Hitler Youth Past Is Denied by Pope on Trip Hit by Row over Holocaust
TIMESONLINE: The wartime past of Pope Benedict XVI threatened to overwhelm his peace mission to the Holy Land as the Vatican issued a denial that the pontiff had served in the Hitler Youth.

“The Pope has said he never, never was a member of the Hitler Youth, which was a movement of fanatical volunteers,” Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said — contradicting statements the Pope has himself made about his involvement with the group. The Vatican denial came as Benedict’s trip sank deeper in controversy and recrimination, eclipsing the message of peace and reconciliation he has been pushing during his pilgrimage

Mr Lombardi said the Pope, as Joseph Ratzinger, a 16-year-old seminarian, served in an auxiliary air defence squadron “that had nothing to do with Nazism or Nazi ideology”. Venting frustration with the relentless focus on the Pope’s war years — a highly sensitive subject on a visit to the Jewish state — Mr Lombardi insisted that the Pope “never was in this movement of young people ideologically linked to Nazism”. The spokesman said that he felt compelled to respond “to the lies written by the media here and internationally”.

However, in a series of interviews in the 1996 book Salt of the Earth, the Pope, then still a cardinal, said that he had been drafted into the Hitler Youth, like so many other young Germans.

“When the compulsory Hitler Youth was introduced in 1941, my brother was obliged to join. I was still too young but later, as a seminarian, I was registered in the HY. As soon as I was out of the seminary, I never went back,” he said at the time. >>> James Hider in Jerusalem | Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Pauline Hanson Red-faced Over Raunchy Photos
Photo of Pauline Hanson courtesy of TimesOnline
TIMESONLINE: A set of risque photographs taken 30 years ago has threatened to derail the latest attempt at a comeback by Australian far right politician Pauline Hanson.

Ms Hanson, who briefly achieved international infamy with a campaign against Asian immigration in the 1990s, was aged around 19 when the pictures were taken by her then boyfriend, former army commando Jack Johnson.

They showed the former leader of the One Nation party partially naked and dressed in lingerie after a drunken night at a luxury Queensland resort.

Mr Johnson, who sold the pictures to Australia's Sunday Telegraph newspaper, said he was digitising his old photographs when a friend saw the images of Ms Hanson and suggested he could make some money out of them.

"Sorry it's come to this, sweetheart - that's the way it is," Mr Johnson told the newspaper. >>> Anne Barrowclough in Sydney | Sunday, March 15, 2009

TIMESONLINE: Pauline Hanson Denies Nude Photographs Are of Her

Mystery surrounds a set of nude pictures allegedly taken 30 years ago of the Australian far-right politician Pauline Hanson.

The photographs, published across Australian media at the weekend, purport to show the former One Nation leader partially naked and in skimpy lingerie.

But Ms Hanson says the photographs are not her, and has threatened to bare her belly button to prove it.

Jack Johnson, the "former boyfriend" who sold the pictures to the Sunday Telegraph for A$15,000 (£7,000), admitted today that he could not remember when or where the pictures were taken.

The former army commando also said that he could not remember the surname of the girl he photographed after a drunken night out in Queensland in th 1970s.

He told Australia's Seven Network that he knew "in my heart of hearts" that the girl in the photographs was Ms Hanson.

"But what if I'm wrong?" he asked in an apparent admission that he may have misidentified the woman in the pictures. "I was never the smartest cookie in the barrel." >>> Anne Barrowclough in Sydney | Monday, March 16, 2009

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Australia) >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback – Australia) >>>