Big Brother = United Nations

Like the Fiber Optic Look of This

If you haven't read the latest on the United Nations efforts to control the Internet, you must look at this article. Robert McDowell's chilling list of items which could come about SOON is listed here.

And this is from the Wall Street Journal, usually not considered a paper which prints hyper-hysteria. The new ruling would:

• Subject cyber security and data privacy to international control;

• Allow foreign phone companies to charge fees for "international" Internet traffic, perhaps even on a "per-click" basis for certain Web destinations, with the goal of generating revenue for state-owned phone companies and government treasuries;

• Impose unprecedented economic regulations such as mandates for rates, terms and conditions for currently unregulated traffic-swapping agreements known as "peering."

• Establish for the first time ITU dominion over important functions of multi-stakeholder Internet governance entities such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit entity that coordinates the .com and .org Web addresses of the world;

• Subsume under intergovernmental control many functions of the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Society and other multi-stakeholder groups that establish the engineering and technical standards that allow the Internet to work;

• Regulate international mobile roaming rates and practices.

all from the source above

Worse than the Pagans--Stranger in a Strange Land

Thanks, Wiki

How is it that our Western, and indeed, parts of the Eastern cultures, have lost the old ideas of hospitality and kindness to strangers? Are we all living in such a fear culture that we cannot possibly reach out to those who are not from our families and usual set of friends? That Christianity created a culture of hospitality superior to the ancients is true, but even the ancients of all areas entertained the stranger. I think of Odysseus at the end of his journey in the House of the King Alkinoös and his court. These isolated people were surprised to see a stranger, but immediately opened their hearts to him, and gave him hospitality without knowing who he was. In fact, the king ordered the mariners to deliver Odysseus to his own country. Homer wrote this in the 8th century B.C.


In the Poetic Edda, the literature written in the 12th or 13th centuries, these words ring as false today, but true then:


Hail, ye Givers! a guest is come; 
say! where shall he sit within?
Much pressed is he who fain on the hearth
would seek for warmth and weal.

He hath need of fire, who now is come,
numbed with cold to the knee;
food and clothing the wanderer craves
who has fared o'er the rimy fell.

Thanks, Wiki

He craves for water, who comes for refreshment,
drying and friendly bidding,
marks of good will, fair fame if 'tis won,
and welcome once and again.


I write this as a stranger in a strange land, three lands to be correct, for almost a year of travelling and writing. I can say that hospitality is dead in some parts of the Western World. Going to daily Mass for nine months in three different countries, and having in two of those countries, no one talk to me or ask about me, or wonder why I was there has happened in countries supposedly Catholic and English speaking. Not friendly. Only in one out of three was there hospitality. Fear and greed have taken over from hospitality. I also blame socialism, which supplants individual love and openness to the unusual, placing all persons under bureaucracies, making people ciphers and not part of the communities, which have died in these socialist countries. Governments are not substitutes for relationships.

I have come to the conclusion that the Americans, and perhaps, because we were all strangers in a strange land at one time, are the most hospitable people I have met. Why hospitality and welcome is dead among the Christians is a mystery to me. The pagans were superior to us in this. We now have the "hospitality industry", which is the service industry of hotels, hostels, bed and breakfasts, which has taken over from the common acceptance of strangers entering a strange land. If we do not change in our perceptions and openness, we may all find ourselves isolated. The stranger could be you.

British readers, important note

Please see Fr. Ray Blake's blog this morning. VIP.

Coming to a Church Near You...

Washington Times Communities Blog

I have many Christian friends who want to ignore what is happening in the Middle-East and Africa, to their own peril. Some of my posts have followed certain trends. See below. The great Spencer sent this note on the move to stop the building of churches in Kuwait, which up to this time, has been fairly open, as opposed to Egypt, the Sudan, Nigeria, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, or Iran, in the giving of permits to build Christian churches. If the complacent Christians in the West do not realize the growing dangers to their brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world, including Somalia. Ethiopia, and even Libya, as well as the above, the situation will escalate into the worst forms of persecution. Pray please, and when you have the chance to vote, vote for those politicians, who are not only aware of the persecution of Christians, but support aid. If you are not aware of the websites carrying news of the Africa nations which persecute Christians, here is one. If it happens there, it can happen anywhere. Here is a twitter link to Voice of the Martyrs which I have followed for many, many years. And, here is an excellent article from the Washington Times Communities blog on persecution and the silencing by the media of news.

Detroit, please note. Some Bishops Support Voris and Give Him the Papal Room!

Some of you remember the crazy kerfuffle over Michael Voris, RealCatholicTV, and the Archdiocese of Detroit noted here. Well, as I mentioned here and elsewhere, Catholics and Christians around the world were shocked by this internecine warfare coming out of the Detroit chancery offices. Such things cause scandal. And, like a small justification for his good and holy work, noticed worldwide, (even in Ireland, Britain, and Malta), the one of the Bishops in the Philippines invited Voris and his team to give a talk on Catholicism and the media. Ironic. And, to underline his support, the good Bishop gave the Papal Room, named after Blessed John Paul II, who stayed there when he visited the Philippines, for the use of Voris. Good one, Bishop and I am sure Blessed John Paul II is smiling on Michael Voris's new evangelization methods.