Pax Christi Protest

It is gratifying to see that a tiny minority of Catholics are willing to protest against the latest bloodstained devil to have converted to their faith being invited by Archbishop Murphy O’Connor to preach in Westminster Cathedral. Stewart Hemsley, of Pax Christi, the Catholic peace group, was reported in The Catholic Herald as explaining:

We’ve organised the vigil because we are very unhappy that Mr Blair should be preaching from the pulpit of Westminster Cathedral when he hasn’t shown any sign of repentance for going to war in Iraq illegally. He has brought horror and devastation to that country and we think it would have been appropriate if he had at least expressed sorrow and sadness and that needs to be done publicly because the act of going to war was a very public act. If I was in the Cardinal’s place I would want to know that Mr Blair had expressed his sorrow and admitted that he was wrong in taking the decision to go to war especially because the late John Paul II had made it abundantly clear that war was not the answer.
I think it would have been more appropriate for the cardinal to follow John Paul II’s lead in this matter. The domestic Church in this country was strangely quiet on this issue and did not follow the lead given by Pope John Paul and the Vatican.

A demand by five million more Catholics for the excommunication of this monster might impress critics of Christianity that it is escaping its bloodstained past. I prophesy it will never happen.

Patriotic Law or Fascist Law?

Notes from the Press

Detention without trial is contrary to human rights. We should return to legal principle. Instead the government uses it as a pretext to make the country lawless. Anyone could be detained indefinitely on utterly anonymous and unchallengeable suspicions. No evidence is needed, and any evidence for the defence need not be disclosed, even when it is known!

Law is our basis of justice, even in the face of terrorism, and is nothing if it is not available to everyone equally. Imprisonment without trial cannot be an equal law. It presupposes that some people deserve to be imprisoned without any evidence being offered for scrutiny. It makes no essential difference whether it is a politician or a judge that serves the detention order.

It is back to the Inquisition when people were imprisoned for life on the say-so of personal enemies, and anyone who could benefit from someone’s imprisonment. Torture and death could not be prevented, once people are imprisoned, as we have seen at Guantanamo and Abu Graib, and our Nazi governments even allow evidence obtained by torture, albeit supposedly outside the country. But then, who will be in a position to object to any evidence obtained by torture, wherever it is obtained.

Policemen have a new duty, to be judges and prosecutors, to practise the Gestapo roles they see coming. They will claim to know who the guilty are, but only they will get to see the evidence, besides certain politicians with a fondness for jackboots. Detention without a trial is a punishment with no crime visible. Anyone subject to it will be thought a terrorist on unchallenged, undisclosed material which may have come from an informant who has reason to lie or who is seeking some benefit in return for information. The intelligence which justified the detention of some men who have spent years in prison is apparently no longer such a source of alarm. They are being released. The only thing that seems to have changed is the government’s mind. Our choice is not fascist measures or nothing. The law has plenty of options, but it needs politicians and policemen willing to use them.

People should be detained only pending a criminal charge. The mysterious and mainly invisible Al Quida trained terrorists should be dealt with the way people like them have always been dealt with, the way they were dealt with in the past. They are kept under surveillance and their properties are raided at a suitable moment, they are arrested, and subject to due process, the evidence being gathered there, and elsewhere, by scientific investigation, by proper legal interrogation of them and their contacts, and from subsequent enquiries. Suspects can be held briefly while these investigations are continuing. After 14 days, they should be charged or released. If lesser infringements have been found, they can be charged with them, and detained legally, and they can be still kept under surveillance if suspicion remains though they are released.

So, when people are suspected of terrorism, they should be investigated thoroughly and, if there is evidence, they should be put on trial. If not, but suspicion remains, they should be kept under surveillance. Instead we have a misconceived suggestion by some decent politicians that all will be well if a judge authorises the house arrest or control order. Judges might not be given all the information. Sugar-coating the unpalatable by suggesting all will be well if a judge makes the order is to forget that it may not feel significantly different if it is Judge Floggem or the Administration who issues an order if you still don’t know the nature of the allegation or the evidence on which it is based.

Blair’s and Bush’s governments have abandoned timeless principles, showing they are intrinsically fascist. The put us back to 1933 in Germany, to apartheid South Africa, and such regimes as Burma where detention without trial, even as “house arrest”, has rightly been decried. Nor does it make any difference that the powers, we are assured, will only be used exceptionally. Nazi’s like Hitler and our own neocons have no trouble in making exceptions into the norm.

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Faith Schools in Britain

Robert Stevens of this little old town, Frome, in Somerset noted in a letter that the pupils of Emmanuel College, Gateshead, were being taught biblical “young Earth creationism” and the Labour government was making no fuss about it at all. It might seem endearingly British to tolerate eccentrics and odd views, but in typical fashion the man responsible here, the headmaster, condemns “liberalism”, even though it is liberalism and not any form of fundamentalism that favours tolerance, even of bigots.

Mr Stevens points out that to make young Earth creationism seem plausible, much scientific knowledge—of biology, geology, astronomy and even nuclear physics, radiometric dating—has to be suppressed. Creationists seek to achieve this through the use of bogus claims of “scientific” evidence supposedly confirming creationism or contradicting evolution.

Should our children be taught complete nonsense as science? Those opposed to creationist lies have no way of communicating with the young people subject to this propaganda, which might make them fit to continue the lying succession, but will count them out of anything science based as a profession. Though Emmanuel College is a so-called City Technology College, tuition like this will render its pupils incapable of pursuing many careers in the sciences. Already, one pupil described evolution as an “atheist lie”, so he is already incapable of discriminating what is really a lie from what has so much evidence in its support, it would require a truckload of encyclopedias to contain it.

Though it should be prosecuted as fraudulent, creationism in the US is a multi million dollar industry. American fundamentalists, Christians and money makers have taken a great interest in the UK since pope Tony wore the tiara. Those ready to invest in British education include people for whom UFOs transport Satan’s lieutenants like Richard Dawkins to spread “evilutionism”. And, yes they think their pun is a sacred give away of the holy truth! God allowed science and terrorism to punish Americans for accepting homosexuality and multiculturalism. Blessed by pope Blair and now bishop Brown, US fundamentalists will be taking over British schools near you.

They say, it is to offer parents choice! Let us choose not to have choices like this.

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Not so fast!

The American people say “Not so fast” tothe Republican Right, after six years of torment for the American nation and the poor of the Middle East. Let us hope that Hilary Clinton takes a more principled stand than she and Bill did until six years back, in saying this. They buckled under to the Right and let Bush in. Democrats need to stand firm this time and prepeare the ground for a victory in 2008. A properly democratic USA ought never to see a Republican administration. Now ought to be the beginning of the end for the cynical bible bashing neo-con caste in Washington.

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