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New pope Francis Bergoglio active in blasting abortion, 'gay' marriage

Bob Unruh
WND
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:24 UTC
Pope Francis

Pope Francis
Called 'choice' a 'death penalty' and said children lose in homosexual lifestyle

Pope Francis, newly selected by the cardinals of the Catholic church to be their new leader, has a heritage of staunch support for conservative issues, heralding possible disappointment for those who advocate for a more "modern" church that accepts contemporary social values.

The selection of Francis, former Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was announced Wednesday, only weeks after Pope Benedict XVI resigned, citing his health and the demands of the church.

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, said, "We congratulate our many Catholic supporters on the selection of a new pope and are encouraged by his reputation for unwavering commitment to preserving the lives of prenatal children and marriage between one man and one woman. We will stand firmly with him and defend him in that commitment and pray for his success."

Glenn cited a report from National Catholic Register that described Bergoglio as "an unwaveringly orthodox on matters of sexual morality, staunchly opposing abortion, same-sex marriage, and contraception. In 2010 he asserted that gay adoption is a form of discrimination against children, earning a public rebuke from Argentina's President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner."
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Cult

Jorge Bergoglio: New Pope Francis I and Argentina's military junta


CBS
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:09 UTC
Image
© CNN
Jorge Mario Bergoglio - who will be now known as Pope Francis - has spent nearly his entire career at home in Argentina, overseeing churches and shoe-leather priests.

The 76-year-old archbishop of Buenos Aires reportedly got the second-most votes after Joseph Ratzinger in the 2005 papal election, and he has long specialized in the kind of pastoral work that some say is an essential skill for the next pope. He is the first Jesuit to be elected pope.

In a lifetime of teaching and leading priests in Latin America, which has the largest share of the world's Catholics, Bergoglio has shown a keen political sensibility as well as the kind of self-effacing humility that fellow cardinals value highly.

Bergoglio is known for modernizing an Argentine church that had been among the most conservative in Latin America.

Bergoglio is known to be conservative on spiritual issues . He opposes abortion, same-sex marriage and supports celibacy. However, according to the National Cathedral Reporter's John Allen, "he's no defender of clerical privilege, or insensitive to pastoral realities."
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Cult

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina elected pope

Jason Horowitz and Anthony Faiola
Washington Post
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:56 UTC
Image
© Peter Macdiarmid / GETTY IMAGES
Newly elected Pope Francis I appears on the central balcony of St Peter's Basilica.
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope Wednesday, becoming the first pontiff from Latin America and taking the name Pope Francis.

Appearing on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica a short time later, the new pope led a prayer for his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

"As you know, the duty of the conclave was to appoint a bishop of Rome, and it seems to me that my brother cardinals have chosen one who is from far away, but here I am," he told the crowd.

Earlier, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the church's most senior cardinal in the order of deacons, or the proto-deacon, announced "habemus papam" and spoke the name of the new pope, chosen on the second day of deliberations among the assembled cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church. But his words were barely audible to the throng gathered in St. Peter's Square, and there was initial confusion over the identity of the new leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.
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Bad Guys

Suicide bomber kills seven in Afghanistan


Guardian
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:49 UTC
Image
© Mohammad Ismail/Reuters
Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai condemned the bombers for attacking Afghan civilians.
Among the seven killed in the remote village of Basos were several family members of the Afghan speaker of parliament

A suicide bomber has blown himself up in a crowd of Afghans watching the traditional sport of buzkashi, killing seven people, officials said.

Among the seven killed in the bombing in the remote village of Basos were several family members of the Afghan speaker of parliament, said regional police spokesman Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai. Another eight people were wounded.

The parliament speaker, Abdul Raouf Ibrahimi, was born in Basos. Ahmadzai said the dead include his father, two brothers and one nephew.
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Cult

North Carolina county commissioners sued for insisting upon official public prayers

Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:38 UTC
Image
© Screenshot via Rowan County Public Access TV
Three citizens and the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina (ACLU) sued the Rowan County Board of Commissioners in North Carolina on Tuesday over the board's continued insistence on opening meetings with official Christian prayers.

The group has been raising the issue since Feb. 15, 2012, when the ACLU sent a letter notifying the board that continuing to open meetings with sectarian religious ceremonies violates the Constitution and contravenes a recent ruling by a federal appeals court. They gave the commission until March 5 to change course.

The group's letter sparked a series of angry commentaries by commissioners, including an email by Commissioner Jim Sides who said he would "volunteer to be the first to go to jail for" the cause of official public prayer at government meetings. Subsequent meetings featured prominent public prayers led by commission members and public comment periods became stacked with enthusiastic Christians lecturing about how the liberal Supreme Court cannot impose its will upon the free people of America.
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Snakes in Suits

Republican rep: Shift funds to abstinence-only because sex ed is 'dangerous'

David Edwards
Raw Story
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:33 UTC
Image
A Republican U.S. congressman from Illinois is calling to take funds from traditional sex education, which he claims are "dangerous" for kids, and reallocated the money to abstinence-only programs with "incredible success records."

During a radio interview with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Tuesday, Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL) explained that he was co-sponsoring a bill to shift over a half a billion dollars away from sexual education over the next five years.

"What you're doing is you're redirecting money from a program that has negative consequences and redirecting some of it into one that has proven to have positive outcomes," Perkins opined.
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USA

Study: Young minority voters asked for ID more frequently than whites

Arturo Garcia
Raw Story
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:27 UTC
Image
© Flickr Creative Commons
Young black and Latino voters were asked far more often to demonstrate they were eligible to vote than their white counterparts, even in states without voter identification laws, according to a new study by researchers at Washington University of St. Louis and the University of Chicago.

Politico reported on Tuesday that 72.9 percent of young black voters and 60.8 percent of Latinos reported being asked to provide identification, compared to 50.8 percent of white voters.

The study also found that 17.3 percent of black voters and 8.1 percent of Latino voters did not vote because of ID requirements, while 4.7 percent of white respondents said they posed a problem.
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Bad Guys

Western media set up North Korea for war

Finian Cunningham
PressTV
Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:51 UTC
Image

Kim Jong-un, the young leader of North Korea
Western so-called news media coverage of the escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula is like watching a cross between a bad James Bond movie and a cheap horror flick about flesh-eating zombies.

It would be funny if the danger of war was not so serious and imminent. The disturbing direction of the Western media coverage is to set up North Korea - a poor impoverished country - for an all-out military attack by the world's nuclear superpower psychopath - the United States.

Paradoxically, this danger is being incited by "news" corporations that pompously claim to be free-thinking bastions of independent journalism, when in reality they are nothing more than progenitors of the worst kind of pulp fiction.

Kim Jong-un, the young leader of North Korea who took over from his late father in 2011, is being cast as an insane villain whose Western media persona resembles that of a putative Doctor Evil. His projected character is fit for a role in an early 007 movie.
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Wall Street

If corporations don't pay taxes, why should you?

Robert Scheer
TruthDig
Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:41 UTC
Image
© AP/Mark Lennihan
Go offshore young man and avoid paying taxes. Plunder at will in those foreign lands, and if you get in trouble, Uncle Sam will come rushing to your assistance, diplomatically, financially and militarily, even if you have managed to avoid paying for those government services. Just pretend you're a multinational corporation.

That's the honest instruction for business success provided by 60 of the largest U.S. corporations that, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, "parked a total of $166 billion offshore last year" shielding more than 40 percent of their profits from U.S. taxes. They all do it, including Microsoft, GE and pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories. Many, like GE, are so good at it that they have avoided taxes altogether in some recent years.

But they all still expect Uncle Sam to come to their aid with military firepower in case the natives abroad get restless and nationalize their company's assets. We still have a blockade against Cuba because Fidel Castro more than a half century ago dared seize an American-owned telephone company. During that same period, we have consistently intervened to maintain the lock of U.S. corporations on the world's resources, continuing to the present task of making Iraq and Libya safe for our oil companies.
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Che Guevara

Hugo Chavez depicted as tyrant for challenging western oil domination

Linda McQuaig
Toronto Star
Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:26 UTC
Image
© PHOTO COURTESY OF LINDA MCQUAIG
Columnist Linda McQuaig with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez after she interviewed him at the presidential palace in Caracas for her 2004 book on the oil industry, 'It’s the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet.'
Venezuelan leader redirected vast sums of national wealth to the swollen ranks of Venezuela's poor.

Had Hugo Chavez followed the pattern of many Third World leaders and concentrated on siphoning off his nation's wealth for personal gain, he would have attracted little attention or animosity in the West.

Instead, he did virtually the opposite - redirecting vast sums of national wealth to the swollen ranks of Venezuela's poor, along with free health care and education. No wonder he alienated local elites, who are used to being first in line at the national trough.

Chavez's relentless championing of the downtrodden set a standard increasingly followed in Latin America. It explains his immense popularity with the masses and the widespread grief over his death last week.

Yet in the West, he was portrayed as a tyrant.
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