Faith Muslim Doctor Faces Blasphemy Charge for Putting Business Card in Trash Can

Amplify’d from www.theblaze.com

Faith Muslim Doctor Faces Blasphemy Charge for Putting Business Card in Trash Can

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — Police say a Pakistani doctor has been arrested on suspicion of blasphemy after he threw away a business card of a man who shared the name of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad.

It is the latest case involving the country’s contentious law on blasphemy against Islam.

Police official Mushtaq Shah says the Muslim doctor was detained Friday in the southern city of Hyderabad after a complaint was lodged alleging his actions had insulted the Prophet Muhammad.

Pakistan’s blasphemy law has received widespread attention following the case of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death last month for insulting Islam. Critics say the law is often misused to settle grudges, persecute minorities and fan religious extremism.

AFP:

Naushad Valiyani was detained on Friday following a complaint by a medical representative who visited the doctor in the city of Hyderabad.

“The arrest was made after the complainant told the police that Valiyani threw his business card, which had his full name, Muhammad Faizan, in a dustbin during a visit to his clinic,” regional police chief Mushtaq Shah told AFP.

“Faizan accused Valiyani of committing blasphemy and asked police to register a case against the doctor.”

Shah said the issue had been resolved after Valiyani, a member of Pakistan’s Ismaili community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, apologised but local religious leaders intervened and pressed for action.

“Valiyani had assured Faizan that he did not mean to insult the Prophet Mohammed by throwing the visiting card in the dustbin,” Shah said, adding that the police had registered a case under the Blasphemy Act. Read more at www.theblaze.com

 

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Amplify’d from www.ydr.com

New trial sought for powerful ex-Pa. state senator

The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA—Attorneys for long-powerful state Sen. Vincent Fumo are battling efforts by federal prosecutors to increase his 4 1/2-year prison sentence in a corruption case even as they seek a new trial, saying he was denied an impartial jury. Defense attorneys argue that U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter was on solid legal ground in imposing the sentence, which federal prosecutors called "unreasonable" and "unduly lenient" in an appeal filed last summer. "If the convictions are not reversed, the sentence must be affirmed," the defense argued in documents filed late Friday with the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Prosecutors had sought at least a 15-year term for Fumo, a 67-year-old Philadelphia Democrat who was convicted last year of 137 fraud and obstruction counts after a five-month trial. Authorities said Fumo defrauded the state Senate, a museum and a nonprofit of millions of dollars. In their appeal, they said "breathtaking" corruption had been exposed in the case and said Fumo over the course of three decades in the state Senate used his control of a Senate panel and one nonprofit and influence over another "to support a lavish lifestyle and illegally amass political power." Prosecutors argued in their appeal that Fumo should have faced up to 21 to 27 years in prison and that the amount of fraud was greater than $4 million, twice the total assessed by the judge. They also said the judge failed to explain how he calculated the fraud total or sentencing range. Fumo's attorneys, however, said the district court committed "no significant procedural error" in sentencing him to 55 months' imprisonment followed by three years of supervision, a $411,000 fine and more than $2.3 million in restitution—although they objected to interest on the latter. Saying the government was arguing "narrow issues of procedural error," they said the amounts had been calculated fairly and the decision to credit Fumo for "good works" was well grounded. Fumo's attorneys also, however, asked the appeals court to grant Fumo a new trial, charging that the court failed to ensure an impartial jury. They said members of the panel improperly learned that the senator had been convicted in a previous corruption trial but the verdict had been overturned on appeal and that one juror had posted on the Internet about the status of deliberations. They also argue that some of the evidence allowed at trial was prejudicial. Read more at www.ydr.com

 

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The war against Israel as a continuation of the bloody Nazi-Vatican-Islamic counter reformation

Amplify’d from continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com

Nazi Palestine's Grand Mufta

The war against Israel as a continuation of the bloody Nazi-Vatican-Islamic counter reformation

Declassified Papers Show U.S. Recruited Ex-Nazis http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/us/12holocaust.html?ref=us By SAM ROBERTS Published: December 11, 2010 After World War II, American counterintelligence recruited former Gestapo officers, SS veterans and Nazi collaborators to an even greater extent than had been previously disclosed and helped many of them avoid prosecution or looked the other way when they escaped, according to thousands of newly declassified documents. With the Soviet Union muscling in on Eastern Europe, “settling scores with Germans or German collaborators seemed less pressing; in some cases, it even appeared counterproductive,” said a government report published Friday by the National Archives. “When the Klaus Barbie story broke, about his escaping with American help to Bolivia, we thought there weren’t any more stories like that, that Barbie was an exception,” said Norman J. W. Goda, a University of Florida professor and co-author of the report with Professor Richard Breitman of American University. “What we found in the record is that there were a fair number, and that it seems more systematic.” In chilling detail, the report also elaborates on the close working relationship between Nazi leaders and the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who later claimed that he sought refuge in wartime Germany only to avoid arrest by the British. In fact, the report says, the Muslim leader was paid “an absolute fortune” of 50,000 marks a month (when a German field marshal was making 25,000 marks a year). It also said he energetically recruited Muslims for the SS, the Nazi Party’s elite military command, and was promised that he would be installed as the leader of Palestine after German troops drove out the British and exterminated more than 350,000 Jews there. On Nov. 28, 1941, the authors say, Hitler told Mr. Husseini that the Afrika Corps and German troops deployed from the Caucasus region would liberate Arabs in the Middle East and that “Germany’s only objective there would be the destruction of the Jews.” The report details how Mr. Husseini himself was allowed to flee after the war to Syria — he was in the custody of the French, who did not want to alienate Middle East regimes — and how high-ranking Nazis escaped from Germany to become advisers to anti-Israeli Arab leaders and “were able to carry on and transmit to others Nazi racial-ideological anti-Semitism.” “You have an actual contract between officials of the Nazi Foreign Ministry with Arab leaders, including Husseini, extending after the war because they saw a cause they believed in,” Dr. Breitman said. “And after the war, you have real Nazi war criminals — Wilhelm Beisner, Franz Rademacher and Alois Brunner — who were quite influential in Arab countries.” In October 1945, the report says, the British head of Palestine’s Criminal Investigation Division told the assistant American military attaché in Cairo that the mufti might be the only force able to unite the Palestine Arabs and “cool off the Zionists. Of course, we can’t do it, but it might not be such a damn bad idea at that.” “We have more detailed scholarly accounts today of Husseini’s wartime activities, but Husseini’s C.I.A. file indicates that wartime Allied intelligence organizations gathered a healthy portion of this incriminating evidence,” the report says. “This evidence is significant in light of Husseini’s lenient postwar treatment.” He died in Beirut in 1974. The report, “Hitler’s Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence and the Cold War,” grew out of an interagency group created by Congress to identify, declassify and release federal records on Nazi war crimes and on Allied efforts to hold war criminals accountable. It is drawn from a sampling of 1,100 C.I.A files and 1.2 million Army counterintelligence files that were not declassified until after the group issued its final report in 2007. “Hitler’s Shadow” adds a further dimension to a separate Justice Department history of American Nazi-hunting operations, which the government has refused to release since 2006 and which concluded that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for certain other former Nazis. Like earlier reports generated by the group, this one paints a grim portrait of bureaucracy, turf wars and communication gaps among intelligence agencies. It also details blatantly cynical self-interested tactical decisions by Allied governments and a general predisposition that some war crimes by former Nazis and their collaborators should be overlooked because the suspects could be transformed into valuable assets in the more urgent undercover campaigns against Soviet aggression. The American intelligence effort to infiltrate the East German Communist Party was dubbed “Project Happiness.” “Tracking and punishing war criminals were not high among the Army’s priorities in late 1946,” the report says. Instead, it concludes that the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps spied on suspect groups ranging from German Communists to politically active Jewish refugees in camps for displaced people and also “went to some lengths to protect certain persons from justice.” Among them was Rudolf Mildner, who was “responsible for the execution of hundreds, if not thousands, of suspected Polish resisters” and as a German police commander was in Denmark when Hitler ordered the country’s 8,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz. Mr. Mildner escaped from an internment camp in 1946, and the report raises questions about whether American intelligence agents’ “lenient treatment of Mildner contributed in some way to his ability to escape” and even suggests that he may have remained in American custody helping identify Communists and other subversives before settling in Argentina in 1949. The report cites other cases that parallel the experience of Klaus Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyon. He cooperated with American intelligence agents who helped him flee to Argentina. One of those cases involved Anton Mahler, who as a Gestapo anti-communist agent interrogated Hans Scholl, the German underground student leader who was beheaded in 1943. Mr. Mahler also served in Einsatzgruppe B in occupied Belarus, which was blamed for the execution of more than 45,000 people, mostly Jews. “This admission on his own U.S. military government questionnaire in 1947 was ignored or overlooked by U.S. and West German authorities,” the report said. American agents recommended that Mr. Mahler and other former Nazis be protected from politically inspired criminal proceedings in Germany. In 1952, the report says, the C.I.A. moved to protect Mykola Lebed, a Ukrainian nationalist leader, from a criminal investigation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He would work for American intelligence in Europe and the United States through the 1980s, despite being implicated in guerrilla units during the war that killed Jews and Poles and being described by an Army counterintelligence report as a “well-known sadist and collaborator of the Germans.” Read more at continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com

 

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Amplify’d from gawker.com

The Moment One Man Wishes He Wasn't So Curious

A man contemplates his dryness as a wall of water along the Mediterranean coast in Sidon, Lebanon, gets very close. Much of the Middle East was hit with crazy weather today. Image via AP

Send an email to Jeff Neumann, the author of this post, at jeff@gawker.com. Read more at gawker.com

 

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Amplify’d from news.yahoo.com

Sudan to investigate video of woman being flogged

By MOHAMED OSMAN, Associated Press Mohamed Osman, Associated Press

KHARTOUM, Sudan – Sudan's judiciary opened an investigation into a video of a woman being flogged that has been widely circulated on the Internet, the state news agency reported Sunday.

The video shows a woman in a voluminous cloak on her knees screaming and pleading with blue-uniformed policemen, identified as Sudanese, who take turns whipping her across the head and feet.

There is no way to verify the identity of the woman or the location of the event shown on the two minute video.

"The investigation was started immediately after the images of the young woman, being punished under Articles 154 and 155 of the 1991 Sudanese penal code, appeared on the Internet," the judiciary said in a statement.

The statement said the investigation would look into whether the punishment was implemented improperly.

Article 154 and 155 of the Sudanese penal code mandates flogging up to 100 lashes as a punishment for adultery or running a brothel, as well as up to five years in prison.

In 2009, Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein was sentenced to 40 lashes under the country's controversial indecency law for appearing in public wearing trousers.

Under a storm of international criticism for the sentence, Hussein was eventually released with just a fine.

Sudan's government implements a conservative version of Islamic law in the north, and "public order" police enforce the laws, banning alcohol, breaking up parties and scolding men and women who mingle in public. Read more at news.yahoo.com

 

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Amplify’d from www.newsmax.com

'I'm Not a Witch' Picked as Top Quote of Year

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A Yale librarian says Christine O'Donnell's TV ad declaring "I'm not a witch" during her unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign has topped this year's best quotes.

Fred Shapiro, associate librarian at Yale Law School, released his fifth annual list of the most notable quotations of the year. In the ad, O'Donnell was responding to reports of her revelations that she had dabbled in witchcraft years ago.

The quote by O'Donnell, a tea party favorite running in Delaware, tied for first place with "I'd like my life back," the lament made in May by BP's CEO Tony Hayward after the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

The original Yale Book of Quotations was published in 2006. Since then, Shapiro has released an annual list of the top 10 quotes. Read more at www.newsmax.com

 

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Israel Will Not Share Jerusalem, Netanyahu Says

Amplify’d from www.foxnews.com

Israel Will Not Share Jerusalem, Netanyahu Says

Dec. 8: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talks during a meeting of local council heads in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, Israel.

JERUSALEM –  Israel's leader on Sunday dismissed a call from a key government partner to share the holy city of Jerusalem with the Palestinians, a reminder of the obstacles facing already troubled peacemaking efforts. Conflicting claims to east Jerusalem lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The dispute over the area, home to sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites, has derailed past peace talks and spilled into violence. Palestinians claim the sector as the capital of their future state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reaffirmation of his intention to hold on to east Jerusalem drew criticism from the Palestinians and was likely to increase friction with the Americans. The White House Mideast envoy is scheduled to arrive this week in another attempt to push peace efforts forward. Netanyahu's defense minister, Ehud Barak of the centrist Labor Party, called for sharing Jerusalem with the Palestinians. But a government official said Barak's idea does not reflect the government's view. The Palestinians want to establish their future state in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel later annexed east Jerusalem in a move that is not recognized by the international community.

Israel's internal diplomatic flare-up came just days after the U.S. dropped its effort to persuade Israel to reinstate a moratorium on new building states in the West Bank as a way of restarting peace talks. Instead, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said indirect talks would resume, while insisting that the two sides must now deal with core issues. Those include the status of Jerusalem, as well as borders, settlements and refugees. Palestinians blasted Israel's rejection of their claim to east Jerusalem. "Mr. Netanyahu is distancing himself not from Barak, he is distancing himself from international consensus, he's distancing himself from international resolutions and distancing himself from international law," said Palestinian spokesman Husam Zomlot. "And most importantly, he's distancing himself from any possible negotiated settlement based on the two-state solution." Jordanian Foreign Minister Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh on Sunday urged the U.S. to come up with a new formula to push the process forward. Interviewed on ABC-TV, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said the U.S. might have to express its own ideas. "It may be unavoidable, actually, for the United States acting as a broker at some point to come in with bridging proposals so we make this happen," he said. Since Netanyahu came to power nearly two years ago, he has grudgingly accepted the principle of a Palestinian state next to Israel. He has carefully refrained from getting into specifics about the core issues, however, saying these must be negotiated. Clinton expressed frustration with the Israeli-Palestinian impasse over the weekend, though she did not suggest a new way forward. She spoke at a forum in Washington. Addressing the same gathering, Barak said the holy city will have to be shared as part of a future peace deal. An Israeli official told The Associated Press that Barak was expressing a personal opinion, not the government's position. "Those remarks were not coordinated with the prime minister," the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because Netanyahu has not responded publicly to Barak's remarks or to Clinton's speech. Since Netanyahu came to power nearly two years ago, Israelis and Palestinians have not been close to tackling major issues. Netanyahu's more moderate predecessor offered a Palestinian state with joint control of key Jerusalem holy sites among other features, but the Palestinians did not accept it. In her speech Friday, Clinton urged both sides to lay out their positions on these core issues "without delay and with real specificity." She pointedly called for compromise on the contested holy city, observing that "there will surely be no peace without an agreement" on Jerusalem — "the most sensitive of all the issues." U.S.-led negotiations broke down after just three weeks and Israel refused to renew a 10-month moratorium on new settlement housing. Palestinians said they would not return to the talks unless there was a total freeze in West Bank and east Jerusalem construction. Israel countered that such a condition had never been made before, and the issue should be part of the negotiations. Washington's special envoy to the Mideast, George Mitchell, is expected to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders this week. Read more at www.foxnews.com

 

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Benedict XVI calls for patience in preparation for Christ's coming

Amplify’d from www.catholicnewsagency.com

Benedict XVI calls for patience in preparation for Christ's coming

Father and son in St. Peter's Square during the Dec. 12 Angelus

Rome, Italy, Dec 12, 2010 / 01:22 pm (CNA).- Advent calls man to strengthen the virtue of patience as he relies on Scripture to "make firm" his heart for the coming of the Lord, said the Pope at Sunday's Angelus.

More than 2,000 children were part of the large crowd present to pray the Angelus with the Pope at noon on Dec. 12. They had come especially to have Benedict XVI bless the baby Jesus statues from their family nativity scenes.

The Pontiff greeted them in particular as they waved handkerchiefs up towards his window and many cheered from their strollers or atop the shoulders of parents.

The Pope focused his message before the prayer on patience, as spoken of in the day's reading from the Letter of St. James.

"Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord," the reading began.

This virtue is more important than ever today in a world in which it is "less popular," where change and the capacity to adapt to change are exalted, said the Pope.

"Without taking anything from these aspects, which are also qualities of man," he taught, "Advent calls us to strengthen that interior persistence, that resistence of the soul that permits us to not despair ... but rather to wait for it, to prepare the coming with hard-working confidence."

St. James spoke of the patience of farmers who await the autumn and spring rains and called people to "make firm" their hearts for the coming of the Lord.

This comparison to farmers is a "very expressive" one, said the Pope, as the farmer is "the model of a mentality that unites faith and reason equally." He does his work using his knowledge of the laws of nature but also entrusts the fundamental elements of his work to God's providence.

"Patience and constancy are precisely the synthesis between human commitment to and reliance on God," said the Pope.

And, Scripture, he said, is unfailing in making man's heart firm because "while everything passes and changes, the Word of the Lord does not."

He called Scripture a "compass" and an "anchor" that can be used to regain orientation when one feels lost or uncertain.

Prophets have found joy and strength in the Word, announcing "the true hope, that which does not disappoint because it is founded on the faithfulness of God." Men often find themselves on "mistaken paths" when choosing to seek out their own paths to happiness, he said.

"Every Christian," concluded the Pope, "by virtue of Baptism, has received the prophetic dignity: may every person rediscover and feed it, with regular listening to the divine Word."

After the Angelus, Benedict XVI asked the children to say a prayer for him and his intentions as they place the baby Jesus in the manger or grotto this Christmas.

Related articles: Sunday's Angelus Pope calls Catholics to prayer and sacrifice during Lent An Advent prayer: ‘Marana tha,’ ‘Lord, come!’ Prayer of Consecration to the Sacred Heart by Pope Leo XIII Read more at www.catholicnewsagency.com

 

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Mayor vetoes homosexual ordinance

Amplify’d from www.onenewsnow.com

Mayor vetoes homosexual ordinance

Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow

A Pennsylvania mayor has said no to special rights for homosexuals.

On a 4-3 vote, the Borough of Hatboro adopted the ordinance on November 22. But according to Diane Gramley of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, that was not the final word.   "On December 6, the mayor took the brave step and vetoed that ordinance, saying that he had listened to the constituents and that the majority who had contacted him did not believe the ordinance was necessary," she explains. "He also noted that he believed such an ordinance should come from the state level and not be a local ordinance."   The family advocate says there will be an attempt to override the veto. "The council voted on [December 6] to have a special meeting on [December 14] to have an override vote," she states.   Gramley believes the key to retaining the veto is for residents, in large numbers, to contact their elected representatives, asking that the ordinance be killed. Read more at www.onenewsnow.com

 

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Watch the Metrodome Collapse from the Inside

URL:  http://gawker.com/5712559/watch-the-metrodome-collapse-...

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Justice Breyer on 2nd Amendment: If You Live in D.C. and Like Shooting Guns “Go to Maryland” (Video)

Amplify’d from www.hapblog.com

Justice Breyer on 2nd Amendment: If You Live in D.C. and Like Shooting Guns “Go to Maryland” (Video)

Justice Breyer on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace presses him here on exactly what the 2nd amendment says: 'It certainly didn't provide for a ban on all handguns as they have here in Washington D.C."...

via gatewaypundit Stephen Breyer was appointed by Bill Clinton in the 1990s, he is the most liberal on the Supreme Court next to Clinton's other Supreme Court nominee- Darth Vader Ginsburg. Thanks a lot Bill... Read more at www.hapblog.com

 

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U.N. Agrees on a Process to Design the Global Taxing Scheme

Amplify’d from texasgopvote.com

U.N. Agrees on a Process to Design the Global Taxing Scheme

By Cathie Adams

Cathie Adams reporting from Cancun, MX -- Cancun, Mexico’s record-setting low temperature during the “global warming” conference did not cool the “hot air” at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, Conference of the Parties 16.

At 5:18 a.m. on Saturday, December 11, Mexican President Felipe Calderón proclaimed the meeting a success and announced next year’s confab in Durban, South Africa. That meeting will be another step on their way to a “legally-binding” document they hope to produce in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2012, a.k.a. Rio+20 signifying 20 years since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio.

Key elements of the Cancun Agreement include:

President Obama’s commitment in Copenhagen last year to reduce greenhouse gases by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 is now officially recognized by the U.N. The U.S. is to create a low-carbon development plan and strategy, and assess how they plan to meet them, including through market mechanisms, then to report their inventories annually to the U.N. It is incredulous for the U.N. to demand that a sovereign nation pass laws to fit the U.N.’s political agenda, but that is essentially what they did! In light of the November 2nd elections, “cap & trade/tax” legislation that would destroy the American economy while having a negligible impact on the environment, is unlikely to pass. But we must remain vigilant concerning the president’s abuse of Executive Orders and the Environmental Protection Agency to implement the unscientific radical environmental agenda.

Poor countries’ actions to reduce emissions will also be officially recognized by the U.N. and a registry will be set up to record and match developing country mitigation actions to finance and technology support from by rich countries. Poor countries must publish progress reports every two years.

Parties meeting under the Kyoto Protocol (the U.S. is not a party) must continue negotiations with the aim of completing their work and ensuring there is no gap between the first and second commitment periods of the treaty. The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanisms were strengthened to drive more major investments and technologies to the developing world.

A set of new initiatives and institutions were launched to deploy money and technology for poor countries to plan and build their own sustainable futures.

Added to the Cancun Agreement are the $30 billion Fast Start Fund by 2012 and the $100 billion annual Green Fund by 2020 that President Obama committed to last year in Copenhagen.

A process was established to design the $100 billion Green Climate Fund under the Conference of the Parties, with a board that equally represents rich and poor countries. The design will probably be for a tax on international shipping and aviation.

A new "Cancún Adaptation Framework" was established to plan and implement adaptation projects in poor countries through increased financial and technical support from rich countries. It includes a process for continuing work on loss and damage (a call for more money for weather-related damages that poor countries believe are caused by the industrialized world’s greenhouse gas emissions).

Rich countries will give more money and technological gifts to poor countries to prevent deforestation and forest degradation.

A Technology Executive Committee and Climate Technology Centre and Network was created to increase money and technology for adaptation and mitigation of greenhouse gases.

Wealth redistribution and taxing authority are clear objectives in each of these elements. The U.N. already has three branches of government: executive (un-elected bureaucrats), legislative (delegation meetings) and judicial (the International Criminal Court). But unlike a government, it lacks the authority to TAX. The process established to design the $100 billion annual Green Fund under the Conference of the Parties could grant them that authority.

On November 2nd, Americans voted against this economic transformational agenda, but we must remain eternally vigilant to stand for agreements based on science, rather than on a global political agenda. The U.N. clearly intends next year’s meeting in Durban, South Africa, to get them closer to their ultimate goal for a U.N. taxing scheme and a legally-binding political agreement in Rio in 2012.

Americans can preempt this scheme by making national sovereignty under the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law major issues during the 2012 presidential campaigns, and by electing a new president in 2012. Read more at texasgopvote.com

 

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Defense Claims Fairfield Priest Abused Perlitz

Amplify’d from fairfieldmirror.com

Defense Claims Fairfield Priest Abused Perlitz

Annie Rooney

Less than two weeks before Douglas Perlitz is scheduled to be sentenced, his defense filed a memorandum stating he is a victim in the charges against him for illicit sexual conduct in Haiti. The “Defendants’ Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing” cited that the deep relationship with Fairfield mentor and priest is one of the leading factors that lead to Perlitz’s illegal behaviors in Haiti.

In the 32-page document filed to the District Court of Connecticut, the defense describes “a priest” having a significant role in Perlitz’s emotionally unstable status in the “Personal Background” section.

The document does not name Rev. Paul Carrier, S.J., who was Perlitz’s mentor and the former Fairfield University director of campus ministry and community service, it only describes a “ priest” who began a long-lasting relationship with Perlitz soon after his first days as an undergraduate at Fairfield University. The document also specifies that this priest played a key role in all of Perlitz’s work in Haiti.

The defense states that this priest accompanied Perlitz on his first trip to Haiti as part of a campus group trip and remained an authority figure for the duration of his time at Fairfield. Recorded evidence shows that Paul Carrier is the priest in this relationship who played a key role in Perlitz’s emotionally unstable status.

Perlitz states that the relationship with the priest “ultimately took on a dark aspect, both physically and spiritually, that had a significant and long-lasting impact on him.” The defense claims that this relationship does not serve as an excuse but rather an explanation which “eventually led him to ‘cross the line’ as he puts it, and engage in sexual misconduct,” according to the document.

The document continues to describe the relationship between this priest and Perlitz as a significant factor in Perlitz’s illegal actions. The relationship revolved around an abuse of power and a violation of trust that Perlitz, in return, projected on the innocent Haitian boys. “It is a sad and all-too-true fact that abusive behavior has a painful circularity to it,” the document states.

Perlitz, also a 1996 graduate of Boston College with a Masters degree in Theology, struggled with his sexual identity and a lack of intimacy. His solution to this came in the form of his work with the boys in Haiti. The defense described the nature of his work as a solution that “presented both opportunity and temptation.”

After suppressing the need for so long, Perlitz describes in the document how he “crossed the line one night.” This began the repetitive abusive behavior that detached Perlitz from the Jesuit values that had once defined his life.

Finally, the document states, “we submit that the proper sentence must recognize both the terrible suffering of the victims in this case, and the exemplary manner in which Doug Perlitz has lived his life.” Perlitz will be sentenced on December 21, 2010 at the New Haven courthouse following a judge’s refusal to grant the defense an extension.

To Download The Entire Motion Click Here.

Similar Posts: Read more at fairfieldmirror.com

Perlitz Defense Denied Delay in Sentencing Read more at fairfieldmirror.com

Perlitz: New Documents To Be Produced Read more at fairfieldmirror.com

Government files pretrial motion to detain Perlitz Read more at fairfieldmirror.com

Fairfield alum indicted for sexual abuse in Haiti Read more at fairfieldmirror.com

Fairfield alum indicted for child abuse: Former commencement speaker Doug Perlitz ‘92 led mission in Haiti Read more at fairfieldmirror.com

 

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They are 82-year-old Jesuit Rev. Bill Bichsel of Tacoma, 60-year-old Jesuit Rev. Stephen Kelly, of Oakland, Calif., 84-year-old Sister Anne Montgomery of Redwood City, Calif., 67-year-old retired teacher Susan Crane of Baltimore, and 60-year-old social worker Lynne Greenwald of Bremerton.

Amplify’d from seattletimes.nwsource.com

Anti-nuclear weapon protesters convicted in Tacoma

A federal jury in Tacoma has convicted five anti-war activists who cut fences at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in November 2009 to protest Trident submarine nuclear weapons.

The Associated Press

TACOMA, Wash. — A federal jury in Tacoma has convicted five anti-war activists who cut fences at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in November 2009 to protest Trident submarine nuclear weapons. The U.S. attorney's office said the five were convicted Monday on all counts of conspiracy, trespass and destruction of government property. They are 82-year-old Jesuit Rev. Bill Bichsel of Tacoma, 60-year-old Jesuit Rev. Stephen Kelly, of Oakland, Calif., 84-year-old Sister Anne Montgomery of Redwood City, Calif., 67-year-old retired teacher Susan Crane of Baltimore, and 60-year-old social worker Lynne Greenwald of Bremerton. The News Tribune of Tacoma reports they could face up to 10 years in prison when they are sentenced March 28. Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com

 

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European Catholic sex abuse cases in 2010

Amplify’d from www.independent.com.mt

European Catholic sex abuse cases in 2010

A report into the sexual abuse of Dutch minors by Roman Catholic priests showed that The Netherlands ranked second only to Ireland in the known extent of the scandals rocking the Church in Europe. The following are some details of the major developments in the Roman Catholic Church scandals in Europe this year. Austria • 28 June: Pope Benedict rebukes Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn for accusing a senior Vatican official, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, of covering up sexual abuse cases. • 10 August: A newspaper reports that a record 100,000 Austrians are expected to leave the Catholic Church in 2010 because of the sexual abuse scandals rocking the Church in Europe. Belgium • 23 April: Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe resigns and goes into hiding after admitting he had sexually abused his own nephew for years. • 24 June: Police raid Church offices and the flat of Cardinal Godfried Danneels – who stepped down as Brussels archbishop in January – and confiscate files and computers from the panel probing abuse cases. The raid occurs during a meeting of the country’s bishops, who are held by the police for nine hours. The Vatican sharply criticises the Belgian authorities for the raids. • 8 September: Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who stepped down as Brussels archbishop in January, admits he made mistakes dealing with abuse cases. He was heavily criticised after a tape of him urging a victim to keep quiet was published. • 10 September: A Church commission reports that widespread child sexual abuse in the Belgian Church drove at least 13 victims to suicide. Of the 475 cases it recorded, two-thirds of the victims were male, with boys aged about 12 most vulnerable. United Kingdom: • 22 April: Bishops in England and Wales apologise for abuse cases worldwide, saying “terrible crimes” had been committed and the Church’s response had been mostly inadequate. The local Church had a series of scandals about a decade ago but had since introduced reforms. • 18 September: Pope Benedict makes one of his most fulsome apologies to abuse victims while on a state visit to the UK, expressing his deep sorrow to innocent victims of “these unspeakable crimes”. Germany • 2 February: The Jesuit order reports 25 cases of sexual abuse of pupils by priests at three boarding schools between 1975 and 1984, with most cases in Berlin. • 9 March: Pope Benedict’s priest brother Georg admits to administering corporal punishment to members of his boys choir in Regensburg but denies this was physical abuse. • 12 March: The Munich archdiocese says Pope Benedict, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and archbishop of the Bavarian city, approved therapy for a paedophile priest but did not know he was later transferred to parishes where he continued to sexually abuse minors. The US media report on the matter says the future pope must have known these details about the case. • 17 March: German Chancellor Angela Merkel demands “truth and clarity” about clerical sexual abuse but says any official inquiry should not be limited to the Catholic Church. • 12 April: A Church report says hundreds of minors were physically abused, and some were sexually abused, at Ettal monastery school in Bavaria over several decades up until about 1990. • 24 June: Former Augsburg Bishop Walter Mixa gives up his fight to be reinstated after resigning in April amid allegations of physical abuse of minors, homosexual advances to seminarians and misusing Church funds. Mixa accuses fellow bishops of tricking the Vatican into accepting his initial resignation. • 31 August: The German Church unveils new, tougher guidelines on dealing with the sexual abuse of minors, obliging Church authorities to report suspected cases to police. • 23 September: Catholic bishops agree to compensate victims of clerical sexual abuse. • 3 December: The Munich archdiocese inquiry reports that at least 159 priests had been involved in or suspected of sexual abuse cases between 1945 and 2009 and 26 had been tried and found guilty. It says there were probably more cases that had been hushed up or the files which had been destroyed. Ireland • 16 February: Pope Benedict holds crisis talks with 24 Irish bishops at the Vatican after two government-commissioned reports in 2009 exposed widespread physical and sexual abuse of minors in Church-run institutions and the systematic cover-up of abuse by priests by the local hierarchy. • 20 March: In rare letter to Ireland’s Catholics, the Pope tells abuse victims he felt “shame and remorse” over the scandals and announces an official Vatican probe of Irish dioceses, seminaries and religious orders. • 24 March: Pope Benedict accepts the resignation of Bishop John Magee of Cloyne, who was accused of mishandling reports of sexual abuse in his diocese. He later accepts the resignation of two other Irish bishops. • 31 May: The Vatican names two cardinals and three archbishops from England, the United States and Canada to lead its inquiry into sexual abuse by clergy in Ireland. Italy • 18 February: Italy has had dozens of cases of clerical sexual abuse involving about 80 priests over the past decade, a priest who runs an anti-paedophilia organisation tells Vatican Radio. Malta: • 18 April: Pope Benedict prays and cries with eight Maltese sexual abuse victims during his first meeting with victims in Europe. Netherlands • 2 March: Dozens of Dutch Catholics have come forward to report sexual abuse by priests, encouraged by media reports of abuse by priests from the Salesian order decades ago. • 9 March: The Dutch Church launched an independent commission to study reports of alleged sexual abuse by priests. • 16 April: The Rotterdam diocese reported a Dutch priest to the police for alleged sexual abuse and barred him from the ministry, making him the fourth to be suspended this year. • 26 November: The Salesian order of priests admitted paying €16,000 in hush money in 2003 to a victim of sexual abuse by seven priests between 1948 and 1953. • 9 December: A Church-commissioned report said that 1,975 people had declared themselves victims of sexual and physical abuse while minors in the care of the Dutch Church and criticised the Church for not responding to the scandals more promptly. Norway • 9 April: The Church in Norway reported four cases of the sexual abuse of minors by priests and revealed that a bishop who resigned in 2009 did so after abusing an altar boy. Switzerland: • 2 June: Swiss bishops said they had received reports between January and May of 72 perpetrators abusing 104 victims, up from 14 perpetrators and 15 victims in 2009. Read more at www.independent.com.mt

 

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