The Republicans are the Party of War, and they pretend to be against abortion. The Democrats are the Party of Abortion, and they pretend to be against war.
On the Republicans, see my previous post of Ron Paul’s article and this blog item by Laurence Vance at lewrockwell.com.
“The Republicans had complete control of the White House and the Congress for over four years when Bush was the president. Why did the Republicans fund Planned Parenthood during this time? And why did conservatives not criticize them then for doing so? The GOP has blood on its hands.”
On the Democrats, see this great article by Glenn Greenwald.
“Beyond accurately describing Iran Deal opponents, Obama also accurately described himself and his own record of militarism. To defend against charges that he Loves the Terrorists, he boasted:
‘As commander-in-chief, I have not shied away from using force when necessary. I have ordered tens of thousands of young Americans into combat. . . .
I’ve ordered military action in seven countries.'”
Catholics need to develop a new form of protest and resistance not based on trying to change the Federal government by voting.
“But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize her true center and experience the sacraments again as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.
The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystalization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek.”
Just wanted to inform you that Fr. Nicholas Gruner, the “Fatima Priest”, passed awayearlier this week.
Fr. Gruner had Dr. Ron Paul as thefeatured speakerat his Fatima Peace Conference in 2013. Dr. Paul courageously attended, ignoring the Pravda media’s faux smears of “antisemitism” and delivering a rousing speech on how the Prince of Peace’s message is even more pertinent in these faithless times. Here is what a man of brilliancehad to say on the event.
Finally, I note separately how the tribute slideshow to Fr. Gruner prominently features Dr. Paul @ point 0:35.
Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace.
This story is not just about stealing from the government or “deeply corrupted local cultures” in the Middle East. It’s about a very sick American culture. Call it Americanism Unchained. We have to ask, “who is corrupting whom?” May God have mercy on us all.
It’s a long article, but even if you can’t read the whole thing, save the link. It would be especially helpful to show to Catholic parents who might have a daughter who’s thinking of joining the military.
“And yet, it would be difficult not to notice that very often programs which start from the idea of justice and which ought to assist its fulfillment among individuals, groups and human societies, in practice suffer from distortions. Although they continue to appeal to the idea of justice, nevertheless experience shows that other negative forces have gained the upper hand over justice, such as spite, hatred and even cruelty. In such cases, the desire to annihilate the enemy, limit his freedom, or even force him into total dependence, becomes the fundamental motive for action; and this contrasts with the essence of justice, which by its nature tends to establish equality and harmony between the parties in conflict. This kind of abuse of the idea of justice and the practical distortion of it show how far human action can deviate from justice itself, even when it is being undertaken in the name of justice. Not in vain did Christ challenge His listeners, faithful to the doctrine of the Old Testament, for their attitude which was manifested in the words: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”111 This was the form of distortion of justice at that time; and today’s forms continue to be modeled on it. It is obvious, in fact, that in the name of an alleged justice (for example, historical justice or class justice) the neighbor is sometimes destroyed, killed, deprived of liberty or stripped of fundamental human rights. The experience of the past and of our own time demonstrates that justice alone is not enough, that it can even lead to the negation and destruction of itself, if that deeper power, which is love, is not allowed to shape human life in its various dimensions.“
As the September 11 anniversary approaches, I am glad that Cammy has recently brought up the topic of “what really happened that day.” It is possible that the unfolding catastrophe in the Middle East may lead to something good. Perhaps millions of Americans will finally demand a serious, far-reaching investigation of 9/11.
We know there was a coverup and that the government obstructed the investigators. My hypothesis is simple: if there had been a full, unobstructed investigation by trustworthy and determined people, the Islamic State crisis would not exist today.
Have you heard about the “28 pages?” Here’s a link:
Regardless of what you think about what “we” should do about ISIS, I think all Catholics, and all Americans of good will, can agree that this information needs to be declassified. Perhaps once this barrier is breached, we can move on further to demanding a full and truthful investigation of 9/11.
I hereby nominate Ron Paul to organize and lead that investigation:
Here is a C-SPAN interview from this month with Richard Gage, talking about his group of 2,224 architects and engineers around the world, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which believes that the World Trade Center was probably brought down by explosive demolition on September 11, 2001, using something called thermite, which burns at 2200° C and can melt through metal, which is the only way they think it’s physically possible for a steel structure to collapse at free fall speed into its own footprint. The group was founded in 2006 and said its mission is to use science to “expose the official lies and cover-up surrounding the events of September 11, 2001 in a way that inspires the people to overcome denial and understand the truth.” Mr. Gage spoke via video link from San Francisco, California.
What I think is key here is that Richard Gage and his group are interested in the science, in answering the question “How could jet fuel alone cause these massive steel structures to fall into their own footprints and disintegrate instantaneously like that, especially Building 7, which was never hit by a plane?” They also rely on samples taken from the scene of the crime which tested positive for thermite, and on oral histories from that day, people who heard explosions and first responders who saw what looked like molten lava running among the wreckage for weeks afterwards.
As someone who worked directly across the street from the World Trade Center in 2001 and was in lower Manhattan that day, I recall my disbelief at what I was seeing. First, I was in the subway when the first tower collapsed, headed north. So I didn’t see it happen. When I met my roommate at her office in Union Square, she said, “What do you know? Do you know that the first tower fell?” I said, “What do you mean it fell?” It was impossible to imagine those things falling. If they had “fallen,” I imagined all of downtown Manhattan being wiped out. I pictured a Jenga tower falling, when one of the blocks that supports the tower is removed (or gives way), and the whole thing spills everywhere. It makes a terrible mess on your living room floor.
A tower falling.
That is what I thought had happened. In my mind, that is what I was picturing. And I thought that if my coworkers had stayed in our building, they would be dead. If the deli owners had stayed in their delis, they were probably dead. If my friend from high school who worked in the World Financial Center next door had stayed in his building, it probably crashed to the ground and he was dead. I thought Wall Street had probably been destroyed, Trinity Church was gone, everything — those buildings were so massive, so massive. For them to “fall” would wipe out everything within a very large circumference.
As I was walking West, I was crossing an avenue and saw the second tower fall. Straight down. It basically just turned to dust. Then I got to someone’s apartment and we watched the coverage on television, and I saw the way they fell straight down, something I’d never seen a Jenga tower do. But after you’d seen it, over and over and over and over, it started to look normal. And you think, maybe a Jenga tower would fall that way too if you lit some of the blocks on fire? Maybe? But it wasn’t making sense, and the dust, that gray dust. Within an hour of our arrival at the apartment in Chelsea, there were photographs of Osama bin Laden being shown on the television. They had their conspiracy theory. Though no evidence was ever offered to prove his involvement, and though he initially denied responsibility, this became the story and it never changed. I remembered wondering why he would initially deny it if he had pulled off something of that magnitude, the worst ever attack in history against “The Great Satan.” Wouldn’t he be proud of it? Needless to say, I had a lot of questions at the time.
Like when they found the terrorist’s passport in the dust a few blocks away. Even the news anchor says in the clip, “If you can believe that.” And I couldn’t. Entire buildings can turn into dust, but this piece of paper, which was in the heart of the fire, could somehow survive? At that point I laughed. What — did he throw it out the window right before the plane hit the building? Can you roll down the window of a plane? Who can believe this stuff, I wondered? How few of my questions were ever answered. The government and the media did not seem interested in asking questions. They seemed to be in the business of “repeat something enough times and people will start to believe it,” “show the footage enough times and it will start to look natural.” Most importantly: “call anyone who asks questions crazy.”
For weeks afterwards there were two columns of smoke rising where the towers had been, like ghost towers. The ruins continued to smoke for weeks, maybe even two months, it’s hard to recall exactly. They continued to smoke after rain, more rain, more rain, as the weather got colder, and I remember standing on the elevated subway platform in Queens each morning, where I always had a view of the trade center, and seeing the smoke still rising from Ground Zero. I thought it was the oddest thing. Why hadn’t the rain put out the fires? I know planes carry a lot of fuel but…come on. I was also training for a marathon, and the dust in the air was making it very hard to breathe. It lingered for months.
Even odder was the fact that my office building was still there and perfectly fine, my little tiny office building that was directly across the street from the WTC, nestled right there under its shadow: unaffected. We were no longer working from there, but after a week or so it had been pronounced structurally sound and we could be let back in. I could go on the roof and look over at Ground Zero. And everything in in the neighborhood of the WTC was still there and standing. It was just a lot dirtier. (In fact, I’ll never forget how disorienting it was going down there the first couple of times. I couldn’t figure out where I was and I had a hard time identifying the street for my building. The WTC was so massive that it created this dwarfing effect; everything around it seemed like a tiny village in comparison. The street my office was on seemed like a tiny little alley. When I went back, without those towers looming over everything, the buildings all looked like normal skyscrapers. The streets felt like streets. I had to use landmarks to get my bearings.I saw my deli on the corner with the same sign I had seen every day, and thought, “I can’t be in the same place. There must be two delis with that same name. Where am I?” Then I saw the street sign that confirmed I was on the right street, but I couldn’t figure out which direction to go in. Normally, I would walk away from the deli and towards the WTC. But it looked so different. I was so disoriented.)
There was some worry about a hotel directly across the street from the WTC, and its structural integrity, but I think they ended up fixing it up and it still stands to this day. Buildings 30-40 feet away from these massive structures still stood! There was just this neat, precise little “hole” in the city where the towers had been. It seemed unbelievable, how surgical the destruction had been, with one exception: Building 7. It was literally unbelievable to stand up there and look out. And, yes, there was a lot of wreckage, but not nearly enough to account for those two buildings. Where did everything go? It disappeared, disintegrated, most of it.
As callers try to lure him into concocting conspiracy theories about who did it, why, and how they pulled it off, Richard Gage says in the C-SPAN clip that it is not his mission to answer those questions. Those are questions for investigative journalists (who, for the past ten years, won’t “go there.”) His mission is to expose the shoddy “science” of the 9/11 Commission, offer a theory that makes sense from a scientific and engineering perspective, and offer evidence that supports his theory. The Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth make a compelling case.
Below, actor Ed Asner helps narrates this documentary that traces the unfolding story that decimates the official account (“collapse due to normal office fires”) of the collapse of Building 7 on the afternoon of 9/11.
Of course if the demolition theory about Building 7 is true, that means it was planned. Some people can’t handle that thought, what Thomas Merton called evil that is so evil it is “unspeakable.” It must not be spoken of. And I admit that this would open up so many more questions, like: How in the world could demolition crews secretly rig these towers, which would take months, without anyone noticing, the janitors, the maintenance people, the office workers? It would require the work of many men, one would think, and how could it be that none of them would ever speak up and spill the beans? Who did and why?
I admit, there would be a lot of questions. None of the answers are easy and none of it is easy to believe. It is all very hard to believe, in my opinion, no matter which way you look at it, no matter which conspiracy theory you choose to believe. (Even the government’s official story is itself a conspiracy theory. To establish something as fact requires evidence and proof.) To be honest, I don’t have any theories about who did it, why, and how. I don’t know what I believe. All I know is what I don’t believe. I don’t believe the official story makes sense; I don’t believe it is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It’s all so hard to believe, but I guess in the end, as a Catholic, I find it easier to believe in man’s capacity for greed, evil, murder, and deception, yes even in “unspeakable” proportions, than I do to believe in things that areimpossibilitiesaccording to scientific principles and the laws of physics.
The important thing, I think, is that we continue to ask questions and search for the truth when the answers provided are not satisfactory. We should not demonize or disparage those who have a genuine interest in the truth. Those who are still very interested in this topic are most likely to be those who were affected by it, those who lost loved ones on that day or in the years following, in the “War on Terror” that was started supposedly in response to 9/11 and continues to this day and will continue, indefinitely, because there is no possible victory.
