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Secrecy News Stories

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An Archbishop Burns While Rome Fiddles
2011-06-05, New York Times
Posted: 2011-06-14 17:10:09
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/opinion/05dowd.html

[When Diarmuid Martin], the archbishop of Dublin, ... was sent home to Dublin in 2003 after 27 years in the Vatican bureaucracy and diplomatic corps, [he] found the Irish church in crisis, reeling from a cover-up [sexual abuse of minors] that spanned the tenures of four past Dublin archbishops. In February, Martin held an unprecedented Liturgy of Lament and Repentance at a Dublin cathedral, where he asked forgiveness from God and victims of abuse and praised the courage of those who had come forward. In return for doing the right thing, he has been ostracized by fellow bishops in Ireland and snubbed by the Holy See. Martin is standing alone against the tide right now, but hes on the right side of history, said Jason Berry, who has written two books on the church scandal. I think he is probably the single best hope for the church within the hierarchy. Yet Martin, famous protector of victims, is an outlier of the club, while Cardinal Bernard Law, notorious protector of pedophiles, has a cushy Vatican sanctuary. And Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who was in league with the notorious abuser of seminarians and inseminator of women, Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, is the dean of the College of Cardinals in Rome.


Sex and politics - part of our heritage
2011-05-31, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2011-06-08 12:55:36
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/29/EDB11JM5BO.DTL

Sexual secrets and drive do turn the tide of our public life. Just ask Arnold Schwarzenegger. Or porn impresario Larry Flynt, author of a new book, One Nation Under Sex: How the Private Lives of Presidents, First Ladies and Their Lovers Changed the Course of American History. This public-private collision turns up as sexual speed traps in the waylaid careers of Schwarzenegger, Newt Gingrich, John Edwards and fully half of the presidents in our history, according to Flynt's book, which he co-wrote with Columbia history Professor David Eisenbach. Lying, blackmail and hypocrisy about secret carnality just add spice to the stew of a particularly American phenomenon described in Flynt's book. One common trait among the powerful and errant, Flynt [commented], "was a huge ego." The book presents us as an often prudish culture where mistresses, illegitimate children and homosexuality in Washington not only dominate the landscape but hijack it at key moments in our history. "I'm the first person to defend a philandering president" who's doing a good job for the public, Flynt says. He'd just like people to know a lot more about sex themselves and care a lot less about how other people practice it. In 2003, Flynt briefly ran for California governor as "the smut peddler who cares." If he had been elected, at least we would have known what we were getting.

Note: If you are ready to see just how ugly it gets when sexual slavery reaches to the highest levels of government, watch the revealing Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" at this link.


Priest Sex-Abuse Case Hits Church of Pope's Adviser
2011-05-19, Time Magazine
Posted: 2011-06-08 12:54:25
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2072613,00.html

The latest sex-abuse case to rock the Catholic Church is unfolding in the archdiocese of an influential Italian Cardinal who has been working with Pope Benedict XVI on reforms to respond to prior scandals of pedophile priests. Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested [on] May 13, on pedophilia and drug charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. "I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues," he allegedly said. Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy, released this week, on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse. According to investigators, Seppia told a friend a former seminarian and barman who is currently under investigation that the town's malls were the best places to entice minors. In tapped phone conversations the two cursed and swore against God. The priest is charged with having attempted to kiss and touch an underage altar boy and of having exchanged cocaine for sexual intercourse with boys over 18.

Note: It's not just the church. To learn how child sex trafficking reaches to the highest levels of government, watch the revealing Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" at this link.


Red Cross and Vatican helped thousands of Nazis to escape
2011-05-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2011-05-31 17:29:05
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/nazis-escaped-on-red-cross-documents

The Red Cross and the Vatican both helped thousands of Nazi war criminals and collaborators to escape after the Second World War, according to a book that pulls together evidence from unpublished documents. Gerald Steinacher, a research fellow at Harvard University, was given access to thousands of internal documents in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). They throw light on how and why mass murderers such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie and thousands of others evaded capture by the allies. By comparing lists of wanted war criminals to travel documents, Steinacher says Britain and Canada alone inadvertently took in around 8,000 former Waffen-SS members in 1947, many on the basis of valid documents issued mistakenly. The documents which are discussed in Steinacher's book Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's henchmen fled justice offer a significant insight into Vatican thinking, particularly, because its own archives beyond 1939 are still closed. The Vatican has consistently refused to comment. Through the Vatican Refugee Commission, war criminals were knowingly provided with false identities.

Note: Many Nazis were allowed entry, often under false identities, into the US in the late 40's and early '50s. Some were doctors who had experimented on concentration camp inmates without their consent, often torturing them and killing them. They continued to experiment on unwilling subjects in CIA mind-control experiments. For confirmation and more information, click here.


Concentration camp doctor tops list of wanted Nazis
2008-04-30, Boston Globe/Associated Press
Posted: 2011-05-31 17:14:07
https://web.archive.org/web/20110917134939/http://articles.boston.com/2008-04...

Karl Lotter, a prisoner who worked in the hospital at Mauthausen concentration camp, had no trouble remembering the first time he watched SS doctor Aribert Heim kill a man. It was 1941, and an 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation. Heim asked him about himself and why he was so fit. The young man said he had been a soccer player and swimmer. Then, instead of treating the prisoner's foot, Heim anesthetized him, cut him open, castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second, Lotter said. The victim's head was removed and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display. "He needed the head because of its perfect teeth," Lotter, a non-Jewish political prisoner, recalled in testimony eight years later that was included in an Austrian warrant for Heim's arrest. But Heim managed to avoid prosecution, his American-held file in Germany mysteriously omitting his time at Mauthausen, and today he is the most wanted Nazi war criminal on a list of hundreds who the Simon Wiesenthal Center estimates are still free.

Note: As this article shows, some Nazi concentration camp doctors had virtually no moral aversion to killing and torturing any prisoner. Some of the most infamous doctors were tasked with perfecting mind control by any means. And many, like Heim, were allowed to escape. For reliable information on this, and how some of these doctors were then secretly brought to the US to train the CIA in mind control techniques, click here.


'Shadow Government' News To Congress
2002-03-01, CBS News
Posted: 2011-05-31 16:53:56
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/01/attack/main502530.shtml

Key congressional leaders say they didn't know President Bush had established a "shadow government," moving dozens of senior civilian managers to secret underground locations outside Washington. Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) [said] he had not been informed by the White House about the role, location or even the existence of the shadow government that the administration began to deploy the morning of the Sept. 11 hijackings. Among Congress's GOP leadership, aides to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.), second in line to succeed the president if he became incapacitated, and to Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (Miss.) said they were not sure whether they knew. Mr. Bush acknowledged yesterday that the administration had taken extensive measures to guarantee "the continuity of government," adding, "This is serious business." Such an operation was conceived as a Cold War precaution against nuclear attack during the Eisenhower administration but never used until now. It went into effect in the first hours after the terror attacks [and] is an extension of a policy that has kept Vice President Dick Cheney in secure, undisclosed locations away from Washington. Cheney has moved in and out of public view as threat levels have fluctuated.

Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here. For an abundance of solid information suggesting a major cover-up around 9/11, click here.


Canada: Bishop Pleads Guilty in Child Pornography Case
2011-05-05, New York Times
Posted: 2011-05-10 10:57:53
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/world/americas/05briefs-bishop.html

A Roman Catholic bishop pleaded guilty in Ottawa on [May 4] to possession of child pornography for importation. Bishop Raymond Lahey, ... who once led the Diocese of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, was charged after customs agents examined his laptop computer as he returned to Canada from an overseas trip in 2009. They found 588 graphic images of children, 33 videos and the texts of stories featuring the enslavement of children. Customs officials estimated that some boys in the photographs were only 8 years old. A month before his arrest, Bishop Lahey negotiated a $15 million settlement with people who had been sexually abused by priests in his diocese as far back as 1950. Bishop Lahey, who resigned his post in Antigonish, has been out on bail, but on Wednesday he asked to be jailed immediately. He faces one to 10 years in prison.

Note: The bishop who negotiated a settlement for children sexually abused by priests is caught with videos featuring the sexual enslavement of children. How high in the church do you think this might go? If you are willing to explore deeper into this matter through a Discovery Channel documentary that shows sexual enslavement of children going to the highest levels of government, click here.


Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
2011-04-18, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2011-04-26 11:21:58
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/secret-memos-expose-link-betwee...

Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show. The papers ... raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd". But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture. Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change. The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.

Note: The recently completed Chilcot Inquiry found that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair exaggerated the Iraqi threat and disregarded intelligence which predicted military intervention in Iraq would be disastrous. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.


Guantnamo leaks lift lid on world's most controversial prison
2011-04-25, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2011-04-26 11:16:26
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-lift-lid-prison

More than 700 leaked secret files on the Guantnamo detainees lay bare the inner workings of America's controversial prison camp in Cuba. The US military dossiers ... reveal how ... many prisoners were flown to the Guantnamo cages and held captive for years on the flimsiest grounds, or on the basis of lurid confessions extracted by maltreatment. The 759 Guantnamo files, classified "secret", cover almost every inmate since the camp was opened in 2002. More than two years after President Obama ordered the closure of the prison, 172 are still held there. The files depict a system often focused less on containing dangerous terrorists or enemy fighters, than on extracting intelligence. Among inmates who proved harmless were an 89-year-old Afghan villager, suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim. The documents also reveal: US authorities listed the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation. Almost 100 of the inmates who passed through Guantnamo are listed by their captors as having had depressive or psychotic illnesses. Many went on hunger strike or attempted suicide. A number of British nationals and residents were held for years even though US authorities knew they were not Taliban or al-Qaida members.

Note: For many key reports on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.


FRONTLINE Investigates Church Sex Abuse In Alaska
2011-04-21, PBS Frontline
Posted: 2011-04-26 11:14:41
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-silence/

FRONTLINE reveals a little-known chapter of the Catholic Church sex abuse story: decades of abuse of Native Americans by priests and other church workers in Alaska. In "The Silence," FRONTLINE producer Tom Curran and reporter Mark Trahant examine the legacy of abuse by a number of men who worked for the Catholic Church along Alaska's far west coast in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They would leave behind a trail of hundreds of claims of abuse, making this one of the hardest hit regions in the country. "I was just a kid," Ben Andrews tells FRONTLINE of the years of abuse he suffered at the hands of Father George Endal and Joseph Lundowski, a layman who was training to be a deacon. "Father Endal and Joseph Lundowski, they couldn't stop molesting me once they started. It was almost an everyday thing. Father Endal kept telling me that it would make me closer to God." "I'm still having nightmares of Joseph Lundowski molesting, having sex with me," says Peter "Packy" Kobuk. "I get up sweating, angry, feel like I could hurt somebody." "This was 1970," says Anchorage attorney Ken Roosa, who represented the Alaska victims in a class action lawsuit against the church. "There was nowhere for the kids to hide. There was no one they could talk to. The adults believed the abusers over their own children. It was a perfect storm for molestation."

Note: For a transcript of this revealing program, click here.


CIA agent alleged to have met Bin Laden in July
2001-11-01, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2011-04-26 10:28:32
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism

Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro. Bin Laden is reported to have arrived in Dubai on July 4 from Quetta in Pakistan with his own personal doctor, nurse and four bodyguards, to be treated in the urology department. While there he was visited by several members of his family and Saudi personalities, and the CIA. The CIA chief was seen in the lift, on his way to see Bin Laden, and later, it is alleged, boasted to friends about his contact. Intelligence sources say that another CIA agent was also present; and that Bin Laden was also visited by Prince Turki al Faisal, then head of Saudi intelligence, who had long had links with the Taliban, and Bin Laden. The American hospital in Dubai emphatically denied that Bin Laden was a patient there. Washington last night also denied the story. Bin Laden has often been reported to be in poor health. Some accounts claim that he is suffering from Hepatitis C, and can expect to live for only two more years. According to Le Figaro, last year he ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to his base at Kandahar in Afghanistan.

Note: For many unanswered questions about the official account of 9/11 asked by highly-respected professors and officials, click here and here.


The Military's Secret Shame
2011-04-03, Newsweek
Posted: 2011-04-12 10:24:09
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/03/the-military-s-secret-shame.html

Last year nearly 50,000 male veterans screened positive for military sexual trauma at the Department of Veterans Affairs, up from just over 30,000 in 2003. For the victims, the experience is a special kind of hell - a soldier cant just quit his job to get away from his abusers. But now, as the Pentagon has begun to acknowledge the rampant problem of sexual violence for both genders, men are coming forward in unprecedented numbers, telling their stories and hoping that speaking up will help them, and others, put their lives back together. In fact, it is the high victimization rate of female soldiers - women in the armed forces are now more likely to be assaulted by a fellow soldier than killed in combat - that has helped cast light on men assaulting other men. Last year more than 110 men made confidential reports of sexual assault by other men, nearly three times as many as in 2007. The real number of victims is surely much higher. Like in prisons and other predominantly male environments, male-on-male assault in the military, experts say, is motivated not by homosexuality, but power, intimidation, and domination. Assault victims, both male and female, are typically young and low-ranking; they are targeted for their vulnerability. One of the reasons people commit sexual assault is to put people in their place, to drive them out, says Mic Hunter, author of Honor Betrayed: Sexual Abuse in Americas Military. Sexual assault isnt about sex, its about violence.

Note: If you are ready to go down the rabbit hole on this one, learn about Kay Griggs, the wife of a USMC colonel and her descriptions of rampant sexual abuse among high ranking military officials at this link.


'World's largest paedophile ring' uncovered
2011-03-16, BBC
Posted: 2011-03-29 11:10:46
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12762333

International police led by a UK team say they shut down the largest internet paedophile ring yet discovered. The global forum had 70,000 followers at its height, leading to 4,000 intelligence reports being sent to police across 30 countries. The operation has so far identified 670 suspects and 230 abused children. Detectives say 184 people have been arrested - 121 of them were in the UK. Some 60 children have been protected in the UK. The three-year investigation, Operation Rescue, was led by investigators from the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop). The members of the network went into a private channel, boylover.net, and then used its secret systems to share films and images of abused children, said Rob Wainwright, director of European police agency Europol. In the UK, the 240 suspects include police officers, teachers and a karate teacher. One of the suspects in the UK is a woman. The internet has proved to be fertile territory for people with a sexual interest in children. Taking advantage of the anonymity modern computer technology provides, paedophiles download and exchange vile images of abuse unaware of the reality of the suffering.

Note: For powerful evidence that this kind of abuse is much more widespread than believed, and even goes to the highest level of government, click here.


Child abuse 'big business online'
2010-05-12, BBC
Posted: 2011-03-29 11:09:19
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10108720

There are around 450 criminal gangs around the world making money from images of child sex abuse, the UK's Internet Watch Foundation has said. The watchdog's annual report says that the 10 most prolific of these account for more than 650 web pages. But despite these gangs being well-established online, the IWF says the the industry is not growing. To help obscure their movements, they move their distribution networks regularly between different providers and countries. Most of the gangs operate a pay-per-view system, charging a monthly fee of around 55 for access to images and videos. Critics have accused the IWF of being ineffective, partly because it is separate from the police and partly because much of the illegal material online does not originate from the UK. IWF spokeswoman Sarah Robertson admits that it is not a policing body but denies that means it cannot act. "The amount of child abuse content hosted in the UK has fallen from 18% to 1% in the last seven years," she said. It is important to remember the serious nature of the content the IWF polices, she said, and that behind every image is a child being abused. Some 44% of the content highlighted to the IWF last year depicted the rape of a child and 23% of it featured children below the age of six.

Note: For powerful evidence that this kind of abuse is much more widespread than believed, and even goes to the highest level of government, click here.


US Navy tested mustard gas on its own sailors
1993-03-14, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2011-03-29 10:49:40
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/us-navy-tested-mustard-gas-on-its-own...

Fifty years ago, the US Navy locked 17-year-old Glenn Jenkins into a gas chamber within sight of the dome of the US Capitol in Washington. It then poisoned him with mustard and lewisite (arsenic) gas. He never recovered his good health. Nathan Schnurman, another 17-year-old, was asked to test summer uniforms for the navy. He was locked in a small hut heated by a furnace and with a door that could be opened only from the outside. When something went wrong with his mask, he asked over the intercom to come out, but was refused. He vomited into his mask, passed out and had a heart attack. The plight of Mr Jenkins, Mr Schnurman and 2,500 other sailors who were used in what the navy called 'man break' experiments with poison gas, has remained a secret for five decades. Only last week, under pressure from the victims, did the Pentagon agree to let them tell their stories. Many, who had been told that the Espionage Act would be used against them, did not even tell their doctors what had happened. All the survivors, now in their late sixties, tell similar stories. The navy not only volunteered its own men, but for decades after the war also refused to compensate them for crippling injuries. [And] the experiments were for nothing. Mustard gas was used just once in the Second World War by the Allies, and then by accident.

Note: The military has repeatedly condoned horrendous research on live subjects. For a revealing list of highly unethical experimentation on human over the past 75 years, click here. For a concise summary of the government's secret quest to control the mind and human behavior no matter what the cost, click here.


U.S. Declines to Give Details on Radiation
2011-03-19, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2011-03-22 18:07:19
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704608504576208840531837916-sea...

U.S. government officials, in private sessions on Capitol Hill [on Friday, March 18], repeatedly declined to give details of radiation measurements at the stricken Japanese nuclear complex, saying the situation is shrouded in a "fog of war." Separately, the Obama administration said ... "miniscule quantities" of radiation from the Japanese nuclear accident were detected Friday at a monitoring station in Sacramento, Calif., a day after similar traces of radiation were detected in Washington state. The administration said the levels of the radioactive isotope xenon 133 were approximately equivalent to one-millionth the dose received from the sun, rocks or other natural sources. The Obama administration's reluctance to detail in public what it is learning from radiation-detection operations around the damaged Fukushima Daiichi complex in Japan ... comes after statements Wednesday by the head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that painted a grimmer picture of the nuclear crisis than Japanese officials had offered, and suggested that the U.S. didn't trust the information coming from the Japanese government.

Note: Shouldn't the title be something more like "U.S. Refuses to Give Radiation Details for Fear of Industry Repercussions"? How sad that money often continues to trump public health in matters like this.


A Conspiracy With a Silver Lining
2011-03-02, New York Times blog
Posted: 2011-03-16 13:09:51
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/a-conspiracy-with-a-silver-li...

In the past six months, the value of [silver] has increased nearly 80 percent, to more than $34 an ounce. [This] is reminiscent of ... the Hunt Brothers. When the Hunts started buying silver in 1973, the price of the metal was $1.95 an ounce. By early 1980, the brothers had driven the price up to $54 an ounce before the Federal Reserve intervened, changed the rules on speculative silver investments and the price plunged. When JPMorgan Chase bought Bear Stearns in March 2008, it inherited Bear Stearns large bet that the price of silver would fall. The international bank HSBC got into the market heavily on the bear side as well. These actions artificially depressed the price of silver dramatically downward, according to a class-action lawsuit ... filed against both banks in November. The conspiracy and scheme was enormously successful, netting the defendants substantial illegal profits in the billions of dollars between June 2008 and March 2010, according to the suit. In November 2009, [Andrew Maguire] ... a former employee of Goldman Sachs and a 40-year industry veteran, [related] tales of how the silver traders at JPMorgan were bragging about all the money they were making as a result of the manipulation, which entailed flooding the market with short positions every time the price of silver started to creep upward. In March 2010, Maguire released his e-mails publicly. Then came the cloak and dagger element: [On March 26th] Maguire was involved in a bizarre car accident in London. The Commodity Futures Trading Commissions investigation is still unresolved, and at least one commissioner Bart Chilton after interviewing more than 32 people and reviewing more than 40,000 documents, [says] there has been enough investigating and not enough prosecuting. Chilton said ... that one participant in the silver market still controlled 35 percent of the silver market.

Note: Gold and silver have been intensely manipulated for many years. The price of gold has risen 500% in the last 10 years, while silver prices have rocketed 700% in the last eight years. Yet the media consistently underreports this amazing news. Few media gave more than a passing mention to gold passing the $1,000 mark in 2008, which was a historic event. Read the full article to understand this important topic. For lots more quality information on this from a former US assistant secretary for HUD, click here.


In Philadelphia, New Cases Loom in Priest Scandal
2011-03-04, New York Times
Posted: 2011-03-16 13:06:30
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/us/05church.html

Three weeks after a scathing grand jury report said the Archdiocese of Philadelphia had provided safe haven to as many as 37 priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior toward minors, most of those priests remain active in the ministry. The possibility that even one predatory priest, not to mention three dozen, might still be serving in parishes on duty in the archdiocese today, with open access to new young prey, as the grand jury put it has unnerved many Roman Catholics here and sent the church reeling in the latest and one of the most damning episodes in the American church. The situation in Philadelphia is Boston reborn. The Boston Archdiocese was engulfed in a scandal starting in 2002 involving widespread sexual abuse by priests and an extensive cover-up that reached as high as the cardinal. The church has not explained directly why these priests ... are still active. Cardinal Justin Rigali initially said there were no active priests with substantiated allegations against them, but six days later, he placed three of the priests ... on administrative leave. Philadelphia is unusual in that the archdiocese has been the subject of not one but two grand jury reports. The first, in 2005, found credible accusations of abuse by 63 priests, whose activities had been covered up by the church. But there were no indictments, mainly because the statute of limitations had expired. The thing that is significant about Philadelphia is the assumption that the authorities had made changes and the system had been fixed, said Terence McKiernan, the president of BishopAccountability.org, which archives documents from the abuse scandal in dioceses across the country. But the headline is that in Philadelphia, the system is still broke.

Note: For powerful evidence that this kind of abuse is much more widespread than believed, and goes beyond the Catholic Church, click here.


Agent: I was ordered to let U.S. guns into Mexico
2011-03-03, CBS News
Posted: 2011-03-16 13:01:14
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/03/eveningnews/main20039031.shtml

Federal agent John Dodson says what he was asked to do was beyond belief. He was intentionally letting guns go to Mexico. An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms [ATF] senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen. Investigators call the tactic letting guns "walk." In this case, walking into the hands of criminals who would use them in Mexico and the United States. Dodson's bosses say that never happened. Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico. ATF named the case "Fast and Furious." Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets. The Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence. One e-mail noted, "958 killed in March 2010 ... most violent month since 2005." Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating violence. Senior agents including Dodson ... confronted their supervisors over and over. Their answer ... "If you're going to make an omelette, you've got to break some eggs." On Dec. 14, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down. Two assault rifles ATF had let go nearly a year before were found at Terry's murder. Dodson said, "I felt guilty. I mean it's crushing." Dodson said they never did take down a drug cartel. However, he said thousands of Fast and Furious weapons are still out there and will be claiming victims on both sides of the border for years to come.

Note: Could it be that there are those in high positions of power who want this violence to keep us in fear? The fear industry brings huge profits. For more powerful information on this, click here and here.


WikiLeaks cables recount how U.S. pressured allies
2001-03-06, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2011-03-16 12:57:30
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/06/IN251HEQIP.DTL

They have received little attention in the United States, but a set of WikiLeaks disclosures of confidential documents has caused an uproar in Europe by showing that U.S. officials pressured Germany and Spain to derail criminal investigations of Americans. More than 2,500 State Department cables ... include accounts of three cases that shed new light on U.S. responses to allegations of wrongdoing: -- The case of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen seized in Macedonia in 2003 by officers who mistook him for an al Qaeda agent with a similar name. He said they turned him over to U.S. authorities, who flew him in shackles, a blindfold and a diaper to a prison in Afghanistan, where they beat him, injected him with drugs and interrogated him. The CIA analyst who advocated el-Masri's abduction and argued against releasing him even after colleagues reported the mistaken identity has been promoted to run the agency's al Qaeda unit and regularly briefs CIA Director Leon Panetta. -- The case of four Spanish residents who said they were tortured by U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay before being released without charges. -- The case of Jose Couso, a Spanish cameraman who was one of two journalists killed in April 2003 by a U.S. artillery shell at a hotel in Baghdad. A U.S. military investigation concluded that troops were responding to reports of rocket attacks from the building, but journalists on the scene have said the hotel was a well-known media headquarters and was not the source of any hostile fire. A May 2007 WikiLeaks cable quoted then-U.S. Ambassador Eduardo Aguirre as saying that "behind the scenes we have fought tooth and nail to make the charges disappear." The Obama administration has refused to discuss the content of the State Department documents or of previous WikiLeaks disclosures about Iraq and Afghanistan.

Note: As mentioned in the full article, all three of these cases were dismissed or derailed due to intense pressure by the US on the legal systems of the countries involved. For many other reliable reports of manipulation around the war on terrorism, click here.


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