"I can't believe it's not butter"?

Looking for the "like" button.

Free samples of Grey Goose Vodka?

And lighten up on indigenous people and endangered species. The Vatican is infested with sick, twisted, selfish minds.

University of Arizona, Vatican and Jesuits Name New Telescope ‘Lucifer’
http://www.arcticbeacon.com/greg/headlines/university-of-arizona-vatican-and-jesuits-name-new-telescope-lucifer/

ON AN ISOLATED MOUNTAINTOP IN ARIZONA
Posted by M.G.R.S. | May 31, 2012
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/place_where_you_live/view/on_an_isolated_mountaintop_in_arizona_6885/

The Heart of Genuine Sadness - Astronomers, politicians, and federal employees desecrate the holiest mountain of the San Carlos Apache by Peter Warshall

http://www.mountgraham.org/content/heart-genuine-sadness-astronomers-politicians-and-federal-employees-desecrate-holiest

Relevant excerpt:

The Apaches wonder just how far the Vatican will go to save allegedly impure, extraterrestrial souls. As at the time of first contact, are Apaches still to be treated as extraterrestrials?

The Authority of Knowledge

In 1987 in Phoenix, Pope John Paul II received an eagle feather for the Vatican collection. "I encourage you," he said, "as native people belonging to different tribes and nations in the East, South, West, and North, to preserve and keep alive your cultures, your languages, the values and customs which have served you well in the past and provide a solid foundation for the future." 

Five years later, Father Coyne: "Nature and the Earth are just there, blah! And there will be a time when they are not there. . . . It is precisely the failure to make the distinctions I mention above [between Nature, Earth, cultures, human beings] that has created a kind of environmentalism and religiosity to which I cannot subscribe and which must be suppressed with all the force that we can muster." Under heavy pressure, Coyne later backed off—eliminating the statement from his missive.

Father George Coyne, better known in Tucson for his frequent ski trips and, when living at the Jesuit communal house, his reluctance to wash dishes, has attempted to portray Apaches who oppose the telescopes as Pagans, duped by Svengali-like, neo-Pagan enviros. 

The University and the Fathers have been enormously successful in slighting the authority of Apache medicine people, especially the validity of their "claims" to the Pinaleño’s holy grounds. Coyne often exaggerates the brainwashing powers of white enviros, insisting that enviros are manipulating Apache minds and emotions for their own purposes. Anything but admit that traditional Apaches have carefully considered the ethical and religious implications of the telescope project and, with great deliberation and courage, dedicated themselves to their own conclusions. One conclusion is that a coalition with various human rights and conservation groups would be more effective than opposing the telescope project alone.

This attitude that "Apaches-are-passively-manipulated-by-crafty-and-clever-white-guys" has been more egregiously promoted by Father Charles Polzer, the Curator of Ethnology at the Arizona State Museum. In a hopefully rare moment of paranoia and unscholarly outburst, he claimed that opposition to the telescope complex is "part of a Jewish conspiracy." The conspiracy "comes out of the Jewish lawyers of the ACLU to undermine and destroy the Catholic Church."

****
Yet, Coyne and Polzer are no fools when it comes to the intrigue of power politics. In order to obtain a Forest Service permit to the mountain peaks, the University of Arizona became the first university to legally question the sacrality of any Native American claim. Both priests submitted affidavits to Federal courts. Their affidavits contributed to the defeat of all Apache attempts to have their land use concerns reviewed by the Forest Service under the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA).

****