Category: politics

Earlier this month I noticed an article in the Sunday Times relating how the Vatican’s diplomatic immunity had been waived in a US-based child sexual abuse case where the claimant alledges that the vatican knowingly transferred a priest to their diocese when they had strong grounds to believe he was a serial perpetrator of sexual abuse against children.
I didn’t notice the case reported in any of the other papers although I’m open to the possibility that it was. The following extract is taken from the University of Pittsburgh’s Jurist website. It’s

“A federal judge in Oregon allowed a sexual abuse lawsuit against the Catholic Church to move forward Wednesday, rejecting the Vatican’s bid to dismiss the suit for lack of jurisdiction. The ruling allows a Seattle-area man to continue with his claim [complaint, PDF] that the Holy See [official website] is liable for transferring the Rev. Andrew Ronan from Ireland to Chicago to Portland, even though the church knew Ronan had a history of sexual abuse. The lawsuit, filed in 2002 [AP report] in the US District Court for the District of Oregon [official website], alleges the Vatican, the Archdiocese of Portland and the archbishop of Chicago conspired to protect Ronan by transferring him from city to city. District Judge Michael Mosman [official profile] ruled that Ronan was an employee of the Vatican under Oregon law and noted that there are exceptions to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act [text], which typically grants the Vatican and other foreign states immunity in US courts. The 1976 act does not shield states when engaged in commercial or certain harmful activities in the United States. The judge added that the Holy See offered no evidence contradicting its involvement in transferring Ronan to protect him.”

By deeming that under Oregon law the priest was an employee of the vatican, its immunity was waived. However, I was surprised by the additional piece of information obtained from the Sunday Times report.

“The ruling follows a four-year legal battle in which the Vatican insisted that the alleged victim spend at least $40,000 (£21,700) translating all legal documents into Latin, the official language of the Holy See.”

I think it reasonable and truthful to describe the following as chicanery:

“The Vatican twice rejected translations by two American Latin professors, saying their translation of “court”, “conspiracy to commit fraud” and “defendant” and many other phrases were incorrect. The two professors hired by the Anderson firm also had to translate modern terms such as “fax number” (numerus isographicus) and e-mail (inscriptio electronica) as well as dense legal arguments relating to foreign immunity. The Vatican gave up its battle against the translations last December.

I think I’ll finish with a fitting entry from the Book of Job

“Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said, / How long wilt thou speak these things? and how long shall the words of thy mouth be like a strong wind? / Doth God pervert judgment? or doth the Almighty pervert justice? / If thy children have sinned against him, and he have cast them away for their transgression; / If thou wouldest seek unto God betimes, and make thy supplication to the Almighty; / If thou wert pure and upright; surely now he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous.”

This is old news but I’ve only really gotten a big buzzing bumble bee in my bonnet about it recently. Possibly because of the SouthPark debacle. I’m sure some readers, including Miles, have a skeleton or two in the closet. What if you could change the past or just make everybody forget about whatever activity/aspect of yourself you find embarassing. Well the good old church of scientology has adopted a very pragmatic approach to this particular dilemna. A few years back it sent a nasty C&D letter to google telling them to censor search results linking to sites which discredit scientology. Now let’s be nice and impartial about that. This was an act of pure unadulterated evil. Thanks to Dan Brown it seems half the world thinks they’re personally related to Jesus but the scientologists have to censor Google. The approach of messrs. Brin and Page was masterful (microsoft-like?) in it’s acrobatics, ensuring that the reason for censorship is out in the open through the innovative ChillingEffects website. Here’s a full list of the scientologist’s gripes, generally focussing on copyright infringement on material relating to their technologies.
What I missed at the time (cos I’m so s-l-o-w) was that the archives of various scientologist debunking pages such as Xenu.net have actually been expunged from the Internet Archive. So when future generations examine what the opinion was in the greater digital community in 2006 about Scientology, large swathes of negative opinion will not be available.
This is awfully sinister. Remember Orwell’s 1984 anyone? From the Internet Archive’s own pages.

The Internet Archive is working to prevent the Internet — a new medium with major historical significance — and other “born-digital” materials from disappearing into the past. Collaborating with institutions including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, we are working to preserve a record for generations to come.< The Internet Archive is opening its collections to researchers, historians, and scholars. The Archive has no vested interest in the discoveries of the users of its collections, nor is it a grant-making organization.

There’s little point in maligning a group of well meaning academics who run a not-for-profit organisation. About as much point in making them censor their archive, suppressing (that greatly abused word in scientology) dissenting voices. But there you go, all’s fair in love, war and cultdom.
I have little problem with any religious belief. Most can be made to appear silly when subjected to cold and rational scrutiny. This in itself does not make any article of faith untrue, it just means that it’s something that cannot be proven and is taken on faith. After all atheism is a belief structure. It’s intrinsic to humanity to believe in something even if it’s the absence of a god, dog or a flying spaghetti monster. Intuitively it’s a divisive rather than a spiritual path to censor those with a different opinion to your own. I guess I’d like to grow old in a world where the Internet enables safe freedom of thought and expression. A little bit of anarchy keeps the asylum a safe place, without it the pressure builds up and leads to lawlessness & war. Think of the internet as a democratic safety valve.

A friend of mine has brought the following rant to my attention. There’s little point in arguing with an organisation whose sole purpose is to criticise the views and statements of another organisation (the FI) but I’d like to make a few points:

• FFFF’s listing of Gaisan as a pro GOP blog is misleading. Gaisan isn’t pro/contra anything political. The opinions on this blog are personal and have nothing to do with Gaisan.
• I have never said I was pro-Bush in any of my blog posts. I have however endeavoured to illustrate the idiotic fallacies of those who are blindly anti-Bush as childish ramblings. The man isn’t perfect but it’s not fair to say he’s an idiot.
• I would not have voted for Bush Sr. or Jr. had I been given the opportunity to do so. This is substantially different from the reductionism of a “goodies versus baddies” approach which characterises most of the personal attacks from Fi Fie… I liked Clinton & Al Gore. Equally I have huge respect for Colin Powell who I believe should have been the US’ first black president. He has the intellect and integrity that becomes a great statesman.
• There isn’t any great crusade on this blog to do anything except air an opinion. I live in a democratic country and I’m therefore free to do that.
• I like Richard Waghorne’s Sicilian Notes although I do not necessarily agree or condone all opinions expressed. It’s called freedom of choice and Richard Waghorne understands that, unlike some.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest I can go back to hacking software.

Say what you like about him but Michael McDowell is never boring and evokes anything but apathy throughout the Irish electorate. Over the past few weeks I’ve listened to opinions as diverse as “McDowell is insane, a real whacko” & “McDowell is the only decent man in government”. Wherever your sympathies lie, the minister for justice can irk them. Should McDowell have leaked information to the press or made his allegations about Connolly using his Dail priviledges? For every yay, there’s a nay. Personally, I think it’s a difficult call. I’m not a fan of the CPI or what many regard as a provisional republican hypocrisy which looks for splinters in the eyes of others while ignoring their own planks (or baseball bats) but it’s inappropriate to categorise this as sedition in an open and democratic society. Even if you conceive that CPI’s purpose is to dig up dirt on parties other than SF to help win votes or discredit dissenters, it’s still a stretch to call this sedition. It’s my opinion that McDowell was angry with the noises coming from CPI and wanted to bring Connolly down. The precise reasons why the DPP failed to bring a case forward are classified but McDowell adopted a publish and be damned approach. Connolly is alledged to have incriminated himself through a fake passport application and McDowell much like that other Irish anti-hero Roy Keane “hit him hard”.
The allegations of “trial by media” against McDowell generally overlook two important points:

1. McDowell isn’t stupid. This was a risky and brave thing to do. The effectiveness of the leaking the garda intelligence claimed by some commentators could have backfired spectacularly and cost him his job.
2. McDowell himself was tried by the media for his actions and put under enormous pressure to resign. There were few supporters, his friend Sam Smyth among them.

A particularly insightful commenter on another blog comments that

“It is instructive that the one man, Frank Connolly (who has set himself up as an arbiter of public probity) who could deal an immediate hammer blow to McDowell’s political and quite possibly legal career (by demonstrating that he was not in Columbia at the time in question) has chosen not to do so, citing higher moral ground. This is a particularly weak response from a man dedicated to rooting out all that is wrong in public life.”

Bang on the money. Also, in response to another commenter, the involvement of Fergus Flood in the formerly well funded CPI does not automatically imply that senior members of the organisation don’t have strong provisional sympathies or these beliefs do not inform the operation of this organisation. Ultimately, this is moot as to my recollection it’s Connolly who garda intelligence implicates in a bogus passport application and not the CPI. McDowells party leader, Mary Harney, questioned the role and principles of the CPI in a television show after McDowells Dail statement on the matter.
For all the cat-calls and jeers, McDowell remains the most compelling figure in Irish politics. Many of his actions are defined by a refusal to forget the atrocities committed in the name of Irish Republicanism and a dedication to equitable justice for all. Forgiveness does not imply blind revisionism. In the words of philosopher George Santayana

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”