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Day: August 16, 2008

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Media, Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political

On Poland’s missle defense agreement

You can read lots of stories on this. The Weekly Standard has a good analysis (ok – basically neo-cons, but even neo-cons can make sense from time-to-time) in Poland’s New Missile Defense.

The first few articles I read yesterday, primarily from the Press in the United States, were so horrible, both historically and factually, that I wanted to correct a few of the inaccuracies and further extend and clarify their statements.

  • Poland will be a nuclear target (because of this new system). Sorry scary Russian General but that is just a fact and has been a fact for 50 plus years. Poland’s geographic position between the ill-named Warsaw Pact and NATO just made this so. Russia and the United States would have cleared Poland off the map in any conflict – and would do so today. Likely that Poland’s Warsaw Pact allies would have been the first to nuke it.
  • Poland is a Eastern European Country. It depends upon who you quote. The CIA Factbook puts Poland in Central Europe. The UN notes Poland as being in East Central Europe. Religiously Poland is Western European. Central European is a better term.
  • Poland has “traditionally [been] under Russian influence.” Only if your historical perspective is 200 years plus or minus, you believe that invasion is a welcome event, or you follow a Pan-Slavic philosophy. Poland fell under Russian “influence” several times, in the partitions of the late 18th century until World War I, during World War II when Russia and Nazi Germany cooperated in the invasion of Poland, and following World War II when Poland was involuntarily thrown under Russian control by its Allies (England and the United States). Influence is also a poor choice of words. Better to say control. Those Russian ‘influences’ were not welcome.
  • Poland was communist. Technically and historically correct but misleading. It’s like a reporter stopping at saying that the United States was an English Colony. Poland was more than that and wasn’t a communist country by its own choice. The statement is not reflective of what Poland was and is in a larger context.

Of course no Press outlet will take notice of my corrections and clarifications, but there you are.

Current Events, Perspective, Political,

We are them

Rod Watson, a columnist for the Buffalo News gets it. From his column: Never happen here? Guess what — it has

As one of its many shifting rationales for starting a war, the Bush administration constantly reminded Americans about the freedoms we take for granted.

That argument will be much less compelling next time for one simple reason: We won’t have nearly as many freedoms left once this bunch leaves office.

The outrageous new policy of seizing electronic devices at the Peace Bridge and other crossings purely on the whim of a border agent is just the latest example of our government doing to us what we’d fight to the death to prevent a foreign power from doing.

Think about it: No warrant. No probable cause. No judge.

Just a vague suspicion —” real or fabricated —” is pretext enough to seize your laptop, cell phone or iPod and all of the personal or business-related information in it. A local entrepreneur’s trade secrets, a journalist’s confidential information from a whistle-blower, your private medical records —” all fair game for any snooping government agent.

No appeal. No ability to challenge it. And no idea when, or if, you’ll ever get it back.

If you walked into a room in the midst of a discussion of this abuse, the reaction would be, —Wow, I’m sure glad I live in America, where nothing like that could happen.— It’s the kind of story that, when it occurs in other countries, prompts U.S. leaders to wag their fingers.

In the last few years, slowly, silently, we’ve become those other countries.

While there have been protests as the administration’s oil buddies rob consumers to rake in record profits, we’ve been robbed of something much more precious with hardly a whimper…

Read the rest. It’s worth time in reflection because look at the next step. From today’s Washington Post: U.S. May Ease Police Spy Rules. More Federal Intelligence Changes Planned

The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.

The proposed changes would revise the federal government’s rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation’s 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants.

Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months. They include a recent executive order that guides the reorganization of federal spy agencies and a pending Justice Department overhaul of FBI procedures for gathering intelligence and investigating terrorism cases within U.S. borders.

Taken together, critics in Congress and elsewhere say, the moves are intended to lock in policies for Bush’s successor and to enshrine controversial post-Sept. 11 approaches that some say have fed the greatest expansion of executive authority since the Watergate era…

Funny they should mention Watergate. Of course that’s scarry to a lot of folks because it stood their trust of government on its head. At the time of Watergate Congress and the Press stood against an abusive Executive. They stood to defend core principals. That doesn’t happen so much anymore. In fact, it is non-existent. This is far scarier and, in comparison, Watergate was limited to a proverbial “Keystone Kop” affair through checks-and-balances.

These measures are not just an abuse of “Executive” authority, but a steady movement toward the authority of dictators. It is simply a license to do whatever the person in charge pleases without accountability.

Fathers, PNCC

August 16 – St. Hippolytus from On Christ and Antichrist

Now, concerning the tribulation of the persecution which is to fall upon the Church from the adversary, John also speaks thus: “And I saw a great and wondrous sign in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And she, being with child, cries, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man-child, who is to rule all the nations: and the child was caught up unto God and to His throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has the place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days. And then when the dragon saw it, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man-child. And to the woman were given two wings of the great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent. And the serpent cast (out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast) out of his mouth. And the dragon was angry with the woman, and went to make war with the saints of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus.”

By the woman then clothed with the sun, he meant most manifestly the Church, endued with the Father’s word, whose brightness is above the sun. And by the “moon under her feet” he referred to her being adorned, like the moon, with heavenly glory. And the words, “upon her head a crown of twelve stars,” refer to the twelve apostles by whom the Church was founded. And those, “she, being with child, cries, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered,” mean that the Church will not cease to bear from her heart the Word that is persecuted by the unbelieving in the world. “And she brought forth,” he says, “a man-child, who is to rule all the nations;” by which is meant that the Church, always bringing forth Christ, the perfect man-child of God, who is declared to be God and man, becomes the instructor of all the nations. And the words, “her child was caught up unto God and to His throne,” signify that he who is always born of her is a heavenly king, and not an earthly; even as David also declared of old when he said, “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool.” “And the dragon,” he says, “saw and persecuted the woman which brought forth the man-child. And to the woman were given two wings of the great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.” That refers to the one thousand two hundred and threescore days (the half of the week) during which the tyrant is to reign and persecute the Church, which flees from city to city, and seeks concealment in the wilderness among the mountains, possessed of no other defense than the two wings of the great eagle, that is to say, the faith of Jesus Christ, who, in stretching forth His holy hands on the holy tree, unfolded two wings, the right and the left, and called to Him all who believed upon Him, and covered them as a hen her chickens. For by the mouth of Malachi also He speaks thus: “And unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in His wings.” — Paragraphs 60 and 61.

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