The Real Reason Behind Melania's Press Conference

Rachel Hurley

The only reason why I still have a Twitter account is that that's where you find the real tea 

As you all know, Melania Trump held a press conference yesterday to tell the country she has nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. Nobody asked her to. Her husband says he didn't know she was gonna do it. Her own staff didn't know the topic until she started talking. The Epstein story had basically died down, 'cause everyone's been focused on Iran. And she just walked out there and revived it.

So why now?
Her adviser said "enough is enough" and "the lies must stop." 

Sure. But she did something weird. 

 

She acknowledged the 2002 email she sent Ghislaine Maxwell, the one where she complimented a New York magazine profile of Epstein and signed off "Love, Melania." She called it a reply. Twice. Except the subject line was "HI!" and there's no prior email from Maxwell in the files. It wasn't a reply. She reached out. Maxwell wrote back and called her "sweet pea."

 

And then Melania pivoted to calling on Congress to hold public hearings for Epstein's victims - under oath. Her husband's administration has been doing everything possible to make this go away. Pam Bondi just refused a subpoena the day before to testify. The whole White House message has been "time to move on." And the First Lady is out here asking for sworn testimony. most of the reporting says that everyone in the White House was "stunned."

 

None of this makes sense - until you know who Amanda Ungaro is.

 

Ungaro is a Brazilian former model. She came to the US in 2002 at 17, on Jeffrey Epstein's Lolita Express. She's on the flight logs. Her agent was Jean-Luc Brunel, one of Epstein's procurers, who was found hanged in a Paris prison cell in 2022 while awaiting trial for raping minors and trafficking girls. 

 

Ungaro told a Brazilian newspaper she saw about 30 girls on that flight, most of them between 14 and 16. She watched some of them disappear to the back of the plane with Epstein and Maxwell and never saw them again. Brunel tried to get her to carry a suspicious package. She refused.

 

After she landed in New York, she ended up at Paolo Zampolli's modeling agency. And this is where it all connects.

 

Zampolli is the guy who brought Melania to America from Slovenia in 1996. Got her the visa. Introduced her to Trump at a party in 1998. Trump has confirmed this himself. Zampolli is in the Epstein files dozens of times. He and Epstein tried to buy Elite Model Management together in 2004. Epstein visited his agency. 

 

In one email from the files, Epstein warned a businessman that "Zampoli is trouble." Zampolli currently works in the Trump administration as special envoy for global partnerships and sits on the Kennedy Center board.

 

Ungaro and Zampolli were together for almost 20 years. They have a teenage son. They sat at Melania's table at the first inauguration dinner. Ungaro even held a UN ambassadorship to Grenada through Zampolli's connections. They split around 2018 and Zampolli later claimed they were never actually married, which was news to basically everyone.

 

Then last June, Ungaro got arrested in Miami on fraud charges at a medical spa. Her new husband made bail. She didn't. 'Cause according to the New York Times, Zampolli called a senior ICE official named David Venturella, told him Ungaro was on an expired visa, and asked about getting her transferred to federal custody. Venturella called the Miami field office. He mentioned the case was important to someone close to the White House. 

 

Zampolli says he just asked what was going on. DHS says it wasn't political. But Ungaro got picked up by ICE before she could post bail and was deported to Brazil. She eventually agreed to leave because she thought staying in detention would cost her custody of her kid. Her son went to Brazil with her, then went back to Zampolli.

 

The man who introduced the President to the First Lady got the mother of his child deported. And this woman knew the Trumps for 20 years. She was at their events. She was close to Melania's parents. She rode on Epstein's plane as a teenager.

 

Now she's in Brazil posting on X, tagging Melania directly. Saying she'll expose everything she knows. Threatening legal action. Saying she has nothing left to lose.

 

But wait! There's more!

 

The Epstein files from January include a redacted FBI proffer from 2019, three days after Epstein's arrest. An immunity witness told federal agents that Epstein introduced Melania to Donald Trump. Not Zampolli. Epstein. Lying under a proffer agreement is a federal crime. The White House says the files may contain unverified claims. Melania has been threatening to sue anyone who repeats it. Wolff. Hunter Biden. The Daily Beast already caved and retracted. Hunter's response was "F**k that. That's not gonna happen." He refused to retract and basically dared them to depose both Trumps. Wolff sued her back.

 

And then Zampolli popped up after Melania's speech to tell the Daily Mail he's ready to testify under oath that he made the introduction. Melania just asked Congress to set up hearings. 

So - to sum up - a woman who was on Epstein's plane, who spent 20 years in the Trump inner circle, gets deported by the man who introduced Donald and Melania. She starts threatening to talk. The Epstein files contain sworn testimony that contradicts the official story of how the Trumps met. And then Melania holds a surprise press conference to deny everything, while her key witness volunteers to back her up and her husband pretends he didn't know it was happening.

 

Melania doesn't do press conferences. She doesn't blindside the West Wing. She doesn't voluntarily bring up the one scandal her husband's team has been trying to bury. Whatever Amanda Ungaro knows, it was enough to make all of that happen on a Thursday afternoon. And good lawd - now everyone is talking about the Epstein Files again.

 

Ungaro was 17 on that plane. Her lawyers say Zampolli started pursuing her at 15, though some accounts say 17. Either way, he was 32. She spent two decades inside Trump world. And when she became a problem, they shipped her out of the country.

 

So - now we wait, I guess. To see if she follows through on her threats - or if this is all just another nothingburger.

 

Labor History: Con Carbon, The Minstrel of the Minepatch

Friday's Labor Folklore Con Carbon, the Minstrel of the Mine Patch Con Carbon the Minstrel of the Mine Patch  by  George Korson Con Carbon was the best known of all of the bards and minstrels in the Anthracite Coal Region of Pennsylvania.  Born into a mining household in Hazleton, Pennsylvania in 1871, he went to work in the Audenried Breaker at the age of nine. Three years later he was brought to Wilkes-Barre by his parents and there continued his apprenticeship in the mines.   Carbon came into public notice quite early when he revealed the sweetest tenor voice in the Wyoming Valley. He was also richly endowed with Irish wit and a sense of mimicry. But all these gifts were mere handmaidens to his outstanding talent -- the ability to articulate in ballad form the thoughts, feelings, experiences, and deepest yearnings of his fellow workers.   New ballads came from him in a steady stream, every traditional one increasing his popularity until his name became a household word throughout the region. He was always on demand to sing his own ballads, but his frail health did not permit him to accept even a fraction of all the invitations that rained down on him. As an expedient, he collected some of his songs and ballads which he had printed under the title of "Con Carbon's Own Songster" and sold at ten cents a copy. Nearly all the contents were cast in phonetic Irish dialect: "When the Breaker Starts Up Full Time," "Mackin's Porch," "Gossip in a Street Car" and "Me Johnny Mitchell Man."    Con Carbon was idolized not only as a maker and singer of miners' ballads, but as a superb storyteller and mimic. His Irish brogue was delicious and, indeed, nature was profligate with her gifts to this humble mining boy. It is gratifying to record that he used these gifts not to enrich himself, for he died a poor man, but to bring a ray of light and some cheer into miners' lives. No wonder then that the boys who went down the shaft in cages worshiped the ground he walked on.  Kingston, Pa. 1900 An instance of such hero-worship was cited by the late Father Phillips, one of Wyoming Valley's most prominent clergyman, with natural gifts of his own to distinguish him. The incident which he describes below occurred at the turn of the century:   "I was booked to deliver an address at an Ancient Order of Hibernians meeting one night in Plymouth. A committee escorted me to the stage on which were seated many prominent members of the Order, among them a little old gentlemen whose face was handsomely decorated with side-whiskers. While conversing with a member of the committee, the little gentleman in question, who was seated on my right, suddenly said, "Begorra, I wonder what's keeping the talent?" I turned and looked at him with surprise, but said nothing. Suddenly he cried, "I wish the talent was here." Again I looked at him with surprise, wondering whether he meant to slight me -- me, who thought I was the whole thing.    Presently, my little friend on the right emitted a roar which would shame the best efforts of a Sioux warrior on the warpath. He threw his hat high in the air and roared with all the lung power at his command: "Be jabbers, the talent has arrived! The talent has arrived!"    It seemed in a moment as though bedlam had broken loose. Every man in the audience was on his feet, whooping with bulging eyes and mouth agape: "Hurrah for Con!" I looked towards the entrance when, lo and behold! I saw Con Carbon being carried on the shoulders of two strapping young miners towards the stage. I thought that my little friend on the right would go into convulsions on the wings of enthusiasm. Every lineament of his features seemed to bespeak the esteem in which he held Con. Even his side-whiskers looked as though their every hair waved a welcome to the laughing, rollicking, good-natured Con.   It was several minutes before the enthusiasm subsided, only to break forth again in cries of, "Let us have 'Me Johnny Mitchell Man,' Con." When Con stepped to the front of the stage, the applause was simply deafening. It seemed to shake the whole building, from top to bottom.    He, and not I, was the feature of the evening. Beside him I felt my own littleness. He certainly was a wonderful character."   Con Carbon died in 1907. Among the tributes paid his memory was a letter to his family from United Mine Workers of America President John Mitchell in which the union leader told how the minstrel had inspired him during the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902.    -- Edited from: Minstrels of the Mine Patch : Songs and Stories of the Anthracite Industry (1938) by George Korson.    Cornelius "Con" Carbon is buried in an unmarked grave in  St. Gabriel's Cemetery in Hazelton, Pa. George Korson (1895-1967) was a folklorist, journalist, and historian who also wrote Coal Dust on the Fiddle : Songs and Stories of the Bituminous Industry (1943).  Con Carbon and Father Curran When Con was still a raw youth and his ballad singing was making him an idol, saloon keepers vied for his presence in their saloons. Of course, he did not have to pay for his drinks, but his mere appearance brought increased business.  The sordid manner in which his talents were thus exploited disturbed the late Father Curran, his parish priest. One Sunday morning he thundered the warning that the first saloon keeper who dared serve the young minstrel drinks would lose his license. As it was generally accepted that Father Curran was not accustomed to making idle threats, Carbon found every saloon in the parish closed to him. This annoyed him, as he had begun to acquire a taste for the hard stuff. One day, soon afterward, a friend invited him into a saloon for a drink. Carbon refused saying, "I can't go in there. I've been silenced by the Church!"  -- story by George Korson. The historic marker is in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Most breaker boys were children between the ages of 8 and 10 years old. It is estimated that, in 1880, twenty thousand (20,000) breaker boys were employed in northeastern Pennsylvania where 80 percent of all the world's anthracite coal was located. Breaker boys were known for their fierce independence and rejection of adult authority. The boys often formed and joined trade unions and precipitated a number of important strikes in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania (Wikipedia)

 

Catholic Church: "Misogyny and child abuse have always been cross-border phenomena"

 

by Eamonn McCann

"The Catholic Church deserves to be burdened with most of the blame. But lay people of secure position sang dumb and averted their eyes."

This is the travel document on which a seven-year-old from Derry, Bernard Kerr, travelled to Australia more than half a century ago. His next-of-kin is given as “The Superior, St. Joseph’s Home, Termonbacca, Derry.”

“Consent to my child/ward proceeding to Australia” is given by “Sr. M. Felice, Superior, St. Joseph’s Home.”

Then document is witnessed by “Rev. M. J. Rooney…Catholic Priest, St. Columb’s College, Derry.”

The priest attests to the right of the nun to send the child to the other side of the world.

“Is there any record of mental disease in the child?” – “No.”

“Has he or she at any time been subject to fits?” – “No

John McCourt gave me the document. He was a “home boy” himself. He will be recorded as a key figure in casting light on clerical child abuse in the North.

Jimmy called round to our house one afternoon maybe 15 years ago. We made a cup of tea and sat talking about this and that for around an hour. I had stuff to do and remember wishing he’d head off.

Jimmy had been taken “into care” as a child in Derry and lodged with the nuns. Months later, a social worker arrived, put him in a care and drove to Kircubbin in Co. Down, about 100 miles away. He was handed over to a De La Salle brother at the gate of Rubane House for Boys. The abuse started more or less immediately.

How long after he arrived?

“He took me straight into a room, he had my trousers off in ten minutes, maybe five.”

He had been collected from a Church institution by a representative of the State and delivered into the hands of his abusers in another Church institution.

A few weeks after he’d called, someone phoned and said that Jimmy had been found hanging from a fire escape on the Northern Road.

Like, I suppose, everybody in these circumstances, I was overwhelmed by grief and guilt. That had been the first and only time Jimmy had called to our house. It must have been obvious something was wrong. But there’s always something wrong. Really, how could you tell?

Christy Moore has a song, 'Everybody Knew, Nobody Said', about Ann Lovett, who died at 15 after giving birth alone in the open air on a winter’s day, January 31st 1984, at a Marian shrine beside St. Mary’s Church in Granard, County Longford. The life of her just-born baby drained away alongside her. The Blessed Virgin looked down upon them, stony-faced. St. Bernadette, child’s hands clasped in serene prayer, gazed up.

I once talked with a woman who had given birth in the 1960s at a “home” run by nuns in Donegal. Like Ann, she had had no family or friends around her to wipe her brow or whisper words of comfort, but, instead, a nun at the foot of the bed telling her repeatedly: “Now you feel the pain of your sin.” As soon as her baby was born, they took it away.

I have written before of Peggy Gibson from the Brandywell area, put into the care of the nuns at six or seven because her family’s poverty was so dire they couldn’t look after her. She was shipped in a consignment of 50 or so children to Perth in Western Australia.

Out on the ocean away from the world, she was given a new name, instructed to use no other name, told she no family, nobody ever to go back to.

“That’s the worst,” John McCourt said to me last week, “worse than anything, the sense that you have no self, no identity of your own.”

Peggy could remember Pat, her brother, swinging her around, or the pair of them sitting on a wall at the Daisy Field on the Letterkenny Road, kicking their heels on a Sunday afternoon. In later years, she came back three times and eventually located him, too late. He’d died six months before she found him.

What would you have said to him, I asked her, presumptuously. “I would have said, ‘I never gave up on you.’”

The Tuam babies we all know about, or think we do. We find now there’s also a stack of small bodies moldering in the ground at Bog Meadow beside Milltown Cemetery in Belfast.

Misogyny and child abuse have always been cross-border phenomena.

The Catholic Church deserves to be burdened with most of the blame. But lay people of secure position sang dumb and averted their eyes. The nuns didn’t snatch babies off the street. The victims were handed to them, sometimes by officers of the State, sometimes by parents of a daughter who’d broken free or just behaved as careless young ones have done since the dawn of time.

There’s many to be held to account, but many, too, whose suffering can never be salved.

The thing to keep most vividly in mind is that everybody knew.

Sexual Violence: Victims of abuse want Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church to Come Clean

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

It seems the Boy Scouts of America, the once revered institution that showed young boys how they could grow up to be real men is, much like the Catholic Church, a haven for pedophiles.

The Boy Scouts organizations were founded by the upper class British military officer Robert Baden Powel or 1^st Baron Baden Powel to give him one of his many titles. Powell was on the front lines in the spread of British colonialism and fought in India and Africa. The female equivalent in my youth in the UK was the Girl Guides. I suppose their purpose was to “guide” the young boys along the path to becoming the men, the rugged individualists and warriors for Jesus that would make the world a safer place for European colonial power and Christendom. The famous three C’s was their goal to be honest, Christianity, Civilization and Commerce. Cecil Rhodes, Rudyard Kipling and Livingston were big fans of the three C's.

We see this today with the continued virus like spread of Evangelic Christianity out of the US in to the former colonial world. Most of the relatively few US Americans I met in Northern Queensland were missionaries from the US heading to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea to save the natives. When I think of this I am reminded of the Diego Rivera mural of the conquest of Mexico with the Conquistador, sword in hand held above a native and behind him the priest with the crucifix, the twin weapons of colonial power.

The Boy Scouts of America is in bankruptcy proceedings in order to protect its assets against some 275 law suits from victims of sexual abuse. There are also thousands of others whose claims have not yet been filed, some as young as five years old.

The bankruptcy proceedings are not only an effort to protect billions of dollars in “…land, buildings, cash and investments….”, the Boy Scouts of America owns, it is also an attempt to keep the internal findings of the organization closed to the public. Lawyers for the victims are pushing for  a list of more than 7,800 “alleged pedophiles” that the organization has in its internal files and wants to keep private. Adding to the already known cases are those who were sexually abused that the Scouts knew about and did nothing.

As this is occurring, the cases against the abuse of boys in the Catholic Church are ongoing. The Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg PA has also filed for bankruptcy after Pennsylvania’s state attorney general released a grand jury report that detailed decades of sexual abuse of young children. The Wall Street Journal reports that since the release of the grand jury’s report, hundreds more have come forward with claims of sexual abuse by priests.

Money plays a huge role in all of this perversion and the cover up. The football scandal and abuse of young boys was another example. There was so much money involved people had too much too lose, the pressure too great

The reports we read about in the mass media about sexual abuse of children is surely the tip of the iceberg. The family is perhaps the greatest source of child abuse and infanticide as it is safe to a great degree as the family is some sacred social unit blessed by the religious authorities, corrupt and rotten institutions themselves. Violence against women is also protected to a great degree by the supposed sanctity of the patriarchal capitalist family structure. The family is an economic unit and while women, in western society anyway, have made great progress and achieved some financial independence from men, money and in the US especially, ownership of property, plays a huge roll in maintaining the family unit long after the love or what one thought was love has gone.

It amazes me how people can question why women waited for years before coming forward in the Harvey Weinstein case. The reasons they give are so obviously valid;, everything you have worked for can be taken away. The same in all the examples of sexual abuse like those working class women who came forward to expose the rapist and friend of Trump Roy Brown of Alabama fame. And there are many women that have accused the degenerate in the White House. What's happened there? And you wonder why they keep their mouths shut. Then there is the shame, the guilt. 

I worked in a fairly safe workplace compared to the private sector but sometimes it was impossible to get some “tough guys” to sign a damn petition to defend someone from harassment. One of them was a right wing character who said that if the government came after his guns he’d take his “piece” or all of his pieces, and head up to the mountains. What on earth is this macho, Rambo nonsense? You can’t even sign a petition to support a co-worker your afraid of reprisal. And as that comedian said recently, if you support the Second Amendment because you're afraid of the government you don't know how tanks work.

There is that ancient riddle, I can’t remember the source, but it asked what first walks on four legs, then on two then on three. The answer is the human; first as a baby, (four) then as an adult (two) and then as an old aged person with a cane. Children and the aged are among the most vulnerable in society and often the most abused. As I get older I look back on my youth and how it was drummed in to my head to respect older people. You got up from a seat when an older person needed one or a pregnant woman or the disabled. Someone robbing a person in a wheelchair would have been almost unheard of. How times have changed. Capitalist ideology, naked self interest, individualism, personal gratification with no concern for others, and the break up of community and the sheer desperation and poverty people find themselves is at the root of this. Taking advantage of the weak and having that type of personality is a virtue and the road to success. There will be great shocks out of which a powerful working class movement will arise in the US and it is through these struggles the collective consciousness of the working class will express itself.

The Boy Scouts of America has seen a huge decline in membership over the past decade and the credibility of the Catholic Church, once the official church of the European Feudal Aristocracy and then Capitalism has hit rock bottom. Society would be better off were both these institutions to take the path of the Dodo.

The Catholic Church: Lies Misogyny and Homophobia.

John Paul 11 thanks statue for saving his life

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I have not been a friend of the Catholic Church as anyone who reads this blog understands by now. I am from a Catholic family although my parents weren’t religious and never went to church as far as I can recall.

But when we moved to a small English village after my father left the army, we were the only Catholics in that village I think and while I never experienced any religious prejudice from the locals, my sister and me were very unhappy in the local school. To this day, the thought of the teacher I had nauseates me. For whatever reason, because we were not local people or because we were Catholics, I don’t really know, she hated me and my sister who was younger was equally mistreated. The woman that taught me had no right being a teacher. She was cruel. So my parents sent us to the Catholic school in Banbury, a north Oxfordshire town about 12 miles away.

For a while I was going to Sunday mass at the US air base in the next village which was a bit of an embarrassing experience. The “Yanks” as we called them, used to put paper money in the alms plate and I put in sixpence. They had a lot of money back then.

On Sundays, a Jesuit priest used to bicycle out to the village from Heythrop College and spend the afternoon with me talking and I assume giving me religious instruction of sorts. I remember he never wore a dog collar whatever that thing is called and I have fond memories of our conversations. I was growing up in a pub and my home life, like so many of us, was not always warm and nurturing despite my mother’s best efforts to make it so.

The way I see it, all of the established organized religions have little to do with spirituality or a persons belief that there is some sort of force out there that set this all in motion. And they certainly all have one thing in common, they are patriarchal and extremely misogynistic.

The new Chancellor of Trinity College Dublin and former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese is waging a war to change the Catholic Church and its misogyny. She said this week that the Catholic priesthood is based on a“fundamental lie” about sexuality and that men attracted to the priesthood had a “deeply problematic” sexuality as those not heterosexual have to pretend to be.  "The number of fake-hetero misogynistic, homophobic gays I met frightened me.", she added, and we all know now that the institution, along with other religious organizations, are frequently havens for pedophiles.

There has been an ongoing struggle to allow priests to marry and against the oppression of women and nuns in the church, some nuns have been threatened with excommunication for this.

McAleese also said that after years in a seminary studying Canon Law (the Catholic equivalent of Sharia Law). “I Became very much aware of the dysfunction at the heart of seminary life and the dysfunction at the heart of much of the priesthood.”.  Not unlike psychotherapists, teachers or any other authority figure, as pastors, McAleese says, “Their capacity for dispersing misery is really immense…”  I would add that the difference with priests is they are supposed to be closer to god.

Included in McAleese’s comments are a couple of quotes from a book of theology titled Love and Theology by the late Pope John Paul 11. The man who I was told was god’s representative on Earth and infallible (could not sin) wrote that a woman’s role in the sex act in the marriage, “is a comparatively passive partner whose function it is to accept and experience.”

God’s vicar goes further in his book, “For the purpose of the sex act, it is enough for her to be passive, and unresisting so much that so that it can even take place without her volition while she is in a state in which she has no awareness at all of what is happening----for instance, when she is asleep or unconscious.”

Ms  McAllese points out further that there was opposition to this view from a late Irish priest Fr. Seán Fagan who openly questioned it correctly claiming it sounded like rape. Fagan was censured sand silenced by the Vatican Inc. while the author of the misogynistic tract was made a Saint.

In the multitude of cover ups of pedophile priests, many were just moved on to greener pastures. One can only image the field day a habitual rapist of children would have being sent in to indigenous communities in colonial countries.

I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone can remain in such an institution but if they feel so compelled, they should at least be openly waging a campaign to change it as Ms. McAleese appears to be.

I have been accused of being opposed to people’s belief in a creator. Who can prevent that? I believe people should be allowed to believe what they want and to express it without fear. My biggest problem with it is that the worship of a supreme being is sanctioned by the state, legitimized as something real, like science.  It is up to people to decide as individuals and religion should be a private matter. But when we talk of indoctrination there is none greater than religious thought as it is given this credibility by the state. It is a very useful political tool in maintaining social control and dividing the working class in our struggle to actually change the world in a real way.  We are taught it from the minute we are born, by our parents, the pulpit and society as a whole.

This is the issue I have with university degrees of religious knowledge, whether it is Canon Law, Theology or any other name. We have degrees in Geek Mythology and perhaps Roman Mythology because their gods are not divine as defined by the state. Christian, Islamic or Jewish theology is as much mythology as these though.

As Marx pointed out, all those that believe in a supernatural being as creator believe all others’ gods are “mad made” while theirs is divine. When something exists only in the imagination of the believer, it’s hard to contest it.

Pakistan: Rape of 7 year old in New Year Sparks Protests

The rape and murder of a young girl in Pakistan has sparked calls for #JusticeforZainab around the world, amid anger over a spate of unresolved child sex crimes in the conservative nation. (Image: Reuters) *

Effective awareness raising and reporting processes way forward in curbing increase in child sexual abuse cases

Friday, 12th January 2018: The brutal rape and murder of a seven-year old girl in Kasur, consequent slack in the police’s investigation and ensuing violence against demonstrators seeking justice for the child is a deplorable situation for the state authorities to be in.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said in a statement: “subsequent dismissal of the concerned police officials or suo motu action by an appellate court as a response to tragic cases like that of Zainab’s, are not permanent nor effective solutions in fighting the plague of child sexual abuse in the country, but  are simply a way to allay the public’s emotions temporarily. Can the provincial government explain how or why demonstrators were fired at in Kasur the day Zainab’s case became public and in which two people were killed? Can the provincial government share what relief measures have been provided to the child victims of sexual abuse in Kasur in prior cases and what measures it has taken generally to curb this menace permanently? After the introduction of the 18th Amendment, it is the responsibility of provincial governments to devise child protection policies appropriate to their part of the country. Can the provincial governments provide details of their progress in this regard?”  

Disturbing trends, such as that more than 11 children under the age of 18 are sexually abused daily and that most victims are murdered after assault, are indicating a widespread menace that requires prompt and strict as well as sustainable action by the relevant authorities. In 2016, 4139 incidents of child sexual abuse took place where 43 percent of survivors were known to the offenders, while 16 percent of the reported cases showed family members as the perpetrators.

HRCP’s fact finding report on the child pornography scandal in Kasur in 2015 revealed that several such cases were reported but only after being highlighted in the mainstream media. When parents of the victims were asked why they had not reported the abuse in a timely manner, they offered two reasons: (i) the social stigma attached to such incidents; and (ii) the atrocious behavior of the police with those who reported it in a timely manner.

The helpline launched by the Child Protection Bureau Punjab a few years ago was a commendable step. However, the utility and importance of the helpline was not disseminated in an effective way. The helpline needs to be made more accessible and children enrolled in schools and seminaries should be made aware of its scope.

Mass media should also realize that for such tragedies, besides responsible and vigorous reporting, adequate follow-up on reported cases is vital for accountability and as a long-term solution to such horrific incidents.

Our provincial governments must take steps to include these themes in school curricula to make pupils and their families aware of such sensitive issues and empower them to protect themselves. They should be made aware of contact persons or facilities they can immediately approach if facing such situations.

As a nation, we are responsible for protecting our children and should together play an effective role in addressing this menace.

Dr. Mehdi Hasan

Chairperson

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)
107-Tipu Block, New Garden Town, Lahore - 54600
Phone: (92-42) 35845969 Fax: (92-42) 35883582
eMail: hrcp@hrcp-web.org
* Image not with the original

Bedari, is a women's and children's rights organization in Pakistan if the readers want to know more about these issues. Bedari also focuses on sexual violence against women and children. It is not connected to the HRCP as far as FFWP knows. Bedaris' website is: http://www.bedari.org.pk/
Bedari FB page: https://www.facebook.com/BedariPakistan/

Video: Tuam and the Catholic Church's Brutal History in Ireland

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

We have covered this story previously on this blog. It is about the children's bones found at the home in Tuam Ireland. These were mostly likely children that had not been baptized as according to Christian/Catholic mythology a child that is not baptized can't get in to heaven. I think that's what Limbo was for until some pope decided Limbo was a computer glitch and didn't really exist.

It is no wonder the Catholic Church has lost the power it once had in Ireland, and a huge aspect of this loss is due to the revolt of women and the struggle of women to control their own bodies and reproduction.

Over the centuries, the Catholic Church, once the religion of European feudalism, has become the dominant religion bolstering the power and spread of capitalism. In Latin America and other possessions of European colonialism it followed the conquistadors and the armies of Europe in the theft of material wealth and culture. I remember first seeing the Diego Rivera mural in Mexico city, the one with the Conquistador standing tall, looming forward with sword in hand over or at a native person. Behind the Conquistador was the priest with the crucifix held high. The choices for the colonized was the sword or the cross, in most cases, large doses of both. The same choices were offered the poor and working masses at home.

The Catholic Church is not the only institution of mass murder. Organized religion is not about god or spirituality, an attempt by decent honest people to explain and understand the world around them. Religion is indeed the opiate of the masses and the ruling class is the pushers.  In the French revolution the officials of the church split along class lines too, the priests among the poor having a different world view with the bishops and other church hierarchy standing strong with the feudal aristocracy and the rising bourgeois.  We saw the same in Latin America with the Liberation Theology that the Catholic hierarchy and the Vatican suppressed with violence when necessary.

The new Italian pope from Argentina was present during the years of the disappeared, when dissenters were often taken in planes over the Atlantic and dropped in to the sea. The US did the same with Vietnamese peasants.  The pope admonished greedy capitalism, he cannot avoid it given the conditions that exist today among the workers and poor of the world.  But he offers no alternative. It's just sinful evil people, greedy capitalists, crony capitalism.

The Catholic church has lost much of its power in Ireland but not all. As in Russia today, and here in the US, the top clergy and the religious institutions are intertwined with the ruling class and the state. But the Vatican's ability to control life and indeed, the economic and political progress of the Irish nation has been severely curbed.

Check out this video that we published some time ago. It's very powerful. Magdalene Laundries, Rape and Forced Labor.

Alan Dershowitz Defends Female Genital Mutilation

“Earlier this year, a 7-year-old girl from Minnesota entered an examination room at a clinic just outside of Detroit. Thinking this was a regular visit, she allowed the doctor to remove her pants and underwear and place her on the examination table. Suddenly, while two women in the clinic held her hands, the physician spread her legs and cut her clitoris.” *

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

It’s hard to read an article that starts like this. This butchering of a 7 year old took place not in Somalia or Ethiopia, but right here in the US in a clinic outside Detroit Michigan. The doctor that cut this young child’s clitoris (in the video below) has been charged with conspiracy to commit female genital mutilation. I am not sure what the difference is between conspiracy to commit and committing an offense really is but one can only feel horror and anger that this young child was savaged in this way.
 

The author of this WSJ commentary Kristina Arriaga quotes a study claiming that 500,000 girls in the US “have undergone the procedure or are at risk”.  When doctors can’t be found she points out, then fathers have performed the butchery with scissors and other sharp objects and often take their children to other countries where the process is legal. A Unicef report claims that at least 200 million girls and women in 30 countries have been subjected to some form of genital mutilation.

In the case in Michigan, the victim, or her parents I would guess, belong to a religious sect that claims the clitoris is a “sinful lump of flesh” and they remove it in order to prevent a woman form becoming promiscuous.

The doctor’s legal team in this case is arguing that this attack on the doctor (and the girl’s family I suppose) is a violation of religious freedom. The author of the piece disputes this and has her view of what religious freedom actually is but what’s interesting is who is representing the doctor and defending religious freedom, the freedom to mutilate and torture a young child.  Alan Dershowitz, the famed lawyer who was involved on the OJ case is on the team. Dershowitz is an ardent Zionist and defender of Zionist atrocities against Palestinians.

Politics makes Strange Bedfellows

It does not take rocket science to figure out why Dershowitz is keen to defend this butchery. As a Jew he is concerned that male genital mutilation, what we call circumcision, is at risk if this case loses.  Here is Dershowitz, and another Jewish lawyer, Mayer Morganroth, whose services are being funded by an international Muslim organization that supports the genital mutilation of young girls.

There can be no doubt in my mind that it is the barbaric rite of male circumcision that Dershowitz is concerned about.  I wrote a piece condemning circumcision some years ago and a few people attacked me for the same reasons, I was threatening religious freedom and also, some hinted I was bordering on anti-semitism.

So Dershowitz, who has no love for the Muslims in Israel/Palestine, is taking Muslim money to defend their right to mutilate this young child’s genitalia and his to mutilate his sons.  He is also concerned about its continuing legality as there have been some cases where in religious circumcision, done by a Mohel in the Jewish faith, the baby has contracted hepatitis or infections due to some sucking procedure the Mohel does. There were court cases about this in New York City, I suggest the reader Google it.

In Britain when I grew up, circumcision (except for religious reasons) was not so common. Most of the boys I grew up with were not circumcised. I still get a little irritated when people defend it on the basis that it is this “extra flap of skin”. It’s “extra” is it? Then they claim it is a hygiene issue. That’s a fine defense for genital cutting. I accept that circumcision does not destroy young men or turn them in to monsters. My problem is that the child has no say. It is not simply a physical assault on the child it is a legal one as well, they do not get to decide what is happening to them, a surgical procedure performed solely because of mythological religious scripts. I don't believe in religious freedom when it is used in this way. I believe a person has a right to believe in gods and be free of persecution for it not free to mutilate a child.

I would bet on this. If this supernatural god-force told Abraham that all his male descendants should be circumcised when they reach the age of 25, there would be a lot more foreskins out there.

* Cutting Young Girls Isn’t Religious Freedom. The First Amendment doesn’t protect the barbaric act of female genital mutilation. Kristina Arriaga WSJ 8-24-17

A Poem for the The Tuam Babies

Tuam Orphanage

Heavy Clogs

Jun 2014

a poem about the mass grave at Tuam

I’m the local schoolmistress

who worked hard to know

the zilch I knew about this.

I’m the Department Inspector

who remembered

the questions not to ask.

I’m the concerned citizen who never

heard their heavy clogs go,

by forced marches, up the Dublin Road.

I’m the editor of the Tuam Herald,

who talked instead about

the Pope’s visit.

I’m the Government Minister whose pink skull

baldly admired the particular yellow

of the roses by the newly whitewashed wall,

and thanked the nuns for their work.

I’m the County Councillor concerned

about the cost to the ratepayer

-per skeleton- of piling that many small ones

of whom no one had ever heard,

into a disused hole in the ground

–one big concrete sarcophagus–

no one knew anything about.

KEVIN HIGGINS

Ireland: Babies deaths, the left, and Catholic Church power.

 As children of unwed mothers, the dead babies were not baptized

By John Throne

When my father would come home drunk all I ever heard from my mother was “You will put us all in the workhouse with your drinking.” The workhouse was the great terror in her life. Its name was then changed to the County Home. It was in Stranorlar. 

I am very keen to hear what demands Comrades who read this blog, or left Comrades in general are putting forward on the issue and the power of the role of the Catholic Church in Ireland. I see where a Protestant organization/church in Dublin has now also been caught with a mass grave. This makes things both easier and more urgent to clarify and raise demands. 

Comrades I have to say that over the recent years I have been surprised at the reluctance of people on the left to take on the structure of the Catholic Church in Ireland and point out its role and power. Paddy Devlin was one of the few well-known left politicians to do so for all his faults. He said that the Catholic Church blocked the development of the left at every turn and as a result every radical movement from below had nowhere to go except sectarian republicanism. 

I was recently in Derry and had to meet a man there that I knew. He was not a socialist. But he knew me and my opinions very well. He said he had to call a few places to collect something and then we would go on to our destination. I said fine and thought no more about it. After a few stops we arrived at the Catholic Church and in he went and delivered the money he had been collecting at the stops he had been dragging me----an atheist and Marxist-----around to. I was enraged that he had involved me in collecting money for that outfit. I broke off all relations with him after this. 

I raised this with a Comrade who is an atheist and former leading member and full timer of the old CWI, the socialist organization from which I was expelled. I said how about if I had taken that other man, the devout Catholic, around and collected money for the Orange Order and never told him what I was doing? Would he not be enraged? This Comrade said he would never have thought about it like this. I was and am astounded that he would not. It shows the depth of the indoctrination of the Catholic Church over its members. The difference between the Orange Order and the Catholic Church is mainly one of power.  

The Catholic Church campaigned from the pulpit for the move to the National Wage agreements in

Onward Christian soldiers

the early 1970's. The Catholic Church set up a committee at the time to set the wage for its lowest rank male full time workers that it calls priests. Donal Nevin, a top trade union official was brought on to the committee. This was to pretend that the labor movement was involved. This committee set a wage for these full time church workers which was three times that of the income of a single mother with three children. Am I not also right in thinking that when it looked like the Stalinist WP was going to take over the ITGWU the Catholic church mobilized its brainwashed members in the trade union and labor bureaucracy and merged the ITGWU and the FWUI and kept the "commies" out. We are dealing with an extremely powerful and conscious political organization of capitalism in the Catholic Church. The Protestant churches are also churches of capitalism but the Catholic Church with its 1.1 billion members, its own state and with diplomatic rights in countries it has a presence, is the main one. 

The US ambassador to the Vatican said that the moral power of the Catholic Church and the

economic power of the US would bring down Stalinism. He was not far wrong. the Catholic hierarchy held many meetings with top strategists of US imperialism as Stalinism began to crack. Google this and you will be astounded at how much information comes up. The popes of the time made trip after to trip to the Stalinist countries to whip up their supporters and make sure that Stalinism was followed by capitalism and not democratic socialism.

So back to Ireland. There will be no successful socialist revolution in Ireland that does not take on the Catholic Church just as there will not be on in the US that does not take on institutionalized racism or sexism. Look at the role such outfits played in the Russian revolution and the Spanish Civil war and the dirty wars in Latin America. The Catholic Church will use the sword by means of mobilizing its members. The left must not be intimidated in the present situation. There is a chance now to strike a serious blow at all the churches and their support for capitalism. For this some cutting edge demands must be developed. I am not in Ireland so I cannot be sure. But some I would suggest: 

No religious organizations to be allowed to control any school, place of education or hospital. 

All who see themselves as progressive and revolutionary leave any organization that is based on sectarianism. 

All organizations that discriminate on gender or LGBT basis to be shunned and all who think of themselves as progressive to leave these organizations. If they cannot leave them build opposition groups within them. 

All who think of themselves as progressive not to allow their children to be named in such organizations and not themselves to marry or be buried in these outfits. 

Tax all religious organizations. 

Open up a debate on whether organizations such as the churches and houses of all religious organizations with their criminal records should be banned from owning property. 

Readers of this blog that know me will know that I was born into a Protestant Orange Order family. My uncle who brought me up was the "Worshipful District Master" they use the fancy titles too like the churches. I broke from that background ended up in the Bogside where I was on the Bogside Citizens Defense Association. I went on to become a revolutionary socialist and remain so and also an uncompromising atheist. Revolutionaries in Ireland must consider have they fully broken from their religious indoctrination whether Protestant or Catholic. 

If what I hear is right and there is not a united front of direct action to force the issue of the mass graves of children on to the parliaments North and South and to end the control by the religious organizations over so much of society then I am worried.  

If this is the case then a great opportunity is being missed. And if as some Comrade says FF and FG are taking up this issue then of course they are. But the question is why can they? They can only do so with any impetus if the left does not take it up and takes it up in the way I suggest that is by showing how weak Irish capitalism made a deal with the Catholic church and gave it control over the workhouses, children's homes, schools and hospitals. It was in a hospital like this that the Indian doctor, Savita Happanavar died after her pleas to terminate her pregnancy due to a miscarriage were refused.  She was told, “This is a Catholic Country.”

As I pointed out in a previous blog, the Irish capitalist class were too weak to lead the struggle for independence in Ireland. (See Trotsky's Theory of the Permanent Revolution. The capitalist parties will not take on the Catholic Church and its control over Irish society.  Irish capitalism and the Catholic hierarchy are both responsible, this alliance is responsible for the mass graves just as this alliance is responsible for the Magdalene Laundries, orphanages and women who were imprisoned in them.

The issue must be taken up in this way because now the mass media is trying to blame the "Irish People." Anything to get their class and its allies the Catholic and Protestant hierarchies off the hook.