The Difference Between Musharraf and Chavez

An Update on the "New Axis of Evil"^TM
An Update on the "So-called War on Terror"^TM
An Update on the "Worst President in US History"^TM

I don't know if this is funny or sad. I know I'm disturbed by it.

In case you haven't heard, the "liberal" mainstream US media are having a field day with the Venezuelan government's refusal to renew the license of a broadcast network -- RCTV -- whose owner, Marcel Granier, was implicated in the economic sabotage of 2003 as well as the 2003 coup against President Hugo Chavez. When the coup failed due to overwhelming democratic opposition and Chavez was returned to power, Granier's RCTV and the other commercial stations ran old Hollywood movies and cartoons.

RCTV was not "shut down" by Chavez -- the twice-democratically elected and legitimate President of Venezuela. The Venezuelan government refused to renew their license because, well, they simply weren't serving the public interest. If Bob Wright and NBC's parent company, General Electric, conspired to overthrow a US President, would it be wrong to refuse to renew licenses?

So Condoleezza Rice wagged her finger at Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro today over Venezuela's refusal to renew RCTV's license. She told a meeting of the Organization of American States in Panama that

Freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of conscience are not a thorn in the side of government. Disagreeing with your government is not unpatriotic and most certainly should not be a crime in any country, especially a democracy.

The irony is delicious. Freedom of speech is GREAT if it is pro-global, unregulated, laissez faire, (so-called) "free-market" capitalist speech. If it is anti-global, unregulated, laissez faire, (so-called) "free-market" capitalist speech, then, well, whatever. Maybe it's okay. Whatever. Maybe it's un-American. I don't know. Whatever. And disagreeing with your government is GREAT if your government is trying to regulate the effects of capitalism within society. If you happen to think that an invasion of a sovereign state who had not threatened you and posed no threat -- immediate or otherwise -- to you, and which invasion was based on lies and probably illegal according to international law is a bad thing, well, whatever. You're probably a communist or something.

So I find it interesting that the "liberal" mainstream US media are not jumping all over the fact that our "ally" in Pakistan, the anti-democratic dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has updated an ordinance that gives him the power to have any building shut down if HE believes an illegal transmission is being aired, and gives him the power to cancel the license of any TV channel he chooses. Oh, and did I mention that the government was already blocking the transmission of the three leading TV stations in Pakistan, because they have been covering the civil unrest surrounding Musharraf's firing of the Chief Justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court?
Why are we supporting this guy? And this is not a Republican/Democrat thing, either. Even the Democrats in the US support Musharraf. No, this is another conflict between global, unregulated, laissez faire, (so-called) "free-market" capitalism, and anything else. It might be directed against Socialism, sure. But it is just as much directed against the kind of capitalism that was practiced in the United States from the time of the New Deal until the trickle-down, supply-side, de-regulated Reagan years.

This is why the late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II called Soviet Communism and unregulated Capitalism morally equivalent evils.

Meanwhile, the man that George W. Bush said was America's most wanted, the man Bush said we'd get "dead or alive" before he flip-flopped and decided he wasn't really very much interested in him, the man who was behind the most brutal attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, Osama bin Laden, is alive and well and living in Pakistan, according to the Taliban. Under the protection, no doubt, of Pervez Musharraf.

What has happened to this country I love so much? Why are we not clamoring in the streets to

IMPEACH GEORGE W. BUSH???

Jesus Was NOT a Socialist...BUT...

The Catholic principle of apostolic succession means, among other things, that there is an unbroken line of apostles from the original twelve until today. It also means that Bishops (and this of course includes the Pope in his role as Bishop of Rome) have a particular authority to teach. This authority is exercised in pastoral letters (on the episcopal level) and encyclicals (a Pope's teaching to the entire church). In fairness to the subject, it is also used as an excuse to keep women from being ordained.

But those who call themselves "Catholic" ignore Church teaching at their own peril. So here's what the US Conference of Catholic Bishops had to say to Congress (all emphases mine).

Do not forget or neglect the needs of the poor and vulnerable in the United States and throughout the world in setting budget priorities, U.S. bishops urged Congress, noting that they have responsibility to meet the common good.

Common good? You still talking about that? Didn't we get rid of that useless concept in the 1980s? No, say the Bishops. Decisions about spending have to be made on the basis of more than "economic policy."

“Meeting essential human needs is a compelling ethical and fiscal priority,” he said. “A moral measure of the budget will be how it treats poor and vulnerable people.”

The Bishops questioned the morality of tax cuts that benefit the rich while putting an undue burden on the middle class and jeopardizing the well-being of the poor.

“When the basic requirements of human life and dignity for many in our country and throughout the world go unmet, it is essential that adequate federal revenues be available to help meet these basic human needs,” he said.

Deficit spending on things like, well, war also limit the amount of money that can be spent on providing for the common good.

The budget should, he said, provide “adequate funding” for programs that help families “escape hunger and homelessness, find decent housing and employment and have access to quality education and medical care.”

This is important not just at home; the common good extends beyond our shores.

He also pointed to strengthening the U.S. government commitment to foreign aid, including relief, developmental and health-care assistance throughout the developing world “where people live with crushing poverty and diseases” and forced to flee “violence and persecution.” “Your budget choices have clear moral and human dimensions,” he said. “They reflect our values as a people.”

Amen.

“The weak and vulnerable,” he said, “do not have powerful lobbyists.”

Alleluia.

Catholic Bishop Could Win Paraguayan Presidency

An update on the "New Axis of Evil"^TM



A former Roman Catholic Bishop, strongly influenced by the "liberation theology" of the Latin American Catholic Church of the 1980s, is the front-runner in the race for Paraguay's 2008 Presidential election.

Fernando Lugo, "the Bishop of the poor," is leading all other candidates -- including that of the ruling Colorado party, likely to be current President Nicanor Duarte Frutos. The Colorado Party is the party of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, the right-wing autocrat who ruled Paraguay as a dictatorship for 35 years, from 1954 through 1989.

Lugo, the Bishop of San Pedro for ten years until his resignation in 2005, is seen as a fighter for social justice and an advocate for the poor. He resigned from the priesthood in December of 2006 in order to run for the Presidency. Opponents on the right attempt to link him with Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales. Lugo disagrees:

For me, the value of the Venezuelan experiment is the social dimension, the better distribution of wealth for the benefit of the poor majority.

But, in his view, Chavez's method is inappropriate since it is

linked to a strong dose of statism, totally at the service of one person

which

is dangerous for a real democracy.

He sees himself not as of the left or the right, but of the people:

As I am accustomed to saying, hunger and unemployment, like the lack of access to health and education, have no ideology.

He notes that

there are too many differences between the small group of 500 families who live with a first world standard of living while the great majority lives in a poverty that borders on misery.

Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Paraguayan Church appear to be conspiring to keep Lugo from being elected. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, denied Lugo's request, founded in Canon Law, that he be released from the priesthood for "the common good." His only altertnative, according to Catholic Canon lawyers who reviewed the case, is apostasy and excommunication. Similarly, the Paraguayan Constitution forbids clergy to run for office, and the Church's refusal to release Lugo from his priestly duties might be used as a Constitutional argument to disqualify him.

John Paul II and the Evils of Liberal Capitalism

Sollicitudo Rei Socialis

As the world mourns the loss of Pope John Paul II, and the political and religious right in the US make of him a spokesman for "American values," it is instructive to look at some of his writings and teachings that the mainstream media largely ignored over the last 26 years.

In 1987, JP II issued an encyclical, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (On Social Matters), in which he clearly cast Marxist Communism and unregulated, free-market, liberal capitalism as equivalent evils, each containing their distinct "structures of sin." It is a revolutionary statement and has guided the Catholic Church's teachings on social justice and global development for nearly two decades. And it has been entirely ignored in the mainstream media, then and now.

While Church pronouncements about moral theology frequently make the news (in the Church's opposition to abortion, birth control, etc.), Catholic social justice teaching is curiously absent. It is easy for the mainstream media to ridicule, for instance, abstinence or celibacy in the face of an overwhelming cultural emphasis on sensual gratification. It is another story to expect it to look critically at the source of its own power and wealth: a global economy of mass exploitation and mass consumption.

But in the light of this 1987 statement, the audacity of the religious and political right to promote the Pope--along with Ronald Reagan and MArgaret Thatcher, for pete's sake--as a symbol of "American" values is particularly galling.

I have chosen representative (and lengthy) quotes. All emphases are mine. I urge you to read this largely ignored encyclical yourself:

(20) In the West there exists a system which is historically inspired by the principles of the liberal capitalism which developed with industrialization during the last century. In the East there exists a system inspired by the Marxist collectivism which sprang from an interpretation of the condition of the proletarian classes made in the light of a particular reading of history. Each of the two ideologies, on the basis of two very different visions of man and of his freedom and social role, has proposed and still promotes, on the economic level, antithetical forms of the organization of labor and of the structures of ownership, especially with regard to the so-called means of production.

(21) This is one of the reasons why the Church's social doctrine adopts a critical attitude towards both liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism. For from the point of view of development the question naturally arises: in what way and to what extent are these two systems capable of changes and updatings such as to favor or promote a true and integral development of individuals and peoples in modern society? In fact, these changes and updatings are urgent and essential for the cause of a development common to all.

22. In the light of these considerations, we easily arrive at a clearer picture of the last twenty years and a better understanding of the conflicts in the northern hemisphere, namely between East and West, as an important cause of the retardation or stagnation of the South. The developing countries, instead of becoming autonomous nations concerned with their own progress towards a just sharing in the goods and services meant for all, become parts of a machine, cogs on a gigantic wheel. This is often true also in the field of social communications, which, being run by centers mostly in the northern hemisphere, do not always give due consideration to the priorities and problems of such countries or respect their cultural make-up. They frequently impose a distorted vision of life and of man and thus fail to respond to the demands of true development.

Each of the two blocs harbors in its own way a tendency towards imperialism, as it is usually called, or towards forms of new- colonialism: an easy temptation to which they frequently succumb, as history, including recent history, teaches.

(28) A disconcerting conclusion about the most recent period should serve to enlighten us: side-by-side with the miseries of underdevelopment, themselves unacceptable, we find ourselves up against a form of superdevelopment, equally inadmissible. because like the former it is contrary to what is good and to true happiness. This super-development, which consists in an excessive availability of every kind of material goods for the benefit of certain social groups, easily makes people slaves of "possession" and of immediate gratification, with no other horizon than the multiplication or continual replacement of the things already owned with others still better. This is the so-called civilization of consumption" or "consumerism ," which involves so much "throwing-away" and "waste." An object already owned but now superseded by something better is discarded, with no thought of its possible lasting value in itself, nor of some other human being who is poorer.

Of course, the difference between "being" and "having," the danger inherent in a mere multiplication or replacement of things possessed compared to the value of "being," need not turn into a contradiction. One of the greatest injustices in the contemporary world consists precisely in this: that the ones who possess much are relatively few and those who possess almost nothing are many. It is the injustice of the poor distribution of the goods and services originally intended for all.

This then is the picture: there are some people - the few who possess much - who do not really succeed in "being" because, through a reversal of the hierarchy of values, they are hindered by the cult of "having"; and there are others - the many who have little or nothing - who do not succeed in realizing their basic human vocation because they are deprived of essential goods.

(41) Following the example of my predecessors, I must repeat that whatever affects the dignity of individuals and peoples, such as authentic development, cannot be reduced to a "technical" problem. If reduced in this way, development would be emptied of its true content, and this would be an act of betrayal of the individuals and peoples whom development is meant to serve.

The Church's social doctrine is not a "third way" between liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism, nor even a possible alternative to other solutions less radically opposed to one another: rather, it constitutes a category of its own…It is necessary to state once more the characteristic principle of Christian social doctrine: the goods of this world are originally meant for all…

And let's not forget one other point, Hugh Hewitt, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Howie, et al.: Pope John Paul II condemned the US invasion of Iraq as an unjust war.