22 May 2020

Minnesota Bishops Will Reopen Public Masses, Defy State Order

   Cathedral of St. Paul. (Shutterstock)

Jonathan Ekene Ifeanyi

Minnesota's Novus Ordo bishops, the first US bishops to take a decision to contravene a senseless state-wide executive order prohibiting religious gathering, write:

“It is now permissible for an unspecified number of people to go to shopping malls and enter stores, so long as no more than 50 percent of the occupancy capacity is reached. Big-box stores have hundreds of people inside at any one time, and the number of goods that are being handled and distributed in one store by many people—stock staff, customers, cashiers—is astounding. Workers are present for many hours per day, often in close proximity. There is no state mandate that customers wear masks in those malls or stores, wash their hands consistently, or follow any specific cleaning protocol.

“In these circumstances, and given the well-researched protocols that we have proposed (and that are being followed successfully elsewhere in our nation) how can reason require us any longer to keep our faithful from the Eucharist?”

I respond: You fool yourselves if you think God will not punish you for preventing people from worshipping God in the first place.

And I hope African (and in particular Nigerian) heretics who, in their massive foolishness, think that they are — by obeying their atheistic governments — obeying God, are listening.

                                                                     BUY HERE.

11 May 2020

Some modern definitions of philosophy are false

by Jonathan Ekene Ifeanyi  
 
Socrates

Russell
Most modern philosophers always rejoice to assert that philosophy has “no universally accepted definition” — and take this statement as a licence to try divorcing the discipline from what it really is. Hence they have diverse — and quite contradictory — opinions about what philosophy is. William James, leader of Pragmatism and of the psychological movement of functionalism, says “philosophy in the full sense is only man thinking, thinking about generalities rather than particulars”; John Dewey, founder of Pragmatism, a pioneer in functional psychology, and a leader of the progressive movement in education in the United States, says it is “thinking which has become conscious of itself”; Ludwig Wittgenstein, of the analytic school, says it is “The logical clarification of thought”; Martin Heidegger, the ontologist, says it is “the correspondence to the being of being”; Alfred J. Ayer, the leading representative of logical positivism, says “Philosophising is an activity of analysis”; Bertrand Russell, the logician and founding figure in the analytic movement in Anglo-American philosophy, says it is “...the attempt to answer ultimate questions, not uncritically as we do in ordinary life and even in the sciences, but critically after exploring all that makes that such questions puzzling and after realising all the vagueness and confusion that underlie our ordinary ideas.”, and so on.

Ayer
Well, there is nothing wrong about any philosopher defining his discipline from his own perspective. Scholars in other disciplines do the same — and there is no problem. But the point here is that these definitions must reflect what the discipline in question really is. The assertion that “philosophy has no universally accepted definition” may have some elements of truth, but to give the impression that philosophy has no original, universally known, definition — as some modern scholars often do — is false. There is nothing in this world that has no common definition, or at least a common idea. Even nothing has a common, well known, definition — namely something that does not exist.” The word “philosophy” is even onomatopoeic, that is, it defines itself. The word philosophy is a combination of two Greek words: Philein — “to love” — and Sophia — “wisdom”. (φιλοσοφία, philosophia). Hence philosophy literally means “love of wisdom” — a true philosopher is a lover of wisdom. “In ancient times a lover of wisdom could be related to any area where intelligence was expressed,” writes Dallas M. Roark in his piece What is Philosophy? “This could be in business, politics, human relations, or carpentry and other skills. Philosophy had a "wholeness" approach to life in antiquity. In contrast to this, some modern definitions restrict philosophy to what can be known by science or the analysis of language.” (Emphasis mine).

And the origin of the word? St. Augustine writes:

Augustine
“As far as Greek language is concerned (and the Greek language has the highest international reputation), there is a tradition of two types of philosophy: the Italian, deriving from the part of Italy which used to be called Magna Graecia, and the Ionian, which flourished in the countries still called by the name of Greece. The Italian school had as its founder Pythagoras of Samos, who is credited with the coinage of the actual name of ‘philosophy’. Before his time, the title of sages was given to those who stood out from the rest of mankind by reason of the kind of quality of life which merited praise. But when Pythagoras was asked about his profession, he replied that he was a ‘philosopher’, that is, a devotee, or lover of wisdom; it seemed to him to be most presumptuous to claim to be a ‘sage’.”—“Quantum enim attinet ad litteras Graecas, quae lingua inter ceteras gentium clarior habetur, duo philosophorum genera traduntur: unum Italicum ex ea parte Italiae, quae quondam magna Graecia nuncupata est; alterum Ionicum in eis terris, ubi et nunc Graecia nominatur. Italicum genus auctorem habuit Pythagoram Samium, a quo etiam ferunt ipsum philosophiae nomen exortum. Nam cum antea Sapientes appellarentur, qui modo quodam laudabilis vitae aliis praestare videbantur, iste interrogatus, quid profiteretur, philosophum se esse respondit, id est studiosum vel amatorem sapientiae; quoniam sapientem profiteri arrogantissimum videbatur.” (De Civitate Dei, Liber VIII, 2).
           
Thus when we go back to the beginning, we see that although philosophers also disagreed among themselves at that time, virtually all understood that philosophers are those who seek the truth or wisdom. That was — and still is — the original, common definition, universally known. Hence in virtually all dictionaries you will always see — among other diverse definitions — something related to the above definition. The dictionary in my computer says — among other definitions — that philosophy is “(a): pursuit of wisdom (b): a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means...”  “In the ...sense in which the term came to be used in Greece in the latter part of the 5th c., philosophy meant the endeavour to understand and to teach how to live well and wisely, which involved the holding of right opinions about God, the world, man, and virtue. It combined religion, morals, and metaphysics”, writes late Paul Harvey in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. (London: Oxford University Press, 1962, p.324).

Heidegger
Virtually all definitions offered by ancient thinkers, such as Aristotle’s “knowledge of the truth”, are related to Wisdom — Truth and Wisdom have the same goal, and a seeker of truth is a man of wisdom. Hence, among some of the modern definitions mentioned above, Heidegger is on point in asserting that philosophy is “the correspondence to the being of being.” Heidegger was an ontologist. Ontology is the philosophical study of being in general, or of what applies neutrally to everything that is real. It was called “first philosophy” by Aristotle in Book IV of his Metaphysics. The Latin term ontologia (“science of being”) was felicitously invented by the German philosopher Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus) and first appeared in his work Ogdoas Scholastica (1st ed.) in 1606. It entered general circulation after being popularised by the German rationalist philosopher Christian Wolff in his Latin writings, especially Philosophia Prima sive Ontologia (1730; “First Philosophy or Ontology”). Wolff contrasted ontology, or general metaphysics, which applied to all things, with special metaphysical theories such as those of the soul, of bodies, or of God.

Aquinas
However, whereas in the Medieval Period, St. Thomas Aquinas, who followed Aristotle, identified “Being as Being” with God, Heidegger refrained deliberately from asserting that being of being is God, an attitude simply common to virtually all modern intellectuals and not just philosophers only — the name of God appearing in anyone’s work is considered an embarrassment. This attitude, of course, is understandable. Although Heidegger was raised in a Catholic home, he had some negative influences while a young man both from intellectuals of his day and from bad books. In particular, his study of classical Protestant texts by Martin Luther, John Calvin and others in 1916 led to his spiritual crisis, the result of which was his rejection of the religion of his youth, Roman Catholicism. Heidegger completed his break with Catholicism by marrying a Lutheran, Elfride Petri, in 1917, and he ended up growing increasingly doubtful of the capacity of philosophy to articulate the “truth” of Being. More and more, he tended to regard Western metaphysics as hopelessly riddled with errors and missteps rather than as a useful point of departure. Instead he became enamoured of the power of poetry, especially that of Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin and Rainer Maria Rilke — non-philosophers — to unveil the mysteries of Being!

It is good to note that even the title of ‘sages’ (meaning wise men) which the earlier thinkers before Pythagoras were called also has a connection to wisdom. My same dictionary says a sage is “(1): one (as a profound philosopher) distinguished for wisdom (2): a mature or venerable man of sound judgment.” St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224–75), George Berkeley (1685–1753), and Søren Aabye Kierkegaard  (1813–55), all saw philosophy as a means to assert the truths of religion and to dispel the materialistic or rationalistic errors that led to its decline,—which also has a connection to the original definition—whereas some of the above definitions by modern thinkers—as well as their activities—absolutely have nothing to do with the seeking of truth or wisdom, but rather are clearly conscious efforts to divorce philosophy from its own original meaning. Bertrand Russell may also be on point in asserting that philosophy is "..the attempt to answer ultimate questions", but whether philosophers are sincere in seeking answers to these "ultimate questions", as men of wisdom do, is another issue!

“We are awash in a sea of knowledge,” writes Justarius in his article, Philosophy: Love of Wisdom. “We are told every day what we want, what we need, and what we should do. Yet without context or connection, knowledge means nothing. Knowledge is not equivalent to wisdom. Wisdom cannot be told to you. It cannot be found on the Internet. It can only be gained through a personal quest to acquire it. Philosophy is that quest.

“Others may define it otherwise, but to me, wisdom is the synthesis of knowledge and experiences into insights that deepen our understanding of the meaning of life. Both are required because theories without experiences can prove false, and experiences without theories can fail to be universal. Once you begin to gain wisdom, two remarkable things can occur: 1) you begin to understand your purpose and how to achieve it, and 2) you begin to connect your wisdom to that of other people across space and time. Patterns emerge like stair steps and, as you climb up, you will begin to experience the unity of all things.

“...Wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing. With the Internet, it is relatively easy to be knowledgeable today; however, knowledge is just a tool. Unless you know how to use it effectively and how it relates to the other tools in your box, knowledge may be either useless or meaningless. Wisdom is not a thing that you can give or be given. It is a by-product of the personal quest for truth and meaning. Philosophy can be understood as the story of people continually asking how and why and what they discovered. Each of them tried to organize their thoughts into a system that would enable them to understand their place in society, the world, and the cosmos. Fascinating, you think. What could be better?

“Well, many people think that modern philosophy is useless or at least impractical. This is partly because they think only of academic philosophers, pondering the five major disciplines of aesthetics, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, and epistemology in their ivory towers. What they don’t realize is that if you walked into the ancient bookstore, there would basically be only two categories: philosophy and religion (and religion contains a fair bit of philosophy too). Philosophy once included all of the sciences (once called “natural philosophy”), much of the humanities (literary criticism, social science, history, etc), and even the entire self-help and business sections (rhetoric, psychology, etc). What happened?”

Justarius says one way to think of it is that philosophy is always on the cutting edge of human thought; that once something becomes explainable or observable, it ceases to be philosophy and become a field in itself. That is true. But I disagree with him that “As these fields mature (that is, the disciplines he just listed), they are beginning to answer old philosophical dilemmas such as free will, consciousness, and the mechanics of morality. Philosophy then is left with the impossible or difficult to answer questions. “What is beauty?” (aesthetics) “What is reality?” (metaphysics) “What is ‘the good life?'” (ethics). These questions may not be “useful” in our materialistic modern world, but they are meaningful. Who wants to live in a world without beauty? Or ethics?”

The truth is that those old philosophical problems have in no way been treated — and in no way can they be treated using the tools of secular disciplines such as psychology, sociology, etc.! Instead, those problems have actually been abandoned in our too-materialistic-modern-world!

St. Augustine writes, in De Civitate Dei:

“...it is sufficient to mention that Plato defined the Sovereign Good as the life in accordance with virtue, and affirmed that he only can attain to virtue who knows and imitates God, — which knowledge and imitation are the only cause of blessedness.  Therefore he did not doubt that to philosophize is to love God, whose nature is incorporeal.  Whence it certainly follows that the student of wisdom (which is the meaning of ‘philosoph-er’), will then become blessed when he shall have begun to enjoy God.  For though he is not necessarily blessed who enjoys that which he loves (for many are miserable by loving that which ought not to be loved, and still more miserable when they enjoy it), nevertheless no one is blessed who does not enjoy that which he loves.  For even they who love things which ought not to be loved do not count themselves blessed by loving merely, but by enjoying them.  Who, then, but the most miserable will deny that he is blessed, who enjoys that which he loves, and loves the true and highest good?  But the true and highest good, according to Plato, is God, and therefore he would call him a philosopher who loves God; for philosophy is directed to the obtaining of the blessed life, and he who loves God is blessed in the enjoyment of God.” — “Nunc satis sit commemorare Platonem determinasse finem boni esse secundum virtutem vivere et ei soli evenire posse, qui notitiam Dei habeat et imitationem nec esse aliam ob causam beatum; ideoque non dubitat hoc esse philosophari, amare Deum, cuius natura sit incorporalis. Unde utique colligitur tunc fore beatum studiosum sapientiae (id enim est philosophus), cum frui Deo coeperit. Quamvis enim non continuo beatus sit, qui eo fruitur quod amat (multi enim amando ea, quae amanda non sunt, miseri sunt et miseriores cum fruuntur): nemo tamen beatus est, qui eo quod amat non fruitur. Nam et ipsi, qui res non amandas amant, non se beatos putant amando, sed fruendo. Quisquis ergo fruitur eo, quod amat, verumque et summum bonum amat, quis eum beatum nisi miserrimus negat? Ipsum autem verum ac summum bonum Plato dicit Deum, unde vult esse philosophum amatorem Dei, ut, quoniam philosophia ad beatam vitam tendit, fruens Deo sit beatus qui Deum amaverit.” (De Civitate Dei, Liber VIII, 8).

This frequent mentioning of God — or Wisdom and Truth which God is sometimes also called or associated with — common to ancient thinkers, is actually what appears to modern secular thinkers to be a real “crime.” Hence they often rejoice to announce that philosophy has no universally accepted definition — an assertion which gives them the licence to choose their own definitions radically unconnected to God, or to Truth, or to Wisdom.

If you turn to Aristotle, as we have already mentioned, you see a definition similar — or rather connected — to that of St. Augustine. He writes, in his Metaphysics (ΤΩΝ ΜΕΤΑ ΤΑ ΦΥΣΙΚΑ):

“It is right ...that philosophy should be called knowledge of the truth. For the end of theoretical knowledge is truth, while that of practical knowledge is action (for even if they consider how things are, practical men do not study the eternal, but what is relative and in the present).
Aristotle
Now we do not know a truth without its cause; and a thing has a quality in a higher degree than other things if in virtue of it the similar quality belongs to the other things as well (e.g. fire is the hottest of things; for it is the cause of the heat of all other things); so that that causes derivative truths to be true is most true. Hence the principles of eternal things must be always most true (for they are not merely sometimes true, nor is there any cause of their being, but they themselves are the cause of the being of other things), so that as each thing is in respect of being, so is it in respect of truth.” — “ὀρθῶς δ᾽ ἔχει καὶ τὸ καλεῖσθαι τὴν φιλοσοφίαν ἐπιστήμην τῆς ἀληθείας. θεωρητικῆς μὲν γὰρ τέλος ἀλήθεια πρακτικῆς δ᾽ ἔργον: καὶ γὰρ ἂν τὸ πῶς ἔχει σκοπῶσιν, οὐ τὸ ἀΐδιον ἀλλ᾽ ὃ πρός τι καὶ νῦν θεωροῦσιν οἱ πρακτικοί. οὐκ ἴσμεν δὲ τὸ ἀληθὲς ἄνευ τῆς αἰτίας: ἕκαστον δὲ μάλιστα αὐτὸ τῶν ἄλλων καθ᾽ ὃ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ὑπάρχει τὸ συνώνυμον (οἷον τὸ πῦρ θερμότατον: καὶ γὰρ τοῖς ἄλλοις τὸ αἴτιον τοῦτο τῆς θερμότητος): ὥστε καὶ ἀληθέστατον τὸ τοῖς ὑστέροις αἴτιον τοῦ ἀληθέσιν εἶναι. διὸ τὰς τῶν ἀεὶ ὄντων ἀρχὰς ἀναγκαῖον ἀεὶ εἶναι ἀληθεστάτας (οὐ γάρ ποτε ἀληθεῖς, οὐδ᾽ ἐκείναις αἴτιόν τί ἐστι τοῦ εἶναι, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκεῖναι τοῖς ἄλλοις), ὥσθ᾽ ἕκαστον ὡς ἔχει τοῦ εἶναι, οὕτω καὶ τῆς ἀληθείας.” (ΤΩΝ ΜΕΤΑ ΤΑ ΦΥΣΙΚΑ, 993b, 19-30).

In sharp contrast to Aristotle, we have already quoted John Dewey, founder of Pragmatism, as asserting that philosophy is just “thinking which has become conscious of itself.” You wonder what he means? Here is it: From Dewey’s book The Quest for Certainty (1929), Later Works, vol. 4 (quoted in the article, The Alexander Technique: Dewey's Philosophy in Action?)

It is false “that what is known is antecedent to the mental act of observation and inquiry ...” ...  It is false “that the object of knowledge is a reality fixed and complete in itself ...” (Page 19.)
Dewey

“The notion that the findings of science are a disclosure of the inherent properties of the ultimate real, of existence at large, is a survival of the older metaphysics.” ...  We should “Drop the conception that knowledge is knowledge only when it is a disclosure and definition of the properties of fixed and antecedent [i.e. already existing] reality ...”  (Page 83.)

We should accept “the teaching of science that ideas are statements not of what is or has been but of acts to be performed.” (Page 111.)

“... knowing is itself a kind of action, ... which progressively and securely clothes natural existence with realized meanings. ...  There are no sensory or perceived objects fixed in themselves.” (Page 134.)

“... known objects exist as the consequences of directed operations, not because of conformity of thought or observation with something antecedent.” (Page 160.)

We should not “persist in the traditional conception, according to which the thing to be known is something which exists prior to and wholly apart from the act of knowing ...”  (Page 163.)

“The doctrine that nature is inherently rational was a costly one.  It entailed the idea that reason in man is an outside spectator of a rationality already complete in itself.” ...  It is false “that knowledge is ideally or in its office a disclosure of antecedent reality ...”  (Page 169.)

Reality is not “fixed and complete in itself,” not “ready-made.”  In itself it is “unfinished,” “plastic,” “malleable,” “contingent,” “indeterminate.” These adjectives are found throughout The Quest for Certainty and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.

The mind is not a “spectator.” Knowledge is not “a disclosure of reality, of reality prior to and independent of knowing ... .”  (Page 44.)

“The business of thought ... is not to conform to or reproduce the characters already possessed by objects ... .”  (Page 137.)

“... we know only after we have acted and in consequence of the outcome of action.” (Page 276.)

Dewey simply maintains that objective reality doesn’t exist, only an indeterminate flux that you — or rather society — moulds into being by your own consciousness — or rather the collective consciousness — through arbitrary actions!  Thus he defines philosophy as “thinking which has become conscious of itself”! There are many others out there like him. And what can really be “philosophical” about such characters?

In fact, when we compare the activities of the ancient thinkers to those of the moderns, it would seem that most modern thinkers who identify themselves as “philosophers” are actually doing a radically new discipline, quite alien to what the ancient thinkers did. And really, that is the case. It would be good, then, — in my own thinking — if the moderns choose another name for this new discipline rather than consciously distorting and perverting, because of their personal grudges, the original meaning of philosophy, or concepts of it.

27 Apr 2020

How COVID-19 may have been deliberately engineered in a China biolab


Almost every calamity that befalls mankind is always caused by man himself, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. However, be such a calamity intentional or not, it can never happen without God’s permission, and when God does permit such—just as He does permit wars, caused by men—it is usually because of sin in the world, that is, to chastise the world. If modern people find it difficult to understand this fact it is because many modern people have moved away from God.

This article (below), by Steven Mosher, argues that the coronavirus may have been deliberately engineered in the Chinese laboratory by joining parts of different viruses together using what is called recombinant technology. That makes sense. However, whatever may be the true story, the coronavirus has happened and is killing people because of too much evil in the world.

“My daughter, pray a great deal. Italy will suffer great upheavals and will be purified by a great revolution; only a part of it will be saved. Obstinate sinners do not want to have anything to do with God, My Eternal Father. His wrath is upon them. There will be calamities—earthquakes, contagious diseases, hurricanes (which will swell the seas and rivers to the point of overflowing), mountains will be swallowed by the earth.(Our Lord’s message to Rev. Sister Ana Ali, 3.00 A.M., October 5, 1987).

How COVID-19 may have been deliberately engineered in a China biolab

By Steven Mosher

The Wuhan Virus may have been deliberately engineered in the laboratory by joining parts of different viruses together using what is called recombinant technology. 

                                       Greater horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum).                   

April 22, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Let’s start with the bats, the species known as Intermediate Horseshoe Bat, to be exact.  The Chinese Communist authorities claim that the China Virus, called SARS-CoV-2, is a naturally occurring coronavirus that is carried by the Horseshoe Bat. They also claim that the virus “jumped” from its normal host to humans at the Wuhan “wet” market.

Both of these claims are demonstrably false.

Let’s start with the Wuhan “wet” market. As I told Jesse Watters on his FOX news show, “Watters World,” last week, if the “wet” market was actually “ground zero” for the outbreak, the authorities would have burned it to the ground. Instead, they have now reopened it.

It is an open secret in Wuhan that, as a team of researchers from Wuhan noted in late February, there were no bats in the market and that direct transmission from bats to humans in the market was “unlikely.”

Two other researchers had reported the same thing a week earlier, namely, “[T]he bat was never a food source in the city and no bat was traded in the market.”  But these researchers, both surnamed Xiao, went even further.  They pointed out that there were bats in Wuhan--thousands of them—but they were being kept in two biolabs not far from the “wet” market where they were used for research purposes.

They identified the two labs as the Wuhan Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).  The Wuhan CDC is the national center for China’s bat coronavirus research.  Wuhan Institute of Virology uses recombinant technology to create and study new coronaviruses. The conclusion of the two Doctors Xiao was that “somebody was entangled with the evolution of [SARS-CoV-2] … the killer coronavirus probably escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Their word choice is a little awkward because the researchers were writing in what is for them foreign language. But what they clearly mean is that the China Coronavirus now plaguing the planet is not the result of a natural recombination of two different viruses in nature through an intermediate host, as many claim.  Rather it was deliberately engineered in the laboratory by joining parts of different viruses together using what is called recombinant technology.

More on the science of how this was done later.  Right now all you need to know is that, within a few hours of its publication, their paper on “The possible origins of [SARS-CoV-2] coronavirus” was withdrawn.  This same fate has since befallen several papers by Chinese authors who have attempted, at great risk to themselves, to reveal the truth about the origin of the outbreak to the world.

  BUY HERE.
Now back to the bats.

China’s chief bat hunter is an employee of the Wuhan CDC named Tian Junhua.  Mr. Tian’s full-time job since 2012 has been collecting bat viruses for research purposes. Over this time he collected thousands of live bats, as well as countless samples of bat urine and feces, from caves over six hundred miles distant from Wuhan. The tiny mammals obviously didn’t get to the city under their own power, but were trapped and transported to the two biolabs by the industrious Mr. Tian.  As the two Drs. Xiao wryly noted, “The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market.”

As a result of the efforts of Mr. Tian and others, China now boasts that it has “taken the lead” in global virus research. It claims to have discovered over 2,000 new viruses since the SARS Coronavirus epidemic of 2003.  To give you a sense of the scale of China’s effort, the total number of viruses discovered over the last two hundred years is, at 2,284, only slightly more.  China’s frenzied collection efforts have nearly doubled the total number of known viruses, and includes hundreds of new and possibly dangerous coronaviruses.

That’s a lot of potentially harmful pathogens to keep track of.  But it is also a huge cache of coronaviruses to harvest parts and pieces from if you are looking to make an already deadly coronavirus even deadlier.

And that seems to be exactly what a group of researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, led by a woman named Shi Zhengli, may have been intent upon doing right up until the end of 2019.  

We all know what happened then.

The Technology

Shi Zhengli received her master’s degree from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 1990.  After earning her Ph.D. in France, she returned to WIV to direct the Institute’s research project into bat coronaviruses.  If Mr. Tian is China’s batman, Dr. Shi is China’s batwoman.

Some of the articles published by Dr. Shi and her team of virologists describe naturally occurring SARS-like coronaviruses that,  like the SARS virus itself, could infect human beings directly.  
But Dr. Shi’s group was not content to merely study existing coronaviruses. They were also genetically engineering new ones.  In a 2008 article in the Journal of Virology, she and her team described how they were genetically engineering SARS-like viruses from horseshoe bats to enable them to use angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) to gain entry into human cells.
In other words, more than 10 years ago, Shi’s team was already creating entirely new and deadly coronaviruses.  They did so by inserting that part of the dangerous SARS virus that allows it to infect people into a second bat coronavirus, which was then able to attack human cells just like the original SARS virus does. 
But simply recreating a new SARS virus was only a first step.  Shi and her team wanted to move beyond that to create completely new, and potentially even more deadly coronaviruses. For that she needed a new and more advanced recombinant technique.  She may have found one in research being done at the University of North Carolina by Prof. Ralph S. Baric.

Prof. Baric had developed a technique for quickly and easily producing what he called “infectious clones.” This involves taking coronaviruses from horseshoe bats and genetically engineering them to more easily infect human cells.  

Why would he--or anyone else for that matter--do such a thing?

Baric explains: “In 2013 preemergent SARS-like Coronaviruses were identified in horseshoe bats and found to be poised for entry into the human population. … preemergent coronaviruses (CoVs) pose a global threat that requires immediate intervention. Rapid intervention necessitates the capacity to generate, grow, and genetically manipulate infectious CoVs in order to rapidly evaluate pathogenic mechanisms, host and tissue permissibility, and candidate antiviral therapeutic efficacy.” (italics added)

Now all of this—preemergent coronaviruses … poised for entry … global threat … requires immediate intervention—all sounds very ominous.  But what people need to understand is that the good professor is talking about coronaviruses that have not actually infected a single, living, breathing human being.  Rather, he is talking about coronaviruses that might, possibly, at some point in the future, make the leap from bats to humans. Or they might not. Ever.
This means that the phrase “preemergent coronavirus” is at best misleading, at worst a fiction.  It is a fiction because neither Prof. Baric, nor Dr. Shi Zhengli, nor anyone else, can possibly know whether any one of these naturally occurring viruses will ever infect a single human being.
In any event, Prof. Baric is very pleased to inform usciting his own research, that “much of the [coronavirus] research over the last 15 years has been possible because of the capacity to generate infectious clones using highly efficient reverse genetics platforms, coupled with robust small animal models of human disease.”

In other words, he and his team used the technique they created to easily construct unnatural coronaviruses and see if they will infect and kill mice.  Dr. Shi Zhengli collaborated with Baric in carrying out some of this research, as highlighted in a 2015 article in Nature Medicine in which they discussed bat coronaviruses that were potentially capable of infecting human beings.  

Now, a sane person might think that the idea of creating dangerous new pathogens in the lab for which humanity had no acquired immunity, no vaccines, and no drug therapies might not be a good idea.  The U.S. National Institutes of Health, under the direction of Dr. Anthony Fauci, however, initially funded Prof. Baric’s research. 

But then Dr. Fauci had second thoughts.  In late 2014 he sent a letter to the University of North Carolina, notifying the university that Prof. Baric’s research project may violate a new moratorium on risky virology studies involving influenza, MERS and SARS viruses.  

The letter and the document from the “Public Health Emergency” office of HHS that it references, orders a pause on “Gain of Function” research into SARS-like coronaviruses.  What is “Gain of Function” research, precisely?  The document defines it as “research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease … [by] “confer[ing] attributes to … SARS [coronaviruses] such that the resulting virus has enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility (via the respiratory route) in mammals. … [that] may entail biosafety and biosecurity risks.”

The original scientific rationale for “enhancing” the ability of certain coronaviruses to infect and kill human beings was to get one step ahead of the net pandemic.  “We will create superbugs in the lab,” the scientists said to themselves, “and we will learn how to defeat them by developing drug therapies and vaccines.  Then when the next superbug emerges from nature, we will be ready.”

But what happens if you create a new superbug in the lab and, before you have devised a defense against it, it escapes from the lab.  What then?

The consequences of unleashing such an “enhanced” coronavirus on the world—a pathogen for which human beings had no natural defenses, and for which human science had no treatments or vaccines—would be incalculable.

The U.S. pause on such research was not lifted until December 29, 2017, over three years later, when NIH put in place what it called “robust oversight” that considers the “scientific merits and potential benefits,” as well as the “potential to create ... or use an enhanced potential pandemic pathogen.”

In other words, the brakes were put on the dangerous “gain-of-function” research being done in the U.S. for fear that it would “create” a pathogen that could, if it leaked from the lab, cause a pandemic.  We decided that the risks associated with such research were generally not worth the benefits.

Not so in China, however.  There, in Dr. Shi’s laboratory, the creation of dangerous “pathogens of pandemic potential” apparently went forward without pause or effective oversight.  Communist China is not known for its concern for human life. 

Since we are now dealing with exactly the kind of deadly and infectious SARS-like coronaviruses that scientists have been creating in the lab for at least the past ten years, it is reasonable to ask if the China Coronavirus is a naturally occurring virus.  Or is it one of batwoman’s concoctions?  

Virtually everyone now agrees that the China Coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, leaked from Dr. Shi’s lab.  But I would suggest that the virus itself is the product of Gain of Function research in which its potency was artificially “enhanced” to make it more infectious and more lethal using recombinant techniques first developed in the U.S., perhaps at Prof. Baric’s lab.  The leak was an accident.  The “enhancement” was deliberate.

On March 30th of this year, an unusual, unsigned “Editor’s Note” was added to Shi and Baric’s original article in Nature Medicine.  The oddly worded note read: “We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.”

Actually, the “most likely source” of the coronavirus is not just one animal but two, whose distinct but related species of coronaviruses were isolated from their hosts and then pieced together in the lab using recombinant technology to create a new and much more infectious variety.

* * *

In Part II I will review the evidence that the novel coronavirus is the result of what Chinese researchers themselves have called an “unusual insertion” in a Horseshoe Bat coronavirus that may have come from a Pangolin coronavirus.

Steven W. Mosher @StevenWMosher is the President of the Population Research Institute and the author of Bully of Asia: Why China’s “Dream” is the New Threat to World Order.

RELATED: Listen to minutes 10-15 of interview with Senator Ted Cruz

26 Apr 2020

Again, armed police storm Catholic parish in France, demand priest stop Mass


Father Philippe de Maistre

“I chose to continue celebrating the Mass, but the police were ordering us to stop,” Father de Maistre told the Figaro.


The Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, later said that if this sort of situation were to repeat itself, the French Catholic hierarchy would “speak out, and in case of confinement, bark very loudly.”

“We are in times that recall certain not very happy periods France went through, such as the (German) Occupation,” said Bishop Aupetit. He ironically underscored that a “good-willed” neighbour had acted as an informer, “warning” the police.

“It is formally prohibited” for armed policemen to enter into a church, he insisted, because the parish priest alone has power of policing in his church: the police may only enter without his permission when there is a “threat to the public order.” In the case of Saint-André, the parish priest had been careful to close the door so that no public would enter. 

“They need to keep their heads and stop this nonsense,” the Bishop added. “Otherwise, we will speak out and, in case of confinement, bark very loudly.”

One member of the French National Assembly, Marie-France Lorho, also reacted strongly, in a letter to the French Minister of the Interior Christophe Castaner.
The letter was made public by Mrs Lorho, deputy of the southern département of the Vaucluse, on her website.
In her letter, having recalled the rules about police entry into churches, she stated that the interruption of a religious service constitutes “an extremely grave act” which can even in certain cases amount to a “profanation.”
“No health crisis can in fact justify such an attack on freedom of worship,” she wrote, quoting the March 23 decree that specifically allows private Masses. “Does the minister intend to recall his instructions to his police forces? Does the minister intend to state more clearly than the decree of March 23, that it in no way impedes in any way whatsoever the celebration of Masses behind closed doors? Finally, does the Minister intend to punish the dubious denunciations which are flourishing against religious services?”
The Saint-André incident was not, in fact, the first of its kind. During the Easter night, the traditionalist parish of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris was also targeted by the police after neighbours complained that a “clandestine” Mass was taking place: it was in fact the Easter vigil that had been widely announced and was being broadcast via Internet. The film showed that the pews were empty.
The religious affairs editor of the weekly Le Point, Aziz Zemouri, presented the incident as a serious breach of public security regarding the COVID-19 epidemic and claimed that the celebrating priest had allowed a number of parishioners to attend in violation of current regulations. One of those parishioners, wrote Zemouri, had left the celebration at around midnight and warned the police. Many French media picked up the story, with disparaging remarks about the FSSPX parish. The main French semi-public news agency AFP illustrated the story with a photo of the nave of Saint-Nicolas filled with parishioners.
The unlikely story was later denied by the prior of Saint-Nicolas, who also clarified that contrary to media reports he had not been fined. According to some sources it was the police chief who led the intervention who (spitefully) told the story to the press.
Another Parisian church, Saint-Eugène Sainte-Cécile, where traditional “Summorum Pontificum” Masses are celebrated on a daily basis, was also “visited” by the police on April 16 during the 7 PM Mass. On that occasion, the priest having omitted to close the church doors during the celebration, some 15 parishioners had entered the church, staying at the back and respecting rules for social distancing. But their presence was still deemed illegal.
One lay Catholic who drove to confess in a monastery near his home in the country shortly before Easter was fined because his travel was deemed “not essential” by local “gendarmes” although visits to one’s place of worship are explicitly allowed by confinement rules on the website of the French Interior Ministry.
An increasing number of priests and lay associations are complaining about the strict prohibition of public Masses in France, while at the same time supermarkets, wine shops, garden centres and public transport are open to the public.
President Emmanuel Macron has announced that partial loosening of lockdown will (or may…) take place on May 11, but has already made clear that public Masses and other religious ceremonies will not be allowed before the middle of June.
He said so in a video conference with faith leaders and heads of Masonic organisations last Monday, shortly after having had a 45-minute telephone conversation with (Anti) Pope Francis, during which the question of the prohibition of religious services was not addressed, according to a presidential spokesman.
The LifeSiteNews story is here (below):
  BUY HERE.
Armed police storm Catholic parish in France, demand priest stop Mass
The police stormed into the church after having been 'warned' by people living close by that a 'clandestine' Mass was taking place. y

By Jeanne Smits, Paris correspondent


April 24, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Four armed policemen entered a Parisian church last Sunday in order to stop what they considered to be an illegal Mass in view of France’s confinement regulations linked to the coronavirus. 
The incident caused outrage among French Catholics. The Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, later said that if this sort of situation were to repeat itself, the French Catholic hierarchy would “speak out, and in case of confinement, bark very loudly.”
The police stormed into the church after having been “warned” by people living close by that a “clandestine” Mass was taking place in the parish of Saint-André de l’Europe, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. They had heard an organ playing.
Under French confinement rules in force since March 17, places of worship may remain open to the public, but public Masses are forbidden. Funeral Masses are an exception. They are permitted with a maximum of 20 participants.
For the rest, only private Masses are allowed, which can include religious communities but no faithful, except for liturgical and technical purposes when the celebrations are being filmed and broadcast for the benefit of the faithful who are confined in their homes.
Such was the case last Sunday when Father Philippe de Maistre celebrated Mass in the presence of an altar server, a cantor and three parishioners to read the lectures, as well as an organist and cameramen: less than the maximum of twenty, at any rate. The situation was therefore completely legal.
The situation soon became tense as the armed law enforcement officers ordered the priest to stop the celebration and warned him that he would be fined.
“I chose to continue celebrating the Mass, but the police were ordering us to stop,” Father de Maistre told the Figaro.
Luckily, his altar server was himself a policeman who went down the altar steps to engage in dialogue with the officers. The discussion lasted for twenty minutes, at the end of which the police accepted not to fine de Maistre. They did, however, insist that the three parishioners leave the church.
According to the rules regarding the separation of church and state in France, a parish priest is master in his own church and no police, let alone armed police, are allowed to enter such buildings unless called to do so by the religious authority.
Also, a special decree published March 23 regarding the celebration of Mass during the confinement period – which has already led to many Kafkaesque prohibitions against anything from walking alone on a deserted beach to jogging more than 1 km from home – was in fact anything but clear.
The faithful are specifically allowed to go to their place of worship and to enter individually but “reunions” and “gatherings” are prohibited: the presence of less than 10 people in the parish church of Saint-André de l’Europe which can accommodate 500 was certainly not a “gathering.”
As the former chapel of a religious congregation, that particular church, moreover, does not belong to the municipality of Paris according to a law 1907, but to the diocese. By entering the private premises of the church, overzealous policemen actually violated the private property of an association and their entry plainly constituted an “assault” under French law, according to the Fondation du Pont-Neuf, a conservative think tank based in Paris.
Bishop Aupetit of Paris sharply criticized the police during an interview with Radio Notre Dame, the radio station of the diocese of Paris, on Wednesday.
“We are in times that recall certain not very happy periods France went through, such as the (German) Occupation,” said Bishop Aupetit. He ironically underscored that a “good-willed” neighbor had acted as an informer, “warning” the police.
“It is formally prohibited” for armed policemen to enter into a church, he insisted, because the parish priest alone has power of policing in his church: the police may only enter without his permission when there is a “threat to the public order.” In the case of Saint-André, the parish priest had been careful to close the door so that no public would enter.
“They need to keep their heads and stop this nonsense,” the Bishop added. “Otherwise, we will speak out and, in case of confinement, bark very loudly.”
One member of the French National Assembly, Marie-France Lorho, also reacted strongly, in a letter to the French Minister of the Interior Christophe Castaner.
The letter was made public by Mrs Lorho, deputy of the southern département of the Vaucluse, on her website.
In her letter, having recalled the rules about police entry into churches, she stated that the interruption of a religious service constitutes “an extremely grave act” which can even in certain cases amount to a “profanation.”
“No health crisis can in fact justify such an attack on freedom of worship,” she wrote, quoting the March 23 decree that specifically allows private Masses. “Does the minister intend to recall his instructions to his police forces? Does the minister intend to state more clearly than the decree of March 23, that it in no way impedes in any way whatsoever the celebration of Masses behind closed doors? Finally, does the Minister intend to punish the dubious denunciations which are flourishing against religious services?”
There has been no answer to date.
The Saint-André incident was not, in fact, the first of its kind. During the Easter night, the traditionalist parish of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris was also targeted by police after neighbors complained that a “clandestine” Mass was taking place: it was in fact the Easter vigil that had been widely announced and was being broadcast via Internet. The film showed that the pews were empty.
The religious affairs editor of the weekly Le Point, Aziz Zemouri, presented the incident as a serious breach of public security regarding the COVID-19 epidemic and claimed that the celebrating priest had allowed a number of parishioners to attend in violation of current regulations. One of those parishioners, wrote Zemouri, had left the celebration at around midnight and warned the police. Many French media picked up the story, with disparaging remarks about the FSSPX parish. The main French semi-public news agency AFP illustrated the story with a photo of the nave of Saint-Nicolas filled with parishioners.
The unlikely story was later denied by the prior of Saint-Nicolas, who also clarified that contrary to media reports he had not been fined. According to some sources it was the police chief who led the intervention who (spitefully) told the story to the press.
Another Parisian church, Saint-Eugène Sainte-Cécile, where traditional “Summorum Pontificum” Masses are celebrated on a daily basis, was also “visited” by the police on April 16 during the 7 PM Mass. On that occasion, the priest having omitted to close the church doors during the celebration, some 15 parishioners had entered the church, staying at the back and respecting rules for social distancing. But their presence was still deemed illegal.
The parish priest went to see the mayor of the “arrondissement” next day and apparently the incident went no further.
One lay Catholic who drove to confess in a monastery near his home in the country shortly before Easter was fined because his travel was deemed “not essential” by local “gendarmes” although visits to one’s place of worship are explicitly allowed by confinement rules on the website of the French Interior Ministry.
An increasing number of priests and lay associations are complaining about the strict prohibition of public Masses in France, while at the same time supermarkets, wine shops, garden centers and public transport are open to the public.
President Emmanuel Macron has announced that partial loosening of lockdown will (or may…) take place on May 11, but has already made clear that public Masses and other religious ceremonies will not be allowed before the middle of June.
He said so in a video conference with faith leaders and heads of Masonic organisations last Monday, shortly after having had a 45-minute telephone conversation with Pope Francis, during which the question of the prohibition of religious services was not addressed, according to a presidential spokesman.
Meanwhile, millions of Muslims living in France will start Ramadan celebrations as of Friday. The Interior Minister Castaner said recently that public celebrations will not be allowed in mosques. On the other hand, the prefect of police of the Bouches-du-Rhône which includes the port of Marseille where large numbers of Muslims live has already said that the police could not “prevent” Muslims living in the same apartment buildings from visiting each other during Ramadan.
Visiting neighbors, under current regulations, normally incurs a fine of 135 euro (about 150 dollars) per offender.

Related: COVID-19: This monster “priest” is reporting a fellow priest for saying mass!