Pope Leo XIV Calls for an End to War
The new pope, Leo XIV, is off to an encouraging start as he calls for peace (from CNN):
Pontiff calls for ‘authentic, just and lasting peace’
Pope Leo XIV delivered his first Sunday blessing from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday and used the address to pray for peace. “In today’s dramatic scenario of a third world war being fought piecemeal, as Pope Francis said, I too turn to the world’s leaders with an ever timely appeal: never again war!”
Sadly for the pope, U.S. leaders believe that peace is achieved through military strength and total dominance, unleashing “warriors” across the world. It doesn’t matter who the president is or which political party is putatively in charge. The Imperial State insists on colossal spending on wars and preparations for the same.
With respect to Gaza and the ongoing death and destruction there, Leo XIV had this to say:
“I am deeply pained by what is happening. Let the fighting cease immediately, let humanitarian aid be provided to the exhausted civilian population, and may all hostages be released.”
Sensible words. But it will take far more than words to stop Israel from its destruction of Gaza and its evisceration and evacuation of the Palestinians there.
Leo XIV also called for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine while highlighting the suffering of the Ukrainian people.
The word “peace” has almost disappeared from American discourse. Leo is helping to reinvigorate it. U.S. leaders are doing their best to sabotage it with war budgets that approach and exceed a trillion dollars yearly (this coming from a Christian nation, at least according to its leaders).
Leo is pointing the way. It’s time all those self-confessed Christians in America start following the Prince of Peace rather than the god of war.
Bracing Views 
“Ditched.” Grose, P. (1996). Continuing the Inquiry : the Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996. NY: Council on Foreign Relations, p. 23. Wala, The Council on Foreign Relations and American foreign policy in the early Cold War, Others agree not share. Schulzinger, The wise men of foreign affairs, pp. 61–62. Not shared with public. Shoup, Imperial brain trust, p. 119.
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The cites above are for US leaders having ditched the public in the 1940s from knowledge of a US imperial system for the future. Pope Leo XIV will need all the divine help he can get to overcome the Matrix-movie-like false system that envelopes the US public. It all hides an 1865 to 1954 US business rip-off in Viet Nam enabled by French force, the real reason for the 1960s US-Viet Nam War.
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Sorry Pope. Our “DEATH” industry pays too well; especially if you are a Politician. Unfortunately, I see little hope for meaningful improvement.
Beginning to think that we have a One-Party system of government. Since both Republican and Democratic parties are completely controlled by billionaires, why don’t we simplify things and just call the combination for what it really is: THE BILLIONAIRE PARTY.
MOTTO: Better Government through BRIBERY.
nasty man
Jerry King
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WJA – “Sadly for the pope, U.S. leaders believe that peace is achieved through military strength and total dominance, unleashing ‘warriors’ across the world… The Imperial State insists on colossal spending on wars and preparations for the same.”
“The word ‘peace’ has almost disappeared from American discourse.”
BDR – “The cites above are for US leaders having ditched the public in the 1940s from knowledge of a US imperial system for the future. Pope Leo XIV will need all the divine help he can get to overcome the Matrix-movie-like false system that envelopes the US public.”
Yesterday the obituary in the Boston Globe began with “Joseph S. Nye Jr., Kennedy School dean who coined ‘soft power’ concept, dies at 88,” quoting him, ‘I invented the concept of “soft power” — the ability to get what one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment.’
“Hard power had historically been easier to articulate and to implement, he explained in ‘Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics,’ his 2004 book devoted to the subject. ‘We know that military and economic might often get others to change their positions. Hard power can rest on inducements (‘carrots’) or threats (‘sticks’). But sometimes you can get the outcomes you want without tangible threats or payoffs.’
“[S]oft power — such as setting up medical clinics in remote parts of the world or promoting democracy through Voice of America broadcasts — ‘works by persuading others to follow or getting them to agree with us on values and institutions that produce behavior we want,’ he wrote in a 1999 Boston Globe opinion piece.
“And Dr. Nye lamented the current erosion of US soft power through cuts in foreign aid.”
Now from Chris Hedges –
“The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — Elon Musk claims is run by ‘a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America’ — is an example of how these arsonists are clueless about how empires function.
“Foreign aid is not benevolent. It is weaponized to maintain primacy over the United Nations and remove governments the empire deems hostile. Those nations in the U.N. and other multilateral organizations who vote the way the empire demands, who surrender their sovereignty to global corporations and the U.S. military, receive assistance. Those who don’t do not.
“When the U.S. offered to build the airport in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, investigative journalist Matt Kennard reports, it required that Haiti oppose Cuba’s admittance into the Organization of American States, which it did.
“Foreign aid builds infrastructure projects so corporations can operate global sweatshops and extract resources. It funds ‘democracy promotion’ and ‘judicial reform’ that thwart the aspirations of political leaders and governments that seek to remain independent from the grip of the empire.
“Humanitarian aid, often described as ‘soft power,’ is designed to mask the theft of resources in the Global South by U.S. corporations, the expansion of the footprint of the U.S. military, the rigid control of foreign governments, the devastation caused by fossil fuel extraction, the systemic abuse of workers in global sweatshops and the poisoning of child laborers in places like the Congo, where they are used to mine lithium.”
‘Nuf said?
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