Saturday 1 December 2012

The Guardian of the Guardian?


7 comments:

The Bones said...

The State is powerful enough to take away your foster children because of your voting patterns.

Presumably, there would have been no uproar but for a Press not governed by the State?

Sure, I accept what you say that Guardian writers do not necessarily mean the whole paper want State regulation but there is an obvious danger to which while they are not oblivious they underplay the threat.

John said...

But the problem is YOU underplay the threat of a State in bed with the rich and powerful who refuse pointblank to implement the findings of an independent commission that found them guilty of foul play. Of course they can play the tedious civil liberties card to get out of jail, it works every time. Cigarette manufacturers who knowingly sell a deadly product that has killed millions are playing the civil liberties card in Australia at the moment. Of course the billionaires who make money from poisoning people with a product more addictive than heroin are interested in freedom, why else would they want the government to back off....

The way I see it is there are two fundamental players int he world today. Governments (the last vestige of our democratic culture) and companies (the real power). The Church/religion is a third player, but they really can only ally themselves with one of the other two (since they lack real power and, let's be honest, won't get it any time soon in Europe - probably most of us wouldn't want to live in a theocracy, we've seen the Middle East and realised it's just not worth the trouble).

So you can throw your power as a third party behind the state and try to force a more ethical democracy informed by Judeo-Christian principles, or you can be taken in hook line and sinker by corporate propaganda and ally against the state and in favour of the civil liberty of big companies who will do anything to make money at any moral cost and then leave the country the second they get a better offer elsewhere. My point is, make this choice knowingly. Don't be duped into this big corporate propaganda that somehow 'the media' (which is just the totality of opinions published as news, including your own blog) or 'the state' (which is just the people YOU vote for) are somehow inherently corrupt while the tax exempt corporation that has no ties to anyone is the little guy being persecuted by the nasty state bureaucracy

John said...

Also, doesn't that Rotheram UKIP nonsense actually disprove your point? The actions of a single employee led to that farce, the media and the state drew attention to it and launched an investigation. Yet again, you speak (disingenuously) as if the state and media were conspiring to pervert justice. Of course individuals do silly things and overstep their authority, thankfully we live in a state and media climate that allows us to know about it.

Now let's take a similar situation where the Church was involved (which, thanks to the media, we eventually learned of).

1) Nuns in Spain stole children and sold them on for profit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15335899

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/11/spain-s-baby-snatching-scandal-focuses-on-nun-s-alleged-role.html

http://www.biblebasedministries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Babies_Stolen_and_Sold_by_Spanish_Priests_and_Nuns.pdf

2) The Irish church corrupted police investigators so that the rape of children would go unprosecuted:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8381119.stm

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/world/europe/14church.html?pagewanted=all

http://news.yahoo.com/top-irish-catholic-faces-abuse-cover-claims-075806882.html

It is thanks to our free media we know about the horrific actions of a corrupt institution here. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water eh, we don't really want to live in a world where nuns can steal and sell kids or priests can rape kids then pay off the police. Even you don't want that

The Bones said...

Oh my. Oh do please go away.

The Irish State was only too glad to cover up the crimes of the clergy in Ireland, as well you know.

We're not talking about the Church, we're talking Press regulation by the State.

John said...

And I'm saying the free press blew the whistle on the rotheram scandal. AND the Catholic nun scandal. Both involved institutions (the state and church respectively) overstepping their power, both were caught by the press. If their is a difference, the state was trying to place an east European child with a new family because the employee thought it was in the child's interest to have a new family (misguided but not evil). The sick senile Spanish nuns who worked happily under the fascist Franco regime stole children and sold them into sexual slavery. Explain that one of you can. I'd say there is no non-relativist explanation. Evil is evil, and those evil fascist nuns should burn in hell, along with the Irish bishops and their Vatican buddies (including Nazinger) who assisted them. Presumably you gave some relativistic coward's cop out to justify fascist terror

John said...

My point is an u regulated press is not necessarily a free press. The Soanush press was not regulated- still, if you reported that nuns were selling mentally disabled children into sex rings you ended up being tortured by the fascists. What we need us a free press, one capable of overcoming corporate and institutional bias to report abuse when it happens. That way thousands of Spanish children would have avoided sexual exploitation, thousands of Irush boys would be alive now, and the Vatican would not be an open gay near market that the Italian press recently reported it to be.

John said...

I see you're quite happy tI practice your own censorship when a fact contrary to your belief is reported. Relativism is your religion, factual truth is not

The Pope Who Won't Be Buried

It has been a long time since I have put finger to keyboard to write about our holy Catholic Faith, something I regret, but which I put larg...