Some wonderful retractions

From here

Asia Bibi

Some cases rightly get major international attention – Here I am thinking of the likes Aung San Suu Kyi, Neda Agha Soltani. It is absolutely right that the Lady’s incarceration and Neda’s murder have been major news items.

Other equally worthy cases do not seem to get the media attention they deserve. This post concerns an appalling sentence handed down to a woman in Pakistan. So far it has received little attention from the world’s press. The Telegraph is an exception (as is the Richard Dawkins website for that matter). Sadly I missed the article when it was originally published.

Asia Bibi is a 45-year-old mother-of-five who has been sentenced to death under Pakistan’s atrocious blasphemy laws

In 2009 Asia had been working as a farmhand in fields with other women, when she was asked to fetch drinking water. Some of the other women – all Muslims – refused to drink the water as it had been brought by a Christian and was therefore "unclean", according to her evidence, sparking a row.

Apparently some of the women workers had been putting her under pressure to renounce her Christian faith and accept Islam.
The women were alleged to have pressed her about Islam. She responded by sharing with them about her faith in Christ. She spoke of how Jesus Christ had died on the cross for their sins and then asked them what Mohammed had done for them. (This pragraph accordning to the site Cross Rhythms.)


The incident was forgotten until a few days later when Mrs Bibi said she was set upon by a mob. The police were called and took her to a police station for her own safety.

Under pressure from the mob the police then registered a blasphemy case against her.

Asia denies blasphemy and told investigators that she was being persecuted for her faith in a country where Christians face routine harassment and discrimination.

Ashiq Masih, her husband, said he had not had the heart to break the news to two of their children.

"I haven't told two of my younger daughters about the court's decision," he said. "They asked me many times about their mother but I can't get the courage to tell them that the judge has sentenced their mother to capital punishment for a crime she never committed." Mrs Bibi has been held in prison since June last year.
"The trial was clear," he said. "She was innocent and did not say those words."

Human rights groups believe the law is often used to discriminate against religious minorities, such as the country's estimated three million Christians. Although no one has ever been executed under Pakistan's blasphemy laws – most are freed on appeal – as many as 10 people are thought to have been murdered while on trial.

Ali Hasan Dayan, of Human Rights Watch, said the blasphemy laws were out of step with rights guaranteed under Pakistan's constitution and should be repealed. "It's an obscene law," he said. "Essentially the blasphemy law is used as a tool of persecution and to settle other scores that are nothing to do with religion.
"It makes religious minorities particularly vulnerable because it's often used against them."

There is no doubt about this, the blasphemy laws in Pakistan are appalling. It seems that they are all too often used to persecute religious minorities (most often the Ahmadiyya sect but many Christians too).

It does not matter what she said or not. It is a horrendous sentence under an evil law. Asia Bibi should be released forthwith. She and her family must then and allowed to lead her lives in peace.

Remembrance

Remembering the Bomber Command dead at the Field of Remembrance

Robyn Hitchcock - Heaven*

On of my favourite Hitchcock songs - from the live album Gotta Let This Hen Out. THe studio version is on Fegmania

Chinese food scandal protestor jailed

Today’s Telegraph reports that Zhao Lianhai, who created a website to highlight the plight of children poisoned in a major food adulteration scandal in China, has been jailed for 2 1/2 years.


Zhao created the site in 2009 after his son was poisoned after being fed adulterated formula milk. He was one of about 300,000 Chinese toddlers who were poisoned (of which at least six of them died) by milk that contained melamine, an industrial chemical that was added to make the milk appear to contain more protein than was actually the case.

The website quickly became a focal point for thousands of parents who were outraged at the crisis, and that the issue had initially been covered up.

As more and more parents began to call for justice and compensation, and Mr Zhao began to press their case publicly, he came to the attention of the Chinese authorities.

Last November, he was arrested by the police and then charged in March with "creating a disturbance". His lawyer, Li Fangping, said the evidence for the charge had been that Mr Zhao had given a media interview on a public pavement, held a dinner in a restaurant for a dozen parents of other victims, and that he had held up a small sign in protest outside a trial of milk company executives responsible for the poisoning.

As his sentence was announced, Mr Zhao protested in court, stripping off his prisoner's uniform and refusing to be handcuffed. "I am not guilty!" he said. Mr Li said he would appeal the sentence, and that Mr Zhao was in "quite good health, but anxious. He has not seen his wife and two children for almost a year."

Mr Zhao has already served one year of his sentence, and will now have another year-and-a-half of prison time.

Three people have been sentenced to death for their role in the toxic milk case, and the general manager and chairwoman of Sanlu, the milk company at the heart of the scandal, was given a life sentence. Dozens of officials, dairy executives and farmers have been punished for allowing the contamination to take place.

What to say? Words fail.

Staigue Fort

Five Anglican Bishops jump on the Vatican Express

The Telegraph reports that five Church of England bishops are leaving to join the Catholic church in a protest over the ordination of women bishops.

The Roman Catholic Church backed their move, and promised a "warm welcome" to all Anglicans who decide to switch allegiance to Rome.

Senior Catholics are finalising plans for the English Ordinariate, a new body created by the Pope to accommodate Anglican converts who cannot accept women bishops.

The Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster, Alan Hopes, the Roman Catholic representative leading the development of the Ordinariate,

“We welcome the decision of Bishops Andrew Burnham, Keith Newton, John Broadhurst, Edwin Barnes and David Silk to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church through the Ordinariate for England and Wales,” he said.

The move was precipitate by a decision at the General Synod of the Church of England in July to support plans for women to be ordained as bishops in England for the first time. The five bishops are said to be “dismayed” at the liberal reforms to the Church in recent decades and will join the Ordinariate in pursuit of “unity” with Rome when the new body is established next year.

Other members of the Church of England are expected to follow their lead. St Peter’s in Folkestone, in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s own diocese, became the first parish to declare publicly that it intended to join the Ordinariate last month.

Holy Trinity church in Reading is expected to make a decision on whether to follow in the next few weeks. Meetings are also planned at St John the Baptist church in Sevenoaks, Kent, and Holy Trinity, Winchmore Hill, in north London.

To be honest I find the move rather stupid. Personally I just don’t see the problem, given that an all male clergy in the past was a simply a reflection of the status of women more than anything else.

The ship jumpers are not guaranteed a universally warm welcome in the Catholic church. There are many people like my father who do not care for people changing religion for something as trivial as this.

Needless to say the new converts will not be forced to be celibate, making the rule on existing catholic priests more of an insult.

I’m wondering if the Catholic Church will have an ad campaign

Anglicans! Are you sick of female priests? Hate the idea of them becoming bishops?

Well join the Catholics. We’re bloody terrified of women!

Burmese junta squeaks home in surprise election win

Burma’s military has claimed a shock victory in the country's first election in 20 years, winning 80 per cent of the seats. This will give the junta a wafer thin majority.

''We have won about 80 per cent of the seats. We are glad,'' said a member of the Union Solidarity and Development Party, the junta's political arm, who did not want to be named.

The USDP member said turnout was more than 170 per cent, despite muted activity at polling stations on election day.

“We are most grateful to those people who came back from the dead to vote for us some of them voted up to 500 times. Such devotion to our party is touching”, said

Still victory was far from assured: “It was only thanks to a sustained campaign of intimidation, arrests and a trumped up charge against Aung San Suu Kyi” that we were able to win.”


Needless to say the election was an utter sham which will do absolutely nothing to better the lot of the Burmese people. That said it is interesting to see that the National Democratic Force, the main pro-democracy party, may win almost half the 37 seats in Rangoon, the country's former capital.

Not that it will make a jot of difference: the military will retain a quarter of the seats in the two houses of parliament, according to the constitution.

Elected lawmakers in both houses can nominate a presidential candidate to compete against the military-appointed legislators' contender but somehow I doubt that this person will stand a chance of becoming president

A little bit of heaven on earth

Anne's Grove garden, County Cork

Death of a sycophant

While I keep an eye on my stats I don't follow them slavishly (apart from keeping on the lookout when they are bout to hit a milestone like the 500,000th visitor) I was surprised to see a big spike in visitors over Friday and Saturday with the great majority of them coming from Romania.

The reason for this spike was the death on November 5th of Romanian poet Adrian Paunescu who, although he described himself as an "inner circle dissident", he was the court poet to Nicolae Ceausescu/ Here is a post I wrote last year which includes on of his abysmal poems glorifiying the Nazi bastard.

ROMANIA’S FUTURE - A POME BY ADRIAN PAUNESCU AGED 7 and 7/16ths

Adrian Paunescu now

While I love bad poetry, there is a huge difference between the passionate ineptitude of the likes of Tayside Tragedian or McIntyre of the giant cheese and the sycophantic ramblings of the political court poets as you will still see in places like North Korea.

Of all the former communist states in Europe Romania was in many ways one of the worst. Ceausescu may have garnered a little respect in the west by having the temerity not to participate fully in the Warsaw Pact structure and not contributing to the forces that toppled Dubcek in Czechoslovakia he was an evil mane in virtually every other respect of his worthless life.

Essentially Ceausescu was. Ultra nationalist and a unreconstructed Stalinist. It would be safe to say that he was a Nationalist Socialist. (Hmm that sounds a bit of a mouthful, let me remove a syllable.- Ceausescu was a National Socialist. Huum still too many syllables. This sounds right)

Ceausescu was basically a NAZI. Like other tyrants he had his coterie of sycophants. One of these was Adrian Paunescu who was Ceausescu's court poet. Here is an example of his work, some extracts of a poem translated by Constantin Roman:

VIITORUL ROMANIEI

"We now live a new life, which was dreamt of and fought for
By our forbears, our national revolutionaries Tudor, Balcescu
Horia and Iancu, who were once upon a time
The martyrs of our sufferings and of Romania’s fate

Today their heir is this wise old man, brought to us in Spring time
To be a hero amongst heroes. As Communist Party Leader,
It stands to reason that he is also the country’s President.
And that is why, through the very person of Ceausescu we found our own newborn ethos.

...

It is Ceausescu himself that introduced honour within the Communist Party and the Country
He rediscovered our history unadulterated
To make us reach for the future in our dreams, as well as
In our daily deeds, full of new meanings.

...

We can’t accept that our life should be broken
As we make history day in, day out, the way it was prescribed
By the 9th Congress of the Communist Party
Whose philosophy is to believe in the People as the ultimate solution


...
Notwithstanding all that the centre of our struggle remains
The Communist Party who knows the problem and has the solution
The Party is the architect of all our future
The perfect judge of our past and present

That is the stuff of which Romania’s hero is made
A true heroes through every fibre
The first recipient of the Truth
Who knows how to confront all Evil

...

As we follow our Hero, we overcome disasters
As we follow our Hero we shall be able to
Make everything to the measure of our enthusiasm
You People with a noble spirit, People with a pure soul. "

Paunescu showing dissent

Even if this is well written in Romanian it has the stink of a man who had his lips to the sphincter of a tyrant. I gather that Paunescu had the temerity to call himself a dissident.

If you wish to read about a real Romanian dissident who did suffer terribly for her actions try Doina Cornea and not this worthless scumbag