Countries that see themselves as victims can be exceedingly dangerous

Notes on a Conspiracy

by Barbara Frye

The global conspiracy against Russia proceeds apace.

Ratings agencies, the UN, Hollywood, the Saudis – are they all against Russia?

It’s hard to say when exactly it began, but the most recent salvo was the decision this week by Standard & Poor’s to lower the country’s foreign-currency bonds to “junk” status.

Apparently, that was not down to the increasingly limited room for a government squeezed between sanctions and plunging oil prices to bolster the Russian economy, as the ratings agency claimed. Instead, it was “politically motivated,” according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov, although he did not say to whose politics Standard & Poor’s was playing handmaiden.

A week earlier, Michel Kazatchkine, the UN secretary general’s special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said dozens of drug addicts had died in Crimea since Russia annexed the peninsula and banned the methadone treatment they had been receiving under Ukrainian law. Kazatchkine said addicts had committed suicide or overdosed and that others were at risk of needle-borne disease as they turned back to street drugs.

Russian health officials disputed the statistics; to the Foreign Ministry, it was a case of bad faith. Kazatchkine’s assessments were “politically charged” and aimed for “cheap propaganda effect,” according to the ministry.

And a few days before Kazatchkine made his remarks, Russia’s culture minister told the Izvestia newspaper that Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Golden-Globe-winning, Oscar-nominatedLeviathan, which tells a tale of corruption in a provincial Russian town, would not have “received so many prestigious Western awards” had it been set in the United States, France, or Italy.

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Read more: www.tol.org

Monsignor Francesco Braschi racconta "La conversione al cristianesimo nei primi secoli" di Gustave Bardy

Perché diventavano cristiani?


Gustave Bardy
La conversione al cristianesimo nei primi secoli

Oggi come nei primi secoli. In una società priva di evidenze, ma dove rimane sempre il «desiderio di rispondere al senso dell'esistenza», cosa significa convertirsi? 

Monsignor Francesco Braschi spiega perché è interessante rileggere Bardy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEchbmumtjA

Leggi tutto: www.tracce.it

Una definición y una visión cristiana de la conciencia moral

«El católico de a pie acoge mejor el Magisterio que los teólogos sofisticados» 

(R. Esteban Duque)







En el año 2013, una entrevista al papa Francisco enLa Repubblica por parte de su director Eugenio Scalfari, llevó a muchos a la perplejidad: “cada uno -decía el Papa- tiene su propia idea del bien y del mal”.

Esto era algo capaz de originar una propuesta peligrosa de autonomía absolutizadora de la conciencia. Semejantes declaraciones fueron el acicate perfecto para que el moralista Roberto Esteban Duque, sacerdote y doctor en Teología de la Diócesis de Cuenca, escribiera el libro La voz de la conciencia, que publica ahora la editorial Encuentro.

- "Cada uno tiene su idea del bien y del mal"... ¿Qué piensa usted de estas palabras que, según Scalfari, dijo el Papa?

-Dicho así, como usted lo presenta, el papa Francisco parecía invitar a obedecer la conciencia creativa; es decir, la verdad moral no dependería de una verdad establecida por Dios, sino que sería “creación” de la conciencia subjetiva y autónoma. La conciencia como juez infalible del bien y del mal era una propuesta del calvinista Rousseau.

»Pero a mí no me gusta interpretar lo que dice el Papa; ya lo hace con actitud pertinaz Federico Lombardi, portavoz de la Santa Sede, y después el juglar mercenario de los medios de comunicación. Como comprenderá, resulta un poco esperpéntico colaborar en la ceremonia de la confusión.

- Pero, ¿no está de acuerdo en que la conciencia es autónoma?

-No si esa autonomía se comprende como un valor absoluto, convirtiendo a la persona en norma de moralidad. La conciencia moral es la norma última y decisiva de la moral, pero no la norma suprema, porque está sometida a la ley divina; la conciencia será el juicio último, de obligatorio seguimiento, pero no el juicio definitivo de moralidad, de ahí que podamos hablar de conciencia verdadera y errónea. La dignidad de la conciencia está en la apertura a la verdad. La conciencia no es creadora de los valores morales, ni fuente autónoma del juicio moral. Es testigo de una verdad que la precede y supera, y que es Dios mismo y su ley.

»El punto crítico de una concepción subjetivista de la moral consiste en la negación de la posibilidad de una conciencia moral errónea. No podemos pensar, como afirma el jesuita Bruno Schüller, que la conciencia no puede engañarse sobre el bien y sobre el mal, que lo que ella ordena es siempre e infaliblemente bien moral. Tal reivindicación de infalibilidad de la conciencia moral es típica del subjetivismo moderno.

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Leer más aquí: www.religionenlibertad.com

The Feds own a third of all US land, up to half and more of many western states.

Abortion, Torture, and the Juice-Box Theologians

by Austin Ruse


There is a movement well underway to convince faithful Catholics they do not have a political home in the Republican Party.

The effort is comprised of former political conservatives who now believe they are more Catholic than anybody else and therefore have cast a pox on both political parties, which is just another way for the abortion party to continue winning.

They want you to believe that the water boarding of three terrorists more than a decade ago is on par with 50 million deaths from abortion, and that any desire for smaller government and less regulation is a form of radical individualism, Randism, or libertarianism that is therefore anti-Catholic.

Overtly political left-wingers and dissenters at places like the National Catholic Reporter, and to a lesser extent Commonweal have been making a case like this for years. They noticed that the so-called non-negotiable issues of abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, same-sex “marriage” and human cloning have had a galvanizing political effect on faithful Catholics.

They were deeply dismayed that dunder-head warmonger George Bush not only captured the way Catholics speak about public policy; he captured their vote, too. In fact, he stomped a dissenting Catholic who ran against him. Bush not only won the faithful Catholic vote, those who actually go to Mass, but he captured the generics, those who haven’t seen a Church in twenty years but still identity as Catholic when pollsters call.

None of this happened by accident. The Bush apparatus knew what they were doing. They put together a formidable team for Catholic outreach and they worked the Catholic side of the street assiduously. There were White House briefings and regular phone calls and the courting of Catholic intellectuals like Father Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, George Weigel and Robert George, who were happy to give their advice and counsel, happy to defend Bush when he deserved it, happy even to make his case to the Holy Father when the need arose.

The political left tried in vain to convince faithful Catholics that other issues rose to the level of abortion, same-sex “marriage” and the rest of the non-negotiables. We were told economic issues rose that high; the minimum wage, the social safety net, universal government health care and all the rest. They argued that the death penalty rose that high. They argued the GOP was not really concerned with abortion after all because decades had passed and the GOP had not overturned Roe v. Wade.

So, we were told to leave the GOP and join the Democrats even though they fight to the death any restrictions on abortion, never saw a gay “marriage” they didn’t love, fought tooth and nail for embryo-destructive research, are enthusiastic about euthanasia, but still want to raise the minimum wage.

Faithful Catholics and even generics ignored this pitch in droves, bolstered in part by Pope Benedict who said others issues could not rise as high in our political estimation as abortion.

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Read more: www.crisismagazine.com

Every terror group received training and funding from Castro.

The Truth About the Cuban ‘Embargo’

by Humberto Fontova


Low information voters are bad enough. But maybe low information presidents, pundits, and legislators contribute to the problem. To wit:

“In Cuba, we are ending a policy that was long past its expiration date. When what you’re doing doesn’t work for fifty years, it’s time to try something new.(President Obama, Jan. 21, 2015.)


“The permanent (Cuba) embargo was imposed in 1962 in the hope of achieving, among other things, regime change. Well. Regime change — even significant regime modification — has not happened in Havana.” (Syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor/analyst George Will, Dec. 24, 2014)

“In the end, I think opening up Cuba is probably a good idea. The 50-year embargo just hasn’t worked. If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn’t seem to be working.” (Congressman Rand Paul Dec. 18, 2014.)

Given the breadth of policy-making, policy-influencing and policy-brokering represented by the figures quoted above you’d hope that one might have prevailed upon their huge staffs to actually research the issue at hand.

They apparently did not. So here I’ll volunteer my services in hopes of raising the information level on this issue:

On January, 21, 1962 at Punta del Este Uruguay U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk gave a speech to the Organization of American States explaining the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba and recommending that the members join the U.S. in voting for these sanctions. In this speech there is not a single word–or even an inference–that regime-change was the embargo’s goal. “The United States objects to Cuba’s activities and policies in the international arena not its internal system or arrangements.”

Indeed, Secretary Rusk went out of his way to stress that regime-change wasNOT the embargo’s goal. In brief, the U.S. was trying to contain Soviet-Cuban sponsored international terrorism:

Every terror group from the Weathermen to Puerto Rico’s Macheteros, from Argentina’s Montoneros, to Colombia’s FARC, from the Black Panthers to the IRA, and from the PLO to AL Fatah received training and funding from Castro.

Granted, while most were not immediately defeated they were certainly contained. Then for three decades the Soviet Union was forced to pump the equivalent of almost ten Marshall Plans into Cuba. This drain on her resources certainly helped bankrupt the Evil Empire.

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Read more: www.frontpagemag.com

The question about Europe now is not whether it can retain its current form, but how radically that form will change.

The new drivers of Europe’s geopolitics

by George Friedman

For the past two weeks, I have focused on the growing fragmentation of Europe. Two weeks ago, the murders in Paris prompted me to write about the fault line between Europe and the Islamic world. Last week, I wrote about the nationalism that is rising in individual European countries after the European Central Bank was forced to allow national banks to participate in quantitative easing so European nations wouldn't be forced to bear the debt of other nations. I am focusing on fragmentation partly because it is happening before our eyes, partly because Stratfor has been forecasting this for a long time and partly because my new book on the fragmentation of Europe — Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe — is being released today.

This is the week to speak of the political and social fragmentation within European nations and its impact on Europe as a whole. The coalition of the Radical Left party, known as Syriza, has scored a major victory in Greece. Now the party is forming a ruling coalition and overwhelming the traditional mainstream parties. It is drawing along other left-wing and right-wing parties that are united only in their resistance to the EU's insistence that austerity is the solution to the ongoing economic crisis that began in 2008.

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Read mnore: www.mercatornet.com

Cosa direbbe uno psicanalista di fronte ai segreti del presidente russo

Zar e vampiro, Putin non divora, assimila

di Umberto Silva

Inauguro le mie considerazioni psicoanalitiche sui fantasmi e le fantasie dei potenti, ma anche dei politici meno abbienti, con una delle figure più inquietanti della nostra epoca, il presidente russo Vladimir Putin, che ha appena dichiarato: "Ogni tentativo di riscrivere la storia è inammissibile e amorale". Ufficialmente ha pronunciato questa frase al museo ebraico di Mosca il giorno della Memoria, indirizzandola al governo di Kiev e accusandolo di accettare tra i suoi sostenitori gli eredi del collaborazionista Stepan Bandera. Ma come Freud insegna, le parole vivono tante vite, le intenzioni sono travolte e i destinatari si sovrappongono l’un l’altro: l’eco di quelle parole di Putin porta assai lontano, e vicino, nel cuore della sua complessa strategia mentale che, mentre dichiara la storia non più riscrivibile, di fatto la riscrive.

La storia, già, di quale storia parla Putin? La storiaccia dei professori negazionisti e dei loro affiliati vestiti di borchie e pelli nere? Sì, anche, ma per lunga esperienza ho motivo di pensare che la storia di cui Putin va parlando sia innanzitutto la sua storia, al pari di tutti noi quando crediamo di parlare degli altri. Di che raccontava Hegel scolpendo i marmorei destini dello Stato prussiano se non del proprio stato psichico, un tantino pietrificato? Riscrivere la storia! Tutti, tranne il coriaceo Putin, forse, lo vorremmo; a partire dall’infanzia, in cui non eravamo amati come desideravamo; o dall’adolescenza, ove quel certo incontro con la prima ragazza potrebbe essere riscritto in modo assai più entusiasmante. Non parliamo dell’età matura, crogiolo di errori e di pagine fosche che vorremmo strappare. E a una certa età quanto pagheremmo per riscrivere tutta la nostra vita o quasi, o se non altro correggerla, mettere i punti dove vanno messi, tagliare certe lungaggini. Putin no, o almeno così dice. Je ne regrette rien, canticchia, memore delle allegre serate in dacia col Cavaliere, e nulla cambierebbe della sua infanzia e della milizia nella Stasi, dal momento che questo percorso l’ha portato a diventare capo di quel fatale impero che umiliò Napoleone e Hitler. Due esimi macellai che al contrario di Putin volevano riscrivere una storia secolare e che, per un po’almeno, effettivamente la storia del mondo cambiarono.

Solo per un po’, e in questo sta la differenza: Napoleone conquista, Hitler conquista, Putin mostra ciò che da sempre è suo, o almeno tale reputa, o finge di crederlo con un tale impegno da sembrare più vero del vero. 

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Leggi tutto: www.ilfoglio.it/