(The Blaze) - The Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) has just released a report titled “Euro Break Up—The Consequences,” wherein they predict the death of the euro and the long-term consequences should that occur...
THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: If this comes true I think it only helps the United States in the long run. Provided of course the momentum of this event doesn't cause us to crack up in the short run. If cooler heads prevail in the United States, and we can simultaneously implement our own significant austerity measures, America comes out ahead in the end. If however, our politicians continue with the status quo here in the USA, than panic will eventually set in as Europe implodes, and as a result, I think we could potentially go down with her.
Europe is likely to revert to a multitude of nation-states, barring the arrival of some messianic figure to save her. As for America, we could go either way, and a lot of that is up to how serious we are about getting our federal spending problem under control. Either we will suck it up, tighten our belts, and ride this thing out to better times. Or we will ignore the problems, let the crisis reach these shores, and end up just like Europe -- a fractured continent made up of multiple nation-states. Sadly, I think it may very well happen that way, and if it does, I'll stick with Dixie! I think I may have to move further South though. Hmmm. The Carolina coast sounds real appealing right now. Any of my readers out there know of some nice places to live between Charleston and Wilmington?
Personal musings aside, and getting onto more spiritual matters, I think what we see playing out here are the early stages of the minor Chastisement that is supposed to come upon Europe as the Catholic mystics and seers have foretold for centuries. The Globalist/Capitalist "New World Order" is collapsing right in front of our eyes. Naturally we can only expect the Marxists and Jihadists to take advantage of the situation. It shouldn't be any surprise to us, it's just in their nature. So expect it. That's the other shoe to drop. Don't ask me for "when" because I don't have a crystal ball. All I know is it WILL happen -- eventually. So when it does we can expect things to go from bad to worse. Now I suppose it is possible it may not happen all at once. We could see it spread out over multiple phases, each one getting progressively worse. For those of us who follow Catholic prophecy, the particular uprising we are concerned about is the one that forces the pope into exile from Rome. When that happens, as best as we can interpret the prophecies, things are supposed to get very bad, very quick, immediately thereafter. This will mark the end of our present age, and the dawn of the Age of Mary (a fairly long period of time) which precedes the Last Days before Antichrist. (See my notes on Catholic prophecy for details.) So all the more reason to keep all eyes on the pope, especially this one, for every word that proceeds from his mouth seems to be golden, and his efforts to reform the Church are truly heroic. Watch this man carefully, for if he is ever forced to flee the Vatican for his life, know that his time is very short, and so is the time we have left before the end of this present age.
THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: Hindsight being 20/20, it would appear that as we've had time to reflect on the events to 2011 thus far, patterns are emerging, and the truth is beginning to come out. Our suspicions are being confirmed.
Western Liberals, particularly in the United States, have for the past three years (at least) been working behind the scenes to create these riotous revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. Now when I say "Liberals" I'm including Neoconservatives in the United States as well. I'm talking about everyone from the far Left (George Soros and company) to the libertarian centrist (George Bush and friends). I am not talking about the truly right wing (paleoconservative) groups, which have been disenfranchised in the United States and Europe for decades.
Information emerging from Wikileaks is starting to confirm many of the suspicions we had, but were hesitant to voice, while the riots were beginning to unfold weeks ago. What we have here is an elaborate strategy that has been executed with precision to elicit a certain response in the Arab world. The manipulation began under the George W. Bush administration and is now continuing under the administration of Barack Obama. While the United States seems to be the principle agent, European powers are likewise in collaboration. This helps to explain the United States' seeming "standoffish" posture while the riot-revolutions unfold. The United States has been intimately involved, but this has been behind the scenes and under the table. Moving in too fast in a public way would tip the world off as to what is really going on.
In dealing with the Arab world the United States us using a threefold strategy to get what it wants. Here's how it works...
First, major corporations within the United States (and Europe) pitch business deals to Arab powers, promising money and prestige to any Arab leader that will cooperate.
Next, if the first step should fail, the CIA steps in and attempts to orchestrate a revolution from inside the nation, to change the regime and place people in power who will be more willing to make business deals with American (and European) companies.
Lastly, if the second step should fail, a pretense for war is manufactured resulting in military action from American and NATO powers, again attempting to produce a regime change.
We saw this entire scenario unfold in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've been watching it unfold in Iran for about a decade now, and the plan has met considerable resistance from there with multiple failures in Step Two, and preparation being made for Step Three. In the last two months we have watched Step Two unfold all across the Arab world as more and more evidence continues to surface of deep American involvement. Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Tunisia, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Syria; are all experiencing unrest. So far the Saudis, Jordanians, Kuwaitis and Syrians have been able to pacify their people with financial aid to citizens and the promise of reform. Saudi Arabia has been having increasing trouble in the south and is now moving troops into Bahrain for a direct confrontation with protesters. Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak was not so lucky, and became the first leader to be ousted in this recent clandestine Euro-American venture. The fate of Libya's dictator Muammar Gaddafi remains uncertain, though it would appear he is winning at the moment. (You will notice the emerging Euro-American pretense for war starting to develop as the West mulls over a transition to Step Three above.) If Gaddafi prevails we can probably expect the accusation of "war crimes" and "ethnic cleansing" against him to come out of Europe and the United States as they attempt to coax their people to support a military "solution."
Of coarse the logical question for anyone to ask is "WHY?" Why would the Western world do this? What is the purpose? What's the benefit? You might be surprised to learn is not about oil. There is plenty of oil all over the world, especially in North America. No, its about something a little more nuanced called "peak oil." What is "peak oil?" Here's is the definition from Wikipedia...
(Wikipedia) - Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. This concept is based on the observed production rates of individual oil wells, and the combined production rate of a field of related oil wells. The aggregate production rate from an oil field over time usually grows exponentially until the rate peaks and then declines—sometimes rapidly—until the field is depleted. This concept is derived from the Hubbert curve, and has been shown to be applicable to the sum of a nation’s domestic production rate, and is similarly applied to the global rate of petroleum production. Peak oil is often confused with oil depletion; peak oil is the point of maximum production while depletion refers to a period of falling reserves and supply.
Now to translate this into common English here is what it means. There is plenty of oil all over the earth. In fact, there is considerable evidence mounting that oil isn't even a "fossil fuel" and that it's actually produced as a byproduct of geological forces deep inside the earth. NASA believes that there is evidence of oil on other worlds with high volcanic activity, and so if that is the case, it can't be the result of decaying dinosaurs and plant life as previously thought. All that aside nobody is talking about oil depletion here, as it would appear that oil may very well be a renewable source of perpetual energy provided by geological-volcanic activity deep beneath the earth's surface. So if the modern science is right, the earth will never run out of oil. It just takes time for the oil to bubble up high enough in the earth's crust for us to drill down and get it. That being said we run into another problem. It's not about how much oil exists, or will exist in the future. It's about how much oil can be extracted at a time even if every country is using all of its resources to get at it. When you reach the maximum extraction rate possible, and the amount of oil consumption surpasses that, you have reached "peak oil." In other words, it's not about how much refined oil hits the market, but rather it's about how fast it's being consumed by the industrial world. Once you hit "peak oil" fuel prices go up, way up, and that slows down economies and threatens economic growth. Without economic growth a nation's political power and corporate hegemony begins to decline, and that spells bad news for the people in charge.
Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 a new bipolar conflict has emerged between the United States and Russia. That conflict is over peak oil, and both the United States and Russia are trying to gain control of as much oil producing countries as possible to gain the upper hand when peak oil occurs. It's expected to occur sometime within the next few decades, so each superpower it vying for as much control as possible. The nation that has the most control over the most oil production suffers the least in a peak oil world economy. The Soviet Union lists as it's oil "producers" most of the "stan" states (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) along with Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Iran. Within these states exist vital pipelines and oil fields supplying the new Russian Federation. Recently, the United States attempted to cut a deal with the nation of Georgia, promising oil revenue from the West and military protection under NATO. This was considered a political "invasion" into the Russian sphere of influence and resulted in a Russian military counter-invasion of Georgia in 2008. Russia seized a northern province in Georgia that contained the coveted oil pipeline, and accused Georgia of "ethnic cleansing" to justify it. (This was a direct "thumb in the nose" to NATO allies which accused Serbia of the same thing in Kosovo to justify the NATO bombing of this Russian ally in the late 1990s.) It was a little case of what comes around goes around.
Among America's allied oil producers are most South American nations and many nations within the Arab world. However, the United States has run into a problem lately. The Arab world has been getting "uppity" in recent decades, namely since the creation of OPEC and the tight control of oil production which dictates fuel prices. The United States took it's currency off the gold standard in 1971 and indirectly placed it on the "oil standard" in that oil is now traded in U.S. dollars. Thus as a result, when the price of oil goes up the dollar is weaker, and when the price of oil goes down the dollar is stronger.
After the economic collapse of the United States and Europe in late 2008, the western economies were propped up artificially with various bailout "stimulus packages" created by Western governments. The United States of course led the way with the largest stimulus package and the printing of U.S. dollars to pay for it. With this massive injection of liquidity (money printing) of U.S. dollars into foreign markets, the price of food rapidly increased creating inflation. These increased food prices destabilized various economies that trade in U.S. dollars, particularly the Arab nations. Euro-American involvement in clandestine populace movements sponsored riots and revolutions in these nations. The idea here was to force Arab leaders to start pumping more oil to stabilize the U.S. dollar and give the Western world an upper hand in the emerging peak oil economy. Those leaders that don't comply face more protests, riots and revolutions to come. It's a nasty little game we're playing to maintain our political influence, economic prowess and corporate hegemony. We're doing it to keep the Russians from getting the upper hand and maintain our superpower status both domestically and internationally.
The problem here is this is how we're treating our supposed "allies" in the Arab world. Granted, they haven't been treating us too nicely in recent decades, but nevertheless, we need their support to prevent Russia from gaining a peak oil advantage. Supporting and sponsoring riots and revolutions within the nations of your supposed "allies" is not very conducive to good relations. We're effectively acting more like a bully than a friend. The only way this pays off for the United States and Europe is if it's successful, and regime changes occur all throughout the Arab world, but even then it's risky business, because if those new regimes are taken over by radicals, we could be in a lot of trouble. Furthermore, if these riot-revolutions are not successful, we have just effectively pissed off our "allies" who give us the upper hand in a peak oil economy. On thing is for sure, if Gaddafi survives the attempted coupe in his nation of Libya, he'll never sell another drop of oil to Europe again. His oil will go to Russia instead.
The problem with Western Liberals (both Leftist Socialists and Centrist Libertarians) is that they both believe their economic models will work just fine in the Arab world since they have proved to work so swimmingly well in the Western world. (Well, sort of.) So the Centrist Libertarians (otherwise known as the Neoconservatives of George W. Bush and company) have pushed to recreate the Arab world in the Western world's image, assuming that this will result in greater oil trading partners over time. While the Leftist Socialists (George Soros and company) also believe their models will work well in the Arab world and so they likewise work with the Centrist Libertarians to accomplish the same goal of regime change. In the end however, their final objectives are considerably different. The Centrist Libertarians (Neoconservatives) would like to create a world where the United States and Europe have the upper hand in a peak oil economy, while the Leftist Socialists envision a new order in which there is an "open society" whereby socialist nations trade oil on equal footing. Both groups are terribly mistaken.
The Arab world isn't going to fall for the Neoconservative or Socialist vision. The Arab world has it's own vision and that is Shariah law. Now there are various degrees of this vision, and a lot of it depends on what part of the Arab world we're talking about, but the basic premise of the vision is shared throughout. They envision Islamic Sharia, under Arab political prowess, with their own economic hegemony. The United States and Russia can just be dammed as far as their concerned. So long as their leaders continue to cooperate with both superpowers they will be vulnerable to uprisings. Right now the Islamic religious leaders in the Arab world are using the subversion of the CIA to their advantage. They know that once their leaders are overthrown there will be a period of vulnerability which they can use to seize power. It's happened before (Iran in 1979), and it will likely happen again. Both the United States and Russia are playing with fire here, but the United States is more deeply entangled, at least as far as we can tell for now. It is likely the whole thing will blow up in our faces in the not-too-distant future.
Those of us familiar with Catholic prophecy concerning the Chastisement of God (which we are now in and will likely soon conclude) will result in the fall of Europe to Muslim and Marxist powers in an upheaval of anarchy. This may very well be payback for Euro-American subversion in the Arab world. We also know that Russia is involved in this somehow, and it would appear the United States is strangely silent, as if we are unable to do anything. We know this results in the fall of the Vatican in Rome, the assassination of our pope, and the rise of a new pope in exile who will crown a new French king that will eventually reestablish the Holy Roman Empire. We also know that nothing short of a direct intervention from God, a disaster of epic proportions and unrivaled in all of recorded history, will be the decisive blow to the powers of evil in this age. Before that happens however, the Church in Europe will be decimated, and European Christians will face the threshold of extinction. Exactly when and how this will all unfold is not known to us at this time, but with each passing month the emerging picture becomes a little more clear.
Riots in Egypt marked the turning point in the current paradigm shift.
(WND) - Islamists, in particular the anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood, seem poised to take power throughout the Middle East as a result of riots that have already toppled one Arab regime and are threatening others, in what some are calling only the latest wave of an Islamic "tsunami" sweeping the globe.
In Egypt, members of President Hosni Mubarak's family reportedly have fled the country as a flood of violent, fatal street protests threatens the stability of this most populous Arab nation, a longtime U.S. ally and the only Muslim nation with a long-lasting peace agreement with Israel.
The White House has been championing the protests, calling for a transition to democratic rule in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood formed the main opposition to Mubarak....
THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: I cannot begin to describe in words the absolute fundamental transformation that is underway in world politics. The mainstream news media is only now just beginning to comprehend the magnitude of a small fraction of it. Nothing this profound has happened since the fall of the Soviet Union. Not even the terrorist events of 9-11 compare to what is happening now. This is nothing short of a worldwide paradigm shift, and it's only just begun.
The riot-revolution in Egypt is just the beginning. Tunisia has already fallen. Yemen and Jordan are next. Turkey has changed it's political course to a more anti-Israel and anti-Western stand, so as to appease the swelling outrage in the hope of preventing riots. Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf States are becoming increasingly isolated. Even their regimes will likely become vulnerable in the months and years ahead. Blame is steadily being painted on the United States and Israel, and sadly, it is not entirely unwarranted.
Allow me to elaborate on exactly what is going on. To understand it all, we need to back up a bit. Let's go back to 1979. Islamic radicals orchestrated a riotous revolution expelling the American backed Shaw of Iran, and replaced his monarchy with an Islamic theocratic republic. Ever since then, Iran has become a thorn in the side of the whole Western world, and especially the United States and Israel, orchestrating and funding Islamic terrorism by working with Syria to take over the only Christian nation in the Middle East - Lebanon. From Lebanon, Iran through Syria has created the terrorist organization Hezbollah. The sworn goal of Hezbollah is to drive the State of Israel into the sea. Furthermore, Iran has recently pursued nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them via intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICMs). In response to the 1979 terrorist kidnapping of American embassy workers in Iran, the United States backed a rogue dictator in Iraq named Saddam Hussein. Washington DC orchestrated the transfer of weapons - even chemical weapons - to Hussein for use in his war against Iran. While at the same time Washington (during the Reagan administration) attempted to play both sides of the Iraq-Iran War by delivering arms to Iran as well. It was only after Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on his own people that the United States stopped all military relations with him. It was at that time Hussein decided the real enemy was the Untied States and the Gulf Arab states. So he signed a peace treaty with Iran and turned his guns south toward Kuwait instead. In August of 1990 Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait - a U.S. ally and oil producer for American markets. Kuwait fell quickly and Saudi Arabia realized it was next on Hussein's black list. So the United States responded with the Gulf War, which ended in February of 1991 with the defeat of Saddam Hussein, the containment of Iraq, the liberation of Kuwait, and the presence of a permanent U.S. military base in Saudi Arabia.
Now let's fast forward ten years to the turn of the century. On September 11, 2001, the United States was brutally attacked by Islamic terrorists. The devastation in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania rightfully enraged the American people. Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian national, and American-educated radical Sunni Muslim of the Wahhabi sect, orchestrated and funded the terrorist attacks through his international terrorist organization called Al Qaeda. The attacks on the United States were celebrated in many places throughout the Middle East, and other Islamic nations, because of what many Muslims perceive as the American backing of Israel and Arab dictators. Osama Bin Laden himself cited American backing of Israel, along with the presence of an American military base in his homeland of Saudi Arabia. As a radical Islamic puritan, Bin Laden saw such American presence as profaning holy ground so close to Mecca. In response, the United States, headed by President George W. Bush, formulated a "War on Terrorism" under which the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, attempting to set up democracies. In both cases democracies were organized, but they were Islamic democracies that continued to enforce various elements of Shariah Law, and are extremely vulnerable to the kind of political pressure that can push them into becoming Islamic theocratic republics like Iran. In this new "War on Terror," as it came to be called, the United States continued to back dictators in multiple Islamic nations including Egypt and Pakistan due to their assistance in combating Islamic terrorism. Simultaneously, the United States embarked on continued deficit spending to back the "War on Terror" and increased social programs, as well as bolstering economic growth by inflating a government backed credit bubble.
Now let's fast-forward ten years to today. The government backed credit bubble popped in September of 2008, as a result the United States bailed out the banks and lenders with trillions of dollars of deficit spending. The U.S. Federal Reserve floated this debt by monetizing it with trillions of dollars of printed funny money. This injection of liquidity into the international markets caused inflation in the international markets, driving up the cost of food, energy, textiles and increasing poverty throughout all nations that use the dollar as their international trading currency. These conditions hit the Middle Eastern nations hard, especially those that worked closely with the United States, causing food riots that escalated into full-blown political revolutions - Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and and now Jordan. There doesn't appear to be any end in sight. On the surface, the riots and demonstrations are understandable. These people have been victimized by governments that have failed them and left them hungry and in poverty. The problem with these revolutions is that radical Islamic groups have stood ready for years, poised to rush in and direct such movements toward the creation of more radical Islamic theocracies. The momentum seems unstoppable now, and there is nothing the United States (or any Western power) can do to influence it. The more the United States tries, the more frustrated civilians turn toward radical organizations such as the "Muslim Brotherhood" in response. Again, who can blame them? The United States backed many of these dictators that brought this ruin upon them in the first place. Why on earth would they trust us?
To make matters worse, Washington has been attempting to play both sides again, by backing the rioters as well as the dictators they are rioting against. Your guess is as good as mine as to why we would do this, but apparently we did, especially in Egypt. Maybe this was to gain political capital with the opposition groups should such a revolution ever happen successfully. However, as it's playing out, whatever political capital we hoped to gain is being spent fast and the whole thing seems to be backfiring on us as it did with our backing of Saddam Hussein in Iraq during the 1980s.
Now the entire Middle East is erupting in revolution, and as soon as one domino falls the next will follow. What happened in Iran back in 1979 is now happening all over the Middle East in 2011 and it seems we are powerless to do anything about it.
From a Catholic perspective all of this was predicted centuries ago by our mystics and seers. In the years ahead more political strength will shift away from the United States and Europe toward radical Islamic powers. Together with Marxist radicals in Europe, they will eventually attempt the same kind of riotous revolutions there. What follows is what many Catholic mystics have called "The Chastisement" which will result in another paradigm shift that will bring about the last great era in Christian history before the rise of Antichrist and the Second Advent.
THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: While we're still enjoying the calm after the storm of the 2010 congressional election, leave it to "The Catholic Knight" to reintroduce a healthy dose of reality. I absolutely LOVE the above video because it points out the fallen nature of man and the inevitable demise of our own man-made self governing system called "democracy" or "republicanism." This video has already caused a lot of Liberals to cringe. They fail to see the subtle irony in Michael Voris' conclusion that only faithful Catholics should be allowed to vote. He doesn't really believe that literally. He's trying to make a point, which is completely missed on Liberals (both on the Left and Right) who are blind to see it. The nature of man, specifically the fallen nature of man, dictates that democratic self-governance will ultimately fail. Historically the shelf life of a democracy is about 200 years. The United States hit it's expiration date in 1976, two-hundred years after the revolution that gave us independence. Our current government hit it's expiration date in 1988, two-hundred years after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Historically speaking, based on the precedence of democracies and republics that have gone before us, we are spoiled goods sitting on the shelf waiting for the clerk to notice we've passed our expiration date. Every day we continue to exist is borrowed time. We should rejoice in the pro-life victory of this last election, and we should strive for bigger victories in the next election, but we must realize that all of these victories might possibly save some unborn babies, but they won't save this republic. They might postpone the inevitable fall of our nation, but only temporarily.
The modern world is headed toward a return to monarchy. It is as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. That's because monarchy is the default form of government. It is the natural state of man, and history bears testimony to this. It is also the most stable form of government ever devised, and history bears testimony to this as well. Someday, our democratic form of republicanism in this nation will fall, and I imagine other democratic nations will fall immediately thereafter as well. The reasons for this are clearly spelled out in the video above. When the fall comes, chaos will follow, but what will emerge from that chaos will likely be a return to imperial Christendom, with kings and princes ruling the provinces formerly known as the United States of America. A benevolent monarch rules by the principle of Subsidiarity, which means that forms of democracy will still exist, on the local level. However, on the national level this form of government will be dispensed with entirely. You say it can never happen? It's happened before - multiple times. There is no reason to believe that history won't repeat itself. Sorry, that's just how human history has always worked.
THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: The Cold War may be over, but the threat of communist Russia has not changed, and the United States has been out maneuvered by one of the oldest tricks in the book - the Trojan Horse.
When the USSR was dismantled in 1991 it was not the end of communism. Then General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev assured the Communist Party that Karl Marx's dream had not died. It was simply changing. The old state was being dismantled because it was bureaucratically unsustainable. In order for communism to advance, it must be liberated from the Soviet state to freely spread throughout the world as "Socialism." Russia was economically broke, and needed time to recover by carefully adopting some capitalist models within a general socialist mindset. It was generally assured that Communism would return to Russia, after a brief absence, under the banner of Socialism. This was nothing new you see, for the USSR always regarded itself not really as "communist," but as the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."
The election of Russian President Boris Yeltsin gave the West hope. It was believed that in spite of Gorbachev's pro-communist (pro-socialist) rhetoric, Russia would fully embrace a capitalist economy once the people had a taste of freedom. That didn't happen. In fact, after several years of recession (bordering economic depression) the people began to clamor for the return of communism. Thus Gorbachev's prediction came true with the election of former KGB agent Vladimir Putin...
Vladimir Putin is the embodiment of the Russian Bear
During the Putin presidency, Russia experienced an economic recovery and has since become considerably wealthy thanks to petroleum production. Putin has since demonstrated zero tolerance for Western freedoms and has aggressively pursued actions to consolidate it's oil supremacy in the region, even to the point of invading a small budding democracy in one of the former satellite states of the old Soviet Union. Russia's attack on the Republic of Georgia was couched in the context of "human rights violations" against Russian citizens in the region. This was a direct slap at NATO which used the same bogus charge to justify the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. It just turns out however, that the only area Russia was interested in taking over was the small swath of land in Georgia's most northern province which just coincidentally happened to have the regions largest oil pipeline going through it. Now Russia has 100% control of this pipeline.
Regardless of what you think about Senator John McCain, you must concede that this Cold War veteran has significant knowledge of international affairs, especially as they relate to the institutes of the former Soviet Union...
Vladimir Putin stepped out of the presidency in 2008 due to a Russian law that term limits presidents to no more than two consecutive terms. Unlike the American law that term limits the U.S. president, the Russian president may return to office after sitting out one term. Now it looks like Putin is preparing to throw his hat back in the ring for the 2012 Russian election...
(Reuters) - Russia's paramount leader, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, hinted on Monday he would return to the presidency in 2012 for six more years and said democracy protesters marching without permission deserved to be beaten.
Asked by the Kommersant daily newspaper in an interview whether Russia's 2012 presidential election did not worry him because he had already decided it, Putin replied: "No, it interests me like...I wanted to say like everyone, but in fact more than everyone else. But I don't want to make a fetish out of it."
Putin ruled as president from 2000 to 2008 before handing the presidency to his chosen successor Dmitry Medvedev, in order to observe a law banning a third consecutive term.
However Putin will be free to run again in 2012 for a newly extended term of six years...
Regardless of what happens in the future, we can be sure of a few things. First, Putin will continue to lead Russia further into Communist Socialism. Putin himself is a dictator in the making, a fairly popular one, as he's led the Russian people into economic stability they've not known in decades. He's done this primarily through oil supply and demand. Second, the United States will soon slide from economic recession into depression as the Socialist Trojan Horse we've ingested soon gets the best of us. As a result of this, the West will be increasingly unable to respond to Russian military advances. As John McCain prophetically warned - "watch Ukraine next."
In the long run we know what the final result will be. The Russian Orthodox Church does act as a force for good within Russia, but it does not have control of the state. As a result it is politically helpless. Concerning the beginning of the Great Chastisement promised to come upon the whole world by many Catholic seers and mystics, I will leave you with these predictions...
Russia will march upon all the nations of Europe, particularly Italy, and will raise her flag over the dome of St. Peter's. Italy will be severely tried by a great revolution, and Rome will be purified in blood for it's many sins, especially those of impurity. The flock is about to be dispersed and the pope will suffer greatly.
-- Sister Elena Aiello, 1954
Father, tell everyone that our Lady has, frequently, announced to me that many nations will disappear off the face of the earth. Russia is the scourge chosen by God to punish mankind, if we, through prayer and the sacraments do not obtain the grace of their conversion. Tell them, Father, tell them that the devil has begun a decisive battle against our Lady, because what most afflicts the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the fall of souls of religious and priests.
(Catholic Culture) - The Vatican has expressed intense concern about the Israeli raid on the "Freedom Flotilla" headed for the Gaza Strip on May 31.
Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office, decried the "needless loss of lives" in the attack, which left at least 20 people dead and others wounded.
Reminding reporters that Pope Benedict XVI will soon be traveling to the Middle East for a pastoral visit to Crete, Father Lombardi said that the Pontiff will follow the latest crisis there with great care....
(Herald Sun) - A VATICAN document leaked overnight calls the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories a "political injustice".
The occupation is a "political injustice imposed on the Palestinians," the Vatican says, according to extracts quoted by Italy's ANSA news agency.
"The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories makes daily life difficult for freedom of movement, the economy and social and religious life," the text says.
The Instrumentum Laboris, a working document on an upcoming synod of bishops on the Middle East, was embargoed for release until Monday, when Pope Benedict XVI was to present it during a visit to Cyprus...
(AP) – The Vatican said Sunday that the international community is ignoring the plight of Christians in the Middle East, and that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Iraq and political instability in Lebanon have forced thousands to flee the region. A working paper released during Pope Benedict XVI's pilgrimage to Cyprus to prepare for a crisis summit of Middle East bishops in Rome in October also cites the "extremist current" unleashed by the rise of "political Islam" as a threat to Christians....
THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: The problem here is twofold. The Israelis have an embargo on all ships approaching the Gaza Strip. They believe this gives them the authority to board and search every ship that attempts to come into port. In this most recent case, the Turkish government (one of the most moderate Islamic governments in the middle east) sponsored a relief flotilla to help the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. The Israelis boarded the ship in a surprise commando style, which is part of their embargo enforcement, and they were greeted with violence.
The Turkish government stands by the claim that the flotilla contained no weapons, and no weapons were being shipped. This may very well be the case from the perspective of the Turkish government, however, it looks like the type of weapons used against the Israeli commandos were personal weapons - such as knives, slingshots, metal bars, etc. The Israelis opened fire, and as a result twenty people lost their lives.
The situation in Israel is a difficult one for Christians in the West to fully comprehend. Of course, many American Evangelicals (influenced by the heretical teachings of Dispensationalism) believe the modern nation-state of Israel is the "real Israel" promised by God for the last days, and they will support the Zionist agenda of Israeli supremacy whether it's right or wrong, no matter who it hurts. On the flip side, the Islamic regimes of the Middle East have a history of being extremely intolerant tyrannies. To make matters worse, some of them have been influenced by radical Islamist ideologues who's only agenda is to wipe Israel off the map and kill every non-Muslim in the region.
It helps to step back and look at things in a dispassionate historical way.
First and foremost, as Catholic Christians we need to understand who we are, in order to understand our relation to Israel. A non-biased study of the New Testament, along with the context of early Christian writings, reveals that the Church (particularly the Catholic Church) is the "New Israel of God." The Lord brought the strictly Jewish Kingdom of Israel to an end in 33 AD with the death and resurrection of Israel's messianic King - Jesus Christ. In AD 70 the physical remnants of that strictly Jewish Kingdom were brought to an end with the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. According to St. Paul the Apostle, an astute Jewish rabbi and author of two-thirds of the New Testament, the Jewish people can continue to be part of the Kingdom of Israel by submitting to Israel's King - who is none other than Jesus of Nazereth - the promised Messiah. Upon submitting to the King, they will fulfill their faith and be grafted into the New Kingdom of Israel - which is the Catholic Church. Jews who refuse to acknowledge their King will remain outside this New Kingdom of Israel - the Catholic Church. They are still Jews of course, and retain their identity as God's original chosen people, but they are incomplete without their King and are outside their own Kingdom! This was the accepted view of the early Christians and should be our view today.
What complicates this is recent history. In the late 1800s two religious-political movements began to take shape in the Western world - Dispensationalism and Zionism. Some believe these two movements were spawned by the same source known as Freemasonry, or the Masonic Lodge, and there is evidence to support this. Dispensationalism was designed for Protestant Christianity, while Zionism was designed for Judaism. A hundred years later the two would merge into what we might call "Dispensational-Zionism," and become the driving political influence of the Middle Eastern mess we know today. To make a long story short, Dispensationalism is the theology created by John Nelson Darby, and popularized by Cyrus I. Scofield (creator of the Scofield Reference Bible), which teaches that the Church is not Israel. Instead, it teaches that Israel is primarily a piece of real estate in the Middle East. That real estate, according to Dispensationalism, becomes prophetically energized once it is occupied by people who call themselves "Jews" regardless if they practice the religion of Judaism or not. Dispensationalism regards the Church as God's mere afterthought, and "accident of providence" so to speak, in which God is simply using it as an external vehicle to bring in the Gentiles while he prepares his real plan of salvation for the Jewish people (or "true Israel"). Because of this, Dispensationalism teaches that Protestant Christians MUST support the political State of Israel financially and politically, at all costs, and without reservation or doubt. As for Catholic Christians, well, they just need to stop being Catholic you see, because Dispensationalism is usually accompanied by a hefty dose of anti-Catholicism. There are many examples of this from contemporary Dispensationalist teachers, too many to count here.
As for Zionism, that was designed primarily for the Jews of the 1800s and early 1900s. However, now that Zionism has merged with Dispensationalism, we can honestly say that the majority of the world's Zionists are not Jews - but Evangelical Protestants!!!
Nevertheless, classical Zionism is simply the teaching that Jews need not wait for the Messiah to lead them back to the promised land, even though that is what their rabbis have taught them for centuries. They can and should, according to Zionism, go back themselves (without the Messiah), build up Israel all on their own, and do so using force if necessary. The history of the Jewish people in the 20th century is both complex and tragic. Zionism began in earnest during the first decades of the 20th century. It's biggest supporters initially were none other than Communist Russia and Nazi Germany. It was seen as a way to "get rid of the Jews" and simultaneously create a model socialist republic in the Middle East. It was only after World War II that Zionism took on a more humanitarian role as a refuge for persecuted survivors of the Holocaust and began to align more closely with the West - particularly the United States. In 1948 the Zionist dream became reality as the State of Israel was created. The very next day war broke out between Israel and it's Arab neighbors. The State of Israel has been fighting a series of perpetual wars (external and internal) ever since. The Turkish relief flotilla raid that has recently sparked outrage around the world is just the latest episode.
Epic heresies, over a hundred years in the making, have brought us to this point in history. The heresies that denied the Church as the New Kingdom of Israel effectively denied Jesus as the King, and in doing so not only coddled those Jews who continued to reject him, but also turned millions of Protestant Christians into their supporters. Today, the United States of America stands as the Dispensational-Zionist capitol of the world. National foreign policy is built on this religious-political ideology. A large number of the American Jewish population is strongly Zionist, while an even larger number of the American Evangelical population is strongly Dispensational. Because of this, the United States has been Israel's strongest supporter, and because of this the Israeli government has grown accustomed to thinking it can do whatever it wants because it knows the United States will back it. This is abruptly changing with the Obama administration, and as a result, Israel is now caught in a very precarious situation.
We cannot know how World War III will start, but we can be sure of how it will end. As far as the Middle East is concerned, World War III will end with the profound crippling of the Arab states, and the total annihilation of the Israeli state. Such a thought is inconceivable to many American Evangelicals who are convinced that God is miraculously protecting the Israelis. The destruction of the Israeli state will inevitably be a faith-shaking event for most American Evangelicals, unless they unshackle themselves from the Dispensational-Zionist heresy. Don't think however, the Arab nations will get off the hook. The devastation that Israel alone can bring upon them is enough to blow away a hundred years of industrial development. So in any kind of all out Arab-Israeli war will only result in losers - no winners.
As Catholic Christians there is not much we can do about this whole situation. It is the result of Protestantism meets Judaism in an epic heresy most probably spawned by Freemasonry over 150 years ago. At this point the ball is already in motion, it has been for some time, and all we can do is wait to see the outcome. There is no sense in choosing sides, or rooting for one group against the other. The Zionists and Dispensationals have in mind the very anti-Christian goal of undermining the New Kingdom of Israel (the Catholic Church) with the modern Nation-State of Israel. While the surrounding Islamic powers are just anti-Christian in general. Caught in the middle are Christians on both sides - Israeli Christians and Palestinian Christians. The one and only group we should side with is our Christian brethren. That is all. Beyond that we should simply decry the violence and pray for the peace of Jerusalem. It can be tempting at times for Catholic Americans to side with Israel. While it is also tempting for Catholic Europeans to side with Palestine. The best thing we can do is leave politics out of it. The whole situation was spawned by heresy -- anti-Catholic heresy at that! We must resist temptation to choose sides and simply support our Christian brethren trapped in the middle. Pray for peace for all parties involved, and that both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims will discover the gospel of Jesus Christ as the one and only workable "roadmap to peace."
(WND) - The International Temple Mount Awareness Day is being planned by a coalition of Jewish groups, including The Temple Institute, the Organization for the Renewal of the Temple (ORT), Women in Green, the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation and Israel National Radio.
"We call on Jews and Gentiles around the world to mark March 16th as a day of solidarity with the Temple Mount and the prophetic vision of 'a house of prayer for all nations,'" reads a statement from the organizers of the event...
THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: This is how it's being sold to us. Christians are being told it's a human rights issue, and that it's not just about the Jews. We're being told the Temple Mount is for all of us, and that everyone (particularly Jews and Christian) should be able to pray there 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. We're being told that it's "unfair" that Muslims are allowed to pray there almost 24/7 and people of other religions are not.
What we're not being told is that it is the Israeli government that has made this arrangement, that it is the Israeli government that backs it, and it is the Israeli government that helps to enforce it. The policy that is so "unfair" to the Jews is in fact put upon them by their own supposed "Jewish" government. True, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Israeli police must make provision for public Jewish prayer on the site. However, the policy of banning all non-Muslims from the site on certain days originally came out of the Ariel Sharon administration. Israeli police continue to refuse to abide by the Supreme Court ruling due to safety concerns. Notice however, the Supreme Court ruling doesn't necessarily deal with Christian or adherents of other religions. Rather, it deals specifically with Jews and their supposed "right" to organize public prayer on the Temple Mount site.
What we have here is a covert attempt by certain Zionists to co-opt Christians (and others) into pressuring their own government into implementing a Supreme Court ruling that primarily deals with not only letting Jews onto the Temple Mount 24/7 but also organize public prayer there. One of the reasons why Palestinian Muslims are so hostile toward letting non-Muslims (particularly Jews) pray on the Temple Mount during Jewish holy days (Sabbath, Passover, Pentecost, Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles, Hanukkah, etc.) is the fear that over time the Jews will co-opt the site and pave the way for the rebuilding of the Temple itself. Of course Muslims don't want this for fear of how that might interfere with Islamic worship on the site, and how it further stakes the Jewish claim on the Temple Mount, Jerusalem and the Palestinian West Bank. What the Muslims see in this, coupled with expanded Jewish settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, is a Zionist strategy of relentless incrementalism.
Now 'The Catholic Knight' is not taking the side of the Muslims here. I could care less about their silly mosque on that arid hilltop and what goes on inside there. It is built on the site that God judged and destroyed nearly 2,000 years ago, using a Pagan Roman army as punishment upon the Jewish leaders of that time, for the rejection of their Messiah, HIS Only Begotten Son, and the gospel preached by his apostles. Upon the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Temple ceased to be a place of authentic worship of God. While the Jews of that time attempted to worship God in that Temple, God himself was actually hanging on a cross outside the city walls - despised and rejected. God gave the Jewish leaders forty years (one Biblical generation) to repent of this. They failed to do so. Instead they rebelled against their Roman occupiers demanding independence. Convinced that God would rise up to help them as he did for the Maccabeans centuries before, they believed themselves capable of defeating the Roman army. God rose up all right, on the side of the Pagan Romans, and revisited his people once again in the form of judgment and destruction. The purpose was to put an end, once and for all, to the sacrificial system set up under the Old Covenant, so as to chide future generations of Jews into accepting the permenant sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Rebuilding the Temple Mount into another symbol of rejection of the true Messiah has always been the goal of many Jewish leaders throughout history, and history tells us they have been willing to collaborate with literally ANYONE to make it happen. Perhaps one of their greatest allies was the Pagan Roman emperor "Julian the Apostate." In AD 363, Julian agreed to help the Jews rebuild the Temple because he (as a Pagan) understood how it's very presence undermined the Christian gospel message, and created confusion about the legitimacy of Jesus Christ's claim to be the Jewish Messiah - and therefore by extension anybody's Messiah! Interestingly enough, God had other plans. As work on the foundation began, strange "balls of fire" (probably methane gas eruptions from seismic activity) continually burst forth from the rocks, scorching workers and bringing construction to a stand still. Eventually the work was abandoned. Some 1,500 years later another emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, agreed to help the Jews rebuild their Temple for similar reasons as Julian the Apostate. However, a little military defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in June of 1815 put an end to that plan. Of course the rabbis have a saying that "coincidence is not a kosher word" and for Christians there ought to be a lesson in these historical events. What is that lesson? It's simple really. God DOES NOT want the Jewish Temple rebuilt! God knows it will be used as a means to undermine the Gospel message and ultimately create a false religion that claims to worship HIM, but in reality rejects HIS Only Begotten Son, and therefore rejects HIM by extension.
In the video above, and the story cited as well, please pay special attention to the pitch line. Worship on the Temple Mount, and later of course the rebuilt Temple itself, is not just a "Jewish thing." According to the Zionist pitch men, it's for ALL PEOPLE - everyone - to become a central place a worship and a conduit if you will, between the human and the divine. Stop and think about that for a second. Exactly what are they saying? They're saying the Temple Mount and their rebuilt Temple (not Jesus Christ) is to become the conduit (or mediator) between God and man. Is this not the ultimate heresy for a Christian? Can this be anything else but apostasy?
As if that were not bad enough, there is more. Already the ancient Jewish Sanhedrin has been reformed (learn more here), and with it a new extension of Judaism has been created for Gentiles called Noahidism (learn more here). It's based on the Biblical account of the covenant between God and Noah after the Great Flood. The gist of this new religion is simple. Noahidism is for Gentiles, while Judaism is for Jews. Of course Jews have the more difficult covenant to keep with 613 commandments. While Gentiles (under Noahidism) need only keep 7 commandments. Of course, this makes it easier for Gentiles to be accepted and categorized in a purely Jewish context. Under Noahidism, a Muslim could theoretically be accepted as a Noahide. The same could be said for Deists or Theists, which is what most non-religious Westerners espouse as their most common belief in divinity. Of course Noahidism would also be very compatible with Freemasonry. However, a doctrinally orthodox Christian could not be accepted as a Noahide because of his belief in the Trinity, which allegedly violates the Noahide command to worship only God, and of course God is defined by the rabbinical Talmud. Theoretically, a Jehovah's Witness could be a Noahide, but not a Catholic or a Protestant. All that aside, what is really interesting is how this plays out once the Temple is rebuilt, because you see there would have to be different courtyards on the Temple Mount separating Jews from Noahides. Can you see a religious caste system developing here? It's similar to what existed during Jesus' time, and in the centuries before, wherein practicing Jews held a more privileged position in the Temple than God fearing Gentiles, no matter how devout they were.
Christian prophecy makes it clear that the Jewish Temple will not be successfully rebuilt until the last days of the end times just before the bodily Return of Jesus Christ. Historically speaking, every previous attempt to rebuild the Temple has resulted in disaster, postponement or cancellation for various reasons. Christian prophecy also indicates that when the Temple is rebuilt, it will be used by the final Antichrist (a Jewish messianic figure) to lead the world into total rejection of Jesus Christ and outright rebellion against God's plan. Unless we are to believe the coming of Antichrist is right around the corner, we can only conclude that this latest Zionist attempt, to reclaim the Temple Mount and rebuild the Temple, will only result in disaster. While we may now have the framework for the final last days scenario, there are still some key end times prophecies that must be fulfilled first...
The world's economic and political power base must shift to the middle east.
The Gospel must be preached to every corner of the world and made widely available for anyone to accept. Nations all over the whole world must be converted.
Sometime after this, there must be a worldwide apostasy of Gentile Christians. (What we have right now is only a regional apostasy in the western world, as Christian missionary work in Africa and Asia is booming!)
For this reason, 'The Catholic Knight' believes we are not yet in the time of the last days, even though we have been living in the end times for centuries. Rather, what we can expect to befall the Zionists is the same thing that befell others who tried to rebuild the Temple. At the very least this is a delay or cancellation due to political reasons. Or else we can expect calamity to befall those who live in Israel. In fact, based on current political and regional news, it's probably safe to assume that Israel will soon be plunged into massive war. I'm guessing that Jerusalem as we know it will be destroyed, and perhaps even the Dome of the Rock as well. Don't assume however that the destruction of the Dome of the Rock will automatically spell the rebuilding of the Temple. As I said, this WILL NOT happen until God is ready to close the book on human history.
So we should keep in mind that ANY Christian cooperation with Jews on the Temple Mount project will only result in cooperating with an anti-Christian agenda. Right now the Zionists are preparing to fool the world into believing the situation on Jerusalem is a human rights issue that affects people of all religions. It does not. There is no religious reason for Christians to worship on the Temple Mount on any day of the year. Likewise, the rabbis have created a religious system in the Talmud that allows Judaism to function as a religion even without the Temple Mount, or even the Temple itself. Their innability to worship there when they want to is not our problem, nor is it any kind of priority for Christians to get involved in. The Israeli Jews are contending with THEIR OWN government on this issue. In other words, it's an internal problem within the Jewish world, and Christians should stay out of it.
As a general rule of thumb, Christians should avoid all matters relating to Zionism, as it is by definition a movement against the Spirit of God. Evangelical Protestants in the United States are quick to point to Israeli military victories, such as the Six-Day War an the Yom Kippur War, as "signs" of God's blessing on the Israeli state and an indication that God wants Christians to support Zionism. However, they fail to point out that Israel has been in a state of perpetual war against Muslim regimes and sects for almost the entire duration of it's existence, and did not have such golden success in the Israeli-Lebanon War in recent years. To claim that military victory is tantamount to God's blessing is arrogant and stupid. So was God blessing the Pagan Roman Empire when he allowed it to destroy the Jewish nation in 70 AD? Was God blessing Russia when he allowed it victory over the tiny nation of Georgia recently? Was God blessing Germany when he allowed it to take over Bravaria? Was God blessing England when he allowed it to take over Northern Ireland? Was God blessing Vietnam when he allowed the Communists to defeat the Americans? Was God blessig North Korea when he allowed the Communists to keep American forces in the South? The list goes on and on, and I think I've made my point. Military victory does not equate God's blessing on a regime. What it means is that God has allowed that regime to survive for now (either to his liking or not) for reasons related to this providencial plan.
Zionism, in all it's forms, leads to an anti-Christian gospel, because it's ultimate design is to rebuild a Jewish nation and the Jewish Temple against the will of God. If you're a Christian, especially a Catholic Christian, then you're supposed to believe salvation comes through Jesus Christ for all people, especially the Jews. If you're a Christian, especially a Catholic Christian, then you should understand why God has been dealing with his people (the Jews) the way he has for the last 2000 years. He is trying to chide them into understanding that Jesus of Nazereth is their Messiah. If you're a Christian, especially a Catholic Christian, then you should understand that any effort to restore the ancient Temple and it's ceremonies is counterproductive to that end. If you're a Christian, especially a Catholic Christian, then you should know that if the Zionists are successful in obtainig their goals, it will only serve to confuse many Christians regarding the nature of Christ's sacrifice, and will become a counterpoint to Christian missionary work if potential converts think their is another (seemingly simplier) way of approaching the God of Israel through Noahidism and the restored Temple. If you're a Christian, especially a Catholic Christian, then you must understand that any support of Zionist goals is counterproductive to the missionary work of the Church and may possibly be a mortal sin.
So what should be the Christian attitude toward Zionism, the Temple Mount campaigns, and the Nation of Israel itself? Well, probably the best thing Christians can do is just be Christians. We should be indifferent toward Zionist political goals, and Muslim counter resistence to them. Rather we should simply recognize that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the ONLY real solution to all of these problems, and we should show love and respect toward both Muslims and Jews without endorsing or supporting their political agendas.
