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Pope will pray for the redemption of Islamic terrorists at Ground Zero

The Pope will pray for the redemption of Islamic terrorists when he visits
the site of the September 11 attacks in New York next week.

The pontiff will call for terrorists to convert to Christianity, saying:
"Turn to Your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with
hatred."

Pope will pray for the redemption of Islamic terrorists at Ground Zero

The Pope will pray for the redemption of Islamic terrorists when he visits
the site of the September 11 attacks in New York next week.

The pontiff will call for terrorists to convert to Christianity, saying:

"Turn to Your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with
hatred."

"God of understanding, overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy, we seek
your light and guidance".

The prayer is likely to further incense the Muslim world, which has already
attacked the Pope for publicly converting Magdi Allam, a journalist and one
of Italy's most high-profile Muslims, at Easter.

-------------------------

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5
79&Itemid=1

Pope Benedict Go Home

by Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report, 9 April 2008

His beneficence he ain't. Pope Benedict XVI, a former Hitler Youth whose
persona fits better with his given name, Joseph Ratzinger, transports his
malevolent, rightwing presence to the United States next which, where he
will doubtless do mischief with his political allies in the Bush regime.
Benedict/Ratzinger soon proved himself one of the most obnoxious and
historically ignorant top Catholics in modern times. The former Inquisitor
told survivors of the world's worst holocaust Native Americans "secretly
longed" to be brought under Christian rule - which wound up killing 19 out
of every 20 of them. Muslims, said Benedict, were the source of all things
"evil and inhuman." Under such circumstances, infallibility is terrifying.

"Benedict has proven himself to be among the worst, most retrograde popes in
modern times."

Why would American media, politicians and average citizens welcome a Hitler
Youth member who personally worked to insure Bush's re-election and who
openly praised the genocide conducted against American Indians? If the man
in question becomes pope, it obviously doesn't matter what he says or does.
Otherwise sensible people suddenly act like illiterate medieval peasants and
fight to kiss his ring.

Benedict XVI will make his first visit to America as pope next week. Since
his elevation in 2005, Benedict has proven himself to be among the worst,
most retrograde popes in modern times. Worse even than his predecessor, John
Paul II. John Paul's iconic "pope mobile" and international visits gave him
the appearance of a warm and cuddly spiritual leader. Yet he was every inch
a politician, and a right wing one at that.

John Paul personally and forcefully opposed the liberation theology movement
that swept Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,
now Benedict XVI, was just like his boss. As head of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith, which used to be called the Inquisition,
Ratzinger crushed all efforts to question church authority or promote
leftist political activity. Known as "God's Rottweiler," Ratzinger forced
Fr. Leonardo Boff, the father of liberation theology, to retire to a
monastery and shut up about liberating oppressed people.

"Ratzinger crushed all efforts to question church authority or promote
leftist political activity."

Ratzinger didn't confine his politics to Latin America. In 2004 George W.
Bush asked the Vatican for help in his election campaign. "Not all of the
American bishops are with me," he whined. Bush's wish was Ratzinger's
command. Ratzinger wrote a letter to American bishops and instructed them to
deny communion to politicians who supported abortion rights. This letter was
written in 2004, when John Kerry, a pro-choice Catholic, ran against George
W. Bush. The communion controversy was just one of the ways in which the
Kerry campaign was weakened by the Bush administration's successful
mobilization of conservative white Christians.

It is certain that no pundit or politician will bring up this disgraceful
activity when Pope Benedict visits Washington and New York. If a foreign
religious leader can work to keep a favored American president in power and
never be reproached, then he is free to deliver words of hate.

Since he became pope, Benedict has heaped insults on American Indians, and
on Muslims all over the world. He said that Christianity was not imposed on
Indians because they "secretly longed" for it. Rubbing salt into the gaping
wound, Benedict added that worship of traditional Indian religions would be
"a step backward."

"Benedict has heaped insults on American Indians and on Muslims all over the
world."

Not content to insult the Indians who survived the holocaust inflicted upon
them by Europeans, Benedict proved himself to be just as bigoted towards
Muslims. He quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor who said that the
prophet Muhammad brought only "evil and inhuman" things to the world.
Despite his blatant bigotry, Benedict is still treated with respect and
admiration. It certainly is good to be the pope.

While European nations were killing Indians, they also began the enslavement
of millions of Africans. The church put the full force of its authority
behind slavery from the earliest days of European incursions around the
world. In 1455, Pope Nicholas V gave permission to ". . . invade, search
out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever . . .
and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery..." The church didn't stray
from that point of view for centuries. As late as 1866 the church said, "It
is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold,
bought, exchanged or given."

When Benedict visits Washington, D.C. and New York City he will say mass
before huge crowds, and politicians will sharpen elbows and call in favors
in order to be seen with him. No one has asked him to apologize for the
church's past support of these genocides or for his own hate speech. Unlike
Jeremiah Wright, who spoke truthful words, Benedict will be lionized for
telling lies, and justifying centuries of atrocities because the
perpetrators look like him.

"Unlike Jeremiah Wright, who spoke truthful words, Benedict will be lionized
for telling lies."

Catholics are not the only Christian denomination who justified genocide and
enslavement. America's true national religion, manifest destiny and white
privilege, has very old and very deep roots. They start with the premise
that Europeans had the right to claim foreign lands as their own, and kill,
buy and sell human beings. Most Americans, regardless of denomination or
religious affiliation, see nothing wrong with Pope Benedict's racism. That
is why he will be welcomed with open arms. The German born ruler of the
Vatican may be very American after all.

* Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms.
Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at
Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com. Ms. Kimberley maintains an
edifying and frequently updated blog at freedomrider.blogspot.com. More
of her work is also available at her Black Agenda Report archive page.

Pope Benedict XVI (The Antichrist)

Comments

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Too late for redemption ...

13.04.2008 15:44

Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell
'We Expected Eternal Paradise For This,' Say Suicide Bombers
September 26, 2001 | Issue 37•34

JAHANNEM, OUTER DARKNESS—The hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon expressed confusion and surprise Monday to find themselves in the lowest plane of Na'ar, Islam's Hell.

"I was promised I would spend eternity in Paradise, being fed honeyed cakes by 67 virgins in a tree-lined garden, if only I would fly the airplane into one of the Twin Towers," said Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11, between attempts to vomit up the wasps, hornets, and live coals infesting his stomach. "But instead, I am fed the boiling feces of traitors by malicious, laughing Ifrit. Is this to be my reward for destroying the enemies of my faith?"

The rest of Atta's words turned to raw-throated shrieks, as a tusked, asp-tongued demon burst his eyeballs and drank the fluid that ran down his face.

According to Hell sources, the 19 eternally damned terrorists have struggled to understand why they have been subjected to soul-withering, infernal torture ever since their Sept. 11 arrival.

"There was a tumultuous conflagration of burning steel and fuel at our gates, and from it stepped forth these hijackers, the blessed name of the Lord already turning to molten brass on their accursed lips," said Iblis The Thrice-Damned, the cacodemon charged with conscripting new arrivals into the ranks of the forgotten. "Indeed, I do not know what they were expecting, but they certainly didn't seem prepared to be skewered from eye socket to bunghole and then placed on a spit so that their flesh could be roasted by the searing gale of flatus which issues forth from the haunches of Asmoday."

"Which is strange when you consider the evil with which they ended their lives and those of so many others," added Iblis, absentmindedly twisting the limbs of hijacker Abdul Aziz Alomari into unspeakably obscene shapes.

"I was told that these Americans were enemies of the one true religion, and that Heaven would be my reward for my noble sacrifice," said Alomari, moments before his jaw was sheared away by faceless homunculi. "But now I am forced to suckle from the 16 poisoned leathern teats of Gophahmet, Whore of Betrayal, until I burst from an unwholesome engorgement of curdled bile. This must be some sort of terrible mistake."

Exacerbating the terrorists' tortures, which include being hollowed out and used as prophylactics by thorn-cocked Gulbuth The Rampant, is the fact that they will be forced to endure such suffering in sight of the Paradise they were expecting.

"It might actually be the most painful thing we can do, to show these murderers the untold pleasures that would have awaited them in Paradise, if only they had lived pious lives," said Praxitas, Duke of Those Willingly Led Astray. "I mean, it's tough enough being forced through a wire screen by the callused palms of Halcorym and then having your entrails wound onto a stick and fed to the toothless, foul-breathed swine of Gehenna. But to endure that while watching the righteous drink from a river of wine? That can't be fun."

Underworld officials said they have not yet decided on a permanent punishment for the terrorists.

"Eventually, we'll settle on an eternal and unending task for them," said Lord Androalphus, High Praetor of Excruciations. "But for now, everyone down here wants a crack at them. The legions of fang-wombed hags will take their pleasure on their shattered carcasses for most of this afternoon. Tomorrow, their flesh will be melted from their bones like wax in the burning embrace of the Mother of Cowards. The day after that, they'll be sodomized by the Fallen and their bowels shredded by a demonic ejaculate of burning sand. Then, on Sunday, Satan gets them all day. I can't even imagine what he's got cooked up for them."

The Onion

Isn't David Miliband a terrorist?

13.04.2008 16:50

Well, vicars and bishops have been praying for our leaders every Sunday as long as I can remember. Maybe they know there are Blackwater and Hallibuton as well as foreign terrorist moles inside our government so this is a prayer for them?

Isn't David Milliband a Terrorist? His mouth appears to splurt nothing but lies, lies and more lies about how unfortunate it is that we have to keep breaking the UN Charter and Geneva Conventions again and again. But it must be done because of 'terrorism', although he offers no evidence of who is responsible for the conflict. He's certainly the most postmodern foreign secretary we've ever had. And the most smarmy.

IMO these people, such as bro. Ed Milliband, are there precisely to DISCREDIT the entire political process and their lies are like little time bombs tripping off their tongues. Civil War has become a very real possibility with the types such as these having slimed their way into power.

In defence of the Pope who has of course worryingly also called for a 'New World Order', there must be something good going on there in the Vatican. Some people there who haven't realised it is a major institution of the devil. Because Kissinger and Blair have arrived recently. Top satanic fixers rapping on the vatican door like two bad pennies.

Tony

'interesting' use of quotes

13.04.2008 18:50

The fact that liberation theology was attacked is enough evidence to realise that our pope's are not men of freedom/love/justice etc but why are so words put into Ratzinger's mouth? You've written various things he's supposedly said full of only two word quotes, why can't you provide his actual words, it just looks like interpretation, opinion with out much foundation. I have no faith in the RC church but if I was to write something about it I'd want to quote them directly rather than simply cast aspersions, aside from the fact that it's no great revelation that the leader of one religion be evangelising there simply aren't any sentences you've provided demonstrating that the pope has actually called muslims evil, I'm quite open to the possibility that he might have done but would be slightly surprised as I'm not sure what advantage it would serve Rome. I don't see what's wrong with basically saying the hijackers should find love, where's the evidence he said they should convert?

geordie

Ask Pope Benedict: When Does Genocide Purify?

13.04.2008 22:02

Ask Pope Benedict: When Does Genocide Purify?

May 18, 2007

Pope Benedict XVI's recent trip to Brazil seems to have done little to shore up the Catholic Church's declining power in its Latin American heartland. It went a long way, however, towards confirming Benedict's reputation as a reactionary bigot.

Benedict, of course, is the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Throughout the 1980s, he was Pope John Paul II's enforcer in the campaign to expunge the dangerously progressive ideals of Catholic "liberation theology" from Latin American soil. What could not be accomplished by state terrorists, who killed thousands of members of Christian "base communities" [1] in the 1970s and '80s, Ratzinger and John Paul sought to engineer by installing conservative bishops who would stem the progressive tide. Fortunately, they seem to have failed. An account by Larry Rohter in the New York Times (May 7) notes that the movement which Ratzinger "once called 'a fundamental threat to the faith of the church' ... persists as an active, even defiant force in Latin America," with some 80,000 base communities operating in Brazil alone. It is fuelled, as it always has been, by the "social and economic ills" that pervade the region, and that have only "worsened" under the neoliberal prescriptions of the past two decades.

This time around, Ratzinger/Benedict's bile was directed not at liberation theology, but squarely at the historical memory of the serial genocides -- probably the most destructive in human history -- inflicted upon the indigenous peoples of the Americas. On the last day of his visit, in the city of Aparecida, the Pope "touch[ed] on a sensitive historical episode," in the blandly understated language of an Associated Press dispatch (May 13). In other words, he ripped the bandages off a still-suppurating wound. According to the official text [2] of Benedict's comments on the Vatican website, the Pope declared that "the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean" were "silently longing" to receive Christ as their savior. He was "the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it ..." Colonization by Spain and Portugal was not a conquest, but rather an "adoption" of the Indians through baptism, making their cultures "fruitful" and "purifying" them. Accordingly, "the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture."

So there we have it. The invasion and conquest of the Americas, which caused the deaths of upwards of 90 percent of the indigenous population, was something the Indians had been pining for all along. They weren't just "asking for it," as sexist cranks depict women as complicit in their own rapes. They were actually "longing" for it, since salvation and "purification" came with it.

Actually, genocide came with it, as Raphael Lemkin knew. Lemkin is the Polish-Jewish jurist who, having fled the Nazi invasion of Poland for refuge in the U.S., coined the word "genocide" [3] in 1943. He defined genocide as "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups." His framing became the foundation of the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948, and of the academic field of comparative genocide studies. Lemkin himself was keenly aware of the devastation of the indigenous people of the Americas, and considered it basic to his understanding of genocide, though most of his writings on the theme remain unpublished. (See the text of John Docker's excellent February 2004 talk at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "Raphael Lemkin's History of Genocide and Colonialism". [4])

Benedict's astounding comments attracted barely a flicker of media attention in the West -- almost all of it on the wire services, and some of it problematic in itself. A May 13 Reuters dispatch noted blithely that, contrary to Benedict's claims, "many Indian groups believe the conquest brought them enslavement and genocide." This is rather like writing that "many Jewish groups believe that the Nazi Holocaust brought Jews enslavement and genocide." The reality exists independently of the belief. As blogger Stentor Danielson points out [5]: "In the real world, it's a basic historical fact that the Indians were enslaved. It's a basic historical fact that entire tribes were wiped out. The reason [that] 'many Indian groups believe' these historical facts is because people like Reuters' craven reporters won't admit when there's a fact behind the claims."

Indian organizations and spokespeople expressed outrage at Benedict's statements, calling them "arrogant and disrespectful." Sandro Tuxa, leader of a coalition of Indian tribes in Brazil's impoverished northeast, declared: "We repudiate the Pope's comments. To say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening" (Reuters, May 14).

Frightening indeed. Genocide scholar Greg Stanton describes denial as the final stage of genocide: "The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses" (see Stanton's "Eight Stages of Genocide" [6] on the Genocide Watch website). Genocidal perpetrators, and those who inherit their mantle, also seek to "purify" historical memory -- as Turkish authorities unceasingly, but so far unsuccessfully, have sought to do in the case of the Armenian genocide.

Stanton also reminds us that denial is "among the surest indicators [that] further genocidal massacres" may lie ahead. That's a thought worth pondering, as the reinvigorated indigenous movement in Latin America confronts a renewed neo-colonial assault on its culture, health, and means of subsistence.

* Adam Jones, Ph.D., is the author of Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction [7] (Routledge, 2006) and editor of Genocide, War Crimes and the West: History and Complicity (Zed Books, 2004). Email: