When Propaganda Becomes Farce

As an old movie director I really enjoy watching how "the usual suspects" try to bamboozle the public using what they believe to be cinematic tools.  That's my problem: I can smell fakery a mile away.

So come to see the merry masquers known to the Propaganda Machine as "The White Helmets"

Lights....camera.... action !

 
   

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/white-helmets-rescue-crisis-actor-mannequin-challenge-fakery/ri17843

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/11/how-white-helmets-videos-are-made.html

Since the USA has been caught here red-handed, I guess it must be some of that "fake news" we keep hearing about.

NATO's Nightmare: a German/Russian alliance.

       



             

James Larson examines the Dubia

"What has been missed in almost all of the critiques of Amoris Laetitia is that it is indeed constituted as a direct attack on the concept of Charity and Sanctifying Grace."

Paul confronts Peter by Rubens

[Editor: Another view of the Dubia Incident, from our friend, Mr James Larson.]

What Really Is At Stake?
The Letter of Four Cardinals to Pope Francis Concerning Amoris Laetitia

by James Larson

On November 14, 2016, four Cardinals (Walter Branmuller, Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffara, and Joachim Meisner) released a letter which they sent to Pope Francis on September 19, along with five “Dubia” (“doubts” or “questions”) in reference to the teaching of the Pope’s Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, and requesting that these dubia be answered and clarified by the Pope himself.

The letter went unanswered, and thus these Cardinals decided to publish both the letter and Dubia, along with a Foreword, and also an Explanatory Note which further elaborated on the five dubia, to the general public. This composite of documents they titled Seeking Clarity. A Plea to Untie the Knots in “Amoris Laetitia”.

The four Cardinals introduce their analysis and explanation of the five dubiawith the following words:

“Let’s get to what is concretely at stake”.

It is my contention that, while the dubia and the analysis presented by the four Cardinals are indeed perceptive and true as far as they go, they do not at all reach to the true depths of “what is concretely at stake”.

Let us first look at these five dubia:

The first dubium deals directly with the issue of those married persons who have obtained a civil divorce and are now living in sin with a second partner. It asks “whether, following the affirmations of ‘Amoris Laetitia’ (nn. 300-305), it has now become possible to grant absolution in the Sacrament of Penance and thus to admit to Holy Communion a person who, while bound by a valid marital bond, lives together with a different person ‘more uxorio’ (in a marital way) without fulfilling the condition provided for by ‘Familiaris Consortio’, n. 84 and subsequently reaffirmed by ‘Reconciliatio et Paenitentia’ n. 34 and ‘Sacramentum Caritatis’ n. 29. Can the expression ‘in certain cases’ found in note 351 (n. 305) of the exhortation ‘Amoris Laetitia’ be applied to divorced persons who are in a new union and who continue to live ‘more uxorio’?

Dubia two, three, four, and five, on the other hand “are about fundamental issues regarding the moral life”

The second asks whether, after the teaching of Amoris Laetitia, there are still “absolute moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts and that are binding without exceptions?”

The third asks whether, after Amoris Laetitia, it is still true “that a person who habitually lives in contradiction to a commandment of God’s law, as for instance the one that prohibits adultery, finds him or herself in an objective situation of grave habitual sin?”

The fourth asks whether, after Amoris Laetitia, the Church still needs to regard as valid the teaching “according to which ‘circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act ‘subjectively’ good or defensible as a choice”?

And the fifth dubium asks whether, after Amoris Laetitia, the Church’s teaching still “excludes a creative interpretation of the role of conscience and that emphasizes that conscience can never be authorized to legitimate exceptions to absolute moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts by virtue of their object?”

All of these questions are being asked, of course, simply because Amoris Laetitia does indeed appear to contradict the perennial teachings of the Church (and of Holy Scripture) in regard to these issues. As the Explanatory Note of the four Cardinals puts it (very mildly, I think), “the interpretation of the document also implies different, contrasting approaches to the Christian way of life”.

But it is much more than a “way of life” that is at stake here. It is, rather, the entire structure of our understanding of Christian Revelation – of Who God is, and of who man is – which is being denied by Amoris Laetitia. And if this be true, then the entire brunt of the Cardinals’ letter to the Pope, which consists of requests for clarification in regard to these dubia, noble and courageous as it certainly is, is an exercise in futility. The fact is that, in the minds and hearts of such men as Jorge Bergoglio and Joseph Ratzinger, the entire philosophical and theological structure of the faith has necessarily undergone a radical alteration which necessitates this contrasting approach to the Christian way of life. In other words, there can be no clarification because Pope Francis fully believes he must do what he is doing. From his perspective, the dubia of these four Cardinals is equivalent to the death cries of theological dinosaurs destined for evolutionary extinction. They therefore must be ignored.

Read the whole article here.

Sycophants on Parade

Vincent Nichols in clerical garb

Could someone please put a gun in his hand?

Beady-eyed Kevin Farrell

Donald Wuerl sporting his brand new dentures

Playground bully or prelate.  You pick.

Pinto puts a whammy on four bad guys.....and the Church

Is that you, Holy Spirit?

This is almost comical.  The Catholic Church has become a parody of a classic giant corporation where the head of the company surrounds himself with fawning yes-men and sends to janitor duty those who question some of his decisions.

I have heard scoffing from some who refuse to believe such a thing. But isn't this exactly where the Church is now?

Some would say the Church has always been that way, that those surrounding the Pope would be no more than toadies doing the bidding of the Big Man.  Some Orthodox believe that, I know. But was it true?

There have always been sycophants, courtiers, cliques, flatterers buzzing around men in high places. Even in the Church.  Great Popes dreaded these types, for they knew that blind slavishness was a very bad idea and they would fight it whenever it reared its ugly head.  The effect of these hangers-on was muted when a great Pope was in charge.  These saintly pontiffs would keep such men in check and make efforts to see that their influence was minimal.  For them it was an ordeal but a job that had to be done.  Great monarchs also had these problems, the greatest of them doing yeoman work to keep the lap dogs under control.

But in 2016 AD we have a somewhat new problem.  Old but new.  Now we have a Pope who is - how shall I say it? - a bit bizarre.  A living, breathing teenager in an 80 year old body.  A martinet who decries discipline in the Church but who is in fact the very worst kind of disciplinarian, the kind that refuses to listen to counsel or reconsider his views.  An egotist who, like John Paul II, craves the limelight, the cheering crowds and the approval of the mass media.  A child who has just been given the biggest toy train in the world and is having  a grand time playing with it.

And as of this moment a man who has not yet realized his awesome responsibility: to transmit the Faith whole and entire to those under his care.  Those under his care include every human being upon earth.  One can see in his face a disinterest in what he has inherited.  My first clue that there was something askew in his mind was that incident early in his papacy when he was walking down a hallway with his entourage and spotted a young altar boy with his hands together as if in prayer.   In a show of ignorant heartlessness he visibly yanked the boy's hands apart.

That incident spoke volumes about what would be coming.

And coming it has.  I will not bore my well-read readers by recounting the scandals this man has caused.  We are all getting sick and tired of them.  What I will do is express my astonishment at the sorry collection of mediocrities, sycophants, dullards, idiots and poofs who have all circled their wagons around this awful Pope.

What a Rogue's Gallery of shameless episcopal reptiles, whose collective intelligence hardly reaches the level of The Three Stooges.  If they had any intelligence, let alone self-respect, they might come to the realization that the Pope is uttering dangerous nonsense on many subjects (not all, of course, but many) and would take him aside and try to show him the realities.  But most of his lackeys are, frankly, worse than him when it comes to the salvation of souls which is the chief effort of the one, true Church.

Yes, these men need to be insulted even though some of them are too obtuse even to understand they are being insulted.  We don't insult the cloth they wear; we insult the men who disgrace that cloth.  It is because I respect the cloth that I call out those who bring bring shame upon it. This approach is, I know, not encouraged by many good people in the Church.  For these good people respect, understandably, should be the order of the day no matter how cretinous some of them are. But as good as that approach is, which I do not for a moment condemn, how respectful can one be to some of these wreckers of the Church?  Is not a bit of tar and feathers, at least the keyboard kind (for now), appropriate in dealing with some Churchmen who are deliberately and with malice aforethought trying to deform the Church into something worse than Protestantism or Judaism, a Protestantism that tinkers with dogma or a Judaism that rejects our Lord outright?  Is that not in fact what some of these characters are engaging in?  And worse. Some of these prelates are openly supporting sodomy.  Sodomy.  Has the import of that really sunk in to our skulls? Moreover, some of them are condoning adultery.  Where are we?  Are we in The Twilight Zone?

I am very willing to entertain arguments about the rightness or wrongness this approach if anyone cares to comment.  I like to keep my head by encouraging commenters who disagree with some of the ravings on this internet stop.  One learns by an exchange of ideas.

This blog is called The Eye Witness not only in honor of Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton but as an actual eye witness of crucial events.  An eye witness watches oily traitors like Kasper or truckling incompetents like Cupich or buffoons like Dolan paying court to a dictator and reports on them.  It is truly a rotten job to have to do.  We take no pleasure in writing about these monstrous people. And while other internet sites and blogs do it better than here this writer would feel somehow unclean by not openly stating that the Church is crumbling before our very eyes.

If there is any good at all in the snivelling idiocies coming from the mouths of these men it is a reminder that - especially to this writer whose allotted time on earth is coming to an end soon - it is time for reflection on why it is that our sins have brought this upon our heads.  War is a punishment for sin so it has been said.  And so is the infliction of bad clerics.

And Advent, among other things, is a good time to reflect.

Again, the "babies being stabbed in their incubators" bull is being trotted out again

Every time the usual forces of chaos want to gin up propaganda, be it against the Kaiser, Saddam Hussein or now Bashar Assad, we have to endure another round of the "babies being killed by those evil bad guys".  Tears and videos abound.  [Funny that those behind all these stories of supposed atrocities against children usually see nothing wrong with abortion.]

So here we go again:

Syria is making gains in eliminating the head-chopping US/Israel proxies in their land and so, in panic, they have to trot out stuff like this.   And so many will fall for this....again.

From Consortium News:

"Late in the day, on Nov. 15, one week after the U.S. elections, the lame-duck Congress convened in special session with normal rules suspended so the House could pass House Resolution 5732, the “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act” calling for intensifying the already harsh sanctions on Syria, assessing the imposition of a “no fly zone” inside Syria (to prevent the Syrian government from flying) and escalating efforts to press criminal charges against Syrian officials.

HR5732 claims to promote a negotiated settlement in Syria but, as analyzed by Friends Committee for National Legislation, it imposes preconditions which would actually make a peace agreement more difficult.

The West Front of the U.S. Capitol

There was 40 minutes of “debate” with six representatives (Ed Royce, R-California; Eliot Engel, D-New York; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida; Dan Kildee, D-Michigan; Chris Smith, R-New Jersey; and Carlos Curbelo, R-Florida) all speaking in favor of the resolution. There were few other representatives present, but the House Foreign Affairs Committee stated that the resolution was passed “unanimously” without mentioning these special conditions.

According to Wikipedia, “Suspension of the rules is a procedure generally used to quickly pass non-controversial bills in the United States House of Representatives … such as naming Post Offices…” In this case, however, the resolution could lead to a wider war in the Middle East and potentially World War III with nuclear-armed Russia.

Most strikingly, the resolution calls for evaluating and developing plans for the United States to impose a “no fly zone” inside Syria, a sovereign nation, an act of war that also would violate international law as an act of aggression. It also could put the U.S. military in the position of shooting down Russian aircraft.

To call this proposal “non-controversial” is absurd, although it may say a great deal about the “group think” of the U.S. Congress that an act of war would be so casually considered. Clearly, this resolution should have been debated under normal rules with a reasonable amount of Congressional presence and debate.

The motivation for bypassing normal rules and rushing the bill through without meaningful debate was articulated by the bill’s sponsor, Democrat Eliot Engel: “We cannot delay action on Syria any further. … If we don’t get this legislation across the finish line in the next few weeks, we are back to square one.”

The current urgency may be related to the election results since President-elect Donald Trump has spoken out against “regime change” foreign policy. As much as neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist allies are critical of President Obama for not doing more in Syria, these Congressional hawks are even more concerned about the prospect of a President who might move toward peace and away from war."

Read the whole article.                              

"Western laws now clash with the moral nature of man"

An interview with Patriarch Kirill.

         


Wouldn't be nice to hear a Pope of Rome talk like this once in awhile?

Wake me when this is over

His Immense Eminence, Cardinal Lou Costello, is really a shining star in the Church firmament.

The Church's Clown Prince is again making a complete ass out of himself and demeaning the honor of the Church...again.

I know I am living through an awful recurring nightmare.  If I am wrong, please God, escort him out the door and out of our lives.

[h/t Dymphna's Road]

The Beginning of our salvation

What pleases me about this recording is that the voices begin at the far distance and slowly grow in volume, signifying the coming of Christ, closer and closer.  It is the song of hope.  I've mentioned this recording before on the blog but I can never tire of recommending it.

This music portends the beginning of our salvation.  It is a fine way to reflect upon Advent.



         

David Lean's OLIVER TWIST

The opening sequence of David Lean's 1948 film Oliver Twist is so striking, so evocative of the time and the place and so gripping that the viewer, even a casual one, cannot look away for the rest of the picture.

We see deep storm clouds gathering in a bleak sky, the silent but growing rumbling of thunder is heard on the soundtrack.  Dead tree branches twist in the rising wind.  Over to the top of a high hill emerges the tiny figure of a woman walking, struggling with each step.  Closer views reveal her to be a young woman who, we soon discover, is now in labor, lost on the wild moors.  Director Lean shows us a close shot of her in pain then cuts to a shot of a thorny branch stretching in the growing wind, which makes the audience experience her pains.  Flashes of lightning accentuate her suffering.  She stumbles forward, hopeless, every step a struggle, her mind filled with anxiety not knowing how she and her unborn child can possibly survive this ordeal.

Finally she glimpses a light coming from the window of a building off in the distance.  In agony she finds the strength to make it there.  It is the parish workhouse.  She rings the bell pull as the rain breaks and drenches her.  At last she is let in.  In the following scenes we see she has given birth to a boy and after kissing her newborn dies in bed.

That description does not do justice to the cinematic power of the combined abilities of Lean, his editor, his cameraman and his designer.  It must not be written about; it must be seen.

Oliver Twist is the finest screen version of this Dickens story and is, perhaps, Lean's greatest film. After that brilliant opening sequence we are soon plunged into the darker world of Victorian poverty as we witness the growth and adventures of a young child born out of wedlock, thrust into the tender mercies of the masters of the workhouse, escape and finding himself lost in London, falling into the clutches of the sinister Fagin and his band of child thieves and finally, after a life of fear, hunger and intrigue, is finally taken in by a family who loves him.

Art Director John Bryan's sketch for the opening sequence.

British films reached their summit in the 1940s and with a very few exceptions never again reached such heights of art and craftsmanship so evident in films like Oliver Twist.  Lean went on in future years to make three-hour-long epics but never again equalled his earlier achievements, especially in his two Dickens adaptations (the other one being the superb Great Expectations of 1946).  What makes this film so memorable is its exact depiction of life among the lower classes in England at that time.  Dickens himself was appalled at what he saw around him when he wrote his novels and in those writings he drew the world's attention to the pitiful state of the poor and children - especially children who were forced for one reason or another to do hard, brutal labor. This Lean depicts with simple clarity, with the exquisite black and white photography the perfect medium for expressing it. Color film (readily available in films from the late 1920s) would not have worked at all. It would not have had the same dramatic effect; it had to be in black and white, and it had to be photographed by cameramen who understood black and white, as most cinematographers did in those great days. [Today's cameramen, oblivious to the possibilities of monochrome photography, usually botch the job terribly on those rare occasions when black and white is used.  Put more prosaically, they don't know what they're doing.]

The other thing the British film industry had going for itself in those days was a rich supply of the finest acting talent available anywhere, before or since.  Modern audiences accustomed to the mugging and miserable acting so common (and so accepted) today will be quite shocked at the rightness, the quality of the performances in this film.  There are far too many perfect performances to discuss in detail here so let us focus on the ones that occupy the most screen time.

As the notorious Fagin, leader of the band of child thieves, we have Alec Guiness in a performance so faultless that one hardly believes one's eyes.  When Guiness went to Lean and asked him for the part Lean scoffed at the idea.  He stopped scoffing when Guiness returned to present himself to him in full makeup.

His Fagin is a real living and breathing person.  It is the actor's art to make an audience forget they are watching acting and Guiness accomplishes it.  He is believable.  He brings out the villainy of Fagin yet manages to make us at times sympathetic with such a creature.  This is a difficult task for any actor even one as skillful as Guiness.  Like others in the cast Guiness imprints upon your memory a vivid character that will stay in the mind.  You won't forget him.

[Whenever discussing Guiness as Fagin one must, alas, trudge through the fetid swamp of name-calling and manufactured outrage.  His performance was denounced as "anti-semirtism" and an ignorant, vicious campaign was raised up against the film due to it.  Dickens wrote Fagin as a villainous Jew and Guiness played the part as written.  Eventually this whole denunciation was seen as the nonsense it was and the movie played as filmed all over the world, except in America.  The hoopla in America was so over-the-top that a fearful distributor sat on the film for two years and only released it after twelve minutes were cut from it, twelve crucial minutes, simply because of the unjust charge laid against Guiness and the film.  Fortunately the recent dvd release of the film restored all the cuts.]

There is no gainsaying the rightness of Guiness in this role as there is no gainsaying the rightness of everyone else in the picture.  Robert Newton is the villain Bill Sykes.  It is his special brand of bulging hatred that makes Newton's role so compelling.  Nasty, brutish, cunning, all these come out with great force in Newton's delineation of the character.  The scene of Sykes' murder of the prostitute Nancy is a powerful one.  I will not spoil it by describing it in detail but will say that it does not sink to the level of sadism so common in today's movies, ones made by sensationalists and incompetents like Scorcese or that overblown amateur Quentin Tarantino.  It is all the more powerful for avoiding the splattered blood of which today's directors are so fond. But it is powerful.

Newton as Bill Sykes

Can such a dark, powerful film be considered entertainment?  Yes.  But it is not time-wasting entertainment.  It will leave viewers profoundly affected by its story and will be genuinely unforgettable to those who experience it. It will stay on the mind and be the catalyst for fascinating discussions.  Some may, happily, turn to the book. Some will reflect on its theme.  Most will find it, I believe, a rewarding experience.

Why is this film so remarkable?  Because it was made by artists and craftsmen, artists and craftsmen whom we should name:  the sets (so crucial to the picture) were the work of designers John Bryan and Wilfred Shingleton, it's camera work and lighting by Guy Green who was fortunate to have such superb sets to photograph, its editor Jack Harris who knew a thing or two about putting films together, its score by Sir Arnold Bax so well suited to the visuals.  The sets which one can never tire of praising were built in what is called "forced perspective" so that one is actually drawn into them. They are complemented by the shooting of them with low camera angles in order to emphasize this perspective, this vastness.  It is what gives the movie its striking look.

This is art and artifice of the choicest kind, the kind that has all but vanished  from the screen.  If you want to see how movies were once made by men with skill and imagination and originality, you could do no better than to see this one.  It is a pity that there are no theatrical showings (at least in this country) of the film on a big screen which would give it its best effectiveness.  Second best, of course, is the dvd.  If you do plan to view it on dvd I suggest finding a quiet evening, watching it on the largest tv screen available and with the telephone off the hook.  Watching this film, according to film critic Leslie Halliwell, is like reading the book in a particularly fine binding.

Lean and his writers have somewhat simplified the story but without losing any of its power. Charles Dickens would I am sure be proud.

I bring up this wonderful film as an antidote to the cinematic Dark Ages now upon us, an age which is incapable of making such a fine thing as this.  It cannot be recommended highly enough both as entertainment and as an experience worth having.  Give it a look.

John Howard Davies as Oliver Twist