With Bernie Sanders calling for a political revolution based on economic fairness, I thought this from Paul Ferrell at MarketWatch, a Murdoch-owned Dow Jones website, was interesting. Read the whole thing, but here are a few teasers:
Mark your calendar: June 18. That’s launch day for Pope Francis’s historic anticapitalist revolution, a multitargeted global revolution against out-of-control free-market capitalism driven by consumerism, against destruction of the planet’s environment, climate and natural resources for personal profits and against the greediest science deniers.
Translated bluntly, stripped of all the euphemisms and his charm, that will be the loud-and-clear message of Pope Francis’ historic encyclical coming on June 18. Pope Francis has a grand mission here on Earth, and he gives no quarter, hammering home a very simple message with no wiggle room for compromise of his principles: ‘If we destroy God’s Creation, it will destroy us,” our human civilization here on Planet Earth.
snip
The fact is the pontiff is already building an army of billions, in the same spirit as Gandhi, King and Marx. These are revolutionary times. Deny it all you want, but the global zeitgeist has thrust the pope in front of a global movement, focusing, inspiring, leading billions. Future historians will call Pope Francis the “Great 21st Century Revolutionary.”
Yes, our upbeat, ever-smiling Pope Francis. As a former boxer, he loves a good match. And he’s going to get one. He is encouraging rebellion against super-rich capitalists, against fossil-fuel power-players, conservative politicians and the 67 billionaires who already own more than half the assets of the planet.
That’s the biggest reason Pope Francis is scaring the hell out of the GOP, Big Oil, the Koch Empire, Massey Coal, every other fossil-fuel billionaire and more than a hundred million climate-denying capitalists and conservatives. Their biggest fear: They’re deeply afraid the pope has started the ball rolling and they can’t stop it.
He then lists eight of "pope’s key warning punches edited in the Catholic Climate Covenant, from his “Apostolic Exhortation,” and in London’s Guardian and other news sources ..." I'll just list the headers, but it's the detailed quotes here that is most interesting:
1. Capitalism is threatening the survival of human civilization
2. Capitalism is destroying nonrenewable resources for personal gain
3. Capitalism has lost its ethical code, has no moral compass
4. Capitalists worship the golden calf of a money god
5. Capitalists pursuit of personal wealth destroys the common good
6. Capitalism has no respect for Earth’s natural environment
7. Capitalists only see the working class as consumers and machine tools
8. Capitalism is killing our planet, our civilization and the people
I like the smell of revolution in the morning, don't you?