Anthony McIntyre's Blog, page 1201

Jobstown Innocent, Establishment Guilty

Details of a public meeting in Belfast to be hosted by Labour Alternative.

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Public Meeting

Jobstown Innocent, Establishment Guilty

 7.30pm Monday 17th July, Queen's SU(Club rooms, third floor)
Guest speakers - Ruth Coppinger TD & Cllr Michael O'Brien, Solidarity
In Dublin, the first group of Jobstown defendants have been found not guilty of false imprisonment for taking part in a peaceful, anti-austerity protest which delayed then Deputy Prime Minister Joan Burton in her car for three hours. This is a huge blow to the Southern establishment, who threw everything at securing convictions in what was clearly a politically motivated witch-hunt to undermine the right to protest and cut across the left and movements of the 99%.

Come along to hear the details of the trial, including evidence of a police conspiracy, the impact the verdict has had and the campaign to have all charges against the remaining defendants dropped, as well as the growing movements for pay restoration and the right to choose in the South.
Hosted by Labour Alternative

The New Wave

The Uri Avnery Column  looks at a spreading challenge to establishment politics, which is international in its span.

When I was young, there was a joke: "There is no one like you – and that's a good thing!"The joke applies now to Donald Trump. He is unique. That's good, indeed.

But is he unique? As a world-wide phenomenon, or at least in the Western world, is he without parallel?

As a character, Trump is indeed unique. It is extremely difficult to imagine any other Western country electing somebody like that as its supreme leader. But beyond his particular personality, is Trump unique?

Before The US election, something happened in Britain. The Brexit vote.

The British people, one of the most reasonable on earth, voted democratically to leave the European Union.

That was not a reasonable decision. To be blunt, it was idiotic.

The European Union is one of the greatest inventions of mankind. After many centuries of internal warfare, including two world wars, with uncounted millions of casualties, good sense at long last prevailed. Europe became one. First economically, then, slowly, mentally and politically.

England, and later Britain, was involved in many of these wars. As a great naval power and a world-wide empire, it profited from them. Its traditional policy was to instigate conflicts and to support the weaker against the stronger.

These days are, alas, gone. The Empire (including Palestine) is but a memory. Britain is now a mid-ranking power, like Germany and France. It cannot stand alone. But it has decided to.

Why, for God's sake? No one knows for sure. Probably it was a passing mood. A fit of pique. A longing for the good old days, when Britannia ruled the waves and built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land. (Nothing very green and pleasant about the real Jerusalem.)

Many seem to believe that if there had been a second round, the British would have reversed themselves. But the British do not believe in second rounds.

Anyhow, The "Brexit" vote was considered a sharp turn to the Right. And right after, there was the American vote for Trump.

Trump is a Rightist. A very rightist Rightist. Between him and the right wall there is nothing, except, perhaps, his Vice. (Vice in both meanings of the word.)

Taken together, the British and the American votes seemed to portend a world-wide wave of rightist victories. In many countries, rightists and outright fascists were flexing their muscles, confident of success. Marine Le Pen was scenting victory, and her equivalents in many countries, from Holland to Hungary, hoped for the same.

History has known such political waves before. There was the wave started by Benito Mussolini after World War I, who took the old Roman fasces and transformed them into an international term. There was the Communist wave after World War II, which took over half the globe, from Berlin to Shanghai.

So now it was the great right-wing wave, that was about to submerge the world.

And then something quite different happened.

Nothing Seemed as stable as the political system of France, with its old established parties, led by a class of old experienced party hacks.

And there – lo and behold – appears a nobody, a practically unknown non-politician, who with a wave of the hand clears the entire chessboard. Socialists, fascists and everybody in between are swept to the floor.

The new man is Emmanuel Macron. (Emmanuel is a good Hebrew name, meaning "God with us".) He is very young for a president (39), very good looking, very inexperienced, except for a short stint as an economic minister. He is also a staunch supporter of the European Union.

A quirk, party functionaries comforted themselves. It will not last. But then came the French parliamentary elections, and the flood became a tsunami. An almost unprecedented result: already in the first round Macron's new party gained an astounding majority, which will surely grow in the second round.

Everybody Needed to think again. Macron was obviously the very opposite of the New Rightist Wave. Not only about European unity, but about almost everything else. A man of the center, he is more left than right. A modest person, compared to the American Trump. A progressive, compared to the British May.

Ah, Theresa May.

What got into her? Put in power after the Brexit vote, with a comfortable majority, she was restless. Seems she wanted to prove that she could get an even larger majority just by herself. These things happen to politicians. So she called for new elections.

Even poor me, with my limited experience, could have told her that this was a mistake. For some reason, people don't like untimely elections. It's like a curse of the Gods. You call, you lose.

May lost her majority. There was no obvious coalition partner in sight. So she is compelled to court the most obnoxious right wingers: the Northern Irish protestants, compared to whom Trump is a progressive: no rights for gays, no abortions, no nothing. Poor May.

Who was the big winner? The most unlikely of unlikely persons: Jeremy Corbyn, (Another one with a good Hebrew first name. Jeremy was a major Biblical prophet.)

Corbyn is as unlikely a near-winner as you get them: ultra-left, ultra-everything. Many members of his own party detest him. But he almost won the elections. In any case, he made it impossible for Theresa May to rule effectively.

Corbyn's achievement brings to mind again that something very similar happened in the US elections within the Democratic Party. While the official candidate Hillary Clinton aroused widespread antipathy in her own party, a most unlikely alternative candidate stirred a wave of admiration and enthusiasm: Bernie Sanders.

Not the most promising candidate: 78 years old, a senator for 10 years. Yet he was feted like a newcomer, a man half his age. If he had been the candidate of his party, there is little doubt that he would be President today. (Even poor Hillary got a majority of the popular vote.)

So Do all these victories and near-victories have something in common? Do they add up to a "wave"?

On first sight, no. Neither did the Left win (Trump, Brexit) nor did the right (Macron, Corbyn, Sanders).

So there is nothing in common?

Oh yes, there is. It is the rebellion against the establishment.

All these people who won, or almost won, had this in common: they smashed the established parties. Trump won despite the Republicans, Sanders fought against the Democratic establishment, Corbyn against the Labour bosses, Macron against all. The Brexit vote was, first of all, against the entire British establishment.

So that is the New Wave? Out with the establishment, whoever it is.

And In Israel?

We are not yet there. We are always late. The last national movement in Europe. The last new state. The last colonial empire. But we always get there in the end.

Half of Israel, almost the entire Left and Center, is clinically dead. The Labor party, which for 40 years held power almost single-handedly, is a sorry ruin. The right-wing, split into four competing parties, tries to impose a near-fascist agenda on all walks of life. I just hope that something will happen before their final success.

We need a principled leader like Corbyn or Sanders. A young and idealistic person like Macron. Somebody who will smash all the existing occupation-era parties and start right from the beginning.

To adapt Macron's slogan: Forward, Israel!

Outraging Grieving Relatives

Anthony McIntyre featuring in the Belfast Telegraph writes that:

Birmingham Bombs: Interview Served No Purpose Other Than To Outrage Grieving RelativesI recall the Birmingham bombs well. As a seventeen year old IRA prisoner, it was a talking point in Crumlin Road jail. The year was ending pretty much as it had started for the IRA’s England campaign: bomb induced fatalities that reached double figures. If the M62 coach bombing was something the IRA could boast about because of the predominance of military personnel among the dead, there were to be no bragging rights in the wake of Birmingham. The slaughter was sans justification. What mitigation may have been cited was never going to make a dent in the public revulsion.

If I found it hard to comprehend then, my understanding has not been enhanced in the slightest by the “revelations” of Michael Hayes, interviewed for a BBC documentary on the bombings. Hayes was many years earlier “identified” as one of the men who planted a device on that fateful November evening in 1974. He has never admitted to it and his contribution to the BBC broadcast brought him no closer to an admission. His responses to the interviewer often seemed like the standard fare IRA posture when confronted by RUC interrogators. It is understandable why he might wish to feature in such a programme: to convey some semblance of remorse for an action he nevertheless refused to admit carrying out. It is much less understandable why the BBC should wish to put the camera on him when he said so little of consequence. 
If the appearance in combat fatigues was designed to give an air of military authenticity to the attack, it failed lamentably, merely conjuring up memories from the time when the cartoon commanders of the UDA could appear in television studios in full military regalia, and masked to boot. 
Sensationalism of this type might titillate some but it is hardly informative. The BBC managed to outrage the relatives of those killed in the blasts without adding anything substantive in terms of public knowledge.
It is evident Michael Hayes can throw greater light on the bombings than currently exists. But his contribution to the BBC broadcast was heat rather than light. He is unlikely to be forthcoming for understandable reasons. With the paralysis to truth recovery that is induced by a prosecutorial culture, encouraged more for recrimination than revelation, the chances for procuring a detailed account of what happened in Birmingham more than forty years ago recede to the point of neither heat nor light: only darkness. 

European Reformations & Witch Hunts – Christian Misogyny & Religious Madness

Michael A. Sherlock (Author) writes on how the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic-Counter Reformation encouraged witch hunting in Europe. TPQ republishes the piece with the author's permission.
Introduction
Prior to the thirteenth century, the Catholic Church’s position on witchcraft, as enunciated within the Canon Episcopi, was that it was a relatively harmless illusion, incapable of directly affecting natural phenomena.[1]  Witchcraft was still, according to the widespread belief underpinning the Canon Episcopi, an evil offense worthy of admonition and exile, but the later belief, that it posed an immediate threat to natural phenomena, had yet to arise amongst the superstitious crowds of Christendom.[2]  The former position was eventually overturned, and in the first few decades of the fourteenth century, largely as a result of Pope John XXII’s issuance of his Super Illius Specula, which authorized the Inquisition to vigorously prosecute witches [3] – witches, predominantly female,[4] were hunted down, beheaded, burned, drowned, strangled, and slaughtered in the thousands.[5] This barbarism aimed primarily against women reached a fever-pitch within the bloody Thirty Years War (1618-1648) between Catholic and Protestant Christians,[6] and it is estimated that by the end of this religious war, as many as half a million people had been executed on charges of witchcraft.[7]

This essay will briefly examine and discuss a number of ways in which both the Protestant Reformation (1517)[8] and the Catholic-Counter Reformation (1545-1648)[9] encouraged witch hunting in Europe. It will be argued that although these Reformations did contribute largely to the increase in both the severity and zeal with which witch hunts were conducted during these centuries, the primary culprits were religion and superstitious ignorance, just as they continue to co-conspire to commit the same atrocities in overtly religious and superstitious countries like modern Saudi Arabia.[10]  It will be argued that the spike in witch hunts during the period in question can be accounted for by placing religion at the foundation of the examination, upon which various social, political and possibly even meteorological contributing factors may be seen as exacerbating influences.


Academic Approaches

Numerous scholars from a variety of academic fields have offered various explanations for the increased intensity of witch hunting from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries in Europe.  Scholars such as Foucault (1961), Szasz (1970), and Senter (1947), for example, have produced a variety of hypotheses based upon a psychological-psychiatric model, arguing, variously, that this phenomenon can be explained by examining the mental states of the perpetrators and/or the victims.  Trevor-Roper (1967), a scholar with one of the most eclectic approaches to the examination of witch hunting in Europe during these centuries, employs a scapegoat hypothesis, which holds that the predominantly female victims of witch hunts were mere scapegoats for the strife faced by Europeans during the period under examination. Other scholars (White, 1913; Thorndike, 1941; Rattansi, 1972; Ben, 1971; Hansen 1975) have argued that the increase in witch hunting can be explained by a superstitious and ignorant misunderstanding of a pre-scientific revolution, which saw some of the first modern attempts at chemistry and other sciences that appeared to a religious and credulous population as magical witchcraft. Further still, other scholars (Nelson, 1975; Currie, 1968; Shoeneman, 1977) have sought to put forth social, political and personal gain models, arguing that the ‘witch craze’ received so much attention that some saw it as a personally and politically profitable avenue for gain, thereby adding impetus to the already fervent persecution of women and men accused of witchcraft.   Finally, a small handful of scholars, amongst whom are included Lewis (1971), Trevor-Roper (1967) and Nelson (1975), argue that the inferior status of women was a causal factor in the fervent witch hunts of early modern Europe.

There may be elements of truth in each of the approaches evinced above, as well as those omitted, but the answer may also lie in a more eclectic approach, one that incorporates not only the spur given to the witch hunts by both the Catholic and Protestant Reformations, but by all of the factors mentioned above, which, to varying degrees, may have watered the seeds of religious ignorance in a more general sense.  Historian Keith Thomas concurs with this proposition, saying: ‘But religious beliefs as such were a necessary precondition of the prosecutions’.[11]


The Protestant Reformation

The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 with Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Saxony.[12] One of the principle doctrines of Luther’s Reformation was Sola Scriptura (‘by scripture alone’), which held that the Bible was the sole and supreme authority on all matters pertaining to doctrine and practice.[13]  This principle acted as a driving force which resulted in Bibles being printed in local vernaculars and as an eventual result, increased literacy rates across Europe.[14] This increase in literacy, coupled with the prior advent of the Gutenberg Printing Press in the 1450s,[15] meant that literature of all kinds could be widely disseminated across the European continent.[16] The proliferation of this new media technology meant that treatises which encouraged the hunting and prosecution of witches, such as Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum (Eng. Hammer of the Witches), published in 1487,[17] were, for the first time, being widely published, and the increased propagation of such literature may have also contributed to the general belief amongst a relatively newly literate laity that witchcraft was becoming an increasingly widespread problem.  This proposition ties in with the psychological-psychiatric model, for if such was in fact the case, then the influence of such media over the mentality of an already superstitious and fearful mass of believers would have probably been quite significant.


Luther’s German Translation of Exodus 22:18 – “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”.

The majority of the victims of the witch hunts in Europe were women.  According to Barstow: ‘women were overwhelmingly victimized: on average 80% of those accused and 85% of those killed were female’.[18]

It is no secret that the Bible itself is a wellspring of religious misogyny, from Genesis to Paul’s Epistles – but on top of the pre-existing misogyny that formed the foundation of such gender-focussed persecutions, Luther’s German translation of the Bible, specifically, his translation of Exodus 22:18, was probably another factor which contributed to the zealous witch hunts launched largely against women.  The source of Luther’s translation is found amongst a textual tradition known to biblical scholars as the ‘Textus Receptus’, and this textual tradition forms the foundation of the King James Bible.[19] This dubious textual tradition, which, with regards to the Hebrew Bible, drew upon the Greek Septuagint,[20] translated the Hebrew noun כשף [21] (‘kashaph’ – Eng. ‘evil doer’/ ‘sorceress’? The precise meaning is unknown)[22] in Exodus 22:18 to ‘witch’/‘sorceress’ (Gk. ‘pharmakis’).[23] The King James Version of Exodus 22:18 was thus rendered: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’.[24]

Luther, following the textual tradition that almost a century later would serve as the foundation of the King James Bible, translated the Hebrew ‘kashaph’ from the Greek ‘pharmakis’ into the German ‘zauberninnen’ (Eng. witches).[25]  It is, therefore, reasonable to argue that the Luther’s German translation of ‘pharmakis’ into the local vernacular of the people was a protagonist in the largely female-focussed witch hunts of early modern Europe. If such happens to have been the case, then it goes some way to vindicating the hypothesis of scholars who have sought to attribute the inferior status of women as a causal factor in the witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe. Add to this translation the newly contrived doctrine of ‘Sola Scriptura’, and the conditions would have been ripe for the persecution of witches, for the Bible, the perceived supreme authority of Christian doctrine and practice commanded such barbarism in the local vernacular of the people.


Heresy and Witches

The word ‘heresy’ stems from the Greek αἵρεσις (‘hairesis’),[26] and it originally connoted a self-chosen, or freely adopted opinion.[27] The meaning of the word was first co-opted and arguably perverted by early Christians.[28]  From approximately the second century onward, heresy came to connote wrong belief, and within the exclusivist theology of the Christian religion, this was associated with concept that the Devil is a deceiver and causes people to fall prey to wrong beliefs, or heresies.[29]

The schismatic Reformations in Europe made heresy a prevalent and widely discussed issue, playing a pivotal role in the Thirty Years War.[30] That heresy came to the surface of the consciousness of Christians in Europe at this time is a matter of little dispute, and that witchcraft was branded heretical is also a fact supported by primary historical sources of the time – such as the aforementioned Malleus Maleficarum, an excerpt of which reads:

And those who try to induce others to perform such evil wonders are called witches. And because infidelity in a person who has been baptized is technically called heresy, therefore such persons are plainly heretics.[31]

Further, Monter comments:

‘Continental witch-trials were almost invariably heresy trials as well as trials for malign sorcery, which makes them different both from the English and from virtually all of the non-European societies which have been studied by anthropologists’.[32]

This association of witchcraft with heresy in Europe may have led to a rise in witch hunts due to the boiling accusations of heresy that were being launched at members of competing confessions of Christianity, and it may well be the case that “witches” were not so much a façade as Trevor-Roper has suggested,[33] but both, or either, an external social or internal psychological drive for consistency in an environment fuelled with a feverish religious zeal to prosecute and persecute “heretical enemies” of the “one true” confession of faith, whether they were Catholics, Protestants, or “witches”.  It is of interest here to note that in areas unaffected by Protestantism, like Spain and Italy – that is to say – in areas unaffected by the heresy-focusing dissonance between Protestantism and Catholicism, witch hunts and trials were far less frequent.[34]  To put it in simpler terms, the public obsession with heresy inspired by the split in Christendom could have inspired authorities and the public at large alike to strive for consistency by persecuting heresy wherever they found it, and if the proliferation of literature on witches brought this form of heresy to the public’s attention, then it is only natural that this heresy would have received widespread attention at a time when heresy was in the forefront of people’s minds.


The Catholic Reformation in Bamberg

The Catholic Reformation, sometimes referred to as the Counter-Reformation, [35] was a comprehensive initiative by the Catholic Church to ebb the tide of Protestantism which was sweeping across Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[36] It began with the Council of Trent in 1545 and ended with the close of the Thirty Years War in 1648.[37]  Friedrich Forner has been held to be the architect of the Catholic Reformation in Bramberg, Germany.[38] His literary accomplishments were vast, but his Panoplia Armaturae Dei (Eng. Panoply of the Armor of God probably received the most attention.[39] Panoplia Armaturae Dei was a series of 35 sermons published in 1626 primarily concerned with the threats posed to Catholics by witchcraft and magic.[40] Forner viewed the proliferation of witchcraft to be the Devil’s last desperate attempt to destroy the Catholic faith, considering that the evil heresy of Calvinism had been largely defeated in the first stages of the Thirty Years War.[41] Thus, Forner’s perception of witchcraft was heavily tied into his eschatological beliefs about the ‘End Times’, which was, for obvious reasons, prevalent during the period of the Thirty Years War.[42] Clark notes:

‘Forner listed the thirteen sins that unleashed demons and witches on errant Catholics (Sermons XII-XIII), and the twenty-four pieces of ‘armour’ that would protect them (Sermons XIV-XXXV)’.[43]

Forner’s sermons were being read by preachers in Sunday and feast-day addresses, and within approximately a year of their publication a third wave of witch hunts, trials and executions ensured in Bamberg.[44] The persecutions of [predominantly] women believed to have been witches in Bamberg were described by Trevor-Roper as having been the worst and most brutal of their time.[45]

The religious insanity in Bamberg was so extreme that it inspired Prince-Bishop Johann Georg Fuchs Von Dornheim to oversee the construction of a “witch prison”, within which was a torture chamber adorned with the relevant biblical passages.[46]  The religious authorities and the faithful and frightened laity in Bamberg were so completely seized by this superstitious frenzy that they executed judges they believed were too lenient on “witches” and even the mayor of Bamberg, Johannes Junius, who was put to death on charges of witchcraft.[47]  This panic, it may be intimated, was probably further intensified by the works of the Froner, who has been variously dubbed the ‘”spiritus rector” of the witch hunts, a “ferocious witch-damner,” and the “mortal enemy of heretics and sorcerers”’[48], and who was also one of the primary protagonists of the Catholic Reformation in Germany.


Climate Change and Witch Hunts

One historical hypothesis that may possibly mitigate, to some degree, the influence of the European Reformations on the increased severity and intensity of witch hunts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is the ‘Little Ice Age Theory’.  Proponents of this theory argue that climate change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries produced meteorological phenomena that had never been witnessed by the people living at the time [49] – like the River Thames in London freezing over between the years 1558-1603,[50] along with the freezing over of Alpine Lakes.[51] On top of these unusual weather phenomena, the climate change is alleged to have occasioned relatively poor, and occasionally completely barren, harvests.[52] These rare climate conditions, scholars like Pfister and Behringer argue, coincided with the previously established belief that witches could affect weather. Behringer comments:

‘The resumption of witch-hunting in the 1560s was accompanied by a debate on weather-making, because this was the most important charge against suspected witches’.[53] Further, Brooke, employing the scapegoat hypothesis, states:

Emerging literatures are demonstrating that not only grain prices fluctuated with climate, leading to subsistence crises, but that early modern Europeans found a scapegoat for their troubles in the form of “weather-making witch”: the great witch hunts of the early modern period exactly bracket the second stage of the Little Ice Age.[54]

Conclusion

Whether the weather changes assisted in an increase in witch hunts in the early modern period or whether it was the result of a number of ideological, political, or social factors associated with the European Reformations, one thing seems abundantly clear: religion was not merely a catalyst, it was the primary perpetrator. Where might Europeans have drawn their delusional paranoia regarding the perceived threat of the supernatural forces guided by witches if not from religion?  Who were the primary propagators of the religious belief in the threat of the demonic and evil forces possessed by witches? They were the clergy, the scholars of the Church, like Kramer, Sprenger, and Froner – men who in their capacity as leaders of the Church spread the fear of witches amongst a religious population who were trained from birth to believe without question.  Voltaire once quipped; ‘Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities’, and such a poignant statement appears entirely applicable to the witch craze of the early modern period in Europe. Thus, although there is sufficient evidence to conclude that the Reformations, both Protestant and Catholic, created an environment in which heresy took centre stage, and that Luther’s doctrine of ‘Sola Scriptura’ led to dogmatic interpretations of the Bible, which further exacerbated the problem – the culprit upon whose shoulders rests the largest portion of blame for the increase in brutal and predominantly misogynistic witch hunts from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries, is the superstitious ignorance inherent within religion itself.



End Notes
Rosemary Ellen Guiley, The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca, 3rd , New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2008, p. 50.Canon Episcopi, cited at: http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/witch/canon.html, accessed on 2nd April, 2016.Michael D. Bailey, Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present, Lanham: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007, p. 122.Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts, London: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1995, p. 23.Nacham Ben-Yahuda, Problems Inherent in Socio-Historical Approaches to the European Witch Craze,  ‘Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion’, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Dec., 1981), 328.Peter H. Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009, p.787.Ibid.John M. Murin (ed.), Paul E. Johnson (ed.), James M. McPherson (ed.), Gary Gerstle (ed.), Emily S. Rosenberg (ed.), Norman L. Rosenberg (ed.), Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Belmont: Thomson-Wadsworth, 2009, p. 32.Lawrence G. Lovasik, St Joseph Church History, New Jersey: Catholic Book Publishing Corporation, 1990, p. 133.Terrence D. Miethe & Hong Lu, Punishment: A Comparative Historical Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 63.Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England, London: Penguin Books, 1971, cited at: https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=Ww1uMe7Dj2MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Religion+and+the+Decline+of+Magic&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwijsODw7-zLAhUHj5QKHRUTDFoQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=necessary%20precondition&f=false, accessed on 1st April, 2016.Simon McCarthy-Jones, Hearing Voices: The Histories, Causes and Meanings of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 40.Keith A. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2001, pp. 85-86; Mark Greengrass, The Theology and Liturgy of Reformed Christianity, cited in: R. Po-Chia Hsia (ed.), The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 6: Reform and Expansion – 1500-1660, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 104.Peter Matheson (ed.), Denis R. Janz (ed.), A People’s History of Christianity, Vol. 5: Reformation Christianity, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010, p. 134.Joseph Needham and Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin, Science and Civilization in China, Vol. 1.1: Paper and Printing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 316.Candice Goucher and Linda Walton, World History: Journeys from Past to Present, New York: Routledge, 2008, p. 238.Donald S. Swenson, Society, Spirituality, and the Sacred: A Social Scientific Introduction, 2nd Ed., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009, p. 250.Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts, London: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1995, p. 23.Stanley E. Porter, Language and Translations of the New Testament, cited in: J.W. Rogerson and Judith M. Lieu, The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 197.Sidney Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1993, p. 5.‘Kashaph’ – Hebrew: Bible Hub, cited at: http://biblehub.com/hebrew/3784.htm, accessed on 2nd April, 2016.Ibid.M.W. Knox, The Medea of Euripides, cited in: T.F. Gould and C.J. Herington, Yale Classical Studies, Vol. XXV: Greek Tragedy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 214; John M. Riddle, Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 133.The Bible, Exodus 22:18, KJV.John M. Riddle, Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 133.‘Heresy’, Greek, Bible Hub, cited at: http://biblehub.com/greek/139.htm, accessed on 3rd of April, 2016.Ibid.See Irenaeus’ Against the Heresies, dated to around 180 CE: Margaret M. Mitchell (ed.) and Frances M. Young, The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 1: Origins to Constantine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 419.Ben Witherington III, The New Cambridge Bible Commentary: Revelation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 247; Claire Taylor, Heresy in Medieval France: Dualism in Aquitaine and the Agenais, 100-1249, Suffolk: Cromwell Press, 2005, p. 81.Peter H. Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009, p. 26.Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, (trans. Montague Summers), New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007, pp. 2-3.  William Monter, The Historiography of European Witchcraft: Progress and Prospects,  ‘The Journal of Interdisciplinary History’, Vol. 2, No. 4, Psychoanalysis and History (Spring, 1972), p. 445.Peter T. Leeson and Jacob W. Russ, Witch Trials, p. 12, cited at: http://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/witch_trials.pdf, accessed on 1st April, 2016.Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts, London: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1995, p. 94.The Counter-Reformation, Encyclopedia Britannica, cited at: http://global.britannica.com/event/Counter-Reformation, accessed on 1st April, 2016.Michael A. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation, London: Routledge, 1999, p. 1.Lawrence G. Lovasik, St Joseph Church History, New Jersey: Catholic Book Publishing Corporation, 1990, p. 133.William Bradford Smith, Friedrich Förner, the Catholic Reformation, and Witch-Hunting in Bamberg, ‘The Sixteenth Century Journal’, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring, 2005), p. 115.Ibid. pp. 115-116.William Bradford Smith, Reformation and the German Territorial State: Upper Franconia 1300-1630, New York: University of Rochester Press, 2008, p. 173.Ibid. p. 126.Kevin Cramer, The Thirty Years War and German Memory in the Nineteenth Century, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007, p. 225; Ken Kurihara, Celestial Wonders in Reformation Germany, London: Routledge, 2016, p. 157.Stuart Clark, Thinking With Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 454.Bengt Ankarloo, Stuart Clark, William Monter, The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, London: The Athlone Press, 2002, p. 27.Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: Religion, Reformation, and Social Change, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1967, p. 146.William E. Burns, Witch Hunts in Europe and America, London: Greenwood Press, 2003, p. 17; Jeffrey B. Russell, Brooks Alexander, A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans, 2nd Ed., London: Thames and Hudson, 2007, p. 86.Rosemary Ellen Guiley, The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca, 3rd , New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2008, pp. 187-188.Bradford Smith, Friedrich Förner, the Catholic Reformation, and Witch-Hunting in Bamberg, ‘The Sixteenth Century Journal’, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring, 2005), p. 115.Wolfgang Behringer, Climate Change and Witch-Hunting: The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities, ‘Climate Change Journal’, 43 (1999), Kluwer Academic Publishers, p. 335.Mark Levene (ed.), Rob Johnson (ed.) and Penny Roberts (ed.), History at the End of the World? History, Climate Change and the Possibility of Closure, Tirril Hall: Humanities E-Books, LLP, 2010, p. 69.Ibid.Wolfgang Behringer, A Cultural History of Climate, trans. Patrick Camiller, Munchen: Polity Press, 2007, p. 132.Wolfgang Behringer, Climate Change and Witch-Hunting: The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities, ‘Climate Change Journal’, 43 (1999), Kluwer Academic Publishers, p. 339.John L. Brooke, Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 451.

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Leeson, Peter T. and Russ, Jacob W., Witch Trials, cited at: http://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/witch_trials.pdf, accessed on 1st April, 2016.

Levene, Mark (ed.), Johnson, Rob (ed.) and Roberts, Penny (ed.), History at the End of the World? History, Climate Change and the Possibility of Closure, Tirril Hall: Humanities E-Books, LLP, 2010.

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Mitchell, Margaret M. (ed.) and Young, Frances M., The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 1: Origins to Constantine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

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‘The Journal of Interdisciplinary History’, Vol. 2, No. 4, Psychoanalysis and History (Spring, 1972).

Mullett, Michael A., The Catholic Reformation, London: Routledge, 1999.

Murin, John M. (ed.), Johnson, Paul E. (ed.), McPherson, James M. (ed.), Gerstle, Gary (ed.), Rosenberg, Emily S. (ed.), Rosenberg, Norman L. (ed.), Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Belmont: Thomson-Wadsworth, 2009.

Needham, Joseph and Tsuen-Hsuin, Tsien, Science and Civilization in China, Vol. 1.1: Paper and Printing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

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Tony Taylor Is The Victim Of British Injustice

Via The Transcripts John McDonagh & Martin Galvin of Radio Free Eireann speak to Doire Councillor, Gary Donnelly, via telephone from Doire, about the counter-democratic means the British government is using once again to intern another Irish Republican, this time Tony Taylor, and about the call for Irish-America to once again join the campaign against Britain’s use of internment in Ireland.

Radio Free Éireann
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(begins time stamp ~ 41:09)

Martin: Gary, are you with us?

Gary: I am indeed, yes.

Martin: Gary, sorry, we had a little bit of difficulty getting to you. Alright. Who is Tony Taylor? Why is he in prison without any real charge or without even any trial and without a hearing that his solicitor or his family member, his wife, or his local Councillor, you, are able to attend and see what the real allegations against him are?

Councillor Gary Donnelly
Gary: Yeah, that’s correct. Unfortunately, the negativity of partition, which continues to foster division, reinforcing illegal borders and denying basic justice to those who would seek its removal and British ministers who would have no democratic mandate in Ireland have bestowed upon themselves the power to arbitrarily imprison Irish people in Ireland, you know, particularly those who would want to see that British border removed. Unfortunately, Tony Taylor comes under that category. Tony Taylor was a former political prisoner and he’s a Republican activist. And Tony had found himself arrested one day and put back in prison because of his licence without any evidence whatsoever being presented to him or being able to challenge.

Martin: Yes, and when – alright, he gets put in on licence he then, they say that this is based on some kind of ‘secret evidence‘ or some kind of ‘special intelligence’ that the British have. How do you contest and fight that evidence? How was he able to have his solicitor, Aiden Carlin, his family there, at a public hearing – how is he able to challenge that evidence if he’s not told what the accusations are?

Gary: It’s impossible. Now what happened: Tony had a hearing, a so-called hearing, at which there was two people – they weren’t judges but they were like parole people. Tony was appointed a solicitor by the state who would be present when this guy, this faceless British intelligence operator who was behind a screen – Tony was removed from the proceedings. Tony’s solicitor was removed. The state-appointed solicitor was allowed to remain and people were put outside the court while this person gave so-called ‘evidence’ for two days and it was unable to be challenged, even heard, you know, so it’s impossible to counteract that.

Martin: Gary, I’ve used this example in the past just as somebody, as somebody, who works in criminal law: If, let’s say for example, you or I would be accused of being at some kind of illegal meeting or illegal activity in, let’s say, in Belfast right now. You would be able, normally you would tell your, you would find out – you were accused of doing ‘something’ on a particular date and time. You then could say: Well wait! I was actually on a radio programme. There would be tapes of that programme. John McDonagh and Martin Galvin could say that it was a live programme – they did the programme live. You’d be able to show phone records to show that you were not in Belfast, that you were in Doire. You would have an overwhelming alibi evidence and defence to those charges. If they don’t tell you what you’re being accused of doing, where the activity that you’re accused of having took place – what date it is – and they tell some solicitor – that is not allowed to speak to you about it, which you don’t pick and you’re not allowed to converse about it because you don’t know the details – how can you possibly present any kind of real defence even though you may have an overwhelming defence like that? How is that possible?The Taylor Family - Tony, his wife, Lorraine, and their three children.
Gary: It’s not possible. The reality is that Tony Taylor is the victim of British injustice. Tony Taylor has been interned and they’ve attempted to dress it up. But you can’t dress it up. You know, you can’t challenge something that’s put against you if they won’t tell you what it is. You know you have some guy – even in this so-called ‘open session’ of the court – this guy was sitting behind a curtain where you couldn’t see his face, you couldn’t tell his expressions and it’s impossible to work within those parameters. Then people were excluded from the court and he had two days of giving whatever –you know, it’s not evidence – because if it was evidence it would be put before a court – even the court system here in this part of Ireland run by the British you know, they still have Diplock courts, which are non-jury, single courts. They have special powers that are loaded in favour of The Establishment. You know, it’s not in the interest of fairness or justice. But it’s designed to protest British interest in Ireland. And even with all that apparatus they’re so-called ‘evidence’, whatever it is that they have, didn’t fit, didn’t pass the test, to even go within that system. So what they have done is that they have changed the goal post and brought in some guy who spent two days lambasting Tony, no doubt, from behind a screen and didn’t have to back it up by any evidence whatsoever.

John: Gary, Martin and myself were just over there and very hard to explain to people here in New York and throughout the country what a sectarian statelet the Six Counties are with the election posters are in one area is a Loyalist – and there’s election posters in Nationalist areas – I mean it affects every part of society in the Six Counties. Now, there was a drawing that happened I think in Europe for football – Oh, great! There’s going to be a football! Glasgow Celtic drew Linfield. Now the articles that are coming out: Well we can’t have it on July 12th – which is the Glorious Twelfth – which is a national holiday in the Six Counties where they march about 1690, the Battle of the Boyne. Then they say: Well we’ll move it to The Eleventh: Well that’s when we have the bonfires. We can’t possibly have it there at eight o’clock – maybe two o’clock. Now they’re talking about they might have the game, because they think so much violence will be around this football game, with no one in the stadium! The sectarianism in the Six Counties affects every facet of life there. I mean, everyone that you know in Belfast or Doire they’re all heading to Bundoren or Donegal to get away for the week Confederate battle flag raised again in the run-up to The Twelfth, this year in Lisburn. Source: ITV-UTV News
Date: 21 June 2017
Gary: Yes. There’s traditionally a mass exodus around that time because really what it is – it’s a bigot-fest where triumphant coat-trailing exercises and people you know, the Orangemen and women, parade their bigotry in open display.

Now I think the significance of this is that Celtic were – you know even the football team, Celtic – Celtic were a team that were set up in Scotland for Irish immigrants after the famine and now when they play within a European fixture and they come back and they to try and play in Belfast there’s a situation where they can’t play on the designated day and now they’re not being allocated any tickets – they’re obviously, I believe that the team have been got to, have been put under pressure, not to take any tickets or so it’ll be effectively played – if it’s going to be played – that it will be played behind closed doors with one set of supporters. Now if that doesn’t signify that there’s something seriously, fundamentally wrong within this artificial state then nothing will.

Martin: Yeah, they say it’s part of a British state, British rule, but you can’t travel from Scotland, which they say is part of the United Kingdom, people can’t go and simply watch a football match, or soccer match as we would call it here in America, in safety because of they’re perceived, just by virtue of their religion, as being enemies of British rule and could be attacked. Gary I – we’re talking to Gary Donnelly who’s an elected Councillor in Doire – I just want to ask you one or two more questions about the procedure: Tony Taylor’s in prison based on a decision by a British Secretary, formerly it was Theresa Villiers, it’s now James Brokenshire – these are people – they’re elected in England, they’re people who are ‘auditioning’ for better jobs at a location they want to be, they simply come, they’re appointed as secretaries to administer British rule in the North of Ireland by the Prime Minister – they work for a limited period of time, they have very little knowledge or interest in the North of Ireland and they can make decisions and, it turns out, the Irish government has spoken out that Tony Taylor should be released. Members of the clergy have said Tony Taylor should be released. Both Nationalist political parties, Sinn Féin and the SDLP (Social Democratic and Labour Party), as well as independent Republicans like yourself have said that Tony Taylor should be released. How is it that a British Secretary like this can just make this arbitrary decision and keep Tony Taylor in under these ridiculous circumstances that you’ve mentioned?
Internment Clock As of 25 June 2017 Source: freetonytaylor.com
Gary: Well they do it because they can do it and they can get away with it. As I said, these ministers – they bestow upon themselves the power to imprison Irish people in Ireland without even being able to face the allegations that’s against them. But you know, I think what you have to do is you have to look at: These are the actions of a failed state and a failed state that has to go to these extremes to prop itself up but it’s only the latest in extreme measure to secure partition. You know we’ve had plastic bullets, lead bullets, shoot-to-kill, state death forces, Loyalist paramilitaries who were funded, armed and controlled by the British state, paid perjurers, supergrasses, Diplock courts – this is just the latest in a long line of extreme measures that the British have to put in place in order to secure their presence in Ireland.

Martin: And one of the things about the impact: It seems like the British always have a case like this going. They had one with Martin Corey for a long period of time who was jailed under the same procedures. Marian Price, of course, was in for a long period of time and that was a case that this was – Sandy Boyer and others at this station used to highlight every week. No, it’s Tony Taylor. And the problem is or the difficulty is, not only for his wife, his young family including one son who is physically challenged and needs Tony very badly – but it’s a message to everybody else on a licence, like Gerry McGeough, like so many others who have been released on licence, that if you start to work politically, if you start to raise your voice, if you start to speak out against the system too forcefully we can use these same type of procedures and you’ll be back in jail and it doesn’t matter if the Irish government, or both Nationalist political parties or the Church or anybody or human rights activists support you we’ll just simply hold you until we see fit to let you go.

Gary: That’s exactly right. You know it does have implications, it has implications for ex-prisoners. You know it’s them saying: If you raise your head, if you get involved solely in political activity – because Tony, before he went to prison, was engaged solely in political activity – and this sending the message to ex-prisoners: You raise your head above the parapet – we’ll put you in prison. You know, and it’s shocking but it’s not shocking in a way you know because it’s all designed to send a message to anyone who would dare to seek the removal of the British order or the British presence in Ireland. You put your head up – we’ll cut it off.

Martin: Okay, what – is there anything that can be done now from the United States – any sort of political pressure we could use to get Tony Taylor released?

Gary: Yes well, Tony’s campaign in Ireland is gathering a bit of momentum at the minute because people thought that he would be released – that the British would have a red face, the spotlight has been shone on them – and that they would release him. There obviously isn’t enough pressure. I know here a number of councils, including Doire, Strabane, Newry, Donegal – the corporate positions – they have passed motions calling for his release. I know that there are other councils, currently at the minute including Dublin Council, where motions are about to be put forward. I think it’s the same in the US where trade unions, activists, clergy, politicians need to be speaking out. They need to be highlighting this case. And I think as this goes on – this injustice, this blatant injustice, this black-and-white issue – that more and more people will become involved and it will put pressure on the British government I think. It needs to go to Europe. You know the pressure just needs to be kept up because they need to be exposed for what they’re doing so that it ends and it doesn’t happen to any other Irish citizen.

Martin: Gary, we’re coming to the end. I just want to ask you a very quick question, just a few seconds: What do you expect if the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) make a deal, bring a lot of money back to The North, like they’re saying – what do you expect Doire to get out of it?

Gary: Probably like what they’ve gotten out of each and every other successive British government or local puppet government: very, very little because since statistics became, you know, started – the people of Doire have topped all the wrong tables of economic poverty, of child deprivation, of unemployment – whatever government is put in place, whether it’s a SinnFéin/DUP government or whether it’s a Tory/DUP government we will be just drip-fed, enough piecemeal crumbs from the table so that we’re not dying on the streets. I don’t see anything changing.

Martin: …Gary, we’re going to have to leave it at that. Thank you very much and again, we’ll continue to support Tony Taylor and his release.

Gary: Thank you very much. (ends time stamp ~ 55:03)

 

End The Carnival Of Failure

Tommy McKearney examines the DUP-Tory pact. This article featured in Socialist Voice . Almost lost amid the frantic scrutinising of the £1 billion bribe offered by Theresa May to the DUP in order to keep a minority Tory government in power was a statement of intent in relation to British foreign policy objectives. 
Along with the financial package for the North, both parties agreed to make a commitment to NATO that the Tory government would spend 2 per cent of GDP on the armed forces. To put this in context we must compare it with the DUP’s pay-off, because 2 per cent of British GDP for 2016 would amount to more than £37 billion.(1) In a nutshell, the British ruling class is content to pay a relatively modest price in order to protect and maintain its imperial interests while allowing the ten Northern MPs to feel self-satisfied.
That the DUP thinks it has secured a historic deal for Ulster unionism should come as no surprise. After all, several leading members of this party believe that the earth was created over a seven-day period 4,652 years ago.
Undoubtedly, while additional expenditure will be welcome in an area of high deprivation, this money will not be a panacea for the North’s lengthy list of problems. Take the region’s health service as just one example: it has been run down for many years, and, as the BBC’s Northern Ireland health correspondent, Marie-Louise Connelly, pointed out, the extra money offered will only allow the service some breathing space.(2) This new money could be used up quickly, she said, just tackling hospital waiting-lists alone.
Of course this is before the inevitable disputes arise over where the money is to be spent. Interestingly, the only infrastructure project to be specified is the York Street intersection in Belfast, which happens to be in the constituency of the DUP negotiator Nigel Dodds.
This deal will prove to be a mixed blessing for the DUP as it finds its London triumph to be temporary. While the pot of money puts Sinn Féin on the back foot in the short term, it will prove damaging for the DUP’s long-term aim of maintaining the union with Britain. The Conservative Party has little or no interest in the people of Northern Ireland and views the arrangement with Arlene Foster’s party as a necessary political expedient in order to implement its wider policies.
In time, the DUP will come to be little more than a party of crackpots (the Daily Mirror’s description), endorsing imperialist aggression and helping perpetuate neo-liberal economics damaging to working-class communities.
This is unlikely to cause the party much damage in its electoral heartlands. However, it will not endear it to its republican and nationalist neighbours in the six counties, or to the British working class. Moreover, by lining up beside the Conservatives and making a unilateral financial arrangement for Northern Ireland, Foster has created divisions between her party and the Scots, Welsh and northern English. As the Guardian said in a recent analysis, “this weakens the internal solidarity of the UK.”
This is an unwelcome observation for the DUP but one that is nevertheless accurate. Moreover, it not only weakens solidarity within the United Kingdom but undermines the political entity that is Northern Ireland.
Twice this year the electorate has gone to the polls, and on both occasions it has given an ominous verdict on the future stability and longevity of the six counties. 
The assembly elections in March resulted in overtly unionist parties losing an absolute majority in Stormont, for the first time in its history. This has to be qualified by recognising that the balance of power at the devolved-government level remained with parties that support the union. Nevertheless the lesson was clear: old certainties about the status quo are no longer quite so secure. Even the Financial Times published a front-page article in April referring to the potential for a united Ireland.(3)
Three months later the British general election provided further evidence of the shifting sands. While almost all eyes have been on the DUP and its new-found bargaining position vis-à-vis Westminster, less attention was paid to the implication of Sinn Féin’s result. Seven of the North’s eighteen Westminster constituencies returned abstentionist candidates, mandated to boycott central government in London. 
It is over-simplistic to dismiss this outcome simply as the result of a sectarian head count. In several constituencies, such as Foyle (Derry) and West Belfast, where abstentionist MPs were returned, the nationalist majority was sufficiently large to make the contest a straight fight between Sinn Féin abstentionists and parties committed to taking their seats. Clearly this is not an outcome as momentous as the 1918 general election, yet it should not be dismissed as insignificant when 30 per cent of the North’s electorate vote to boycott central government.
As a consequence, Sinn Féin will face something of a dilemma if it attempts to form an administration in Stormont with the DUP. How can Michelle O’Neill argue that a British government, supported by the DUP, can meet the demand of the Belfast Agreement that London maintain rigorous impartiality in relation to all matters in the North? Even the Tory bigwig Chris Patten said it would be “difficult for the UK government to show neutrality” when it has done a close political deal with the DUP.(4)
This problem will only be compounded by the fact that many Sinn Féin supporters have now opted to boycott Parliament as well.  
In the absence of widespread consensus concerning governance of the area, it is difficult to see how the failed political entity that is Northern Ireland can endure in the long run in the face of changing demographics at home and a disdainful population in Britain.
What has to be avoided, however, is falling into the trap of engaging in the politics of sectarian head-counting, or advocating the nationalist objective of politically uniting Ireland without changing the present economic fundamentals. A workers’ republic is the only realistic option for bringing about a united working class throughout Ireland. To make this more than a cliché, though, it is necessary for socialists to be honest about where the present situation will lead, transparent in our analysis of what is needed, and frank about our ambition to create a workers’ state.
All the while socialists must search for means of struggle that will transform Irish society, north and south, in a progressive direction. With Stormont possibly collapsing once again, there is both the need and the opportunity to create a vehicle capable of identifying the issues on which a successful campaign for a socialist transformation can be built. State-funded public housing, a secure health service, proper care for the elderly, workers’ rights and a decent public transport system are all issues that urgently need addressing.  
Nor should we ignore the misappropriation of 2 per cent of GDP that will be used to pay for imperialist aggression and the slaughter that inevitably follows in its wake.
Above all, we need to state the obvious. The northern Irish state has failed entirely, and the southern Irish state as at present constituted has failed the working class. Time to end the carnival of failure and set our compass for a workers’ republic!

1. Office for National Statistics, “Gross domestic product: Chained volume measures . . .” at www.ons.gov.uk.
2. BBC News, “DUP-Tory deal secures extra spending in Northern Ireland” (www.bbc.com/news).
3. Alex Barker, Arthur Beesley, and Vincent Boland, “EU signal over a united Ireland stokes fear of post-Brexit UK,” Financial Times, 28 June 2017 (http://on.ft.com/2t4ZNzK).
4. BBC News, “DUP-Tory deal ‘may make peace process difficult’—Patten,” 28 June 2017 (www.bbc.com/news).

Battersea Park Closed On Sundays

Matt Treacy writing @ Brocaire Books thinks it is game over: the DUP not only maintain the crown but get to wear it.

Sinn Féin were never in coalition with a party whose many members think that the world was created 4,700 years ago; who would probably join a Hamas throwing gays off the roof event; who closed playgrounds on Sundays; and so on.

Have they forgotten the Chuckle Brothers? The “difficult decisions”? Meeting the Queen?

You would imagine so if you were following their post election hissy fit. Their chuckle friends have now become ultra reactionaries.

And they were not ultra reactionaries in 2007?

Fact is that Shinners entire strategy has been torpedoed. DUP will most likely now either turn its back on Stormont or negotiate a deal with Tories that will make any conceivable Stormont be as favourable to Catholics as it was in 1922.

Game over.

Societies Across Ulster Renew Demands For Irish Unity

The 1916 Societies  press on in their push for a border free Ireland.

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Members of the the Thomas Ashe Society Omagh, the Rising Phoenix Society Derry City, the James Connolly Society Monaghan and the Sean MacDiarmada Society Fermanagh erected a number of billboards during the week calling for ‘Irish Unity Now’, this in response to the British Government’s triggering of Article 50 and the imminent negotiations to effect its withdrawal from the EU.

Speaking afterward, Sean Bresnahan of the Thomas Ashe Society said that “post-the recent ‘Brexit’ vote in the UK and with Britain now negotiating her terms of exit from the European Union, Ireland – both north and south – faces certain upheaval over the months and years to come”.

Continuing, he described Brexit as the “dominant conversation in Irish politics, with much of that discussion centering on whether a ‘renewed’ border – despite it having never gone away – should be a ‘hard border’ or a ‘soft border’, depending on what arrangements are decided on by Britain and the rest of Europe when Brexit has been finalised”.

In Derry, Frankie Quigley of the Rising Phoenix Society said that:

for ourselves, the damage Brexit is certain to do Ireland – in particular the North – which faces acute isolation removed from Europe and on the margins of the so-called United Kingdom – demands neither a hard border or a soft border but an END to the border, with full Irish Unity to proceed in its stead.

Pat Corrigan in Fermanagh added that:

Brexit thus establishes a renewed imperative for Irish Unity and that, with continuing partition set to present major difficulties for all of Ireland, this is now a national priority and indeed THE national priority. On that basis, we propose that the Irish people be afforded their long-denied right to determine their own future, through a national referendum that brings forward an independent all-Ireland republic.

In conclusion, Monaghan’s Mark Campbell described such a republic, which he argued should be “socialist by design”, as:

best-placed to resolve the complex challenges thrown up by Brexit, affording all of the Irish people – both north and south – an opportunity to build a better future, for each of their number, in an Ireland that affords the necessary stability demanded by these uncertain times.

Shouldn't Have To Be This Way

Mick Hall writing @ Organized Rage feels that:

The despicable way residents of Grenfell Tower and the other blocks which have similar cladding have been treated takes your breath away.

A shocking photo of exposed gas pipes serving flats in Grenfell Tower after the refurbishment by Kensington and Chelsea council was completed.

The way the authorities have dealt with the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire takes your breath away. Time and again they have shown absolute contempt for the working class people who lived in the tower and the adjoining estate.

Understandably there is widespread scepticism amongst the survivors and their supporters about the official death toll, amid ongoing concern the police and council have been far too slow in releasing information about the numbers.

According to the Guardian:

It's led to Grenfell residents' groups compiling lists of victims and survivors, Sajad Jamalvatan, a biomedical engineering student who lived on the third floor of the block, has established a Whatsapp community of 86 families who escaped from the block, calling the group Grenfell United. From conversations with these residents over the past fortnight he is sceptical about the police death toll of 79 and believes that the actual number is likely to be above 120.

While there is widespread acceptance that police and coroners are working in uniquely challenging conditions, unable to access parts of the building that are too dangerous to enter, there is frustration among residents that officials have not released a number of those people who survived, or an estimate of the numbers of people ordinarily resident in the block. Jamalvatan said he was trying to compile a database of survivors on behalf of his neighbours.

Sajad Jamalvatan told Amelia Gentleman this:

“We were expecting the TMO [tenant management organisation] to do this list for us, but we don’t think they are willing to help us,” he said, referring to Kensington & Chelsea TMO, the body that looked after the block for the local authority.

Jamalvatan said he was trying to organise a meeting between the council and all of the survivors, in one place, but that it was proving difficult to arrange. “They don’t want to face 400 people in a room. They prefer to deal with us individually.”

Tottenham MP David Lammy had this to say in a tweet about the lack of information on the number of residents who had their lives stolen:

There has been no update on a) the death toll, b) the number of survivors or c) the number of people in Grenfell Tower for over a week,” he wrote. “What are the authorities doing to come up with an estimation of how many people were in Grenfell? Not good enough.

Another campaign group Justice 4 Grenfell is equally perplexed about the lack of information on this and is attempting to establish an accurate list of those who died. Ishmahil Blagrove, a coordinator for Justice 4 Grenfell, said he believed that during Ramadan there were many people visiting the tower, and staying with friends:

There are people who are still missing, people who are undocumented, we are unhappy with the 79 victims who have been recorded by the media and the police. We want to do some probing to find out how accurate that figure is and give them something that reflects a fuller picture.

A resident who escaped from the fire who was visiting the Rugby Portobello Trust, where there is a community centre for victims had this to say:

We been helping to compile an informal list of victims and survivors, we’ve had to do it ourselves. No one has told us anything about who survived. It seems very strange, I know exactly how many people there were on my landing. We were a stable, well-formed cohesive community. That’s what makes it so strange that they haven’t done a list of residents.

Indeed.


Questions are also beginning to be asked about why it's necessary to evacuate all the residents from the Tower Blocks which have similar cladding to Grenfell House so that the cladding can be removed.

One Bray Tower resident in Camden who is still in his flat had this to say:

My Tower was renovated almost a decade ago, nothing changed on Friday evening when we were told to leave that hasn’t been the same for the past nine years, certainly, if they say they want to evacuate to achieve the works I will do that, but they did the whole refurbishment without anybody leaving.

I myself have lived in a tower block which was refurbished and I too stayed put in the building throughout. At times electricity, water, and gas were turned off during the day while the work was being done, but we were given prior warning by the local authority to make arrangements. Living in those conditions wasn't much fun, especially if you were on nights, but it was a damn site better than living in one room in a hotel or bed and breakfast.

Now there may be good reasons to evacuate the blocks, but once again it’s the lack of information from the authorities which has poisoned the tenants relationship with them. And to re-quote a well worn saying, it doesn’t and shouldn't have to be this way.

Gender Segregation Undermines Equality

A Press Release form Southall Black Sisters.


Background to the case

School X segregates its pupils based on their gender. From the age of 9 to 16, boys and girls of Muslim background are segregated for everything - during lessons and all breaks, activities and school trips.

The school was inspected by Ofsted which raised concerns about gender segregation and other leadership failings involving the absence of effective safeguarding procedures, and an unchallenged culture of gender stereotyping and homophobia. Offensive books promoting rape, violence and against women and misogyny were discovered in the school library. Some girls also complained anonymously that gender segregation did not prepare them for social interaction and integration into the wider society. As a result of what it found during the inspection, Ofsted judged the school to be inadequate and placed it in special measures.

The school took legal action against Ofsted accusing it of bias amongst other things, and claimed that gender segregation did not have a detrimental impact on girls. Following a High Court hearing, in November 2016, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Jay, found no evidence of bias against the school but agreed with the school that gender segregation did not amount to sex discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. He went onto say that no evidence had been presented to show that gender segregation disadvantaged the girls in the school.

Ofsted is seeking to overturn this part of the judgment but the Department of Education and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, along with SBS and Inspire are intervening in support of Ofsted.

Why we are intervening


SBS and Inspire are intervening in this case because we believe that the right to equality for women and girls of Muslim background in this instance is being seriously undermined. We are alarmed by the growing acceptance of such a practice in our universities and schools; a move that we have also previously contested. In a context where all the evidence shows that minority women are subject to growing abuse, isolation, inequality and powerlessness, the practice of gender segregation cannot be viewed as a benign development because it is informed by the Muslim fundamentalist view that women are inferior and the cause of disorder and sexual chaos in society. If unchecked, the practice will give religious fundamentalist and ultra-conservative forces in our communities more and more power to define women’s lives. It will also signal the view that regulatory bodies like Ofsted have no business in investigating issues of gender inequality in faith based schools. We say that gender segregation amounts to direct sex discrimination and violates the fundamental rights and freedoms of women and girls under international human rights law on equality and non-discrimination.

Pragna Patel of SBS said: “Fundamentalist and conservative religious norms like gender segregation are becoming normalised in minority communities at an alarming rate. Separate can never be equal in a context of rising misogyny, violence against women and patriarchal control. Regressive religious forces want to implement their fundamentalist vision of education. They want to use religion to extinguish the human rights of minority women and girls to equality and self determination. We will not allow this to happen. We will not allow them to undo the strides that we have made for greater equality and freedom. Our struggle against gender segregation mirrors the struggle against racial segregation: it is morally, politically and legally wrong and the Court of Appeal and the rest of society must recognise this.”

Sara Khan of Inspire said: “I am deeply concerned about the rise and accommodation of gender segregation in our schools and universities. This is due in large part to the rise of fundamentalist patriarchal movements over the last few decades which seeks to reinforce regressive gender stereotypes and restrict women’s rights in an attempt to deny women full and equal participation in public life. I have seen first hand the damaging impact of gender segregation on women and girls. As a British Muslim woman, I call on our country and our judiciary to stand on the side of equality and women's rights, at a time when illiberals and fundamentalists seek to do away with them.

Maryam Namazie from One Law for All added: “Islamists have become adept at using rights language to impose rights restrictions. Islamist projects like the niqab or Sharia courts are deceptively promoted as “rights” and “choices” when in fact their aim is to control and restrict women and girls. Girls in Islamic schools are segregated not in order to enable them to flourish but because they are seen to be the source of fitnah and male arousal from puberty onwards. Which is why they must be veiled, segregated, and prevented from many activities that are essential to child development. The court would do well to remember that when it comes to children in particular, there is a duty of care to ensure that the girl child has access to a level playing field and is able to flourish – sometimes despite the wishes of parents and fundamentalists.”

We will be available on 11 and 12 July to give interviews and make comments.
For Further Information Contact:

Pragna Patel, Director of Southall Black Sisters, pragna@soublacksisters.co.uk 02085719595.

Sara Khan, Director of Inspire, Sara.Khan@wewillinspire.com

Maryam Namazie of One Law for All, maryamnamazie@googlemail.com 077 1916 6731.

Notes to the editors:

For more background information see Southall Black Sisters.

See the High Court judgment here: https and here. 

Southall Black Sisters is also part of the One Law for All campaign which also includes the Kurdish Culture Project, Centre for Secular Space and others working to challenge the rise of religious fundamentalism and extremism and it specific impact on the rights of black and minority women in the UK. We are currently running a campaign against the accommodation of Sharia laws in the law or as part of alternative dispute resolution systems in relation to family matters. 

Information about previous contestations against gender segregation in universities can be found @
Over 300 Abused Women Issue Statement Against Parallel Legal Systems: Who Will Listen To Our Voices?
Campaign against Gender Apartheid in UK Universities
'Shariafication by stealth' in the UK
The Sunday Times report on women being barred from asking questions at Queen Mary Uni Isoc