Ricky Gervais tells fans to ‘Actually Do Something For Oklahoma’ by donating to Red Cross

By Daniel S Levine, 5/22/2013

A 15-year-old South African boy died after he was kept chained to his bed, beaten with planks and hoses at a training camp that boasted of “making men” out of its young recruits, a court has heard.

Raymond Buys, 15, who died after being ‘beaten’ at camp that ‘makes men out of boys’. Photo: DAILY TELEGRAPH

 

By Aislinn Laing, Johannesburg

6:02PM BST 24 Apr 2013 

Raymond Buys, who had learning difficulties, was admitted to hospital and put on life support two months into a three-month training course run by Alex de Koker’s Echo Wild Game Rangers in the bush an hour south of Johannesburg.

He was severely emaciated and dehydrated, had brain damage, a broken arm and bruises, and cigarette burns all over his body. His mother was told that the chances of him surviving were “virtually zero”. He died two weeks later.

“I sent my son on this course to make him a better man, to give him a better future,” Wilma Buys told The Daily Telegraph. “I trusted Alex de Koker with his life.”

Mr de Koker, 49, and employee Michael Erasmus, 20, are currently on trial for charges of murder, child abuse and neglect, along with two cases of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm in relation to Mr Buys’ death.

His death is alleged to have been the third among the mainly Afrikaans children who attended the R22,000 (£1,500) courses run by Mr de Koker, who was reportedly a member of murdered white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche’s Iron Guards movement.

In 2007, 25-year-old Erich Calitz died from severe brain injuries, according to Afrikaans newspaper Rapport. The same year, 19-year-old Nicholas van der Walt died at the same training camp being run in Swartruggens in the Northwest province.

Mr Calitz’s sister Mathilda Groenwald told Johannesburg’s Star newspaper that her brother was slightly brain-damaged and struggled to hold down jobs. She told the paper he was beaten when he asked to quit the camp, adding: “Alex (de Koker) told him that he wasn’t gay and he would make a man out of him”.

Mr de Koker was handed a suspended sentence in 2009 over Mr Calitz’s death but escaped charges for Mr van der Walt’s death, which was ruled to have been caused by a heart attack.

Mrs Buys said her son had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and was struggling at school. The course had been recommended to her by a friend. When she went to see Mr de Koker, he told her he could help her son find a job in the wildlife trade.

She said that her son started the course on January 12, 2011. Over the next two months, she said, she spoke to Mr Buys just three times – and was told by Mr de Koker that he was self-harming.

“Raymond was only allowed to speak to me on speakerphone,” she said. “When I asked him why he was hurting himself, he told me ‘Mum, I’m not doing it to myself’.”

Mr de Koker rang Mrs Buys on March 23 to say her son had been admitted to hospital for tests. When she arrived, she found that he was dying.

This week, during the trial of the two men at Vereeneging District Court, a boy who shared a tent with Mr Buys sobbed as he recalled how recruits carried out manual labour including cutting grass with machetes and stacking stones to build a dam.

Gerhard Oosthuizen, 19, said Mr Buys was chained to his bed after he tried to escape and, forbidden from going to the bathroom, repeatedly soiled himself, according to a report in Beeld newspaper.

He was said to have told the court that on one occasion, when Mr Buys went to the toilet in a field while the recruits worked, he was forced to eat his own faeces.

On another, Mr Oosthuizen said, after Mr Buys tipped over a container of washing powder, he was forced to eat what he had spilled and vomited foam.

He said Mr Buys was beaten with planks, sticks and plastic pipes when he failed to work, the paper reported.

He was said to have claimed that he had once seen Mr Buys in a hut at the camp with a pillowcase over his head, being shocked with a stun gun by Mr de Koker and Mr Erasmus.

“He screamed … I was scared and ran away,” the newspaper quoted the witness as saying.

Both Mr de Koker and Mr Erasmus have pleaded not guilty to the charges. The case continues.

Critically ill woman faces jail time if she goes forward with lifesaving abortion

In addition to her health complications, doctors have confirmed that the fetus has anencephaly and is nonviable

BY KATIE MCDONOUGH

Enlarge(Credit: Amnesty International)

Should You Let Your Kids Discover Calvin and Hobbes on Their Own?

The father who created a Calvin and Hobbes nursery is clearly a wonderful person for many reasons, but we should outline the big ones in the hopes that it might catch on and make the world a better place. 1) He loves his progeny enough to put this kind of labor into their happiness—the room is not just a place to play, it’s a place to sink yourself in whimsy and adventure. 2) He’s praising one of the great comic strip characters of all time: an edgy, imaginative kid who lives in the moment—all qualities to be praised. 3) In doing so, he’s undermining his authority, which shows that he’s a brave parent interested in independent thinking. (Any worry you might have that he’s too wrapped up in his offspring—that treehouse is awfully precise—can be allayed by the fact he’s celebrating a character who makes undermining his parents a life goal.)

But what if Calvin is a secret pleasure? This is a question about Calvin and Hobbes, but also about how to share your passions with your children. Some, like baseball, have a built-in parent-child component: Everyone enjoys the experience together and you talk about it endlessly for the rest of your life. In the category of books, The Lord of the Rings, like baseball, should be discussed ’till dawn.

But what if Dad’s love of Calvin changes the experience? When Calvin becomes Spaceman Spiff, it’s something only he sees—his parents are not a part of that experience. The entire strip is a mix of the “grown-up” version of reality and Calvin’s version. The reader gets to decide which is more real, but mostly you get lost in Calvin’s world and you blissfully ignore the parental world. Can you do that when he’s painted—by your dad—on your wall?

These questions are not meant to imply a judgment, just a curiosity about how kids respond to things. I always assumed you had to leave bread crumbs and hope. I left my old Calvin and Hobbes books on my son’s shelf and let him think sneaking them during reading time was his idea. When my daughter came along and stole them from her brother I figured the plan had worked.

Maybe I missed out on something, though. Maybe the lesson of Calvin is that we don’t need theories about these things. We should move easily between our imaginations and the real world long after we’ve outgrown the tree house. Maybe then we’d be inspired enough to build a nursery dedicated to an imaginary little runt whose best friend is a tiger.

2013-03-23 23:18

Dr. Jan Grey en sy vrou, Elise.

Dr. Jan Grey het vier jaar gelede na Australië geëmigreer met groot planne om ’n kerk vir “honderdduisende Afrikaanssprekendes” te stig.

Hy het ook Suid-Afrikaners wat “Malema en sy uitsprake wou ontvlug” aangemoedig om Australië toe te emigreer.

Verlede maand is dié herder van die Afrikaanse Kerk Gold Coast (ACGC) deur sy kerkraad in die pad gesteek.

Hy is in 2008 beroep na die ACGC, wat met sowat 100 Afrikaanse huisgesinne volgens Australiese standaarde ’n “groot” gemeente is.

Die oud-Pretorianer bestempel Au­straliërs se lewensbeskouing as “sekulêr-humanisties tot ­ateïsties” en sê hulle leef “doodgewoon losbandig” en is uitge­lewer aan ’n “ongebreidelde hedonistiese lewenstyl”.

Sy ore was egter glo doof vir sy lidmate se klagtes oor sy “afskeepwerk” – hy het glo net Sondae gepreek en geen verdere herderlike werk gedoen nie.

Grey se siening van die bediening, die bestuur van geld en die verwagte nederigheid as ’n herder het drasties verskil van die verwagtinge van die gemeente, sê lidmate wat verkies om anoniem te praat.

Sy “styl” en “houding” het glo verdeeldheid gesaai en hy het glo ook meer tyd by sy vrou se geskenk-en-skryfbehoeftewinkel deurgebring as met kerksake.

Daarby het hy glo ’n “dominee-mevrou”-kultuur, wat lid­mate geglo het hulle in Suid-Afrika agtergelaat het, aan hulle opgedwing.

’n Lidmaat sê van die stigterslede van die gemeente het later padgegee.

“Sowat 47 dominees het al na die ooskus gekom en Grey het almal se patroon gevolg: dominee speel, bedank dan (of ons dwing hom om te gaan) en gaan preek daarna vir die Aussies in swak Engels of word hulp-predikers in ’n Aussie-gemeente.

“Daarna word hulle finansiële konsultante, polisverkopers of polisiemanne.

“Grey is gevra om te bedank en doen nou ’n klerklike werkie by ’n Christelike organisasie.”

Grey het aan Rapport gesê: “Ek laat staan wat agter my is en strek my uit na wat voor my lê. Ek sal my eerder op die bediening van die 60% non-churched Australians toespits.

“Ek en my vrou (Elise) het by my ou Suid-Afrikaanse bediening, die Campus Crusade for Christ, aangesluit.

“Ek glo baie Afrikaanssprekendes sal mettertyd met ons saamwerk.”

Volgens ds. Renier van der Klashorst, ’n Afrikaanse predikant by die Pioneer Community Church in Queensland, “sit die kerk met ’n krisis”.

“Sowat 40% van die predikante wat hierheen immigreer, raak soms uitgebrand of beland in ’n ander beroep. Sommige predikante is dalk ontnugter, doen te veel, werk sewe dae, of verval in kerkpolitiek.

“Ek moet egter byvoeg: Om die Aussies geestelik te bearbei, is ’n groot uitdaging.

“Hulle is reëlvaste mense, maar nie lief vir kerk toe gaan nie. Sowat 6% is wel kerkgangers. Baie gewese Suid-Afrikaners hier gaan ook nie kerk toe nie,” sê Van der Klashorst.

Hier is Jan Grey, die Poepol van die Week en jaar in 2011:

http://mcbrolloks.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/in-die-beeld-poepol-van-die-week-dr-jan-grey-moeg-vir-malema-kom-na-australie-se-leraar/

Hy het toe nie so lank gehou onder sy gemeente nie, en ons het dit goed voorspel.

The sins of the Argentinian church

The Catholic church was complicit in dreadful crimes in Argentina. Now it has a chance to repent

”We’re at a very primitive stage of mankind,” Nolan declared, “that’s what people don’t understand. Just pick up the Times on any given day and you’ve got a catalogue of ape behavior. Strip away the slogans and excuses and verbiage, the so-called ideology, and you’re reading about what one pack of chimpanzees did to another.”

Top British Cardinal Resigns, a Day After Charges of ‘Inappropriate Acts’

By RACHEL DONADIO and JOHN F. BURNS

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VATICAN CITY — Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric announced his resignation on Monday, a day after being accused of “inappropriate acts” with priests, saying he would not attend the conclave to elect a new pope.

The cleric, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, said that he had submitted his resignation months ago, and that the Vatican said Pope Benedict XVI had accepted it on Feb. 18. However, the timing of the announcement — a day after news reports of alleged abuse appeared in Britain — suggested that the Vatican had encouraged the cardinal to stay away from the conclave.

“Everybody’s been struck by how quickly Rome responded,” said Austen Ivereigh, director of the British church advocacy group Catholic Voices. “Clearly Rome saw that there was sufficient substance to the allegations. They would not have told him to stand down unless they thought there was something worth investigating.”

The move leaves Britain without a voting cardinal in the conclave and is bound to raise questions about other cardinals. It comes amid a campaign by some critics to urge Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles not to attend the conclave because of his role in reshuffling priests accused of abuse.

It also comes just days after the Vatican Secretariat of State issued a harsh statement against recent news media reports, including ones alleging a gay sex scandal inside the Vatican. It said that cardinals should not be affected by external pressures when they vote for the next pope. About 115 cardinals are expected to be at the gathering. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the former archbishop of Westminster, will attend the meetings in Rome before the conclave, according to Mr. Ivereigh, the cardinal’s former spokesman, but he is past the voting age cutoff of 80 years.

Vatican watchers said that Cardinal O’Brien’s decision not to attend the conclave was rare.

“It’s quite unprecedented,” said Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert with the Italian weekly magazine L’Espresso. “He made it clear that his resignation came under the pressure of the accusations. His certainly isn’t a frequent case and hasn’t happened in conclaves in recent memory.”

On Monday, Benedict changed the laws governing the conclave to allow cardinals to move up the start date before the traditional waiting period of 15 to 20 days after the papacy is vacant. He met with three cardinals who had conducted a secret investigation into a scandal over leaked documents and ruled that the contents of their report would be known only to his successor, not to the cardinals entering the conclave.

Cardinal O’Brien’s announcement came a day after The Observer reported that four men had made complaints to the pope’s diplomatic representative in Britain, Antonio Mennini, the week before Pope Benedict XVI announced on Feb. 11 that he would be stepping down as of Thursday.

The Observer said that the accusations, which dated back to the 1980s, had been forwarded to the Vatican.

Last week, Cardinal O’Brien drew different headlines, telling the BBC that the next pope should consider abandoning the church’s insistence on priestly celibacy, and suggesting that it might be time for the papal conclave to choose a pontiff from Africa or Asia, where church membership has been growing even as it has fallen across Europe and North America.

On Monday, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, played down the connection between the news reports and Cardinal O’Brien’s resignation, which the pope accepted after the cardinal reached the mandatory retirement age of 75.

A statement issued by the media office of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland said that Cardinal O’Brien had informed the pope some time ago of his intention to resign as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh as his 75th birthday approached on March 17, but that no date had been set.

The cardinal said in the statement, “The Holy Father has now decided that my resignation will take effect today, 25 February 2013.”

“Looking back over my years of ministry: For any good I have been able to do, I thank God,” he said. “For any failures, I apologize to all whom I have offended.”

“I also ask God’s blessing on my brother cardinals who will soon gather in Rome,” the statement said, adding: “I will not join them for this conclave in person. I do not wish media attention in Rome to be focused on me — but rather on Pope Benedict XVI and on his successor.”

Cardinal O’Brien, whose office had initially said he would fly to Rome before the conclave, has been the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland since 1985 and was named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2003. He was among the cardinals who attended the conclave that chose Benedict as John Paul’s successor in 2005.

The main role of cardinals is to elect a new pope, and they remain eligible to vote under any circumstances, even if they have been excommunicated, Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, the secretary for the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, said last week.

Ambrogio Piazzoni, a papal historian, told reporters last week that he could think of no examples of cardinals who had refrained from voting for anything other than health reasons, or from the pressures of different governments in past years.

Terence McKiernan, the president of BishopAccountability.org, a nonprofit Web site based in Massachusetts that seeks to collate documentation about the sexual abuse crisis, said the move set a new precedent.

“Many cardinals scheduled to join the conclave have been involved as bishops in handling cases of clergy sexual abuse, and some of them have done such a bad job that they, too, should recuse themselves from the conclave,” he said in an e-mailed statement, naming Cardinal Mahony and the leaders of the church in two scandal-scarred countries, Cardinal Sean Brady of Ireland and Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Belgium. “If they are involved in the deliberations and the votes, they will taint the outcome, damaging the legitimacy of whoever is ultimately chosen.”

The resignation was met with mixed responses in Scotland, ranging from satisfaction among gay and lesbian groups to dismay among others who saw Cardinal O’Brien as a strong voice for Scotland and its 750,000 Catholics, as well as an influential advocate for the poor and aid to the developing world. He has been a frequent visitor to Catholic missions in Africa.

Among some, there was upset that the cardinal had been brought down by accusers who have so far not identified themselves publicly, and whose allegations have yet to be tested by any ecclesiastical tribunal, or by a Scottish court. There was strong endorsement for the pope’s decision to accelerate the cardinal’s resignation and a hope that the episode would lead to a determination under a new pope to deal decisively with the legacy of sexual abuse among priests.

The differing views were reflected in e-mails that flooded into the BBC.

“I have little pity for a man who said some truly nasty things about the gay community,” wrote James Swinburne, in the English city of Manchester. “Religious belief or not, these views have no place in the U.K. in 2013. His comments will have hurt and offended many people, and potentially perpetuated prejudice that exists within our society.”

Other e-mails were more forgiving. “Having a system which places men with a priestly vocation in a place where they deny their sexuality, whether it be heterosexual or homosexual, is bound to create situations,” wrote Jeremy Ross, from the town of Ashtead, near London. “This rule needs to be challenged by a new pope alongside the fact that the priesthood is forbidden to women.”

Born in Northern Ireland, the cardinal was raised in Scotland after his father was posted to a Royal British Navy base outside Glasgow in the 1940s. After graduating with a chemistry degree, he became a priest at the age of 27. He then spent five years as a math and science teacher before being appointed, in his 40s, to senior positions at two of the church’s principal Scottish seminaries, before moving to Edinburgh as archbishop.

Among Cardinal O’Brien’s defenders was Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, whose push for Scotland’s independence from Britain has won qualified support from the cardinal. Mr. Salmond, with other leading Scottish politicians, stressed that people should not rush to judgment about the cardinal before the church has completed its inquiry into the complaints. “None of us know the outcome of the investigation,” he said, adding, “but I have found him to be a good man for his church and his country.”

“It would be a great pity if a whole lifetime of work was lost” amid the furor over the allegations, he said.

(Reuters) – Pope Benedict’s decision to live in the Vatican after he resigns will provide him with security and privacy. It will also offer legal protection from any attempt to prosecute him in connection with sexual abuse cases around the world, Church sources and legal experts say.

“His continued presence in the Vatican is necessary, otherwise he might be defenseless. He wouldn’t have his immunity, his prerogatives, his security, if he is anywhere else,” said one Vatican official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“It is absolutely necessary” that he stays in the Vatican, said the source, adding that Benedict should have a “dignified existence” in his remaining years.

Vatican sources said officials had three main considerations in deciding that Benedict should live in a convent in the Vatican after he resigns on February 28.

Vatican police, who already know the pope and his habits, will be able to guarantee his privacy and security and not have to entrust it to a foreign police force, which would be necessary if he moved to another country.

“I see a big problem if he would go anywhere else. I’m thinking in terms of his personal security, his safety. We don’t have a secret service that can devote huge resources (like they do) to ex-presidents,” the official said.

Another consideration was that if the pope did move permanently to another country, living in seclusion in a monastery in his native Germany, for example, the location might become a place of pilgrimage.

POTENTIAL EXPOSURE

This could be complicated for the Church, particularly in the unlikely event that the next pope makes decisions that may displease conservatives, who could then go to Benedict’s place of residence to pay tribute to him.

“That would be very problematic,” another Vatican official said.

The final key consideration is the pope’s potential exposure to legal claims over the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandals.

In 2010, for example, Benedict was named as a defendant in a law suit alleging that he failed to take action as a cardinal in 1995 when he was allegedly told about a priest who had abused boys at a U.S. school for the deaf decades earlier. The lawyers withdrew the case last year and the Vatican said it was a major victory that proved the pope could not be held liable for the actions of abusive priests.

Benedict is currently not named specifically in any other case. The Vatican does not expect any more but is not ruling out the possibility.

“(If he lived anywhere else) then we might have those crazies who are filing lawsuits, or some magistrate might arrest him like other (former) heads of state have been for alleged acts while he was head of state,” one source said.

Another official said: “While this was not the main consideration, it certainly is a corollary, a natural result.”

After he resigns, Benedict will no longer be the sovereign monarch of the State of Vatican City, which is surrounded by Rome, but will retain Vatican citizenship and residency.

LATERAN PACTS

That would continue to provide him immunity under the provisions of the Lateran Pacts while he is in the Vatican and even if he makes jaunts into Italy as a Vatican citizen.

The 1929 Lateran Pacts between Italy and the Holy See, which established Vatican City as a sovereign state, said Vatican City would be “invariably and in every event considered as neutral and inviolable territory”.

There have been repeated calls for Benedict’s arrest over sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

When Benedict went to Britain in 2010, British author and atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins asked authorities to arrest the pope to face questions over the Church’s child abuse scandal.

Dawkins and the late British-American journalist Christopher Hitchens commissioned lawyers to explore ways of taking legal action against the pope. Their efforts came to nothing because the pope was a head of state and so enjoyed diplomatic immunity.

In 2011, victims of sexual abuse by the clergy asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the pope and three Vatican officials over sexual abuse.

The New York-based rights group Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and another group, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), filed a complaint with the ICC alleging that Vatican officials committed crimes against humanity because they tolerated and enabled sex crimes.

The ICC has not taken up the case but has never said why. It generally does not comment on why it does not take up cases.

NOT LIKE A CEO

The Vatican has consistently said that a pope cannot be held accountable for cases of abuse committed by others because priests are employees of individual dioceses around the world and not direct employees of the Vatican. It says the head of the church cannot be compared to the CEO of a company.

Victims groups have said Benedict, particularly in his previous job at the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal department, turned a blind eye to the overall policies of local Churches, which moved abusers from parish to parish instead of defrocking them and handing them over to authorities.

The Vatican has denied this. The pope has apologized for abuse in the Church, has met with abuse victims on many of his trips, and ordered a major investigation into abuse in Ireland.

But groups representing some of the victims say the Pope will leave office with a stain on his legacy because he was in positions of power in the Vatican for more than three decades, first as a cardinal and then as pope, and should have done more.

The scandals began years before the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope in 2005 but the issue has overshadowed his papacy from the beginning, as more and more cases came to light in dioceses across the world.

As recently as last month, the former archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony, was stripped by his successor of all public and administrative duties after a thousands of pages of files detailing abuse in the 1980s were made public.

Mahony, who was archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 until 2011, has apologized for “mistakes” he made as archbishop, saying he had not been equipped to deal with the problem of sexual misconduct involving children. The pope was not named in that case.

In 2007, the Los Angeles archdiocese, which serves 4 million Catholics, reached a $660 million civil settlement with more than 500 victims of child molestation, the biggest agreement of its kind in the United States.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the pope “gave the fight against sexual abuse a new impulse, ensuring that new rules were put in place to prevent future abuse and to listen to victims. That was a great merit of his papacy and for that we will be grateful”.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Additional reporting by Robin Pomeroy; Edited by Simon Robinson and Giles Elgood)