised as it had “always” happened for as long as she could remember.

She also revealed that she was pressured into keeping quiet by her guardian, who threatened to kill himself if she spoke to authorities.

The Safeguarding Partnership, who commissioned the review, claimed that the local council has implemented “significant changes to systems and practice” following the report, and that they were “committed to continually reviewing how agencies in Leeds work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people in Leeds.”

Going forward, a report will lay out the measures that the council will put in place to prevent paedophiles from being granted custody of children before the local council, which hopes to use the recommendations to inspire national legislation.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/03/25/council-vows-to-not-place-children-in-the-care-of-paedophiles-again-after-girl-was-impregnated-by-legal-guardian/

Bitcoin has ‘no future’ – Russian finance official

The top cryptocurrency is not a reliable tool for investment due to its volatility, Anatoly Aksakov claims

The cryptocurrency market is extremely unpredictable and cannot be viewed as an alternative to traditional financial services at a time of global uncertainty, according to the head of the Russian State Duma Financial Market Committee.

Anatoly Aksakov told the Parliamentary Newspaper on Wednesday that for Russians it is better to invest in the country’s digital financial assets (DFAs). The issuance of DFAs will be accelerated this year, the lawmaker noted.

“I am rather wary of bitcoins. The price of the crypto has now risen again due to instability on the American financial market amid concerns of a possible crisis. Of course, when such signs occur, investors are looking for alternative assets where they can invest money. Obviously, bitcoin seems attractive to them,” he argued.

Aksakov, however, stressed that the price of bitcoin is highly volatile, with investors risking major losses.

“The cryptocurrency market today is extremely unpredictable, and, in my opinion, bitcoin has no future. Therefore, I would not advise investing in it, but would keep money in Russian digital assets that are starting to appear on the market. This year, we expect a serious promotion of the issuance of digital assets, secured, among other things, by natural resources and the potential of companies,” he explained.

DFAs, like cryptocurrencies, are based on blockchain technology. However, unlike the crypto, operations with them are centrally managed. In Russia, DFA issuance is regulated by the Central Bank, with companies required to register as information system operators.

https://www.rt.com/business/573459-bitcoin-crypto-future-unreliable/