Thursday, March 12, 2026

FROM STEPHEN COUGHLIN: The French Revolution and the Decapitation of the Carmelites July 17, 1794.

The French Revolution and the Decapitation of the Carmelites July 17, 1794.

Sixteen Carmelite nuns from the Compiègne convent were accused and tried, without due legal process, of religious fanaticism and conspiracy against the Republic. When they were arrested, they made a vow of martyrdom, swearing to sacrifice themselves with joy, in the name of God, so that the madness of the Revolution might cease. The nuns were placed in carts, and the revolutionaries in the square cheered with the arrival of each one. But when they realized they were religious sisters, the crowd began to fall silent until an absolute silence was established. The revolutionaries hired women to “rouse” the others to shout and celebrate the deaths at the guillotine, but even they fell silent. The only sound heard in the square was that of the sisters singing *Veni Creator Spiritus*.

Watching this I can smell the incense.

In their executions, they were the only ones, among all the condemned, to walk upright, without needing to be dragged from their mobile cells. Mother Teresa of Saint Augustine, the eldest of them all, asked the executioner to leave her for last, so that she could thus give her final counsel to her flock. The people could not believe what they were seeing. Then a voice arose from the midst of the crowd, crying out:

“Si ces femmes ne vont pas tout droit au paradis, alors il n’y a pas de paradis.”

“If these women do not go straight to paradise, then there is no paradise.”

They were angels, as the eyewitnesses described them. The Carmelites wore a serene smile on their faces at the moment of meeting death, and the silence in the square only grew. The eldest Mother needed the executioners’ help to climb the steps. They were weeping, and she said to them,

My friends, I forgive you with all my heart, just as I desire God to forgive me.

The last guillotined silenced the angelic song of the Mother, and the square remained in profound silence.

The Fruits of Martyrdom
Ten days later, with the fall of Robespierre, the Reign of Terror came to an end.

Long live Christ the King.

Many records were found of the impact they had on those who witnessed the faith of these martyrs as they refused to deny Christ. Some returned to the practice of the Church, others became religious, and some fled the revolutionary madness.

IMMORAL LEADERSHIP IN CAILFORNIA WOULD NEVER DO THIS FOR CITIZEN; HOWEVER, IF YOU'RE AN IMMIGRANT, GIVE US A CALL

ROD D. MARTIN: Beijing's Ethnic Cleansing Plan

Wait, so before people eat, they take a picture of the food and show strangers? And the strangers like and comment on it?

APPLE LAMPS: Three Independence-class Littoral Combat Ships . . .Canberra, Santa Barbara, and Tulsa . . . all three already deployed to U.S. 5th Fleet, all three operating in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf right now,

Apple Lamps responding to Malcolm Nance,

Everything you said about the current state of the Navy's mine countermeasures capability is wrong. Not a little wrong. Completely, embarrassingly, dangerously wrong.... "The four ships we had dedicated to doing this we just decommissioned." The Avengers in Bahrain... Devastator, Dextrous, Gladiator, Sentry. Wooden-hulled ships from the 1980s. Ships that were pushing 40 years old. You know what replaced them? Three Independence-class Littoral Combat Ships... Canberra, Santa Barbara, and Tulsa…
all three already deployed to U.S. 5th Fleet, all three operating in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf right now, today, as you wrote this little rant. Not in San Diego. Not in drydock. In theater. Carrying the most advanced mine countermeasures mission package the Navy has ever fielded. USS Canberra arrived in Bahrain in May 2025 as the first LCS with a full MCM mission package. USS Santa Barbara is in the Arabian Gulf conducting mine countermeasures operations with unmanned surface vehicles… and, by the way, just made naval history by executing the first-ever at-sea launch of a LUCAS one-way attack drone from a littoral combat ship under Task Force 59. USS Tulsa is right there alongside them. Three ships. In the Gulf. Doing the mission. While you say the Navy "is absolutely not ready for this." These are fundamentally different platforms. Autonomous mine-hunting sonar… the AN/AQS-20C… towed by unmanned surface vehicles so sailors stay outside the minefield. Airborne laser mine detection systems on MH-60 helicopters. Unmanned influence sweep systems for acoustic and magnetic minesweeping. The old Avengers sent sailors INTO the minefield on wooden boats. The new systems keep them OUT of the minefield using robots... something you call a "downgrade" And while Santa Barbara hunts mines, she's operating under armed overwatch from A-10C Warthogs out of Jordan… loaded with JDAMs, laser-guided APKWS rockets, and enough firepower to shred any fast boat or drone swarm the Islamic Regime throws at them. The Avengers never had anything like that. "We lost all of our corporate knowledge." Really? The Navy spent a decade building, testing, qualifying, and deploying an entirely new mine warfare architecture specifically to preserve and advance that knowledge. They trained new crews. They ran operational tests on Cincinnati. They deployed the first operational package on Canberra. The Navy's mine countermeasures technical division ran this transition for years with deliberate overlap between old and new platforms. You lose corporate knowledge when you do nothing. The Navy did the opposite of nothing. "Now we're running an experiment and it's gonna cost people their lives." Three combat ships, forward deployed in the most contested waters on earth, running mine countermeasures with unmanned systems, protected by close air support, integrated with Task Force 59's autonomous warfare network. That's the most capable mine warfare force the United States has put in the Persian Gulf since 1991.

Yelling "amateur hour" at people while getting the basic facts of the Navy's current force posture completely, demonstrably wrong… while three ships are literally in the water doing the job he says nobody can do… that IS amateur hour.