| Vatican threatens to sue Indymedia
By FREEDOM OF PRESS 06/04/2007 At 19:41 It looks clear to us that the trial is going to restrict the liberty of expression and is politically motivated, trying to silence satirical criticisms published in a letfist site about the political positions of the new pope. Back in April 2005, the World Press reported that the Italian Public Departmen's attorney, Salvatore Vitello, intends to take legal action against a satirical photomontage picturing Cardinal Ratzinger, the then newly chosen pope, in Nazi uniform. A few months ago, the intention materialized in the form of a letter of request that is now being considered by the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice (STJ). The request letter asks for the the page to be taken down and disclose the identity of the people deemed responsible for the site, which is registered in Brazil. The case in question is a good example of the double standards in dealing with the freedom of the press. In the incident of the cartoons that satirized prophet Mohammed in the Danish journal Jyllands-Posten, the public opinion of the liberal democracies jumped to condemn the fanaticism and the restriction of the freedom of expression. Now that the satire concerns a religious figure that occupies a privileged position in the international setting, the Italian Judiciary, in accordance with the Vatican, initiates forms of cyber political pursuit. The photomontage at the heart of the trial is a satirical composition published on the Italy Independent Media Center site in April 2005. IMC, or Indymedia, is a global network of open publishing websites, where readers can publish news and opinion, established in 1999 to cover the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle. The photomontage is an anonymous contribution by one of the site users and puts the face of the Pope Benedict XVI to the body of a Nazi officer. The picture is accompanied by following comment, which the Italian Public Department considered offensive: "Nazi pope - happiness to all the faithful. After the anti-communist reactionary, now comes the ultra-reactionary Nazi." The satire is clearly a composition that ridicules and criticizes persons and institutions by means of funny exaggeration. The right of satire is one of the foundations of the freedom of expression and press, and is what guarantees that all papers and magazines carry cartoons and caricatures on their pages every day. As an exaggeration, satire is always based on some elements of truth that are then maximised, aiming for a funny effect. In the case of the Pope photomontage, the truth element is that Pope Benedict XVI was member of the Hitler Youth in Germany when he was 14, as well as the fact that his politics, as Mayor of the Faith Doctrine Congregation during John Paul II rein, was considered ultra-conservative. The cartoon does not have as its object the Catholic faith but, rather, the political orientation of the person in charge of the Papacy, as highlighted in the comment. Despite the fact that the photomontage contains all the elements that qualify as a satire and, therefore, should be protected by the laws that defend the freedom of expression, the Italian Public Department used an article of the Italian penal code that criminalizes the "contempt of a minister of the Catholic faith", Catholicism being the "state religion" there. However, the jurisprudence established in Italy already regards as outdated and illegitimate the argument that fuses State and Religion. That means that the core argument that substantiates the solicitation of the letter of request is questionable in its own country of origin. Although Indymedia is not the author of the post concerned, the maintenance of the page where it is published is to us a question of principles. We believe that the photomontage is a satirical criticism of the political positions assumed by the Pope during his ecclesiastical career and that attorney Salvatore Vitello is criminalizing a publication based on outdated articles of the Penal Code, especially that this very Penal Code has recently had substantial changes to its writing. The letter of request sent to the STJ is based on a judicial agreement of mutual cooperation between Brazil and Italy which limits this cooperation to predicted cases in the legislation of both countries and to crimes that are not of a political nature. However, the Brazilian law does not offer special protection for the ministers of the Catholic faith. Further, the letter of request, although claiming the trial is not of political nature, does highlight that the Independent Media Center website is the "expression of the information circuit of the antagonist left". It is pretty obvious that the trial is going to restrict the freedom of expression and is politically motivated. It is trying to silence satirical criticism, published on a leftist site, about the political positions of the new pope. We expect the Minister entrusted by the trial in the Superior Court to have the same understanding. We also expect that the Brazilian civil society, as we as the international community, would express their opposition to this attempt by the Italian attorney to silence any criticism of the controversial political orientations of the Catholic Pope. Recently, the request for filing the case was sent to the Italian Judicial authorities by the Italian Public Department itself. However, the request letter sent to Brazil is still being processed by the Federal Justice.
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maybe it is time to expose the drinking and thinking of the new pope. and fill up the catholic churches with the poor throughout the world and expose unnecessary luxuries that result in a silenced voice to the repression presently takin place throughout the world
Nazi pope - happiness to all the faithful. After the anti-communist reactionary, now comes the ultra-reactionary Nazi 
from youth 
in uni 
& his "church"(sic)
Unless you marked it as satire, WHICH YOU DIDN'T, photoshopping the pope into a Nazi uniform is libel. The pope did not himself don a Nazi uniform, and therefore you are trying to portray him as wearing one, which is something false. You did so with the intent of damaging his reputation, thus it is not only false, but malicious and therefore satisfied the two requirements to prosecute a libel lawsuit. Indymedia should apologize.
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Because the crimes of Nazis were so unimaginable beyond any reasonable imagination, uninformed people sometimes frivolously compare conservatives with Nazis. This is not only plain wrong and insulting to anyone knowledged, but belittles Nazis and their deeds. Did the pope annihilated millions of people by industrial means, did he come at night to detain your neighbor's family to a concentration camp where they were gasified and their bodies recycled, did he castrate disabled persons or children of families with a different political opinion? The list of Nazi crimes is very long and even calling them extremely serious is a significant understatement. The horrors and terrors Nazi dominion brought over society is clearly the worst in human history, which is really not poor of excesses. The remains of Nazi dictatorship are places so full of manifest horror, that no one who ever got only close to them, as the pope for instance did lately, would not find anything funny in such a comparison. Clearly, whoever compared the pope to Nazis was clueless at best. The comparison is not only tasteless and wrong but it belittles Nazisms. And to belittle Nazism is neither satiric nor anything that should have a place in any media that considers itself as progressive or emancipative. To defend such a comparison is dishonourable for Indimedia. Indimedia should rethink its position and apologise. 
Pope Benedikt XVI. in Auschwitz, Poland
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The "libel" thing doesn't really work. The libel is a way of supressing corporate and political slander through various judicial channels, and the idea is completely generated around putting a halt to any kind of free speech claim or accusation that might put a damper on some PR campaign for a millionaire. The Pope is responding much like a corporation would with a hurt image, being a "religious" man this makes his entire operation look rather ridiculous and should be completely ignored. After all, "give ceasers things to ceasers and god's to god", how does sueing your neighbor play into that? It doesn't. The man's a joke...libel me.
The other claim, the one about how the statement "belittles the nazi's" should be disregarded. We're dealing with language here; and at its very origin references are made that don't portray the object ever in it's entirety. Analogies and metaphores are at the very focal point of communication, aside from that we cannot speak without using them. The claim that this comparrison is wrong on some kind of linguistic groundwork doesn't really hold up; it's a caricature and we use them all the time. The equavalent here (beware, a comparrison is coming)is like going to an artist and asking for a self-portrait and getting angry when your chin is too large or that your nose hangs too low. The artist's responsibility is to portray you according to his expertise, and if he wants to do that accurately or turn you into a cubbist portrait is up to him. I agree, there are some differences here between the example and the subject, but that's the problem with communication, in some cases we can be as accurate as possible and with others exploding the phenomena to some insane degree works just as well to get a point across. All of this, despite the fact, that the Popes entire religion is oriented around metaphores, comparrisons, and examples, some so bizarre and obscure that the subject hit at constantly hits amiss through the lineage of the translations.
Your argument could be that it's the medias responsibilty to hit as close as possible. That's true, but it's also the observers responsibility to at least become mildly aware of the subject before believing the way in which it was contextualized. In this case, the Pope WAS a Nazi, and it can be argued that his ideologues ARE Nazistic.
Where are you when the mainstream media is comparring the likes of Chavez to the Nazi party? Or the president of Iran? These are comparrisons that are pretty further from the mark than the Pope gag.
Very weak.
We're being subverted, we have every right to subvert back.
-B.
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I have just discovered this wedsite through a friend. I find it very interesting and independent. I wonder how many people, especially Africans, know about it. Please keep the good work going. but let me warn you religion and politics which are twin sister forces are the greatest threat to freedom of expression. Good luck.
Saidu
Slide projector at cab rear window. 
Drive-By Projection Box
Part Two of the 'Artistic Blasphemy Series' 
The Blue Pencil is Lord
The so-called ?lamb of God? traipses the world, protected by millions of people who flock to form an impenetrable wall which no one can rise above or shout over. While the real sheep suffer in silence, the world swallows up every peep he utters, declaring him a living saint. What a power to behold, and what immense room for abuse of that power. 
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surely the reaction to this photomontage only serves to reinforce the claim it makes. did the nazi's grant their enemies freedom of speech? did they intimidate people to prevent them from speaking up? ...
While national constipationists are busy tending to the illegalities of the individual?s moral choice, with such measures as prohibition and censorship, the lost mass of democracy, which always proves to be vulnerable to religiously enticed ignorance, remains too afraid or numb to attend to the illegalities of the subtle intimidation and fiercely hidden suppression that promises to arise against all desire for loud dissent.
The dragon guard?s the serpent?s diddle, so any rational prophet will either speak a parable or write a riddle.
Latin Rome gave us the word 'idiot'. How insulting to laypeople! 
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shame on indymedia. anyone who claims to be progressive would not try to mask vile slander with pithy freedom of speech arguments.
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"Why, it has been asked repeatedly, did the Pope not utter a solemn denunciation of this crime against the Jews and against humanity? . . . Why, it has been demanded, did he not give a clear moral and spiritual lead to Catholic priests throughout Europe? In June 1941, when the Vichy French government introduced ?Jewish laws' closely modeled upon the Nuremberg Laws, the Pope responded to appeals from French bishops by stating that such laws were not in conflict with Catholic teaching. Later efforts by the British, Americans and Poles to persuade the Vatican to publish a specific condemnation of Nazi extermination of the Jews fell on deaf ears. The Pope, came the reply, could only issue a general condemnation of wartime atrocities." "A strong and openly voiced papal line might have silenced those Catholic bishops throughout Europe who actively and fervently collaborated with their Nazi masters. . ." ?Ronnie S. Landou, The Nazi Holocaust, pp. 216-217. "...For a long time during those frightful years I waited for a great voice to speak up in Rome. I, an unbeliever? Precisely. For I knew that the spirit would be lost if it did not utter a cry of condemnation when faced with force. It seems that that voice did speak up. But I assure you that millions of men like me did not hear it and that at that time believers and unbelievers alike shared a solitude that continued to spread as the days went by and the executioners multiplied.... ...What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, should rise in the heart of the simplest man. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today". ?French author, Albert Camus, in a statement made at the Dominican Monastery of Latour-Maubourg in 1948. "For the professing Christian, of all the questions that arise out of the study of the Third Reich and the Holocaust the most terrible are these: What were the churches doing? How could such a monstrous crime be committed in the heart of Christendom by baptized Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox who were never rebuked, let alone excommunicated? Where were the Christians?" ?Franklin H. Littell, "Foreword" in Bonifas, Prisoner 20-801: A French National in the Nazi Labor Camps, p. vii. When mass killings began, the Vatican was extremely well informed through its own diplomatic channels and through a variety of other contacts. Church officials may have been the first to pass on to the Holy See sinister reports about the significance of deportation convoys in 1942, and they continued to receive the most detailed information about mass murder in the east. Despite numerous appeals, however, the Pope refused to issue explicit denunciations of the murder of Jews or call upon the Nazis directly to stop the killing. Pius determinedly maintained his posture of neutrality and declined to associate himself with Allied declarations against Nazi war crimes.  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Marrus.html http://isurvived.org/Pictures_iSurvived-3/V3-Vatican-Nazis.GIF http://liberalslikechrist.org/NaziPriestsSaluteHitler.jpg The Jasenovac concentration camp was the first test-case death camp of the Nazis before efficient industrialised organisation of murder had been achieved. Victims in Jasenovac, who according to Dorich number between 600-700,000 people, were bludgeoned, disembowelled or dismembered to death. It is alleged that in the nightly hand-killing contests that one priest single-handedly killed 1500 Serbs. All victims were buried in pit-graves together, whether Jews, Serbs, Roma or Ukrainians. The lawsuit alleges that the Vatican played not only a leading role in the Ustashe, but in the hoarding of related war-loot and in the setting up of ratline escape routes for the Ustashe. The federal lawsuit was then brought against the Vatican for its alleged collusion in war crimes by the Croatian Ustashe and even more ominously, for secreting large vaults of Croatian war-loot into the Vatican coffers. The suit alleges that this secret Vatican project financed yet more of the almost 'mythic' rat-lines mentioned in ODESSA, the re-location and funding of implicated Nazi and Ustashe priests and monks to largely South America. Members of the Illyrian College of San Girolamo in Rome who were reportedly involved in the 'rat lines' were friars Krunoslav Draganovi?, Petranovi? and Dominik Mandi?. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_action_suit_against_the_Vatican_Bank_and_others
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Who is talking about masking anything here?
We wrestle against a flood of propaganda that has been drowning truth for centuries. We struggle to grab hold of the veil that is and yet isn?t, to tear it from top to bottom and expose the abominations devised in the secret chambers of the state and the most holy place of the church.
With the pretense of filtering impurities for fear of corrupting the masses, the suppressor?s veil actually filters out vital incriminating truths from reaching the masses in order that they might rightfully impeach deviant leaders and come away from organized tax-exempt Babylon and let Her fall into nothingness for doing the opposite of what She pretends to do.
If none should have anything to fear, bring on the legal challenges and keep the court right here.
FORWARD THE JUDGMENT - IMC Israel
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It is truly a sad day when some prick lawyer is hired to pursue a non-issue such as the satirization of the Nazi, Pedophile, Pope who now leads the cadre of pedophile Cardinals and their lower minions. One day religion will be no more, let us just hope that day comes before we nuke ourselves into oblivion on account of the biggest lie ever told, religion.
I agree with you that there is a CLEAR double standard here. When Muslims get upset at Danish newspapers making fun of their Prophet, people say oh why are they upset, they are fundamentalists. Yet poking a little fun at the Pope (who is not even a Prophet) oh no here come the lawyers and lay suits.
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The pope did not himself don a Nazi uniform, and therefore you are trying to portray him as wearing one, which is something false.
He was in the Hitler Youth, even if allegedly against his will, so he very probably weared such an uniform. Also there is no representation of false information because the pope wasn't presented in a uniform he could never has possibly weared, such a maoist uniform or an uniform from an era in which he wasn't born. It is clearly political satire as it is well known that the pope isn't currently wearing any such uniform, but there's a reference to an actual period of his life. There is no law requirement to mark satire as such, as there is no requirement to mark bible as fiction.
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Does anyone here know that the Vatican has threatened to sue indymedia recently? Yes, it?s true. If you Google ?Vatican sue? you will find around 1,230,000 results that predominantly point to one specific website.
This issue has existed for nearly three months, but I?ll bet most people haven?t heard a peep about it. The media has remained shamefully silent in what is looking like a Catholic version of Islam and the Danish cartoons.
Before I continue, I would like to clear one thing up. I know that I have many friends working in and behind the spotlights of entertainment and news broadcast media who would tell the world whatever it could possibly need to know.
The Government, the Federal Communications Commission, lawsuits, television program sponsors who propagate militant ?morality?, and a censor in every broadcast studio makes it difficult not to be considered part of ?the Beast? by those who wonder why no one?s talking. I would never blame anyone but the editors? boss?s bosses or those who intimidate from atop the hill. Editors cannot be editors if they get fired, imprisoned for insurrection, or killed, but they can remain and follow the rules and secretly share secret information about instances of calculated suppression that they want the people to know about. This of course is speculation, for now?
Anyway, let?s get back to the Vatican legal lynching team.
How is it that when Muslims are offended by blasphemy the Media shows them at their worst and then they continue talking about it until the story gets old, but when the pope is offended by blasphemy ? they actually have used the term in this instance - the International Media remains silent and has for nearly three months now?
I say love the followers, have understanding, mercy and patience with them, but despise and spew out of your mouth the works of the leaders who keep them brainwashed by keeping free thinkers from reaching them.
Now I am going to submit a copy of this to both DefCon and the indymedia website of which all roads lead. So if you like, let?s play hide and seek and see if you can find me there. I know that anyone who searches anything about the Vatican threatening to sue will be able to find me there. J I wonder what you will think about the ?blasphemous? graphics.
They say that the pen is mightier than the sword, but in Network TV Land he who wields the blue pencil is lord.
He who rules the religion rules the region.
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In conjunction with this thread, I would like to refer readers to Pat Condell as he discusses on video the accusation of Islamophobia. It?s quite succinct ? with 4,326 views as of this hour. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fa8_1182431311
Here are more images of the Vatican "distancing" itself from the Fuhrer. 
Spam your f'n dominator asses!
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