NewsWithViews.com - The Warsaw Ghetto massacre and treacherous death camps that awaited the seemingly unsuspecting Jewish people of Europe during WWll remain a constant reminder to those who say “Never Again!”
Yet, as if the sands of time and winds of change have somehow magically re-aligned, it does seem modern humanity has basically forgotten.
With all of its witnesses, historical evidence, physical, spiritual and emotional, we still find denial in vast numbers of ignorant people worldwide.
The reasons are too pathetic to repeat here but certainly in part because the actions by Hitler and his subservient assistants were just too gruesome to believe..
The European general population was a hideous and unbelievable mass of human stupidity.
They were simply cowards who sat idly by, watching their friends and neighbors hauled away to their deaths, and did absolutely nothing in most cases to stop the madness, the slaughter, and the genocide.
The actions or inactions by the general public defied the laws of civility, decency and brotherly love, abandoning the civilizing precept “Love thy neighbor as thyself”.
America today has new rules. They only apply to screaming minority groups and people who hate America’s historical teachings, values and community standards.
Now, in modern America we are finally reaching the point of collapse. Many Americans, from the John Birch Society to mainline churches to Talk Hosts have been droning on about the coming demise of America for years.
Well, here it comes, all you talk-a-lot-but-do-nothing folks. You should be proud. America is being systematically looted and destroyed from enemies within and all you all can do is talk, talk, talk, talk and talk.
The purpose of our Founders was to have small containable local governments across America. Their objections to central authority, centralized government and what we define as socialism or communism were well known and are well documented.
The fact that we just celebrated Independence Day and not Interdependence day should speak volumes, but the sad fact is, in the new all American vernacular, facts don’t really mean a hell of a lot.
Just today the Fox News channel ran a story about Midgets demanding that the FCC make “Midget” one of the “George Carlin seven” words illegal to broadcast.
Somehow in the new subculture of PC-or-die America, Midgets now see themselves as a foul word.
I just played Randy Newmans song about short people. No use of the evil Midget word in there. I feel better knowing Randy was so PC in the writing of the song.
Midgets everywhere thank you, Randy, of this I am sure.
We can’t use the word Squaw either, seems Indians – err-uh excuse me “Native Americans” – are offended, you know, naming mountains, streams, lakes and ball clubs in their honor is a bad thing to do …?.
It only took them 400 years to decide it was a problem, but, hey, who’s counting?
Blacks don’t like the “N” word unless they use it in a Hip Hop song or out on the corner with their “brothers” (The word brother is probably taboo too). I guess I can call my brother by his first name until he complains to the FCC. Is there another meaning for the name Dougie? If so don’t tell him; I’m kind of used to it and don’t want to change.
We probably can’t get the word “Cracker” outlawed (too many boxes in the grocery store) and besides, what would we crumble over our soup?
We might possibly make a rock solid appeal against the word Gringo. But then again, Mexico and the rest of the Spanish speaking world might not approve of us changing their vocabulary just to appease the hurt feelings of a few angry white males.
And then there is the word woman...Has man in it, so it might be offensive too? And the word she has he in it .. Hmmm … better be kind and rewind.
Can’t cut trees in old growth forests and make way for young trees that would absorb and store lots more carbon dioxide, yet we hear all the complaining about CO2 pollution.
I wouldn’t want to accuse anyone or any group of hypocrisy, but, if the shoe fits.
Green thugs, animal rights extremists, and other loony-tunes have taken over America.
Tattoos, body piercing, branding, seems the more cartoon-like the look the more desirable. It’s like Roger Rabbit the movie has managed somehow to become a reality.
I am left asking the question … Whatever possessed these fools, the Devil?
Oops, I may have just answered my own question.
H/T Nuckin' Futz
Back to the subject.
I know I was astounded, flabbergasted, caught up in a whirlwind of ambivalence when as a young student I was taught the stories of the Holocaust.
Even as a adult radio host doing a 21 week in-depth report and interviewing over 50 survivors, I couldn’t understand how people could be marched off to their death without putting up a fierce fight and forcing the hands of their captors to kill them where they stood rather than be herded off like farm animals.
I became a radio host in Medford Oregon in 1990. I was syndicated with Art Bell at TRN in 1993. I rose to be one of the most listened to radio hosts in America with over 200 stations airing my show coast to coast, sea to shining sea.
Unlike today, nobody paid to place the show on stations, nobody bribed the stations with marketing dollars, and nobody made any particular promises. In those days you had to earn your way by getting ratings.
The radio show rose to great heights and held it’s own for 12 plus years until I finally realized that Americans, like Hitler’s Jewish victims, would never fight back, never rise up and never forcefully attempt to survive.
And so I lost my interest in keeping the fight up on air.
After fighting for Farmer water rights in the Klamath basin on the Oregon/California border and watching the leaders cave in and actually praise their Senator and Congressman and thank them for the screwing, I knew the end had to be near.
Senator Gordon Smith and Congressman Greg Walden, after $300 Million in economic theft by the Feds, received accolades for bringing home $30 Million for the recovery.
What the sheeple forgot was that Smith and Walden were getting 10X the accolades from colleagues back in DC for negotiating the $300 Million down by 90%, thereby screwing the farmers and residents out of $270 million bucks.
After that, I slunk away into a funk that even today I struggle to overcome. I basically threw up my hands and walked away.
Big Brother and his minions have come. They are so accomplished that they already stole our property rights, our self defense rights, our parental rights, our constitutional rights, our dignity, our heritage, our customs, culture, and jobs. Entire industries are gone.
And finally our equities, savings, retirement funds and our future, have all vanished into the ether – or into the hands of banksters who manipulated the rules of the game.
America has been morally and financially gang raped.
And, like a lot of rape victims, sad as it is, we don’t want to accept it. We tell ourselves we should have fought harder, we should have yelped louder, we should have assailed our attackers, poked out their eyes, ripped off their ears, bit into their juggler vein, something, and yet we laid there like a two dollar whore and took the abuse.
More is coming, Ready for a train ride out to the countryside, Mr. and Mrs. Patriot?
Soon enough Big Brother will have you eating at his soup kitchen, living on his rations and in his housing projects, and working in his newly acquired factory.
Many of you will be asked to turn in your Politically Incorrect friends and family members for such nefarious crimes as being a patriot.
Big Brother will convince you that patriots are really terrorists – a recent government study already called them this – and you will obey him, bend to his will, and sell out your own children, grandchildren, your country and yourself.
Don’t believe me? Just reflect on the history of oppressed people anywhere, WWll Jews in particular.
You will submit to the will of the ruling power and you will shame yourself and denigrate the memory and the legacy of all America’s heroes of past wars.
You could wake up, right now today, see a problem or a threat and take appropriate steps to eliminate it. But that would take guts, might cost you your freedom, even your life.
If enough of us decided today we would rather be dead than Pinko Commie red and stood up and placed our lives on the line to stop the bastards right here in their Marxist commie tracks, then we might have a half a chance.
Politico - The leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee don’t have the votes to strip from the defense authorization bill $1.75 billion for seven F-22 Raptor fighter jets, but they’re hoping the power of the presidency will sway some colleagues.
President Barack Obama took another swipe at the advanced fighter jet, reiterating his threat to veto any bill containing F-22 funds, in letters to committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and ranking Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona on Monday.
“Would the president veto the bill?” asked Levin. “That speculation is no longer out there.” Those who wind up supporting more F-22s will now jeopardize funding for the troops, Levin added.
And McCain said he’d “strongly recommend” that the president veto the bill if F-22 funding was included. A vote on the amendment to remove money for more F-22s could come as early as Tuesday.
Debate about the Raptor fifth-generation fighter jet won’t be limited to the Senate; the fiscal year 2010 defense appropriations bill is scheduled for a Thursday markup in the House.
Fox News - A group committed to establishing an international Islamic empire and reportedly linked to Al Qaeda is stepping up its Western recruitment efforts by holding its first official conference in the U.S.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global Sunni network with reported ties to confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Al Qaeda in Iraq's onetime leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It has operated discreetly in the U.S. for decades.
Now, it is coming out of the shadows and openly hosting a July 19 conference entitled, "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam," at a posh Hilton hotel in a suburb of Chicago.
Hizb ut-Tahrir insists that it does not engage in terrorism, and it is not recognized by the State Department as a known terror group.
But some terrorism experts say it may be even more dangerous than many groups that are on the terror list.
"Hizb ut-Tahrir is one of the oldest, largest indoctrinating organizations for the ideology known as jihadism," Walid Phares, director of the Future of Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told FOXNews.com.
Phares said that Hizb ut-Tahrir, rather than training members to carry out terrorist acts like Al Qaeda, focuses instead on indoctrinating youths between ages of 9 and 18 to absorb the ideology that calls for the formation of an empire — or "khilafah" — that will rule according to Islamic law and condones any means to achieve it, including militant jihad.
Hizb ut-Tahrir often says that its indoctrination "prepares the infantry" that groups like Al Qaeda take into battle, Phares said.
"It's like a middle school that prepares them to be recruited by the high school, which is Al Qaeda," he said. "One would compare them to Hitler youth. ... It's an extremely dangerous organization."
Phares said Hizb ut-Tahrir has strongholds in Western countries, including Britain, France and Spain, and clearly is looking to strengthen its base in the U.S.
"The aim of this conference is to recruit within the Muslim community in America," he said. "The Middle East governments go after them, but in the U.S. they are protected, so having a base here is going to help their cells around the world."
Representatives of Hizb ut-Tahrir declined to comment when contacted by FOXNews.com.
Oren Segal, director of Islamic Affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, said the conference is cause for concern.
"While they're not, for the most part, engaging in violent activities, and they publicly say that they're against violence, there have been examples around the world where people who have spun off of this group have engaged in violent activity," Segal told FOXNews.com. "That's why they're banned in several Arab and Central Asian countries, as well as Germany and Russia."
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one of the group's most famous alumni, New Statesman journalist Shiv Malik reported, citing intelligence sources. In addition to plotting the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he also is implicated in the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, the Bali nightclub bombings and the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Malik's report, the public policy institute the Nixon Center and the counter-extremism think tank the Quilliam Foundation agree that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq until he was killed in June 2006, also was once a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir.
They say other former members include Asif Muhammad Hanif, a British man who blew himself up outside a bar in Tel Aviv, killing four people (including himself) and wounding more than 50; and Omar Bakri Mohammed, a radical cleric currently banned from Britain who praised the 9/11 attacks, raised funds for Hezbollah and Hamas and called for attacks on the Dublin airport because U.S. troops transfered there on their way to Iraq.
Segal said Hizb ut-Tahrir is becoming more active online in the U.S. — particularly on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace — and now it may be able to add a significant number of Americans to its ranks.
But one place the group will likely not be recruiting is a local Islamic school that backed out of hosting the conference.
The non-profit Aqsa school in Bridgeview said Hizb ut-Tahrir had deceptively portrayed the conference as a bazaar-type event where traditional food and clothing would be sold.
"They misrepresented themselves and the event. We don't want to be in the middle of something like that," the school's business manager Rana Jaber, told CBS News.
The conference's new venue doesn't seem to mind.
Hilton Oak Lawn General Manager Rick Harmon said Hizb ut-Tahrir used its own name when it reserved the room for the conference, but the hotel was not aware of the content of the event, which includes lectures entitled "Capitalism is Doomed to Fail," "The Global Rise of Islam," and the "Role of Muslims in America," until after the contract was signed.
Still, Harmon said the hotel is open to all kinds of meetings, that don't necessarily reflect its position or beliefs.
"We're United States citizens and an American business — if it's legal, we're able to host it, as long as it's nothing that disrupts our other guests' privacy and security," Harmon told FOXNews.com.
According to the Khilafah Conference 2009 Web site, the group aims to do neither.
"Hizb-ut-Tahrir is convinced that change must start in the minds of people, and therefore does not accept for people, or societies, to be forced to change by means of violence and terror," it reads.
The site, which includes a promotional YouTube video, says the group "does not work in the West to change the system of government, but works to project a positive image of Islam to Western society."
Click here to see the conference video.
But former member Ishtiaq Hussain said Hizb ut-Tahrir is repackaging itself as a moderate organization as a tactic, while in reality it is "extremist."
"They don't recognize countries like Israel, for example; they don’t believe Israel should exist," Hussain, now a trainer for the Quilliam Foundation, told FOXNews.com. "Some of their leaders have denied the Holocaust, and they believe homosexuals should be thrown off the highest building. ... It's actually a very dangerous group."
Hizb ut-Tahrir itself has also published writings that seem to contradict its tenet of non-violence.
In his book, "How the Khilafah Was Destroyed," Sheikh Abdul Qadeem Zalloom, the former global leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir, says anyone who rules by a non-Islamic system should "either retract or be killed ... even if this led to several years of fighting and even if it led to the killing of millions of Muslims and to the martyrdom of millions of believers."
Click here to read the full excerpt.
Hizb ut-Tahrir's official ruling on the permissibility of hijacking planes says, "If the plane belongs to a country at war with Muslims, like Israel, it is allowed to hijack it, for there is no sanctity for Israel nor for the Jews in it."
Click here to read the full ruling (pdf).
And one of the organization's more recent leaflets, published in March, calls for the declaration of "a state of war against America."
Click here to read the leaflet.
But, despite these threats and calls to action, Hizb ut-Tahrir remains off the State Department's terror watch list, and it is free to host the Khilafah Conference and any other event like it.
"In other parts of the world where they're really very active, they've drawn tens of thousands of people to some of their events," Segal said.
"It'll be interesting to see to what degree they'll be welcomed here."
The Economist = The United States’ recent history has been a relentless tilt to the West — of people, ideas, commerce and even political power.
California and Texas, the nation’s two biggest states, are the twin poles of the West, but very different ones. For most of the 20th century, the home of Silicon Valley and Hollywood was the brainier, sexier, trendier of the two: Its suburbs and freeways, its fads and foibles, its marvelous miscegenation have spread around the world. Texas, once a part of the Confederacy, has trailed behind: Its cliche has been a conservative Christian in cowboy boots, much like a certain recent president.But twins can change places. Is that happening now? It is easy to find evidence that California is in a funk. At the start of this month the once golden state started paying creditors, including those owed tax refunds, business suppliers and students expecting grants, in IOUs. California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, also said that the gap between projected outgoings and income for the current fiscal year has leapt to a horrible $26 billion. With no sign of a new budget to close this chasm, one credit agency has already downgraded California’s debt. As budgets are cut, universities will let in fewer students, prisoners will be released early and schemes to protect the vulnerable will be rolled back.
THEY PAVED PARADISE AND PUT UP THE PARKING TAXES Plenty of American states have budget crises; but California’s illustrate two more structural worries about the state. Back in its golden age in the 1950s and 1960s, it offered middle-class people, not just techy high-fliers, a shot at the American dream — complete with superb schools and universities, and an enviable physical infrastructure. These days California’s unemployment rate is running at 11.5 percent, two points ahead of the national average.
In such cities as Fresno, Merced and El Centro, jobless rates are higher than in Detroit. Its roads and schools are crumbling. Every year, more than 100,000 more Americans leave the state than enter it.
The second worry has to do with dysfunctional government. No state has quite so many overlapping systems of accountability or such a gerrymandered legislature. Ballot initiatives, the crack cocaine of democracy, have left only around a quarter of its budget within the power of its representative politicians. (One reason budget cuts are inevitable is that voters rejected tax increases in a package of ballot measures in May.) Not that Californian government comes cheap: It has the second-highest top level of state income tax in America (after Hawaii, of all places). Indeed, high taxes, coupled with intrusive regulation of business and greenery taken to silly extremes, have gradually strangled what was once America’s most dynamic state economy. Chief Executive magazine, to take just one example, has ranked California the very worst state to do business in for each of the past four years.
By contrast, Texas was the best state in that poll. It has coped well with the recession, with an unemployment rate two points below the national average and one of the lowest rates of housing repossession. In part this is because Texan banks, hard hit in the last property bust, did not overexpand this time.
But Texas also clearly offers a different model, based on small government. It has no state capital-gains or income tax, and a business-friendly and immigrant-tolerant attitude. It is home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other state — 64 compared with California’s 51 and New York’s 56. And as happens to fashionable places, some erstwhile weaknesses now seem strengths (flat, ugly countryside makes it easier for Dallas-Fort Worth to expand than mountain-and-sea-locked Los Angeles), while old conservative stereotypes are being questioned: Two leading contenders to be Houston’s next mayor are a black man and a white lesbian. Texas also gets on better with Mexico than California does.
American conservatives have seized on this reversal of fortune: Arthur Laffer, a Reaganite economist, hails the Texan model over the Gipper’s now hopelessly leftish home. Despite all this, it still seems too early to cede America’s future to the Lone Star state. To begin with, that lean Texan model has its own problems.
It has not invested enough in education, and many experts rightly worry about a “lost generation” of mostly Hispanic Texans with insufficient skills for the demands of the knowledge economy. Now immigration is likely to reconvert Texas from Republican red to Democratic blue; Latinos may justly demand a bigger, more “Californian” state to educate them and provide them with decent health care. But Texas could then end up with the same over-empowered public-sector unions that have helped wreck government in California.
Second, it has never paid to bet against a state with as many inventive people as California. Even if Hollywood is in the dumps, it still boasts an unequaled array of sunrise industries and the most agile venture-capital industry on the planet; there is no prospect of the likes of Google decamping from Mountain View for Austin, though many start-ups have. The state also has an awesome ability to reinvent itself — as it did when its defense industry collapsed at the end of the Cold War. Perhaps the rejection of tax increases will “starve the beast” and promote structural reform.
A referendum on a new primaries system could end its polarized politics. Schwarzenegger’s lazy governorship could come to be seen not as the great missed opportunity, but as the spur for reform.
The truth is that both states could learn from each other. There is no perfect model of government: It is America’s genius to have 50 public-policy laboratories competing to find out what works best.
But, to give Texas some credit and serve as a warning to Schwarzenegger’s heir, at this moment America’s two most futuristic states look a lot more like equals than ever before.
The other, even more important, reason to expect change is internal. In 2004 Texas became one of only four states in America where whites are no longer in the majority. On recent trends, Hispanics will be the largest ethnic group in the state by 2015. Since they tend to vote Democratic, this has big implications for Texas’s political make-up and for national politics. And an increasingly assertive Hispanic caucus, in an increasingly Democratic state, also seems sure to demand better schools and health care for the people it represents, who currently lag far behind the Anglos on any social indicator you care to name. Close to half of Latinos in Houston, for instance, fail to graduate from high school.
How Texas responds to these forces will determine its future. Get it right, and the state will remain business-friendly and globally competitive, with high employment and a rising standard of living. Get it wrong, and Texas could follow California (which “flipped” from Republican to Democratic control in part thanks to rapid immigration) down the road of high taxes and excessive regulation. This route has bankrupted California and is prompting a net 100,000 people to leave each year. Many of them head for Texas. One simple statistic tells that tale: it costs nearly three times as much to rent a self-drive van for a one-way journey from Los Angeles to Houston as the other way around.
Fox News - Who knew?
A billboard proclaiming that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican has stirred a religious and political hornets' nest in Houston, where a church leader is trying to draw black voters into the Republican Party.The jumbo-sized roadside ad made its contentious claim for about a week -- until a local black activist charged that the sign unjustly politicized King's legacy and was hurting his community by telling a "blatant lie."
"Martin Luther King may have very well believed in some of the Christian principles of the Republican Party, but Dr. Martin Luther King was not a Republican or a Democrat," said Quanell X, who heads the New Black Panther Party in Houston.
"Dr. King was bigger than a political party -- he was a humanitarian, and so to attach him exclusively to any party is to devalue his humanitarian global status," he said. "We were insulted ... by the billboard because it was a blatant lie."
King held great sway over black voters and carefully courted both Republicans and Democrats. He never officially endorsed a party or candidate.
But the founder of RagingRepublicans.org, the black conservative group that sponsored the sign, told FOXNews.com that the sign was designed to get blacks to rethink their political affiliation -- about 95 percent of blacks voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential elections -- and that this is just the beginning. He said a radio campaign that focuses on "the destructive nature of liberalism" is forthcoming.
"We think it's imperative that [the GOP] try and attract more people from the communities of color to vote their values -- to vote conservative," said Claver Kamau-Imani, who heads the Corinthian Christian Empowerment Church, a small house church in Houston.
What's more, he said, the sign is accurate.
Kimau-Imani told FOXNews.com that King's niece, the Rev. Alveda King, has long argued that her uncle was a Republican, though he acknowledged there was no documentation or voting record to prove it.
Those claims enraged Quanell X, who held a press conference late last week to rally against the sign and ended up in a shouting match over the legacy of the murdered civil rights icon.
The billboard, which Kamau-Imani says cost $3,000 to display for a month, came down shortly after Friday's press conference -- about 20 days ahead of schedule, a move Kamau-Imani attributed to the "spineless" response of the billboard company, SignAd.
"The simple fact is that the leader of the Black Panther Party here in Houston called a news conference and they spooked," he said.
Representatives for SignAd did not return requests for comment.Quanell X told FOXNews.com he was pleased that he had succeeded in getting the billboard removed. He added that King would never have embraced the present-day GOP, which he said had "racist elements."
"Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would not be with the party of Newt Gingrich, he would not be with the party of Sarah Palin, he would not be with the party of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage or Sean Hannity," he said.
Representatives for the King family did not return requests for comment.
What went little noticed in the fray was the subtext on the billboard, which said that the Raging Republicans are committed to "leading America's 2nd emancipation."
Kamau-Imani told FOXNews.com that black voters feel that "your blackness, your street cred is tied up with whether you are a Democrat or not" -- a notion he said amounted to a kind of mental slavery that keeps blacks from speaking freely.
The president of the Houston branch of the NAACP said that the civil rights group does not wade into partisan politics, but seemed pleased that the sign had come down.
"The community has prevailed," said Carol Galloway, president of the organization's Houston branch.
Despite losing some of his investment in the billboard, Kimau-Imani told FOXNews.com he was happy with the effect of the sign.
"The billboard was simply something to get a conversation started, to make people think about their political affiliations," he said. "It appears we have achieved our goal."
AFP - Bloomberg - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev illustrated his call for a supranational currency to replace the dollar by pulling from his pocket a sample coin of a “united future world currency.”
“Here it is,” Medvedev told reporters today in L’Aquila, Italy, after a summit of the Group of Eight nations. “You can see it and touch it.”
The coin, which bears the words “unity in diversity,” was minted in Belgium and presented to the heads of G-8 delegations, Medvedev said.
The question of a supranational currency “concerns everyone now, even the mints,” Medvedev said. The test coin “means they’re getting ready. I think it’s a good sign that we understand how interdependent we are.”
Medvedev said that although the coin, which resembled a euro and featured the image of five leaves, was just a gift given to leaders it showed that people were beginning to think seriously about a new global currency.
"In all likelihood something similar could appear and it could be held in your hand and used as a means of payment," he told reporters. "This is the international currency."
Russia, along with China, has been a vocal proponent of diversifying the global currency system away from the dollar, which has dominated global finance and commerce since the end of World War II.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the summit joined the band in favour of dumping the dollar as the international currency of reference, insisting that "we cannot stick with just one single currency."
The Associated Press - Pope Benedict XVI called Tuesday for a new world financial order guided by ethics, dignity and the search for the common good in the third encyclical of his pontificate.
In "Charity in Truth," Benedict denounced the profit-at-all-cost mentality of the globalized economy and lamented that greed has brought about the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
"Profit is useful if it serves as a means toward an end," he wrote. "Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty."
The document, in the works for two years, was released one day before leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations meet to coordinate efforts to emerge from the global financial crisis.
The release was clearly designed to give world leaders a strong moral imperative to correct errors of the past, "which wreaked such havoc on the real economy," and make a more socially just and responsible world financial order.
"The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly — not any ethics, but an ethics which is people centered," he wrote.
The German-born Benedict, 82, has spoken out frequently about the impact of the crisis on the poor, particularly in Africa which he visited earlier this year. But the encyclical, one of the most authoritative documents a pope can issue, marked a new level of church teaching by linking the Vatican's long-standing doctrine on caring for the poor with current events.
While acknowledging that the globalized economy has "lifted billions of people out of misery," Benedict accused unbridled growth of recent years of causing unprecedented problems as well, citing mass migration flows, environmental degradation and a complete loss of trust in the world market.
He urged wealthier countries to increase development aid to poor countries to help eliminate world hunger, saying peace and security depended on it. He specified that aid should go to agricultural development to improve infrastructure, irrigation systems, transport and sharing of agricultural technology.
At the same time, he demanded that industrialized nations reduce their energy consumption, both to better care for the environment — "God's gift to everyone" — and to let the poorer have access to energy resources.
"One of the greatest challenges facing the economy is to achieve the most efficient use — not abuse — of natural resources, based on a realization that the notion of 'efficiency' is not value-free," he wrote.
He denounced that the drive to outsource work to the cheapest bidder had endangered the rights of workers, and demanded that they be allowed to organize in unions to protect their rights and guarantee steady, decent employment for all.
Benedict called for a whole new financial order — "a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise" — that respects the dignity of workers and looks out for the common good by prioritizing ethics and social responsibility over dividend returns.
"Above all, the intention to do good must not be considered incompatible with the effective capacity to produce goods," he wrote. "Financiers must rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity so as to not abuse the sophisticated instruments which can serve to betray the interests of savers."
He stressed that he wasn't opposed to a globalized economy, saying that if done correctly it has an unprecedented potential to redistribute wealth around the globe. But he warned that if badly directed and if the problems aren't fixed, globalization can increase poverty and inequality and trigger the type of crisis under way.
Benedict has written two previous encyclicals in his four years as pope: "God is Love" in 2006 and "Saved by Hope" in 2007.
