The Terrible Train Crash at Frankford Junction

There  is  enough  solid  material  inside  of  the  get-the-story-out-fast-before-anyone-can-scoop-us  narratives  in  the  web  and  media  to  enable  us  to  get  a  pretty  good  handle  on  what  happened  with  Amtrak  #188  last  Tuesday  night.  My  tentative  conclusions,  with  questions  and  observations,  follow.

The  engineer  on  Amtrak  #188,   Brandon  Bostian,   32  yoa,  seems  to  have  been  mature,  well-balanced,  well-liked,  and  enthusiastic  about  his  work  as  an  Amtrak  engineer.

Whether  he  was  at  the  beginning  of  his  shift,  near  the  end  of  his  shift,  or  how  long  his  shift  was,  is  not  yet  known.

Whether  anyone  was  in  the  engine  with  him  is  not  yet  known.  There  appears  to  have  been  a  central  aisle  from  one  end  of  the  engine  to  the  other.     Whether  the  controls  in  the  rear  of  the  engine  could  be  locked-out   or  had  been  locked-out  in  the  front   by  Bostian  is  not  known.  Whether  the  doors  to  the  engine  could  be  locked  and  whether  Bostian  had  locked  them  is  not  known.  Whether  the  business  class  car  just  behind  the  engine  had  access  to  the  engine  door  is  not  known  --  although  one  surmises  that  preserving  such  access  may  have  been  customary.

The  engine  was  an  essentially-brand-new   Cities  Sprinter  ACS-64  electric  engine  built  by  Siemens  Corporation.     Behind  that  were  7  cars.

There  are  a  few  ways  to  slow  the  train  down  --  by  electrical  resisitance  within  the  engine  wheels,   by  engine  brakes,   and  by   brakes  within   each  vehicle  in  the  1-engine-followed-by-7-car  passenger  train.  The  latter  means  of  braking  was  probably  the  safest.  It  would  distribute  the  braking  momentum  transfer  into  the  rails  and  railroad  ties  beneath  over  the  length   of  the  train.

The  tracks  appear  to  have  been  somewhat  unitized,  if  you  look  at  aerial  photos  of  the  tracks  before  the  accident,  aerial  photos  of  the  tracks  just  after  the  accident,     and  photos  of  new  track   being  carted-in  by  truck  to  replace  the  destroyed  truck.    A  simple  question;  When  track  units  are  installed,  how  are  they  anchored  to  the  railroad  right-of-way  --  or  do  they  just  "float,"  on  trap  rock  or  dirt?  In  other  words,  could  a  heavy,  suddenly-braking  engine  or  train  literally  yank  a  section  of  track  off  its  bed?  Is  there  an  amazing  secret  defect  in  the  track  design,  generated,  for  instance,  by  some  moron's  desire  to  economize  a  little  too  much  in  the  face  of  Amtrak's  ever-shrinking  federal  subsidies  and  the  really  bad  economy  since  2007?  Is  there  an  Amtrak  executive  who  is  hiding   the  fact  of  an  unwise  purchase  of  a  new  type  of  track?  

At  Frankford  Junction,  the  tracks  were  banked  for  speed,    being  higher  on  the  outside  side  of  the  curb  by  5"  per  width  of  track.   That's  a  pretty  good  embankment.   Any  calculation  of  listing  by  the  train   toward  the  outside  of  the  curve  due  to  centrifugal  force  in  turning  has  to  overcome  a  pre-existing  listing and  centripital  pulling   toward  the  inside  of  the  curve,  first,  due  to  that  track-embankment-generated  listing.

News  reports  showing  a  railroad  "expert"  claiming  that  the  train  could  jump  track  if  the  train's  speed  exceeded  the  speed  limit  by  as  little  as  5  mph  have  to  be  wildly  "over-conservative"  and  so  dead  false.

When  I  was  a  young  man,    the  Metroliners  used  to  "blow  through"   that  banked  turn   at  a  frightening  speed  --   well  over  50  mph.  I  remember  see  that  little  trash-bearing  wake  of  air   trapped  by  the  slipstream   behind   the  passing  Metroliners  headed  into  that  banked  curve.

So,  the  50  mph  speed  limit  for  what  appears  to  be  brand  new  well-banked  track  (see  next  paragraph)  is  interesting.

News  accounts  describe  the  curve  at  Frankford  Junction  as  "a  sharp  turn."  Panoramic  news  source  pictures  from  ground  level,  such  as  this  one ...

...  make  it  look  like  a  sharp  turn.

In  fact,  it  is  a  very  gentle  turn.  See  Google  Maps,   Earth  Image,   at ...

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0013838,-75.0944874,161m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

At  the  moment  of  departure,  #188  had  238  passengers  and  5  crew.  The  ages  of  those  passengers  seem  importance.  For  example,  were  there  any  kids   in  the  first  passenger  car  --  the  Business  Class  car  --  just  behind  the  engine?   Did  a  kid  cross  from  the  Business  Class  car  to  the  engine  --  even  with  a  parent's  permission  --  to  allow  him  or  her  to  experience  the  thrill  of  being  in  the  engine?

#188  left  30th  Street  Station  at  exactly  9:09  p.m.,  according  to  Amtrak's  schedule.  Bostian  moved  the  train  north  out  of  the  station  up  the  tracks  on  the  west  bank  of  the  Schuyhkill River,  past  the  west  side  of  the  Philadelphia  Zoo,  and  then  eastward  across  the  Schuylkill  River  over  the  old  stone  arch  Connecting  Railway  Bridge,  to  the  Northeast  Corridor  tracks  running  diagonally,  northeast  across  North  Philadelphia,  to  North  Philadelphia  Station  at  Broad  Street  and  West  Glenwood  Avenue,  between  Lehigh  and  Allegheny  Avenues.

The  train  apparently  did  not  stop  at  North  Philadelphia  Station.   Did  someone  at  North  Philadelphia  Station  make  improper  entry  into  the  engine  from  the  platform  between  the  engine  and  the  Business  Class  car  as  the  train  slowed?  Is  this  possible?

The  train  continued  northeast  across  North  Philadelphia,    and  swung  rightwards,   behind  St.  Christopher's  Hospital  at  Front  Street  between  Eire  and  Tioga,  so  that  it  traveling  east,  toward  Frankford  Junction  and  the  Frankford  Junction  curve.

As  stated  above,  the  "terrible"   curve  at  Frankford  Junction  is  a  leftward  turn  toward  the  Northeast   at  the  rate  of  about  3.3  degrees  per  100  feet  (so  that  in  the  1200  feet  between  the  point  of  intersection  with  Frankford  Avenue  and  the  point  of  intersection  with  the  line  through  Wheatsheaf  Lane,    the  track  has  turned  about  40  degrees  north  northeast).  If  you  plug  that  into  the  formula  for  achieving  balancing  speed  --   the  speed  along  a  track  banked  for  speed  where  the  train  is  in  equipoise,  falling  neither  toward  the  inside  of  the  curve  nor  toward  the  outside  of  the  curve ...

...  where  "Vmax"  is  mph,  "Ea"  is  the  number  of  inches  the  outside  rail  is  higher  than  the  inside  rail,   and  "d"  is  the  number  of  degrees  turned  per  100  feet,  you  get  58  mph.

Now,  clearly,    if  the  train  can  lean   in   toward   the  inside  of  the  curve  without  derailing  and  falling  inward,  at  1  mph,    where  the  tracks  are  so  seriously  banked  that  it  has  to  go  58  mph  before   it  reaches  equipoise,   it  would  seem  to  be  able  to  rather  easily  take  the  curb  at  even  116  mph    --  twice  58  mph  --  without  derailing  outwards,  toward  the  outside  of  the  curve.

Bostian  seems  to  have  had  #188  cruising  along  at  roughly  70  mph  as  he   began  to  close  in  on  the  Frankford  Junction  curve,  where  the  posted  speed  limit  is  an  inexplicable  50  mph  (where,  again,  58  mph  is  equipoise,  given  the  grade).

Instead  of  slowing  down  to  the  posted  speed  limit,  after  that,  #188  inexplicably  increased  its  speed,  so  that  it  reached  a  maximum  of  107  mph  before  it  reached  the  curb.

Why?

Was  Bostian  fatigued,   so  that  he  forgot  that  he  had  not  even  passed   Frankford  Junction  yet,  and  thought  that  he  was  on  the  straightaway  northeast  of  Frankford  Junction  along  the  Delaware?

Did  he  actually  begin  braking  the  train,   so  that  momentum  spilled  his  water  bottle  into  the  apparatus,  short-circuiting  the  accelerator  slide  and  generating  a  sudden  increase  toward  maximum  speed?

Did  a  water  bottle  left  by  someone  on  the  controls  at  the  other  end  of  the  engine  do  this?

Unknown  to  all,  did  a  vandal  tossing  a  rock  "get  lucky"   and  pierce  the  windows  next  to  the  controls   and  slam  the  accelerator  slide  to  the  "maximum  speed"  position?  In  other  words,  was  Bostian  shocked  and  puzzled  by  the  velocity  increase?

Did  a  child  or  malicious  teenager  from  the  North  Philadelphia  platform  or  from  the  Business  Class  car  tamper  with  controls?

Who  knows?

That  is  the  question  of  all  questions.

In  judging  this  question, remember  four  (4)  words  --  the  "Toyota  Unintended  Acceleration  Problem."

In  other  words,  was  Bostian;'s  Cities  Sprinter  ACS-64  electric  engine  merely  the  first  one  to   do  this,  with  fatal  results.

This  is  not  an  idle  question.

Here's  another  angle  worthy  of  investigation:    One  problem  with  today's  nuclear  power  plants  is  the  layering  of  safety  systems   upon  the  basic  mechanism,  and  the  layering   of  second  layer  safety  systems  upon  the  first  --  generating  a  mechanism  so  frighteningly  complex  that  no  human  being  is  safe  around  them.  With  that  in  mind ...

Is  it  possible  that  the  federal  government's  own  Positive  Train  Control  System  mandate  interface  mechanism  somehow  caused  the  problem?

In  any  event,  just  as  #188  was  entering  the  Frankford  Junction  curve,    Bostian  threw  on  the  brakes.

Now,   again,  I  believe  that,  contrary  to  all  media  reports  and  executive  speculation  within  Amtrak  and  the  National  Transportation  Safety  Board,    in  my  opinion  #188  could  have  easily  taken  the  curb.

However,   when  Bostian  threw  on  the  brakes  --  something  every  human  being  in  his  position,  including  every  Amtrak  executive,    every   National  Transportation  Safety  Board   investigator,    Mayor  Wilson  Good  and  the  District  Attorney,  and  everyone  else  who  has  opened  his  mouth  in  angry  criticism,   would  have  done  in  this  case  --  the  passengers  felt  a  terrible  vibration.

That  would  have  been  the  brake-frozen  wheels  vibrating  their  way  down  the  curb.

I  believe  that  the  vibration  is  what  derailed  the  train.  Suddenly,    the  net  effect   of  all  of  those  wheels   bbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppping  their   way  down  the  track,  so  that,  on  the  average,   the  train  was  somewhat  "airborne"  during  every  second  of  breaking,   markedly  decreasing  each  railroad  vehicle's  right  wheels'  flanges  on  the  inside  surface  of  the  outside  rail,     at  104  mph  --  the  train's  last  known  speed  before  departing  from  the  railways  over  the  outward  side  of  the  curve  --  contributed  heavily  to  the  derailment.

I  would  also  be  interested  in  the  relative  integrity  of  the  brake  pads  in  the  cars  behind  the  engine.

The  engine  was  effectively  brand  new  --  with  new  brakes.

If  the  railroad  cars  behind  it  only  had  older  brakes  that  only  held  "half  as  good,"     their  would  have  been   a  "ramming"  effect  by  the  momentum  in  the  rear  cars.     Just  as  you   can't   push  a  length  of  rope  into  a  mouse  hole,     the  cars  in  the  rear  aren't  going  to  happily  slow  down  for  the  engine   if  the  engine  stops  better  than  they  do.

They  are  going  to  want  to  pile-up  against  the  engine's  rear.

I  believe  that  that  contributed  very  heavily  to  the  derailment   --   and  that  that  is  why  the  first  passenger  car  behind  the  engine   was  bent  into  the  shape  of  a  giant  horse  shoe.

Perhaps  it  was  the  passenger  cars  slamming  the  engine   from  behind  because  of  their  inferior  brakes  that  pushed   the  violently  vibrating  engine  off  the  tracks.

So,   Bostian  threw  on  the  brakes.

#188  began  bbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppping  its   way  down  the  track,  into  the  curb.

The  cars  begin  the  Business  Class  car,  the  first  passenger  car,  rammed  it  hard  and   bent  it  into  a  horseshoe  shape.

As  this  was  occurring,   the  engine  derailed,  and  simply  proceeded  in  a  straight  line  from  the  point  of  derailment.

The  cars  behind  the  Business  Class  car  cast  the  Business  Class  car  to  the  left,  making  those  cars  bounce  right  well  off  the  track  as  the  train  continue  forward  from  momentum.

And  then  it  all  ground  to  a  halt.

We  should  not  pre-judge  Bostian.

Candidate Christie's "Big Tax Cut Plan" Flirts with National Financial Calamity

In  New  Hampshire,   presidential  hopeful  New  Jersey  Governor  Christie  tried  to  attract  flies  to  his  fly  paper  with  promises  of  more  across-the-board  tax  cuts,   even  as  he  criticized  President  Obama's  handling  of  the  economy.

Massive  deficit-generating  tax  cuts   was  Governor  Christie's  plan  for  recovery,    despite  the  fact  that  the  National  Debt   has  exploded  like  a  nuclear  bomb   since  President  Obama  took  over  --  from  $10  trillion   to  $18  trillion  --   and  continues  rushing  skyward,  up,  up,  up,  up  up ...

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

...even  at  the  present  moment,  and  interest  payable  on  the  dept  is  about  one-half  trillion  dollars  per  year,  a  debt  burden  that  chokes  the  life  out  of  our  economy  and  keeps  millions  jobless  the  same  way  that  $50,000  worth  of  credit  card  debt  can  destroy  a  home's  budget.

To  put  it  another  way,  Dr.  Christie's  prescription  for  the  "drunk  drivers"  behind  the  wheel  today   is,  "MORE  ALCOHOL!"

What This Magazine Is; Articles Welcome !

I  have  to  say,  for  the  sake  of  God's  holy  Church,  that  this  online  magazine  is  NOT,  repeat  NOT,   a  publication  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  

It  is  merely  my  own  opinion.

And  who  am  I ?  I  am  a  62  year  old  South  Jersey  man  who  attended  Catholic  grade  school,  Catholic  high  school,  Catholic  college,   and  secular  law  school,  and  then  spent  30  years  practicing  law  in  Pennsylvania  and  New  Jersey.    I  attended  weekly  Mass  at  a  Catholic  Church,  go  to  Catholic  confession,   go  to  weekly  Catholic  Bible  study,  function  as  a  speaker  in  a  Catholic  speakers'  program,  and  occasionally  address  Catholic  CCD  students  on  Catholic  theology.    I  have  also  written  about  a  dozen  published  articles  in  a  Catholic  magazine  on  various  religious  topics  --  mostly,  about  the  Bible.    The  perspective  is  Catholic.

Despite  all  of  that,  would  today's  Church  officials  agree  that  I  am  "Catholic"?    I  don't  know,  for  a  particular  reason.

One  of  the  things  I  do,  here,  is  go  after  the  Church,  energetically,  if  I  see  a  weakness. 

For  example,  so  many  bishops  nationwide  wrote  letters  of  recommendation  transferring  priests  out  of  their  dioceses  for  so  many  priests  concerning  whom  they  had  thick  files  verifying  statutory  rape  of   one  boy  or  young  man  after  another,  again  and  again  and  again  and  again,  that  there  was  an  appearance  of  hiding  the  crime  (Obstruction  of  Justice)   and  pimping  for  gay  "johns"  by  helping  them  prey  on  the  young  sheep  in  their  own  flocks  (Solicitation),  while  we  stupid  Catholics,  with  our  heads  in  the  ground  like  dumb  ostriches,  financed  the  whole  endeavor.  So,  I  have  gone  after  that  set-up,  repeatedly.  

I  am  certain  that  I  am  not  well-liked  for  writing  things  like,  "Are  our  bishops  actually  knowingly  engaged  in  homosexual  pimping ???"  or,  "Come  on,  John  Jay  Institute !!!   Right  after  admitting   that   70%  of  the  priests  accused  of  'doing'  boys  and  young  men,  only,   actually  said,  'I  do  it  with  male  adults,  too !'  you   write,  'The  Church  does  not  have  a  'homosexual  problem!'   What  liars !"

I  have  also  been  absolutely  clear  about  the  direct  relationship  between  Benedict  XVI   and  the  priestly  sex  abuse  problem,  and  the  indirect  relationship  between  Pope  Francis  and  the  priestly  sex  abuse  problem.

I  have  also  gone  after  the  Church  for  not  going  all  of  the  way  on  the  Adam-and-Eve  teaching  --  for  not  simply  admitting,  "The  Adam  and  Eve  story  is  not  history,  at  all.  It  is  divinely-inspired  myth  teaching  religious  truth."    

I  have  also  criticized  a  piece  of  theology  about  Mary  about  which  the  Church   is  very  quiet.  Whereas  Mary  really  was  always  a  virgin,   the  Church  includes  within  the  Perpetual  Virginity  doctrine  a  bizarre teaching  that  Jesus  was  not  born  in  the  technical  sense  --  that  God,  instead,  had  Him  come  out  of  Mary's  womb  "like  a  beam  of  sunlight  through  glass."  This  doctrine  is  called,  "Virginity  in  Partu,"  "virginity  even  in  the  act  of  birthing  Jesus."  As  we  would  put  it  in  our  day  and  age,  "Jesus  beamed-down  out  of  Mary."

Priests  and  theologian  can  jump  up  and  down  in  protest  and  angrily  deny  that  the  Church  uses  the  words  "beaming  down,"     but  in  essence   it  teaches  exactly  that.

This  rather  strikingly  Gnostic  --  and,  in  my  opinion,  absolutely  heretical  --  teaching   not  only  converts  Jesus  into  something  that  is  un-Biblical  and  fundamentally  different  than  us,  it  also   seems  to  create  a  deadly  conflict  with  the  hypostatic  union   doctrine  --  that  Jesus,  at  all  points  in  His  life,  was  "always  God  and  always  Man."    He  can't  have  been  "always  Man"  during  the  point  in  time  when  He  was  engage  in  passing  through  the  wall  of  Mary's  womb  "like  a  beam  of  sunlight  through  glass"    and  then  coming  in  for  a  landing  on  the  ground.

The  Church  also  regrets  its  own  correct  Biblical  theology  on  contraception,  to  a  point  that  ironically  indirectly  advances  the  pro-abortion  movement.

When,  to  try  to  "stop  the  bleeding"   by  exposing  the  Church  on  such  things,   I  am  clear   in  writing  about  such  things,     it  can't  be  that  I  am  well-liked   among  any  Church  administrators  aware  of  how  I  write.  So,  would  Church  administrators  say  that  I  am  "Catholic"?  I  think  I  am.    But  I  think  that  some  of  them  would  deny  it.

And  so,  I  am  chronically  afraid  that  one  of  these  days  I  am  going  to  be  told,  "Stop  using  the  word  'Catholic'  in  your  website  title,  or  be  excommunicated."


In  any  event,    I  really  do  look  for  proposed  articles   in  my  e-mail.    They  can  be  on  nearly  any  subject   of  general  interest,  or  relevant  to  politics  or  religion.  I  love  humor  and  history.     If  you  have  an  idea   for  an  article,  or  an  article,  itself,  e-mail  me  at 

 peter.j.dawson.nj.us@gmail.com

No  compensation  for  the  articles  --   sorry  --   and  I  become  the  owner  of  all  copyright  rights,  to  avoid  controversy.

Nazi Bean-Counters in Auschwitz Versus Jewish V-1 and V-2 Rocket Builders

At  this  point,   the  argument  of  93  year  old   former  SS  Auschwitz  guard  and  bean  counter  Oskar  Groenig,  on  trial  in  Germany,  is,  "Look,  morally,  I  am  defenseless.  I  am  guilty.    But  am  I  guilty  under  the  law?"

Anybody  who  reads  my  blog,  here,  knows  that  I  am  extremely  favorable  to  Jewish  people  and  to  Israel.   I  am  more  sympathetic  to  Israel  than  is  my  Jewish  wife.

So,  it  is  with  good  motives  that  i  ask,   "How  do  we  judge  Oskar  Groenig?"

It  is  not  a  simple  question,  if  one  is  to  be  fair.

Nazi  V-1  and  V-2  rockets  slammed  into  England,  during  WWII,   killing  tens  of  thousands  of  innocents,  including  babies.

Who  actually  built  those  V-1  and  V-2  rockets?

Well,  a  lot  of  the  time,  Jews!

The  Nazis  forced  Jewish  slaves  in  work  camps  and  death  camps  to  build  deadly  rockets   for  them.

Most  of  the  Jewish  forced  labor  rocket  builders  died,    in  the  effort,  or  when  the  factories  were  closed,  and  the  Nazis  very  consistently  hid  the  evidence  by  simply  murdering   their  Jewish  labor.

But  some  of  the  rocket-building  Jews  survived.

So,  are  those  Jewish  rocket  builders  "guilty  under  the  law"  of  murdering  British  babies?

Before  you  answer  that  question  for  yourself,  ask  the  72  year  old  orphan  of  parents  killed  by  a  falling  V-1  or  V-2    how  he  or  she  feels  about  the  criminal  culpability  of  rocket-making  Jewish  slaves.

In  the  end,  what  rocket-making  Jewish  slaves  did  is  prefer  the  immediate  death  or  maiming    of  Allied  innocents  over  their  own  immediate  death,  torture  or  maiming.

If  a  gunman   tied  up  me  and  my  wife,  and  said,  "Pete,    I'm  going  to  shoot  one  of  you  --  either  you  or  your  wife,  right  now.  I'll  shoot  whomever  you  tell  me  to  shoot."  And  I  bought  time  for  myself  by  saying,  "Please,  shoot  my  wife  first,"    how  many  in  my  audience  here  would  regard  that  as  non-inculpatory  --  as  grounds  for  declaring  me  "innocent"?

The  Prosecutor  in  Groenig's  case  might  answer,  "Well,  Groenig  was  free  to  refuse  to  cooperate.     The  Jews  in  the  rocket  factories  had  guns  at  their  heads!"

Is  that  distinction  valid?

Read  this  paragraph  from  the  Holocaust  Encyclopedia ...

Anti-Nazi politicians and union workers either fled Germany or faced long-term confinement in a concentration camp. Ernst Thälmann, leader of the German Communist party since 1925 and one-time candidate for the German presidency, for example, had been arrested after the fire that destroyed German parliament building in 1933. He spent more than 11 years in the camps. The SS killed him in Buchenwald concentration camp on August 18, 1944, during an air raid on a nearby factory....

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007656


So,  opposing  Hitler's  terror  machine  from  inside  wasn't  like  risking  Obama  Administration  wrath  by voting  Republican  instead  of  Democrat.

The  bottom  line  is,   Groenig's  question  is  not  so  simple.

The St. Laurentius Case: The Ongoing Sale of Our Catholic Heritage by Church Officials

I  am  sick-to-death   of  American  Catholic  Church  administrators  treating  the  faithful  like  mushrooms  to  bleed  as  many  contributions  out  of  them  as  they  can,  as  they  sell-off  every  beautiful,  paid-off,  well-located  church  property  they  can  as  they  ask  the  faithful  to  drive  farther  and  farther  every  week   to  go  to  Mass  or  confession  in  still-mortgaged  little  shoeboxes  of  glass  and   aluminum  and  sheetrock.

We  can  all  see  where  it  is  headed  --   20  years  from  now,    our  children  will  be  asked  to  drive  to  the  only   Catholic  Church  left  in  New  Jersey,  Sacred  Heart  in  Newark,  to  go  to  Mass  each  Sunday.

Years  ago,  about  3  times  per  week  I  used  to  stop  at  a  quiet  little  chapel  on  Burnt  Mill  Road  in  Cherry  Hill,  Holy  Rosary  Church,  to  pray  before  the  Eucharist.

What  is  that  location,  now ?

There  is  a  sign  outside  saying

"SWAMINARAYAN  MANDIR"

Yup !   It's  Hindu !

I  don't  think  that  the  Hindu  congregation,  there,  is  currently  active.  But,  the  sign  is  still  there,  as  I  write.

Which  brings  us  to  St.  Laurentius,  in  the  Fishtown  section  of  Philadelphia ...

In  its  haste  to  wipe  out  as  much  of  our  Catholic  heritage  as  possible,  the  Philadelphia  Archdiocese   has  de-consecrated  this  beautiful  masterpiece  of  God-honoring  Catholic  art,  telling  Catholics  there,  "Drive  farther  and  farther  every  week   to  go  to  Mass  or  confession  in  still-mortgaged  little  shoeboxes  of  glass  and   aluminum  and  sheetrock.  St.  Laurentius  costs  too  much  to  keep-up."

One  wonders  if  that  is  true  at  all.   They  --  Catholic  administrators  --  have  lied  to  us  so  much  in  recent  decades,  mostly  by  silence,   while  they  pretend  that  there  is  nothing  bad  to  talk  about.     I  have  a  feeling  that  "too  much  to  keep-up"   means,  "Look,  we  have  to  maximize  our  return  when  we  sell  Church  properties,  to  pay  for multi-zillion  dollar  lawsuits  against  the  Church  in  the  priest  cases,  now  that  we  are  such  a  bad  risk  that  insurance  companies  won't  insure  us.     So,  we  really  can't  afford  to  sell  more-modern   church  buildings,  because  of  the  mortgages  on  them.     Selling  one  of  them  is  the  financial  equivalent  of  giving  it  away !     Why  bother ?     So,  we  have  to  sell  as  many  unmortgaged  old,  beautiful  church  buildings   on  commercially-valuable  streetcorners  as  we  can,  even  if  it  means  wiping-out   the  congregations  there   and  annihilating  Catholic  heritage  more  effectively  than  a  nuclear  explosion."

In  other  words,  I  wonder  if,  even  if  a  source  of  maintenance  funding  enabling  the  Catholic  building  to  remain  there  for  free  turned-up,  would  the  Archdiocese  say,  "Oh !   How  wonderful !  Now  we  get  to  keep  it  open  for  the  Catholics  in  Fishtown !"

I  doubt  it !

Don't  be  surprised,  Catholic  sisters  and  brothers  in  Fishtown,  if  you  wake  up  one  morning   and  there  is  a  sign  in  the  front  of  St.  Laurentius  reading,

"SWAMINARAYAN  MANDIR"

Asia's Daughter

One  of  the  things  I  have  learned,  in  getting  close  to  several  Southeast  Asian  immigrant  families,  is  that  women  and  girls,  in  their  cultures,  aren't  people.  In  their  cultures,  women  and  girls  are  luggage.



The  following  joke  that  came  out  of  the  Vietnam  War  illustrates  the  problem:  

An  American  soldier  patrolling  the  roads  in  Bin  Duong  Province  befriends  a  farmer  he  sees  walking  along  with  his  cow  every  day.    At  a  particular  point  he  notices  that  there  is  always  a  woman  walking  about  100  yards  behind  them.  The  American  soldier  asks,  "Who  is  that?"  "Oh,"  he  says,  "That  is  my  wife!"

This  upsets  the  American  soldier.  "Oh,  come  on!"  he  responds.  "She  is  your  wife,  your  life  partner,   your  gift  from  God!  She  should  be  walking  beside  you,  in  a  place  of  dignity!"

The  farmer  shakes  his  head.  He  says  with  exasperation,  "You  just  don't  understand  our  people!"

After  he  serves  out  his  enlistment  in  Vietnam,  the  soldier  comes  home  and,  after  a  few  decades,  he  decides  to  go  back  to  Vietnam  and  visit  his  old  haunts  there.

As  he  walks  up  the  roads  he  had  once  patrolled,  he  sees  his  old  farmer  buddy,   and  catches  up  with  him  and  greets  him  warmly.  The  former  GI  turns  around,  sees  no  one  down  the  road  behind  them,  and  says,  "Where  is  your  wife?  Is  she  okay?  Did  she  survive  the  war?"

The  farmer  points  to  a  figure  up  the  road,  a  hundred  yards  ahead  of  them   and  says,  "She  is  there!"

"Oh,  wow!"  the  American  exclaims.  "That  is  wonderful!  Not  only  is  she  no  longer  walking  behind  you,  but  you  even  have  her  walking  ahead  of  you,  in  a  place  of  honor!    I'm  impressed!"

The  old  Vietnamese  farmer  looks  at  the  American  and  says,  "Land  mines."



As  I  came  to  know  Southeast  Asians  and  their  families,  I  lived   that  joke  on  one  occasion,  as  follows.

Once,  on  an  unbelievably  hot  Summer  day,    I  was  asked  by  a  Vietnamese  immigrant  man  to  come  to  a  house  party  in  his  air-conditioned  home.  When  I  got  there,  I  was  surprised  to  see  that  it  was  all  men,    Vietnamese  and  Chinese,  drinking  alcohol  and  talking.  I  asked  my  host,   "Where  is  your  wife?  Where  is  your  little  daughter?"

"Shopping!"  he  smiled.

I  foolishly  assumed  that  he  meant  that  mother  and  daughter  were  shopping  in  our  local  air  conditioned   mall.

A  few  minutes  later,   the  wife  drove  up  in  their  family  car,   and  came  in,  soaked  in  sweat,   one  of  several  large  bags  of  groceries  filled  with  food  for  the  guests  in  one  arm,   one  of  the  guests'  diaper-clad  baby  in  her  other  arm,    diaper  overflowing  crap  out  the  back  onto  her  arm,    and  the  host's  5  year  old  daughter  crying  loudly  and  clawing  at  her  mother's  arm.  She  put  the  bag  of  groceries  on  a  kitchen  counter,   and  began  to  gently  lay  the  baby  on  the  floor  to  clean  the  crap  off  her  harm  and  then  change  the  baby's  diaper,  while  she  carefully  ignored  their  crying  daughter  for  the  moment.

As  all  of  this  was  going  on,   the  Asian  men  kept  talking  and  drinking  booze  in  the  air  conditioned  living  room.  I  thought,  "What  the  Hell!  The  father  of  the  baby  isn't  even  helping!"

Just  then,  the  grocery  bag  became  unbalanced  and  fell  to  the  floor  with  a  crash.    All  could  hear  jars  of  something  shatter  inside.  As  liquid  oozed  out  of  the  bag,  the  host   screamed  in  Vietnamese  at  the  wife  --  probably,  "You  stupid  woman !  Get  rid  of  that  smelly  baby  and  clean  the  grocery  mess  off  the  floor !  Now !"  --  but  continued  socializing  and  drinking  alcohol.

I  couldn't  stand  it  any  more.     I  got  out  of  my  chair,  stood  up,  and  yelled  to  the  wife,  who  I  will  just  call  "Thi,"  here,  the  Vietnamese  language  equivalent  of  "Ms.,"   "THI !    HELLO !    YOU  LOOK  LIKE  YOU  NEED  SOME  HELP !  YOU  GO  INTO  THE  BACK,  CHANGE  AND  TAKE  A  NICE  COOL  SHOWER !   I  WILL  TAKE  CARE  OF  YOUR  LITTLE  DAUGHTER'S  PROBLEM,  WHATEVER  IT  IS !   YOUR  HUSBAND  WILL  CLEAN  UP  THE  MESS  ON  THE  FLOOR !    THE  FATHER  OF  THE  BABY  WILL  CHANGE  HIS  OWN  BABY'S  DIAPER !   AND  THE  OTHER  MEN  WILL  STOP  TALKING  AND  DRINKING  ALCOHOL,   AND  GRATEFULLY  BRING  IN  THE  GROCERIES !  AFTER  YOU  SHOWER  AND  CHANGE,   YOU  CAN  COME  INTO  THE  AIR  CONDITIONED  LIVING  ROOM,  HERE,  AND  SIT  IN  MY  SEAT,  AND  ENJOY  AN  ALCOHOLIC  BEVERAGE  ON  THE  ROCKS !"

All  fell  quiet.    I  did  not  realize  that  my  announcement  was  upsetting  and  embarrassing  in  the  eyes  of  everyone  there,  including  the  thoroughly-socialized  wife.  Finally,  the  wife  said,  "Mr.  Peter,  I  know  what  you  are  trying  to  do,  but  it  will  do  no  good."

The  Asian  men  all  took  her  words  to  be  an  indication  of  her  immediate  surrender  to  her  fate  as  an  Asian  woman.    They  forgave  me  for  being  stupid,    and  went  back  to  talking,  laughing  and  drinking  alcohol.   I  felt  uncomfortable  with  the  idea  of  thoroughly  embarrassing  the  host  by  helping  the  wife  while  everyone  else  sat  on  their  a - - - -  drinking  booze  --  it  would  have  amounted  to  a  declaration  of  war  between  families  --   so,  I  stayed  with  the  men.  The  incident  ruined  my  day,  and  I  returned  home  head  filled  with  shame.


Now  for  the  thing  that  motivated  me  to  write  this  article:

A  friend  --  my  computer  guy  --  told  me  about  the  BBC  piece,  "India's  Daughter."    It's  about  how  a  young  lady  in   India  went  on  a  casual  date  with  a  young  male  friend.    They  saw  the  movie,  "The  Life  of  Pi."    On  the  way  back  home,  on  a  bus  at  around  8:00  p.m.,   a  17  year  old  boy  and  4  men  and  the  male  bus  driver  beat  the  boy  over  the  head  with  "an  iron  bar"   --  rebar ?  --  and  grabbed  the  girl  and  stripped  her  and  gang  raped  her  repeatedly  as  they  bit  her  repeatedly.     As  she  fought  back,    they  shoved  the  iron  bar  up  her  vagina,    cutting  into  her  visceral  organs,  and  yanked  it  out  with  such  ferocity  that  they  dragged  her  small  intestines  with  it.    They  pulled  out  her  intestines  until  no  more  would  come   --  "To  teach  her  a  lesson !"  they  pleaded.

Then  they  threw  the  bodies  of  the  raped  girl,  trailing  her  internal  organs,  and  of  her  male  friend,  naked  into  the  streets.

"She  shouldn't  have  been  out  so  late !,"  the  rapists'  attorneys  pleaded.  "Her  family  should  have  been  with  her !    She  should  have  been  smart  enough  to  not  fight  back !    It  takes two  hands  to  clap !   Rape  is  mostly  the  girl's  fault !"

She  died.


That's  southeast  Asia.

Did the Nazis Achieve TIME TRAVEL ???!!!

It  is  the  great  fault  of  the  human  condition,  but  especially  of  our  age  --  I  think  because  we  believe  too  much  in  ourselves,  fragile  though  we  be  --   that  our  imaginations  are  too  dull  to  envision  the  possibility  of  departures  from  the  norm.

There  is  a  teeny  tiny  bit  of  evidence  that  the  morally-repulsive  Nazis  did  something  completely  amazing  in  the  scientific  realm   during  World  War  II  --  and  that  is  build  a  time  machine !!!

Late  last  year,   I  mentioned  a  book  in  one  of  my  posts,  The  SS  Brotherhood  of  the  Bell,  by  Joseph  P.  Farrell.

The  theory  of  relevant  portions  of  this  very  intriguing  but  hard-to-read  book  is  that  mercury  antimony  oxide  --  the  famous  "red  mercury"  --  is  quite  real,   and  that  if  ignited  it  burns  so  hot  that  it  can  be  substituted-in  for  a  nuclear  blast  as  the  trigger  in  a  thermonuclear  device  needing  heat  to   combine  tritium  and  deuterium.    (The  ability  of  red  mercury  to  generate  so  much  heat   makes  it  an  extremely  dangerous  conventional  explosive  when  applied  to  that  purpose,  so  that  Mossad  had  to  assassinate  the  makers  of  red  mercury  in  South  Africa  when  they  began  to  market  the  substance  with  irresponsible  freedom  after  the  apartheid  government  of  South  Africa  fell.)

Supposedly,  the  other  major  use  of  red  mercury  is  in  rotating  tanks  critical  to  the  successful  operation  of  a  machine  developed  by  the  Nazis  to  achieve  time  travel.  The  Nazi  machine  is  called  "die  Glocke,"  "The  Bell,"  because  of  its  shape ...

  

According  to various  authors  on  the  subject,  as  the  Third  Reich  collapsed,   SS  General  Hans  Kammler   had   the  scientists  on  the  Die  Glocke  project  murdered,  to  protect  the  secret  of  the  device,   had  the  device  flown  to  a  port  still  in  control  of  the  Nazi's,  and  then  had  it  carried  by   a  very  advanced  submarine  to  South  America,  perhaps  Argentina,  where  Kammler  used  it  as  a  bargaining  chip  for  his  freedom.

Either  it  was  given  to  black-ops  type  personnel  in  the  American  government  right  after  the  war,  or  Kammler  escaped  in  it  --  perhaps  into  the  future !!!

Either  as  a  test  run,  or  as  a  result  of  Kammler's  escape  attempt,   the  device  was  flown through  time  into  the  future,    where  it  came  crashing  down   into  the  woods   in  Kecksburg,  Pennsylvania,  almost  20  years  later,  in  1965 !!!

Before  I  talk  about  what  happened  in  Kecksburg,   I  have  to  get  into  something  else  discussed  by  Farrell.    Hitler's  intelligence  services  successfully  penetrated  the  Soviet  government  during  World  War  II,  making  German  intelligence  incredibly  useful  to  the  United  States.   So,  in  addition  to  Operation  Paperclip,  in  which  we  absorbed  Nazi  scientists  into  America's  space  race  effort,   we  supposedly   absorbed  wholesale  the  entire  Nazi  Eastern  block  intelligence  operation  into  America's  main  intelligence  service,  so  that,  suddenly,  because  the  Cold  War  followed  Word  War  II,  as  this  combination  of  American  intelligence  officers  and  Nazi  intelligence  officers  formed  into  the  CIA,    the  Nazis  oddly  and  ironically  found  themselves  in  charge  of  the  CIA !!!

Supposedly,   because  President  John  F.  Kennedy  expressed  a  determination  to  completely  disembowel   the  CIA,  perhaps  because  he  knew  more  about  the  Nazi  end  of  the  operation  than  anyone  was  willing  to  publicly  speculate  at  the  time,  the  CIA  decided  that  he  had  to  go.     So,   alerted  by  LBJ   that  Kennedy  would  be  going  to  Dallas  in  1963,   the  CIA  positioned  several  sharpshooters  near  Dealey  Plaza,  off  the  Kennedy  motorcade  route,  so  that  the  Secret  Service  could  not  clear  the  route  as  "safe"  in  advance,    positioned  Oswald  as  the  patsy  in  the  book  depository,   and  then  stage  a  traffic  tie-up  to  force  the  motorcade  to  go  through  Dealey  Plaza,  where  the  CIA  sharpshooters  blew  out  Kennedy's  brains,   and  then  blamed  everything  on  Oswald.  Interestingly,  Farrell  says  that  "umbrella  man"  on  Dealey  Plaza  who  signalled  the  sharpshooters  with  his  umbrella  that  the  motorcade  was  coming  was  none  other  than  former-Nazi-stooge-Prime-Minister-of-Hungary-turned-CIA-operative  Ferenc  Nagy,  someone  I  studied  briefly  in  one  of  my  Poli  Sci  courses  at  St.  Joseph's  University !!!

Back  to  Kecksburg,  Pennsylvania ...

Because  the  arrival  of  the  device  in  Kecksburg  was  so  violent  and  fiery   --  hundreds  of  Kecksburg  residents  saw  the  thing  descending  out  of  the  sky  in  a  fiery  trail,    turn,  and  then  crash  through  the  trees  into  the  woods  in  Kecksburg  --  more  than  a  hundred  people  in  Kecksburg  went  rushing  down  to  the  woods  to  see  what  was  up,  in   a   scenario   oddly  reminiscent  of  Orson  Welles'  1938  "War  of  the  Worlds"  radio  drama.

The  people  of  Kecksburg  looked  at  the  device  laying  sideways  in  the  bushes.

As  they  waited  for  "the  authorities"  to  show  up,  John  Murphy,  a  reporter   for  a  Kecksburg  radio  station,  took  photographs  of  Die  Glocke  and  took  careful  notes.

"The  authorities"  arrived  --  ostensibly,   the  Nazis  in  the  CIA  and  their  super-secretive  personnel  --  and  carted  their  super-secret  "property"  away,  and  then  denied  everything.

Offended  at  official  denials,  John  Murphy  began  pulling  together  his  material  for  a  special  presentation  on  the  object.     Just  before  broadcast,    Murphy  was  "visited,"  his  photos  and  other  materials  seized,  and  his  life  threatened.

Murphy  "wimped-out,"  and  supplanted  his  much  anticipated  broadcast  with  nonsense.

Ashamed,  a  few  years  later,    Murphy  had  a  change  of  heart,  and  began  to  pull  together  a  replacement  broadcast.

Lo  and  behold,  as  though  his  lines  were  ongoingly  illegally  tapped,   Murphy  was  killed  by  a  hit-and-run  before  his  new  program  could  be  broadcast.

So,  that's  the  story,  as  far  as  I  know  it  at  this  time.  Except  for  one  thing ...

Offended  at  the  government's  nonsensical  denials  about  the  Kecksburg  incident,   some  worthy  soul  paid  for  the  erection  of  a  monument  exhibiting  the  vehicle's  appearance  as  reported  by  witnesses.   The  monument  is  shown  below.   The  writing  around  the  bottom  would  be  some  kind  of  Nazi  occult  invocation  --  In  Sanskrit ?  In  Nordic  Futhark ?  Who  knows? ...