Concentration of forces is the most basic law of military science. Victory on the battlefield is won by amassing as many troops as possible at the key point of attack, or ‘schwehrpunkt,’ as it’s known in German.
Unfortunately, the amateur strategists in the White House seem to have been studying social anthropology and women’s issues instead of basic military science. What they want is, to use the term coined by Russian poet Yevtuschenko, a half war.
This week, Pentagon chief Ash Carter, announced the US would send about 200 more special forces troops to Iraq and Syrian to fight the Islamic State. After vowing not to send troops to the Mideast, President Obama has by now deployed 3,500 new US soldiers to Iraq for “training.”
The best way to lose or at least prolong a war is by committing penny packets of troops. The US did precisely this in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan – and lost all these wars. Now, we’re on to more half-measures in the Levant.
President Barack Obama’s first instincts to avoid any more wars were absolutely correct. But the course of political events and the Paris massacre have dragged him into more rather than less military misadventures in the Mideast and Afghanistan. Obama’s senior strategic advisors, Susan Rice and Samantha Power, have been steadily providing wrong-headed, even calamitous advice.
America’s mighty – perhaps almighty- military industrial complex, the Republican war party, neoconservatives and imperialists – keep impelling the US towards new wars in Ukraine, Iraq and Syria in spite of Obama’s desire to end America’s addiction to foreign conflicts. Some of these cranks want a full-blown war with nuclear-armed Russia.
While Mr Margolis is far too kind to our illustrious Emperor his article is well worth a look. Read the rest of the article here.
The internet is abuzz about a story from somewhere that the Synod Apostolic Exhortation was written prior to the Synod.
Did anyone think otherwise?
Those who did are not versed in the ways of propaganda, and the blog that is exploding this supposed "bombshell", as if it were a shocking revelation, might do better to study the mechanics of revolutions. Revolutions are not spontaneous uprisings; they are generally well-planned and orchestrated with brilliance. The actors are hand-picked, well-connected and amply financed.
That is not to say that things can't go wrong. They can. But as a rule when a PR campaign is prepared by skilled people - and the Synod was nothing but a pre-planned PR campaign - things generally flow along pretty smoothly. The examples of pre-planning on this farce were well in evidence from the get go: the questionnaires, the press releases, the conveniently leaked information, etc. A thoroughly professional job.
Playing people like violins is the special talent of propaganda artists.
We don't wish to burst any blog's bubble (they are colleagues after all) but this "revelation" or "bombshell" should really surprise no one who has been paying attention.
In Nairobi, the pope calls for “eliminating carbon use” on a continent where tens of millions of poor families burn wood to heat their homes and cook their food.
(He somehow failed to note that Jesus cooked fish for his apostles over burning coals).
Meanwhile, U.S. bishops join their colleagues to demand a binding global agreement on global warming, while the pope’s feckless Peronist sidekick insists that opponents of such an agreement are evil Tea Party members who make their living selling oil.
Not to be outdone, New York’s Cardinal Dolan, faced with the most antiCatholic administration in living memory, pleads with Obama: “Mr. President, we want to be with you, we want to be strong” – in fact, he insists, America’s bishops long to be Obama’s “cheerleaders!”
As one has come to expect, Easter and Christmas bring about the usual Jewish blasphemies against Jesus Christ, and Catholicism, and anything smacking of the sacred. They occur everywhere, magazines, television, movies PBS "specials", the lot. I believe it is time we call out these people for what they are: the Jews and those who serve them are mockers of God.
We have been trained, so to speak, to avoid these issues or else to speak in hushed, careful tones about them out of fear of being called names or worse. The bombardment of propaganda intended to silence Christians while Our Lord is being ridiculed has been enormously successful: only very few will bring up the subject at all. Regular visitors to this blog know that I occasionally point out Jewish complicity in many of the ills in the world, from the wars and terrorism they are promoting, to the promotion of sodomy, to the attacks on the person of Our Lord and Blessed Mary. I try to do it gently, with a huge dose of irony, and always with the intention that these blind people will come to their senses and accept their birth right, the Catholic faith. But perhaps it is now time to speak more frankly to these people, who are never going to see God in the face due to their rejection and hatred of His Son and whose eternal destiny is too horrible to contemplate.
Now in release out of the Jewish-owned entertainment industry comes a little gem called, "The Night Before". I avoid modern films like I avoid head lice so I wouldn't have even heard about it unless someone mentioned it. But a comment over at The Unz Review reads thus:
You left Hollywood off that list. We used to have to suffer through such sentimental, second-rate movies like It’s a Wonderful Life. Fortunately we can now enjoy first-rate Christmas movies like The Night Before (Directed by Jonathan Levine; produced by Seth Rogan, Evan Goldberg; written by Ariel Shaffir, Evan Goldberg, Jonathan Levine; starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogan, Lizzy Caplan, et al.), which has a touching scene of Rogan mocking Jesus on the cross and throwing up in the aisle during consecration of the Eucharist during midnight Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Note well the names of the people involved in it. Aside from being a group of non-talents they are all Jews. What, I wonder, is the opinion of those innocent Jews out there who don't necessarily have any overt animosity towards Christians yet must realize that at some point there is going to be a backlash against all this? Biblical historians might well ask, Don't they ever learn?
So where does this leave us at this point in time?
At an absolute minimum we should be expecting to hear something, anything, from Church leaders despite the fact that the Church made peace with "the world" officially in 1962-1965. Will Los Angeles prelate Gomez speak out bravely and publicly, naming names, about such cheap little blasphemies? How about Cardinal Dolan, in whose diocese many scenes of this movie were shot?
Was an actual Catholic church used in the scene referred to above, or was it a studio mock-up? If it was an actual church, which one was it, and who gave these cretins permission to film there?
Personally, I grow weary of Jewish mocking of Christ and His Church and am using my little space on the internet to say so. Christian charity demands that I tell them that unless they are baptized, and unless they enter the one, true Church, their final end is damnation. It is frankly that simple.
For two thousand years they have been battling the Church in a futile effort to destroy her. They have used many artifices to accomplish this and, unfortunately, have had some success. Pray for them. And pray for the leaders of the Church who once had the courage and charity to say what had to be said, as did holy priests, like Padre Pio:
"Jews are enemies of God and foes of our holy Religion."
And pray, too, for the audiences who attend this movie, and laugh and enjoy themselves. Mr Belloc, of course, has a word to say to those people. The following quote has been ignored or misunderstood for decades. Even today's war-mongers misuse it to defend their annihilations of nations. But it was not intended for that; it was intended for the mockers and those who enjoy their mockings.
We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.
Pope Francis if he would stop, think, look around him and ponder what is happening to the Church and the world, might take notice of something that is slowly but surely gaining ground in post-Communist Russia. Russia is a nation still suffering from problems, and a recent century-long occupation by an alien thing known as Communism, but the signs of its healing are unmistakable to anyone who will look at the situation with brutal honesty.
The West, the post-Catholic West, is crumbling morally, religiously and civilizationally while post-Communist Russia is rediscovering its Christian past. The leaders of the West, the anti-Christian Western powers exemplified by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and its hangers-on, have declared "spiritual war" on Russia, and as the days and months continue so does the animus towards this resurging Christian nation intensify.
The Russian Orthodox has its problems, to be sure. The Caesaro-papism of their outlook is preventing to a large extent its reunion with Peter's Chair. We Catholics know that reunion will happen in God's good time, but sensible people cannot see any hope for a reunion until first the Catholic Church finally does what Russia and its Orthodox Church has done, namely: return to its roots. Writer Frank Gashumba notes:
For the modern outsider, Orthodoxy may appear a confronting relic of the past: a highly ritualistic liturgy suggesting an imprisonment to empty tradition; a disturbing refusal to embrace such modern imperatives as gender-neutrality, the men obstreperously growing their beards long with the women underfoot meekly covering their heads; no guitars, rock ‘n’ roll or a general concern to become relevant and get with the program. In a word, an insouciant disregard for the importunate demands of the world.
There is the stone wall presented to us in all its clarity. The leaders in the Vatican are doing precisely what the Russian Orthodox are not, Rome wants to get warm with the world, Orthodoxy in Russia does not. Rome has embraced the world which is why Pope Francis is so admired by the world; it is also why the world hates Russia and its re-emerging Christianity and wants to destroy her by any means possible, including using Syria as a catalyst to start a world war to destroy the Russian nation. All wars are religious, and so is this one.
Unlike Orthodoxy Rome does not want to be seen as "a relic of the past", and so has since the swinging sixties destroyed the beauty and holiness of the Mass, ignored centuries-old expressions of piety, abandoned beauty in music, art, literature and architecture and has, well, totally embraced the world. And we have a Pope who is seemingly just fine with all this chaos.
If Pope Francis would study seriously what is slowly growing in Russia and act on it as the Vicar of Christ he is supposed to be he might yet save Europe and the Faith. If he wont, may God grant us mercy by removing him and replacing him with a man who will be hated the world.
In the interests of helping Pope Francis warn the faithful against priests who give him the creeps, and those who give him warm feelings, we offer this gallery of photos to help readers in identifying the types referred to by the Holy Father.
CREEPY PRIESTS:
Some weird old guy in Italy
Herbert Vaughan - they made him a Cardinal yet!
Creepy seminarian who justly wound up in a concentration camp
NON-CREEPY PRIESTS:
Who is he looking at? Or shouldn't I ask?
The distinguished Bishop ackerman
The ultra-manly and masculine James Martin
The noble Bernardin, while being devoured internally by AIDS
We trust this will be helpful to our readers in spotting the type of seminarian or priest our current Pope wishes us to avoid, and the type he likes very much.
Just to prove that Francis puts his money where his mouth is, here are two examples of fine, non-creepy men he has put into high positions:
Lucas, left, with that other permanent adolescent, Spielberg
The mind of movie guru George Lucas, a mind permanently fixed in a state of adolescence, will give birth in a few weeks to yet another rehash of his "Star Wars" obsession. Though he is not as "hands-on" in this latest production his rapidly greying eminence hangs over it like a pall.
Amused, we glance over the cast list, the likes of which I shall not dwell upon. The worst of it is to see so fine an actor as Max von Sydow wasting himself in such trivialities.
To say that we are being bombarded and bamboozled by the hype over this never-ending saga is to put it mildly. The hoopla to date would give one the impression that what we are witnessing is more important than the Second Coming. Such is the power of PR.
And such is the state of mind of the average person that the release of more junk like this is greeted as something almost holy. A glance at the average news outlet tells the story plainly: another helping of Lucas-bloated pabulum with mayonnaise is what the world is waiting to have poured over them.
And it is impossible to escape this. The upcoming release is drummed into our heads like a voodoo mantra, complete with drums and gyrating adherents, displayed everywhere we walk, work or (try to) relax. Am I the only person, film aficionado that I am, that finds this disturbing? Young people, our precious young people, are allowed by their parents to feed on this over-cooked and tasteless stew on a regular basis. "It's only a movie. Relax", they say. My answer to that would be, garbage in, garbage out.
Young people are having their own precious brains - not to mention, souls - addled by the addled brains in Hollywood. That is really what is going on here. Their young lives are being filled with eye-catching nonsense daily. Hourly. They are not allowed to develop either intellectually, emotionally or spiritually. They become obsessed with mere entertainments, so obsessed that the practical living of their lives is being adversely affected. Will they ever get serious about life? Plan for the future? Begin to realize that they will have to make it though life on their own without a light sabre or the help of The Force...or their parents?
To say they are being dumbed down would be a compliment. I vividly recall several occasions when I attended the screenings of some classic films of the past at a theatre that once specialized in these types of movies. The film(s) being shown were intelligently written and made, quite witty and in many cases edifying. During several particularly amusing moments which would draw laughs from those of us seasoned in the world of great films the baseball cap-wearing young people who normally feasted on modern movies, and who thought it might be nice to sample an "old film" for a change, would sit there in a dazed stupor, obviously too dull to appreciate examples of real humor. Tragic, really. When even a simple sense of humor is no longer being developed in our young folk we are edging closer to disaster.
A similar experience occurred when after recommending P.G. Wodehouse to an acquaintance who still enjoyed reading I was amazed at his reaction. He found the books boring and unfunny. I would suggest that anyone who finds Wodehouse unfunny is already deceased. Yet this fellow could not find a single story about Jeeves or Ukridge that amused him. In my own case this I can attest: that Mr Wodehouse is perhaps the only author I have ever read who makes me laugh literally out loud. Not my friend, though. But we must be tolerant and patient of such souls; I suppose anyone who finds the Junior High-level humor of The Simpsons funny, as he does, has already had his comic sensibilities bludgeoned out of him and would find reading Wodehouse similar in enjoyment to a journey to the Arctic without taking along a winter coat.
But to return to the infantilism that now characterizes the entertainment industry, and the forced-fed phenomena that is the release of the newest Lucas effort, it tells this writer how difficult a job it would be to help these dazed movie-goers get control of their lives and their futures. Too many times have I seen potential in young people being left to rot in the rain as their attention is drawn to these special effect baubles that dance on movie screens and televisions.
Would they tolerate a warning from someone who knows what he's talking about?
The late, great Sir Alec Guiness, who appeared (somewhat reluctantly) in the original "Star Wars" has some advice for young people who look upon these movies as idols:
I believe that Sir Alec has pronounced the final word on this obsession. Once and for all.
This coming Advent and Christmas Seasons will be better spent ignoring Hollywood. An antidote to the general hysteria over the release of the latest big screen rubbish? Wodehouse?Chesterton? Dickens? Maybe a Christmas concert? Whatever you choose, keep them out of the movie theatres.
