Sunday, October 31, 2010

Barangay Jericho























HOMILY
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time – 31 October 2010

Readings: Wis 11:22-12:2; Ps 145:1-2, 8-9, 10-11, 13, 14; 2 Thess 1:11-2:2; Lk 19:1-10


Imagine a barangay named Jericho. It was big and prosperous, and has just received news that the Lord Jesus was set to pass through its main road. The barangay chairman was one named Zaccheus, a man of small stature in more ways than

SURPRISE! Halloween Is Not Pagan After All !!!

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: So go ahead and dress those kids up and send them out for some fun. Of course if they're young you'll want to make sure they have some adult supervision. I would also recommend staying clear of anything that glorifies violence or the occult. That's the real problem with Halloween. Popular (Secular) culture has tried to ruin it, just like Christmas, by getting the focus onto anything other than what it's supposed to be about. By glorifying violence and the occult, Halloween has turned into something nasty. It doesn't have to be. For my kids, it's a night of dress up and make believe. My daughter usually goes as a princess or animal character. My son like superheros and Star Wars characters. One time my son asked if he could go as a skeleton, and I said "no" because Halloween is a celebration of life, and we don't want to use it to glorify death. So he decided to be Iron Man instead. When my daughter asked if she could dress up as a witch, again I said "no" because witchcraft (Wicca) is an occult religion, and we don't honor such things. She decided to go as a cat instead. Now maybe I'm being a bit strict here, but I think it's a fair adjustment. The kids get to celebrate the occasion, and the family doesn't have to worry about sending the wrong kind of message. These are just some personal family rules, but I imagine some variation of them would probably serve most Catholic families well. Some Catholic families might be okay with skeletons and witches, provided they are more cute than scary or occult.

I am a bit mortified at the whole "scary" business during Halloween. For heaven's sake, this is supposed to be a childrens' celebration! Why on earth would you put something on that would scare the pants off them and then go out in public!?! Honestly parents, we need to do a better job on this. If your kid is going out looking like death on a stick, maybe it's time to have a sit down talk with him/her.

The name "Halloween" comes from Old English. It began with the English reference to All Saints Day (November 1st) on the Catholic calendar. The English referred to the All Saints as "All Hallows." You've heard the term before right? "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..." It's just another way of saying "holy" or "sanctified." All Saints Day (November 1st) is the day on the liturgical calendar when we honor all those who have died in Christ and now LIVE in heaven. It's a celebration of eternal life! The night before All Saints Day is All Saints Evening, but the English would refer to it as "All Hallows Even." Gradually, over time, the name morphed into "Hallow'even" and eventually into "Halloween." A similar thing happened with the word Christmas, which is an abbreviation of the term "Christ's Mass" in reference to liturgical celebrations for the "Feast of the Holy Nativity" observed on December 25th in the Western Christian calendar.

Now the historic customs surrounding Halloween come from various sources, and most of them involve immigrants to the United States and there cultural distinctions in dealing with the celebration of All Saints Day (Nov. 1st) and All Souls Day (Nov. 2nd).  Most of what we do today comes from the Irish and the French. Trick-or-treat actually evolved from a sad prank English Protestants would play on English Catholics on Guy Fawkes Day (Nov. 5th).  Americans simply bumped the date back to October 31st, and turned it into something fun for everyone.  In recent years it has become in vogue for some Evangelical Christians to boycott Halloween. This is misguided and unnecessary. The day (and the night) belongs to us. It is our celebration - a Christian celebration - or at least it's supposed to be. Ancient Pagans knew nothing of Halloween or the modern customs we have associated with it. As Christians, it is not our place to curse the darkness, but rather shine a light. It's time to change the spirit of Halloween back to something more in tune with our Christian heritage. Instead of all the creepy stuff, decorate your home in cheerful and playful items that celebrate life. Typically in our home, we put out happy face jack-o-lanterns with cheerful scarecrows along with decor appropriate for harvest season.

Of course we understand that wherever you go, we're going to see somebody who's made a haunted house or some other macabre display. On that we just use our best judgment. If it looks ridiculously violent or occult, we just stay clear and move on to the next place. We don't scare our children with haunted houses or frighten them with scary movies. In fact, we generally don't watch scary movies in our home anyway.

What's important is that our children understand the meaning behind all of this. We are celebrating life, particularly eternal life with God, and in doing so we are honoring all those who have gone into heaven before us. Thus, we like to make sure they go to mass the following day - All Saints Day.
(BeliefNet) - We’ve all heard the allegations: Halloween is a pagan rite dating back to some pre-Christian festival among the Celtic Druids that escaped church suppression. Even today modern pagans and witches continue to celebrate this ancient festival. If you let your kids go trick-or-treating, they will be worshiping the devil and pagan gods.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The origins of Halloween are, in fact, very Christian and rather American. Halloween falls on October 31 because of a pope, and its observances are the result of medieval Catholic piety...

read full story here

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Corrupting our Minors, Corrupting the Future

DIOCESE OF LEGAZPI
PASTORAL BULLETIN NO. 03, Series of 2010

To: Clergy, Religious, Lay Faithful
Re: Corrupting our Minors, Corrupting the Future


"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Mt 18,16)


Reports coming from all over leave no doubt as to

Friday, October 29, 2010

Mass Assassinations Lie at the Heart of America's Military Strategy in the Muslim World

Mass Assassinations Lie at the Heart of America's Military Strategy in the Muslim World

Greatly expanded U.S. military Special Ops teams, U.S. drone strikes and private espionage networks run by former CIA assassins create a threat to our security.
by Fred Branfman 
August 24, 2010  |  "[General McChrystal says that] for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies." -- "The Runaway General," Rolling Stone, 6/22/10
One of the many innocent victims of drone attacks

The truth that many Americans find hard to take is that that mass U.S. assassination on a scale unequaled in world history lies at the heart of America's military strategy in the Muslim world, a policy both illegal and never seriously debated by Congress or the American people. Conducting assassination operations throughout the 1.3 billon-strong Muslim world will inevitably increase the murder of civilians and thus create exponentially more "enemies," as Gen. McChrystal suggests -- posing a major long-term threat to U.S. national security. This mass assassination program, sold as defending Americans, is actually endangering us all. Those responsible for it, primarily General Petraeus, are recklessly seeking short-term tactical advantage while making an enormous long-term strategic error that could lead to countless American deaths in the years and decades to come. General Petraeus must be replaced, and the U.S. military's policy of direct and mass assassination of Muslims ended.
The U.S. has conducted assassination programs in the Third World for decades, but the actual killing -- though directed and financed by the C.I.A. -- has been largely left to local paramilitary and police forces. This has now has changed dramatically.
What is unprecedented today is the vast number of Americans directly assassinating Muslims -- through greatly expanded U.S. military Special Operations teams, U.S. drone strikes and private espionage networks run by former CIA assassins and torturers. Most significant is the expanding geographic scope of their killing. While CENTCOM Commander from October 2008 until July 2010, General Petraeus received secret and unprecedented permission to unilaterally engage in operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, former Russian Republics, Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, the Horn of Africa, and wherever else he deems necessary.
Never before has a nation unleashed so many assassins in so many foreign nations around the world (9,000 Special Operations soldiers are based in Iraq and Afghanistan alone) as well as implemented a policy that can be best described as unprecedented, remote-control, large-scale "mechanized assassination."  As the N.Y. Times noted in December 2009: "For the first time in history, a civilian intelligence agency is using robots to carry out a military mission, selecting people for killing in a country where the United States is not officially at war."  
This combination of human and technological murder amounts to a worldwide “Assassination Inc.” that is unique in human affairs.
The increasing shift to direct U.S. assassination began on Petraeus's watch in Iraq,where targeted assassination was considered by many within the military to be more important than the "surge." The killing of Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was considered a major triumph that significantly reduced the level of violence. As Bob Woodward reported in The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008:
"Beginning in about May 2006, the U.S. military and the U.S. intelligence agencies launched a series of top secret operations that enabled them to locate, target and kill key individuals in extremist groups. A number of authoritative sources say these covert activities had a far-reaching effect on the violence and were very possibly the biggest factor in reducing it. Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) responsible for hunting al Qaeda in Iraq, (conducted) lightning-quick and sometimes concurrent operations When I later asked the president (Bush) about this, he offered a simple answer: 'JSOC is awesome.'" [Emphasis added.]
Woodward's finding that many "authoritative sources" believed assassination more important than the surge is buttressed by Petraeus' appointment of McChrystal to lead U.S. forces in Afghanistan. McChrystal's major qualification for the post was clearly his perceived expertise in assassination while heading JSOC from 2003-'08 (where he also conducted extensive torture at "Camp Nama" at Baghdad International Airport, successfully excluding even the Red Cross).
Another key reason for the increased reliance on assassination is that Petraeus' announced counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan obviously cannot work. It is absurd to believe that the corrupt warlords and cronies who make up the "Afghan government" can be transformed into the viable entity upon which his strategy publicly claims to depend -- particularly within the next year which President Obama has set as a deadline before beginning to withdraw U.S. troops. Petraeus is instead largely relying on mass assassination to try and eliminate the Taliban, both within Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The centrality of assassination to U.S. war plans is revealed by the fact that it was at the heart of the Obama review of Afghan policy last fall. The dovish Biden position called for relying primarily on assassination, while the hawkish McChrystal stance embraced both assassination and more troops. No other options were seriously considered.
A third factor behind the shift to mass assassination is that Petraeus and the U.S. military are also determined to attack jihadi forces in nations where the U.S. is not at war, and which are not prepared to openly invite in U.S. forces. As the N.Y. Times reported on May 24, "General Petraeus (has argued) that troops need to operate beyond Iraq and Afghanistan to better fight militant groups."
 The most significant aspect of this new and expanded assassination policy is President Obama's authorizing clandestine U.S. military personnel to conduct it. The N.Y. Times has also reported:
In roughly a dozen countries -- from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife -- the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists (Military) Special Operations troops under secret "Execute Orders" have conducted spying missions that were once the preserve of civilian intelligence agencies.
Particularly extraordinary is the fact that these vastly expanded military assassination teams are not subject to serious civilian control. As the N.Y. Times has also reported, Petraeus in September 2009 secretly expanded a worldwide force of assassins answerable only to the military, without oversight by not only Congress but the president himself:
The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents. The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa. Unlike covert actions undertaken by the C.I.A., such clandestine activity does not require the president's approval or regular reports to Congress. [Emphasis added]
Although sold to the American public and Congress as targeted, selective assassination aimed only at a handful of "high value" insurgent leaders, the program has in fact already expanded far beyond that. As personnel and aircraft devoted to assassination exponentially increase, so too do the numbers of people they murder, both "insurgents" and civilians.
Winning hearts and minds in North Waziristan, Pakistan
While it is reasonable to assume that expanding the number of Special Operations commandos to its present worldwide level of 13,000 will result in increasing assassinations, the secrecy of their operations makes it impossible to know how many they have murdered, how many of those are civilians, and the effectiveness of their operations. It is not known, for example, how many people U.S. military assassins murder directly, and how many they kill indirectly by identifying them for drone strikes. Much of their activity is conducted, for example, in North Waziristan in northwest Pakistan which, as the N.Y. Times reported on April 4 "is virtually sealed from the outside world." 
More information, however, has emerged about the parallel and unprecedented mass mechanized assassinations being carried out by the C.I.A. drone programs. It is clear that they have already expanded far beyond the official cover story of targeting only "high-level insurgent leaders," and are killing increasing numbers of people.
Bishop Oscar Romero: not forgotten
The CIA, of course, is no novice at assassination. Future CIA Director William Colby's Operation Phoenix program in South Vietnam gave South Vietnamese police quotas of the number of civilians to be murdered on a weekly and monthly basis, eventually killing 20-50,000 people. CIA operatives such as Latin American Station Chef Duane "Dewey" Clarridge also established, trained and operated local paramilitary and death squads throughout Central and Latin America that brutally tortured and murdered tens of thousands of civilians, most notably in El Salvador where CIA-trained and -directed killers murdered Archbishop Romero and countless other Salvadorans.
But the present CIA assassination program in Pakistan and elsewhere is different not only because it is Americans who are themselves the assassins, but because of the unprecedented act of conducting mechanized mass assassination from the air. The CIA, as Nick Turse has reported for TomDispatch.com, is exponentially increasing its drone assassination program:  "(Drone) Reapers flew 25,391 hours (in 2009). This year, the air force projects that the combined flight hours of all its drones will exceed 250,000 hours. More flight time will, undoubtedly, mean more killing." 
Not concerned about drones? Coming soon to your locale: this Microdrone is one of many kinds currently being manufactured to provide "police protection" for civilians across America, Europe and Asia.
There were already signs in 2009, when drone strikes were a fraction of what they are now, that they were striking large numbers of civilians and proving militarily and politically counterproductive. Most Pakistanis believe it is largely civilians who are being killed, and anti-American hatred is growing accordingly. A Gallup poll conducted in July 2009, based on 2,500 face-to-face interviews, found that "only 9 percent of Pakistanis supported the drone strikes." A Global Research study documented the drone murder of 123 civilians in January 2010 alone.
A particularly significant indication of the drone strikes' military ineffectiveness has come from Colonel David Kilcullen, a key Petraeus advisor in Iraq, who testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on May 23, 2009, that, "Since 2006, we've killed 14 senior Al Qaeda leaders using drone strikes; in the same time period, we've killed 700 Pakistani civilians in the same area. We need to call off the drones."
Kilcullen's testimony was ignored, however, and as drone strikes have not only been continued but exponentially increased, there are increasing signs that they have vastly increased the scope of the killing far beyond the claimed "high-level insurgent leaders." The N.Y. Times reported on Aug. 14:
[The CIA has] broadened its drone campaign beyond selective strikes against Qaeda leaders and now regularly obliterates suspected enemy compounds and logistics convoys, just as the military would grind down an enemy force.
The CIA received approval to target a wider range of targets in Pakistan's tribal areas, including low-level fighters whose identities may not be known, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. Former intelligence officials acknowledged that in many, if not most cases, the CIA had little information about the foot soldiers killed in the strikes.
What this means is clear: the CIA is assassinating an expanding number of "low-level" people, labeling them as "fighters," but has little if any idea of who they really are. The history of such mechanized campaigns from the air, such as Laos where I have studied the U.S. 1964-'73 air war intensively, is that increased warfare from the air inevitably becomes increasingly indiscriminate, destroying civilian and military targets alike. As the drone program continues to expand, it will inevitably wind up killing more civilians -- and, if McChrystal is right, exponentially create more people committed to killing Americans.
Numerous moral, legal and ethical objections have been raised to this program of mass assassination. Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions, has stated that "this strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions."
The notion that a handful of U.S. military and CIA officials have the right to unilaterally and secretly murder anyone they choose in any nation on earth, without even outside knowledge let alone oversight, is deeply troubling to anyone with a conscience, belief in democracy, or respect for international law. It was precisely such behavior that made the Gestapo and Soviet secret police symbols of evil. Since the U.S. Congress has never reined in an Executive Branch that has routinely ignored international law since 1945, however, it is likely that the question of whether this program will be continued will be determined by its perceived effectiveness, not its morality. 
The evidence is mounting that U.S. assassinations are so ineffective they are actually strengthening anti-American forces in Pakistan. Bruce Reidel, a counterinsurgency expert who coordinated the Afghan review for President Obama, said: "The pressure we've put on (jihadist forces) in the past year has also drawn them together, meaning that the network of alliances is growing stronger not weaker."
Reidel's striking conclusion that jihadi forces in Pakistan are stronger after six years of drone airstrikes that the CIA claims are weakening them, is echoed by numerous other reports indicating that General Petraeus' strategy of using military force against Al Qaeda, Afghan and local insurgent forces in Pakistan has pushed them further east from isolated northwest areas into major cities like Karachi, where they operate freely and work together far more closely than before. The general's miscalculations regarding Pakistan are reason enough for him to be replaced.
In the long run, General Petraeus' strategy of expanding both ground and mechanized assassination throughout the 1.3 billion-strong Muslim world is likely to do the greatest disservice to his country's interests. It is true that U.S. leaders have used local forces to assassinate tens of thousands since 1945 and that while these programs were largely ineffectual, they did not lead to attacks on American soil.
But 9/11 has changed the calculus. It is clear that in today's wired and globalized world, marked by large-scale immigration, cheap telecommunications and airline travel, where crude technologies like car bombs or IEDs can be as easily detonated in New York as in Kandahar, and where America's enemies are growing increasingly technologically sophisticated even as nuclear weapons proliferate and become miniaturized, it is the height of folly to foment geometrically growing anti-American hatred in the volatile Muslim world.
A growing number of military and counterinsurgency experts support Colonel Kilcullen's belief that these assassination programs abroad are not protecting Americans at home. Both the "Underwear" and the "Times Square" bombers attributed their attempts to blow up Americans to their anger at the drone strikes. While Americans were saved by their incompetence, the U.S. may not be so lucky the next time, and the time after that. One thing is crystal clear: inflaming anti-American hatred throughout the Muslim world can only exponentially increase the numbers of those committed to killing Americans.
Such fears are increasing in Washington, as the N.Y. Times reported in the wake of the Times Square bombing:
A new, and disturbing, question is being raised in Washington: Have the stepped-up attacks in Pakistan -- notably the Predator drone strikes -- actually made Americans less safe? Are they inspiring more attacks on America than they prevent? As one American intelligence official said, "Those attacks (on two Pakistani Taliban leaders) have made it personal for the Pakistani Taliban -- so it's no wonder they are beginning to think about how they can strike back at targets here."
As General Petraeus and the U.S. military "make it personal" to increasing number of people throughout the Muslim world, they are recklessly sowing a whirlwind for which many of us, our children and grandchildren may well pay with our lives for decades to come.
It is difficult for most Americans to grasp the fact that their leaders' incompetence -- Republican and Democrat, civilian and military -- poses one of the single greatest threats to their own safety. But only when Americans do so will there be any hope of making America more secure in the dangerous years to come.
A clear place to begin protecting America is to abandon the assassination approach to war, ditch General Petraeus, end the military and CIA's focus on worldwide and mechanized mass assassination, and halt its reckless expansion of U.S. war-making into nuclear-armed Pakistan and so much more of the Muslim world.

Final Note: Duane 'Dewey' Clarridge: The True Face of U.S. Policy Toward the Muslim World
We'll intervene whenever we decide it's in our national security interest. And if you don't like it, lump it. Get used to it, world!" -- Duane Clarridge, interviewed by John Pilger in "The War on  Democracy"
As the N.Y. Times reported, Clarridge is presently advising CIA assassination efforts in Pakistan. ("Duane R. Clarridge, a profane former C.I.A. officer who ran operations in Central America and was indicted in the Iran-contra scandal, turned up this year helping run a Pentagon-financed private spying operation in Pakistan.") Watch an extraordinary three-minute video interview with Clarridge that reveals the true face of U.S. policy in the Muslim world.
Fred Branfman, the editor of “Voices From the Plain of Jars: Life Under an Air War” (Harper & Row, 1972), exposed the U.S. secret air war while living in Laos from 1967 to 1971.
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Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Libertarian Economics Is Anti-Christian

G.K. Chesterton
THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: The great Anglo-Catholic convert to Rome, G. K. Chesterton, said the following about economics and politics. "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."

Karl Marx
With that in mind I would like to turn our attention to economics. There are basically two schools of economics at work in the modern world. The first comes to us from Karl Marx in the form of Socialism, and we are all too familiar with the rabid Christophobia associated with that. How many millions of Christians died under the oppression of forced Socialist (i.e. Communist and Fascist) regimes during the 20th century? I suppose only God knows. Socialism is a total failure economically.  It has raped the taxpayers of every country it's influenced.  While it simultaneously drained their national treasuries to nothing, leaving them only with debt.  In America we see these very same ideas embraced by progressive universities, the entertainment industry and the Democratic Party.  During the 20th century, socialist policies enacted in the United States eventually brought the world's last remaining superpower to it's knees economically.  The progressive Democrat government put in place in 2008 has only exacerbated the problem.  As of 2010, over 56% of the U.S. federal budget was spent on "entitlement" programs, which are essentially socialist ponzi schemes, while the government ran a federal deficit of $1.17 trillion to pay for them.  The U.S. now faces a debt crisis that threatens to undermine it's very sovereignty.  So as the world ever so slowly begins to understand the failures of Marx, it gradually turns to another guru of economic despair - Ludwig Von Mises.

Ludwig Von Mises
Ludwig Von Mises was the founder of the Austro-Libertarian school of economics. The Von Mises school of thought advocates minimal to zero government intervention in economics with maximum free trade on a global level. In America, it's an idea that is frequently promoted on conservative talk radio, and there are many advocates within the Republican Party. The Libertarian Party is practically based on it. Many see it as the exact opposite of Socialism, and therefore the cure to what ails us in this post-Socialist environment. Sadly, there are problems, and this is not the "fix" many are hoping for.  Austro-Libertarian policies are what gave us NAFTA and GATT.  These are free trade deals that allow American corporations to outsource their workforce, making products in other countries for a fraction of the cost, then selling them back to Americans with no tariffs to lower their profit.  It puts Americans out of work, and rewards companies for hiring virtual "slave labor" overseas.

The only Christian voice that has truly tackled the issue of economics in the modern world is that of the Catholic Church. From the social encyclicals of the popes, we see that what the Church advocates is something akin to what G. K. Chesterton called "Distributism." In today's terminology, it might better be described as "Micro-Capitalism." Perhaps the term "Distributed-Capitalism" may be another way of putting it. By this is meant the free market. But the market is not truly "free" if it is dominated by a handful of men who have cornered it with monopolies. In this sense, the government truly does have a role in economics in the form of protecting the free market from those few powerful businesses that would seek to crush the free market trade of smaller businesses. For the most widely distributed ownership of property, via legitimate free market trade at a local level, is the most sure safeguard against widespread poverty and dependency. It is also the most consistent producer of charity for the poor among individuals. The problem with Austro-Libertarian economics is that a locally controlled market is lost to international free traders and cutthroat competition coming from the "big box" retail outlets.

Christopher A. Ferrara
Thomas E. Woods
To make matters worse however, the founder of this school of thought was just as Anti-Catholic and Christophobic as the father of Socialism - Karl Marx himself. Mises, like so many of his followers today, failed to understand the nuance of Catholic Social Doctrine, describing it as authoritarian in nature, and even going so far as to accuse the Catholic Church of embracing Socialism for it's own self interest.  While it is fair to say that both Catholic and Protestant individuals have in the past abused Church social teaching for Socialist ends, it is not true to say that the Church itself in any way supports Socialism.  In fact, the Holy See has a reputation of excommunicating Socialists masquerading as theologians, and has actually condemned all forms of collectivism in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  This is a "straw-man" logical fallacy, used by Mises to justify his own philosophy and malign Catholic Social Doctrine.  The following are excerpts from the Ludwig Von Mises Institute. They were compiled as a reference for a heated exchange between Christopher A. Ferrara, author and President of the American Catholic Lawyers Association, and respected historian Dr. Thomas E. Woods, both practicing Catholics.  Dr. Woods, a scholar and author, has sided with the Von Mises perspective on economics and has written some articles in defense of it.  While Mr. Ferrara has faithfully held to the traditional Catholic perspective of the popes. In this open written exchange, Ferrara takes Woods to task on his departure from the traditional Catholic understanding of social teaching and calls upon him to reconsider his views. Drawing from the Ludwig Von Mises Institute's website as a source, Ferrara demonstrates the blatantly anti-Catholic and Christophobic position of Mises and his Austro-Libertarian school of economics.

The source of this text (and accompanying open letter) can be found HERE.

LUDWIG VON MISES

VERSUS

CHRIST, THE GOSPEL AND THE CHURCH
From Chapter 29 of Socialism
1. Jesus’ preaching of a Kingdom to come destroys all social ties:
The expectation of God’s own reorganization when the time came and the exclusive transfer of all action and thought to the future Kingdom of God, made Jesus’s teaching utterly negative. He rejects everything that exists without offering anything to replace it. He arrives at dissolving all existing social ties….
2. Jesus is like the Bolshevists:
His zeal in destroying social ties knows no limits. The motive force behind the purity and power of this complete negation is ecstatic inspiration and enthusiastic hope of a new world. Hence his passionate attack upon everything that exists. Everything may be destroyed because God in His omnipotence will rebuild the future order. No need to scrutinize whether anything can be carried over from the old to the new order, because this new order will arise without human aid. It demands therefore from its adherents no system of ethics, no particular conduct in any positive direction. Faith and faith alone, hope, expectation—that is all he needs. He need contribute nothing to the reconstruction of the future, this God Himself has provided for. The clearest modern parallel to the attitude of complete negation of primitive Christianity is Bolshevism. The Bolshevists, too, wish to destroy everything that exists because they regard it as hopelessly bad. But they have in mind ideas, indefinite and contradictory though they may be, of the future social order. They demand not only that their followers shall destroy all that is, but also that they pursue a definite line of conduct leading towards the future Kingdom of which they have dreamt. Jesus teaching in this respect, on the other hand, is merely negation.
3. Jesus despises the rich, inciting the world to violence against them and their property, and His teaching has borne “evil seed”:
One thing of course is clear, and no skilful interpretation can obscure it. Jesus words are full of resentment against the rich, and the Apostles are no meeker in this respect. The Rich Man is condemned because he is rich, the Beggar praised because he is poor. The only reason why Jesus does not declare war against the rich and preach revenge on them is that God has said: “Revenge is mine.”
In God’s Kingdom the poor shall be rich, but the rich shall be made to suffer. Later revisers have tried to soften the words of Christ against the rich, of which the most complete and powerful version is found in the Gospel of Luke, but there is quite enough left to support those who incite the world to hatred of the rich, revenge, murder and arson. Up to the time of modern Socialism no movement against private poverty which has arisen in the Christian world has failed to seek authority in Jesus, the Apostles, and the Christian Fathers, not to mention those who, like Tolstoy, made the Gospel resentment against the rich the very heart and soul of their teaching.
This is a case in which the Redeemer’s words bore evil seed. More harm has been done, and more blood shed, on account of them than by the persecution of heretics and the burning of witches. They have always rendered the Church defenseless against all movements which aim at destroying human society….
4. The Church, not Enlightenment liberalism, cleared the way for Socialism:
…. It would be foolish to maintain that Enlightenment, by undermining the religious feeling of the masses, had cleared the way for Socialism. On the contrary, it is the resistance which the Church has offered to the spread of liberal ideas which has prepared the soil for the destructive resentment of modern socialist thought. Not only has the Church done nothing to extinguish the fire, it has even blown upon the embers….
5. Christian doctrine is destructive of society, prohibits concern for sustenance and work, preaches hatred of the family, and even endorses castration:
…. So it is that Christian doctrine, once separated from the context in which Christ preached it—expectation of the imminent Kingdom of God—can be extremely destructive. Never and nowhere can a system of social ethics embracing social co-operation be built up on a doctrine which prohibits any concern for sustenance, and work, while it expresses fierce resentment against the rich, preaches hatred of the family, and advocates voluntary castration.
6. The Gospel played no part in the building of Western civilization:
The cultural achievements of the Church in its centuries of development are the work of the Church, not of Christianity. It is an open question how much of this work is due to the civilization inherited from the Roman state and how much to the idea of Christian love completely transformed under the influence of the Stoics and other ancient philosophers. The social ethics of Jesus have no part in this cultural development. The Church's achievement in this case was to render them harmless, but always only for a limited period of time….
7. Because it opposes liberalism, the Church is an enemy of society:
The fate of Civilization is involved. For it is not as if the resistance of the Church to liberal ideas was harmless. The Church is such a tremendous power that its enmity to the forces which bring society into existence would be enough to break our whole culture into fragments. In the last decades we have witnessed with horror its terrible transformation into an enemy of society. For the Church, Catholic as well as Protestant, is not the least of the factors responsible for the prevalence of destructive ideals in the world today
8. Liberalism is superior to Christianity and has restored humanity by overthrowing the Church, which is why the Church hates it:
Historically it is easy to understand the dislike which the Church has shown for economic liberty and political Liberalism in any form. Liberalism is the flower of that rational enlightenment which dealt a deathblow to the regime of the old Church and from which modern historical criticism has sprung. It was Liberalism that undermined the power of the classes that had for centuries been closely bound up with the Church. It transformed the world more than Christianity had ever done. It restored humanity to the world and to life. It awakened forces which shook the foundations of the inert traditionalism on which Church and creed rested. The new outlook caused the Church great uneasiness, and it has not yet adjusted itself to even the externals of the modern epoch.
9. Christianity has become a religion of hate, seeking to destroy the “wonderful new world” of liberalism:
True, the priests in Catholic countries sprinkle holy water on newly laid railways and dynamos of new power stations, but the professed Christian still shudders inwardly at the workings of a civilization which his faith cannot grasp. The Church strongly resented modernity and the modern spirit. What wonder, then, that it allied itself with those whom resentment had driven to wish for the break-up of this wonderful new world, and feverishly explored its well-stocked arsenal for the means to denounce the earthly struggle for work and wealth. The religion which called itself the religion of love became a religion of hatred in a world that seemed ripe for happiness. Any would-be destroyers of the modern social order could count on finding a champion in Christianity.
10. Because they follow the Gospel and have not been “inoculated” with liberal philosophy, priests and monks are the enemies of society:
Priests and monks who practiced true Christian charity, ministered and taught in hospitals and prisons and knew all there was to know about suffering and sinning humanity—these were the first to be ensnared by the new gospel of social destruction. Only a firm grasp of liberal philosophy could have inoculated them against the infectious resentment which raged among their protégés and was justified by the Gospels. As it was, they became dangerous enemies of society. From the work of charity sprang hatred of society.
11. The Church and the Papacy seek to enslave men by depriving them of reason and the spiritual freedom of capitalism:
The Church knows that it cannot win unless it can seal the fount from which its opponent continues to draw inspiration. As long as rationalism and the spiritual freedom of the individual are maintained in economic life, the Church will never succeed in fettering thought and shepherding the intellect in the desired direction. To do this it would first have to obtain supremacy over all human activity. Therefore it cannot rest content to live as a free Church in a free state [the very slogan of Cavour, the great Masonic enemy of the Church and Blessed Pius IX - CAF]; it must seek to dominate that state. The Papacy of Rome and the Protestant national churches both fight for such dominion as would enable them to order all things temporal according to their ideals. The Church can tolerate no other spiritual power. Every independent spiritual power is a menace to it, a menace which increases in strength as the rationalization of life progresses.
12. Christianity needs socialism in order to maintain theocracy against the threat of “independent production”:
Now independent production does not tolerate any spiritual over-lordship. In our day, dominion over the mind can only be obtained through the control of production. All Churches have long been dimly aware of this, but it was first made clear to them when the socialist idea, rising from an independent source, made itself felt as a powerful and rapidly growing force. It then dawned upon the Churches that theocracy is only possible in a socialist community.
13. The Church must “transform” itself by embracing capitalism rather than papal teaching, such as that of Pius XI:
If the Roman Church is to find any way out of the crisis into which nationalism has brought it, then it must be thoroughly transformed. It may be that this transformation and reformation will lead to its unconditional acceptance of the indispensability of private ownership in the means of production. At present it is still far from this, as witness the recent encyclical Quadragesimo anno.

Through the Wormhole (2010)



Hosted by Morgan Freeman, Through the Wormhole series tries to find answers for essential questions about our existence and the universe, and brings together the experts from different fields.

It's nice to listen some nonbeliever scientists but most of the time it is brought into question "well-balanced universe" but I think this only helps to boost teleological argument. And I hate to see this ridiculous "God helmet" thing in science documentaries. I don't understand how can this prove God?



- ENGLISH SUBTITLES INCLUDED -

Episode 1 - Is there a Creator?

http://www.fileserve.com/file/VkR2Ds3


http://www.rapidshare.com/files/427368234/Through.the.Wormhole.S01E01.Is.There.a.Creator.HDTV.XviD-FQM.rar


Episode 2 - The Riddle of Black Holes

http://www.fileserve.com/file/T9r3USa


http://www.rapidshare.com/files/427377050/Through.the.Wormhole.S01E02.The.Riddle.of.Black.Holes.HDTV.XviD-MOMENTUM.rar


Episode 3 - Is Time Travel Possible?

http://www.fileserve.com/file/eaQnHTc


http://www.rapidshare.com/files/427387408/Through.the.Wormhole.S01E03.Is.Time.Travel.Possible.HDTV.XviD-MOMENTUM.rar


Episode 4- What Happened Before the Beginning?

http://www.fileserve.com/file/7r8E7gV


http://www.rapidshare.com/files/427293721
/Through.the.Wormhole.S01E04.What.Happened.Before.the.Beginning.HDTV.XviD-MOMENTUM.rar



Episode 5 - How Did We Get Here?

http://www.fileserve.com/file/ngcG8N7


http://www.rapidshare.com/files/427314508/Through.the.Wormhole.S01E05.How.Did.We.Get.Here.RERIP.HDTV.XviD-MOMENTUM.rar


Episode 6 - Are We Alone?

http://www.fileserve.com/file/tPS2HzC


http://www.rapidshare.com/files/427332157/Through.the.Wormhole.S01E06.Are.We.Alone.HDTV.XviD-MOMENTUM.rar


Episode 7 - What Are We Really Made of?

http://www.fileserve.com/file/KPea7Gw


http://www.rapidshare.com/files/427347534/Through.the.Wormhole.S01E07.What.Are.We.Really.Made.Of.HDTV.XviD-MOMENTUM.rar


Episode 8 - Beyond the Darkness?

http://www.fileserve.com/file/pbBEnxv


http://www.rapidshare.com/files/427358119/Through.the.Wormhole.S01E08.Beyond.the.Darkness.HDTV.XviD-MOMENTUM.rar

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

GORDON DUFF: WHEN WILL THE CRIMES OF 9/11 END?

GORDON DUFF: WHEN WILL THE CRIMES OF 9/11 END?
October 16, 2010 posted by Gordon Duff 

DISINFORMATION, SPYING, INTIMIDATION, THE BIGGEST COVER-UP IN AMERICAN HISTORY
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
9 years after 9/11, American drug production in Afghanistan has gone from zero to 92% of world output.  Calling the drug business there anything but “American” is a lie.  We don’t just “turn way,” we are in it up to our necks, maybe deeper.  Last week we learned that USAID, part of the Department of State, was supplying fertilizer for opium production.  Testimony that implicates every level of the American government in drug dealing, corruption and even complicity in terrorism has been ignored or suppressed for years.  The American government, in concert with the powerful Israel lobby, is working to silence citizen dissent, suppress “open source” information and control, not just the media but every form of human communication beyond the guarded whisper.

No police state in history is guilty of more.

In particular, I recently read the most recent additions to Dimitri  Khalezov’s book on 9/11.  Khalezov was a Russian “special weapons” officer.  This led his examination to look at applications of advanced technologies tied to the application of particle physics, fission and fusion weapons and “Star Wars” technology which he has a unique understanding of.  What was enjoyable was his non-dogmatic approach.  There are so many theories around regarding 9/11, with government paid “shills” coming up with a new and crazier version almost weekly.  For every pronouncement about Al Qaeda and hijackers the government makes overtly, they make ten pronouncements about space aliens and cosmic death rays on the internet.

We know they do it, they have been caught repeatedly.  These are the actions of a police state.

I am not ready to comprehensively discuss all the reasons that 9/11 is such a disgusting subject.  Suffice it to say that the naked lies the government has foisted on the public for so long are both irrational and patently insane.  This is where Khalezov shines.  He has a way of cutting through the manure.

It is funny to read a Russian discuss 9/11.  One area that we can deal with today and, perhaps, put one minor thing to rest is how the World Trade Center was built and why an aircraft, why 500 aircraft could never hurt it.  Oh, you say, the plane flew right through the building, passing through the thin glass windows and out the other side.

Yup, that’s how it seemed.

How Khalezov describes the outer walls of the WTC is though comparison with a World War II T-34 Russian Tank.  His point is that each of the beams that made up the outside of the building, spaced 3 feet apart, had four sides, each not only harder but thicker than the armor on a tank.  The analogies used by Khalezov were compelling.
His first point, of course, is that anti-tank rounds are never made of aluminum.  You don’t use aluminum knives. 

 Aluminum can’t cut steel.

We could go further:  Crashing a Boeing 767 into 20 massive 4 sided hardened steel girders, highly supported and interlaced, cutting through them and eventually bringing down the largest building in the world would be the equivalent of throwing a beer can at a garbage truck.

Want more?  Cutting a steel knife with a piece of cheese?

Derailing a freight train with a thrown marshmallow?  OK, that one is a bit much, but you get the picture.  Aircraft are made of lightweight and very thin aluminum.  The WTC had a massive outer wall of heavy steel, thick enough to armor a tank, a similar center structure around the core and a second wall for a plane to pass through.  No possible amount of aluminum in any shape or configuration at 400 miles per hour or 2000 miles per hour could pass through one steel beam much less dozens.

Pages are spent describing this point nobody has discussed other than Khalezov.  It is clear that Khalezov and David Ray Griffin don’t see “eye to eye” on the methods used to bring the building down.  In many ways, it is a shame that there is a more powerful need to deal with the science before we deal with the criminal intent, especially finding those responsible.  I respect both men for the work they have done and their disagreement is an honest one.  That both manage to disagree with each other and still humiliate the government’s fabrication is both curious and compelling.

On this point all are in agreement.  Khalezov is emphatic that the wildest possible conspiracy theory involves box cutters, hijackers and  a massive building “pancaking” to the ground in total free fall while enough steel to build a naval fleet turns into dust. No idiot could believe that, a “hare brained” lie that has proven to be assembled from planted witnesses, misquotes and total fabrications.

If even one of these things were a factor, it would be evidence of a criminal conspiracy.  That all are present, that and the massive government spy operation directed against those seeking the truth, an operation that takes up an entire department header by Cass Sonnenstein, with a title that unavoidably sounds like “Reichs Minister of Propaganda,” we can say “case closed.”  We can also say with some certainty, “No Muslims were harmed in the making of this picture.”

I don’t plan on going there but something haunts me.  Nobody has seen or heard from Osama bin Laden since 2001.  Benazir Bhutto says he was killed then.  Intelligence officials from several countries confirm this privately.  Yet we have a hundred thousand people looking for him, nearly 5,000 have died hunting him after his death was confirmed, as reliable sources tell us.

On the other hand, the “suicide hijackers” we claim were on the planes on 9/11 seem to be, not only alive, but are thinking of suing the networks for being refused entry into the country to go on talk shows.  How can we have dead hijackers kept out of the country because they are on terrorist watch lists?  Doesn’t that stop when you die?

What kind of place are we running here?

But, we are here to talk dissolving steel, magically plummeting buildings and government misconduct.  When the NIST stated that the WTC “pancaked” they misrepresented the amount of concrete in the upper stories.  There was nothing to collapse, only vertical steel, no huge concrete walls, no pillars made of concrete and only thin concrete floors.  They lied.

Almost all the concrete in the buildings is in the foundation, there is little in the upper floors.  They are steel.  It would be like dissolving several aircraft carriers and seeing them blow away with the wind, except this is exactly what we saw.  However, we have seen one other steel building, the Windsor Building, in Madrid, burn for 24 hours.  This building was nowhere as strong and burned, not one hour but for at least a day.

The “government’ runs a website at www.america.gov meant to “debunk” 9/11.  They refer to an article from Popular Science and a study done by the National Institute of Standards.  Few scientists will stand by any of this anymore, they are all either onboard with “9/11 Truth” or protecting their careers with silence.
When we talk about steel no plane could ever penetrate, the NIST does supply a nice photo, though.
My recommendation is to read the book, not because I agree with it or everything it says.  Simply read it because it provides many relevant points, and some clear warnings about how serious government interference has been in the process of finding the truth.

Every lie, every infiltrated group, every bit of ridiculous pseudo-science proves one thing.  

9/11 was an inside job and those responsible are still pulling the strings in America.
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About Gordon Duff: Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, and Senior Editor at Veterans Today. His career has included extensive experience in international banking along with such diverse areas as consulting on counter insurgency, defense technologies or acting as diplomatic officer of UN humanitarian groups. Gordon Duff's articles are published around the world and translated into a number of languages. He is regularly on TV and radio, a popular and sometimes controversial guest.
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