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Today's
Stories
May
7, 2005
Gary
Leupp
Biblical Prophecy and Christian Zionism
May
6, 2005
Patrick
Cockburn
Baghdad Diary: a Week of Bombs and
Blood
Erin
Yoshioka
Another "3 Strikes" Travesty:
Why is Santo Reyes Facing Life in Prison?
Sam
Husseini
Talking with Syrians
Dave
Lindorff
Ernie Pyle Where Are You? When Reporters were Reporters
Kevin
Zeese
Circus Trials of Abu Ghraib: When Even the Fall Girl Can't Plead
Guilty
Joshua
Frank
An Overextended US Military? It Won't Stop Another War
Dan
Bacher
Tribes and Salmon Win One: Bush Backs Off Trinity River Water
Raid
P.
Saineth
India's Bloody Water Wars

May
5, 2005
Carles
Mutaner
Is Chavez's Venezuela "Socialist"
or "Populist?"
Carl
G. Estabrook
Is There Any Hope for the Pope?
Farrah
Hassen
The US's Syrian Obsession
Kevin
Zeese
"Sent Into Combat Unequipped and Unprepared": an Interview
with Patrick Resta
Michael
Leonardi
May Day with an American Soldier in Rome
Bennett
Ramberg
The Future of Nuclear Terror: Coming to a Reactor Near You
Ray
McGovern
The Smoking Gun on White House Deceit
Norman
Solomon
Nuclear Fundamentalism, the New York Times and Iran
Nicole
Colson
The Back Alley Attack on Abortion Rights
Brian
Concannon, Jr.
Clearing the Fences in Haiti

May
4, 2005
Colin
Kalmbacher
Ann Coulter and the Police State:
Heckle a Racist, Get Arrested
John
Walsh
Al Franken is a Big Fat Phony: Lying
on Air America to Support the War
Greg
Moses
Vigilante Wedge: Schwarzenegger Reprises
"Birth of a Nation"
Ali
Khan
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Poised to Fall Apart
Chris
Floyd
Ring Them Bells
Linda
S. Heard
D-Day for Tony Blair: Bogeymen and Scare Tactics
Dave
Zirin
The NFL, Congress and the Male Cheerleader Principle
William
S. Lind
Fool's Paradise
Gary
Leupp
Bolton's Proudest Moment: Breaking
the UN's Anti-Zionist Resolution
Website
of the Day
Kent State, May 4, 1970

May
3, 2005
Dave
Lindorff
Bush has Grasped the Third Rail,
Now Turn on the Juice
Brian
Cloughley
Halliburton's War Loot
Ira
Kurzban
Death Squad Diplomacy: How Bolton Armed Haiti's Thugs and Killers
Seth
Sandronsky
Towards Debtors' Prisons?
Gilad
Atzmon
The Labour Party Isn't an Option Any More
Michael
Donnelly
Branding Eco Collapse
Alex
Sanchez
Chile's Man at the OAS: a Blow to Bush?
Peter
Linebaugh
Magna Carta and May Day

May
2, 2005
Ron
Jacobs
Toward an Anti-Imperialist Movement
Stan
Goff
The Case of Hasan Akbar
Karyn
Strickler
Achieving Gender Balance in US Politics
Joshua
Frank
Leaked UK Memo Indict's Blair's Iraq Folly
Kevin
Zeese
Getting Out of Iraq will Prove Tougher Than Getting Out of Vietnam
Vicente
Navarro
Pope Benedict: a Rightwing Politician
April
30 / May 1, 2005
Alexander
Cockburn
Marla Ruzicka, Rachel Corrie and
"Credibility"
Gabriel
Kolko
Lessons from a Total Defeat: the End
of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Later
Jennifer
Loewenstein
The Disengaged: Gaza and the Fragmentation of Palestinian Nationhood
Lee
Sustar
City for Sale: Richard Daley's Chicago
Saul
Landau
The Bush-DeLay Axis of Naked Power
T.W.
Croft
The Undiscovered Country: the High Tide of the Neo-Con Confederacy
Nikolas
Kozloff
Fox News v. Hugo Chavez
William
Blum
Never-Ending Double Standards
Dave
Lindorff
Judicial Jury Tampering in Philly
Joshua
Frank
The Bi-Partisan Assault on Teenage Girls
Doug
Giebel
Saving Jane Fonda
Steven
Erlanger
A Response to Kathy Christison, from the NYT Jerusalem Bureau
Chief
Fred
Gardner
Washington State Doctor Harassed
Mike
Whitney
Another Mad Bush Press Conference
Kurt
Nimmo
Putin Pussyfoots in Palestine
Joe
DeRaymond
A Short History of the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania
Michael
Dickinson
Flags
Mickey
Z.
May Day at Yankee Stadium
Justin
Taylor
The Crawling Chaos: HP Lovecraft's Polymorphous Legacy
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Engel, Albert, St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
Save Barbados's Cowpastor
April
29, 2005
W.
John Green
Rice in Colombia: Silence on the Death
Squads?
Luke
Brothers
Greenwashing Nuclear Power: Nicholas
Kristof, the John Stossel of the NYT
Norman
Solomon
War, Aid and Public Relations
M.
Junaid Alam
The Politics of Smears and Self-Absorption
Jackie
Corr
The Bush Budget and Constitutionally Protected Tax Havens
Hunter
Greer
Feeding Tubes and the SAT: Finally,
a Use for Standardized Testing!
Sharon
Smith
The New Assault on Women's Rights:
Why are the Democrats Silent?
Website
of the Day
Tony Blair's Election Rap

April
28, 2005
Omar
Waraich
Blair's Poodle: the Billy Bragg Interview
Kevin
Zeese
Abu Ghraib One Year Later: Have Those Responsible Gotten Off?
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Torture Tort Reform
Greg
Moses
Why I'm Not Standing with the Gringo Vigilantes
Toni
Solo
Nicaragua on a Dollar a Day...Forever?
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Republican Dole Drums; Democrats in Doldrums
Werther
George Will Revises the Vietnam War

April
27, 2005
John
Ross
Pope Ratzo and the Hucksters of Death
Joshua
Frank
DeLay, Abramoff and Israeli Militias
Ray
McGovern
The Bolton Affair: More Than Meets
the Eye
Mark
Donham
Government Pettiness and Wetland
Destruction
Dan
Smith
Bush's Iraq Poker: Hold, Fold, or Raise?
April
26, 2005
Dave
Lindorff
Church Sex Trumps Torture and Murder
Alevtina
Rea
Magic of the Yellow Emperor
Greg
Moses
The Senator and the Narc Pirates of
Highway 281
Joshua
Frank
Horowitz's Gang of Ghouls and Cowards
on Ruzicka
Diana
Johnstone
The French are At It Again
April
25, 2005
Uri
Avnery
The Persecution of Vanunu
Alison
Weir
The Okrent Perversions: How the NYT
Minimizes Palestinian Deaths
Lee
Sustar
Labor Loses a Hero: the Strong Life
of Dave Yettaw
Leonardo
Boff
A Liberation Theologist on Ratsinger:
a Pope of Fear and Centralized Power?
Gary
Leupp
Bush's Bully: the Career of John Bolton
April
23 / 24, 2005
Alexander
Cockburn
Time's Buried Hitler Cover
Gary
Leupp
The Anti-Japanese Demonstrations
in China
James
Petras
Elections for Democracy or Empire?
Harry
Browne
Springsteen's "Devils and
Dust"
Fred
Gardner
The Custody Threat
Ron
Jacobs
The Desterrados of Colombia: They
are not Collateral Damage
Elizabeth
Schulte
Why Backing Democrats is Pulling
the Anti-War Mvt. to the Right
Chris
Floyd
Oil, Guns and Banks
April
22, 2005
Saul
Landau
The Kinky Moralists: Missionaries
Forever
Kevin
Zeese
Dean Backs the Iraq Occupation
Joshua
Frank
Earth Day Paradox: Enviros vs. Nature
Mike
Whitney
God's Rottweiller: Pope Ratzinger's
Pie-in-the-Sky for the Masses
Michael
Flynn
Wolfowitz on Top of the World
Lee
Sustar
The One-Sided Class War
Website
of the Day
Bitter Greens
April
21, 2005
Bill
Quigley
The Church Picks Its Ashcroft for
Pope: a Catholic Worker Response to the Rise of Ratsinger
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's X-Files
Jason
Leopold
Drilling and Spilling in ANWR: Worse
Than the Exxon Valdez?
Kathleen
Christison
Sharon's 92 Percent Solution:
How the Misperceptions Roll On
April 20, 2005
April 20, 2005
John Ross
Lopez
Obrador: Mexico's Would-be Mandela (Part Two)
Kevin Zeese
Halliburton:
Poster Child of the War Profiteers
Uri Avnery
The
100 Days of Abu Mazen
Website of the Day
The House that Jack Built
April 19, 2005
Jean-Guy Allard
An
Exclusive CP Interview with Ricardo Alarcon on One of the World's
Most Notorious Terrorists: "Is Posada Still Working for
the White House?"
Dave Lindorff
What's
Good for Canada is Good for GM: Health Care Costs and Job Flight
Neve Gordon
Before
the Law: Israel's Military Justice System in the Occupied Territories
Brian Concannon, Jr
Immaculate Evasions in Haiti
Murray Hudson
Chemical Warfare Over Tennessee: Aerial Spraying of Deadly Pesticides
Frank B. Ford
Poem for Marla Ruzicka
Monty Python
Memo to Pope Rat
Michael Dickinson
Cardinal Sins
Paul Craig
Roberts
Outsourcing
the American Economy: a Greater Threat Than Terrorism
Website of the Day
Strindberg and Helium
April 18, 2005
Linda Schade
/ Kevin Zeese
The
Carter-Baker Commission: Corporate Conflicts of Interest
John Ross
Mexico's
Would-Be Mandela Stares into the Darkness
Brian McKenna
Dow
Chemical Buys Silence in Michigan
Mike Whitney
The NYT in Fallujah
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Peace in Tatters
Dave Zirin
Straight Outta High School: Jermaine O'Neal, Race and Hip Hop
Eli Stephens
The Killing of Nicola Calipari: a Math Lesson
Harry Browne
War
and Elections in Britain and Ireland
Website of
the Day
A16: Photos of the World Bank Protest
April 16 /
17, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Message
in a Bottle: How Coca-Cola Gave Back to Plachimada
Mark Dow
The Art of Jailing: Inside America's Immigration Gulag
Omar Waraich
Blair's Accountability Moment: Lesser-Evilism Grips Britain
Robert Buzzanco
How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Vietnam and Iraq
Sherry Wolf
Bitches' Liberation? Whatever Happened to the Struggle for Women's
Liberation?
Fred Gardner
The Pharmaceuticalization of Marijuana
Ron Jacobs
Free Speech with Permission Only: a Tale of Two Universities
Mark Weisbrot
CAFTA will Further Depress US Wages
John Pardon
The High-Tech "Competitiveness" Smokescreen
Yoshie Furuhashi
Debtors of the World Unite! How Dems Went to Bat for the Credit
Industry
Mike Roselle
Cubicle of Doom: the Death of Environmentalism?
Ralph Nader
Scientists or Celebrities?
Ramzy Baroud
Gaza: the Line of Memory and Despair
Jackson Thoreau
Barbara Bush: We Should Have Pulled the Plug on Our Daughter
Michael Dickinson
"Imagine" and the Koran: Listening to Lennon in Istanbul
Richard Neville
Shaking the Walls of TwinWorld
Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel, Curtis, Ford and Gaffney
Website of the Weekend
Rebel Angel
April 15, 2005
Brian Cloughley
Diplomacy,
Bush Style: Boorish Bolton & Arrogant Rice
Bill Glahn
No
Child Left a Dime
Mickey Z.
One Zimbabwe or Another: an Interview with Greg Elich
Stephanie McMillan
Fear and Art: Feds Raid Another Exhibit
Josh Mahan
Victoria's Dirty Secret
David Russitano
Will the Real Minutemen Please Stand Up?
Jorge Mariscal
Rodolfo Gonzales: the Passing of a Legend
Rodolfo "Corky"
Gonzales
"I am Joaquin"
Tom Reeves
Students
Rise Again in Québec
April 14, 2005
Karyn Strickler
Red
States Rebellion: Montana vs. the Patriot Act
Pat Williams
The
Flattened Economy of the Rocky Mountain West
Jessica Pupovac
What
You Should Know About Bank One's New Daddy
Joshua Frank
Contradictions of the Anti-War Mvt.
Jerzy Mankowski
Jeffrey
Sach's Millennium Plan: a View from Poland
Talli Naumann
Right-to-Know in Mexico
Antony Loewenstein
The Aussie Press Under the Empire of Murdoch
Virginia Rodino
Challenging the Empire: Tactics for the Anti-War Movement
Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen
Bush's
Vision of Arab Democracy vs. Two Reports
Website of the Day
The 13th
Moon: Women Poets Read for Peace in Portland
April 13, 2005
Maria Carrión
Bolton
in the Western Sahara
Mike Whitney
Fighting Torture with Art: the Abu Ghraib Paintings of Fernando
Botero
Terry Jones
Let Them Eat Bombs
Dave Lindorff
A Sickening Error
Nathaniel Livingston, Jr.
Ethnic Cleansing at Air America
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Nuclear Blackjack with Iran
Don Fitz
Battling Dengue Fever with Bats and Birds: the Vietnamese Alternative
to Pesticides
Tom Crumpacker
Democracy and the Multiparty System: The US and Cuban Experiences
JG
The
Abuse of Haitian Kids at PS 34
Jack McCarthy
Horowitz Comes to Tallahassee
Kevin Zeese
Is God Picking a Side in Iraq?: an Interview with Rev. Sekou
Jeffrey St.
Clair
How
Exxon Used the Guise of Homeland Security to Purge One of Louisiana's
Environmental Champions
April 12, 2005
John Wheat
Gibson
The
Goddess of Immigrants: Aeschylus, Thucydides and the Patriot
Act
Kevin Zeese
The Time to Oppose a Draft is Now
Alan Farago
The
Cancer Clusters of Cape Coral: Toxics Trump Democracy in Florida
Dave Lindorff
Blackout in Montgomery: Selling Social Security Destruction to
White Alabamans
Ron Jacobs
Bob
Dylan at the Crossroads
Nelson P. Valdes
Flashback: John Bolton's Big Lie
Dave Zirin
War
Games and War Names
Website of the Day
Parents Against the Draft
April 11, 2005
Tom Barry
Negroponte
and the Eclipse of the CIA
Saul Landau
Love for the Unborn and Brain Dead:
Contempt for the Rest Us
Monique Dols
Scapegoated at Columbia: Smearing Joseph Massad
Phil Gasper
Burning Professors: Resurrection of a Witchhunt
Mike Whitney
See No Evil: Pope TV and the New World Media
Edwin Krales
The Origin of AIDS: an Ethical Inquiry
Paul de Rooij
Undermining
Civil Society: Horowitz's Corrosive Projects
Website of the Day
Academic Freedom at Columbia: a Petition
April 9 / 10,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Torture
Air, Incorporated
William A. Cook
Janus at the State Dept.: Glossing Over Israel's Human Rights
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Gary Leupp
My Favorite Papal Moment: a Bonfire in Peru
Alan Maass
Pope-a-Dope: John Paul 2, Death of a Reactionary
Laura Carlsen
Democracy Sinking in Mexico
Joe DeRaymond
Death and Displacement in Colombia
Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Rebuffed in Venezuela (Again)
Dave Lindorff
The Price of Oil and the Bush Dollar
Greg Moses
Growling at Hallliburton
Fred Gardner
Southern Station Session
Justin Smith
The US Prison System: a Hesitant Defense of the Not-Quite-as
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George Bush's True Religion: From Bob Jones to Jim Jones
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No Intelligence Failure in Iraq; Political Failure in the US
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West Point's Bad Geography: the Conqueror's Warped View of the
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Weekend Edition
May 7 / 8, 2005
Purges, Pedophiles and Cover
Ups
Pope
Torquemada
By
SAUL LANDAU
How does the new Pope connect to Catholic
kids persecuting me as a child, especially during Halloween,
obstructing justice and shaping US politics?
At age six, growing up in the Bronx, a gang of Irish Catholic
kids jumped me and beat me.
As they punched, I asked why.
"You killed our Lord, kid," said a freckled boy of
about eight. "We're getting even."
My father bandaged my wounds and told me that the Cossacks in
the Ukraine had done worse. "The Cossacks would ride into
our village on horses and spear Jewish babies. It's been that
way for centuries. It won't change," he reassured me.
As a teenager, I learned the origins of anti-Semitism. "Jews
are scapegoats," my father said. "The poor suffer,
but instead of blaming those who exploit them, the Church blames
the Jews because they supposedly killed Jesus, that momser [Yiddish
for bastard]."
On the celibacy of priests, my father asked rhetorically what
those guys in robes do with boys at choir practice. "Check
them for hemorrhoids and hernias? They shtup [poke] them and
then tell the kids to beat up Jews." As I grew older and
actually made friends with some of my former persecutors, I learned
that the local parish priest had indeed incited the boys to take
on the "killers of Christ." My father insisted that
the "line" came from Rome, that priests did what the
Pope told them to do.
I wonder if those kids who beat me up became priests, bishops
and cardinals. They might have become close associates of Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) at the time that the
Vatican decided to distract attention from the Church's decade-long
sex abuse scandal.
As the world became aware of pedophilia in the priesthood, Ratzinger
took command of the Vatican's counter offensive, a course that
interfered with justice for the victims of priests' abuse and
also with US politics. How to direct the public away from the
fact that hundreds of priests have taken advantage of kids in
their parishes? In the 2004 elections, the Church weighed in
on the side of George W. Bush and other candidates who opposed
abortion and gay marriage, issues most likely to divert attention
away from the scandal.
On August 11, 2004, less than three months before the elections,
Ratzinger sent a directive to US Bishops. "The Church teaches
that abortion or euthanasia is a grave sin" Citing previous
Church doctrine, he warned Catholics. "In the case of an
intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or
euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to take
part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law or vote
for it." Christians have a "grave obligation of conscience
not to cooperate formally in practices which, even if permitted
by civil legislation, are contrary to God's law. Indeed, from
the moral standpoint, it is never licit to cooperate formally
in evil. ,,,This cooperation can never be justified
"Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion
and euthanasia," Ratzinger continued. "For example,
if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the
application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage
war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present
himself to receive Holy Communion.There may be a legitimate diversity
of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying
the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and
euthanasia."
So, Ratzinger informed the Bishops, the Pope permitted disagreement
on the Iraq War and death penalty, but "regarding the grave
sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person's formal cooperation
becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician,
as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion
and euthanasia laws), priest should inform him "that he
is not to present himself for Holy Communion."
A Catholic voter "would be guilty of formal cooperation
with evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion,
if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because
of the candidate's permissive stance on abortion or euthanasia."
(http://www.tldm.org/News7/Ratzinger.htm)
Some liberal priests defused Ratzinger's directive, but Bush
won 6% more Catholic votes than in 2000, an edge that turned
swing close states like Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico.
The Ratzinger letter also resounded in South Dakota's Senate
race where Democrat Tom Daschle lost re-election by less than
5,000 votes to John Thune. Sioux Falls Bishop Robert Carlson
told Daschle to stop identifying publicly as a Catholic because,
using Ratzinger guidelines, "Catholics would be guilty of
formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present themselves
for Holy Communion, if they were to deliberately vote for a candidate
precisely because of the candidate's permissive stance on abortion
or euthanasia."
Beyond his plan to label pro-choice Democrats as God's enemies,
Ratzinger also elaborated a legal cover up. In May 2001, as ongoing
revelations about kinky priests threatened to drown the Church's
reputation, the Cardinal sent a secret letter, (obtained by
The Observer) to every Catholic bishop. In it, Ratzinger
"asserted the church's right to hold its inquiries behind
closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10
years after the victims reached adulthood." Jamie Doward,
Observer, April 24, 2005)
Lawyers for abuse victims claimed that Ratzinger "obstructed
justice" by ordering that "the church's investigations
into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret." If
the totality of sex crime allegations became public or fell into
the hands of the police, the Church's reputation would suffer
irreparable damage. So, Ratzinger's letter says, in cases where
abuse had been "perpetrated with a minor by a cleric,"
the church should claim jurisdiction.
The German-born Cardinal wanted "preliminary investigations"
into abuse claims to go to his office, not police or DAs. Then,
he would refer those claims to private, Church-established courts
in which the "functions of judge, promoter of justice, notary
and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases
only by priests" and would remain "subject to the pontifical
secret."
Ratzinger also threatened to excommunicate priests who revealed
details of the ongoing cases. The lawyers used this letter in
a suit filed on behalf of two alleged abuse victims in Texas
and against Ratzinger, alleging that he conspired to obstruct
justice. On April 8 2004 the lawyers called Father John Beal,
a Catholic University professor, to state under oath that the
Ratzinger letter stated that the church had jurisdiction and
control over sexual assault crimes.
Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, who co-signed Ratzinger's missile,
had opined that he saw no reason that bishops should "contact
the police in order to denounce a priest who has admitted the
offense of pedophilia." (The Observer, April 24,
2005)
An additional cover up charge appeared in the Independent. According
to Peter Popham, "Pope Benedict XVI has been accused of
ignoring for seven years charges facing Fr Marcial Maciel, the
founder of the Legionaries of Christ [an ultra conservative organization
founded in Mexico in 1941] because Fr Maciel was a close friend
of Pope John Paul II."
In 1997 Ratzinger led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, set up by the Vatican to excommunicate sexually abusive
priests. Popham reported that Bishop John R McCann of New York
forwarded Ratzinger "detailed charges of sexual abuse made
by Fr Juan Vaca, a priest in Bishop McCann's diocese."
In an open letter to Marcial, Vaca wrote that "Everything
you did contradicts the beliefs of the Church and the order."
Vaca cited "innumerable times" that Marciel would
"wake me in the middle of the night abusing my innocence.
Nights of fear, so many nights of absolute fear: so many nights
of lost sleepplaced my own psychological health in jeopardy."
(Independent, April 23, 2005)
Vaca and eight other former Legionaries of Christ accused Maciel
of sexually abused them in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Cardinal
Ratzinger took no action. He focused on the overriding issue
of defeating the "dictatorship of relativism." The
Church, he insisted, must use political power and manipulation
to have its absolute "truth and values" prevail. (Sam
Smith Progressive Review April 24)
"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism,"
Ratzinger warned in his last homily as Cardinal, "which
does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its
highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires." (CBC
April 18, 2005)
For 2000 plus years, the Catholic
Church has appealed to hundreds of millions around love and forgiveness
while it also practiced intolerance and bigotry. In the 1960s,
Popes John XXIII and Paul VI helped make the Church into the
servant of the poor. For millions of Catholics, Liberation Theology
renewed the beauty and spirit of their Church.
But Paul II and now Benedict XVI have sought to remove that "Marxist-based
theology" from the Church and return it to darker periods
of its history.
Saul Landau's newest book is THE
BUSINESS OF AMERICA: HOW CONSUMERS HAVE RELACED CITIZENS AND
HOW WE CAN REVERSE THE TREND. He is a fellow of the Institute
for Policy Studies and teaches at Cal Poly Pomona University.
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