“I think we’ve learnt a lot of things about what is appropriate behaviour and what’s not appropriate behaviour.”

One Australian bishop’s monstrously banal response to 26 suicides attributed to priestly abuse.

Some hobbyists collect stamps; others probe the very heart of matter

(above) Richard Handl, whose name is sometimes transliterated as "Ray Palmer"

To each their own. Via the Washington Post:

 A Swedish man who was arrested after trying to split atoms in his kitchen said Wednesday he was only doing it as a hobby.

Richard Handl told The Associated Press that he had the radioactive elements radium, americium and uranium in his apartment in southern Sweden when police showed up and arrested him on charges of unauthorized possession of nuclear material.

…

Although he says police didn’t detect dangerous levels of radiation in his apartment, he now acknowledges the project wasn’t such a good idea.

“From now on, I will stick to the theory,” he said.

Usually, I find private experimentation that could potentially bring harm to unwitting bystandards reprehensible—hell, I don’t even like fireworks. But for some reason, I can’t help but admire Handl.

I’m brought to mind of Michio Kaku, the theoretical physicist who as a teenager built a functional particle accelerator in his parents’ garage. Both stood upon the shoulders of giants and reach to touch the world’s deepest core with their own hands, reaffirming the accessibility and practicality of knowledge we usually assume can only be uttered in the esoteric cloisters of the ivory tower.   

Which is not to say what Handl did was probably not incredibly reckless and deserving punishment. Yet I still hope Handl gets a light sentence and, before fading from the public consciousness, goes on to become a popularizer and demystifier of nuclear physics. As the industrial world burns off its fossil fuels, the much maligned specter of nuclear power could use a friendly public face.

Following Kenny speech, Vatican withdraws envoy from Ireland

A nation with an 87 percent Catholic population no longer has an ambassador to Rome. Via Irish Times:

The Vatican has recalled its envoy to Ireland following Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s trenchant criticism of the Holy See’s role in covering up cases of clerical child sex abuse. Deputy Vatican spokesman Father Ciro Benedettini said Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, the Apostolic Nuncio of Ireland, had been recalled from Dublin for consultations in the wake of the Cloyne report.

Fr Benedettini confirmed Dr Leanza had already arrived in Rome. He said the principal aim of the recall was to make it easier for its secretary of state and other officials to prepare the Holy See’s official response to the Government in the wake of the Cloyne report into the mishandling of child sex abuse claims.

“The recall of the nuncio, being a measure verily adopted by the Holy See, denotes the seriousness of the situation and the Holy See’s desire to face it objectively and determinately,” he said. “Nor does it exclude some degree of surprise and disappointment at certain excessive reactions.”

Fr Benedettini added: “The recall of the nuncio should be interpreted as an expression of the desire of the Holy See for serious and effective collaboration with the (Irish) Government.”

Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore, who met Archbishop Leanza earlier this month, said the recall was a matter for the Holy See.

“The Government is awaiting the response of the Holy See to the recent report into the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, and it is to be expected that the Vatican would wish to consult in depth with the nuncio on its response,” he added.

In language never used by an Irish leader, Mr Kenny last week accused the Vatican of downplaying the rape and torture of children in order to uphold its own power and reputation. At the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, last night, Mr Kenny said he had received “thousands” of messages from around the world in response to his speech. This reflected the way people felt about this issue, he said. Mr Kenny added he was “astounded” by the number of clergy who had been in touch to say it was “about time” someone in his position spoke out. The Taoiseach received a standing ovation when he finished delivering the annual lecture in honour of Nobel laureate and former SDLP leader John Hume at the opening session of the summer School. Referring to his Dáil speech last Wednesday on the Cloyne report, he said: “I made a few remarks this week about children, which means a lot to me, I have to say.

“I just wanted people to understand that, when I say we live in a republic with laws and responsibilities and rights, I mean it. The fact that I have had thousands of messages from around the world speaks for itself about the impact and the way people feel.

“The numbers of members of the clergy who have been in touch in the last few days, to say it is about time somebody spoke out about these matters in a situation like you are, has astounded me,” Mr Kenny said. “I haven’t made any other comment except to say that we await the response from the Vatican.”

“I like to think that part of what we do in Government is to create the environment where the innocence of children can develop naturally through their formative years,” Mr Kenny said. He said this was in the hope, “that when they grow up and grow old they will look back with a sense of pride and a sense of respect for where they came from”.

Vatican obstructed abuse investigations as late as 2007

Via the Irish Times:

[Roman Catholic parliamentarian and leader of the conservative-Christian democratic Fine Gael party] Taoiseach Enda Kenny today told the Dáil the Cloyne report exposed an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate the inquiry into clerical sex abuse.

Addressing the House, Mr Kenny said: “The rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation’.

“Far from listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal with St Benedict’s “ear of the heart” . . . the Vatican’s reaction was to parse and analyse it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer. . . . This calculated, withering position being the polar opposite of the radicalism, humility and compassion upon which the Roman Church was founded.”

“The revelations of the Cloyne report* have brought the Government, Irish Catholics and the Vatican to an unprecedented juncture,” the Taoiseach said.*

*Published earlier this month, the published findings from a comprehensive investigation into the efforts of the Irish Catholic Church and sympathetic governments and educators to cover up the abuse of minors in Church care in the Cloyne diocese.  

“It’s fair to say that after the Ryan and Murphy reports Ireland is, perhaps, unshockable when it comes to the abuse of children. But Cloyne has proved to be of a different order.

“Because for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual-abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See, to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic . . . as little as three years ago, not three decades ago. And in doing so, the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism . . . the narcissism . . . that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”

Mr Kenny said the Cloyne report told “a tale of a frankly brazen disregard for protecting children”. He said although the report had shown the need for the Vatican “to get its house in order”, it also revealed how the State had failed victims too.

“For too long Ireland has neglected its children,” he said.

“This is not Rome. This is the Republic of Ireland 2011, a republic of laws,” Mr Kenny said.

Mr Kenny was speaking during a Government motion on the report that “deplores the Vatican’s intervention which contributed to the undermining of the child protection frameworks and guidelines of the Irish State and the Irish bishops”.

It expresses “dismay at the disturbing findings of the report and at the inadequate and inappropriate response, particularly of the church authorities in Cloyne, to complaints and allegations of child sexual abuse.”

Also speaking in the Dáil this afternoon Minister for Justice Alan Shatter said the report’s findings were unambiguous.

“We cannot correct past wrongs perpetrated on our children, but we can take action to prevent, insofar as is possible, the wrongs of the past being perpetrated on our children in the future,” he said.

“We cannot depend on the undertakings of others to correct failings and introduce robust and effective structures of protection. Cloyne irrefutably confirms that some who, in the past, gave such undertakings acted in bad faith,” the Minister told the Dáil.

Earlier today, Mr Shatter said comments made by Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi about the Cloyne report were “somewhat unfortunate and disingenuous”.

Making his first extended comments on the implications of the report, Fr Lombardi said yesterday there was nothing in the advice given by the papal nuncio to Irish bishops which could be interpreted as an invitation to cover up abuse cases.

Fr Lombardi said a controversial letter from papal nuncio Luciano Storero in 1997 was grossly misinterpreted following publication of the report last week.

Speaking in favour of the all-party Oireachtas motion, Sinn Féin spokesman on children Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said it was “high time” the church stopped believing itself to be above the law. He asked how many inquiries would be needed before real action was taken on this “dreadful neglect”.

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore last night ruled out expelling the current papal nuncio, however. A spokesman said the Government needed to ensure that diplomatic channels remained open in order to communicate its views to the Vatican and receive its response. Mr Gilmore said the Government was awaiting a formal response from the Vatican to the Cloyne report.

His spokesman said: “While a deadline for a response was not set, the Tánaiste has made it clear that if a response is not forthcoming in a reasonable time frame, it will be followed up on.”

Icelandic town hopes songs will pacify elves disgruntled by highway construction

Illustration by Swedish artist John Bauer (1882-1918) of "Bland Tomtar Och Troll", 1909

Via Iceland’s Ice News:

It is hoped that elves and hidden people around the north-western Icelandic town of Bolungarvik will start to calm down again following their recent dangerous pranks and humans’ subsequent efforts to appease them.

Local residents sang songs and said prayers in honour of the peeved hidden folk and elves this week in an effort to smooth ruffled feathers. Dynamiting began again midweek following a nasty incident, reported here, where rocks and soil rained down on Bolungarvik.

Some people pointed the finger of blame on angry elves who had finally snapped. The dynamiting for the town’s new avalanche defence barrier comes less than a year after a new road tunnel through the Oshlid hill was completed — neither of which with the prior blessing of the hidden people.

Seers requested the Bolungarvik municipal government make a full apology to the hidden people and elves for the disturbance the avalanche barrier and tunnel have caused them. The council failed to see the potential quirky PR value and refused to co-operate — saying that there must be logical explanations for the recent spate of accidents and breakdowns. Some locals then took matters into their own hands; making up their own peace offering.

“I have now been asked by both elves and men to broker a compromise here, and I hope that this song will suffice,” said Bolungarvik musician Benedikt Sigurdsson. All heavy machinery at the site was stopped while the ceremony went ahead, and pre-school children and other interested residents gathered round to show their support.

The problem with the flotillas

Christopher Hitchens writing in Slate:

At a time of widespread democratic and pluralist revolution in the region, Hamas imposes its own version of theocracy on Gaza and seems otherwise aligned with the forces that stand athwart the hope of continued and deeper change. Who wants to volunteer time to make this outfit look more presentable? Half the published articles on Gaza contain a standard reference to its resemblance to a vast open-air prison (and when I last saw it under Israeli occupation, it certainly did deserve this metaphor). The problem is that, given its ideology and its allies, Hamas qualifies rather too well in the capacity of guard.

Only a few weeks ago, the Hamas regime in Gaza became the only governing authority in the world—by my count—to express outrage and sympathy at the death of Osama Bin Laden. As the wavelets lap in the Greek harbors, and the sunshine beats down, doesn’t any journalist want to know whether the “activists” have discussed this element in their partners’ world outlook?

…

Hamas is listed by various governments and international organizations as a terrorist group. I don’t mind conceding that that particular word has been used in arbitrary ways in the past. But what concerns me much more is the official programmatic adoption, by Hamas, of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This disgusting fabrication is a key foundational document of 20^th-century racism and totalitarianism, indelibly linked to the Hitler regime in theory and practice. It seems extraordinary to me that any “activist” claiming allegiance to human rights could cooperate at any level with the propagation of such evil material. But I have never seen any of them invited to comment on this matter, either.

How the US’s cavalierness with the Geneva Convention hurts the war on terror

Via Gabor Rona, International Legal Director for Human Rights First, writing The Jurist:

Germany and the United States see eye to eye on a lot. And so, German leader Angela Merkel got a 19 gun salute and what amounts to a state dinner last week (it is not called a state dinner because she is technically not the head of state, and therefore two guns shy of 21) even though her government refuses to share intelligence with the United States to conduct drone strikes in Pakistan.

Why is this fly in the ointment? It is not that Germany opposes the war. Merkel has, in fact, committed thousands of troops to Afghanistan. It is that Germany has doubts about the drone program’s compliance with international law.

Publicly at least, the Obama administration expresses no such doubts, of course. So what causes the two strongest of allies see things so differently?

For one thing, the two countries have different visions of the purposes of the Geneva Conventions. In the European collective memory, war is as much a scourge on civilians as on combatants. For Americans, war happens elsewhere to US combatants, not to US civilians, the last major war fought on US soil having been a century and a half ago. In Europe, human rights and “humanitarian law” (as the laws of armed conflict are known there) are part of a broader school curriculum, as the Geneva Conventions require. In the US, the “laws of war” (as they are known there) are more exclusively the province of the military and you are lucky to find it taught in law school, let alone high school.

The two countries also differ greatly on enforcement of international human rights obligations. The main European human rights treaty, the European Convention on Human Rights, is enforced by an independent court. The main human rights treaty to which the US is a party, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has no enforcement mechanism applicable to the US. Meanwhile, American courts typically refuse to enforce the Geneva Conventions and human rights law.

In Europe, human rights law is understood to apply in war time, although subject to the laws of armed conflict. Not so much in the US.

In Europe, human rights law is understood to apply to a state’s conduct beyond its own borders. Not at all in the US.

Because the US is such an outlier, countries with robust human rights protection mechanisms must tread carefully in their dealings with their indispensable ally, for fear of violating their own legal obligations.

It is not just Europe. Last month, a Canadian appeals court refused to extradite an indicted terrorist suspect to the US because he had been tortured in detention in Pakistan, with US complicity.

Part of the reason other countries may balk at sending suspects to the US is the fear that they will end up in indefinite detention in Guantanamo or tried by its kangaroo court military commission system, rather than in the traditional federal courts. This is not idle speculation. Congress is now debating a law to prohibit federal court trials and to require Guantanamo detention and military commission trials for terrorism suspects.

In Afghanistan, NATO forces fighting alongside US forces stopped turning al Qaeda and Taliban suspects over to the Americans after news broke in 2004 of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Obviously, not even US coalition partners believed the “few bad apples” meme pushed by the Bush administration. But the Obama administration has come a long way from the illegal practices of the early post-9/11 Bush administration in matters of detainee treatment. So why is the NATO policy still in place? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the US continues to detain people without providing them the right to see or challenge the evidence, let alone to have a lawyer.

The US also continues to insist on broad authority to conduct drone strikes without articulating the legal criteria it uses to determine their legitimacy. It continues to insist on broad powers to detain people without trial under questionable interpretations of the laws of war. It continues to insist on the right to transfer suspects to countries with records of detainee abuse under a veneer of “diplomatic assurances” that they will not be tortured, and without giving the detainee a right to challenge the decision. It continues to subject terrorism suspects to military trials that fail to provide the minimum judicial guarantees required by either the Geneva Conventions or by human rights law. And it continues to ignore its legal obligations to hold accountable the architects and perpetrators of US torture and to provide remedies to their victims.

Winston Churchill famously said that the US always does the right thing—after it has exhausted all the other possibilities. The globalization of terrorism means that the US cannot win this battle alone. It needs international cooperation. No reasonably astute observer thinks otherwise. But the US has been slow to connect the dots between its failures to comply with international law and the decisions of allies to withhold essential cooperation, like intelligence sharing and transfer of terrorism suspects for prosecution.

This is not about being sensitive to European sensibilities. America has different traditions and there are many issues on which it is perfectly fine to have different views and policies. This is about US counter-terrorism policies creating an obstacle to cooperation with the US, and about other countries’ ability to accept cooperation from the US. It is about nothing less than a common defense against terrorism and the realization that national security will be enhanced, not diminished, by bringing US policies into compliance with international legal norms.

Sweden and the fragility of democracy

A quater of young people in Sweden, the nation ranked last year as the fourth most democratic nation by the Economist’s annual Democracy Index, would be receptive to an autocrat indifferent to the results of elections and pronouncements of the parliament.  Via The Local:

In a debate article in Friday’s Dagens Nyheter (DN) Lindberg wrote that scientists are seeing worrying threats against the foundations of democracy in Sweden, at the same time as dictatorships in the Middle East and North Africa are falling under the pressure of young people’s demand for a right to vote.

According to the survey, 26 percent of 18-29-year-olds thought that it would be good or very good if a “strong leader who didn’t have to care about a Riksdag or an election” ruled Sweden. Older generations value democracy higher. 97 percent of those over 30 stated that it is important to live in a democratic country.

It is significant, wrote Lindberg, that the randomly chosen group of Swedes forming the basis for the study represented voters from across the political spectrum.

The participants were all in employment, had the same basic education and the same faith in institutions such as church, university, national defence and different types of organisations. None were more or less willing to take part in any forms of protests or demonstrations.

I suppose this especially jarring for me, being an American as I am, because we more or less define our national idenity by the robustness of our political liberties. We have no common culture to fall back on before the 1770′s, whereas most peoples have at least a millennia of history to draw upon for national pride.

What can the American or international democrat take away from this grim statistic? A reminder that liberalism is an experiment in morals and politics, one whose principal tenants have been considered outlandishly counterintuitive for all but the last two or three centuries of our species’ 200,000 year history. Even in those countries where the experiment has succeeded far enough to produce a high degree of security and autonomy,  watching the slow, deliberative, compromised day-to-day crawl of electoral government hardly endears citizens to the process, if they have forgotten the horrors of autocracy. As E.M. Forster said, many dislike parliaments because they are talking-houses; but it is precisely because they are talking-houses they are so valuable. I only hope in the coming years the Swedes do not have a harsh lesson in this truth.

Today is Memorial Day, and we are at war, again

Today is Memorial Day, which, in paper, is set aside to honor those who serve the national interest in the armed forces. But no one, at least no one conducting the most attended conversations on the national stage, is discussing the servicemen and women we have inLibyaright now. Nor are they discussing the violations of The War Powers Act and Article I of the Constitution which their deployment entails.

Not just President Obama is responsible for these violations, though he did swear to uphold Constitution and enacted laws. The Congress is also culpable; its members have failed to assert its own duty to declare war and police the executive. And we, too, are culpable, for not demanding of our respective representatives that we be told why we commit our dwindling monies and the bodies and efforts of our finest to a remote and uncertain conflict. Qudaffi’s tyranny is beyond dispute; but none in the West whether the revolutionaries are budding democrats, jihadists, or tribal factions with no ideological commitment recognizable to outsiders. Some of each element seem to be in play. Yet we cannot say which will prevail until after the rubble settles; or if they could establish any sustainable institution with or without further unasked-for alien nation-building.

Ours would be such a sad nation, if we could not give care to the wars conducted on our behalf.

We honor no one leaving our leaders undisturbed.

Priest served on board of Dutch NAMBLA-like group

Via the reliably yellow Daily Fail Mail, so take it with a grain of salt:

The Dutch Catholic Church and the Salesian order are investigating revelations that a Salesian priest served on the board of a group that promotes paedophilia with the full knowledge of his boss.

The order’s top official in the Netherlands, Delegate Herman Spronck, confirmed in a statement that the priest – identified by RTL Nieuws as 73-year-old ‘Father Van B.’ – served on the board of a group that campaigns to end the Dutch ban on adult-child sex.

The group is widely reviled but not outlawed.

‘Of course we reject this and distance ourselves from this personal initiative’ on the part of the priest, Spronck said in a statement.

‘Membership in such organizations does not fit with the ethos of the Salesian order.’

However, Spronck’s own superior in Belgium said he will investigate both Spronck and Van B., after both men were quoted by RTL Nieuws as saying such relationships aren’t always harmful.

Superior Jos Claes told Belgian television on Saturday he ‘couldn’t imagine’ that both men would not be disciplined, but said he must make sure of the facts first.

‘Society thinks these relationships are harmful. I disagree,’ RTL quoted Van B. as saying. He served on the organisation’s board from 2008 until 2010, when its founder was arrested for alleged possession of child pornography, a case that is ongoing.
Van B. told RTL he remains a member of the group and now lives in a retirement home in eastern Netherlands.

In a second interview, RTL quoted Spronck as saying he was aware of Van B.’s paedophilia and membership, and even of two instances where the priest had been fined by police for exposing himself in public. But he said he didn’t think that was sufficient reason to ban him from the order.

‘Removing someone from the order is something you would only do in the case of grave moral transgression, such as rape. There was never any question of that,’ Spronck was quoted as saying.

Spronck added that adult-child sexual relations do not necessarily have to be damaging, including with children as young as 12.

Spronck and his organisation could not be reached Saturday for comment. According to its website, the Dutch arm of the Salesians has 14 employees and 400 volunteers and aims to help poor children.

Dutch Catholic Church spokesman Pieter Kohnen said Saturday that, even with sex abuse scandals rocking the church worldwide, this particular case was ‘unbelievable’ and the church utterly rejects paedophilia.

He said if Superior Claes did not act quickly to reform the Dutch Salesian order’s leadership, the matter would be referred to Rome.

RTL’s report detailed Van B.’s movements over two decades, through three dioceses and six parishes in the Netherlands where the priest often departed under a cloud of suspicion.

Pastor Rudy de Kruijf in the eastern city of Wijchen said Van B. had helped him as recently as Christmas, but his church ended contact immediately when it learned of his past.

Kohnen said the Church has done extensive background checks on all employees since 2004, but in Van B.’s case that would not have helped since he was a volunteer.

Thousands of past cases of alleged sexual abuse by Dutch priests are under investigation by an independent but church-funded commission in the Netherlands.

The Dutch church, which has more than 4 million members, set up a body to deal with abuse allegations in 1995. But the independent commission was formed last year after shocking abuse cases were uncovered just as similar stories were snowballing in neighboring Germany.

Several of the most prominent abuse cases coming to light recently in the Netherlands have also involved Salesians at boarding schools and orphanages in the 1950s and 1960s.