Russia! Russia! Russia!
Clearly, a puppet of Putin.
“The Vatican Had No Comment”
One of the enduring mysteries of the contemporary Catholic Church is why so many priests know about practicing homosexuals in the priesthood, but don’t do anything about it. An egregious example comes to mind from when I lived in New York City under Cardinal John O’Connor, and then Cardinal Edward Egan. A gay-friendly parish downtown used to hold pro-gay events all the time, many of which could not be justified in any authentically Catholic sense. I recall them once advertising an LGBT-oriented sex toy event in the church basement, though I can’t remember whether that was under O’Connor’s reign or Egan’s. It didn’t matter. That parish was going to do what it was going to do no matter what, and the chancery wasn’t going to stop it.
There are a liberal Catholic priests, both gay and straight, who know who the sexually active conservative closet cases are, and won’t out them. There are conservative Catholic priests, both straight and chastely gay, who have no obvious interest in protecting the closet, who nevertheless don’t out liberals who are sexually active. Why is that?
A gay Catholic friend told me that it’s because both sides live under a Cold War policy of Mutually Assured Destruction. They will snipe at each other in proxy wars, but when it comes right down to it, they will not turn on each other directly, because once the first missile is fired, there’s no stopping them. Both sides know that such warfare could destroy the institution that they both depend on. So they practice restraint, despite mutual loathing.
An interesting theory. Made sense to me when I heard it.
If it’s true, though, then we have to see conservative Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s statement over the weekend as a nuclear bomb going off in the enemy’s capital.
Read Vigaron’s statement here. Yowza.
Background: Why did Pope Benedict Resign? McCarrick, Vigano and Vatican Bank Scandals Explained in Detail
Update, from the informative Twitter feed of Fr. Kevin Cusick.
My latest column: I tried to blow the whistle on predator #CardinalMcCarrick 15 years ago but was shut down by @NY_Arch. #Catholic leaders, including @Pontifex #PopeFrancis, who claim to be shocked! by revelations about creepy "Uncle Teddy" are all lying.https://t.co/JxVgGFfax7
— BrettMDecker 🇺🇸 (@BrettMDecker) August 28, 2018
“The Vatican had no comment.”
Richard Fernandez – [Archbishop Viganò] says a gay and left wing mafia has been trying to take over the church; that Benedict acted vs McCarrick but it was subsequently overruled by the left and gay mafia. I was reading the PDF yesterday now the WaPo has it.
Viganò, 77, was the Holy See’s apostolic nuncio, or ambassador, in Washington from 2011 until 2016. He has been a lightning rod within the Vatican who lost a power struggle in Rome under Benedict, emerged as a Francis critic and reportedly ordered the halt of an investigation into alleged sexual relations between an archbishop in Minnesota and seminarians.
Jason Berry, who has written several investigative books about the Vatican, said he believes this is the first time a pope has been accused from within.
“From within the Vatican hierarchy, from within the Roman Curia, I don’t think anyone has ever publicly accused a pope of covering up for a sex abuser,” Berry said. “That’s why this is such a big deal.”
[…]
Viganò’s letter says that in 2013, he met Francis and told the new pope face to face that there was “a dossier this thick” about McCarrick. He says he then told Francis about Benedict’s order that McCarrick remove himself from public life.
“He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance,” Viganò says he told Francis. “The Pope did not make the slightest comment about those very grave words of mine and did not show any expression of surprise on his face, as if he had already known the matter for some time, and he immediately changed the subject.”
Barry Coburn, McCarrick’s lawyer, said in a statement: “These are serious allegations. Archbishop McCarrick, like any other person, has a right to due process. He looks forward to invoking that right at the appropriate time.”
The letter also includes an allegation against Wuerl, D.C.’s current archbishop and McCarrick’s successor. He is a close ally of Francis and is already under scrutiny following a grand jury report in Pennsylvania about clerical child sex abuse and an alleged coverup. Wuerl for years led the diocese of Pittsburgh.
Viganò is vague in the allegation against Wuerl. The letter says “obviously” Wuerl knew about Benedict’s restrictions on McCarrick because the then-ambassador, Pietro Sambi, was “responsible, loyal and direct” and must have told him. Viganò says he brought up the subject himself with Wuerl, and he writes that Wuerl “was fully aware of it.”
Wuerl’s spokesman, Ed McFadden, denied the report.
It’s behind a paywall, but the story is available if you haven’t run out of “free” visits.
“A Glimpse of Europe’s True Face”
[European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica ] Mogherini’s summit in Vienna was a statement of deep contempt for the US. Days before US President Donald Trump was scheduled to arrive on the continent, the leaders of Europe publicly colluded with Iran, China and Russia to undermine and weaken America. While shocking in and of itself, Europe’s behavior didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.
Mogherini has been publicly attacking the US for walking away from the nuclear deal and declaring her allegiance to the pact three times a day, every day since May 8 when Trump announced he was pulling the US out of it and reimposing sanctions on Iran.
What we didn’t know until recently is why Mogherini and her colleagues have chosen to stand with Iran against America.
We got the answer on June 30.
Six days before the Vienna summit, Belgian security forces arrested members of an Iranian terror cell as they made their way to Paris to blow up a rally held that day by the Iranian opposition movement Mujahedin e-Khalq. The cell was led by Asduallah Asadi, the head of Iran’s intelligence network in Europe. Asadi is registered as the Iranian intelligence attaché at the Iranian embassy in Vienna. He is an officer of the Revolutionary Guards’ al-Quds Brigade, which is responsible for Iran’s foreign terror operations.
Thousands attended the rally in Paris. Among the many VIPS present were former prime minister Ehud Barak, former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
The arrests in Belgium drove home the fact that Iran has developed a massive terror infrastructure in Europe. The terror operatives who were arrested lived and operated in at least four countries: Germany, Austria, Belgium and France.
On the face of it, it is amazing than right after terrorists under the direct command of the Iranian regime were caught en route to carrying out an attack in Paris, Europe’s top diplomats sat down with the leaders of the regime and brainstormed how to shower them with cash in open defiance of the United States.
[…]
As with Iran, so with Russia, when you see the full spectrum of European actions, you realize there is no connection whatsoever between European rhetoric and European policy. As with Iran, so with Russia, Europe’s actual policy is to appease Russia by paying it off. As with Iran so with Russia, Europe expects the US to pull its fat from the fire when the going gets tough – and pay for the privilege of doing so.
Trump scares the Europeans. He doesn’t scare them because he expects them to pay for their own defense. All of his predecessors had the same expectation. He frightens the Europeans because he ignores their rhetoric while mercilessly exposing their true policy and refuses to accept it. They are scared that Trump intends to exact a price from them for their weak-kneed treachery.
h/t Larry
Big Red Button
A team of US officials led by envoy Sung Kim met with North Korean officials Sunday at Panmunjom, the border village between North and South Korea in the demilitarized zone, senior State Department officials told CNN.
The talks were the first face-to-face conversations between the two countries since the summit last month between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and were held to work on implementing the agreement reached between the two leaders, the officials said.
Kim is the US ambassador to the Philippines and has been one of the key US officials dealing with the North Koreans leading up to the Trump-Kim summit.
National security adviser John Bolton said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” earlier Sunday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would communicate with the North Koreans in the near future about the dismantling of their weapons of mass destruction as well as their nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Big Red Button
I’m old enough to remember when global nuclear war was just a tweet away.
Not A Muslim
The Obama administration secretly sought to give Iran access — albeit briefly — to the U.S. financial system by sidestepping sanctions kept in place after the 2015 nuclear deal, despite repeatedly telling Congress and the public it had no plans to do so […]
The report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations revealed that under President Barack Obama, the Treasury Department issued a license in February 2016, never previously disclosed, that would have allowed Iran to convert $5.7 billion it held at a bank in Oman from Omani rials into euros by exchanging them first into U.S. dollars. If the Omani bank had allowed the exchange without such a license, it would have violated sanctions that bar Iran from transactions that touch the U.S. financial system.
The effort was unsuccessful because American banks — themselves afraid of running afoul of U.S. sanctions — declined to participate. The Obama administration approached two U.S. banks to facilitate the conversion, the report said, but both refused, citing the reputational risk of doing business with or for Iran.
This is big. Thus, you’re not going to hear about it.
This Is Not Your Grandma’s Humane Society
The hottest new trend in virtue signalling: 200 puppies rescued from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone are bound for the U.S.
h/t Vinnie
Next?
Art Of The Deal
Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Forget the Bomb.
Art Of The Deal
North Korea Agrees To Unconditional Denuclearization, Suspends Missile Tests, Shuts Down Testing Facility…
April 20th, 2017, headline: “North Korea nuclear threat: should California start panicking?”
April 20th 2018 headline: “North Korea willing to accept ‘complete denuclearization’ without conditions” – “leader suspends nuclear and missile tests, shuts down test site”
Why?
Trump pic.twitter.com/jqcfz6wZuV
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) April 21, 2018
How Israel Destroyed Syria’s Nuclear Reactor
This is the story of a single night more than a decade ago, and a daring, hair-raising operation executed by the Israeli air force, army and intelligence community that destroyed an atomic plant in northeastern Syria. Yet no less, it is also a story of a big intelligence failure – the worst since the Yom Kippur War, according to a number of top intelligence people – in which Israel somehow managed for years not to notice a reactor being built right under its nose, in a neighboring country on whose surveillance Israel was spending vast amounts of money.
Honey, I Finished The Internet
Chernobyl – a photo essay.
You Had One Job
Well, this is odd. The employee who sent the false missile alert in Hawaii, causing widespread panic and confusion, is refusing to cooperate with the investigation, a federal official said Thursday.
Previous.
You Had One Job
You Had One Job (Bumped for Update)
“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL,”
Yupdate.
One button? Pushed by “someone.” This debacle is going to get interesting. There’s a reason libs want to distract by blaming Trump. https://t.co/M0QGazNSz3
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) January 13, 2018
Another update, and this I can personally confirm is a legit account:
More.
Yup.
VIDEO – Hawaii Emergency Mgmt.: Person Not Only Triggered Alert But They Also Pressed ‘Yes’ to Verify https://t.co/VzpD1vooFe
— Grabien (@GrabienMedia) January 14, 2018
Big Red Button
I’m old enough to remember when global nuclear war was just a tweet away…
South Korean President Moon Jae-in credited U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday for helping to spark the first inter-Korean talks in more than two years, and warned that Pyongyang would face stronger sanctions if provocations continued. South Korean President Moon Jae-in credited U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday for helping to spark the first inter-Korean talks in more than two years, and warned that Pyongyang would face stronger sanctions if provocations continued.
“… and my button works.”
On April 28, 2017, North Korea launched a single Hwasong-12/KN17 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) from Pukchang Airfield in South Pyongan Province (the Korean People’s Army’s Air and Anti-Air Force Unit 447 in Ryongak-dong, Sunchon City, to be more precise). That missile failed shortly after launch and crashed in the Chongsin-dong, in North Korean city of Tokchon, causing considerable damage to a complex of industrial or agricultural buildings…