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POPSPope Feared Bush Is The Anti-Christ The Pope, who grew up facing the evils of Hitler and Stalin, knows evil when he sees it. An old article from 2003, but very thought-provoking! Now, I'm no Catholic, but if Pope John Paul ll (rest in peace) had such concerns about the "goodness" of Mr George W. Bush, then I sit up and listen. Are there any Catholics out there who know what the Church's or the current Pope's stand on this issue is now?
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POPSPolitican Cartoons "The United States, some years back, found its new bogeyman "Islam" to replace its former imaginary enemy "Communism." And now the European press appears to have finally (?) found a replacement for the Jewish people that they used to malign and attack. Anti-Islam/Muslimism appears to now have officially replaced anti-Jewish sentiments in Europe. The roots of these attacks are the same: an inability to acknowledge and respect a diversity of people that might result in a Europe that is non-White and/or non-Christian. The anti-Muslim/Islam cartoons of today are little different than the anti-Jewish cartoons that were published by the Nazis during WW II."
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POPSTen Ways to Make Sure That Peace Stays Dead Too many people on each side see the other as wholly culpable. Too many people on each side see themselves as wholly innocent, wholly victimized, ill-served by the well-meaning, abandoned by former allies, betrayed by the media, misunderstood by people who should know better, forgotten by the world. Too many people on each side see only the suffering that has been caused them. Too many people have learned to wall themselves off from the suffering that they have caused.
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POPSThe 10 Greatest Books of All Time Each individual top 10 list is like its own steeplechase through the international canon. List at the end of the clip, though I find Lev Grossman's intro more interesting.
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POPS12 Compelling Monuments Dedicated to Peace From the most prolific countries in the world, unique, memorable and with a lot of history behind; A lot more details for each monument at the source: http://weburbanist.com/2008/05/16/12-compelling-monuments-dedicated-to-peace-reversing-the-typology-of-the-war-memorial/
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POPSFT.com: Europeans see US as Threat to PEACE.!!! The level of European concern about the US has remained broadly consistent over the past year. In 11 previous polls dating back to July 2006 the proportion of respondents considering the US a threat to stability has ranged between 28 per cent and 38 per cent. The latest poll comes in the wake of the “surge” that has increased US forces in Iraq to about 160,000 troops, but which has not been accompanied by political breakthroughs or a dramatic reduction of violence.
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POPSSomething Very Strange is Happening in German Graveyards "This widespread problem has given rise to an entire industry that aims to save the day with new methods of rot. The latest innovation on this morbid market is the Swiss-engineered Linder reconditioning system -- a severe method that involves deep incursions into cemeteries. After excavating the unusable soil, Linder fills the area with a "custom mixture of topsoil, woodchips and gravel." Finishing touches to the burial place include a drainage system with additional filter and seepage layers."
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POPSThe Biggest Threat to the West Lies Within Itself, Not with Islam Simon Jenkins on threats to peace and democracy. This defeatism led the American Congress to allow its president to authorise torture and detention without trial in what Senator Robert Byrd called “the slow unravelling of the people’s liberties”. It enabled a British Home Office to curb free speech and habeas corpus. It arms police, fortifies buildings and impedes the free movement of citizens. It makes every Christian suspicious of every Muslim.
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POPSLuciano Pavarotti Has Died Luciano Pavarotti has died in his home in Medina Italy, at 5 AM local time. I never got to see Pavarotti perform, but I have been lucky enough to see Paul Potts live and to see and hear the thundering singing of a truely gifted tenor is an absolutely amazing and breathtaking experience. Rest in Peace Pavarotti.
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POPSCan we learn to love uncertainty? "... Yet they are all defined in terms of the unsettling lack of something positive or better. It is perhaps for that reason that the stories of those who discovered these uncertainties have been largely overlooked. This is why I made Dangerous Knowledge for BBC television: to champion the incomplete, the uncomputable and the uncertain."
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POPS8 Child Prodigies So Amazing They'll Ruin Your Day "Ah, childhood. It's a magical time when you're still allowed to be a non-productive drain on society and not feel guilty about it. But while most of us spent our childhoods staring at cartoons over bowls of sugary breakfast cereal, some kids were more focused on things like composing symphonies, performing surgery or getting nominated for the Nobel Prize."
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POPSTolstoy & Gandhi: Two Giants Bound By Pacifism
Enlightening account of the relationship between Tolstoy & Gandhi "In South Africa, Tolstoy's writings landed on the desk of a young Indian dissident, Mahatma Gandhi. He was overwhelmed, declaring that after reading Tolstoy his "lack of faith in non-violence vanished." He hung a picture of Tolstoy on his office wall and named the camp where he trained activists in peaceful resistance Tolstoy Farm. Gandhi wrote five letters to Leo Tolstoy and received four in return, all glowing with praise and intellectual exchange. In his last letter, written in September 1910 only weeks before his death, Tolstoy told Gandhi that his activity was "the most central and important of all the work now being done in the world." Years later, Gandhi repaid the compliment, writing that he knew of no one "in India or anywhere else who has had as profound an understanding of nonviolence as Tolstoy had." Tolstoy had inspired Gandhi's legendary instruction to "be the change you want to see in the worl