Year: 2010

Ruth Gledhill in The Times tells us that

The civil servant in charge of the Pope’s visit to Britain has been suspended and is to be investigated for misconduct after a memo lampooning the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church was leaked to the press.

All the staff involved in producing the memo are to be sent on “urgent diversity training”

Urgent diversity training? Meaning what? They’ll be trained not to have contempt for contemptible beliefs? How will that be accomplished, exactly? Heavy drugging? Waterboarding?

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “As we have made clear publicly, it was a foolish document that did not in any way reflect FCO views. Although it was intended only for internal use, it was ill-judged, naive and disrespectful of some key tenets of the Catholic faith. It has caused great offence…

Why do key tenets of the Catholic faith have to be respected? They are false after all – and the ones that were mocked in the memo are also harmful – so respect should not be mandated. I do realize it’s not the Foreign Office’s job to make the Catholic church a better institution, but it also shouldn’t be its job to lick Ratzinger’s boots.

The FCO very much regrets this incident and is deeply sorry for the offence which it has caused. We strongly value the close and productive relationship between the UK Government and the Holy See and look forward to deepening this further with the visit of Pope Benedict to the UK later this year.

Does it? Why? Why does the Foreign Office strongly value the close and productive relationship between the UK Government and the Holy See? What is there to value in that? The “Holy See” is a horrible secretive coercive all-male obscurantist organization that shields fugitives from justice (Cardinal Bernard Law) and conceals decade upon decade of child rape until the last rag has been stripped away. The “Holy See” tells Africans not to use condoms during an Aids epidemic, it tells everyone everywhere not to use any birth control at all, it works tirelessly to prevent women from getting abortions and thus to deprive all women of childbearing age of a secure sense that they own their own lives. The “Holy See” stinks – it is repulsive to see the Foreign Office crawling to it in this slavish way.

A pretty story.

Three sisters have suffered serious facial burns after two unidentified men on a motorbike threw acid at them in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. The sisters, aged between 14 and 20 years old, were attacked as they walked from Kalat city to Pandarani village…The police named the girls as Fatima Bibi, 20, Saima Bibi, 16 and Sakina Bibi, 14…Two weeks ago, an unknown group – the Baloch Ghairatmand Group (the Honourable Baloch Group) – claimed responsibility for a similar attack on two women in a market in Dalbandin city. The group had warned women to wear the hijab, the traditional Muslim headscarf, and not to visit markets unaccompanied by men from their families.

So in other words these three girls had acid thrown in their faces because they existed, because they were girls, because they went outside, because they went somewhere, because they were visible, because they walked and talked and breathed, because there were three of them. They had acid thrown in their faces because nothing. They had acid thrown in their faces because two thugs felt like throwing acid on some women, and the Bibi sisters were there. “Honourable” indeed – give me a fucking break.