In late 2001 Enron, a global blue-chip energy company with roots in the 1930s, declared itself bankrupt following revelations of accounting fraud, criminal insider dealing and corruption. Accounting firm Arthur Andersen, the company responsible for auditing and therefore hiding Enron’s accounting malpractice, fell with Enron for prevarication and obstruction of justice. Individuals such as Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow were prosecuted and found guilty of their crimes.
In 1945 the death of Adolf Hitler hastened the demise of the German Nazi Party, the organisation responsible for the extermination of over twelve million Jews, homosexuals, Roma, mentally and physically handicapped people, Slavs, Communists and dissidents. Individuals such as Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann, Alfred Rosenberg, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Konstantin von Neurath were prosecuted and found guilty of various crimes. Allied governments prevented the resurrection of the Nazi Party after the war.
The Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, a Protestant sect formed after a schism in 1955, effectively came to end after the siege of Waco in 1993. The sect had been accused of child abuse and rape, among other things more important to the US authorities, and although the charges at the eventual trial reflected the authorities’ priorities there is no doubt that Vernon Howell would have been prosecuted had he survived the siege.
The Ryan Report, published in May 2009, and the Murphy Report, published this week, have concluded that the Catholic Church in Ireland is guilty of perpetrating systematic and institutionalised physical and sexual abuse of children for the last seventy years, of protecting and retaining the services of priests accused of these crimes, of failing to release information about these practices to the relevant authorities, of obstructing any efforts to prosecute or even publicise the abuse and of continuing to allow the abuse within its organisation. Successive governments (in the case of the Ryan report) and members of the Garda Síochána (in the case of the Murphy Report) have been shown to share a large part of the blame for failing to act on accusations and actively protecting the Church and its criminal element. Although it is not a criminal offence, the Church is also failing to show any remorse for the crimes committed under its auspices and within its ranks.
The Church in Ireland is not alone in these accusations, as priests in Canada, Australia and the United States have also been accused – and in some few cases convicted – of child abuse and independent reports have echoed the findings of the reports in Ireland. In total there are thousands of accusations and thousands of priests implicated in the abuse. Many dioceses in the US have been forced to file for bankruptcy either because of paying or in order to avoid paying compensation. And the only response from Rome has been to suggest that homosexuality is a pre-requisite for paedophilia.
Whether the Church is to be regarded as a religious organisation, a political organisation or an economic organisation there is considerable precedent to support the idea that as an organisation it should be dismantled in its entirety and should cease to exist in its current form. The Catholic Church has become not only obsolete and irrelevant to modern life but also a dangerous enemy to modern society. It has strayed so far from Christian principles of charity and protection as to be unrecognisable as a Christian entity, and instead shows the principal characteristics of a mafia-like organisation or a totalitarian regime.
There is no doubt that not all Catholics are bad people, in the same way that not all Germans were Nazis and not all bankers are thieves. They have a right to a church in the same way that Germans have a right to membership of a political party and businessmen have a right to trade; this is beyond dispute.
However, the Catholic Church as it operates today must close its doors permanently and the people who are responsible for the abuse – including those who have attempted to cover it up – should be prosecuted in a civil court and punished for their crimes. Only then can a new church be constructed on the basis of more acceptable ideals, if that is what the Catholic faithful want, and only then can the rest of us see that justice has been done.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Keeping your house in order
It seems Google are in hot water. Four executives are being prosecuted in a Milan court after four high school students bullied a teenager with Down’s Syndrome, filmed the bullying and posted the video on the internet. The father of the victim, as well as an organisation that defends the rights of people with Down’s, are accusing the Google executives of “defamation and failure to exercise control over personal data”.
Of course, none of the executives will go to jail, as has been suggested in various reports. Apart from the fact that journalists use the word “could” all the time to fill double the space, create a higher volume of news and increase interest in mundane outcomes, executives rarely go to prison. Judges the world over sympathise more with suits and ties, especially those who work for wealthy companies, than they do with the common person.
This comes in the same week that Google were forced to apologise to Michelle Obama after a racially offensive doctored photograph of the First Lady appeared as the number one hit on Google images. Google, however, refused to remove the image, in the same way that in the Italian case they failed to remove the video for two months.
The comment from the spokesman in the bullying case was as follows: “This prosecution is akin to prosecuting mail service employees for hate speech letters sent in the post.” No, actually it isn’t. As there doesn’t appear to be a convenient alternative following the postman analogy, let’s change the scenario. The Google postman story would be the same as somebody renting out a holiday home to a person who commits a serious crime in the holiday home.
The reality of Google’s situation is akin to somebody inviting a person into their own home and allowing them to commit a serious crime there. You should know what’s happening in your own home, and you have a responsibility to stand against things which harm other people. A website administrator has the responsibility of looking at the content that he or she invites onto the site.
Much has been written on the fear that Google will eventually become some sort of internet police, and perhaps they are conscious of this and are trying hard to give the impression that they have no desire to control any content on the internet. But it’s much simpler than that – Google should monitor site content like any other administrator and take responsibility for their omissions. For their own good too – if they are seen to be above the law, all the more reason why people will think they are trying to be the law.
Of course, none of the executives will go to jail, as has been suggested in various reports. Apart from the fact that journalists use the word “could” all the time to fill double the space, create a higher volume of news and increase interest in mundane outcomes, executives rarely go to prison. Judges the world over sympathise more with suits and ties, especially those who work for wealthy companies, than they do with the common person.
This comes in the same week that Google were forced to apologise to Michelle Obama after a racially offensive doctored photograph of the First Lady appeared as the number one hit on Google images. Google, however, refused to remove the image, in the same way that in the Italian case they failed to remove the video for two months.
The comment from the spokesman in the bullying case was as follows: “This prosecution is akin to prosecuting mail service employees for hate speech letters sent in the post.” No, actually it isn’t. As there doesn’t appear to be a convenient alternative following the postman analogy, let’s change the scenario. The Google postman story would be the same as somebody renting out a holiday home to a person who commits a serious crime in the holiday home.
The reality of Google’s situation is akin to somebody inviting a person into their own home and allowing them to commit a serious crime there. You should know what’s happening in your own home, and you have a responsibility to stand against things which harm other people. A website administrator has the responsibility of looking at the content that he or she invites onto the site.
Much has been written on the fear that Google will eventually become some sort of internet police, and perhaps they are conscious of this and are trying hard to give the impression that they have no desire to control any content on the internet. But it’s much simpler than that – Google should monitor site content like any other administrator and take responsibility for their omissions. For their own good too – if they are seen to be above the law, all the more reason why people will think they are trying to be the law.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Too much like common sense
(Madrid, Spain)
Latin America has long enjoyed a tense and complicated relationship with the two European countries that did the most to shape its history over the last few centuries. The collision of different cultures can be magical or controversial, the waves of European émigrés have been replaced by a flood of Latin American immigrants and successive New World governments have tried to shake off the European influence while continuing to look to their Old World counterparts both politically and financially.
However, the existing symbiosis has recently thrown up one significant parallel between Spain and the whole of Latin America. The issue of abortion in a predominantly Catholic society is always likely to be controversial, but within a chauvinist context it is unlikely to be resolved in favour of those most affected, that is women.
Earlier this month there were demonstrations throughout Latin America for and against various aspects of the subject after the deaths of two young mothers highlighted the dangers of not introducing adequate legislation. There are estimated to be around four million secret abortions a year in the whole of Latin America, resulting in more than 4,000 deaths from surgical complications, infections and a lack of medical assistance.
In Colombia the demonstrations centred on the government’s refusal to inform girls of their rights on this subject, a refusal which had been central in the case of a thirteen-year-old girl who had been raped by a neighbour and was turned away from seven hospitals and one courthouse. A court finally ruled in her favour – after the baby had already been born.
In Chile, which enjoys the reputation of being one of the more progressive and liberal countries in Latin America, the law states that the life of the unborn foetus is always to take precedence over the life of the mother, wife, sister, lover, friend. Even having a female president has been insufficient to change this law.
The Dominican Republic is another example of countries which are not revising the laws in favour of women, but rather against them, as new legislation has made abortion illegal in any case and punishable by prison. Nicaragua is also going backwards – it has been a secular state since 1939, yet since 2006 abortion has been illegal.
The reason for the slide back into primitive legislation is of course the Catholic Church. In Colombia the government refuses to inform girls of their rights because the Church has instructed them to refuse. In Peru and Argentina the Church has organised counter-demonstrations in which the faithful have been ordered to insult the people who support women’s rights and threaten them into submission.
Europe, rightly or wrongly, is generally seen as more progressive and forward-thinking than many other areas of the world, a place where our wealth allows us access to better education and prolonged periods of peace enable us to see each other’s point of view with more ease. Within Europe Spain has long been a beacon of liberalism and equality – the Second Republic bestowed upon the people freedoms and rights of which other countries could only dream, and the current Socialist government has legalised gay marriage and done more than any other government to combat domestic violence.
However, at exactly the same time that Latin America is suffering this upheaval, Spain is undergoing its own share of unrest on the subject of abortion. Bibiana Aído, Minister for Equality, was quoted as saying that abortion was an issue on a scale with breast enlargement. Cardinal Antonio Cañizares was quoted as saying that abortion was worse than child sex abuse.
Somehow, the minister’s comments seem to have caused more of a stir than those of the cardinal, with bishops even threatening to excommunicate ministers, although that could be because certain commentators are striving to discredit the minister because of her support for a bill which would introduce a confidentiality clause for teenagers.
The Catholic Church professes to support life, yet it continues to condemn many of its followers to death through policies – not beliefs, because the Church is after all a political organisation – which do nothing to ease the lives of millions of women and children around the world. In theory the Church is a socialist organisation, yet its pursuit of the disadvantaged and the dissenters is fascist in its intensity.
Fortunately, what the Church lacks in compassion Zapatero’s government makes up for in common sense. Aído’s comments reveal a sharp insight into the world of young women today – breast enlargement operations and abortions are two surgical interventions which could make or break the life of a girl and require compassionate and protective legislation.
Fellow Socialist Carmen Montón, an MP from Valencia, went deeper into the topic saying that while parents had no right to oblige their child to abort neither had they the right to force their child to be a mother. She insisted that the law was about “young women having legal and health protection” and has also been quoted as reminding critics that laws are not just for perfect families but for everyone.
And the President himself showed honesty and intelligence when asked about the possibility of his own daughter deciding on an abortion: “The truth is I would like it if she talked to me about it, obviously. I feel that this desire for her to consult me is the result of the trust that should exist between parents and daughters and we parents have to earn that trust. But at the end of the day the decision must lie with the person who decides to voluntarily terminate their pregnancy.”
Therein lies the importance of this legislation – the daughters of parents who lack the common sense to build a trusting relationship with their children, along with the daughters of parents who would prefer to leave the job of parenting to a misogynist and child-free organisation like the Catholic Church, need the protection of the law to safeguard them against being told what to do simply because they are under eighteen and under their parents’ roof.
Being under your parents’ roof means an obligation on the part of the parents to protect, but does not allow the parents to dictate to children who are capable of making their own decisions. Perhaps they will make the “wrong” decision – all the more reason why the children need protection, not intransigence.
And as for the Catholic Church threatening to excommunicate the ministers in Spain and threatening the pro-women’s rights protesters in Latin America – the Church is reeling from the constant revelations of paedophilia and abuse and is slowly beginning to collapse with at least seven diocese in the United States declaring bankruptcy after being faced with multi-million-dollar compensation claims. It is time for the Church to face the truth of its demise and close its doors for good. For the good of everyone, in fact.
Latin America has long enjoyed a tense and complicated relationship with the two European countries that did the most to shape its history over the last few centuries. The collision of different cultures can be magical or controversial, the waves of European émigrés have been replaced by a flood of Latin American immigrants and successive New World governments have tried to shake off the European influence while continuing to look to their Old World counterparts both politically and financially.
However, the existing symbiosis has recently thrown up one significant parallel between Spain and the whole of Latin America. The issue of abortion in a predominantly Catholic society is always likely to be controversial, but within a chauvinist context it is unlikely to be resolved in favour of those most affected, that is women.
Earlier this month there were demonstrations throughout Latin America for and against various aspects of the subject after the deaths of two young mothers highlighted the dangers of not introducing adequate legislation. There are estimated to be around four million secret abortions a year in the whole of Latin America, resulting in more than 4,000 deaths from surgical complications, infections and a lack of medical assistance.
In Colombia the demonstrations centred on the government’s refusal to inform girls of their rights on this subject, a refusal which had been central in the case of a thirteen-year-old girl who had been raped by a neighbour and was turned away from seven hospitals and one courthouse. A court finally ruled in her favour – after the baby had already been born.
In Chile, which enjoys the reputation of being one of the more progressive and liberal countries in Latin America, the law states that the life of the unborn foetus is always to take precedence over the life of the mother, wife, sister, lover, friend. Even having a female president has been insufficient to change this law.
The Dominican Republic is another example of countries which are not revising the laws in favour of women, but rather against them, as new legislation has made abortion illegal in any case and punishable by prison. Nicaragua is also going backwards – it has been a secular state since 1939, yet since 2006 abortion has been illegal.
The reason for the slide back into primitive legislation is of course the Catholic Church. In Colombia the government refuses to inform girls of their rights because the Church has instructed them to refuse. In Peru and Argentina the Church has organised counter-demonstrations in which the faithful have been ordered to insult the people who support women’s rights and threaten them into submission.
Europe, rightly or wrongly, is generally seen as more progressive and forward-thinking than many other areas of the world, a place where our wealth allows us access to better education and prolonged periods of peace enable us to see each other’s point of view with more ease. Within Europe Spain has long been a beacon of liberalism and equality – the Second Republic bestowed upon the people freedoms and rights of which other countries could only dream, and the current Socialist government has legalised gay marriage and done more than any other government to combat domestic violence.
However, at exactly the same time that Latin America is suffering this upheaval, Spain is undergoing its own share of unrest on the subject of abortion. Bibiana Aído, Minister for Equality, was quoted as saying that abortion was an issue on a scale with breast enlargement. Cardinal Antonio Cañizares was quoted as saying that abortion was worse than child sex abuse.
Somehow, the minister’s comments seem to have caused more of a stir than those of the cardinal, with bishops even threatening to excommunicate ministers, although that could be because certain commentators are striving to discredit the minister because of her support for a bill which would introduce a confidentiality clause for teenagers.
The Catholic Church professes to support life, yet it continues to condemn many of its followers to death through policies – not beliefs, because the Church is after all a political organisation – which do nothing to ease the lives of millions of women and children around the world. In theory the Church is a socialist organisation, yet its pursuit of the disadvantaged and the dissenters is fascist in its intensity.
Fortunately, what the Church lacks in compassion Zapatero’s government makes up for in common sense. Aído’s comments reveal a sharp insight into the world of young women today – breast enlargement operations and abortions are two surgical interventions which could make or break the life of a girl and require compassionate and protective legislation.
Fellow Socialist Carmen Montón, an MP from Valencia, went deeper into the topic saying that while parents had no right to oblige their child to abort neither had they the right to force their child to be a mother. She insisted that the law was about “young women having legal and health protection” and has also been quoted as reminding critics that laws are not just for perfect families but for everyone.
And the President himself showed honesty and intelligence when asked about the possibility of his own daughter deciding on an abortion: “The truth is I would like it if she talked to me about it, obviously. I feel that this desire for her to consult me is the result of the trust that should exist between parents and daughters and we parents have to earn that trust. But at the end of the day the decision must lie with the person who decides to voluntarily terminate their pregnancy.”
Therein lies the importance of this legislation – the daughters of parents who lack the common sense to build a trusting relationship with their children, along with the daughters of parents who would prefer to leave the job of parenting to a misogynist and child-free organisation like the Catholic Church, need the protection of the law to safeguard them against being told what to do simply because they are under eighteen and under their parents’ roof.
Being under your parents’ roof means an obligation on the part of the parents to protect, but does not allow the parents to dictate to children who are capable of making their own decisions. Perhaps they will make the “wrong” decision – all the more reason why the children need protection, not intransigence.
And as for the Catholic Church threatening to excommunicate the ministers in Spain and threatening the pro-women’s rights protesters in Latin America – the Church is reeling from the constant revelations of paedophilia and abuse and is slowly beginning to collapse with at least seven diocese in the United States declaring bankruptcy after being faced with multi-million-dollar compensation claims. It is time for the Church to face the truth of its demise and close its doors for good. For the good of everyone, in fact.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The British Army and the BNP - a marriage made in Hell
(London, England)
On the same day that it was announced that a list of BNP members has appeared on the internet a group of former British generals published an open letter in the press demanding that the party stop using British military symbols such as Churchill’s face and the Spitfire and declared that the party held values that “are fundamentally at odds with the values of the modern British military, such as tolerance and fairness”.
The British army is known the world over as a fascist organisation which draws its members from the thuggish underbelly of a jingoistic society and uses them to enforce the imperialist policies of the British government, the British crown and the xenophobic, hooligan majority of English people. It is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians this decade alone, as well as the deaths of some of its own members through intolerance and injustice.
It has yet to be demonstrated whether the list of BNP party members is real or a hoax, but it is probably not necessary to have a list to see who is a member or a sympathiser. The English are more than vocal in their support of the British army and the exploits of “our boys” against whichever group of foreigners happens to be this year’s target.
They turn out for military parades for returning soldiers, they tune in to television programmes that exalt and reward modern veterans, they read newspapers that support the army and incite hatred for foreigners and they use the national support as a convenient platform to demonstrate their primitive values.
The rise of the BNP simply underlines and confirms what those on the outside looking in have known for a long time – England is “against Continental totalitarianism” and the BNP is “the party of the British squaddie”.
Anybody in the British army that feels the BNP is distorting the world’s view of the British military is deluded. Anybody in the BNP who would rather we believed they do not support the British army’s slaughter of foreign civilians is deluded too. They are made for each other.
On the same day that it was announced that a list of BNP members has appeared on the internet a group of former British generals published an open letter in the press demanding that the party stop using British military symbols such as Churchill’s face and the Spitfire and declared that the party held values that “are fundamentally at odds with the values of the modern British military, such as tolerance and fairness”.
The British army is known the world over as a fascist organisation which draws its members from the thuggish underbelly of a jingoistic society and uses them to enforce the imperialist policies of the British government, the British crown and the xenophobic, hooligan majority of English people. It is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians this decade alone, as well as the deaths of some of its own members through intolerance and injustice.
It has yet to be demonstrated whether the list of BNP party members is real or a hoax, but it is probably not necessary to have a list to see who is a member or a sympathiser. The English are more than vocal in their support of the British army and the exploits of “our boys” against whichever group of foreigners happens to be this year’s target.
They turn out for military parades for returning soldiers, they tune in to television programmes that exalt and reward modern veterans, they read newspapers that support the army and incite hatred for foreigners and they use the national support as a convenient platform to demonstrate their primitive values.
The rise of the BNP simply underlines and confirms what those on the outside looking in have known for a long time – England is “against Continental totalitarianism” and the BNP is “the party of the British squaddie”.
Anybody in the British army that feels the BNP is distorting the world’s view of the British military is deluded. Anybody in the BNP who would rather we believed they do not support the British army’s slaughter of foreign civilians is deluded too. They are made for each other.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Ripping up the West's credibility
(New York, USA)
It is difficult to find a transcript of Libyan president Gaddafi’s speech to the UN, let alone a coherent translation of his words. Perhaps we are simply supposed to accept the snippets that have been interpreted for us and hate the man without ever questioning why.
Two things have been repeated almost non-stop since his mammoth speech finished – he “ripped up” the UN charter and he suggested the Security Council be renamed the “Terror Council”.
First of all, he did not “rip up” the Charter. He had a copy of the joke that is the Charter in his hands as he was speaking and made a small tear in one corner of the booklet before appearing to realise what he was holding and putting it down quickly. Sinéad O’Connor “ripped up” that photo of the Pope (may she forgive me for dragging that up after so long but I cannot find a better example) – Gaddafi did not “rip up” the Charter.
Secondly – without wishing to succumb to the “reflexive anti-Americanism” that Obama accused the world of perpetrating – various Western governments including the US, Britain and Spain have indeed committed acts of terrorism in recent times. In fact most of the suits and ties who were sat listening to Gaddafi were there in representation of regimes that have used “violence and threats to intimidate or coerce”, that have caused a “state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorisation” or that have shown a “terroristic method of governing” at one time or another in recent years.
These regimes include Israel (countless examples of violence against Palestine and Lebanon), Sudan (Darfur), Uganda and France (their involvement in the Rwandan genocide), Ireland (the use of the armed forces and the police against the people of Mayo and in protection of the economic interests of Shell), Zimbabwe (violent oppression of dissenters) and many others.
Western commentators are happy to follow the party line and condemn Gaddafi as a “nutcase” (Irish Times) but the people who read the newspapers and watch the news are not stupid. In response to one journalist’s blog on the BBC the first reader to reply summed up the attitude perfectly:
“Can we have the full transcript Nick so we can make our own minds up?”
It is difficult to find a transcript of Libyan president Gaddafi’s speech to the UN, let alone a coherent translation of his words. Perhaps we are simply supposed to accept the snippets that have been interpreted for us and hate the man without ever questioning why.
Two things have been repeated almost non-stop since his mammoth speech finished – he “ripped up” the UN charter and he suggested the Security Council be renamed the “Terror Council”.
First of all, he did not “rip up” the Charter. He had a copy of the joke that is the Charter in his hands as he was speaking and made a small tear in one corner of the booklet before appearing to realise what he was holding and putting it down quickly. Sinéad O’Connor “ripped up” that photo of the Pope (may she forgive me for dragging that up after so long but I cannot find a better example) – Gaddafi did not “rip up” the Charter.
Secondly – without wishing to succumb to the “reflexive anti-Americanism” that Obama accused the world of perpetrating – various Western governments including the US, Britain and Spain have indeed committed acts of terrorism in recent times. In fact most of the suits and ties who were sat listening to Gaddafi were there in representation of regimes that have used “violence and threats to intimidate or coerce”, that have caused a “state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorisation” or that have shown a “terroristic method of governing” at one time or another in recent years.
These regimes include Israel (countless examples of violence against Palestine and Lebanon), Sudan (Darfur), Uganda and France (their involvement in the Rwandan genocide), Ireland (the use of the armed forces and the police against the people of Mayo and in protection of the economic interests of Shell), Zimbabwe (violent oppression of dissenters) and many others.
Western commentators are happy to follow the party line and condemn Gaddafi as a “nutcase” (Irish Times) but the people who read the newspapers and watch the news are not stupid. In response to one journalist’s blog on the BBC the first reader to reply summed up the attitude perfectly:
“Can we have the full transcript Nick so we can make our own minds up?”
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