GUARDIANS, OR THE HARPIES ON THE WALL
Bali, 2002 Picture Courtesy AP
QUOTE
I have a fascination for the documents that blow through the ruins of war, the pages of letters home and the bureaucracy of armies and the now useless instructions on how to fire ground-to-air missiles that flutter across the desert and cover the floors of roofless factories.
Robert Fisk. The Great War for Civilisation.
TEXT
In the background, Cardinal George Pell was being hauled across the coals by lawyers being paid thousands of dollars a day to treat him with very little respect. It might have been a secular witchhunt, but there it was. Spotlight, an excellent film, won the Oscar for Best Picture. There were so many rivers running every which way. Harpies perched on walls. The occasional guardian offered sage advice. "Old habits die hard." The Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse in Institutions dragged on in excoriating detail. Many would have preferred to have died rather than be exposed to such public humiliation. Rumours ran every which way. The Church did not come out looking good. Travesties lay on both sides of the fence. Darkness in the swirls. You didn't have to look too far.
"I don't remember, I don't recall, very much at all."
The Church may have once been a foundation for Western culture, but Pell's comment on their obligation to follow Christian principles was met with derisive laughter from the audience. Crowd funding had covered the cost of alleged victims flying to roam.
Oh how sweet it would be to be in Rome.
He had sat often enough as a teenager at the top of the Spanish Steps, watching the sun rise over Rome.
Every ignominy, every scandal, every piece of hypocrisy, it was all burnt into a sea of conflicting standards. "I am not here to defend the indefensible," Pell said; and he had few defenders in the Australian media.
He had covered services in St Mary's where the now Cardinal Pell had officiated.
The initiation into the mysteries.
The formation, as the nuns called it. The creation of a link between the human and the divine.
He had been impressed by the atmosphere, the ritual.
What was now being labelled an abuse of power; while all around lay other abuses of spiritual power, in a world, in a realm, where everything was fragile; where some had departed to protect themselves; and others had arrived to protect a world blotting out in a period of conflict and terrible pain.
Humans were humans, celibacy an unnatural state, the exposes so damaging, the statistics so appalling, the discrediting so final, the damage so absolute. And while Christianity thrashed around in the destruction of itself, Islam was on the March. Child brides. Slavery. Tea boys. There were very dark forces afoot; everywhere.
There were spirits above the meditation sites, the founder of Falun Gong had claimed. And they could walk through walls, appear and disappear at will, here at The End of Days. A fast road to enlightenment.
Fighting was breaking out between refugees and border guards in Europe. The gloss had gone off Malcolm Turnbull. His own interior had changed, and he was simply adjusting. The old days when he had felt like a crushed entity at the bottom of an aquarium full of liquid lead had been vanquished. And sooner or later all these disasters would break through into another stream, and the scandals of one day would be the history of another; but few would survive the ignominy of loss of their own credibility.
Things were changing, that was all. The sins of the Church exposed. The power of The Great Satan there for all to see. Humans, with so little love for each other, so prepared to exploit, appeared, often enough, to be doomed. Brussells does not have the right to change the cultural and religious history of Europe, the critics said more concisely than ever. And so the world spun, and there would be no rest.
THE BIGGER STORY
How Fairfax and Paul Sheehan bought the lies told by "Louise"
NICKY BRYSON AND MYRIAM ROBIN
Freelance writer and Crikey media reporter
A week after the story of "Louise", who claimed she had been gang-raped by Middle Eastern men, was first splashed on the front page, and four days after Paul Sheehan acknowledged how it all fell apart, The Sydney Morning Herald this morning broke its silence on how one of its senior writers published a story of horrific abuse and bureaucratic indifference that was, probably, false. But the paper maintains Sheehan's line that "key elements of the story were unable to be substantiated", despite the wealth of evidence that the story told to Sheehan was highly unlikely, and should have raised red flags for both Sheehan and his editors.
The paper stated at the bottom of page 2 this morning:
"In last Monday's paper, the Herald reported the details of an alleged sexual assault under the headline, 'The horrifying untold story of Louise',
"A subsequent column printed in last Thursday's edition ... acknowledged key elements of the original story were unable to be substantiated. The original story, which has been corrected, included aspersions against the Middle Eastern community and raised untested allegations of inaction against the NSW Police. The Herald sincerely regrets the hurt and distress this report caused to these groups and unreservedly apologises."
The story highlights a startling case of journalistic error, made all the more significant because it came from such a senior writer and was taken seriously enough to put on the front page of Australia's most trusted newspaper.
Sheehan has apologised several times in the past week, and got on the front foot admitting his error before Fairfax's competitors got wind of it. He has been relatively transparent about the reasons why he came to believe 'Louise's' story despite little corroborating evidence. But if he had not, it is likely the scandal would have come out anyway. In the days immediately following the story's initial publication, many on social media noted that aspects of it seemed far-fetched. The similar claims made by a woman in several Reclaim Australia rallies were recalled. Some, like Richard Cooke, who tried to contact 'Louise' wrote that they found her a difficult subject who was unable to give journalists ways to validate her story.
EU migrant crisis: Stranded asylum seekers storm Greece-Macedonia border fence
By Europe correspondent James Glenday, wires
There have been dramatic scenes on the border between Macedonia and Greece as asylum seekers used a steel pole to break down a barbed wire fence.
About 7,000 people are stuck on the Greek side of the border trying to get through to Macedonia, and tensions boiled over at the Idomeni camp overnight.
Asylum seekers ripped away barbed wire from the border fence before using a pole as a battering ram to smash a section open.
Around 300 people forced their way through a Greek police cordon and raced towards a railway track between the two countries.
They threw stones at Macedonian riot police and shouted: "Open the border!"
Authorities responded with several rounds of tear gas, fixed the fence and then called in reinforcements.
At least 30 people, many of them children, requested first aid in the stampede that ensued, the charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said.
Skopje said one of its policemen was hurt and required hospitalisation.
The protest occurred several hours after Macedonia allowed just 300 Syrians and Iraqis to cross.
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