Raul Castro is so impressed with Pope Newleaf that he wants to go back to church. I’m advised this might be a sign of multi-infarct dementia. The silly Castro is probably also losing his olfactory sense, unable to detect the smell of sulfur on the pontiff, and his eyesight, mistaking the Vatican for an agency of social equity. Said Castro: “if the pope continues this way, I will go back to praying and go back to the church, and I’m not joking … I am from the Cuban Communist Party, that doesn’t allow believers, but now we are allowing it, it’s an important step.” Important step to what?! Capitalism and servitude? The Catholic church was a tool of Cuba’s murderous dictator Fulgencia Batista, and vice versa! La Revolución Sigue old man.
Tag Archives: Vatican
Nazi Pope misjudged, resigns instead of ending life in a bunker with cyanide
Pope Ratzinger is stepping down, it’s not an admission of guilt, more like a plea of no contest to the avaricious, woman-phobic, pedophilic neo-religious order’s continued depravity. He’s leaving office to spend more time with his health, an honorable act to be applauded actually, an example for future Ronald Reagans and George W. Drunkards. Pope Benedict, his official title, was the Vatican’s first Nazi pope, having begun his career in uniform as a Hitler Youth, but he kept with the Catholic Church’s long tradition of Fascism.
Tea Partying with the Freak Brothers
Whew! These Occupy posts are far more difficult to pry from myself than their predecessors; the hands-on mechanics of putting the earlier stuff into practice in the present world, amongst the isolated pools of individuated consciousness we humans represent, each with his or her own vision of the whole, has been at the very least disorienting. I’ve lately revived an old motto i swiped from the good people at Oat Willie’s down in Austin, Texas: Onward Through the Fog! How odd is it that i’ve recently connected with some folks that hark back to that place in ways that are deeply surreal. Oat Willie’s and Fat Freddie will seem to be completely out of place in this bit, in which i mean to address the notion of cooperation amongst disparate factions, but not permanently i hope. By the end of this post, i hope to connect Occupy, The Tea Party, disparate passions, and yes, Hippies. It will be necessary to engage in some relatively surreal thinking.
Last night on a new Facebook page, “UNITE: OCCUPY,” (cap lock and all), i got into a conversation about this stuff started by a guy that asked whether anyone thought a joint event between Occupiers and Tea Partiers might be possible. Sure, i said, our Colorado Springs group had lots of Tea Partiers among its earliest enthusiasts, and although many have pulled away, there still exists a close association with many that veer sharply toward the Te Party camp, especially among Ron Paul supporters. The common ground Occupy shares with the Tea Party, at least t a grass root level, is substantial. There can be no doubt of the equally substantial differences. I suspect that it would take some pretty serious ideological barnstorming to bring the two camps together, but nothing prevents the groups from at least tentative discussion to find commonalities.
Tonight our Occupy group staged a talk by Tea Party stalwart, Constitutionalist Mike Holler. Mike seemed for all appearances to be an earnest and well-versed supporter of Constitutional “fundamentalism,” if you will. He peppered his talk with lots of my favorite quotes from my favorite founding fathers. He got a little testy about the revisionist history his kids bring home from college early on–perhaps indicative of one point of separation between Occupiers and Tea Partiers. Some of those are important. Occupy is international, where the Tea Party can display degrees of jingoism. I, personally, respect the earnest efforts of our Enlightenment founders, but recognize that they were flawed, and aver that their document was dated by racist, sexist, and elitist provisions and thinking that they might be excused from by noting their temporal milieu. We don’t have the same luxury. Occupy is legitimately grass root, supported by sweat and blood more than funded, where TP is, or at least became very quickly corporately funded “astroturf,” disingenuously proffering libertarian ideals as a smoke screen for corporate license to plunder. Occupiers are in my experience far more diverse than Tea Partiers. Socialist and Anarchist Occupiers are common, as are assorted races, genders, orientations, and religious persuasions, where Tea Partiers seem to my limited observation to be relatively homogeneously white Christian capitalist patriots. Mike interjected that both groups had been misrepresented by the media, and that seems likely to be so given that mainstream media seems content to misrepresent ’bout anything they report in this country, but Fox news and the rabid right like the Tea Party so much i have to wonder if he’s fallen victim to a personal soft spot.
Mike spoke eloquently enough in his effort to simplify the Constitution, focusing on issues of freedom, and state’s rights. He said very little with which i could find disagreement. He pointed out two major points of confluence between Occupy and the Tea Party–personal liberty, and a rally-cry, “No more Bailouts!” I suspect he fastidiously avoided some points he knew or at least feared might be contentious, like for example the ludicrous assertions i’ve heard often that environmental warnings from the scientific community stem from some kind of Satanic control scheme from the–well just whom is never too clear. The Vatican or something. Commies, i guess. That just maybe the best way for Tea Partiers and Occupiers to interact, though, for now, concentrating on the common aversion to what amounts to Fascism. Interacting from that perspective could exclude much conversation. It could put the Tea Party in the same position as the Occupy movement, after their Fascist sponsors withdraw in horror. Whatever. We Occupiers got on just fine with Tea Party Mike–“Mr. Constitution.”
Mike largely expressed notions we Occupiers could embrace. I suppose he could have done a bit of research and tailored his speech toward that end, but i think we just agree; he seemed a grassroot kind of guy, to me. He briefly alluded to schisms within the Tea Party, and there’s no sensible reason to avoid acknowledging the same within Occupy. Last night’s event was attended by Occupy people that have had such extreme altercations in their attempts to wrestle a semblance of ideological unity from a stubbornly liquid platform that it could easily enough have disintegrated into bedlam. I attended with my dear friend Thomas, with whom i often disagree. In fact, he and i often disagree so strongly that sometimes i feel like smacking him in back of the head. I expect he feels the same way about me at times. Maybe much of the time. Take note, war-mongers of the world: Thomas is a great guy, and even though we disagree with one another, sometimes strongly, neither of us has smacked the other in back of the head. Get it?
So here we were last night, disparate Occupiers engaging a Tea Party mouthpiece in a room full of people that have all experienced the vagaries of human interaction under a fairly pressurized circumstance over the past few months. No butterflies fluttered around the room, but no one worked up a bickering session, either. We worked together. All of us. One could recall the old adage that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” but that would be devolution. I prefer to imagine that those with arguments present recognized the futility of scrapping amongst friends, if only below the radar of their Egos. Whether my nobler hopes for those pained souls in the room last night are valid or not, the assertions i made in these non-pages well before Occupy began remain true. The system we wrestle against is collapsing around our heads. And the solution is spiritual, to a far greater extent than it is temporal.
Fat Freddy is a comic book character that lives in Denver. Seriously. I met him a little while ago. (This only seems out of place, i promise.) Mr. Constitution Mike Holler expressed the opinion last night that our American republic, our constitutional federation of states, is in its final throes; that we are in a position where, ” it’s too late to save the country, but too early to start shooting.” Mike seemed tentative in expressing his hope that God might pull some kind of supernatural rabbit from his celestial hat to resolve our monumental national woes. I expect he feared perturbing the often non-Christian sensibilities of the Occupiers. He needn’t have worried quite so much–we may be largely skeptical of literal interpretations, but we’re pretty tolerant of that sort of thing. When i met Fat Freddy–an icon of counter-cultural activism important to me since childhood, an old-school Hippie with connection to the most famous and infamous of that crowd–he singled me out and pulled me aside to explain in some detail his expectation for a spiritual upheaval in coming days. Freddy’s taken up with the Urantia Book, a tome i’ve heard Christians disparage as devilish. I couldn’t see anything devilish about what he showed me. He earnestly explained his expectation for resolution. Soon.
We had come to Denver to talk about foreclosures and bank jiggery-pokery with another guy, and pulled up at Freddy’s house without knowing it. It just happened that way. These old Hippies like Tea Party fave, Ron Paul. (Follow along, now, i know it’s weird, and yeah, i know a lot of Occupiers don’t like Paul; i’m not sure about him myself). Also in attendance at that meeting was a woman i had been conversing with on line for quite a while in the context of Occupy. It took me nearly through the whole meeting to recognize her, because i knew her to live down in the Four Corners neighborhood of Colorado. She lives at Freddy’s now. This juxtaposition is so weird that now i’m expecting the Mad Hatter, or Lewis Carroll himself to pop up at some meeting quoting from Jabberwocky. Mike Holler holds out for resolution to the country’s woes in a traditional Christian context. My own suspicion, shared with J.B.S. Haldane, is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. But somewhere in the mix i am convinced that some divine Thing many of us think of as God is deeply interested in the little proceedings here on our little blue marble and that our interactions are subsequently and necessarily thus influenced.
We live right here. We have no choice but to manage things on a coarse, physical level; but we also live, i think, on an overlapping and less tangible plane, where we have more influence than we might ordinarily imagine. At the same time, things seem to occur herethere without our conscious direction. We’ll need to keep plugging away at things like grasping the Constitution, and taking on massive, quixotic quests like fighting banks and a world full of renegade, intransigent governments and power brokers, not to mention our own internal battles, as finely defined as within our own Souls. We’ll need to recognize the Truth in one another, even when it’s obscured by a bunch of worldly disagreement and fog. And so far as i can tell, were learning. Whatever that means.
Reprinted from hipgnosis.
All in
When i first set out to write this blog i had no intention of writing about geopolitics, or anything any bigger than my own little world, or to develop any sort of readership at all, let alone to kick up international interest. Who knew? Since the time i started, Adbuster’s Occupy movement has overtaken the whole world and i’ve become a part of it, along with apparently millions of fellow humans dissatisfied with aspects of the concentric and overlapping political systems that govern and control the minutiae of our daily lives. Occupy has struck a chord that resonates well beyond what seems to have been its original intent as well.
Adbuster asserts in its campaign web-page opener that, “we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy,” speaking, one assumes of U.S. democracy, even though Adbusters is a Canadian publication founded by Kalle Lasn, an Estonian. Adbusters itself claims to be a, “global network of culture jammers and creatives,” and that their Occupy is, “[i]nspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas.” One should note that Adbusters is a non-profit organization with aspirations and effect well beyond the confines of the magazine at its core.
Many of my dear intrepid friends struggle mightily with the unavoidable nature of the movement in which we all participate. Occupy Colorado Springs, (OCS), has garnered a fair amount of attention both because of its early acquisition of a city permit to camp on the sidewalk, and for its fragmentary infighting. Strong personalities have clashed fairly spectacularly for what scale we’re dealing with here, and precisely the same arguments are on display at Occupy web-pages all over the U.S., as well as abroad. Here, many patriotic, nationally oriented players have concentrated on addressing the U.S. Constitution and the influence of corporate interests in Washington, D.C. politics. Others have been caught up in causes of personal concern as the “focus” of the overall movement has grown more and more diffuse. The bickering and difficulty in reaching consensus has been frustrating but, i suggest, not unhealthy or out of place.
Adbusters, following ques from the Middle East and Spain, deliberately set off a “leaderless” movement, and has fastidiously avoided taking hold of any sort of control of what has developed since, refusing even media interviews for fear of exercising undue influence. Occupy remains a leaderless movement. Various groups and individuals have issued lists of demands; the one linked there, “is representative of those participating on this [particular ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Facebook] page.” We Occupiers have much common ground, which has served well to bring us all together, and will continue to serve as we gather to discuss and bicker over issues and particulars. There is plenty to differentiate amongst us as well, on individual and other categorical bases, but we have recognized, more or less, an essential humanity that has us willing to stand in freezing temperatures if we live in the northern hemisphere, and subject ourselves to the slow, often painful process of learning to live together.
Some among us, as we have seen right here in Colorado Springs, are very uncomfortable indeed with the amorphous nature of the Movement. We have seen splintering, censorship wars, general Assemblies that devolve into shouting matches, and the development of personal animosities. These phenomena are repeated on a grander scale throughout the Movement while observers gloat over the imminent dissolution of Occupy unity. Neither we Occupiers nor the Movement’s detractors ought to be misled by these birth pains. Our situation as humans, or for that matter any other creature inhabitant of the Earth has been rendered fully untenable by humans competing for dominance. The upheaval we engage from our Colorado Springs street corner, or from squares in Manchester, Belgrade, Cairo, and etc. is the natural response of rats in a corner. Were it not for the fact that we humans indeed possess reasoning capacity beyond a rat’s we really would be screwed. Fortune, or Divine providence, or evolution, or whatever mechanism or mechanisms turn(s) out to be true has granted us the tools that, utilized with empathy at every turn may–just may–allow us to work our way out of the massive pickle in which we’ve put ourselves. Nothing about this will be easy, quick, or for most, especially comfortable.
The Movement is leaderless. This is an existential fact. No matter how strenuously individuals attempt to grab hold of reigns, or to turn them over to others, there is no authority behind the Movement other than the profound spiritual authority of its essential Idea. The financial disparities that we have focused on here in the U.S. are real, and the supra-national bodies that control our government with full directive power are the same bodies that separate people from power in every nation on Earth. Each issue that has arisen into the Movement’s overall consciousness, from derivative markets, to marijuana law, to camping on public property is part and parcel of the whole thing, which itself amounts to such a gigantic, lumpen juggernaut that we have a hard time gathering our thoughts around the whole thing at once. We must.
Many U.S. citizens, including some prominent in and around OCS, have expressed insistent nationalism. Muslims and Christians around the world have pushed religions agendas. Nationalism is by no means confined to the U.S.A. Our corporate, non-personal enemy and its personal, human operators are Global already, and use these divisions to our detriment! At a Colorado College faculty panel yesterday, much ado was made of income disparities and market finagling by Wall Street financiers. We can isolate our minds all we want, but we can not eliminate the fact that Wall Street, Fleet Street, Singapore, Hong Kong, the House of Saud, whatever, whatever, are already one indivisible entity, operating in opposition to any concern for overall humanity or household priorities for any of us as inhabitants of the planet, including the natural requirements of the controllers. The Idea of competition and profit has acquired an independent life of its own and has prevented even those at the top of the unwieldy pyramid from living lives connected to the most valuable prizes of all, which we humans have recognized throughout our history and recorded in odes, songs, and literature to be transcendent of politics and possessions. The statistics cited by those college economists, and the many Occupiers that mention them in speeches and lists of demands are quite real, and Americans might note that Kurdish, Nepali, and Palestinian Occupiers, for example, skew the stats we’ve been flailing our arms about here even further, and that “First World” exploitation is a very large part of this discussion, indeed.
There can be little doubt that the “Wall Street” entities in control of our various governments have planned for and directed events toward a “New World Order” for decades, if not centuries. Lots of justifiably paranoid conspiracy watchers all over the planet have done their best to alert their fellows to this alarming and unacceptable development for as long as it has been in the mix. The Vatican, a power with negative credibility in its adherence to its own doctrine, has offered itself up as a potential controller of a global banking scheme. Currently entrenched power-brokers will absolutely without question attempt to co-opt and control the current Movement. We humans are not interested in more of the same bullshit, plus the added benefit of still more bullshit! We occupiers are fully Sovereign, each in his or her own right. We are leaderless by design, which is the natural development of the abject failure of our leaders, and in fact of the failure of the very foundation of our interaction amongst ourselves that has developed without much direction for at least the 10,000 year span during which we have written about it. Those who resist this fact will find little more than inversely correlated discomfort in their resistance. One can deny the nature of a rhinoceros till one’s dying day, but the beast remains a rhinoceros, and the denier’s last day may well come on the day he encounters a rhinoceros.
Sovereign consensus building is not democracy. It’s something we humans have never attempted on the scale we Occupiers are attempting now. Broad-scale cooperation as a foundation is against an established competitive approach that we have fallen into by default for a long, long time. Voting one another into submission will not work, simply because we have let the cat out of the bag. We noble individuals are learning a brand-new thing, like it or not, because a rhinoceros has smashed the freakin’ house down. I, for one will not abandon the Liberty of my own Sovereignty, no matter who votes what, nor will i abandon the respect i hold for each other Sovereign in the entire mix. I recognize the differences between whatever groups or persons are in the whole wide world. Categorical observations are real, so far as they go; but i won;t be bound by them. I won’t be forced to fight against the 1% simply because i am a member of the 99%. Rather i will be fighting with every fiber of my being for the 100% of us who will ALL be trampled by the rhinoceros, in pretty danged short order, unless we ALL relinquish our insistence on control, avarice, and irresponsibility of all stripes.
Each of us has a part to play, a purpose to serve. Never abandon what you know. Work hard at open discussion. Don’t be embarrassed by frustrating moments or attempt to hide your own humanity. Withdraw for a moment if you need to to prevent overboiling passions. We’re all in this together. Be patient Brothers and Sisters; this is gonna hurt some….
OWS List of Demands:
www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=157161391040462
Adbusters:
www.adbusters.org/campaigns/occupywallstreet
NPR:
www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141526467/exploring-occupy-wall-streets-adbuster-origins
Middle Eastern origins:
www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/apr/09/libya-egypt-syria-yemen-live-updates
Acampadas:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13466977
Pavlov’s hierarchy of bells
More to this.
The Pope versus Obama and the American people
‘The Vatican has vetoed three of Barack Obama’s potential nominees as US ambassador amid a growing dispute between the White House and the Roman Catholic church over the new administration’s support for abortion rights and the lifting of a ban on stem cell research.’
Full story at
Vatican vetoes Barack Obama’s nominees for US ambassador
Yes, but wouldn’t it be perfectly GRAND if the US government was to just say,
‘Catholic Church, you are not a country anyway, and we don’t send government ambassadors to churches.’ That would shut those silly ass bishops and the Pope God figure up for good, wouldn’t it?
Just who the Hell does the Pope and his Catholic church groupies think that they are anyway? The Anglican Church doesn’t have an American ambassador sitting in London or wherever that church’s HQ is located at for their leader to chat with. The Muslims don’t get an ambassador sent to Mecca or any of the other Holy Cities of their religion. There is no US government ambassador sent to Salt Lake City to hobnob with the Mormon Big Shot there. Simply to send an ambassador to the Vatican violates the separation of Church and State that is the foundation of modern democracy. It simply privileges one religion over others and the Catholics do not deserve this extra privilege at all!
Obama, just tell the Pope that you’ll send them Nobody as the US ambassador to the Vatican. And start taxing all that Catholic Church property, too. OH? And start applying the law to its fullest extent to those in the Catholic Church that have covered up sex crimes within the Catholic Church. Time for the special treatment for this church to come to an end. Time for them to end their interference in politics and stick to talking about God, instead of always trying to push their religion off onto others.
Bishop Williamson must RECANT says Pope
At the behest of the Vatican, Bishop Richard Williamson apologized for offense caused by his statements regarding WWII historical records of the Nazi concentration camps. But Pope Benedict weighed the bishop’s statement as insufficient. Now he’s demanding a full retraction before he will reconsider the latter’s excommunication. Being urged to recant may be a scandal in papal circles, but history buffs and cineasts have only ever seen truth-clinging heretics assailed with cries to “RECANT!”
Google it yourself. Oddly this development puts Bishop Williamson in esteemed scientific and theological company. But this is just historical revisionism. Especially aimed against closely held popular beliefs, revisiting the official version of the Holocaust is like backing a losing horse still too early after the “fact.” However, has blasphemy ever met with other than an officially disgusted welcome? Certainly the challenging argument only compounds its offense by deeming to compare itself to earlier, now orthodox, heresy.
One might well wonder where this episode is leading. Has the Pope been oblivious to the Holocaust issue, as his spokesmen would have us believe, or is the German pontiff deviously reopening the official discussion?
As with any reform, leaders may be receptive, but know in the meanwhile that their subjects are the hardest to win over. The brunt of resistance is thus diverted toward the heretic, until the case is made. Only in the movies do champions of the status quo look unbecoming in defeat. In the real world the holdouts are populist champions representing the overwhelming majority of adherents.
Bishop Richard Williamson’s public statements have caused great offense, and the Pope’s recent move to make peace with the renegade Williamson, among others, has reignited the fury of the Bishop’s critics. But of what import do non-Catholic opinions have on the subject of how the Vatican administrates its ranks? Surely a bishop’s personal, non-religious views, soon return to obscurity.
By throwing the ball back in the Bishop’s court, Pope Benedict unquestionably directs the media spotlight back on the “question” of the Holocaust. It’s hard to imagine that he expects anything other than a firm committed stand by the bishop. What are men of faith but what they believe?
At stake is more than the rehabilitation of Bishop Williamson, but the soul of modern Germany. A re-characterization of the Nazi death camps would mean reassessing the collective guilt of Europe’s non-Jews. It might also mean a reprieve for the German People whose national identity for generations has been defined by their participation in the most unspeakable of evils.
I’m not sure why the Pope’s having once been a Hitler Youth is always dismissed out of hand. Although perhaps, for the sake of argument, that’s as it should.
The Vatican might also gain something themselves by bringing more light to critical analysis of the Holocaust. They could be seeking a possible mitigation of their infamous role in the Nazi genocide. There’s no escaping the evidence that the Catholic church collaborated with Hitler. If they can paint his “Final Solution” as less homicidal, their actions can perhaps be adjudged as more pragmatic.
Catholic Church ‘imprudence’
Holocaust- denying bishop expresses regret and sends letter to Vatican saying his remarks were ‘imprudent’ There is only one thing to do with these imprudent Catholics and that is to take them out! After all, Iran’s Ahmadinejad does not head up a religion that helped kill 6,000,000 Jews and countless others that were not Jewish in their concentration camps. But the Pope does! Many of the WW2 fascists were Catholics and the Catholic Church supported the Fascist Movement of that time, including the current Pope. They did it once and they certainly might do it again!
So it’s time for the Jewish State to deal with those who committed the Holocaust, and are now denying that there even was much of a Holocaust against the Jews. This church, the Catholic, also harbors large numbers of pedophiles within it and enables them to prey on small children. Surely it is the job of the Israeli Jewish State to selectively attack the Holocaust deniers in places like Rome and elsewhere they inhabit? A few kids here and there might be mistakenly injured but that often happens in noble causes!
But wait? There is one big problem, is there not? The Catholics still have a lot of fire power coming from God. Sure, they haven’t too many combat divisions, but the Catholic Church certainly has more power than say?… the landless Palestinian refugees do! Maybe the Jewish State would get beat, even with all its DIME weaponry and White phosphorus, which they use in purely a legal manner I have been assured, over and over and over again.
So even if the Catholic Church was responsible for an ACTUAL Holocaust (no-no-no!!!! Adolph did that, Tony!), the Jewish State shall just live alongside in peace with the Pope and his friends? And I thought that they were tough guys, didn’t you? I thought that they had inherited the spirit of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance?
Maybe I was wrong? Oh, well… but it sure would be nice if the Holocaust committing Catholic Church was driven into the Mediterranean Sea but for good. Some genocides are better than others IMO. Plus, that now Vatican property could make some nice Jewish Holocaust survivor a nice and safe place to live peacefully and with love.
Obama outed himself as a bigot when he crawled into bed with Rick Warren
Just like Clinton, Obama won’t hesitate to throw gays to the dogs if he thinks it will buy him a single vote from the rabid right. I told you he wasn’t to be trusted. And just as we saw with Prop 8, most of the black community only wants equal rights for themselves, not anybody else.
Say it out loud: Barack Obama is a coward.
Of course, Obama openly declared his bigotry against gays before the election, declaring they did not deserve equal rights in marriage. So this really shouldn’t surprise anyone that he would flip off the gay community like this. “Change we can believe in,” my ass.
During the campaign, I had so many arguments with his supporters, who insisted that he was the miracle that would make everything right with America. When confronted with the reality of his positions (as on gays) they would insist that was only to get elected, but, “just you watch,” once he was, then we would see the “real Obama.” Well, Ladies and Germs, the election is over, and there it is: the REAL Obama — flipping the bird to his supporters.
Only a moron would think his hiring every right winger he can find somehow doesn’t mean his is going to be a right wing administration.
What, am I the only one who realized what being a Chicago politician meant? It means he’s an asshole who can’t be trusted. But now I suspect a lot of his supporters are beginning to realize that. Though there will always be those who will defend him, no matter what — just like those Republicans who constantly made excuses for Dubya, or those born-again Christians who spend their entire lives dreaming up excuses for their “god.” People are pathetically stupid.
Disgraced: 66 nations in the UN have backed a resolution decriminalizing homosexuality.
Big hold outs: the USA, Russia, China, and the Vatican.
The nations that are more progressive than this dying backwater: Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guinea-Bissau, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Montenegro, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, United Kingdom, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Dec 29 notes, thomasmc.com.
Unholy Alliance at United Nations fails to stop call to end criminalization of the world Gay community
What a motley and sorry crew! The US government, all the homophobic Muslim states, and The pontificating Vatican all tried to stop the United Nations this Thursday from passing a resolution urging the world to stop criminalizing the Gay community. One cannot really expect a government like the US one that is deeply mired in the use of torture worldwide to recognize human rights issues of any kind, and the Bush Administration didn’t fail to fall short. No word yet from BO, but don’t hold your breath now….
France led this effort which the entire European Community supported, and now it is official. The UN has put its paper word against the continued legal and police abuse of the world Gay community. Other nations, like the US, fell way short.
Cuba was one nation that did support the resolution though, as did most other Latin American countries. See On the UN General Assembly’s Historic Vote for LGBT Rights for more of the almost totally hidden away US coverage of this historic vote.
Filthy Rich Win Class War!
Treasonous Congress Pays Off Wall St. Pirates! That loud sucking sound you hear is your future going down the toilet.
The $1T bailout gift to Wall St. was just the first installment. I bet they make least one more trillion dollar extortion demand before the inauguration in January. And they won’t stop until the country is bankrupt, and 99% of the wealth is held by the richest 1% of the population. If Americans had any sense, they would burn DC & Wall St. to the ground by morning.
Nazi cops in Denver gloating about ignoring the Constitution during DNC.
False Prophet Pat Robertson predicts USA will be hit by a nuclear strike after election. Though it probably wouldn’t do as much damage as Congress did this morning.
Is Bill O’Reilly a dysfunctional moron? Does the Pope shit in the Vatican?
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Oct 3rd notes, thomasmc.com.
Half of all Americans have below average intelligence
Abuse of power. More information arises about Palin’s persecution of her sister’s ex-husband.
Will Sarah Palin have Anne Kilkenney killed?
Sarah Palin (Armageddon Party) thinks we should invade Russia.
Sarah Palin (Delusion Party) says Iraq attacked us on 9/11.
Palin lied about her never saying global warming isn’t caused by human activity. She challenged Gibson to prove she had, so he did.
Religion is evil incarnate. Vatican issues fatwah against satirist who joked about the bigot Pope.
Religious Reich is spitting fire and brimstone because McCain and Palin didn’t obey their summons to appear.
The latest Christian videogame: commit genocide on Muslims, in Jesus name!
Oh, fuck.
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Sept 12 notes, thomasmc.com.
Pope offended by frog
The Holy Cross Frog. See that cross on his back? Maybe it inspired the art you will read about below?
Pity The Pope. Just when he manages to snuff the idea of a beauty contest for nuns that one of his priests was hoping to get going, along comes The Frog. What next? Catholics Protest Frog Please don’t enter the museum if you are Catholic!
‘Independence’ for Kosovo and now ‘independence’ for Abkhazia and South Ossetia?
US officials huff and puff but cannot blow the Russian house down? They already did that by making Kosovo an ‘independent’ country, did they not? Now it is the Russian turn to do into the US as was done unto them.
We may well be on the way to seeing an ‘independent’ Abkhazia and an ‘independent’ South Ossetia being born. Both Russia and the US are now prepared to use smaller nationalities against bigger ones so it’s ‘independence’ time these days! The US and Russia learned to play this game from European colonial imperialism, and talk about ‘self-determination’ gone wild! The Vatican could well become one of the world’s medium size ‘countries’ if this ‘independence’ thing gets going good!
That’s what makes the title to this reportage by the BBC most comical! US warns Russia of lasting impact Wasn’t it the other way around when Putin told the US government that by making Kosovo ‘independent’ from Yugoslavia, that it had opened Pandora’s Box? Check out the map seen at the end of this article of the made-in-USA borders of Georgia. That’s about to change.
Plus notice where the Georgian city of Gori is located? It is located right next to the capital of the now destroyed South Ossetian capital. The US government is complaining because Gori got pounded by Russian forces, but where do we think the Georgian forces that moved into South Ossetia came from? It was from Gori. The Russian attack on Gori was payback for what the city did to their South Ossetian neighbor populated mainly with non-Georgians. The giants play with the Lilliputians, but the Lilliputians also like to bash each other.
Christ the Redeemer of the Andes
In the early part of the 20th century, Argentina and Chile were engaged in an ongoing border dispute. Inspired by Pope Leo XIII’s calls for worldwide peace and harmony, the Bishop of Cuyo commissioned a statue of Christ the Redeemer to remind believers of Christ’s message of peace. As the countries drew closer to armed conflict, plans were made to ship the statue from Buenos Aires to the Andes as a symbol of peace between the two nations.
The statue stands at the border of Argentina and Chile, at 12,572 feet, on the Bermijo Pass. This is the location where General José de San Martín and his army of 4,000 crossed the Andes in 1817 in their quest to liberate Chile from Spanish rule. Needless to say, it is sacred ground to the many South Americans who consider San Martín to be their Libertador.
In 1902, a peaceful resolution to the dispute was reached. Two years later, 3,000 Chileans and Argentinians climbed to the summit together to see the statue unveiled. One of the plaques beneath the statue reads:
Sooner shall these mountain crags crumble to dust than Chile and Argentina shall go to war again with each other.
The countries came to the brink of war in Beagle Conflict but, at Pope John Paul II’s urging, signed a Vatican-mediated compromise in 1984.
I guess Christ the Talisman is working!
In praise of Pope Benedict and his boys
The Vatican has updated the list of the seven deadly sins! We are no longer to be concerned only with gluttony, lust, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. As if these weren’t more than enough! Oh, woe is I.
The new cardinal sins (those that require absolution from a priest to be forgiven — otherwise you’re lookin’ at a stint in Purgatory) are pollution, mind-damaging drug use, and genetic experimentation. Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, also made mention of the ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots. “The poor are always becoming poorer and the rich ever more rich, feeding unsustainable social injustice….If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has a weight, a resonance, that’s especially social, rather than individual.”
The church seems to be walking the walk here, at least where the Earth’s fate is concerned. During Pope Benedict’s papacy, Vatican engineers have developed plans for some Holy See buildings to use solar energy, including photovoltaic cells on the roof of the auditorium for pilgrims’ audiences with the pontiff.
As for fighting social injustice, one needs only visit the Vatican to sense that perhaps the church has a way to go on this one. I’ve heard suggestions in the past that the church sell some of its astounding collection of artwork to help the poor. The reply is that the art should be considered public wealth, equally available for all to see. A reasonable argument, especially if one has the resources to make it to the Vatican.
As for the billions in real estate owned by the church, reference is usually made to Jesus’ obvious love for the temple in Jerusalem as justification. The big beautiful churches, after all, were not built at great monetary cost, but through the dedication of thousands of laborers and through the prayers of the faithful. Again, a reasonable position. The Vatican, the artwork, and the great churches of Europe are part of human history and probably shouldn’t be sold off to collectors and developers for fast cash.
It’s not often that I find myself in agreement with the Catholic church. But I have to say, I think they are on the right track here.
Pope Nazi Rat beatifies 500 of Franco’s Spanish fascist clergy
It always seems incredible to me that Americans are mainly totally unaware of how the Catholic Church was a bedrock of support for the WW2 Nazis and fascists of all stripes. They still are. Vatican honors Spanish war dead but only the fascist backing clergy!
Why not theaten Mecca with bombing runs?
Tommy Tancredo is at it again! He has a sure way to winning the hearts and minds of Muslims…. why not threaten to bomb their Holy sites? What a genius the guy is, and he sure does Colorado proud. I wonder, too, if he has a plan for what to do when the Vatican City is attacked shortly afterwards? Probably it will be to jackhammer the Ka’bah into pieces and fragments in order to ensure a lasting peace? Free Bibles for everyone!
John Paul Second, the sequel…
Catch the Easter Morning Mass ? I bet the NeoCons are real sad about this… hee hee hee…
They have been anxiously awaiting a Casus Belli and Jus ad Bellum from him, something that they never got from JP2.
Without those 2 pronouncements, basically which would make it not a sin for a Catholic to kill somebody in a war, Catholic soldiers would have to go to confession every time they do.
You know, when Hannity was babbling about Ratzinger having effectively stopped a “Marxist takeover” of the Vatican, by writing a pastoral letter denouncing Liberation Theology, he was pronouncing “a death knell for Liberalism in the Catholic Church” and all the NeoCon pundits were howling for joy because they thought (or at least said, sometimes they say things they don’t really mean in their heart of hearts) that a “Conservative” pope had been elected.
In a case of long term memory kicking in, they were crowing the same way when JP2 got elected… because JP2 was opposed to the Soviet Bloc.
Also, Liberation Theology is the way the Catholic Church justifies the existence of the United States as a Legitimate Government…
Guess there is no joy in Mudville tonight, or Crawford either.
This makes Ratzinger’s second Urbi et Orbis Easter Mass, and he shows no sign of being a “tame” Pope.
_________________
Last night, I stayed up all night wondering where the Sun had gone….
and then, suddenly, it dawned on me…
Giving Catholicism its due
I might never have imagined myself saying this, being somewhat agnostic in my practices, certainly atheist in my personal dialogs.
I had a Catholic upbringing, even some years at Catholic schools. I’ve railed against the dogma of organized religion, the counter-intuitive belief system that seemed always to oppose scientific philosophy.
I’ve felt victimized by the guilty self-restraint which tempers a Catholic’s view of pleasure. Sex for example seemed all the more exciting for what it shouldn’t be, as opposed to what it is. The vague admonition that a person should choose a mate within their faith took on real meaning for me when I discovered myself drawn to similarly prudish partners, Catholic.
Dirty laundry aside, in the civic and philanthropic realm, I am encountering a great number of Catholics, disproportionate to the other more predominant American religions. Why is this?
It’s true that many of these Catholics are no longer practicing, in fact many are rebelling still against their upbringing. In the do-gooder crowd this seems especially true.
From a humanist perspective it is hard not to condemn the Vatican’s stand against prophylactics and its resultant impact upon AIDs ravaged Africa. It’s hard also to regard the church’s patriarchal edicts as anything other than stubborn sexist recalcitrance. In fact when independent-minded people gather to rail against what are felt to be oppressive religious forces, they are most usually recovering Catholics.
Maybe we should give Catholicism its due. The Catholic Church may have launched countless lives into trajectories of self-doubt, but it implanted those lives with a spiritual center. Those brains formed themselves around spiritual ideas which, even if it rejected them, knew that some spiritual idea or other should reside there.
That’s my radical, none to complicated developmental theory.
I hit upon this topic when I read today about Cindy Sheehan having been a Catholic youth minister. Are there quite a few Catholics in the anti-war movement? There certainly are. Would the number seem disproportionate? Frankly, yes. In Colorado Springs, bastion of fundamentalist protestantism, the anti-war community is driven by a majority of Catholic or former Catholic activists.
Why is that? Catholicism can’t lay claim to being more spiritual or more ethical than any other religion. Where are the Protestant voices among the protesters? We need to wake the dormant consciences of that majority of American churchgoers.
Whatever the spiritual practices to which we now cling, ex-Catholics should be thankful for the awakened sense of humanity with which we were imparted.