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Obama speaks of tearing down walls in Berlin speech about hope and understanding
Senator Barack Obama spoke today to more than 100,000 people in western Berlin, saying, "This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love. With that wall gone, we need not stand idly by and watch the further spread of the deadly atom." more » |
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Pope calls for new environmental consciousness at World Youth Day
SYDNEY, Australia -- Pope Benedict XVI used his first major address at the Roman Catholic Church's youth festival on Thursday to warn that the world was being scarred and its natural resources used up by humanity's "insatiable consumption." more » |
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Judge rules that torture-tainted evidence not admissable in 1st Guantánamo war crimes trial
It seems likely that the prosecution of the Guantánamo prisoners will be severely limited by the stupidity of those who decided that torturing them was consonant with American values and promoted our collective security. In the end, neither was served. more » |
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Please Read: US Catholic
Bishops' "Faithful Citizenship"
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Catholics
across America are standing up to policies and practices of a second
Bush Administration that profoundly violate Catholic ethics. Click to expand »
Catholics
across America are standing up to policies and practices of a second
Bush Administration that profoundly violate Catholic ethics. Click to hide »
- New
CDC abortion statistics were released by the Bush Administration in the dark of night
over the Thanksgiving holiday, as is their custom, safely after
the mid-term elections. This secretiveness offers perhaps the
best evidence that the Republicans are fearful of the public knowing
how impotent their approach to abortion has been. New
statistics released 11/22/06 showed a continued increase
in teen abortions for year 3 of the Bush Administration, and essentially
a continued flattening of the curve on total abortions across
the US (the total in 2003 dropped by 8000, excluding California
statistics, out of a total of 1.29 million). CDC
statistics released over Thanksgiving 2005 for year
2 of the Bush Administration showed the first increased abortion
rates in nearly 10 years, reversing the long decline under President
Clinton. Even last
spring's Guttmacher data validated this flattening
out in the long abortion decline under the preceding Clinton Administration.
Mr Bush has truly made himself "the Abortion President"
by exploiting the tragedy of abortion to further polarize our
society on this issue, and Catholics in particular, while featuring
Catholic speakers at his 2004 Convention (Arnold Schwarzenegger,
George Pataki, Rudolph Giuliani) whose abortion views were indistinguishable
from Senator John Kerry's. Control of the White House, the Supreme
Court, and until recently the Congress, but the Republicans have
actually reversed the decline in abortion seen under the previous
Democratic administration.
- Budget
priorities that target the most vulnerable in society--Pope
Benedict has issued a new
encyclical focused almost exclusively on Jesus' call to reach
out to those in need (Mt 25:40). Continued budget
cuts in services to the poor for healthcare, education and food
stamps.
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Exploitation
of Christianity for political gain-- Former
assistant director of the White House's Office of Faith-Based
Initiatives, David
Kuo, wrote
a book last year detailing how the Bush Administration privately
derides Conservative Christians while harnessing their political
power to advance an economically-based agenda advancing tax
cuts for the well-to-do and cutting environmental regulations
for major polluters.
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"Preemptive War"—the most profane
imaginable violation of Jesus’ injunction in the Sermon
on the Mount to “Love your enemies,” now enshrined
as official US policy in the 2006
National Security Strategy Assessment. More than
3000 US servicemen and women are dead and more than 21,000 injured
as a result of all the falsehood proffered in the name of the
pre-emptive war principle.
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Continued
justification of the use of torture-The
Administration worked surreptitiously to pass new legislation forgiving
their previous use of torture in secret CIA prisons
Mr. Bush finally acknowledged, by undermining the War Crimes
Act of 1996. Click here for more details.
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Killing with no
end in sight--With more than 3000 US troops dead, the
British medical journal The Lancet published data Oct 12, 2006,
from a research group at Johns Hopkins, indicating that 655,000
people have died as a result of President Bush's war in Iraq. Imagine the worst day of your life, with your children living
in total fear, and having that day repeat itself over and over
again. And the war is having the effect of forcing many Christians
in Iraq to leave, in part because the Americans are identified
with Christianity according to an Oct 17, 2006 story in the
New York Times.
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Politicking in Catholic
churches divides Catholics. The Bush Campaign's unprecedented exploitation
of congregations for political purposes, by plumbing parish
donor lists and paying Republican Catholic “organizers”
to register voters after Mass in Catholic churches and thus pollute
our spiritual space.
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Despoiling the environment—Genesis’ injunction to be “good stewards.”
The word "environment" simply did not come up at the
2004 Republican National Convention in New York. Meanwhile a
quiet revolution of regulations is turning back the clock fifty
years on air, water, forest and soil quality in the U.S.
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Climbing poverty
and lack of medical insurance, driven by Administration
indifference to cuts in local services while pursuing tax policies
vastly expanding the income gap—a direct affront to Pope
John Paul II and the “preferential option for the poor.”
Census data released Aug 30, 2005, showed that since Mr. Bush
took office, family median income has fallen by $1669.00, child
poverty has increased by 1.4 million to almost 13 million in
the last 4-1/2 years, the total number of people in poverty
up by 5.4 million, and 6 million more Americans have no health
insurance. Now, legislators have passed massive
bills in energy, sweat shop job creation in Central
America, transportation, and immunity
for the gun industry that further threaten the
economic wellbeing of the worst off among us.
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Sabotaging
the Assault Weapons Ban, after Mr. Bush claimed to support it,
and handing broad
legal immunity to the Gun Industry, with incumbent
rewards to criminals, drug traffickers and international terrorists.
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"Now
more than ever, we must stand up for our enduring principles and
values. We can't lie low while the Republican Party tries to pass
itself off as the party of 'moral values,' at the very time when
it shortchanges America's children, neglects the nation's needy,
and leaves America with trillions of dollars in debt for future
generations to pay off. We must not give the time of day to a party
that mobilizes the hateful reactionary forces of bigotry, greed,
and fear and tries to win elections by fomenting irreconcilable
divisions in our people." - Senator
Edward M. Kennedy
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Catholics across America are standing up to policies and practices of a second Bush Administration that profoundly violate Catholic ethics.
Cost of the War in Iraq
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