Pope to Take on Greenspan

The News: In an address to diocesan clerics within his bishopric, Pope Benedict XVI stated that the Church has the duty to present a reasonable and well-argued criticism of the errors that have led to the current economic crisis. This duty, he said, forms part of the Church's mission and must be exercised firmly and courageously, avoiding moralism but explaining matters using concrete reasons that may be understood by everyone.

Referring to his forthcoming social Encyclical, the Pope presented an overview of the crisis analysing it at two levels. At the macroeconomic level, the Pope said the present system was grounded in selfishness and idolatry of wealth. Here the Church must make her voice heard - nationally and internationally - in order to help bring about a change of direction towards a political economy based on self-sacrifice and concern for the needy. At the microeconomic level, individuals would have to "alter their ways." (Vat. News. Serv.)

The Note: It is not altogether radical to assert that the Church has a mission to critique political economy. She has done so before. What would be radical is a criticism that went beyond "moralism". One is left to wonder what sort of economy the Pope has in mind that would base itself -- systematically -- on self-sacrifice and concern for the needy.

©Barfo, 2009
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An Occasion for Focus

Item 1: Emmily, a cash-register clerk for Kaiser's supermarket in Germany was fired, after 31 years on the job, for allegedly stealing $1.50 in return bottle coupons. The Labor Court upheld the dismissal calling Emmily's action an "irreparable breach of trust." One politician called the court's decison "barbaric" while the Governor of Bavaria said he did not understand "how a cashier can be fired because of €1.30 while managers who lose billions can keep their jobs."

Item 2: Meanwhile, 60,000 GM workers across Europe staged walked outs in Germany, France, Spain, Sweden Austria and Hungary, in protest against GM's plans to close plants. The workers want GM subsidiaries to be split off from the Detroit parent company. Germany union leader, Walter Hubel, excoriated GM for technical incompetence. "They have built models with the aerodynamics of a barn door and the weight of a small tank," he said. Frank Walter Steinmeir, currently Number Two, in the Merkel coalition government, said that "GM has long earned good money with Opel. It would be obscene were they now to throw away European factories like a squeezed-out lemon."

Item 3: Union and anti-globalists are also planning demonstrations in Germany under the slogan "We're not Paying for Your Crisis." Spokesman Alexis Passadakis demanded that those who profitted from the economy that caused the crisis should be required to fork over 5% to 20% of their gains. He denied that worker had had it good under the Greenspan Good Years. "The majority of people have not earned much from the boom -- instead they have had to deal with restraint in their wage agreements. The rich, on the other hand, have seen strong increases in their wealth. So it is only fair that they should pay extra duties" Passadakis also said that no public funds were adequate to "bail out" the trillions in toxic assets held by banks. He argues that the only solution was to let the banks go bankrupt then put them under public control and then recapitalize them.

o0o

It appears that class-consciousness is on the rise again, at least in Europe. The question remains, Why was it dormant for so long? The answer, it seems to me, is that "class-consciousness" is a state of mind that exists only when the belly is empty. Trickle down works, at least so long as there's a trickle. And this, after all, makes a certain amount of sense. As they say, "Why go looking to borrow trouble?" But when trouble has come knocking on the door, then it's a different matter. The present economic catastrophe, at least provides the occasion for people to focus attention on the systemic problem.

The second question also remains, Why are US/American workers so utterly cow-like? It cannot be said simply that it is due to their having been bought off with an easy, goody-filled life, because European workers were also bought off. So why aren't U.S. workers taking to the streets?

©Barfo, 2009
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Union Strives to Create Lumpen Proletariat

The News: Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers union reached deal today that granted the Company discretion to "fund" its retiree health care fund with stock instead of cash balancing its "liquidity needs" as it saw best. "The modifications will protect jobs for U.A.W. members by ensuring the long-term viability of the company,” the union’s president, Ron Gettelfinger, said.

The Note: Pathetic. It is perfectly true that health care costs are a major burden to U.S. enterprises. The solution is National Health Care which lightens the burden for all by spreading the costs and eliminating insurance company profits from those costs. Instead, Gettlefinger, who is apparently devoid of class consciousness, is grateful for the chance to turn his union members into an organized lumpen proletariat.

I think we should bring back petticoated aristocrats. I mean, aristocrats created jobs for chamber-pot carriers, footmen, stable boys and bedroom boys. Without aristocrats there wouldn't be any good jobs for the rest of us.

©Barfo, 2009
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What a Difference

The News: President Obama gave his first press conference today, in which he discussed his approach to solving the economic crisis and touched upon policy changes with respect to the Middle East.

The Note: What a difference forthrightness and intelligence make.

©Barfo, 2009

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The Things We Teach Ourselves

The News: An Ohio man was sentenced to 16 years in prison for disciplining his children with cold showers, dunking and making them wear a dog shock collar. Judge Timothy Campbell said the case sounded "like something from Guantanamo Bay."

The Note: Our Guantánamo Bay?

©Barfo, 2009
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Jews Demand to Dictate Church Doctrine

The News: Seeking to heal the rift with so-called “traditional” Catholics, Pope Benedict annulled the excommunication of four Lefebvrist bishops, among them Bishop Richard Williamson who had allegedly denied that millions of Jews were gassed as part of a deliberate Nazi policy.

The Pope’s action “provoked outrage” (NYT) and drew criticism from self-appointed “Jewish groups.” The Anti-Defamation League claimed that lifting William’s excoummunication “undermines” Catholic-Jewish relations. ADL director Abe Foxman stated that the Pope’s action “sends a terrible message to Catholics...that there is room in the [C]hurch for those who would undermine the [C]hurch’s teachings and would would foster disdain and contempt for... Judaism.”

Rabbi David Rosen director of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations urged the Vatican to “reiterate” its “unqualified ...condemnation of all and any Holocaust denial.”

Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center warned of a “political cost” to the Vatican. In a thinly veiled threat of blackmail, Samuels added “I am certain as a man who has know the Nazi regime in his own flesh, [the Pope] understands you have to be very careful and very selective.”

The Note: The instantaneous and furious reaction of the Jewish-Zionist establishment bespeaks the theologico-political agenda they are pursuing. All cultures are founded on a fundamental myth or epic which defines the contours and course of a civilization. The agenda being pursued by the Pope’s outraged critics is none other than to supplant “The Holocaust” as our defining myth. This is not, as some claim, a gambit for money, but rather for power.

At the outset, let it be stated what ought not to be an issue: that the Nazis pursued an aggregate of policies designed to ethnically cleanse territories under their control and to ‘segregate out’ undesired elements from German national life. These policies resulted in “substantial” fatalities among the target groups and, therefore, qualified as genocide pursuant to current definitions under international law. All the rest is “detail” of either a prurient or historically useful interest, depending on the particulars at issue. (Fn-1)

But what also ought not to be at issue is any man’s right to question the prevailing historical narrative. The accusation that Bishop Williamson has “denied” the “Holocaust” is decidedly not an historical accusation but simply an accusation of blasphemy!

The science of history is not physical science. History is an account of conduct and events which are attested to by writings, statements, and circumstantial evidence involving few hard “measureable” facts. History -- or more precisely historical accounts -- are always being re-examined and revised in light of new discoveries and new methodological approaches. The charge that someone “denies” an account is a fundamentally anti-historical accusation.

Those who make the accusation, are never very clear which part of “the Holocaust,” exactly, it is forbidden to question. “Holocaust” -- which strictly speaking means “firestorm” -- is not an historically accurate term. During the world war, millions did die in firestorms, but virtually none of these victims were Jews. The victims of firestorms were primarily Germans and Japanese. The Jews cribbed the word as a rhetorical and dramatic label for their own devastating experience. As thus used, the term stands for a cluster of assertions and images which we are presented as orthodox historical fact. But that orthodox historical account has itself been repeatedly revised by the “non-deniers” and “non-revisionists” themselves. ( Fn-2 )

The epithet of “holocaust denier” is nothing more than a cry to stir up and let loose a legal or media lynch mob. Unfortunately, it usually works. But when the New York Times reports that Williamson “said he did not believe that six million Jews died in the Nazi gas chambers,” it has to be asked which part of the blasphemy is objected to? Is the Times asserting “holocaust denial” consists in denying that six million Jews were gassed? That would be interesting because no one --- absolutely no one -- has ever claimed that six million were gassed. In fact, virtually no historian accepts the six million figure in any case. The Jewish historian Raul Hilberg’s last estimate was 5.1 million and some estimates go as “low” as 3 million. So what exactly was the bishop’s sin?

The bishop’s sin was reading the Leuchter Report -- a 1988 study by a chemical engineer who advanced a number of technical and forensic arguments as to why gas chambers could not have existed. Needless to say the report provoked polemical “counter-studies” (as well as assaults on Leuchter’s credentials and motives), most notably the 1998 Van Pelt Report. However, the sheer voluminousness of Van Pelt's report bespeaks the complexity of the issue. One does not need 1117 pages to prove something that is supposedly "self-evident".

The importance of the polemic is that the existence of killing gas-chambers would provide strong circumstantial evidence of a program of genocide and one, moreover, that would seem to have been particularly targetted at Jews. The problem is that there is only circumstantial evidence of this circumstantial fact. People like Abe Foxman can grow wroth all they want and can heap endless invective on their victims, but the facts to date are far more uncertain than they -- and their propagandists in the press -- would have one believe.

At the Nuremberg Trials (the full records of which are still not fully available to the public), the existence of gas-chambers was presumed almost off-handedly. For example, Justice Parker’s opinion indifferently adopted Commandant Hoess’s estimate that 2.5 million were “gassed” at Auschwitz and Eichman’s (hearsay) report that 6 million Jews perished “of which 4,000.00 were killed in extermination institutions.” As stated, neither the totals nor the gross breakdowns are accepted today. ( Fn-3 )

The latest judicial examination of the issue took place in 2000, in the suit for libel brought by historial David Irving against Deborah E. Lipstadt, who had accused Irving of being a “holocaust denier”. Although Justice Gray, ultimately gave judgement to Lipstadt, he acknowledged the validity of Irving’s contention that there was “little clear evidence of the existence of gas chambers designed to kill humans.” (Opinion, § 13.75) Gray’s opinion makes clear that both the numbers of deaths attributable to killing and the actual existence of gas chambers is fundamentally a question of interpretation and not fact. (Fn-4 Excerpts)

But if the question is one of interpretation, what is left to “deny”? Are people to be branded (and in the case of Germany) prosecuted because they disagree with the self-officialized interpretations of Abe Foxman and the Weisenthal Institute? And if so, how is this different from an Inquisition?

The whole question of Nazi occupation and racial policies, and their conduct of the war in the East, is an extremely complicated topic that is virtually inseverable from the entire question of Nazi ideology and rule. Further complication arises from whether we adopt a juridical or sociological mode of analysis. While the existence or non-existence of “gas chambers” is a significant detail it is by no means sufficient to answer all questions or paint the full picture.

Undoubtedly bishop Williamson was in over his head; but so too are bimbos in the press that blather inanely about the sheer perversity of “denying that six millions were gassed.” Hilberg has conceded that the “six” million figure is “symbolic.” Is gassing “symbolic” too? Were there just “some” prototype gassings or were they carried out on a mass scale? Was Auschwitz a labor camp (as the presence of industrial factories would suggest) or was it a “killing centre” -- how much of “factory of death” is symbolic too? How much historical symbolism and how many "dramatized accounts" are wrapped up in a metaphorical label?

To be fair to the bishop, none of this was anything he was out and about sermonizing. As a Tridentine Catholic, Williamson holds to some archly-conservative views on a variety of topics that run counter to any number of currently prevailing truths and orthodoxies and which will no doubt provoke modernists of all stripes. He can claim no immunity from fair debate on the merits, on account of his cloth. But that is not what this is about. What has been raised is not a debate but an accusation of neo-blasphemy for having dared to question an asserted truth about "the holocaust".

A look at the video interview shows that the remarks in question were something he had said years ago in Canada. These were dredged up from the past by the interviewer who was evidently sniffing about for copy. Williamson was clearly taken off guard and made the tactical mistake of answering off-the cuff from memory, which led him to make what seems to me to be the further mistake of quoting Leuchter’s estimates of deaths at Auschwitz for the total number of Jewish fatalities in the war. Nevertheless, his broader point was that “as far as” he had “understood the evidence” as weighed by experts there was “no direct evidence” of a “deliberate policy” to gas Jews. If they changed their conclusion, he would probably change his. Those remarks were not that far removed from Justice Gray's findings as to the paucity of direct evidence on the issue. [Bishop Interview ]

But in the end, what of it? In the end, the whole brouha boils down to no more than that a bishop had read and was convinced by historical interpretations advanced by people who seemed to him be experts in their field. Big deal.

Far more telling is the reaction of a holocaust establishment that seems intent on hunting down every “denier” as ruthlessly as Eichman “scoured” Europe for Jews. Is Williamson to be haled before some Weisenthal Tribunal and punished for reading the wrong book?

In the end, the Jewish/Zionist establishment doesn’t really care about Williamson. He is simply the bait in a larger game. According to Foxman, the the Pope’s action allows room in the Church for those “who would would foster disdain and contempt for... Judaism.” This is nonsense, but telling nonsense.

The Pope did not reinstate Williamson and the others because they had supposedly “denied the holocaust” -- he reinstated them as an matter of rapprochment within the Church among Catholics. This no one else's business. It is not for Abe Foxman to say who should or should not be incorporated into the Body of Christ.

Neither Williamson’s statement, much less the Pope’s action, in anyway foster “disdain of Judaism” -- even if he had known of remarks made by Williamson years ago. Foxman’s leap from “gas chambers” to “Judaism” is so utterly illogical that one is left wondering if he believes the two to be the same. He does. As Gilad Atzmon writes:

"Philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the German born Hebrew University professor, was probably the first to suggest that the Holocaust has become the new Jewish religion. 'The Holocaust' is far more than historical narrative, it indeed contains most of the essential religious elements: it has its priests (Simon Wiesenthal, Elie Wiesel, Deborah Lipstadt, etc.) and prophets (Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and those who warn about the Iranian Judeocide to come). It has its commandments and dogmas ('never again', 'six million', etc.). It has its rituals (memorial days, Pilgrimage to Auschwitz etc.). It establishes an esoteric symbolic order (kapo, gas chambers, chimneys, dust, Musselmann, etc.). It has its shrines and temples (Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum and now the UN). If this is not enough, the Holocaust religion is also maintained by a massive economic network and global financial infrastructures (Holocaust industry a la Norman Finkelstein). Most interestingly, the Holocaust religion is coherent enough to define the new 'antichrists' (the Deniers) and it is powerful enough to persecute them (Holocaust denial laws)." [Article] [Fn 5 Holodays]

Rabbi Rosen’s demand that the Vatican issue “unqualified ...condemnation of all and any Holocaust denial.” is nothing other than a bald and bold attempt to dictate the Church’s doctrinal magisterium.

Precisely because it would be absurd for the Church to go about condemning historical accounts of this and that, any such action by the Pope would ipso facto elevate the issue to a doctrinal level. Given the fact that the Church does not even condemn denial of Christ’s Divinity and Resurrection, Rosen’s demand is nothing less than that the Church adopt a new and higher object of devotion and that it accept the Suffering Jew as the New Lamb of God.

©Barfo, 2009
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A Good Caesar

The News: Moving swiftly to undo the most notorious tyrannies of the previous regime, President Obama issued executive orders scheduling the close of Guantánamo prison, prohibiting secret CIA renditions and forbidding harsh interrogation techniques. Obama also cancelled Bush/Cheney secrecy acts designed to keep their official papers under seal.

The Note: The president's action cannot but be welcome. However, the question remains, Why were our institutions so incapable of resisting the clear tyranny and shameful thugishness of the neocon administration? Why was Congress so cowardly and supine in face of acts which undermined our liberties and appalled the world? Why did the Supreme Court cowtow and grovel like some trembling satrap before supposed presidential "prerogatives"? Obama's orders today are like those of the "good Caesars" of yore who released the falsely imprisoned, remitted unjust penalties and burned the secret reports of informers. But none of these welcome rectifications restored the Republic. The rule of law is not restored by the acts of a man.

©Barfo, 2009

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Anguish & Shame

The News: Another Israeli "precision bomb" supposedly "targetted" at combatants only, again managed to slaughter more civilians and more children, this time the daughters of Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish a gynecologist who had worked in one of Israel's main hospitals before he was imprisoned without leave in the Gaza Ghetto pursuant to the Israeli imposed "blockade". In an audio-cast that will not be shown on the AIPAC and Zionist controlled US media, Israeli television broadcast Aboul Aish's desperate cries for help and anguished utterances of grief,

"My girls were sitting at home planning their futures, talking, then suddenly they are being shelled," he said in a voice shaking with emotion. "I want to know why they were killed, who gave the order?"

The Note: The doctor's cries are almost unbearable to listen to. But equally of note is the look of unease, disquiet and shame that slowly overcomes the Israeli broadcaster. This is what it looks like when conscience makes contact with synderesis. It is more than we will see on U.S. television, whose anchor-people float adrift on a dead sea of moral indifference masquerading under the rubric of "news neutrality". They would do well to remember Dante's observation that between heaven and hell lies the land of the neutrals despised equally by those above and those below. And we would do well to remember that although these anguished cries are the direct result of Israeli barbarism, they are also the result of the psychotic cunning of the American Jewish establishment and the prostituted cowardice that pervades Congress. We would do well to remember, that all vintage is always trampled out eventually.

©Barfo, 2009

[Reuters report here]

Besmirching the Law

The News: As half the world has read and seen, a young black man was shot point blank in the back by a transit police officer in Oakland California. The transit officers -- dressed in the now usual flak gear -- had detained four youths for rowdy behaviour on a train. The four were kept seated against the wall on the ground while the officers "investigated." A cell-phone video taken by a passenger on the train showed Oscar Grant, hands up front, being told to lie face down on the ground. Grant complied whereupon Johannes Mehserle, 27, pulled out his gun and shot him in the back. The victim died shortly thereafter.

Mehserle immediately resigned from the force, thereby immunizing himself from having to answer questions during any internal investigation. As a (now) ordinary citizen, Mehserle can invoke his Miranda rights against self-incrimination. Meanwhile, the local District Attorney's Office announced that it was proceeding with a thorough investigation into the matter in order to decide whether or not to charge Mehserle.

Outraged Blacks took to protesting, during which three were arrested and charged forthwith with resisting police officers.

The Note: The incident illustrates, yet again, the lawlessness of the cops and the utter bankruptcy of the US criminal (in)justice system.

There can be little doubt that rancid racism pervades US police forces. Blacks are routinely harrassed and brutalized by cops beyond whatever may be necessary to enforce the law. But the underlying and more important point is that, in doing so, cops show themselves to be a law unto themselves. This in turn points to a still yet greater evil: the prostituted corruption of the justice system that is supposed to supervise the police.

By statute, police are given special license to carry arms and use such force as would otherwise be prohibited to the rest of us in most situations. But license is not the same as carte blanche. An officer's use of force must always conform to limits and standards set by the force and, ultimately, to the mandates of the law.

Police have always resisted any notion of supervision. They have resorted to the excuse that determining whether force was properly used in any situation requires a specialised expertise that "ordinary" people do not have. The analogy used is that it requires a military man to judge military tactics. There is some merit to the argument, but not nearly as much as cops would pretend. As much as they may want to para-militarize themselves, civilian law enforcement is not war and involves far simpler and ordinary considerations. Ultimately, the plaint that police conduct should be investigated internally is simply a demand to be the judge of one's own case -- a claim that has always repugnant to the univerally fundamental notions of justice.

But it is precisly that repugnancy that politicians and the judiciary have connived to perpetuate. Across the land, every attempt to set up citizen-oversight boards has been watered down to the point of meaninglessness. A host of privileges, exemptions and procedures exist to embarrass any serious investigation by third parties. Mehserle's self-immunization is an example.

Certainly every ordinary citizen should have the right to refuse to answer police questions. But Mehserle was not an "ordinary" citizen. He was a special licensee and agent of the state. He undertook a special oath to uphold the law and he was granted a variety of benefits in exchange for his commitment. The idea that a police officer could unilaterally abrogate all his duties and undertakings simply by walking away from them is offensive to fundamental notions of responsibility. Certainly Mehserle could shield himself from investigation for events that took place from and after his resignation; but it is sheer repugnancy to law to say that he can shield himself ex post facto for events occuring before his resignation. And yet a debased law allows precisely that.

The trump card in the argument for police self-patrolling is that local district attorneys will exercise ultimate oversight and will bring criminal charges when appropriate. But the present case illustrates what a farce that argument is.

The unfortunate fact is the most district attorneys, far from regarding themsleves as custodians of law think of themselves as no more than the legal arm of law enforcement. The cops handle the case up to the court house door, the prosecutor takes it on from there. But that is not correct. Obviously, police and prosecutors must collaborate; but they do not do so as equals or as team-mates. Over and over again the highest state and federal courts have said that a prosecutor's paramount duty is to the law and to see that justice is done. A prosecutor (as all attorneys) is an officer of the court not a law enforcement officer. Disgracefully, far from hewing to their fiduciary duties to the law, most prosecutors act no better than water boys for th team.

Again, the present case serves as an example. The local District Attorney had no problem arresting and charging three protesters who were said to have assaulted crowd control officers. And yet, that same office announced it would take two or more weeks to investigate the shooting incident. Baloney. With a video showing one man shooting a prostrate man in the back, there isn't a prosecutor in the land who would not be at clerk's desk at eight in the morning with a complaint charging first degree murder. .... provided, the suspect was not a cop.

The excuse dished up by the Oakland District Attorney -- that they needed to investigate whether the shooting might not have been a mistake -- is slop worse than SOS. "Mistake" is a defense; it is brought up by the accused. To be sure, prosecutors routinely take into consideration potential defenses that could be brought up during trial. But a case consisting of an unprovoked shooting of a prostrate man, is not one of them. With evidence like that, any prosecutor would be more than eager to file charges, delighted at the prospect of seeing a defendant trying to argue "ooops".

What "we have to investigate" really means in this case is "we have to two-step and shuffle" to see if we can't figure out a way to plausibly argue "insufficient evidence" to bring charges against Mehserle. That's all there is to "investigate" because the case-for-murder is otherwise patently visible. The notion, being leaked and floated, that Mehserle thought he had pulled out his taser is just as patently absurd. An experienced officer mistakes the feel of a gun for the feel of a taser? Oh puleeze.

But aside from the ludicrousness of the hypothesized defense, is the fact that the "prosecutors" are spinning their wheels trying to dream up utterly risible excuses. Step back. Mehserle has resigned from the force and refuses to talk . Faced with a situation where the prime suspect in a homiced refuses to talk and refuses to make known his excuse or explanation, so called "prosecutors" are sitting around trying to figure out what possible defenses the suspect could maybe come up with if and when he stops not talking.

It is beyond belief; and the only explanation for this prosecutorial conduct is that they are foot-dragging and trying to figure out how not to charge Mehserle with murder. Law and Justice are utterly besmirched.

©Barfo, 2009

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Israel Accuses Vatican of Terrorist Propaganda

The News: Speaking in an on-line interview, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Office for Justice and Peace, condemned the resort to violence and likened the conditions in Gaza to those of a concentration camp.

The Cardinal's remarks were ignored by the major US media outlets; however they did not go unnoticed in Israel which condemned the comparison. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told Reuters that "The vocabulary of Hamas propaganda, coming from a member of the College of Cardinals, is a shocking and disappointing phenomenon” which was totally removed from "truth and dignity".

The Note: What would Israel know about truth? It has so consistently twisted, shifted and blurred the truth that it wouldn't recognize a lie if it walked smack into it. Virtually every humanitarian organization in the world, including the International Red Cross and UN Relief Agencies have condemned both Israel's food and fuel blockade of Gaza and its grotesquely disproportionate response to Hamas "rocket" attacks. Are they all lying? Of course not.

Dropping 1000 pound bunkerbuster bombs is not what one would call "proportionate" to the firepower of hand-held rockets and mortars that, at most, can punch a hole in a roof a thousand or so meters away. Five hundred Palestinian deaths to three of four Israeli casualties is no nowhere close to one eye for one eye.

Most importantly, withholding food and fuel from people trapped in a walled and barb-wired enclosure is what ghettos and concentration camps are all about. Not even the philo-semitic US press which all but has its copy written for it in the Israel Foreign Office has been able to suppress the fact that for the past year Israel has subjected Gaza to a blockade of food, fuel and medicine. When food is withheld, people starve. Is that too a lie?

"Israel is committing a shocking series of atrocities by using modern weaponry against a defenceless population - attacking a population that has been enduring a severe blockade for many months," according to UN Relief coordinator Richrd Falk speaking in a BBC interview.

Israel's conduct is so outrageous that the International Red Cross has taken the unusual step of publicly condemning Israel's violation of humanitarian law after, its aid workers were shot at, barred from rendering assistance and, after four days, found the starved and emaciated bodies of four children huddling next to their dead mother amid the corpses of 10 other women and children. [Reuters report and video here]

Dignity? What would Israel know about dignity? True dignity, as opposed to pomp, power and pride, avoids whining, bombast and hypocricy.

Back in February 2008, Israeli threatened Gaza with a "holocaust". Faced with a stunned and shocked world, Israel's hasbarah mavens started back-pedalling, arguing that "holocaust" really only meant a "snafu," mess-up, chaos in the kitchen and stuff like that -- which is why Zionists build Snafu Memorials everywhere they can. Any bear with a brain understood what Israel was threatening.

By the end of the year, Israel was making good on its threat. Haaretz military correspondent Amos Harel has called the operation Israel's version of "shock and awe." Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilani, acknowledged that the Israeli military "has made preparations for long weeks of action" and according to Prime Minister Olmert's the bombardment was "the first of several stages approved by the security cabinet". This would be followed by a land incursion which Southern Command General Yoav Galant would "send Gaza decades into the past".

What is a "shocking phenomenon" is that Israel can so shamelessly drape itself in the mantle of dismayed piety when conduct it has admitted and even bragged about is pointed out critically. If blasting an imprisoned and starved enclave back decades is not what concentration camps and holocausts are all about then nothing is.

Even in Israel, and even on the pages of Haaretz or the Jerusalem Post one can find acknowledgement of facts that are buried deep in the U.S. press, if they are printed at all. Even in Israel, there is trenchant criticism by Jews of self-brainwashing, paranoia and suspicion that has taken hold of the greater part of Jewish society. There is no denying there that the "barrage of rockets" penetrating "into" Israel are little more than an obnoxious nuisance that inflict minor property damage on a farming town several hundred meters from Gaza. There is no denial there that the real aim behind the official crocodile tears is to displace a Hamas that was duly elected in elections Israel itself had insisted upon. There is no ignorance in Israel that what the government really wants is to impose a Quisling regime -- a compliant "council" -- to keep Concentration Camp Gaza quiet.

But while the entire rest of the world is aware of and appalled by Israel's conduct, the United States is kept in the dark by a government and media that is abjectly subservient to zionist interests. Instead of dignity and truth, the US gets barraged with belligerent nonsense such as the White House statement that "These people are nothing but thugs, so Israel is going to defend its people against terrorists like Hamas." Or, it gets fed, from neocon word-punks on the New York Timesmore of the same old untruths extolling an Israeli success in Gaza as a victory in the war on terror. Yes indeed... the endless, murderous victory of the victimized bullies.

Cardinal Martino spoke up for the weak and defenceless with truth and dignity. It is the regime in Israel that resorts to hypocrisy and lies in order to obscure its shameless crimes.

©Barfo, 2009

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Our Right to Charity

The News: Due to the global economic crisis and falling oil prices, Venezuela-owned CITGO announced that it was dropping its "cheap heating oil program" which provided low cost fuel to 200,000 U.S. households. A spokesman for Citizens Energy Corp., which distributed the oil for CITGO, said the decision was a shock coming as it did "not only in the middle of the winter, but in the middle of an economic shot."

The Note: While the decision creates an indisputable hardship for the indigent recipients, the reaction seems to assume that we -- as Americans -- are entitled to charity. Does it ever occur to anyone in this country -- the foremost exploiter of other people around the world -- that maybe Venezuelans are having a hard time of it too? The cheek is astounding. Hugo Chavez got no thanks from us when he instituted the program. In fact, our media spat in his face and said the move was "just propaganda". Of course, that didn't stop us from quietly accepting the charity. Nor, apparently, does it stop us from raising a victimized wail when a global economic disaster we and we alone caused requires Venezuela to take measures to protect its own.

©Barfo, 2008

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Hidden Messages

The News: Reuters reported today that the abduction of a U.S. anti-kidnap expert in northern Mexico last month remained a mystery with no clues to the man's whereabouts. Felix Batista, based in Miami, had been invited to Coahuila by state police to give seminars on security. He was abducted on December 10th and has not be heard or seen since. No ransom has been demanded.

The Note: Ransom was not the point now, was it?

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The Kommissar is Us

“Dreh dich nicht um, schau, schau,
der Kommissar geht um!
Dreh dich nicht um, schau, schau,
der Kommissar ist uns"

It was reported today that a family of U.S.-born Muslims, including a physician, a lawyer and several children, who were waiting to board a flight, were detained for investigation by agents of the Homeland Security Service. They had been overheard discussing their seating assignments and commenting on the fact that the seats adjacent to the wings were probably the safest. They were turned in by their fellow passengers.

Don't turn around, uh uh,

The detainees were eventually released and allowed to continue on their intended journey, but employees of the airline refused to let them board, on the grounds that the suspects had not been "cleared". Most of the news reports focused on this aspect of corporate obtuseness; none focused on the more critical fact that,

The Kommissar is us.

A little over seven years ago, Barfo foretold the inevitable denouement of Bush's trumpetted "War on Terror".

"In all events, this war against terrorism on which we embark today, like the war on drugs on which we embarked years ago, cannot be won. ... And who is the enemy? ... What the Government will have to presume is that everyone is at least a potential terrorist. In the most fundamental sense that is a presumption that is entirely antithetical to the concept of civil friendship, i.e., societas." (The Devil's Bill)

Earlier in 2008, the Barfo took note of a report that Homeland Security Service was training its agents to spot Western terrorist recruits, who were "capable of blending into American society and attacking domestic targets." We pointed out that was this training presupposed was none other than that all of us were presumptively "potential suspects." (Blendables)

And so the bill is being paid... without a murmur, even eagerly, plus with tips. Americans who are by and large dense to everything under the sun, are alert to anything suspicious... in fact to anything potentially suspicious... in fact suspicious to anything at all, because anything could potentially be a bad thing which, for the sake of safety, needs to be reported to our Guardians.

It does little good to play the "politically seasoned" and to slough off the incident as a regrettable but essentially minor case The Swarthies -- Anglo-America's ongoing distrust of anything less creamy than buttermilk. The reason the excuse does not work is that what is at play here is not a form of racism but a generalized state of fear. The Muslim detainees had been speaking English and had said nothing patently untoward. Suppose they had been Hispanics speaking Spanish? Or maybe even Sephardic Israelis speaking Hebrew...or is that Arabic? The problem with generalized fear is that it needs something to grab onto precisely because it is "generalized" and therefore needs to grab onto anything in order to give itself a reason.

But a society that is suspicous of itself, is a society that has lost its fundamental coherence. In medical terms, the body politic has lost its health; it's biological processes become inverted and begin to work against the body rather than for it.

Aristotle pointed out millenia ago, that society is a form of friendship and is predicated on mutual trust. If we gathered together in a cave or a clearing it was because we trusted one another in the collective enterprise being undertaken. The gathering together could not have happened otherwise. Our subsequent living and working together and even our commerce become elemental forms of friendship that presume a basic level of good-intention and good-will.

To say, then, that we are each "potential suspects" to one another despite our "common appearance" is to put axe to the very root of society. We cease to be social and become inimicable. A society that is inimicable with itself is a mere husk, like a body wasted by a metastasizing disease.

The United States has always had strong collective, anti-social tendencies. Lacking a unifying culture above the habits of material consumption, the country fostered a culture of hucksterism that hid behind ersatz realism, empty bravado and self-adulation. Hud. This of course is the malignant core of neo-liberalism which sees society as a "beast" to be destroyed and ruthless Ego as the only good. The reductionist illogic of that ideology is precisely that it necessitates a fear of the equally ruthless other and when this fear is shared collectively, it becomes not only fear of the foreign other but turning inward, fear of self. At that point the body politic self-consumes.

©WCG, 2008
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Our Status as A Free People

The News: England's Home Secretary has put forth a proposal to have the private sector manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use 24/7. The proposal's proponents said that it included "tougher legal safeguards to guarantee against leaks and accidental data losses." (But not to safeguard privacy.)

The Note in the News: Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, said the proposed database would be "an unimaginable hell-house of personal private information," "It would be a complete readout of every citizen's life in the most intimate and demeaning detail. No government of any colour is to be trusted with such a roadmap to our souls." McDonald added:

"The tendency of the state to seek ever more powers of surveillance over its citizens may be driven by protective zeal. But the notion of total security is a paranoid fantasy which would destroy everything that makes living worthwhile. We must avoid surrendering our freedom as autonomous human beings to such an ugly future. We should make judgments that are compatible with our status as free people."

The BARFO wishes its readers the courage to stand for a Free and Autonomous New Year.


©Barfo, 2008

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Holiday Bashing

The News: Gay and transgender groups in England and Italy have bashed Pope Benedict for bashing gays. According to the Guardian and BBC News, in a Christmas address to the Roman Curia, the Pope allegedy said "that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was as important as protecting the environment." Gay groups denounced the comments as "unacceptable" and "unscientific."

The Note: The Pope said no such thing. The word "homosexuality" does not appear in the address at all; and one is left to wonder why the BBC feels compelled to concoct quotes out of whole cloth. In response, Father Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said that the pope had not wished specifically to attack homosexuality or sex change operations in his speech. "He was speaking more generally about gender theories which overlook the fundamental difference in creation between men and women and focus instead on the role of cultural conditioning,"

Not surprisingly, the press does not provide any link to the actual text of the address; however a James Crossley's blog provides the following unofficial translation:

Eminent Cardinals,

Venerated brothers in the Episcopate and the Priesthood,

dear brothers and sisters!

The Nativity of the Lord is at hand. Every family feels the desire to get together in order to enjoy the unique and unrepeatable atmosphere that this feast is able to create.

Even the family of the Roman Curia finds itself gathered today, according to a beautiful custom thanks to which we have the joy of meeting together and exchanging best wishes in this special spiritual climate.

To each of you I address my heartfelt greeting, with full acknowledgment of the much appreciated collaboration that you render to the Successor of Peter.

I sincerely thank the Dean of Cardinals Angelo Sodano , who has spoken in behalf of all who are here and those who are at work in the various offices of the Vatican, including the Pontifical Representatives.

I have referred to the special atmosphere of Christmas. I like to think that it is almost a prolongation of that mysterious joy, that intimate exultation, that was felt by the Holy Family, the angels and the shepherds in Bethlehem the night when Jesus was born.

I would call it 'the atmosphere of grace', thinking of the expression St. Paul used in the Letter to Titus: "Apparuit gratia Dei Salvatoris nostri omnibus hominibus" (The grace of God has appeared, saving all men)(cfr Tt 2,11).

The Apostle affirms that the grace of God manifested itself 'to all men'. I would say that this also shows the mission of the Church, and in particular, that of the Successor of Peter and his co-workers, namely, to contribute so that the grace of God, the Redeemer, may be ever more visible to everyone, and may bring salvation to everyone.

The year that is about to end was rich in retrospective looks at significant dates in the recent history of the Church, but also rich in events which brought with them signs of orientation for our path towards the future.

Fifty years ago, Pope Pius XII died. Fifty years ago, John XXIII was elected Pope. Forty years have passed since the publication of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae and thirty years since the death of its author, Pope Paul VI.

The message of these events has been reported and meditated in many ways during the course of the year, so I will not dwell on them again at this time.

But memory looks beyond just those events in the past century, and in this way, also brings us to the future.

On the evening of June 28, in the presence of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, and the representatives of many other Churches and ecclesiastical communities, we inaugurated the Pauline Year at the Basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls to commemorate the birth of the Apostle of the Gentiles 2000 years ago.

For us, Paul is not a figure of the past. Through his letters, he still speaks to us today. And whoever enters into contact with him is impelled by him towards the crucified and resurrected Christ.

The Pauline Year is a year of pilgrimage not only in the sense of a visit to the Pauline sites, but also and above all, a pilgrimage of the heart, along with St. Paul, towards Jesus Christ.

Paul teaches us definitively that the Church is the Body of Christ, that the Head and the Body are inseparable, and that one cannot love Christ without loving his Church and her living community.

Three specific events of the year drawing to a close stand out particularly.

First of all, World Youth Day in Australia, a great feast of faith, which gathered together more than 200,000 young people from all parts of the world, bringing them together not only externally - in the geographic sense, but, thanks to sharing the joy of being Christian, bringing them together interiorly.

Alongside WYD, there were the two trips to the United States and to France, in which the Church was made visible before the world and for the world as a spiritual force that can show ways of living that through the testimony of faith, brings light to the world. These were, indeed, days that radiated luminosity. They radiated confidence in the value of life and in the commitment for good.

Finally, we must recall the Bishops Synod - pastors coming from around the world met together about the Word of God which they exalted together, around the Word of God, whose great manifestation is found in Sacred Scripture.

That which we often take for granted daily, we grasped freshly in its sublimity:

- The fact that God speaks to us, that he answers our questions.

- The fact that he, using human words, speaks to us in person and we can listen to him, and in listening, learn to know him and to understand him.

- The fact that he enters our lives to shape it, and we can step out of our life in order to enter the vastness of his mercy.

Thus we realised all over that God in his Word addresses each of us, speaks to the heart of every being. If our heart is awake and opens itself to listen, then everyone can learn to hear the Word that is addressed specifically to him.

But only when we hear God speaking to each of us in such a personal way, then we can also understand that his Word is meant to bring us each closer to one another, so that we may find the way out of what is only personal.

This Word has shaped a common history and will continue to do so. And so we realize all over that precisely because the Word is so personal, then we can understand it correctly and totally only within the 'we' of the community instituted by God - always conscious that we can never exhaust it completely, that it always has something new to say to each generation.

We have understood that, of course, the Biblical texts were written in specific times, and therefore constitute in this sense a book from the past. But we also saw that their message does not remain in the past nor can they be kept there. God fundamentally always speaks in the present, and we will have heard the Bible fully only if we discover the 'present' of God, which calls to us now.

Finally, it was important to experience that in the Church, there is a Pentecost even today - that the Church speaks in many tongues, and this, not only in the external sense that all the languages in the world are represented in her, but in an even deeper sense: in her are found the multiple ways of experiencing God and the world, the richness of different cultures, and only thus can we see the vastness of human existence, and because of this, the vastness of the Word of God.

We have also learned that Pentecost continues to be 'under way', it is still incomplete. There are a multitude of languages which still await the Word of God in the Bible translated for them.

And it has been moving to see the multiple testimonials of lay faithful who in every part of the world not only live the Word of God, but suffer for it.

A precious contribution was the address of a rabbi on the Sacred Scriptures of Israel, which are our Sacred Scriptures too.

And an important moment for the Synod was when Patriarch Bartholomew, in the light of Orthodox tradition, and with penetrating analysis, opened for us another way of access to the Word of God.

Let us now hope that the experiences and acquisitions of the Synod may effectively influence the life of the Church: on personal relations with Sacred Scriptures; on their interpretation in the liturgy and in catechesis as well as in scientific study - so that the Bible does not remain a Word of the past, but that its vitality and actual relevance may be read and disclosed in the vast dimensions of its meanings.

The pastoral visits this year also had to do with the presence of the Word of God. Their true meaning can only be in serving that presence.

On such occasions, the Church makes itself publicly perceptible, and in this way, the fact that faith is at least the question of God. This public manifestation of the faith calls out to all who seek to understand the present and the forces which operate in it.

The phenomenon of the World Youth Days, particularly, has become increasingly an object of analysis, by those who seek to understand this particular species, one might say, of youth culture.

Before this, Australia had never seen as many people from all the other continents as during the last World Youth Day in Sydney, not even during the Olympics. And if earlier, there had been apprehensions that the appearance of such great numbers of young people would represent a threat to public order, paralyze traffic, block daily activities, provoke violence and make room for drug use, all such fears were proven to be unfounded.

It was a feast of joy - a joy that ultimately involved even those who were reluctant. Ultimately, no one felt it as an annoyance or a disturbance.

The days of the youth became a feast for everyone. Or rather, it was the first time everyone realized what a feast is, a celebration - an event during which everyone is, so to speak, outside himself, beyond the self, and therefore, truly with oneself and with others.

What then is the nature of what takes place during World Youth Day? What are the forces that act? Fashionable analyses tend to consider WYD as a variant of modern youth culture, as a type of rock festival modified in the ecclesial sense, with the Pope as somewhat of a star; and that with or without faith, these festivals would basically be the same thing. In this way, such analyses would do away with the question of God.

There are even Catholic voices who share this tendency, seeing WYD as a great spectacle, beautiful even, but with little meaning for the question of faith, and on the presence of the Gospel in our time. They would consider them days of festive ecstasy which, in the end, would leave everything just as before, without making any deep influence on life. Thus, they can find no explanation for the specialness of those days and the particular nature of their joy, the creative power of communion.

But first of all, one must note that the World Youth Days do not simply consist of that one week during which the events are publicly visible to the whole world. There is a long exterior and interior path that leads to them.

The Cross, accompanied by the Icon of the Mother of the Lord, goes on pilgrimage through the countries of the world. Faith, in its own way, needs to be seen and touched.

The encounter with the Cross, which is carried and touched by the faithful, becomes an interior encounter with Him who died on the Cross for us. The encounter with the Cross inspires within the hearts of young people the memory of the God who made himself man and suffers with us. And we see the woman whom he has given us to be our Mother.

The solemn WYD days are only the culmination of a long road along which young people proceed to encounter each other and to encounter Christ.

In Australia, it was not by chance that the Via Crucis through the inner city became a climactic event of those days. It synthesized once more all that had happened in preceding years and called attention to him who brings us all together - the God who loved us to the point of death on the Cross.

And so, the Pope is not the star around which these events take place. He is totally and only the Vicar [of Christ]. He points to the Other who is among us.

Finally, the solemn Liturgy is the center of all the celebration, because in it, what we cannot realize takes place, that for which we are always in wait. He is present. He is among us. He has torn open the heavens and this makes the earth bright. It is this that makes life joyous and open, and that unites us with one another in a joy that cannot be compared to the ecstasy of a rock festival.

Friedrich Nietzsche once said: "The question is not how to organize a feast, bit to find the persons who are able to derive joy from it". According to Scripture, joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (cfr Gal 5,22): this fruit was abundantly perceptible in the days at Sydney.

Just as a long road precedes every World Youth Day, another long road follows. Friendships are formed which inspire a different lifestyle that is interiorly sustained. The great World Youth Days, not least of all, have the purpose of inspiring such friendships capable of making new places of faith emerge in the world, which are also places of hope, and of charity that is practised and lived.

Joy as a fruit of the Holy Spirit - thus we come to the central theme of Sydney which was, in fact, the Holy Spirit. In this retrospective, I wish once more to point out in summary the orientation that was implicit in the theme.

1. First of all, there is the affirmation that comes to us from the start of the story of Creation, which tells of the Creator Spirit that moved over the waters, created the world and continuously renews it.

Faith in the Creator Spirit is an essential element of the Christian Creed. The fact that matter has a mathematical structure, is full of spirit (energy), is the foundation of the modern science of nature.

Only because matter is structured intelligently, our mind is able to interpret it and actively remodel it. The fact that this intelligent structure comes from the same Creator Spirit that also gave us our spirit, implies a task and a responsibility.

The ultimate basis of our responsibility towards the earth is our faith in creation. The earth is not simply a property that we can exploit according to our interests and desires. It is a gift of the Creator who designed its intrinsic order, and through this, has given us the orientative indications to follow as administrators of his Creation.

The fact that the earth, the cosmos, mirror the Spirit Creator also means that their rational structure - which beyond their mathematical structure, become almost palpable through experimentation - carries in itself an ethical orientation.

The Spirit that shaped them is more than mathematics - it is Goodness itself, which, through the language of creation, shows us the road to correct living.

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful only the message of salvation. She has a responsibility for Creation, and it should validate this responsibility in public.

In so doing, it should defend not just the earth, water and air as gifts of Creation that belong to everyone. She should also protect man from destroying himself.

It is necessary to have something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense. It is not metaphysics that has been overcome by time, when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this natural order be respected.

This has to do with faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, which, if disregarded, would be man's self-destruction and therefore a destruction of God's work itself.

That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term 'gender' effectively results in man's self-emancipation from Creation (nature) and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator.

The tropical rain forests deserve our protection, yes, but man does not deserve it less as a Creature of the Spirit himself, in whom is inscribed a message that does not mean a contradiction of human freedom but its condition.

The great theologians of Scholasticism described matrimony - which is the lifelong bond between a man and a woman - as a sacrament of Creation, that the Creator himself instituted, and that Christ, without changing the message of Creation, welcomed in the story of his alliance with men.

Part of the announcement that the Church should bring to men is a testimonial for the Spirit Creator present in all of nature, but specially in the nature of man, who was created in the image of God.

One must reread the encyclical Humanae Vitae with this perspective: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against consumer sex, the future against the exclusive claim of the moment, and human nature against manipulation.

2. I would like to add some more brief observations on other aspects of pneumatology [knowledge of the Holy Spirit]. If the Creator Spirit manifests itself above all in the grand silence of the universe, in its intelligent structure - faith, beyond this, tells us something unexpected: namely, that the Spirit speaks, so to say, in human words; it has entered history, and as the force that shapes history, is also a Spirit that speaks. It is the Word which comes to us in ancient Scriptures and in the New Testament.

What this means for us was expressed wondrously by St. Ambrose in one of his letters: "Even now, as I read the Divine Scriptures, God is taking a walk through Paradise" (Ep 49,3).

Reading Scripture, even today we can ourselves almost roam the garden of Paradise and meet God as he walks there. Between the theme of World Youth Day in Sydney and the general Assembly of the Bishops' Synod, there is a profound internal connection.

The two subjects "Holy Spirit" and "Word of God" go together. Reading Scripture, we also learn that Christ and the Holy Spirit are inseparable.

When St. Paul with surprising synthesis says, "The Lord is the Spirit" ( 2 Cor 3, 17), we see not just the trinitarian unity between the Son and the Holy Spirit, but above all, their union with respect to the story of salvation.

In the passion and resurrection of Christ the veils of purely literal sense are taken down, making visible the presence of the God who speaks.

Reading Scripture together with Christ, we learn to hear in human words the voice of the Holy Spirit, and we discover the unity of the Bible.

3. We come now to the third dimension of pneumatology which consists, precisely, in the inseparability of Christ and the Holy Spirit. It is perhaps most beautifully manifested in St. John's narration of the first apparition of the Resurrected Christ to his disciples: the Lord breathed on his disciples and thus gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Just as the breath of God at the dawn of Creation had transformed the dust of the earth into living man, thus the breath of Christ welcomes us to ontological communion with the Son - it makes us new creatures. And this is why it is the Holy Spirit that makes us say with the Son, "Abba, Father!" (cfr Jn 20,22; Rm 8,15).

4. Thus, as the fourth dimension, there emerges spontaneously the connection between the Spirit and the Church. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, showed how the Church as the Body of Christ is thus an organism of the Holy Spirit, in which the gifts of the Holy Spirit merges all individuals together into a single living organism.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Body of Christ. In the entirety of this Body we find our task, we live for each other and each one dependent on the other, within the depth of him who lived and suffered for all of us, and through his Spirit, draws us to himself into the unity of all the children of God.

"Do you, too, want to live in the Spirit of Christ? Then, be in the Body of Christ", Augustine says in this respect (Tr. in Jo. 26, 13).

oOo

Thus with the subject of the Holy Spirit which oriented World Youth Day in Australia, and in a more hidden way, the weeks of the Bishops Synod, the entire breadth of Christian faith is made visible, a breadth which leads, from responsibility for Creation and for man's existence in tune with Creation, through Scriptures and the story of salvation, to Christ, and from there, to the living community of the Church - in its structure and responsibility, as in its vastness and freedom, expressed as much in the multiplicity of charisms as in the Pentecostal image of the multitude of languages and cultures.

An integral part of celebration is joy. The feast iself can be organized, but not joy. This can only be received as a gift. In fact, it is given to us in abundance, and for this, we are grateful.

Just as St. Paul describes joy as the fruit of the Holy Spirit, so too, John in his Gospel, links the Spirit and joy closely. The Holy Spirit gives us joy. He is joy itself. Joy is the gift in which all the other gifts are contained. It is the expression of happiness, of being in harmony with oneself, which can only be achieved by being in harmony with God and his creation.

Part of the nature of joy is to radiate itself, the need to communicate itself. The missionary spirit of the Church is nothing but the impulse to communicate the joy that has been given to us.

That such joy may always be alive in us and thus iraddiate the world in its tribulations - that is my wish at the end of this year. Along with a sincere gratitude for all your efforts and work, I wish that this joy which comes from God may be given to us abundantly in the New Year.

I entrust these wishes to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Mater divinae gratiae, asking her that we may experience the Christmas festivities in the joy and peace of the Lord.

With these sentiments towards all of you and the large family of the Roman Curia, I impart the Apostolic Blessing from my heart.

Translated by Teresa Benedetta (Papa Ratzinger Website)

©Barfo ,2008

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So that Government of the Bank, by the Bank and for the Bank shall not perish from the Earth

Want a Billion or Two? Sign here.....

Want Food Stamps? ...

©Barfo, 2008

Shoeless in America

The News: Enraged by Bush's smirking arrogance, Muntader al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist for Al-Baghdadia television, hurled his shoe at the ducking president and then the other, calling Bush a dog. He was immediately subdued and severely beaten by security thugs. Almost immediately, thousands of supportive Iraqis took to the streets demanding al-Zaidi's release. According to the New York Times, a "thinly veiled glee" pervaded the Arab world.

The Note: And doubtless beyond.

©Barfo, 2008

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New York Times Shields U.S. from Incoming Truths

The News: In an article headlined "Russia Backs Off on Europe Missile Threat," the New York Times reported that "President of Dimitri Medvedev of Russia retreated Friday from his threat to deploy missiles on Europe’s borders, ... if President-elect Obama joined Russia and France in calling for a conference on European security by next summer." The Times continued that "at a meeting in Nice hosted by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Mr. Medvedev backed away from the bellicose speech he gave last week." According to the Times, Sarkozy "helped ease the way for Mr. Medvedev’s retreat" by supporting "the idea of talks" on a new security architecture for Europe to be held this coming year between the United State, Russia and European states. The Times added that "Mr. Sarkozy made clear that he wants the United States to think again about the missile defense systems that it plans to build in Poland and the Czech Republic."

The accompanying photo showed perturbed Medvedev standing at attention looking like an oversized schoolboy being admonished by Sarkozy.

The News: In an articled headlined "Sarkozy backs Russian calls for pan-European security pact," the UK Guardian reported that "President Nicolas Sarkozy of France joined Russia in condemning the Pentagon's plans to install missile defence bases in central Europe yesterday and backed President Dmitri Medvedev's previously ignored calls for a new pan-European security pact." The article went on to say that "Both presidents concluded a Russia-EU summit... with an agreement to convene a major international conference next summer at which the Americans, Russians and the 27 countries of the EU should come up with a blueprint for new post-cold war "security architecture" in Europe.

The accompanying photo showed a smiling and assured Medvedev shaking hands with a determined looking Sarkozy.

The Note: Thank God we can count on the flagship of U.S journalism to do what's right by the country.

©Barfo, 2008
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MEXICO SOLVES LIQUIDITY CRISIS

MEXICO CITY -- Scientists at the National Autonomous University of Mexico announced today that they had discovered how to make diamonds from tequila. The discovery comes as the world recession is hiting Mexico. A happy president Felipe Calderon, announced that the discovery had solved Mexico's endemic liquidity crisis.

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Delirium Tremens

So, Barack Obama has been elected president by a hefty margin.   Liberals and Progressives are overjoyed and are vociferating as if (a mere eight years late) the New Millenium has indeed arrived.

I am sorry to rain on the party, but Obama is not going to introduce any fundamental change to the neo-liberal regime which has gotten us to where we are. Nor is he going to reverse the irreversible course of history, which is that all empires have to rise and fall.

A neo-con is simply a neo liberal gone punk. Domestically and diplomatically Obama will provide some emollients and better manners, but I doubt little else. He may take a few paltry steps towards realizing Bismarckian social benefits and he may go back to an Eisenhower-esque diplomacy of working "through" allies and international institutions. Otherwise the Flush Democrats are already "warning" us not to expect a new New Deal (i.e. a new faux social democracy) and the New York Times is peddling its usual demented ravings telling us it's time to leave off the "folly" of Iraq and focus on the "necessary" war in Afghanistan. No you dimits!!!! I am not Jove, I am Neputne!!!!!!

I admire Obama. He is likely the most intelligent president we've had since that racist bastard, Woodrow Wilson. Obama is engaging, informed and in control. I am glad most Americans showed that they could overcome their obsessive compulsive disorder over skin hue. But, to paraphrase Tolstoy, politics is something more than personality. Americans' disastrous propensity for exceptionalism has blinded them both to understanding the true nature of the country and to thinking that historical laws do not apply to us.

Like all leaders, Obama is constrained by his context and the material he has to work with. It may be that, far from being a creature of his time, he stands outside it at some Archimedean Point and understands that neither the actual nor the merely possible reflect the ideal. But assuming that to be the case, he is still constrained by the calculus of history. I fear his options are limited. I wish I were wrong.

©Barfo, 2008