Persecution in Vietnam

The following video was taken in August in Vietnam. It appears to show local police raiding an unidentified church meeting held in a home and arresting several members.

The Vietnamese constitution guarantees religious freedom, but churches are required to register with the state, a move that results in numerous restrictions being placed upon the activities of such churches. As a result, many churches - including the one in the video - choose to remain unregistered.

Persecution of Christians in Vietnam is routinely harsh, with arbitrary arrests, harassment and fines being routine. A number of Christians are in prison with reports of several having died as a result of injuries sustained.

Underground house churches are particularly represented among ethnic tribal groups in the mountains of central and southern Vietnam.

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Health Care: Keep Your Eyes on the Prize - Jim Wallis - God's Politics Blog

Health Care: Keep Your Eyes on the Prize - Jim Wallis - God's Politics Blog


Jim Wallis comments on the re-emergence of the abortion issue into the debate on universal health care in America and asks if the "culture wars" are back.




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YouTube - Dispatches: Inside Britain's Israel Lobby

YouTube - Dispatches: Inside Britain's Israel Lobby

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Defining Capitalism

"[T]he combination of a Fed that can print money, deposit insurance, and a Congress that can authorize bailouts provides an extensive safety net for big financial firms. In such an environment, pursuing a policy of easy money plus deregulation doesn't amount to free market economics: it's a form of crony capitalism."

John Cassidy

"Perhaps we should try and think of a name for the new economic system, which certainly isn’t capitalism: that, remember, is all about ‘creative destruction’, and the freedom to fail. That’s exactly what we don’t have. The most accurate term would probably be ‘bankocracy’."

John Lanchester

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More on Police and the (Social) Media

Following yesterday's post about the refusal of a local paper to sign an indemnity form with Essex Police, which would restrict the paper's freedom to use a story in a way other than that proscribed by the force, two other related stories appeared on the radar.

First, the Met have started to request that images held in external databases showing officers with their number badges covered should be removed and not used. The Evening Standard describes this move as an attempt to "rewrite history".

Second, blogger Simon Collister claims to have received an "aggressive" voicemail from Dick Fedorcio, Director of Public Affairs and Corporate Communications at the Metropolitan Police, asking him to contact him if he planned on blogging about the Met in the future.

"He advised me, in a rather intimidating fashion, that if I planned on blogging about the Met again I should give him a call in advance."

I'm not easily shocked. But today, I am.

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Local Paper Won't Play Ball With Police's Managed News Service

"It's a national form and the purpose of it is to ensure that the material they gather is used for the right purpose, and not used for some later story which is totally unrelated." So says a spokesman from Essex Constabulary as he describes an indemnity form used by the force which local media organisations were asked to sign before being giving access to a police photocall at a recently-discovered huge cannabis factory.

Although most media organisations signed the form, the Epping Forest Guardian declined to do so and was therefore barred from the photocall. Among other things, the indemnity form asked media companies to guarantee that material would not be "archived" for future use and would be used only in connection with the immediate "purpose" of the photocall. It also asked them to give an undertaking that no material would be used in a way that was "detrimental" to the Essex Constabulary.

Local editor Anthony Longden responds: "Our policy on indemnity forms is certainly nothing new - we don't sign them because they make what we consider to be unreasonable demands, and we prefer to protect our independence and our journalistic material."

The paper's refusal to sign resulted in it being initially denied access to the location , a fact that a police spokesman commented on: "I am aware that some have refused to sign it but they have missed out on a major opportunity. For this particular newspaper, it was probably their main story for this week's edition." The paper subsequently found out the location of the factory and has run several stories on the events there.

The police's attempt to manage this piece of news is regrettable and reflects an unhealthy trend towards curbing freedom of the press. It is unreasonable in a free society that the state/police should be allowed to determine the "purpose" of a news story or proscribe how it should be used in the future.

It's hard enough running a local newspaper these days. The Guardian are therefore to be especially commended for refusing to go along with this attempt by the police to manage the news. Essex police should stop using these indemnity forms and stop trying to control the media in this way.

I appreciate that Thomas Jefferson is not one often quoted this side of the Atlantic. On this matter, however, he has much to to say:

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it."

and

"Information is the currency of democracy."

photo r0bz


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Guinea, Guns and BAE Systems

To nobody's great surprise, recent atrocities in the west African country of Guinea, when civilians opposed to Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara's military junta were attacked, killed and raped by soldiers loyal to the regime, have an indirect link to BAE Systems.

Eye witness reports of the 29th September massacre, when 157 people were reportedly killed at a rally calling for Camara to not take part in Presidential elections planned for next January, describe some of the weapons and equipment used by army units as they unleashed a brutal attack upon the crowd of 50,000 at a football stadium in the capital Conakry.

These reports include descriptions of:

• French-made Cougar grenade launchers, whose sale to Guinea were authorised by the French government in 2007
• Mamba Mine Protected Vehicles, built by BAE Systems and reportedly sold to the Guinea regime through a South African intermediary company

Since the September massacre, during which widespread rape is reported to have taken place, Amnesty International have called for an immediate suspension of all weapons and arms supplies to Guinea.

A participant within the armed forces who took part in the September massacre has described the army as being leaderless and in a state of chaos. He also claims that elements from neighbouring Liberia are operating at middle ranking levels within the Guinea army.

Human Rights Watch reported in 2003 that Guinea was used as a major transit route for illegal arms shipments to the Muslim-majority LURD rebel group in their conflict with the government of Charles Taylor between 1999 and 2003. The report claims that these arms shipments originated in the Ukraine and Iran.

To add to the complexity, the military junta in Guinea has, since the massacre, announced a $7billion mineral rights deal with the People's Republic of China.

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