News Notes

Former Kevorkian attorney runs for governor; displays religious bigotry

Politicians generally avoid religious controversy. But in his former role as lawyer of Jack Kevorkian, the advocate and practitioner of assisted suicide, Fieger has called Adam Cardinal Maida, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Detroit, a "nut," compared the Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Greater Detroit to Nazis, described the Pope with mocking vulgarities and said he would rather take advice from "Joe the wino," and regarded Jesus as "just some goofball that got nailed to the cross."
Fieger has said that a report in The Washington Post about the Jesus remark was "a lie" and that Governor Engler used it "to inspire a little religious bigotry."
But a tape made by the reporter, Richard Leiby, shows that while speculating on how religious beliefs emerge, Fieger compared the belief that Jesus is divine to the cult of Elvis Presley.
"In 2,000 years we've probably made somebody who is the equivalent of Elvis into God, so I see no reason why not to believe that in 2,000 years Elvis will be God," Fieger said. "Probably if we went back 2,000 years and they said, you know, we think Jesus is God, and Jesus is just some goofball that got nailed to the cross."
The comments about the Archbishop came two year ago, when Fieger was asked why Kevorkian had sought a permit to carry a concealed weapon. One reason, the lawyer quipped, "was to protect himself from nuts like Cardinal Maida."
Fieger compared the Orthodox rabbis to Nazis in early 1996, when the rabbis issued a statement condemning assisted suicide as a violation of Jewish teaching. "They're closer to Nazis than they think they are," he told The Detroit News. "Orthodox Jews are not different than the right-wing Christian nuts. If you're a religious nut, you're a religious nut."
Fieger says he is not a member of any religious group, but is ready to "keep all my options open." On his Web site, he says that "I have no difficulty with the unfettered practice of religious beliefs," but do not want them incorporated into law.
He does not explain why he admires the Martin Luther King Jr.'s religiously based political activity, but calls Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Muslim and Jewish opponents of assisted suicide in Michigan "religious fanatics."
In Michigan, Mark Brewer, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, said, "I don't pretend to be an expert about everything Mr. Fieger has said about religion, but my sense is that voters here are mainly concerned about bread-and-butter issues of state politics."

"Gay" Games financial woes propped by Dutch tax money

Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS - The 1998 Gay Games were supposed to be a carefree celebration of homosexuality. But even before the hoopla of the opening ceremony could fade, the director was fired for mismanagement. Then the city of Amsterdam rushed to the rescue with a $2.5 million loan to ensure the games go on.
The games organizers also had to tap a government-funded agency to help pay athletes from developing countries the cash they were promised for food and other necessities.
"Gay Games Committee Gets More Surprises Every Day," said a headline in De Volkskrant daily, summing up the confusion swirling around the quadrennial Olympics-style sports festival.
"It's kind of a dark spot on the party. It's a shame," said Rudolf Steinberger, who helped organize the competition's marathon.
Thousands of athletes and spectators flocked to Amsterdam, Europe's self-styled homosexual capital, for the events.
But the firing of managing director Marc Janssens and the discovery of a trail of unauthorized overspending behind him overshadowed the $7 million event.
Janssens, a Dutchman, was fired by the Games' board of directors, which said he "made commitments outside the approved budget, commitments that were also bigger than his authority."
The games were about $1 million short, despite more than $3 million in government subsidies and sponsorship money.
"The problems were severe," said City Hall spokeswoman Mirjam Otten. "It is important for the Games to go on."
To ensure that they do, Amsterdam officials provided a loan of $2.5 million this week. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, which had already donated $250,000, doled out $112,500 more.
A publicly funded development agency helped the games pay up to 300 participants from Africa and Latin America the $200 allowance they were promised for the week. Some had only received half, the Amsterdam daily Het Parool reported Wednesday.
City officials, wary of any more misspending, have appointed accountants to keep an eye on the books.
"The situation is under control. ... You can be sure that we're not big spenders at this moment," said games spokesman Paul van Yperen.
Although about 30 sports competitions and "cultural events" were offered at the games, they have been largely eclipsed by the financial troubles.
TX child pornographer and molester gets 500 years Corpus Christi, TX - A 50-year-old child pornographer from Flour Bluff, near Corpus Christi, is beginning a nearly 500-year prison sentence after suddenly deciding to admit to molesting five girls.
Former real estate agent Jeffrey Orr was sentenced September 2 after pleading guilty to almost 200 separate counts. Among them were four counts of aggravated sexual assault and 150 counts of possession of child pornography.
Jurors were sent home for the day when Orr indicated to his attorney, Juan Gonzalez, that he wanted to plead guilty.
Orr's change of heart came one day after some jurors became visibly upset when they were forced to view 20 minutes of a pornographic tape he made involving two 10-year-old girls.
An agreement was reached in which Orr would serve two consecutive life sentences on two of the aggravated sexual assault of a child charges, after which State District Judge Robert Blackmon would decide the rest of the sentences.
Once Blackmon heard the rest of the evidence, he added two more back-to-back life sentences on aggravated sexual assault of a child charges. He then added 15- and 5-year sentences for the rest of the charges, which included indecency with a child and possession of child pornography charges.
Orr was silent after the sentences were read.

Oregon-Texas abortion connection exposed

Denton, TX - Life Dynam ics, a Texas-based, hard-hitting anti-abortion group has exposed an abortion connection between Oregon and Texas.
For years, a mystery abortionist arrived regularly at the Planned Parenthood of Waco, Texas and entered the building through a cattle chute specially constructed to keep the abortionist anonymous. Even when the local pro-life group finally got John Britton's name, they were unable to get a photograph or to backtrack him.
Eventually it was discovered that Britton was from Yamhill, Oregon, a small farming community in the middle of the Willamette valley.
But Life Dynamics was successful in tracking and photographing the cagy, but dischevelled-looking abortionist. It turns out that Britton has a home at 22101 NW Tanger Lane in Yamhill and another at Lake Whitney Estates in Whitney, Texas and that he commutes between the Planned Parenthoods in Waco, Midland, and Ft. Worth where he performs abortions.
After taking the abortionist's photograph, Life Dynamics designed a post card with Britton's picture which exposes the abortionist, giving his home addresses and the addresses of the three clinics where he aborts babies.
In August, the postcards were simultaneously mailed to all the addresses in the areas where he lives and works. Naturally, there was public and media reaction - especially in Texas.
Mark Crutcher, executive director of Life Dynamics says the group plans to continue their efforts to publicize Britton.
"We have to continue the process of exposing him," Crutcher said. "Exposure is the one thing the abortionists can't stand. It's like lifting a rock and having all the cockroaches scurry out - short of shutting down the U.S. Post Office, they can't stop what we're doing."
Life Dynamics was also recently in the news for organizing an effort in Canada to mail out questionnaires to Canadian physicians asking for information on colleagues who perform abortions.
The organization became synonymous with the "Bottom Feeder" joke book mailed to medical students several years ago. Crutcher says that a sequel to "Bottom Feeder" is in the works.

WA baby killer charged

Port Angeles, WA - Eugene Turner, a doctor who admitted using his hand to suffocate a newborn (Life Advocate, May/June 1998), was charged with second-degree murder by authorities on August 31.
The charge was based on Turner's admission and other evidence gathered by police, medical investigators, and consultations with medical experts.
Turner admits that he "manually obstructed the airway" of baby Conor Shamus McInnerney on January 12 at Olympic Memorial Hospital.
Local pro-life activists are skeptical that it took almost nine months to determine a crime had been commited despite Turner's bald admission.
The state Medical Quality Assurnace Commission has accused Turner of unprofessional conduct, but the state Health Department has cleared the hospital of any wrongdoing.
Turner no longer has privileges at the hospital but has continued to treat patients at his private office in Port Angeles.

Eight Oregon "legal suicides" recorded

Salem, OR - Only 10 terminally ill patients have requested and received lethal drug doses since the nation's only assisted-suicide law went into effect last November, Oregon health officials said on August 19.
Of the five men and five women who took the steps required under the law, eight committed suicide using the prescribed drugs and two died naturally from their illnesses, the Oregon Health Division said in a report.
It said most of the suicides took place within the past three or four months, since the first reported case in March, when a Portland-area woman in her 80s took barbiturates washed down with brandy rather than succumb to terminal breast cancer.
Proponents of the controversial law said the report laid to rest concerns that terminally ill patients would flood Oregon to take advantage of it.
"There can be no doubt that the law is working as intended," said Barbara Coombs Lee, executive director of Compassion in Dying Federation, adding that only one in five people who consider the assisted-suicide option actually took advantage of the law.
But Roman Catholic church officials, who have spearheaded efforts to abolish the law, condemned what they called "the killing of terminally ill persons by their physicians."
"Today's news confirms the tragic path on which the practice of medicine and the doctor-patient relationship is headed in Oregon and the United States," the Oregon Catholic Conference said in a statement.
Dr. Gene Chin, a medical epidemiologist with the Health Division, said the number of assisted-suicide deaths was minuscule compared with the 29,000 deaths recorded annually in Oregon.
The division, which is required by law to track and summarize data about assisted suicides, did not release any details of cases to protect the families' privacy.
The report said the average age of patients who took advantage of the new law was 71, and all but one had cancer, with the other patient suffering from heart disease.
On average, those who took the lethal medication lost consciousness within five minutes, and in every case patients fell into a coma within 20 minutes. Death occurred in an average of 40 minutes, although in one case it took seven hours.
Chin said the state was interviewing physicians about any complications for a more complete annual report on assisted suicides required under the law.
Under the state's Death with Dignity Act, all 10 patients were judged mentally capable of making a decision about suicide, were confirmed to be terminally ill by two physicians, and made two requests for the drugs with a 15-day waiting period in between.
The law went into effect after Oregon voters, by a 60 to 40 percent margin, last year ratified their 1994 decision to make the state the world's first jurisdiction to legalise physician-assisted suicide.

No right to ads on bus, judge says to pro-lifers and ACLU

San Francisco, CA - A federal appeals court upheld Phoenix's refusal to allow the ACLU and an anti-abortion group advertising space on the outside of city buses.
In a 2-1 ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the policy of turning down noncommercial ads was reasonable, based on the city's interest of making money and remaining neutral on political and religious issues.
The ruling allows Phoenix to extend its policy to municipal facilities such as sports arenas, and will encourage other cities to adopt similar policies, said city lawyer Donald Loeb. Other cities have various transit ad restrictions, but Phoenix is the first to draw the line between commercial and noncommercial ads, he said.
After Phoenix adopted the policy in November 1996, the Children of the Rosary wanted to run an ad with a biblical passage and the message "Choose Life." After hearing of the dispute, the American Civil Liberties Union proposed an ad saying it supports free speech.
The American Center for Law and Justice, which represented Children of the Rosary, promised to appeal. Spokesman Benjamin Bull said the policy promotes viewpoint discrimination by preventing only issue-oriented groups from advertising on buses.

International arrests net child porn ring

London, ENGLAND - On September 2, about 100 people in 12 countries were arrested in what police said was the biggest ever worldwide swoop on pedophiles operating on the Internet.
British police coordinated the raids, code named "Operation Cathedral," in Europe, Australia and the United States. They recovered more than 100,000 indecent images of children as young as two from one U.S.-based pedophile club known as "Wonderland."
"The content would absolutely turn the stomach of any right-minded person. It is disgusting stuff," said Detective Superintendent John Stewardson, who led the operation from Britain.
Raymond Kelly, commissioner of U.S. Customs, told reporters in Washington the probe revealed "the most extensive ring of child pornographers ever uncovered."
"The people who exploit children in this way think they can hide in cyberspace. They are wrong. We will find them and bring them to justice," he said.
The Customs Service said in a statement that it had opened the first federal investigation into Internet child pornography in 1993. In the last year, it said 189 people had been convicted in the United States on charges relating to the possession, manufacture and/or distribution of child pornography.
Police said 11 people were arrested in Britain in dawn swoops across the country. In cooperation with other police forces and Interpol, 33 addresses in 22 states were raided in the United States, 18 in Germany, 16 in Italy, eight in Norway, three in Belgium and one or two in Finland, Austria, France, Sweden and Portugal.
Beglian police spokesman Koen De Proost told VRT radio that the network contained offers of "the most revolting depictions of child porno."
"People were auctioning their collections of pictures. It went so far that people abused their own children to be able to present the most striking material," he said.
De Proost said the investigation was now looking at possible links to other networks. He gave no details.
Police officials from the participating states had met over the summer at Interpol headquarters in France to prepare the action.
British police said the majority of those arrested were men but some were women. Some of the children whose images were used in the paedophile club were related to those arrested.
Charges will differ from country to country according to their different judicial systems. But charges could range from possession of pornographic material to the more serious offence of sexual abuse of children.
Stewardson said police had worked with computer experts to recover a number of databases and had then tracked down the suspected members of the "Wonderland" club around the world.
He said it was the biggest ever police assault on pedophile activity on the Internet.
"As far as we are aware this has been done before, but we don't believe on this scale. Any sort of seizures from this type of offence previously were in the region of 10,000 images. The databases we have cuurently in connection with this contain over 100,000 images so it is considerably bigger than anything else," said Stewardson.

South African pastor is abortionist

Bushbuckridge, SOUTH AFRICA - A student who was refused an abortion at a Northern Province hospital bled to death when a male nurse allegedly botched the operation.
Frank Ndlovu, 36, who works at the Mapulaneng Hospital in Bushbuckridge, allegedly performed the operation using the hospital's instruments in his room at the staff's residential quarters.
Einah Ribone Malele, 20, of Matloshe High School in Casteel, allegedly turned to Ndlovu for help after nurses at the hospital told her when she arrived on August 18 that they did not terminate pregnancies.
When she died in Ndlovu's bed after severe blood loss, he allegedly dumped her body just metres away from the residential quarters.
Police spokesman Sergeant Phillip Makola said police had confiscated an assortment of bloodied scissors, hand gloves and chemicals from the room.
Makola said Ndlovu, who is also the pastor of a church, lived in a house in Hazyview, but had allegedly been using his old room in the hospital residence to perform "back-street" abortions for the past year.
Ndlovu, a married father of three children, appeared in the Mapulaneng magistrate's court on August 24. He was not asked to plead on a charge of murder.
He was arrested at work after a tip-off last on August and is out on bail.
The case was postponed to September 15 for further investigation. Northern Province health and welfare spokesman Tshepo Moshima said that Ndlovu was suspendedfrom work.
He said the nurses who turned Malele away had every right to do so.
"The department cannot force its nurses and doctors to perform abortions if they don't want to," he said.
Only 15 of the 45 hospitals in the province perform abortions. Since September, 753 women have undergone the operation in Mpumalanga.
Assistant nursing director at Mapulaneng Hospital, Adrianah Sambo, refused to comment, saying she had been given orders not to talk to the media.
A spokesman for the national Department of Health said that health workers were not forced to perform abortions but they were obliged by law to refer the patient to someone who would. Anyone who prevented a legal abortion would be guilty of an offence.

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