A South Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on state charges related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County's federal detention centers.
The indictment, which had not yet been signed by the presiding judge, was one of seven released Tuesday in a county that has been a source of bizarre legal and political battles in recent years. Another of the indictments named a state senator on charges of profiting from his position.
Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra himself had been under indictment for more than a year and half before a judge dismissed the indictments last month. This flurry of charges came in the twilight of Guerra's tenure, which ends this year after nearly two decades in office. He lost convincingly in a Democratic primary in March.
Cheney's indictment on a charge of engaging in an organized criminal activity criticizes the vice president's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees because of his link to the prison companies.
Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment on Tuesday, saying that the vice president had not yet received a copy of the indictment.
The indictment accuses Gonzales of using his position while in office to stop an investigation in 2006 into abuses at one of the privately-run prisons.
Gonzales' attorney, George Terwilliger III, said in a written statement, "This is obviously a bogus charge on its face, as any good prosecutor can recognize. Hopefully, competent Texas authorities will take steps to reign in this abuse of the criminal justice system."
Willacy County has become a prison hub with county, state and federal lockups. Guerra has gone after the prison-politician nexus before, extracting guilty pleas from three former Willacy and Webb county commissioners after investigating bribery related to federal prison contacts.
Another indictment released Tuesday accuses state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. of profiting from his public office by accepting honoraria from prison management companies. Guerra announced his intention to investigate Lucio's prison consulting early last year.
Lucio's attorney, Michael Cowen, released a scathing statement accusing Guerra of settling political scores in his final weeks in office.
"Senator Lucio is completely innocent and has done nothing wrong," Cowen said, adding that he would file a motion to quash the indictment this week.
Last month, a Willacy County grand jury indicted The GEO Group, a Florida private prison company, on a murder charge in the death of a prisoner days before his release. The three-count indictment alleged The GEO Group allowed other inmates to beat Gregorio de la Rosa Jr. to death with padlocks stuffed into socks. The death happened in 2001 at the Raymondville facility, just four days before de la Rosa's scheduled release.
In 2006, a jury ordered the company to pay de la Rosa's family $47.5 million in a civil judgment. The Cheney-Gonzales indictment makes reference to the de la Rosa case.
The Madonna of Orgasm Church (Orgasmens Madonnas kyrka) took an important step toward official recognition in Sweden last week when a court ruled it had the right to be registered as a faith community. Originally, the Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency (Kammarkollegiet) had refused the church's registration application on the grounds that its name may offend Christians.
But the church's founder, artist Carlos Bebeacua from Lövestad in southern Sweden, won his appeal to the county administrative court.
If the agency does not appeal the court's decision within three weeks, then it must process Bebeacua's application to register the church, which he founded in the early 1990s.
According to the Skånska Dagbladet newspaper, the idea for the church came to Bebeacua, who is the church's self-appointed cardinal, after a painting of his entitled 'The Madonna of Orgasm' sparked protests requiring police action during the 1992 World's Fair in Seville, Spain.
“The orgasm is God, the orgasm should be worshiped,” Bebeacua told the Kvällsposten newspaper.
“The orgasm is the ultimate feeling of lust, it shouldn't be limited to ejaculation. You can reach it through art or by looking at a landscape and thinking 'Wow!'”
The current Catholic pope made his mark a few decades ago by reeling in South American liberation theologians through the threat of excommunication. The following makes it evident old habits die hard.
This has come into particular highlight this very week, because the Inquisition office (now renamed the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith) has sent a letter to Father Roy Bourgeois threatening him with ex-communication (which effectively means an end to his income and to his teachings inside the church) for daring to publicly support the ordination of women and to offer remarks in a ceremony ordaining a woman as priest.
Roy Bourgeois isn't just any priest. He is, along with John Dear and Sister Joan Chittister, one of the most courageous Catholic voices for peace and non-violence and the founder and leader of the School of the Americas Watch (SOAW). The ultimatum and ex-communication would be effective the day before the annual demonstration of the SOAW at Fort Bennings where the School of the Americas is housed and where it trains South and Central American police forces in the techniques of torture, repression, and counter-insurgency. We at the Network of Spiritual Progressives have been calling for support for this demonstration which begins on Friday and goes till Sunday (if you happen to be coming to the demonstration and would help us distribute information or sit at our table to help us get the word out about our Global Marshall Plan campaign, please let us know by email).
So the Inquisition will now in one fell swoop be able to rid itself of the progressive Catholic who has created the most important spiritual progressive demonstration taking place anywhere in the country for peace and against torture, and simultaneously terrify other priests into not daring to question the Church's doctrines of women. It should be noted that the very progressive teachings of the Church against war and poverty have not served as a basis for the excommunication of any priest or other church officials who have publicly supported the US war in Iraq or Afghanistan or supported the notion of a violent war against terror. The Inquisition answers to no one,and so its arbitrary power is used against those who support progressive causes, but not against those who support authoritarian and reactionary and violent causes.
We urge all those who feel strongly opposed to this attempt to silence dissent within the Church and to oust its most celebrated peace-priest to take the following steps: 1. Write to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican, Rome, Italy and protest. 2. Write to your local newspapers and protest. 3. Write to your local Catholic church and priests and protest. 4. Write to the National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, and to national news sources like the NY Times and Washington Post and CNN and NPR and let them know that the NSP is protesting this move against Father Bourgeois and re-affirming our commitment to equal rights for women plus our commitment to strengthen the demonstrations in Fort Benning until the training of this sort is stopped and made illegal in the U.S.
In August, Father Bourgeois joined a ceremony in a Unitarian Universalist church in Lexington, Ky., in which a friend from the peace movement, Janice Sevre-Duszynska, claimed ordination as a Roman Catholic priest. Father Bourgeois gave the homily and laid hands on her.
He had known that excommunication was possible but said he thought it unlikely. His order summoned him to headquarters and gave him a warning but did not discipline him.
Then he received a letter dated Oct. 21 from the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, warning that if he did not recant, in writing, he would be excommunicated within 30 days.
“When I got the actual letter, I had to sit down,” he said. “I felt nauseous. I thought, this is serious stuff. The first thought that came to mind was, How am I going to explain this to my dad and my family?” After weeks of prayer, Father Bourgeois informed the Vatican that he would not repent.
Roy Bourgeois threatened with excommunication Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch, outside a congressional office building in Washington in 2007 (CNS photo/Paul Haring)Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois has been threatened with excommunication by the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for his support of women’s ordination, according to a letter made public today.
The letter was written by Bourgeois and addressed to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. It was distributed via e-mail by Bill Quigley, a New Orleans lawyer who represents Bourgeois. According to Bourgeois’ letter, which is dated Nov. 7, the congregation has given him 30 days to recant his “belief and public statements that support the ordination of women in our Church, or (he) will be excommunicated.”
The letter indicates that Bourgeois received notification from the congregation Oct. 21. Bourgeois, a priest for 36 years, attended the ordination of Janice Sevre-Duszynska in Lexingon, Ky., Aug. 9 and preached a homily.
If Bourgeois is excommunicated at the end of 30 days, it would come just before the mass rally and protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga., that Bourgeois has organized for 19 years. In recent years, more than 15,000 people, many of them Catholic university students, have joined the three daylong rally and demonstration. Bourgeois was not immediately available for comment. The text of Bourgeois’ letter follows.
Rev. Roy Bourgeois, M.M. PO Box 3330, Columbus, GA 31903 November 7, 2008
TO THE CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, THE VATICAN
I was very saddened by your letter dated October 21, 2008, giving me 30 days to recant my belief and public statements that support the ordination of women in our Church, or I will be excommunicated. I have been a Catholic priest for 36 years and have a deep love for my Church and ministry. When I was a young man in the military, I felt God was calling me to the priesthood. I entered Maryknoll and was ordained in 1972.
Over the years I have met a number of women in our Church who, like me, feel called by God to the priesthood. You, our Church leaders at the Vatican, tell us that women cannot be ordained.
With all due respect, I believe our Catholic Church’s teaching on this issue is wrong and does not stand up to scrutiny. A 1976 report by the Pontifical Biblical Commission supports the research of Scripture scholars, canon lawyers and many faithful Catholics who have studied and pondered the Scriptures and have concluded that there is no justification in the Bible for excluding women from the priesthood.
As people of faith, we profess that the invitation to the ministry of priesthood comes from God. We profess that God is the Source of life and created men and women of equal stature and dignity. The current Catholic Church doctrine on the ordination of women implies our loving and all-powerful God, Creator of heaven and earth, somehow cannot empower a woman to be a priest.
Women in our Church are telling us that God is calling them to the priesthood. Who are we, as men, to say to women, “Our call is valid, but yours is not.” Who are we to tamper with God’s call?
Sexism, like racism, is a sin. And no matter how hard or how long we may try to justify discrimination, in the end, it is always immoral.
Hundreds of Catholic churches in the U.S. are closing because of a shortage of priests. Yet there are hundreds of committed and prophetic women telling us that God is calling them to serve our Church as priests.
If we are to have a vibrant, healthy Church rooted in the teachings of our Savior, we need the faith, wisdom, experience, compassion and courage of women in the priesthood.
Conscience is very sacred. Conscience gives us a sense of right and wrong and urges us to do the right thing. Conscience is what compelled Franz Jagerstatter, a humble Austrian farmer, husband and father of four young children, to refuse to join Hitler’s army, which led to his execution. Conscience is what compelled Rosa Parks to say she could no longer sit in the back of the bus. Conscience is what compels women in our Church to say they cannot be silent and deny their call from God to the priesthood. Conscience is what compelled my dear mother and father, now 95, to always strive to do the right things as faithful Catholics raising four children. And after much prayer, reflection and discernment, it is my conscience that compels me to do the right thing. I cannot recant my belief and public statements that support the ordination of women in our Church.
Working and struggling for peace and justice are an integral part of our faith. For this reason, I speak out against the war in Iraq. And for the last eighteen years, I have been speaking out against the atrocities and suffering caused by the School of the Americas (SOA). Eight years ago, while in Rome for a conference on peace and justice, I was invited to speak about the SOA on Vatican Radio. During the interview, I stated that I could not address the injustice of the SOA and remain silent about injustice in my Church. I ended the interview by saying, “There will never be justice in the Catholic Church until women can be ordained.” I remain committed to this belief today.
Having an all male clergy implies that men are worthy to be Catholic priests, but women are not. According to USA TODAY (Feb. 28, 2008) in the United States alone, nearly 5,000 Catholic priests have sexually abused more than 12,000 children. Many bishops, aware of the abuse, remained silent. These priests and bishops were not excommunicated. Yet the women in our Church who are called by God and are ordained to serve God’s people, and the priests and bishops who support them, are excommunicated. Silence is the voice of complicity. Therefore, I call on all Catholics, fellow priests, bishops, Pope Benedict XVI and all Church leaders at the Vatican, to speak loudly on this grave injustice of excluding women from the priesthood.
Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador was assassinated because of his defense of the oppressed. He said, “Let those who have a voice, speak out for the voiceless.”
Our loving God has given us a voice. Let us speak clearly and boldly and walk in solidarity as Jesus would, with the women in our Church who are being called by God to the priesthood.
In Peace and Justice, Rev. Roy Bourgeois, M.M. PO Box 3330, Columbus, GA 31903
Anarchist and His Dog, The (1907) In spite of widespread public fear of aliens and anarchists, films could often poke fun at these despoilers of the British way of life. Indeed, many of the films featuring anarchists were comedies, among them Jimson Joins the Anarchists (1911); The Baby and the Bomb (1911), in which a baby frustrates an anarchist plot; George Robey Turns Anarchist, PC Nabben and the Anarchists and Pimple, Anarchist (all 1914). Here, the anarchist (in the usual beard) makes increasingly violent advances to a woman. She is rescued by an honourable Englishman who sees off the foreigner. Planning his dastardly revenge, the anarchist is outwitted by his dog, which retrieves the bomb, blowing up his master.
1968 has been called the Year of Revolutions. We had riots in America and Paris, a Spring in Prague, mass demonstrations against the Vietnam war. 1969 saw the ferment continue…in Swansea at least. Swansea students had mass sit-ins, and marches across a stretch of the Mumbles road. We fought for a pedestrian bridge and mixed sex Halls of Residence. Europe trembled.
There were stirrings in the Anarchist camp too. Ian Bone had an anarchist dog accessorized with a small red and black flag around its collar. The image may have sparked the idea, that or the beer. Why do we fight for the liberation of man…what about dogs?
Comrades, what about dogs?
Rhetoric turned into action.
Singleton Park encircled much of the University. Behind it was a compound for unwanted dogs. One dark night the compound was raided and the dogs released. Singleton Park resounded to the eager barking of dogs, packs of them roaming through bushes and trees searching for bones and Bakuninist truths. Not exactly Reservoir Dogs but a victory of sorts.
After a whole day of walking around thinking about it--his eyes burning, his heart pounding--he decided that the thing to do was to warn the policeman by writing a letter. He did not know whether real anarchists warned them or not, but Stubby couldn't get reconciled to the idea of killing a person without telling him you were going to do it. It seemed that even a policeman should be told--especially a policeman who played with a dog.
The following letter was pencilled by a shaking hand, late that afternoon. It was written upon a barrel in the Lynch wood-shed, on a piece of wrapping paper, a bristly little head bending over it:
To the Policeman who comes to take my dog 'cause I ain't got the two fifty--'cause I tried but could only get one eighty--'cause a man was off his nut and didn't pay me what I earned--
This is to tell you I am an anarchist and do not believe in the government or the law and the order and will shoot you when you come. I wouldn't a been an anarchist if I could a got the money and I tried to get it but I couldn't get it--not enough. I don't think the government had ought to take things you like like I like Hero so I am against the government.
Thought I would tell you first.
Yours truly,
F. LYNCH.
I don't see how I can shoot you 'cause where would I get the revolver. So I will have to do it with the butcher knife. Folks are sometimes killed that way 'cause my father read it in the paper.
If you wanted to take the one eighty and leave Hero till I can get the seventy I will not do anything to you and would be very much obliged.
1113 Willow street.
The letter was properly addressed and sealed--not for nothing had Stubby's teacher given those instructions in the art of letter writing. The stamp he paid for out of the dime the man gave him to get a soda with--and forget his troubles.
The Schipperke look more like foxes when they are mature, and like little bears when they are young pups. They are bright, intelligent, and obstinate hence the designation Little Captain, they push their way around. They are the perfect anarchist dog and the perfect dog for an anarchist.
I am just wondering about youse anarchists here. I am not asking a stupid question, just really wondering. You reckon there should be no borders and people should be able to roam free and there should be no gaols and communities should deal with offenders but what about blackberry bush, lantana, annual ragweed, cabomba, camel thorn, castor oil plant, madeira vine, water hyacinth, witchweed, and all those other plantsome nasties. Are plants entitled to anarchy also? Do you reckon nature will sort it all out in the end? Does it matter if lantana chokes out native plants? Should anarchy reign in the plant world? And then there are animals of course. Would it be OK for your roaming-free persons to bring along some elephants, buffalo, wildebeest, iberian lynxes, greater bamboo lemurs, etc, to keep them company? Should there be animal anarchy or is it restricted to humans? After all, I share 85% of my genes with my dog. So he's almost human. Or I'm almost dog, one or the other. In any event he's definitely an anarchist dog.
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"We look forward to the time when the power of love will replace the love of power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace." -- William Gladstone (1809-1898)
Credo
"A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on." ~ William S. Burroughs (1914-1997)
"A people who would begin by burning fences and let the forest stand!" ~ Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
" I would prefer not to" - Bartleby the Scrivener ~ Herman Melville (1819-1891)
"The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself" ~ William Blake (1757-1827)
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." ~ Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)
"On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break." ~ Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007)
"Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find money cannot be eaten." ~ Cree Prophecy
"Theology is just a debate over who to frame for creating reality. What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos." ~ Kerry Thornley (1938-1998)
"Money can buy everything, it is said. What is not said is what it takes to buy money." ~ A ballad against work - Kamunist Kranti
"What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and sh*ts quantity." ~ William S. Burroughs
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words you can control the people who must use the words."
And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy...
...And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?...
Mark 13
And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
