LA Church 'in record abuse deal'
The Catholic Church in Los Angeles has reached a financial deal with more than 500 people alleging sexual abuse by priests, the plaintiffs' lawyer says.
The deal, said to be for $660m (£324m), has yet to be approved by a judge.

It would be the biggest compensation payment the Church has made since the sexual abuse scandal erupted in 2002.

It would take the total paid out by the Church in the US to $2bn since 1950, with the LA diocese paying about one quarter of that.

The settlement figures have not yet been officially announced.

The diocese is expected to sell property to raise the compensation funds.

Ray Boucher, lead plaintiff lawyer in the case, said the settlement also called for the release of confidential priest personnel files.

"Transparency is a critical part of this and of all resolutions," he said.

Healing process

Steven Sanchez, a plaintiff in the case, said he was both relieved and disappointed by the outcome.

"I was really emotionally ready to take on the archdiocese in court in less than 48 hours, but I'm glad all victims are going to be compensated," he said.

"I hope all victims will find some type of healing in this process."

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said while it was the largest settlement by the Church, money was not the key objective for victims.

"It is never about the money. Victims want healing, prevention, closing, accountability," he said.

The diocese has not yet commented on the settlement but said Church officials planned to be in court on Monday morning.

In a recent letter to parishioners, Cardinal Roger Mahony said the Church would be selling an administrative building and was considering the sale of about 50 other Church properties to raise funds for settlement.

Since 2002 nearly 1,000 people have filed such claims against the Roman Catholic Church in California alone.

In February 2004, a report commissioned by the Church said more than 4,000 Roman Catholic priests in the US had faced sexual abuse allegations in the last 50 years.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6899391.stm

Published: 2007/07/15 07:29:57 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Maybe this priest has forgotten what his mission is?

Stir over priest's 'anti-Semitic remarks'
The BBC's Adam Easton reports on the growing row over alleged anti-Semitic remarks made by the controversial head of a religious radio station in Poland.

Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, 62, allegedly called the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, a "swindler" who had bowed to pressure from the Jewish lobby to compensate people for property lost during and after World War II.

The comments came to light last week after the weekly magazine, Wprost, published excerpts and subsequently a tape, from a private lecture it said the priest gave to students at his media centre in Torun, northern Poland.

In it, Fr Rydzyk, reportedly criticises Mr Kaczynski for his subservience to the Jewish lobby.

"You know that it's about giving $65bn," to the Jews, he allegedly said. "They will come to you and say 'give me your coat. Take off your pants. Give me your shoes'," the magazine reported.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center - an international Jewish human rights organisation - strongly rebuked the comments.

"This is outrageous, a [Nazi propaganda minister] Josef Goebbels in a collar," said Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Center.

Israel's ambassador to Poland, David Peleg, said Fr Rydzyk's comments were damaging Polish-Israeli relations.

"The tapes that have come to light are evidence that Rydzyk and his institutions are anti-Semitic and something must be done in the name of good Polish-Israeli relations," he said in an interview with Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper.

Influential

Fr Rydzyk, a priest from the Redemptorist order, has regularly courted controversy since he launched Radio Maryja in 1991.

With a blend of chat, music and religious services, the station styles itself as the "Catholic Voice in Your Home" and attracts many listeners in rural and poorer areas.

I... expected the Polish government and president would have reacted at once in a decisive way to Rydzyk's anti-Semitism
David Peleg
Israeli ambassador to Poland

But critics say it promotes xenophobic, ultra-Catholic, and at times, anti-Semitic views.
Fr Rydzyk has since gone on to create something of a media empire, including the Trwam television station, the newspaper Nasz Dziennik, and a journalism college in his headquarters in Torun.

Figures suggest Radio Maryja is steadily losing listeners with the station now attracting just over a million people or around two per cent of the daily audience.

But Fr Rydzyk's political influence has never been higher. In 2005, he urged his listeners to vote for the Law and Justice party, headed by Mr Kaczynski's twin brother, Jaroslaw.

The party won the elections and subsequently its members have become regular guests on both the radio and TV stations.

Last weekend, for the first time ever, a prime minister appeared at Radio Maryja's annual pilgrimage.

Addressing the crowd of around 150,000 people, Jaroslaw Kaczynski told them: "Here is Poland."

A day later, the magazine, Wprost, published its story.

Apart from the alleged anti-Semitic remarks, it also claimed Fr Rydzyk called President Kaczynski's wife a "witch" for her supposed support of limited abortion rights.

"You witch! I'll let you have it. If you want to kill people, do it to yourself first," he reportedly said.

Leaders reticent

Fr Rydzyk has suggested the tapes were doctored and called the story "fictitious".

The magazine says the authenticity of the tapes is beyond doubt.

Poland's Senate Speaker, Bogdan Borusewicz, has also been quoted as saying he believes the tapes to be genuine.

Despite the alleged slur, both Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski have refused to condemn the priest.

If the tape is verified as being Fr Rydzyk, then he should apologise, they said.

Many commentators here believe the twins may be reluctant to move against him.

The priest has the ability to carry perhaps more than a million votes to their side come new elections.

However, Mr Peleg is hopeful action will be taken.

"I also expected the Polish government and president would have reacted at once in a decisive way to Rydzyk's anti-Semitism. And although a few days have passed, I think this reaction will be forthcoming," he told Gazeta Wyborcza.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6898183.stm

Published: 2007/07/13 21:16:34 GMT

© BBC MMVII

The lure of stardom and political influence can turn a guy's head; think that's what's happened here? Or maybe the guy always was kind of a yutz.

This is on the long side but a worthwhile read. At least I think so as it confirms my long held suspicions about the real mission of the Bush team over there.

Saving Iraq
by ROBERT DREYFUSS

[posted online on June 27, 2007]

Last week, a fierce critic of the Bush Administration's war in Iraq went, perhaps, a bridge too far. Pauline Baker, president of the Fund for Peace, flatly predicted that there is no hope for Iraq, other than its collapse and fragmentation. Upon issuing a report that described Iraq as the second most unstable "failed state" after Sudan, Baker told the Washington Post, "We have recommended...that the administration face up to the reality that the only choices for Iraq are how and how violently it will break up."

And she's not the only one. Many opponents of Bush's adventure in Iraq, from left to center-right, have thrown up their hands. Most notorious, Senator Joe Biden, Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations and former Ambassador Peter Galbraith have written off Iraq, either predicting or encouraging its breakup into mini-states. Countless others have concluded that ethnic and sectarian divisions in Iraq have hardened into permanent hatreds. And there are those who--sadly or gleefully, depending on their point of view--declare definitively that Iraq was never really a nation. Instead, they say, it is an artificial creation that never existed except in the minds of British imperialists like Winston Churchill and Gertrude Bell.

Such sentiments are being challenged by a nascent bloc of Iraqi nationalists who, against all odds, are working to put together a pan-Iraqi coalition that would topple the US-backed government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Maliki's ruling alliance includes separatist Kurdish warlords and Iranian-backed Shiite fundamentalists, both of whom want to carve out semi or wholly independent statelets. Although it has not yet jelled, Maliki's opposition--which includes Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, as well as Christians, Turkmen and others--is within striking distance of creating a functioning parliamentary majority.

More important, outside Parliament the nationalists represent an overwhelming majority of rank-and-file Iraqis. Among the Sunnis, who have fifty-five seats in the 275-member Parliament, there is broad support for maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity not only among its deputies but throughout the armed Iraqi resistance, a diverse group that includes Baathists, Sunni tribal leaders, former military officers and the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni religious organization that claims to be the political arm of the resistance.

Among the Shiites, most Iraqi observers believe that if new elections were held, the big winners would be Muqtada al-Sadr's party, which controls much of eastern Baghdad and wields great power in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, and the Fadhila party, a quasi-Sadrist party with great strength in Iraq's south, particularly Basra. The big losers would be the ruling Dawa party, which has little or no remaining support, and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), an Iranian-backed paramilitary party that now calls itself the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq (SICI).

Add to those forces the dwindling but still significant influence of secular nonsectarian Iraqis, whose titular leader is Iyad Allawi. Allawi's party, which has friends in the Arab Gulf and good connections to the CIA and MI-6, controls twenty-five deputies in Parliament. Its strength is ebbing as Iraq's middle class flees the civil war at an accelerating rate. But Allawi, who also has strong ties to Iraq's military officer class, could be a power broker in the emerging nationalist coalition.

Almost unnoticed in the American media, these nationalist forces have been groping toward an accommodation that could oust Maliki. In fits and starts, and under the worst possible conditions--literally under fire--they are looking for a way out of the ethnic and sectarian crisis. It is an effort that has been under way for nearly a year. But they are doing so not only without American support but with determined opposition from the Bush Administration.

Even though the nationalists represent what is probably Iraq's last chance to avoid civil war, collapse and fragmentation, the Bush Administration continues to support the Maliki government, the Kurdish warlords--America's closest allies in Iraq--and, most inexplicably, the Shiite fundamentalists in SICI. According to recent reports, Washington may be toying with the idea of replacing Maliki with Adel Abdul Mahdi, currently the Iraqi vice president and a leader of SICI. Last week Abdul Mahdi threatened to resign his post, and he appears to be angling for Maliki's job. (In 2006, during the prolonged negotiations following the December 2005 elections, the US Embassy quietly backed Mahdi over Maliki, but Maliki triumphed--by one vote--with the support of Muqtada al-Sadr.)

Why isn't Washington backing the nationalists, despite its growing frustration with Maliki's inability to meet the so-called "benchmarks" of political reconciliation that the United States wants? Because what holds together the emerging nationalist coalition, more than anything else, is militant opposition to the US occupation of Iraq.

Over the past two months, the nationalists in Parliament have won two landmark votes: the first in support of a bill calling for the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal and the second in a vote demanding that the Iraqi government submit any plan to extend the US occupation past 2007 to Parliament. Most (but not all) of the support for those votes came from deputies associated with the Sunnis (fifty-five seats), Sadr (thirty seats), Fadhila (thirty seats) and Allawi (twenty-five seats). Theoretically, those four parties control 140 seats in Parliament, a bare majority--and one that could be bolstered by independent Shiite and even some dissident Dawa party members, according to Iraqi sources.

For Americans concerned about what Iraq might look like after a US withdrawal, it's important to note that the nationalist bloc is united by more than its opposition to the US occupation. They are also strongly opposed both to the terrorist forces of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and to the growing influence of Iran in Iraq. Lately, Sunni Iraqis, including tribal militias and several armed insurgent groups--such as the Islamic Army in Iraq and the 1920 Revolution Brigades--have been battling AQI throughout Anbar and other provinces, notably Diyala and Salahuddin to the north and east of Baghdad, as well as in some Baghdad neighborhoods. The Sunnis, who are also bitterly opposed to Iran's influence in Iraq, have gotten support from Sadr and Fadhila in trying to limit Iranian meddling. (Iran operates in Iraq primarily through SICI, whose Badr Brigade militia was created in Tehran in 1982 and has been armed, trained and advised by Iranian intelligence ever since.) In Basra, Nasiriyah and other Iraqi cities, both Sadr's and Fadhila's forces have been waging pitched battles against the militia and death squads of SICI.

Although Iran is reported to have influence or control over some of Sadr's Mahdi Army commanders, in recent weeks Sadr has been reasserting control of the Mahdi Army, purging extremists and reaching out to Sunni resistance leaders and clerics. And when US Ambassador Ryan Crocker met with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad on May 28--a meeting widely reviled by Iraqi nationalists, who saw it as the start of a US-Iranian plot to carve up Iraq--Sadr issued a striking denunciation of Iran. "It is most regrettable that they [the Iranians] are inadvertently or deliberately forgetting, in such negotiations, to demand that the occupier depart," said Sadr.

The most active Iraqi politician working to assemble the nationalist bloc in Iraq is Saleh Mutlaq, the former Baathist and leader of the National Dialogue Front. "We have been engaged in constructive talks to create this powerful bloc to save Iraq," he said earlier this month. "Maliki's government should go because it has brought untold suffering to the Iraqi people." Mutlaq and others, including Allawi, have spoken about a "National Salvation Government" that could replace Maliki.

Of course, achieving that is a tall order. There is enormous suspicion among many of the potential players in the opposition. And with each passing day, as more Iraqis are killed, as sectarian atrocities pile up and as attitudes harden and fears grow, it becomes more difficult to bridge those divides. On top of all that, opposition leaders have to deal with the heavy-handed influence of the United States in all aspects of Iraqi civil affairs. According to US sources, Washington is using its vast influence in Iraq to prevent the emergence of a nationalist opposition and to preserve Maliki's regime.

Last month, when I asked David Satterfield, the State Department's chief Iraq person, if the United States could see itself supporting an alternative to Maliki, he shot down the suggestion in the strongest terms. "We strongly, explicitly support the government of Prime Minister Maliki," he said, through a clenched jaw, and looking me in the eye. "It is not helpful to talk about alternatives."

Similarly, two weeks ago, at a conference in New York, I asked Amar Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, son of SICI leader Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, about the National Salvation Government idea. "It represents a kind of conspiracy against the political process that is taking place right now," he said. Hakim is widely expected to become the leader of SICI if his father, who has lung cancer, dies or is incapacitated. Maliki, too, has begun warning darkly of conspiracies and military coups d'etat, even though his political opponents are operating openly and according to parliamentary rules.

What's important about all this is that perhaps the best chance to end the war in Iraq will come not from the US Congress, hamstrung by presidential veto and limited by the more timid instincts of its most conservative members, and not from the White House, which seems committed to preserving current US policy in Iraq into 2009, but from the Iraqis themselves. With or without Maliki, Iraqi opposition to the US occupation could force a timetable for withdrawal even before the end of 2007.

The United States, meanwhile, is flailing. The "surge" isn't working. The new US policy of arming Sunni tribes and even some resistance groups against Al Qaeda in Iraq is not a strategy; instead, having spent billions of dollars to arm and train the Shiite-led government's army and police, the United States is now arming the other side in Iraq's civil war, as well. Perhaps it makes too much sense for the delusional Bush Administration, but rather than arm both sides in the civil war it ought to arm neither and begin its withdrawal. Long before that realization dawns on US policy-makers, perhaps the Iraqis themselves will force the issue.

These words were spoken by Eunice Kennedy Shriver in May of 1973. Or was it yesterday?

"These are most bitter days, and yet, as our leaders stand revealed, we see not evil men but shallow and pathetic men. The final charge against these men, I think, will not be their shabby deals, their frantic cover-ups. No, it will be simply that having been given the extraordinary power and opportunity to make life better in this nation and the world they scarcely tried. And to justify their selfishness, their paltry goals, they told us there was no dream, no moral cause, forget about generosity and love. Their message was grab what you can and run. Let them run now, and let us see if we can make something grow in the desert they have left behind."

I just wish they would go already. Nixon left rather than face impeachment and (as he knew more than anybody) almost certain removal from office. This administration has at least as much to hide; I say let's see if it will work again.

I can't stand Bush anymore! I knew something like this was coming (the commutation of the prison part of the Libby sentence) but it still pisses me off. Listening to the lame duck bastard today got me going again.

He was faced with a "tough" decision. He thought long and hard. He decided (I always cringe when I hear this) that the sentence was "severe".

He still faces a "stiff" fine and probation. Wooo. Fining a rich guy (even assuming that they don't pay it for him) is like punching me on the arm: I won't like it but I can easily withstand it.

And "probation". That's good. I wonder what he and his probation officer will talk about. Golf?

And, the assumption that we don't know what's really going on, or is it more the arrogance of a President who cares not a wit what it looks like?