BREAKING! Presiding Judge for Milwaukee Abuse Case: "Sloppy and Inaccurate" reporting by the New York Times

read full story here

Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher (2010.03.26)

I ripped Christopher Hitchens part from SYS release.

File Name ..........: Real.Time.with.Bill.Maher.2010.03.26.Christopher.Hitchens.avi
Total Size (MB) ....: 67,69 MB
Video Length .......: 00:10:27
Video Codec Code ...: XVID
Video Codec Name ...: XviD MPEG-4 codec
Resolution .........: 624 x 352
Framerate ..........: 29,970 FPS
Audio Bitrate ......: 128 KB/s (CBR)
Channels ...........: 2 Ch
Sampling Rate ......: 48000 Hz


http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Q6RPY90G

"U.S. and Israel sign a massive arms deal" by Jerry Mazza

Jerry Mazza, an independent journalist from New York, has just published a new column about a massive arms deal between the US and Israel, in spite of the recent snub by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu of US Vice President Joe Biden. During Biden's recent visit, the Minister of the Interior announced that Israel was planning some 1,600 new settlements in land that historically belongs to the Palestinians, thereby subverting American efforts to maintain peace talks between the conflicting parties. In addition, Netanyahu further insulted Biden by deliberately breaking the frame of a photograph that had been prepared for him as a gift, telling Biden "All I can offer you is broken glass!" Jerry makes the nice point that, although it is difficult for Americans to accept, there are multiple indications of complicity by elements of the government of Israel in the events of 9/11, as a recent article by Alan Sabrosky, former Director of the US Army War College, has explained in "Gordon Duff: Sabrosky Interview Ties Israel to 9/11".

For more on Jerry, see the previous blog and also the blog "Jerry Mazza on Obama, 9/11 and Afghanistan" for a sampler of his writings and for my interview with him on JamesFetzerNews.)

Jerry Mazza on New Arms Agreement with Israel

U.S. and Israel sign a massive arms deal
Jerry Mazza / 29 March 2010

Here, I thought the U.S. and Israel were ready to go 15 rounds in the Garden (not Eden).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’ insulted Vice President Biden, Middle East envoy George Mitchell, plus Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton warned Netanyahu that the building of more settlements in the West Bank definitely will slow peace efforts. Netanyahu basically said who cares.

And then I read this HAARETZ headline: Despite row, U.S. and Israel sign massive arms deal. What, so they can use them on us? You gotta be kidding. But no, there it is, in the first paragraph: “As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington this week absorbing the full wrath of the Obama administration, the Pentagon and Israel’s defense establishment were in the process of sealing a large arms deal.” Sounds like they’re playing, good cop, bad cop, n’est-ce pas?

“Well, isn’t that special,” Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” smiles from cyberspace and asks, “Now, who could be behind that? (Beat) Saaatan?” Well, it certainly sounds like the great dissembler. As Haaretz says, “According to the deal, Israel will purchase three new Hercules C-130J airplanes. The deal for the three aircrafts, designed by Lockheed Martin, is worth roughly a quarter of a billion dollars. Each aircraft costs $70 million.” Ugh, I think, worth a quarter of a billion bucks, each plane $70 million? What? Who’s paying for this deal?

Well, the ‘deal,’ it turns out will be covered by American foreign assistance funds. What does that mean? We’re fronting them the money to buy our planes? Kiss my tassels.

And look at this: “The aircrafts were manufactured specifically for Israeli needs, and include a large number of systems produced by Israel’s defense industry.” What? When? Three new planes, $70 million each? They didn’t make these in a minute. Who ever heard? Well who ever said that you need to know what the Pentagon is doing? It is top secret, not for schlimazels like you, you taxpayer, you American senior citizen, useless eater. You’re lucky you’ve got your Social Security and Medicare for another year. Then it all goes to B’nai Brith. Arrrrrgh!

And what are the ‘Israeli’s special needs’ besides bombing Palestinians? Well, how about bombing the Iranians. Bombing the Jordanians, the Syrians, and the whole megillah? The Pentagon has got to be nuts. Or, once again, the Pentagon is letting little Israel play the big stick for them in the Middle East.

Listen to this: “The Pentagon will issue a formal announcement on the matter on Thursday evening.” That’s it, just like that? We don’t vote, we don’t know, we’re handing these vipers more deadly weapons, more money? Are you serious, Haaretz? Well, don’t shoot the messenger.

Right, but it says, “America and Israel have still not reached an agreement regarding the purchase of the Lockheed F-35 war plane. It is still not clear when that deal, which is estimated to be worth more than $3 billion, will finally be sealed and carried out.”

But don’t we give these characters $3 billiion a year to buy war crap? Is this it? And we have to front them even more for the first deal? And we’re supposed to not be angry at these goons for trying to gobble up the West Bank. Is Obama getting head from Monica Lewinski? What’s going on: Three Lockhead F-35’s; three new Hercules C-130J airplanes?

And this for the country that does more spying on us than any nation, friend or enemy? Are we serious? What are those guys smoking at the Pentagon and who’s supplying them?

And here’s the capper. “If that deal is signed in the near future, Israel will likely receive its first F-35 in 2014.”

If that deal is sealed, wait a minute? Ho, hold on, that’s my, that’s our tax money, putz! Seal your lips before I get the Five Dancing Israelis to dance on your heads while we document Israel going up in smoke, not just the World Trade Center. These guys were videotaping one of their buddies dancing on a white moving van in New Jersey, dancing and flicking his lighter as the towers burned and fell in the background.

And these schlimazels walked away after they were arrested for a couple of months, cold as stone, no remorse, nothing. And the FBI stood there with their hands on their privates, doing, saying nothing, as the boyz were extradited to Israel and claiming on TV there that they were to document the event. How did they know there was going to be an event to document, particularly one of those tragic proportions? How, Secretary Gates, tell me?

See, here’s what I believe. The reason we throw more and more money at Israel is because Israel, the Mossad, does all this dirty business for us, including helping to wipe out the WTC on 9/11. Larry Silverstein and Frank Loewy, his partner, the lessees of the WTC, are now reaching a new deal with the Port Authority for more money to build Towers 2 and 3, after they received $4.5 billion in insurance, and Larry another $500 million in insurance on Tower 7, which he built five stories higher and wider immediately. This is a cash cow for Silverstein and his buddies. That and other little “assignments” the dual Israel/American citizens and Mossad are so good at pulling off.

World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein poses for a portrait in his office overlooking the site in New York. Silverstein and government agencies that control the trade center site have reached a deal to resolve a 16-month stalemate over rebuilding at ground zero.

So by now you think I’m an anti-Semite saying this? No, everything I’ve said is the truth. When you tell the truth, fact, about someone that isn’t a religious or ethnic slur. It’s just the truth. Throw them all in jail. Go ahead. I am an American citizen. This is my country. And I don’t want my country associated with these murderers.

In fact, I’d like to know why so few people picked up on former US Marine Corps grunt Gordon Duff, who writes for Veterans Today, interviewing USMC Vietnam vet, Dr. Alan Sabrosky, former director of studies at the US Army War College, about his military knowledge that Israel Did It, that is 9/11, and has the potential to launch a nuclear strike. The Mossad, he claims, took down the towers with help of the CIA. Sabrosky, who is Jewish, but also a fiercely loyal American, is seething at the Israelis.

So, bottom line, it all comes back to following the money, and asking why we’re bowing to Israel, spotting them for billions for more high-powered, advanced tech planes, especially when they’ve thumbed their noses at our orders to not keep building new settlements in Palestine.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net. His new book, “State Of Shock: Poems from 9/11 on” is available at www.jerrymazza.com, Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com.

Pope To Be Crucified This Easter

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: Above we have a depiction of what the liberal mainstream news media would metaphorically like to do to Pope Benedict XVI this Easter. Lord knows they certainly are trying with everything they've got. However, it's not as if something like this has never happened before.

For the record, the pope is innocent of any wrong doing. Every attempted smear story they throw at him falls short. All you have to do is read the details. For example; in Munich we're talking about one case, wherein somebody beneath Ratzinger (currently Pope Benedict XVI) transferred an accused priest without Ratzinger's knowledge or consent. Then in the case of Milwaukee, again we are talking about one accused priest, who could not be prosecuted by civil authorities and the charges were dropped. Then while the Archbishop was the one and only man who could have done anything, he decided to punt the case to the Vatican instead, where it was delayed for months. Finally, when a response was given, it was given not by Cardinal Ratzinger (currently Pope Benedict XVI), but by somebody completely different, recommending the trial be canceled since the accused priest was dying, the Archbishop of Milwaukee had not defrocked him, and criminal charges had already been dropped by civil authorities. The accused priest died four months later. Once again, the responsibility lay at the Archbishop of Milwaukee's feet, because he alone was the only one who had evidence to defrock the accused priest, and yet he tried to pass the buck to Cardinal Ratzinger's office at the Vatican instead.

That's it! That's all the liberal mainstream media has! That is their whole case! Yet with that, they are trying to implicate the pope in some sort of trial by newspaper in which they alone play the judge, jury and executioner.

Since the mainstream news media refuses to do their jobs, let us in the blogosphere once again do it for them. Here are the facts..

FACT #1
The Catholic Church has ALWAYS taught that sexual abuse of minors is a damnable sin, of the worst kind, in which Jesus Christ himself said it would be better for someone who does this to tie a millstone around his neck and be thrown into the deepest part of the sea. Catholics involved in sexual abuse have not only failed in morality, but they have also failed in Catholicism, in that they are not practicing the Catholic Christian faith at all.

FACT #2
The total number of all priests accused of sexual abuse of minors from 1950 to 2002 is less than 5% of all Catholic clergy. That means more than 95% of Catholic clergy have never been accused and are doing their jobs correctly, living quiet and holy lives in service to their parishes.

FACT #3
In spite of what people say about clerical celibacy being a "cause" of these problems, actual statistics indicate that the majority of sex-abuse of minors is perpetrated by married men; step-fathers, uncles, cousins and live-in boyfriends. Statistically speaking, being a celibate man in the Catholic priesthood actually REDUCES your odds of sexually abusing minors. That's just a matter of statistical FACT. (learn more here)

FACT #4
In the overwhelming vast majority of cases where sexual abuse was reported in the Catholic Church, the alleged victim was a male between the ages of 12 and 18. Victims younger than 12 were almost never reported, and sexual abuse of females was also rare. This is not the clinical definition of pedophilia. It is however a type of predatory homosexuality that seeks to take advantage of underage young men. Therefore the term "pedophile priests" is a misnomer and not based on hard statistical data. A more accurate term should be "predatory homosexual priests."

FACT #5
Homosexual men are not allowed to become priests in the Catholic Church. In order for a homosexual to become a priest he must lie about his homosexuality just to get into seminary and remain "in the closet" indefinitely. If he is ever discovered to be gay, he would be fired and laicized (defrocked).

FACT #6
Sexual abuse of minors is slightly higher in Protestant churches according to data released by insurance agencies that underwrite them. (learn more here)

FACT #7
Sexual abuse of minors is significantly higher in non-religious institutions that deal with children, particularly public schools, where according to a U.S. government report, a child is literally over 100 times more likely to be molested in a public school than in a Catholic church. (learn more here)

FACT #8
The reforms implemented in the US Catholic Church after the sex-abuse scandal of 2002-2003 have been hailed by child protective services as the most comprehensive ever seen in a public institution and have been cited as a model for other institutions to follow.

FACT #9
No other person in the Vatican has done more to defrock abusive priests and curb sexual abuse in general than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). He was a hawk on clerical discipline and hunting down predators. When he became pope he instituted a zero tolerance policy not only against abusive clerics but against homosexual priests in general. So it's ironic that this pope would find himself under media scrutiny for this reason.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was appointed Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981, three years after John Paul II's election to the papacy in 1978. As you can see by the graph above, sexual allegations against priests had reached it's highest point the year Ratzinger was appointed. It had never been any higher, with nearly 9 out of every 1,000 priests being accused (almost 1%). Ratzinger went into action and quickly earned the nickname "God's Rottweiler" for his tough approach against all forms of ecclesiastical misconduct - most especially sexual abuse by clerics. Within twenty years, Ratzinger was able to reduce sex abuse allegations to a pre-1950's level with less than 1 out of every 1,000 priests being accused (less than 0.1%). This is especially remarkable when we consider that during the same time period sexual abuse of minors was on the rise in European and North American society in general. Ratzinger was able to implement this massive reform with a zero tolerance policy for homosexuality in the priesthood and by defrocking priests himself when he was canonically capable of doing so. However, Ratzinger did have limitations imposed on him while he was Prefect for the Congregation, and he was not allowed to implement all of the reforms he desired. After becoming pope in 2005, Ratzinger was able to write many of his reforms into Church law and remove many of the obstacles he encountered during his tenure as Prefect to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Now careful examination of the graph above reveals that sexual allegations against priests started to rise dramatically in the middle 1950's through 1981 (the year of Ratzinger's appointment). Who were the popes during those time periods? That would be Pope Pius XII, Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul I (who reigned for less than a month). Pope John Paul II reigned only during the last three years of this time period before the numbers began to drop. So logically, which pontiffs should receive the most scrutiny? That would be Pius XII, John XXIII and Paul VI. The most dramatic rise came under the papacies of John XXIII and Paul VI. Why does the media not go after them? What was happening during their pontificates that might explain their lack of action and failure to deal with the problem?

In going after the pope like this the mainstream media swallows the camel to strain a gnat as it ignores 99% of sex-abuse and coverup in the public schools to go after less than 1% in the Catholic Church, which happens to be less than what exists in other religious institutions. Since the mainstream media will not report the fact that the problem in the Catholic Church is only a tiny fraction of the problem that exists in public schools, we are once again left to ask the nagging question: WHY is the mainstream news media seeking to coverup and PROTECT child sex abusers by hiding the statistics of where they do the most damage?

Increase Press Release Pick Up with Video, Tweeting

Whether it is photos, video links or tweeting, PR writers will be well served to take another look at these tools and techniques to get their client’s or organization’s news noticed online.

“Some 30 billion views of video are happening every month. When you attach a video to a press release, you get two and half times the pick up,” notes Jeff Karnes, new media executive and product advisor to MEDIAmobz, BusinessWire’s new video production service. Karnes was part of a panel focused on convergence, citizen and social journalism, sponsored by Business Wire Atlanta on March 25.

The average length of the videos is under two minutes and can be produced significantly cheaper than in past years, thanks to the growth in online video production houses that include a network of writers, producers and video staff.

So, how much are Atlanta-area news outlets relying on video (as well as social networking sites like Twitter) to tell their stories to an increasingly digital readership?

Phil Bolton, the founder of Global Atlanta, a three-person news service that covers international business from a local perspective, is a true believer, regularly posting short video clips on stories Global Atlanta covers to YouTube. Bolton, who also is a big user of Skype, says “every reporter in the future will not only have a pencil and pad, but also a digital camcorder.”

AJC: Selective with Video

Shawn Mcintosh, public editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), pointed out, “we do have video and the payoff is huge when you pick the right topic.” She cited as an example, coverage of natural disasters such as the 500-year flood that occurred in Atlanta last September. She doesn’t advocate widespread video use for every business story a company wants to place. She also says it’s important for PR people to “deliver the message in the most effective way.” Attachments won’t get past the spam filter.

Facing a tough business climate, and the migration of readership to the Internet, the AJC has experienced significant staffing and coverage changes, but it remains focused on the metro area, and on investigative journalism.

She believes the hardest period of change is past the AJC, with the adjustment to being a smaller publication in terms of staffing. Today, the paper has the largest investigative team in its history, Mcintosh says, noting that the AJC is focused on providing “comprehensive local news” – something she says is difficult to get anywhere else. The paper has bolstered staff in key beats such as business – including adding beat bloggers.

Connecting with the Media: Twittering ‘More Intimate’

The panel also discussed the growing use of Twitter and social networking to connect with readers (and for PR pros to connect with the media).


Every beat reporter at AJC uses Twitter for reporting and distributing information, notes Mcintosh. She described the paper’s Twitter breaking news feed as highly engaging and the cleverly worded tweets by AJC reporters show a “fun” side to up-to-the-minute reporting. She adds that even with the increasing focus on digital, the paper remains committed to producing a high-quality print product as well.

Mark Meltzer, executive editor of the Atlanta Business Chronicle, says his news organization is much more focused on digital – and even with a smaller staff trimmed from the difficult economy, each staff writer devotes time daily to the paper’s blogs.

Meltzer tweets about key news stories, calling the vehicle very important for driving traffic to the paper. He says it’s also used for research, where staff can send queries out and get questions answered. “It’s a great way to promote the Chronicle and I think since it’s free publicity, anyone who is not using it that way is making a huge mistake.”

Meltzer adds, “I have closer relationships to some of the people in the PR community who follow me on Twitter. If I get an e-mail from somebody on Twitter, I will probably return it. There’s something a little bit more intimate about that.”

Meltzer isn’t the only journalist embracing Twitter – Mark Senak, JD, a lawyer and health industry PR executive at Fleishman-Hillard, talks about the growing number of tweet-reporters on his Twitter site focused on pharmaceutical industry communications and planning, Eye on FDA. He even maintains a list of reporters on Twitter.

If you are a PR pro or journalist, are you increasing your use of video and Twitter? Share your experiences here.

Korn - Evolution

Lyrics:
I'm diggin' with my fingertips
I'm gripping at the ground I stand upon
I'm searching for fragile bones
(Evolution)

I'm never gonna be refined
Keep trying but I won't assimilate
Sure we have come far in time
(Watch the bow break)

And I'm sorry that I don't believe
by the evidence that I see
That there's any hope left for me...
It's evolution!
Just evolution!

And I, I do not dare deny
the basic beast inside;
It's right here,
It's controlling my mind!
And why do I deserve to die
and I'm dominated by
This animal thats locked up inside

Close up to get a real good view
I'm betting that the species will survive
Hold tight, I'm getting inside you
(Evolution)

And when were gonna find these bones
They're gonna want to keep them in a jar
the number one virus caused by
(Procreation)

And the planet may go astray
in a million years they'll say
"Those mother fuckers were all derranged!"
It's evolution!
Just evolution!

And I, I do not dare deny
the basic beast inside;
It's right here,
It's controlling my mind!
And why do I deserve to die
I'm dominated by
This animal thats locked up inside

Take a look around
Nothing much has changed

I, I do not dare deny
the basic beast inside;
It's right here
It's controlling my mind!
And why do I deserve to die
I'm dominated by
This animal that's locked up inside

Why
Why do I deserve to die?

History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell (Audiobook + E-book)

A comprehensive analysis of history of philosophy and survey of religions from Ancient Greek to the modern day.

"A precious book ... a work that is in the highest degree pedagogical which stands above the conflicts of parties and opinions." Albert Einstein

Since its first publication in 1945, Lord Russell's A History of Western Philosophy has been universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject -- unparalleled in its comprehensiveness, its clarity, its erudition, its grace and wit. In seventy-six chapters he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. Among the philosophers considered are: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, Plotinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, John the Scot, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, James, Dewey, and lastly the philosophers with whom Lord Russell himself is most closely associated -- Cantor, Frege, and Whitehead, co-author with Russell of the monumental Principia Mathematica. Amazon

File size: 949 MB

- ALL LINKS ARE INTERCHANGEABLE -


UNAVAILABLE

[Buy the book]

Why Secular Western Civilization Will Fall - VERY SOON!

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: The words of Pope John Paul II echo in our minds no longer as a warning, but now as a prophecy being fulfilled before our eyes. This is why Western Civilization (Europe, North and South America, Australia and even Russia) will not survive the next forty years. It's all going to come crashing down very quickly - slowly at first - but increasing with intensity until it's over....

If the promotion of the self is understood in terms of absolute autonomy, people inevitably reach the point of rejecting one another. Everyone else is considered an enemy from whom one has to defend oneself. Thus society becomes a mass of individuals placed side by side, but without any mutual bonds. Each one wishes to assert himself independently of the other and in fact intends to make his own interests prevail. Still, in the face of other people's analogous interests, some kind of compromise must be found, if one wants a society in which the maximum possible freedom is guaranteed to each individual. In this way, any reference to common values and to a truth absolutely binding on everyone is lost, and social life ventures on to the shifting sands of complete relativism. At that point, everything is negotiable, everything is open to bargaining: even the first of the fundamental rights, the right to life.

This is what is happening also at the level of politics and government: the original and inalienable right to life is questioned or denied on the basis of a parliamentary vote or the will of one part of the people-even if it is the majority. This is the sinister result of a relativism which reigns unopposed: the "right" ceases to be such, because it is no longer firmly founded on the inviolable dignity of the person, but is made subject to the will of the stronger part.

In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism. The State is no longer the "common home" where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenceless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part. The appearance of the strictest respect for legality is maintained, at least when the laws permitting abortion and euthanasia are the result of a ballot in accordance with what are generally seen as the rules of democracy. Really, what we have here is only the tragic caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations: "How is it still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted? In the name of what justice is the most unjust of discriminations practised: some individuals are held to be deserving of defence and others are denied that dignity?" When this happens, the process leading to the breakdown of a genuinely human co-existence and the disintegration of the State itself has already begun.

To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom: "Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin" (Jn 8:34).

John Paul II

Evangelium Vitae

Mark my words, Western Civilization will not last another forty years under Secularism. Before 2050 Western Secularism will have imploded, giving way to a new theocratic system in it's place. The only thing that remains to be seen is this. Which type of theocratic system will ultimately take over? Will it be a revived form of Christendom? Or shall we look forward to prayer rugs, burkas and mosques? It's going to happen people. The only questions now are when and how.

The Catholic Bishops' Epic Failure On Healthcare Reform

(The New Ledger) - At the most basic possible level, the Catholic Bishops — the men I hold as a matter of faith to be in the direct line of Apostolic Succession — have enabled scandal, and it has finally flowered in full. A bishop has plenary discretion in the manner in which he brings his wayward sheep back into the fold, but by any measure, to put this politely, the American bishops’ exercise of their discretion has been a total embarrassment. Scandal is the act of teaching, from a position of authority, by word or deed, that what is evil is actually good. For essentially my entire lifetime, the Democratic Party has made as one of its governing planks that women have an inherent right to murder their children. Catholic Democrats have not, with a tiny handful of exceptions, bothered to even murmur a protest; the most prominent among them have taken up that position as their own — some without even bothering to run for the Presidency first.

The roster of names is so long that its recitation would be a total rebuke to the authority of any American Catholic bishop now living and many dead. Kennedy, Leahy, Kucinich, Drinan, Durbin, Pelosi, Casey (Jr.), Mitchell, Sebelius, Cuomo, I could go on. These are men and women who have made it the goal of their careers to advocate the abortion license, to preserve it and expand it. The leaders in the fight to keep public funding of abortion were overwhelmingly self-professed Catholics. Last night, they succeeded.

They teach by word and act that abortion is, at worst, an unfortunately necessary convenience, and is more often a good. They create scandal. They do so as Catholics...

read full story here

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: The problem is there is nothing in the article I can argue with. Sadly, it's all true. The USCCB is an epic failure on just about every front, and this of course carries on to many individual American bishops. Not all bishop have failed, but many have, and as a result the USCCB (a left-leaning bureaucratic body anyway) is pushed into the realm of extreme Left on economic issues, dabbling into various forms of outright Marxism.

The problem here is centered around Subsidiarity, the Catholic principle of Social Justice which explicitly states that it is immoral for higher governing agencies to take over jobs that should be done by lower governing agencies. It's a bottom-up grassroots approach to government that is the complete antithesis of various forms of collectivism - Marxism, socialism, fascism and communism. The American constitutional ideal of federalism closely relates to Subsidiarity. Experts on Catholic Social Justice have called this the "hinge" upon which all of Catholic Social Justice turns, and without it there can be no Catholic Social Justice.

For something as important as Subsidiarity one would think the U.S. Catholic bishops would cover it in their official Catechism for U.S. Catholics. Instead, this all important principle of Subsidiarity gets barely a single line of mention. That is revealing. It tells a lot about where the priority of the USCCB is.

So when the Democratic controlled Congress introduced a healthcare reform bill that essentially set the stage for an eventual government takeover of the whole healthcare industry, the USCCB, along with many individual bishops, didn't see a problem with that. Instead they tried to negotiate the issue of abortion, as if it were some minor detail that had to be ironed out before this "wonderful" (yes, that's how one bishop described it) piece of legislation could be passed into law. Of course, once the extreme Left-wing Pro-Abortion Democrats in Congress and the Whitehouse realized the USCCB was willing to play footsie with them, they went to work on the backroom deals and language modification necessary to woo the Catholic votes needed and confuse the issue as much as possible. IT WORKED!

Because the USCCB was unwilling to take a clear stand for life over the years, by formerly excommunicating high profile Catholic politicians that voted for abortion, their last minute effort to throw the bill under the bus didn't work. Supposedly "Pro-Life" Catholic Democrats knew they were safe from any consequences of voting for a blatantly pro-abortion bill, so long as the President gave them the verbal promise of an executive order banning federal funding of abortion. After all, if the Catholic bishops never excommunicated the likes of Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi, how could they possibly chastise them? As for Subsidiarity - what's that? Obviously Catholic Democrats had never heard of it before, certainly not from the US Catholics Bishops. So obviously that was never a problem to begin with.

Yes, the USCCB is a miserable failure, and they had better be men enough to take the blame. It was in large part their fault and I do hope they'll own up to it. However, we certainly cannot lump all American bishops in together with them. There are quite a few who have individually stood for Life and Subsidiarity without reservation and without budging. To them "The Catholic Knight" tips his helmet, but sadly in the United States they are few and far in between.

Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal and Cover-Up Fully Exposed and Explained

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: I dare anyone reading this article to PROVE to me, using real hard data, that sexual abuse and cover up is any higher, per capita, in the Catholic Church than in any other religion. Go ahead, I dare you...

WORCESTER, MA. A former pastor Andrew J. Bierkan, 54, at the First Congregational Church of Sutton who now heads a church in Ohio has been indicted here on charges of unnatural rape of a child and posing a child in a state of nudity. He is now pastor of St. Paul United Church of Christ in Cincinnati, according to Worcester District Attorney John J. Conte. (Worcester Telegram & Gazette, August 13, 2003)
Ex-Sutton pastor charged with rape of girl from church

Eddie Thomas, pastor of St. Luke Baptist Church in Ringgold, LA., is arrested and charged with indecent behavior with a juvenile, aggravated incest and pornography involving a juvenile. (the Shreveport Times, July 17, 2003)
Police seize videotape alleged to show sex with child

South Austrailia, AUS. A South Australian police task force into child sex abuse within the Anglican Church had identified 217 victims and 48 possible offenders, police said today. However the number of victims could rise to more than 400 as investigations continued, Police Commissioner Mal Hyde said. Mr Hyde today likened the scale of police investigations into child sex abuse to those for the infamous Snowtown bodies-in-the-barrels murders in 1999. (The Age, July 16 2003)
Major sex abuse uncovered in Anglican Church

Lake Wales, FL. The pastor at the Church of the Nazarene has been charged with sexually assaulting a male 17-year-old youth leader three times in 2001. The Rev. Gene Francis, 52, of Lake Wales, was arrested Tuesday and charged with unlawful sexual activity with a minor. (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, June 4, 2003)
Lake Wales minister arrested in sexual assault case

Tuscon, AZ. The Rev. David Valencia, 47, assistant pastor of a Pentecostal church is expected in court Wednesday on rape charges issued by Pennsylvania authorities. In Pennsylvania, Valencia was an assistant pastor at Christ Church at Grove Farm, an interdenominational church that uses Anglican liturgy. The pastor of Christ Church, the Rev. John Guest, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Valencia was dismissed in late 2001 because he was found to have pornography on an office computer after he was warned about a similar incident months earlier. (Tucson Citizen, May 31, 2003)
Rev. David Valencia allegedly had sex with a 17-year-old girl he was counseling

READ HUNDREDS OF SIMILAR STORIES HERE

Now was that shocking? Yes. It should have been. Was it scandalous? Yes. It most certainly was. Was it Catholic? NO! Not a single story listed above, or in the link to hundreds of similar stories, involved the Catholic Church in any way. So what is the lesson to be learned from this? The lesson to be learned here is that shocking sex-abuse of minors is not exclusively a Catholic problem. Yes, there is a cover-up going on, and it has nothing to do with the Catholic Church...

(Telegraph) - Child abuse has gone unchecked in the Church of England for decades amid a cover up by bishops, secret papers have revealed.

Information that could have prevented abuse has been "lost or damaged", concerns about individuals have been ignored and allegations have not been recorded. It means that the Church has no idea how many paedophiles are in its midst.

Lawyers warned last night that the Church faces a crisis as catastrophic as the one that engulfed the Roman Catholic Church and cost it millions of pounds in damages.

Richard Scorer, a solicitor who has specialised in child abuse cases, said that the Church of England's mistakes amounted to "an appalling, shocking level of negligence" that is likely to leave it open to claims from victims who have been too afraid to speak out in the past. The Church is to launch an urgent investigation on an unprecedented scale.

It will look at the records of thousands of clergy – including those who have retired – church employees, lay workers and volunteers dating back decades in an attempt to expose those who have previously escaped prosecution and identify those who pose "current risks".

Dioceses will appoint independent reviewers with access to all of their personnel files. These are due to be examined over an 18-month period.

However, the internal Church documents – leaked to The Sunday Telegraph – show that even if churchwardens, who are lay officials, are found to have previous allegations against them, the Church has no power to suspend them...

read full story here

However, it's not just the Church of England. There are others, many others....

DALLAS (ABP) -- A recent sex scandal involving two North Texas pastors and the women who accused them of molestation is unusual because the victims -- by now beyond the statute of limitations for sex-abuse cases -- urged authorities and media to publish their names in conjunction with the case.

Typically, the names of sex-abuse victims are not publicized in an effort to spare the victim more emotional trauma. But Katherine Roush and Debbie Vasquez agreed to be identified in order to call attention to an increasingly prominent scathe of clergy sex-abuse cases in Baptist churches.

Larry Reynolds of Southmont Baptist Church in Denton, Texas, and Dale Amyx of Bolivar Baptist Church in Sanger, Texas, were accused in separate civil lawsuits of molesting Roush and Vasquez, respectively, during counseling sessions when the girls were 14 years old. The abuse continued for several years, according to charges.

Had the women, now adults, reported the molestation at the time of the crime, each man could have faced first-degree felony charges. In juvenile cases, victims can report a crime until 10 years after their 18th birthday.

Instead of the possible life sentence that would have gone with his felony charge, Reynolds issued an apology at a church Thanksgiving banquet as part of a settlement agreement. His suit was settled out of court. Vasquez's lawsuit has yet to be resolved.

Sex-abuse charges like the ones in North Texas have become increasingly common, with cases in Missouri, Kentucky and Florida making regional and national news. And some experts have said Baptist churches may be particularly vulnerable to this kind of abuse.

Inappropriate behavior by clergy cuts across all denominational ties and theological positions, ethicist Joe Trull said. But he says a case can be made that "nondenominational churches and Baptist churches who have autonomous church government are more vulnerable and susceptible" to instances of sexual abuse....

read full story here

These are not just isolated cases mind you. There is ample evidence from non-biased third parties (particularly insurance companies who underwrite churches) that the problem of sexual abuse of minors and church cover-up spans all denominations and sects...

(Chicago Sun Times): The three companies that insure the majority of Protestant churches in America say they typically receive upward of 260 reports each year of young people under 18 being sexually abused by clergy, church staff, volunteers or congregation members.

The figures offer a glimpse into what has long been an extremely difficult phenomenon to pin down -- the frequency of sex abuse in Protestant congregations.

read full story here

----------

(The Guardian) - The Vatican has lashed out at criticism over its handling of its paedophilia crisis by saying the Catholic church was "busy cleaning its own house" and that the problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger.

In a defiant and provocative statement, issued following a meeting of the UN human rights council in Geneva, the Holy See said the majority of Catholic clergy who committed such acts were not paedophiles but homosexuals attracted to sex with adolescent males.

The statement, read out by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's permanent observer to the UN, defended its record by claiming that "available research" showed that only 1.5%-5% of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse.

He also quoted statistics from the Christian Scientist Monitor newspaper to show that most US churches being hit by child sex abuse allegations were Protestant and that sexual abuse within Jewish communities was common.

He added that sexual abuse was far more likely to be committed by family members, babysitters, friends, relatives or neighbours, and male children were quite often guilty of sexual molestation of other children.

Nor did The statement said that rather than paedophilia, it would "be more correct" to speak of ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males.

"Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17."

The statement concluded: "As the Catholic church has been busy cleaning its own house, it would be good if other institutions and authorities, where the major part of abuses are reported, could do the same and inform the media about it."

The Holy See launched its counter–attack after an international representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, Keith Porteous Wood, accused it of covering up child abuse and being in breach of several articles under the Convention on the Rights of the Child...

read full story here

The statistics for Protestant sexual abuse of minors is actually a higher than what is found in the Catholic Church. A similar trend can be found in other non-Christian religions as well. Now please don't misunderstand. I'm not trying to attack our Protestant brethren on this issue. Sexual-abuse is no more their fault for being Protestant than it is the Catholic Church's fault for being Catholic. The problem is widespread, and in actuality, it has NOTHING to do with religion....

(CBS NEWS) - Any institution that has allowed children to be harmed by predators deserves to be taken to task for it. No institution should get a pass. And no profession should get a pass. Not preachers, not priests — not even teachers.

Especially not teachers. And yet …

Consider the statistics: In accordance with a requirement of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, in 2002 the Department of Education carried out a study of sexual abuse in the school system.

Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft looked into the problem, and the first thing that came to her mind when Education Week reported on the study were the daily headlines about the Catholic Church.

“[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem?” she said. “The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”

So, in order to better protect children, did media outlets start hounding the worse menace of the school systems, with headlines about a “Nationwide Teacher Molestation Cover-up” and by asking “Are Ed Schools Producing Pedophiles?”

No, they didn’t. That treatment was reserved for the Catholic Church, while the greater problem in the schools was ignored altogether.

As the National Catholic Register’s reporter Wayne Laugesen points out, the federal report said 422,000 California public-school students would be victims before graduation — a number that dwarfs the state’s entire Catholic-school enrollment of 143,000.

Yet, during the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government’s discovery of the much larger — and ongoing — abuse scandal in public schools....

read full story here

Yes indeed! There is a cover-up going on, and the one I'm talking about is not in the Catholic Church, nor in the Protestant churches, nor even in the public schools which have an exponentially high level of sex-abuse. No, this cover-up is in the mainstream news media.

That's right! The mainstream news media is INTENTIONALLY covering up the actual statistics of sexual abuse in society and secular institutions. This is yet another reason why the mainstream media is no longer trusted by the general public. This is yet another reason why more and more people are getting their news and information off Internet blogs (like this one), independent news sources and talk radio. More and more the mainstream news media both in North America and Europe are demonstrating not only their complete incompetence in handling the news, but also an inherent anti-religious bias in the way they report it. Of course here in the United States we've known this for a long time. Only now are Europeans just starting to figure it out. Since the mainstream news media simply REFUSES to do their job on this topic, it looks like 'The Catholic Knight' blog will once again have to do it for them...

FACT #1
The Catholic Church has ALWAYS taught that sexual abuse of minors is a damnable sin, of the worst kind, in which Jesus Christ himself said it would be better for someone who does this to tie a millstone around his neck and be thrown into the deepest part of the sea. Catholics involved in sexual abuse have not only failed in morality, but they have also failed in Catholicism, in that they are not practicing the Catholic Christian faith at all.

FACT #2
The total number of all priests accused of sexual abuse of minors is less than 5% of all Catholic clergy. That means more than 95% of Catholic clergy have never been accused and are doing their jobs correctly, living quiet and holy lives in service to their parishes.

FACT #3
In spite of what people say about clerical celibacy being a "cause" of these problems, actual statistics indicate that the majority of sex-abuse of minors is perpetrated by married men; step-fathers, uncles, cousins and live-in boyfriends. Statistically speaking, being a celibate man in the Catholic priesthood actually REDUCES your odds of sexually abusing minors. That's just a matter of statistical FACT. (learn more here)

FACT #4
In the overwhelming vast majority of cases (more than 80%), the alleged victim was a male between the ages of 11 and 17. Victims younger than 11 were almost never reported, and sexual abuse of females was also rare. This is not the clinical definition of pedophilia. It is however a type of predatory homosexuality that seeks to take advantage of underage young men. Therefore the term "pedophile priests" is a misnomer and not based on hard statistical data. A more accurate term should be "predatory homosexual priests."

FACT #5
Homosexual men are not allowed to become priests in the Catholic Church. In order for a homosexual to become a priest he must lie about his homosexuality just to get into seminary and remain "in the closet" indefinitely. If he is ever discovered to be gay, he would be fired and laicized (defrocked).

FACT #6
Sexual abuse of minors is slightly higher in Protestant churches according to data released by insurance agencies that underwrite them.

FACT #7
Sexual abuse of minors is significantly higher in non-religious institutions that deal with children, particularly public schools, where according to a U.S. government report, a child is literally over 100 times more likely to be molested in a public school than in a Catholic church. (learn more here)

FACT #8
The reforms implemented in the US Catholic Church after the sex-abuse scandal of 2002-2003 have been hailed by child protective services as the most comprehensive ever seen in a public institution and have been cited as a model for other institutions to follow.

FACT #9
No other person in the Vatican has done more to defrock abusive priests and curb sexual abuse in general than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). He was a hawk on clerical discipline and hunting down predators. When he became pope he instituted a zero tolerance policy not only against abusive clerics but against homosexual priests in general. So it's ironic that this pope would find himself under media scrutiny for this reason.


Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was appointed Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981, three years after John Paul II's election to the papacy in 1978. As you can see by the graph above, sexual allegations against priests had reached it's highest point the year Ratzinger was appointed. It had never been any higher, with nearly 9 out of every 1,000 priests being accused (almost 1%). Ratzinger went into action and quickly earned the nickname "God's Rottweiler" for his tough approach against all forms of ecclesiastical misconduct - most especially sexual abuse by clerics. Within twenty years, Ratzinger was able to reduce sex abuse allegations to a pre-1950's level with less than 1 out of every 1,000 priests being accused (less than 0.1%). This is especially remarkable when we consider that during the same time period sexual abuse of minors was on the rise in European and North American society in general. Ratzinger was able to implement this massive reform with a zero tolerance policy for homosexuality in the priesthood and by defrocking priests himself when he was canonically capable of doing so. However, Ratzinger did have limitations imposed on him while he was Prefect for the Congregation, and he was not allowed to implement all of the reforms he desired. After becoming pope in 2005, Ratzinger was able to write many of his reforms into Church law and remove many of the obstacles he encountered during his tenure as Prefect to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Now careful examination of the graph above reveals that sexual allegations against priests started to rise dramatically in the middle 1950's through 1981 (the year of Ratzinger's appointment). Who were the popes during those time periods? That would be Pope Pius XII, Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul I (who reigned for less than a month). Pope John Paul II reigned only during the last three years of this time period before the numbers began to drop. So logically, which pontiffs should receive the most scrutiny? That would be Pius XII, John XXIII and Paul VI. The most dramatic rise came under the papacies of John XXIII and Paul VI. Why does the media not go after them? What was happening during their pontificates that might explain their lack of action and failure to deal with the problem?

These are the facts. This is the REAL NEWS, not that nonsense you see on the television or read in the newspapers. Sadly there really is a cover-up going on here, and it's a cover-up of statistical facts. What we have in the European media today is a deliberate attempt to hide the facts and smear the reputation of the Catholic Church, particularly the pope if they can get to him.

Why is this? Well, part of it has to do with the nature of the media itself. There are two sayings in the news business.

Saying # 1 "If it bleeds it leads."
Meaning if the story involves gross violence, mayhem or some kind of sadistic abuse, it will almost always find itself on the front page of the newspaper, as well as the leading story in almost every news broadcast. If it's not actually the first story, then it will be very close to the first story. This is because violence, mayhem and abuse sells newspapers and gets people to watch news broadcasts. What the news media is doing is capitalizing on strange aspect of human nature that deals with morbid curiosity. There is some kind of strange subconscious characteristic in human beings that likes to see blood, gore and torture. I don't know why that is, but it is, and the mainstream news media has learned how to take advantage of it for marketing purposes.

Saying # 2 "Sex sells"
This isn't just a news media term, it's a universal term for all advertising and marketing. People are naturally attracted toward sexual stories and topics. That's why so many end table magazines are filled with articles about sex. That's why commercials and advertisements usually feature a scantily clad young attractive woman, or a handsome and physically fit shirtless man. It works! It gets people to look, and it gets them to buy. In the newspaper and television news business this kind of advertisement is a little more tricky. They can't just market sex for sex's sake. They have to package it in a story, and quite often this involves some kind of tawdry sex scandal. So when any kind of news comes out about a religious sex scandal you would think the media would be all over it, and indeed they are, but in this case they do it in a very disproportionate way.

Outside of the normal violent and sexual nature of the mainstream news media there is another component to this whole thing. BIAS! Yes, that's right, and in this case it's a particular anti-Catholic bias that is generated by a deep seated anti-Catholic prejudice or form of bigotry. This comes from newspaper editors, reporters, as well as television newsroom producers. Most of them are secular atheists or agnostics. Some of them are liberal Protestants and even a few are liberal Catholics who have an ax to grind against the generally conservative policies of the Catholic Church. This is the ONLY realistic explanation for the disproportionate media attention on the Catholic Church, when it is a statistical fact that Protestant churches have a slightly higher incidence of sexual abuse of minors and cover-up. This is the ONLY realistic explanation for the disproportionate media attention on the Catholic Church, when it is a statistical fact that non-religious institutions (such a public schools) have a sexual abuse rate of minors that is literally over 100 times higher than any religious institution, including the Catholic Church. One would think there would be at least 100 time more media coverage on sexual abuse in public schools. That is not the case at all. Instead the Catholic Church gets virtually ALL the negative media attention, while hardly a single news story can be found on the overwhelming sexual abuse going on in public schools. Curious? No. BIAS! Perhaps even bigotry! (Just calling it like I see it folks.)

Is there a cover-up going on here? YOU BET THERE IS! It's in the mainstream news media, which actively seeks to tear down the Catholic Church at every opportunity possible, and simultaneously seeks to protect a much higher number of abusers in non-religious institutions, by hiding the data related to them, and refusing to cover their sex-abuse stories with even one-hundredth of the media attention. So the question everybody should be asking is this. WHY is the mainstream news media seeking to PROTECT child sex abusers by hiding the statistics of where they do the most damage?

The Century of Darkness

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: As conservative Americans lament the socializing of the U.S. economy under President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress, it would be helpful for Catholic Americans to step back and put the whole thing into historical and prophetic context.

The Russian Bolshevik Revolution occurred in October - November of 1917, immediately following the miracle of the sun at Fatima in October of that same year. Our Lady warned us of what was to come. The secrets of Fatima were as follows...

1. A greater war would follow World War I after the "strange light" in the night sky (fulfilled in January of 1938 and immediately followed by World War II).
   
2. Then Russia would spread it's [Marxist] errors all over the world and entire nations would disappear (fulfilled in 1945 through present).
3. The Holy Father (the pope) would suffer martyrdom and the Catholic Church would be left in ruins (currently waiting on fulfillment, though John Paul II believed the prophecy applied to him).

Personally, I believe the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II was just a foretaste of what is to come. This is because John Paul II survived and there are multiple prophecies from other approved Catholic seers who likewise predict an actual assassination of the pope.

Pope Leo XIII himself gave a prophecy concerning a century of darkness that was to come. Based on this message, followed by the message and timing of the Fatima visions, in conjunction with the prophecies of Anne Catherine Emmerich and many other approved Catholic mystics, it is reasonable to conclude that the century of darkness began immediately after the close of the Fatima visitations in 1917. This coincides with the Bolshevik Revolution in October-November of that same year. Ever since then, the world has been hopelessly under the influence of Marxism.

Marxism

Marxism is the political and economic philosophy of Karl Marx in which the concept of class struggle plays a central role in understanding society's allegedly inevitable development from capitalism to a socialist and ultimately classless society. From Marxism comes the concepts of implementation ranging from extreme to moderate: communism, socialism, fascism, and liberalism (or what some call "soft marxism").

Now, nearly one-hundred years after the Bolshevik Revolution, virtually every nation on the earth as succumbed to the ideology of Karl Marx in one way or another. Of course many Americans are fond of the notion that the United States stood squarely against Marxism throughout the twentieth century. This is a fanciful notion, but a very incorrect one. In fact, the United States of America fully embraced the theories of Karl Marx, it just disagreed with Russia (and the Soviet Union) as to how it should be implemented. The Russians preferred a fast and immediate transition via force - communism. While the Americans preferred a more slow and gradual transition - liberalism. For the United States it began with the graduated income tax and the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. These seemingly benign policies would lay the foundation for America's Marxist transition later on. Then with the election of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1930, the United States wholly embraced the slow and steady transition to a Marxist economy. Later, under President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, that transition took the next step. Small steps continued under presidents Carter, Clinton and George W. Bush. Finally, with the presidency of Barack Obama, the United States took a major leap toward implementing the Marxist agenda. Legislation was signed into law starting the process toward socialized medicine. This followed the government takeover of many insurance agencies, financial institutions, banks and one automobile manufacturing giant. It is estimated that after the full implementation of the healthcare legislation, nearly 1/2 of the United States economy will be owned and operated by the federal government - the very definition of a socialist nation.

If we are correct in assuming that 1917 marks the beginning of the century of darkness foretold by Pope Leo XIII and others, then we can take comfort in the knowledge that Satan's reign of terror is soon coming to a close. However, that does not mean he will relinquish power quickly. There may be years of struggle to follow as the world is slowly turned back over to a more Christian way of governance. Many prophecies predict terrible wars, accompanied by disruptions in the Church, the assassination of the pope, and even a divine intervention in the form of a terrible celestial event.

Now here is the bad news. The speculative timing of these events may be off. There is a good school of thought which suggests that the date of the century of darkness actually began in January of 1938. This is because all of the prophecies of Our Lady of Fatima were conditional up to that point (the beginning of the Second World War), and then the prophecies seemed to become more unconditional thereafter. IF this school of thought is correct, then the century of darkness will not end until 2038, and there are two prophecies from approved Catholic sources that seem to confirm this. IF they are correct, then we have about another 28 years of pure socialism to look forward to before it finally reaches it's inevitable violent end.

So what we are watching for in the years to come is a sign. Does our suffering under Marxism begin to end in 2017, or must we wait until 2038? That is the prophetic question of our time. The sign will be war - specifically - another war in Europe. When the fighting begins, know the century of darkness is rapidly coming to an end.

"TRUMAN PASSING BY" by Jerry Mazza

Freelance writer Jerry Mazza has written a poem for me inspired by the article I wrote "Policing thought in America: Why can’t we discuss the events of 9/11?" following The Huffington Post's removal of a column guest written by Jesse Ventura about 9/11. Jerry is an expert on domestic politics and foreign affairs, having written hundreds of articles on politics and government for onlinejournal.com where he is an associate editor. His ground-breaking analysis on the corruption by our government on issues such as 9/11, foreign policy, the war on terror, the economy and more are consistently on target. (See also the blog "Jerry Mazza on Obama, 9/11 and Afghanistan" for a sampler of his writings and for my interview with him on JamesFetzerNews.)

Jerry is the author of "State of Shock: Poems from 9/11 On", a selection of narrative and lyrical poems, which are a call for help and reaction to the dangers facing our country. These poems suggest that an operation of the magnitude of 9/11 cannnot have been the work of 19 Islamic “terrorists” but rather the machinations of key members of our own ruling elite to start the “War on Terror” in a grasp for Mid-Eastern oil and power. Jerry's draws the conclusion that 9/11 constituted a form of coup d’etat for the Bush administration, the purpose of which was to restrict civil liberties, to acquire excessive powers for war-making and secure additional appropriations both to fund the war and control civil dissent.

Jerry Mazza on JFK, 9/11, and Suppression of
Speech (24 March 2010)

TRUMAN PASSING BY
Jerry Mazza / 22 March 2010

The night that Truman rode by
with Bess in the open car
and motorcycle escort
down Grand Street, Williamsburg,
Brooklyn, seeking office
post-FDR, the working
class crowds cheering him on,
myself and Che Che, my best friend
waving our baseball caps
in the cold November night,
the smell of fried fish hanging
in the air from the fish store
that touched the Trumans’ noses,
one among a million smells
of working America,
another smell, corruption
like the garbage rising
from the OSS
to CIA, a shadow
government beyond
the shouts and love and votes
of all these Americans,
somewhere a photo of Dewey
claiming victory, V-fingered
in the Daily News,
and history rolling before
our eyes and all the money
and misery it would bring us
long after Harry passed
to victory and his maker,
and the shots rang out
in Dealey Plaza, killing
the Prince of Camelot
15 years later in the
shadow of Vietnam
that deepened into a night
of knives and magic bullets
killing the truth for our age.

Immigration Reform = God's Chastisement On America

(AP) - Frustrated with the lack of action to overhaul the country's immigration system, tens of thousands of demonstrators rallied on the National Mall and marched through the streets of the capital Sunday, waving American flags and holding homemade signs in English and Spanish.

Supporters traveled from around the country in hopes the rally would re-energize Congress to take up the volatile issue. Some lawmakers oppose any attempt to help an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants become U.S. citizens while others insist on stronger border controls first...

read full story here

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: This is going to be a tough pill for my readers to swallow, but I actually support the Democrats on this. However, it's not for the typical reasons you might think. Please read on, and feel free to criticize my views in the comments below. As a conservative patriotic American, I sympathize with your frustration and dissent, and provided it's clean I'll give you an open forum to voice it here.

I don't support immigration reform because I'm a bleeding heart liberal, nor is it because I have some misplaced sense of "social justice." I don't support it because the USCCB told me to, nor do I support it because the Vatican encourages compassion. I don't support it because I'm a "free-trader" nor because I want "open-borders." I am not a supporter of NAFTA nor the emerging "North American Union" (NAU). I admit my reasons for supporting this are peculiar which is why I believe my readers deserve a full explanation. My reasons are as follows...

Reason # 1
The United States of America is under the chastisement of God. We must embrace it, not resist it. The chastisement comes mainly for one reason, and that is the wholesale slaughter of the unborn children through abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. It is also because of the countless souls that have never even been conceived do to the massive use of artificial birth-control, in addition to widespread sexual perversion in the form of fornication, adultery and homosexuality. All of this together has resulted in a birthrate decline that is unsustainable. We have already dropped below the threshold of what is historically reversible. Therefore with a native population that is in decline, it must be replaced, in earnest and as quickly as possible, by people who are more likely to follow God's laws. While Mexicans are not perfect, and they too are just as prone to sin as we are, they have so far demonstrated a general willingness to avoid abortion, artificial birth-control, and maintain God's model for a traditional family most of the time. While not all of them are Catholic, the majority of them are, and so this also puts them in greater favor with God than the general (liberal or dispensationalist) Protestant population of the United States. God is giving this land over to those people who are more likely to follow his laws, and we as Catholic Christians MUST NOT resist the chastisement of God Almighty.

Reason # 2
As pointed out in reason # 1, the native population of the United States is in serious decline that is unsustainable. The social security safety net will collapse without sufficient tax revenue if the number of wage earners is declining. Therefore, the federal government must import wage earners, in earnest, to shore up it's financial obligations or else it will face a bloody revolution! Europe and Canada have also faced a similar situation with their declining native populations, and therefore have been forced to import as many new taxpayers as possible to shore up their social security systems. Unfortunately for them, they have not had a Catholic third-world nation directly to the south already sending potential taxpayers to them by the truckload. They've been forced to seek immigrants from around the world, and also unfortunately for them, the only people ready and willing to come are African and Middle Eastern Muslims. For this reason, Europe and Canada are quickly importing massive numbers of Muslim immigrants who reproduce several times faster than native Europeans and Canadians with an average of 4 to 8 children per household. Naturally, over a period of just a few decades this will result in a dramatic population shift in these countries to a growing Islamic influence. This is why many demographic experts have predicted that Europe (and possibly even Canada) will be Islamic nations by 2050. The United States is in the EXACT SAME BOAT, with the exception that we have Mexican Catholics clamoring to get into this country from a nation immediately to our south and don't require a plane ticket to get here. Importing Mexican Catholic taxpayers into the American economy, as opposed to African and Asian Islamic taxpayers, makes logical sense and spares us the fate that will soon come upon Europe and Canada once Muslims have a large enough demographic to transform those countries into Islamic nations.

Reason # 3
Protestantism has failed in America. Likewise, American-style Liberal Catholicism has failed as well. "Americanism," which has always been condemned by the popes, has now failed America. The idea of a secular government, that maintains a "wall of separation" between religion and government has resulted in the mess we currently endure. It does not work, and it will continue to fail. America needs to become a Catholic nation, at least socially, with a government that is subservient to the will of a Catholic majority. When I say Catholic majority, however, I do not mean the liberal American-style of Catholicism that has been the status quo in the United States for the last fifty years. What America needs is a vibrant and dynamic new Catholicism that is rooted in tradition. Some Catholic Americans are already working on this, as we see developing on EWTN and in the Old Southern states. Mexican Catholics have a lot to offer to this, but it must be a convergence between the two that will transform America into what it needs to be. We must not forget that the religious pluralism, with a Protestant majority, has totally and completely failed the United States. Liberal American-style Catholicism has been no help at all. There needs to be a social shake-up of our religious demographic mix if we ever hope to prepare for Islamic majorities in Europe and Canada.

Reason # 4
The current situation with illegal aliens in the United States is entirely the fault of the United States government, and not the fault of those who took advantage of the situation. For about three decades now, the U.S. feds have been practically ENCOURAGING Mexican nationals to illegally enter this country. Likewise, the Mexican government has been supporting it as well. One would almost think there is a backroom conspiracy going on between the two governments. I suspect this is probably because of the demographics issue. Our government knows the current rate of native depopulation is unsustainable, but at the same time refuses to explain this to Americans. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe it's because forces within our government are trying to depopulate the nation of natives? Who knows? Whatever the case, the policy of near zero enforcement of our nations immigration laws has been in place for decades, and the result has been an illegal population of about 20+ million people. YOU CANNOT DEPORT TWENTY-MILLION PEOPLE!!! Sorry, that's not possible. It would be a humanitarian crisis. You cannot incarcerate twenty-million people either. The cost would be more than it's worth. The best thing to do is fix the problem that led to it - which is open borders. Then we must give Mexico a favored immigration policy, and get these people legal as quickly as possible so we can start taxing them.

Reason # 5
The current system is set up to victimize both Mexican illegals and the American blue collar working class. By allowing illegals to stay illegal, the government collects some revenue off them through the payroll tax. That's because private businesses that hire illegals would much rather pay the INS fines if they get caught, then get busted by the IRS for tax evasion if they fail to report the pyroll tax. So the government already gets a little revenue off them with no fear of ever having to pay out government entitlement benefits. However, by staying illegal the business benefits too, because it neither has to pay job benefits nor minimum wage. This hurts the Mexican illegal of coarse because he works for sub-standard pay, has no benefits, and no legal recourse for anything. However it also hurts the American blue collar class who get squeezed out of work because of illegals who will do it cheaper. By legalizing the 20+ million illegals in this country everybody will benefit. First the governemnt will get more revenue because it will finally be able to tax these people directly. Second, Mexican illegals will finally get full American pay and benefits, as well as legal recourse. This will give them a reason to pursue full citizenship and fully integrate with American culture. Third, the American blue collar working class will no longer have to compete with unfair competition. At long last it will cost an employer the exact same amount of money to higher an American as it would to higher a Mexican. With cost being exactly the same, Mexican nationals will no longer have the advantage of unfair competition, and employers will no longer have any advantage to discriminating against the American blue collar working class.

OFFICIAL: USA Is Now A Socialist Nation

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: It's official. As of today, Sunday March 21, 2010, the United States of America officially became a socialist nation. If we really wanted to be honest with ourselves we should rename the country to the United Socialist States of America (USSA).

By this I mean the federal government already controls Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, many once private banking and lending institutions, General Moters, and other formerly private sector companies. Now the federal government is in the process (a process that CANNOT be stopped I might add) of taking over the entire healthcare industry, of which this most recent legislation passed by the House of Representatives is only the start. It is the first in a long chain of bills and executive orders that will slowly transfer the ownership of private medicine over to the federal government. Mark my words, it's a process of relentless incrementalism that cannot be stopped.

When you include all of the direct and hidden taxes Americans are forced to pay, the average wage earner in this country already pays about half of his gross income to the federal government. This is a marginal taxes rate, which if it were honest and open, would be comparable to Sweden - a socialist monarchy.

Now I know this is a hard pill to swallow, but rest assured the American people (as a whole) are getting exactly what we deserve. Why? Because (as a whole) we elected this president and this congress knowing EXACTLY what they stood for. There is nobody in this country who can claim ignorance. The truth about this president and this congress was already laid out before the American people long before the 2006 and 2008 elections. Americans knew these people were socialists and yet they elected them anyway. Now we're just collectively getting what we all collectively asked for. Maybe you yourself, individually didn't ask for it, but collectively we did when we collectively elected Barack Obama by popular vote.

All the wrong financial moves have now been made. There will be no economic recovery. Between the financial bailouts and this latest healthcare scheme, there can be no recovery. It's impossible! Start preparing now for the financial crash of 2010. The United States will soon suffer greatly for it's sins, and God will bring our national chastisement upon us through the very "leaders" we've elected. In short, we are getting, and will continue to get, EXACTLY what we deserve.

Sadly, the group of people who will suffer the most from this legislation is the one group that bears no responsibility for it at all. It is the unborn, many more of whom will be aborted with our tax dollars, as a ongoing sacrifice of martyrdom for the sins of our perverted society.

Policing thought in America: Why can’t we discuss the events of 9/11?

Policing thought in America:
Why can’t we discuss the events of 9/11?
James Fetzer / 19 March 2010

The brain trust that calls itself “The Huffington Post” has disgraced itself and shown the "progressive left" is a cowardly fraud by removing a column guest written by Jesse Ventura about 9/11. The official explanation from no less than Arianna Huffington, presumably, is “Editor's Note: The Huffington Post's editorial policy, laid out in our blogger guidelines, prohibits the promotion and promulgation of conspiracy theories--including those about 9/11. As such, we have removed this post.” Maybe no one explained to these worthies that if any one were to write about 9/11, they would be writing about a conspiracy theory, since the government’s own “official account” is only the most outrageous. And, as Jesse’s new book, AMERICAN CONSPIRACIES (2009) elucidates, there have been many more throughout our history.

3/9/10 Jesse Ventura on NBC's "Today Show": AMERICAN CONSPIRACIES

Conspiracies are as American as apple pie. All they require are two or more individuals acting together to bring about an illegal end. When a couple of guys knock off a 7/11, they are engaged in a conspiracy, even if they are subsequently charged with armed robbery instead. Most America conspiracies are economic, like Enron, WorldCom, and Halliburtion. Bernie Madoff comes to mind, since he can't possibly have done it alone. Since the "official account" maintains that 19 Islamic fundamentalists hijacked four commercial carriers, outfoxed the most sophisticated air defense system in the world, and perpetrated these atrocities under the control of a guy in a cave in Afghanistan, the "official account" is a conspiracy theory, too.

3/8/10 Jesse Ventura on CNN's "Larry King": AMERICAN CONSPIRACIES

Apparently that subject is taboo at The Huffington Post. But if that is the case, then many important events are not going to be covered there. Conspiracies to murder political leaders are far older than the assassination of Julius Caesar and include attempts on the lives of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Truman. Four of those involved in the Lincoln conspiracy were hung from the same gallows at the same time. Consider the range of events that could not be understood absent conspiracies as David Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., listed them in his chapter, "The Silence of the Historians", MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), page 402:

Foreign Targets/Assassination Conspiracies (during 20th Century only): Franz Ferdinand / Rajiv Gandhi / Louis Mountbatten / Czar Nicholas II / Adolf Hitler / Rafael Trujillo / Salvadore Allende / Charles DeGaulle / Benigo Aquino / Anwar Sadat / Luis Colosio / Leon Trotsky / Ngo Dinh Diem / Rene Schnneideer / Pancho Villa / Ngo Dihn Nhu / Jacobo Arbenz / Grigorli Rasputin / Fidel Castro / Mohammed Mossadegh / Patrice Lumumba / Pope John Paul II / Saddam Hussein / Manuel Noriega

Egad! What would Shakespeare have had to write about but for plots against the Kings and Queens of England? And in the US (20th Century), the list would be extended to include John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Watergate, Iran-scam, Iran-Contra, Senator Paul Wellstone, Cpl. Pat Tillman, and many others as well, if you consider the evidence. So if the American press is not even willing to investigate conspiracies, we are going to be unable to begin to understand our own history, including the stories that appear on virtually every page of The New York Times, as I documented in "Thinking about 'Conspiracy Theories': 9/11 and JFK", which is accessible via google and published my book, THE 9/11 CONSPIRACY: THE SCAMMING OF AMERICA (2007). What would history be without them?

James Fetzer interviewed by Stephen Lendman on 9/11, JFK, and Barack Obama (12/3/10)

The Huffington Post is not the only prominent offender. Even amazon.com has refused to carry the DVD of a conference on “The Science and Politics of 9/11: What’s Controversial, What’s Not”, that I organized in Madison, WI, 5-7 August 2007. It runs 14 ½ hour and includes presentations discussing many aspects of 9/11. A publisher tired to market it on amazon.com and found it was suppressed:

Dear Jim

Bad news.

I tried to put it up on Amazon, but the thought controllers have blocked it.

Possible Matches on www.amazon.com
ASIN: 1615774629
Product Name: The Science and Politics of 9/11: What's Controversial. What's Not.
Binding: DVD
DVD Region Code: 0
EAN: 9781615774623

Sorry, this product is ineligible for Amazon Marketplace selling at this time.

The product you attempted to create a page for is currently suppressed so that it will not appear on our Web site. Because of this, it is ineligible for Amazon Marketplace selling. Products are suppressed in the Amazon.com catalog for numerous reasons. For example, Amazon prohibits the sale of illegal and offensive products. (For more information, please review a complete list of prohibited content.) In addition, products may be suppressed at the explicit request of artists or manufacturers.

As a former Marine Corps officer and retired professor of philosophy, I am at a loss as to what has become of this once-great country of ours. Are we so afraid of the examination of what our government has told us about “the pivotal event of the 21st century” that even progressive newspapers like The Huffington Post and presumably impartial business operations like amazon.com refuse to publish a column by the former Governor of Minnesota or to carry the DVD of a meeting of experts on different aspects of the case? What is there to be afraid of—unless the "official account" is a house of cards that will collapse if it is critically scrutinized?

A brief summary of presidential directives, executive orders, and congressionaly approved bills that where signed into law over the last 40ish years. And no, this isn't a bunch of conspiracy nonsense. They are simply facts.

And that indeed appears to be the case. According to the "official account" of the destruction of the Twin Towers, the planes hit the buildings, the resulting fires weakened the steel, and a pancake collapse of one floor upon another ensued. But that description is not even remotely consistent with the gross observable photo evidence. The buildings appear to be tuning into millions of cubic yards of fine dust:

“Revealing new aerial photos of 9/11 attack released”
James Fetzer, VoltaireNet, 18 February 2010
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164022.html

“New 9/11 Photos Released”
James Fetzer, 10 February 2010
http://jamesfetzer.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-911-photos-released.html

Does this look remotely like a “pancake collapse” to you? A set of 9/11 photos were recently release which, when they are temporally sequenced, provide a glimpse of what was actually going on, which was no “pancake collapse”. Every American deserves to see that the “official account” cannot even accommodate the gross appearance of the Twin Towers as they were destroyed even below ground level as first responders have told me.

"Conspiracy Theory" with Jesse Ventura on 9/11

No one knows exactly how this was done. It appears to have required a highly sophisticated combination of conventional and unconventional means. Once you understand that the sequence of events these photos display cannot have been the result of a "pancake collapse", that there was no "collapse" at all as these two 500,000-ton buildings were converted into very fine dust, but that some complex form of a demolition under control was taking place and you being to grasp why not even The Huffington Post or amazon.com can allow you the least glimpse of what actually happened on 9/11. It was indeed “the scamming of America” and the reasons appear to have had nothing to do with Islam or “19 Islamic fundamentalists”.

James H. Fetzer, McKnight Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota, Duluth; Founder, Scholars for 9/11 Truth (http://911scholars.org), Editor, Assassination Science (http://assassinationscience.com), and Co-Editor, Assassination Research (http://assassinationresearch.com), maintains a blog on 9/11 and other “false flag” attacks at http://jamesfetzer.blogspot.com.

Secrets of the CIA