All Saints

I wish you a blessed All Saints.  This link from Fr. Gordon MacRae will give you great consolation if you have lost a loved one and will inspire those who believe in religious freedom.

The You tube links on For the Greater Glory are worth seeing.  I wonder if American Catholics today have the courage of the Mexican people?  Would we risk our lives to go to Mass?  I was surprised how well the second video ties in with the last blog.  Please stay tuned for Scary Night, the election blog.
 

http://thesestonewalls.com/gordon-macrae/of-saints-and-souls-and-earthly-woes-viva-cristo-rey/

STAND UP FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RALLY

http://standupforreligiousfreedom.com/

October 20, 2012

For Life and Liberty - Mass - October 14th

Archbishop William E. Lori will say Mass at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC at Noon.  Mass will be televised by  http://www.ewtn.com/  Eternal Word Television Network.  People of good will everywhere are encouraged to join in prayer.  Thank you.
 http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/
Confused about the debate last night between Biden and Ryan?  Excellent articles and FACTS.
http://krestaintheafternoon.blogspot.com/
Director of Education at Catholic Bioethics Center urges pro life vote on assisted suicide in Massachusetts.
http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/US.php?id=6311

They Shoot Germans, Don’t They?

 Conrad Veidt as "Kurt"

Take Off  That Monocle or Take Me to Your Fearless Leader

It's always someone else's fault in politics.  Until now, in the European Union, Greece and Germany had no quarrels.  Then came the economic melt down.  Germany, which has been able to keep "head above water", has been called in to help.  Someone in Germany said a dirty word, "Austerity measures."  Someone in Greece replied, "NAZIS!"  Stathis Stavropoulis, Greek political cartoonist, bemoans the daily grind of rendering German politicians in Third Reich garb.  I had to empathize with him.  The article below from Spiegel goes on to say, 'Even the New York Times recently published one of his cartoons, which Stavropoulos characterizes as "more tragic than funny."'  So instead of being grateful not all of Europe was lost, people in the media and government are angry and turning to jingoism, stereotyping and hurtful hate speech, blaming people they don't even know.  Even Angela Merkel, a liberal politician, has been put into "evil" uniforms.  While politicians blame one another, people suffer.  The United States economy is running on the policy of a blank check book and a charge account, which is never paid.  16 trillion dollars and we won't have Germany to bail us out!
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/when-in-doubt-call-them-nazis-ugly-stereotypes-of-germany-resurface-in-greece-a-817995.html

When boys are in third grade, war is a distant fiction full of glorious explosions and gory violence.  Girls in the third grade think this is awful and lose respect for boys for at least 7 years or more.  My class was looking at a war cartoon drawn by the great British artist Joe Colquhoun (pronounced Co-hoon).  It was a page from "The Rat of the Regiment", a Terry Thomas type doing everything a British soldier should not.  Wicked and cowardly, “the Rat” used his unconscious Sgt. as a human shield in battle, picked the pockets of the dead,  and enjoyed shooting down “unarmed Krauts” who were waiving a white flag of truce.  My boys, having seen plenty of cable TV, saw nothing wrong in shooting someone waiving a white flag.  "But that would be evil," say I, "A white flag means you are surrendering."  "But they can shoot you," a boy said.  "They are unarmed," I replied.  "What if you were in the trench and had no gun and the enemy came?" I tried to reason.  "Wouldn't you want the enemy to show mercy?  Maybe you could eventually go home?"

I told my father this story adding, “..., as if they shot unarmed German soldiers,…”

“But they did shoot unarmed German soldiers,” my father replied. 

I was aghast.   Dad told me the story of his Uncle Harry, an American soldier in WWI.  His Commander used to say, "Take the prisoners to the stockade and be back in five minutes."   Uncle Harry said it was physically impossible to walk to the stockade and return in 5 minutes.  What he meant was to take the German prisoners out and shoot them. Uncle Harry, being an Irish Catholic, played dumb and really took the German prisoners to the stockade.  He didn’t shoot them.  I suppose he took the consequences when he got back.  So some German soldiers saw their families again. 

Today, it may surprise young readers to hear Germans demonized for simply being German.  Not me.  I grew up in the sixties.  Germans were the villains of choice in Hollywood since the silent days.  In the early fifties there was a brief span of cold war stereotypes.  If you see Wikipedia under “American Anti Communist Films” you find only 6!  By the sixties this went out of style.  Between the McCarthy Hearings and a swing towards secular humanism foundered on a new luxurious American lifestyle, a desperate left sought to bury Stalin by reviving Hitler.  Hollywood literally “….Saved Hitler's Brain”.  Soon only ‘squares” feared “the left”.  If you see films made during and after the War like The Stranger with Orson Welles, his monologue at dinner where he says "Germans" desire not a Godly savior but a dictator.  Note he says, “GERMANS” not Nazis.  Very interesting.  There was a deal of talk in films and in articles about the nature of the German people and their maniacal desire to rule the world.  American soldiers were shown "Your Job in Germany" directed by Frank Capra and written by Theodore Geisel aka Dr. Seuss.  General Patton called this film, "bullshit".  It is a wretched film telling soldiers never to trust a German, as if racism and greed was built into their DNA.  This film is propaganda and propaganda is ugly no matter the source and no matter the subject.  Propaganda films say much more of the filmmakers than of the people being demeaned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Job_in_Germany

I learned the evils of propaganda at an early age.  As a little girl I saw many TV shows where the idea all Germans are evil because of their blood scared me.  Boys shot me with imaginary machine guns in the schoolyard for being German.  But I didn't want to take over the world or hurt anyone.  Jesus was my Savior.  Many Americans of German extraction like Gen. Eisenhower fought to free Europe.  
“I don't want you to think we are all monsters,” Marlene Dietrich said to Spencer Tracy in Judgment at Nuremburg. Marlene had a problem with a scene where her character denies all the Germans knew about the Holocaust.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbOOpTkjGcE&feature=related  Tracy's Judge tells her they did.  It made Marlene uncomfortable, she wanted the script changed but Spencer Tracy told her "it is needed."  It's a strange answer.  Needed?  To condemn all Germans it was, collectively all Germans, not just Nazis.  No one of German descent could ever hold his or her head up.  In the film clip Germans are drinking beer and Marlene has a demi tasse, which contradicts reality.  The Nuremberg trials were held in 1946.  Between 1945 and 1947 the Allies prohibited food imports and production to punish German civilians.  When the Vatican attempted to transmit food supplies from Chile to starving German infants the U.S. State Department forbade it.  Read American food policy in occupied Germany on Wikipedia.  And there were German babies, the women of Europe were gang raped by incoming troops, so common place, it was never prosecuted.  Solzhenitsyn, who was haunted by the gang rape/murder of a little girl he witnessed in Germany, wrote a poem about it.  Talk about a war on women.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_food_policy_in_occupied_Germany
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1382565/Red-Army-troops-raped-even-Russian-women-as-they-freed-them-from-camps.html
 
"We will never be forgiven for the war," as the German motor mechanic said in a Leonard Wibberly short story.  We should never forget the Holocaust.  My fear is that we have indeed forgotten.  Not by forgiving but by forgetting the Holocaust came not only from anti Semitism but from a society where God was “dead”, sexual liberation and the occult was celebrated, and euthanasia was put into practice by doctors to rid the world of undesirable people.  Sound familiar?  Not only Socialist Germany but also the United States adopted laws which allowed the poor, minorities, the disabled,alcoholics, and the mentally ill to be sterilized.  I recommend this documentary Black Holocaust http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBOk4I23x9c&feature=relmfu  and this old film which must be seen to be believed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EVdAOKjR-s This we have forgotten in America.  The sheriff can’t take you by force to a hospital anymore, unless you live in China, but just wait.  Now we have “death panels”.  And they are “needed”.  Funny how the government has a blank check for every program under the sun but they’ve decided to begin “austerity measures” with the frail elderly and the disabled. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/opinion/health-care-reform-beyond-obamacare.html?_r=2&

Stereotypes are everywhere in entertainment, as well as politics.  My young readers may not be familiar with Jay Ward’s Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JVlUHxf8iY&feature=endscreen&NR=1  The cornball double title was their trademark, like the one above.  Two silly cold war spies, Boris and Natasha worked oddly enough for Fearless Leader, who had a German accent.  If you go to “Fearless Leader” on Wikipedia the article claims he was styled after a chilling propaganda poster of a German general (with a man hanging from a lamppost reflected in his monocle). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fearless_Leader  The article goes wrong when it claims the German in the poster was based upon Conrad Veidt as Major Strasser in Casablanca.  Major Strasser didn’t wear a monocle.  However, the man in the poster does resemble Conrad Veidt playing General Kurt Von Kolb in the film Escape.

Conrad Veidt got the kind of adulation women gave the Beatles decades later.  Today, he has many fans and aficionados.  Our own John Barrymore brought him to Hollywood.  Only when the talkies arrived, and he was offered the role of Dracula, did he return home to Germany. The world changed.  Veidt hated the Nazis.  Plus, he remarried, Lily, who was Jewish.  They were fortunate enough to have the money to escape to England.  Many others did not.  I knew a very elderly German lady who had a similar journey.  She used to show us the photo of,  "dat vonderful mann", her husband, the handsome pilot.  You might wonder why a decorated WWI flying ace would be driven from his country.  Serving your country cut no ice with the Reich.  He was Jewish.

Veidt was arrested and interrogated when he returned to Germany to complete a film.  He’d made British anti Nazi films.  Thanks to his wife and powerful friends in Britain he was released.  Veidt became a British citizen.  While visiting New York on a promotional tour for the film Contraband, MGM asked him to appear in Escape.  Released in 1940, Escape was one of the first films to reveal the existence of concentration camps.  Veidt didn’t like playing Nazis but he considered it “necessary” to help the war effort.  Laurence Oliver claimed no actor in Britain gave more of his own salary to the British war effort.  Sadly, if Veidt had lived beyond the age of fifty, he would have played an endless stream of Nazis in B movies and TV.  He would have hated that.  If Escape were remade today the ending would have no mercy.

There is an ironic story here.  Escape was a popular novel and executives hired big stars, Nazimova, Norma Shearer, and Robert Taylor.  They needed an actor with charisma to play the smoldering, attractive villain.  So here was Mr. Veidt, making his comeback to the silver screen.  Soft lighting, good tailoring, sparkling monocle.  His charming accent, his soothing voice, he always spoke in a low register above a whisper, which is a trick to make the audience listen.  That walk, he floated into the house, coat on his shoulders like Dr. Doom.  Using his enormous hands to great effect, holding a cigarette like no other or threatening the hero with his fist.  Even when he is revealed as corrupt and cruel he is still slick.  Poor Robert Taylor, as one critic said, came off like a garage mechanic in comparison.  Jerry Allen (Conrad Veidt From Caligari to Casablanca) claimed Veidt in Escape received almost as many fan letters from women as Clark Gable for Gone With the Wind!  Astonishing publicity at MGM.  Never again was Conrad Veidt allowed to have sex appeal in a that uniform.  No soft lighting for Major Strasser - caterpillar mustache, shoe black eye brows and NO MONOCLE.  It is ironic no matter how Hollywood paints Germans as no good they give them a non-human invincibility.  Germans, all Germans, are human just like all the other humans on earth.  There is no evil or lowly race.  No supermen either.  Only one race, the human race.  I wish people would stop forgetting this.  

As as they would say on Rocky and Bullwinkle, "Until our next episode, 'When Liberalism Isn't Liberal or The Party's Over.'"

Peace,

Citizeness Journalist

Pro life Germans under attack, it’s not easy being pro life,… http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/human-rights-activist-sees-face-of-fascism-at-eu-human-rights-conference

Good article by Paul Kengor!  An American high school marching band recently caused a commotion by saluting the Bolshevik Revolution, “St. Petersburg 1917”.  When the supervisor was asked to explain, she saw nothing wrong.  Apparently our scholars make up history to justify their own worldview.  What if the band had performed “Berlin 1933”?  The Supervisor would have lost her job and rightly so.   http://www.visionandvalues.org/2012/09/communism-on-parade/

And now for some good news –

Child actor donates first paycheck to Missionaries of Charity 

http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/World.php?id=6271#ixzz28SGW3Yyt

 

WEAK, HELPLESS WOMAN!

 There is a war on women and children and it's not being waged by Catholics or conservatives. 

The video above is from Helen Alvaré of Women Speak for Themselves.  If you have not signed their petition ladies, please consider it.  Possibly your only opportunity to speak out as a woman in our generation.  What I want to know is how did women go from asking for the right to vote as a citizen to being forced to pay for another woman's abortifacient drugs?  Early feminists objected to abortion.  The cruelty of a woman forced by a man, her family or dire circumstances to murder her baby was to them a heinous crime against the sanctity of mother and child.  The very sort of injustice they wanted to liberate women from.  It didn't work out as they planned.  We were liberated all right.  Taken off the pedestal and put into the service of a male dominated, sexually progressive society.  Worst of all, many men and women do not understand the situation we have put ourselves into.  They've been taught this is "freedom".  Abortion is as American as apple pie and dare I say it, motherhood?  Young women are encouraged to "hook up" in order to "compete" with other girls.  To give their boyfriend what only their husband should be entitled to.  To risk their health and suffer the painful symptoms of birth control on their young bodies.  Only to see their boyfriend leave for a new girlfriend.  Why stay?  It's not as if they were married. 

You see this selfish attitude on a broad scale in the world.  The First World is telling the Third World to have less children, sterilize your people.  Then maybe we will send aid to you.  Is that saving the world's poor?   Visit Pop.org or C-Fam websites and get the facts on how poor women are treated in other lands.  One of the first things the President did was to reverse the Mexico City policy which prohibited funding to international family planning groups offering abortion services.  This hurt poor women and killed their babies.  The President also isolated himself when he appointed advisory panels on religion and women's issues.  Only progressives were chosen. 

So where are we women who do not agree?  If our present administration and news media ignore us, gag us, refuse to interview or photograph us, we will have to do it ourselves.  The large news services nuance their interviews so it appears all women agree with one side, pro choice.  NOT SO.

Yes, there is a war on women.  But not a war prohibiting sexual license, this war prohibits the right to exercise freedom of religion and for the right to live a chaste life and for some, the right to live at all.   A war which silences a vast majority of women of faith who are simply treated as if we did not exist. 


Sandra Fluke didn't speak for any women I know, honestly.  Interesting, the very male chauvinist media which always uses obscene words to describe women, as Bill Maher did for Sarah Palin, strongly objected when Rush Limbaugh did not talk like a gentleman.  Why were they surprised?  None of them ever talk like gentlemen.  Was he is the pay of progressives who wanted to make journalists on the right appear as boorish as their left wing counterparts?  One might even suspect Ed Schultz, Limbaugh's Liberal Tweedle Dee to be in the pay of conservatives.  During the hue and cry to fire Rush Limbaugh, it turned out Ed Schultz said the same thing about Laura Ingram.  For which, Mr. Schultz got a week off without pay.  Sounds pretty good.

Family Guy, a Fox cartoon series, featured a song mocking Terry Schiavo after she was painfully euthanized by dehydration per court order.  Her family begged for her life to be spared but her husband and the courts won the day.  The cartoon characters happily called her, "mashed potato brain."  That's what a liberal American media calls, "funny".  It was the most evil thing I ever saw.  Why the demonic hatred against a helpless, injured woman who never harmed anyone?  Why?  Was it because she was only a housewife?  Was it because the pro life movement took up her cause?  Priests for Life and brave Fr. Frank Pavone pleaded for mercy for her.  No one listened.  It made me feel very uneasy.  It made me feel as if any of us women could have been in her place.

Don Imus made cruel unconscionable remarks about African American student athletes, members of the Rutgers women's basketball team, over the radio.  He tried to justify it by saying rap stars talk that way.  Mr. Imus was an elderly white man, not a rap star.  He did apologize.  He should have. Insults are like drops of water in a lake.  They make ripples.  They go deep where we cannot see.  They cannot be taken back.

Lolo Jones, U.S. Olympic athlete was nuanced a hypocrite in the NY Times.  It would seem if you are a talented, beautiful woman who proclaims your Christian beliefs in traditional marriage you cannot sell products or pose for artistic photos.  I don't condone the nude photo, but speaking as an artist, the pose showed less than a day at the beach.  The NY Times attacked our athlete shortly before her big 12 second race.  She came in 4th.  Tweeters mocked her saying if she'd had "sum sex" she could have won.  Where were the feminists to defend her?  Male athletes pose nude too and sell products.  What is the difference?  The difference was she said she was waiting for marriage because she is a Christian.  Progressives hate that. 

Women have dignity.  Married or single, blessed, barren or virgin, we have a great mission to protect, nurture and teach children.  Our sexually "progressive" or "regressive" culture depicts women as objects in films, novels, and pop music.  We are told being a sex object "empowers" women.  I think the word is "imperils".

Until next time, peace.

 

http://www.usccb.org/bible/gn/3:5#01003015-g

Genesis 3:15 I will put enmity between you and THE WOMAN and between your offspring and hers,....

You know from whence the War on Women and Children comes from.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/09/the-bible-refers-to-jesus-wife-too/262545/

Interesting point of view from The Atlantic Magazine regarding a peculiar papyrus purported to prove Jesus was married. Look up Karen King, who brought the papyrus to light.  See Wikipedia. O dear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74t6rug_Yh8&feature=related

Just for laughs.  The cousin Basil routine from the Three Stooge Classic The Brideless Groom with Krystine McIntire as the 4th stooge.  Krystine was an opera singer not a vaudevillian.  After many failed takes a weary Shemp Howard pleaded with Krystine to just hit him and not to be afraid to hurt him.  Krystine was up to the job this time.  This was the final take.

What is Truth?

Welcome to Citizeness Journalist, a blog about discovering truth.

Human beings are limited.  Sometimes, we don’t know the truth.  Sometimes, we don’t want to know.  Truth can take us out of our comfort zone.

Long ago, men discovered if you control public opinion, you could rule the world.  Therefore, we must double-check every news story we hear.  That is what being a Citizen Journalist is about.  If you get your news from CNN, BBC, the NY Times or the big three networks, look out.  You are getting a virtual feeding tube of spin from power brokers whose agendas are the antithesis of your own.  You will be told what your values will be and who to vote for.  You know better.

I’ve been told, "No one will listen to YOU."  "This will take a lot of time."  "Why don't you just pray?" 

There is a time for prayer, a time for silence and a time to speak.  Whatever the outcome, November 6, 2012 will change our lives.  As you listen and read outright lies and hate speech against everything we know to be true, you too must speak.  However, we must speak out in love.  Don’t fall into the trap of hating those who revile and say all manner of evil against you.  That temptation is straight from, you know where.  Apathy is the state required for nations to fall, tyrants to rule, the innocent to be crushed and souls to be lost for eternity.

THIS IS THE TIME TO SPEAK.  Are you ready?
 
Citizeness Journalist won't be all doom and gloom.  There will be laughter, art, and the good news.  Look in any time you are in despair about the world situation.  Upcoming articles like, "They Shoot Germans, Don't They?", "Not Your Pop Pop's Batman", "Weak, Helpless, Woman" and "When Liberalism Isn't Liberal" are meant to entertain, inform and bring people together.  There will be links to news resources, links to stories for clarification.  Please let me know what you think.  Respectful comments are welcome.

I encourage you all to be your own Citizen or Citizeness Journalist.

 “WHAT IS TRUTH?”

"What is Truth?"  An apathetic question by a cruel Roman Prefect to Jesus of Nazareth.  Meaning, "One truth is as good as another."  In a word, "Relativism".  Sadly, we live in a world of relativism, where truth is your opinion and needn't be based on fact.  There is an inference here; those in authority determine the truth.  A convenient point of view for a villain, for the reason to deny "truth" is to deny good and to deny intrinsic evil, falsehood and sin.  Jesus never denied the existence of sin, in fact, He came to testify to the TRUTH.

Journalists, politicians, scientists, historians, entertainers and activists casually lie.  News services "spin" stories to project opinions meant to mislead.  Examples of this are by no means scarce.  If the end justifies the means and there is no God then slander your enemy.  Not only are public figures slandered but entire groups of people.  How many Catholics know calumny is a serious sin?  Another “spin” is neglecting to mention stories of unparalled import, for example the HHS Mandate.  Out of sight out of mind.  https://www.stophhs.com/  This petition has been up for months and only 101,628 have signed.  There should be millions.

  

Hate Speech.  Did we ever hear so much of it?  Hate speech directed against me and mine, my Church, my faith, my priests, my party affiliation, my morals and my sex.  And not the, "Wing nut!" variety, I refer to the obscene, bullying variety.

Do you recall Alec Baldwin's terrorist threats against Senator Henry Hyde and his family live on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, December 12, 1988, before the Clinton impeachment?  (Clinton was acquitted.)  Baldwin said, "if we were in another country...we would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and kill their wives and their children.  We would kill their families, for what they're doing to this country."  Baldwin later apologized.  The network said it was a "joke."  Someone else would have been put in jail.  Pro life Senator Hyde died in 2007.  Baldwin went on to star in hit shows and mock conservatives.  The tragedy here is both Baldwin and Hyde were both raised Roman Catholic and Democrat.  Small world.

The Hollywood crowd, you know the ones, I won’t grant them any more press.  Their vile remarks against those who are pro life and who want to live their faith reveal more of themselves than anyone else.  Most disturbing were the obscenities hurled at Cardinal Dolan for the beautiful interfaith prayer he said at the end of the Democratic Convention.  And I saw Democrats pray, yes!   Those in favor of the Democratic Party Platform, praying.  Might there be hope?

Could we go beyond party affiliation?  People of all faiths and some searching.  Party affiliation is fleeting and often the passions aroused by party fighting come straight from, you know.  These passions come from ignorance, propaganda, life journey and careless rushing to judgment about others.

Al Kresta interviewed Ray Flynn, former governor of Boston.  Speaking as a Catholic Democrat, he said they were people who worked hard.  I thought to myself, Catholic Republicans work hard too.  I recalled some of my ancestors; a coal miner, a weaver, a policeman, a brewer, and a baker.  Not a millionaire in the bunch.  All Republicans aren’t Rockefeller.  Nor are all Democrats struggling. 

Instead of finger pointing, we should be praying that God would forgive our rush to judgments or as my friend Msgr. Murray would say, “our selfishness, our self centeredness, our sins.”  And that God would restore the country we've succeeded in destroying.

Here are some links. 

Please consider listening to Senator Barack Obama LIVE from the Illinois Senate as he justified an abortionist's call to allow a baby, who survived an abortion, to DIE alone in a storage closet.  YES.  And this was PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE BEFORE the last presidential election.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/unearthed-audio-obama-calls-newborn-baby-a-fetus-outside-of-the-womb

Novena Prayer for the Election in November, please consider prayer and fasting from now until then.

http://www.priestsforlife.org/novenas/election-day-novena.htm 

Do you know your party's platform?  Better check.  Time is up.  I have friends, life long Democrats from Democratic families, who have become Republicans.  Why?  The life issues and the HHS Mandate.

http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/US.php?id=6065

You can't support an intrinsic evil if you are a Catholic.  Then why do so many?

https://www.stophhs.com/stop_hhs_mandate/baltimore-archbishop-catholic-voters-cant-vote-for-a-candidate-who-stands-for-an-intrinsic-evil/

Hilarious animation.  How did they do the voices?  Makes all these people seem like children but in the eyes of God we all are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h8O7V-WxWQ

See you next week.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Peace,

Citizeness Journalist