Tuesday, March 12, 2013

"Extra Omnes": Vatican Conclave Begins

"Extra Omnes!" Ralph Kramden, iconic NYC bus driver could not have said it any better. "Everybody out!" With those words, the conversation and social discourse among all Cardinals, irrespective of age, comes to an end and the Cardinals younger than 80 who are deemed part of the 115 Cardinal electors go into Sacred Lockdown in the equally iconic Capella Sistina at the Vatican to make their choice.

The Boys in the Back Room speak, compare notes, and vote. We wait for the smoke. Black - Back to the drawing board. White- "Habemus papam."

As the BBC reported:

"After 10 general congregations open to all cardinals, regardless of age - at which 160 cardinals spoke of the issues facing the Church and the qualities needed by its next leader - no clear frontrunner has emerged.


"Last time around there was a man of stature, three or four times that of any other cardinal," French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin told reporters.

"That is not the case this time around. Therefore, the choice has to be made among one, two, three, four... a dozen candidates.

"We still don't really know anything. We will have to wait for the results of the first ballot."  New York Archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan told his priests there was hope that a new Pope could be chosen by Thursday.

"Candidates named as contenders include Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan, Brazil's Odilo Scherer, and Cardinal Dolan himself - though he told one interviewer anyone who thought he was in with a chance might be "smoking [something funny]". Full article here

The Boys in the Back Room speak, compare notes, and vote. We wait for the smoke. Black - Back to the drawing board. White- "Habemus papam."









The View from Over There: Pravda - "U.S. System Grows Necrophiliac Psychopaths"

"American reality today looks worse than darkest Hollywood movies" writes Vitaly Salnick in the Russian daily PRAVDA.

"Something wrong has been happening in the U.S. during the recent years. Children in schools are massively fed with a drug that has been used in psychiatric hospitals and is classified as amphetamine. At least 6 million U.S. students take Ritalin and a similar drug, Dexedrine. The drugs are used against the so-called hyper-activity."

"Many experts have repeatedly pointed out the fact that these drugs, also called children's cocaine, lead to unprovoked violence and mass shootings in American schools.


"Yet, the smart U.S. government turns American students into pharmacological zombies, trying to take guns away from adults, referring to the crimes committed by young psychopaths. To give you an idea of ​​the extent of such policies, we would like to note that the production of amphetamine-type drugs in the country has been growing exponentially. In addition, Americans consume large quantities of chemical food, which is also a part of the pharmacological industry. Natural food in the U.S. is very difficult to buy. The agency, which directly deals with the issues of changes among the population, is called the Food and Drug Administration, which obviously means that food and drug is one and the same thing."

"To crown it all, there are practically no mental health services provided to the population in America. They have been replaced with ambulatory narcotization. In 1955, there were 559,000 patients in state-funded psychiatric hospitals per 165 million people. Nowadays, their number has dropped to less than 50,000 per 300 million people. It is believed in America that about 20 percent of U.S. prison inmates are mentally ill. However, they will not be sent to "yellow houses", as they serve as a valuable labor resource in the American prison economy..."


The full article in Pravda appears here