Cardinal Ravasi, act your age

A Cardinal of the Catholic Church extolling a third-rate Pop "star" is just about as embarrassing as a 75 year old woman wearing a mini-skirt.

Your Eminence, try to act a little dignified as you wear the robes of a Prince of the Church.

And try to act your age.

UPDATE:

Those renowned arbiters of cultural elegance at The New York Times have taken Father George Rutler to task, for having the backbone to call a spade a spade and castigating Ravasi, a cultural nincompoop, for waxing tearful over the death of Mr David Bowie.  Heavens.  Please, someone send some smelling salts to the Times.

Russia begins to free itself from Goldman Sachs

The dragon being stabbed may not be Goldman Sachs, but  they "are of their father, the devil".

It is encouraging to see this.  By uncoupling itself from giant Wall Street banks and the plutocrats who run them, Russia will be doing a service not only to Russia, but much of the rest of the world, including America.

F William Engdahl explains.

Russia has just taken significant steps that will break the present Wall Street oil price monopoly, at least for a huge part of the world oil market. The move is part of a longer-term strategy of decoupling Russia’s economy and especially its very significant export of oil, from the US dollar, today the Achilles Heel of the Russian economy.

Later in November the Russian Energy Ministry has announced that it will begin test-trading of a new Russian oil benchmark. While this might sound like small beer to many, it’s huge. If successful, and there is no reason why it won’t be, the Russian crude oil benchmark futures contract traded on Russian exchanges, will price oil in rubles and no longer in US dollars. It is part of a de-dollarization move that Russia, China and a growing number of other countries have quietly begun.

The setting of an oil benchmark price is at the heart of the method used by major Wall Street banks to control world oil prices. Oil is the world’s largest commodity in dollar terms. Today, the price of Russian crude oil is referenced to what is called the Brent price. The problem is that the Brent field, along with other major North Sea oil fields is in major decline, meaning that Wall Street can use a vanishing benchmark to leverage control over vastly larger oil volumes. The other problem is that the Brent contract is controlled essentially by Wall Street and the derivatives manipulations of banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP MorganChase and Citibank.
First appeared:http://journal-neo.org/2016/01/09/russia-breaking-wall-st-oil-price-monopoly/

Read the rest here.

Professor Gottfried re-thinks the Germans

For the last thirty years I have devoted my energies to defending the German people against a variety of charges directed against them by their leftist and neoconservative critics in the US and Germany. Many of the points that I’ve raised about the historical past don’t have to be amended, because they continue to be true, e.g., about the Allied responsibility for the outbreak of World War One,  the silliness of looking for Nazi ideas throughout the German past, and the brilliance of German philosophical and literary accomplishments. Nothing that is now occurring would cause me to revise my critical judgments about the grossly unjust Treaty of Versailles, the terror bombing of German cities during the last year of World War Two, the arrogant stupidity of the post-World War Two re-education of the German people carried out by the “Western democracies” and the kangaroo court held in Nuremberg in 1946 and 1947. These are not things that I feel impelled to reconsider.

What I am changing my mind about is whether the Germans are totally blameless for the antifascist horror into which they’ve descended. As German friends tell me, what transpired on New Year’s Eve, when over a thousand Near Eastern Muslims attacked 121 women near the central train station in Cologne, tore off their clothes and in some cases began to rape them, is only the “tip of the iceberg.” There have been hundreds of other incidents of violenceacross Germany that have been reported since Angela Merkel, to the near unanimous support of her Christian Democratic-captains, encouraged Muslim migrants to enrich her country by their presence. The German media have tried to hush up the embarrassing incidents or after the attacks in Cologne shifted the blame to the victims. Apparently the verbally abused and assaulted women didn’t “stay at arm’s length” from their attackers. It is hardly surprising that the police came belatedly to the crime scene or that Cologne’s feminist social democratic mayor, Henriette Reker, insists that the failure of the victims to maintain the proper distancefrom their attackers led to their fate. 

Read the whole article here.

Mr Soros, destroyer of Catholic Europe

Saving Energy

As a sensible American concerned about the environment and my personal carbon footprint I will be taking action this very night.  I will turn off my television when our supreme leader delivers his State of the Despotism speech.

Saving energy.  And my sanity.

In Bavaria, the Festival of the Eternal Adoration

It is pleasant to record that there are still old European Christmas and Epiphany traditions that have not been totally forgotten by Catholic people.

In Pottenstein, Bavaria:

https://www.rt.com/in-motion/328175-german-village-religious-fest/

Cardinal Koch, are you calling Our Lord....a liar?

I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No man cometh to the Father but by me.

Those are the words of Christ.  But now you are saying, Cardinal Koch, that the Jews have another way, and are not to be disturbed by Catholics who want to bring them to the Faith.  In the recent Joint Declaration you are saying that we must leave the Jews to their own devices and not to trouble them by helping them to see that it is only Christ who is the way, the truth and the life.

Are you suggesting that there is another way, one Jesus forgot to mention?  Or - dare I even think this - are you calling the Son of God a liar?

If you are saying the Jews, unbaptized, do not need Christ and Baptism you are calling Our Lord Jesus Christ a liar.  No amount of petty-fogging explanations or weasel words are going to hide the fact that if you believe what you put your name to you are engaging in an act bordering on apostasy.

Perhaps you and others in the Vatican who accept this nonsense are trying to snow us.  We are not fools, Your Eminence.  We cannot be snowed or fooled by these kinds of Joint Agreements which directly contradict the word of God.  No amount of nuance or clever wordplay will make us forget what Christ actually said.  You insult Catholics by expecting them to accept the rubbish that is your Joint Declaration of Catholics and Jews.

The Catholic faithful are simply fed up with you and who think like you in the Church.  If you seriously believe that a Jew can enter Heaven without Baptism and an acceptance of the one, true Faith you need to do the honest thing and resign from your position and spend some long years studying the Faith you have forgotten so much about.  And that includes any below you or above you who harbor the same false theology.

Christ said, "No man"; you are saying.....what, exactly?  That there is another way to the Father other than Our Lord?  Are you perhaps peddling that "dual covenant" horse manure?

Do you know the pitiable state of these poor souls?  St John Chrysostom knew.  Do you wish to leave these people in the state they are in, with no hope of seeing God when they die?  Is this the kind of "charity" and "mercy" the Church's leaders are now selling?  False charity, false mercy and rank sentimentality are not going to save souls.  Any souls.

I think we can assume that that ancient "fear of the Jews" is at the heart of this outrage.  At least have the intellectual honesty to admit that, if it is true.  Don't hide behind convoluted statements; speak clearly: you are frightened of them, of their power (which is immense), of their machinations which have brought misery not only upon peoples and cultures but on the very Church of Christ.  By your cowardice you feed this beast and forever prevent these poor souls of a chance at salvation.  By your cowardice you help to promote Jewish projects in the world, many of which are detrimental and revolutionary, such as the promotion of sodomy.  It is certainly beyond doubt that their media has propagandized for these outrages for decades.  Your refusal to tell them the truth only fosters more of these evils, these blasphemies, these murders.  Worse than all that, Your Eminence, you condemn these pitiful souls to Hell by not telling them the truth they must hear.

Does any of this weigh on your conscience?  Even denying the very words of the Son of God....this does not bother you?

Jesus Christ was quite explicit in what He said, leaving no room for private interpretation or any interpretation for that matter.  Nostra Aetate, and all its pomps and works, including this utterly false, mendacious and scandalous Joint Declaration, must be rejected by the Catholic Church if for no other reason than that there are souls at stake.

Christ commissioned His Church to teach all nations. I do not recall any Him exempting anyone at all from His command.  You are saying the Jews are exempt.

I ask Your Eminence then: who am I to believe, Jesus Christ or you?

You're probably not in good hands with Allstate

Proving once again that giant corporations are some of the biggest promoters of the queer revolution, the Allstate insurance giant has produced a new advert video on the joys of two dads and their "daughter".

You will forgive me for not providing any link to this.  I'd rather keep my lunch in my stomach where it belongs. You can check out the website of the Protestant organization the American Family Association for more details if you wish.  (Surely I must have missed all the Catholic organizations, priests, nuns and Bishops who have come to the fore mentioning this, and leading the charge.  I'll have to check again.)

Profits, of course, have nothing to do with this.  A big corporation is going to pander to a tiny minority of the country in order to make big bucks?  No, it is pure agenda-pushing as is quite obvious.  As the Indiana debacle of last year should have proven to any who still harbor any illusions that corporations are the greatest thing since sliced bread, Big Business is not on our side.

The response to this is eminently simple: sever your ties with Allstate, and any other affiliated companies or any other businesses that pander to sex perversion.  Dropping insurance companies is as simple as blowing your nose.  Say farewell to Allstate, and be sure and tell them why.

Big Business and Big Buggery are tripping down the lane hand-in-hand.  Let us be aware of that and act accordingly.

We still have the power of boycott; let's use it well.

Soros and the Refugees: The Chutzpah Chronicles

The Eye of Soros is upon you

Another good piece by F William Engdahl on the ubiquitous Mr Soros.

Since John D. Rockefeller was advised to protect his wealth from government taxation by creating a tax-exempt philanthropic foundation in 1913, foundations have been used by American oligarchs to disguise a world of dirty deeds under the cover “doing good for mankind,” known by the moniker “philanthropy” for mankind-loving. No less the case is that of George Soros who likely has more tax-exempt foundations under his belt than anyone around. His Open Society foundations are in every country where Washington wants to put ‘their man’ in, or at least get someone out who doesn’t know how to read their music. They played a key role in regime change in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe after 1989. Now his foundations are up to their eyeballs in promoting propaganda serving the US-UK war agenda for destroying stability in Syria as they did in Libya three years ago, creating the current EU refugee crisis.

We should take a closer look at the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis wreaking such havoc and unrest across the EU, especially in Germany, the favored goal of most asylum seekers today. George Soros, today a naturalized American citizen, has just authored a six-point proposal telling the European Union on what they must do to manage the situation. It’s worth looking at in detail.

He begins by stating, “The EU needs a comprehensive plan to respond to the crisis, one that reasserts effective governance over the flows of asylum-seekers so that they take place in a safe, orderly way…” He then says that, “First, the EU has to accept at least a million asylum-seekers annually for the foreseeable future.”
First appeared:http://journal-neo.org/2015/12/18/soros-plays-both-ends-in-syria-refugee-chaos/

Read the rest here: http://journal-neo.org/2015/12/18/soros-plays-both-ends-in-syria-refugee-chaos/

The Not-so-Great War still haunts us

The Churchill Legend 

by Patrick Foy

Last week a Palm Beach friend, a country club Republican, gave me a copy of the Weekly Standard. She urged me to read “A World in Crisis, what the thirties tell us about today” by its opinion editor, Matthew Continetti. The predicate of this overly long article seems to be that the fate of the universe hinged upon a little-known traffic accident involving Winston Churchill on the upper east side of Manhattan in the early 1930’s. Unlike a Thomas Hardy novel, in this instance a chance mishap worked out for the best. Or so Continetti would have the reader assume. 

Churchill was crossing Fifth Avenue at 76th Street in the late evening of December 13th, 1931 on his way to Bernard Baruch’s apartment for a pow-wow, when he looked the wrong way, crossed against the light, and was sideswiped by a car going 30 mph. The hapless statesman spent over a week in Lenox Hill hospital recovering from a sprained shoulder, some facial lacerations, and a mild concussion, all of which required a doctor’s prescription for “alcoholic spirits especially at meal times.” 

Mr. Continetti mentions “the granularity of history”, whatever that means. “…If the car had been traveling just a little bit faster, the history of the twentieth century would have been irrevocably altered.” True enough, but for the better or the worse? That is the question. 

Being a patriotic, informed and self-respecting American, I would normally not be caught in the same room with the Weekly Standard, anymore than I would waste time reading National Review online or be a subscriber to Commentary Magazine. All of them are members of the same Neocon,  faux conservative fraternity, which hijacked Washington, starting with H.W. Bush, in the aftermath of the Cold War and demolished any hope of a “peace dividend”. The Neocons and their dupes have been beating the drums for U.S. “exceptionalism” and for global military confrontation ever since. 

In varying degrees, Washington’s elected and unelected officials of every stripe and hue–from Bubba Bill Clinton and Madeleine “it’s worth it” Albright to G.W. “Charlie McCarthy” Bush and Dick “Edgar Bergen” Cheney to Drone Attack Obama and Hillary The Obliterator–all have danced to that same annoying drumbeat. In terms of career advancement, it has indeed been worth it for them. For the country, on the other hand, the results have been disastrous. These include inter alia the predictable 9/11 terrorist blowback from Arab nationalist/religious fanatics, and the ruinous, dead-end, unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Read the whole article here.