Afghanistan, in Today's News 10.22.09

Afghanistan. To develop a better understanding of what is really going on behind the scenes between the United States and Pakistan President Karzai, read the following from a paragraph in Karl Rove's column today.

"...Mr. Obama refused to take a call from Afghan President Karzai after his recent disputed election, a confidante to Mr. Karzai told me. That same confidante also said that the Afghan president was dismayed when political strategist James Carville, who has close ties to both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and [White House chief of staff] Mr. Emmanuel, became an advisor to Ashraf Ghani, who ran against Mr. Karzai. Mr. Karzai took that as a sign that Mr. Obama was encouraging opposition to him. And, finally, administration figures have raised doubts about the White House's confidence in Afghanistan's government. In his interview on CNN on Sunday, for example, Mr. Emmanuel questioned 'whether, in fact, there's an Afghan partner."

Catholic Church, in Today's News 10.22.09

Catholic Church. The reason behind the Society of Saint Paul X's agreement to closed discussions with no time limit with the Vatican now becomes a little clearer. Bernard Fellay, the Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, gave an interview to a Chilean newspaper in which he stated that "there is a lot of truth" to speculation that the Vatican is moving to convert the SSPX into a personal prelature, similar to Opus Dei.

In other words, an agreement could be in the making that the meeting with the Vatican will recommend. We will see.

Certainly, this move would make sense after the recent overture to the Anglicans. If a special accommodation can be made for the Anglicans, why not for the SSPX which after all is only defending the Church legacy.

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Bishop Fellay also commented on the Bishop Williamson controversy, saying the attack on Bishop Williamson "was a well-planned attack, not against the Society [SSPX], but directed against the person of Pope Benedict XVI, in order to tarnish his gesture."

Bishop Fellay seems to be playing up to the Pope here, but the statement does have some truth to it. And yet, Bishop Fellay seems to miss that those behind the attack on Williamson have an over-riding interest in establishing the holocaust as central event in world history. Their attack on Bishop Williamson served this aim as well.

Afghanistan, in Today's News 10.21.09

Afghanistan. The United States effort to force Afghan President Karzai into a run-off election has succeeded. How did they do it? Therein lies a tale.

First some background. The Afghan regime has become more and more isolated as regional leaders form blocs with the Taliban to overthrow the government. The US recently decided that Karzai could no longer govern effectively in carrying out the US interests. He had to go, so that a new regime could try to turn the situation around. The problem, of course, is nowadays the US can't just go in and dump someone they don't like. Now they have to go through the motions of replacing Karzai 'democratically.' All this has added importance now that the Obama regime is looking to settle the war and still protect Obama's reputation. To this end, all manner of backdoor negotiations are occurring between the Taliban and the US. The US hope is that a new Afghan regime can work out a compromise with the Taliban to the exclusion of al Qaeda.

The US decided that the best way of disposing of Karzai was through manipulating the results of the recent elections. The media began beating the drums about corruption in the Afghan elections. Based on the media's claims the US brought in the UN-led Electoral Complaints Commission to examine the alleged fraud.

Election results showed Karzai with a 54.6% victory, enough to claim the presidency. When the commission finished its 'work' Karzai's total was 48.3%, only enough for a run-off election, which just happened to be what the US wanted.

When Karzai recognized the job being done on him, he and his supporters refused to support the commission results. Enter Senator John Kerry, he of nimble tongue.

Kerry, at Obama's request, flew to Afghanistan and went on a five-day marathon 'discussion' with Karzai. Karzai began to bend but said if the new commission results were accepted, his authority would be undermined.

What to do, what to do? Simple, the results of the election were simply changed! An agreement was reached that Karzai would lose a majority by three tenths of one percent. No one even bothers to try to justify the new result as based on some kind of count. And thus Karzai is moderately happy about his authority, and the US obtains the run-off election.

And so another outrageous manipulation of a nation's internal affairs is performed by the US. And most amazing of all, it is all done in the name of freedom and democracy.

The election will occur in a couple of weeks. The US will now go into high gear to undercut Karzai.

Health Care, in Today's News 10.19.09

Health Care. As the health care legislation moves toward adoption, "expert panels" remain a part of the package intended for vote.

"Expert panels" will provide 'guidelines' for doctors on what procedures to perform on a patient. The recommendations of these panels will inevitably be seen as 'best practices,' and would therefore be adopted as blueprints for which procedures health insurance should cover. A doctor who does not follow the guidelines could face reductions in their insurance and medicare payments. The goal of all this, of course, is to reduce costs. 

If adopted, expert panels will become a third party in every doctor-patient consultation. The third party will be the expert-panel guidelines, from which there can be no deviation without penalty. Thus, this third party is not an equal participant. The third party is the one with veto power, and moreover there is no appeal from the third party determinations.

More than anything else in the proposed legislation, expert panels signify a fundamental turning point in health care. Compassionate health care, the contribution of the Church to humanity, will be replaced with government control operating on a cost-cutting basis.

The proposed system is only good for the cryptocracy who will see a greater share of societal wealth go from health care to their pockets. Everyone else will suffer. Patients will be saddled with a blueprint plan for health recovery, and it will be extremely difficult to obtain alternate care. Doctors will be hamstrung by best practices which may or may not fit a particular problem. Doctors actually become like robots; all they have to do is identify a problem and the regulations take over. Any attempt to do something different would be punished. Society as a whole will find itself weighted down by yet another impersonal, inhuman massive bureaucracy attempting to control citizens' lives.

The change is not in the interest of anyone. Yet, there is no outcry against the expert-panel outrage. Every now and then someone will speak out, as in the Wall Street Journal today on the commentary page, "'Expert Panels' Won't Improve Health Care."  But where are the associations and organizations that represent professionals and patients? Their presence is noticeable by their absence.

And most outrageous of all is the silence of the leaders of the Church and Catholic organizations. Nothing has crossed the desk here presenting Catholic commentary on expert panels. We now face the likely possibility that one of the great legacies of the Church is set to slip into oblivion because no leader saw fit to oppose it. 

The Church leaders have the capability to stop the expert panels. The faithful are a large percentage of the public. If the faithful were motivated to take action against the expert panels, the cryptocracy and legislators would sit up and take notice. Even just a nation-wide campaign of prayer would shake the rafters.

Yet, the Church leaders don't even seem to recognize the problem. The change to expert panels is the central issue of the health care legislation. The Bishops, however, are concentrating on a number of other issues, all important. They seem to miss entirely that the compassionate care of the needy that Jesus' teaching brought about is under unprecedented challenge.

Moreover, the Bishops seem to be positioning themselves to approve the legislation if they receive a few crumbs from the legislators. If they do approve legislation that contains expert panels, it will be one of the greater disgraces in the history of the Church.

H1N1 (Swine) Flu Update No 55, in Today's News 10.17.09

H1N1 (Swine) Flu. Oops, another screw-up by the directors of the swine flu scare campaign. Not only did they fail to arrange to have their vaccine ready at the same time that the campaign was to be in full swing. Now, it turns out that they will receive 25% less vaccine than reported.

The cryptocracy's goal of using this scare campaign to condition the public to accept vaccination (even mandatory vaccination) without protest is failing through sheer incompetence by the campaign directors. Instead of herding the public into a mass vaccination, they have succeeded in promoting the growth of public cynicism.

The latest Pew poll shows that 47% of adults were not planning to get the swine flu shot. Of them, 35% believed the vaccine was too risky or that it hasn't been tested thoroughly.

It must be very frustrating for those who would control the public to see so much intelligence among their subjects-to-be.

*******

They said they were going to do it, and now they are doing it. The swine flu directors said a few weeks ago that they would publicize the deaths of children to try to convince the public of the danger of swine flu and the necessity of mass vaccination. And so, today the Center for Disease Control announced that 47 children have died from swine flu since the end of August. The CDC made the announcement with emotionally charged words and scare-mongering. 

These people have no shame!

Past experience demonstrates that if the CDC is reporting data, be extremely suspect. The CDC is a highly political entity and not above twisting data to serve their political ends. In this case, they just report the number without any other data. Lacking is whether the victims had underlying chronic illnesses or how these numbers compare with seasonal flu or even how they know it was swine flu and not seasonal flu.

A similar distortion is the statement found in today's Wall Street Journal, "...the new H1N1 flu has become widespread in 41 states." The impression is given that the flu bug is sweeping the nation. But, actually all the sentence says is that the flu bug is in 41 states, making it widespread. Again no data is provided. If a state has one case of swine flu, it makes the list of states. And the more states that can be reported with swine flu cases, the better for promoting hysteria.

 

Catholic Church, in Today's News 10.16.09

Catholic Church. The Vatican announced today that the dialogue with Society of Saint Pius X will take place on October 26. The Vatican said the initial talks would focus on unresolved doctrinal issues. The Vatican also stipulated that the content of the meeting(s) would remain 'strictly private.'

Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the SSPX, said the talks with the Vatican could take a long time.

So lets hope the SSPX knows what it is doing. The SSPX has agreed to a long series of talks with the Vatican that are private. In other words, the discussion in the Church over Vatican II that the SSPX has long wanted will now be confined to a few SSPX leaders and senior staff members of the Vatican.

The Vatican officials are schooled in double-talk and double-think. It will be quite easy for them to tie these talks up for a long, long time, perhaps endlessly. A skilled negotiator knows how to string out a discussion to the point of meaninglessness.

The situation almost looks like a trap. The SSPX is stuck in an arrangement that potentially has no end-point and that is unlikely to solve the issues. The only way out of the straight-jacket is to walk out of the talks.

Perhaps this the aim of the Vatican: to keep talking until they are able to force or to provoke the SSPX to split. The cards are certainly laid out to facilitate such a maneuver.

Bishop Fellay has proved himself in the past to be ingenious about parrying the Vatican's attempts to isolate him and the SSPX. We will now see what he will do in this latest set-up.

*****

The SSPX should expect that the Vatican will push, push, push on the issue of relations with the Jewish religion. The SSPX's failure to defend Bishop Williamson when he was under world-wide attack has left the SSPX vulnerable on this issue. The Vatican will not fail to exploit this opening in an attempt to put the SSPX on the defensive.

 

Afghanistan, in Today's News 10.16.09

Afghanistan. Afghan President Karzai better scramble if he wants to avoid the Ken-Lewis-treatment, or worse, from the United States. The weeks' long investigation of corruption in the Afghan presidential election is nothing more than an effort by the United States to undermine and get rid of Karzai.

After working the fraud-in-the-elections gambit for weeks, the US finally is close to establishing the need for a run-off election between Karzai and the former foreign minister Abdullah. The US polling apparatus shows that Karzai would probably win, but never underestimate the effort of the war chiefs. When they get their runoff, they will then turn their energy to character-assassination of Karzai.

Karzai had better move fast if he doesn't want to join the long list of politicians who displeased the cryptocracy and were removed in one manner or another.

******

"Sen. Levin Crafts Afghan Compromise." This is a headline in today's Wall Street Journal (page A6). This article purports to convince us that Senator Levin, the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has entered the great discussion of Afghan policy by proposing to solve the dilemma of more troops versus a 'counter-terror' push with fewer troops. Levin's compromise: train the Afghan army faster!!

Now there is a new idea!!!! This stratagem was a complete disaster in Vietnam, where the South Vietnamese army, built up fast by the US, was incapable of defending the regime, and ultimately led to the collapse of the war effort. In Iraq, the new idea was implemented and resulted in no decrease in US troops. This army too will probably collapse when the Americans reduce their armed influence.

It seems this 'new' approach is what the war mongers come up with when they realize that they cannot win a war. Just train the indigenous army quickly and hope for the best. In the long run this strategy provides cover for the war mongers when the war is lost. 'We didn't lose, it was the Afghan-Iraq-South Vietnamese army who lost the war.'