OLD SCHOOL DISINFORMATION?

"A shocking report prepared for Prime Minister Putin by the Foreign Military Intelligence Directorate (GRU) states that one of the United States top experts in biological and chemical weapons was brutally murdered after he threatened to expose a US Military test of poison gas that killed hundreds of thousands of animals in Arkansas this past week.

According to this report, John P. Wheeler III, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force, Washington, D.C. from 2005-2008, when he became the Special Assistant to the Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Logistics and Environment, was found brutally murdered and dumped in a landfill, and as we can read as reported by Fox News...

...Wheeler’s military career included writing one of the most important manuals on the effectiveness of biological and chemical weapons which led to his being hired in 2009 as a consultant to the Mitre Corporation, whose aviation system development department, the GRU reports, is at the forefront of creating the computer command and control systems used by the US Air Force in their fleet of aerial spraying planes.

These aerial spraying planes, this report continues, are based at the Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas that over the past few months have been involved with ‘test dispersants’ of poisonous gasses in the Afghanistan War Theater using chemical weapons stocks obtained from Iraq and held at the Pine Bluff Arsenal, also located in Arkansas...

...According to this report, the US relocated from Iraq to the Pine Bluff Arsenal an estimated 63,000 metric tonnes of the poisonous gas Phosgene that is described as one of the most feared chemical weapons ever used due to its ability to literally cause the lungs and respiratory system to explode.

Nearly immediately after Russia accused the US this past summer of not fully destroying Iraq’s Phosgene poisonous gas stockpile the Pine Bluff Arsenal began an ‘accelerated’ disposal programme injecting it deep into the ground in central Arkansas, but which, unfortunately, since this past September, has caused over 500 minor earthquakes to occur raising the concerns of their local population...

...Upon Wheeler discovering what was happening with Iraq’s Phosgene poisonous gas stockpiles, this report continues, he traveled from his home in Delaware to Washington D.C. where he openly confronted and threatened to expose the Pentagon and White House Officials responsible. Being a Vietnam Veteran who was responsible for having the famous memorial to that war erected, Wheeler was more than knowledgeable about the United States massive chemical and biological attacks in that conflict and had vowed to not let happen again.

Sadly, but all too common in the United States these days, when Wheeler threatened to go public with what was happening he was targeted for death, and as a “sign” to anyone else thinking of going against the regime, had his body dumped in a garbage pit for all the World to see."
EU Times

This reminds me of the stories that I used to listen to on Radio Moscow when I was a kid, laying in bed at night, twisting the dial on my shortwave. Follow the link back and read the whole thing, it's a hoot.

That being said, the mystery that surrounds the death of Wheeler is all cloak and dagger feeling. Here's a guy that was the leading expert on biological warfare and was now working at the department of defense in dealing with the threat of cyber warfare. He mysteriously disappears, only to turn up dead in a landfill. It's fairly obvious that there's something more here than just a run of the mill robbery/murder. But what?

The part of the story above about the earthquakes in Arkansas is true. I read it in the paper over the Christmas week. My mother-in-law was visiting from Hot Springs and she said that its a major mystery down there. Some think that the quakes are being caused by fracking, a process used in the search for natural gas deposits. If I remember right, Arkansas has put a hold on further exploration until they can figure out what's going on.

So, is the story correct and the quakes aren't being caused by fracking but instead by injections of chemical weapons grade gas into the earth to dispose of it? And what about the dead birds and fish? Was it really a malfunctioning spray system? Then what about the fish and bird kills going on elsewhere in the world? Did our planes have problems there, too?

Or is it more likely that the fish died off en masse just like they often do in rivers for any number of reasons and the birds were flying in a massive flock, as they often do, and got tangled up in a high altitude storm, lighting strike or some other natural event.

But that's what I like about the story in the EU Times. They're doing just what Radio Moscow used to do, taking unrelated facts and twisting them into a piece of disinformation meant to confuse and anger the people. And then they throw in some subtle and some not so subtle editorializing right in the middle of everything. All clumsy and heavy handed and oh so Soviet feeling. Great stuff!

Or, maybe it's true.

ANOTHER MYSTERY MISSILE

H/T The Coming Depression

PLEDGE? WELL...MAYBE NOT SO MUCH

Let the backpedaling begin! The Republicans are getting just a bit less robust about those promises they made before the elections. I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt but in the end, if they do anything materially different than every other Congress of the last 80 years I'll be flabbergasted!

THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT - WERE THE FOUNDERS WRONG?

My friend Ioannes over at Commentarius de Prognosticis wrote an article which I have posted in its entirety below. His thoughts have got me to write some of mine after his article regarding the nature of government. I was going to post this at his site but it just got too long. I've been thinking about this for awhile and still have a long way to go to fill out my thoughts. While I'm sure none of what I've written or been thinking about is particularly original as it follows Distributive thinking, it's fairly eye opening for me.

So enjoy the post from Ioannes and then read mine if you have the time. I'd like a whole bunch of holes to be shot in my thinking so I know where I'm going wrong.

"Folks,

Deal W. Hudson at Inside Catholic has a great article entitled, Does the USCCB Understand Subsidiarity? Please left click your mouse cursor on the aforementioned hyperlinked text to read his essay. Simply put, the answer is either "no" or "yes, and we don't care", for the USCCB is wholly given over to liberal progressive Democrat ideals where the Federal Government is the source and wellspring of all solutions to society, and not Jesus Christ. As Mr. Hudson concludes:

It's a good moment in our nation's history for all of us to take a fresh look at our founding documents. And while we are at it, Catholics can lay them alongside the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church and note how a limited government with a separation of powers, as well as a respect for individual liberty and free enterprise, is not antithetical to what is found there.

But no liberal progressive Democrat actually believes in the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as they are written and originally intended.

By the way, for those who may not know what the technical term "subsidiarity" means, here is its definition:

1. (Christianity / Roman Catholic Church) (in the Roman Catholic Church) a principle of social doctrine that all social bodies exist for the sake of the individual so that what individuals are able to do, society should not take over, and what small societies can do, larger societies should not take over
2. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) (in political systems) the principle of devolving decisions to the lowest practical level

The Church's teaching on Capital and Labor is discussed in Pope Leo XIII's Encyclical Rerum Novarum where socialism is clearly rejected:

...it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property.

Pope John Paul II expanded on that in his Encyclical, Centessimus Annus, where (as David Brosnich of the Acton Institute points out) he:

...wrote that the Welfare State was contradicting the principle of subsidiarity by intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility. This "leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending."

More on this can be found in the article, The Principle of Subsidiarity.

The time has long passed to throw the liberals out of both the Church and their political offices."

Now, onto the boring stuff:

While I agree with all you've said, who do we replace them with? The Republicans, at least the old time party apparatchiks, will use government to support corporate interest, again consolidating all power at the top to the detriment of the people.

I'm hoping that the newly elected Tea Party people won't be co-opted into this country club mentality and will stand strong against central government powers. I guess we'll see just how sincere they are when the vote over the debt ceiling comes up.

I'm quickly losing hope that short of the return of Christ himself we'll never see honest and effective government run for the benefit of the people. Hell, even our much revered Founders went off the reservation as soon as they found themselves in positions of power.

This brings me to something I’ve been thinking about. I am starting to believe that the Founders, sons of the enlightenment all and many or most being Freemasons to boot, made a critical mistake in their understanding of government and it's reverberating today.

Man doesn't create government. He doesn't design it, lend it some of his rights and thus have complete dominion over it. Government is a separate and God created thing. Existing, like man, as a God created object and, just like man, possessing its own rights and responsibilities, fully independent of anything else.

Man can only accede to it or not. He can no more create it than he can create love or honor.

I'm beginning to think that the state exists for man and man exists for the state. Neither can find its true fulfillment, its completeness without the other. We exist parallel to each other and depend on each other to restrain our propensity towards evil and to guide and support our search for the common good.

Both man and government have rights, none of which can completely override those of the other. But the ideas stated in the Declaration of Independence, “with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”, are not true. If they were, how could it be possible for a state to conscript its citizens in times of dire emergency? According to the Declaration we have an “unalienable right” to liberty. In other words, unless we harm the natural law rights of another the state has no right to infringe upon our liberty. Yet, most people would agree that the state has the natural law right to conscript its citizens in time of dire emergency when the survival of the state or its citizens rest upon it. Whether townspeople needed to sandbag because the levee is about to break or the kid drafted into a war that must be won, the state has the authority to demand that the people serve. The state has a natural law right to self defense that presupposes the means to defense in the same way our right to self defense demands that we be allowed to carry weapons, as expressed in the Second Amendment.

Further, do we have the same right to conscript that the government does? If the government derives its powers from the people then it follows it cannot posses rights that the people themselves don't. Because the government possesses the right to conscript I believe this proves the point that its rights stand apart from and are different then those of the people.

So we have a general right to liberty that can be overridden in times of emergency to our state, not an unalienable right. The state should support and protect our general right with the understanding that we have an obligation to suspend our right from time to time to support the state. The state and man are separate entities designed to support and defend each other. Neither is meant to have complete dominion over the other. Both have responsibilities to each other that come with their individual rights.

Further, I've come to the conclusion that the natural, God designed system of government is Monarchy.

When you get done laughing, hear me out.

This is precisely the system of government used by the Church and it has lasted 2000 years. Point out any other government that's made it that long.

Secondly, all government, eventually, and America is no exception, end up with some form of Monarchy. Generally, governments become oligarchies, led by a small group of individuals that pretty much control everything. This is as true for us as it is for most European Monarchies and all others around the world.

I think this natural inclination towards a Monarchy of some sort is an indication that government is just trying to return to form, to assume its true nature. The thing is, they don't become true Monarchies because the people in power don’t want them to be. They become a twisted version of the truth which is incredibly dangerous to the interests of the individual.

A true Monarchy, such as the one in Rome, does understand subsidiarity and practices it. This is why the Church, though it has an earthly king, allows and encourages most of the decision making and day to day operations of its vast empire to be controlled by the parish priest. And it allows the individual member of the Church the freedom to do and say as they please, within the bounds of a very few proclamations of the faith which must be adhered to. Sure there are Church laws but they’re generally light and easy to follow. Most apply to the functioning of the church itself, not to the people that make up the body.

Has it always functioned perfectly? No! Not because of the nature of the government, though. Our problems have come from corrupt individuals in high and low positions of power. But what can we expect? We are a corrupted species, the effects of the fall clouding all our actions.

But, I contend that since the government of the Church was designed from the ground up according to God’s plan and built as a true Monarchy, it has weathered the storms, still standing after all the attacks Satan has thrown at it.

Because America, at a foundational level, is founded upon an idea of government created by man, not God, it won’t stand the test. No republic ever has. No other form of government as ordained by man has ever lasted. Only the one, true Monarchy will still be with us, after all else has failed.

Because of their experience with an oligarchy under the name of Monarchy, the founders believed that Monarchy was inherently corrupt and evil so they designed a system that is in many ways really close to the system of government used by the Church. But it’s not the same thing and that small difference, that distortion of the truth regarding the true nature of government will prove the downfall of all they labored and died for.

YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION?

This video is from Glenn beck's news site The Blaze. The slowdown by the sanitation workers in New York was just the beginning of the strikes and social unrest that we'll be seeing this year. The left needs anarchy to force itself and its evil on the country. They need the people broken and battered so that a strongman can emerge; a savior, a messiah. This is what happened in Wiemar Germany and Hitler and his National Socialism rose to power. This is what happened in Russia and Lenin and his Marxist party seized control. And it will happen here. The only question is whether we'll stand for it.

All we have to do to defeat it is to stand tough and refuse to participate. If they start a riot, don't show up to join it or to try and stop it. If they don't clean the street, get out your shovels. Any hole they try to blow in society we can fill ourselves with our own strong backs and determination.

So get ready and pray, because we'll need divine intervention to win this one. We're facing the physical manifestation of the war that is underway in the spiritual world for control of the earth and the people that live here. We know how it turns out but we don't know how it gets to the end.

IT'S TIME FOR US TO SPEAK UP OR FADE INTO HISTORY

I wrote the short letter below to my Congressman, Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer tonight asking him to vote against extending the debt ceiling. It's time that all of us that see what's coming do everything we can to get our reps to stop this government from self destructing. If we don't, and if it continues to borrow and borrow with no real way to ever pay it back, it will collapse. It will not only collapse but it will cease to exist in any recognizable form. So we either act like adults and take our medicine, RIGHT NOW, or we stick our heads in the sand for another year or maybe a little more, and we allow ourselves to be led to the slaughter.

My guess is that the debt ceiling will be raised and the clock marking the time left before America is destroyed will continue to click down to that final, brutal moment when the lights get turned off and the party stops. All because we aren't grown up enough to face the consequences of our actions.

"I'm writing to ask that you do not vote to extend the debt ceiling. I understand precisely what that means; we will default on our obligations and our economy will collapse. The thing is, that is going to happen regardless of whether we continue to pile on more debt or not. The only difference is that maybe, just maybe, it can be shoved down the road another year or two. But that only delays the inevitable and worsens the results. If we can hold our debt at current levels and begin to significantly slash spending, and yes, that includes ALL entitlements, even Social Security and Medicare, to a level that matches revenue, maybe we can come out of this, years from now, in one piece.

This will be extraordinarily difficult and painful but there's really no way around it now.

Please take a look at this article at Market Ticker (http://bit.ly/i15ubg). He does a good job of explaining the math.

Thanks for your time."

RETURN OF THE MILLERITES

"But of that day and hour no one knoweth, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone."
Matthew 24:36

Here we go again:

If there had been time, Marie Exley would have liked to start a family. Instead, the 32-year-old Army veteran has less than six months left, which she'll spend spreading a stark warning: Judgment Day is almost here.

Exley is part of a movement of Christians loosely organized by radio broadcasts and websites, independent of churches and convinced by their reading of the Bible that the end of the world will begin on May 21, 2011.

To get the word out, they're using billboards and bus stop benches, traveling caravans of RVs and volunteers passing out pamphlets on street corners. Cities from Bridgeport, Conn., to Little Rock, Ark., now have billboards with the ominous message, and mission groups are traveling in countries from Latin America to Africa to spread the news outside the U.S.
More U.S. news

"A lot of people might think, 'The end's coming, let's go party,'" said Exley, a veteran of two deployments in Iraq. "But we're commanded by God to warn people. I wish I could just be like everybody else, but it's so much better to know that when the end comes, you'll be safe."
MSNBC

I suspect that we'll start to see more and more of this sort of stuff in the near future. It's apparent to most that something is happening that's not like anything we've experienced before. Many of us believe that we are in the times foretold in the Bible. I don't think that we're in the end times but the changing of an era that will usher us into an age of peace as the Book of Revelation speaks of, before the return of Christ and the final judgement. Others would disagree. Many in the Protestant world believe in a "rapture", a relatively new idea that is outside any of the traditional mainstream Christian theologies. I think they're wrong but that's not the point.

The one thing that all Christians should be able to agree on because it's so freakin' plainly spoken in the Bible is that no one will know the time that whatever happens...happens. There are always groups and individuals that claim to know the future, that say they are speaking for God and that they know the time of the second coming or rapture or whatever their pet theory is and that we should follow them. And for some reason, even though the words of the Bible contradict them, people hop on board.

Then the time passes and nothing happens and the people that are prone to mocking Christianity and religion in general get to go on TV and radio making funny jokes and ridiculing believers. And many that may have been considering whether to ask God into their lives figure that this just proves how silly the whole thing is so they turn around and walk away. Another soul lost because somebody got all puffed up and consumed by their own fantasy and led others astray.

"Then if any man shall say to you: Lo here is Christ, or there, do not believe him.
For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect. Behold I have told it to you, beforehand.
If therefore they shall say to you: Behold he is in the desert, go ye not out: Behold he is in the closets, believe it not. For as lightning cometh out of the east, and appeareth even into the west: so shall the coming of the Son of man be. Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together."
Matthew 24:23-28

When the time comes, God won't leave us guessing. We'll know that it's the real deal. There will be many that are coming that will be able to use the natural world, to create signs and wonders that will amaze, but, if you've been praying and kept the channels of communication open, you'll know the charlatan from the King.

But get ready for one of the greatest medicine shows in the history of man as Satan tries to sell his man as the Messiah. And keep on praying.

LOTS OF NOTHING

I'm having one of those days where I just can't think of anything to write about. I take that back. I can think of things to write about but I can't think of anything I care to write about. I've got to give it a try, though. Mostly I'll just try to provide the incoherent rambling as advertised in the header.

It's a new year but nothing's changed. The stock market's up and the economy's down, the smiling faces on the news talking about how everything is getting better while, at least in the construction business, there isn't any work to be found. Well, I take that back, too. Because there is work out there. The problem is that there are so many unemployed or underemployed individuals and contractors out there bidding on it that the prices are too low to make doing the work profitable. Hell, forget profit, the prices are too low to even pay a decent wage. One tiny mistake, and I guarantee there'll be at least one, and suddenly you're paying for the privilege of working.

Oil's creeping up on $100 per barrel and the cost of doing business is rising with it. Not just the cost of doing business but the cost of doing just about anything. Everything we do is fueled by oil. It's either made from oil or transported with oil. So the much ballyhooed tax break that the Republicans fought so very hard for, which will mostly impact the wealthy and not those of us that are worried about making the house payments, will get eaten up in higher costs for energy. Unless you're wealthy; then you'll hardly notice the additional cost but, boy those tax breaks will sure add up.

My wife went to the store yesterday and coffee was up to $14 for a container that cost about $6 six months ago. She found some ON SALE for $7 so she'll buy a couple and put them away. Screw the stock market, the big return is on food and clothing. Hyperinflation is here, at least in the things we have to buy to survive; food, clothes and fuel.

It's time to tap the maple trees and start cooking syrup, trimming the grapes and start building some more planting beds. The seed catalogs have been coming in the mail and we're getting ours ordered for the coming year. I've got to get in my order for the bees we hope to start keeping this year, too.

I've been reading the various predictions for the coming year from the usual prognosticators and their scoring of their own accuracy from the year past. As usual, about 50/50. No one could see the stock market at the level it's at today but then none of them anticipated the American government and the Euro zone basically falling on their swords to protect the interests of a handful of major banks.The overall tone of the predictions seemed about right, though. No one can predict the time or place that most things will happen but most of us can see the general direction they're heading. And the economies of the world are heading towards collapse. Whether they finally drive off the cliff this year or not they've all got the pedal pushed to the floorboards.

Personally, I think that what we'll see in the coming year is the continuation of a slow motion crash into something greater than a depression. We're going to see the world slowly grind to a halt. The only real question I have is how much violence and disorder will accompany this return to sanity and if there is a violent breakdown will a strongman emerge to seize control? I've said a number of times before that I believe we are heading back to life as it was in the time period of around 1870-1890. I think that's where we'll end up but I think it's going to get real ugly before we get there and when we do finally get life back to some sense of simplicity and order we'll be thankful to have it.

I also expect to see an uptick in religion over the next year. For many it'll just be blindly reaching out to something in a time of stress. For some it'll take but for many it won't. This puts a special burden on those of us that believe to be able to give reason for our belief. Not just touchy-feely emotion driven kumbaya reason but real reason, founded on logic and facts. People that are looking for a reason to believe, for salvation, need objective fact, something they can hold onto. Wishing for a life jacket and believing with all your heart that life jackets are real is all well and good but when the ship is sinking it's better to have a real one.

The storms have passed and the sun's back out, the temperatures in the 30's where they should be. Life goes on.

Happy New Year everyone. Keep praying so that you can keep the line open. This year will be full of challenges and it never hurts to get a bit of inside information.

And we're all one day closer to spring!