Caption: The wife insists I wear my wedding band...

[emad]

[BlondieK143]

1. "I don't get it, even my ring is bigger than his brain!"

:)

[afraid_of_the_dark]

2. Sorry, but I just can't get in on the Pope-bashing captions...

but I will say that he looks so feeble. It's amazing how hard he's worked for so long, and I hope that if there is a heaven, he will be well rewarded there.

[emad]

3. JP2: fair game considering the spin that keeps him in office.

He's kept pretty quiet these last 60 years about his own matrimonial status!

[gandalf]

4. Is he married? nt

[afraid_of_the_dark]

5. Just to the church, as far as I know.

But maybe I missed something?

[emad]

7. The Marian Fathers (a Polish religious order) located at

Fawley Court, Henley on Thames, Oxon, UK has a museum of polish history, including huge archive of documents related to WW2 and cold war years up to and including 1990. JP2's personal papers are held there including details of his UK-resident wife and adult children.

The Vatican has made numerous attempts to have these docuemtns classified under the UK Official Secrets Act and failed, but Thatcher managed to manipulate the libel courts in 1982 to partially gag this one by saying it would pose a potential threat to UK security if JP2's family details were placed in the public domain DURING HIS LIFETIME.

Can't wait for him to pop his clogs.

The offspring are what is termed 'colorful characters': ie have criminal records.

[afraid_of_the_dark]

9. Not something I've heard before...

I'll have to look into it.

[emad]

10. Marian Fathers due in court again in UK later this year to answer

more money laundering charges connected to a sex abuse of minors scandal centred on a Catholic convent in North London in the early 1960s. The convent was subsequently turned into a Zoroastrian temple.

The issue concerns drug money laundered via BCCI in the UK to BCCI in Dubai and onwards to branches/subsidiaries in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. Some of the BCCI acounnt holders in these Asian countries are directly linked to Osama Bin Laden.

Interestingly enough, between 1980 and 1988, Tony Blair and his wife went through a series of private law suits in the civil courts, trying to gain possession of the title deeds to this property (the Zoroastrian temple), in conjunction to their now crony Lakhshmi Mittal (Asian steel magnate who doshed up the Labour party and won huge government contracts in Romania). The Blair's lawsuit failed, as did their subsequent appeals.

The cover up of this civil litigation is almost as bad as the historical sequence of events associated with child sex abuse atrocities committed in this property during its convent phase as well as laterly as a Parsee temple.

[gandalf]

11. you never cease to surprise me

with your intimate knowledge of "contemporary history".

I printed out the Kerry/Brown BCCI report and will try to find and read the most important issues in the 435 pages.

[emad]

12. I've been involved in the reporting of some pretty awful lawsuits

in my time and have got to know some of the people involved in a) criminal cover-ups of sex abuse cases in the US and UK; b) the covert financial networks that served in money laundering of vice, especially child prostitution - hence BCCI and Banco Ambrosiano; c) some of the key players - judges/barristers/witnesses - in such lawsuits.

I eagerly await the day more information will be placed in the public domain, especially the current BCCI class action in London, which is grinding slowly with legal argument at the moment about the admissibility ofcertain classified UK documents which give Thatcher a degree of anonimity..

Also the Calvi case which has resumed in Italy, but is in the same situation where previously classified documents converning criminal activity by the P2 Lodge from 1971 to 1982 are being brough into evidence, following their release by City of London police - after 22 years of gagging. I expect it is Berlusconi himself who is exerting pressure on highly embarassing facts to be excluded from evidence, to spare JP2's blushes and those of the beneficiaries of the Ambrosiano scam.

This old DU post refers to recent developments concerning old crooks in the UK:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1474244

[gandalf]

19. Thanks for the information

In Germany, as far as I can see, nobody in the media landscape seems to be interested in BCCI.

Perhaps you know Andreas von Bülow, once minister in the cabinet of chancellor Schmidt, who wrote a (not so good) book on 9/11. He had written, some years ago, a book on criminal acts, committed by governments (Im Namen des Staates). There P2, BCCI and so on are discussed. Bülow has some first-hand knowledge, thanks to his political positions. Naturally, after he wrote his book, he was a "conspiracy nut".

[afraid_of_the_dark]

6. The papacy is an office they hold for life...

With only a few exceptions. There'd have to be some pretty big reasons why he would be stripped of his office.

[emad]

8. Like being a member of the P2 Lodge, whose minor apparatckicks

are currently up before the judge in Italy on murder 1 charges involving "God's Banker" case - Roberto Calvi.

[skip fox]

13. "Who da Pope? I'm the Pope,

BAAABBBYYYY!!!!

[skip fox]

14. GAD!!! All this serious analysis and disquisition on a CAPTION thread!!!

I mean, is nothing holy?????


(just kiddin') :toast:

[emad]

15. Disquisition? Is that like the (Spanish) Inquisition?

????

[skip fox]

16. In the hands of some,

yes.

[skip fox]

17. Resist theological debate!!! CAPTION or

DIE!

:toast:

[Endangered Specie]

18. In an attempt to appeal to the new generation...

The pope bounces his hand in the air like a rapper to be cool.

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