ON OCTOBER 19 MAITE NKOANA-MASHABANE, South African Minister of International Relations formally withdrew his country from the International Criminal Court (ICC) located in the Netherlands.
Masganbane indicated that the ICC is overreaching by forcing compliance on issues that violate the sovereign rights of the nation, specifically the ICC mandate to arrest Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan during a state visit to South Africa.
IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE COMMUNIST COLLAPSE of 1989, Slovakia, like other Eastern European countries, fell under the sway of aggressive secularism, the dominance of foreign investors, and the political, social-cultural, and economic rhetoric of neoliberalism, which favors deregulation, privatization, multiculturalism, social austerity (a shrunken state role in alleviating poverty) and tolerance of LGBT and other aberrant moral-cultural values at odds with the traditional family oriented values. Such values are considered retrogressive by neoliberal progressives who clamor for tolerance of everything but traditional Christian values that they associate with tyranny, patriarchy, and fascism.
Cardinal Glemp the primate of Poland at the time of the communist collapse in 1989 had premonitions of the future challenges that would come from neoliberalism – materialism of a Western sort:
“We have withstood the onslaught of Atheistic Materialism, Marxism is dead; however I am not sure that we can withstand the onslaught of Western Materialism.”
The challenge foreseen by Cardinal Glemp certainly came to Eastern Europe (and also to Africa, Asia, and Latin America). Under the guise of liberal toleration and the rhetoric of prosperity, it sunk deeply into the soil of Slovakia. However, like the proverbial seed (Matthew 13: 5-7) that was planted on unprepared rocky ground it came up quickly, but because it lacked fertile soil its fruits were scorched or choked by the thorns of concupisence and greed.
Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, and when the sun rose it was scorched, and it withered for lack of roots. Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it.
Consequently, the abundance promised was never forthcoming. However, their are signs of forthcoming political change indicate a departure from the neoliberal paradigm toward something new .
Unlike the American two party winner take all system, Slovakia, like other European countries has a system of “proportional representation”. This means that the percent of votes a party receives in an election determines the percent of seats they receive in parliament. Since the political landscape in most European countries is dotted with numerous political parties sometimes reaching as many as fifty, it is difficult to ever garner 51% of the vote and thus the government is composed of coalition governments made up of competing but ideologically aligned (or politically aligned) parties. In such a system, any party with 15% of the seats is considered a major party. The party with the largest number of seats is usually recognized as the party from which the Prime Minister is drawn.
In Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico’s social-democratic party “SMER” controls 33% of the seats (in 2012 it held an overwhelming 44% of the seats); the other 67% are shared among nine other parties. Slovakia, like other European countries has surprisingly spawned a new grass roots Christian and Euro-skeptic political party. The “People’s Party” or “Our Slovakia” recently received 14 of the 150 contested seats or 8% the vote. The other pro-Christian party, the Slovak National Party (SNP) won 8.6% of the seats in parliament.
The nascent Our Slovakia Party is headed by Marian Kotleba, who is opposed to further integration with the European Union and is skeptical about NATO membership; he has referred to NATO as a “terrorist organization”. According to Kotleba, the national election
“Is the beginning of a new era for Slovakia. And as a result, we will save the country from where it was heading.” By this he was referring to the Western liberal agenda imposed after the collapse of communism, which favored foreign investment and liberal values over the interests the Slovakian people and their traditional Christian culture.
Kotleba, although maligned as a “Fascist” by Western pundits, rejects the Nazi label and suspects that it arises from his campaign against ingrained political and economic corruption and the kulturkampf against Christian values pursued by ideologues, who favors a neo-liberal agenda contrary to Slovakia’s indigenous patrimony. Not surprisingly, he also favors Slovakia’s economic independence as indicated by advocacy of a national currency and Slovakia’s exit from the Eurozone.
Because he is perceived as an agent of change, he finds support among the poor, marginalized, and young voters who are increasingly vocal and desirous for political and economic change that favors the broader common good.
The neoliberals promised to integrate the country with Europe, which at the time was attractive due to the European opposition to communism from which the countries of Eastern Europe were newly emerging. In reality this translated into the heavy burden of neoliberal reforms. When Slovakia joined the European Union in 2004, the road to economic, political and cultural serfdom under the banner of neoliberalism went into full swing.
Under a regiment of neoliberal structural reform whatever paltry compensation workers had grown accustomed to under the previous regime was removed. Instead, unemployed and underemployed workers were now blamed for their own impoverishment due to laziness, apathy, lack of proper education or moral ineptitude. In short, they were blamed rather than assisted by a new neoliberal state that busied itself with cronyism and increasing investment opportunities for foreign corporations and financial institutions. As in Poland and elsewhere, unemployment and inflation soared as a result of implementing market oriented neoliberal policies. The so-called neoliberal “Shock Therapy” was considered a necessary part of healing the dying economy. As a result of economic austerity resulting from planned shocking of the Slovakian economy and dominating its political landscape, the ever-growing economic fallout resulting from the therapy was excused by its ideological proponents and those on their payroll. It was not indicative, they said, of failed neoliberal polices but was to be attributed to the personal failure of the workers.
Nonetheless, overtime, the pull of a deregulated economy, the promise of state subsidies to foreign corporations, low wages accepted by Slovakian laborers, and falling property prices lured Western dollars. This infusion of foreign capital led to partial respite as Slovakia became a hub of auto production. Because the neoliberal rational calculus depends upon financial (rather than human) calculations necessary to attract and maintain foreign investment, wages remained low, unemployment high, health care abysmal and government social assistance minimal. These economic trends were exacerbated by cultural degradation and a systematic attack on traditional values via public education, the mass media, and foreign agents working to instill a liberal worldview throughout Slovakia.
As a result of these economic, political and social failures, the liberal agenda, so successful in the twentieth and early twenty first century has begun to collapse. Workers and astute politicians are waking up to the fact that liberalism, contrary to its promises, has exacerbated rather than improved the situation. Cultural degradation on top of psychological and social trauma, caused by economic prosperity for a few and impoverishment for many, has proven to be the straw that is breaking the neoliberal back. People are increasingly fed up with the whole liberal agenda and are seeing through the thin veneer of rhetoric daily fed to the lot of wary workers whose difficult living circumstances are clearing their vision and contributing to a closer affinity with the church as it had in Poland where the church became the hub of opposition to the communist regime.
These mounting pressures reached a head in 2012 when the “Gorilla Scandal” shook the people of Slovakia from their slumber and awoke them to the reality of pervasive political corruption that surpassed the evils of communism. People took to the streets all over Slovakia with a call for “REAL democracy”, that is democracy rooted in the dignity of the human person, every human person.
However, no one seemed to have the cure or a hand strong enough to promote real positive change throughout the country. Nonetheless, positive change is occuring. The neoliberal parties dedicated to the European Union, toleration of moral aberrations contrary to the natural and divine law, economic austerity, economic models that result in wealth for a few but not wide-spread prosperity for many, are being robustly challenged. In the place of old political parties new ideas and new parties wary of the EU, sick of “political correctness” and rooted in human dignity and traditional Christian values are surfacing in Slovakia as they are throughout Europe and the world.
Uniting under the banner “We are reclaiming our country,” Civic Resistance groups in Slovakia are clamoring for change. Their voice is resonating throughout the country where it sounds something like this:
Following the collapse of communism, the state was grabbed by a new regime of corrupt politicians and corporate oligarchs who were given a license to engage in theft of public property. Under the guise of “democracy” they have lied to the people and enriched themselves.
Of course people who say such things are a threat to a well controlled social system built on liberal values. Consequently, they are often branded as lunatics, Nazis, Fascist, etc. by the neoliberal press supported by neoliberal political cronies. Unwelcome and thus lacking a seat in the Ministry of Propaganda, Civic Resistance found a viable outlet in the social media from which they were able to successfully promote the candidacy of Marian Kotleba as Governor of the Banska Bystricia region in Southeast Slovakia.
Their dedication paid off. In 2013 the People’s Party supported Kotleba for Regional Governor. They promoted him as an honest political maverick dedicated to social justice and able to challenge financial institutions that feed on the people’s ignorance and their need for money, to challenge corporate multinationals who siphon off profits instead of investing them in higher wages, who expatriate profits to foreign shores after abusing the environment and failing to contribute to the social needs of the host country and they promoted Kotleba as a person able to challenge corrupt politicians who permit their country’s natural resources and cultural legacy to be looted by neoliberal oligarchs and robber barons.
Kotleba’s candidacy was cemented when the EU began to issue quotas for refugees from the Middle East. At this point Brussels was denounced as dictatorial; the People’s Party’s desire for traditional national values gained momentum by a perceived threat of an army of refugees who, under the banner of EU tolerance, would subject a Christian nation to foreign and often antithetical Islamic values. Because similar arguments could be heard in Russia, Poland and Hungary, the momentum for a Christian consensus among Slavic nations continues to grow to the chagrin of neocons and neoliberals.
The People’s Party provides Slovakia with a voice for the majority that had been seduced by the subtle caress of liberalism. The caress of liberalism has turned into a calloused hand felt by many. Increasingly frustrated by economic inequality, the moral program of liberalism along with political correctness and an inability of politicians to defended the common good have led to a point of critical mass – average people are waking up and beginning to see through the propaganda and ideological warfare waged upon them and are beginning to coalesce.
Slovakia is experiencing a social-political-economic-moral crisis similar to other European nations and to other nations around the globe subject to the neoliberal agenda resulting in a culture of death. As in these other places (such as Nigeria, Philippines, Brazil, Hungary, Poland to name a few), Slovakia will predictably turn away from its neoliberal romance turned sour with the West. Unless neoliberalism adopts a more friendly face and permits sovereign nations to decide their own directions and to participate fairly in the international arena, unless it permits traditional and Christian values and innovative economic and political models rooted in those values to come to the fore, it will continue to fade into the past. Either way, liberalism seems done. It is failing and these countries provide ample evidence of its failure. If liberalism adopts a more friendly face and permits new economic and political models as well as the protection of traditional moral values it is no longer liberalism. If it fails to do these things, it is simply going to exhilarate its own demise. Basically, liberalism is dead, but it refuses to admit its demise and has therefore become a warmonger using threats of military force to impose its agenda throughout the world.
It believes so greatly in its liberal cause, that is willing to adopt any means to bring them to fruition. It believes, as did one of its founding patriarchs, Jean Jacques Rousseau that people must be “forced to be free.”
“In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will (majority consensus) shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free.”
This is the sentiment of neocons and liberals in America today – it is the voice trying to dominate the American landscape and the voice driving American foreign policy in such places as Slovakia. It is a voice at odds with the Christian faith and the authentic dignity of the human person made to the image of the Holy Trinity. Is there any greater danger in the world today?
THE WORLD BANK
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) was created in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference held in the United States at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The WB is an international lending institution consisting of approximately 177 member states for which it guarantees credit or to whom it makes loans from a portfolio of approximately $220 billion. Like the IMF, the WB is concerned with economic restructuring according to the neoliberal model and with major infrastructure projects intended to enhance economic efficiency. Although the WB does lend money to rescue defaulting economies (the IMF is more proficient at this), its primary focus is funding economic development, environmental sustainability, health projects, infrasructure etc. In any one year, the bank’s total loan portfolio ranges from approximately $5 up to $30 billion US dollars spread out among member states.
The WB, headquartered in Washington, DC, exists to promote and facilitate foreign investment and international commerce. WB loans, like IMF loans include “Structural Adjustment Programs” (SAPs) intended to nudge borrowing countries toward structural reforms in a market oriented direction. Loans also include policy requirements that reflect a neoliberal economic bias stipulating such things as:
Social Austerity (reductions in social spending on such things as health and welfare)
Reduction of Subsidies (on basics such as food and energy)
Deregulation
Reduction of Trade Barriers (such as taxes on imports that often compete with domestic supply
Promotion of Foreign Ownership of Businesses
Conversion of Agricultural Yield from Food to Cash Crops for Export
Privatization
Current concerns of the WB include deforestation, depletion of the ozone and other ecological concerns, AIDS, and vaccinations for communicable diseases. The WB has set goals to help realize United Nations Millennium Development Goals set in 2000[1]. In this regard, the G8 (a group of eight industrialized nations—United States, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, Russia and Canada, —that promote global consensus on international security, economic growth, terrorism and energy, and crsis situations, 2005) guaranteed up to $55 billion dollars to the WB, IMF and African Development Bank to cancel the debt of heavily indebted poor nations.
The WB consists of two entities:
(1) The International Development Association (IDA) and
(2) The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).
International Development Association
The IDA was established in 1960 and is headquartered in Washington, DC. It consists of 173 member countries and offers both grants and loans to over 80 member states with the highest credit risk – over half of these countries are in Africa. Receiving countries are evaluated according to per capita income (below $1200 per year) and their record of implementing policy requirements aimed at economic and social reform and poverty reduction. The IDA is considered the friendly or soft lending arm of the World Bank: It provides loans for up to 40 years, with built in grace periods often up to ten years, and low interest rates 1-3 %. Often loans are provided at no interest to regular client states. Like the IMF, loans come with neoliberal assumptions about economic growth that must be met to continue in good standing.
In the new millennium, the WB has financed numerous projects including access to clean water for over one hundred million people, for the training of over three million teachers, and for the vaccination of over three hundred million young people. It has also made hundreds of millions of dollars in loans available to small businesses and has funded extensive bridge and road repair.
WB funds come through contributions of member states and from occasional supplementary funds from the IBRD and the International Finance Corporation (IFC)[2]. Funds are replenished according to a three year cycle. Almost 60% of all funding originates in the United States with another 30% coming from France and England. In 2014, the fund was replenished with almost $50 billion US dollars from contributing states. Refunding does not occur without extensive discussion and amendment of goals and policies due to prevailing political concerns brought by contributing members.
Interested primarily in health care, education, infrastructure and clean water in the neediest states, over half of IDA’s capital is issued to fund projects in thirty African states. Recent special, interests include agriculture, electricity, education, and roadways.
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) is considered the “robust arm” of the WB. As such, it makes loans available to middle income nations. The IBRD provides financial services including grants, risk guarantees, and loans; like its sisters bank the IDA, the IBRD is headquartered in Washington DC. The IBRD was established in 1944 with the goal of providing financial assistance for the recovery of Europe following World War II. It is governed by a board of governors with a governor from each of its 187 member states.
Like the IDA, the IBRD receives funding from its member states, but unlike the IDA it receives most of its funding by borrowing from private investors on the international investment market by selling bonds – the IBRD funds only sovereign states and projects backed by such states. On average, the IBRD raises in a range form $20-$30 billion dollars in bond sales annually of which approximately 90% is used for financing projects; it has a debt portfolio[3] of approximately $100 billion.
The Bank offers a number of financial services and products, including flexible loans, grants, risk guarantees, financial derivatives, and catastrophic risk financing. It reported lending commitments of $26.7 billion made to 132 projects in 2011.
ANALYSIS:
Although World Bank policies have, in fact, generated wealth, newly created wealth tends to concentrate in small pockets of financial institutions, political patrons, and those with strong ties to the developed North. It is becoming increasingly difficult for third world governments to convince their people that short-term austerity will result in long term prosperity when after thirty years all it has done is increase glaring disparity. Increasing disparity is increasingly associated with increasingly autocratic governments, which are necessary to implement and enforce World Bank SAPs that have worked to polarize society and essentially harm the people in whose name they are introduced.
Structural Adjustment have exacerbated poverty,
“Since the 1980s adjustment has helped create a net outflow of wealth from the developing world, which has paid out five times as much capital to the industrialized countries of the North as it has received.”[4]
Since Third World leaders and their staff are often educated at business schools in the North America (along with World Bank staff financers and economists educated in neoliberal theory) and, as a result, become advocates of the liberal market economy, when markets fail, they are, more often than not, perplexed and unsure where to turn for answers. Following a decade of imposed neoliberal polices that brought economic depression to Columbia, Columbian President Galviria stated,
“I have to confess that the evolution of the country after my government has left me perplexed, like many other Columbians” (President Galviria of Columbia). [5]
Columbia and other nations habituated to the Word Bank structural model have experienced ever mounting debt such that the “debt of the developing world equals about one-half their combined GNP and nearly twice their total export earnings”. This is the result of SAPs that orient these economies “toward generating foreign exchange…designed to ensure that debtor countries continue to make debt payments.[6] Although exports are high, they fail to meet social needs because domestic companies are often privatized and end up in the hands of foreign investors who are able to repatriate profits to Northern bank accounts.
Moreover, since exports tend to increasingly consist of cash crops, farmers are often not producing enough food crops to feed their own people. Exports are intended to pay salaries of workers who in turn are able to buy imported food; however, because the market is unregulated, food prices tend to rise making it increasingly difficult to meet basic nutritional needs, which were once provided by indigenous third world farmers themselves.
This is not the only way that World Bank loans limit the creative ability of local peoples to help themselves. Rather than being able to spend the money efficiently looking for cost-effective materials and contracting experts from the home country, World Bank loans are notorious for including agreements that bind third world parties to purchase not only products and materials from developed countries but expert advice as well.
While SAPS help countries to service their debts and help enrich a small class of political opportunists, financial officers, and corporate executives, workers continue to live in poverty exacerbated by decreased social services and rising food prices. Moreover, they are alienated from economic and political decision making that affects their lives and their livelihood, and by turning them into individual competitors estranges them socially and culturally from each other. Interestingly, as much as the IMF, World Bank and industrialized nations of the North laud free markets, the leading nations of the North have all been assisted by government spending, trade tariffs, subsidies, and generous social welfare programs denied to the developing nations.
Because of its social costs, this model of development is not likely to succeed. New development models are being developed that are more congruent with social needs and the human dignity of workers that are involved in micro finance and economic development rather than top down macro and structural approaches. Rather than placing all the burden on the state thereby depriving its citizens of initiatives, new approaches are operating closer to the people and include intermediate social group such as trade unions, human rights advocates, farmer cooperatives, fraternal and self-help organizations that are more focused on family needs, health care, increasing earnings, cultural development, social organization and broad communal consensus.
A vanguard of Christian philosophers and social scientists foresaw the negative consequences of overemphasis on macro development, unregulated capitalism, statism and free market cronyism. Their ideas found their way into Catholic Social teaching, which has over the course of a century and a half, developed a well thought out approach to human social-economic-political development congruent with the kind of micro-development that is organically developing throughout the third world.
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FOOTNOTES
[1] The Millennium Summit of the United Nations gathered in 2000 to articulate eight goals necessary to enhance international development. All member states and over twenty international organizations agreed to work toward achieving the following goals by 2015.
[2] The IFC, headquartered in Washington DC, was created in 1956 to stimulate economic development by using its funds to invest in private sector for profit ventures aimed at reducing poverty. It is particularly concerned with agriculture, health, microfinance, and education. Currently, it invests approximately $18-20 billion annually in such projects .
[3] A group of investments in debt owned by a bank or company intended to earn interest. The portfolio includes such things as debtor’s names, amounts of debts, balance due on debts etc.
[4] Global Exchange: http://www.globalexchange.org/resources/wbimf/faq
[5] Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM); http://cadtm.org/spip.php?page=imprimer&id_article=668
[6] Global Exchange: http://www.globalexchange.org/resources/wbimf/faq
FRANCE MIGHT BE THE OLDEST DAUGHTER of the Church, but she is also the birthplace of the so-called “Enlightenment” an esoteric term connoting Gnosticism – the false light of wisdom promised Eve in Eden, which stealthily crept out of the Masonic Salons of Paris hidden in the amphibologies (double entendre) of the Encyclopedists[1] . These duplicitous agents of the New Age prepared the way for the French Revolution, the rise of modern liberalism, and the subsequent attack on Christendom (on the Catholic clergy, Catholic aristocracy and Catholic monarchy) that Napoleon Bonaparte spread across Europe all the way to the gates of Moscow under the banner of revolutionary banner of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”.
It is possible to grasp something of the double meaning intended by such words as liberty, equality, and fraternity (they mean one thing to adepts and another to the uninitiated or conditioned commoners) by recourse to the writings of François-Marie Arouet (known by his nom de plume as Voltaire), especially by recourse to his Dictionary of Philosophy. Voltaire was a major contributor to the Encyclopedia, a patriarch of the Enlightenment and a Masonic adept initiated into Freemasonry in 1778 at the Lodge of Nine Sisters.
Though Voltaire and the men involved in the cabal with him called themselves “Philosophes”, they were an affront to philosophy, the type of men Paul was referring to when he stated:
“For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” (Romans 1:22).
Paul indicated that there would be Christian philosophers according to Christ and deluded philosophers full of deceit allied with the world against Christ:
“Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy, and vain deceit; according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8).
May of the Catholic aristocracy, the “Old Guard”, were educated in the Thomistic and Augustinian philosophy of Christ. They knew the voice of Christ and the voice of His adversary (John 10:27). Theerfore, though a minority, they valiantly resisted while it was prudent to do so. However, in the long run, they had to surrender the field and capitulate under a tidal wave of liberalism that covered all of Europe by the end of the 19th century.
Since then, France has oscillated back and forth among several political alternatives; nonetheless, most of the proposed alternatives have contained some facet of liberalism and France has remained in the liberal camp as a supposed avant-garde force propelling Europe, and the world, into a new global order under the sway of liberalism.
However, in France, as elsewhere, the liberal ideologues have grown so arrogant and accustomed to easy victory that they have too hastily put forward an agenda so indecent that the supposed “morons” whom they have socially engineered, and whom they abhor, are no longer acting so gullible. They are beginning to question events and even to demand change. Things have gone too far and there is a noticeable counter-current welling up from the reservoirs of France’s deep cultural and spiritual patrimony coalescing into a political current that is swiftly moving in the opposite direction.
Emergence of Marine Le Pen and the National Front
Although the National Front (FN) was launched on October 5, 1972, it is part of a conservative tradition that opposed the French Revolution of 1789. Consequently, the FN rejects both the revolution and its liberal legacy. Sensing the weakness of France’s various conservative constituencies, constituencies that represent its cultural patrimony, its historic national ethos, its spiritual traditions and its ancient moral precepts rooted in Christian faith and reason, leaders of the FN realized the importance of forming a national front, an umbrella party that united the conserving elements of France under one political banner.
Then on January 15, 2011, Marine Le Pen unexpectedly became the leader of the FN and since then has catapulted a municipal party into a national political power. The FN received nearly 5 million votes in the 2014 parliamentary elections and gained 25% of all the seats in parliament. Then in 2015 in the first round of regional elections, it placed first in half of the 13 newly reapportioned regions ahead of every party in France. In Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, little Le Pen won 41% of the vote. News like this sent shock waves throughout Europe (as similar events were happening in the Balkans and Central Europe, but no one foresaw such an event in modern France, the Mother of Liberalism.
The FN, much to the chagrin of EU leaders and the political elite of France, has rejected both liberalism and neoliberalism and is researching innovative economic policies that are more popular and serve the broader common good. Although they remain open to leaving certain vital industries such as transportation, health care and energy in the hands of the government, they are rejecting globalism and unfavorable EU mandates and policies in favor of national identity and cultural legacy.
Thus, the FN has referred to the EU as:
“…the last stage on the road to world government” and a “puppet of the New World Order.”
Le Pen does not represent the ultimate solution for the French people, but she is an astute political barometer measuring change in the political atmosphere indicating widespread discontent with worn-out liberal rhetoric and indicative of a growing movement favoring social and political solutions that respect French tradition and its cultural and spiritual legacy as well as the Christian identity of Europe. Consequently,
Le Pen admires Vladimir Putin and refers to him as a “defender of the Christian heritage of European civilization.”
Marine Le Pen believes that
“Russia is unfairly ‘demonized.’ She has claimed that the campaign against the Russian leadership is being conducted at the highest levels of the European Union with support from the United States.”
French National Values
As a leader deeply interested in protecting the national patrimony, Le Pen is a sharp critic of continued immigration of Islamic fundamentalists who refuse to adopt the traditions and values of their host country but continue to oppose and ridicule them while receiving protection for doing so from the EU. Tolerance does not mean permitting a guest to dictate to you what you must believe in your own house while persecuting a person if he or she dared do such a thing in their own house. For example, Christian refugees in Kelkheinm, Germany are being persecuted by Muslims in a Christian country and getting away with it.
In a Report put out out by “Open Doors” a Christian Alliance operating in Germany 743 attacks against Christians in German refugee camps have been documented in this year alone. The Report states that:
“It must be assumed that there is a high number of unreported cases….Effective measures for the protection of religious minorities have yet to be implemented.” In Spain for example,
“Christian refugees thrown overboard and drowned 84 In Spain, a migrant from Cameroon has been indicted of having murdered six Christian refugees. The accused and captain of a boat supposedly blamed a Catholic priest for the rough sea during the passage. He beat the priest with a sharp piece of wood and threw him overboard. Subsequently he and another refugee searched all other boat passengers for any items identifying them as Christians and subsequently dumped another five Christians into the sea. The state prosecutor has charged him of premeditated murder.
In France, Open Doors Reports:
“In January 2016, the public learned about violent incidents directed against Christian refugees at Grande-Synthe, a camp in Northern France. Regarding the general situation of the Iranian-Christian minority, labour union leader David Michaux confirmed that there was a real problem between Muslims and non-Muslims. “The Muslims are trying to drive the Christians out from the camp.”
Numerous Christian migrants have filed complaints but have not received any help. This statement by an Iranian Christian is typical,
“I reported the death threats I received to the Info point several times in Persian but they did not react. I reported it two to three times.”
A Lutheran Pastor Gottfried Martens, verified the neglect of Christian refugees under attack by Islamic refugees in Germany.
“There is not a single case in which Christian refugees in my church had been attacked and injured in their accommodation where the investigation was not dismissed in the end,” he said. “In every case the attacked Christians word stood against the word of the attackers, who were always in the large majority. … In the end, each of the criminal charges only leads to further humiliation of the victims and a loss of confidence in the constitutional state.”
Marine Le Pen understands what is happening to Christians abroad and even in European refugee camps and wants to put a stop to it.
Since it is the European Union that is imposing these foreign ideologies on France, it is the right of France to leave the EU. Recalling BREXIT, she proposes a FREXIT:
“The Brits have chosen their destiny and decided to leave the European Union. They made the choice of independence… I will hold a referendum (if elected president) on France’s EU membership because you have the right to speak out… Yes, my friends, it is possible to change things.”
Trump or Clinton?
Regarding presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, CNN reported that Le Pen favors Trump because Clinton means entrenched interests, therefore globalism and more war to protect entrenched interests. Comparing herself to Trump she stated:
“We are similar because we are not part of the establishment, we are not part of the system, and we do not depend on anybody and we don’t take orders from anyone,” she said.
“For France, anything is better than Hillary Clinton. Anything but Hillary Clinton. Because I think Hillary Clinton means war. Hillary Clinton means devastation. It means world instability.”
ARTICLE BEING COMPLETED
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NOTES
[1]The group of French philosophers who worked together to produce renowned Encyclopedie. The work was overseen by Denis Diderot, and promoted as a Dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts, et des métiers (Dictionary of arts, sciences and letters). The writers intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the entire field of human knowledge from the perspective of the “Enlightenment”
POLISH DEMOCRACY HAS UNDERGONE a series of changes from the time of its modern inception during the exciting days of Solidarnosc back in 1989. Since then it has moved from a nascent democracy, birthed under Lech Walesa, to an unforeseen reversion back to socialism, followed by a decisive move toward secular neoliberalism backed by significant Western dollars for military, cultural and economic purposes. For a while it looked as though Poland’s Catholic identity was in jeopardy as the country adopted more and more liberal tenets from the West. It was as if the words of Primate Cardinal Glemp in 1989 were coming true:
“We have withstood the onslaught of atheistic materialism, Marxism is dead. However, I am not so sure that we can withstand the onslaught of Western (hedonistic) materialism.”
All three tenets of liberalism: economic, political and moral were being unpacked in Poland. First came profuse promises of financial assistance followed by the schooling of political leaders in civics and liberal democracy taught by legions of libertarian ideologues representing think tanks supported by the State Department. Next, the painful Western neoliberal prescription for austerity and economic restructuring was swallowed along with a toxic sugar-coated pill of foreign investment that made it appear palatable. This was followed by foreign purchase and then control of corporate businesses and by interference in politics at all levels. After establishing a beachhead in the NGOs and multinational corporations along with control of a significant percentage of financial institutions and garnering political sway in Warsaw, the liberal cultural agenda was introduced propped up by broad scale advertisement and countless Western dollars with strings attached to ideological items such as the family, sexuality, liberal toleration of the LGBT agenda, and related issues that are all part of the liberal paradigm for freedom, freedom, that is, without a place for Christianity in the public forum. Following decades of this liberal “shock treatment”, it seemed as if Poland would collapse under the onslaught of Western materialism as foreseen by Cardinal Glemp.
The Poles, however, are a resilient people, a people with a thousand years of rich cultural history steeped in the legacy of Roman Catholicism. Poland’s cultural, spiritual, and intellectual roots run very deep, too deep, in fact, for even such an insidious program as neoliberalism nurtured by profuse capital infusion. The liberalizing of Poland is a top priority of the US State Department, and of the EU. Consequently, Poland “has been the largest beneficiary of subsidies from the EU”. Poland has been infused with Western capital because it is externally important geopolitically, and because it is a show case for liberal democracy. Consequently, those who call for the toleration of anything but fell threatened by Christian developments in Poland are threatening to stop the cash flow as the ultimate “trump card” necessary to avert what they perceive as the ultimate disaster – Poland returning to its Catholic identity:
“Brussels can start to take another look at the funds that over the years have contributed so much to the Polish economic miracle (they amount to more than the entire Marshall Plan for postwar Europe in today’s dollars).”
Like other peoples around the globe, the Poles are becoming painfully aware of liberalism’s shallow promises and are beginning to see through its friendly propaganda. Poles are an intellectual people well accustomed to secularism and broad programs of propaganda that were imposed upon them by an all controlling communist regime that strained to falsely appear in favor of human rights and dignity; they are awakening to the fact that a similar program is being fed them by liberal ideologues who have taken up key positions throughout the country in a war to stealthily impose neoliberalism upon them contrary to their traditional values, contrary to their Catholic heritage. The fruits of twenty years of liberal rule are now readily apparent and people are reeling back from their negative experiences. Communism worked against man and society, so too does liberalism. Consequently, sober Poles have quickly awoken to this reality; as they led the world against communism, they are leading the rally for a renewed Christian Europe cognizant of their reputation as the “Rampart of Europe”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLJcJi3qPpM
FATIMA and DIVINE MERCY
At Fatima Our Lady promised and Era of Peace and in a series of approved apparitions that took place in Poland and that have the highest approbation of the Catholic Church, Jesus Christ revealed to Saint Faustina that a change was coming and that the impetus for the change was to be the nation of Poland:
“I bear a special love for Poland (he said), and if she will be obedient to My will, I will exalt her in might and holiness. From her will come forth the spark that will prepare the world for My final coming” (Diary, 1732).
It is not surprising then, that after 20 years of liberalism the Polish people have given a political mandate to the Law and Justice Party (PiS), which has strong ties to the Catholic Church. Party leaders recently endorsed a total ban on abortion with support from the Church. Jarolaw Kaczyński, Chairman of PiS told reporters that
“In these (moral) matters, as a Catholic, I follow the teachings of the bishops.”
Under Kaczynski’s leadership, PiS not only won the presidency, it also has solid control of the parliament (SEJM), which lacks any viable liberal component for the first time in decades.
The Prime Minister of Poland, Beata Szydło, is also the Vice Charman of PiS; she also also supports the anti-abortion legislation. As does the new Polish President, a devout Catholic Andrzej Duda.
In the United States and Argentina nuns and laity who publicly ridicule bishops, disrupt Mass, challenge priests during their homilies and desecrate sacred objects are considered heroes. These tactics are therefore adopted to ridicule the church and win public support.
In Poland, however, such acts are considered profanations, profanations which if carried out by trols, conditioned masses, or paid subversives would actually help rather than hinder the church. Thus covert actions such as these that work elsewhere are backfiring in Poland. According to Polish political scientist Marek Migalski reaction to disruptions at Mass in Poland are similar “to the outrage in Russia when punk rockers Pussy Riot staged a 2012 protest in a Moscow cathedral, which left many ordinary Russians aghast and actually boosted support for Vladimir Putin.”
“If the face of the opposition is aggressive feminists yelling in church, then it helps PiS,” he said
The following two quotes are examples of the vitriol coming from liberal ideologues manifesting their biased anti-Christian sentiments and also manifesting the growing unity among Slavic nations, a unity which is an increasing challenge to the liberals that is not going away:
“Both Poland and Hungary now offer a toxic ideological brew that is reminiscent of interwar Europe: anti-communism and anti-capitalism can be combined and justified in the name of a highly intolerant nationalism based on Christian values that conclusively define who is a true Hungarian or true Pole.
Liberal ideologues and pundits are coming undone as they watch these developments. Because they are unable to stop or avert them by their usual methods, they are predicting a gloomy picture for themselves as other Slavic countries of Eastern Europe join Poland, Hungary and Slovakia in the march toward Christian social renewal:
“Today we witness the emergence of a new Authoritarian International in the region, with Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and possibly Croatia as potential future members alongside Hungary and Poland.“
Hungary’s largest political party is Fidesz and its third largest political party is Jobbik; are both proponents of Christian social renewal and both cooperate with PiS and other Polish patriotic movements. Their cooperation “is rooted in a shared vision of Europe, Márton Gyöngyösi, a leader of Jobbik responsible for foreign policy, told POLITICO.”
“As opposed to liberal values based on individualism, secularism, consumerism and multiculturalism, we support the defense of the nation state, its traditions, ethnic composition and Christian values.”
Having a comprehensive view of the political landscape in front of him and and a prudential vision of what is possible in the current climate, a senior advisor to President Duda recently indicated that he thinks the time has come for change:
“Now begins the process of reconquering the country, and it may be brutal.”
As stated above, “Law and Justice (PiS) swept the table of Polish politics this year, first unexpectedly winning the presidency in May and then in October taking an outright majority in the parliament. The party now wields more clout over Poland than any government since the end of communist rule a quarter century ago” (http://www.politico.eu/article/poland-pis-politics-kaczynski-tusk/).
Poland is certainly a country to watch and to emulate. From her will “come the spark” that will prepare the world for the final coming of Jesus Christ. She certainly seems to be living up to her destiny among nations.