Lese Majeste Law

Thai protester accused of mocking queen gets 2 years' prison


 Pro-democracy protesters perform on a mock "red carpet" fashion show billed as a sort of counterpoint to a fashion show being held by one of the monarchy's princesses nearby in Bangkok, Thailand on Oct. 29, 2020. A court in Thailand on Monday, Sept. 12, 2022 sentenced an activist to two years in prison for insulting the country's queen by wearing traditional Thai attire at a demonstration two years ago for reform of the monarchy, a legal watchdog group said. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

TASSANEE VEJPONGSA  

Mon, September 12, 2022 

BANGKOK (AP) — A court in Thailand on Monday sentenced an activist to two years in prison for allegedly insulting the country’s queen by wearing traditional Thai attire at a demonstration for reform of the monarchy two years ago, a legal aid group said.

Jatuporn “New” Saeoueng wore a pink dress while a fellow protester held an umbrella over her as she walked down a red carpet at a mock fashion show held in the street in downtown Bangkok on Oct. 29, 2020.

The rally was billed as a counterpoint to a fashion show being held by Princess Sirivannavari Nariratana, a daughter of King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

Vajiralongkorn’s wife, Queen Suthida, dresses in elegant silk fashions for formal and public occasions. Members of the royal family have attendants often holding ceremonial umbrellas over them on such occasions.

The group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights said Bangkok’s Criminal Court initially sentenced Jatuporn to three years’ imprisonment for violating the lese majeste law — which makes defaming the monarch or his immediate family punishable by a prison term of three to 15 years per offense — and the Public Safety Act. She was also fined 1,000 baht ($27.50). The sentence was immediately reduced to two years.

Jatuporn was sent to the Central Women’s Correctional Institution pending another court’s ruling on her request to be freed on bail.

The protest was one in a series in 2020-2021 that originally demanded political changes, including new elections and a more democratic constitution, but expanded to call for reform of the monarchy.

Protesters charged that King Vajiralongkorn wields an inordinate amount of power in what is nominally a democracy under a constitutional monarchy. The monarchy has long been considered an untouchable institution, revered by a large part of the population.

The protest movement later lost momentum due to controls imposed to fight the coronavirus pandemic and a government legal offense against protest leaders.

According to Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, since November 2020 there have been 210 people charged with a total of 229 violations of the lese majeste law. Thirteen cases have come to trial, and charges were dismissed in three of them.

“I have no intention to mock anyone. I dressed for myself on that day, for a version of myself in a Thai traditional dress,” Jatuporn said in an interview posted online ahead of Monday’s court ruling, "And today, I dress the same way to show that this is just me, in a Thai traditional dress and to ask -- what’s wrong with that?(asterisk)

Jatuporn, who faces six more charges related to her protest activities, said she would appeal her case all the way up to the Supreme Court if necessary.

“The mock fashion show was a satirical take on the political situation of the country – a peaceful public event akin to a street festival with music, food and dancing,” Kyle Ward, deputy secretary general of the human rights group Amnesty International, said in an emailed statement. "Participants should not be punished for participating in a peaceful assembly.(asterisk)(asterisk)

"We urge the authorities to immediately drop all charges against those who have merely exercised their human rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and release those arbitrarily detained.(asterisk)(asterisk)

——-

Associated Press writer Grant Peck contributed to this report.

Philippine lawmaker seeks to abolish agency recovering Marcos wealth


A Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG)

 official shows a jewellery set of the confiscated jewellery collection

 of former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos during the appraisal 

by Sotheby's inside the Central Bank headquarters 


Mon, September 12, 2022 

MANILA (Reuters) - A Philippines lawmaker has submitted a bill seeking to scrap a commission tasked with recovering billions of dollars in wealth plundered during the rule of the president's late father, arguing it has "outlived it usefulness".

The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) has since 1986 retrieved about $5 billion from the family of incumbent President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, but about $2.4 billion is still caught up in litigation.

The PCGG was established a few days after the elder Marcos fled a popular uprising against his two decades of decadent rule at the helm of what many historians consider one of Asia's most famous kleptocracies.

Marcos Sr died in exile in Hawaii in 1989, after which his family returned to the Philippines to launch a comeback that culminated in his son's landslide election victory in May.

Congressman Bienvenido Abante, who filed the bill, said the commission had run its course.

"If after that long period of time, they failed to establish whether the sequestered assets are ill-gotten or not and who are the owners of these assets, they will not be able to do so even if we would give it another hundred years," he said.

During election campaigning, the Marcos family insisted its vast fortune was legitimately obtained and the commission was merely an "anti-Marcos agency".

Part of the billions recovered has been used to compensate thousands of victims of state brutality during the notorious 1970s martial law era of the late Marcos.

An attempt to abolish the commission in 2018 was vetoed by the previous president, but the latest effort is unlikely to face resistance, with Marcos commanding a legislative super-majority.

His cousin is lower house speaker, his son is a congressman and his sister a senator, underlining the power and influence still wielded by the Marcos family, decades after its humiliating retreat.

The president's press secretary did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the bill.

Opposition Akbayan partylist vowed to block it, calling it "an attempt to abolish the country's sense of justice and history".

(Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by Martin Petty)

OIL FUND INVESTS IN ICE
Porsche IPO Draws Commitment From Norwegian Wealth Fund

Swetha Gopinath and Tommaso Ebhardt
Tue, September 13, 2022 


(Bloomberg) -- Volkswagen AG has lined up commitments from anchor investors including the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund as it pushes ahead with a listing of its Porsche AG unit, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Norges Bank Investment Management has agreed to buy stock in what’s set to be one of Europe’s largest initial public offerings, the people said. VW is discussing seeking a valuation of around 70 billion euros ($70 billion) to 85 billion euros, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private.

Other big-name investors like T Rowe Price Group Inc. have separately indicated interest in subscribing to the IPO, Bloomberg News reported last month. Qatar Investment Authority has made a preliminary commitment to buy a 4.99% stake, VW said this month.

Dietrich Mateschitz, the billionaire founder of energy drink brand Red Bull, also held talks about buying stock in the offering, the people said. However, he is no longer likely to proceed with an investment after the collapse of a potential Formula 1 partnership between Porsche and Red Bull, two of the people said.

VW aims to finalize a price range for the Porsche offering over the weekend and start taking investor orders early next week, the people said. The company is telling fund managers that preliminary investor interest is already enough to cover the deal several times over, one of the people said.

Deliberations are ongoing, and details of the share sale could still change, the people said. Representatives for VW, Porsche and Norges Bank Investment Management declined to comment. A spokesperson for Mateschitz didn’t immediately respond to emailed queries.

The listing is set to reopen European markets, which have been largely shut for the most part of the year with investors shying away from equity offerings due to an energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, higher interest rates and elevated inflation.

IPO investors will be sold preferred shares in Porsche that don’t carry voting rights. The billionaire Porsche and Piech clan, which controls VW, is separately buying common stock that will give it a blocking minority stake in Porsche.

Analysts at HSBC Holdings Plc, which doesn’t have a role on the offering, wrote in a note Tuesday that Porsche is worth just 44.5 billion euros to 56.9 billion euros. The carmaker’s pricing power may wane as supply recovers over the next two years, while demand may take a hit under a recessionary environment, analysts including Edoardo Spina wrote.

Besides volatile markets, Porsche is also contending with corporate governance concerns. Some investors have voiced doubts about the surprise appointment of the unit’s chief executive to the helm of VW, which will continue to hold the bulk of its shares.

The share sale will help direct funds to Europe’s biggest carmaker to foot the staggering cost of electrification and software development.

Zara Billionaire Ortega Bets $700 Million on US Warehouses

Rodrigo Orihuela
Tue, September 13, 2022 



(Bloomberg) -- Zara founder Amancio Ortega has spent over $700 million in recent weeks on a series of logistics acquisitions in what’s shaping up to be one of the biggest bets yet by the Spanish textile tycoon.

Ortega’s family investment company Pontegadea bought five logistics centers in the US states of Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Texas from Realty Income Corp. for about $722 million, in a deal reported by Spanish daily El Pais on Tuesday and confirmed by a Pontegadea official.

Those acquisitions come in the wake of previously announced logistics purchases, also from Realty Income, which totaled $183 million. Taken together, the moves mark a strategic step into a new area of real estate from Pontegadea’s traditional focus on buildings such as apartments and office towers.

The US logistics market has boomed in recent years thanks to the e-commerce push spurred in large part by Amazon.com Inc., with investors including KKR & Co. and Blackstone Inc. snapping up warehouses and industrial properties.

Rents on industrial properties rose 21% in the second quarter from a year earlier, with leasing volume up 6%, according to a report by Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. Pontegadea’s recently purchased logistics plants have long-term lease agreements with global players including Nestle SA, Amazon, and FedEx Corp.

Ortega has made a number of big real estate deals this year, including paying about $500 million for a 64-floor luxury apartment building in New York and agreeing to buy Toronto’s Royal Bank Plaza skyscraper for about C$1.2 billion.

Ortega’s fortune is valued at more than $46.8 billion, making him the 24th richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Pontegadea ended 2021 with a portfolio of 15.3 billion euros ($15.5 billion) in property holdings, mainly premium commercial real estate in major cities across the world.

The foray into logistics comes as the Spanish textile giant diversifies more broadly, with a range of deals including an investment in a Telefonica SA-owned subsea telecoms operator and moves in the energy business, in renewable power, electricity transmission and natural gas transport.

The bulk of Pontegadea’s income comes from Ortega’s stake in Zara owner Inditex SA, the world’s largest apparel retailer, which owns a range of clothing brands.

PowerHome Solar slashes half its workforce, discontinues NC installations in wake of Generac failures


PowerHome Solar, based in Mooresville, has filed a suit against Generac contending the equipment manufacturer provided defective equipment and, for more than a year, failed to resolve the problem.


By John Downey – Senior Staff Writer, Charlotte Business Journal
Sep 12, 2022

PowerHome Solar laid off 500 workers and stopped sales in North Carolina, Texas and Georgia today, citing losses related to defective equipment that led the company to sue its former provider last month.

This is the second round of job cuts PowerHome, doing business as Pink Energy, blames on the failure of a safety component in battery storage systems provided by equipment manufacturer Generac.

With today’s layoffs and another 600 let go last week, PowerHome has lost more than half of its workforce. At least 200 people were laid off in North Carolina last week. The company says it cannot say how many people were affected here in the current round.

CEO Jayson Waller acknowledges the cuts are impacting his company’s Mooresville headquarters.

“There is nothing worse than laying people off,” he says. “In all the businesses I’ve ever been involved with, especially this one, we’ve always had awesome growth. To have to lay off 1,100 employees is just sad.”

Solar installations halted in three states

Waller says the layoffs have come across the board for installers, electricians and customer service workers. The company has entirely shut down a few locations nationwide and has stopped selling new systems in North Carolina — its home market and its largest — as well as Texas and Georgia. It is dealing with the financial fallout of a high rate of failures in systems using the Generac equipment.


PowerHome Solar CEO Jayson Waller, pictured here at the company headquarters in Mooresville, blames the layoffs and financial damage on its former partner, electric equipment manufacturer Generac.
MELISSA KEY/CBJ

Waller says his company is continuing to service its existing systems in those three states. It is still installing solar systems in 13 states.

In its lawsuit filed Aug. 1 against Generac in federal court in Lynchburg, Virginia, PowerHome asserts it has suffered about $155 million in lost revenue due to canceled installation contracts and sales appointments.

PowerHome also contends in the suit that its valuation has plummeted to $452 million from a valuation of $1.05 billion — “a direct … result of the harm Generac’s defective products have caused to (PowerHome’s) business and reputation,” it says.

PowerHome now has 1,000 employees nationwide.

Generac says it is not to blame

Generac (NYSE: GNRC) has not yet filed its formal response to the lawsuit. But spokeswoman Tami Kou did respond to the allegations in the suit and in Waller's general public assertions.

"In certain situations, especially when product installation guidelines have not been followed, as appears to be the case with some Pink Energy installations, customers may have experienced certain issues with a particular Generac component of their solar energy system," she says. "We have introduced a new next-generation, rapid-shutdown device, which has been designed and engineered to the highest reliability standards."

She says the company is working to get those "upgrades and warranty replacements taken care of as quickly as possible."

“Generac is a leading manufacturer of solar + storage solutions, and we sell our products to a wide range of distributors and solar contractors,” she wrote in an email. “As a company, we stand behind our products and will continue to honor our customer commitments.”

Waller maintains the defects and the failures to quickly resolve them are all Generac's responsibility.
Failures lead to fire, increasing complaints

The two companies formed a partnership in early 2020 to market PowerHome solar installations with Generac batteries and system components. Waller says Generac’s status as a major public company, with around $2 billion in annual sales, made it appear a reliable and ideal partner.

But Generac had just recently expanded into the home-solar market through an acquisition. By April 2021, PowerHome realized that customers were seeing failures in a safety component meant to cut back on output from solar systems. By August of last year, failures had led to at least one fire at the home of a PowerHome customer in Kentucky. No one was injured, but Waller says the defective Generac part was to balme.

Problems were found in Generac's PWRCell system, which PowerHome had agreed to market with its solar-panel installations to make for a complete package with power management and battery storage. At issue was the "photovoltaic rapid shutdown system." That is a safety feature required in solar installations to allow emergency workers to reduce or completely shut off the output from the system to reduce the chance of injury. One of the components in that system was burning out and caused system failures, creating a hazard.

PowerHome eventually learned of failures experienced in the Generac systems by other installers. After the Kentucky fire, PowerHome says, Generac released a component upgrade to resolve the problem. But PowerHome says that fix led to new problems in which parts of the solar systems were being shut down without notice.

That reduced, and in some cases completely curtailed, output for some customer installations, leading to a significant increase in complaints to PowerHome.

Generac, Waller says, was not reimbursing PowerHome for repairs it had to do on Generac equipment. And he says, when PowerHome finally prevailed on Generac to take on the repairs itself, the manufacturer has dragged its feet and left PowerHome customers with faulty operations of their systems.

BBB raises flag, PowerHome starts business as Pink Energy

The increase in complaints was flagged by the Better Business Bureau in the spring. Customers complained of poor power output and long delays in repairs. The BBB temporarily withdrew its A+ rating for Pink Energy, as it is listed with the bureau, and gave it an a "not rated" designation. That hurt the company's reputation, Waller says. But PowerHome worked with the BBB to explain the situation and to explain what it would do to address the complaints, and the bureau restored the rating.

"Pink Energy recently terminated their relationship with Generac, a key supplier of batteries and components for their solar installations," the bureau said in an Aug. 24 update to the rating. "BBB believes that this step is addressing the product quality issues."

PowerHome began doing business under the name Pink Energy in April, as the issues with the Generac systems worsened.

Waller has called on Generac to issue a recall of its control systems, which he contends are a safety hazard. He says that about 40% of the Generac systems installed by PowerHome have experienced some kind of failure. He says PowerHome discontinued its partnership with Generac when it filed the lawsuit.

Kou rejects those assertions and says PowerHome unilaterally ended the partnership when parts are readily available to resolve the customer issues.

"It is unfortunate that Pink Energy appears to not want to take any accountability for their actions," she says. "By their inflammatory public statements and the lawsuit, we believe Pink Energy may be hoping to distract customers from the many complaints and allegations that reportedly have been leveled against them regarding poor installation and service, as well as public accounts of dubious marketing claims and sales tactics."

In 2021, PowerHome was ranked seventh among 228 home solar installers in the U.S. by Solar Power World. It has installed systems for about 35,000 customers and made the Inc. 5000 list of the nation’s fastest-growing companies in four of the last five years.

A BOY AND HIS DOG

After risky journey, migrant and his dog say goodbye at U.S. border


Asylum-seeking migrants cross the Rio Bravo river in Ciudad Juarez

Mon, September 12, 2022

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - Venezuelan migrant Brayan Pinto, 18, and his small fluffy white dog, Brandy, trekked together across several countries and a treacherous tropical jungle to reach the U.S.-Mexico border.

On Sunday, the two companions had to say goodbye.

"She's been with me for two years," Pinto said, hugging the fluffy animal with the pink collar - a mix of Pekingese and toy poodle - within view of El Paso, Texas.

Brandy had been a gift from his mother before her death to become his emotional support pet, and the little dog had crossed several borders with him.

"Now that we've reached the United States, they tell me I have to leave her because she can't cross to the other side," he said.

Before walking alone towards the U.S. border, Pinto recalled their long journey together, including nine days through the notoriously dangerous Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia.

"Leaving her is like leaving a family member," Pinto said.

Then he sadly put Brandy into the arms of a photo journalist who had agreed to take care of her in Mexico, and nestled his face into her curly fur for a final farewell.

CANADA

Indigenous Woman Attacked By Mob Of White People For Not Wearing A Bra

Kui Mwai, BLAVITY  Mon, September 12, 2022

A horrifying video of an Indigenous woman being attacked by a mob of white people for not wearing a bra has gone viral on Twitter. The clip, shared and taken by the victim Laura Gagnon, shows the mob accosting her, and one suspect — who the police have yet to publicly identify — appears to strike her.

“Yesterday evening I was attacked by a white woman who was upset I was wearing no bra,” Gagnon shared in a tweet alongside a video of the incident. “I utilized IG live to record her actions against me. I have never experienced a white mob chasing me and it’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life. Please be safe out there.”

The footage shows the incident, which occurred last Wednesday, begin with a verbal altercation between Gagnon and another woman. Two women then approach Gagnon as she questions why she, as an Indigenous woman, would be body-shamed on unceded Algonquin territory, the Ottawa Citizen reports.

“Don’t touch me b***h,” she shouts as one of the women appears to physically assault her.

Things escalate as the mobsters realize Gagnon is filming. One woman is heard screaming, “Stop filming.” She appears to hit Gagnon again, this time knocking her down to the ground as more screaming ensues.

Gagnon struggles to get up and get her things, including her phone, which the mobsters had snatched from her. The video cuts and we see Gagnon in her car explaining what just happened.

“Guys, I’m being attacked right now,” she says, breathless. “And none of these people…” her voice trails off as the mobsters bang and knock on her doors. The woman who allegedly hit her is shown climbing on the hood of her car.

“This lady is attacking me right now,” Gagnon says in the video. She later says that she believes the woman attacked her because she wasn’t wearing a bra.

According to the Ottawa Citizen, police were called to the Billings Bridge area in Ottawa, Canada, where the incident occurred after reports of a “collision.” Investigators deemed Gagnon had been assaulted, charged the suspects and took them into custody. Later, they were released after being served a notice to appear in court.

Authorities are describing the incident as a “verbal altercation that escalated into a physical altercation.”

While appearing in court, the unnamed 37-year-old suspect is said to be charged with assault and mischief.

The Ottawa Police Service Hate and Bias Crime Unit has also reviewed the case, though no hate-crime-related charges have been filed.

New Zealand child abuse survivors call for intervention from Pope Francis

FILE PHOTO: A general view of St.Peter's square at the Vatican

Mon, September 12, 2022 

By Praveen Menon

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A New Zealand group representing survivors of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has called on Pope Francis to intervene in the redress process, claiming that church authorities were mishandling it and retraumatising victims.

In a letter sent to the Vatican and seen by Reuters, the New Zealand chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a global organisation for child abuse victims, accused church officials in New Zealand of breaching procedures for managing abuse complaint cases.

"Most sadly, we are being harmed by the very Church office set up to provide healing," Christopher Longhurst, the National Leader for SNAP Aotearoa New Zealand, said in his letter to the Pope.

Longhurst said in the letter that while publicly the leaders of the local Catholic church extend an "open hand to the hope of healing", behind closed doors they traumatise survivors a second time by violating their own procedures.

"Given the lack of an authentic and honest path to healing in New Zealand’s Catholic Church, we would like to ask

for Your Holiness to intervene," Longhurst said in the letter, that was mailed to the Vatican last Friday.

It was not clear if the pope, who receives hundreds of letters sent through the regular mail each day, had yet seen it.

Longhurst told Reuters the mishandling included a denial of adequate investigative process, denial of fair review of process, stalling and divergence, and also a general lack of compassion.

Church leaders in New Zealand said they were continually updating and improving the complaints and disclosure processes to help survivors of abuse.

The letter to the pope comes amid an ongoing public inquiry into the physical and sexual abuse at faith-based and state care institutions in New Zealand, which found in 2020 that up to a quarter of a million children, young people and vulnerable adults were abused over the last few decades. Indigenous Maori accounted for a large share of the victims.

It is one of longest and most complex commissions of inquiry undertaken in New Zealand.

An interim report from the Royal Commission inquiry noted that no audit of the redress process had been carried out yet.

The Royal Commission did not respond to a request for comment. It will make recommendations to the government in its final report next year.

SNAP's complaints were targeted at the Catholic Church’s National Office for Professional Standards (NOPS) that is tasked with administering Te Houhanga Rongo (A Path To Healing), a redress process in response to abuse complaints.

The New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference, which established NOPS, said bishops and congregational leaders have listened to survivors through the inquiry hearings and implemented changes.

"The Church leadership is continually updating and improving the complaints and disclosure processes to help survivors of abuse, and will continue to engage actively on improvements throughout the remaining time of the Royal Commission and beyond the Royal Commission’s scheduled completion in 2023," said Bishop Stephen Lowe, Bishop of Auckland and Secretary of the NZ Catholic Bishops Conference.

A total of 1,680 reports of alleged abuse by church entities from 1950 to 2021 met the Royal Commission’s definition of abuse, according to a report https://www.catholic.org.nz/assets/Uploads/20220201-Tautoko-IGP-Fact-Sheet-1-Feb.pdf prepared for the commission.

A total of $16.8 million (NZD) has been paid directly to approximately 470 survivors in pastoral or ex-gratia payments by Catholic Church entities

Critics, however, said not enough is being done.

Sonja Cooper, Principal Lawyer and Partner at Wellington -based Cooper Legal, which is currently handling over 2,000 cases of child abuse victims involving state and faith-based institutions, said she has not seen anything different about the way the process is run.

"It's not a process that exercises any natural justice. And if they can find anything to make a decision that is against the survivor, they will," Cooper said, adding that ex-police officers were used for the interview process, which was deeply problematic for many survivors.

"The church seems to be operating from a position of not believing, and the burden is put on the survivor to prove that they are telling the truth. The process is very geared towards protecting the Catholic Church and its clergy," she added.

The Catholic Church has been excoriated for belated action over decades of scandals around the world, though it has paid billions in damages and Pope Francis has urged an all-out battle against clerical child abuse.

($1 = 1.6324 New Zealand dollars)

(Reporting by Praveen Menon; Additional reporting by Philip Pullella in Vatican City, Editing by Michael Perry)

TAX THE CHURCH

The Catholic Church Is Bankrolling a Nationwide Assault on Women’s Rights

Tessa Stuart Mon, September 12, 2022 

catholic-church-funding-anti-abortion-in-states.jpg Kansans To Vote On Constitutional Amendment On Abortion - Credit: Kyle Rivas/Getty Images

There was no winner in last month’s vote on abortion rights in Kansas. Technically, nothing changed after voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure intended to strip abortion protections out of the state’s constitution. When the race was called on the evening of August 2, every Kansan retained the same set of rights they’d woken up with that morning. But there was a loser: the ballot initiative’s largest financial backer by a long shot, the Catholic Church, whose dioceses squandered millions of dollars on the failed effort.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City contributed $3.18 million, the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, $652,355; $175,000 came from the Diocese of Salina; tens of thousands more from smaller churches scattered around the state. The Kansas Catholic Conference threw in $275,000. Together, the donations amounted to well over half of the Value Them Both Association’s total haul — an “absolutely stunning” amount of money, says Jamie Manson, the president of the advocacy group Catholics for Choice.

Come November, though, the exorbitant sum spent in Kansas may represent just a fraction of the Church’s political outlay this year. A record number of referendums on abortion will be put to voters around the country this fall. And in each of the states where an abortion measure is on the ballot, the effort to strip women of their reproductive rights is being largely bankrolled by the Catholic Church and its affiliates.

In Michigan, the Catholic Conference has committed $200,000, the largest donation by far to the campaign opposing the Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative. The Michigan Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s organization, has pledged an additional $50,000 to the committee leading the charge against Proposal 3, “Citizens to Support MI Women and Children.”

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington is the second biggest donor to the campaign opposing Vermont’s Right to Personal Reproductive Autonomy amendment. The church’s contribution — $50,000 — represents one fifth of the total raised to date by the group, “Vermonters for Good Government.”

The Kentucky Catholic Conference is the single biggest donor to “Yes for Life.” “Yes for Life” is the group working to add an amendment to the Kentucky constitution clarifying that the document does not protect a right to abortion. The KCC has given $36,000 to that effort so far.

Churches and religious organizations, by virtue of their tax-exempt status, are prohibited from campaigning on behalf of candidates for public office. But “issue advocacy” — carried out through ballot initiatives and lobbying efforts — is allowed. It can be difficult to ascertain how much churches and their affiliates spend on those political efforts, though, because in addition to not being required to file tax returns, they are, in many cases, exempt from disclosing lobbying activity as well.

A report commissioned by Catholics for Choice found that between 2014 and 2021, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and their affiliates spent at least $10 million dollars lobbying state lawmakers in a handful of states, including Montana. There, the organization found the Montana Catholic Conference lobbied on behalf of five bills. Four of them were abortion related, including the “Referendum to adopt the Montana Born-Alive Infant Protection Act,” a bill that paved the way for a ballot measure voters will weigh in on this fall that would extend legal rights to infants “born alive at any stage of development.”

What makes the Church’s disproportionate spending on anti-abortion advocacy so remarkable, Manson says, is the degree to which it goes against a majority of Catholics’ own views on the issue. A 2019 Pew Research poll found that 68 percent of U.S. Catholics opposed overturning Roe v. Wade, while more than half of Catholics — 56 percent — believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Catholics, Manson also points out, make up one quarter of abortion seekers in the United States, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute.

“Catholics are always well left-of-center on all of these issues having to do with sexuality, and they are governed by church leaders who are fringe hard-right,” Manson says. “These issues of sexual reproductive health are profound issues of social justice. And the Catholic laity see it, but the bishops just refuse to see it.”

Church leaders, ultimately, are the ones who decide how the collection plate money is spent.

“Do parishes have finance councils, and all of those things? Sure they do. But do they ultimately have decision-making authority on how money is used? No,” Manson says. “This whole structure is set up to have lay people completely disempowered.”

Kara Voght contributed to this report.

Is a Secretive Alabama Sect That Believes Rainbows Control Dimensions Behind More Than One Killing?

Barbie Latza Nadeau Mon, September 12, 2022 

University of Cosmic Intelligence Facebook

The Alabama couple who are charged with the highway murder of student Adam Simjee may be followers of a conspiracy-theory sect led by a suspected child molester, police now say.

Yasmine Hider and her partner, Krystal Pinkins, were arrested on Aug. 14 after Hider allegedly fatally shot Simjee after luring him and his girlfriend into a forest where they were living off the grid with Pinkins’ 5-year-old son.

Simjee and his girlfriend, Mikayla Paulus, had been out on a drive to take in some nature when Hider allegedly flagged them down under the guise that she needed roadside assistance. Instead, police say, she pulled a gun on the couple. Simjee was also armed and shot back in self-defense, wounding Hider. Simjee died at the scene.

Police then found the camp where Hider, Pinkins, and Pinkins’ son—who they disarmed of his sawed-off shotgun—had been living off-grid for some time. The two women are charged with murder, kidnapping, and robbery. Additional charges against Pinkins include child endangerment.

After investigating the couple’s background, police now say they were followers of a secret sect known as the University of Cosmic Intelligence, led by Rashad Jamal White—aka Rashad Jamal, or “God” to followers—who is in custody in Georgia on charges of child molestation and child cruelty.

Police are now looking at other killings that may be tied to sect devotees, including the Jan. 16 slashing death of Helen Nettles Washam in Eight Mile, Alabama.

Washam’s husband told Vice that his son Damien had become obsessed with White’s group, started drinking, and couldn’t stop quoting him. “I think he should die,” Hubert Washam said, describing how his son killed his mother with a ninja-style sword and attacked his autistic brother and uncle who was bedridden with cerebral palsy.

“He was listening to those conspiracy kind of videos and it was dumb as hell,” Washam’s father told Vice. “It was stupid. I tried to look at some of these videos and I can’t even listen to them, it’s so dumb. Lizard people and aliens.”

The University of Cosmic Intelligence group’s Facebook page features a number of Jamal’s tweets and says it is geared toward “enlightening and illuminating the minds of the carbonated beings, a.k.a. your so called Black and Latino people of Earth” and sells trinkets that include crystal necklaces for $111.11 and T-shirts for $66.93.

Jamal, a self-described musical artist and deity, has a wide following on YouTube, where he recently uploaded a jailhouse song in which he seems to imply that human beings—especially NBA players—are injected with “nanobot technology” and become avatars at birth, after which society conditions them through “social programming through sex, violence and drugs and movies and music.”

Jamal also claims the government controls the weather and that rainbows are fabricated to control the “alternate dimensions” around us all.

He preaches polygamy, anti-vaccine conspiracies, and calls himself “God” to his many followers. “I am a god, and all of my people, the Black and Latino people, are gods. And we were made in the image of our creator,” Jamal sings in the latest YouTube offering. “Therefore, I am an extension of Her/Them, and I am the creator and destroyer of my reality, so I take full responsibility for all events that I have experienced through this lifetime, for this is what we call shadow work in the spiritual realm.”

While it is not clear if Hider and Pinkins—who were followers of the group—carried out the alleged murder as part of their following, investigators have successfully petitioned a Georgia court for a gag order on the case, apparently to not rouse suspicion among other members of the University of Cosmic Intelligence community.