Eighteen-month-old Mohammed Zakariya al-Matouq of Gaza reportedly suffers from cerebral palsy and genetic disorders — but that didn’t stop the American media or Gaza’s leadership from using a photo of the boy as proof of widespread starvation and for anti-Israel propaganda.

His image has been used on the front pages of newspapers around the world and in broadcasts like the BBC, CNN, and Sky.

In the Guardian’s story on the photo, it was captioned that Muhammad was “facing life-threatening malnutrition.” The U.K.’s Daily Express called it “a horrifying image encapsulating the ‘maelstrom of human misery’ gripping Gaza.”

Mohammed’s photo was also distributed by Anadolu Agency, the Turkish state news service, as the amount of humanitarian aid into Gaza has been challenged and questioned. Critics are arguing that Hamas omitted the child’s medical history, as confirmed by his mother and Dr. Suzan Mohammed Marouf in order to amplify a starvation narrative.

In the photo, Mohammed is held by his mother, who BlazeTV host Pat Gray can’t help but notice “seems pretty OK.”

“I’m not saying she’s gigantic, I’m just saying she’s not starving. So if you’re eating all his food, you might want to share there, mom, because you look pretty healthy,” Gray says.

“So it turns out, he’s got several other problems genetically that he was born with … and they are the problems that cause him to look like that, right? Not the fact that Israel is keeping food from these Palestinians,” he adds.

“I don’t remember a time in the past,” he says, “and they’ve been through this kind of stuff many, many times with the Palestinians. I don’t remember them ever cutting off a food supply.”

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​Upload, Camera phone, Video, Sharing, Video phone, Free, Youtube.com, Pat gray unleashed, Pat gray, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Hamas propaganda, Hamas, Gaza, Palestinians, Starving gaza boy photo, Media lies 

An executive order signed by President Trump upon taking office is having a ripple effect on gender activism in Canada.

On January 20, Trump signed an order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

The order affirmed the “biological reality of sex” and formally recognized only two genders in the United States. Canadians were recently notified that the order is now restricting their gender performance in terms of travel documents.

‘Canada must uphold its commitment to gender inclusion.’

Since 2019, Canadians have been allowed to designate their genders as “X” on their passports, a policy that progressed through the Nexus travel cards, a joint program between the Canada Border Services Agency and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The program allows travelers between the two countries to cross faster using expedited lines and screening processes.

Now, the CBSA has confirmed that Nexus users from Canada will no longer be allowed to label their gender as “X” and must be compliant with Trump’s executive order moving forward.

As Juno News reported, current Nexus cards will remain valid if they use the X, but all future applications are required to select either “male” or “female.”

Canadian border officials confirmed that this will affect hundreds of Nexus members.

RELATED: Border Patrol switches up tactics to apprehend illegal immigrants in Los Angeles

Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images

Approximately 550 Nexus applications have been submitted with the gender marked as “X” between January 2022 and March 2025. It is unknown, however, how many current card holders will have to change once they renew; Nexus cards are valid for five years.

A CBSA spokesman told the Canadian Press that while Canada’s government recognizes the “X,” it cannot guarantee entry to other countries.

“Not all countries have the same values and legal system that we have in Canada,” Luke Reimer said in a statement. “As a result, it is important for travelers to be informed about the legal framework and social customs governing sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics in the destination country.”

Predictably, transgender activists in Canada were not pleased about the change and labeled it a regression.

RELATED: Sanctuary cities on DOJ’s list set to reap the whirlwind

Photo by Stacey Newman/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Removing the “X” option is a “step backward for the recognition and inclusion of trans, nonbinary, and gender-diverse people,” according to Helen Kennedy. Kennedy is the executive director of Egale Canada, a gay activism charity. Kennedy told the Canadian Press, “Canada must uphold its commitment to gender inclusion and human rights by working with U.S. counterparts to find solutions that do not erase the identities of 2SLGBTQI people.”

A lawyer named Sarah Mikhail claimed the change is a “manifestation” of how Trump’s policies affects different gay identities.

“What we are seeing right now is a policy that is at odds with our own policy and inconsistent and incompatible with it,” she told the Canadian Press. She added that the change of policy is “distressing and troubling” to those who believe they are transgender or nonbinary.

The U.S. will continue to accept Canadian passports that use an “X” gender for general travel, though.

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​News, Trump, Canada, Gender ideology, Gender identity, Woke, Transgenderism, Politics 

Texas Democrats have once again fled the state — not in the face of danger or persecution, but to block a vote they know they’ll lose.

This time, they’re trying to derail a redistricting plan that would likely establish five more Republican districts. Rather than face the debate, they bolted. Gov. Greg Abbott responded by ordering the Texas Rangers to investigate the absent legislators for potential violations of state law, including bribery.

Voters should recognize that these performative walkouts have nothing to do with democracy or the rule of law. They’re tantrums — undemocratic and unaccountable.

This isn’t a new tactic for Democrats in Texas. In 2003, they fled to a motel in Ardmore, Oklahoma, to block another redistricting vote. Eleven Senate Democrats later fled to New Mexico in a failed attempt to stop the plan. In 2021, Democrats once again abandoned their posts — this time flying to Washington, D.C. — to obstruct a bill that tightened mail-in voting rules and curbed 2020-era voting expansions in Harris County. That bill passed too.

Now they’re repeating the act, claiming to “defend democracy” from Republican gerrymandering while retreating to safe blue havens like Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York. One Democrat compared the new redistricting map to the Holocaust (she later apologized). Others predictably called the plan “racist.” Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries flew to Austin for “closed-door meetings,” and California Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pledged to pursue their own gerrymanders back home.

The hypocrisy is as plain as it is tedious.

As journalist Matt Kittle noted in the Federalist, this brand of protest isn’t just ineffective — it’s absurd. Wisconsin Democrats tried something similar in 2011, fleeing to Illinois to block a bill that curbed public-sector union power. Then-Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans passed it anyway using a procedural maneuver to overcome the quorum requirement.

Kittle also pointed out the irony: The Democrats’ sanctuary states — Illinois, New York, California — are among the most gerrymandered in the country. Yet those states don’t seem to trouble the “defenders of democracy.”

It’s easy to see why Texas Democrats like Reps. Jasmine Crockett and Al Green want to preserve a system that favors them. What’s harder to see is what they hope to gain from this stunt. They have no leverage. Their absence ensures failure. Even as political theater, it’s weak and self-defeating. It makes them look unserious and incapable of governing.

Rep. Salman Bhojani, one of the Texas Democrats who fled, may not return at all — he reportedly needs to leave the country for a “family medical emergency.” His constituents in Euless should ask: Who’s representing them now?

But most won’t ask. Most don’t even know who Bhojani is. And that’s the deeper problem.

Too many state legislators are anonymous placeholders. They win office by running with a “D” or “R” next to their names. They stay in office because they’ve been there before. Their constituents rarely track their votes or positions — many wouldn’t even recognize their representative if they saw them on TV.

Bhojani faced no opponent in his last election. Apart from donors and staffers, almost no one in Euless likely knows who he is — until now that he’s left the country and quite likely his job.

RELATED: The cold civil war is real — and only one side is fighting to win

Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images

So what kind of democracy is this?

If lawmakers go unchallenged, remain largely unknown, and face no accountability for skipping out on their duties, can we really call this democratic representation? And if redistricting efforts aim to align political boundaries more closely with population centers — rather than carve out safe enclaves for party operatives — might that not restore some of the lost accountability?

At present, most lawmakers serve parties and donors, not voters. The party ensures they run unopposed or draws the district to guarantee victory. The campaign is just a formality. Once elected, they vote the party line and maybe dabble in social media branding.

Right now, this is more a problem for Democrats than Republicans. But that could easily flip. Voters of all stripes should recognize that these performative walkouts have nothing to do with democracy or the rule of law. They’re tantrums — undemocratic and unaccountable.

Republicans in Washington and across red states should follow Texas’ lead: Call the bluff, pass the bills, and begin the work of restoring actual representative government. That’s what voters want — left, right, and center.

​Opinion & analysis, Texas, Democrats, Quorum, Quorum breakers, Redistricting, Gerrymandering, Greg abbott, Texas rangers, Republicans, Gavin newsom, California, Jb pritzker, Illinois, Kathy hochul, New york, Democracy, Jasmine crockett, Al green, Salman bhojani 

You are what what you eat eats. Try saying that in a hurry.

It’s a simple maxim, but one that guides me in my nutritional choices and in the advice I give to other people about improving their diet. If the meat and animal products you eat come from animals that live unhealthy, unhappy lives — if they’re stuffed full of poor-quality food they shouldn’t even be eating and housed in an unnatural environment — then you’re not going to derive as much benefit from those products as you should.

If you feed animals badly, you get a bad product. It’s that simple.

And why would you want that?

Animal welfare matters

Animal welfare matters not only because it determines the quality of the food you eat, but also because animals are sentient, feeling creatures who deserve moral consideration.

This doesn’t get said enough, actually, and there’s been a rather depressing tendency for so-called conservatives to pay little heed to the suffering of livestock or animals. This is part of a broader Philistine tendency on the right, I think, that reduces everything to economics and lines on a graph.

But of course it’s more economical to immobilize 10,000 chickens in a strip-lit warehouse instead of pasturing them on grass, in rather the same way it might seem economical to import your nation’s birth rates and undercut native labour with cheap foreigners at half the price — and of course they don’t unionize either!

A two-way pact

Domestication, which created cows and chickens and sheep and pigs as we know them, was a two-way pact, and we shouldn’t forget it. We got reliable, high-quality nutrition that didn’t have to be hunted on the plains and in the forests, at great risk to ourselves, and the animals got care and protection — including from other animals like wolves and bears and big cats.

The terms of this pact, and of man’s proper relation to nature more broadly, were given their most solemn expression in the book of Genesis, when God granted man “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

By “dominion,” God didn’t mean, “You can do anything you want to these animals.” He meant, “You are the lord of these animals, and like every lord and his subjects, you have obligations to them. They are in your care. They are not to be abused or misused.”

I didn’t really intend this piece to be a bit of Biblical exegesis, but oh well — here we are.

But as I was saying, if you feed animals badly, you get a bad product. It’s that simple.

Farmed salmon ‘toxic’

Take farmed salmon, for example. I think we all know we’re supposed to eat more oily fish to get those important omega-3s in our diet, but the truth is, farmed salmon may be one of the most toxic foods on the planet, and it’s all to do with how the fish are raised and in particular what they’re fed.

RELATED: Cattle rancher’s STARK warning: You’ll only have meat ‘as a treat’

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Research has linked regular consumption of farmed salmon to diabetes and obesity. Mice fed farmed salmon gain twice as much weight as mice fed other foods. Farmed salmon has been shown to carry an enormous payload of harmful chemicals, which probably explains its obesogenic effects.

A 2004 study showed at least 13 different persistent organic pollutants in the flesh of farmed salmon and that levels of polychlorinated biphenyls — chemicals known to be carcinogenic and to cause hormonal disruption — were eight times higher in farmed salmon than wild. Two other kinds of carcinogenic chemicals — dioxins and polybrominated diphenyl ethers — have also been found in high concentrations in farmed salmon.

One of the main foods given to farmed salmon is eel and other fatty fish, which are chosen because of their high protein and fat content. The problem is that fatty fish readily accumulate harmful substances, many of which are lipophilic (attracted to fat) and get stuck in their fat stores. A lot of the fatty fish that go into fish feed are taken from the Baltic, one of the most heavily polluted seas on the planet, concentrating the waste of nine industrial nations. (In Sweden, fishmongers are legally required to warn customers of the health risks of consuming fish caught in the Baltic. I bet you didn’t know that.)

Pigs under pressure

The same is true of pigs and pork. Apart from chickens, pigs bear the greatest burden of suffering in the modern industrial farming system. If you want any further reason to pray for the Three Gorges Dam to fail, look up China’s multi-story pig farms, which have the capacity to house and slaughter millions of pigs a year.

We in the West aren’t much better, though. For the most part, pigs here are just as unhappy: cramped, stressed, stuffed full of cheap corn and soy to fatten them up for slaughter as quickly and economically — there it is, that word again — as possible.

That means atrocious misery and poor-quality pork and lard to boot. There’s been a lot of talk of putting away seed and vegetable oils and returning to healthy traditional animal fats like butter and tallow and lard, but lard from industrially raised pigs is anything but healthy or traditional. Because pigs don’t have a rumen — those magical multiple stomachs possessed by cows and sheep — if they’re fed trash like soybean oil, they can’t convert the fats in it to saturated fat. As a result, the fat content of the pork comes to resemble soybean oil, and you’ve got seed oil but it’s called lard. So it goes.

Meet Acorn Bluff

Thank God, then, for Acorn Bluff Farms, a family farm in the rolling bluff country of Louisa County, Iowa. The farm has been in continuous use for nearly 200 years, but in the last five years its owners have converted the farm to focus on producing the highest quality pasture-raised pork, using one of the world’s most prestigious heritage breeds: the Hungarian Mangalitsa.

Mangalitsa pigs were originally bred for the Habsburgs, the royal family of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. You can recognize them by their absurdly cute curly hair. Since they were bred for European royalty, you can bet Mangalitsa pigs taste good. Some call Mangalitsa the “Kobe beef” of pork, Kobe beef being one of the priciest and most prized kinds of beef in the world. The cows are fed beer and given massages. (Really: Look it up.)

Acorn Bluff Farms

The other red meat

At Acorn Bluff Farms, the pigs and piglets are allowed to roam and forage and wallow in the mud and chase one another through the fields and forest like pigs and piglets should. Follow the farm’s Twitter account (@acornblufffarms) for regular heartwarming videos.

In the middle of the 20th century, pork began to be marketed as “the other white meat,” but this was only really possible because modern farming methods were turning pork into an insipid, watered-down, pale shadow of the meat it really is.

If you buy some pork chops or a side of spare ribs from Acorn Bluff Farms, you’ll see pork in its true form: the other red meat. And what’s more, you can enjoy every single mouthful, without guilt — which is how it should be, because God said so.

​Maha, Acorn bluff farms, Pork, Farming, Mangalitsa pigs, Lifestyle, Health and wellness, Fitness, Provisions