Photo (Courtesy)http://www.usasurvival.org/images/pope_obama2.png
AIM Report By Cliff Kincaid November 18, 2009
In fact, the bishops believe that “health care is a basic human right,” which is the premise of the Obama plan and it is driving the campaign to have the federal government take over the health care sector.
Some pro-life Catholics reacted with shock to the news that the Vatican warmly greeted the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama, who is pro-abortion. They don't seem to understand that the Vatican and Obama agree on most major international issues. This is the untold story-how Obama and the Vatican accept major ingredients of what has been called a New World Order.
Another untold story is how, despite a disagreement over abortion, the U.S. Catholic Bishops and the Obama Administration agree on major aspects of so-called health care reform.
These topics are mostly taboo in the liberal and conservative media. Liberal and conservative Catholics alike would prefer not to discuss how the Catholic Church, here and abroad, functions like a liberal/left-wing political lobby.
But the facts should not be much of a surprise. A majority of Catholics voted for Obama, despite the fact that his pro-abortion record was well known, and when he was honored at Notre Dame, the premier Catholic University in the U.S., only about one-third of U.S. Catholic Bishops publicly objected.
The Nobel Committee's award to Obama has been viewed by many, on the left and right, as a surprise. But it makes perfect sense. The committee noted that Obama "has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play." All of this is true. Obama has built up the power of global institutions at the expense of the United States.
While the Vatican statement congratulating Obama was also seen by some as a surprise, it too makes sense. The Vatican expressed the hope that "this most important recognition will ultimately encourage such a difficult but fundamental commitment for the future of humanity, so that it might bring the expected results."
The "expected results" are evident when one considers that Pope Benedict, the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics, had endorsed a "World Political Authority," a form of world government, in his recent encyclical "Caritas in Veritate." This world political authority, in the Vatican view, is supposed to "manage the economy," bring about "timely disarmament," and ensure "food, security and peace."
On domestic matters, it is frequently reported that the Roman Catholic Bishops in the U.S. oppose the Obama health care plan. In fact, the bishops believe that "health care is a basic human right," which is the premise of the Obama plan and it is driving the campaign to have the federal government take over the health care sector.
The Bishops disagree with Obama on tax-funding of abortion, but on other matters-such as health care for immigrants and the poor-the Bishops are to the left of the plans introduced by Congressional Democrats.
The Bishops, who have a staff of 350 people, also agree with the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats on what is euphemistically called "immigration reform." On October 8, Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick told the Senate that a new bill should help bring illegal aliens "out of the shadows" and give them permanent residency and citizenship. Such a bill figures to be one of the next major Obama initiatives.
On the matter of a cap-and-trade energy bill, which would raise energy prices supposedly to combat global warming, the Catholic Bishops believe that the U.S. should adopt "mitigation and adaptation" approaches that mean "shifting behavior now to adjust to the near-term impacts of climate change." The Bishops explain that "Mitigation means cutting back on the emissions of harmful global warming pollutants and taking action to prevent further harm to the atmosphere."
Again, this is the Obama Administration position.
The Bishops have launched a "Climate Change Justice and Health Initiative" that promotes "legislative action," including "the transfer of such technologies and technical assistance that may be appropriate and helpful to developing countries in meeting the challenges of global climate change." This, too, is accepted and being promoted by the Obama Administration.
Decision On Afghanistan
On the controversial matter of what to do in Afghanistan, left-wing pressure has been applied on the Obama Administration by Pax Christi, a Catholic group which insists that the U.S. military presence has "fueled the spiral of violence and further destabilized the region." It says that the solution lies in "reducing the U.S. military footprint" and favors ending the use of air strikes and drones on terrorist targets. Its "solution" is more diplomacy and foreign aid.
On an equally serious matter, Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, Dave Robinson, executive director of PaxChristi USA, recently signed a letter endorsing "the administration's intent to engage Iran diplomatically..." Robinson favors more talking with Iran, not more sanctions and certainly not military action against the fanatical regime.
What's interesting is that you find the same Catholic personnel working on domestic and foreign policy issues.
For example, the executive committee on the Pax Christi national council includes figures such as Donna Toliver Grimes, a "Poverty Education and Outreach Manager" for the bishops who also serve on the staff of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). This is the entity funded by an annual collection authorized by the U.S. Catholic Bishops which is advertised as a charity to "break the vicious cycle of poverty" but which has poured millions of dollars into ACORN and related organizations over the years.
In an October 2 memorandum, Bishop Roger P. Morin acknowledged that the CCHD had also been funding several groups promoting public policy positions in violation of Catholic moral teaching. These were groups promoting homosexual rights and abortion. Morin claimed that the funding had been cut off.
However, Bellarmine Veritas Ministry, which uncovered the scandal, says that Morin's response is unsatisfactory and "factually deficient in several areas."
Obama's Catholic Connection
Obama's community organizing days in Chicago began in an organization funded by the Catholic Church. In a Politico.com story about Barack Obama's friendly meeting with the Pope, reporter Josh Gerstein featured information that made it clear that the President's Catholic connection goes back to his days as a community organizer and that Obama's associates understand and appreciate this fact.
Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough was quoted as saying that Obama's work as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago "was funded partly" by the "Catholic Church campaign for human development..."-the CCHD.
McDonough, a former Senior Fellow at the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP), was the moderator of a May 10, 2006, CAP event on "How Catholic Progressives View the Role of Faith in Governance."
Conservative Catholics concerned about this problem have documented that millions of dollars of Catholic money over the last four decades have gone into Saul Alinsky-style networks which pursue their own brand of socialist direct action. CCHD itself acknowledges funding ACORN projects with grants totaling more than $7.3 million during the last 10 years.
Filling in more of the details of the story that Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough referred to, conservative Catholic writer and activist Stephanie Block has documented that Obama was lead organizer in Chicago for the Alinskyian Developing Communities Project. It received a $40,000 Catholic Campaign for Human Development grant in 1985 and another $33,000 grant in 1986.
While he was in Chicago, Obama was trained by top Alinskyian organizers. One was the ex-Jesuit, Greg Galuzzo, lead organizer for Gamaliel. The Developing Com-munities Project operated under the Gamaliel Foundation, a network of Alinskyian organizations that also received CCHD grants.
Gamaliel calls Obama a former Gamaliel organizer and boasts of connections to top White House officials such as Obama friend Valerie Jarrett.
The Developing Communities Project, which hired Obama as lead organizer, was an offshoot of the Calumet Community Religious Conference of Alinsky-trained Jerry Kellman. The network of community organizations Alinsky founded, known as the Industrial Areas Foundation, also received CCHD grants.
The grants are being used, however, not just to seize power, but to change the minds of traditional Catholics. Indeed, this is a necessary prerequisite for taking power.
Alinskyian training sessions in the religious context are designed not to develop or cultivate a personal relationship with Christ and promote traditional values and cultural institutions but to engage in Marxist political activity and radical change. Stephanie Block puts it this way: "Their worldview is marred by visions of class struggle and perpetual revolution. They are systematically trained to renounce moral truth in favor of consensus-based 'values.'"
What has happened over the years, some of these experts say, is that Catholics trained in Alinskyian thought have become confused about moral issues and problems. They think, for example, that opposition to the death penalty is on the same moral plane as opposition to abortion, even though Catholic moral teaching has never precluded capital punishment. They believe that fighting "global warming" is as important as saving the lives of unborn children or preventing the killing of the elderly. They are trained to fight for abortion and homosexual "rights" in violation of traditional Catholic Church teaching.
The BigGovernment.com videos of questionable ACORN activities have outraged taxpayers and members of Congress. Many Catholics will be angered by the revelations-if Fox News dares to publicize the evidence-of how their money has been funneled to ACORN and similar organizations by the official Catholic hierarchy.
The evidence of Catholic collaboration with Marxist and "progressive" networks is substantial. A documentary, "The Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky and His Legacy," notes that "Alinsky envisioned an 'organization of organizations,' comprised of all sectors of the community-youth committees, small businesses, labor unions, and, most influential of all, the Catholic Church." A website devoted to the documentary cites the Catholic Campaign for Human Development as one of several organizations "actively practicing Alinsky's techniques."
The Citizen's Handbook to radical organizing notes that "Much of IAF [Industrial Areas Foundation] organizing occurs through Christian churches particularly the Catholic church."
Obama "worked in several Catholic parishes, supported by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, helping to address severe joblessness and housing needs in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods of Chicago," noted the group calling itself Catholic Democrats. Another group, Catholics for Obama, says that "President Barack Obama reflects core values of Catholic Social Teaching, which informs how we live our faith in the world."
The president of Catholic Democrats, Patrick Whelan, serves on the board of Catholics for Obama and as co-director of Pax Christi in Massachusetts.
In the newsletter of Pax Christi Massachusetts, Whelan writes about flying to Chicago in May of this year, "where I attended a reunion of Catholic Priests and community activists who hired a young Barack Obama in 1985."
Whelan says that Obama, in his book, Dreams from My Father, "created a character named Marty Kaufmann, based on two real-life community organizers who attended this gathering on May 16, 2009."
Whelan also writes about Obama's meeting with the Pope. "Overall," he says, "it was clear that the common ground between the US Government and the Holy See-on poverty, the environment, international armed conflict and peace in the Middle East-far outweighed their differences."
PROGRESSIVES SUPPORT GLOBAL TAXES
While policymakers debate a few million dollars for ACORN and a few hundred billion dollars more for health care reform, those committed to one-world government are moving ahead with plans for a global tax that could extract trillions of dollars out of Americans' already depleted IRAs and stock holdings.
One can't exclude the possibility of such a tax being slipped into a health care or cap-and-trade bill that the Congress or the public could not have time to read before passage.
Bob Davis of the Wall Street Journal deserves a journalism prize for taking the time to read the recent communiqué issued by the G-20 countries meeting in Pittsburgh. He found they had assigned the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the job of studying how to implement a global tax on America and the rest of the world.
"The IMF assignment from the G-20 has been widely overlooked," Davis noted. His article ran under the headline, "IMF Mulls Global Bank Tax."
The "Leader's Statement" endorsed by President Obama and released at the event declares on page 10 that "We task the IMF to prepare a report for our next meeting with regard to the range of options countries have adopted or are considering as to how the financial sector could make a fair and substantial contribution toward paying for any burdens associated with government interventions to repair the banking system."
The term "fair and substantial contribution" is code for a global tax. Other misleading terms for global taxes include "innovative sources of finance" and "Solidarity Levies."
While the global tax would affect the savings of ordinary Americans and be passed on to consumers, it is being packaged by the international left and its progressive allies in the U.S. as an assault on Wall Street and the big banks.
One proposal, popular at the United Nations for decades and long-advocated by Fidel Castro, is the Tobin Tax, named after Yale University economist James Tobin. Such a tax, which could affect stocks, mutual funds, and pensions, could generate hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Indeed, Steven Solomon, a former staff reporter at Forbes, says in his book, The Confidence Game, that such a proposal "might net some $13 trillion a year..." because it is based on taking a percentage of money from the trillions of dollars exchanged daily in global financial markets.
Such transactions are commonplace on behalf of Americans who have stock in mutual funds or companies that invest or operate overseas.
Meanwhile, President Obama used his recent speech to the United Nations to declare, "We have fully embraced the Millennium Development Goals." He left unsaid what this means. It has been calculated that this will cost the U.S. $845 billion to meet U.N. demands for a certain percentage of Gross National Product to go for official foreign aid to the rest of the world. Compliance with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was incorporated into the Global Poverty Act that Obama had introduced as a U.S. senator but which never passed.
A global tax of the kind envisioned in the G-20 document could help provide the revenue to fulfill Obama's promise to comply with the MDGs.
One of the leading cheerleaders for the global tax is economist Joseph Stiglitz, an Obama supporter and former Clinton official who has been working with the Socialist International Commission on Global Financial Issues. He played a key behind-the-scenes role in the June United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis. He was selected as a U.N. adviser by the then-president of the U.N. General Assembly, Communist Catholic Priest Miguel D'Escoto.
Over at the Huffington Post, a voice of the Obama-supporting left, Kyle G. Brown advised that such a tax is doable and that "a modest fee on every stock, every bond-in short, every financial transaction" could generate $100 billion a year at a rate of just 0.5 percent. He explains, "That would defray health care costs, and help struggling states restore social services that have been axed over the past two years."
Brown is not a policy maker but rather a self-described writer and broadcast journalist at the BBC and CBC.
The progressives know that such a rate could be ratcheted up quickly, bringing in hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars.
The AFL-CIO, the giant labor federation backing Obama, has already endorsed the Tobin Tax, as has Robert Kuttner, a leading liberal thinker who serves as co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. This is a pro-Democratic Party think tank that still includes ousted Obama green jobs czar Van Jones on its board.
As reported by The Hill newspaper, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the Highways and Transit Transportation Subcommittee, has "seized on the idea as a way to help pay for a new massive surface transportation reauthorization bill, estimated to cost $450 billion over six years," but wants to tax oil-based derivatives rather than stock transactions. DeFazio had previously introduced a House resolution to pass a Tobin Tax.
What is driving the global taxation agenda is a Marxist view that the U.S. is exploiting the people and natural resources of the world.
In his 2001 speech to the U.N. World Conference on Racism, Castro advocated the Tobin Tax specifically in order to generate U.S. financial reparations to the rest of the world. He declared that "the tax suggested by Nobel Prize Laureate James Tobin" should be imposed in order to generate "one trillion US dollars annually to save and develop the world."
The only thing that has changed is that the U.S. now has a President who agrees with Castro, and he and his progressive backers believe that they can obtain a slice of the revenue for their socialist projects here as well.
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Source:http://www.aim.org/aim-report/vatican-backs-obamas-global-agenda/