First they came for the Socialists...

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist. 

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— 

Because I was not a Trade Unionist. 

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— 

Because I was not a Jew. 

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. 

Martin Niemöller

The original intent of this remark, given in speeches around Germany, was to point out that Germans—in particular leaders of German Protestant churches—had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people.

Today, in the United States, the Republican Party is responsible for the intensification of racial animosity against minorities - blacks and hispanics in particular - and are the cause of much of the violence against blacks now being acted out on the public stage by the growing militaristic police presence in this country.  White militia groups, openly carrying loaded weapons, now patrol the US-Mexico border against the "incursion" of hispanic children!

Recent stories in the press, such as the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and several additional instances of such violence have resulted in a growing unease in social media about not just official violence against blacks, but the increasing trend of police violence against any public dissent against that violence, regardless of the race or ethnicity of the protestors.

Additionally, numerous Stand Your Ground laws in various States have resulted in civilian violence against minorities which have allowed the perpetrators to walk away without fear of prosecution.  These laws have been promulgated by Republican legislatures over the loud and vociferous protests of Democratic and pro-gun control groups.

I am greatly troubled by these various developments.

While law enforcement violence against blacks and hispanics is nothing new, especially in the South, to see such violence pop into the public eye in places like Missouri and California is troubling, to say the least.  And to see the situation in Missouri escalate into such a state that the police turn the town into an armed camp, arresting both members of the press and a State Senator, is beginning to border on the absurd and the alarming.

I add here the recent execution of Troy Anthony Davis (October 9, 1968 – September 21, 2011), an American man convicted of and executed for the August 19, 1989, murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia.  In spite of the recantation of numerous prosecution witnesses and the admission of guilt by another inmate, the State of Georgia went ahead with the execution.

I can add several more, indeed, four out of the top 5 wrongful executions in the US were of black men.  It is well documented that the US justice system, nationwide, is stacked against minorities.

It is an interesting phenomenon that the only groups of pro gun demonstrators "exercising" their open carry rights are white.  There are no documented cases of groups of black men so demonstrating their "right" to open carry anywhere in the United States.

I wonder why that is?

I think the situation is getting out of control.

I think the fact that it is out of control is deliberate.

Republicans have been running on a platform which asserts that the "government" doesn't work and is a burden on the American people.  They have worked very hard, using every opportunity to ensure that their assertions work out to be true, sabotaging good government at every possible turn.

They have ensured that American police departments, under the aegis of the "War on Drugs", have loaded up with as much militaristic weaponry and equipment as possible using Federal money to finance that buildup.

Their campaigns of fear and uncertainty aimed at the poorest elements of white America have stoked the fires of racial animosity and hatred in order to ensure the re-election of Republican leaders at every level of government, using State and local powers to subvert Federal laws and regulations wherever possible to foil the increasingly liberal march of American social beliefs and morals and any influence that may have on US law.

The trust and confidence of the American people in our police, in the courts, and in the prosecutors who administer our system of justice is eroding daily.  When police concentrate on blacks and hispanics, ignoring whites, and prosecutors apply different standards of justice to minorities, public trust in these institutions begins to erode.

When the courts begin to allow these other groups to violate the rights of minorities without consequence, the erosion of public trust accelerates.

Sooner or later, the people of this country will decide that they've had enough, and Republicans hope that they can cash in on that decision.

Don't let them.  Speak out!  The best way to do that is to vote.  DON'T STAY AT HOME!

This November, get out and vote.  Vote Democratic!  Toss out the Republican Party and force them to go into exile, where they can hopefully restructure their party and relearn what it is to be an American.

I think they've forgotten completely.

Rethinking the fight against racism

The gulf between being educated about something and ignorant of it is a wide one.  It makes the difference between understanding that subject and merely thinking you do because you have been mislead all your life.

I have always considered myself to be an educated man.  Of course, being educated, I do understand that there are huge gaps in that education of various kinds, where either the system I was educated in was deficient or I elected to take a particular direction to my education, forsaking those I wasn't interested in.

In other words, I always thought I knew what those gaps were, and was largely Ok with what they represented.

Boy, was I wrong!

Today, I clicked over to read an article whose title intrigued me as I saw it shared on Facebook.  That title, "What White People Need to Learn", sounded interesting, especially as I consider myself white, and am always interested in learning something new about myself.  I was to be rocked to the core by what I would read.  Its content was so different from what I thought it might be as to be shocking.

I know, overused word, but read on, you'll see what I mean.

The author, Mary-Alice Daniel, was writing the article as part of a series by women of color on Alternet.  What she had to say about the history of the term "white" as a racial descriptor should make every person who looks at him or herself that way sit down immediately and re-examine everything they thought they understood about race.

Including their own identity.

My ancestry is a mixed one, like many Americans.  My family comes from (in order of percentage amount) Germany, Scotland/Ireland, and England.  The last is a supposition, and has not been confirmed by research, yet.  I think my mother's father's family was English, but I am not sure, and don't know what kind of mix might have been on his wife's side.  Incomplete information.

So, when I read the following paragraph, it literally made me sit back in shock:

The very notion of whiteness is relatively recent in our human history, linked to the rise of European colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade in the 17th century as a way to distinguish the master from the slave. From its inception, “white” was not simply a separate race, but the superior race. “White people,” in opposition to non-whites or “colored” people, have constituted a meaningful social category for only a few hundred years, and the conception of who is included in that category has changed repeatedly. If you went back to even just the beginning of the last century, you’d witness a completely different racial configuration of whites and non-whites. The original white Americans — those from England, certain areas of Western Europe, and the Nordic States — excluded other European immigrants from that category to deny them jobs, social standing, and legal privileges. It’s not widely known in the U.S. that several ethnic groups, such as Germans, Italians, Russians and the Irish, were excluded from whiteness and considered non-white as recently as the early 20th century.

Emphasis mine.   Boy, is it mine!

So, as late in history as just a hundred years ago, if not quite that far back, three quarters of my family would have been considered non-white!  No wonder my grandfather changed the pronunciation of our name to make it sound less German!

I sincerely hope that this doesn't sound like I am unhappy about or somehow dismayed about my family's status.  I am not.  It does, however, make me sit back and realize that the history I've been taught was badly twisted and edited, censored and formatted to make me think about myself, my social status, and the structure of our society in such a way as to try to enlist my wholehearted compliance with making that structure remain in place.

It was designed to make me say to myself, "Man, I am glad I was born white!" whenever I see another story about how minorities are mistreated, oppressed and smacked back into "their place".

As of today, I am no longer going to consider myself "white" inside of my own mind.  Oh, I'll still have to check the "white" boxes on forms and such.  The system I live inside of insists on that, and this late in my life, I'm not sure I've the energy to fight it on that level yet.

But, I do think it is time for this knowledge to be more widely spread, and time for the Progressives in this country to begin to use this new set of facts to where it can begin to be taught to succeeding generations.  It is valuable to know, and it illustrates things "racial" in a whole new light.

For instance:

Those who identify as white should start thinking about their inheritance of this identity and understand its implications. When what counts as your “own kind” changes so frequently and is so susceptible to contemporaneous political schemes, it becomes impossible to argue an innate explanation for white exclusion. Whiteness was never about skin color or a natural inclination to stand with one’s own; it was designed to racialize power and conveniently dehumanize outsiders and the enslaved. It has always been a calculated game with very real economic motivations and benefits.

Once again, the emphasis is mine.

Now perhaps I am showing my ignorance here.  This may be something that blacks and hispanics may have intuitively known all along.  If so, if there are any who are willing to comment on this post and set me straight, please do!

[Don't get me wrong, I do understand the privilege thing, I do know race was used as such a separator - it was the loosie-goosie definition of it and how that was used so coldly that floored me.]

This is some thing we (the American people not "white folks") need to get straight, so we can begin to address the racial thing in a much better and more knowledgable way.  In recognition of that, bear this in mind from the author's last paragraphs:

My hope in writing this is that white Americans will discover how it is they came to be set apart from non-whites and decide what they plan to do about it. 

So, yes, for one month, let’s hear about white history, educating ourselves and others. Let’s expose whiteness as a fraudulent schema imposed as a means to justify economic and physical bondage. Let’s try to uncover the centuries-old machinations that inform current race relations and bind us in a stalemate of misunderstanding. Then let’s smash this whole thing to pieces.

But I'd rather this not be for just one month a year - let's make this knowledge a permanent part of our understanding of Western Civilization.  It is a critical fact that makes the whole thing make so much more sense!

Justice Dis-served.

Yeah, I know, that's not a word.  But it oughta be, doggone it.

Today, for the second time, Amanda Knox got convicted of murder.  The first was the result of the original highly celebrated trial, which was overturned on appeal.

In the US, that would have been the end of it.  American prosecutors have one bite at the apple, if the accused is acquitted, they lose, and that's it, they have no appeal.  But, in Italy, that apparently is NOT the end of it, and prosecutors can appeal an acquittal they disagree with.

Which they did, and the Italian Supreme Court directed another Appeals Court to retry the poor girl.

That court today returned a guilty verdict.

Due to the Constitutional protections against Double Jeopardy, it is unlikely that Amanda Knox will ever be extradited back to Italy to serve that time.  But, she is thereby restricted to the United States for the rest of her natural life - if she sets foot in another country Italy has an extradition treaty with, it's back to the hoosegow.  For over 28 years.   That means the entire European Union, you know.  And who knows how many others.

Given the absolute carnival her first trial apparently was, and the cavalier manner in which the Italians apparently investigated the crime in the first place, this entire ordeal has the obvious trappings of a corrupt and disabled justice system.  This second trial has the appearance of being just a sop to the prosecutors, as the justices themselves have to know that she'll never serve a day of her sentence, due to that double jeopardy thing.  Which is a complete travesty of justice all by itself.

Oh, I know, the American system of justice doesn't have anything to crow about, given the number of innocents we imprison every year.  Or out and out kill, like that poor fellow in Mississippi - or was it Alabama?  Everybody knew that man was innocent, yet they killed the poor bastard anyway.  Just cause he was black, and they could.

Which brings me to why I am writing this tonight.

The thread that connects these thoughts is that any human justice system is imperfect.  We do end up jailing innocent folks, sometimes for decades.  Fortunately, there are numerous groups in the US who work tirelessly to get new trials for people they investigate cases for and determine that an injustice has been done.  Sometimes, they even succeed.

But then what?  Oh, yeah, sometimes these guys get some kind of renumeration.  As if any money amount can reimburse you for decades of your life wasted behind bars.  But at least, they sometimes get that.

But what about the victim?  Our entire justice system is supposedly predicated on the ideal that the government speaks for the dead.  That in cases of murder, where the dead cannot speak and tell their tale, the government steps in to see that justice is done on their behalf.

Unless of course, they get the wrong perpetrator.  In that case, the real murderer walks, free and clear.  Even if some years later, the guy in prison is shown to be wrongly accused and convicted, the American justice system is not at all interested in going back to that cold case and finding out who really did it.  True, if the wrongly convicted man is freed based on the confession of the real murderer who is now in prison for life, they might go ahead and try the real perpetrator just to get the conviction on record - especially if that will prevent any kind of future parole issues.

But at no time is any case ever reinvestigated based on the desire to see real justice done.  No prosecutor's office wants to stand up in front of a judge and explain why they are prosecuting THIS guy after having wrongly convicted THAT guy 30 years ago.  Or 20, or 10.  Kinda hard to prove to the judge that, "Yeah, trust me, we might have gotten that one wrong, but we're really convinced THIS time we've got the right guy!"

So, all day, every day, murderers go free.  Walking among us.  They could be your coworker, your neighbor, your friend.  Your boss, your mailman, your car mechanic.  Or the guy that comes into your home to fix the leaky faucet or your computer.

You may be comfortable with that.

I'm not.

Where the hell is the FBI?

Did somebody, while we weren't looking, repeal the U.S. Code › Title 18 › Part I › Chapter 115 › § 2384, which is the part of the US Code which forbids sedition and criminalizes it?

I wonder, because I keep seeing articles like the one I saw today on the web site "Raw Story", entitled, "Fox News analyst tells Tea Party group he can lead a military coup against Obama".  This is at least the second or third such story I've seen in the last six months, and it makes me wonder, if the NSA has such an ability to screen US telephone and electronic communications, why hasn't this asshole (and the others I read about) been fucking arrested yet?

Or is all that stuff about surveillance just so much rubbish?

I'm sorry about the language, but this kind of thing just pisses me off.  Ok, no I'm not sorry.  This shit makes my very blood boil.

These people are the very first to spout off about patriotism and love of country, but they are also the very first to abandon all support of the Constitution as soon as their precious conservative sensibilities have been bruised by the election (TWICE) of a man the color of whose skin doesn't fit their worldview of who should reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and whose very existence threatens their sense of power so badly it shrivels their tiny dicks.

Arrest the bastards, lock the assholes into the lowest, dankest, darkest prison we've got and weld the frigging door shut.  Then lose the key to the front door AND the paperwork recording where they got lost.

I don't care if they are former military and claim some kinship with that good old boy network.  By even talking about the possibility of taking any kind of military action against the civilian government, they lose any claim to special privilege.  They show themselves to be fair weather patriots.

Good and solid supporters of the Constitution, until it begins to protect someone they dislike or detest.  Then all bets are off and the testosterone takes over.  Like Ole Judge Roy Bean used to say, give the bastards a fair trial then bury them under the fucking jail.  Or something like that.

Aaaarrrggghhh!

Revisiting the Holocaust.

On Facebook a while back, someone posted a link to this web page that advertises a broadcast of a documentary made after the liberation of Europe in 1945.

The Documentary, "Memory of the Camps", was produced with the help of (among others) Alfred Hitchcock, but was put on hold by the British before it was broadcast for political reasons.  It was recently re-discovered and restored, and is set for broadcast on British television in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Europe.

The page includes a full length version of the film, and in spite of the horrific images it shows, is a must see for any thinking adult who gives a shit about the political health of his/her country.

Why?  Two reasons.

First is the lesson the film makers intended to teach - this can happen if evil isn't fought and thwarted.

Second is another one I'd like to talk about.  It is strongly related to the first, but is a bit more extensive in scope.

It is:

This can happen to YOUR COUNTRY.  It can and will happen if you and every citizen in your country do not pay attention and fight extremism at every chance and in every manner possible.

Nah, you say.  That can't happen HERE, can it?  My people aren't like that!  We'd never kill kids, never starve folks to death.  We'd never kill that many people in such a systematic way.

Huh.  Don't you just wish.  What about the USA?  The country that stands for individual freedom, for liberty and justice!

Estimates of native populations prior to 1500 CE range from as low as 7 million to as much as 54 million.  It is also estimated that as many os 50-80% of that population may have been killed upon contact with Europeans and subsequent infection by diseases they had no immunological protections against.

Native Americans were decimated by the subsequent warfare and pressure of relocation by the rapid and overpowering influx of white Europeans into the North American continent.  (This DOES include Canada!)  No reliable numbers of the affect of that on population numbers have been suggested.

But it must have been devastating.  Was that a genocide?  Or simply a conquest?  Does it matter?

The extremism manifested itself in the "Manifest Destiny" mantra that rationalized the conquest and massacre of natives on the basis of a supposed natural  inevitability of our taking the continent from those who had lived here for over ten thousand years.  That somehow, it was our "destiny" to engulf the continent and populate it.

Even if it did already have a population residing in it.

Could it happen here like it did in Europe?  Sure.  Extremism happens anywhere, and when we see headlines where American politicians justify forcibly keeping people in poverty by denying them an education or the ability to control their own procreation, it is obvious it IS happening here.

Republican Party politicians advocate policies that are hateful, discriminatory, and racist.  They advocate policies that are homophobic and misogynistic, hurting people on the basis of made up differences and ideological imperatives.

They advocate that States secede from the US in order to pursue that agenda, or at the very least, pass State laws nullifying Federal laws that set that agenda back.

Now, am I saying that Republicans WANT to take the same career track Hitler did?  That they intend to snuff out the lives of all who they see as different?  Of course not.  Certainly not the average Republican at the State or local level.  As a country, we see that as evil and bad.

But then, if you'd showed photos of the Holocaust to the average Nazi Party member in 1932, they would have thought of those photos of being the result of Communist activity.  They saw themselves as the savior party of their homeland.  Saving it from economic ruin and political suicide.  Saviors of the German way of life.  The belt buckle of every German soldier was inscribed with the inscription "Gott Mitt Uns", which means "God is with us".

Sound familiar yet?  Wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.  Exactly the same as the Republicans are today.

Saviors of America.  Defending the American Way of Life.  Saving us from economic ruin and political suicide.  Pointing at Socialists and Communists as the evil doers who threaten us.

Hitler, too, excoriated Darwin.  Hitler, too, outlawed abortion, to help continue the Master Race.  Hitler, too, was racist.  Hitler promised economic recovery and international power and respect for Germany.  Hitler, too glorified war and made military service seem desirable.  Hitler, too acted hand in hand with the economic powers of his country to put Germany on the course to war.

In the end, he brought ruin and disgrace and ended his life in an underground bunker at his own hand, too cowardly to face his crimes.

Is there an American Hitler?  Will there be?

Maybe not.  But, maybe so.

Is the slide into anarchy inevitable?  Are we doomed to repeat history?  Will we allow ourselves to be hoodwinked into voting for another National Socialist Party?

It doesn't have to be.

IF Americans who care go vote.  IF Americans who care educate themselves.  IF Americans - LIKE YOU - get involved.

VOTE this November.  VOTE to throw out the extremists, the political outliers who have contaminated American politics into something even traditional Republicans hate.

Throw the bastards out.  Throw them out so far they'll need to pipe in sunlight.

Vatican in trouble over child abuse again.

Here's an interesting update on the state of the child abuse scandal that has engulfed the Roman Catholic Church in recent years.  Representatives of The Holy See on Thursday will appear before a U.N. committee in Geneva on its implementation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child in order to answer questions about the Vatican's involvement in the scandal.

The linked story at the Washington Post gives the details, so I won't go into the nuts and bolts of the issue here.   If you are interested, follow the link and read the WP's story.

What I want to talk about is this:

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Wednesday that the Holy See ratified the treaty because of its longstanding commitment to caring for children, in the fields of education, health care, refugee services and other outreach to families in need. He said that while abuses had occurred at the hands of churchmen, it was important to distinguish between where the Holy See bore responsibility and where local authorities must intervene. 

“The Holy See is not an organization in which all the priests or Catholics of the world are employees. It’s a big religious community,” he told The Associated Press. “Every member of this community has responsibilities as citizens of the country where he or she lives and with the authorities of that country.”

Emphasis mine.

And yet, to date, the Holy See has refused to encourage its bishops to report abusers to local authorities, hiding behind the lack of laws in many localities requiring such reporting.  In fact, in past cases in the US, even in States where the reporting of suspected abuse is required, such reporting has failed to take place, and the Church has often moved the abusers to new locations where they often have engaged in new cases of abuse.

This stance is outrageous!  It is widely known and accepted that the church hierarchy is in full administrative control of every priest consecrated in its name worldwide.  In fact, just recently, the Pope excommunicated a priest for his consecration of a female priest.  That is definitely a case where local "control" was jumped over and the central authority of the Pope was invoked.

The church may use legal and financial means in different countries to hide and or obfuscate the reality of its worldwide control, but the fact is, a Catholic priest anywhere in the world has to submit to the authority and control of the Pope.

The Roman Catholic Church has been and is still now refusing to respond to this worldwide crisis of the abuse of children in any meaningful way.  It has, in fact, seemingly circled the wagons and hunkered down for a long siege, apparently hoping that it can survive this by stonewalling until public attention goes away.

This very clearly signals that the new Pope, no matter how newly nice or concerned he seems to be, is still either unable to control his kingdom, or is not as concerned in reality as he would have you think from his public persona so recently scrubbed clean.  I have warned that he is still mainly concentrating on cleaning up the public face of his church for the purpose of stemming the tide of Catholics who have been running out the door, taking their money with them, and this current position of the church has not changed my mind.

In fact, I believe that one of the reasons so many Catholics are still running for the door is because of the Church's stance and reactions to this crisis.  How can one continue to support an organization which preaches the love and devotion of Christ for his people when it not only refuses to stop the abuse of its most vulnerable and youngest members, but protects the monsters who conduct that abuse - nay, even propagate that abuse by allowing them to move to new locations to seek new victims?  One that even refuses to defrock and remove abusers from its ranks!

I am convinced that the Church, at its highest levels, not only refuses to respond to the crisis in ways the public demands, but does so because it is still of the opinion that the Church is above secular law and can weather this crisis like it has weathered so many in the past.  They believe it can stonewall outsiders and just outlive the crisis.

They do have a point - this is a bureaucracy that can trace its roots back to the Roman Empire through an unbroken line of church authorities going back to the 4th century - around 1700 years!

That IS a long time, and it HAS withstood a lot of such critical problems in the past, and its international worldwide organizational reach is one reason why.  Because of the fragmentary nature of the organization of the world's political States into many separate sovereign entities, they HAVE been above secular law for much of that existence.  They think that this crisis is no different, and are depending on their international stature to continue to provide them with relative immunity based on that power and reputation.

But this crisis is different from past crises.  In the past, information was hard to disseminate.  People didn't tend to get an international sense of things, even with the new advent of TV, because that took the news media getting that sense and providing the story.

Today, we've got the Internet.

Today, information takes mere minutes to cross oceans where in the past it took hours, days, or weeks.  You've heard the old saying that bad news is all over town before good news has a chance to put its shoes on?  Today, good news doesn't even have time to turn off the alarm clock before the bad news is across the globe.

The Internet, as a global communications network, enables people to organize along lines of interest globally.  This time, the RCC is not faced with a few isolated local authorities it can ignore with impunity.  It is faced with global attention.  People all across the world are watching and evaluating the Holy See's actions and words, and if many many people don't see a marked improvement in the Vatican's position, more and more people will keep running for that door.

No matter how nice the Pope is, nor what color his shoes may be.

Child abuse - systemic and sickening.

If you go back and read all my posts (sit back and have a beer!), you'll notice that a majority of the ones about child abuse by clergy are about the Roman Catholic Church.  Not all by any means, but that's what was hitting the news at the time.

Today, I'm not sure if this has really hit the news, but this came sliding down my newsfeed on Facebook, and I just had to look.

One of the enduring themes on my blog is the harm religion does to society.  I try to note on a regular basis that I do recognize that not all religious people or religious ideas are in and of themselves harmful.  Yes, there have been good things and people come out of the various religions on this world.

But so have nasty, evil, harmful things.  Things that have been perpetuated over time and made part of the systematic inside workings of some religions.

Like a culture of raping young boys in the RCC, and turning an officially blind eye to the practice.  Enough news stories have come to my attention to make me believe that that particular practice is present in other religions as well, and may well be systematic in other places too.

Just such a story is what came to my attention today.

Take a minute to go and read the story.  Go ahead, I'm not going anywhere, I'll be here when you get back.  But, be warned!  The story is graphic, the description of the abuse will sicken you.  If you are in danger of flashbacks of similar abuse, I can excuse your refusal to read it.

This is a story of systemic, ingrained, oppressive evil.  This is what is known as evil incarnate.  If indeed, there could be a real, living breathing devil, he resides inside that community and grows stronger from the corruption, the pain and the horror of what transpires there.

If the RCC's systemic abuse of children is evil, this makes what they do look like cartoon caricatures of reality.

There is no way that an entire community where over 50% of the male population has been abused could be unaware of the situation.  This kind of evil enlists the whole group in its practice.  Through fear, corruption and violence, it perpetuates itself.  Since this kind of abuse tends, in untreated victims, to make its own new generation of abusers, how long until the entire group becomes one seething cesspool of corruption?  How long until the rabbis invent some theocratic justification for the ritual of abuse?  How long until it becomes a secret, but witnessed, rite of passage?

Is this what the Jewish religion has become?  Is this what they have allowed themselves to descend to after surviving the world's most terrible pogrom?

In the past, I have posted other news items citing similar abuse (but not so group-wide in its corrupting influence) in other religions.  Hindu, Islam, Christian and others.

What is it about religion that seems to target young boys?  Is it because they are more available?

One thing is for sure, this is NOT a sexually based crime.  I hope you understand that rape is a crime of violence and power.  It is intended to put the abuser in a position of power over the victim, to make the victim feel powerless.

As if speaking for a deity isn't enough power.  These people are insane.

So, you think you live in a Democracy?

I want to tell you the story of two police related incidents.  One occurred in Chicago and one in New Mexico, Hidalgo County.

In Chicago, one Flint Farmer was shot by a Chicago cop.  He was lying on the ground, face down when the cop fired three rounds into Farmer's back, killing him.  The officer had two prior shooting incidents THAT YEAR, but had not been placed on leave, or charged or placed on any kind of special watch by his supervisor.  The Chicago prosecutor now says that since he could have mistaken Farmer's cell phone for a gun, he will not be charged with a crime.

In New Mexico, David Eckert was stopped for a minor traffic violation, coasting through a stop sign.  When told to get out of his vehicle, one of the two cops thought he saw Eckert "clinch his buttocks".  He was detained on suspicion of having narcotics and taken to a nearby medical center, where they waited for a search warrant for a cavity search.  Upon obtaining the warrant, the doctors at the center refused to perform the search due to ethical concerns.  So the two officers packed up Mr. Eckert and took him to another medical center, where doctors weren't so picky.  He was violated physically numerous times as late as early the next morning with doctor's fingers, enema paraphernalia, and finally, a colonoscopy tool with a camera while Mr. Eckert was under anesthesia.  The last took place after the time period of the warrant had expired.

In addition, the medical center in question was in ANOTHER COUNTY, rendering the warrant completely invalid on its face, since the warrant had been issued in an adjacent county by a county judge.

The problems with these two stories are legion.  Official misconduct in both cases, obviously.  A complete disregard for standard police procedures also in both cases.  A total disregard for the civil rights of the victims. (I refuse to call them suspects) A failure of supervising authority to both train and supervise their officers in proper legalities and procedure, and an additional failure of the management of the entire justice system in Chicago to restrain an out of control officer or even adhere to proper procedure in failing to administer a blood alcohol test ( the officer had been drinking before coming on duty) and by allowing a possibly alcohol impaired officer out in public with a firearm.

What is so different about these two cases?  Amazingly, nothing.  You can google various key words and get dozens of such stories almost every day across the country.  

Oh, well, maybe one thing;  both victims were white.

But really, nothing else stands out, which is the biggest problem.  Even with national attention, the cops in these cases will probably not suffer any more than some vague administrative penalty, if that.  Maybe an ass chewing by the boss, and that to the two in New Mexico, because the invalidation of the warrant kills any possibility of prosecution.  Not because they had him officially butt-raped, but because they took him to another county.

We have become inured to this kind of official violence.

So inured, in fact, that when several State legislatures, including the Virginia legislature, passed laws forcing invasive sonograms on pregnant women who want abortions, much of the public... yawned. The outrage was, for many people, the abortion restrictions, not so much the official rape the procedure involves.

Welcome to Theocracy, folks.  This is what it looks like.  Laws passed over the objection of a majority of the population (most Americans support some easy form of abortion by choice), police able to violate the rights of citizens (even white ones) without consequence and with mostly very little public outrage.

is this how the great American Experiment ends?  Not with a bang but without even a whimper?  Are we such wimps that we will allow our public officials to run roughshod over our rights, pass laws that ignore our expressed wishes, and gerrymander election districts so they can stay in office indefinitely?

I've written extensively about the Dominionists in this space.  Yes, I believe that there IS a right wing conspiracy to bring theocracy to this country, and I believe we are partway through their agenda.

No, I don't necessarily think that the stories I noted above are specifically the result of that conspiracy.  But they don't help us resist, either.  Corrupt and unaccountable cops are likely to play right into the hands of those theocrats, because if the cops are already accustomed to violating people's rights through sheer negligence without consequence, taking that extra step to deliberate oppression shouldn't be that big a step to make.  It certainly puts police officials into the position of being blackmailed into these kinds of activities, if they were to be reluctant.

Ignore these signs at your peril. Theocracy is at our doorstep, if we don't take deliberate action to forestall its installation.  Corruption in our government is not only bad in and of itself, but plays right into the hands of those who already call our government dysfunctional.

Let's work to fix that, huh?

I'd rant, but it wouldn't do any good.

This week's drama in DC hits home.  I'm a Federal worker, and my leave for this week was cancelled - I am now on furlough.  Meaning that beginning October 1st, assuming the Congress doesn't pass some kind of funding bill for all or part of FY 2014, I won't get a paycheck next Friday, October 11th.  Meaning that a lot of bills won't get paid.  And THAT will affect my credit rating, folks.

Thanks, Boehner.

I say thanks to the Speaker of the House because it is in his direct power as part of his job to determine what bills get voted on and when.  Considering that all 200 Democrats and at least (so far) upwards of twenty Republicans are willing to vote on a clean Continuing Resolution to get us back to work, that's enough (under normal working conditions) to get that bill passed.

But Boehner won't let it hit the floor.  He is held hostage himself by the Tea Party wing of his caucus, such that he refuses to allow it to be voted on.

Why does that tea Party want to drag this thing out?  Because they've been planning this thing for over three years, since before the election of 2010!  Rachael Maddow has a pretty good take on this, along with plenty of video of Republicans threatening just that.  Oh, and in at least one video, there's a conservative audience clapping, so this isn't and has never been any kind of a secret.

Just in case you've got some Republican friends claiming that the Democrats are at fault, here's a timeline of just how the budget process has played out this year.

So, what's the REAL reason for all this?  Right wing politics.

For thirty years or more, extremists in the Republican party have been making their usual noise about a broken government, an evil government, one that is out to take your guns and restrict your liberty.  For thirty years, they've been relegated to a very small, lunatic fringe of far right wingers using ultra-patriotism to disguise their hatred for the Union of the North and their long held wishes for a return of States' Rights.  Of course, you and I and every other sane American knows that the real government has no such designs and is comprised of quite normal Americans trying their best to do a difficult job.

So, what does an extremist do when his most cherished predictions fail to come true?

You MAKE them come true.  In this case, you take over the Republican Party and prove that democratic forms of government don't work by doing everything you can to prevent them from working as designed.  You obstruct, you obfuscate, you dig in your heels and delay, and in the end, you make your point by making the government shut down (as you've been telling your constituents you would for three years) by extorting the President and the major party with something you KNOW they will not and cannot accept.

This is not an accident.  This is not just wild, crazy people doing insane things.

This is a cabal of conservative right wingers determined to bring this government down.  So, you ask, what will they put in its place?

Good question.  I doubt that all them have a good answer.  Many of them have probably been promised money, jobs, and security in some new regime, but I'd bet that the details have been sketchy and lacking.  The money, I'd bet, has been good so far!

But look at their allies.

For those who have read my blog for a while, you'll remember my numerous writings about Dominionists.  After this, go to the main page and click on the tag Dominionists, and you'll get a whole list of posts.

Read them, and you'll get a good idea what is probably in store.  But don't count the Plutocrats out yet - they've had their moneybags in this, too, so look for some Corporate goodies thrown in, too.

Am I being alarmist?  I don't think so.  Look at this objectively.  I know us lefties have been throwing around words like crazy, nuts, insane and a lot of others in a similar vein to describe Republican antics over the last five years.  The word "stupid" has figured prominently.

But these are NOT stupid people.  You don't get elected to Congress being stupid unless you've got some smart backing and advisors.  (translation:  handlers)  Those handlers are not employed by stupid people.

There IS a motive behind this.  People don't go insane on a national basis just because there's something in the water.  Yeah, many of the conservative audience in Southern States may BE stupid.  They may BE completely flummoxed by Fox News.  But again, what's behind it?  WHO is behind it?

Why does a Christian preacher get away with praying to god for an ARMED insurrection against a black President?  Where's the outrage?  Why hasn't every Patriot on the right ridden this man out of his TV studio on a rail, tarred and feathered?

Because it is all orchestrated.  Yeah, call me a conspiracy nut, go ahead.  But when the Dominionist-led Army rides into Washington DC and a Dominionist President is installed in the White House, don't say I didn't warn you.

I'm updating my passport.  (After the government is reopened...)

The Open Bar in the House.

Now I don't want anybody to get me wrong here. I am NOT a teetotaler and see nothing wrong with a drink now and then.  I happen to own more than a few bottles of one kind of alcoholic stuff or another, including some rather not-cheap bottles of good Scotch.  I like Scotch.  I like a beer every now and then and like a good wine with a meal occasionally.  I even have a glass of wine with the Cyber-wife very so often, too!

But if there is one thing I have learned in my life, it is that there is a time and a place for everything, and if there is one place and one time which is most certainly NOT meant for drinking, it is on the floor of the US House of Representatives during a gaveled in session considering a bill to keep the government open past the end of the current Fiscal year!

Yes, you heard me right.  Last Saturday night, while considering the Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government open into the 2014 fiscal year, Republican members of the House were on the floor, DRINKING.  It was so bad, members of the press in the gallery above the floor could smell it wafting to their level, and journalists outside the doors could smell it on the House members as they went in and out the doors.  One lady tweeted that she'd run into at least two of them in the liquor store!

The allegations by the press who witnessed this include the fact that it was Republican members who were guilty of this disgraceful behavior.

Now, in the last few years, we've seen and heard some awful things from the mouths of these people, and they've done some terrible things legislatively to some particular parts of the American people, especially gays and women.  But one can always claim that those are true differences of opinion based on differing political ideals.

Not this.  This kind of behavior betrays a contempt for the office they hold, for the Chamber of the Congress they belong to, for the government of which they are an integral part, and for the American people they have been elected to represent.  There just aren't sufficient words in the English language to express my utter contempt, disgust, loathing, outrage and simple abhorrence for not only the actions of these people, but for the men themselves who would dare to dishonor the sacred halls of our democracy and the traditions of this great country by such juvenile and contemptuous behavior in the very heart of where the laws of this land are created.

It shows their utter contempt for the democratic traditions of the process they are a part of and their complete lack of care for the people whose lives and well being they hold in their hands.  It shows the shameful lack of control which the leaders of the Republican party either inadvertently displayed or purposefully exercised on that occasion.  I tend to think it is an utter failure of leadership, whether purposeful or not.

This is outrageous behavior.  This is inexcusable under almost any conceivable circumstance.  I cannot possibly imagine what other countries must think of the United States after this display of complete and unbridled lack of not just decorum, but civilized behavior.

There was a time when, as an American citizen, I could hold my head up high, knowing that I was a citizen of the greatest and most honorable democracy the world had ever seen.  Knowing that our country was a shining light of what humans could endeavor to build in the way of governance and upholding human rights.

No longer.  After last Saturday night, this country has been demonstrated to be no better than a third world banana republic, unable to even maintain a minimum of civil behavior within the halls of its lawmaking body.

Today, I am ashamed to be an American.  Thanks, Republicans.  Thanks, a bunch.

Human Trafficking - Just Plain Slavery

::sigh::

Back to the real world.

Tonight I am going to introduce you to a subject that get very poor reception in the United States:  slavery.  Most people when they hear that word, think of black slaves bending under the lash of white slave masters, being sold on a slave block, families being separated, etc.

Welcome to the 21st century!  Slavery, modern style, is quite a bit different.  Often, it is sex slavery.  There was a post on Facebook tonight that highlighted a story in which the various States of the US have been ranked according to their efforts to stop what is today euphemistically known as Human Trafficking.  (I guess the term slavery is a bit ... uncouth ... for American tastes.)  The site is Take Part, and the story is entitled, "The 7 Worst States in the Fight Against Human Trafficking - 2013 Edition".

The number of people trafficked in the United States is difficult to estimate, but the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children says that there are approximately 100,000 children in the U.S. forced into sex trafficking every year. And many more thousands of adults are enslaved, as well.

I urge all of you to get educated about this horrible crime.  It is unconscionable that any human being should be enslaved and forced to work against their will.

I mean, come on, this is the 21st century.  This kind of thing is insane, and to think that AMERICANS are responsible for some of this is even worse.

Go check out that web site and find out how YOUR State ranks in the fight against slavery.

At First, It Looked Good. Now? Not So Much.

A while back, the word went out that the Pope had made some changes in Vatican law that criminalized child abuse.  Yay!!

In the Vatican.  Not everywhere, just the Vatican.  So, not so yay.

Now, the word is out (now that the verbiage of the new laws are now public) that it isn't such good news after all - it seems that simply reporting any sex crimes is now illegal!

According to the new laws, revealing or receiving confidential Vatican information is now punishable by up to two years in prison, while newly defined sex crimes against children carry a sentence of up to twelve years. Because all sex crimes are kept confidential, there is no longer a legal way for Vatican officials to report sex crimes.

Whoa!  All of a sudden, it isn't "yay" at all.  It is rather more in the character of "Boo"!

Of course, there is an explanation of sorts:

“We didn’t mean for this to happen, obviously,” lamented Vatican foreign minister Monsignor Dominique Mamberti. “It’s quite the papal pickle that His Holiness has placed upon our heads. Sex crimes are more illegal than ever, but technically it’s illegal to report them.” Mamberti said that the simultaneous passing of each law is merely a coincidence and insisted that the Church is not trying to protect itself against further embarrassment, but critics outside the Vatican are skeptical.

Skeptical?  Why would we be skeptical?  Could it have anything to do with the fact that almost every case of child abuse we know about was reported OUTSIDE of the Vatican, and thus the new laws won't have any more affect than trying to use a popgun to sink a battleship?  Or that the Church has done everything but commit murder to prevent word of sex crimes of any kind to get out to the public - much less reported to authorities?

Nah.  Couldn't be.  Right?  Right?

As the Holy See moves to clarify the law, Mamberti has warned would-be offenders within Vatican walls that they “are still subject to the most watchful eye of all: the eye of God..."

 Ok, now I know we're in trouble.

One horror - two lessons

Today's post is about a particularly disturbing thing that has come to my attention.  Via Ophelia Benson's blog Butterflies and Wheels at FreeThought Blogs, there comes a revelation from Ireland that the Catholic Church, in partnership with the government of Ireland, between the years of  1960 and 1975 as over 25,000 children passed through Irish Catholic orphanages, allowed pharmaceutical companies such as GlaxoSmithKline to proceed with vaccine trials on those children without their knowledge or consent.

Now, this kind of thing is disturbing enough, that a sovereign nation's government could allow any kind of human trials to take place without industry standard consent, but for these trials to take place without public knowledge or proper oversight is astonishing.

This reveals two very disturbing problems.  First is that this is a clear case of the conflation of Church and State producing a situation where the public health and welfare has been not only ignored, but abused.  By BOTH church and state.  This alliance between the two was so taken for granted by the two most powerful organizations in Ireland that nobody saw a requirement to adhere to either law or commercial health or medical standards for patient consent.

If this alone doesn't disturb you, your moral compass isn't just broken, it's shattered.

The next issue is that this illustrates perfectly the fact that religion, as it gains power and influence, allows for such moral outrages as this, creating immense damage and harm to the people it is supposed to care about.  But being both too big for its britches and conflated with the secular power, it allows itself to ignore its responsibilities and to become a law unto itself.

Now, if all this just fine with you, then you won't care that the radical right wing of Christianity in the US is trying to create just such a theocracy for itself.  So, then you can just go on and ignore this.

But if you do care and don't want this to happen in this country, then please pay attention to politics and help vote the Conservatives out of office.  Your children and theirs depend on your actions today to protect their future interests!

How much longer can we call ourselves a Democracy?

I have been an open critic of the Patriot Act since it was passed in 2001.  I was unhappy when it was reauthorized in 2006, and even more openly critical when it was again reauthorized in 2011.

This week, the predictions of numerous outspoken critics like Senator Bernie Sanders have come alarmingly true, now that the actions of Verizon in providing the communications records of millions of its customers to the NSA have been revealed.

The Patriot Act, I am convinced, is about as directly unConstitutional as a law can get, and is only protected from being struck down by the perfidy of the SCOTUS in shutting down lawsuits against it by disallowing plaintiffs' standing to sue.

There is a reason that the Constitution set the Fourth Amendment in place, restricting the ability of the government to search your person and your effects for evidence of criminal activity, and that is due to the British actions during the Revolutionary period in violating citizens' persons and property looking for just such evidence without so much as a by-your-leave or a single excuse me.  That colonial power used its exclusive possession of military force to allow its agents free rein in turning people's lives upside down both in those searches and in the imprisonment that inevitably followed.  That amendment was put in place to stop the new US government from doing the same thing.

The only reason we aren't up in arms about this latest invasion of our privacy is that we can't see it.  It is invisible, sucking in every little bit or byte your computer or telephone puts out and storing it for possible use against you should the invisible powers doing the sucking decide that you might be a national security risk.  What's more, the very law the government has passed giving itself the power to violate the Constitution prevents your carrier - Verizon in this case - from even notifying you of that violation of your privacy!  Furthermore, should you find out, the SCOTUS has ruled that an illegal disclosure cannot give you standing to sue for relief.

The blame for this is a Congress that has repeatedly reauthorized this illegal and massive violation of privacy twice since its passage.  A Congress that has no backbone and, since President Obama's election, no desire, to stop the ongoing Presidential Power Grab.  Unfortunately, this Congress has even less backbone for this, as Republicans have only one desire - to turn this into another "Obama scandal".

No.

This is not "Obama's" fault, it is the fault of a governmental system that perpetuates the acquisition of and the hoarding of as much power as possible for whichever Branch of government can manage it.  It is enabled by government officials who are blinded by corruption and money wielded by Corporations whose only goal is the acquisition of as much profit as possible.

The solution is for the members of Congress to take their integrity back.  The answer is for them to put some steel into their backbones, stand up to the moneyed interests and refuse to go along any more.

But don't look for any of that.  Congress has been taken by the Republicans, not by the usual process of elections, but by the cowardice of the Democrats, who have refused to take a principled stand against pride, corruption and sheer stupidity and have allowed themselves to be dragged through the muck and the mire of political grandstanding and corruption.

Don't ask me how to fix it.  I'm fresh out of ideas.

The new slave class - exposed.

This isn't really news.

America's prison systems have been using convict labor for a long time, but recent, supposedly more enlightened times were supposed to have given them better working conditions, better pay and a choice of jobs.

Not any more, apparently.  The group known as ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, has changed all that.

At the Union Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Florida, inmates from a nearby lower-security prison manufacture tons of processed beef, chicken and pork for Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises (PRIDE), a privately held non-profit corporation that operates the state’s forty-one work programs. In addition to processed food, PRIDE’s website reveals an array of products for sale through contracts with private companies, from eyeglasses to office furniture, to be shipped from a distribution center in Florida to businesses across the US. PRIDE boasts that its work programs are “designed to provide vocational training, to improve prison security, to reduce the cost of state government, and to promote the rehabilitation of the state inmates.”

Yes, for twenty cents an hour!  Twenty cents an hour! Less than a quarter an hour, less than $2 a day.

In the United States of America.  Forced labor.  This amounts to little less than slave labor.

This is detailed in an article in The Nation, published as far back as August 1, 2011.  And the problem is getting bigger with every new inmate!

I think we need to rethink the US' record on human rights.

Really? This is your answer to the world? Sigh.

Much has been written about the sexual abuse scandal roiling through the Catholic Church.  I've written about it here.   I've even noted that other organizations have been plagued by similar problems.

But there are two things that distinguish between an organization that nobody blames for an instance of sexual abuse of a child and one which deserves the full condemnation and blame that can ever be heaped upon it.

Attitude.

No, they don't understand.

My main problem lately with the RCC has been just that.  The failure of the RCC to fully, completely and transparently deal with the fact that pedophile priests within their ranks (not by far all priests, mind you) have not only been active, but have been protected by the hierarchy over the years, being moved from parish to parish to avoid discovery, not only by their parishioners, but by local law enforcement.

The fact of the existence of these actions is bad enough, but to date, the poster "child" for this entire scandal is Cardinal Mahoney of LA, now retired, and also recently removed from all pastoral and administrative duties, even in retirement, after the full brunt of documents were revealed in the current lawsuit over the scandal.

But I am here to reveal to you what was merely hinted at yesterday on the ABC Evening News regarding Mahoney's blog.

He starts out bravely.

One very insightful and powerful Address has sustained me over these past difficult years as all of us in the Church had to face the fact that Catholic clergy sexually abused children and young people. 

Entitled On Carrying A Scandal Biblically it was first delivered in late 2002 by Father Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I., in Canada.  The Address was edited into an article, and is readily available on his website.

 Sure, even Cardinals under fire need some form of support, and there's a lot of places online where one can find inspiring things to sustain oneself in times of mental hardship.

But, keep reading:

There is nothing else in print which has so captivated my heart and soul, and served as the basis for countless meditations and reflections.  I recommend it to anyone who is searching for a truly counter-cultural approach at dealing with this terrible sinfulness which has overwhelmed all of us in the Church.

"Counter-cultural" approach?  Hmm.  Go on.

You will never find the Rolheiser approach even mentioned in any news media, since it is not about condemning others, but about how disciples of Jesus are called to carry and live out a terrible scandal day by day. 

He calls our suffering what it really is:  painful and public humiliation, which is spiritually a grace-opportunity. 

 Wait, hold it. Here, we begin to see the real problem, as illustrated by Captain Sparrow.  This isn't about you, Mahoney or your "suffering" upon being exposed as a law breaker.  This about your criminal actions in protecting other criminals.  This is about ending your criminal activities.  This is about you and your fellow bishops, archbishops and cardinals admitting your past actions and officially, publicly and finally, for all time, ending your organization's criminal activities in supporting these pedophiles and their heinous activities and hiding them from public view.

But, wait, read on!  There is more that fully exposes the real attitude problem.

I have tried to live out--poorly and inadequately far too often--his two implications of humiliation:

1. the acceptance of being scapegoated, pointing out the necessary connection between humiliation and redemption;
2. this scandal is putting us, the clergy and the church, where we belong--with the excluded ones; Jesus was painted with the same brush as the two thieves crucified with him.

 No.  Full stop.  Nobody is being scapegoated.  You, cardinal Mahoney, the entire Church Hierarchy, all the way to the Pope are being blamed because you not only failed to stop the abuse, but under the full authority of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith over Ratzinger's signature, hid the abuse,  and moved the offending priests to both avoid public exposure and prevent the arrest and prosecution of those offending priests.  You did it, not as"bad" individuals, or as men failing your god, but you did it in full understanding of the criminality of your actions and the actions you were protecting, and you did it using the full authority of your organization's hierarchical power, as delegated from the Pope, your absolute monarch.  You did it, arrogantly asserting that your church and all of its priestly hierarchy are above secular law, all over the world!

You are astoundingly presumptuous and arrogant by even suggesting that this puts you in league with your founding figure's travails - your church teaches that he was innocent and without blame!  You, yourself have probably pointed this out thousands of times in preaching to your flocks over the decades of your ministry!  How in the world can you, of all people, have the presumption to compare your current situation, accused of felonious, criminal activity with that of your innocently proclaimed god!

That's not all.

"Jesus models this for us.  He took in hatred, held it, transformed it, and gave back love; he took in bitterness, held it, transformed it, and gave back graciousness; he took in curses, held them, transformed them, and gave back blessing; he took in betrayal, held it, transformed it, and gave back forgiveness."  That's what it means to ponder biblically.

What a pile of crap.  I'm sorry for the blunt language, but that is the best way I can find to describe this tripe.

There is no forgiveness possible for a man, or an organization, which has the chutzpah to compare themselves and their "suffering" by public humiliation in the exposure of their criminality with the proclaimed innocence of their god and the story of his humiliation and crucifixion.  There is no comparison, and any person who accepts his words without utter disgust and contempt either isn't thinking very deeply or at some level has to condone the RCC's actions fully and completely.

The depths to which these people have fallen is astonishing, and the fact that more Catholics haven't risen up and made their disgust and anger known is frankly a puzzle to the rest of the world.

These people no longer represent their god.  These people can no longer claim the moral right or the standing to preach to the rest of us about how innocent and pure their crucified god is supposed to be.

If that god were real, he would denounce these monsters.  He would clean the world of the stain that organization represents upon his church and his reputation.  If he were real, his very hand would wipe them from the face of the earth.

Somehow I just don't see that happening.

More abuse, but not on little boys.

I've got two news reports for you, both on the same subject.  This should horrify and shame all of us as members of the human race, that in the 20th century, a supposedly modern state could do this to a supposedly free people.

I refer to the country of Ireland.  The country of green fields, little people and the overbearing and (once) powerful Catholic Church, and the so called Magdalene Laundries four orders of that church ran from 1922 to 1996 in which over ten thousand young women were enslaved, working six days a week for no pay.  It is a story of humiliation, more than likely sexual abuse and certainly mental abuse, as these women were publicly called "Maggies", a term which brought them shame as "fallen women", even though many of them were sentenced there by the courts for petty crimes. It turns out that almost a third of them were there at the behest of the government of Ireland!

The Magdalene Laundries were a network of 10 institutions run by four religious orders — the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge. They were used in certain cases to detain women considered deviant in what was a deeply conservative Roman Catholic country. Women who had children outside marriage, girls deemed flirtatious (so-called preventive cases), those with mental disabilities and even victims of sexual abuse were sent to the laundries, often turned in by family, where they simply disappeared from society.

A nice place to make that very inconvenient, flirtatious and disobedient daughter disappear!  With no questions asked, either, they must have been glad to get another free worker.

If there is any question over how dangerous it is to get the State and religious institutions mixed up with each other, this has got to be in the top five of perfect examples and illustrations to prove the point!

I hope this example helps many of you to understand, again, how many people, not just atheists and agnostics, simply cannot bring themselves to support institutions of religion.   This has nothing to do with belief.  It has everything to do with refusing to support an institution with an 1800+ year history of violence, repression, and horrible abuse, which is increasingly being shown today to have not only not stopped the abusive practices, but still advocates its repressive tendencies, as it fights for the right to force its misogynistic and patriarchal belief system on the rest of the US in the fight over contraception under "Obamacare".

It is time for these old institutions to just die.  They are harmful and do little to justify the money people give them.

I wish they HAD slapped his wrist, it would have been worse than this!

Remember Cardinal Mahoney?  Oh, you know, the guy I wrote about a few days ago, who aided and abetted criminal priests for decades in LA avoid the legal ramifications of their pedophilia?  Yeah, that one.  (Patooie... splat.  Oh, sorry bout the rug!))

Well, he's back in the news again, sort of.  It seems the current head guy in charge of the ArchDiocese of LA, Archbishop Jose Gomez, has removed Mahoney of all his remaining pastoral and administrative duties after the public release of the priests' records exposing Mahoney's culpability in aiding and abetting their criminal acts.

That's it?  They forced him into retirement?  Here's a man who has spent the last forty years keeping the law (and the public) from discovering that the Catholic Church had a pedophilia problem by making the problem worse instead of better, and the only thing they can think of to deal with the issue is to force him into retirement?

I now refer you to my previous post about this subject, linked above on the first line.  This activity of Mahoney's is NOT simple mismanagement.  It is behavior which was not only condoned by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, but was the subject of a written order by the now current Pope spelling out the actions the Church expected its members to follow, specifically designed to prevent civil authorities from discovering the problems and acting against pedophiliac priests, and potentially, the guilty cardinals as well.

I do remember in the Nuremberg Trials, when the guilty Nazi officers of the SS were charged with horrific crimes against humanity, their defense was that they were simply carrying out orders.

We hung the bastards anyway.

This situation is only a matter of degree.  Nobody's been killed, and nobody is at risk of execution.  But men like Mahoney (I refuse to use his title as a gesture of respect) only deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison.  Carrying out orders that one KNOWS to be illegal is not excused by the fact that one may lose their job if they refuse.  There is a duty to refuse the orders and do what one knows is right.

These men are supposed to be men of god.  they are tasked with teaching their human "flocks" the route to heaven.  Sexually abusing the innocent children of those flocks is not on the list of duties expected of men of god.

Again, this is another symptom of an organization corrupted by generations of a culture where this activity is not only condoned, but is a part of it and allowed, indeed, probably even controlled by unwritten rules.

Disgusting.  Simply disgusting.

This isn't ignorance or incompetence, this is criminal.

The New York Times has posted a story about Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles, retired Archbishop, and how he personally covered up the abuse of children by priests under his supervision by moving them into counseling outside the State of California for the express purpose of avoiding the California requirement for counselors to report sexual abuse to authorities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/us/files-show-cardinal-roger-mahony-covered-up-sex-abuse.html. (Pardon the clumsy link , mobile posting by google's blogging app sucks)

Quote:

"In 1986, Cardinal Mahony wrote to a New Mexico treatment center where one abusive priest, Msgr. Peter Garcia, had been sent.

“I believe that if Monsignor Garcia were to reappear here within the archdiocese we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors,” Cardinal Mahony wrote.

Monsignor Garcia admitted to abusing more than a dozen young boys, most of them from families of illegal immigrants, since he was ordained in 1966, and in at least one case he threatened to have a boy he had molested deported if he talked about it, according to documents filed in court.

He was never criminally prosecuted, and has since died."

Unquote

This activity was carried out for at least a decade before the abuse became public,

A DECADE!!!

This is not incompetence, this is not, as Mahoney claims, ignorance of consequences. This is criminal activity, and the documents filed in court prove it. Mahoney should be held personally liable, and prosecuted for his criminal acts in covering up such horrible, criminal acts. Just because he may have been unaware of the terrible consequences of the abuse on the victims, does NOT excuse his willful coverup of what he KNEW were criminal acts by priests under his direct supervision.

Nail the bastard.

I'm sorry, but no priestly robes will protect him from the utter contempt and disgust I feel for a man who would magnify the already criminal activities of his subordinates by covering them up. Indeed, those robes merely magnify my feelings, as his actions are contrary to the teachings he oversaw his priests giving to his parishioners and the authority he and his priests claim from their god. They are certainly contrary to the duties of an adult in charge of the very most vulnerable of our species.

The Feds should jump in here and file charges under the RICO Act- his actions are the actions of a criminal organization by virtue of his position as Archbishop and by virtue of those actions being taken as part of his regular duties as the supervisor of the offending priests. These are not the actions of a single rogue individual, as much as the Catholic Church may want to portray them as such.

These are the actions of a corrupt, criminal organization whose already known and publicized orders to its hierarchy were to handle these incidents internally and to avoid notifying civil police authorities, in MULTIPLE COUNTRIES. Now documents are being filed which prove that this man knew this and and acted according to orders from above to circumvent civil law and authority.

More than anything else, this shows the corruption of the Catholic Church and its entire hierarchy, from top to bottom. How can anyone believe a single teaching of a church whose actions belie their most basic values?

To all Catholics, I now tell you this: in words similar to what I saw in Facebook today, the combination of knowledge of these terrible things and inaction on your part equal no less than complicity in those actions. That inaction shows that you condone the abuse, you condone the coverup and the attempts by the Catholic Church to hide these criminal actions from the proper civil authorities.

Every Catholic in the country should refuse to tithe any more money to an organization which would take these kinds of actions. You should immediately notify your local Parrish priest that you shall no longer attend Mass until the Church takes firm, definitive action, from the Pope down, to completely eliminate this cancer from its ranks and immediately and completely reimburse every victim it can find for the horrors visited on them by its members.

This organized criminal activity should immediately cease, the Church should desist from allowing any further such criminal actions to occur in its name and it should announce such actions by an official, binding announcement of the proper type from the Pope which is meant to be of the "infallible" kind, binding the church to its strictures forever.

Until that happens, every Catholic who fully understands the implications of this activity should immediately stop actively supporting this corrupt, criminal organization.

Some People Never Learn...

Is it just me, or are the Republicans, as a national political Party, just stupid?

In an article today on the ThinkProgress site under Justice, Ian Millhiser has written that the RNC National Chairman, Reince Priebus, wants the Republicans to start rigging elections across the country to benefit Republicans.

In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus did not simply endorse this election-rigging scheme, he indicated that it should be targeted towards consistently Democratic states where it is most likely to skew the presidential election to the GOP’s benefit:

Republicans are in a unique position to make headway with such a plan nationally because Wisconsin and other key states that have gone to the Democratic presidential candidate in recent elections are currently controlled by Republicans at the state level. The change would give Republicans a chance to claim some of those states’ electoral votes.“I think it’s something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at,” Priebus said of the plan to change how electoral votes are granted.

Such a system “gives more local control” to the states, he argued.

So, after losing an election by a fairly decent margin, the Republicans are going to talk about rigging the next ones to win instead, of, oh, I don't know, finding out why?

Please, tell me, what is wrong with this picture?

I'll tell you anyway, I won't make you guess.  Morality, or better, the lack of morality.  Here's a political party whose most conservative members constantly harp about biblical morality and the lack of same in the rest of the country as being the reason it is going to hell in a handbasket, and they are now engaged in a discussion - publicly - on the best way to rig the next few Presidential elections to best ensure Republican victories.

I'd say this is the very height of hypocrisy, but damn it, that word has been too often used for these people - it is losing its punch!  Better to name it for what it is - sedition.  This is a deliberate attempt to undermine the rule of law, to ensure their own control over the obvious will of the American people to keep a divided government.  It should be illegal to deliberately incite the undermining of the law for political gain.  It should be illegal to actually do it, too.

But, that's ok.  Republicans have been busy in the last four years showing the American people how they will rule once they get power, and since they have refused to take the warning of 2012 seriously, hopefully, the American people will get more serious back, and start throwing them out at the State level too in 2014.

I won't hold my breath, but dang, this is some serious stupid.