The Wiggles were awarded Australian Catholic University's (ACU) highest honour

I knew the CC would love these weirdos.

The Wiggles

 The Wiggles were awarded Australian Catholic University's (ACU) highest honour, Doctor of the University (honoris causa), at the University's Sydney Faculty of Education graduation ceremony on Tuesday 11 April 2006 at 7pm at Sydney Town Hall.

The honour was bestowed upon The Wiggles by the University in recognition of their outstanding contribution to early-years education and child development through the arts. "Red" Wiggle, Murray Cook, provided the occasional address at the ceremony.

Speaking about the Wiggles' achievements, ACU Vice-Chancellor, Professor Peter Sheehan AO said,

"The Wiggles have provided challenging and highly stimulating education and great enjoyment to our children in their early years. Drawing on their natural talents and energies, this group has used its knowledge of early childhood education, the value of the preciousness of individuals and their keen interest in music and art to bring joy, humanity and great happiness to the young children of Australia, the United States of America, Great Britain, China and New Zealand."

Disturbing fact (link)

Seymour Hersh unleashed

Update (2/13/23): Legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed on Saturday that his latest bombshell report, which suggests the CIA was responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in September, was not a hard story to find. It was obvious that there was more to the issue than was being reported by most media outlets, Hersh said. Link

 

Original Article (1/20/11):

Seymour Hersh unleashed 

(Seymour (Sy) Myron Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is a United States Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters.)

Posted By Blake Hounshell Tuesday, January 18, 2011 - 1:34 AM Share

DOHA, Qatar—David Remnick, call your office.
In a speech billed as a discussion of the Bush and Obama eras, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh delivered a rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe here Monday expressing his disappointment with President Barack Obama and his dissatisfaction with the direction of U.S. foreign policy.

"Just when we needed an angry black man," he began, his arm perched jauntily on the podium, "we didn't get one."

It quickly went downhill from there.

Hersh, whose exposés of gross abuses by members of the U.S. military in Vietnam and Iraq have earned him worldwide fame and high journalistic honors, said he was writing a book on what he called the "Cheney-Bush years" and saw little difference between that period and the Obama administration.

He said that he was keeping a "checklist" of aggressive U.S. policies that remained in place, including torture and "rendition" of terrorist suspects to allied countries, which he alleged was ongoing.

He also charged that U.S. foreign policy had been hijacked by a cabal of neoconservative "crusaders" in the former vice president's office and now in the special operations community.

"What I'm really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over," he said of his forthcoming book. "It's not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it -- how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced."

Hersh then brought up the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. "In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What's this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they're all worried about some looting? ... Don't they get it? We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody's gonna give a damn.'"

"That's the attitude," he continued. "We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That's an attitude that pervades, I'm here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command."

He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta."

Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited to "defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering," according to its website.

"Many of them are members of Opus Dei," Hersh continued. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function."

"They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins," he continued. "They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”"

Hersh relayed that he had recently spoken with "a man in the intelligence community... somebody in the joint special operations business" about the downfall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. "He said, ‘Oh my God, he was such a good ally.'"

"Tunisia's going to change the game," Hersh added later. "It's going to scare the hell out of a lot of people."

Moving to Pakistan, where Hersh noted he had been friendly with Benazir Bhutto, the journalist told of a dinner meeting with Asif Ali Zardari, the late prime minister’s husband, in which Hersh said the Pakistani president was brutally disdainful of his own people.

Hersh described a trip he made to Swat, where the Pakistani military had just dislodged Taliban insurgents who had taken over the scenic valley, a traditional vacation area for the urban middle class. Hersh said he asked Zardari about the tent cities he saw along the road, where people were living in harsh, unsanitary conditions.

“Well, those people there in Swat, that’s what they deserve,” the Pakistani president replied, according to Hersh. Asked why, Hersh said Zardari responded, “Because they supported the Taliban.” (Note: Hersh's conversation is not recounted in his 2009 New Yorker article on Pakistan's nuclear weapons, presumably because it couldn't be verified.)

The veteran journalist also alleged that the CIA station chief in Islamabad, who was recently recalled after his name surfaced in Pakistani court documents and in the lively Pakistani press, had actually been fired for disputing the plans of Gen. David Petraeus, who took over the Afghan war last summer after General McChrystal was summarily dismissed.

"When Petraeus issued a very optimistic report about the war in December that he gave to the president," Hersh said, the station chief "just declared it was bankrupt... internally. He just said ‘This is completely wrongheaded. The policy's wrongheaded.' Off he goes. Out he goes."


"I've given up being disillusioned about the CIA," Hersh said. "They're trained to lie, period. They will lie to their president, they will lie certainly to the Congress, and they will lie to the American people. That's all there is to it."

Hersh was speaking on the invitation of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, which operates a branch campus in Qatar.

The Unfortunate Story of Jean Calas

Jean Calas (1698 – March 10, 1762) was a merchant living in Toulouse, France, famous for having been the victim of a biased trial due to his being a Protestant. In France, he is a symbol of Christian religious intolerance, along with Jean-François de la Barre and Pierre-Paul Sirven.

Calas, along with his wife, was a Protestant. France was then a mostly Catholic country; Catholicism was the state religion. While the harsh oppression of Protestantism initiated by King Louis XIV had largely receded, Protestants were, at best, tolerated. Louis, one of the Calas' sons, converted to Catholicism in 1756. On October 13-October 14, 1761, another of the Calas' sons, Marc-Antoine, was found dead on the ground floor of the family's home. Rumors had it that Jean Calas had killed his son because he, too, intended to convert to Catholicism. The family, interrogated, first claimed that Marc-Antoine had been killed by a murderer. Then they declared that they had found Marc-Antoine dead, hanged; since suicide was then considered a heinous crime against oneself, and the dead bodies of suicides were defiled, they had arranged for their son's suicide to look like a murder.

On March 9, 1762, the parlement (appellate court) of Toulouse sentenced Jean Calas to death on the wheel. On March 10, at the age of 64, he died tortured on the wheel, while still very firmly claiming his innocence. Voltaire, contacted about the case, after initial suspicions that Calas was guilty of anti-Catholic fanaticism had subsided, began a campaign to get Calas' sentence overturned.

On March 9, 1765, Jean Calas was found not guilty.

• l'Affaire Calas (in French)
• Voltaire's Traité sur la Tolérance à l'occasion de la mort de Jean Calas (in French)
•  "The Calas Case". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 
•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Calas, Jean". Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

The Vatican in the News 1/18/11

 Vatican Warned Bishops Not to Report Child Abuse
New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN A newly disclosed document reveals that Vatican officials instructed the bishops of Ireland in 1997 that they must not adopt a policy of ...

Miracle? Nun says she recovered after praying to Pope
NDTV.com
But in a statement Friday, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints said Vatican-appointed doctors had "scrupulously" studied the case and determined that ...

Rabbi and Pope discuss Jewish-Christian cooperation in Israel
Catholic News Agency
Vatican City, Jan 17, 2011 / 08:10 pm (CNA).- Pope Benedict met with prominent Israeli Rabbi Shlomo Riskin on Jan. 12, who updated the pontiff on the ...


 Pontiff Receives Lutheran Delegation From Finland
Catholic.net
Today in the Vatican, the Pope received members of a Catholic-Lutheran delegation from Finland who make an annual trip to Rome for the feast day of St. ...

Pope's blood to be built into altar Sydney Morning Herald The exact date of the opening is not yet known, but it should be shortly after John Paul's beatification at the Vatican on May 1. ...

The real assassination target in Tucson?

This info was taken from here. I always recommend everyone verify all things. Let this sort of be a disclaimer. Several times I have found info connected to Alex Jones to be wrong. Even in matters such as this. I believe he does this on purpose to incite revolution and extremist behavior for the goal of harming the reputations of truth-seekers. The Alex Jones Operation (Project Alex Jones) has many purposes. One purpose is to be a "straw man sock puppet" meant to discredit the whole grass roots, alternative media, constitutionalists, ect ect movements ... -T.R.

Meet Judge John Roll

"Widely respected." "A wise jurist." The US news media heaped on the praise, but was purposefully vague about who this extraordinary judge was and what he actually did. The early and oft-repeated media claim "the judge was just in the wrong place at the wrong time" doesn't ring true for several reasons, the most important being how the heck would they know and know so quickly? Equally as suspicious, why did they feel the need to repeat this statement over and over again from the very beginning of the reports? Who inserted this into the news stream? Judge Roll was an opponent of the Federal government overreaching its authority. Specifically: 1. He ruled against federal imposition on states rights in gun law matters, 2. He ruled against elements of the Patriot Act (the part where federal "law enforcement agents" can seize your bank account without cause), and 3. He ruled against the newly announced FEMA Governor system in which the federal government plans to take the power of elected state Governors and put in in the hands of federally-appointed "regional" governors in the case of an "emergency." It's a rare judge these days that stands up to this BS or shows any interest in the Constitution at all. And he ended up dead in the parking lot of a Safeway Supermarket at the hands of a "lone nut" who local law enforcement allowed to run wild publicly making violent threats against employers and school administrators.

Link to page with video

EU and Vatican criticised

The People's Assembly launched a scathing attack against the European Parliament accusing it of disseminating false reports about the "repression of Christians" in Egypt, reports Gamal Essam El-Din

 

Egyptian MPs, belonging to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and opposition, opened fire on the Brussels-based European Parliament, accusing it of interfering in Egypt's internal affairs. Speaker of the People's Assembly Fathi Sorour told MPs in a session on Monday morning that he condemned the way in which the European Parliament had "tried to exploit the attack which hit the Two Saints Church on the New Year's Eve in order to imply that there is a systematic policy of repression against Coptic Christians in Egypt". Sorour said that in a meeting with a delegation from the Bundestag (German parliament) yesterday, he had stressed that "the terrorist attack against the Alexandrian church targeted Muslims and Christians alike and the European Parliament's statements about repression of Christians in Egypt are entirely unfounded".

Supporting Sorour, senior NDP MPs accused the European Parliament of propagating lies about Egypt. Abdel-Ahad Gamaleddin, NDP spokesman in the People's Assembly, insisted that "the European Parliament's statement claiming that Coptic Christians face persecution shows how most European institutions are completely ignorant of the situation in Egypt."

Chairman of the assembly's National Security and Defence Committee Amin Radi urged the European Parliament to exercise restraint before publishing false statements about religious conditions in Egypt.

"The European Parliament should fully understand that the bomb attack against the church was aimed at sowing discord between Christians and Muslims in Egypt," Radi said.

The Ghad Party's Ragab Hilal Hemeida accused the European Parliament of offering money to its clients in Egypt to spread lies and instill a kind of "creative chaos in the country".

MPs also attacked Pope Benedict XVI for issuing a statement that reflected "the spirit of the Crusades". "Please, Pope of the Vatican," pleaded independent Coptic MP Gamal Assad Abdel-Malak, "stop recalling the spirit of the Crusades. Copts in Egypt do not face repression and are not in need of the protection of the Christian West." 

"Since Napoleon Bonaparte's French Expedition and until the Zionist colonialist campaigns of today the West has been trying to exploit what it calls the Coptic issue and other religious minorities to interfere with the internal affairs of Egypt. Yes, there are some discriminatory policies against the Copts but these are nowhere near a systematic policy of persecution."

Abdel-Malak urged the government "not to dig its head into the sand like an ostrich and assume everything is OK with Egypt's Copts". He asked the ruling NDP to enter into "open discussion" of Coptic grievances "so as to close the door to foreign meddling".

Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, was also singled out by MPs for attack. Saad Al-Gammal, chairman of the assembly's Arab Affairs Committee, charged that both "the Mossad and the extremist Islamist organisation Al-Qaeda are seeking to inflame sectarian strife in countries like Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen."

"Mossad now serves the interests of Al-Qaeda and vice-versa. Neither will be able to break the national unity of Egypt."

Raafat Seif, spokesman of the leftist Tagammu Party, refused to join the anti-European Parliament tirade, saving his criticism for the proliferation of policies that allowed the growth of the kind of intolerance that culminated in the Alexandria bombing.

"Such policies include the growth of extremist education in private and government schools, the use of television and print media and mosques to spread hate against others, including Copts, describing them as infidels," said Seif.

NDP MPs tried to stop Seif from continuing until Sorour intervened. He went on to denounce "the extremist ideology of Wahabi Islam which had imposed itself on Egypt at the expense of the moderate and centrist ideology of Al-Azhar, which calls for tolerance, freedom of religion and inter-faith dialogue".

In response, Sorour urged MPs not to link Coptic grievances with the Alexandria bomb attack. "In so doing," he argued, "MPs are repeating foreign allegations that the bomb attack is somehow linked to Coptic grievances and the repression of Christians in Egypt."

Minister of State for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Moufid Shehab reiterated the argument that the bombing was an attempt to sow divisions among Egyptians. He warned MPs against confusing issues "by connecting the crime to Coptic grievances".

NDP MPs also criticised coverage of the attack on television channels. "Coverage of the bombing was at odds with the national interest," said Abdel-Ahad. "Channels which refuse to toe the national line should be closed."

Zakaria Azmi, chief of the presidential staff and a heavyweight NDP MP, accused daily newspapers of being so desperate to obtain a scoop that they had published conflicting reports about the results of the investigation into the Alexandria attack.

"Such irresponsibility could force citizens to lose confidence in the investigating authorities," he said. Newspapers should remember that the penal code criminalises all forms of intervention in ongoing investigations," said Azmi.
 

Family of late Polish president accuses Moscow of crash plot

The family of late Polish president Lech Kaczynski who died with 95 others in an April 2010 air crash in western Russia said on Monday that Moscow may have plotted to assassinate him.

6:01PM GMT 17 Jan 2011

 

"Today the hypothesis of an assassination plot against the Polish president is more plausible than ever," Marcin Dubieniecki, the husband and lawyer of the late Kaczynski's only child, daughter Marta, told Polish media on Monday.

"There are many things indicating that (the Russians would have wanted) to assassinate Lech Kaczynski," Ms Dubieniecki told Poland's commercial TVN24 news channel.

Kaczynski was known for his deep suspicion of Poland's Soviet-era master Moscow and for holding a staunch policy line against Russian moves in the region.

According to Ms Dubieniecki, Moscow may have been motivated by "the possible re-election of president Lech Kaczynski, revenge for (his backing) Georgia and by Russian interests in relations between Moscow and the European Union."

In its final report issued last Wednesday in Moscow, Russian investigators blamed the catastrophe on the incompetence of the plane's Polish pilots and pressure from senior officials on the flight to land despite dangerous weather warnings.

Ms Dubieniecki accused Russian investigators of ignoring an attempt by Polish pilots to regain altitude and abort the landing 22 seconds prior to the crash.

The attempt "failed because the crew was misinformed about the plane's altitude and about the position of the landing course and path," Ms Dubieniecki charged.

The Russian crash report stirred controversy in Poland, with liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk saying Poland would present its own version after he termed the Russian findings "incomplete".

Meanwhile Kaczynski's surviving twin and conservative opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Moscow's report "made a mockery of Poland."

The report clears local air traffic controllers and the technical condition of the regional airport in Smolensk of having been a factor in the crash.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Polish counterpart Bronislaw Komorowski pledged on Friday to continue dialogue.

Related Articles

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• Two dead after all engines fail on Russian plane

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• Lives Remembered

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New Provincial Named for California Province of the Society of Jesus

Los Gatos, CA—Fr. Michael F. Weiler, S.J., has been appointed by Fr. General Adolfo Nicolás, S.J, as the next provincial of the California Province of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). Fr. Weiler succeeds Fr. John McGarry, S.J., who has served as provincial of the California Province since 2005. Fr. Weiler will take office on the Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, July 31, 2011.

Fr. Weiler currently serves as Director of Novices and Superior of Ignatius House Novitiate, a position he has held since 2005.

Fr. Weiler is a graduate of Bellarmine College Preparatory, Loyola Marymount University, Gonzaga University, Jesuit School of Theology, and California School of Professional Psychology. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1975, was ordained in 1988 and received his final vows in 2005. Following ordination, Fr. Weiler served as an associate pastor at Dolores Mission in Los Angeles and then as an instructor in counseling psychology and a psychologist at Santa Clara University.

For more information about the California Province of the Society of Jesus, see www.jesuitscalifornia.org, or contact the Advancement Office at advancement@calprov.org.

Years of harassment by Feds may have lead to threats

Vincent McCrudden - CEO  of Alnbri Management, LLC has been arrested for alledgedly making threats against federal regulators.

The article in the Long Island Press reads,

"FBI agents arrested Vincent McCrudden, 49, of Long Beach, Thursday at Newark Liberty International Airport as he returned from Singapore. Federal prosecutors believe McCrudden had been there for the past several months.

He is accused of threatening 47 employees of the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission and other agencies. Many of the messages included profanity laced tirades against the regulators, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Central Islip.

McCrudden was ordered held without bail at an initial court appearance Friday. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Jan. 27.

“Although bad tempered and at times ill-mannered, he is a good and decent man. He does not pose a true threat to anyone,” said defense lawyer Bruce Barket. “Vulgar language, bad use of metaphors and very poor timing are not crimes.”

Prosecutors said that in addition to death threats posted on his website, McCrudden posted a $100,000 reward seeking personal information about several government officials.

“In this day and age, there is no such thing as an idle threat,” U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said in a statement. “Those who threaten injury or worse to the lives of others will be promptly investigated and vigorously prosecuted.”

The threats against the regulators followed a a CFTC civil enforcement lawsuit filed against McCrudden in December, prosecutors said. The complaint alleged McCrudden has been the subject of various enforcement or disciplinary proceedings over several years.

But even before the CFTC action, he allegedly sent an email to an employee of the National Futures Association, stating: “It wasn’t ever a question of if I was going to kill you, it was just a question of when. And now, that question has been answered. You are going to die a painful death.”

His website also allegedly included an “execution list” with the names of 47 current and former federal regulators, prosecutors said, including the chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Commission.


But Mr. Vincent McCrudden  States on his web site:

     Mr. McCrudden worked on Wall Street for over 20 years. He started his career on the floors of the New York Commodity Exchange executing orders for some of the largest institutions in the world including hedge funds and Commercial & Investment Banks. He then ran Global Desks in such areas as Foreign Exchange, Credit Derivatives & Equity Derivatives. He taught derivatives courses at the New York Institute of Finance.

     Mr. McCrudden is a former soccer player at the University of Rhode Island, and then played professionally for the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Minnesota Strikers of the NASL. He also was an amateur boxer and has raised money over the years for the NYPD for slained [sic] and disabled officers.  He has two beautiful children.

     Mr. McCrudden has spent the past 13 years and counting combating a colluded Government attempt to discredit and harrass Mr. McCrudden through repeated bogus procedures. Mr. McCrudden has sought relief by suing multiple agencies and officials for $1 Billion. But this has not stopped certain higher ranking officials because they know that Judges are Government employees too. In order to stop the libel, slander and harrassment at the hands of these entities, and with no available forum in the US justice system, Mr. McCrudden has started a process to enact payback for years of Government abuse. As a twice survivor of the WTC bombings, Mr. McCrudden knows all too well what the Government can do in the "name of public interest". Mr. McCrudden believes the 23 friends he lost on 9-11-2001 would have had their full support. Wake up my fellow citizens and middle class and go look into the mirror, because you my friends are the face of the new Al Qaeda! Civil disobedience can be a start for justice. Its us (middle class) against them (Government officials and the Bourgeosie).  Start acting now before its too late!

     Government employees should be individually accountable and not be able to hide behind the veils of their entities. If they are sued for bad behaviour, they should have to use their own resources and money like any other citizen.

So what's the story? Government corruption, intimidation and harassment? Or is this man doing what people sometimes do and try and hide from their crimes by making accusations against the government? By what I've read he seems very angry and appears to believe he's truly being harassed. If convicted he faces up to five years in prison for each of the two counts.

Additional Links:

Here's The "Execution List" Posted By The Crazed Money Manager Who Threatened To Kill 47 SEC, CFTC And FINRA Members

and

Vincent McCrudden

Spanish king Juan Carlos to visit Russia in February



King Juan Carlos and President Dmitry Medvedev

 King Juan Carlos of Spain is expected to visit Russia on February 25, Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez said on Monday.

The king will visit St. Petersburg, accompanied by the country's foreign minister and industry minister, Jimenez said at a meeting with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov.

Juan Carlos is expected to meet with top executives of leading Russian companies, she added.

Zhukov recalled that 2011 is the Year of Spain in Russia and the Year of Russia in Spain.

"It is very nice that the Year of Russia in Spain and the Year of Spain in Russia is starting against the backdrop of very good ties between our countries, both on the political and economic level," he said.

MOSCOW, January 17 (RIA Novosti)

Stephen Hawking With Pope Benedict at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences

Pope Benedict "blesses" Stephen Hawking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Vatican, 2008

Video: