Category Archives: Vatican

Pope Francis and the Fat Well-Fed Hungry Men (and Women) of Davos………

      


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“Pope Francis on Tuesday called on the world’s political and business elite gathered in Davos to use their spirit of entrepreneurship to alleviate crushing global poverty. In a message read out at the opening ceremony of the annual World Economic Forum, Francis said: “Those who have demonstrated their ability to be innovative and for improving the lives of many people by their ingenuity and professional expertise can further contribute by putting their skills at the service of those who are still living in dire poverty.” It is “intolerable” that hunger continues to stalk the world even though “substantial quantities” of food are wasted, the pontiff added. Ahead of the annual meeting of the global elite that ends Saturday, the charity Oxfam issued a report that said inequality had run so out of control, that the 85 richest people on the planet “own the wealth of half the world’s population.”……………………”

The Pope is right in this case of course. But the men and women meeting in Davos, and those groupies who hang around the periphery, sort of like the IMF-World Bank meetings that I used to attend, are also hungry. Their hunger in Davos is not for food, for I know they are well-fed and well-wined and dined (actually overfed and almost certainly over-wined).
 

I here posted on Davos 2013. Here is an excerpt of that post:

‘”Big
firms no longer aspire merely to train competent managers. They pride
themselves on their ability to select and train leaders for global
roles………. Many of the bankers and politicians caught dozing by the
financial crisis were regulars at Davos. Ordinary folk trust Davos Man
no more than they would a lobbyist for the Worldwide Federation of Weasels……………..”

Also
sprach The Economist,
for once not gushing over the sanctimonious potentates, glib bankers,
my fellow economists, and celebrities converging on Davos.

It is where leaders, potentates, economists, banksters, celebrities, self-styled
celebrities, minions, journalists, and groupies converge. I have been always
skeptic of this gathering: it could just be sour grapes. But I have been even more
skeptic, nay hostile, about it these past four or five years.

Some
shameless bankers and investment banksters are there pontificating to the financial
media about how the economy should be managed. They who managed their banks and
investment banks into near oblivion and had to get public welfare to save their
fat annual bonuses. Banker-Panhandlers with a sense of entitlement, with an attitude, panhandlers with the
Mother of All Attitudes…..’

Cheers
mhg

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Jewish Concerns Regarding the Pope’s Concern about Jewish Concerns, Self-Perpetuating Peer Selection at Penn State………

         


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“The selection of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina to be the new pope of the Roman Catholic Church is being seen as a move that will continue to cement Catholic-Jewish relations. Bergoglio, 76, who took the name Francis I and is the first Jesuit ever to be chosen pope, has “demonstrated his profound solidarity with the Jewish community of Argentina in both times of sorrow and joy,” said Rabbi David Rosen, International Director of Interreligious Affairs of the American Jewish Committee. He was referring to the high marks Bergoglio received in his response to the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed more than 100. The bombing, believed to be the work of Hezbollah terrorists with the backing of Iran, was one of the worst anti-Jewish attacks ever in Latin America. In 2005, Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz of the Center for
Christian-Jewish Understanding at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield,
Conn., praised Bergoglio’s leadership, saying: “He was very concerned with what happened.”..…………..”

The Jewish Weekly sees this new Pope as being ‘sensitive’ to Jewish
concerns. You’d think the National Socialist thugs still rule from the Baltic to the
Alps and Il Duce rules in Rome. (And WTF does a Pope have to do with Hezbollah or Hamas or Mossad or the Strait of Hormuz?)

Speaking of that: what about Muslim concerns?
Don’t we have some: Sunni concerns, Shi’a concerns, Wahhabi concerns. How about
despotic concerns? Interesting that so much gushing praise and goodwill is issued by world media
about the new pope: you’d think he was elected instead of being appointed by a few
of his pears. Sort of like the Saudi king or the Iranian Ayatollah or the
Yemeni president are selected. But that is okay: even the Saudi Mufti is not elected or
appointed by his peers, but appointed by the princes.

Obviously a Pope selected
by his peers can only do so much reform, until he collides with the special (or perhaps peculiar) interests
of the peers who appointed him. IF he does: he usually doesn’t as we discovered
in the recent couple of years regarding the continuing, er, problems of Penn
State
the American Catholic Church and the reported alleged continued cover-u
p.

Cheers
mhg

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