CALEDONIAN COMMENT

Some food for thought for former Hitler Youth and Nazi anti-aircraft gunner Pope Benedict XVI (pictured above) . The Roman Catholic church in Dublin, Ireland has for decades covered up child abuse committed by priests (doubtless now nervously playing with their rosaries, below) because bishops wanted to protect the church’s “good reputation” at the expense of the victims, an expert commission reported yesterday after a 3-year inquiry into previously secret church records. Abuse victims said they welcomed publication of the investigation into the mishandling of child abuse cases from 1975 to 2004 in the Dublin archdiocese, home to a quarter of Ireland’s 4 million Roman Catholics. 

The Irish government said the investigation “showed clearly that a systemic, calculated perversion of power and trust was visited on helpless and innocent children. The perpetrators must be brought to justice, and the people of Ireland must know that this can never happen again.” And this is the corrupt “religious” organisation that Ireland even once gave a pivotal role in their written constitution – a gang of cross-dressing paedophiles. And for many years successive Irish governments colluded with the priestly perversions. This is the organisation that idiots like Tony Blair rush away to “convert” to, led by the nose by an over-bearing wife.. This is the bunch of child molestors who con their deluded followers into queuing up all night outside churches to fawn over bags of bones and stuff money into collecting tins. This is the clerical cosa nostra that gave us the Inquisition and now encourages AIDS, ignorance, poverty and disease by banning condoms and condemning medical advances.  This is the corrupt re-writer of history that grants “sainthood” to homosexual deviates like Cardinal Newman and pro-Nazi Popes like Puis XII who collaborated with the Holocaust.  This is the cabal that not only fosters sexual perversion but also tries to subvert and pervert UK democracy by emotionally blackmailing Roman Catholic MP’s over issues like abortion and stem cell research.  The whole lot of them, from the Vatican downwards, should be arrested, tried and locked up. 

Pictured above is Jumeira Palm Island in Dubai, where many sports and film stars have homes. An example of brazen greed and extravagance. And almost £44 billion was wiped off the value of London’s companies yesterday amid growing fears the UK financial sector could be heavily exposed to Dubai World, the state-owned conglomerate which yesterday asked for a standstill on its $60 billion debt. The FTSE 100 tumbled 170.68,  more than 3%, in its biggest 1-day percentage fall since the market plunged to 6-year lows in March. Investors had been hoping the British financial sector had worked through much its toxic debt – But it is estimated that banks are exposed to about half of Dubai’s $80 billion borrowings. So presumably the taxpayer will be called upon yet again to cover bad decisions taken by greedy bankers. Maybe if these banks had backed sound UK companies that they’ve since let go to the wall instead of acting like middle-eastern fast-buck merchants, things might have been better. Maybe if these banks had known they’d be allowed to go to the wall the same way they’ve let so many of our businesses go to the wall, they’d have thought twice about Dubai. Not that their bonuses will be affected, of course.

German troops are shown above in Afghanistan, training local militia. But Germany’s top soldier and a senior defence ministry official have been forced to resign after politically embarrassing video footage emerged of a German-ordered air raid that killed dozens of civilians in that country. In the  German parliament yesterday Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the Defence Minister, announced that there would be the country’s biggest military shake-up in more than 2 decades, throwing a spotlight on Germany’s increasingly nervous strategy towards Afghanistan, its first big overseas deployment since the Second World War. German soldiers and politicians resigning over civilian deaths ?  Times really have changed !

Prize for prat of the week ? A Nigerian drug smuggler who swallowed 67 packages of cocaine who was caught after customs men noticed his bulging belly. Fidelis Ozouli (x-ray of his packed midriff pictured above) was apprehended at Manchester Airport when officers became suspicious about his route to England from Switzerland. Then Customs men ordered an X-ray when they saw how bloated he was. They were amazed when it showed the amount of cocaine – in his stomach.

The drug was hidden inside scores of condoms (above) and was 78 % pure, giving it a street value of £250,000. If just one of the condoms had split, Ozouli would have died. The 2.2 lb haul is believed to be the second-largest amount smuggled into the country by a drugs mule picked up by customs. The 30-year-old student told Manchester Crown Court he hadn’t realised the packages contained drugs. He added: “I just did not know what they were. I thought I was swallowing something else to take into Britain as a favour for a pal.” Yeah sure.

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The Bank of England, under the control of its Governor Mervyn King (pictured above) secretly loaned £61.6 billion to 2 banks at the height of the UK financial meltdown last year. Reportedly a “dire financial emergency” meant covert crisis loans were extended to the banks then in difficulty, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and the Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS), at the beginning of October 2008  -  before they were partly nationalised. The Bank of England revealed these details for the first time yesterday, stating that it has waited until now to disclose them because it feared the revelation could trigger panic. In fairness, a sensible approach – nobody wants to see a run on the banks and the money has since been repaid.

What however is not acceptable is the continued behaviour of these banks – and indeed banks in general –  towards businesses and individuals as this recession continues. They have been in receipt of taxpayer bailouts, Quantitative Easing monies and “covert crisis loans” , but they are still denying credit to potential customers at reasonable rates. Indeed, they are continuing to reduce the amount of credit they make available, to the detriment of the economy. Their enthusiasm for financial transactions would appear to go no further than calculating their staff bonuses and “repairing their balance sheets” (a.k.a. profiteering), while potential borrowers facing “dire financial emergency” continue to be hung out to dry. Why can’t the government and the Bank of England make their support conditional on these banks lending reasonably and more frequently, without crippling interest charges and rip-off arrangement fees ?

In the UK yesterday a Scotland Yard commander was accused of misleading parliament after an inquiry found that undercover police were secretly deployed at the G20 protests last April to spy on activists, contrary to the police chief’s denials. Commander Bob Broadhurst, who had overall command of the G20 policing operation, told the Home Affairs select committee in May that “no plain clothes officers were deployed at all” during the demonstrations in the City of London. But it has emerged that 25 undercover City of London police WERE stationed around the Bank of England to gather “intelligence” on protesters on 1 and 2 April. Broadhurst stands by the evidence he gave to MPs, claiming the deployment of undercover officers was unknown to him. Yeah sure. But in fairness in any case, it wasn’t the undercover officers that were attacking and indeed killing protestors – it was some of the uniformed ones, whose beligerent mood is captured in the above photo.

Another example of muddled New Labour thinking. That epitome of banal incompetence, even by the inept standards of the dying UK government,  the Health Secretary Andy Burnham (pictured above), admitted yesterday that research into cancer and dementia is under threat because of government plans for free social care. Mr Burnham, said that millions of pounds would be “reprioritised” from health research and development to pay the costs of the Social Care Bill, published yesterday. Money will also be diverted from public health campaigns such as those on swine flu, sexually transmitted diseases and obesity. The Bill, a key plank of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s pre-election legislative agenda, has been condemned by politicians, scientists and health campaigners. It would guarantee free personal care at home or other support for up to 400,000 elderly and disabled people with the greatest needs from next October, at a cost of £670 million a year. Of course it will never happen, not least because the care workers aren’t there – but any excuse to cut spending while making false election promises will do for this cretin Burnham and the corrupt government he serves in.

In Switzerland minarets could be banned this weekend after voters go to the polls for a controversial referendum. The Right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) argues that the distinctive mosque features are a symbol of Islamic intolerance. The party has led an emotive campaign to outlaw them. Posters depicting a woman in a burkha in front of minarets shaped like missiles (pictured above), against the background of a Swiss flag, have been put up around the country. Ulrich Schüler, an SVP parliamentarian and leading member of the anti-minaret movement, says the towers are political rather than religious. What a good idea – let’s get rid of all the Islamic mosques – and while they’re at it, let’s also get rid of every single Jewish synagogue, Hindu temple and Christian church into the bargain. That way, there will be a damn sight less arguments in the world all round.

The prostitute at the centre of a sex scandal involving Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has for the first time claimed that she had sex with him. Since first alleging she spent a night last November at Berlusconi’s Rome residence, Patrizia D’Addario (pictured above – the blond by the way!) has limited herself to saying she shared a bed with the 73-year-old PM. But in her new book, “Take Your Pleasure, Prime Minister”, Miss D’Addario writes: “He told me he wanted contact with my skin, he held me tight, he took my breath away. I took him inside me, he suffocated me with kisses.” An Italian journalist said : “This is the first time she has really made it clear that they had sex.” Amazing – up till now we all assumed that they were in bed discussing the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.

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UK Business Secretary Lord Mandelson (pictured above) reportedly “went behind Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s back” last week in a last-ditch attempt to snatch the job of EU foreign supremo and abandon the Cabinet, it was claimed over the weekend. “Reliable” diplomatic sources claim Mandelson made frantic phone calls to prominent EU figures to try to persuade them to make him the EU High Representative responsible for foreign policy instead of unknown fellow New Labour politician Baroness Ashton. And when his bid failed he urged the PM to sack inept, incompetent Foreign Secretary David Miliband and give him his job. To be fair to Mandelson, leaving aside his ambition, sacking Miliband isn’t actually a bad idea. But to get back to the story.

Predictably, a tired, dispirited Mr Brown (above) and the PM’s office have made no comment. But the allegations have shocked New Labour Ministers, who had been told that Lord Mandelson had supported Baroness Ashton after his own candidacy – together with that of Mr Miliband and former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon – had been ruled out. However, reliable sources say that Lord Mandelson made an astonishing second attempt to grab the job in the days leading up to last week’s EU summit. The sources said that he did so without informing the PM. All these “shocked” politicians – if they’re really shocked at anything Lord Mandelson is capable of, they shouldn’t be in politics because they’re far too naive and trusting. And it’s good to know that in the middle of the worst recession in living memory, with banks still not lending, unemployment rising, repossessions increasing and businesses going bust every day, that our leaders have still got their priorities right by wasting their time and our money acting like spoilt children by jockeying for position within a burning building.

Mind you, Lord Mandelson may be doing us a favour by highlighting the banality of the EU appointments. Just who is this Baroness Ashton ? The above photo was taken in 1982 and will help us. Partially obscured behind a group of fellow Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) activists, a mousy little woman in a crumpled anorak, top right circled in red, stands on the steps of 10 Downing Street. It is April 1982, and Cathy Ashton – CND’s influential national treasurer and a suspected Communist sympathiser – is demanding that the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher turn back the British naval Task Force heading for the Falklands amid fears that it was armed with nuclear weapons.

Fast-forward 27 years to last week and Cathy cuts no less a banal and anonymous figure. Yet in political terms she has risen astonishingly. Cathy Ashton, or Baroness Ashton as she is today, has left CND and is now the European Union’s grandiosely titled “High Representative for Foreign Affairs”, serving 490 million citizens. She will receive an annual salary of £239,000 as well as a raft of allowances and perks that will net her an estimated £4 million in 6 years. It is an absolute scandal that such a non-elected nonentity can achieve such promotion. What gives this woman the right to represent us in foreign affairs, apart from the seedy patronage of Gordon Brown, himself another unelected nonentity ? The cynical, hypocritical, undemocratic, nauseatingly patronising, self-interest of New Labour just stinks.

Pictured above are former Hitler Youth and Nazi anti-aircraft gunner Pope Benedict XVI, together with the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams. In taking the unusual step over the weekend of protesting personally to the Prussian Pontiff about the latter’s shock announcement last month of special new arrangements for the mass conversion (poaching) to Roman Catholicism of disillusioned, traditionalist (that’s gay hating and women hating) Anglicans. A spokeswoman for Dr Williams said after their meeting: “Obviously the Archbishop expressed concern at the way things have happened. The Pope listened in a friendly spirit.” A statement issued by the Vatican, displaying its usual insufferable arrogance, described their discussions as “cordial” and, without referring specifically to the Pope’s initiative, said they had “focused on recent events affecting relations between the Roman Catholic church and the Anglican communion”. Is this bloke Williams a man or a mouse ? Why didn’t he just tell this German head of the biggest front for paedophiles on the planet to get knotted ? There again, Dr Williams himself might have retained more credibility with his deluded flock if he hadn’t spent the last 2 years trying to convince everyone of the efficacy of Sharia Law.

And while we’re on about the puerile insanity of religion, particularly within the Roman Catholic church, the late Pope John Paul II (pictured above) regularly whipped himself in a sign of “remorse for his sins,” a nun has sensationally revealed. This is the Polish bloke that used to kiss runways when he landed his plane; he died in 2005 and is currently being considered for sainthood by the Roman Catholic church – the ultimate accolade and a tribute to a “holy” person – provided the Vatican can find a couple of pious cretins who can attest to “miracles” he’s effected since his death – which of course the Vatican surely will.

As part of the Vatican’s ongoing investigation thousands of documents have been collected and examined by officials from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Among them is the testimony of Polish nun Tobiana Sobodka, of the Sacred Heart of Jesus order, who worked for Pope John Paul II in his private Vatican apartments and at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo near Rome. Sister Sobodka said: “Several times he would put himself through bodily penance. ‘We would hear it – we were in the next room at Castel Gandolfo. You could hear the sound of the blows when he flagellated himself. He did it when he was still capable of moving on his own”. As of yet no-one within the Vatican has quizzed the nun as to how he received flagellation once he became incapable of moving on his own. But then again, these nuns are trained to be doctrinally versatile. It really is hard to believe that in the 21st century we’re still being fed this medieval bullshit – and even harder to believe that anyone with even an elementary education would be naive and brainless enough to want to convert to it.

Language testing (above). You’d think the procedure would be simple and easy. But in politically correct Britain these days, they’re REALLY easy. Immigrants who don’t understand English have been able to BUY language certificates that give them the right to settle in the UK. An investigation has found that staff at English language colleges in London and Birmingham have been offering migrants who speak little or no English Home Office-regulated English and Citizenship certificates for £250 each. Tests are rigged to allow anyone to pass. Staff hand out crib sheets with questions and answers in English. Others let candidates write the sound of English words on the sheets in their native language, so the answers appear right, but they don’t know what they are saying.

At the UK Learning Academy in Birmingham, a staff assessor told an undercover reporter that candidates did not have to take any courses or speak any English to pass the tests. The assessor simply asked if the candidate knew their own name, date of birth and address. When told that they did, the assessor allegedly replied: “That’s all right then. That’s a guaranteed pass.” Which raises 2 interesting questions : (a) Will those people who paid for their certificates now be re-tested ? And (b) What the hell were they doing even pretending to teach English in BIRMINGHAM, where even the indigenous population have never mastered the language ? 

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