Popes and Dopes
The Associated Press / 12.09.2009
ROME — Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday lamented what he described as a steady diet of news about evil in the world, saying it hardens hearts, as he prayed at the Spanish Steps in a Christmas-season tradition.
Shoppers who jammed the narrow streets, including Via Condotti with its posh shops, paused from buying Christmas gifts to catch a glimpse of Benedict as he was driven in a glass-sided popemobile to the square below the Spanish Steps.
"Every day, through the newspapers, television, radio, evil is reported, repeated, amplified, making us used to horrible things, making us become insensitive, and, in some way, poisoning us," the pope said after kneeling in prayer before a statue of the Virgin Mary to mark the Dec. 8 Catholic feast day in her honor.
"Hearts harden and thoughts darken," Benedict said.
He also complained that the mass media "tend to make us feel like spectators, as if evil regards only others and certain things could never happen to us."
Instead, Benedict said, "We are all actors, and for better or worse, our behavior has an influence on others."
An aide held a white umbrella over the 82-year-old pontiff in a drizzle at dusk. Benedict wore an ermine-trimmed, crimson cape to guard against the chill.
from Information Clearing House
By John S. Hatch
September 01, 2009
Henry Kissinger once referred to military service people as ‘dumb, stupid animals to be used’ as tools of foreign policy. One wonders if this man of no regrets nevertheless wishes he had not vocalized what in fact has been the position of successive US governments including the present one? Madeleine Albright, after famously stating that the undisputed deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to hunger and easily preventable diseases during the post Gulf War I sanctions ‘were worth it’ later admitted that the statement did not have a nice ring to it. But Herr Doktor doesn’t apologise. Not for millions of deaths in Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos. Not for Agent Orange. Not for Operation Phoenix. Not for demanding more death in Iraq.
But could his swinish assertion be true? After all, hundreds of thousands went willingly to Viet Nam, or allowed themselves to be sent virtually as killer slaves to magically protect ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ by murdering peasant men, women and babies, by drowning them in buckets, throwing them out of helicopters, raping women and then shooting them in the back of the head. Often they helicopter bombed every shanty in every random village they came across. They drove themselves insane in their frenzy of violence. Once there, there was no return from the reptile side. Fifty-eight thousand died for nothing, as it turned out, because Sec Def McNamara had miscalculated the Domino Effect. Oops. An unknown number committed suicide, committed murder back home, or were shot by police. ‘We don’t do body counts.’
Dumb, stupid animals. But even animals don’t behave like that. Not even stupid ones. Well, homo americanus. He does. He does, over and over.
And how did psycho Uncle Sam say ‘thank you’? By pretending Agent Orange was benign. By denying that PTSD is real. No Gulf War Syndrome. By abandoning its veterans. Just as it did after the Gulf War, fought for reasons as bogus as Viet Nam.
Just as it continues to do regarding the equally bogus reasons for the savage invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Depleted Uranium is good for you. Take a deep breath. Got a brain injury? Well we happen to think that you were already nuts, so piss off.
The Brute Factory
Pope Benedict: Media
are obsessed with evil