They might, if used consistently. The thread title is also inacccurate.

Since someone's livelihood is being threatened, I'd say using misleading language to spread online rumors is not a good use of DU. If he said something the OP doesn't like, s/he should quote him or the article about him accurately.

Parts 1, 2, & 3 on Youtube

Part 1: World War II

You're probably thinking of John XXIII (23rd), "the good pope,"

who during WWII made efforts to help Jews escape the holocaust, and who as pope (Oct. 1958-Nov. 1963) took steps to improve relations between Catholics and Jews. From wiki:

One of the first acts of Pope John was to eliminate the description of the Jews as "perfidious" in the Good Friday liturgy. He also made a confession for the Church of the sin of anti-semitism through the centuries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_XXIII

On 25 December 1958, he became the first pope since 1870 to make pastoral visits in his Diocese of Rome, when he visited children infected with polio at the Bambino Gesù Hospital and then visited Santo Spirito Hospital. The following day he visited Rome's Regina Coeli prison, where he told the inmates: "You could not come to me, so I came to you." These acts created a sensation. . . . http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/John_XXIII

The Vatican only owns its property in Rome

and its nuncios, and Vatican City is about as big as an average urban university. Catholic properties (parishes, hospitals, etc) are typically owned by their local bishop, and since the pope is the bishop of Rome, he only "owns" his Roman property and the Vatican embassies. Here's a discussion of the question posted on DU eight years ago:

This is in line with Benny's general slant.

He's theologically conservative, true, and opposed Liberation Theology and clergy participating in politics, but his political views are consistently anti-war and anti-exploitation. We don't often hear about them because of the other problems he deals with, also because he writes in Latin and speaks in German-accented Italian, and is shy about using English.

But I like Benny more than the last pope, even though John Paul II was considered more charismatic. JP2 also tended to support NATO-friendly military objectives in Poland and elsewhere and was friendly with Thatcher and Reagan. Benny seems more simpatico with Putin, though I don't think they're actual buds, in that he's an old school collectivist who preaches against usury, as above, i.e. against the accumulation of wealth at the expense of ordinary people. Of course, that's been the official position of the RCC since there's been an RCC.

Anyway here's an article from September describing an anti-war sermon he delivered in Lebanon:

hey don't knock it til you've tried it

Benny and friends on a recent visit, Oct. 21, 2012:

Can we alert on freakin' NPR?

I turn on the news and somebody's conducting an earnest interview with a good ol' boy named Brady (but not that Brady) drawlin' about how kewl M-16s are and why they're the country's best sellers and how he expects weapon sales to be brisk this holiday season and all that's missing is the 800 number and operators standing by:

Wow.

Thanks xchrom, I think we'll be seeing a lot more of this until it's firmly established that this shy young adult was a vengeful, violent, sexually confused misfit, and then the official story will sit well. But at the moment it looks to me like it doesn't quite add up and likely never will.

Great question. I think we can get a pretty clear idea

from JFK's 1960 campaign book, "The Strategy of Peace," which I recently got hold of. Here's what my used copy looks like:



It's mainly devoted to foreign policy, his two main initiatives being world peace and nuclear disarmament, but he also has a section on domestic policy, "America's Readiness for World Responsibility," that goes through each area pretty thoroughly: Civil rights (he calls them civil liberties); scientific research and all levels of education including "A New Horizon for Negro Education"; farm, trade, and industrial policies, and a whole separate section on what he calls the "Economic Gap" (a play on "missile gap&quot , namely unequal distribution of wealth in the US and in the world. It's pretty sharp. I've posted a few juicy quotes on this thread which I need to update:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021965229

All in all it's a safer, more prosperous, and more generous world that Kennedy envisions, good for the people but less good for oil companies and war profiteers, and we know how that turned out. My guess is that if all 3 had lived there's also a good chance we'd be several years past fossil fuels and already utilizing cleaner, as-yet-to-be exploited technologies on a large scale.

JFK's 1960 "Strategy of Peace": just wow

(This is a continuation of Ocatfish's Nov. 22 "Justice for JFK thread," which appears to be archived, in response to Sabrina's comment #492, direct link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1965210 )



Well it came in yesterday's mail, not the nice hardback in the pic above, but a battered Popular Library "Special” with faded red edges and a cover price of 50 cents, LOL. But if it's any indication of the 1960 campaign I can see exactly how JFK punked Tricky Dick, because every paragraph still exudes Kennedy can-do optimism and intelligence, also a rational and charitable view of foreign peoples and humanity in general. A couple of highlights:

1) The centerpiece is a region-by-region consideration of “areas of trial,” which sadly haven't changed much since 1960, apart from the particular hotspots: Israel, the Middle East, Indochina, Algeria (North Africa), Latin America, India and China, Poland and Eastern Europe.

2) Regarding Indochina: It turns out JFK had been urging the US to avoid military involvement in Vietnam since at least 1951, and he includes a 1954 speech reiterating in the clearest terms his earlier warning that “such intervention would be virtually impossible” to win and a "doomed failure" (p. 89).

3) Nuclear disarmament and sustainable world peace are his crystal-clear foreign policy themes, no conversion necessary. For example, point 11 of the “Twelve-Point Agenda” that opens the book: “We must begin to develop new, workable programs for peace and the control of arms,” followed by specific initiatives to accomplish these goals (pp. xiv-xv). Mutual understanding and cooperation are also themes that he returns to repeatedly.

4) Domestic policy: There's another section laying out his commitment to policies including “civil liberties,” scientific research, all levels of education including “a new horizon for [African American] education,” and “equal opportunity and economic justice for all [people] of all ages, races, and creeds” (this was 52 years ago so I updated a couple of terms).

5) Latin America: he says a lot of great stuff but I'll cut to the part about Bolivar and Castro:

Just as we must recall our own revolutionary past in order to understand the spirit and the significance of the anti-colonialist uprisings in Asia and Africa, we should now reread the life of Simon Bolivar, the great “Liberator” ... of South America, in order to comprehend the new contagion for liberty and reform now spreading south of our borders. On an earlier trip throughout Latin America, I became familiar with the hopes and burdens which characterize this tide of Latin nationalism.

Fidel Castro is part of the legacy of Bolívar, who led his men over the Andes Mountains, vowing “war to the death” against Spanish rule, saying, "Where a goat can pass, so can an army.” Castro is also part of the frustration of that earlier revolution which won its war against Spain but left largely untouched the indigenous feudal order. "To serve a revolution is to plow the sea," Bolívar said in despair as he lived to see the failure of his efforts at social reform.

Whether Castro would have taken a more rational course after his victory had the United States Government not backed the dictator Batista so long and so uncritically, and had it given the fiery young rebel a warmer welcome in his hour of triumph, especially on his trip to this country, we cannot be sure.

But Cuba is not an isolated case. We can still show our concern for liberty and our opposition to the status quo in our relations with the other Latin American dictators who now, or in the future, try to suppress their people's aspirations. And we can take the long delayed positive measures that are required to enable the revolutionary wave sweeping Latin America to move through relatively peaceful channels and to be harness to the great constructive tasks at hand. (pp. 167-69)