U.N. Climate Report: Expect Extreme Coastal Flooding Every Year

Donald Trump - who has denied the reality of climate change and sought to reduce limits on carbon emissions and to weaken clean water and clean air laws - is now, belatedly, facing a formal impeachment inquiry.  But while this massive political event begins, something that will more directly impact millions of Americans was outlined in a new United Nations Climate Change report. Rising sea levels, increased heat waves, and multiple other adverse impacts are becoming ever more of a reality and coastal cities are looking at annual coastal flooding events in the not too distant future. The report ought to be a clarion call, but one cannot help but fear that all Republicans will be focused on is protecting their toxic and utterly unfit leader - in short, fiddling while Rome burns, if you will.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the disturbing report.  Here are excerpts:  

Climate change is already causing staggering impacts on the oceans and ice-filled regions that encompass 80 percent of the Earth, and future damage from rising seas and melting glaciers is now all but certain, according to a sobering new report from the United Nations.

The warming climate is already killing coral reefs, supercharging monster storms, and fueling deadly marine heat waves and record losses of sea ice. And Wednesday’s report on the world’s oceans, glaciers, polar regions and ice sheets finds that such effects only foreshadow a more catastrophic future as long as greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked.

Given current emissions levels, a number of serious impacts are essentially unavoidable, says the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Extreme floods that have historically struck some coastal cities and small island nations once every 100 years will become an annual occurrence by 2050, according to the IPCC. In addition, if emissions continue to increase, global sea levels could rise by more than three feet by the end of this century — around 12 percent higher than the group estimated as recently as 2013. . . . “The conclusion is inescapable: The impacts of climate change on the ocean are well underway. Unless we take very serious action very soon, these impacts will get worse — much, much worse.”

More than 100 scientists from around the world contributed to the latest report by the IPCC, which found that profound and potentially devastating consequences lie ahead for marine life, Arctic ecosystems and entire human societies if climate change continues unabated.

The findings also come as world leaders gathered this week at the United Nations for a much-anticipated “climate summit” aimed at injecting new momentum into the flagging effort to persuade countries to do more to move away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner forms of energy. While dozens of smaller nations did unveil plans for coming years, the world’s largest emitters have stopped short of committing to transformational changes.

“The climate emergency is a race we are losing — but it is a race we can win if we change our ways now,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres told world leaders Tuesday in his latest attempt to spur action.

One of the document’s most striking findings involves the rise in sea level, which is now being driven mainly by the rapid melting of ice in Greenland, Antarctica and the world’s smaller glaciers. Sea level rise is accelerating, and the world could see 3.6 feet in total sea level rise by the year 2100 in a very high-emissions scenario. In 2013, the IPCC had estimated that value at slightly over three feet.

But the truth is that even these estimates may be too small, because when scientists behind the report looked at an alternative method for gauging how much seas could rise — simply canvassing the views of experts — even larger estimates emerged. The group’s findings only highlight “likely” amounts of sea level rise, meaning they do not represent worst-case scenarios.

For some major coastal cities, a historical 100-year flood event will happen annually by the year 2050. That includes large cities such as Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok, Lima, Singapore, Barcelona and Sydney, the report says. In the United States, cities facing fast-moving sea-level danger include Los Angeles, Miami, Savannah, Honolulu, San Juan, Key West and San Diego.

“The world’s coasts provide a home to around 1.9 billion people and over half of the world’s megacities — all of which are in grave danger if we don’t act immediately to prevent rising temperatures and sea levels,” Hildalgo said in a statement. “Extreme high temperatures, coastal flooding, and more frequent natural disasters are becoming the new normal. ... This is what the climate crisis looks like now.”

Ice loss is accelerating in Greenland and Antarctica, scientists found. Permafrost, which contains enormous amounts of carbon that can be released as it thaws, has warmed to “record high levels.” Summer Arctic sea ice extent is now probably lower than at any time in “at least 1,000 years,” and the oldest, thickest ice has already declined by 90 percent.

And then there is the entire world ocean. “Over the 21st century, the ocean is projected to transition to unprecedented conditions,” the report states.

The ocean is losing oxygen, growing more acidic, taking up an increasing amount of heat, and becoming more stratified, with warm water at the surface preventing cooler, nutrient rich waters from rising. All of these changes have profound consequences for marine ecosystems.

Lynn Scarlett, the vice president for policy and government relations at the Nature Conservancy and a top-ranking Interior Department official during the George W. Bush administration, said the grim findings in Wednesday’s report should be a call to action.

Trump Taps Former Fox News Ideologue As UN Ambassador

The totally unqualified Heather Nauert.

As if proof of the premise of the previous post - i.e., that today's GOP is the party of the witless - were needed, Der Trumpenführer has selected someone utterly unqualified to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.  Rather than select someone with knowledge and experience, Trump picked a former Fox News ideologue who has a total of 16 months in government and no foreign policy experience.  It's reminiscent of Hitler's placement of  the unqualified in positions as long as they were loyal to him and would parrot his sick agenda. Bloomberg looks at this idiotic choice that is all too predictable given the Trump/Pence regimes recruitment of stooges to date.  Here are article highlights:

Donald Trump has settled on State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to replace departing United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Nauert, 48, is an unusual choice for the UN role given that she had little experience in government or foreign policy before joining the administration in April 2017 after several years as an anchor and correspondent for Fox News, including on the “Fox and Friends” show watched by Trump. Haley also lacked foreign policy experience when she took the UN posting, but she had twice been elected governor of South Carolina.

Nevertheless, Nauert’s candidacy had the strong support of Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who came to trust her as a reliable voice and advocate for Trump’s agenda. It was a stark turnaround from the era of Pompeo’s predecessor, Rex Tillerson, who shut her out from his inner circle. She had threatened to quit several times under Tillerson but, thanks partly to her alliance with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner, she ended up outlasting her former boss.

“Nauert is a very good public operator, and should do a professional job presenting U.S. policy at the UN,” Richard Gowan, a senior fellow at the United Nations University’s Center for Policy Research, said in an email. “It is less clear that she has the experience to hammer out hard deals with China and Russia over problems like Iran and North Korea.”

Aides believe Nauert’s key assets include strong communications skills and a fluency with the Trump White House, particularly in understanding the thinking of the president and secretary of state.

Nauert won’t face an easy confirmation battle given her lack of experience and the likelihood that she’ll be asked to answer for the Trump administration’s scorn for international bodies, including the UN. In a speech in Brussels this week, Pompeo made his doubts about the organization clear, asking, “Does it continue to serve its mission faithfully?”

“In the absence of any actual diplomatic experience I suppose it’s reassuring to UN supporters that she will arrive with no particular personal agenda,” said Loren DeJonge Schulman, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. But in a reference to Nauert’s background as a spokeswoman, she added, “It’s not a role for merely reading talking points.”

Trump and Republicans Mirror Nero on Climate Change

Myth has it that as large areas of the ancient the City of Rome burned in a major fire, Emperor Nero played his fiddle as his subjects suffered.  Fast forward to today and we see Donald Trump and much of the Republican Party doing the equivalent as one dire study after another indicates that the world is headed towards a climate Armageddon if policies are not quickly changed.  Instead of ramping up to face the coming disaster, Trump is loosening regulations to INCREASE the release of carbon into the air and allowing increased pollution.  Meanwhile, his lunatic evangelical base blames disasters on gays and abortion rather than the failed policies of their favored leaders.  The latest report on climate change suggests that the window of opportunity to take corrective action is closing.  Instead of acting on the crisis, Trump continues his Nero imitation while spreading hate and division across America.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at the frightening scenario.  Here are highlights:

When a cautious, science-based and largely apolitical group like the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world must utterly transform its energy systems in the next decade or risk ecological and social disaster, attention must be paid.

The panel, created in 1988, synthesizes the findings of leading climate scientists, an undertaking for which it received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. It is not in the habit of lecturing governments. But its latest report, issued near Seoul on Monday, is very different. One United Nations official described it as “a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen” — an alarm aimed directly at world leaders. “Frankly, we’ve delivered a message to the governments,” said Jim Skea, a co-chairman of the panel and a professor at Imperial College, London. “It’s now their responsibility … to decide whether they can act on it.”

Unfortunately, no alarm seems loud enough to penetrate the walls of the White House or the cranium of its principal occupant. President Trump had nothing substantive to say about the report, preferring, his staff said, to focus on celebrating the elevation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Having already announced that he would withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, having also rolled back a suite of Obama-era efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Mr. Trump thus reaffirmed his sorry role as an outlier in the global struggle against climate change — a struggle few believe can be won without the enthusiastic participation of the United States.

The report, written by 91 scientists from 40 countries, came about at the request of several small island nations that took part in the Paris talks . . . . Fearing that their countries might someday be lost to rising seas, they asked the intergovernmental panel for further study of a lower threshold, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius). The panel’s report concluded that the stricter threshold should become the new target. The alternative is catastrophe — mass die-offs of coral reefs, widespread drought, famine and wildfires, and potentially conflict over land, food and fresh water.

The panel said a mammoth effort is needed, beginning now and carrying through the century, to decarbonize global energy systems. The next 10 years are absolutely crucial: Emissions will have to be on a sharp downward path by 2030 for any hope of success. Greenhouse gases must be cut nearly in half from 2010 levels. Renewable energy sources must increase from about 20 percent of the electricity mix today to as much as 67 percent. The use of coal would need to be phased out, vanishing almost entirely by midcentury.

As an early piece in the Times noted, Trump is pandering to mining interest in Appalachia and certain western states to the detriment of the nation as a whole:  

Trump, who has questioned the accepted scientific consensus on climate change, continues to praise “clean beautiful coal” and has directed his Environmental Protection Agency to reverse major strides undertaken by the Obama administration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. This is unbelievably reckless. In addition to undermining the fight against climate change, the president's efforts to prop up the dirtiest of all fuels will also exact a significant toll on public health, on the hearts and lungs of ordinary Americans.

The E.P.A.’s bedrock mission is to protect public health and welfare. Its basic tools are 50 years of federal clean air and water laws meant to limit Americans’ exposure to environmental poisons and pollutants.

The latest example is a proposal his agency [EPA] sent to the White House for review and approval that would, in broadest terms, greatly devalue the public health benefits of reducing air pollution. The proposal is specifically aimed at a 2011 finding by the Obama administration that when the agency devises rules to control a particular pollutant — mercury, in this case — it must take into account not only the compliance costs to industry but the additional health benefits that arise from the reduction in other harmful gases like soot and smog that occur as a side effect. Though the health benefits of controlling mercury alone were quite small, and the costs to industry large, those costs were outweighed by savings to the country in annual health costs and lost workdays when the co-benefits were factored in. [T]he Trump administration’s laughably weak replacement plan would cause (by the Trump E.P.A.’s own calculations) as many as 1,400 premature deaths annually by 2030, as well as 15,000 new cases of upper respiratory disease and billions of dollars in new health care costs, mainly from an increase in fine particulate matter linked to heart and lung disease. What we are dealing with here, in other words, is a bit of a shell game — hard to follow, costly to the public, satisfying to those who are running it. We are also dealing with people who won’t let inconvenient forecasts about death and disease deter them from their appointed goal of satisfying Mr. Trump’s pro-coal agenda, and who also seem eager to keep such forecasts hidden.

Trump/Pence Regime Ends Diplomatic Visas for UN Same-Sex Partners

Since taking office, Donald Trump, Mike Pence and their minions Jeff Sessions and Betsy DeVos have waged an unceasing war on LGBT Americans, keeping Trump's frightening promises to Christofascist leaders in June, 2016.  If confirmed, Brett Kavanaugh would likely use his position on the Supreme Court to further rescind rights and protections for LGBT Americans.  But Trump/Pence is not limiting its attacks to LGBT Americans.  Now, partners of LGBT diplomats to the United Nations will lose their visas if they are not legally married.  The move is not motivated by a desire to encourage same-sex marriage, but rather to force such partners from the USA since many countries still do not permit same sex marriage.  A piece in the BBC looks at this foul move which will make Christofascist hate merchants happy.  Never under estimate the cruelty and pettiness of Trump/Pence and its Christofascist supporters.   Here are story excerpts:

The US has announced it will deny diplomatic visas to same-sex partners of foreign diplomats and United Nations employees.  The change went into effect on Monday, giving partners currently in the US until 31 December to leave, get married or otherwise change their visa. It is a reversal of rules introduced in 2009.

Currently, 25 countries have recognised same-sex marriage. Homosexuality remains illegal in 71 countries.

The new Trump administration policy update was circulated in a United Nations (UN) memo. The memo states: "As of 1 October 2018, same-sex domestic partners accompanying or seeking to join newly arrived United Nations officials must provide proof of marriage to be eligible for a G-4 visa or to seek a change into such status." G-4 visas are granted to employees of international organisations and their immediate families.

According to the State Department, "only a relationship legally considered to be a marriage in the jurisdiction where it took place establishes eligibility as a spouse for immigration purposes".

[C]ritics have called the move unfair to homosexual partners, given a large number of countries do not recognise same-sex marriage. Former US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power decried the policy, calling it "needlessly cruel and bigoted".

The UN-Globe, advocates for LGBT equality in the UN, said the Trump administration's new policy was "an unfortunate change in rules".

"Couples already inside of the United States could go to city hall and get married. But they could potentially be exposed to prosecution if they return to a country that criminalises homosexuality or same-sex marriages."

After the end of this year, unmarried same-sex partners of diplomats and UN employees will be expected to leave the US within 30 days if they remain unmarried and without a visa status change.

The only exception, however, would be same-sex partners of officials coming from countries that do not recognise same-sex marriage. They will be granted a diplomatic visa if the government which sends them to work in their embassies in the US grants the same privileges to same-sex partners of US officials sent to that country.

The new policy is a reversal of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's 2009 decision to allow same-sex domestic partners of foreign officials diplomatic visas.  State Department officials say there are around 105 families total that could be affected by the policy.

Akshaya Kumar, the Deputy UN Director of Human Rights Watch, wrote that the change "will have an insidious impact on same-sex couples".  "The US government should recognise, as it had for almost nine years until today, that requiring a marriage as proof of bona fide partnership is a bad and cruel policy, one that replicates the terrible discrimination many LGBT people face in their own countries, and should be immediately reversed."

France Calls for No Trade Deals with On Countries outside Paris Climate Accord

Since the end of World War II, America has been one, if not the only, preeminent super power in the world.  Much of this hegemony was accomplished and maintained through international alliances such as NATO and trade treaties.  Now, the Trump/Pence regime is shredding the template that has kept America strong and seeking to destroy mostly beneficial trade treaties.  Indeed, Trump and his sinister and apparently equally ignorant Vice President seemingly want to take America back to 1920's - 1930's style isolationism (which helped set the stage for WWII) even though the world and global trade has changed radically in the intervening almost 100 years.  The mindset is just as delusional as pro-Brexit voters in the United Kingdom who dream of the long gone British Empire.  Today, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested what may become a new reality as America slinks back into isolationism: a unified Europe, Mexico, Canada, South America and most of Asia all joining in trade agreements that would truly isolate America.  A piece in The Independent looks at the possible picture of the future.  Here are article highlights:

Emmanuel Macron has announced France will no longer accept “commercial agreements” with countries that do not “respect” the Paris Climate Accord during a fiery speech at the United Nations General Assembly. 

The French president called for the upholding of trade rules that “guarantee fair competition on equal footing” during his Tuesday speech, following a Monday afternoon meeting with Donald Trump and the US president’s speech on Monday morning. Mr Macron appeared defiant towards Mr Trump, suggesting he’d no longer negotiate trade deals with the US after its withdrawal from the climate agreement last year. 

The US is now reportedly the only nation in the world which remains opposed to the Paris Agreement, after Mr Trump decided to pull out of the accord in 2017. 

Mr Macron also appeared to reject the US president’s “America First” policies, arguing that international superpowers should seek peaceful resolutions for global issues, from the Syrian Conflict to Iran’s nuclear programs. 

He also criticised the president’s decision to pull out of the Iran Nuclear deal, touting its success in preventing the country’s "nuclear military path”. 

“What will bring a real solution to the situation in Iran and what has already stabilised it? The law of the strongest? Pressure from only one side? No!“ he said. “We know that Iran was on a nuclear military path but what stopped it? The 2015 Vienna accord.” 

The speech deeply contrasted that of Mr Trump, who spoke on Monday about “America’s policy of principled realism,” while criticising components of the United Nations.

“We will not return to the Human Rights Council until real reform is enacted. We will also not provide any support to the International Criminal Court,“ he [Trump] said, adding that “the ICC has no authority. It violates all principles of justice and due process.”

“We will never surrender America’s sovereignty,” Mr Trump continued. “We reject the ideology of globalism. America is governed by Americans.“ 

[Trump] The president also announced the US would reduce its funding towards the UN peacekeeping budget to under 25 per cent. 

I'm sure that Trump supporters will sneer at France's position, but before they do so, they might want to reflect on the reality that France has a transportation/infrastructure far better than America's and a health care system that is the most efficient in the world which doesn't leave its citizens in bankruptcy when serious illness occurs.  

Other Nations at U.N. Openly Laughed at Trump

Having traveled in France and the United Kingdom earlier in the month, I can honestly say that having Donald Trump as the occupant of the White House proved to be an embarrassment.  Trump is literally loathed in both nations (a feeling I can fully appreciate).  Now, that loathing came home to roost as Trump engaged in a narcissistic spew of batshitery at the United Nations.  His reality free speech literally triggered laughter from diplomats from around the world and not because Trump was telling jokes.  Rather Trump himself was the joke as is America the joke given that it has such a buffoon in the White House who could not even win the popular vote.   Trump and his evil minion, Mike Pence are quickly isolating America from the rest of the world which, if past allies, China and developing countries come together with new trade and climate treaties could damage America greatly.  Only Trump and his knuckle dragging base don't seem to realize that significant long term damage is being done.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Trump's - and by extension, America's - plummeting stature on the world stage.  Here are excerpts:

President Trump has long argued that the United States has been taken advantage of by other nations — a “laughing stock to the entire World,” he said on Twitter in 2014 — and his political rise was based on the premise that he had the strength and resolve to change that.

But at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump got a comeuppance on the world’s biggest stage. Delivering a speech that aimed to establish U.S. “sovereignty” over the whims and needs of other nations, the president’s triumphant moment was marred in the first minute when he was met by laughter — at his expense.

The embarrassing exchange came when Trump boasted that his administration had accomplished more over two years than “almost any administration” in American history, eliciting audible guffaws in the cavernous chamber hall.

“He has always been obsessed that people are laughing at the president. From the mid-’80s, he’s said: ‘The world is laughing at us. They think we’re fools,’ ” said Thomas Wright, a Europe analyst at the Brookings Institution. “It’s never been true, but he’s said it about every president. It’s the first time I’m aware of that people actually laughed at a president. I think it is going to drive him absolutely crazy. It will play to every insecurity he has.”

For Trump, the moment wasn’t just embarrassing. It also punctured one of the core fabulist assertions of a president who has, according to Washington Post fact-checkers, made more than 5,000 false or misleading statements since taking office.

As the midterm elections approach, Trump has begun boasting of a long list of accomplishments for his administration, at one point reciting them at a recent campaign rally from two pieces of paper that he pulled from his suit jacket.

In doing so, the president typically has claimed sweeping success and placed himself favorably in historical comparison to the nation’s greatest leaders. At a rally in Springfield, Mo., last week, Trump was wrapping up an hour-long address to supporters with some flowery teleprompter prose about the courage of America’s founders when he strayed from the script to assert that his election in 2016 was “the greatest movement in the history of our country.”

At the United Nations, Trump’s claim to have done more in less than two years than most of the 44 previous administrations defied any bounds of reality — or hubris. The difference was that he was not talking to a room full of excited, red-hat-wearing “MAGA” supporters who cheer him on. [Y]ou kind of feel good that Trump was finally escaping the bubble of political rallies that continually gives him the impression that everyone agrees with the false claims he is making,” said Smith, who watched Trump’s speech from Berlin, where she is spending a year as a fellow at the Bosch Academy. “There was a moment I thought to myself, ‘This is good that the president is being exposed to how the rest of the world sees him.’ ”

On social media, Trump’s critics quickly mocked him on Tuesday.  “American Presidents used to set the global agenda at the UNGA. Now Trump gets laughed at,” tweeted Ben Rhodes, who as a top national security aide to President Barack Obama helped craft U.N. speeches.

“The world just laughed @realDonaldTrump,” comedian Wanda Sykes tweeted. Referring to the famed theater in Harlem in which the audience boos and heckles bad performers offstage, she added, “Stay tuned, they might go full ‘Showtime at the Apollo’ on him.”

By the afternoon, Trump was projecting an air of nonchalance, telling reporters that his boast in the speech “was meant to get some laughter.” But most observers weren’t buying it from a president who seldom laughs at himself and whose default expression is an unsparing glare.

“It’s got to hurt,” said Wright, the Brookings Institution analyst. “It was on camera and it was spontaneous. It was on one of the biggest stages in the world.”

Anyone who truly cares about America, including its standing in the world, should want Trump - and his ass kissing, yes am VP, Mike Pence - removed from office as soon as possible.  It will tajke years to undo the damage being done to the long term prospects of the nation. 

Trump Regime Votes Against UN Resolution Condemning Death Penalty for Gays

You are not reading the title of this post incorrectly.  Since his inauguration, Der Trumpenführer and his fellow extremist, Mike Pence, having been waging war against the LGBT community, particularly those who are transgender.  Now, that war is seemingly going international and seeking to reverse U.S. positions put in place under the Obama administration.  It goes without saying that the Christofascists who comprise Trump's core base (along with white supremacists) are thrilled.  As are Islamic extremists and the brutal leaders of Saudi Arabia, America's false ally which is the principal financier of Islamic extremism worldwide. The Washington Blade looks at this disturbing development.  Here are highlights:

The U.S. on Sept. 29 voted against a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution that condemns the death penalty for those found guilty of committing consensual same-sex sexual acts.

The resolution — which Belgium, Benin, Costa Rica, France, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia and Switzerland introduced — passed by a 27-13 vote margin.

Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa, Togo, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Albania, Croatia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Slovenia, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay, Venezuela, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and the U.K. supported the resolution. Botswana, Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, China, India, Iraq, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined the U.S. in opposing it.

The resolution specifically condemns “the imposition of the death penalty as a sanction for specific forms of conduct, such as apostasy, blasphemy, adultery and consensual same-sex relations” and expresses “serious concern that the application of the death penalty for adultery is disproportionately imposed on women.” It also notes “poor and economically vulnerable persons and foreign nationals are disproportionately subjected to the death penalty, that laws carrying the death penalty are used against persons exercising their rights to freedom of expression, thought, conscience, religion, and peaceful assembly and association, and that persons belonging to religious or ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented among those sentenced to the death penalty.” Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Sudan are among the handful of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual activity remains punishable by death. The so-called Islamic State has executed dozens of men in Iraq, Syria and Libya who were accused of committing sodomy.

“It is unconscionable to think that there are hundreds of millions of people living in states where somebody may be executed simply because of whom they love” said ILGA Executive Director Renato Sabbadini in a press release, referring to the resolution. “This is a monumental moment where the international community has publicly highlighted that these horrific laws simply must end.”

Trump traveled to Saudi Arabia in May. He made no mention that consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death in the kingdom in a speech he gave in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

Trump has also not publicly commented on the ongoing crackdown against LGBT Chechens.

The U.S. and 24 other countries in 2014 voted for a resolution against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted. The body in 2011 narrowly approved a resolution in support of LGBT rights that South Africa introduced.

This is what my "friends" who voted for Trump are supporting whether they want to be honest with themselves or not.  Disgusting!

Gay and Marked for Death

Although modern science and knowledge confirms that homosexuality is both normal and simply one form of sexuality in nature, conservative religion and its continuing embrace of ignorance and reliance on the writings of unknown Bronze Age authors or those who would likely be deemed mentally ill due to "hearing voices" and "God speaking to them continues to be the scourge of the existence of LGBT individuals in far too many parts of the world.  At present, fundamentalists Islam is perhaps the most dangerous scourge, but throughout time, Christianity has certainly wracked up plenty of death and misery for those who were born LGBT.  Now, the United Nations is working to draw attention to the plight of those not born in conformity with the beliefs of the ignorant, simple minded, and power mad who use religion to justify brutality and murder against others.  A column in the New York Times looks at the development.  Here are highlights:

AS he tried to concentrate on his final college exams, he couldn’t erase the terrifying images in his head, an endless replay of a video he’d seen. It showed two men being killed — their necks noosed, their bodies dragged through the streets and set on fire.  They had burned, he told me, because they were gay.  Just like him.

Islamic extremism was sweeping through Iraq, and terror coursed through his veins. It became unbearable when, in mid-2014, the Islamic State seized control of the city where he lived. He fled, traveling furtively across Iraq for nearly a month, looking for a point of exit, finally finding one and boarding a flight to a city in the Middle East where he wouldn’t be in danger.

“The greatest moment of my life was stepping on that plane,” said the man, in his mid-20s, who asked that I not use his name or any identifying details, lest harm come to family members back in Iraq. “I was able to breathe again. I hadn’t been breathing.”

On Monday, he will tell his story at a special United Nations Security Council meeting on L.G.B.T. rights. American officials involved in it arranged for me to talk with him in advance by phone.

Although Monday’s discussion isn’t a formal one that Security Council members are required to attend, it’s nonetheless the first time that the council has held a meeting of any kind that’s dedicated to the persecution of L.G.B.T. people, according to Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations.

And it’s an example, she told me, of a determined push by the United States and other countries to integrate L.G.B.T. rights into all discussions of human rights by international bodies like the U.N.

There have also been enormous victories for L.G.B.T. people in nations as different as Nepal and Malta over the last few years. This year alone, a popular referendum legalized same-sex marriage in Ireland and a Supreme Court decision did so in the United States.

But, Power noted, “Unfortunately, internationally, those trends are not being paralleled in very large swaths of the world.” This divide is becoming ever starker, creating new diplomatic tensions, challenges and responsibilities for countries like the United States.

[Obama] said at a news conference with the Kenyan president, going on to add: “The idea that they are going to be treated differently or abused because of who they love is wrong. Full stop.”

Our own country can’t wholly congratulate itself. Federal legislation to outlaw employment discrimination based on sexual orientation has languished for many years.   But American officials were among those who pushed back successfully earlier this year when Russia fought to overturn a policy to grant benefits to the same-sex spouses of U.N. employees.

The Security Council meeting, which the United States is co-hosting with Chile, will focus on the Islamic State’s brutality against gays as a way of getting countries who might not be sensitive to the plight of gays, but who have profound concerns about the Islamic State, to pay attention.

Even so, there’s no telling whether such Security Council members as Chad, Angola, Nigeria, Russia and China will send high-level representatives or any representatives at all. The meeting is also open to countries that aren’t on the council, but it’s closed to the public and members of the news media.

Power said that it’s vital that the Islamic State’s treatment of gays not be omitted from discussions of its atrocities against other vulnerable groups.

And that’s partly because the terror felt by gays in areas controlled by the Islamic State is an extreme form of their victimization in far too many other places. It’s a summons to action for enlightened countries that could open their arms wider to L.G.B.T. refugees.

I continue to believe that religion, especially fundamentalist religion of all faiths, is one of the great evils in the world.  It is a pestilence that needs to be eradicated from the face of the Earth. 

Pope Francis' Encyclical on the Environment Sides With Science.

While the Roman Catholic Church ignores many aspects of science and scientific knowledge - e.g., modern knowledge on sexual orientation - a draft of Poe Francis' much-anticipated encyclical on the environment comes down hard on the side of science and sets the stage for Republican climate change deniers having to attack the Pope/Catholic Church.  In some ways the scheduled release of the encyclical could not be better in terms of roiling the political waters of the 2016 presidential contest.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the basics of the draft encyclical which should be causing headaches for Republicans like Marco Rubio who claim to be devout Catholics yet sell their souls to the ugliest elements of the ignorance embracing of the party base.  Here are article highlights:

It almost sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but on Thursday a Catholic cardinal, an Orthodox theologian and an atheist scientist will walk into the Vatican synod hall and present Pope Francis’s hotly anticipated encyclical on the environment.  The hype around the document has been so fevered that it even spawned a silly spoof movie trailer in which the super pope fights an epic battle to save the planet.  And the Vatican City state secrecy that surrounded it only increased the drama.

But on Monday, a leaked version of the encyclical was published prematurely by the Italian weekly magazine L’Espresso, which printed the full text of a 192-page document with six chapters and two new prayers by Pope Francis dedicated to “the communal home that is planet earth.”

Because the leaked text is not an official Vatican document, we won’t know for sure until Thursday just how close it is to the final product, but a number of major publications, including The Guardian and The New York Times ignored the Vatican’s pleas for restraint and chose to publish extensive excerpts anyway.  

If the leaked draft is at all close to the final encyclical, we can expect that, as predicted, Francis comes down on the side of scientists who have concluded climate change is greatly affected by man-made pollution. It starts with the pope’s warning that the earth, “is protesting for the wrong that we are doing to her, because of the irresponsible use and abuse of the goods that God has placed on her.” He argues that people must change their lifestyles and methods of consumption to combat global warming.

No matter what edits made the final cut in the official encyclical—or what, for that matter, motivated the leaking of a religious text—the pope’s emphasis on respect for the environment as a moral issue is what is important.  “It will be a combination of that more rarified genre of the encyclical with some real moments of distinctly Francis rhetoric,” Peppard predicted, which, if the draft is any indication, is right on the mark.

That doesn’t mean the pope or Vatican are looking for a particular policy solution, although Peppard believes the timing of its official release is not by coincidence ahead of his crucial September visit to the United States where he will address the United Nations and Congress in addition to his duties at World Meeting of the Families in Philadelphia and a side trip to Cuba.

[T]he fact that anyone cares what a religious leader says about science is really a testament to the Francis effect and the potential he has to reach the masses.  Of course whether any of that will actually help save the planet is an entirely different matter.

The Christian Right’s New Global War on Gays

As other posts on this blog have noted, as the American Christofascists have been steadily losing the culture war over gay rights and marriage equality, they have been increasingly focusing their efforts on exporting the extreme religious beliefs and anti-gay animus overseas.   The Trojan horse that they are using for this endeavor is "protecting the natural family" which translates to opposing abortion, contraception, divorce (at least in theory) and, most importantly, gay equality and marriage.  Leading the export of ignorance and religious intolerance is the World Congress of Families (WCF) which defines the "natural family" as "centered around the voluntary union of a man and a woman in a lifelong covenant of marriage."  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at WCF's insideous throcratic agenda.  Here are excerpts:

The news looks bad for America’s conservative rear-guard. This month’s decision by the Supreme Court may soon make marriage equality the law of the land. Over three-quarters of Americans support anti-discrimination protection for gays and lesbians. One of our star athletes (and a Republican!) has transitioned her gender to overwhelming (though not universal) applause.
Does the Christian Right have a Plan B?

You bet they do. Their main weapon is an unfamiliar term: “natural family.” And they’re going to use it to beat back advances in women’s and LGBT equality worldwide, starting at the UN.

Since 1948, the United Nations has stated that the family is “the natural and fundamental group unit of society.” It makes policies and appropriates funds with that in mind.
But whose family? Does the term (and the policy and the money) only cover Mom-and-Pop nuclear families? Does it include single parents and kids? Gay families? Extended families? Families of choice?

These parameters are not just semantic, because they dictate policy. If “family” means a heterosexual couple with as many children as possible, then policies like family planning and LGBT equal rights should be opposed, if (a big if) they have a negative impact on families thus defined. If “family” is a broader term, then those same policies should be promoted.

These issues came to a head in 1994, designated the “Year of the Family” by both the United Nations and the Vatican. . . .In fact, progressives had sought to make 1994 the Year of the Families, plural. Conservatives successfully beat that back, but between pluralism and support for reproductive freedom, 1994 was a wakeup call.

“Natural family” was one response. As defined by its leading promoter, conservative activist Allan Carlson, the “natural family” is a small, conservative subset of actual families. It is “centered around the voluntary union of a man and a woman in a lifelong covenant of marriage,” and is for the purpose of “ensuring the full physical and emotional development of children.”  Although this definition is at variance with the Biblical institution of polygamy and concubinage, it nonetheless became the central value of the World Congress of Families (WCF), founded by Carlson in 1997 . . . . 

One of WCF’s biggest successes is Russia. Beginning in the 1990s, Carlson and his Russian counterparts—conservative sociologists at Lomonosov Moscow State University—melded American “family values” conservatism with Russian concerns about a “demographic winter.” One result was the first WCF conference, in 1997, and its declaration that, in Parke’s words, “condemned policies that subvert ‘the legal and religious status of traditional marriage,’ as well as those that promote contraception and abortion, ‘state welfare systems,’ comprehensive sexual education, nonmarital cohabitation, ‘homosexual unions,’ and single parenting.”

[A]s it happens, there is no demographic winter—in Russia or anywhere else. What there is, both in Russia and the United States, is a demographic shift toward, bluntly speaking, more brown people and fewer white people. This is what the Russian Orthodox Church and Putin’s revanchist circle are fighting—and the WCF is happy to help.

Inside Russia, WCF helped pass the notorious Anti-Propaganda Law, banning gays from any public displays of existence, and wrote the ban on gay adoption.  

[A]t the UN, Russia has blocked every effort to recognize multiple forms of family—most recently in June 2014 . . . “It is part of a broader agenda led by the U.S. Religious Right aimed at cementing a patriarchal and heteronormative family structure as the fundamental unit of society, and then using that as a tool to advance conservative, right-wing social policies through the UN and other international organizations.”

[At the 2015 WCF assembly in Salt Lakr City] the cast of characters will be the same: Russian and African far-rightists, together with WCF partners Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, Alliance Defending Freedom, and Americans United For Life.  Not surprisingly, the theme of the conference will be “religious liberty.”

There are plenty of reasons to take these wingnuts seriously. First, there’s a lot of money: oligarch/Putin money in Russia, conservative foundation money here. Second, the governments of Russia and many Global South countries are actively hostile to LGBT people, blaming them for every problem under the sun, from Ebola to Hollywood movies. Third, they may have the votes at the UN—as they did last year in Geneva.

It’s entirely possible that LGBTs and women throughout the world will suffer a backlash because of advances in rights for gay people and women in the US and Europe. That means those advocates in the West shouldn’t get too carried away with themselves. Opponents of equality are just getting started.

Religious conservatives remain a cancer on society and the world.  As throughout history, they continue to market hate, discord and theocracy at the expense of human rights and science and knowledge. 

UN Human Rights Chief Calls for Prosecution of Torture Architects

German defendants at Nuremberg trials

The full executive summary of the Senate torture report can be found here (NOTE: many names and details are redacted).  Not surprisingly, some at the United Nations want the architects of the torture program prosecuted.  The Guardian has details:

The UN special rapporteur on counter terrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, has released a statement saying “It is now time to take action” and “The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today’s report must be brought to justice.” The statement reads in part:

The summary of the report which was released this afternoon confirms what the international community has long believed - that there was a clear policy orchestrated at a high level within the Bush administration to commit systematic crimes and gross violations of international human rights law. The identities of the perpetrators, and many other details, have been redacted in the published summary report but are known to the Select Committee and to those who provided the Committee with information on the programme. It is now time to take action. 

The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today’s report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes. The fact that the policies revealed in this report were authorised at a high level within the US Government provides no excuse whatsoever. Indeed, it reinforces the need for criminal accountability. 

International law prohibits the granting of immunities to public officials who have engaged in acts of torture. This applies not only to the actual perpetrators but also to those senior officials within the US Government who devised, planned and authorised these crimes. As a matter of international law, the US is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice.

Note: under international law and treaties to which the United States is a signatory, Barack Obama has NO legal authority to either (i) refuse to prosecute the offenders or (ii) grant pardons to such criminals. 

If one looks at the Nuremberg trials, here is what happened to Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest ranking SS leader to be tried at Nuremberg.  -  Hanged 16 October 1946.

United Nations Warns Vatican toTurn Over Sex Abuse Files to Police

Despite protestations that it opposes sexual abuse of children and youths by Catholic clergy, across the globe the Roman Catholic Church continues to obstruct justice and seeks to thwart police investigations of suspected predator priests.  Worse yet, the Vatican  employs claims of "diplomatic immunity” to protect senior prelates from the reach of the law.  The United Nations anti-torture commission is losing patience.  A piece in The Telegraph looks at the UN's growing  impatience with the Vatican's failure to assume responsibility for abuse done in dioceses around the world.  Here are excerpts:

The United Nations anti-torture watchdog has ordered the Vatican to hand over files containing details of clerical sexual abuse allegations to police forces around the world amid concerns over the use of “diplomatic immunity” to hamper investigations. 

Members of the UN Committee on Torture also warned the Holy See against effectively allowing suspected paedophiles to seek sanctuary in Rome, after calls for a former Papal ambassador to be extradited to his native Poland to face investigations.

In a highly critical report, published in Geneva, it questioned attempts by the Vatican to claim that its obligations under international law only apply within the tiny city state.

It ordered the Vatican to use its authority over the Roman Catholic Church worldwide to ensure all allegations of clerical abuse are passed on to the secular authorities and impose “meaningful sanctions” on any Vatican officials who fail to do so.

And it voiced “regret” at a lack of openness by the Vatican about its co-operation with civil authorities in sexual abuse investigations.

As I have argued before, if Pope Francis was really  serious about dealing with the sex abuse scandal, there would be widespread sackings of bishops and cardinals who participated in cover ups and the obstruction of justice.  His failure to so act speaks volumes, none of it good.

Brunei Law To Allow Death By Stoning For Gay Sex

I condemn conservative Christians who are best defined by their hatred of others frequently on this blog.  But Christian fundamentalists are not the only foul force in the world.  Right along side them are the Islamic fundamentalists who likewise cling to ignorance, spew hatred towards others and fight a rear guard battle against modernity itself.   The latest example is what is happening in Brunei where an extreme sharia law penal code has been enacted which imposes the death penalty for an array of offenses including same sex relations. If anyone deserves the death penalty, it is those who passed the new penal code and those who advocated for it.  Huffington Post looks at this development which violates international law:

The United Nations has responded to the nation of Brunei, a sovereign state in southeast Asia, where officials are reportedly set to roll out a new penal code including death by stoning as punishment for same-sex acts.

Other offenses referenced in the revision of capital punishment regulations reportedly include "rape, adultery, sodomy, extramarital sexual relations for Muslims, insulting any verses of the Quran and Hadith, blasphemy, declaring oneself a prophet or non-Muslim, and murder." 

The revised penal code is slated to go into effect April 22, according to Gay Asia News and other media outlets.

“Application of the death penalty for such a broad range of offenses contravenes international law,” Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement. “We urge the Government to delay the entry into force of the revised penal code and to conduct a comprehensive review ensuring its compliance with international human rights standards,” he told a news conference in Geneva.

Brunei is the latest in a series of countries to pass anti-gay laws that could result in extreme punishments for those engaging in same-sex acts. In February, Uganda's president signed a bill that calls for first-time offenders of same-sex acts to be sentenced to 14 years in jail, and "repeat offenders" could receive life in prison. Additionally, Nigeria has a similar anti-gay law that makes same-sex relationships illegal and sets penalties of same-sex acts at up to 14 years in prison.

Conservative/fundamentalist religion is always an evil.  The public needs to open its eyes to this reality and not be distracted by charitable activities that in no way outweigh the evils done and by claims of "religious freedom" on the part of those who seek to oppress others. 

UN to Grill Vatican Again on Sexual Abuse of Minors

While Pope Francis again recently publicly apologized for the sex abuse of children and youths by Roman Catholic Church clergy and said that he would take responsibility for the crimes against children, in reality nothing has changed. No bishops or cardinals have been publicly sacked and stripped of all benefits and perks.  It has all been talk to date and no substantive action.  Now, in the wake of a brutal past report by the United Nations, the Vatican is about to again face yet another round of grilling by a United Nations committee.    The San Jose Mercury has details.  Here are excerpts:

A second U.N. committee plans to question Vatican officials on failures to stop clergy sex abuse. 


The hearing scheduled for May 5-6 in Geneva will look at whether the Vatican's record on child protection violates the U.N. Convention Against Torture. The Holy See ratified the treaty in 2002.
Vatican spokesmen said Monday they could not immediately comment.

Last January, Vatican officials testified for eight hours before an obscure human rights committee on the scale of clergy sex abuse globally.

The Vatican was compelled to appear as a signatory to the U.N. Convention for the Rights of the Child, which requires governments to take all adequate measures to protect children from harm. The Holy See was one of the first states to ratify the treaty in 1990.

The U.N. committee issued a scathing report, accusing Vatican officials of systematically placing their own interests over those of victims. The Vatican condemned the findings as a reflection of "prejudiced" positions of anti-Catholic advocacy groups.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit legal group based in New York, submitted reports on behalf of victims to both committees urging closer U.N. scrutiny of the church record on child abuse. For the upcoming hearing before the U.N. Committee Against Torture, the Center for 
Constitutional Rights argued the rape of children by clergy amounted to torture and inhuman treatment, and the Vatican hasn't done enough to stop the abuse.

Last Friday, Pope Francis said he took personal responsibility for the "evil" of clergy sex abuse, sought forgiveness from victims and said the church must be even bolder in efforts to protect children. But Mary Caplan of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said children are still vulnerable in the church because "that unhealthy, rigid, secretive, hierarchical, virtually all-male structure is not changing."

The Survivors' Network last year had separately asked the International Criminal Court to investigate former Pope Benedict XVI and Vatican cardinals for possible crimes against humanity over clergy abuse. The court, based in The Hague, rejected the request.

The Church hierarchy's global criminal conspiracy to protect predator priests and cover up horrors that would hav e harmed the Church's image make Mafia plots look like child's play.  Worse yet, NO ONE has been held responsible from John Paul II on down.  One can only hope that the United Nations continues to forcefully demand answers from the Vatican.

The United Nations Report on the Vatican’s Role in Global Sex Abuse

This blog has long been a critic of the Roman Catholic Church and the global conspiracy orchestrated from the Vatican to cover up the sexual abuse of likely hundreds of thousands of children and youths by Catholic clergy.  Sadly, to date, neither the Church as an institution nor the hierarchy has been held accountable.  Those who participated in the conspiracy remain for the most part as "princes of the church" given undue deference and respect when many ought to instead be behind bars for a long, long time.  This past week, the United Nations released a report that was nothing less than scathing toward the Vatican.  Andrew Sullivan reacts and makes the case why serious change is needed in the Catholic Church and also why this will be a litmus test for whether or not Pope Francis deserves any respect.  Here are excerpts:

The UN Report on the Vatican’s role as a global conspiracy to enable, abet and cover up crimes against humanity is a vital reminder of just how hideous the Catholic Church has been in violating the souls and bodies of so many innocents. Sometimes, the sheer scale of the abuse renders one mute. But it shouldn’t.

The scale of the criminality is important to keep in mind:

Last month, the Vatican acknowledged that close to 400 priests left the priesthood in 2011 and 2012 because of accusations that they had sexually abused children.

The number of victims is in the tens of thousands. And their agony never ends.
But the institution itself has never held itself fully accountable. And the crimes it presided over were legion and horrifying. Only today, for example, we read of the apology issued by the Legion of Christ – a neo-fascist, theocon cult – for the grotesque abuses of its founder, protected for years by Pope John Paul II:

The Legionaries of Christ, which former members said was run like a secretive cult, accused the founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, who died in 2008, of “reprehensible and objectively immoral behavior” as head of the order from its founding in 1941 until Pope Benedict XVI removed him in 2006.

The Dish’s long coverage of this scandal – well before the hierarchy began finally to take it seriously – can be found here. And when you absorb just how evil this cult was, just how depraved its leader was, and the psychic and spiritual toll it took on so many human beings, you come to one conclusion: there is no way this organization should still exist. The Vatican should shut it down. Period. Instead we have the former cronies and favorites of Maciel still calling the shots.
[W]hy does the church tolerate the continuation of such an organization? And yet it does. Similarly, why on earth is the Pope who presided over the sex abuse crisis – and protected Maciel to his death – even faintly considered for sainthood, far sooner than has ever been the case before? Sanctifying a Pope who presided over such crimes against humanity is an obscenity.

And why do we have to struggle to discover that more than 400 priests have been defrocked because of child rape in the last couple of years alone? Why aren’t their dismissals announced proudly by the Vatican? And why, for Pete’s sake, does the Vatican not enforce a simple rule: all accusations of child abuse should be referred immediately to secular law enforcement?

Francis has an opportunity here – perhaps the only opportunity the church will ever get – to turn a new page, to insist on complete transparency, to be fully accountable to law enforcement, and to atone and recant for the legacy of the past. There needs to be a purge not just of abusing priests but of every church official who played any part in the cover-up. Why, for example, has Cardinal Bernard Law not been defrocked and publicly shamed – instead of enjoying a cushy sinecure in Rome?

The truth is that the Catholic Church has committed a crime against humanity. Until every person implicated in that crime is removed, defrocked and disgraced, the entire moral credibility of the church will remain irreparably damaged.

Andrew's thoughts mirror my own.  Indeed, until the type of purge he describes occurs, I do not see how anyone who is decent and moral can remain an active member of the Church.  To remain a member is to be complicit in the crimes already committed and those likely still occurring.

Vatican Denounced by United Nations On Sex Abuse

As has been noted before on this blog, a committee working on enforcement of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child has been investigating the Vatican's involvement in the world wide sex abuse of minors and youths by Roman Catholic clergy.  To say that the Vatican has been uncooperative and disingenuous is a staggering understatement.  The Vatican dishonestly said that it had no responsibility for actions of bishops and cardinals outside the boundaries of Vatican City despite written Vatican directives that have come to light ordering that abuse not be reported to police authorities.  Now, the U. N. has blasted the Vatican as reported in a piece carried by the Virginian Pilot.  Here are article excerpts:

A U.N. human rights committee denounced the Vatican on Wednesday for adopting policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades, and urged it to open its files on the pedophiles and the churchmen who concealed their crimes.

In a devastating report, the U.N. committee also severely criticized the Holy See for its attitudes toward homosexuality, contraception and abortion and said it should review its policies to ensure children's rights and their access to health care are guaranteed.

On sex abuse, "the committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by, and the impunity of, the perpetrators," the report said.

It called for the sex abuse commission that Pope Francis announced in December to conduct an independent investigation of all cases of priestly abuse and the way the Catholic hierarchy has responded over time, and urged the Holy See establish clear rules for the mandatory reporting of abuse to police.

The committee issued its recommendations after subjecting the Holy See to a daylong interrogation last month on its implementation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the main international treaty ensuring children's rights. During that session, the committee's independent experts grilled the Holy See on its protection of children, working from reports prepared by victims groups and human rights organizations.

The Vatican had no immediate comment.

As I have asked before, how and why do people who claim to be moral continue to bankroll this utterly corrupt and lawless institution much less kiss the asses of the heinous Church hierarchy?