Refusing to Read the Signs of the Times

by Thomas A. Droleskey

[1] And there came to him the Pharisees and Sadducees tempting: and they asked him to shew them a sign from heaven. [2] But he answered and said to them: When it is evening, you say, It will be fair weather, for the sky is red. [3] And in the morning: Today there will be a storm, for the sky is red and lowering. You know then how to discern the face of the sky: and can you not know the signs of the times? [4] A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign: and a sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. (Matthew 16: 1-4.)

 

The puffed up naturalists of the false opposites of the "right" and the "left" in this country were the subject of yesterday's brief commentary, Union of False Opposites. This new commentary will be about as brief as yesterday's as not much time needs to be spent in reiterating points that have been made in numerous articles on this site since its inception (and in the printed pages of the old Christ or Chaos journal), including Longer Than World War II, which was posted one year ago today, as well as in articles published on other websites (see A Tale of Two Speeches and The Real Enemies Are Within, part 1; and The Real Enemies Are Within, part 2).

It is perhaps quite relevant in light of the airstrikes that have been launched by an "international coalition" (sound familiar) to enforce a cease-fire in the civil war that has broken out in Libya to reiterate points that I made a year ago today as I noted that the unjust and immoral American invasion and occupation of Iraq had lasted longer the entirety of World War II, which began in Europe with the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and ended with the former surrender of the Empire of Japan on September 2, 1945:

There was, therefore, a predisposition on the part of the neoconservative war hawks in the administration of then President George Walker Bush to use the tragic events of September 11, 2001, as the pretext to launch an immoral, unjust, unconstitutional invasion of a sovereign nation that posed no immediate or any kind of real, legitimate threat to the national security of the United States of America. This unjust war has cost the lives of nearly five thousand American citizens, including civilians, and has been responsible for the deaths of somewhere between 100,000 and 600,000 thoroughly innocent Iraqi civilians (estimates vary), some of whom have died as a result of American military actions, others of whom have died as a result of terrorist attacks launched by various warring Mohammedan factions within Iraq and by those who used the country's porous borders after the invasion as a sieve to seek to attack American forces in Iraq that they could not otherwise reach from their home countries.

The financial costs of the war have been staggering. The social costs for Americans at home have been staggering as the family lives of regular military service personnel and, most especially, of reservists in the United States National Guard have been disrupted and, in all too many instances, entirely broken, shattered. As I wrote The Remnant on early-2003 in in anticipation of these costs of the pending war, "for what?" To make Iraq safe for a "democracy" it did not want and will always be threatened by rival factions? For what?

Here is a brief synopsis of the misrepresentations that were made in the propaganda build-up to the Iraq War in 2002-2003 here in the United States of America:

 

1) Saddam Hussein had no "weapons of mass destruction." He destroyed his stockpile of biological weapons in the 1990s. The biological agents that he used on the Kurds in 1991 were sold to him by the United States of America in 1985 to be used in the then ongoing Iran-Iraq War. Hussein, who was certainly a brutal thug responsible for the deaths of about 1.5 million Iraqis between 1969 and 2003 (about the same number of innocent human beings put to death under cover of the civil law by means of surgical abortions each year) simply stockpiled those weapons to be used in his own country at a later date. Who was the American envoy who arranged for the sale of these biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. Look for yourselves:

 

  Shaking Hands: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983.  (National Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/ There is an interesting, fact-based article, replete with links to national security documents, available at: Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein.)

As noted just above, Hussein stockpiled these weapons sold to him by the United Sates of America, choosing not to use them in the war against Iran, which did not end until 1988, and used them instead on the Kurds in northern Iraq following the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, a war that was launched to expel Iraq's forces from a country, Kuwait, which Hussein believed that American Ambassador April Glaspie on July 25, 1990, had signaled to him was not of significant enough interest for the United States of America to do anything other than express a verbal condemnation in its behalf should he, Hussein, decide to reclaim Iraqi land that was taken away from it following the end of World War I.

2) The Iraqi government had no involvement in the September 11, 2001, attacks upon the World Trade Center towers in the City of New York, New York, and upon the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

3) The Iraqi government had no involvement with Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein was a thug who governed Iraq in the style of a Mafioso don. Mobsters protect their territories very carefully. Saddam Hussein, a very secular and non-observant Mohammedan and a xenophobe who had no use for foreigners of any type (saved for the Soviets when it served his purposes to have them train his military forces), never wanted a rival gang of mobsters to enter and possibly destabilize his country.

4) According to then President Bush, in an address given on October 7, 2002, Saddam Hussein's Iraq had a "growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas" (see George W. Bush: Address to the Nation on Iraq From Cincinnati, Ohio). This last point was particularly laughable. Growing fleet? How about two unmanned aerial vehicles? That's right, two. Their range? About 650 miles, which means that these unmanned aerial vehicles would had to have been transported by the nonexistent Iraqi navy undetected by satellite reconnaissance in order to get close enough to the United States to drop the nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction" that Saddam Hussein was alleged to have possessed or was in the "process" of developing. Absolute absurdity designed to frighten the American public and win international support for his scheme of "regime change" to aid the not-so-"democratic" State of Israel and American corporate interests.

5) Saddam Hussein was not attempting to purchase enriched uranium from the country of Niger to foment another attack on the United States of America, contrary to the claim made by President George Walker Bush in his State of the Union Address on January 28, 2003:

 

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.

Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary, he is deceiving. (President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address.)

 

No, it was George Walker Bush and his neoconservative war hawks who were deceiving the world. Saddam Hussein, caught up in his delusional world of paranoia and thuggery, was content to rattle the cages of the United States of America. He had no credible means to attack this country whatsoever.

The unjust, immoral, unconstitutional invasion of the sovereign country of Iraq to impose upon its people the "American way" so as to make the Middle East safe for Israel has also devastated Iraq's population of Christians, including Chaldean Rite Catholics. Mohammedan violence against Catholics and members of various Orthodox sects has been relentless in the past seven years. As bad as Saddam Hussein was, and he was a brutal thug, to be sure, he was a clever politician who wanted to have the support of as many groups as possible in Iraq, which is why he protected the small Christian minority in that country. One of the consequences of Hussein's overthrow has been to make Christians "fair game" for Mohammedan murderers, who have long desired to kill off or to drive into exile the "infidels."  (See More Christians Killed in Iraq, Chaldean bishop says U.S. accountable for death of Archbishop of Mosul, and Go Tell Iraq's Catholics--and American Babies--About The "Lesser of Two Evils".)

Neither the George Walker Bush administration or that of his successor, Barack Hussein Obama, have cared much to stop the violence against Christians as to do so would mean angering members of warring Mohammedan factions who are deemed "necessary" to build a "democratic" Iraq. The lives of Chaldean Rite Catholics and members of the various Orthodox sects are as expendable to American policy-makers, who have, of course, sanctioned outright torture and introduced contraception into country almost immediately after the first wave of the American invasion began seven years ago today, as the lives of Palestinian Arabs and the Lebanese are to the murderous thugs in the government of Israel and in that country's defense forces. Too bad. The "better" world must be built. Too bad that so many innocent lives must be killed. Too bad.

The United States of America is as vulnerable to attack from without now as it was seven years ago today. Diligent intelligence work has thwarted several credible efforts to attack our territory once again, including an attack that was to take place within the New York City subway system. Alas, the leaders of this country do not understand that we can never make this country secure from attacks without as long as our laws sanction the deliberate assaults upon the innocent preborn day in and day out. The Rome of the Caesars fell to barbarian invaders in large measure because of the social decay found within the empire (in addition to the cost of needless foreign wars, over-regulation of the economy, bloated bureaucracies, the cult of personality of the ruling class--sound familiar?). The United States is not exempt from such a fate. (Please see We've Done This to Ourselves, Empires Come and Go--Including Ours, and No Homeland Security for the Preborn.)

 

What will constitute "victory" in Libya? The observance of a "cease-fire" that Daffy Qaddafi has no intention of observing? Qaddafi's death? What will constitute "victory" in Libya? No one knows.

Although President George Walker Obama has assured us that the United Masonic Nations Organization's approval for airstrikes against Libyan military targets to enforce a "no fly zone" to protect civilians from being attack by Qaddafi's forces came as a "last resort," it appears as though the man who believes in a different version of "peace" than the Pax Americana of his predecessor, President Woodrow Wilson Bush, missed a few class sessions about the Just War Theory when he was in college at Yale University. Perhaps he will brush up on those lessons during his golfing vacation in Brazil this weekend.

Let me just summarize, therefore, a few salient considerations that flow from the Just War Theory as applied to the current "international" military operation in Libya.

First, there is no imminent threat to the national security of the United States of America that requires the use of American military forces in Libya. While it is true that Qaddafi's attacks on his own people are savage and relentless and without any mercy, these attacks do not justify the intervention of foreign airstrikes that risk escalating an civil war into a region-wide, if not worldwide, conflict marked by the sort of Libyan-sponsored terrorist attacks that we have seen in the past, especially with the bombing of Pan American Airways flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988. Indeed, Qaddafi is promising just such attacks, which are credible because he has the ability to supply blood money to mercenaries to do so.

Second, George Walker Obama has not sought Congressional approval for military action in Libya. It is enough for him to rely upon a resolution of the United Masonic Nations Organization, proving yet again that he has as much contempt for the Constitution of the United States of America's requirement for Congress to issue a declaration of war as most of his predecessors of the past few decades. It is enough for Caesar Barackus Obamus Ignoramus to have the backing of the United Masonic Nations Organization. We are not referring here to a situation of incoming nuclear missiles that require an immediate response absent Congressional approval. We are referring in this situation to a quite voluntary decision to undertake military action without regard for the provisions of the Constitution that the current president swore to uphold. Well, what's good for Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and George Walker Bush is good for Barack Hussein Obama.

Third, there is, as noted above, no rational criterion by which to judge the success of the current military operation. What is success? A status quo of a Libya ruled in part by Moammar Qaddafi and in a few areas by rebel forces who must receive air drops of vital supplies to sustain themselves for years on end? The ouster of Qaddafi, followed by the rise of tribal warfare that would make the sectional conflicts that have taken place in Iraq since the ouster of Saddam Hussein eight years ago look tame by way of comparison? What is success?

Fourth, there has been, at least as far as I can tell, no rational discernment by American policy-makers concerning the application of the moral principle of Proportionality to determine whether the illusory good end that they think they are pursuing is outweighed by the foreseen but unintended evil consequences of military air strikes. The social infrastructure of Libya, built around alliances of various clans whose leaders have been paid off for years by Qaddafi with the profits from the sale of Libyan crude oil, is entirely artificial and is even more explosive than that of Iraq. President George Walker Obama is even more naive than Woodrow Wilson Bush if he thinks that his assurances that American ground troops will never step foot on a grain of sand in Libya will make it possible for those clans to unite around some nonexistent person to lead a post-Qaddafi Libya.

The leaders of the West, including Barack Hussein Obama, are mad. They are drunk with their own false, delusional concepts of life and of history. They refuse to see that God Himself is sending them manifest signs of His displeasure not only with the sins of us all but most particularly at the fact that one supposedly "civilized" state after another has seen fit to promote sin under cover of the civil law and to celebrate it jubilantly in every aspect of what passes for popular culture.

For the sake of reemphasis, especially for those who might have stumbled upon this site for the first time, let me reiterate the simple truth that men and nations that promote grave evils, including chemical and surgical baby-killing and perversity, and which promote, if not find humorous, blasphemous theatrical productions and alleged musical performances cannot escape the wrath of God forever:

The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)

 

Earthquakes have rocked Chile, Red China, Haiti and Japan since the beginning of 2010.

Japan has suffered a tsunami after the earthquake of Friday, March 11, 2011, that damaged several nuclear power plants, causing radioactive steam to be emitted into the atmosphere.

Unprecedented snowstorms and flooding have caused great dislocation in the Midwest and East here in the United States of America this winter of 2010-2011 that ends today, Sunday, March 20, 2011, the Second Sunday in Lent, at 7:21 p.m., Eastern Daylight Saving Time (if I have done the calculation from 23:21 "UTC" to Eastern time correctly).

Man made catastrophes caused by profligate governmental spending and excessive taxation to fund unjust entitlement programs and unjust and immoral foreign wars threaten to bankrupt the United States of America.

The signs are all there. The signs are all there.

Alas, the puffed up naturalists of the false opposites of the "right" and the "left" refuse to read the signs of the times as they continue to believe that they can establish order in the world, whether of the Pax Americana or the Pax Internationale of Marxism, as they continue to foment grave evils at home and abroad by promoting and funding policies in defiance of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, thereby undermining both the temporal and eternal good of the souls for whom Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross to redeem on Good Friday. They continue to heap hot coals on their heads as they serve as the instruments of even more chastisements in the days and the weeks and the months and the years to come.

As I noted five days ago now, we must thank God every day that we are Catholics and can prosper under the crosses and chastisements of the present moment.

The Catholic Church, unlike the counterfeit church of conciliarism, speaks to us clearly about the fact that it is impossible for there to be peace in the souls of men and thus in the world absent a conversion of men and their nations to the true Faith that has been entrusted to her by her Divine Founder and Invisible Head, Christ the King, to be safeguarded and taught infallibly until His Second Coming at the end of time:

There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail.

It is apparent from these considerations that true peace, the peace of Christ, is impossible unless we are willing and ready to accept the fundamental principles of Christianity, unless we are willing to observe the teachings and obey the law of Christ, both in public and private life. If this were done, then society being placed at last on a sound foundation, the Church would be able, in the exercise of its divinely given ministry and by means of the teaching authority which results therefrom, to protect all the rights of God over men and nations. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

 

Today, the Second Sunday in Lent, is the first of three times during the liturgical year that we read the Gospel account of Our Lord's Transfiguration atop Mount Thabor (the other times are Ember Saturday in Lent and the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6). We must keep ever in mind the truth that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will return summa cum gloria on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead. His victory will be made manifest to the puffed up naturalists of the "right" and of the "left" who think that their various schemes of human self-redemption and their empty references to generic concepts of "faith" and "God" can unite men and restore nations to sanity. Their delusional schemes and their immoral programs and actions will be exposed for all to see. They lose. Christ the King wins following the Triumph of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

We desire to be transfigured in glory for all eternity in Heaven. There is only one way to get to the Heavenly Mount Thabor, and that is by climbing our way to Mount Calvary each day of our lives, especially by making sure that we make all sacrifices necessary to move our families to those safe shelters in the catacombs where true bishops and true priests who are not "una cum" apostasy and betrayal will feed our souls with the true Sacraments as they provide us with the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith that are never subject to negotiation with heretics and schismatics, never capable of being understood or expressed in any other way that they have been understood and expressed throughout the ages. For we must always never lose sight of the fact that the men in the world who refuse to read the signs of the times are enabled by the apostates of conciliarism who teach a false religion that has robbed so many hundreds of millions of Catholics from seeing the signs of the times for themselves.

Our Lady desires to lead us to the Heavenly Mount Thabor. Are we willing to stand next to her each day at Mount Calvary in order to be in Heaven with her for all eternity as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our states in life permit?

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints