via Reuters:
VATICAN CITY(Reuters) - Vatican financial investigators suspect a department of the Holy See which oversees real estate and investments was used in the past for possible money laundering, insider trading and market manipulation, according to a report seen by Reuters. The information in the confidential document, which covers the period from 2000 to 2011, has been passed on to Italian and Swiss investigators for their checks because some activity tied to the accounts allegedly took place in these countries, a senior Vatican source said.
Showing posts with label organized crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organized crime. Show all posts
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Norway Sues Catholic Church for 'Fraud'
via Naharnet.com:
Norway is claiming 4.6 million euros ($5.1 million) compensation from the Catholic church for exaggerating membership numbers to obtain more state aid, the Oslo diocese said Monday. The diocese, its bishop and the financial officer are suspected of fraudulently registering thousands of people on its membership lists between 2010 and 2014, which enabled it to obtain 50 million kroner (more than $6.0 million or 5.8 million euros) in state subsidies. Norway's church denies engaging in fraud but has admitted its past methods were "unsatisfactory."
In Norway, a predominantly Protestant country, the state provides subsidies to organized religions, the size of which is determined by the number of members. The Dagbladet daily, which first broke the story, said the diocese had received a letter from the administration on Monday calling for the 40.6 million krone overpayment to be refunded. A spokeswoman for the diocese, Lisa Wade, confirmed the contents of the letter. She told AFP that the church would not be paying the sum and would take the matter up with the culture ministry. We have a very different understanding of the law," she said. "It's complex. It's not like it's a clear-cut case."
Norway's Roman Catholic minority had 140,000 registered members in 2014, more than double the number in 2010.
To explain the jump, the Church has claimed it benefited from a large wave of Catholic immigrants, notably Poles, who practiced their religion but did not register with the Church, which in turn cost the Church more but did not result in increased state subsidies.
Their names have now been removed from the list. More than 21,000 other cases have yet to be clarified. Police raided the Catholic Church's offices on February 26 on suspicions of "aggravated fraud."
Norway is claiming 4.6 million euros ($5.1 million) compensation from the Catholic church for exaggerating membership numbers to obtain more state aid, the Oslo diocese said Monday. The diocese, its bishop and the financial officer are suspected of fraudulently registering thousands of people on its membership lists between 2010 and 2014, which enabled it to obtain 50 million kroner (more than $6.0 million or 5.8 million euros) in state subsidies. Norway's church denies engaging in fraud but has admitted its past methods were "unsatisfactory."
In Norway, a predominantly Protestant country, the state provides subsidies to organized religions, the size of which is determined by the number of members. The Dagbladet daily, which first broke the story, said the diocese had received a letter from the administration on Monday calling for the 40.6 million krone overpayment to be refunded. A spokeswoman for the diocese, Lisa Wade, confirmed the contents of the letter. She told AFP that the church would not be paying the sum and would take the matter up with the culture ministry. We have a very different understanding of the law," she said. "It's complex. It's not like it's a clear-cut case."
Norway's Roman Catholic minority had 140,000 registered members in 2014, more than double the number in 2010.
To explain the jump, the Church has claimed it benefited from a large wave of Catholic immigrants, notably Poles, who practiced their religion but did not register with the Church, which in turn cost the Church more but did not result in increased state subsidies.
Their names have now been removed from the list. More than 21,000 other cases have yet to be clarified. Police raided the Catholic Church's offices on February 26 on suspicions of "aggravated fraud."
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Adviser to Queen was founder of paedophile support group to keep offenders out of jail
via The Daily Mail:
One of Britain’s most senior judges actively campaigned to support a vile paedophile group that tried to legalise sex with children, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. Lord Justice Fulford, named last year as an adviser to the Queen, was a key backer of the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) which police suspect of abusing children on an ‘industrial scale’.
An investigation by the Mail on Sunday has discovered that Fulford was a founder member of a campaign to defend PIE while it was openly calling for the age of consent to be lowered to just four.
It can also be revealed that the Appeal Court judge and Privy Counsellor:
Planned demonstrations outside courts where defendants – described by prosecutors as ‘sick’ and a ‘force for evil’ – were on trial.
Wrote an article claiming PIE, now under investigation in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal, was merely a way for paedophiles to ‘make friends and offer each other mutual support’.
Sought help with the campaign from future Labour Minister Patricia Hewitt, then in charge of a controversial civil rights group.
Attended meetings to discuss tactics with PIE chairman Tom O’Carroll, who has since been jailed for possessing thousands of pictures of naked children.
Was praised by the paedophile group for coming to its defence.
Fulford was a founder member of an organisation called Conspiracy Against Public Morals set up to defend PIE leaders facing criminal charges.
It later published a sickening pamphlet claiming that children would be freed from the oppression of the state and their parents if they were allowed to have sex with adults.
The 60-page document, unearthed by The Mail on Sunday, is adorned with disturbing child-like pictures and sexual cartoons.
At the time the organisation went under a slightly different name but had the same postal address as Fulford’s group had.
When asked last night about his involvement in the group, Fulford said: ‘I have no memory of having been involved with its foundation or the detail of the work of this campaign.’
One of Britain’s most senior judges actively campaigned to support a vile paedophile group that tried to legalise sex with children, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. Lord Justice Fulford, named last year as an adviser to the Queen, was a key backer of the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) which police suspect of abusing children on an ‘industrial scale’.
An investigation by the Mail on Sunday has discovered that Fulford was a founder member of a campaign to defend PIE while it was openly calling for the age of consent to be lowered to just four.
It can also be revealed that the Appeal Court judge and Privy Counsellor:
Planned demonstrations outside courts where defendants – described by prosecutors as ‘sick’ and a ‘force for evil’ – were on trial.
Wrote an article claiming PIE, now under investigation in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal, was merely a way for paedophiles to ‘make friends and offer each other mutual support’.
Sought help with the campaign from future Labour Minister Patricia Hewitt, then in charge of a controversial civil rights group.
Attended meetings to discuss tactics with PIE chairman Tom O’Carroll, who has since been jailed for possessing thousands of pictures of naked children.
Was praised by the paedophile group for coming to its defence.
Fulford was a founder member of an organisation called Conspiracy Against Public Morals set up to defend PIE leaders facing criminal charges.
It later published a sickening pamphlet claiming that children would be freed from the oppression of the state and their parents if they were allowed to have sex with adults.
The 60-page document, unearthed by The Mail on Sunday, is adorned with disturbing child-like pictures and sexual cartoons.
At the time the organisation went under a slightly different name but had the same postal address as Fulford’s group had.
When asked last night about his involvement in the group, Fulford said: ‘I have no memory of having been involved with its foundation or the detail of the work of this campaign.’
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Decapitated body of Brazilian journalist investigating child prostitution ring found
via The Independent:
The decapitated body of a missing blogger who was investigating a child prostitution ring has been found by police in Brazil. Evany José Metzker's body was found outside the town of Padre Paraíso, in the northeast of Brazil's southeastern Minas Gerais state. According to local media reports he had been stripped half-naked and his hands tied behind his back. His head was found 100 metres from his body. Metzger, who maintained a blog named 'Coruja do Vale' (The Owl of the Valley), was reportedly investigating a child prostitution ring operating in the area. Media rights groups, including Reporters Without Borders as well as the Minas Gerais Union of Professional Journalists, called on the Brazilian authorities to mount a "thorough" investigation into Metzker's murder...Metzger's wife, Hilma Chaves Silva Borges, was quoted by The Committee to Protect Journalists as saying that Metzker was working in a dangerous part of the country. "There are lots of murders here. I think that the motive, given the barbarity of his murder, was because he hit on something," she was quoted as saying. Brazil is the third most dangerous country for journalists in Latin America, after Mexico and Colombia, according to Reporters Without Borders. In his blog Metzger often reported on corrupt officials and politicians.
The decapitated body of a missing blogger who was investigating a child prostitution ring has been found by police in Brazil. Evany José Metzker's body was found outside the town of Padre Paraíso, in the northeast of Brazil's southeastern Minas Gerais state. According to local media reports he had been stripped half-naked and his hands tied behind his back. His head was found 100 metres from his body. Metzger, who maintained a blog named 'Coruja do Vale' (The Owl of the Valley), was reportedly investigating a child prostitution ring operating in the area. Media rights groups, including Reporters Without Borders as well as the Minas Gerais Union of Professional Journalists, called on the Brazilian authorities to mount a "thorough" investigation into Metzker's murder...Metzger's wife, Hilma Chaves Silva Borges, was quoted by The Committee to Protect Journalists as saying that Metzker was working in a dangerous part of the country. "There are lots of murders here. I think that the motive, given the barbarity of his murder, was because he hit on something," she was quoted as saying. Brazil is the third most dangerous country for journalists in Latin America, after Mexico and Colombia, according to Reporters Without Borders. In his blog Metzger often reported on corrupt officials and politicians.
Friday, May 8, 2015
California Trio Accused of Running Rogue Masonic Police Force
source: BBC, via Cryptogon:
Three people have been charged in California with impersonating law enforcement officers after claiming to operate a police department with jurisdiction in 33 states. They said they belonged to a group called the Masonic Fraternal Police Department, which they claimed dated back to the Knights Templar. One of the trio is a junior aide to California’s attorney general. Uniforms, weapons and vehicles were found in premises linked to the group. Brandon Kiel – an aide to state Attorney General Kamala Harris – David Henry and Tonette Hayes were arrested on 30 April and released later that day.
“When asked what is the difference between the Masonic Fraternal Police Department and other Police Departments the answer is simple for us. We were here first!” the group’s website page reads. “We are born into this Organization, our bloodlines go deeper than an application.” Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokeswoman Nicole Nishida told the Associated Press news agency that there were no indications that the group had carried out any law enforcement activities.
Three people have been charged in California with impersonating law enforcement officers after claiming to operate a police department with jurisdiction in 33 states. They said they belonged to a group called the Masonic Fraternal Police Department, which they claimed dated back to the Knights Templar. One of the trio is a junior aide to California’s attorney general. Uniforms, weapons and vehicles were found in premises linked to the group. Brandon Kiel – an aide to state Attorney General Kamala Harris – David Henry and Tonette Hayes were arrested on 30 April and released later that day.
“When asked what is the difference between the Masonic Fraternal Police Department and other Police Departments the answer is simple for us. We were here first!” the group’s website page reads. “We are born into this Organization, our bloodlines go deeper than an application.” Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokeswoman Nicole Nishida told the Associated Press news agency that there were no indications that the group had carried out any law enforcement activities.
Priest Who Ran Meth Ring Sentenced to 5 Years
source: NBC, via Cryptogon:
A suspended Connecticut Roman Catholic priest who authorities say dealt pounds of methamphetamine and bought a sex shop intending to launder his drug money will spend another three years in prison after being sentenced on Thursday. Around 75 people were in court on Thursday to support Monsignor Kevin Wallin, 63, dubbed "Monsignor Meth" in some media reports, and the judge called it an "unprecedented" turnout for a drug trafficking sentencing. Wallin, who has already served 28 months in jail, was sentenced to five years and five months in prison. With time served, Wallin will be in prison for three more years, followed by five years of supervised release. "My shame remains intense. ... 'I'm sorry' does not convey the remorse I feel," Wallin said on Thursday. "The day I was arrested was a very good day."
In March, Monsignor Kevin Wallin's public defender filed a sentencing request for leniency in federal court in Hartford, citing Wallin's three decades of charitable service as well as more than 80 letters of support, including one from the late New York Cardinal Edward Egan. "I cannot ignore your decision to infect your community with methamphetamine," Judge Alfred Covello said. In addition to the dozens of supporters, 90 letters supporting wallin were also submitted. Wallin pleaded guilty in 2013 to a methamphetamine conspiracy charge and agreed to a potential prison sentence of 10 to 11 years, but was asking for a sentence of no more than four years in prison, followed by a year of home confinement, 500 hours of community service and drug treatment.
"The record evidence demonstrates that Kevin Wallin is an extraordinary man whose remarkable character and acts have touched thousands of people," Wallin's public defender, Kelly Barrett, wrote in the sentencing request in March. "Kevin tragically became a methamphetamine addict. He fell from grace and did criminal wrong, but has confessed his crimes and has been working hard to atone for them." Barrett wrote that Wallin's numerous accomplishments include serving as pastor of St. Peter's Parish in Danbury and the Cathedral Parish in Bridgeport, volunteering with a variety of community groups, helping found an AIDS ministry program, leading an inner city charity group, serving on the Danbury Cultural Commission and serving on the board of directors of Sacred Heart University.
Egan, who died in March, was bishop of the Diocese of Bridgeport from 1988 to 2000 and praised Wallin in a letter to the court. "He was outstanding in the fulfillment of his assignments and in his concern for people in need," Egan wrote. "Father Wallin was held in highest regard as a dedicated clergyman and an outstanding citizen as well." Federal prosecutors said Wallin committed serious crimes and most people convicted of conspiring to sell meth are sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.
Federal investigators said Wallin had associates in California send him methamphetamine beginning in late 2008 or early 2009. By 2011, Wallin's partners were sending him one to three pounds of meth a month and Wallin was running the drug operation out of his apartment in Waterbury, investigators said. Wallin also bought the "Land of Oz & Dorothy's Place" adult video and sex toy shop in North Haven and apparently intended to launder drug proceeds that totaled in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, federal agents said in court documents.
Wallin's two accomplices in California — Chad McCluskey of San Clemente and Kristen Laschober of Laguna Niguel — were both sentenced last year to five years in prison. Two men who helped Wallin sell drugs in Connecticut also were convicted. Kenneth Devries, of Waterbury, was sentenced to more than two years in prison and Michael Nelson of Manchester awaits sentencing. Brian Wallace, a spokesman for the Diocese of Bridgeport, previously said Wallin is still a priest, but remains suspended from public ministry. "We're asking for prayers for him, understanding and recognizing that many people ... suffer from addiction and they lose control of their lives," Wallace said. "It's time for him to try to rebuild his life."
A suspended Connecticut Roman Catholic priest who authorities say dealt pounds of methamphetamine and bought a sex shop intending to launder his drug money will spend another three years in prison after being sentenced on Thursday. Around 75 people were in court on Thursday to support Monsignor Kevin Wallin, 63, dubbed "Monsignor Meth" in some media reports, and the judge called it an "unprecedented" turnout for a drug trafficking sentencing. Wallin, who has already served 28 months in jail, was sentenced to five years and five months in prison. With time served, Wallin will be in prison for three more years, followed by five years of supervised release. "My shame remains intense. ... 'I'm sorry' does not convey the remorse I feel," Wallin said on Thursday. "The day I was arrested was a very good day."
In March, Monsignor Kevin Wallin's public defender filed a sentencing request for leniency in federal court in Hartford, citing Wallin's three decades of charitable service as well as more than 80 letters of support, including one from the late New York Cardinal Edward Egan. "I cannot ignore your decision to infect your community with methamphetamine," Judge Alfred Covello said. In addition to the dozens of supporters, 90 letters supporting wallin were also submitted. Wallin pleaded guilty in 2013 to a methamphetamine conspiracy charge and agreed to a potential prison sentence of 10 to 11 years, but was asking for a sentence of no more than four years in prison, followed by a year of home confinement, 500 hours of community service and drug treatment.
"The record evidence demonstrates that Kevin Wallin is an extraordinary man whose remarkable character and acts have touched thousands of people," Wallin's public defender, Kelly Barrett, wrote in the sentencing request in March. "Kevin tragically became a methamphetamine addict. He fell from grace and did criminal wrong, but has confessed his crimes and has been working hard to atone for them." Barrett wrote that Wallin's numerous accomplishments include serving as pastor of St. Peter's Parish in Danbury and the Cathedral Parish in Bridgeport, volunteering with a variety of community groups, helping found an AIDS ministry program, leading an inner city charity group, serving on the Danbury Cultural Commission and serving on the board of directors of Sacred Heart University.
Egan, who died in March, was bishop of the Diocese of Bridgeport from 1988 to 2000 and praised Wallin in a letter to the court. "He was outstanding in the fulfillment of his assignments and in his concern for people in need," Egan wrote. "Father Wallin was held in highest regard as a dedicated clergyman and an outstanding citizen as well." Federal prosecutors said Wallin committed serious crimes and most people convicted of conspiring to sell meth are sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.
Federal investigators said Wallin had associates in California send him methamphetamine beginning in late 2008 or early 2009. By 2011, Wallin's partners were sending him one to three pounds of meth a month and Wallin was running the drug operation out of his apartment in Waterbury, investigators said. Wallin also bought the "Land of Oz & Dorothy's Place" adult video and sex toy shop in North Haven and apparently intended to launder drug proceeds that totaled in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, federal agents said in court documents.
Wallin's two accomplices in California — Chad McCluskey of San Clemente and Kristen Laschober of Laguna Niguel — were both sentenced last year to five years in prison. Two men who helped Wallin sell drugs in Connecticut also were convicted. Kenneth Devries, of Waterbury, was sentenced to more than two years in prison and Michael Nelson of Manchester awaits sentencing. Brian Wallace, a spokesman for the Diocese of Bridgeport, previously said Wallin is still a priest, but remains suspended from public ministry. "We're asking for prayers for him, understanding and recognizing that many people ... suffer from addiction and they lose control of their lives," Wallace said. "It's time for him to try to rebuild his life."
Monday, April 6, 2015
Colombian Report on US Military’s Child Rapes Not Newsworthy to US News Outlets
via Globalresearch.ca
:
An 800-page independent report commissioned by the US-friendly Colombian government and the radical left rebel group FARC found that US military soldiers and contractors had sexually abused at least 54 children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007 and, in all cases, the rapists were never punished–either in Colombia or stateside–due to American military personnel being immune from prosecution under diplomatic immunity agreements between the two countries.
The report was part of a broader historical analysis meant to establish the “causes and violence aggravators” of the 50-year-long conflict between the government and rebels that’s presently being negotiated to an end. AsColombia Reports (3/23/15) would spell out:
Thus far, however, these explosive claims seem to have received zero coverage in the general US press, despite having been reported on Venezuela’s Telesur(3/23/15), the British tabloidDaily Mail (3/24/15) and Russian RT (3/25/15).
But why? These aren’t fringe claims, nor can the government of American ally Colombia be dismissed as a peddler of Bolivarian propaganda. Indeed, the Miami Herald (9/3/09) documented the case of US Sgt. Michael Coen and contractor César Ruiz in 2009:
The US government has made little effort to investigate a US Army sergeant and a Mexican civil contractor implicated in Colombia in the raping of a 12-year-old girl in August 2007, according to an El Nuevo Herald investigation.
The suspects, Sgt. Michael Coen and contractor César Ruiz, were taken out of Colombia under diplomatic immunity, and do not face criminal charges in the United States in the rape in a room at Colombia’s Germán Olano Air Force Base in Melgar, 62 miles west of Bogotá.
So why no coverage? Certainly one of Washington’s stanchest Latin American allies co-authoring a blistering report about systemic US military child rape of a civilian population should be of note–if for no other reason than, as the report lays out, it undermined American military efforts to stop drug trafficking and fight leftist rebels:
Yet here we are, over 72 hours since the Colombian and foreign press first reported on the allegations, and there’s a virtual media blackout in America over the case. Nothing on CNN, nothing on MSNBC, nothing in the New York Times or Miami Herald. Nothing in Huffington Post. Nothing inFusion or Vice. Why?
As UK authorities and NATO officials stress the importance of clamping down on “false Russian” narratives in the media, perhaps our own media could stop providing a shining example as to why such anti-Western narratives are so often the only outlet for certain ugly truths.
:
An 800-page independent report commissioned by the US-friendly Colombian government and the radical left rebel group FARC found that US military soldiers and contractors had sexually abused at least 54 children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007 and, in all cases, the rapists were never punished–either in Colombia or stateside–due to American military personnel being immune from prosecution under diplomatic immunity agreements between the two countries.
The report was part of a broader historical analysis meant to establish the “causes and violence aggravators” of the 50-year-long conflict between the government and rebels that’s presently being negotiated to an end. AsColombia Reports (3/23/15) would spell out:
In his report, the historian [Renan Vega] cited one 2004 case in the central Colombian town of Melgar where 53 underage girls were sexually abused by nearby stationed military contractors “who moreover filmed [the abuse] and sold the films as pornographic material.”
According to Colombia’s leading newspaper, El Tiempo, the victims of the sexual abuse practices were forced to flee the region after their families received death threats.
Other Americans stationed at the Tolemaida Air Base allegedly committed similar crimes, but possibly also never saw a day in court due to an immunity arrangement for American soldiers and military contractors agreed by Washington and Bogota.
One case that has called most attention in Colombian media was that of a 12-year-old who in 2007 was raped by a US Army sergeant and a former US military officer who was working in Melgar as a military contractor.
Colombian prosecutors established that the girl had been drugged and subsequently raped inside the military base by US sergeant Michael J. Coen and defense contractor Cesar Ruiz.
However, prosecution officials were not allowed to arrest the suspected child rapists who were subsequently flown out of the country.
Thus far, however, these explosive claims seem to have received zero coverage in the general US press, despite having been reported on Venezuela’s Telesur(3/23/15), the British tabloidDaily Mail (3/24/15) and Russian RT (3/25/15).
But why? These aren’t fringe claims, nor can the government of American ally Colombia be dismissed as a peddler of Bolivarian propaganda. Indeed, the Miami Herald (9/3/09) documented the case of US Sgt. Michael Coen and contractor César Ruiz in 2009:
The US government has made little effort to investigate a US Army sergeant and a Mexican civil contractor implicated in Colombia in the raping of a 12-year-old girl in August 2007, according to an El Nuevo Herald investigation.
The suspects, Sgt. Michael Coen and contractor César Ruiz, were taken out of Colombia under diplomatic immunity, and do not face criminal charges in the United States in the rape in a room at Colombia’s Germán Olano Air Force Base in Melgar, 62 miles west of Bogotá.
So why no coverage? Certainly one of Washington’s stanchest Latin American allies co-authoring a blistering report about systemic US military child rape of a civilian population should be of note–if for no other reason than, as the report lays out, it undermined American military efforts to stop drug trafficking and fight leftist rebels:
However, prosecution officials were not allowed to arrest the suspected child rapists who were subsequently flown out of the country.
The case has caused major indignation among Colombians for years….
The special envoy will possibly have to deal with the role of the US military and its members in the alleged victimization of Colombians.
Yet here we are, over 72 hours since the Colombian and foreign press first reported on the allegations, and there’s a virtual media blackout in America over the case. Nothing on CNN, nothing on MSNBC, nothing in the New York Times or Miami Herald. Nothing in Huffington Post. Nothing inFusion or Vice. Why?
As UK authorities and NATO officials stress the importance of clamping down on “false Russian” narratives in the media, perhaps our own media could stop providing a shining example as to why such anti-Western narratives are so often the only outlet for certain ugly truths.
Friday, March 13, 2015
10 Secrets The Catholic Church Hopes You’ve Forgotten
via Listverse:
10 The Lies Of Mother Teresa
Although Mother Teresa was beatified as a saint by the Catholic Church in 2003, in reality she was far from the saint the Church would lead you to believe. In fact, Mother Teresa isn’t even her real name; she was born Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Albania. The issues certainly don’t end with her pseudonym. Researchers today have called Mother Teresa an empty “PR ploy” by the Vatican to rehabilitate their tarnished image.
Mother Teresa’s claim to fame is helping poor around the world, but she did quite the opposite throughout her lifetime. Mother Teresa made niceties with right-wing Haitian Dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and accepted money from him which had been stolen from Haiti’s poor. Duvalier was known for stealing millions from Haiti’s poor so that he could maintain his own lavish lifestyle. He spent $2 million of Haiti’s money to pay for his extravagant wedding. Duvalier also profited from drug trafficking and selling the body parts of deceased Haitians.
Mother Teresa rubbed elbows with another thief by the name of Charles Keating. If that name rings a bell for you, it should; Keating is the banker best known for defrauding American taxpayers out of over $3 billion during the savings and loan crisis of the ’80s and ’90s. Keating donated $1.25 million to Mother Teresa and lent her his private jet so that the missionary could jet set around the world. Keating would later be convicted in state and federal courts of a litany of crimes including racketeering, fraud, and conspiracy. After Keating was convicted, Mother Teresa refused to return the stolen money and asked one of the courts to overturn his sentence.
What she did with the money remains in question. The care she gave to the sick and poor in her hospices was observed to be wholly unsanitary, medical care was wholly insufficient, and crucial pain management for the dying was cruelly inadequate. Her hospices were found to not even distinguish between terminally ill patients and those who could be cured. Consequently, patients with curable illness died from the poor, unsanitary treatment they received from Mother Teresa’s facilities.
Her motivation for setting these hospices may have been less compassion and more fundamentalism. Mother Teresa callously encouraged those who worked in her hospices to baptize dying patients, regardless of the patient’s religious beliefs or consent. Mother Teresa’s fundamentalism stretched beyond the subject of baptism. She claimed that abortion was “the greatest enemy of peace in the world,” and opposed contraception even in the cases of rape and incest.
Mother Teresa also defended a pedophilic priest named Donald McGuire, trying to get him leniency after he was convicted of raping children. She wanted him to be reinstated as a priest despite his heinous crimes.
The greatest irony of it all is that by the end of her life, Mother Teresa didn’t even believe in the fundamentalism she spouted or the religion she spent her life serving. After her death, letters Mother Teresa had written to the Vatican surfaced and revealed that she had stopped believing in the religion she plugged. Mother Teresa wrote: “What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.”
9 Alliance With Radical Islamists
In 1994, 180 countries met to draft a proposal with the United Nations to address the coming crisis of overpopulation. The plan met an unexpected foe in the Catholic Church. In its opposition to the plan, the Catholic Church reached out to unlikely allies: radical Islamists.
The population plan drafted by representatives from 180 countries sought to tamper overpopulation by including measures to increase women’s rights and reproductive rights around the world. The Catholic Church felt the language went against their conservative views on abortion rights and sexual freedom. But the Catholic Church had a hard time finding allies around the world to join in their opposition to the measures, so they allied themselves with “radical and fundamentalist governments and groups in Islamic countries.”
The move received swift denunciation from Western countries around the world. Western diplomats worried that the Vatican was bolstering Islamic radicals with plans to overthrow governments around the Middle East and form their own radical Islamic state.
After Iran signed on with the Catholic Church, Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani hinted at a grander alliance between the Vatican and Iranian Islamist. Rafsanjani said that “Collaboration between religious governments in support of outlawing abortion is a fine beginning for the conception of collaboration in other fields.”
The Vatican also struck a similar alliance with Libya and other Islamic fundamentalist governments. As a result of the deal, the Vatican tried to help Libya quell its conflicts with Western nations. The Western nations sought to clamp down on the dictatorship after it sponsored the Lockerbie terrorist attack of 1988, which resulted in the deaths of 259 individuals.
8 Jozef Tiso
The Catholic Church is known to have allied itself with fascists in World War II, most notably with Mussolini by signing the Lateran Treaty. However, one lesser-known fascist dictator of the time was actually a practicing Catholic priest.
Before Jozef Tiso got into the dictator game, he cut his teeth in a prestigious seminary in Vienna and became an ordained Catholic priest. Father Tiso then worked as an assistant priest before becoming the Spiritual director of one of Slovakia’s largest seminaries. Soon, Tiso began to moonlight in politics. He joined Slovakia’s fascist party and served as an editor of a Slovakian newspaper in which he published a series of extremely anti-Semitic articles in the run-up to the Holocaust.
It wasn’t long before Tiso became one of the leaders of the fascist Slovak People’s Party. Father Tiso and his confidants shifted the party to the hard right in line with the nearby Nazi party, embracing the clerical nationalism and fascism inspired by Tiso’s own brand of right-wing Catholicism.
Father Tiso was elected into Slovakia’s parliament in 1925, but he would ascend to the role of dictator when Nazi Germany occupied Sudetenland in 1938. Tiso swiftly established a dictatorship and made an alliance with the Nazi party. Slovakia was turned into the Slovak Republic, a puppet state of Nazi Germany.
During this time, 16 of 63 members of Slovakia’s parliament were priests. Slovakia’s fascist parliament quickly began passing anti-Jewish legislation. Slovakia then became the first country to begin deporting its Jewish residents to concentration camps run by Nazi Germany, effectively setting the Holocaust into motion.
According to a December 1940 census, there were 88,951 Jews in Slovakia at the time. First, Tiso’s Slovakia sent 20,000 Jews to the Nazis to be used in work camps before they were killed. By June 1924, around 52,000 Jews were deported from Slovakia—almost 60 percent of Slovakia’s Jewish population. Most were sent to Auschwitz, where they were murdered by the Nazis.
Hitler witnessed one of Tiso’s speeches in 1942 in which Tiso touted his Jewish deportation scheme. After the speech, Hitler remarked, “It is interesting how this little Catholic priest Tiso is sending us the Jews!”
Tiso was removed from power in 1944 during the Slovak National Uprising. Just before being ousted, the Vatican radio told its listeners that Father Tiso retired in his role as a monsignor for the Vatican, “owing to his political activities.” After Slovakia was liberated from Nazi control by the Soviet Union the next year, Father Tiso was captured by American troops in June 1945. He was hanged for treason in 1947.
Throughout the entirety of his political career, he remained a practicing Catholic priest.
Tiso isn’t the only dictator to start off as an aspiring priest in seminary. USSR dictator Joseph Stalin also studied to become a priest at Russia’s leading Orthodox seminary, the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary.
7 Excommunication Policies
n 2009, the Catholic Church in Brazil came under fire for punishing an underaged girl who was raped and subsequently had an abortion. The Church couldn’t excommunicate the girl herself because minors cannot be excommunicated, but the Church did excommunicate her mother. The Church also excommunicated the doctors who performed the emergency abortion. However, they did not excommunicate the girl’s rapist.
In fact, the Catholic Church opposes abortion so vehemently that not only is it worthy of excommunication; the Church believes it’s worthy of death in some cases. The Catholic Church has previously established that it would rather have a woman die than get a life-saving abortion.
The scandal highlighted an even larger problem for the Catholic Church that stems from its core doctrine. First and foremost, it doesn’t consider rape a crime worthy of excommunication, even though having an abortion after a rape an act is worthy of excommunication. The Vatican’s bizarre standards on excommunication also broach its problem with pedophilic priests. The Catholic Church doesn’t consider pedophilia and child abuse crimes worthy of excommunication in and of themselves.
In fact, the Catholic Church didn’t even excommunicate the Nazis for the crimes against humanity they committed, despite the fact that many Nazi leaders were practicing Catholics. There is only one Nazi to be excommunicated by the Catholic Church, and that was Joseph Goebbels. The Vatican didn’t excommunicate him for starting World War II or the Holocaust; instead, the Church excommunicated Goebbels because he married a divorced Protestant.
Until recently, no pedophilic priest who had abused children had been excommunicated by the Catholic Church. Late last year, Pope Francis broke Church precedent and issued the first excommunication of a pedophilic priest who had sexually abused children. The priest had been convicted of the abuse and sentenced to 14 years in prison three years earlier.
But if you think Pope Francis has totally overhauled the Church’s excommunication practices, think again. Pope Francis also excommunicated a priest for advocating that women should be able to be priests and for believing that gay marriage is perfectly reasonable.
6 Money Laundering And Tax Evasion
shady money
The Vatican Bank is notoriously poor, if not corrupt in managing its finances. While congregations in Catholic churches around the world may think the money they pour into collection plates is going to charity or priests, the truth is that the money goes to far more lurid activities.
In 2013, Vatican Bank’s director, deputy director, and senior accountant were all charged with using their positions to engage in a massive money laundering scheme. The Vatican Bank had been under investigation for money laundering for years.
Italian police claimed the Vatican Bank had been operating as a “trust company” that harbored secret monies of the corrupt politicians and companies, along with the Mafia. The bank also used its finances to bribe political parties.
The Vatican bank is so intertwined with the Mafia, that after Pope Francis sought to tamper corruption in the bank months ago, Italian prosecutors believed he was in danger of being assassinated by the Mafia.
The Vatican’s ties with the Mafia are so strong that it accepted one billion lire to bury a notorious Italian crime boss in its basilica next to former popes.
5 Age Of Consent
twelve year olds
The Catholic Church has famously been plagued by cases of widespread child abuse carried out by its priests. Oddly enough, the child abuse wasn’t as illegal in Vatican City as it was in the rest of the world. That’s because the age of consent in the Vatican was only 12 years old. In fact, the age of consent in the Vatican was only 12 until July 2013, when Pope Francis raised the age of consent up to 18 in the wake of the Church’s pedophilia and prostitution scandals.
Until the shockingly recent change, the Vatican had the lowest age of consent in the world. The 12-year-old age of consent tied the Vatican with the Philippines, Mexico, Angola, and Zimbabwe, all of which have a 12-year-old age of consent to this day.
This frighteningly low age of consent may explain why the Catholic Church often doesn’t consider the child abuse carried out by its priests’ pedophilia. High-level church officials like the Vatican’s secretary of state have claimed that homosexuality is to blame for its priests’ child abuse, not pedophilia, calling homosexuality a “pathology.”
4 Fueling The Illegal Ivory Trade
ivory crucifix
The ivory trade is a horrific practice. The often illegal trade has caused numerous species to become endangered, decimating the elephant population in Africa. Elephants, one of the most intelligent species on the planet, are senselessly and inhumanely killed and their ivory tusks are ripped off. The rest of the elephant’s mauled body is discarded as waste. Perhaps the primary reason the illegal practice exists is because of organized religion.
In order to stop the violence, 180 countries got together and formed the CITES treaty, or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. The treaty’s purpose is to keep endangered species from going extinct by stopping practices that have obliterated their populations, like the ivory trade or the shark fin trade. There was one notable exception among the signatories: the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church opposed the attempt to protect endangered species because the Catholic Church buys lots of ivory. It does so not out of necessity, but out of tradition. Many of the decorative crucifixes in Catholic Churches are made out of ivory, which can only be made by slaughtering an elephant.
3 Questionable Charity Policies
lgbt rights
The Catholic Church bolsters its image by labeling itself as a charitable organization. Its congregations are led to believe their donations to the Church fuel charitable causes around the world. However, the Catholic Church’s objective for this charity is often advertising rather than altruism.
Recently, the Catholic Church claimed it would stop all of its charity work in Washington, D.C. if the city passed a law legalizing same-sex marriage. Although they didn’t actually stop working in Washington, D.C. when gay marriage was legalized, the Washington Catholic Charities did cease to provide benefits to all spouses of both homosexual and heterosexual workers. To legally avoid providing benefits to people in gay marriages, they stopped providing benefits to everyone.
The Catholic Church attempted to use its influence to prevent charities around the United States from supporting rights for gay citizens. When the Catholic Church heard that the YMCA was patterning with an organization that supports LGBT rights, the Catholic Church told the YMCA to cut its ties with the group or lose $60,000 of its funding. The YMCA didn’t back down, so the Catholic Church yanked its funding from the YMCA, along with eight other charitable groups. When all was said and done, the Catholic Church yanked over $300,000 in funding for charities solely because they began to support equal rights for the LGBT community.
2 Forced Castration Of Abused Boys
Castrato was a classical style of singing; male singers would sing in a higher range, which can usually only be sung by women. In order to produce this high castrato voice in males, the singer needs to be literally castrated before he begins puberty, preventing his body from reaching sexual maturity and his voice from dropping.
You may be wondering, why not just get women to sing the high notes? Well, the Catholic Church never thought it would be an option to allow women to sing in their church choirs, citing a Bible verse: “let women keep silent in church.” In 2001, it was revealed that the Catholic Church had encouraged choir boys to be castrated in order to alter their singing range. Beginning in the 16th century, the Catholic Church castrated its prepubescent choir boys to deliberately prevent them from reaching sexual maturity.
Some of the castrato singers, like Alessandro Moreschi, were famous among Europe’s opera-goers of the time. Moreschi and those like him were prized for their ability to utilize the vocal strength of the male body with the high register of the female voice. However, the majority of the castrated boys were rendered unable to sing or live normal lives. They were therefore discarded by the Church, thought to be “useless even as circus freaks.”
In 1902, the Catholic Church issued a decree which banned the practice within the Sistine Chapel, but the Vatican continued to tolerate the practice. The last castrato singer thought to be affected by the castration practice retired in 1959.
But the Catholic Church’s use for castration sometimes had an even darker intention. In 2012, it was revealed that the Catholic Church in the Netherlands had been forcibly castrating its choir boys who threatened to tell the police that they had been sexuality abused by its priests. Dutch investigative journalist Joep Dohmmen discovered the story of a young boy in a Catholic boarding school who was sexually abused by a Dutch monk and reported the abuse to the Dutch police in 1956. After the Dutch Catholic Church found out that the boy reported the abuse to the authorities, they put him into a church-run psychiatric ward, declared him to be homosexual, and forcibly castrated him.
There have been at least 10 other similar cases among the boy’s classmates, who were also sexually abused by priests and then forcibly castrated by the Catholic Church when they tried to report it.
1 The Rwandan Genocide
rwandan genocide
The Rwandan genocide—the slaughter of the Tutsi minority and some Hutus by the Hutu majority—claimed an estimated 800,000 lives in only four months in 1994. As much as 20 percent of Rwanda’s population was senselessly killed, and about 70 percent of the Tutsi minority. After the bloodshed ended, the country—if not the world— frantically looked for the murderous perpetrators to bring them to justice. Many of the killers behind the genocide suddenly vanished, and the Catholic Church may be responsible for their escape.
At the time of the genocide, the Catholic Church was called “the most powerful social institution in Rwanda.” Around two-thirds of the population of Rwanda is Catholic. Human rights groups and survivors’ groups claim the Catholic Church was complicit in allowing the genocide to occur, while some Catholic clergymen participated in the massacre themselves. In addition, the Catholic Church and its clergy have helped some of the perpetrators of the genocide flee Rwanda to escape persecution or shielded them from extradition.
As other priests did with the Nazi ratlines after World War II, an organized network of Catholic priests helped and protected the genocidal priests. The network smuggled the criminals out of Rwanda to Europe, where they could be sheltered from prosecution and even continue preaching in Catholic churches. Many fled to Italy because of the Catholic Church’s strong presence in the country and ability to fight extradition.
One such priest was Father Athanase Seromba. During the Rwandan genocide, Father Seromba told around 2,000 Tutsis that they could take refuge from the violence inside the church he operated. On April 6, 1994, when 2,000 of the Tutsis gathered inside, Seromba ordered the Church to be bulldozed with the Tutsis inside. After the Church was flattened, Father Seromba and his henchmen shot the remaining survivors.
After the genocide was stopped, Father Seromba fled Rwanda with the aid of a network of sympathetic clergymen. He continued to practice as a priest for the Catholic Church under a false name in a church near Florence, Italy. He went unnoticed until 2002, when he was uncovered by investigators working with the International Tribunal for Rwanda. The Chief Prosecutor for the tribunal claimed the Vatican had fought Father Seromba’s extradition to face his trial. The Vatican told the prosecutor that Father Seromba was “doing good works in Italy.”
Human rights advocates around the world have long called for the Catholic Church to apologize for its role in the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath. Thus far, the Catholic Church has not issued any such statement.
10 The Lies Of Mother Teresa
Although Mother Teresa was beatified as a saint by the Catholic Church in 2003, in reality she was far from the saint the Church would lead you to believe. In fact, Mother Teresa isn’t even her real name; she was born Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Albania. The issues certainly don’t end with her pseudonym. Researchers today have called Mother Teresa an empty “PR ploy” by the Vatican to rehabilitate their tarnished image.
Mother Teresa’s claim to fame is helping poor around the world, but she did quite the opposite throughout her lifetime. Mother Teresa made niceties with right-wing Haitian Dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and accepted money from him which had been stolen from Haiti’s poor. Duvalier was known for stealing millions from Haiti’s poor so that he could maintain his own lavish lifestyle. He spent $2 million of Haiti’s money to pay for his extravagant wedding. Duvalier also profited from drug trafficking and selling the body parts of deceased Haitians.
Mother Teresa rubbed elbows with another thief by the name of Charles Keating. If that name rings a bell for you, it should; Keating is the banker best known for defrauding American taxpayers out of over $3 billion during the savings and loan crisis of the ’80s and ’90s. Keating donated $1.25 million to Mother Teresa and lent her his private jet so that the missionary could jet set around the world. Keating would later be convicted in state and federal courts of a litany of crimes including racketeering, fraud, and conspiracy. After Keating was convicted, Mother Teresa refused to return the stolen money and asked one of the courts to overturn his sentence.
What she did with the money remains in question. The care she gave to the sick and poor in her hospices was observed to be wholly unsanitary, medical care was wholly insufficient, and crucial pain management for the dying was cruelly inadequate. Her hospices were found to not even distinguish between terminally ill patients and those who could be cured. Consequently, patients with curable illness died from the poor, unsanitary treatment they received from Mother Teresa’s facilities.
Her motivation for setting these hospices may have been less compassion and more fundamentalism. Mother Teresa callously encouraged those who worked in her hospices to baptize dying patients, regardless of the patient’s religious beliefs or consent. Mother Teresa’s fundamentalism stretched beyond the subject of baptism. She claimed that abortion was “the greatest enemy of peace in the world,” and opposed contraception even in the cases of rape and incest.
Mother Teresa also defended a pedophilic priest named Donald McGuire, trying to get him leniency after he was convicted of raping children. She wanted him to be reinstated as a priest despite his heinous crimes.
The greatest irony of it all is that by the end of her life, Mother Teresa didn’t even believe in the fundamentalism she spouted or the religion she spent her life serving. After her death, letters Mother Teresa had written to the Vatican surfaced and revealed that she had stopped believing in the religion she plugged. Mother Teresa wrote: “What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.”
9 Alliance With Radical Islamists
In 1994, 180 countries met to draft a proposal with the United Nations to address the coming crisis of overpopulation. The plan met an unexpected foe in the Catholic Church. In its opposition to the plan, the Catholic Church reached out to unlikely allies: radical Islamists.
The population plan drafted by representatives from 180 countries sought to tamper overpopulation by including measures to increase women’s rights and reproductive rights around the world. The Catholic Church felt the language went against their conservative views on abortion rights and sexual freedom. But the Catholic Church had a hard time finding allies around the world to join in their opposition to the measures, so they allied themselves with “radical and fundamentalist governments and groups in Islamic countries.”
The move received swift denunciation from Western countries around the world. Western diplomats worried that the Vatican was bolstering Islamic radicals with plans to overthrow governments around the Middle East and form their own radical Islamic state.
After Iran signed on with the Catholic Church, Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani hinted at a grander alliance between the Vatican and Iranian Islamist. Rafsanjani said that “Collaboration between religious governments in support of outlawing abortion is a fine beginning for the conception of collaboration in other fields.”
The Vatican also struck a similar alliance with Libya and other Islamic fundamentalist governments. As a result of the deal, the Vatican tried to help Libya quell its conflicts with Western nations. The Western nations sought to clamp down on the dictatorship after it sponsored the Lockerbie terrorist attack of 1988, which resulted in the deaths of 259 individuals.
8 Jozef Tiso
The Catholic Church is known to have allied itself with fascists in World War II, most notably with Mussolini by signing the Lateran Treaty. However, one lesser-known fascist dictator of the time was actually a practicing Catholic priest.
Before Jozef Tiso got into the dictator game, he cut his teeth in a prestigious seminary in Vienna and became an ordained Catholic priest. Father Tiso then worked as an assistant priest before becoming the Spiritual director of one of Slovakia’s largest seminaries. Soon, Tiso began to moonlight in politics. He joined Slovakia’s fascist party and served as an editor of a Slovakian newspaper in which he published a series of extremely anti-Semitic articles in the run-up to the Holocaust.
It wasn’t long before Tiso became one of the leaders of the fascist Slovak People’s Party. Father Tiso and his confidants shifted the party to the hard right in line with the nearby Nazi party, embracing the clerical nationalism and fascism inspired by Tiso’s own brand of right-wing Catholicism.
Father Tiso was elected into Slovakia’s parliament in 1925, but he would ascend to the role of dictator when Nazi Germany occupied Sudetenland in 1938. Tiso swiftly established a dictatorship and made an alliance with the Nazi party. Slovakia was turned into the Slovak Republic, a puppet state of Nazi Germany.
During this time, 16 of 63 members of Slovakia’s parliament were priests. Slovakia’s fascist parliament quickly began passing anti-Jewish legislation. Slovakia then became the first country to begin deporting its Jewish residents to concentration camps run by Nazi Germany, effectively setting the Holocaust into motion.
According to a December 1940 census, there were 88,951 Jews in Slovakia at the time. First, Tiso’s Slovakia sent 20,000 Jews to the Nazis to be used in work camps before they were killed. By June 1924, around 52,000 Jews were deported from Slovakia—almost 60 percent of Slovakia’s Jewish population. Most were sent to Auschwitz, where they were murdered by the Nazis.
Hitler witnessed one of Tiso’s speeches in 1942 in which Tiso touted his Jewish deportation scheme. After the speech, Hitler remarked, “It is interesting how this little Catholic priest Tiso is sending us the Jews!”
Tiso was removed from power in 1944 during the Slovak National Uprising. Just before being ousted, the Vatican radio told its listeners that Father Tiso retired in his role as a monsignor for the Vatican, “owing to his political activities.” After Slovakia was liberated from Nazi control by the Soviet Union the next year, Father Tiso was captured by American troops in June 1945. He was hanged for treason in 1947.
Throughout the entirety of his political career, he remained a practicing Catholic priest.
Tiso isn’t the only dictator to start off as an aspiring priest in seminary. USSR dictator Joseph Stalin also studied to become a priest at Russia’s leading Orthodox seminary, the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary.
7 Excommunication Policies
n 2009, the Catholic Church in Brazil came under fire for punishing an underaged girl who was raped and subsequently had an abortion. The Church couldn’t excommunicate the girl herself because minors cannot be excommunicated, but the Church did excommunicate her mother. The Church also excommunicated the doctors who performed the emergency abortion. However, they did not excommunicate the girl’s rapist.
In fact, the Catholic Church opposes abortion so vehemently that not only is it worthy of excommunication; the Church believes it’s worthy of death in some cases. The Catholic Church has previously established that it would rather have a woman die than get a life-saving abortion.
The scandal highlighted an even larger problem for the Catholic Church that stems from its core doctrine. First and foremost, it doesn’t consider rape a crime worthy of excommunication, even though having an abortion after a rape an act is worthy of excommunication. The Vatican’s bizarre standards on excommunication also broach its problem with pedophilic priests. The Catholic Church doesn’t consider pedophilia and child abuse crimes worthy of excommunication in and of themselves.
In fact, the Catholic Church didn’t even excommunicate the Nazis for the crimes against humanity they committed, despite the fact that many Nazi leaders were practicing Catholics. There is only one Nazi to be excommunicated by the Catholic Church, and that was Joseph Goebbels. The Vatican didn’t excommunicate him for starting World War II or the Holocaust; instead, the Church excommunicated Goebbels because he married a divorced Protestant.
Until recently, no pedophilic priest who had abused children had been excommunicated by the Catholic Church. Late last year, Pope Francis broke Church precedent and issued the first excommunication of a pedophilic priest who had sexually abused children. The priest had been convicted of the abuse and sentenced to 14 years in prison three years earlier.
But if you think Pope Francis has totally overhauled the Church’s excommunication practices, think again. Pope Francis also excommunicated a priest for advocating that women should be able to be priests and for believing that gay marriage is perfectly reasonable.
6 Money Laundering And Tax Evasion
shady money
The Vatican Bank is notoriously poor, if not corrupt in managing its finances. While congregations in Catholic churches around the world may think the money they pour into collection plates is going to charity or priests, the truth is that the money goes to far more lurid activities.
In 2013, Vatican Bank’s director, deputy director, and senior accountant were all charged with using their positions to engage in a massive money laundering scheme. The Vatican Bank had been under investigation for money laundering for years.
Italian police claimed the Vatican Bank had been operating as a “trust company” that harbored secret monies of the corrupt politicians and companies, along with the Mafia. The bank also used its finances to bribe political parties.
The Vatican bank is so intertwined with the Mafia, that after Pope Francis sought to tamper corruption in the bank months ago, Italian prosecutors believed he was in danger of being assassinated by the Mafia.
The Vatican’s ties with the Mafia are so strong that it accepted one billion lire to bury a notorious Italian crime boss in its basilica next to former popes.
5 Age Of Consent
twelve year olds
The Catholic Church has famously been plagued by cases of widespread child abuse carried out by its priests. Oddly enough, the child abuse wasn’t as illegal in Vatican City as it was in the rest of the world. That’s because the age of consent in the Vatican was only 12 years old. In fact, the age of consent in the Vatican was only 12 until July 2013, when Pope Francis raised the age of consent up to 18 in the wake of the Church’s pedophilia and prostitution scandals.
Until the shockingly recent change, the Vatican had the lowest age of consent in the world. The 12-year-old age of consent tied the Vatican with the Philippines, Mexico, Angola, and Zimbabwe, all of which have a 12-year-old age of consent to this day.
This frighteningly low age of consent may explain why the Catholic Church often doesn’t consider the child abuse carried out by its priests’ pedophilia. High-level church officials like the Vatican’s secretary of state have claimed that homosexuality is to blame for its priests’ child abuse, not pedophilia, calling homosexuality a “pathology.”
4 Fueling The Illegal Ivory Trade
ivory crucifix
The ivory trade is a horrific practice. The often illegal trade has caused numerous species to become endangered, decimating the elephant population in Africa. Elephants, one of the most intelligent species on the planet, are senselessly and inhumanely killed and their ivory tusks are ripped off. The rest of the elephant’s mauled body is discarded as waste. Perhaps the primary reason the illegal practice exists is because of organized religion.
In order to stop the violence, 180 countries got together and formed the CITES treaty, or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. The treaty’s purpose is to keep endangered species from going extinct by stopping practices that have obliterated their populations, like the ivory trade or the shark fin trade. There was one notable exception among the signatories: the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church opposed the attempt to protect endangered species because the Catholic Church buys lots of ivory. It does so not out of necessity, but out of tradition. Many of the decorative crucifixes in Catholic Churches are made out of ivory, which can only be made by slaughtering an elephant.
3 Questionable Charity Policies
lgbt rights
The Catholic Church bolsters its image by labeling itself as a charitable organization. Its congregations are led to believe their donations to the Church fuel charitable causes around the world. However, the Catholic Church’s objective for this charity is often advertising rather than altruism.
Recently, the Catholic Church claimed it would stop all of its charity work in Washington, D.C. if the city passed a law legalizing same-sex marriage. Although they didn’t actually stop working in Washington, D.C. when gay marriage was legalized, the Washington Catholic Charities did cease to provide benefits to all spouses of both homosexual and heterosexual workers. To legally avoid providing benefits to people in gay marriages, they stopped providing benefits to everyone.
The Catholic Church attempted to use its influence to prevent charities around the United States from supporting rights for gay citizens. When the Catholic Church heard that the YMCA was patterning with an organization that supports LGBT rights, the Catholic Church told the YMCA to cut its ties with the group or lose $60,000 of its funding. The YMCA didn’t back down, so the Catholic Church yanked its funding from the YMCA, along with eight other charitable groups. When all was said and done, the Catholic Church yanked over $300,000 in funding for charities solely because they began to support equal rights for the LGBT community.
2 Forced Castration Of Abused Boys
Castrato was a classical style of singing; male singers would sing in a higher range, which can usually only be sung by women. In order to produce this high castrato voice in males, the singer needs to be literally castrated before he begins puberty, preventing his body from reaching sexual maturity and his voice from dropping.
You may be wondering, why not just get women to sing the high notes? Well, the Catholic Church never thought it would be an option to allow women to sing in their church choirs, citing a Bible verse: “let women keep silent in church.” In 2001, it was revealed that the Catholic Church had encouraged choir boys to be castrated in order to alter their singing range. Beginning in the 16th century, the Catholic Church castrated its prepubescent choir boys to deliberately prevent them from reaching sexual maturity.
Some of the castrato singers, like Alessandro Moreschi, were famous among Europe’s opera-goers of the time. Moreschi and those like him were prized for their ability to utilize the vocal strength of the male body with the high register of the female voice. However, the majority of the castrated boys were rendered unable to sing or live normal lives. They were therefore discarded by the Church, thought to be “useless even as circus freaks.”
In 1902, the Catholic Church issued a decree which banned the practice within the Sistine Chapel, but the Vatican continued to tolerate the practice. The last castrato singer thought to be affected by the castration practice retired in 1959.
But the Catholic Church’s use for castration sometimes had an even darker intention. In 2012, it was revealed that the Catholic Church in the Netherlands had been forcibly castrating its choir boys who threatened to tell the police that they had been sexuality abused by its priests. Dutch investigative journalist Joep Dohmmen discovered the story of a young boy in a Catholic boarding school who was sexually abused by a Dutch monk and reported the abuse to the Dutch police in 1956. After the Dutch Catholic Church found out that the boy reported the abuse to the authorities, they put him into a church-run psychiatric ward, declared him to be homosexual, and forcibly castrated him.
There have been at least 10 other similar cases among the boy’s classmates, who were also sexually abused by priests and then forcibly castrated by the Catholic Church when they tried to report it.
1 The Rwandan Genocide
rwandan genocide
The Rwandan genocide—the slaughter of the Tutsi minority and some Hutus by the Hutu majority—claimed an estimated 800,000 lives in only four months in 1994. As much as 20 percent of Rwanda’s population was senselessly killed, and about 70 percent of the Tutsi minority. After the bloodshed ended, the country—if not the world— frantically looked for the murderous perpetrators to bring them to justice. Many of the killers behind the genocide suddenly vanished, and the Catholic Church may be responsible for their escape.
At the time of the genocide, the Catholic Church was called “the most powerful social institution in Rwanda.” Around two-thirds of the population of Rwanda is Catholic. Human rights groups and survivors’ groups claim the Catholic Church was complicit in allowing the genocide to occur, while some Catholic clergymen participated in the massacre themselves. In addition, the Catholic Church and its clergy have helped some of the perpetrators of the genocide flee Rwanda to escape persecution or shielded them from extradition.
As other priests did with the Nazi ratlines after World War II, an organized network of Catholic priests helped and protected the genocidal priests. The network smuggled the criminals out of Rwanda to Europe, where they could be sheltered from prosecution and even continue preaching in Catholic churches. Many fled to Italy because of the Catholic Church’s strong presence in the country and ability to fight extradition.
One such priest was Father Athanase Seromba. During the Rwandan genocide, Father Seromba told around 2,000 Tutsis that they could take refuge from the violence inside the church he operated. On April 6, 1994, when 2,000 of the Tutsis gathered inside, Seromba ordered the Church to be bulldozed with the Tutsis inside. After the Church was flattened, Father Seromba and his henchmen shot the remaining survivors.
After the genocide was stopped, Father Seromba fled Rwanda with the aid of a network of sympathetic clergymen. He continued to practice as a priest for the Catholic Church under a false name in a church near Florence, Italy. He went unnoticed until 2002, when he was uncovered by investigators working with the International Tribunal for Rwanda. The Chief Prosecutor for the tribunal claimed the Vatican had fought Father Seromba’s extradition to face his trial. The Vatican told the prosecutor that Father Seromba was “doing good works in Italy.”
Human rights advocates around the world have long called for the Catholic Church to apologize for its role in the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath. Thus far, the Catholic Church has not issued any such statement.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Lord James of Blackheath: I Helped Smuggle Children Used For Slavery And Sexual Exploitation
via Researchingreform.net:
In a debate which took place in the House of Lords yesterday on the Modern Slavery Bill, Lord Blackheath makes a startling revelation. He tells his fellow peers that whilst working for the Australian Civil Service in London, he was tasked with herding, as he puts it, small children on to boats at Tilbury, for transportation to Australia. Blackheath says:
“They did not have names; they did not know who their parents were, or where they came from, and they were completely terrified.”
He recounts that at the time, he was “deeply suspicious” of this practice, and had a strong feeling that the children did not have the proper permissions to travel. Since then, he has been likened to Jimmy Savile, although to his credit, he does say his rap sheet is worse. Savile was responsible for abusing 300 children – Blackheath facilitated the abuse of 2,500 vulnerable minors, none of whom knew who their parents were or what was happening to them. Completely alone in the world. And yet Blackheath, with his strong suspicions, which included the belief that what he was he was being asked to do to those children was in fact illegal, chose to keep schtum.
You would think that after such an admission, Blackheath would be a little more introspective. Not a bit of it. No longer speaking in the first person he tells us: “It involved many tens of thousands of children over 15 years; we should be deeply ashamed of it.” The rest of Blackheath’s statement is equally interesting. He details how these children were shipped off to Australia (careful to mention this happens during a Labour government – Blackheath is a Tory boy); how the courts there refused to sanction any adoptions involving these children; and how subsequently, they all ended up on the streets. 2,500 children. On the streets. All on their own.
And then, he goes on to share his knowledge, common knowledge as it turns out, that many of these children over time were picked up by so called religious organisations who were in fact abusing children emotionally and physically. Two of these organisations appear to be infamous – The Sisters of Mercy, who were Catholic nuns, and the Christian Brothers, who were already known in government service as the “Christian buggers”. “Already known in government service”. How about that.
Blackheath also tells us:
“The rules of a Christian Brothers home were that if you were abused by one of the holy fathers, that was an act of god, and if you complained about the holy father, that was a sin against god and you would be flogged for it. By the way, the flogging was with a metal hacksaw replacement blade. It did not leave much of a kid… Any ship that was allowed to sail from that date on was allowed to sail in the knowledge that the inmates were going to be raped and abused.”
And yet Mr Blackheath did nothing. He did not utter a word.
A group of social workers at the time, though, did. And of course, they were ignored.
Here is more information on Lord Blackheath via Wikipedia:
David Noel James, Baron James of Blackheath CBE (born 7 December 1937) is a British businessman and corporate troubleshooter and Conservative life peer.
James has had a varied career in the city of London. Between 1959 and 1964, he trained with Lloyds Bank, joining Ford Credit's launch team in 1964. He then became a director of many companies, often in trouble, to assist their recovery: in 1973 he joined Cork Gulley to rescue Cedar Holdings; in 1989 he was appointed chairman of Eagle Trust; other directorships have included British Shoe Corporation, LEP group, Dan-Air, North Sea Assets and Central & Sheerwood. During his time at Eagle Trust he triggered the Iraqi supergun affair. Whilst visiting Eagle-owned Walter Somers factory in Halesowen in 1990, he noticed the muzzle of what appeared to be a large gun. He informed MI6, giving them one of their first leads.[1]
[The Iraqi supergun affair, aka Project Babylon, was a project with unknown objectives commissioned by the then Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to build a series of "superguns". The design was based on research from the 1960s Project HARP led by the Canadian artillery expert Gerald Bull. There were most likely four different devices in the program
The project began in 1988; it was halted in 1990 after Gerald Bull was assassinated, and parts of these superguns were seized in transit around Europe...The second supergun, "Big Babylon"..would have been over 100 metres (300 feet) high at the tip. The complete device weighed about 2,100 tonnes (the barrel alone weighed 1,655 tons). It was a space gun intended to shoot projectiles into orbit, a theme of Bull's work since Project HARP. Neither of these devices could be elevated or trained, making them useless for direct military purposes...It is possible that Big Babylon was intended both to launch satellites and to serve as a weapon]
...In April 2006 it was announced that James had been nominated for a Life Peerage by the Conservative Party[3] The news had already been revealed in a list leaked to The Times[4] that eventually led to the Cash for Peerages scandal. James himself had given a relatively small amount to the Conservatives. He was created Baron James of Blackheath, of Wildbrooks in the County of West Sussex on 9 June 2006.[5]
In November 2010 Lord James claimed in the House of Lords that he had been approached by a secretive "megarich" organisation, which James referred to only as 'Foundation X', willing to lend billions of pounds, interest-free, to the UK government.[6]
He has worked as a Consultant for Cerberus Capital Management.[7]...James attracted some press and blog attention after a speech in the House of Lords on 1 November 2010, in which he claimed to have been approached by an unnamed organisation wishing to fund massive public works projects in the UK with vast currency reserves backed by gold bullion.[8][9] A Labour Party staff member and political blogger who wrote about the story[10] speculated that the organisation in question is the Office of International Treasury Control.[11] possibly an organisation though unknown or unacknowledged by any government to date. However, James has stated that he had not been approached by the Office of International Treasury Control, that there were no links between Foundation X and the Office of International Treasury Control,[12] that the Foundation X was a viable organisation, and that the offer was in good faith. Further, in the course of the recorded speech James uses a comparison to the "total value of the Vatican Bank Reserves" to denounce the validity of the "total amount of bullion ever taken from the earth's crust" as given by a "12-year-old issue of National Geographic" (the alleged single source for this figure), which had been used by Lord Strathclyde to dismiss the claim for the assets of Foundation X to be backed by bullion. In this speech Lord James of Blackheath neither identifies Foundation X with the Vatican or the Vatican Bank nor does he hint on any such connection.[13]
On Saturday 6 November 2010; the HM Treasury issued a statement which contradicted James' earlier claims; denying that any meeting took place between Lord James and Treasury commercial secretary Lord Sassoon and a representative of the group which had been referred to as 'Foundation-X'.[14]...James attracted some press[15][16] and blog[17] attention after another speech in the House of Lords on 16 February 2012, in which he claimed a massive $15 trillion money-laundering fraud from the United States Federal Reserve in the name of "Yohannes Riyadi" – a man who may or may not exist. James offered to provide evidence and asked for an official investigation (Hansard, transcription 16 February 2012, Column 1016, from 5.20 pm).[18]
In a debate which took place in the House of Lords yesterday on the Modern Slavery Bill, Lord Blackheath makes a startling revelation. He tells his fellow peers that whilst working for the Australian Civil Service in London, he was tasked with herding, as he puts it, small children on to boats at Tilbury, for transportation to Australia. Blackheath says:
“They did not have names; they did not know who their parents were, or where they came from, and they were completely terrified.”
He recounts that at the time, he was “deeply suspicious” of this practice, and had a strong feeling that the children did not have the proper permissions to travel. Since then, he has been likened to Jimmy Savile, although to his credit, he does say his rap sheet is worse. Savile was responsible for abusing 300 children – Blackheath facilitated the abuse of 2,500 vulnerable minors, none of whom knew who their parents were or what was happening to them. Completely alone in the world. And yet Blackheath, with his strong suspicions, which included the belief that what he was he was being asked to do to those children was in fact illegal, chose to keep schtum.
You would think that after such an admission, Blackheath would be a little more introspective. Not a bit of it. No longer speaking in the first person he tells us: “It involved many tens of thousands of children over 15 years; we should be deeply ashamed of it.” The rest of Blackheath’s statement is equally interesting. He details how these children were shipped off to Australia (careful to mention this happens during a Labour government – Blackheath is a Tory boy); how the courts there refused to sanction any adoptions involving these children; and how subsequently, they all ended up on the streets. 2,500 children. On the streets. All on their own.
And then, he goes on to share his knowledge, common knowledge as it turns out, that many of these children over time were picked up by so called religious organisations who were in fact abusing children emotionally and physically. Two of these organisations appear to be infamous – The Sisters of Mercy, who were Catholic nuns, and the Christian Brothers, who were already known in government service as the “Christian buggers”. “Already known in government service”. How about that.
Blackheath also tells us:
“The rules of a Christian Brothers home were that if you were abused by one of the holy fathers, that was an act of god, and if you complained about the holy father, that was a sin against god and you would be flogged for it. By the way, the flogging was with a metal hacksaw replacement blade. It did not leave much of a kid… Any ship that was allowed to sail from that date on was allowed to sail in the knowledge that the inmates were going to be raped and abused.”
And yet Mr Blackheath did nothing. He did not utter a word.
A group of social workers at the time, though, did. And of course, they were ignored.
Here is more information on Lord Blackheath via Wikipedia:
David Noel James, Baron James of Blackheath CBE (born 7 December 1937) is a British businessman and corporate troubleshooter and Conservative life peer.
James has had a varied career in the city of London. Between 1959 and 1964, he trained with Lloyds Bank, joining Ford Credit's launch team in 1964. He then became a director of many companies, often in trouble, to assist their recovery: in 1973 he joined Cork Gulley to rescue Cedar Holdings; in 1989 he was appointed chairman of Eagle Trust; other directorships have included British Shoe Corporation, LEP group, Dan-Air, North Sea Assets and Central & Sheerwood. During his time at Eagle Trust he triggered the Iraqi supergun affair. Whilst visiting Eagle-owned Walter Somers factory in Halesowen in 1990, he noticed the muzzle of what appeared to be a large gun. He informed MI6, giving them one of their first leads.[1]
[The Iraqi supergun affair, aka Project Babylon, was a project with unknown objectives commissioned by the then Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to build a series of "superguns". The design was based on research from the 1960s Project HARP led by the Canadian artillery expert Gerald Bull. There were most likely four different devices in the program
The project began in 1988; it was halted in 1990 after Gerald Bull was assassinated, and parts of these superguns were seized in transit around Europe...The second supergun, "Big Babylon"..would have been over 100 metres (300 feet) high at the tip. The complete device weighed about 2,100 tonnes (the barrel alone weighed 1,655 tons). It was a space gun intended to shoot projectiles into orbit, a theme of Bull's work since Project HARP. Neither of these devices could be elevated or trained, making them useless for direct military purposes...It is possible that Big Babylon was intended both to launch satellites and to serve as a weapon]
...In April 2006 it was announced that James had been nominated for a Life Peerage by the Conservative Party[3] The news had already been revealed in a list leaked to The Times[4] that eventually led to the Cash for Peerages scandal. James himself had given a relatively small amount to the Conservatives. He was created Baron James of Blackheath, of Wildbrooks in the County of West Sussex on 9 June 2006.[5]
In November 2010 Lord James claimed in the House of Lords that he had been approached by a secretive "megarich" organisation, which James referred to only as 'Foundation X', willing to lend billions of pounds, interest-free, to the UK government.[6]
He has worked as a Consultant for Cerberus Capital Management.[7]...James attracted some press and blog attention after a speech in the House of Lords on 1 November 2010, in which he claimed to have been approached by an unnamed organisation wishing to fund massive public works projects in the UK with vast currency reserves backed by gold bullion.[8][9] A Labour Party staff member and political blogger who wrote about the story[10] speculated that the organisation in question is the Office of International Treasury Control.[11] possibly an organisation though unknown or unacknowledged by any government to date. However, James has stated that he had not been approached by the Office of International Treasury Control, that there were no links between Foundation X and the Office of International Treasury Control,[12] that the Foundation X was a viable organisation, and that the offer was in good faith. Further, in the course of the recorded speech James uses a comparison to the "total value of the Vatican Bank Reserves" to denounce the validity of the "total amount of bullion ever taken from the earth's crust" as given by a "12-year-old issue of National Geographic" (the alleged single source for this figure), which had been used by Lord Strathclyde to dismiss the claim for the assets of Foundation X to be backed by bullion. In this speech Lord James of Blackheath neither identifies Foundation X with the Vatican or the Vatican Bank nor does he hint on any such connection.[13]
On Saturday 6 November 2010; the HM Treasury issued a statement which contradicted James' earlier claims; denying that any meeting took place between Lord James and Treasury commercial secretary Lord Sassoon and a representative of the group which had been referred to as 'Foundation-X'.[14]...James attracted some press[15][16] and blog[17] attention after another speech in the House of Lords on 16 February 2012, in which he claimed a massive $15 trillion money-laundering fraud from the United States Federal Reserve in the name of "Yohannes Riyadi" – a man who may or may not exist. James offered to provide evidence and asked for an official investigation (Hansard, transcription 16 February 2012, Column 1016, from 5.20 pm).[18]
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Lawyers ask again for Prince Andrew to testify under oath
via The London Evening Standard:
Lawyers representing the woman claiming she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew are re-sending him a letter asking him to testify under oath about the allegations, the Standard can reveal. Virginia Roberts’ legal team are delivering the document for a second time requesting his ‘voluntary cooperation in answering question about his sexual interactions’ with her. Miss Roberts’ lawyers had sent the letter directly to Buckingham Palace the first time but it was claimed it was returned without being opened. Today her lawyers told the Standard “We are attempting delivery through the British Embassy in Washington”.
It came after Andrew spoke out publicly for the first time to deny allegations he had sex with an under-age teenager. Speaking to leading figures from the worlds of politics and business at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos he said he wanted to “reiterate and reaffirm” Buckingham Palace statements dismissing accusations, made in US court documents, that he had sex with a woman on three separate occasions when she was a minor in 2001. Last night he said: “Firstly I think I must, (and) want, for the record to refer to the events that have taken place in the last few weeks and I just wish to reiterate and to reaffirm the statements which have already been made on my behalf by Buckingham Palace.”
He went on to say: “My focus is on my work.”
Lawyers representing the woman claiming she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew are re-sending him a letter asking him to testify under oath about the allegations, the Standard can reveal. Virginia Roberts’ legal team are delivering the document for a second time requesting his ‘voluntary cooperation in answering question about his sexual interactions’ with her. Miss Roberts’ lawyers had sent the letter directly to Buckingham Palace the first time but it was claimed it was returned without being opened. Today her lawyers told the Standard “We are attempting delivery through the British Embassy in Washington”.
It came after Andrew spoke out publicly for the first time to deny allegations he had sex with an under-age teenager. Speaking to leading figures from the worlds of politics and business at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos he said he wanted to “reiterate and reaffirm” Buckingham Palace statements dismissing accusations, made in US court documents, that he had sex with a woman on three separate occasions when she was a minor in 2001. Last night he said: “Firstly I think I must, (and) want, for the record to refer to the events that have taken place in the last few weeks and I just wish to reiterate and to reaffirm the statements which have already been made on my behalf by Buckingham Palace.”
He went on to say: “My focus is on my work.”
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Prince Andrew named in underage sex lawsuit
via The Washington Post:
Prince Andrew was named this week in an ongoing lawsuit brought by a group of women who claim they were trafficked to the world’s rich and powerful as part of an alleged underage “sex slave” ring run by American investment banker Jeffrey Epstein.
The allegation, found in a court filing this week, prompted Buckingham Palace to issue an unusual statement to the Guardian, noting that the allegation surfaced in “long-running and ongoing civil proceedings in the United States to which the Duke of York is not a party.” The statement continues: “As such we would not comment in detail. However, for the avoidance of doubt, any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.”
As part of a 2008 plea deal with prosecutors, Epstein spent 13 months in prison on a state charge of soliciting prostitutes. According to unsealed documents pertaining to that deal, Epstein was the subject of a federal investigation probing allegations that the powerful figure abused dozens of underage girls at his Palm Beach mansion. The deal effectively allowed him to avoid potential federal charges stemming from the investigation.
The lawsuit, filed in 2008 by two anonymous alleged victims, charges federal prosecutors with violating a statute by not consulting with them before finalizing the plea deal. The latest filing is a motion to expand that existing case to include the allegations of two more women.
Those women named Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz and other powerful associates of Epstein as participants in the alleged sexual abuse ring. It’s the first time the Duke of York’s name has appeared in a court document alleging that he sexually abused Epstein’s alleged victims.
But as the Guardian’s reporting makes clear, this isn’t the first time the Duke of York’s name has been linked publicly to the allegations against Epstein: Prince Andrew was friends with Epstein for years — before, during and after the banker served time in prison. In 2011, responding to a statement from one of Epstein’s former employees, Prince Andrew told Vanity Fair that he never attended any of the notorious pool parties at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion and denied having contact with the alleged victims. He allegedly ended his friendship with Epstein at some point that year.
In the new motion, “Jane Doe #3″ says she was “forced to have sexual relations with this Prince when she was a minor in three separate geographical locations,” including in British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s apartment in London; during an “orgy” on Epstein’s island in the U.S. Virgin Islands; and in New York.
“Epstein instructed Jane Doe #3 that she was to give the Prince whatever he demanded and required Jane Doe #3 to report back to him on the details of the sexual abuse,” the document says. Maxwell is a friend of Epstein’s who is named as a co-conspirator in the suit.
Dershowitz, too, has denied the allegations against him in the new motion. Speaking to Politico this week, the attorney said the claims were “totally, unequivocally and completely false.” Those allegations include a claim that “Deshowitz was an eye-witness to the sexual abuse of many other minors by Epstein and several of Epstein’s co-conspirators,” that “Epstein required Jane Doe #3 to have sexual relations with Dershowitz on numerous occasions,” and that the attorney played “a significant role” in negotiating Epstein’s federal plea agreement....Federal prosecutors identified more than 40 potential victims in their investigation against Epstein before the federal inquiry was dropped in the plea deal. Some of those victims have reached out-of-court settlements with Epstein for undisclosed amounts.
According to the motion, Epstein’s clients included “many other powerful men, including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.” The alleged victim accuses Epstein of requiring the women he gave to powerful individuals to “describe the events” with them “so that he could potentially blackmail them.”
Through her lawyers, Jane Doe #3 issued the following statement to the Guardian in response to the denials of her alleged abusers: “These types of aggressive attacks on me are exactly the reason why sexual abuse victims typically remain silent and the reason why I did for a long time. That trend should change. I’m not going to be bullied back into silence.”
Prince Andrew was named this week in an ongoing lawsuit brought by a group of women who claim they were trafficked to the world’s rich and powerful as part of an alleged underage “sex slave” ring run by American investment banker Jeffrey Epstein.
The allegation, found in a court filing this week, prompted Buckingham Palace to issue an unusual statement to the Guardian, noting that the allegation surfaced in “long-running and ongoing civil proceedings in the United States to which the Duke of York is not a party.” The statement continues: “As such we would not comment in detail. However, for the avoidance of doubt, any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.”
As part of a 2008 plea deal with prosecutors, Epstein spent 13 months in prison on a state charge of soliciting prostitutes. According to unsealed documents pertaining to that deal, Epstein was the subject of a federal investigation probing allegations that the powerful figure abused dozens of underage girls at his Palm Beach mansion. The deal effectively allowed him to avoid potential federal charges stemming from the investigation.
The lawsuit, filed in 2008 by two anonymous alleged victims, charges federal prosecutors with violating a statute by not consulting with them before finalizing the plea deal. The latest filing is a motion to expand that existing case to include the allegations of two more women.
Those women named Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz and other powerful associates of Epstein as participants in the alleged sexual abuse ring. It’s the first time the Duke of York’s name has appeared in a court document alleging that he sexually abused Epstein’s alleged victims.
But as the Guardian’s reporting makes clear, this isn’t the first time the Duke of York’s name has been linked publicly to the allegations against Epstein: Prince Andrew was friends with Epstein for years — before, during and after the banker served time in prison. In 2011, responding to a statement from one of Epstein’s former employees, Prince Andrew told Vanity Fair that he never attended any of the notorious pool parties at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion and denied having contact with the alleged victims. He allegedly ended his friendship with Epstein at some point that year.
In the new motion, “Jane Doe #3″ says she was “forced to have sexual relations with this Prince when she was a minor in three separate geographical locations,” including in British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s apartment in London; during an “orgy” on Epstein’s island in the U.S. Virgin Islands; and in New York.
“Epstein instructed Jane Doe #3 that she was to give the Prince whatever he demanded and required Jane Doe #3 to report back to him on the details of the sexual abuse,” the document says. Maxwell is a friend of Epstein’s who is named as a co-conspirator in the suit.
Dershowitz, too, has denied the allegations against him in the new motion. Speaking to Politico this week, the attorney said the claims were “totally, unequivocally and completely false.” Those allegations include a claim that “Deshowitz was an eye-witness to the sexual abuse of many other minors by Epstein and several of Epstein’s co-conspirators,” that “Epstein required Jane Doe #3 to have sexual relations with Dershowitz on numerous occasions,” and that the attorney played “a significant role” in negotiating Epstein’s federal plea agreement....Federal prosecutors identified more than 40 potential victims in their investigation against Epstein before the federal inquiry was dropped in the plea deal. Some of those victims have reached out-of-court settlements with Epstein for undisclosed amounts.
According to the motion, Epstein’s clients included “many other powerful men, including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.” The alleged victim accuses Epstein of requiring the women he gave to powerful individuals to “describe the events” with them “so that he could potentially blackmail them.”
Through her lawyers, Jane Doe #3 issued the following statement to the Guardian in response to the denials of her alleged abusers: “These types of aggressive attacks on me are exactly the reason why sexual abuse victims typically remain silent and the reason why I did for a long time. That trend should change. I’m not going to be bullied back into silence.”
Thursday, January 1, 2015
‘Ndrangheta, the Freemasonry of Crime
via Conspiracy Archive:
Italian police have videotaped the initiation ceremony of an elite circle within ‘Ndrangheta – La Santa. A translation has been provided by Euronews:
Invoking the names Garibaldi, Mazzini and La Marmora in the opening is a Masonic reference, as are mention of the stars, the sun and the moon. The rank of santisti, originally “only conferred on no more than thirty-three people,” was instituted as a secret society within a secret society. An innovation from the 1970s, the most important ‘Ndrangheta mafia chiefs decided to implement an occult stage, a secret sect, to “maximize the power and invisibility” of the bosses, the existence of which would only be known by other santisti (Paoli 114). It was intended from the start to allow mafia bosses to join Freemasonry and vice versa, to facilitate more direct influence in civil society, the state and finance. “The very creation of the Santa was greatly influenced by the Freemasonry, with which the ‘Ndrangheta chiefs developed ties during the Reggio Calabria revolt of 1970,” writes Professor Letizia Paoli in Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Further evidence of masonic ties elucidated by Paoli is the fact that the ceremony – now confirmed in the video – is opened “’in the name Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Giuseppe La Marmora,’ three major figures of the Italian Freemasonry, who are personified during the same meetings by three santisti” (ibid). And not captured on tape, another initiation ritual – Fidelizzazione – is more overt:
The creation of the Santa was analogous to the tradition within Italian Freemasonry to set up covered lodges or so-called black lodges (of the P2 variety) as an extra layer of secrecy:
Indeed, in an arrest warrant of some 500 members during 1990s, prosecutors noted:
The emergence of ‘Ndrangheta and the Cosa Nostra in the latter half of the 19th century was itself influenced by Masonry, the Carbonari, and the populist spread of insurrectionary secret societies. During the movement for Italian unification (Risorgimento) the nascent mafia’s organizational model was learned from political prisoners, Masons and Carbonari, mixing with traditional gangs in prison. Thereafter, according to historian John Dickie, they would operate as “Freemasonries of Crime.” Paoli highlights this fact as well. The “Fratellanza of Favara,” for instance, “one of the largest nineteenth-century mafia associations with branches in several towns and villages of the Agrigento province”:
The structure of ‘Ndrangheta is discussed in a UCL lecture by professor John Dickie. The Freemasonry of Crime, it turns out, has a hierarchy not all dissimilar to the 18th Century Bavarian Illuminati. The ‘Ndrangheta have a provincial boss (like Illuminati Provincials), under which there are local branches (Illuminati Prefects and Deans) with members divided into Major and Minor (Illuminatus minor and major) classes of initiates (2:30, 3:10, 4:34; 7:10). The Santa, I suppose could be likened to Regents, and the Senior Ranks, the Areopagites.
Italian police have videotaped the initiation ceremony of an elite circle within ‘Ndrangheta – La Santa. A translation has been provided by Euronews:
Good evening, and good evening to the “santisti”.
Indeed in this holy evening in the silence of the night under the light of the stars and the splendor of the moon, I form the holy chain, in name of Garibaldi, Mazzini and Lamarmora, with words of humbleness, I form the holy society! Say all together with me: I swear ….to repudiate…altogether up to the seventh generation… all the criminal society that I have recognized so far, in order to defend the honour of my wise brothers! Until yesterday you belonged to the criminal society. As far as “N’drangheta” is concerned up to yesterday you were complete! Now you must take a different path. You must arm yourself. You must repudiate all you knew until yesterday. Here there are two paths….the mountains…the holy mountain..
Today, from now on, you judge by yourself! There are two possibilities: if in your life you fail to do something important, your brothers must not judge you. You must know by yourself that you failed and you must choose the way to follow. The oath of poison!! A pill, there is a pill!!…. Cyanide! ….Or you poison yourself. Or you take this one that shoots. The bullets in the gun.. You must always keep one bullet! That is for you!
If they ask you: “Excuse me, do you know whose son are you? Who is your father? You must answer: My father is the sun. My mother is the moon.”
Invoking the names Garibaldi, Mazzini and La Marmora in the opening is a Masonic reference, as are mention of the stars, the sun and the moon. The rank of santisti, originally “only conferred on no more than thirty-three people,” was instituted as a secret society within a secret society. An innovation from the 1970s, the most important ‘Ndrangheta mafia chiefs decided to implement an occult stage, a secret sect, to “maximize the power and invisibility” of the bosses, the existence of which would only be known by other santisti (Paoli 114). It was intended from the start to allow mafia bosses to join Freemasonry and vice versa, to facilitate more direct influence in civil society, the state and finance. “The very creation of the Santa was greatly influenced by the Freemasonry, with which the ‘Ndrangheta chiefs developed ties during the Reggio Calabria revolt of 1970,” writes Professor Letizia Paoli in Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style (Oxford University Press, 2008).
According to the former chief of the Messina ‘ndrina, Gaetano Costa, Mommo Piromalli “who was famous for being a Mason, or – at any rate – extremely close to the Mason circles . .. introduced the rule … according to which any member of the Santa could join the Masonry”. And indeed, according to another mafia witness, Albanese, “all the santisti were part of the Masonic brotherhood or, at least, the chiefs of the Santa were full members.” (116).
Further evidence of masonic ties elucidated by Paoli is the fact that the ceremony – now confirmed in the video – is opened “’in the name Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Giuseppe La Marmora,’ three major figures of the Italian Freemasonry, who are personified during the same meetings by three santisti” (ibid). And not captured on tape, another initiation ritual – Fidelizzazione – is more overt:
…during the ceremony the officiant asks: “Do you know the family of the Masons?” The novice must answer: “No, but if necessary I embrace it with my skin, flesh and bones, swearing the loyalty asked of me to the family of the holy order of the Masons”. Furthermore, as in Masonic practice, while the new member’s name is communicated to all the existing members, theirs are initially not disclosed to him (ibid).
The creation of the Santa was analogous to the tradition within Italian Freemasonry to set up covered lodges or so-called black lodges (of the P2 variety) as an extra layer of secrecy:
As the pentito Giovanni Gulla points out, “the Santa, as a secret sect, is the exact correspondent of the covered Freemasonry vis-a-vis the official one”. In the same way as the secret lodges were formed in the Freemasonry, the Santa and the higher ranks were created to reinforce protection around the inner core of the association through secrecy. In this way, the Santa and the higher ranks functioned to remedy the ‘Ndrangheta’s traditional low degree of secrecy (ibid).
Indeed, in an arrest warrant of some 500 members during 1990s, prosecutors noted:
The [‘Ndrangheta’s] entrance into previously existing or ad hoc constituted Masonic lodges was the way to establish links with those social strata which traditionally adhered to the Masonry, that is, members of the liberal professions (physicians, lawyers, and notaries), entrepreneurs and politicians, representatives of state institutions, among them magistrates and members of the police forces. Through this link, the ‘Ndrangheta was able to find not only new possibilities for economic investment, but previously unconceived political outlets. Above all, that “covering,” accomplished in various ways and in various levels (diversions, lack of investigations, attacks of every kind to noncompliant magistrates, adjustments of trials, etc.), produced a substantial impunity, characteristic of this criminal organization, rendering it almost “invisible” to institutions, to such an extent that only a couple of years back it came to the attention of the national public opinion and of the most qualified investigative bodies (198-199).
The emergence of ‘Ndrangheta and the Cosa Nostra in the latter half of the 19th century was itself influenced by Masonry, the Carbonari, and the populist spread of insurrectionary secret societies. During the movement for Italian unification (Risorgimento) the nascent mafia’s organizational model was learned from political prisoners, Masons and Carbonari, mixing with traditional gangs in prison. Thereafter, according to historian John Dickie, they would operate as “Freemasonries of Crime.” Paoli highlights this fact as well. The “Fratellanza of Favara,” for instance, “one of the largest nineteenth-century mafia associations with branches in several towns and villages of the Agrigento province”:
… practiced rites and initiation procedures of Masonic derivation, explicitly referring to the “universal republic.” Likewise, the Stoppaglieri of Monreale allegedly used rites of a Masonic type, while its founder, Giuseppe Palmeri from Nicaso, was a member of Mazzini’s revolutionary movement for the independence and unification of Italy, which was also heavily influenced by the Freemasonry. The influence of liberal secret societies upon the formation stages of contemporary mafia associations is also echoed in the legends recounted by today’s mafia members. According to Tommaso Buscetta, for example, the current Cosa Nostra was once known as Carboneria – a clear reference to the liberal secret society bearing the same name (104).
The structure of ‘Ndrangheta is discussed in a UCL lecture by professor John Dickie. The Freemasonry of Crime, it turns out, has a hierarchy not all dissimilar to the 18th Century Bavarian Illuminati. The ‘Ndrangheta have a provincial boss (like Illuminati Provincials), under which there are local branches (Illuminati Prefects and Deans) with members divided into Major and Minor (Illuminatus minor and major) classes of initiates (2:30, 3:10, 4:34; 7:10). The Santa, I suppose could be likened to Regents, and the Senior Ranks, the Areopagites.
Sunday, December 7, 2014
UK Member of Parliament 'was at snuff film lad's murder'
This post contains details that may be inappropriate for sensitive readers.
via The Express:
The existence of “snuff” pornography, in which the victim is killed on camera, has long been rumoured, but until last year no police officer had ever seen one. [This statement is incorrect. Snuff films were also discovered in the UK 14 years ago, and that case also involved Russian associates, just like this one.] A film seized during a raid on a Latvian man’s house in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, shows a teenage girl begging a man not to hurt her before she is raped, then strangled with a wire causing her to foam at the mouth and her eyes to roll back into her head. She is then wrapped tightly in a plastic sheet and dragged from the room. The police officer leading the inquiry was convinced she was murdered.
The judge who sentenced Andreas Bauminis, 22, to eight months in jail for possessing that film and other material in March also said she was probably killed. From her accent, police believe the girl to be American, but despite having images of her and her apparent killer for 15 months, they have done nothing to help trace them. Neither Britain’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), which is part of the National Crime Agency (NCA), nor any US agency such as the FBI have yet been sent the video. Both CEOP and the US agencies have powerful facial recognition software. Campaigning Labour MP Tom Watson said the revelations highlighted a serious failure in the UK’s policing of child pornography....Mr Watson said: “If the view of the judge and the police in this case is true, then Britain's police have sat on evidence of a child murder for over a year....The raid on Bauminis’s house in February 2013 came after a tip-off from the Russian Interior Ministry, which had monitored an upload of child pornography from a UK-based computer address.
The Russian government contacted CEOP, which traced the computer to a house in Skelmersdale.When Lancashire Police raided the home, they discovered an “enormous” computer that one officer said resembled “something out of a submarine”. Sick films, including Japanese cartoons depicting sexual abuse of children by adults and animals, were found. However, it was the other 20-minute video featuring a white, blonde girl of about 14 years of age and made about two years ago that shook even hardened officers. Detective Constable Edward Wenham, who led the investigation, said it was the “worst thing I had seen by a country mile”. He said: “My firm belief was this child was definitely killed.
“A man in his 40s was decorating; he had a goatee beard and you could see his face quiet clearly. “The young girl came into the room and asked him for money to go to cheerleading camp. “The girl was white. It was apparent that the man was either her father or stepfather. “The man began to shout obscenities, then he sexually abused her before strangling her and sexually abusing her again. “After that he laid out a clear plastic sheet and laid the body in this, then wrapped it tightly around her. It took about three minutes for this. I was convinced this was not acting and that the girl was dead. If she had been play-acting when the plastic was wrapped around her face she could not have been able to keep so still. If it was acting, it was better than an Oscar-winning performance: her eyes didn’t blink or move at all. Other horrific videos showing even younger girls being abused were also found, which detectives believe were made in Russia."
Sentencing at Liverpool Crown Court in March, Judge Dennis Watson QC said while it was difficult to be certain that the girl had died on camera “all the evidence points to the fact that she almost certainly did”.
He imposed a prison sentence of eight months and Bauminis could be released this summer. Mike Hames, the former head of Scotland Yard’s Obscene Publications Unit, described the seizure of the “snuff” video as “incredibly important” because it appeared to verify long held suspicions such material existed. He said it was vital to comb through Bauminis’s contacts. “You have to work on the presumption he’ll be part of a wider network of paedophiles they’ll be sharing child pornography between them."
more, via Aanirfan:
It is being reported that a young boy was murdered during a torture session filmed at Amsterdam's Blue Boy club. There is evidence that a UK Member of Parliament was present when the boy was killed. UK Police are currently investigating the Member of Parliament's link to the snuff movie.
This child murder is linked to Warwick Spinks who is linked to the Elm Guest House boy brothel in London which is linked to the UK security services. Around 1969, Warwick Spinks was caught on secret camera offering to supply a video in which a 10 year old boy was killed and another featuring the horrific abuse of a young boy. The untouchable "Warwick Spinks ... built businesses and bought properties in South Africa, Namibia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland, France and England..."
It has been reported that a number of top Conservative Members of the UK parliament took young boys to Holland for the purpose of child sexual abuse. A source said: "Officers were told Spinks knew the MP and arranged a tour to Amsterdam. While there he went to the Blue Boy bar, where Spinks was running a brothel.
"The MP was said to have been present when a boy died during an orgy which was being filmed."
Award-winning journalist Nick Davies wrote about the grim mysteries of snuff movies. [The following passage quotes Davies]:
Alan Williams, the "Welsh Witch", and Londoner Warwick Spinks managed boy brothels in Amsterdam
Williams boasted of the day in south Wales when he had seen a 10-year-old boy on his bike, grabbed him, raped him, and, when he cried, strangled him. From Boys Clubs 21, he organised the importing of boys from Cardiff and London, inflicting intense violence on any who defied him. Spinks had been running a mail order pornography business from Brighton, before he moved to Amsterdam. ..reportedly sections of the British police said they lacked the money to investigate what was happening in Europe...In the UK, it has been alleged that dangerous child abusers held key positions in certain local government authorities, such as Islington in London...It has become clear that all of the above child abuse can be linked to the CIA, and its friends in Mossad, MI6, MI5...If the CIA wants to control the boss of MI6, or the Secretary General of NATO, or a top Hollywood entertainer, or the President of the United States, or a member of a royal family, or a newspaper editor, or a key employee of Google, it can supply them with young girls or boys.
In order to get the system in place, the CIA has to know where children will be available for abuse.
A guide book is helpful. In 1964, an American called Bob Damron published a book listing gay bars.
The CIA is reported to have photographs of certain top foreign dignitaries visiting such bars.
From 1969/1970 onwards you could buy the Spartacus guide book which listed the child brothels all around the world from Port Au Prince to Pattaya. Now, the big question is, how on earth did the Spartacus editors know the details of all these brothels around the world? The people most likely to know all the details were the CIA and its friends. The CIA has been linked to child abuse and child murder worldwide.
The Spartacus Club and Spartacus International were run from Amsterdam by John Stamford, a former Roman Catholic priest from the UK. In 1995, Stamford died mysteriously in prison in Belgium, aged 56.
Spartacus members got a '10% Discount' at the Elm Guest House boy brothel in London. Peter Glencross, commercial manager of Spartacus, helped persuade Carole Kasir to turn her Elm Guest House into a boy brothel.
Peter Glencross reportedly set out to create a network of child brothels for Spartacus members.
Customers of the Elm Guest house included members of MI5 and a cabinet minister, reportedly.
also relevant, via Wikipedia. This entry was poorly translated from German by Google Translate.
John D. Stamford (* May 20-June 21 [1] in 1939 in Lancashire (England); † 1999 ? in Belgium) was a priest and first editor of the internationally marketed Spartacus International Gay Guide .
Origin
Stamford was a Catholic priest in Brighton, [2] before he has taught as a teacher at a Catholic Sunday School in Lancashire. Later he operated in Brighton a guest house. 1967 saw the 28-year-old as JDS Publications, 46 Preston Street, Brighton with the publication of the monthly gay Spartacus Magazine in DinA5 format and founded in 1968 [1] the Spartacus International Gay Guide for all continents, which as of March 1970 in Sussex appeared ,
1971/1972 Stamford moved to Amsterdam. The published at EUR Spartacus 3rd edition in December 1973 in Amsterdam, designed as a guide Spartacus International Gay Guide brought - similar to its competitors Places of Interest , Bob Damron's Address Book , Gayellow pages the target group of gays in the focus of the marketing departments of the international tourism industry as wealthy individuals. The addresses listed - especially in suffering persecution countries - were often the focal point of local and transnational political and non-political groupings of homosexuals. In the more developed countries Stamford served multilingual publication as a model for numerous national and regional guide, the publications from the rear of series such. B. Berlin from behind from the Bruno Gmunder Verlag . Stamford, however, was also accused of his publications promoting prostitution of minors. Different states put pressure on the Dutch government to lay Stamford crafts [???]. [3]
Publishers
In Amsterdam, published Stamford other publications, the magazine Spartacus Traveller and the pedophile -oriented Pan Magazine [2] and pornography in publishing The Coltsfoot Press, temporarily renamed as Department of Spartacus-Verlag. [4] He bought a luxurious business Villa in Amsterdam Subdivision Baarns which was established in 1986 seized due to multi-million dollar tax liabilities. In the subsequent auction numerous personal items of Stamford were lost. A former employee Stamford doubted Stamford knew what was going on. Stamford accuses other employees to have cheated him out of tens of thousands of guilders...1987 quotes the German language magazine Gay journal Dutch newspaper De Gay Krant that Stamford in Holland would wanted for illegal boys trade. [7]
sources:
John D. Stamford: 'Spartacus Gay Guide', 1975, Seite 12
Event-Magazin (Londoner Programmzeitschrift), David Roper: Good Man Guide , Buchbesprechung, 29. April 1982
Zeitschrift Gay Journal : Ist Stamford noch zu retten? Nr. 7, Juli 1985, basierend auf Artikeln der niederländischen Zeitung The Gay Krant .
Werbung in der 1985er Ausgabe des Spartacus International Gay Guide
Zeitschrift DU&ICH , Wilfried D. Schwarze: In letzter Minute. Mit der Vertragsunterzeichnung am 1. Dezember 1986 durch Bruno Gmünder (Foto links) und John D. Stamford (Foto rechts) ist die Zukunft des Spartacus gesichert , Januar 1987, S. 63.
Peter Thommen, Blog des schwulen Buchladens ARCADOS: Spartacus – Guide durch eine „schwule Welt“? November 2006
Gay Journal: Stamford im Visier , 1987, Nr. 4/5, S. 15.
via The Express:
The existence of “snuff” pornography, in which the victim is killed on camera, has long been rumoured, but until last year no police officer had ever seen one. [This statement is incorrect. Snuff films were also discovered in the UK 14 years ago, and that case also involved Russian associates, just like this one.] A film seized during a raid on a Latvian man’s house in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, shows a teenage girl begging a man not to hurt her before she is raped, then strangled with a wire causing her to foam at the mouth and her eyes to roll back into her head. She is then wrapped tightly in a plastic sheet and dragged from the room. The police officer leading the inquiry was convinced she was murdered.
The judge who sentenced Andreas Bauminis, 22, to eight months in jail for possessing that film and other material in March also said she was probably killed. From her accent, police believe the girl to be American, but despite having images of her and her apparent killer for 15 months, they have done nothing to help trace them. Neither Britain’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), which is part of the National Crime Agency (NCA), nor any US agency such as the FBI have yet been sent the video. Both CEOP and the US agencies have powerful facial recognition software. Campaigning Labour MP Tom Watson said the revelations highlighted a serious failure in the UK’s policing of child pornography....Mr Watson said: “If the view of the judge and the police in this case is true, then Britain's police have sat on evidence of a child murder for over a year....The raid on Bauminis’s house in February 2013 came after a tip-off from the Russian Interior Ministry, which had monitored an upload of child pornography from a UK-based computer address.
The Russian government contacted CEOP, which traced the computer to a house in Skelmersdale.When Lancashire Police raided the home, they discovered an “enormous” computer that one officer said resembled “something out of a submarine”. Sick films, including Japanese cartoons depicting sexual abuse of children by adults and animals, were found. However, it was the other 20-minute video featuring a white, blonde girl of about 14 years of age and made about two years ago that shook even hardened officers. Detective Constable Edward Wenham, who led the investigation, said it was the “worst thing I had seen by a country mile”. He said: “My firm belief was this child was definitely killed.
“A man in his 40s was decorating; he had a goatee beard and you could see his face quiet clearly. “The young girl came into the room and asked him for money to go to cheerleading camp. “The girl was white. It was apparent that the man was either her father or stepfather. “The man began to shout obscenities, then he sexually abused her before strangling her and sexually abusing her again. “After that he laid out a clear plastic sheet and laid the body in this, then wrapped it tightly around her. It took about three minutes for this. I was convinced this was not acting and that the girl was dead. If she had been play-acting when the plastic was wrapped around her face she could not have been able to keep so still. If it was acting, it was better than an Oscar-winning performance: her eyes didn’t blink or move at all. Other horrific videos showing even younger girls being abused were also found, which detectives believe were made in Russia."
Sentencing at Liverpool Crown Court in March, Judge Dennis Watson QC said while it was difficult to be certain that the girl had died on camera “all the evidence points to the fact that she almost certainly did”.
He imposed a prison sentence of eight months and Bauminis could be released this summer. Mike Hames, the former head of Scotland Yard’s Obscene Publications Unit, described the seizure of the “snuff” video as “incredibly important” because it appeared to verify long held suspicions such material existed. He said it was vital to comb through Bauminis’s contacts. “You have to work on the presumption he’ll be part of a wider network of paedophiles they’ll be sharing child pornography between them."
more, via Aanirfan:
It is being reported that a young boy was murdered during a torture session filmed at Amsterdam's Blue Boy club. There is evidence that a UK Member of Parliament was present when the boy was killed. UK Police are currently investigating the Member of Parliament's link to the snuff movie.
This child murder is linked to Warwick Spinks who is linked to the Elm Guest House boy brothel in London which is linked to the UK security services. Around 1969, Warwick Spinks was caught on secret camera offering to supply a video in which a 10 year old boy was killed and another featuring the horrific abuse of a young boy. The untouchable "Warwick Spinks ... built businesses and bought properties in South Africa, Namibia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland, France and England..."
It has been reported that a number of top Conservative Members of the UK parliament took young boys to Holland for the purpose of child sexual abuse. A source said: "Officers were told Spinks knew the MP and arranged a tour to Amsterdam. While there he went to the Blue Boy bar, where Spinks was running a brothel.
"The MP was said to have been present when a boy died during an orgy which was being filmed."
Award-winning journalist Nick Davies wrote about the grim mysteries of snuff movies. [The following passage quotes Davies]:
"One boy had simply been shot through the head", Terry said. "He had been causing trouble and had been executed in front of several paedophiles." Another, he believed, had been thrown into one of the canals. "But the one about whom he spoke the most was a boy who had been tortured and killed in the most painful fashion in the course of producing a pornographic video."
Alan Williams, the "Welsh Witch", and Londoner Warwick Spinks managed boy brothels in Amsterdam
Williams boasted of the day in south Wales when he had seen a 10-year-old boy on his bike, grabbed him, raped him, and, when he cried, strangled him. From Boys Clubs 21, he organised the importing of boys from Cardiff and London, inflicting intense violence on any who defied him. Spinks had been running a mail order pornography business from Brighton, before he moved to Amsterdam. ..reportedly sections of the British police said they lacked the money to investigate what was happening in Europe...In the UK, it has been alleged that dangerous child abusers held key positions in certain local government authorities, such as Islington in London...It has become clear that all of the above child abuse can be linked to the CIA, and its friends in Mossad, MI6, MI5...If the CIA wants to control the boss of MI6, or the Secretary General of NATO, or a top Hollywood entertainer, or the President of the United States, or a member of a royal family, or a newspaper editor, or a key employee of Google, it can supply them with young girls or boys.
In order to get the system in place, the CIA has to know where children will be available for abuse.
A guide book is helpful. In 1964, an American called Bob Damron published a book listing gay bars.
The CIA is reported to have photographs of certain top foreign dignitaries visiting such bars.
From 1969/1970 onwards you could buy the Spartacus guide book which listed the child brothels all around the world from Port Au Prince to Pattaya. Now, the big question is, how on earth did the Spartacus editors know the details of all these brothels around the world? The people most likely to know all the details were the CIA and its friends. The CIA has been linked to child abuse and child murder worldwide.
The Spartacus Club and Spartacus International were run from Amsterdam by John Stamford, a former Roman Catholic priest from the UK. In 1995, Stamford died mysteriously in prison in Belgium, aged 56.
Spartacus members got a '10% Discount' at the Elm Guest House boy brothel in London. Peter Glencross, commercial manager of Spartacus, helped persuade Carole Kasir to turn her Elm Guest House into a boy brothel.
Peter Glencross reportedly set out to create a network of child brothels for Spartacus members.
Customers of the Elm Guest house included members of MI5 and a cabinet minister, reportedly.
also relevant, via Wikipedia. This entry was poorly translated from German by Google Translate.
John D. Stamford (* May 20-June 21 [1] in 1939 in Lancashire (England); † 1999 ? in Belgium) was a priest and first editor of the internationally marketed Spartacus International Gay Guide .
Origin
Stamford was a Catholic priest in Brighton, [2] before he has taught as a teacher at a Catholic Sunday School in Lancashire. Later he operated in Brighton a guest house. 1967 saw the 28-year-old as JDS Publications, 46 Preston Street, Brighton with the publication of the monthly gay Spartacus Magazine in DinA5 format and founded in 1968 [1] the Spartacus International Gay Guide for all continents, which as of March 1970 in Sussex appeared ,
1971/1972 Stamford moved to Amsterdam. The published at EUR Spartacus 3rd edition in December 1973 in Amsterdam, designed as a guide Spartacus International Gay Guide brought - similar to its competitors Places of Interest , Bob Damron's Address Book , Gayellow pages the target group of gays in the focus of the marketing departments of the international tourism industry as wealthy individuals. The addresses listed - especially in suffering persecution countries - were often the focal point of local and transnational political and non-political groupings of homosexuals. In the more developed countries Stamford served multilingual publication as a model for numerous national and regional guide, the publications from the rear of series such. B. Berlin from behind from the Bruno Gmunder Verlag . Stamford, however, was also accused of his publications promoting prostitution of minors. Different states put pressure on the Dutch government to lay Stamford crafts [???]. [3]
Publishers
In Amsterdam, published Stamford other publications, the magazine Spartacus Traveller and the pedophile -oriented Pan Magazine [2] and pornography in publishing The Coltsfoot Press, temporarily renamed as Department of Spartacus-Verlag. [4] He bought a luxurious business Villa in Amsterdam Subdivision Baarns which was established in 1986 seized due to multi-million dollar tax liabilities. In the subsequent auction numerous personal items of Stamford were lost. A former employee Stamford doubted Stamford knew what was going on. Stamford accuses other employees to have cheated him out of tens of thousands of guilders...1987 quotes the German language magazine Gay journal Dutch newspaper De Gay Krant that Stamford in Holland would wanted for illegal boys trade. [7]
sources:
John D. Stamford: 'Spartacus Gay Guide', 1975, Seite 12
Event-Magazin (Londoner Programmzeitschrift), David Roper: Good Man Guide , Buchbesprechung, 29. April 1982
Zeitschrift Gay Journal : Ist Stamford noch zu retten? Nr. 7, Juli 1985, basierend auf Artikeln der niederländischen Zeitung The Gay Krant .
Werbung in der 1985er Ausgabe des Spartacus International Gay Guide
Zeitschrift DU&ICH , Wilfried D. Schwarze: In letzter Minute. Mit der Vertragsunterzeichnung am 1. Dezember 1986 durch Bruno Gmünder (Foto links) und John D. Stamford (Foto rechts) ist die Zukunft des Spartacus gesichert , Januar 1987, S. 63.
Peter Thommen, Blog des schwulen Buchladens ARCADOS: Spartacus – Guide durch eine „schwule Welt“? November 2006
Gay Journal: Stamford im Visier , 1987, Nr. 4/5, S. 15.
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Sir Peter Hayman, British diplomat, knighted MI6 operative and alleged pedophile
via Wikipedia:
In November 1937 he joined the Home Office as an Assistant Principal. In World War II he served in the Rifle Brigade from 1942 to 1945, rising to the rank of Major.[1]
Hayman was director general of the British Information Services in New York[4] (1961–64) and then deputy commandant of the British military government in West Berlin from 1964 to 1966. He returned to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, becoming Deputy Under Secretary of State with responsibility for the United Nations and Eastern Europe from 1969 to 1970.[1] Then, from 1970 to 1974, he served as High Commissioner of the United Kingdom to Canada.
The Independent stated in his obituary that he started a commercial career in 1974, upon retirement at age 60.[3] However The Guardian reported in 2014 that he later served in the intelligence services, and was "long-time deputy director of MI6".[5] The Daily Telegraph characterized him as an "MI6 operative".[6]
In October 1978, Hayman left a package of paedophilia-related materials on a London bus. The police traced the package and discovered that under the pseudonym "Peter Henderson", Hayman had used an apartment in Bayswater, London, to conduct obscene correspondence. In the apartment, police found 45 diaries describing six years of "sexual fantasies" concerning children and activities with prostitutes, articles of female clothing and obscene literature. He was investigated by police but released without charge after being given a warning not to send obscene material through the mail.[7][8] In 1981, Private Eye magazine revealed this event. Then, using parliamentary privilege, MP Geoffrey Dickens asked why Hayman had not been prosecuted.[9][10] The Attorney General's reply indicated that while Hayman had been found to have received pornographic material through the post, it was not of an extreme nature, was non-commercial and in a sealed envelope, so did not warrant prosecution.[11]
In April 1981 Sir Michael Havers, the Attorney General, said in parliament that while Hayman was a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange, he was never a member of the executive committee, so was not prosecuted as others were for publishing contact advertisements.[12][13]
In 1984, Hayman was convicted for an act of gross indecency in a public lavatory.[1][9]
Later, on 29 November 1985, Dickens complained in the House of Commons that he had suffered harassment following his naming of Hayman. "The noose around my neck grew tighter after I named a former high-flying British diplomat on the Floor of the House. Honourable Members will understand that where big money is involved and as important names came into my possession so the threats began. First, I received threatening telephone calls followed by two burglaries at my London home. Then, more seriously, my name appeared on a multi-killer's hit list."[14] The Independent newspaper in February 2013 could find no corroboration for Dickens' claims in 1985.[14]
References
1. "Obituary: Sir Peter Hayman". The Times (London). 9 April 1992. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
2. "Ex-envoy tied to child porn". The Spokesman-Review. 19 March 1981. Retrieved 23 February 2013.
3. Denis Greenhill (11 April 1992). "Obituary: Sir Peter Hayman". The Independent. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
4. Geoffrey T. Hellman (3 February 1962). "Information Chief". The New Yorker. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
5. Muir, Hugh (25 February 2014). "Diary: Don't count on IDS. Figures just aren't his thing". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 February 2014.
6. Philip Johnston (4 July 2014). "Child abuse files were dismissed as fantasies of a deluded man". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 8 July 2014.
7. "Briton's friends shocked by pedophilia accusation". The Montreal Gazette. 19 March 1981. Retrieved 29 December 2013.
8. "The double life of sex case diplomat". The Sydney Morning Herald. 24 March 1981. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
9. "OBITUARIES Geoffrey Dickens". Independent. 18 May 1995. Retrieved 23 February 2013.
10. Mark Dowdey (18 March 1981). "MP defies porn case plea". Daily Mirror. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
11. "Text of MP's questions on envoy and replies be Ministers". The Guardian. 20 March 1981. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
12. "Why Sir Peter Hayman was not named". The Times (London). 7 April 1981. Retrieved 2 July 2014. "through his membership of PIE or otherwise"
13. Colin Brown (7 April 1981). "Havers denies special treatment for Hayman". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 July 2014. "Sir Peter was a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange"
14. "Tory MP warned of powerful paedophile ring 30 years ago". Independent. 22 February 2013. Retrieved 23 February 2013.
also related, via Yournewswire.com:
A teenage boy working at Buckingham Palace revealed he was groomed and sexually abused by a VIP paedophile ring there. The lad was also assaulted at the Royal Family’s Scottish retreat Balmoral, according to shocking Home Office files, reports the Sunday People. The boy who was 16 at the time, told how he was the victim of “exploitation of the highest order” – the claims could now be the subject of a police investigation.
The boy who was 16 at the time, told how he was the victim of “exploitation of the highest order” – the claims could now be the subject of a police investigation. In a heartbreaking note, the boy – then just 16 – told how he was the victim of “exploitation of the highest order”. The chilling claims could now be the subject of a police investigation into historic allegations of child sex abuse in the 1970s and 80s – linked to MPs and powerful figures. The disturbing account was passed directly to the then Home Secretary Leon Brittan but he ruled it was “not practical” to investigate. Campaigning Labour MP Tom Watson said: “I’m sure the Palace will want to co-operate with any inquiry.” A Palace spokesman said: “The Royal Household takes any allegation of this nature seriously and would act to address any specific allegations or investigate specific information.” The Sunday People and the investigations website Exaro have established that the Home Office file contains evidence of a letter written by the boy’s mother.
In November 1937 he joined the Home Office as an Assistant Principal. In World War II he served in the Rifle Brigade from 1942 to 1945, rising to the rank of Major.[1]
Hayman was director general of the British Information Services in New York[4] (1961–64) and then deputy commandant of the British military government in West Berlin from 1964 to 1966. He returned to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, becoming Deputy Under Secretary of State with responsibility for the United Nations and Eastern Europe from 1969 to 1970.[1] Then, from 1970 to 1974, he served as High Commissioner of the United Kingdom to Canada.
The Independent stated in his obituary that he started a commercial career in 1974, upon retirement at age 60.[3] However The Guardian reported in 2014 that he later served in the intelligence services, and was "long-time deputy director of MI6".[5] The Daily Telegraph characterized him as an "MI6 operative".[6]
In October 1978, Hayman left a package of paedophilia-related materials on a London bus. The police traced the package and discovered that under the pseudonym "Peter Henderson", Hayman had used an apartment in Bayswater, London, to conduct obscene correspondence. In the apartment, police found 45 diaries describing six years of "sexual fantasies" concerning children and activities with prostitutes, articles of female clothing and obscene literature. He was investigated by police but released without charge after being given a warning not to send obscene material through the mail.[7][8] In 1981, Private Eye magazine revealed this event. Then, using parliamentary privilege, MP Geoffrey Dickens asked why Hayman had not been prosecuted.[9][10] The Attorney General's reply indicated that while Hayman had been found to have received pornographic material through the post, it was not of an extreme nature, was non-commercial and in a sealed envelope, so did not warrant prosecution.[11]
In April 1981 Sir Michael Havers, the Attorney General, said in parliament that while Hayman was a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange, he was never a member of the executive committee, so was not prosecuted as others were for publishing contact advertisements.[12][13]
In 1984, Hayman was convicted for an act of gross indecency in a public lavatory.[1][9]
Later, on 29 November 1985, Dickens complained in the House of Commons that he had suffered harassment following his naming of Hayman. "The noose around my neck grew tighter after I named a former high-flying British diplomat on the Floor of the House. Honourable Members will understand that where big money is involved and as important names came into my possession so the threats began. First, I received threatening telephone calls followed by two burglaries at my London home. Then, more seriously, my name appeared on a multi-killer's hit list."[14] The Independent newspaper in February 2013 could find no corroboration for Dickens' claims in 1985.[14]
References
1. "Obituary: Sir Peter Hayman". The Times (London). 9 April 1992. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
2. "Ex-envoy tied to child porn". The Spokesman-Review. 19 March 1981. Retrieved 23 February 2013.
3. Denis Greenhill (11 April 1992). "Obituary: Sir Peter Hayman". The Independent. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
4. Geoffrey T. Hellman (3 February 1962). "Information Chief". The New Yorker. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
5. Muir, Hugh (25 February 2014). "Diary: Don't count on IDS. Figures just aren't his thing". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 February 2014.
6. Philip Johnston (4 July 2014). "Child abuse files were dismissed as fantasies of a deluded man". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 8 July 2014.
7. "Briton's friends shocked by pedophilia accusation". The Montreal Gazette. 19 March 1981. Retrieved 29 December 2013.
8. "The double life of sex case diplomat". The Sydney Morning Herald. 24 March 1981. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
9. "OBITUARIES Geoffrey Dickens". Independent. 18 May 1995. Retrieved 23 February 2013.
10. Mark Dowdey (18 March 1981). "MP defies porn case plea". Daily Mirror. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
11. "Text of MP's questions on envoy and replies be Ministers". The Guardian. 20 March 1981. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
12. "Why Sir Peter Hayman was not named". The Times (London). 7 April 1981. Retrieved 2 July 2014. "through his membership of PIE or otherwise"
13. Colin Brown (7 April 1981). "Havers denies special treatment for Hayman". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 July 2014. "Sir Peter was a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange"
14. "Tory MP warned of powerful paedophile ring 30 years ago". Independent. 22 February 2013. Retrieved 23 February 2013.
also related, via Yournewswire.com:
A teenage boy working at Buckingham Palace revealed he was groomed and sexually abused by a VIP paedophile ring there. The lad was also assaulted at the Royal Family’s Scottish retreat Balmoral, according to shocking Home Office files, reports the Sunday People. The boy who was 16 at the time, told how he was the victim of “exploitation of the highest order” – the claims could now be the subject of a police investigation.
The boy who was 16 at the time, told how he was the victim of “exploitation of the highest order” – the claims could now be the subject of a police investigation. In a heartbreaking note, the boy – then just 16 – told how he was the victim of “exploitation of the highest order”. The chilling claims could now be the subject of a police investigation into historic allegations of child sex abuse in the 1970s and 80s – linked to MPs and powerful figures. The disturbing account was passed directly to the then Home Secretary Leon Brittan but he ruled it was “not practical” to investigate. Campaigning Labour MP Tom Watson said: “I’m sure the Palace will want to co-operate with any inquiry.” A Palace spokesman said: “The Royal Household takes any allegation of this nature seriously and would act to address any specific allegations or investigate specific information.” The Sunday People and the investigations website Exaro have established that the Home Office file contains evidence of a letter written by the boy’s mother.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Three mysterious deaths on properties of British Royal Family
via NBC:
A murder mystery with elements of an Agatha Christie whodunit is unfolding at the vast country estate where Queen Elizabeth II and her family gathered in rural splendor to celebrate Christmas and New Year's. British police said that a young woman's body was found in the forest at Sandringham and that they are treating it as a murder case. An autopsy was conducted Tuesday, but the precise cause of death was not disclosed, and investigators have yet to establish the woman's identity...Police said a forensic pathologist found that it was highly unlikely the death was of natural causes and that there was no evidence of accidental injury. Investigators hoped to use DNA to identify the woman.
The queen and her husband, Prince Philip, celebrated the holidays at Sandringham with their children and grandchildren. The royal couple were still at Sandringham on Tuesday, along with their youngest son, Prince Edward, and his wife, Sophie. The royal family owns vast tracts of land throughout Britain, and it is not unprecedented for serious crimes to be committed on property under their control. In 2010, the body of a 46-year-old woman was found on the crown estate near Windsor Castle. She had apparently been killed by hammer blows to her head. Her estranged husband was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 26 years in prison.
Last March, the body of an American with a royal obsession was found on an island in the park opposite Buckingham Palace. Authorities said Robert James Moore, who had sent rambling letters and strange packages to the queen, may have been dead for as much as three years. The cause of death was not determined. Now Sandringham, which has served as a private residence for British monarchs since 1862, has been touched as well. Sandringham has long been one of the queen's favorite residences, especially during the holidays... Buckingham Palace officials are staying mum about the murder case. Police are keeping many details confidential as they try to develop leads. "I cannot confirm whether she was clothed because, at the moment, only my staff, the person who found the body and the person or people who put it there know that, and I would like it to stay that way," Fry said.
A murder mystery with elements of an Agatha Christie whodunit is unfolding at the vast country estate where Queen Elizabeth II and her family gathered in rural splendor to celebrate Christmas and New Year's. British police said that a young woman's body was found in the forest at Sandringham and that they are treating it as a murder case. An autopsy was conducted Tuesday, but the precise cause of death was not disclosed, and investigators have yet to establish the woman's identity...Police said a forensic pathologist found that it was highly unlikely the death was of natural causes and that there was no evidence of accidental injury. Investigators hoped to use DNA to identify the woman.
The queen and her husband, Prince Philip, celebrated the holidays at Sandringham with their children and grandchildren. The royal couple were still at Sandringham on Tuesday, along with their youngest son, Prince Edward, and his wife, Sophie. The royal family owns vast tracts of land throughout Britain, and it is not unprecedented for serious crimes to be committed on property under their control. In 2010, the body of a 46-year-old woman was found on the crown estate near Windsor Castle. She had apparently been killed by hammer blows to her head. Her estranged husband was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 26 years in prison.
Last March, the body of an American with a royal obsession was found on an island in the park opposite Buckingham Palace. Authorities said Robert James Moore, who had sent rambling letters and strange packages to the queen, may have been dead for as much as three years. The cause of death was not determined. Now Sandringham, which has served as a private residence for British monarchs since 1862, has been touched as well. Sandringham has long been one of the queen's favorite residences, especially during the holidays... Buckingham Palace officials are staying mum about the murder case. Police are keeping many details confidential as they try to develop leads. "I cannot confirm whether she was clothed because, at the moment, only my staff, the person who found the body and the person or people who put it there know that, and I would like it to stay that way," Fry said.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Vatican 'dope mobile' busted carrying cocaine and cannabis
via Rt.com:
Using an official Vatican car to transport cocaine and cannabis did not help two Italians to avoid justice. Diplomatic plates failed to protect the two smugglers as they were stopped and arrested in France. Two Italians, 30 and 41, whose names have not been revealed, are now in a French prison. There are varying reports on where the arrest was made. Local sources say the incident took place at a French border checkpoint, while AFP reported the two were detained at a toll station near Chambéry, in the French Alps. law enforcement searched the Vatican vehicle, they found four kilos of cocaine and 200 grams of cannabis.
It appeared that the car belonged to the Argentine Cardinal Jorge Maria Mejia, 91, retired librarian of the Holy See, who is now recovering after a heart attack. According to reports, the Cardinal’s private secretary had given the car to the two Italian men few days earlier, to take it for its annual checkup. French RTL radio said the two men used the car to drive to Spain to buy the drugs, assuming they would be protected by the diplomatic plates. They were reportedly on the way back when French police stopped them.
This information, however, has not yet been confirmed by legal sources. The Vatican confirmed that one of its official cars had been stopped in France with drugs on board, but stressed that none of its staff were involved in the incident. "Cardinal Mejia’s car carrying drugs was effectively blocked by the French police but the cardinal, who is ill… it is totally unrelated," the Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi said. When asked, both men failed to provide a Vatican diplomatic passport, so the Vatican was not directly implicated, French legal sources said.
Using an official Vatican car to transport cocaine and cannabis did not help two Italians to avoid justice. Diplomatic plates failed to protect the two smugglers as they were stopped and arrested in France. Two Italians, 30 and 41, whose names have not been revealed, are now in a French prison. There are varying reports on where the arrest was made. Local sources say the incident took place at a French border checkpoint, while AFP reported the two were detained at a toll station near Chambéry, in the French Alps. law enforcement searched the Vatican vehicle, they found four kilos of cocaine and 200 grams of cannabis.
It appeared that the car belonged to the Argentine Cardinal Jorge Maria Mejia, 91, retired librarian of the Holy See, who is now recovering after a heart attack. According to reports, the Cardinal’s private secretary had given the car to the two Italian men few days earlier, to take it for its annual checkup. French RTL radio said the two men used the car to drive to Spain to buy the drugs, assuming they would be protected by the diplomatic plates. They were reportedly on the way back when French police stopped them.
This information, however, has not yet been confirmed by legal sources. The Vatican confirmed that one of its official cars had been stopped in France with drugs on board, but stressed that none of its staff were involved in the incident. "Cardinal Mejia’s car carrying drugs was effectively blocked by the French police but the cardinal, who is ill… it is totally unrelated," the Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi said. When asked, both men failed to provide a Vatican diplomatic passport, so the Vatican was not directly implicated, French legal sources said.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Princess 'tried to flee three times'
The Sunday Morning Herald just published an article about how Princess Charlene had her passport confiscated by palace officials after repeatedly trying to return to South Africa to avoid her upcoming marriage with Prince Albert II. As with the case of Britney Spears, it is always disturbing to see a grown woman who is literally not allowed to make her own decisions. I can't say I know exactly what is going on here but her situation does seem like a pretty clear indication that arranged marriages are not exactly a thing of the past.
On a related note, a former FBI operative and employee of Albert's is threatening to come forward with an expose of the prince's indiscretions. Here are some choice quotes from a relevant article in The Sunday Times:
"Everyone wants to make friends with Albert, the prince of Monaco, the fairytale, Mediterranean mini-state whose balmy weather and strict banking secrecy have turned it into the playground of choice for tax exiles from all over the world...With its casino culture, gleaming yachts and luxury real estate, the tiny territory wedged between France and Italy has for long been a magnet for money of dubious origins...One of Eringer’s constant concerns was the penetration of Monaco by freemasons. According to the lawsuit, he briefed Albert “on the three masonic lodges in France and their overlap with organised crime, including links to Monaco.”
Former FBI agent Elringer went on to reveal how Albert continually became involved with businessmen accused of various illegal activities while making plans to establish a freemason lodge in Monaco. Here is an excerpt from the article about Princess Charlene.
On a related note, a former FBI operative and employee of Albert's is threatening to come forward with an expose of the prince's indiscretions. Here are some choice quotes from a relevant article in The Sunday Times:
"Everyone wants to make friends with Albert, the prince of Monaco, the fairytale, Mediterranean mini-state whose balmy weather and strict banking secrecy have turned it into the playground of choice for tax exiles from all over the world...With its casino culture, gleaming yachts and luxury real estate, the tiny territory wedged between France and Italy has for long been a magnet for money of dubious origins...One of Eringer’s constant concerns was the penetration of Monaco by freemasons. According to the lawsuit, he briefed Albert “on the three masonic lodges in France and their overlap with organised crime, including links to Monaco.”
Former FBI agent Elringer went on to reveal how Albert continually became involved with businessmen accused of various illegal activities while making plans to establish a freemason lodge in Monaco. Here is an excerpt from the article about Princess Charlene.
Princess 'tried to flee three times'
Princess Charlene of Monaco tried to flee home to South Africa three times before her marriage to Prince Albert II, according to reports in French newspapers.
The couple's glittering religious wedding drew crowds of thousands to the Mediterranean principality on Saturday and the guest list included a host of heads of state, European royals and stars of the fashion and sports world.
But sources cited by Le Journal du Dimanche said the former Charlene Wittstock, 33, tried to take refuge in her country's embassy in Paris when she went to the French capital in May to try on her wedding dress.
Instead palace officials confiscated her passport and persuaded her to take part in the weekend's nuptials.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)