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Note-- The symbol ^ denotes that that article can be read in full at the link.

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Breaking News

UN report: World's biggest cities merging into 'mega-regions'
The Guardian - By John Vidal, environment editor - March 22, 2010
- LINK ^

Trend towards 'endless cities' could significantly affect population and wealth in the next 50 years. The world's mega-cities are merging to form vast "mega-regions" which may stretch hundreds of kilometres across countries and be home to more than 100 million people, according to a major new UN report.

The phenomenon of the so-called "endless city" could be one of the most significant developments - and problems - in the way people live and economies grow in the next 50 years, says UN-Habitat, the agency for human settlements, which identifies the trend of developing mega-regions in its biannual State of World Cities report. The largest of these, says the report - launched today at the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro - is the Hong Kong-Shenhzen-Guangzhou region in China, home to about 120 million people. Other mega-regions have formed in Japan and Brazil and are developing in India, west Africa and elsewhere. The trend helped the world pass a tipping point in the last year, with more than half the world's people now living in cities.

US | Another Kristalnacht Event - Bricks shatter glass at NY Democratic offices
Salon / AP - March 22, 2010
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Authorities are trying to find out who threw bricks through windows and doors at two Democratic Party offices in western New York before Sunday's health care vote. Monroe County Democratic Committee officials say a brick shattered glass doors at the party's headquarters in Rochester on Saturday or Sunday. No one was in the building at the time. Rochester police are investigating. Early Friday a brick was thrown through a window at Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter's district office in Niagara Falls.

Google risks China's ire with slap to censorship
Reuters - March 23, 2010
- LINK ^

Google shut its mainland Chinese-language portal and began rerouting searches to its Hong Kong site, unleashing Beijing's ire and prompting worry over its prospects in China. China lost little time in warning Google that its spurning of self-censorship had angered the one-party government, wary of ceding control over China's 384 million Internet users.

UK | Iraq Inquiry asks to question George Bush's senior officials.
The Telegraph - By Patrick Hennessy, Political Editor - March 20, 2010
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The Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War could take an explosive new twist after it emerged that leading figures in George Bush's administration have been asked to give evidence to it. While the most senior figures are reluctant to give evidence, Washington sources claim about 10 former officials, most involved in the post-invasion period, have agreed to do so.

The surprise development adds to the chances of Sir John's inquiry producing a "smoking gun" on the key questions of whether Britain and the US adequately prepared for the conflict and whether it was justified under international law. Although it has no legal power to compel witnesses to appear before it, the Chilcot Inquiry has succeeded in obtaining testimony from virtually every single British politician, official and senior military figure who played a key role in the war.

UK | Nuclear terror risk to Britain from Al-Qaeda
Britain faces an increased threat of a nuclear attack by al-Qaeda terrorists following a rise in the trafficking of radiological material, a government report has warned.
The Telegraph - By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent - March 22, 2010
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Opinion | Commentary | Editorials | Op-Eds

Opinion | Ten reasons why East Jerusalem does not belong to Israel
Israeli hawks say that Jerusalem is theirs because of a long, romantic national history there. Too bad it's made up
Salon - By Juan Cole - March 23, 2010
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Council on Monday that "Jerusalem is not a settlement." He continued that the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel cannot be denied. He added that neither could the historical connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem. He insisted, "The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today." He said, "Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital." He told his applauding audience of 7,500 that he was simply following the policies of all Israeli governments since the 1967 conquest of Jerusalem in the Six Day War.

Netanyahu mixed together romantic, nationalist cliches with a series of historically false assertions. But even more important was everything he left out of the history, and his citation of his warped and inaccurate history instead of considering laws, rights or common human decency toward others not of his ethnic group.

So here are the reasons that Netanyahu is profoundly wrong, and East Jerusalem does not belong to him.
Click link above for continuation. >

US | Opinion | The Crimes of Empire,
Atlantic Free Press - By Francis A Boyle Contributor - March 23, 2010
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Successive governments of the United States of America like to designate other countries, whose leaders they do not like, "rogue states“. Noam Chomsky showed in "Rogue States“ that this designation does not apply to countries such as Iraq but to the United States itself. According to him, the American superpower fulfills all the characteritics of such an entity. The U. S. and its "junior partner“, the United Kingdom, made Iraq a cartoon of an "outlaw nation“ that threatens the entire world, and Saddam Hussein the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. If that would have been true, they should have turned to the U. N. Security Council. Instead they started an act of aggression against Iraq, thereby showing contempt for international law and the U. N. Charter, which would have provided a legal base to handle this crisis peacefully. Chomsky mentions that Libya, Cuba, and North Korea were also designated as "rogue states“, and the ´boy emperor from Crawford, Texas` named Iran, Iraq and North Korea the "axis of evil“. U. S. President Ronald Reagan had already termed the Soviet Union an "evil emprie“.

Having red Carl Boggs book, one can doubt whether the right countries were stigmatized "rogue states" because "The Crime of Empire“ is the criminal history of U. S. behavior in international relations.

Opinion | The Vatican / Ireland | Why the Pope's Apology May Not Be Enough
Time Magazine - March 22, 2010
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United States Government

"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress." -- John Adams

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." -- Mark Twain

The people's history reading list for Activists
- LINK ^^

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Topical News

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Activism at the Ground Level

A Must Book Review | "Soul of a Citizen" Excerpt: Taking Money Out of Politics: A Grassroots Effort for Clean Elections
Truthout - Book By Paul Rogat Loeb _ March 21, 2010
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"The strength of a democracy is, as in nature, in the roots, not in the flamboyant leaves that announce their glory in the spring, then wither and die after two terms or so in public office." -- John Davidson Miller

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Arts & Culture

Musicians mix Coldplay and Taylor Swift together - Enjoy
Wimp
- LINK ^

An Engaging Book Review and Documentary | A grand history and an elegiac new film explore Britain’s recent, and irrecoverable, past.
The Atlantic - Reviews by Benjamin Schwarz of book by David Kynaston, Film by Terence Davies - April 2010
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Climate Change

North America | Birds and Climate Change: On the Move
Daily Kos - By Jamess - March 15, 2010
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National Audubon Society - Nearly 60% of the 305 species found in North America in winter are on the move, shifting their ranges northward by an average of 35 miles. Audubon scientists analyzed 40 years of citizen-science Christmas Bird Count data — and their findings provide new and powerful evidence that global warming is having a serious impact on natural systems.

US | Pervasive, wide-ranging' climate impacts in US, White House task force finds
Alert.net / Reuters - By Frances Beinecke - March 18, 2010
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Climate change is already having "pervasive, wide-ranging" effects on "nearly every aspect of our society," a task force representing more than 20 federal agencies reported Tuesday. "These impacts will influence how and where we live and work as well as our cultures, health and environment," the report states. "It is therefore imperative to take action now to adapt to a changing climate." Indeed, climate change has begun to affect the ability of government agencies to fulfill their missions, reports the White House Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force

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Communities and Species

+ Video | Genealogy - Faces of America - Know Thyself
PBS - Current
- LINK ^

Weird Nature: Unusual ant farmers
Editor - As a youngster in a ranch town in New Mexico I had occasion to observe these ant farmers take their herds of aphids from their ant hill in the morning to graze on plants in order to produce their sticky sweet 'honey dew milk' for the ant colony.
Wimp / BBC Worldwide
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Genealogy | Video - Faces of America - Making America
Explore the immigrants that transformed the US
PBS Current
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US Moves to Protect Red-Legged Frog of Mark Twain Fame
McClatchy Newspapers / Sacramento Bee- By Matt Weiser - March 16, 2010
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U.N. Group Rejects Shark Protections
The New York Times - By David Jolly - March 23, 2010
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PARIS — Delegates to a United Nations conference on endangered species voted down three of four proposals to protect sharks on Tuesday, handing another victory to Japan, China and countries opposed to the involvement of the international authorities in regulation of ocean fish.

Storms threaten butterflies' winter rest in Mexico
Rare cold, rain devastate monarch butterfly reserve. Long-established mass migration seen under threat
Reuters / Alert.net- By Patrick Rucker - March 18, 2010
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High Arctic species plummeting across the board
Environment News Network - March 22 , 2010
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Between 1970 and 2004 species populations in the high Arctic have declined by 26 percent, according to the first report by the Arctic Species Trend Index (ASTI). While this may be a natural cycle, scientists are concerned that environmental impacts such as climate change are worsening natural population fluctuations in the high Arctic. Declining species include lemmings, red knot, and caribou . . .

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Corruption and Criminality in Government and Allied Corporations

US | New Fraud Cases Point to Lapses in Iraq Projects
From Wall Street to the Back Streets Corruption Is Robbing Our Children, the Taxpayers, Our National Health Care and the Future uf the Country.
The New York Times - By James Glanz - March 13, 2010
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US | Lehman Bros. Used Accounting Trick Amid Financial Crisis - and Earlier
Failed investment bank Lehman Bros. used an accounting trick at the end of each quarter to make its finances appear less shaky than they really were, says a report from an examiner.
Truthout / Christian Science Monitor - By Mark Trumbull - March 12, 2010
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Economy and Finance

"I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." -- Winston Churchill

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." -- Ronald Reagan (1986)

Bloomberg Economic News
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Bloomberg Current Worldwide Financial News
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US | Federal Reserve Must Disclose Bank Bailout Records
Bloomberg News - By David Glovin and Bob Van Voris - March 19, 2010
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US | The Growing Movement for Publicly Owned Banks
Truthout - By Ellen Brown - March 19, 2010
- LINK ^

Quote | "Hundreds of job-creating projects are still on hold because Michigan businesses and entrepreneurs cannot get bank financing. We can break the credit crunch and beat Wall Street at their own game by keeping our money right here in Michigan and investing it to retool our economy and create jobs. -- Lansing, Michigan Mayor Virg Bernero in the Detroit News, May 9, 2010

US | Alert - How it's done | Man steals woman's banking information
Wimp / Good Samaritan - Courtesy Mope - Current
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Energy

Scotland gets serious about sea power
ENN / Yale Environment 360 - March 23, 2010
- LINK ^

Scotland has approved ten marine energy projects that leaders predict could provide electricity for one-third of the nation’s homes by 2020 and make Scotland the world leader in wave energy. The government awarded leases to companies to construct six wave energy projects and four tidal projects off the Scottish coast in what experts say would be the first developments of their kind on a large commercial scale.

Zero-Carbon Buildings
Earth Policy - By Lester R. Brown - March 17, 2010
- LINK ^

The building sector is responsible for a large share of world electricity consumption and raw materials use. In the United States, buildings—commercial and residential—account for 72 percent of electricity use and 38 percent of CO2 emissions. Worldwide, building construction accounts for 40 percent of materials use.

Because buildings last for 50–100 years or longer, it is often assumed that cutting carbon emissions in the building sector is a long-term process. But that is not the case. An energy retrofit of an older inefficient building can cut energy use and energy bills by 20–50 percent. The next step, shifting entirely to carbon-free electricity, either generated onsite or purchased, to heat, cool, and light the building completes the job. Presto! A zero-carbon operating building.

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Food and Nutrition

Recipe | How to master roasted vegetables
Three ingredients and two concepts are all you need to unlock all the caramelized goodness you want
Salon - By Francis Lam - March 12, 2010
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Recipe | Garlic Soup for One
The New York Times - By Martha Rose Shulman - March 19, 2010
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Study Suggests Lead-Poisoning Risk Could Lurk in Spice Racks
Time - By Alice Park - March 15, 2010
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Humor and Satire

US | Humor - Palin Slammed As 'Wild Alaskan Dingbat' After Hitting Grayson In Home District
Huffington Post - By Ryan Grim - March 15, 2010
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US | Satire - Texas Legislature Votes to Rewrite Bible
Citizens for Legitimate Government - By R J Shulman - Current
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Media and Journalism

"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed." -- Mark Twain

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Politcal Issues

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -- P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

Real clear Politics Daily Rundown
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Pollution

Air - Time for Serious Action on Black Carbon
ENN - Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development - March 16, 2010
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Washington, D.C. - Black carbon soot, produced from incomplete combustion of diesel fuel and biomass, is one of the largest contributors to climate change apart from CO2, as well as a danger to public health, and should be a prime target of policymakers according to scientists and experts.

Oceanic - The Biggest Dump in the World
As large as the USA, the Great Pacific Waste Patch is the biggest dump in the world. Ed Cumming discovers that it keeps getting bigger, and could be poisoning us all.
The Telegraph - By Ed Cumming - March 16, 2010
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Music Video | "Democracy Is Coming to the USA" - Leonard Cohen
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Science

Bloomberg Index of Current Science News
- LINK ^

Film | NASA's new risky search for life forms on Mars
Astounding science and engineering technology
Wimp / NOVA - Current
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Medical Science | Genetically modified mosquitos could be used to spread vaccine for malariaA genetically engineered mosquito that vaccinates as it bites has been developed by scientists.
The Telegraph - By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent - March 19, 2010
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Paleontology | Eggshell of extinct giant bird provides ancient DNA
In a world first an international team of researchers have successfully extracted ancient DNA from the eggshells of various species of extinct birds
University of Oxford - March 18, 2010
- LINK ^

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Social Issues

"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." -- Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)

US | Poll - Less than half of Americans consider themselves middle class
The Huffington Post - By Arthur Delaney - March 15, 2019
- LINK ^

US | Slide Show - Dustbowl Days
Author Christina Davidson discusses how Walker Evans's Depression-era photography is viewed by his subjects' descendents.
The Atlantic - March 9, 2010
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Does Puberty Make You Stupid? Lessons from Mice
Time Magazine - By Claudia Wallis - March 22, 2010
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Up until 20 years ago, scientists believed that the human brain was largely mature by puberty. Apparently, they had failed to notice the irrational behavior and flaky thinking of teenagers. Now, of course, we know that the human brain continues to undergo serious restructuring well into the 20s. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

Sophisticated brain-scan studies by Jay Giedd at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have shown dramatic changes throughout the teenage years as excess gray matter is pruned from the prefrontal cortex — the seat of higher-order thinking and making judgments (like not smoking weed right before your chemistry exam). Meanwhile, behavioral studies have shown what every parent already knows: teens have poor control over impulses and a tendency toward risk taking. Still, relatively little is known about how such changes affect learning or what happens at a biochemical level in the brain as teens go through their addled adolescence.

Video | Haiti - Out of the Rubble
Photographer Evan Abramson shares his images from post-quake Haiti
The Atlantic - February 10, 2010
- LINK ^

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Violence

Indian military to weaponize world's hottest chili
"Ghost chili" will be used in hand grenades
Salon / AP - By Wasbir Hussain - March 23, 2010
By WASBIR HUSSAIN, Associated Press
- LINK ^

The Indian military has a new weapon against terrorism: the world's hottest chili. After conducting tests, the military has decided to use the thumb-sized "bhut jolokia," or "ghost chili," to make tear gas-like hand grenades to immobilize suspects, defense officials said Tuesday. The bhut jolokia was accepted by Guinness World Records in 2007 as the world's spiciest chili. It is grown and eaten in India's northeast for its taste, as a cure for stomach troubles and a way to fight the crippling summer heat. It has more than 1,000,000 Scoville units, the scientific measurement of a chili's spiciness. Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units, while jalapeno peppers measure anywhere from 2,500 to 8,000.

US - El Salvador | The Death and Life of Bishop Romero
Consortium News - By Gary G. Kohis - March 18, 2010
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Consortium News Editor’s Note
Many Americans like to forget the unpleasant history of what the U.S. government has inflicted on the peoples of little countries that have done the United States no harm. It's easier to justify these interventions as part of some larger crusade, some supposedly noble cause that required the unfortunate spilling of someone else's blood.

One of the ugliest examples was what happened in Central America in the 1980s as U.S.-trained -- and often U.S.-armed -- security forces conducted a reign of terror against workers and peasants who were inspired by Christian doctrine to struggle for justice, sometimes behind the memory of Oscar Romero, the martyred archbishop of El Salvador, as Dr. Gary G. Kohls recalls in this guest essay:

Next week will be the 30th anniversary of the assassination of El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero, a pivotal moment in the modern history of Central America and a moment that deserves reflection among U.S. citizens regarding the role their own government played in the ghastly bloodshed that surrounded Romero's death.

Gunned down while saying Mass on March 24, 1980, Romero died because of his outspoken condemnation of militarism and injustice. He had emerged as the highest-profile defender of impoverished campesinos and idealistic members of the Catholic clergy who were demanding an end to centuries of inequality and repression in El Salvador.

Romero's murder also demonstrated how far Salvadoran rightists were prepared to go in stopping the growing movement for social and economic reform. The brazenness reflected, too, how confident the anti-communist security forces were in their eventual support from the U.S. government.

Yet, Romero was an unlikely martyr for justice. He had begun his rise to power in the Salvadoran Roman Catholic Church as a lowly, rather naïve and very conservative priest who was elevated to the episcopacy partly because he was thought to be an obedient servant for the wealthy Salvadoran elite.

Romero was expected to protect the elite's tradition of maintaining power and control, by any means necessary, over the exploited working classes, especially the rural peasants, most of whom were practicing Catholics who had been told for centuries to look to the after-life for their reward.

However, these campesinos had begun to show signs of revolt, finally demanding freedom from their centuries of oppression. They formed quasi-revolutionary groups deriving inspiration from Jesus's gospels praising the poor and rejecting greed.

Romero watched the Salvadoran security forces resort to torture, extra-judicial killings and disappearances to silence and intimidate the liberation movement, including young clergy assigned to Romero's archdiocese. Each night, mutilated bodies were dumped along the streets.

In the face of this cruelty, Romero's politics and theology did an about-face. He began a courageous three-year ministry openly opposing the Salvadoran military, the wealthy elites and his compromised Catholic Church hierarchy, which had long sided with the rich and powerful.

His path to martyrdom was set, and he knew it.

Romero became a Christ-like figure, who followed Jesus's example of unflinching anticipation of martyrdom. Romero also adopted the methods of Jesus, a strategy of active nonviolent resistance. He repeatedly called on the security forces to stop the repression.

He pleaded directly to the soldiers, who would change into plainclothes before heading off onto their death-squad missions. He told them, in the name of God, to refuse orders to shoot their countrymen. In his last Sunday sermon, a broadcast he knew was being monitored by the Salvadoran military, he said:

“Before an order to kill that a man may give, the law of God must prevail that says: Thou shalt not kill! No soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God.”

Romero knew his days were numbered, but that knowledge didn’t stop him from speaking out for human rights, on behalf of the poor and helpless. In one of his last interviews, Romero said:

"If God accepts the sacrifice of my life, may my death be for the freedom of my people ... A bishop will die, but the Church of God, which is the people, will never perish. If they kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people.”

Romero maintained his Christ-like, nonviolent stance to the end, even challenging the ethics of leftist rebels who felt that they had no recourse but to exact some violent revenge against the fascists who controlled the security forces.

On March 24, 1980, after ending his final homily, Romero turned to the congregation to consecrate the Eucharist. He said:

"May this Body immolated and this Blood sacrificed for Mankind nourish us also, that we may give our body and our blood over to suffering and pain, like Christ -- not for Self, but to give harvests of peace and justice to our People."

Then, the assassin’s bullet pierced his heart.
More at link above.

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