Category Archives: Perversion and Propaganda

No ROTC and JROTC at Catholic schools!

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***The following was written by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy***

Pope Francis could not be more correct: “the spirit of war comes from our own hearts* Indeed, “the wars, the hatred, the hostility aren’t products we buy at the market: they’re right here, in our hearts.” But, how does such a spirit get into our hearts? Does it come from being exposed to Christlike love as the most important, honorable, noble, heroic and valuable act that a person—young or old, male or female—can desire, imitate, choose and participate in with others?

 

and

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as the old saw goes. With his Petrine faculty of universal jurisdiction, Pope Francis  could end tomorrow the terrible child abuse, mind manipulation and anti-mind of Christ practice in Catholic universities and high schools of recruiting and training Christian young men and women for war, that is, he could terminate all ROTC and JROTC programs at all Catholic educational institutions—starting, for the sake of good example, with his own Jesuit community’s educational facilities which are mired in these anti-Gospel change of heart, change of mind, pedagogical operations. It is not God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit that puts the spirit of war into the hearts of Christians. Si vis pacem, para bellum, “If you want peace, prepare for war,” is not the teaching of Jesus. This is contrary to the teaching of Jesus. For a Catholic high school or university to entice young men and women into that spirit or to foster that spirit under the auspices of Christian symbols, liturgy, sacramentals, authorities figures, etc. is blasphemous. Such a school, or Church drives the spirit war like a stake deep into the Sacred Heart of Jesus which the person received at his or her Baptism into Christ.

-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

*Psychic activity is usually associated in the Bible with various organs. The chief of these is the heart. The Biblical idiom differs from the modern idiom in considering the heart as the seat of intelligence and decision, whereas today we would use mind and will. In the Biblical idiom the heart is the source of thoughts, desires and deeds. Thus a man is what his heart is. “The spirit of war which comes from our own hearts” is not only a personal spiritual problem for the individual Christian, it is equally, perhaps primarily, an institutional Church problem.

Dictionary of the Bible, ‘Heart’, Rev. John L. McKenzie

 

Vietnam War Commemoration Office

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Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. This is a great article about the lies we are told about our country’s wars: Misremembering America’s Wars, 2003 – 2053: The Pentagon’s Latest Mission Accomplished Moment:

In 2012, the Pentagon kicked off a 13-year program to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, complete with a sprawling website that includes a “history and education” component. Billed as a “public service” provided by the Department of Defense, the United vietnam-war-commemoration-flagStates of America Vietnam War Commemoration site boasts of its “resources for teachers and students in the grades 7-12” and includes a selection of official government documents, all of them produced from 1943-1954; that is, only during the earliest stages of modern U.S. involvement in what was then called Indochina.

The Vietnam War Commemoration’s educational aspirations, however, extend beyond students. “The goal of the History and Education effort,” according to the site, “is to provide the American public with historically accurate materials and interactive experiences that will help Americans better understand and appreciate the service of our Vietnam War veterans and the history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.” To that end, the United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration offers an interactive historical timeline.

Not surprisingly, there were a few problems with the timeline.

Setting the record straight seems, however, to be the last intention of the United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration.  When I called with my questions last August, the Commemoration’s M.J. Jadick said, “This is something you should be able to get an answer for.”  Yet for six months, government officials have failed to provide me with any answers about the creation of their timeline, about its seeming lack of adequate context, about entries that are at best insufficient and, at worst, dishonest, or just plain wrong.  And in that same period, none of the obvious errors and obfuscations I pointed out has been changed in any way.

Author of the article Nick Turse writes:

You don’t need cybernetic eye implants and immersive propaganda portals to alter history.  You don’t need a digital David Petraeus or a President Bush avatar to distract you from the truth.  You don’t need to wait decades to have disinformation beamed into your head.  You just need a constant stream of misleading information, half truths, and fictions to be promoted, pushed, and peddled until they are accepted as fact.

Welcome to 2053.  Mission accomplished.

Nick Turse is author of Kill Anything That Moves. Read the whole article here.

Highest Form of Propaganda

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“The U.S. military has won the ideological war. The nation sees human and social problems as military problems. To fight terrorists Americans have become terrorists. Peace is for the weak. War is for the strong. Hypermasculinity has triumphed over empathy. We Americans speak to the world exclusively in the language of force. And those who oversee our massive security and surveillance state seek to speak to us in the same demented language. All other viewpoints are to be shut out. ‘In the absence of contrasting views, the very highest form of propaganda warfare can be fought: the propaganda for a definition of reality within which only certain limited viewpoints are possible,’ C. Wright Mills wrote. ‘What is being promulgated and reinforced is the military metaphysics—the cast of mind that defines international reality as basically military.'” Chris Hedges, The Menace of the Military Mind, Feb. 3, 2014

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, center, and other officials testify on Capitol Hill last Wednesday at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on national security threats. From left: National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen, FBI Director James Comey, Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. (AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, center, and other officials testify on Capitol Hill last Wednesday at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on national security threats. From left: National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen, FBI Director James Comey, Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. (AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

How About Coming Home for Good?

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We can always expect the Super Bowl to be packed with sentimental troop worship and pro-military propaganda for the masses. See our post on Fascism and Football and the Budweiser commercial above. In the background, I believe JennaAnne is singing a revised version of “I’m Coming Home” by Diddy:

I’m coming home, I’m coming home.
Tell the world I’m coming home.
Let the rain wash away, I’ll the pain of yesterday.
I know my kingdom awaits, and they’ve
forgive my mistakes.
I’m coming home, I’m coming home.
Tell the world I’m coming.
…
Trapped inside this cage I’m living in.
My wings hide, my palms are worn and thin.
But if you set me free, don’t live and let me be,
I’ll return back to you. But my real home needs me too.
…

Chorus: written by J. Cole
Verses: written JennaAnne

Of course Anheuser-Busch was one of one more than 35 major corporate sponsors of a massive public relations campaign designed by the Pentagon called America Supports You (ASY):

“…the Pentagon conducted an astonishingly vigorous and comprehensive public relations campaign that provided it with public visibility and with a familiar, readily accepted presence across a wide array of popular cultural activities. During the Bush administration this included a program specifically designed to encourage Americans to support US troops, and to create among US military personnel an impression that their efforts and sacrifices are valued back home and that the American public stands behind them as they continue the occupation of Iraq and the indefinite war on terror. This double-edged sword aimed at both a public and a military audience was called America Supports You (ASY).” — “Support the Troops”: Populist Militarism and the Cultural Reproduction of Imperial Power, Mark Rupert, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University

We think coming home is a great idea, but how about letting the troops come home for good? That’s something we could get behind. Check out Come Home America. Their effort aims to unite the political Right and political Left against war: “Americans united in their alarm about the destructive consequences of our country’s runaway militarism.” You may not have heard of them though, because, as far as I know, unlike the Pentagon, Come Home America does not have the funds to procure a multimillion contract with a big time public relations firm. Also, Come Home America has, as far as I know, exactly zero “major corporate sponsors.”

The Church teaches us the Way of holiness by pointing us to the truth. The government tries to brainwash us by spending millions of dollars on public relations and advertising campaigns.

Pope Pius XI’s words in his encyclical on the power of the motion picture, Vigilanti Cura, are of particular note here (television advertising could also be considered moving or motion pictures in short form):

…there does not exist today a means of influencing the masses more potent than the cinema. The reason for this is to be sought for in the very nature of the pictures projected upon the screen, in the popularity of motion picture plays, and in the circumstances which accompany them.

The power of the motion picture consists in this, that it speaks by means of vivid and concrete imagery which the mind takes in with enjoyment and without fatigue. Even the crudest and most primitive minds which have neither the capacity nor the desire to make the efforts necessary for abstraction or deductive reasoning are captivated by the cinema. In place of the effort which reading or listening demands, there is the continued pleasure of a succession of concrete and, so to speak, living pictures. This power is still greater in the talking picture for the reason that interpretation becomes even easier and the charm of music is added to the action of the drama. Dances and variety acts which are sometimes introduced between the films serve to increase the stimulation of the passions.

And then there’s Hitler in Mein Kampf:

“To whom has propaganda to appeal? It has to appeal forever and only to the masses! It has to make use of small and smallest minds. . . . Propaganda has to be directed at the great masses and its efficiency has to be measured exclusively by its effective success.”

War Made Easy

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War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations. The documentary is based on the book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death by Norman Soloman and published in 2005.

Cliches

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Those who demand unconditional support for the troops often speak in clichés. This satirical “Open Letter to a Soldier to Those Who Criticize the Troops” nails almost every one.

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Church bulletin on Veterans Day, 2013, St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Athens, GA. "Thank you for serving our country & protecting our freedoms."

Church bulletin on Veterans Day, 2013, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Athens, GA. “Thank you for serving our country & protecting our freedoms.”

The appropriate popular response

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Seen in Atlanta airport, Dec. 18, 2013.

Seen in Atlanta airport, Dec. 18, 2013.

The Church teaches us the Way of holiness by pointing us to the truth. The government “teaches” us what the “appropriate” response to something is by spending millions of dollars on PR campaigns (i.e. via very sneaky and highly effective propaganda).

“To preclude a recurrence the Vietnam Syndrome during the GWOT, the Pentagon conducted an astonishingly vigorous and comprehensive public relations campaign that provided it with public visibility and with a familiar, readily accepted presence across a wide array of popular cultural activities.45 During the Bush administration this included a program specifically designed to encourage Americans to support US troops, and to create among US military personnel an impression that their efforts and sacrifices are valued back home and that the American public stands behind them as they continue the occupation of Iraq and the indefinite war on terror. This double-edged sword aimed at both a public and a military audience was called America Supports You (ASY).

…According to American Forces Press Service (AFPS), “The Defense Department launched [ASY] in November 2004 to showcase support for the country’s men and women in uniform from the American public as well as the corporate sector.”46 With the aid of a multimillion dollar contract with a private public relations firm, a private foundation called the America Supports You Fund, over 35 major corporate partners such as Anheuser-Busch, Wal-Mart, and Microsoft, and hundreds of local affiliate groups, ASY organized mass ‘Freedom Walks’ in dozens of cities nationwide to commemorate 9-11 and encourage patriotism and militarism as the appropriate popular responses.”

“Support the Troops”: Populist Militarism and the Cultural Reproduction of Imperial Power, Mark Rupert, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University

Is Katniss Christlike?

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This “Catholic meme” perfectly encapsulates pervasive misunderstandings about the Hunger Games on the part of the Christian community, which I wrote about at length here.  Below is a photograph of St. Maximillian Kolbe, who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz. He is being compared to Katniss in the Hunger Games. This is obviously a reference to the scene where Katniss volunteers to go to the “games” in place of her sister. Many Christians call Katniss a Christ-like figure because this was an act of self-sacrifice.

"Catholic meme" with St. Maximillian Kolbe

“Catholic meme” with St. Maximillian Kolbe

There is one very important difference between Katniss and St. Maximillian Kolbe: St. Maximillian Kolbe was a nonviolent individual who never, as far as I know, killed anyone. Katniss is a killer, no matter which way you slice it. Many people would surely say that the difference between them is so obvious it does not even need to be pointed out, but to borrow a line from Neko Case, the difference between these two tributes/martyrs/heroes is “so clear it is almost invisible.” And there are those who wish to make that difference invisible, so as to be better able to propagate untruths and half truths, so as to serve their own dark ends.

There is a difference between offering to suffer in place of another and offering to kill in place of another. There is also a difference between person A being willing to sacrifice his own life so that person B can live, and person A being willing to kill person C (and maybe persons D, E and F) so that person B can live, even if person A is risking his own life in the process. In a certain light, both can be seen as acts of self-sacrifice, but only the first one is Christ-like. The second is not.

Heretical Email Forwards

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This was a forward I received the other day. I certainly feel nothing but compassion for the individuals in these photographs, but the conclusions at the end are, to my mind, heretical. Heresy is defined as an insistence on one half of the truth.

*****

Subject:  Three Important Pictures, Please read to the bottom, Thank You…

International Picture of the Year. Here are three very touching photos honored this year.

First Place : 

First Place, Todd Heisler, The Rocky Mountain News

First Place, Todd Heisler, The Rocky Mountain News

When 2nd Lt. James Cathey’s body arrived at the Reno Airport , Marines climbed into the cargo hold of the plane and draped the flag over his casket as passengers watched the family gather on the tarmac. During the arrival of another Marine’s casket last year at Denver International Airport , Major Steve Beck described the scene as so powerful: ‘See the people in the windows? They sat right there in the plane, watching those Marines. You gotta wonder what’s going through their minds, knowing that they’re on the plane that brought him home,’ he said. ‘They will remember being on that plane for the rest of their lives. They’re going to remember bringing that Marine home. And they should.’

Second Place, Todd Heisler, The Rocky Mountain News

Second Place, Todd Heisler, The Rocky Mountain News

Second Place, Todd Heisler, The Rocky Mountain News

The night before the burial of her husband’s body, Katherine Cathey refused to leave the casket, asking to sleep next to his body for the last time. The Marines made a bed for her, tucking in the sheets below the flag. Before she fell asleep, she opened her laptop computer and played songs that reminded her of ‘Cat,’ and one of the Marines asked if she wanted them to continue standing watch as she slept. ‘I think it would be kind of nice if you kept doing it,’ she said. ‘I think that’s what he would have wanted.’

3rd Place – “Son, a grateful Nation…”

Todd 3

Photograph credit: Aaron Thompson

PLEASE KEEP THIS GOING!
Blue Fridays.
Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing blue every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called the ‘silent majority.’ We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for God, country and home in record breaking numbers. We are not organized, boisterous or overbearing.

Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops. Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday — and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something blue. By word of mouth, press, TV — let’s make the United States on every Friday a sea of blue much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in BLUE and it will let our troops know the once ‘silent’ majority is on their side more than ever. The first thing a soldier says when asked ‘What can we do to make things better for you?’ is: ‘We need your support and your prayers.’ Let’s get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something blue every Friday.

IF YOU AGREE — THEN SEND THIS ON. IF YOU COULDN’T CARE LESS — THEN HIT THE DELETE BUTTON.

Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you:
1. Jesus Christ
2. The American G. I.

One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.

YOU MIGHT WANT TO PASS THIS ON, AS MANY SEEM TO FORGET BOTH OF THEM.