In the United States, the Catholic Church has payed more than 2.6 billion US dollars in compensation to victims so far. Since it is getting uncomfortable, they came up with a new way to cope with compensation payments now.

After yet another child-abuse scandal has come to light, the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus – also called Jesuits – filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The Province includes Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Washington and Oregon.

Seattle University Spectator reports:

The province [...] filed for reorganization [...] in response to a lawsuit in which 63 Native Alaskan victims have alleged they were sexually abused by Jesuits and that leaders of the province covered up the abuse. More victims will be joining the lawsuit in the coming weeks, according to the plaintiff’s lawyers.

Now, let’s see how Fr. Patrick Lee, S.J., provincial of the Oregon Province views this affair:

Chapter 11 will allow the Oregon Province to resolve pending claims, manage its financial situation and continue its various ministries in the Northwest in which it has been engaged since 1841. [...] Our decision to file Chapter 11 was not an easy one, but with approximately 200 additional claims pending or threatened, it is the only way we believe that all claimants can be offered a fair financial settlement within the limited resources of the Province.

To sum up, in order to pay a fair financial settlement, the church files for bankruptcy. Right.

John Manly, an attorney for the victims:

This bankruptcy has nothing to do with finances–the Jesuits are one of the wealthiest religious organizations in the United States. This filing is about protecting the hierarchy and those who covered up for abusers.

Patrick Wall, a representative of the victims:

We believe that this is an affirmation that the Society of Jesus knowingly and purposefully dumped priest perpetrators in Alaska. The data is overwhelming. Twenty-eight priests from 11 provinces in five countries resulted in over 300 Native Alaskan kids being sexually abused from 1948 to 2001.

And that is obviously just the tip of the iceberg. Why do I get the strong impression that this is not about individuals - one priest here, another there – but about the institution Church, about the way the whole system seems to work?

See also:

• Church Humane
• Catholic Church and Paedophilia

A couple of months ago, the Vatican officially stated that “only 1.5 – 5 per cent of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse”.

Read that again: “only 1.5 – 5 per cent”. Right. I wrote an article about it back then, containing some extremely unpleasant facts.

Yesterday, Malte Welding put together a comprehensive overview I want to share here.

In 1962, an official document was sent to all Catholic bishops, signed by the Pope John XXIII. The Guardian brought a story about this document in 2003, also publishing the document online.

The document was confirmed as genuine by the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales. It encourages to “cover up cases of sexual abuse or risk being thrown out of the Church”. The Guardian writes:

“[The document] is called ‘Crimine solicitationies’, which translates as ‘instruction on proceeding in cases of solicitation’. It focuses on sexual abuse initiated as part of the confessional relationship between a priest and a member of his congregation. The instructions outline a policy of ’strictest’ secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication. They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials.”

Now comes the interesting part: as dailykos.com pointed out in 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger (also known as Benedict XVI – the current pope) is “the author of a May 2001 letter to bishops stating that the ‘Crimine Solicitationies’ law [...] is still in effect”.

The Catholic Church has been systematically abusing children for decades. They have an official document, encouraging clergy to cover abuse up, and “encourage” victims to swear an oath to keep it secret.

And the current pope Ratzinger officially signed a letter that this practise should continue, in the year 2001.

I feel very, very sick. And I am pretty sure that holy Ratzinger and his devout group of bishops have broken international law here, for a couple of decades. Not necessarily by abusing children – but by covering thousands of cases up.

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Time to fill the new “what I dislike” category.

• The police in Munich arrested two people. Now, that is nothing special really. Special about this incident is that those two hadn’t done anything, except for acting suspicious. Actually, they might have contacts to muslim extremists, although the police isn’t really sure about. Police officially announced that they were not arrested because of a criminal offense, but “just to be sure that they wouldn’t do anything bad” regarding the Oktoberfest. Excuse me!? Their lawyer has sued the police now deprivation of liberty / false imprisonment.
• Two days ago a new law has been passed in Poland, allowing the state to force castration on convicted pedophiles (re-read that sentence please, in case your brain somehow refuses to accept this as truth). Now, we surely don’t have to discuss here that molesting children is a terrible crime and should be severely punished – but I thought the whole “cutting off the thief’s hands” business was quite out of date – for let’s say, 400 years? This is terrible! Poland is part of the European Union!

Update, 08.10.2009:
The potential “terrorist” actually called the police (!!!) shortly before he was arrested, because he was frightened by the people observing/following him. The article (German) shows how arbitrary the Bavarian police acted.

Update, 21.12.2009:
If you speak German, please read this article which was published in Sueddeutsche Zeitung. This is what happened to the student who was arrested before the Oktoberfest and kept imprisoned for 8 days.

(via Fefe)

Minister of Interior Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) said a few hours ago in an interview that the law to censor the internet in Germany – with the official reason of fighting child pornography – was passed in order to set the CDU apart from other parties in the final part of the election campaign, and that it contains mistakes and errors.

As long as politicians lie, as long as they at least pretend to do things that are good for the people, they fear us, at least a tiny little bit. But as soon as they actually tell you that they don’t care at all, that they just did what they did because they wanted to be re-elected, as soon as a Dick Cheney actually admits that the US went to Iraq for oil it’s a sign that things not only not go very well, but that things are quite out of control.

Sueddeutsche.de writes:

Der Minister gab handwerkliche Fehler beim sogenannten Zugangserschwerungsgesetz für Stoppschilder im Internet zu. Das Gesetz zum Schutz vor Kinderpornografie sei im Endspurt des Wahlkampfes auch deshalb entstanden, um die CDU gegenüber anderen Parteien abzusetzen.

Unbelievable.

The Guardian posted an excellent article about paedophelia in the the Catholic Church. I’ll sum up the important parts (if I directly quote here, I quote the Guardian, not the Archbishop Silvano):

• “An international representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union [...] accused the Catholic Church of covering up child abuse and being in breach of several articles under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”
• “Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the UN, defended the church by claiming that ‘available research’ showed that only 1.5%-5% of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse“. Allow me to paraphrase: official Vatican statistics state that every 20th to 60th catholic priest actively molests/molested children. When you consider that these numbers are very likely to be lower than the actual numbers, and that only a small percentage of pedophiles molest children, that leaves us with very alarming numbers of pedophile priests.
• The Archbishop added that “problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger”.
• He also said that “the majority of Catholic clergy who committed such acts were not pedophiles but homosexuals attracted to sex with adolescent males. [...] The statement said that rather than paedophilia, it would ‘be more correct’ to speak of ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males. ‘Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17.’ ” To paraphrase again: the majority of the priests involved in child abuse are not pedophiles – they merely, amongst other things – force fellatio and anal sex on young boys, abusing their social authority society gives them to do that. That’s much better than “paedophilia”, we all agree on that, Mr. Tomasi.
• The Catholic Church has so far payed over two billion (!) Dollar in compensation to victims in the US.

Seriously, what is going on? The Catholic Church openly admits that they have sexually abused and exploited thousands of children (note: “thousands” just refers to the last few years), states that it’s not a big deal really because “only 1.5-5%” of the priests are pedophiles, says that it’s not an issue due to the fact that priests are not actually pedophiles but just ephebophiles, and furthermore declares that we shouldn’t accuse them because in other religions things are going not so well either?

And you support this organization with your tax-money? You pray to a God these people serve? You allow them to teach our children in public schools?

And just in case you forgot:

• The Pope officially declared a few months back that the use of condoms makes AIDS worse, not better (this probably costed many thousand people their lives, due to the fact that they listen to what this guy says).
• The Brasilian Archbishop recently excommunicated a 9 year old girl because of an abortion – she had been raped by her father and was pregnant with twins. Giving birth would have killed her, so the doctors decided to perform an abortion. The Archbishop was actively and openly supported by the Pope.
• The roman catholic PAX bank bought stocks in defence, tobacco and birth control companies. Of course the bank had previously advertised ethical investment funds, claiming to avoid arms and tobacco companies along with organisations that do not adhere to Catholic beliefs.
• In Ireland, several thousand children (perhaps much more) were systematically molested by nuns and priests.
• I could go on for another couple of hours with this.

Huffingtonpost writes about the US patriot act:

In the debate over the PATRIOT Act, the Bush White House insisted it needed the authority to search people’s homes without their permission or knowledge so that terrorists wouldn’t be tipped off that they’re under investigation.

Let’s see what they actually did with it:

Only three of the 763 “sneak-and-peek” requests in fiscal year 2008 involved terrorism cases, according to a July 2009 report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Sixty-five percent were drug cases.

In conclusion, in the year 2008 the patriot act – which is still valid – was used in 0.39% of the cases for the reason it was officially implemented for.

(via Fefe)

Only if both wife and husband are Jewish, the state of Israel legally acknowledges marriages.

Israel, whose Jewish population of 5.6 million accounts for 41 percent of worldwide Jewry, has obstructed intermarriage between its Jewish and Arab citizens by refusing to recognize such marriages unless they are performed abroad.

And there’s a new campaign now:

Israel has launched an advertising campaign urging Israelis to inform on Jewish friends and relatives abroad who may be in danger of marrying non-Jews.

No matter which religion or organization does things like that: I find it highly offensive, inhumane and wrong.

According to the campaign’s organizers, more than 200 Israelis rang a hot line to report names of Jews living abroad after the first TV advertisement was run on Wednesday. Callers left details of e-mail addresses and Facebook and Twitter accounts.

(Sources: SZ.de and alternet.org via fefe)

Sending an ultra thin 42*37cm² packet from Germany to …

• Norway…
• Poland…
• Austria…
• France…
• Italy…
• you get the idea …

… costs 3.30 €.

Sending an ultra thin 42*37cm² packet from Germany to …

• Germany …

… costs 4.40 €.

Arglarglargl …

A few rather unknown facts about the so-called pandemic:

• The superawesome treatment Tamiflu decreases the infection with the virus from 6 days to … 5 days. Wow, that is quite awesome.
• There are already strains immune to the vaccine.
• The vaccine was only tested on several thousand patients. That’s not enough for a vaccine which will be given to many hundreds of million of people (at least 30 million in Germany alone).
• Now it gets crazy – probably, because we’re going to start talking about the US: vaccine makers and federal officials will be immune from lawsuits that result from any new swine flu vaccine, under a document signed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. If problems arise, a federal court handles claims and decides who will be paid from a special fund (here is a good overview about that topic).
• And it becomes even funnier: more than half the children in England taking the swine flu drug suffer side-effects (as nausea and insomnia), N = 248. Researchers concluded that the “burden of side-effects needs to be considered” when deciding whether to treat children with preventative measures.

A very famous writer once wrote something very useful. I highly recommend people in charge to apply it to our current situation:

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