Eideard

Demonstrators supporting the women Katsav assaulted
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Israel’s former president Moshe Katsav has been found guilty of rape and sexual harassment following a year-long trial, largely held behind closed doors to respect the privacy of the three complainants, all former subordinates.

Political leaders and analysts praised the ruling, saying it showed that the law applied to everyone, including the president. But many expressed shame and embarrassment that a former head of state had been found guilty of such serious offences…

The sexual offences took place during Katsav’s terms as president and as minister of tourism. Complainant A accused him of raping her on two occasions, while complainants H and L accused him of sexual harassment. The verdict confirmed all the three accusations. Katsav was acquitted only of charges that he had harassed a witness…

The rightwing former president has portrayed himself as a victim of ethnic discrimination. Israeli political life has long been dominated by Jews of European origin, while Katsav and many of his supporters are of Middle Eastern origin.

Katsav became the eighth president of Israel in 2000 and was forced to resign in disgrace in July 2007, after the accusations emerged in 2006…

Outside court, women’s rights groups cheered…

The White House, Congress and the State Department ignored the event – as they do with anything negative about the government of Israel.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s resignation after just eight months in office has triggered shock across Japan and raised new doubts about the country’s political stability. The fact that a U.S. military base figured centrally in his decision has also generated concerns about the damage to the crucial relationship with Washington under his government.

Hatoyama pointed to two factors in his decision. The first was his inability to fulfill his campaign promise to relocate the U.S. military’s Futenma Marine Air Station on Okinawa…

Perhaps more surprising was the role of a political scandal. In Hatoyama’s announcement, he also asked the party’s secretary general, Ichiro Ozawa, to resign with him…

Perhaps as important is the DPJ’s foreign and security policy vision. The U.S.-Japan alliance and the management of forty thousand U.S. troops in Japan created opportunity for opposition party critique of the old-fashioned LDP approach of solving problems behind closed doors. Public tolerance for this approach was growing thin, particularly in Okinawa where the bulk of U.S. forces are concentrated. In its rise to power, the DPJ took aim at some of these oversight practices. Likewise, it took aim at some of the allegations that “secret agreements” with Washington ran counter to government statements on nuclear weapons transit and other sensitive issues…

What remains to be seen is how the Democratic Party of Japan internalizes the lessons learned over the past eight months as Japan’s governing party and what the legacy of Hatoyama’s resignation will be. In Tokyo, there is also concern that the first effort to govern by the DPJ so badly bruised the bilateral relationship with Washington–particularly with President Barack Obama, a president that many think shared so much of the DPJ’s own goals.

The CFR doesn’t confront the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to address secret agreements, obvious and unpublished restrictions on Japan’s freedom to manage their own political life.

Wars of national liberation have been fought over as much.

A megachurch paid a 20-year-old man to keep silent about a sexual relationship he had with disgraced evangelical pastor Ted Haggard, a senior church pastor said. Haggard, who was fired amid allegations that he used drugs and patronized a male prostitute in 2006, had a sexual relationship with a second man — a 20-year-old volunteer at his megachurch, said the Rev. Brady Boyd.

The church agreed to pay the man in exchange for his pledges not to talk publicly about the relationship, Boyd said, referring to a settlement reached by the man’s lawyer and the church’s insurance company. Under the settlement, the church provided the man money to pay his college tuition, moving expenses and counseling, Boyd said. “This was compassionate assistance. It was to help him move forward, not a settlement to keep him quiet,” said Boyd…

In the last three weeks, Boyd said, the young man told him that he was considering going public with his story because Haggard was portraying himself as a victim in an upcoming HBO documentary called “The Trial of Ted Haggard,” which is scheduled to air Thursday…

In a settlement with New Life, the church and Haggard agreed that he would retain his six-figure salary for a year, leave the Colorado Springs area, receive counseling, and not speak publicly about what had happened for one year, according to a church staff member with knowledge of the settlement who was not authorized to speak on the record.

Despite the fresh scandal, Boyd said he is hopeful for the future.

So am I. When our species moves to a level of education and understanding beyond witchdoctor ideology.