Saturday, February 19th, 2011
RANDY SLY, - Catholic Online
Stephan: This awful story just will not stop. Three different reports in three different dioceses were filed today; I chose this one. I think it is notable that the Catholic laity has not organized itself to demand that the clergy be rededicated and cleansed, and structural changes made. Two billion dollars of believers' money has been spent so far to compensate for the systemic flaws of this system. Yet it takes place below most of the media's sight line. Business as usual. Even if you are not a Catholic this story should be seen as important. The Roman Catholic Church is the oldest virtual state woven deeply into the fabric of almost every Western nation, all of Africa, and parts of Asia. Catholics are the largest denominational community in the U.S. This slow motion implosion will affect billions of people.
Randy Sly is the Associate Editor of Catholic Online and the CEO/Associate Publisher for the Northern Virginia Local Edition of Catholic Online (http://virginia.catholic.org). He is a former Archbishop of the Charismatic Episcopal Church who laid aside that ministry to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church.
WASHINGTON, DC — On February 10, 2011 a Philadelphia Grand Jury landed a serious blow to the Philadelphia Archdiocese with regard to child abuse charges against three priests and a lay teacher. In addition to recommending criminal charges in all three cases, the Grand Jury also recommended criminal charges against the Secretary for Clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia under Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua.
The recommended charges against the three priests, Edward Avery, Charles Engelhardt, and James Brennan and the teacher, Bernard Shero include rape and indecent sexual assault. In addition, they are recommending charges against Monsignor William J. Lynn, the Secretary for Clergy, which includes two counts of endangering the welfare of a child.
The report and presentment of the Grand Jury is the second of a one-two punch for the Archdiocese. The first came six years ago where a Grand Jury issued a 127 page report that began, ‘This report contains the findings of the Grand Jury: how dozens of priests sexually abused hundreds of children; how Philadelphia Archdiocese officials – including Cardinal Bevilacqua and Cardinal Krol – excused and enabled the abuse; and how the law must be changed so that it doesn’t happen again. Some may be tempted to […]
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Saturday, February 19th, 2011
DAVID NATHER & KATE NOCERA, - Politico
Stephan: When my daughter was conceived Planned Parenthood, helped us find the one Ob/gyn in D.C. who would help us have a natural birth. It was such a novelty the Washington Post gave me an issue of their Sunday magazine to write about it. Dozens of women I have known over the years have gone to this organization for pap smears, to get information about contraception, or help with a host of other women's issues. Trying to close down Planned Parenthood is a an attack on women, their safety, health, and their status. It coarsens American society to do this for what are blatantly religious and ideological reasons.
The House just approved Rep. Mike Pence’s amendment to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, checking off a hot-button social issue even as it set up a bigger showdown over defunding the health care law.
The vote was 240-185 with 11 Democrats voting for the amendment, and seven Republicans voting against. One member voted present. A group of Republicans on the floor applauded when the vote hit 218.
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That amendment managed to suck up three hours of often emotional debate time Thursday night, which is a big part of the reason the health care law defunding votes got pushed into today.
Pence, of Indiana, touched off a vicious back-and-forth Thursday night in which Republicans insisted the organization is too aggressive about performing abortions and several Democrats charged that the GOP was waging a ‘war on women.
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Saturday, February 19th, 2011
PAUL PEACHEY, - The Independent (U.K.)
Stephan: An aspect of climate change and the growing food crisis you may not have considered; I certainly hadn't.
After a series of natural calamities and poor harvests, the price of spices from ginger to nutmeg have rocketed in one of the hidden stories of global food inflation. Traders and brokers reported prices of some spice staples have increased more than tenfold over the past five years and in turn hit food manufacturers and consumers.
Speculators have joined the fray encouraged by high prices and poor returns on the financial markets, leading to hoarding and pushing up prices.
Several years of hurricanes and devastation in major spice growing areas have led to a perfect storm of circumstances that contributed to the price rises. Cyclones that hit Madagascar destroyed vanilla crops, hurricanes in the West Indies affected nutmeg and unpredictable monsoons in India cut chilli harvests. Milan Shah, who imports spices for the UK food industry, struck deals to buy cardamom at £1.20 a kilo in 2007 but four years on the price stands at £16.50.
In Britain prices have followed the upward trend in the £250m a year herb-and-spice market where demand is fuelled by a growth in ethnic cooking and health concerns: reducing the salt level in diets has resulted in an increased use of spices, said Anthony Palmer, UK General […]
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Saturday, February 19th, 2011
STEPHEN C. WEBSTER, - The Raw Story
Stephan: We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on 'intelligence' and 'security' and this is what we bought. It has proven useless at identifying and warning in advance about things like the Egyptian revolution. But is it excellent at violating your ever diminishing civil rights, and groping you at the air port. Increasingly I feel like I am living in an Orwell novel.
These days, with Facebook and Twitter and social media galore, it can be increasingly hard to tell who your ‘friends’ are.
But after this, Internet users would be well advised to ask another question entirely: Are my ‘friends’ even real people?
In the continuing saga of data security firm HBGary, a new caveat has come to light: not only did they plot to help destroy secrets outlet WikiLeaks and discredit progressive bloggers, they also crafted detailed proposals for software that manages online ‘personas,’ allowing a single human to assume the identities of as many fake people as they’d like.
The revelation was among those contained in the company’s emails, which were dumped onto bittorrent networks after hackers with cyber protest group ‘Anonymous’ broke into their systems.
In another document unearthed by ‘Anonymous,’ one of HBGary’s employees also mentioned gaming geolocation services to make it appear as though selected fake persons were at actual events.
‘There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas,’ it said.
Government involvement
Eerie as that may be, more perplexing, however, is a federal contract from the 6th Contracting Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base, located south of Tampa, Florida, that […]
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Saturday, February 19th, 2011
MATT TAIBBI, - Rolling Stone
Stephan:
Here’s how regulation of Wall Street is supposed to work. To begin with, there’s a semigigantic list of public and quasi-public agencies ostensibly keeping their eyes on the economy, a dense alphabet soup of banking, insurance, S&L, securities and commodities regulators like the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), as well as supposedly ‘self-regulating organizations’ like the New York Stock Exchange. All of these outfits, by law, can at least begin the process of catching and investigating financial criminals, though none of them has prosecutorial power.
The major federal agency on the Wall Street beat is the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC watches for violations like insider trading, and also deals with so-called ‘disclosure violations’ – i.e., making sure that all the financial information that publicly traded companies are required to make public actually jibes with reality. But the SEC doesn’t have prosecutorial power either, so in practice, when it looks like someone needs to go to jail, they refer the case to the Justice Department. And since the vast majority of crimes in the financial services industry take place in Lower […]
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