Catholic World News has announced the publication of a new book by the current Roman Catholic pope. In The Infancy Narratives, Benedict "dwells on the details of the Nativity story, including the poverty into which Jesus is born and the homage offered first by lowly shepherds, in a sign of God's special care for the poor."
I am not sure why "shepherds" have to be "lowly," except from the condescending perspective of the rich. And if God has a "special care for the poor," nobody in the Vatican has paid any attention to it for about the last eighteen centuries--since the Catholic Church got rich.
The Catholic Church is the richest corporation on earth. Its current CEO sits atop a large mountain of gold, an art collection which if sold would feed all the starving poor in the world for the next twenty years, and real estate worth more than the combined national budgets of all the member states of the United Nations.
If God has a "special care for the poor," the Catholic Church and God have very different values. And if God is going to judge us humans when this world comes to an end, surely he will condemn the Catholic Church and its leaders to burn forever in what the Cathlic Church calls "hell."
That simple bit of logic having been stated, I want to say one thing more.
I read about Benedict's new book on something called "Catholic Culture.org"--which came to me courtesy of Google. I would have responded to the news item from Catholic World News via "Catholic Culture.org" except that I couldn't. "Only donors are allowed to Sound Off," I read. "If you are a donor, log in."
The bona fides of the Catholic Church are always dependable. When I was a young man, my grandfather was invalided for a long time. The parish priest visited him, occasionally. I remember one afternoon my younger sister's friend asking, innocently. "How much does he charge for a house call?"
It's not just a myth that in the middle ages clever monks in southern Europe sold Jesus's foreskin more than 1500 times. . . .
Bert Hornback
Impriposter
Nihil Bonum
dinsdag 20 november 2012
dinsdag 13 november 2012
MAY SECESSION SUCCEED!
MAY SECESSION SUCCEED!
Georgia and twenty-nine other of these supposedly United States want to secede? What a lovely idea! Why doesn't everybody secede?
There are enough decent humans--even in Georgia--to guarantee that there wouldn't be any slave states. There aren't enough mock-Christians anywhere to make a Mock-Jesus Hate State, or enough fanatical Mormons in Utah to make a Moronic State. (Alas, there aren't enough Native Americans anywhere to make even one Native American State.)
There isn't a single state that could afford its share of the mis-named Defense Department (it was the War Department until 1946). No single American state could afford nuclear weapons--or even unmanned bomber-drones. No single state could afford anything closer to a dysfunctional CIA than a sherrif's office. No single state would dare swagger stupidly into wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria. No single sovereign American state would have been able to bomb Lybia, or invade Grenada, or Lebanon, or Panama, or buy an army to overturn the government of Nicaragua, or try the Bay of Pigs invasion, or engineer the Cuban embargo, or try more than thirty times to murder Fidel Castro.
So let's all secede--for the world's sake. Let's have the Disunited States of America. "United We Stand, Divided We Fall" we used to say. But we aren't united, and what we seemed to have been united for--vain, stupid, arrogant, capitalist power--has been bad for everybody. So let's change the motto: "Divided We Fall--For All."
Europeans may be smart enough--civilised enough, after all these centuries--to be united in a civilised manner. It seems so. And rather than conquer or buy their neighbor states, the European Union has invited states to join it--and is even paying to bring poorer states' standards of living up to a European par.
But the United States of America was not founded upon such social principles, and has never even tried to exist as such a genuinely cooperative society. So let's encourage its disunification. Maybe, someday, its people will become wise enough to want to live together in civilised society.
So . . . I say--with mixed feelings, to be sure--hooray for Georgia!
Georgia and twenty-nine other of these supposedly United States want to secede? What a lovely idea! Why doesn't everybody secede?
There are enough decent humans--even in Georgia--to guarantee that there wouldn't be any slave states. There aren't enough mock-Christians anywhere to make a Mock-Jesus Hate State, or enough fanatical Mormons in Utah to make a Moronic State. (Alas, there aren't enough Native Americans anywhere to make even one Native American State.)
There isn't a single state that could afford its share of the mis-named Defense Department (it was the War Department until 1946). No single American state could afford nuclear weapons--or even unmanned bomber-drones. No single state could afford anything closer to a dysfunctional CIA than a sherrif's office. No single state would dare swagger stupidly into wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria. No single sovereign American state would have been able to bomb Lybia, or invade Grenada, or Lebanon, or Panama, or buy an army to overturn the government of Nicaragua, or try the Bay of Pigs invasion, or engineer the Cuban embargo, or try more than thirty times to murder Fidel Castro.
So let's all secede--for the world's sake. Let's have the Disunited States of America. "United We Stand, Divided We Fall" we used to say. But we aren't united, and what we seemed to have been united for--vain, stupid, arrogant, capitalist power--has been bad for everybody. So let's change the motto: "Divided We Fall--For All."
Europeans may be smart enough--civilised enough, after all these centuries--to be united in a civilised manner. It seems so. And rather than conquer or buy their neighbor states, the European Union has invited states to join it--and is even paying to bring poorer states' standards of living up to a European par.
But the United States of America was not founded upon such social principles, and has never even tried to exist as such a genuinely cooperative society. So let's encourage its disunification. Maybe, someday, its people will become wise enough to want to live together in civilised society.
So . . . I say--with mixed feelings, to be sure--hooray for Georgia!
donderdag 8 november 2012
PHIGS AND OTHER EUPHEMISMS
I don't pretend than anyone should care what I think, but just to be honest about my state of mind, I wish to say that I don't give a fig about the reasons for the outcome of the American presidential election. That the majority of Americans voted for the lesser of two evils is hardly a cause for joy.
I am glad that Mitt Romney didn't win. There is something postive in that: the majority of Americans didn't vote for wealth and injustice, for anti-social government. But a majority of voting Americans did vote for Barack Obama: and Mr, Obama stands for violence, belligerance, murder, illegal detention, torture, and lies and broken promises.
Let me itemize these allegations
Violence, belligerance, murder: offensive wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria; unmanned "drones" used to kill suspected "enemies" but also killing innocent people who, when dead, are called "enemies."
Illegal detention, torture: at the illegal U.S. concentration camp at Guantanamo, where unindicted prisoners have been tortured for as much as twelve years; and at Fort Leavenworth, in the United States, where PFC Bradley Manning has been held illegally for more than 900 days without being charged with a crime, and who was for more than a year tortured in solitary confinement at Quantico.
Lies and broken promises: about our wars, our enemies, about closing Guantanamo, ending torture, supporting "whistle-blowers."
So I am not cheering. I did so four years ago, naively. I had supported Lyndon Johnson in 1964--and then came Vietnam. I supported Jimmy Carter in 1976--and then he tried to start World War III by invading Iran--to free 48 (or was it 52) secret CIA operatives in the US Embassy in Teheran. Bill Clinton was a good president--but he started his presidency by bombing Basra, in Iraq, because an Iraqi man was accused of plotting to kill George H. W. Bush. (The man was never even brought to trial.)
Obama is among the worst of our warrior presidents--and we have had a lot of them! He inherited the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and enlarged them to include attacks on Pakistan and Syria. He has introduced CIA "drone" attacks, and enlarged our attacks on civilians. (US news reports call our victims "enemies"; European news sources regularly identify the victims of our blind attacks as "civilians.") Nixon and Kissinger's napalm war in Vietnam and the "Christmas Bombings" of Cambodia, and Colin Powell's burying Iraqi troops in the sand with bulldozer blades attached to tanks
in George H. W. Bush's Iraq war were probably worse that Obama's use of unmanned drones, in terms of the numbers of innocent people killed. But murder is murder, and mass murder is mass murder, never mind the size of the mass.
So I am not cheering. I hope maybe Obama will spend the next four years trying to do the right thing,to govern morally. But I'm not sure he can. When you have done what he has done for four years, can you suddenly quit being evil, and become a good man?
I don't pretend than anyone should care what I think, but just to be honest about my state of mind, I wish to say that I don't give a fig about the reasons for the outcome of the American presidential election. That the majority of Americans voted for the lesser of two evils is hardly a cause for joy.
I am glad that Mitt Romney didn't win. There is something postive in that: the majority of Americans didn't vote for wealth and injustice, for anti-social government. But a majority of voting Americans did vote for Barack Obama: and Mr, Obama stands for violence, belligerance, murder, illegal detention, torture, and lies and broken promises.
Let me itemize these allegations
Violence, belligerance, murder: offensive wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria; unmanned "drones" used to kill suspected "enemies" but also killing innocent people who, when dead, are called "enemies."
Illegal detention, torture: at the illegal U.S. concentration camp at Guantanamo, where unindicted prisoners have been tortured for as much as twelve years; and at Fort Leavenworth, in the United States, where PFC Bradley Manning has been held illegally for more than 900 days without being charged with a crime, and who was for more than a year tortured in solitary confinement at Quantico.
Lies and broken promises: about our wars, our enemies, about closing Guantanamo, ending torture, supporting "whistle-blowers."
So I am not cheering. I did so four years ago, naively. I had supported Lyndon Johnson in 1964--and then came Vietnam. I supported Jimmy Carter in 1976--and then he tried to start World War III by invading Iran--to free 48 (or was it 52) secret CIA operatives in the US Embassy in Teheran. Bill Clinton was a good president--but he started his presidency by bombing Basra, in Iraq, because an Iraqi man was accused of plotting to kill George H. W. Bush. (The man was never even brought to trial.)
Obama is among the worst of our warrior presidents--and we have had a lot of them! He inherited the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and enlarged them to include attacks on Pakistan and Syria. He has introduced CIA "drone" attacks, and enlarged our attacks on civilians. (US news reports call our victims "enemies"; European news sources regularly identify the victims of our blind attacks as "civilians.") Nixon and Kissinger's napalm war in Vietnam and the "Christmas Bombings" of Cambodia, and Colin Powell's burying Iraqi troops in the sand with bulldozer blades attached to tanks
in George H. W. Bush's Iraq war were probably worse that Obama's use of unmanned drones, in terms of the numbers of innocent people killed. But murder is murder, and mass murder is mass murder, never mind the size of the mass.
So I am not cheering. I hope maybe Obama will spend the next four years trying to do the right thing,to govern morally. But I'm not sure he can. When you have done what he has done for four years, can you suddenly quit being evil, and become a good man?
vrijdag 2 november 2012
ANYBODY INTERESTED IN WAR CRIMES?
Anybody interested in war crimes? Crimes against humanity?
Ooops! I forgot. Those don't exist any more. No such thing. Why not? Nuremberg has been restored, and is ready for use. . . .
But most of what goes on in our modern wars could be classified as both war crimes and crimes against humanity. And since the heyday of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon--napalm, the Christmas bombing of Cambodia, etc.--the U.S. has been the world leader in torture, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. So if we reactivated Nuremberg, the U.S. couldn't run the trials; its various leaders (Kissinger, Bush I, Colin Powell, Bush II, Obama) and so many of its military officers and men (and women) would all be on the docket, and trotted out through the underground tunnel into the courtroom. They would be charged with war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Bradley Manning is alleged to have exposed war crimes. Certainly the film that he is accused of letting us see--we have all seen it, surely--shows American troops committing war crimes. But remarkably, none of the troops pictured murdering civilians from a helicopter gun-ship has been charged. Instead, Bradley Manning has been held in prison without being charged with anything for nearly 1,000 days. In solitary confinement, naked, for most of a year--but not charged with any crime. (The United Nations torture investigator has not been allowed to speak with Manning privately.)
Does anybody in the U.S. remember what a writ of "habeas corpus" was? We used to have a constitutional right to such: we couldn't be detained indefinitely without being charged with a crime. Bush II "suspended" that constitutional right--can a president suspend the U. S. Constitution? --in order to run his concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. And despite his promise to close that illegal torture facility and prison, Obama has not done so, nor has he restored habeas corpus. And Obama has had Bradley Manning imprisoned for most of his term as president.
What have we become--as a nation, as a people? Our biggest crimes used to be greed and street violence, and what is called "organised crime." But now our nation practices "organised crime" all around the world. (Watch out for that drone!) And as a people, we accept it.
Tuesday is voting day. Four years ago, I happily voted for Obama--as did the Nobel Committee in Oslo. I am told I must vote for him again this time. Why? Because he isn't as bad as Romney would be. But Romney hasn't broken a promise about Guantanamo, or expanded our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to include Pakistan and Syria as well. Romney isn't using unmanned drones to kill people in the Middle East--who, once dead, always turn out to have been members of al Qaida. Romney hasn't approved torturing Bradley Manning, and is not responsible for Bradley Manning's illegal imprisonment. Nor has Romney declared that Bradley Manning is guilty--without even being charged!--as Obama did: "He broke the law." (Those were the words of our lawyer, law-professor president.)
So on Tuesday I will vote with my feet. For the first time since 1956, when I voted for Adlai Stevenson, I won't go to a polling station, or cast an absentee ballot. I can't.
Anybody interested in war crimes? Crimes against humanity?
Ooops! I forgot. Those don't exist any more. No such thing. Why not? Nuremberg has been restored, and is ready for use. . . .
But most of what goes on in our modern wars could be classified as both war crimes and crimes against humanity. And since the heyday of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon--napalm, the Christmas bombing of Cambodia, etc.--the U.S. has been the world leader in torture, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. So if we reactivated Nuremberg, the U.S. couldn't run the trials; its various leaders (Kissinger, Bush I, Colin Powell, Bush II, Obama) and so many of its military officers and men (and women) would all be on the docket, and trotted out through the underground tunnel into the courtroom. They would be charged with war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Bradley Manning is alleged to have exposed war crimes. Certainly the film that he is accused of letting us see--we have all seen it, surely--shows American troops committing war crimes. But remarkably, none of the troops pictured murdering civilians from a helicopter gun-ship has been charged. Instead, Bradley Manning has been held in prison without being charged with anything for nearly 1,000 days. In solitary confinement, naked, for most of a year--but not charged with any crime. (The United Nations torture investigator has not been allowed to speak with Manning privately.)
Does anybody in the U.S. remember what a writ of "habeas corpus" was? We used to have a constitutional right to such: we couldn't be detained indefinitely without being charged with a crime. Bush II "suspended" that constitutional right--can a president suspend the U. S. Constitution? --in order to run his concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. And despite his promise to close that illegal torture facility and prison, Obama has not done so, nor has he restored habeas corpus. And Obama has had Bradley Manning imprisoned for most of his term as president.
What have we become--as a nation, as a people? Our biggest crimes used to be greed and street violence, and what is called "organised crime." But now our nation practices "organised crime" all around the world. (Watch out for that drone!) And as a people, we accept it.
Tuesday is voting day. Four years ago, I happily voted for Obama--as did the Nobel Committee in Oslo. I am told I must vote for him again this time. Why? Because he isn't as bad as Romney would be. But Romney hasn't broken a promise about Guantanamo, or expanded our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to include Pakistan and Syria as well. Romney isn't using unmanned drones to kill people in the Middle East--who, once dead, always turn out to have been members of al Qaida. Romney hasn't approved torturing Bradley Manning, and is not responsible for Bradley Manning's illegal imprisonment. Nor has Romney declared that Bradley Manning is guilty--without even being charged!--as Obama did: "He broke the law." (Those were the words of our lawyer, law-professor president.)
So on Tuesday I will vote with my feet. For the first time since 1956, when I voted for Adlai Stevenson, I won't go to a polling station, or cast an absentee ballot. I can't.
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