This seems like a huge story to me. The World Bank has been seen by many as a kind of trojan horse. In the guise of helping poor nations, the bank would make the loans conditional on nations opening themselves up to foreign exploitation. The head of the bank, interestingly appointed by the President of the United States, has open to question as well. They have often been people like former Secretaries of Defense without experience in banking or even in helping anyone. Unless this choice is incredibly well disguised, it looks like President Obama is actually nominating someone who could do some good.
To read story, click here.
Geraldo Rivera said today that Trayon was as guilty as the man who shot him. Why? According to Rivera he was a person of color wearing a hoodie which makes people think of criminals. I suppose, in his mind, he wanted to protect other youth from getting gunned down, but if kids have to dress differently so bigots don’t gun them down, shouldn’t our concern be on the other end of that equation? As Sharpton points out in his speech (included) the suspect left the police station with the murder weapon and is now free.
Rivera’s remarks here.
Sharpton’s comments here
Robert Jensen has an article on one of my favorite internet sites “fair.com”. FAIR looks at distortions of media coverage. Dr. Jensen will also be presenting the paper at 9:30 this Sunday in the sanctuary at our church. At St. Andrew’s we believe that critical thinking skills are essential to the life of faith. Sorting through the news in an age of propaganda is an art every citizen should learn. All are welcome to attend or, if you just want to read it, the paper is included below.
To read Dr. Jensen’s article, click here.
Sometimes I dream about children in other countries being afraid of our bombs falling from the sky. Or trying to sleep knowing we may kick their door down at any time. Or being afraid to play in a field because we have left cluster bombs there. I wonder what it is like to be raised in such fear. I think about mothers whose children will have birth defects because we used depleted uranium in one of our interventions. I love my country, but I hate the American Empire with every cell in my body, because nothing else on earth is causing more heartache to my human family. I understand that every empire comes to an end. I can live with the fact that some future empire will probably be even worse. What keeps me awake is thinking about the other possibility, that we could have been so much greater.
To the credit of the Catholic Church, this priest was removed after the fact, but it goes to show how cruelty can find a hiding place in religious ritual. Guarnizo said he was being treated unfairly by church leadership and that he denied Communion to the woman for the same reasons he would have denied it to a “Quaker, a Lutheran or a Buddhist,” or someone who “had shown up in my sacristy drunk, or high on drugs.”
To read article, click here.
Well this is an interesting poll. 56% of those in U.S. do not believe the contraception mandate to be a violation of religious freedom. Even more interesting is that the Catholic numbers are a bit higher, 57% of Catholics polled believe mandating contraception coverage is not a violation of religious liberties against 38% who do. This is interesting to me because I’ve been tuning into Catholic radio these last few weeks and the Bishops don’t seem to be talking about anything else.
to read more about the poll, click here.
This will be helpful. There is a new site that will serve as “the climate desk” keeping up with global changes in weather.
To read article, click here
Whatever one thinks of the NATO mission in Libya, it is now clear that there was no plan for what would happen after overthrowing Qaddafi. Unsurprisingly, the result is chaos. The warlords Qaddafi was holding down are now fighting over control of the nation and the violence is beginning to spill into neighboring nations. Blessed is the nation that remains “unsaved” by the United States.
To read article, click here.
When people call America a “Christian” nation, they don’t mean to tell everyone else to get out. But, if you think about it, when all is said and done, those words mean, “get used to having our religion crammed down your throat, or find a new place to live.” If America is a Christian nation, that means my non-Christian neighbors are second class citizens. I am one Christian who finds that deeply offensive.
Recently, a pastor introduced Rick Santorum by saying,
“This nation was founded as a Christian nation, the God of Abraham, the God Isaac, and the God of Jacob. There’s only one God — there’s only one God and his name is Jesus. I’m tired of people telling me that I can’t say those words. I’m tired of people telling us as Christians that we can’t voice our beliefs, or we can no longer pray in public. Listen to me: if you don’t love America and you don’t like the way we do things, I’ve got one thing to say: Get out! We don’t worship Buddha. I said we don’t worship Buddha. We don’t worship Muhammad. We don’t worship Allah. We worship God. We worship God’s son Jesus Christ.”
When one Christian says that kind of thing to our neighbors, the rest of us have a duty to rise to the defense of those of other faiths, or those of no faith. America belongs to us all. If we remain silent when others speak in our name, we become a part of the dead weight of other peoples’ oppression.
To read a Rabbi’s Response, click here
