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| Ray Gricar - Penn Pedo State Victim? - MIA April 2005 |
(...missing April 15, 2005, declared legally dead July 25, 2011) was an American attorney who served as the district attorney of Centre County, Pennsylvania, from 1985–2005. On April 15, 2005, Gricar went missing under mysterious circumstances and has not been heard from since…
After the revelations about the Penn State sex abuse scandal in which it was revealed that Gricar had declined to prosecute Jerry Sandusky, the well-known forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht said that "I believe that his disappearance is almost certainly related to this Penn State debacle."
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| The Laughing Cow Prince Bishop of New York City |
Irish Archbishops slam Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s report on Rome Irish college
Cardinal Timothy Dolan has been attacked by four Irish archbishops for a misleading report which had led to major changes at the Irish College in Rome.
The Irish Times reports that the four archbishops are heavily critical of Cardinal Dolan’s role in a visitation and review of the College ordered by the Pope.
The four archbishops, Cardinal Seán Brady, Archbishop of Armagh; the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin; the Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Michael Neary, and the Archbishop of Cashel, Dr Dermot Clifford, were sent a copy of the visitation report by the Vatican.
They say Cardinal Dolan’s report, which has resulted in the college hierarchy being sent back to Ireland and may see it close down, is riddled with errors.Under orders from Pope Benedict, Cardinal Dolan led a root and branch review of all structures and processes at the famous Irish seminary in the Vatican.
His report expressed concern about ‘the atmosphere, structure, staffing and guiding philosophy of the Irish College in Rome’.
But now four of Ireland’s leading clerics have hit out at the report.In a statement to the Irish Times, they said: “As part of the process involved in the visitation to the Irish College, Rome, the trustees were given an initial report by the Holy See.
“This initial report contained some serious errors of fact, including named individuals. Attentive to the importance of applying due process, and respecting the rights of those named in this initial report, the trustees made a detailed and considered response to the Holy See.”
Cardinal Dolan was still an Archbishop when he led the apostolic visitation to the Irish College in Rome last year.
He was assisted in the visitation report by the then Archbishop of Baltimore in the US and now Cardinal Edwin O’Brien, Msgr Francis Kelly of the Northern American College in Rome and others..
I'm Jewish. I keep kosher in my home. I have two sets of dishes. One for meat and one for dairy, and another two sets of dishes on top of that for Passover. Judaism believes that therapeutic abortions, namely abortions performed in order to preserve the life of the mother are not only permissable but mandatory. The stage of pregnancy does not matter. Wherever there is a question of the life of the mother or that of the unborn child, Jewish law rules in favor of preserving the life of the mother. The status of the fetus as human life does not equal that of the mother. I have not asked you to adopt and adhere to my religious beliefs. Why are you asking me to adopt yours?
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| "Success" you morons, its in the script. Wink, Nod.
While Obama is a short term holder of the Executive Branch, it was
decided long ago that Deregulation and the Rape of the American Worker was the
quickest way for a few to become robber baron billionaires.
Like the Great Soviet stagnation under a handful of incompetent leaders,
America’s decline, stagnation and future disintegration is in the works.
And to quote myself from at least decade or more now:
The Soviet System merely Collapsed First!
And from Clinton signing away American Financial Security with the death
of Glass-Steagall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act
in a special secret plea bargain with
Special Republican Prosecutor Kenneth Starr, the die was cast.
In any case, it is crying over spilled milk. Sunday’s election in Greece may finally push
over the dead economic cadaver and bring about the official death certificate signing for the economic collapse of the West, Europe First, USA
next. It will kind of be like watching all the debris of the Johnstown Flood, 1889,
floating passed us on its way down stream.
Have a nice day.
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| Mitt Romney - Macau Candidate - China First |
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| In Sheldon Adelson We Trust |
Restore Our Future, which is run by a handful of former Romney aides and confidantes, raised and spent more than $41 million during the Republican presidential primary season — money spent largely on negative television ads that went after the likes of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.
During the primary, Adelson and his family gave more than $20 million to a super PAC supporting Gingrich. But even then, sources close to the billionaire said he was comfortable with Romney as the eventual nominee.
Adelson is the eighth-richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of about $25 billion dollars.
A college dropout raised in Boston by poor Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Adelson pursued various business ventures before striking gold in the computer trade show industry. He used that money to revive the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. He helped turn the Strip into a major convention destination and now owns resorts in Macao and Singapore.
Adelson started out life as a Democrat. But in the 80s and 90s, as his wealth grew and he clashed with unionized hotel workers, he became a loyal Republican. He also supports conservative politicians and causes in Israel, where he owns the newspaper Israel Hayom. He also donates millions to charity, in particular medical research.
He told the Las Vegas Sun in May that he would was “going to give one more small donation — you might not think it's that small — to a super PAC and then if I give it will be to a C4.” (A 501c4 group does not have to disclose its donors; the GOP-backing Crossroads GPS is a likely beneficiary of Adelson’s funds.)
“I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections,” he said in a March Forbes interview. “But as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it.”
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| China First - Romney Bain Exported New Jobs Foreign Policy Proposal? |
The Vatican Bank is under media fire as reports emerge that Italian prosecutors suspect it of laundering Sicilian mafia bosses’ riches.
The Institute for Works of Religion, commonly known as the Vatican Bank, has so far refused to disclose details of an account held by a priest in connection with a money laundering and fraud investigation.
Father Ninni Treppiedi was sacked from serving as a priest after a series of church funds transactions made by his parish came to anti-mafia prosecutors’ attention this spring. The dealings, involving millions of euro, date back to 2007-2009.
Prosecutors suspect Treppiedi was involved in money-laundering operations linked to Matteo Messina Denaro, a Mafia Godfather on the run. The cleric’s former post in Aclamo, near Trapani, is said to be the richest parish in the Mafia stronghold of Sicily.
Trapani prosecutor Marcello Viola made the request to disclose Treppiedi’s account details over six weeks ago. But the Vatican, though confirming the request has been received, maintains the issue is not mafia-related.…The first reports on the scandal emerged in the Italian media two weeks after the head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was ousted after receiving a unanimous vote of no-confidence from bank overseers.
The banker is under investigation for another case of alleged money laundering. But there is speculation that the actual reason behind the no-confidence vote is that Tedeschi was aware of possible mafia links and leaked names and accounts details to police.
“The board members raised concerns about both the content of the doctrinal assessment and the process by which it was prepared. Board members concluded that the assessment was based on unsubstantiated accusations and the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency.”
The warning comes in a new report that says poor governance contributed to financial and political scandals in almost every European country during 2011.
Greece, Italy and Spain are listed as among the most corrupt countries on the continent.
Political parties, businesses and the public sector are said to be the worst institutions for corruption, while electoral commissions and state auditors performed the best.
The report named Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain – the eurozone's most financially-troubled nations – as having deeply-rooted problems in their public administrations where officials are not accountable for their actions.
Political lobbying is also seen as a major cause for concern. Out of 25 European countries 19 have no regulations on political lobbying.
Party funding, with the influence of lobbyists on decision-makers remaining veiled in secrecy, is seen as ripe for abuse by big businesses. The report says Europe's political parties must do more to make funding transparent.
Prime Minister Mario Monti has announced the Vatican must pay taxes on non-religious property, from which it previously enjoyed an exemption.
The annual cost could be up to 720m euros ($945m; £598m) according to municipal government bodies.
Italy's Catholic Church has 110,000 properties, worth about 9bn euros.It includes shopping centres and a range of residential property.
In December, the government reintroduced a tax paid by anyone who owns land or property in Italy - which the Church does not pay.
But a growing wave of Italians are opposed to what they see as special privileges in the face of a tightening economy
Following their government's latest austerity measure package, more than 130,000 people signed an online petition calling for the Church's tax exempt status to be revoked.
Since 2005, church-run groups and organisations have not been classed as official commercial bodies and have been exempt from paying property tax.
According to the Corriere della Sera newspaper, tax authorities will calculate how much of a property is used purely for religious purposes and tax it proportionately.
This means a church would remain exempt but a chapel which operates an hostel would pay tax accordingly.
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| Thatcher clone David Cameron |
British Prime Minister David Cameron's office confirmed Monday that he accidentally left his 8-year-old daughter Nancy in a country pub after a family Sunday lunch.
Officials said the incident happened "a couple of months ago," as the family was leaving the pub near Chequers, a country house prime ministers use while in office, west of London.
Nancy had gone to the bathroom while Cameron and the rest of the family piled into two cars to drive back to the house.
Cameron was travelling in one car with his bodyguards and assumed that she was in the other car with his wife Samantha and two other children. Samantha assumed Nancy was with her father, and they only realized she was missing when they got home.
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| Breaking up is not hard to do. |
Zoo management have called in animal experts to try and give the pair counselling - feeding them romantic good mood food and trying to get them to join in joint games - but so far without effect. Zoo boss Helga Happ said: "We get the feeling they can't stand the sight of each other anymore."
Bibi and Poldi have been a pair since before anyone alive today can remember - they have been together at the Austrian zoo in Klagenfurt for 36 years and before that they lived at Basel zoo in Switzerland.
Zoo boss Helga added: "They are both 115 years old - they have been together since they were young and grew up together, eventually becoming a pair.
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| When pigs fly? |
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| Give me Secular Liberty or give me Death! |
None of these incidents—and there are hundreds like them—will ever get the goat of those taking cheap shots at Cardinal Dolan. He inherited a big problem from the disgraced Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, and did what he could to correct matters. Moreover, unlike public school employers, he didn’t grant lifetime salaries and benefits to suspected offenders. He should be commended, not condemned, for doing so.
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| Where is my free lunch, I mean tax free religious Lasagna? |
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| Blackfriars Bridge London. Where all Vatican Bankers eventually go. |
From the Internet 2010:
Vatican City – This is no ordinary bank: The ATMs are in Latin. Priests use a private entrance. A life-size portrait of Pope Benedict XVI hangs on the wall.
Nevertheless, the Institute for Religious Works is a bank, and it’s under harsh new scrutiny in a case involving money-laundering allegations that led police to seize euro23 million ($30 million) in Vatican assets in September. Critics say the case shows that the “Vatican Bank” has never shed its penchant for secrecy and scandal.
The Vatican calls the seizure of assets a “misunderstanding” and expresses optimism it will be quickly cleared up. But court documents show that prosecutors say the Vatican Bank deliberately flouted anti-laundering laws “with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital.” The documents also reveal investigators’ suspicions that clergy may have acted as fronts for corrupt businessmen and Mafia.
The documents pinpoint two transactions that have not been reported: one in 2009 involving the use of a false name, and another in 2010 in which the Vatican Bank withdrew euro650,000 ($860,000) from an Italian bank account but ignored bank requests to disclose where the money was headed.
The new allegations of financial impropriety could not come at a worse time for the Vatican, already hit by revelations that it sheltered pedophile priests. The corruption probe has given new hope to Holocaust survivors who tried unsuccessfully to sue in the United States, alleging that Nazi loot was stored in the Vatican Bank.
Yet the scandal is hardly the first for the centuries-old bank. In 1986, a Vatican financial adviser died after drinking cyanide-laced coffee in prison. Another was found dangling from a rope under London’s Blackfriars Bridge in 1982, his pockets stuffed with money and stones. The incidents blackened the bank’s reputation, raised suspicions of ties with the Mafia, and cost the Vatican hundreds of millions of dollars in legal clashes with Italian authorities.
On Sept. 21, financial police seized assets from a Vatican Bank account at the Rome branch of Credito Artigiano SpA. Investigators said the Vatican had failed to furnish information on the origin or destination of the funds as required by Italian law.
The bulk of the money, euro20 million ($26 million), was destined for JP Morgan in Frankfurt, with the remainder going to Banca del Fucino.
Prosecutors alleged the Vatican ignored regulations that foreign banks must communicate to Italian financial authorities where their money has come from. All banks have declined to comment.
In another case, financial police in Sicily said in late October that they uncovered money laundering involving the use of a Vatican Bank account by a priest in Rome whose uncle was convicted of Mafia association.
Authorities say some euro250,000 euros, illegally obtained from the regional government of Sicily for a fish breeding company, was sent to the priest by his father as a “charitable donation,” then sent back to Sicily from a Vatican Bank account using a series of home banking operations to make it difficult to trace.
The prosecutors’ office stated in court papers last month that while the bank has expressed a “generic and stated will” to conform to international standards, “there is no sign that the institutions of the Catholic church are moving in that direction.” It said its investigation had found “exactly the opposite.”
Legal waters are murky because of the Vatican’s special status as an independent state within Italy. This time, Italian investigators were able to move against the Vatican Bank because the Bank of Italy classifies it as a foreign financial institution operating in Italy. However, in one of the 1980s scandals, prosecutors could not arrest then-bank head Paul Marcinkus, an American archbishop, because Italy’s highest court ruled he had immunity.
Marcinkus, who died in 2006 and always proclaimed his innocence, was the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola’s character Archbishop Gilday in Godfather III.
The Vatican has pledged to comply with EU financial standards and create a watchdog authority. Gianluigi Nuzzi, author of “Vatican SpA,” a 2009 book outlining the bank’s shady dealings, said it’s possible the Vatican is serious about coming clean, but he isn’t optimistic.
“I don’t trust them,” he said. “After the previous big scandals, they said ‘we’ll change’ and they didn’t. It’s happened too many times.”
He said the structure and culture of the institution is such that powerful account-holders can exert pressure on management, and some managers are simply resistant to change.
The list of account-holders is secret, though bank officials say there are some 40,000-45,000 among religious congregations, clergy, Vatican officials and lay people with Vatican connections.
The bank chairman is Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, also chairman of Banco Santander’s Italian operations, who was brought in last year to bring the Vatican Bank in line with Italian and international regulations. Gotti Tedeschi has been on a very public speaking tour extolling the benefits of a morality-based financial system.
“He went to sell the new image … not knowing that inside, the same things were still happening,” Nuzzi said. “They continued to do these transfers without the names, not necessarily in bad faith, but out of habit.”
It doesn’t help that Gotti Tedeschi himself and the bank’s No. 2 official, Paolo Cipriani, are under investigation for alleged violations of money-laundering laws. They were both questioned by Rome prosecutors on Sept. 30, although no charges have been filed.
In his testimony, Gotti Tedeschi said he knew next to nothing about the bank’s day-to-day operations, noting that he had been on the job less than a year and only works at the bank two full days a week.
According to the prosecutors’ interrogation transcripts obtained by AP, Gotti Tedeschi deflected most questions about the suspect transactions to Cipriani. Cipriani in turn said that when the Holy See transferred money without identifying the sender, it was the Vatican’s own money, not a client’s.
Gotti Tedeschi declined a request for an interview but said by e-mail that he questioned the motivations of prosecutors. In a speech in October, he described a wider plot against the church, decrying “personal attacks on the pope, the facts linked to pedophilia (that) still continue now with the issues that have seen myself involved.”
As the Vatican proclaims its innocence, the courts are holding firm. An Italian court has rejected a Vatican appeal to lift the order to seize assets.
The Vatican Bank was founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage assets destined for religious or charitable works. The bank, located in the tower of Niccolo V, is not open to the public, but people who use it described the layout to the AP.
Top prelates have a special entrance manned by security guards. There are about 100 staffers, 10 bank windows, a basement vault for safe deposit boxes, and ATMs that open in Latin but can be accessed in modern languages. In another concession to modern times, the bank recently began issuing credit cards.
In the scandals two decades ago, Sicilian financier Michele Sindona was appointed by the pope to manage the Vatican’s foreign investments. He also brought in Roberto Calvi, a Catholic banker in northern Italy.
Sindona’s banking empire collapsed in the mid-1970s and his links to the mob were exposed, sending him to prison and his eventual death from poisoned coffee. Calvi then inherited his role.
Calvi headed the Banco Ambrosiano, which collapsed in 1982 after the disappearance of $1.3 billion in loans made to dummy companies in Latin America. The Vatican had provided letters of credit for the loans.
Calvi was found a short time later hanging from scaffolding on Blackfriars Bridge, his pockets loaded with 11 pounds of bricks and $11,700 in various currencies. After an initial ruling of suicide, murder charges were filed against five people, including a major Mafia figure, but all were acquitted after trial.
While denying wrongdoing, the Vatican Bank paid $250 million to Ambrosiano’s creditors.
Both the Calvi and Sindona cases remain unsolved.
Source: Associated Press, December 2010
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| Follow the money. |
