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Editor:
This is a read n’ heed… our people act in the same way. I need only mention the names of Gleb Podmoshensky, Panteleimon Metropoulos, Isidore Brittain, Sam Greene, and Seraphim Storheim. The lies issued forth by the institutional church and by the goodthinkers are disgusting and without warrant. Toddler assholes like Rod Dreher should shut up about the Catholics… we do the same exact thing (sadly enough).
Note well that the OCA hasn’t given up on denying Storheim’s guilt… they’re wasting the donations of the faithful in a bootless attempt to clear a perv. You can believe Mr Justice Mainella or you can believe Jeff Gindin (Storheim’s shyster mouthpiece)… I believe the former… he found Storheim and his lawyer “without credibility”. I agree. We have a shit-spattered byre to clean and we have no call to point fingers. This story illustrates a crank institutional culture that we share in its entirety. We’ve fallen and we REFUSE to get up. After all, didn’t the OCA give Peterson a “Get Out of Jail Free” card? ‘Nuff said…
BMD
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A canon lawyer alleging a widespread cover-up of clergy sex misconduct in the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis made her most detailed claims yet, accusing archbishops and their top staff of lying to the public and of ignoring the American bishops’ pledge to have no tolerance of priests who abuse. Jennifer Haselberger, who spent five years as Archbishop John Nienstedt’s archivist and top adviser on Roman Catholic church law, also charged that the church used a chaotic system of record-keeping that helped conceal the backgrounds of guilty priests who remained on assignment. Haselberger said that when she started examining records in 2008 of clergy under restrictions over sex misconduct with adults and children she found “nearly 20” of the 48 men still in ministry.
She said that she repeatedly warned Nienstedt and his aides about the risk of these placements, but they took action only in one case. Because she raised alarms, she said that they eventually shut her out of meetings about clerical misconduct. She resigned last year. Haselberger wrote in an affidavit released Tuesday in a civil lawsuit brought by attorney Jeff Anderson, “Had there been any serious desire to implement change, it could’ve been done quickly and easily with the stroke of a single pen. The archbishop’s administrative authority in his diocese is basically unlimited”.
For years, the archdiocese pledged that it was following the national bishops’ policy, known as the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People”, which lays out a series of requirements… from conducting background checks to alerting parishioners about offender priests and barring guilty clergy from parish assignments. Archbishop Harry Flynn, who led the Minneapolis archdiocese until retiring in 2008, was an architect of the 12-year-old plan. However, Haselberger said that she discovered in 2008 that the archdiocese hadn’t conducted background checks on most priests since the early 1990s.
When she drew attention to the lapse, she said that they told her to eliminate references to the date of background checks in a form pledging a priest is suitable for ministry. Haselberger said that she found priests’ records scattered in storage locations throughout the archdiocese, including the history of allegations against them, their compliance with the monitoring programme, and evidence of their misconduct. She said, “The presence of so many files in so many different locations meant that often important information didn’t make its way into the priest’s personnel file”.
She also said the archdiocese gave inaccurate information to auditors hired by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to monitor dioceses’ compliance with the child protection plan. Haselberger noted that the auditors didn’t have access to church files to check whether the archdiocese’s report matched the records. She said, “They would’ve found out that it didn’t”. Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens said in a statement that Haselberger’s “recollections aren’t always shared by others within the archdiocese”. He said that the archdiocese was taking steps toward “greater transparency and accountability”.
Since the clergy abuse scandal began in 1984, then, erupted into a national crisis in 2002, the American church has been flooded with revelations… from civil lawsuits, grand jury inquiries, and the bishops’ own research… about how dioceses consistently put the interests of the church above victims. Still, Haselberger’s accusations stand out because of her credentials and timing. She’s the highest-level official from an American diocese to make claims of a cover-up. A canon lawyer educated at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, she served as a judge on church tribunals in Minnesota and was trained through the US bishops’ conference on child safety and monitoring guilty clergy. In addition, Haselberger is coming forward in what Anderson calls “real time”. The bulk of previous disclosures about American bishops sheltering abusers were made years, if not decades, after the wrongdoing. Haselberger alleges a cover-up is happening now in Minnesota.
When Haselberger’s allegations first became public in a series of reports last September by Minnesota Public Radio, the archdiocese initially defended its record on preventing abuse. Since then, Nienstedt apologised for any mistakes and said in a deposition that he hid some information on accused clergy from police. A task force Nienstedt formed to review how the archdiocese handled abuse claims released a report in April conceding “serious shortcomings” by church officials. Haselberger said that the Rev Kevin McDonough… the archdiocese’s vicar general or top aide for 17 years, and brother of White House chief of staff Denis McDonough… never accepted the discipline plan American bishops adopted in 2002 that streamlined church law so that the dioceses could bar guilty priests from ministry or remove them from the priesthood altogether.
McDonough continued his previous approach of striking agreements with accused offenders to remain priests but stay away, sometimes providing them extra payments to do so. McDonough oversaw clergy misconduct cases until last September. Haselberger wrote, “He explained to me his position that dismissal wasn’t the right solution for the church”. Haselberger said that McDonough called the archdiocese’s monitoring system for priests guilty of sex misconduct “state of the art”. However, she said that the program relied heavily on self-reporting by guilty priests with no verification of what they reported. In one example, she said that Rev Robert Kapoun, accused of molesting several young boys, is enrolled in the monitoring program, but spends the winter months in Florida without oversight. Another priest, just out of prison after his conviction for victimising an adult woman during counselling, was placed in a retired priests’ home where minors worked. Haselberger said that the archdiocese learned of the problem from the priest’s probation officer. She said that when top Nienstedt lieutenant Rev Peter Laird learned about the problem, he said that the young people should be fired. Laird resigned as vicar general last September. He didn’t respond Tuesday to an e-mail request for comment.
Meanwhile, Nienstedt announced on 1 July that allegations were made against him several months ago of inappropriate sexual behaviour and he’d hired a firm to investigate. Nienstedt told the Catholic magazine Commonweal that he’d never engaged in sexual misconduct, nor had he made any sexual advances. Haselberger told Commonweal that the firm interviewed her, and investigators have about 10 sworn statements alleging sexual impropriety by Nienstedt. Last year, Minnesota lawmakers temporarily abolished time limits on civil lawsuits over child sex abuse, for three years. Similar windows for lawsuits in other states have resulted in total payouts by dioceses in the tens of millions of dollars and more.
15 July 2014
Rachel Zoll
Associated Press
http://www.newschannel10.com/story/26024705/church-lawyer-details-cover-up-claims-on-sex-abuse
Editor:
We’ve done all of the above… and more. Look at how Paffhausen defended Ray Velencia… I’d say that the public record of the Koumentakos case speaks eloquently of both of these men. Also, don’t forget how JP allowed Ray, a priest under suspension, to present himself as a priest in good standing at a GOAA parish, and to sue Fr Michael Regan, a priest in good standing. Now, that’s something that’s never occurred amongst the RCs… a suspended priest suing a priest in good standing… that’s special, ain’t it? No, we have NOTHING to chortle about… we’re in WORSE shape than the RCs are, and we won’t get anywhere until we admit it and stop defending the plug-uglies.
However, must we drain the cup to the bottom? I hope not…
BMD
Voices from Russia 
19 July 2014. Roundup on the Malaysia Airlines Affair
Tags: air disasters, aviation, aviation accidents, Boeing 777, Donetsk, Donetsk People's Republic, FlightAware, Malaysia Airlines, Novorossiya, political commentary, politics, Russia, Russian, Ukraine, Ukrainian
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Deputy Chairman of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Government A Е Purgin said, “The Malaysian Boeing crash site is secured by the opolchenie. They cordoned off the entire area containing the wreckage and the bodies of the dead passengers. This was to ensure the integrity of the scene for an objective investigation, as well as to guarantee the security of the experts carrying out all necessary measures to establish the causes of the disaster. The DNR Minoborony has more than enough resources to perform its tasks at the crash site”. A Yu Borodai, Chairman of the DNR Government, noted, “The causes of the crash remain unclear. However, the DNR opolchenie lacks weaponry capable of knocking down an airliner flying at 10,000 metres (@ 33,000 feet)”.
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Commercial airline pilot Robert Mark, editor of Aviation International News Safety, told the British newspaper Telegraph that the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines plane followed a course north of the usual route, saying, “The heading of the crashed plane was 300 miles (483 kilometres) north of the usual route. Most Malaysia Airlines flights from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur follow a route that passes far to the south”. However, a Malaysia Airlines representative told journalists earlier, “This was an approved route, 15 out of 16 airlines use it. This was a safe route… most countries used it. We didn’t received notification to change it”.
Mark said, “I can only tell you as a commercial pilot myself that if we’d been routed that way, with what’s been going on in the Ukraine and the Russian border over the last few weeks and months, I would’ve never accepted that route. I went into the FlightAware system, which we all use these days to see where airplanes started and where they tracked and I looked back at the last two weeks’ worth of MH17 flights, which was this one. The flight today tracked very, very much further north into the Ukraine than the other previous flights did … there were MH17 versions that were 300 miles south of where this one was”.
Earlier media reports indicated that the plane was flying over the area of clashes three months after all international pilots received warning about the inadvisability of doing so… in April, American and EU aviation authorities issued alerts about the dangers of flying over Novorossiya. However, another expert, Norman Shanks, former head of security for the BAA airport holding group in the UK, suggested that Malaysia Airlines changed its itinerary to save money, saying, “Malaysia Airlines, like many other carriers, continued to use this route (over Novorossiya), since it’s shorter, which means less fuel consumption and lower costs”.
Editor:
In other words, the flight went over a dangerous area to save money… to garner a bit more profit for bloodsucking “Free Market” pigs. Interesting, no? One of the reasons of the crash was “the invisible hand of the market”. It’s around your throat when the greed of the One Percent kicks in. Profit counts more than people’s lives do in the calculations of the country club set… do have a care when encountering them.
BMD
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Former US Congressman Ron Paul said that we shouldn’t draw hasty conclusions about the causes of the Malaysia Airlines disaster in Novorossiya. He believes that it’s unreasonable to accuse anyone without knowing all the facts. Commenting on American media reports about alleged Russian arms deliveries to the DNR and Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR), Paul said, “Putin is too smart to get tied up in such actions”. Paul pointed up that all the present Ukrainian problems began after a USA/EU-supported putsch overthrew the legitimate elected government of V F Yanukovich.
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Deputy Defence Minister A I Antonov thinks that jumping to hasty conclusions about who caused the crash of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 is improper. He’s adamant that we shouldn’t allow the junta to investigate the crash without outside vetting; it should allow foreign experts in, as this is what the international community wants. On a live broadcast on Rossiya-24 TV, Antonov posed ten questions to the Minoborony Ukrainy about the crash in Novorossiya. He thinks that the answers to them will allow Russia and the international community to find an answer to the main question… what happened in the sky over the Ukraine and what we should do to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
Firstly, what interests Antonov is how the junta could instantly “identify” the perpetrators of the tragedy, and what was the basis of their conclusions. Earlier, Anton Gerashchenko, Adviser to the Ukrainian “Minister” of Internal Affairs, posted on Facebook that the plane flew at an altitude of 10,600 metres, and that supposedly the opolchenie shot it down using captured junta Buk-M1 SAMs. Later, the Genprokuratura Ukrainy said that the opolchenie hadn’t captured any Buk SAMs, only their bases, without any SAMs or supporting equipment {Buks are mobile, so, the junta probably withdrew them: editor}. Konstantin Sivkov, President of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems and Doctor of Military Sciences, confirmed that the opolchenie couldn’t shoot down the Boeing, observing that the Buk SAM requires an external target designation system, which the opolchenie doesn’t have. There’s another version which points to the junta’s armed forces… the Minoborony Rossii noted that the airliner’s route and the crash site were within the range of three Buk-M1 batteries, as well as being in range of two batteries of junta long-range SAMs. Antonov asked Rossiya-24, “Can Kiev report all the details of their usage of Buks in the war zone, and… most importantly… why did they deploy them, if the opolchenie lack warplanes?”
The Minoborony Rossii also wonders why the junta doesn’t want an international commission to investigate the affair. Antonov asked, “When will an international commission begin its work? … Why did the SBU begin to fiddle with the recordings of the flight crew with ground control and with Ukrainian radar data without the oversight of international representatives?” Earlier, citing a UN source, Reuters reported that the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) proposed to the junta that an international group should investigate the crash, with members from Malaysia, the Netherlands, and the OSCE.
Antonov asked, “Is the Minoborony Ukrainy ready to submit to documentary evidence to international experts accounting for all SAMs and AAMs? This is very important, for it’d allow us to actually determine which systems were used against the Malaysian Boeing”. In addition, the Minoborony Rossii waits for a response to the statement of the Spanish air traffic controller working in Kiev, “Can officials in Kiev comment today on reports in social networks ostensibly from a Spanish air traffic controller working in the Ukraine, stating that two military aircraft tailed the crashed Boeing over the Ukraine? Whether these funds objective control on the movement of aircraft of the Air Force of Ukraine in the day of the tragedy brought international commission?”
Antonov thinks that if we wish to clarify the circumstances of the crash, we have to ask questions about its route. Commercial airline pilot Robert Mark, editor of Aviation International News Safety, said that the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines plane followed a course 480 kilometres (300 miles) north of the usual route. The airline insisted that it followed the route because it had received notification that the change was allowed and safe. Antonov asked, “Why did Ukrainian air traffic controllers allow a deviation of the aircraft’s route to the north, towards the area of the so-called ‘anti-terrorist operation’, which Kiev carries out against the people of the south-east?” Earlier media reports indicated that the plane was flying over the area of clashes three months after all international pilots received warning about the inadvisability of doing so… in April, American and EU aviation authorities issued alerts about the dangers of flying over Novorossiya. Antonov asked, “Why didn’t they completely close the combat zone to civilian aircraft, especially, because there was no continuous coverage of radar for navigation in this area?”
At the end, Antonov brought up the tragedy of the Russian Tu-154 in 2001. “Then, during an exercise of Ukrainian air defence units, an S-200 SAM shot down a Russian Tu-154 airliner flying between Tel Aviv and Novosibirsk”. As a result, 78 people died; 66 passengers, mostly Israeli citizens, and 12 crew members. Ukrainian courts refused to recognise Ukrainian involvement in the tragedy. What were the lessons of the previous similar disaster of the Russian Tu-154 in the Black Sea? Then, until the last possible moment, the entire Ukrainian leadership denied that their armed forces were involved in the affair. Only after we presented irrefutable facts did we prove who the true culprit of the tragedy was”.
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Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, an expert on Soviet history, spoke on Democracy Now, pointing up that Americans don’t see the real picture of events in Novorossiya and the Ukraine, and that’s why many blame the opolchenie. Cohen believes that, despite the daily promotion of the junta from Washington, most Americans don’t know anything about what’s happening in Donetsk, Lugansk, Kramatorsk, Slavyansk, and about how the junta killed many civilians in these cities. He said, “However, we aren’t shown anything about what’s happened in these Ukrainian cities, these eastern Ukrainian cities. Why is that important? Because this airliner, this shootdown, took place in that context. The American media says it must have been the bad guys… that is, the rebels… because they’ve shot down other airplanes. This is true, but the airplanes they’ve been shooting down are Ukrainian military warplanes that came to bomb the women and children of these cities. We’re now in a new Cold War with Russia. We have been for several months. One aspect of Cold War is civilian deaths”. Cohen believes, despite the fact that the opolchenie had the opportunity to strike at the aircraft, he doubts that their available equipment allowed them to carry out something like that. He also pointed up that the junta forces could also do so, bringing up the affair of 2001, when a Ukrainian S-200 SAM mistakenly shot down a Tu-154 airliner on a Tel Aviv-Novosibirsk flight. Cohen completely dismissed the notion that Russia destroyed the aircraft, “The Russians certainly had no motive here. This is horrible for Putin and for the Russian position”.
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Ex-Air Force Commander V S Mikhailov told Russian News Service on the Genshtab radio show that the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 crash was a deliberate junta provocation, saying, “Recent events showed that the opolchenie was doing well in the LNR and DNR. The junta suffered heavy losses, which made them very jittery. They planned to have the plane crash in Russia, but they failed. Why did they miss? Of course, they counted on the plane falling in Russia. However, what’s 50 kilometres at that speed at that altitude? It’s very little”.
Editor:
Typically, jet airliners cruise at about 900 kilometres per hour, which is 15 kilometres per minute. That is, 50 kilometres translates out to three minutes of flight, give or take. General Mikhailov is right… a Russian pro devastates Uniate dreaming yet again (or, Russian Reality stomps Uniate “Consciousness” as per usual).
BMD
19 July 2014
Rossiya Segodnya
http://ria.ru/world/20140719/1016673839.html
http://ria.ru/world/20140718/1016634564.html
http://ria.ru/world/20140719/1016688246.html
http://ria.ru/world/20140719/1016688730.html
http://ria.ru/world/20140719/1016695060.html
http://ria.ru/world/20140719/1016713036.html