Showing posts with label Strict Father. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Strict Father. Show all posts

Monday, November 28, 2022

Archbishop Viganò to Medical Doctors for Covid Ethics International

stilumcuriae  |  Medical Doctors for Covid Ethics International (MD4CE International) is grateful to His Excellency, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, for speaking to us and sharing his thoughts on the current global crisis, which began with the fraudulent concocted Covid-19 pandemic emergency, supported by and maintained by an evil military grade psychological operation, complete with the unashamed use of fear and shame propaganda, which was unleashed in a coordinated manner on the unsuspecting people of the entire world by their own governments in early 2020, with predictably cataclysmic results.

MD4CE International is an international group of medical doctors, scientists, lawyers, journalists, economists, historians, politicians, philosophers, data analysts, bankers, military/intelligence experts and others from all over the world, working determinedly together to expose the terrible truth of what has happened during the past three years to the people of the world, their families, their communities, their countries, and to hold those responsible for the great crimes committed properly to account.

Dear and distinguished friends,

Allow me first of all to thank Doctor Stephen Frost for the invitation he has extended to me to speak to you. Along with Doctor Frost I also thank all of you: your commitment to fighting the psychopandemic propaganda is commendable. I am well aware of the difficulties you have had to face in order to remain consistent with your principles, and I hope that the damage you have suffered can be adequately repaired by those who have discriminated against you, depriving you of work and salary and labelling you as dangerous no-vaxxers.

I am pleased to be able to speak and share with you my thoughts about the current global crisis. A crisis that we can consider to have begun with the pandemic emergency, but that we know has been planned for decades with very specific purposes by well-known personalities. Stopping at the pandemic alone would in fact be a serious mistake, because it would not allow us to consider the events in their full coherence and inter-connectedness, thus preventing us from understanding them and above all from identifying the criminal intentions behind them. You too – each with your own expertise in the medical, scientific, legal or other fields – will agree with me that limiting yourselves to your own discipline, which in some cases is extremely specific, does not fully explain the rationale for certain choices that have been made by governments, international bodies, and pharmaceutical agencies. For example, finding “graphene-like” material in the blood of people who have been inoculated with experimental serums makes no sense for a virologist, but it does made sense for an expert in nanomaterials and nanotechnology who understands what graphene can be used for. It also makes sense for an expert in medical patents, who immediately identifies the content of the invention and relates it to other similar patents. It also makes sense for an expert in war technologies who knows about studies on the enhanced man (a document of the British Ministry of Defense calls him “augmented man” in transhumanistic terms) and is therefore able to recognize in graphene nanostructures the technology that enables the augmentation of the war performance of military personnel. And a telemedicine expert will be able to recognize in those nanostructures the indispensable device that sends biomedical parameters to the patient control server and also receives certain signals from it.

Once again: the assessment of events from a medical point of view should take into account the legal implications of certain choices, such as the imposition of masks or, even worse, mass “vaccination,” made in violation of the fundamental rights of citizens. And I am sure that in the field of health governance the manipulations of the classification codes of diseases and therapies will also emerge, which have been designed to make the harmful effects of measures taken against Covid-19 untraceable, from placing people on respirators in intensive care to watchful waiting protocols, to say nothing of the scandalous violations of regulations by the European Commission which – as you know – has no delegation from the European Parliament in the field of Health, and that is not a public institution but rather a private business consortium.

Just in the past few days, at the G-20 Bali summit, Klaus Schwab instructed heads of government – almost all coming from the Young Global Leaders for Tomorrow program of the World Economic Forum – about the future steps to be taken in view of establishing a world government. The president of a very powerful private organization with enormous economic means exercises undue power over world governments, obtaining their obedience from political leaders who have no popular mandate to subject their nations to the delusions of power of the elite: this fact is of unprecedented gravity. Klaus Schwab said: “In the fourth industrial revolution the winners will take it all, so if you are a World Economic Forum first mover, you are the winners” (here). These very serious statements have two implications: the first is that “the winners will take it all” and will be “winners” – it is not clear in what capacity and with whose permission. The second is that those who do not adapt to this “fourth industrial revolution” will find themselves ousted and will lose – they will lose everything, including their freedom. In short, Klaus Schwab is threatening the heads of government of the twenty most industrialized nations in the world to carry out the programmatic points of the Great Reset in their nations. This goes far beyond the pandemic: it is a global coup d’état, against which it is essential that people rise up and that the still healthy organs of states start an international juridical process. The threat is imminent and serious, since the World Economic Forum is capable of carrying out its subversive project and those who govern nations have all become either enslaved or blackmailed by this international mafia.

In light of these statements – and those of others no less delusional than Yuval Noah Harari, Schwab’s adviser – we understand how the pandemic farce served as a trial balloon for imposing controls, coercive measures, curtailing individual freedoms, and increasing unemployment and poverty. The next steps will have to be carried out by means of economic and energy crises, which are instrumental to the establishment of a synarchic government in the hands of the globalist elite.

Sunday, September 25, 2022

Let's See If Valodya Declares Something Close To Martial Law In Russia

herson.tsargrad  |  Question:  Do you concede  that not only in the territory of the border regions of Russia – that’s to say, the Kursk, Belgorod, Voronezh, Rostov regions, and Crimea —  but martial law may be declared throughout the country?

YP: Very had to believe, but I cannot rule out this possibility. This is because, in my opinion, the question of creating the State Defense Committee is already overdue and even overready. We now live under the laws of peacetime. Accordingly, we can influence certain structures, including state power and elected power, only through the laws of peacetime. Holding referendums raises the stakes and already implies a war to the bitter end, because neither Kiev nor the West will agree to the outcomes of the referendums. Therefore, everything will depend on the military, there will be no negotiations. The essence of the special operation must change – this is inevitable.

Question: Does this mean that the Special Military Operation itself will change in its essence?

YP: I really hope for it. I think it’s inevitable. Because it makes no sense to announce even partial mobilization within the framework of the Special Military Operation [SMO] – and this cannot solve the problem of a referendum. It is clear that the status of the SMO should be changed; this has been under discussion for a long time. If, nevertheless, martial law is declared on the territory of Russia, then we can expect the termination of the transit of natural gas through the territory of Ukraine and many other negative economic consequences. Right now I believe that strikes against the critical infrastructure of Ukraine should simply be unavoidable. And this will quickly put Kiev in an uncomfortable position. Military operations must now proceed differently.

Question: But do I understand correctly that there will be an escalation?

YP: Of course, this is the next stage of escalation, and at the highest level. The next stage is the direct and open declaration of war. Although the war has in fact already been under way. You can call this a special military operation as much as you like, but the essence of it will now change.

Question: How do you think the situation will develop? You have already said that this is an escalation, that these are quite tough measures. I have a certain suspicion that Russian society for the most part is not ready for such a development of the situation. How to convey to people that this is important? That this is necessary — partial mobilization and the introduction of martial law?

YP: We woke up on February 24 in a completely different country. It’s just that people still try not to notice it. But this is to be expected, really. After all, both at the beginning of the First World War and at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, people also did not fully understand the essence of the events that took place at the beginning. And even the leadership of the Soviet Union finally designated the Great Patriotic War as the Great Patriotic War only on August 10–11, 1941, and not on June 22 at all. It’s the same with us now.  The war is already underway, and we have had another country since February 24.  In gradual steps our society should mature to understanding. And yet we are not going anywhere else.  The country will be different. The world will be different. And we, accordingly, must win our place under the sun in the new world for our country. There are no other options. If we do not do this, then we will be in the dustbin of history.

Question: What will this mean from the practical point of view of our compatriots, ordinary Russians?

YP: In fact, for the ordinary person, nothing fundamentally will change, not yet. But the rules of the game in the country will change. That is, many things that could still be done – to criticize the special military operation, to criticize the army, to express, as some say, ‘their personal opinion’ about these events which harm Russian society — all this will gradually be curtailed. It is clear that you cannot conduct military operations when a powerful fifth column is fighting against you in the rear. This, first of all, the ordinary Russian will have to understand.

There is one more problem. Many officials are waiting for everything to come back to where it was in the expectation that the Russian army will lose in Ukraine. I feel and see it when I communicate with people. And I really hope that after Vladimir Putin’s address, all this will stay  in the past. Each official will be subject to completely different requirements. They will either have to support what is happening, or they will be removed from their places.

Question: So you are convinced that the behaviour and thinking of the so-called elite will change?

YP:  Not right away. But things will change very quickly. However, the mobilization will affect a very small number of people. It will be no more than a few hundred thousand people.

Question: I understand what the transition to the mobilization model of the economy means. However, I have very significant doubts, taking into account the structure of the domestic economy, taking into account those owners who control the assets. I am skeptical that this entire group will begin to change. What do you think the mobilization economy means?

YP: The mobilization economy can be different – ​​full, partial, and so on. I do not think that the same emphasis will be placed on this now as it was in the Soviet Union in 1941. That is, everything for victory, and nothing else for anything. However, the production of weapons will be increased; we will see some changes in priorities. We urgently need to make ourselves independent now, including in the information space, in the computer business. And if earlier we tried persuading the asset owners to do this, now we must compel them by state order.

 

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Speaking Softly As Always, Valodya Ended U.S. Superpower (REDUX 3/10/18)


straightlinelogic |  During his State of the Nation address on March 1, Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed that Russia had developed six new weapons. For Putin’s descriptions of the weapons and more details about them, please read the above-linked article by Alexander Mercouris, which was posted on SLL.

Four of the six weapons Putin mentioned are, if Putin is to be believed, already developed: the Sarmat heavy Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), a nuclear powered cruise missile, a nuclear powered underwater drone, and an aircraft launched Kinzhai hypersonic missile. They are breathtaking for their speed, range, maneuverability, undetectability, and miniaturization of nuclear reactor technology. The other two, the Avangard hypersonic projectile and laser weapons (which Putin only cryptically mentioned), are believed to be still under development.

Hypersonic means a minimum of at least 5 times the speed of sound (Mach 1 or 741 mph, Mach 5 is 3705 mph). Putin claimed the Kinzhai hypersonic missile travels at Mach 10 (7410 mph). The Avangard hypersonic projectile may hit Mach 20 (14020 mph). Intercepting missiles traveling at supersonic speeds (Mach 1 to Mach 5) has proven difficult enough. Even in the limited, controlled tests that have been conducted, present technology has not been 100 percent effective. Presumably, in real world situations they would be even less effective. The difficulties of intercepting weapons traveling at hypersonic speeds are obvious and daunting.

Compounding those difficulties are the weapons’ range and maneuverability. The Sarmat ICBM is believed to have range of at least 10,500 miles (Putin said it has “practically no range restrictions”) and can attack targets via either the North or South Pole (US missile defenses are oriented towards the North Pole). It is able to constantly maneuver at a speed of what is believed to be Mach 5 or Mach 6, and to carry 15 warheads with yields estimated at 150 to 300 kilotons (the Nagasaki atomic bomb had a yield of 23 kilotons).

Powering cruise missiles and underwater drones (both of which can carry nuclear warheads) with miniature nuclear reactors gives them virtually unlimited range. Putin claimed the Kinzhai missile, “can also manoeuvre at all phases of its flight trajectory, which also allows it to overcome all existing and, I think, prospective anti-aircraft and anti-missile defence systems.”

Wednesday, March 09, 2022

Did You Know That Russia Had Banned All GMO Foods?

loc.gov |  On June 29, 2016, the Federation Council of the Russian Federation Federal Assembly (the upper chamber of the legislature) adopted the Federal Law on Amending Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation in Regard to Improvement of State Control in the Field of Genetic Engineering. (Press Release, Federation Council, Ban on Growing and Production of Genetically Modified Organisms on Russian Territory Is Established (June 29, 2016) (in Russian); text of the Law and Legislative Information available at Bill No. 714809-6, State Duma website (last visited June 30, 2016).)

The new Law imposes a ban on food stuffs produced using genetically modified plants or animals. As stated in the new Law, the legislation “strengthens measures aimed at monitoring of all types of activities associated with GMOs, preventing release of GMOs into the environment, and ameliorating the consequences if such a release occurs.” (Law, art. 1(1).) Among the federal laws amended by the new Law are the Law on Seed Production and the Environmental Protection Law. Provisions prohibiting “any use of seeds derived from through genetic modification, including those that cannot reproduce or transfer inherited genetic material,” and “reproduction of animals whose genetic program has been changed by using genetic engineering methods” were added to these acts. The only exemption is made for experimental research work. (Id. arts. 2 & 3.)

The new ban, which received expressions of support and approval from the legislative assemblies of eight Russian provinces, will enter into force as soon as it is officially published. (Id.)

Registration of GMOs

New registration procedures for genetically engineered or modified organisms and for the issuance of permits for work in this field are established by the new Law. Violations of the newly introduced prohibitions will be punished with increased fines; federal and local officials of the agencies in charge of monitoring activities related to GMOs have the right to issue these fines. (Id. art. 4.)

The new restrictions extend to imported products and the Law provides for new registration requirements and procedures applicable to importers as well. Import of genetically modified organisms and products containing GMOs is not totally prohibited, but is subject to registration with the federal government. The Law expands the right of the executive government to prohibit the importing of GMOs and products containing GMOs into Russia because of the potential harmful impact of such products on humans or the environment. (Legislative Information, supra.)

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Valodya DeCommunizes 90% Russian Donetsk And Luhansk

WaPo |  Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees ordering military forces into two separatist regions of Ukraine for “peacekeeping” purposes as Moscow recognized the breakaway regions’ independence Monday.

Putin signed a decree recognizing the areas — a move that Russia could use to justify an attack in those locations — and an agreement of cooperation with the heads of the two regions: Denis Pushilin of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Leonid Pasechnik of the Luhansk People’s Republic. The separatists do not control the entirety of their regions, and it was not clear Monday evening whether a military incursion could occur.

The formal recognition prompted a chorus of condemnation from Western leaders, with some vowing sanctions.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said President Biden would issue an executive order prohibiting U.S. investment and trade in the breakaway regions.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called Putin’s recognition of the breakaway territories a “blatant violation” of international law and said the bloc would “react with unity, firmness and with determination in solidarity with Ukraine.”

British Foreign Minister Liz Truss tweeted that the U.K. would announce “new sanctions on Russia in response to their breach of international law and attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Friday, November 05, 2021

Archbishop Viganò’s Open Letter to Archbishop Gomez

insidethevatican  |  Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 80, has written an open letter to America’s bishops expressing concern about various issues concerning the Coronavirus, and the vaccinations against the virus.

    The central concern of the former Vatican nuncio to the United States (2011-2016) is that the testing of the various vaccines has not yet been completed, and will not be completed in many cases until 2023 or 2024.

    Since there are already after nine months of vaccinations a number of reported cases of negative reactions to the vaccines, Viganò says that he, and other bishops, ought to be concerned about the announced plan of US President Joseph Biden (link) to vaccinate in the near future 28 million American children between the ages of 5 and 11.

    Since these children have, statistically, faced little danger from the Coronavirus, but might face some type of negative side effect from the untested vaccines, Viganò argues that it would be more prudent to postpone such massive vaccinations plans for such young children until the testing is complete.

    To persist in carrying out the plan would be a crime, Viganò maintains.

    The letter contains many footnotes to scientific articles — some little noted by the mainstream media — which the archbishop believes support his arguments.

    “I realize that it may be extremely unpopular to take a position against the so-called vaccines,” Viganò writes to Gomez, “but as Shepherds of the flock of the Lord we have the duty to denounce the horrible crime that is being carried out.”

    Here is Viganò’s text, when he sent to me yesterday, October 26, though the text is dated October 23, four days ago. —RM

Saturday, July 03, 2021

Civic Virtue Is Dead In America...,

charleshughsmith  |  Though no one dares confess this publicly, America is now a moral cesspool. As a result, the moral legitimacy of the nation’s leadership has been lost. Every nook and cranny of institutionalized America is dominated by self-interest, and much of the economy is controlled by profiteering monopolies and cartels which wield far more political power than the citizenry.

Civic virtue has been lost. What remains is elite self-interest masquerading as civic virtue.

In his Farewell Address, President Carter explained that "The national interest is not always the sum of all our single or special interests. We are all Americans together, and we must not forget that the common good is our common interest and our individual responsibility."

Social cohesion, civic virtue and moral legitimacy are the foundation of every society, but they are especially important in composite states.

America is a composite state
, composed of individuals holding a wide range of regional, ethnic, religious and class-based identities. The national identity is only one ingredient in a bubbling stew of local, state and regional identities, ethnic, cultural and religious identities, educational/alumni, professional and tradecraft identities, and elusive but consequential class-based identities.

Composite states are intrinsically trickier to rule, as there is no ethnic or cultural identity that unifies the populace. Lacking a national identity that supersedes all other identities, composite states must tread carefully to avoid fracturing into competing regional, ethnic or cultural identities.

Composite states must establish a purpose-based identity that is understood to demand shared sacrifice, especially in crisis. In the U.S., the national purpose has been redefined by the needs of the era, but never straying too far from these core unifying goals: defending the civil liberties of the citizenry from state interference, defending the nation from external aggressors, and serving the common good by limiting the power of special interests and privileged elites.

We've failed to limit the power of privileged elites, failed to demand greater sacrifices of the wealthy in exchange for power, and so the moral legitimacy of the regime has been lost. And with the ascendance of self-interest and the elite's abandonment of sacrifice, social cohesion has been lost.

This loss is reflected in the bitter partisanship, the increasingly Orwellian attempts to control the mainstream and social media narratives, the debauchery of "expertise" as dueling "experts" vie for control, the fraying of social discourse, the substitution of virtue-signaling for actual civic virtue, the institutionalization of white-collar crime (collusion, fraud, embezzlement, etc.), the increasing reliance on Bread and Circuses (stimulus, Universal Basic Income) as real opportunity dissipates, and the troubling rise in shootings, crime, random violence and plummeting marriage and birth rates.

The unraveling of social cohesion has consequences. Once social cohesion unravels, the nation unravels.

Saturday, April 24, 2021

Once Upon A Time WAP Stood For Women Against Pornography

wikipedia |  Women Against Pornography (WAP) was a radical feminist activist group based out of New York City that had an influential force in the anti-pornography movement of the late 1970s and the 1980s.

WAP was the most well known feminist anti-pornography group out of many that were active throughout the United States and the anglophone world, primarily from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. After previous failed attempts to start a broad feminist anti-pornography group in New York City, WAP was finally established in 1978. WAP quickly drew widespread support for its anti-pornography campaign, and in late 1979 held a March on Times Square that included over 5000 supporters. Through their march as well as other means of activism, WAP was able to bring in unexpected financial support from the Mayor's office, theater owners, and other parties with an interest in the gentrification of Times Square.

WAP became known because of their anti-pornography informational tours of sex shops and pornographic theaters held in Times Square. In the 1980s, WAP began to focus more on lobbying and legislative efforts against pornography, particularly in support of civil-rights-oriented antipornography legislation. They were also active in testifying before the Meese Commission and some of their advocacy of a civil-rights based anti-pornography model found its way into the final recommendations of the commission. In the late 1980s, the leadership of WAP changed their focus again, this time more on the issue of international sex trafficking, which led to the founding of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. In the 1990s WAP became less active and eventually faded out of existence in the mid '90s.

The positions of Women Against Pornography were controversial. Civil liberties advocates opposed WAP and similar groups, holding that the legislative approaches WAP advocated amounted to censorship. In addition to this, WAP faced conflict with sex-positive feminists, who held that feminist campaigns against pornography were misdirected and ultimately threatened sexual freedoms and free speech rights in a way that would be detrimental toward women and sexual minorities. WAP and sex-positive feminists were involved in conflict in the events surrounding the 1982 Barnard Conference. These events were battles in what became known as the Feminist Sex Wars of the late 1970s and 1980s.

Lacking Anything Resembling Moral Consensus We're Doomed To Political "Might Makes Right!"

benjaminstudebaker |  There’s an endemic debate over what people are saying when they refer to ‘the west’. Is the west defined by its whiteness, its wealth, its liberal democracy? Should we call it the ‘highly developed countries’, the ‘advanced economies’, the ‘first world’, or the ‘global north’? I think most of these terms misses what is distinctive about this set of places. The countries we think of as ‘western’ are all countries where Catholicism was once dominant but is now in varying levels of retreat. Western countries are ‘post-Catholic’.

Catholicism has certain distinctive effects on a place. Crucially, Catholicism situates politics as subordinate to morality. In medieval Catholic states, the monarch derives authority from the pope or from divine right. This means the monarch’s legitimacy depends on the monarch having the right moral orientation. In other parts of the world, politics and morality were more heavily enmeshed. In the Byzantine Empire, the emperor was supreme in both religious and temporal matters. In the Islamic world, the caliph combined both political and religious authority. In China, different dynasties embraced and promoted the teachings of many different schools of thought at varying points. It was only in the Catholic west that politics and morality were firmly separated, with the former rendered clearly subordinate to the latter.

Because Catholicism made politics subject to religion, it became especially important for its theology to be clear. If the legitimacy of the regime depends on the regime having the right moral orientation, a moral consensus must be maintained and articulated. Any breakdown in the consensus over religion would threaten to destroy the political consensus, too. So in the Catholic world, heresy became extraordinarily taboo. The effect of this was to make Catholicism steadily more rigid over time. Its theology became enormously detailed and ornate, but it also became less flexible. Eastern rulers could adjust moral and religious emphases to suit their political needs, but Catholic rulers were in a moral straightjacket. Over time, the tensions between the Catholic moral vision and the political imperatives faced by Catholic rulers intensified. Catholic kingdoms consolidated their power, and monarchs sought to reduce their dependence on Catholicism for legitimacy. This led to state-sponsored Protestantism, as well as the promotion of secular humanism.

The trouble is that abstractions like the good, the true, or God are inherently difficult for human beings to concretely define. Attempts to capture them conceptually necessarily lead to simplification and distortion. But because Catholicism had become the dominant legitimation paradigm for medieval states, it had to articulate precise conceptualizations of irreducibly abstract ideas. This was understandable–without precision, how could we know the king really was legitimate? But the subordination of politics to morality compelled Catholics to develop a theology that was too precise to be accurate. In other words, by trying to subordinate politics to morality, Catholics were forced to subordinate morality to politics.

The excessively strong, excessively precise claims of the Catholics led to the repudiation of these claims by the Protestants and humanists. This tore apart the Catholic consensus and badly undermined political legitimacy. For a while, Protestants and humanists tried to replace Catholicism with another precise account of good/truth/God. But because precise accounts necessarily distort these abstractions, it was impossible to convince the public to embrace these substitutes with anything like the level of conviction with which Catholicism had once been embraced.

This forced post-Catholic states to make their peace with a level of moral pluralism. But post-Catholics could not have the same attitude to pluralism which the Romans or Persians or Chinese had. In these ancient empires, politics and morality were inseparably bound up with one another, and therefore as long as religious views remained compatible with the law they posed no deep problems. In the post-Catholic world, the state was still expected to justify itself in reference to morality. Without a moral consensus, the basis of the state’s authority was in jeopardy. So when post-Catholic states embraced pluralism, they had to embrace pluralism as a morality in itself, so that this morality could take on the role which Catholicism had previously played. This, ultimately, is what liberalism is–a kind of pluralism fashioned into a morality to which the state might be answerable.

 


Drugged-Up, Divorced, Ignorant, Indebted And Decadent....,

NewYorker |  Everyone’s fed up with the baby boomers. Younger progressives charge them with a form of generational hoarding—of titles and power but mostly of money. The richest generation in the history of the world, the story goes, has squandered its wealth on vanity purchases and projects while leaving younger Americans with a debased environment and crazy levels of debt. During the Presidency of Donald Trump—a boomer himself, who drew some of his strongest support from other boomers—the generation’s long-standing optimism seemed plainly misleading. Why did anyone think that things were always bound to turn out all right?

But for bleakness, scope, and entropic finality, the progressive critique of boomers has nothing on the Catholic social-conservative one, which measures the generation’s sins not just in rising debt ratios but also in the corruption of souls. In the view of an increasingly prominent cohort of Catholic intellectuals, Americans have, in the long span of the boomer generation, gone from public-spirited to narcotized, porn-addicted, and profoundly narcissistic, incapable not only of the headline acts of idealism to which boomers once aspired, such as changing the relations between the races or the sexes, but also of the mundane ones, such as raising children with discipline and care. That the arguments over the boomer legacy quickly become fundamental—that they bring up the question of national decline and the fate of liberalism—suggests that the generation has so fully suffused cultural memory that, when we say “boomer,” we might simply mean “American.”

The more nakedly selfish and frankly pornographic American that society came to seem during the Trump years, the more influence accrued to the scolds. Much of this had to do with the singular presence of Ross Douthat, a brilliant Catholic conservative intellectual and the best columnist of the time. But even the optimists were seeking a darker palette, and the Catholic conservatives were there to supply it. In 2018, Barack Obama let it be known on Facebook that he had been reading “Why Liberalism Failed,” by the Notre Dame political philosopher Patrick Deneen, whose writing is suffused with a thistle-chewing pessimism. The project of liberalizing markets and culture, Deneen argued, had made everyone feel rootless, and was behind the yearning for a strongman that helped give us Trump.

Deneen made a certain amount of sense as a despair thermometer. The latest impressions left by the boomers in that moment suggested that everything had gone terribly wrong: Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, the racism and stupidity of the Trump Administration, and the spectre of the religious grass roots in thrall to a man who had not only allegedly cheated on his wife, with a porn star, shortly after she gave birth but who had also imposed his adult children on the world, most notably a daughter obsessed with the sheen of prosperity and a son who broadcast brutality from a twitching mouth. So much seemed morally repugnant. How had we, as a liberal society, become so fond of corruption—and so gross?

The Catholic intellectual right issued a correction, as quick and snappy as a nun’s rap across the knuckles: you are looking for a different word, they said. Not “gross,” but “decadent.”

Friday, January 15, 2021

I Am Familiar With And I Approve Of Josh Hawley's Theological Grounding

christianitytoday |  Though the overall number of Christians in Congress fell slightly from 91 percent from 2017 to 88 percent in 2019, a vast majority of freshmen—78­ of the 96 newly elected lawmakers—identify as Christian and around half—47—are Protestants, according to the Pew Research Center’s Faith on the Hill report.

With the largest freshman class since 2011, these representatives bring historic levels of diversity to Washington, a range of backgrounds outside politics, and deep convictions about faith in governance. The group includes Sunday school teachers, deacons, Christian college graduates, missions trip participants, prayer advocates, a former aspiring pastor, and plenty of churchgoers.

“In Romans 13, government officials are described as ministers of God,” said Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who assumes Claire McCaskill’s seat, in an interview last year about his faith. “That’s how serious God is about politics.”

Former counsel with the religious liberty legal group Becket (where he helped defend the Hobby Lobby and Hosanna-Tabor cases before the Supreme Court), Hawley belongs to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, speaks before Baptist crowds, and is one of 22 freshmen who identify as unspecified/other Protestants in the congressional questionnaire from CQ Roll Call, the basis for the Pew report released today.

Wednesday, November 04, 2020

Solve et Coagula: Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano's Letter To President Trump

lifesitenews |   In recent months we have been witnessing the formation of two opposing sides that I would call Biblical: the children of light and the children of darkness. The children of light constitute the most conspicuous part of humanity, while the children of darkness represent an absolute minority. And yet the former are the object of a sort of discrimination which places them in a situation of moral inferiority with respect to their adversaries, who often hold strategic positions in government, in politics, in the economy and in the media. In an apparently inexplicable way, the good are held hostage by the wicked and by those who help them either out of self-interest or fearfulness.

These two sides, which have a Biblical nature, follow the clear separation between the offspring of the Woman and the offspring of the Serpent. On the one hand, there are those who, although they have a thousand defects and weaknesses, are motivated by the desire to do good, to be honest, to raise a family, to engage in work, to give prosperity to their homeland, to help the needy, and, in obedience to the Law of God, to merit the Kingdom of Heaven. On the other hand, there are those who serve themselves, who do not hold any moral principles, who want to demolish the family and the nation, exploit workers to make themselves unduly wealthy, foment internal divisions and wars, and accumulate power and money: for them the fallacious illusion of temporal well-being will one day – if they do not repent – yield to the terrible fate that awaits them, far from God, in eternal damnation.

 In society, Mr. President, these two opposing realities co-exist as eternal enemies, just as God and Satan are eternal enemies. And it appears that the children of darkness – whom we may easily identify with the deep state which you wisely oppose and which is fiercely waging war against you in these days – have decided to show their cards, so to speak, by now revealing their plans. They seem to be so certain of already having everything under control that they have laid aside that circumspection that until now had at least partially concealed their true intentions. The investigations already under way will reveal the true responsibility of those who managed the COVID emergency not only in the area of health care but also in politics, the economy, and the media. We will probably find that in this colossal operation of social engineering there are people who have decided the fate of humanity, arrogating to themselves the right to act against the will of citizens and their representatives in the governments of nations.

 We will also discover that the riots in these days were provoked by those who, seeing that the virus is inevitably fading and that the social alarm of the pandemic is waning, necessarily have had to provoke civil disturbances, because they would be followed by repression which, although legitimate, could be condemned as an unjustified aggression against the population. The same thing is also happening in Europe, in perfect synchrony. It is quite clear that the use of street protests is instrumental to the purposes of those who would like to see someone elected in the upcoming presidential elections who embodies the goals of the deep state and who expresses those goals faithfully and with conviction. It will not be surprising if, in a few months, we learn once again that hidden behind these acts of vandalism and violence there are those who hope to profit from the dissolution of the social order so as to build a world without freedom: Solve et Coagula, as the Masonic adage teaches.

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Hunter Biden Has Been A Longtime Victim Of Joe Biden's Corruption And Greed

brucewilds  |  Both giving and receiving bribes is usually a felony with significant legal ramifications. Influence peddling, the illegal practice of using one's influence in government or connections with persons in authority to obtain favors or preferential treatment falls into this category. One thing is clear, whenever we are talking about the involvement of huge sums of money, foreign players, officials holding high public office, or family members of politicians a few eyebrows should get raised. With this in mind, the Biden problem extends well past Hunter but also into how other family members have profited from Joe's time as Vice President such as his brother's involvement in a huge government contract in Iraq.

The issue of Hunter Biden receiving money from Russia, Ukraine, and China surfaced during the first Presidential debate and Biden claimed it was a story already discredited by authorities. This narrative was destroyed when the Washington Times acknowledged the Treasury Department records confirm Hunter Biden received a wire transfer for $3.5 million from the Mayor of Moscow’s wife. It is difficult to find anyone that holds Hunter in high esteem and the fact the United States suspects the woman sending him this money built much of her wealth through corruption does little to improve his standing. For those of us cynical of all the so-called public servants that seem to line their pockets and hold the attitude they are above the law this is a big red flag. 

If the veil of secrecy surrounding Hunter's career is lifted we will most likely find Hunter's dad did share in the spoils bestowed upon not only his son but others in the Biden family. I contend Joe Biden's cozy relationship with corruption is why former President Obama did not rush to endorse Biden when he announced he planned to run. To be clear, we are talking about, millions, and hundreds of millions of dollars or more. For us cynics, we see this as what may be only the tip of the spear when it comes to public officials throwing the American people under the bus for fun and profit. As a voter, this dovetails with my concern about Biden's relationship and attitude towards China which I consider a major issue. 

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

No Greater Love Than This - But Groping Joe Has Used Hunter As A Bagman....,

Slate  |  Last week, the New York Post began publishing reports on a series of photos, emails, and documents allegedly taken from a laptop hard drive that belonged to Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. As it became increasingly clear that the Post was using hacked, unverified information that may have been manipulated by a foreign entity for the purposes of influencing the upcoming presidential election, social media companies started to ban or otherwise attempt to reduce the spread of the Post’s initial story. But the tabloid continued printing information from the hard drive, a copy of which it says it received from disgraced Donald Trump associate and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Given that Giuliani and Steve Bannon were the Post’s two sources of information about the hard drive, the provenance of the Rupert Murdoch­–owned paper’s information is more than a little suspect. Giuliani, for one, has said that there’s a 50-50 chance he worked with a Russian spy to dig up embarrassing material about the Biden family. And the computer repair shop owner who allegedly obtained the hard drive and turned it over to Giuliani’s lawyer doesn’t exactly seem like a trustworthy fellow either. So it is with a massive grain of salt that we consider the contents of the hard drive itself. One of the stories contains an alleged text exchange between Hunter and Joe Biden from two months before Joe announced his presidential campaign. It began with a text Joe sent around 7 a.m. to Hunter, who was residing in a rehab facility. “Good morning my beautiful son,” the text reads. “I miss you and love you. Dad.”

Whether or not the hacked material is accurate and complete, the father-son text exchange does the exact opposite of what Giuliani and Trump have been trying to do. For years, Trump and his allies have attempted to paint Hunter as the beneficiary of (Trump-style) nepotism and a shameful sleazeball who reflects poorly on his father. Yet, in the text conversation, Biden comes off as loving and concerned. Hunter certainly admits to struggling with addiction and the pressures of living under intense public scrutiny, but there is nothing politically damaging about the exchange—only a sad, humanizing portrait of a family working through a difficult time.

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Chastity Made The Church Grow Fondlers (Pope Francis Is Kicking Their Asses)

turcopolier  |   I used to spend quite a lot of time with Catholic clergy and prelates in the US, Europe and the Levant when I was involved in charitable works in the ME.

The clergy and hierarchy in the US are, in my experience, in the main, vain, careerist homosexuals hiding from a largely heterosexual world. They cultivate each other from an early age, seeking the kind of "mentorship" that involves a lot of fawning and sucking up, one way or another,

That is not to say that there not a good many godly men who sacrifice a lot personally in the hope of following Jesus. I knew quite a few like that in the chaplainate of the Army, but there are more of the others. I will never forget a sermon preached on Memorial Day at the Presidio of Monterey by an Army Chaplain.

See my "Dear Hearts Across the Seas" for that.

In the ME, the age old practice of simony continues in the clergy. A Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, a Palestinian, had to be removed from his see some time back because he installed his nephew as auxiliary bishop of Nazareth, and then they shared the "loot" together. Eventually his sins became too great to ignore.

Teddy McCarrick was very, very queer all his clerical life and the corruptor of many young men. He was always like that. Clergy and Religious in and from the Archdiocese of New York would laugh sadly and say that if he had not made a pass at you , you must be really ugly. I was always careful to sit at the opposite end of any table in the fear that I might not be ugly or aged enough to escape his attention.

Pope Francis is accused by Archbishop Vigano of apostasy in the matter of doubting the reality of Transubstantiation and of various other heresies, including a confession and justification of his own homosexuality to a gay priest.

Nevertheless, it appears that he wants to shovel out the Church's stables.

Tuesday, September 01, 2020

Jordan Peterson vs. Queer-Eye: The Battle For Aimless And UNLOVED Men....,


opendemocracy |  In each ‘Queer Eye’ episode, the ‘Fab Five’ co-hosts give a struggling hero – usually a depressed man – a lifestyle refresh: teaching him to cook something scrumptious, buying him stylish clothes, grooming him, doing up his house and supporting him to confront troubles in their life.

What this means for each character varies. But the underlying message of every cry-athon episode is the same. Toxic masculinity and competitive ultra-capitalism have taught men life lessons which make us miserable. To find joy, we need to unlearn.

While reality TV is notoriously cruel, the ‘Queer Eye’ cast specialise in kindness. Each of them opens up about their own struggles: grooming expert Jonathan Van Ness is an HIV+ non-binary former sex worker and ex-meth addict. Interior designer Bobby Berk is estranged from his Bible-belt family, and was a homeless teenager.

Culture expert Karamo Brown is of Jamaican-Mexican heritage, grew up “very poor” and became a father at 17. Fashion aficionado Tan France comes from a “very strict” Muslim household in Doncaster, and is one of the first openly gay people of South Asian descent on a major show. Chef Antoni Porowski, the son of Polish migrants to Canada, is estranged from his mother.

Each episode, I would sob to a stream of touching moments and familiar feelings, and an unbearable pressure would slip from my chest.

Far Right masculinity 
As I gossiped around that Veronese conference hall, I realised I had rarely met people who so desperately needed to learn from the Fab Five.

The event was a sort of rally for far Right forces hoping to storm the European elections. But the combination of speakers seemed a bit incongruous: Catholic bishops and alt-Right YouTube stars; Italian far Right politicians and American evangelical pastors. While most started their speeches by announcing the enormous number of children they had fathered – as though success comes with the capacity to ejaculate – they were otherwise an odd mix.

When you met their audience, it all made sense. This was a world which gave struggling men meaning. Rather than helping us confront our demons, it suggested we worship them, weaving myths about masculine superiority, encouraging a world in which husbands and fathers are mini-dictators. A world where “the strong and the weak will know their place”, as Franco’s great grandson, the self-proclaimed heir to the French throne, declared from the main stage.

The key preacher in this world wasn’t any priest. He wasn’t even there: it was Jordan Peterson.

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

So What Is The Role Of The Christian In All This?!?!


medium |  Bernie Sanders thinks that we need a political revolution. I think that we are going to get one whether we want one or not. And not the nicey nicey 1932 kind where we get health care and education. I want a full scale revolution as much as I want a category five hurricane, but here we are.
The sad fact is that our corporate elites are deliberately sabotaging our political system in the hope of bringing about a Pinochet style dictatorship. They have been working at this for a long time.

We live in a society where people die of easily treatable diseases and others are driven to bankruptcy by the high cost of for-profit health care. Before 1982 homelessness was so rare you needed a trained eye to see it. Now we see armies of homeless people, half of whom are employed but who cannot afford the rent in the city where they live. We live in a society where people are murdered everyday because we value guns more than human life.

Now coronavirus is heightening all the contradictions of American finance capitalism. It is no longer possible to deny that our society has become dysfunctional, almost a failed state. Coronavirus promises to do for American finance capitalism what World War One did for royal autocracy.

So what is the role of the Christian in all this? First of all we must commit to the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. No one can live up to all that, but if we are honest with ourselves, we are not even trying. I am referring to that part of the Christian community that is serious about their faith, and exclude the greedy televangelists and their delusional followers. We have been letting ourselves off too easily. What is coming down from the pulpit that makes us OK with baby prisons, endless war, and armies of homeless people? Why do we keep reelecting politicians who enable these things? 

Why do we keep making excuses for ourselves? Our moral crisis goes way beyond electoral politics (although I would be the first to agree that we are called to participate in electoral politics).

Christians must recommit to the values of the Sermon on the Mount. No more nobody can do that, so I will just continue with business as usual and throw myself on the mercy of Christ. We have to at least try. We must put aside delusional thinking and, as a minister of mine once said, live fearlessly in truth.

So what would that look like? What would it look like if we really committed to living out the values of the Sermon on the Mount?

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Louis Proyect Puts Hands On Matt Taibbi And The Weinstein Bros.


counterpunch |  In the opening moments of their conversation, Taibbi repented for not making a big stink over Weinstein’s ostracism and eventual resignation from Evergreen over student protests. Suing the school for $3.8 million in damage, Weinstein walked away with only a half-million.

One wonders if Taibbi looked into the case against Weinstein made by three Evergreen professors that year on Huffington Post titled “Another Side of The Evergreen State College Story”. One of them was Zoltan Grossman, who has written dozens of articles for CounterPunch over the years. The three make an essential point:
In order for a propaganda campaign to succeed, it needs a Big Lie. At Evergreen, the Big Lie is that Evergreen’s Day of Absence demonstrated “reverse racism” as whites “were forced to leave campus because of the color of their skin.” It is stunning to us how often this “alternative fact” has been repeated until it has become unchallenged truth. The truth is that the Day of Absence has long been an accepted — and voluntary — practice at Evergreen. On the Day of Absence, people of color who chose to do so generally attended an off-campus event, while whites who chose to participate stayed on campus to attend lectures, workshops and discussions about how race and racism shape social structures and everyday life.
Once they got past the Evergreen business, Weinstein and Taibbi settled into a litany of how bad things have gotten in the U.S. because of uppity anti-racist students dragging the country down. They struck me as two middle-aged men ready to write a book titled “The Decline of the U.S.” after the fashion of Oswald Spengler. They probably could make good money writing such a book since there is always a market for screeds against political correctness, identity politics, and that sort of thing. Usually written by conservatives like Allan Bloom (“The Closing of the American Mind”), they also have their liberal counterparts like Todd Gitlin, who wrote “The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America is Wracked by Culture Wars” in 1996.

Gitlin, who signed the Harper’s letter, described himself in the book as sympathetic to blacks but was distressed by their retreat into what he felt were self-absorbed, symbolic politics, according to a N.Y. Times review. He wrote that “few political campaigns are launched against the impoverishment of the cities” and that “The diversity rhetoric of identity politics short-circuits the necessary discussion of what ought to be done about all the dying out there.” He had come to the same conclusions as Adolph Reed Jr., who also got the red-carpet treatment from Taibbi and Halper.

Weinstein gushed over Taibbi’s long record of courageous journalism as if writing take-downs of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump risked a jail term. Yes, Taibbi is entertaining, but how far can you go stating the obvious, even if scabrously. I’d prefer a little less scabrousness and a lot more economic analysis. That’s one of the reasons I stopped reading Taibbi after the good old “vampire squid” days ended.

Friday, July 24, 2020

The Blasted Thing's Invisible...,


charleshughsmith |  The word privilege is much bandied about now. I've been writing about privilege for many years, and ended up writing a book about the source (and thus the end) of privilege: Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege.
Privilege and inequality are two sides of the same coin. Those with privilege get more than everyone else without actually creating more value, which is the definition of inequality.
What few seem to grasp is the absolute source of inequality / privilege is our financial system, specifically the way we create and distribute money.
Few people connect the dots between a central bank (the Federal Reserve) creating money out of thin air and giving the super-wealthy first dibs on this new money, and the vast inequalities of wealth and power that are widening to the point of social disorder on a grand scale.
While the majority may not fully understand the source of inequality, they do intuit that billionaires got the mine and the rest of us got the shaft. Since humans are social apes and social apes have a sense of fairness, even within pecking orders with a few at the top, the inherent unfairness of our financial system generates resentment and indignation, while the lack of understanding generates frustration.
My colleague Mark Jeftovic penned a post explaining how those closest to the Fed's money spigot get wealthier for doing absolutely nothing but being close to the spigot. This is the most basic structure of our financial system and economy. Everything else flows from this simple mechanism. On Cantillionaires, Sycophants and Losers.
Put another way: while the rest of us earn money by creating goods and services, those close to the Fed's money spigot create absolutely nothing but they get billions of dollars at rates of interest that are essentially zero, or adjusted for inflation, less than zero.
 As a result, they can outbid the rest of us for all the assets that generate income.

Monday, June 22, 2020

The Resurrection Of Christ Cathedral

                       

wikipedia |  According to the official website, "the church was designed in a monumental Russian style, organically incorporating modern architectural approaches and innovations unique to the Orthodox church creation". The facades of the building are finished with metal, the arches are glazed. The walls of the church, decorated with murals, include battle scenes from military history and scripture texts. The decoration of the lower (small) church is made of ceramics and is decorated with Gzhel painting, with pieces of glass smalt used in the manufacture of mosaic panels. The central apse dedicated to the Resurrection of Christ is made in the form of a metal relief. The decoration of the church, the icon and the iconostasis (icon wall) are made of copper with enamels, as was done on the marching military icons. The image of the Saviour-Not-Made-by-Hands in the central dome of the church is the largest image of the Christ's face executed in mosaic.

Glass mosaics

Stained glass mosaics in the cathedral's vault feature various Red Army orders, accompanied by their respected ribbons that denote their class. Many of the orders display the faces of prominent military leaders from the Imperial Russian Army. The following orders are depicted in the mosaics: The Order of Alexander Nevsky (First Class), Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky (First Class), Order of Ushakov (First Class), Order of Nakhimov (First Class), Order of Suvorov (First Class), Order of Kutuzov (First Class), Order of Victory, Order of the Red Banner, Order of the Red Star, and the Order of the Patriotic War (First Class).

Sizes

Some of the sizes are symbolic. The height of the church along with the cross is 95 meters. The diameter of the drum of the main dome is 19.45 meters, symbolizing the year when the Great Patriotic War ended – 1945. The height of the belfry is 75 meters, a reference to the 75 years that passed in 2020 since the end of World War II. The height of the small dome is 14.18 meters – 1418 days and nights hostilities lasted in Great Patriotic War. The area of the church complex is 11,000 m². The capacity of the interior of the church is up to 6,000 people.

Bells

The bells are made at the Voronezh Foundry. The decoration of the bells repeats ornaments decorating the cathedral. The bells reflect the theme of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, icons of patrons of the Russian Army. The main bell-evangelist was decorated with bas-reliefs depicting key events of the Great Patriotic War. Work on the manufacture of bells was carried out for six months. The ensemble weighs more than 20 tons, it includes 18 bells, the largest of which weighs 10 tons.[7] 17 of the 18 bells are dedicated to the types and arms of the troops. On the one hand the emblem is applied to the bell, on the other, the image of the patron saint.[7] On 23 August 2019, bells are set on the belfry of the cathedral.

Dome

On 15 November 2019, a 80-ton central dome was erected on the cathedral, the height and diameter of which are 12 meters.[8] In total, the cathedral has six domes, four of which are identical, each of which weighs 34 tons, the central one is the largest and one is on the belfry. The design has a high alloy steel frame with a strength factor from 300 to 1500 years.

Main icon

The central icon of the Main Church of the Russian Armed Forces is the "Holy Saviour" in the main dome. The Icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands is a canonical image of the Holy Face of Jesus Christ, miraculously imprinted on a piece of material and transmitted by the Saviour himself to King Abgar V of Osroene. The face on the icon surrounds the images of the Most Holy Mother of God of Kazan, of Vladimir, of Smolensk and of Tikhvin, placed on artistic reliefs that depict significant events in the history of the Russian state. In the ark, which invariably accompanies the icon, there are eight particles of holy patrons: the great martyr George the Victorious, St. Andrew the First-Called, St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, St. Sergius of Radonezh, the great martyr Barbara, the apostle Peter, the great martyr Panteleimon the Healer, and also Fyodor Ushakov, the righteous commander of the Black Sea Fleet and one of the most revered saints in the fleet.

The image of the Savior is placed in a bronze fold and weighs about 100 kg. The icon itself without a fold has dimensions of about 98 × 84 × 10 cm.'


What Is France To Do With The Thousands Of Soldiers Expelled From Africa?

SCF  |    Russian President Vladimir Putin was spot-on this week in his observation about why France’s Emmanuel Macron is strutting around ...