Catholic stuff….
More whining from the Archdiocese of Boston in today’s Globe in a story about the failing pension fund:
The archdiocese, in its most recent annual financial report, described the clergy pension fund as "our largest liability and most significant financial concern." The document describes the plan as underfunded by $114 million, and warns that it will run out of money in 2011 unless it is restructured. The archdiocese currently brings in $5.4 million a year from Christmas and Easter collections to support the plan, but spends $15 million a year on benefits.
If the priests hadn’t spent all those years poking their penises into children, and the bishops hadn’t spent all those years covering up for the priests, maybe the Church wouldn’t have this problem.
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Taliban stuff…
The Pakistan Taliban that took over and brutalized the Swat area is asking civilian residents who fled the fighting there to return, pledging not to shoot them, according to an AP story in today’s Globe.
"I would like to appeal to the people of Mingora to get back to their homes and start their routine life as we will not fire even a single shot," [spokesman Muslim] Khan said in a phone call from an undisclosed location.
Hmmm, let’s see, do the civilians want to take the word of medieval, lying, sadistic barbarians who butcher women and children, or do they want to wait out the battle?
For all the horror of the fight, the Sri Lankan government had the right idea. If you’re going to go after brutal ideologues, it’s best to crush them completely, once and for all. The Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan have earned no less.
But of course some variant will just pop up elsewhere elsetime. When the dominant population of the planet comprises talking monkeys, the murderous nonsense never ends.
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Gun flu stuff…
Twelve people died of the swine flu in the United States. The press is ga ga over the catastrophe. The government wrings its hands. The vaccine companies plot their profits.
Thirty six thousand people die in the United States from normal, everyday sorts of flu. Nobody pays attention except for the mourners.
Thirty one thousand people die of gunshot wounds every year in the United States. Gun sales have soared since a half-white man was elected President. The NRA frothed at the mouth until Congress agreed to let people carry loaded, concealed weapons in national parks. Apparently the thinking is that children and other innocents will feel safer if surrounded by so-called grown-ups who need to have a weapon at hand to feel adequate. The Lion might be forgiven for thinking that NRA-sanctioned behavior is psychologically equivalent to priests waving their penises in the faces of children.
Guns are the real plague in the United States, and the NRA is at the heart of the disease. But apparently it’s okay by them for people to use guns to kill people. They think murder and suicide by gun is as natural as flu.
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Civil War Obama stuff…
President Obama yesterday did something no white President ever did.
Obama laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, a customary presidential undertaking on Memorial Day. He also had one sent to the Confederate Memorial there, a traditional practice but not well publicized. Obama also took the unprecedented step of sending a wreath to the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington’s historically black U Street neighborhood.
That memorial – to the 200,000 blacks who fought for the North during the Civil War – had been mentioned as a compromise in recent days.
It’s nice that someone in power recognized that American Blacks fought successfully against the ignorant, arrogant Christian crowd down South that considered Blacks inferior sub-humans. Some of those members of the White Master Race must have had interesting expressions on their faces as their former slaves took them prisoner or stuck a bayonet in their gut or maybe even smacked them around a little bit on the sly. Of course we may never know. And after the war those folk didn’t like coming out from behind their silly, pointy-headed hoods.
That the racists still have way too much influence is demonstrated by the statement that giving a wreath to the black memorial is considered a ‘compromise’.
(Is there some overriding legal misreasoning why the Klan and the other white racist militias aren’t considered to be terrorist organizations and aren’t treated as such?)
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Jeff Jacoby lies…
A letter in today’s Globe drives another nail into the heart of Jeff Jacoby’s propaganda machine:
AFTER READING Jeff Jacoby’s column "Peace isn’t Arab goal," it became clear that the columnist was either ignorant of important facts about the Arab-Israel conflict or intentionally deceiving the public. He claims the entire world is for a two-state solution except "the Arabs," but never mentions the fact that the Arab Peace Initiative calls for a two-state solution. The initiative was adopted not only by the Arab League, which includes all Arab states, but was affirmed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which includes all Muslim states, even Iran. Jacoby goes on to cite that the charters of Hamas and Fatah call for Israel’s destruction, but he has never read, or has conveniently ignored, the Israeli prime minister’s Likud Party charter, which explicitly opposes the creation of a Palestinian state anywhere in the West Bank and Gaza.
The Arab and Muslim world have said time and again that they will agree to peace with Israel if it follows international laws, but it is Israel that continues to illegally occupy Palestinian territory and violate humanitarian law.
Yousef Munayyer
Washington
The writer is a policy analyst with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Frankly, The Lion thinks Mr. Munayyer is being way too polite. Israel is a brutal terrorist state.
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Speaking of Israeli duplicity…
Mark Lavie of the AP writes in today’s Globe that a secret Israeli report claims that Venezuela and Bolivia are selling uranium to Iran.
The two South American countries are known to have close ties with Iran, but this is the first allegation that they are involved in the development of Iran’s nuclear program, considered a strategic threat by Israel.
The wingnuts and the American Zionists in Congress and the government will take this as gospel, of course. And how convenient that the Israelis are accusing two nations not in favor with the United States for the simple reason that the people of those countries, in free and open elections, chose progressive or socialist governments.
Perhaps the Israelis would like to distract the poobahs in the United States from the virulent talk of the current Israeli leadership.
…Netanyahu said, addressing the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. "My job is first and foremost to ensure the future of the state of Israel … the leadership’s job is to eliminate the danger. Who will eliminate it? It is us or no one."
And:
…Netanyahu said "United Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided."
Actually, no. For quite a long time it belonged to Muslims. And to Christian crusaders. But never mind that.
And it’s worth noting that the Israeli Parliament is considering two bills that fly in the face of Israel’s claim to be a free, democratic country.
One would make continued citizenship for Israeli Arab citizens “contingent on an oath of loyalty to Israel as a ‘Jewish, Zionist and democratic state,’ party spokesman Tal Nahum said.”
Shades of ‘Sieg Heil, Dolphie’.
The other goes hand-in-glove with the existence of Gaza as the world’s largest concentration camp.
The party’s announcement came a day after it introduced a bill that would outlaw Arab demonstrations mourning their defeat and exile in the war that surrounded Israel’s establishment in 1948. The bill received preliminary approval from a ministerial forum but still needs to pass repeated readings in parliament before becoming law.
The bill threatens three years in prison to anyone who participates in public protests or commemorations.
That’s like letting the thieves and murderers go free while imprisoning the victims for complaining about the injustice.
But that’s Israel, the country with which the United States has a ‘special relationship’. That’s like having a special relationship with cancer in your gut.
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