The Peoples’ Republic of Saint Peter’s Square
There’s a little Lefty fella running a franchise in central Italy into the ground. Running things into the ground is what Lefties do. What he does and says wouldn’t be worth a bucket of spit if he didn’t have billions of followers around the world who think he’s a direct conduit to their Maker.
There was no loved lost between me and Joe Ratzinger when he “retired” from the papacy. I considered him an angry, rather fanatical religious figure. From all accounts, I was wrong about that, but I don’t think much about popes anyway. There are also slowly emerging stories about the state of the Vatican Bank (already not having a sterling reputation)1 and politics within the walls of the “holy” city. Was Benedict shown the door because he was going to spill the beans?
Francis, on the other hand, has flim-flammed just about everybody.
Jorge Begoglio, spent his formative years straddling both sides of the political fence and studying philosophy, literature and theology. Looking back, it might have been helpful had he spent a semester or two studying economics in Chicago. But you can’t have everything.
The political fence-straddling makes a bit of sense considering the loony bin Argentina was when he served there as a Jesuit priest and bishop. But that doesn’t explain his reeling back and forth since.
Why should I care?
I shouldn’t have skin in this game. I have no association with a spirit world and certainly no religious loyalties. What the head of a pretend country, allowed to survive through a deal with Benito Mussolini does, should effect me not at all. But it does. The pretend country is well-connected and the boss is very political. As it turns out, he has decided to throw his weight solidly behind the Left and is trying to take his flock with him. And he is lock-step with his secular partners in bringing the whole world into a dystopian nightmare. The nightmare is, of course wrapped in pretty ribbons of “diversity” and “care for the downtrodden”.
Basically, Begoglio is driving his church into the waiting arms of his friends in the WEF/Davos cult.2 The policy of “Silence and Prayer,” as described by Vatican participants in Davos, smacks of the Concordat and the Lateran Treaty. And recent church policy is running fully behind the chaos and power grabs of the Davos cult.
True to modern Leftist form, Begoglio and the tiny central government in Rome are now cancelling people who don’t ring the bell for the boss. Among the lunatic pronouncements from the Vatican we’ve seen lately is the embrace of the trans fad, including where young people are involved.3
Jorge’s lack of sincere care for kids is of no surprise considering his appointment of an unapologetic enabler4 of child abuse to the office to investigate - you got it - cases of priests abusing kids!
Keeping the pot stirred for socialism, sociopathic fads and non-diverse “diversity” nonsense is serving the Davos cult (which includes administrations of almost every western nation) quite well. Having the active assistance of the Vatican provides “religious” cover for more proles to pretend to believe the nonsense as well. It is intended to serve as a rubber stamp for more green scams, “smart” cities and more aggressive censorship of us, the proles. They will sterilize our kids and tell them pretending to be of another sex is real. And “Francis” will tell you this pleases god. [eye-roll]
For defending the church against this secular onslaught, led from the top, Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas was fired last week. To his credit, he has not taken this insult quietly. He is calling on his people and bishops across the country to stick to the teachings of the Christ and the Bible.
If he and I were to have a beer and discuss the miraculous side of Church teachings, we’d have much to disagree about, from the concept of a god needing a son to the definition of a miracle in the first place. But in standing against the secular craziness the Roman Church is being driven to, he and I have common cause.
The Vatican has tried, with varying results, to insert itself into politics since Rome fell. Now, it is being used, by the POPE, as a sacrificial alter, where you and I will be will be devoured by our new masters - governments and the cronies they serve.
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Straining My Morality
I watched with mixed emotions - amusement and disgust - as protestors blocked the Bay Bridge in San Francisco during APEC.
Considering these spoiled brats were pro-Hamas idiots, I’d have a hard time respecting their presence if I were driving across that bridge. Their only saving grace might be their utter ignorance of how the entire Arab world actually sees gays, liberals, women and Palestinians. They haven’t a clue what they are hollering about. But hey, they get to be part of the narrative. They get a collective 15 minutes.
That they inconvenienced the pure theater known as an APEC “Summit” was kind of amusing. These things are junkets, during which domestic audiences back home hear how their heads of state are taking it to their counterparts at the conference. Little comes of it all.
Adding to the phony drama is the meeting between Joe Duh and Xi Jinping -Ricochet Rabbit5. It seems more and more we’ve been tarting up photo ops between POTUS and people like Xi and Putin as being in any way important. Such things used to mean the consummation of some kind of pre-negotiated deliverables being inked by the participants. Now they mean nothing at all.
Oh sure, we heard how the Chinese were going to “cooperate” in the reduction of Fentanyl. You bet. You just hold your breath and watch how they cooperate on that one. Let us know where to send flowers.
They also agreed to “restart” military talks. What the hell does that even mean. When it is in our interest we already talk to their military. They never listen. We’ve been shaking our finger at them for 10 years over their militarization of the South China Sea, including in the national waters of other countries. They don’t give a warm, watery shit about what we think, militarily. And unless they invade Taiwan, they never will.6
The brats on the bridge accomplished nothing. APEC amounts to nothing. Since the Chinese kook has purged all his reliable advisors, the meeting with Joe Duh means less than nothing. So San Francisco had an extra traffic jam for nothing. The good news is the drug addicts and lunatics will be back, camping in the streets, quicker than you can say “California deserves it.”
Naive Pronouncements
It’s a good thing the European Union’s days are numbered7. They say the silliest things. This week, Josep Borrell, foreign policy chief of the EU, lectured Israel saying one horror doesn’t justify another. We’ve been hearing such unhelpful drivel for over a month now.
Do these people have any sense of history at all? When fighting their way into Germany, should the allies stopped and said, “Now wait a minute! We need to get aid into the towns we are attacking and negotiate the release of our POWs before we do one more thing!”?
There are two truths these intentionally ignorant “officials” pretend not to grasp when a horror is committed. First, when a horror like 10/7 is committed, ALL consequences meted out by the aggrieved nation is on the shoulders of the original perpetrators; every last casualty, until they surrender and give themselves up.
Also, when such attacks occur, it is the responsibility of the nation attacked to make certain that there are no traces left of those who committed the horror, or their organization, to do it again. All other considerations, food, fuel, medicine - even hostages, take a back seat to that mission.
You go, Israel! You fight your war. The chattering peanut gallery has no responsibility to YOUR people. Bebe Netanyahu was very clear that questions would be asked of him when it’s all over. That is as it should be. But that can’t be a guiding influence on his actions. The defeat and extermination of Hamas should be.
If only someone could point out to Palestinians in Gaza, Lebanon and the territories how phenomenal life could be if only they tolerated civilized, honest, 21st century political representation. Sadly, we are at least two generations from that happening. Violent indoctrination is intense among these people and starts with the very young. Those living along the Mediterranean don’t understand they have a two-state solution already. They could seriously cash in on their turf almost overnight. Gaza, Beirut and the West Bank could both be amazing destinations. But not while medieval lunatics run those places.
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I warned you!
I posted on FB on Nov. 14th that the FCC was about to vote on a piece of “regulation” that was going to change how the information industry works. And they voted the next day. The Senate has been busy in the arena too.
As we go through this, remember RFK Jr’s second rule of politics: If government finds it can abuse a law, the government WILL abuse that law.
A while back, while crafting the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act - another green scam tarted up as law, Congress tasked the FCC with coming up with an “equity” scheme for the internet. This was another of those times where “lawmakers” task unelected bureaucrats with making actual laws.
The result was the FC-goddamn-C basically hijacking the way the internet will expand and operate. Get a load of this naive bit of justification:
“The trajectory of digital progress has not always been even, has not always been fair, a result that has held back our collective achievements as a nation,” said Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, who voted in favor of imposing the rules. “Eradicating digital discrimination anywhere will empower individuals everywhere. This is a proceeding that will impact generations of Americans to come, and will work to ensure a more just and equitable future for tomorrow.” [emphasis mine]
It’s worth noting that it reads like socialist drivel. That is the mindset that leads to the kind of draconian requirements they are about to slap ISPs with. And get this bit of subjective, catch-all bullshit:
ISPs could be fined if they are caught engaging in conduct that’s discriminatory and “not justified by genuine issues of technical or economic feasibility,…” [emphasis mine]
So here we have a law, vaguely worded to allow an agency to write the actual law, under which penalties will be assessed based on a Lefty bureaucrats’ subjective interpretation of the term “genuine”. The term in this case being attached to the words “technical” and “economic”.
Let me tell you how this will shake out. (Doubt me not. I called the problems with EVs and wind farms BEFORE companies started bailing on those stupid ideas.) XYZ company is expanding their 5G network in, we’ll say, Baltimore. They have analyzed the data and believe they will make money by next setting up in the downtown area. They considered areas bordering the business and retails areas but decided that they wouldn’t make money in the surrounding areas and that those areas didn’t justify the risk to workers due to high crime and drug trafficking.8
This will be the exact case the FCC’s socialists are banking on. It’s the one they want. They WILL say that these do not reflect GENUINE economic considerations. The question being: genuine to whom? They will say complaining about safety is racists (regardless of the racial makeup of the neighborhoods). They will tell the ISP to keep building until the FCC is satisfied or face fines.
And the plot thickens. The Senate has been busy.
The seedling for complete government control over internet content was planted on 5 September of this year. S. 1080, Cooper Davis Act states that communications companies will be responsible to report all drug trafficking content on their servers and report the account holders.
There’s more. You need to read the summary.
“S. 1080 would require providers of electronic communications and remote computing services (such as email, cell phone, social media, and cloud computing) to report certain instances of illicit drug trafficking on their platforms to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Specifically, the bill would require providers to report the unlawful sale or distribution of fentanyl, methamphetamine, or other counterfeit controlled substances and preserve the contents of each report for 90 days. S. 1080 would require each report to contain information about the users involved, including their names and addresses, and how the provider discovered each violation. Additionally, the bill would create new criminal penalties for providers who fail to submit a report and civil penalties for submitting incomplete or fraudulent reports. S. 1080 also would require DEA to review each report to determine whether further investigation is warranted.”
Criminal Penalties?! Keep in mind, the only way this is possible is for every company involved to monitor every account through the use of algorithms. So if your algorithm misses a few, you’re now a criminal? Great. While shifting the law enforcement responsibilities to social networks and phone and email services, S. 1080 lays the groundwork for what is to come.
RFK’s second rule, right?
Once this Orwellian scheme has been tested and the providers are sufficiently cowed, we will again here about the DANGERS of “misinformation” and “disinformation”. As demonstrated by the Twitter Files, this is any content that doesn’t fit the Lefty Regime narrative. Piggy backing on the S. 1080 test cases, Uncle Stinky will lay out a new regimen of reporting required for anyone with a server on the internet. Who is saying what? Control of your speech and mine will be etched in law. Disobedience will be punished.
The FCC’s equity drivel will be expanded and linked to new and improved S. 1080 to make sure that the information provided by the communications entities doesn’t look bad for minorities.
These people don’t care about drug traffickers. Hell, in partnership with the cartels the Regime is the biggest distributor of illicit drugs in history. And they don’t care about equity. They care about power and absolute control of information and the backbone that provides it.
All of this will absolutely happen, unless you stand up. So far, I’ve watched you let one abuse after another wash over you like gentle waves on a sunny beach, knowing the waves will get bigger and more numerous. You’ll eventually drown.
You can bet the farm the hyper-rich cronies of Davos are now giving the Vatican Bank plenty of business. One suspects that might not have been the case under Ratzinger.
Among attendees at Davos were world leaders, activists, a few thousand high-priced hookers and Cardinals Peter Turkson or Michael Czerny for the Vatican. No word on whether they availed themselves of the hookers.
The irony is rich, as “Francis” was a vocal opponent of gay marriage laws in South America when he was shining his apples for Joe Ratzinger, as recently as 2005. No wait…he had some kind of religious epiphany since then where god told him trans is cool and the Bible supports gay sex, right?
Cardinal Victor Fernandez covered for at least one priest’s sexual abuse of boys for 10 years. He then officiated at the man’s funeral after the priest committed SUICIDE! Somebody, please, square that with the Church’s teachings on suicide and child abuse.
With all respect to Chris Plante, I wrote that the first time I heard Xi’s name. How could you not?
They never will invade Taiwan. If they did we wouldn’t have to fire a shot to shut them down and they know it.
We are within a decade of Germany and France, for different reasons, rejecting the Union. Then, who is going to hold it together? Poland? Belgium?
Ask any technician who climbs poles for a living what it is like working in a high-crime dump. One pole-climber told me he was about to install a light fixture that had been shot out. As he prepared to climb, a local citizen approached and asked what the climber was going to do. When he said he was going to fix the light the citizen showed him a pistol in his belt and said, “No, you’re not.” The light never got fixed.
Rome, Davos, Censorship and Apec