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The underlying religious crisis is plain for all to see. In the Middle East conflict in 2014, only four powers are secular, and the other six claim to base their identities on their religions: Judaism, Islam, and behind the scenes, Christian Zionism.

In 2005, after years of reading about the U.S. military’s bombing  campaigns and torture around the world, I could take it no longer. El Salvador. Guatemala. Then Iraq. So I quit my job at the San Jose Mercury News and made one tiny effort to reclaim a shred of integrity as a U.S. citizen. This is my story.

We handed out this flyer that summarized the dictatorship theories of Professor John Yoo to the graduating seniors and robed professors as they marched to the graduation ceremony of Boalt Hall Law School, May 2006 Berkeley, CA.

Today, Palm Sunday, we must pray for the United States which has trained  foreign soldiers at the School of Americas to torture and repress political opponents and innocent civilians in Central and Latin America.

Two local parishioners – one seeking to “live in the truth” and another citing the example of Father Bill O’Donnell – have been sentenced to three months in federal prison for trespassing at the former School of the Americas in Georgia last fall.

The question I ask myself is not about why I went to Georgia but why it took me so long. Once there, I prayed and prayed for God’s guidance and in the end, was holding Domingo’s cross and the poster of the Jesuits when I crawled underneath the fence of the fort.

Two Bay Area Catholics were among 40 protesters arrested Nov. 20 during a prayer vigil and demonstration at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly the School of the Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia.

The Baghdad I witnessed was a city where the shadow of death rose up through chance meetings: the hotel clerk who implored me for vitamins for his starving daughter, the wealthy businessman who prepared a lavish meal of arak and kabob and talked openly of the suicides of well-known intellectuals, the successful artist who pointed to the painting on his wall done by a friend who starved to death.

Try this Financial Worksheet!  1. Add up your total assets. 2. Add up your total assets a month later. 3. Calculate the change: 2-1 = 3. Is #3 positive? You’ve saved money, and your income is greater than your expenses. If #3 negative, you’re in the hole and sliding down the rabbit hole of debt and illusion. All the rest is details.

Many readers responded to my original essay on our debt-driven way of living in “Going Broke on $44,500 a Year,” published in the San Jose Mercury News. Here are some of the suggestions that they offered to solve the middle class debt crisis.

Are you careful with money, yet still sinking into debt?  The decline of the middle class began in the 1980s, when social values eroded and warnings against debt were cast aside.