Month: January 2011

by Zoe Pollock

Kathryn Joyce reminds us it happens to adults too:

Adult victims could comprise up to 25% of all clergy abuse cases, estimates David Clohessy, National Director of [the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests], but often face considerable skepticism about their stories. “In the eyes of the law, victims like [Katia] Birge are adults. But that doesn’t mean that emotionally, psychologically, in the presence of a trusted, powerful, charismatic clergy person, that in fact they can function like adults.” Considering the abundant ethical and legal prohibitions against doctors or therapists having even consensual sex with patients, in recognition of coercive power imbalances in play, Clohessy notes, “none of us have been raised from birth to think that a therapist is God’s representative or that a doctor can get me into heaven.”

Joyce connects Birge's case to a larger issue:

[The accused Juan Carlos] Hernandez was just one of an increasing number of lay ministers and volunteers assuming formerly clerical roles in the Catholic Church, particularly in heavily Latino parishes, such as Denver’s. Facing a general shortage of priests, and a critical lack of ordained staff equipped to serve Spanish-speaking communities, a papal dictate was issued in 2003, calling for an expanded role for laity in the church’s ministry.

by Conor Friedersdorf

…in China.

by Chris Bodenner

Brian Ulrich tries to gauge the motives of military leaders, who met with Mubarak yesterday:

Opposition leaders led by Muhammad el-Baradei have also expressed a desire to negotiate with the military. What is happening within it? Publicly they have sided with the demonstrators, using force mainly to try and bring order by rounding up looters, as just reported a few seconds ago by al-Jazeera English from Alexandria. They may be hoping that if their credibility increases, they can work a transition to the military-friendly Omar Suleiman rather than risk the unknowns of a non-NDP government following a successful revolution.

He later adds, "the more I think about this, the more I suspect the military leadership is seizing the opportunity to install Omar Suleiman now and forestall the possibility of a Gamal Mubarak presidency." Earlier thoughts by Noah Millman here.

(Photo: Egyptian army soldiers take position in front of the Giza pyramids in Cairo on January 31, 2011 as protesters called for an indefinite strike in Egypt upping the stakes in their bid to topple President Hosni Mubarak's regime. By Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images)

by Patrick Appel

Heba Morayef of HRW updates:

Thousands are still gathered in TSq, reiterating their demands for the departure of Mubarak. There's widespread dissatisfaction with the annucment of the cabinet and the proposed interior minister. Army is controlling the square and checking people's IDs at all entry points. When I asked why a soldier replied: "it's to keep the police out and make sure none of the escaped criminals get in." There are some police elsewhere jn Cairo, some traffic cops, but no state security police anywhere downtown that I can see. 

(Photo:  Protestors defy the curfew in Tahrir Square on January 31, 2011 in Cairo, Egypt. By Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images.)

by Conor Friedersdorf

The Detroit Free Press reports:

A California man is in jail on a terrorism charge after he was arrested in Dearborn for allegedly trying to blow up the biggest mosque in metro Detroit, Dearborn officials said today.The suspect was arrested in the parking lot of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn on Monday, while hundreds were inside the mosque that sits along Ford Road, police said. He came to the city because of its large Arab-American and Muslim population, police said.

The suspect, Robert Stockham, is 63-years-old, and since he is a white American citizen, this is inevitably going to serve as a point of comparison: are there going to be calls from the usual suspects to deny him a trial in civilian courts?

An interesting detail from later in the story:

An employee at a local bar called police after overhearing violent threats allegedly made by the man, Islamic Center of America Executive Administrator Kassem Allie said. The employee was afraid that Stockham was going to target Muslims or Arabs in the area, he said.

So often in these stories, a violent act is ostensibly averted thanks to the stupidity of the alleged perpetrator and someone he interacts with calling the police.

Reuters adds this detail:

He carried class-C fireworks — called "consumer fireworks" by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, a police source said.

That's the type sold at stands around the Fourth of July, which is surprising. You'd have to have a hell of a lot of those fireworks to blow up a building. "It was a substantial quantity (of explosives), enough to do us harm," said Kassem Allie, 53, the executive administrator of the Islamic Center. It'll be interesting to see if the story is being hyped or if this guy ammassed a huge cache of consumer grade fireworks.

by Conor Friedersdorf

As journalists everywhere do their best to bone up on Egypt and cover a complicated story as it unfolds, writers at Andrew Breitbart's Web site Big Peace are publishing all kinds of irresponsible crazy:

We know that the Muslim Brotherhood supports the uprising in Egypt. The Obama administration does as well. Based on the release of a secret document, it’s been learned that the United States government supported the April 6 Youth Movement – a group that played a key role in the uprising – in the form of a summit in Washington, D.C. That summit took place from December 3-5, 2008. We also know that Bill Ayers and Bernandine Dohrn were in Cairo a little more than one year later, engaging in protests while attempting to show solidarity with Hamas by entering Gaza with Egyptian protesters.

…Conveniently or coincidentally, the actions – and now words courtesy of the once secret document – of the Obama administration, coupled with the actions and words of Bill Ayers indicate a desire on the part of both to usher in a new Islamic caliphate in the Middle East, assuming they’re not ignorant of the Brotherhood’s goal. What more evidence is needed to demonstrate that Islamism and Marxism are not strange bedfellows? They’re hand-in-glove bedfellows.

This is from a different author:

It should come as no surprise, then, that the hard left– aligned always with elements of the most radical Islamists against US interests– are joining the battle on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood. This repeats the pattern begun during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, as leftists like Michel Foucault serenaded Ayatollah Khomeini and the promise of a theocratic regime in that country. That a homosexual like Foucault would prefer the Shariah-adherent totalitarianism that was unleashed in Iran to the more pro-Western Shah is testament to the hard left’s fetishization of the post-colonial narrative: anything but America, and the more militantly anti-American, the more “legitimate.” Dinesh D’Souza argued, I believe convincingly, last year that Obama is similarly predisposed.

When Brietbart launched Big Peace, he wrote that "the site is pro-freedom, pro-liberty, and pro-American but will not be an outlet for false information or propaganda." So will he defend as plausible truth the notion that Obama desires the rise of a new Islamic caliphate in the Middle East? It would be nice if other conservatives who tout his Web properties would confront the disservice he does to his audience.

by Chris Bodenner

The State Department, through Secretary Clinton's Senior Advisor for Innovation, is claiming credit for the release of the six reporters:

Ryan Singel explains how Russians avoided being killed by a suicide bomber:

An unexpected and unwanted text message from a wireless company prematurely exploded a would-be suicide bomber’s vest bomb in Russia New Year’s Eve, inadvertently thwarting a planned attack on revelers in Moscow, according to The Daily Telegraph.

The would-be suicide bomber was planning to detonate a suicide belt bomb near Red Square, a plan that was foiled when her wireless carrier sent her an SMS while she was still at a safe house, setting off the bomb and killing her. The message reportedly wished her a Happy New Years, according to the report, which sourced the info from security forces in Russia. Cell phones are often used as makeshift detonators by terrorist and insurgent groups.

Life imitates Four Lions.

by Zoe Pollock

It's been hard to see one of my favorites, Harper's Magazine, weathering rough waters as of late, in a standoff between the staff (now unionized) and publisher John "Rick" MacArthur. Megan's written about the saga, and I too hope they can pull through since their Readings (and Index and book reviews) are an indispensable part of my life. This farewell post by Ted Ross, the recently let-go editor, strikes a more personal chord about what it means to be out of work today:

I knew my father as the sort of person who put on a suit and disappeared to work every day. Work was a place where, when I visited him, people spoke to him with some modicum of respect. His job represented certainly not all but a fair amount of who he was. I knew him (and I still do) as a man who worked. Without thinking about it too much, I’ve always wanted my children to see me in the same way—presentable, respectable, necessary.

by Patrick Appel

An amazing story from Daily News Egypt: