En Passant

A jury found Cardinal George Pell guilty of child sexual abuse in December last year I write in Independent Australia. Pell was found guilty of sexual penetration of a child under 16 and four charges of committing indecent acts with a child, or in their presence. after five weeks of hearings and three and a half days of […]

Where is the outrage from our government at 4,444 reported cases of child sexual abuse over 30 years? The silence is deafening, says John Passant in Independent Australia.

To read the whole article click here. Suffer the little children: Sexual abuse and neglect by church and state

Louise O’Shea in Red Flag writes that the powerful are protected no matter what they do. Child abuse, whether it be in religious institutions, orphanages, through forced poverty or in immigration detention centres, is acceptable so long as it is carried out by the powerful. Seen in this context, moral panics about protecting children have nothing to do with concern for children. They are rather a cynical pretext for attacks on people’s rights and the demonising of minorities.

The problems are systemic and require systemic solutions, not band-aids. All capitalism can give us, given the importance of the police and religion to the system and the power they have, is band-aids and Royal Commissions.

Until the privileged position and power of the police and priests is overthrown there will be more deaths and injuries at the hands of police and ongoing abuse of children by priests and others.

The State and capital will attack the Other – whether it be indigenous Australians, Muslims or refugees – for their own benefit. They will not investigate one of their own, in this case the Catholic Church over child abuse, unless there is real pressure from below to do so.

The main reason for Cardinal Pell’s outburst was not morals but money. The Greens question funding to private schools at the expense of public schools. Pell, in defending the privileged schools, looks to me much like the money changers in the Temple.

Something is rotten in the State of Vatican City. The New York Times has made allegations that the present pope, Benedict XVI, protected known paedophile priests in Germany and the United States. Benedict’s statement to Irish victims of the Church’s reign of terror against children and subsequent cover up was an apologia for the Church, not […]

The industrial revolution and the expansion of capitalism worldwide commodified all human relations, including Christmas. Thus the traditions of the past became objects of profitability.

That’s the bind for the Liberals. How do they win back the support of the ruling class as a class? Certainly voting against the ETS won’t do that.

Here in the Australian Capital Territory the Labor Party (in minority Government) supported a Greens’ Bill giving legal recognition to same sex unions which passed just under 2 weeks ago. Federally the homophobic and anti-equal rights Rudd Labor Government will suggest changes to the Act which effectively gut it. The local Catholic archbishop weighed in […]