Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had ‘obstructed justice’ after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church’s investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret.

The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001.

It asserted the church’s right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II’s successor last week.

Lawyers acting for abuse victims claim it was designed to prevent the allegations from becoming public knowledge or being investigated by the police. They accuse Ratzinger of committing a ‘clear obstruction of justice’.

The letter, ‘concerning very grave sins’, was sent from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that once presided over the Inquisition and was overseen by Ratzinger.
Full:guardian.co.uk

TÜBINGEN, Germany, April 23 – For all Pope Benedict XVI’s decades as a Vatican insider, it may have been the crucible of a university town swept by student radicalism in the late 1960’s that definitively shaped the man who now leads the Roman Catholic Church.

During his Bavarian childhood under the Nazis, Joseph Ratzinger became convinced that the moral authority based in Catholic teachings was the sole reliable bulwark against human barbarism, according to friends, associates, and his biographer, John L. Allen Jr.

But while his deep reading and thinking in theology, philosophy, and history were fundamental to development as a theologian, it was the protests of student radicals at Tübingen University – in which he saw an echo of the Nazi totalitarianism he loathed – that seem to have pushed him definitively toward deep conservatism and insistence on unquestioned obedience to the authority of Rome.

Before he arrived at the university, he had spent most of his time writing books and teaching in the Catholic theology departments of several German universities. His growing reputation was enhanced by the prominent role he was said to have played at the Second Vatican Council called by Pope John XXIII in 1962 to formulate doctrines for the church in the modern world. (It was concluded three years later, under Pope Paul VI.)

When he arrived at Tübingen in southern Germany in 1966, he was widely viewed as a church reformer, a man who wanted to open the church up to dialogue with others in the world.

But in his autobiography, he shows that the Vatican Council also alerted him to what he deemed dangerous liberalizing tendencies from inside the church and to the danger that reform, if not tightly controlled by a guiding authority, can quickly go awry.

“Very clearly, resentment was growing against Rome and against the Curia, which appeared to be the real enemy of everything that was new and progressive,” he writes. Academic “specialists,” he complains, were encouraging the bishops to accept dubious assumptions. One of these assumptions was “the idea of an ecclesial sovereignty of the people in which the people itself determined what it wants to understand by church.” The idea of the “church from below,” which led to liberation theology, was being born and, as he puts it, “I became deeply troubled.”

So he was already deeply suspicious of the left wing inside the church, when, in 1966, he joined the Catholic Theological Faculty of Tübingen University.

He had been recruited by none other than the liberal Swiss theologian Hans Küng, the very man who became, and remains, one of his chief political and theological rivals. The experience of the student revolt seemed to confirm every suspicion that Father Ratzinger already nurtured about liberalizing tendencies and the hidden germ of totalitarianism lurking within revolutionary movements.
Full: nytimes.com

Worried about the ‘totalitarianism lurking within revolutionary movement’ and so chooses the totalitarianism of the Catholic Church.
Some ‘intellectual.’

A state department report which showed an increase in terrorism incidents around the world in 2004 was altered to strip it of its pessimistic statistics, it emerged yesterday.

The country-by-country report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, has come out every year since 1986, accompanied by statistical tables.

This year’s edition showed a big increase, from 172 significant terrorist attacks in 2003 to 655 in 2004.

Much of the increase took place in Iraq, contradicting recent Pentagon claims that the insurgency there is waning

Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, ordered the report to be withdrawn and a new one issued minus the statistics.

A Democratic congressman, Henry Waxman, has written an angry letter about the change to Cameron Hume, the state department’s inspector general, arguing that Ms Rice’s decision “denies the public access to important information about the incidence of terrorism”.

Mr Waxman said: “There appears to be a pattern in the administration’s approach to terrorism data: favourable facts are revealed while unfavourable facts are suppressed.”

Ms Rice’s spokesman, Richard Boucher, denied the change was politically inspired and said Ms Rice had decided the statistics would be better handled by the national counter-terrorism centre.

However, intelligence officials said there were no immediate plans to publish the figures.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 22 – Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person facing a trial in the United States in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, pleaded guilty on Friday to participating in a broad conspiracy by Al Qaeda to fly planes into American buildings.

Mr. Moussaoui, wearing a dark-green prison jumpsuit, stood before Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the Federal District Court here and said that he was forgoing a trial on the facts and that he understood that his guilty plea meant he might be executed.

But Mr. Moussaoui, 36, a Frenchman of Moroccan heritage who was arrested in August 2001, offered a surprise. He said that despite his guilty plea he had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks.

Instead, he said, he had been planning to participate in a separate undisclosed plot to fly a plane into the White House at a different time.

In a rambling discourse, he said his role was part of a plan to force the release of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Muslim scholar who is serving a life sentence for conspiracy to blow up New York bridges and tunnels and other landmarks in 1993.

“I am guilty of a broad conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction to destroy the White House,” he said, offering a new account of his role in plots that is at odds with the different versions government prosecutors have put forward.

Speaking with a heavy French accent, Mr. Moussaoui said there was nothing in the indictment or the fact sheet to which he assented that demonstrated that he was supposed to participate in the Sept. 11 attacks.

“You can’t point to me and say that Moussaoui came to U.S. to participate in 9/11,” he said.

He told the court he felt it was important to emphasize that he had not admitted any connection with the Sept. 11 attacks because that would increase the pressure for his execution “when the government brings victim statements to court.”

Mr. Moussaoui, who has shunned most of his defense lawyers and has shown himself to be a shrewd student of American criminal law, was referring to the trial he faces on whether he should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, speaking to reporters at the Justice Department shortly after the hearing, said prosecutors would seek the death penalty at the new phase, which will in essence be a copy of what the criminal trial would have been, with both sides presenting their cases before a jury.

“As you know, we are seeking the death penalty in this case,” Mr. Gonzales said.

“Moussaoui and his co-conspirators,” he added, “were responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents on Sept. 11, each one a son or daughter, father or mother, husband and wife.”

Mr. Gonzales brushed aside Mr. Moussaoui’s statement that he was not involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The fact that Moussaoui participated in this terrorist conspiracy is no longer in doubt,” he said. “In a chilling admission of guilt, Moussaoui confessed to his participation.”
Full: nytimes.com

Well no Mr. Gonzales, actually he didn’t confess. To suggest that he’s trying to avoid the death penalty is ridiculous.
Full: nytimes.com

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 22 – Some leading Kurdish political figures are trying to stall the formation of a new Iraqi government in an effort to force out Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite chosen two weeks ago as prime minister, Iraqi and Western officials said.

Such an effort could further delay forming a government at a sensitive time. The past week has seen a sharp increase in insurgent violence, including the downing Thursday of a commercial helicopter that left 11 people dead. One of the victims was apparently executed by the attackers.

American officials say the continuing failure to form a new government – almost three months after elections – could be contributing to the resurgent violence.

The political momentum generated by the elections has “worn off a bit,” an American official here said Friday, and that “has given the insurgents new hope. The best thing to undermine the insurgency is to maintain momentum on the political process.”

A spokesman for the Kurdish alliance denied Friday evening that there was any effort to unseat Dr. Jaafari. But Kurdish leaders have never been comfortable with religious figures like Dr. Jaafari, the leader of one of Iraq’s best-known Shiite religious parties. Any successful campaign against him could derail the pact between the Shiite and Kurdish alliances that emerged two months ago, opening the possibility of a new alignment that would favor more secular figures like the departing prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
Full: nytimes.com

If the grand strategy is chaos, everything is understandable.

April 21, 2005 – It didn’t take long, the former anti-war presidential candidate has now become the pro-occupation leader of the Democratic Party. Just when a majority of the public is saying the Iraq War is not worth it, Howard Dean the new leader of the Democratic Party is saying: “Now that we’re there, we’re there and we can’t get out.”

Like the good partisan he is Dean blames Bush for a war most in his party voted for and an occupation that most in his party recently voted to continue to fund. Of the President Dean said: “The president has created an enormous security problem for the United States where none existed before. But I hope the president is incredibly successful with his policy now that he’s there.”

Chairman Dean does not seem to understand that the illegal occupation of Iraq is part of the problem, not part of the solution. In fact, the many fears he expresses regarding pulling out of Iraq are made more likely by the US occupation of Iraq.

According to an article in the Minnesota Star Tribune, Dean claims that an American pullout from Iraq could endanger the United States in any of three ways: by leaving a Shiite theocracy worse than that in Iran, which he called a more serious threat than Iraq ever was; by creating an independent Kurdistan in the north, with destabilizing effects on neighboring Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iran and Syria, and by making the Sunni Triangle a magnet for Islamic terrorists similar to the former Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

From his comments, it is evident that Chairman Dean only believes in democracy if the voters support the kind of government the U.S. wants. U.S. officials find a puppet government led by U.S sympathizers preferable to what Iraqis want. Indeed, we find autocratic governments like Saudi Arabia and Egypt preferable to democratic governments that are likely to oppose U.S. interests.

The fears expressed by Chairman Dean indicate that we really don’t want a democracy in Iraq.
Full: axisoflogic.com

An influential pro-Israel lobby group in Washington has fired two senior officials targeted by an FBI inquiry into the leaking of US secrets to Israel.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) sacked its policy director, Steven Rosen, and its Iran specialist, Keith Weissman, after receiving information from investigators looking into how classified information about US policy on Iran was obtained by Israel’s government.

Lawyers for the pair issued a written denial of wrongdoing, saying: “Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman have not violated any US law or AIPAC policy. Contrary to press reports, they have never solicited, received or passed on any classified documents.”

However, AIPAC, which had vigorously defended its employees against spying allegations since they surfaced last year, quickly distanced itself from their statement.
“The action AIPAC has taken was done in consultation with counsel after careful consideration of recently learned information and the conduct AIPAC expects of its employees,” said a spokesman.

The dismissals have come as the federal espionage investigation is reported to be reaching a conclusion. According to US press reports, it focuses on whether a Pentagon official, Lawrence Franklin, provided a draft of a presidential directive on Iran policy and other information to AIPAC, and whether that information was then passed to Israel.

Mr Franklin is an Iran expert who worked for the under-secretary of defence, Douglas Feith, a prominent neo-conservative who is leaving his job this summer. Mr Franklin is still employed by the defence department pending the outcome of the investigation, but no longer in a classified job or in the Pentagon. Neither he nor the AIPAC officials have been charged with any crime.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush is celebrating Earth Day with one of his favorite pastimes – working the land.

The president, who often is at odds with environmentalists, was scheduled to celebrate their holiday on Friday in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He was to speak at the Cades Cove area near Townsend, Tenn., after some quick restoration work on one of more than a dozen trails that originates there.

“I’m looking forward to getting my hands dirty,” Bush, who spends hours during his down time clearing brush on his Texas ranch, told young people awarded for their environmental work at the White House on Thursday. “Looking forward to getting outside of Washington.”

Bush is the first sitting president to visit the park since Franklin Roosevelt dedicated it in 1940, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. McClellan said the trip marks the 22nd national park that Bush has visited since taking office, a record for sitting presidents.

McClellan said Bush would use his speech to emphasize the importance of personal environmental stewardship, volunteerism and cooperative conservation efforts.

“One of the greatest responsibilities in a free society is responsible stewardship of our natural environment,” Bush said at the White House ceremony. “All of you have taken that duty seriously. You have set a clear and strong example, and you’re inspiring others to do their part.”

Environmentalists say Bush is not being a responsible steward by pushing for more timber, oil and gas from public lands and relying on the market rather than regulation to curb pollution.

Bush’s “healthy forests” law lets companies log large, commercially valuable trees in national forests in exchange for clearing smaller, more fire-prone trees and brush. His “clear skies” proposal would give power plants, factories and refineries more time to reduce air pollution. Environmentalists call those labels deliberate misnomers.

But no one disputes that Bush likes to spend his time getting back to nature, especially during his frequent trips to his 1,590-acre Texas ranch. There he’ll spend hours fishing and cutting down cedar trees with a chain saw to give the native oaks more water and light.

During a visit to the Santa Monica Mountains near Los Angeles in August 2003, he also did restoration work by shoveling dirt for a few minutes to fix a trail.

Full Article: counterpunch.org

shoveling dirt and cutting down trees…

by Diane Christison
Imagine my chagrin. While vacationing in beautiful Vancouver, I had my sun-and-mountain reverie interrupted on Tuesday by a New York Times article seeming to give the final word on Ariel Sharon’s plans — blessed, of course, by George Bush — for the disposition of Israel’s border with the West Bank and the Israeli settlements inside that territory. The article, by veteran diplomatic correspondent Steven Erlanger, discussed the “small furor” supposedly set off inside the Bush administration by Israel’s announced determination to build 3,500 new housing units in Maale Adumim, the largest of several Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and the fact that this new move will unilaterally expand Israel’s borders into the Palestinian territory. But Erlanger gives us the impression that this is not really the disastrous development it might seem. He quotes David Makovsky, of the pro-Israeli think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as saying that after all things are not so bad because Sharon, the Israeli most associated with wanting 100 percent of the West Bank, has now scaled down his sights to only 8 percent. This 8 percent is the proportion of the West Bank to be incorporated on the Israeli side of the separation wall when its new route, approved by the Israeli cabinet in February, is completed.

This was bad enough for my vacation mood, but then come to find out a columnist for Canada’s national newspaper the Globe and Mail, Marcus Gee, picked up the story the next day and, for all of Canada to see, played it as indicating a great breakthrough:

“After decades of blood and tears, a solution to the conflict over the Holy Land is emerging . . . . It is not an entirely just solution. But it is a solution, and it could give both sides what they need most: an independent homeland for the Palestinians and secure borders for Israel. The solution is the work of one man: Ariel Sharon.”

Thus are widespread misperceptions and gross distortions of reality born among a broad segment of the media-savvy public.

Steven Erlanger might be excused for swallowing the unlikely story that the Bush administration is really in anything like “small furor” over Israel’s settlement expansion plans, but it is dismaying to see a correspondent of Erlanger’s caliber allowing himself to be misled by an apologist for the Israeli settlement enterprise like David Makovsky.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

The Association of University Teachers today voted to boycott two Israeli universities over their failure to speak out against their government.

Delegates at a conference in Eastbourne voted, against the wishes of the executive, for an immediate boycott of Haifa University, which they accuse of restricting the academic freedom of staff members who are critical of the government, and of Bar Ilans University, which has a college in the disputed settlement Ariel.

The boycott, which is now official union policy, will follow a plan prescribed by a group of 60 Palestinian academic and cultural bodies and non-governmental organisations, which calls for British academics to severe links with Israeli institutions but to exempt Israelis who speak out against their government’s policies towards the Palestinians.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk