So, So Sad. But True, Nonetheless.

Christians In North Korea.

 Starved, beaten, tortured, forced to undergo abortions and shot... all for being Christian: Horrifying abuse of religious prisoners in North Korea is laid bare by those who survived

Survivors of North Korea's religious prisons have revealed how people are tortured, starved, worked to death and shot for their beliefs - with the harshest punishments reserved for Christians.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8884091/Survivors-reveal-Christians-tortured-shot-faith-North-Korea.html

Why Can We Not Have A Proper Justice System?

From textbook special forces op to legal groundhog day?

After drama off the Isle of Wight, another re-run of a legal farce looms

Melanie Phillips Oct 27

Two days ago, seven Nigerian stowaways accused of seizing control of the Nave Andromeda, an oil tanker sailing near the Isle of Wight, were overpowered and detained during a nine-minute raid by members of the Royal Navy’s elite Special Boat Service.

The seven are being held for questioning at various police stations. If they are found guilty of the offence of "seizing or exercising control of a ship by use of threats or force", they face jail. 

But — guess what — the seven are seeking asylum in the UK. And now former immigration chiefs are warning that they might drag out their asylum claims for years, well beyond any prison terms they may serve.

Well, there’s a surprise.

The Telegraph reports: 

David Wood, the director general of immigration enforcement at the Home Office until 2015, warned that even if the men were jailed for more than three years, they could still fight deportation under Article 3 of the Human Rights Act. 

… “The other problem would be securing the consent of Nigeria to take the stowaways back once they had served any prison sentence notwithstanding any Article 3 claim”, added Mr Wood.

“At the end of the day, they don't say: ‘We are not taking these people back.’ They prevaricate,” he said. “They say: ‘We are not satisfied that this person is Nigerian’ and don’t engage in any debate about it.”

… Two years ago, four migrants from Nigeria and Libya ran amok on a container ship during a 14-hour stand-off in the Thames Estuary, waving metal poles and throwing faeces, before claiming asylum in the UK. The group's immigration status is due to be “reviewed" by the Border Force upon completion of their prison sentences.

Past precedent hardly gives a cause for optimism that people who break UK law in seeking asylum can be thrown out as undesirables. As The Times observes:  

In 2006 nine Afghan asylum seekers won a legal challenge over their right to stay in the UK after they seized a Boeing 727 and forced the crew to fly to Stansted Airport in Essex six years earlier. The government repeatedly refused to grant refugee status to the group, who were escaping the Taliban, but was overruled in the High Court.

This is precisely the problem that exercises the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, and has led her and Boris Johnson to attack “activist” and “leftie” immigration lawyers for frustrating attempts to deport illegal immigrants and those whose asylum claims have been turned down.

This year, there have already been 7,500 migrants using people-smugglers to cross the Channel in order to claim asylum in the UK, almost four times last year's total, and many deportation flights have been grounded by last-minute appeals on human rights grounds. Today this illegal and unscrupulous trade produced another tragedy when at least one person died after a boat carrying migrants sank while trying to reach the UK from France.

The Home Secretary is reportedly planning to amend the UK’s Human Rights Act to limit the types of asylum appeals which can be brought under its provisions.

But amending this act would surely not solve the problem, since the UK would remain bound by the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights and thus any appeal rulings by the European Court of Human Rights. Previous governments which have railed against the use of human rights law to frustrate their policies have nevertheless flinched from taking the one step that would end this problem — removing the UK’s signature from the European human rights convention.

In my Times column this morning, where I criticised both the language used by Patel and Johnson as well as by the 800 members of the legal profession who have signed a letter criticising them for attacking immigration lawyers, I wrote this: 

There is a legitimate argument that ministerial attacks on lawyers are a dangerous attack on the independence of the profession. It’s also fair to criticise Patel and Johnson for using intemperate and generalised language. Most immigration lawyers merely do their best for their clients by seeking every possible avenue provided for them by the law. Indeed, the reason such lawyers are able to frustrate government policy is because the laws on the statute book provide them with the opportunities to do so, or because of procedural errors made by the Home Office itself.

Rather than attack the lawyers for doing their job, it would surely be more appropriate for the Home Secretary to put her own house in order and for parliament to change the laws that are considered unhelpful. Otherwise, attacking “leftie lawyers” can be seen merely as a populist insult enabling these politicians to pander to public outrage while failing to take the necessary measures.

But it wouldn’t be enough to change the Human Rights Act. The government would almost certainly need to take rather more drastic action in untangling the UK from European human rights law. And that’s a step that, despite its bullish rhetoric, the British government is still unlikely to take.

Our Sweet Beeb.

 Outrage as BBC are accused of portraying murderer Oscar Pistorius as a VICTIM in documentary trailer that does not mention Reeva Steenkamp

Critics berated the BBC for failing to mention Steenkamp's name and suggesting that Pistorius's fall from grace was the real tragedy of the story (they are pictured in South Africa in 2012). Mail.

*Late news. Apparently the trailer has now been removed and and an apology issued.

Yey!

 

Amy Coney Barrett confirmed as US Supreme Court justice.

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Lawyers and Officers of The Court.

 It is long overdue for changes to be made to our legal system with regard to the role of defence lawyers - whether they be barristers or solicitors.

Clearly, it is the role of the prosecutor to pursue those, already heavily filtered by both Police and the CPS, in order to gain the conviction of those reasonably believed to be guilty of an offence.

Naturally, defence lawyers who believe in the innocence of their client have, at this point, already gained the benefits of this significant filtering process. Many unconvicted and untried criminals will have also gained from this exercise.

With a colossal percentage of the remaining clients who face court being clearly guilty - defence briefs can hardly claim equivalent moral high ground to that of the person prosecuting with regard to any defendant who cannot reasonably be believed to be innocent.

Never let us forget that the vast majority of acquitted defendants are not innocent but merely not guilty.

Against this backcloth, reasonable behaviour by defending solicitors and barristers should obviously never be to try to thwart justice by seeing a guilty client acquitted or under-sentenced. 

Their function must simply be to ensure that their client receives justice and and a wholly fair outcome.

The prosecutor wants a fair outcome. More often than I dare suggest, the defence brief does not.

Birdie.

 

If Attempted Half-Heartedly - Don't Even Bother!

 

How Can You Contradict This Thinking?

 

Petition Launched.

 Charity Launches Asylum Petition for Pakistani Christian Girl Forced to Convert to Islam.

Arif Ali/AFP/Getty

THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D.

26 Oct 2020 Breitbart.

A Catholic charity has launched a campaign urging Prime Minister Boris Johnson to grant UK asylum to a young Christian girl in Pakistan receiving death threats from a Muslim rapist who forced her to marry him and convert to Islam.

During the coronavirus lockdown last April, Mohamad Nakash kidnapped at gunpoint Maira Shahbaz, a 14-year-old Catholic girl from the Punjab Province, gang-raped her with two other accomplices, blackmailed her, and forced her to convert to Islam.

In early August, the Lahore High Court ruled that Shahbaz had voluntarily converted to Islam and therefore is legally married to Mr. Nakash, who claimed that a “marriage certificate” in his possession listed the girl’s age as 19, even though her family has a birth certificate proving she is only 14.

Two weeks later, Maira escaped from Nakash’s house and informed police of the ongoing abuse she had suffered at his hands. Nakash responded by making death threats against her, accusing her apostasy, as well as threatening to release videotape of her being gang raped.

Don't You Just Adore The Bidens?

 https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/10/24/breitbart-land-data-shows-number-one-online-story-in-america-about-debate-is-biden-corruption/

Yee Hahhh! Here We Go!

 The agreement with Japan is also seen as the first stepping stone over the UK’s impending membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

The CPTPP is a trade alliance which includes countries such as Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Australia.

Mr Holden, who was one of the new ‘Blue Wall’ MPs in the last election, claimed the UK’s already thriving in its new role as an independent nation.

Writing in Conservative Home, he said: “The Japan deal is proof that we can strike good trade deals for Britain, despite the derision of arch-Remainers.

Your Prayer Is Greatly Appreciated For ...

 Tom, very poorly in hospital with leukaemia, who has now contracted Covid 19! Pray too for wife Barbara who is not allowed to visit and is struggling with the technology to keep her in touch.

Debs who has pneumonia which is not responding to antibiotics. Debs was a police officer present at the Hillsborough disaster and has suffered grievous psychological problems over the intervening 31 years.

Derek who had a heart transplant some years ago. Psychological and physical problems after losing his wife.

Peter with PSA levels which have not been responding well, of late, to treatments. He has had prostate cancer for some twelve years.

Brian with bladder cancer.

Joe, in his 40s, who had an horrendous heart attack two and a half years ago and whose progress is minute at the moment. He remains in a care home. Please pray that he will recover sufficiently to be able to live at home.

Pray for Lindsey who had a terrible equine accident and has multiple problems as a result.

Jamie-Lee who has very severe psychological issues and suicidal tendencies. She is currently sectioned. 

Pray for Ben, 22, who has lost both parents very suddenly in the space of five months.

Tony. With advanced oesophageal cancer spread to the liver.

Please pray too for the 260 million Christians who are being actively persecuted for their faith.

Please pray against that spirit which has infected so many churches worldwide which does not hold steadfastly to Biblical Truth.

Education Is Becoming Increasingly Destructive.

The treason of the educational class Censorship of knowledge and ideas is now expanding from campus to schoolroom Melanie Phillips Oct 25 Knowledge; Robert Reid, 1896 Bad ideas owe their advance into mainstream thinking not just to bad people but also to otherwise decent people going along with such notions out of cowardice or other weakness. The censorship of any thinking which conflicts with the orthodoxies of identity politics is increasingly destroying the western university as the crucible of reason, along with its core purpose to advance knowledge through the free play of evidence, ideas and argument. This closing of the western mind is now taking place inside schools too. In America, high-school officials are increasingly imposing censorship and speech regulation.  A Vermont district has fired a school principal, Tiffany Riley, for writing on Facebook that she didn’t agree with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. As the legal commentator Jonathan Turley writes: Shortly after that posting, Mount Ascutney School Board held an emergency meeting to declare that it is “uniformly appalled” and that Riley was “tone deaf” for making such a statement. In what should now be a major free speech case, the Board unanimously voted to fire Riley, citing her “denigrating, derogatory, or contrary to the movement for social equity for African Americans, including the Black Lives Matter movement.”  The background to the affair is this. Before graduation at Riley’s school, an American flag was painted in the school grounds near to where the graduation ceremony was to be held. This was declared insulting or disturbing by a former pupil, Iyanna Williams. She expressed the view that “display of the flag is associated with exclusion of African American citizens from political considerations,” and wanted the addition of a painted statement representing Black Lives Matter or other associated ideas. In other words, Williams was disrespecting the American flag because she was grossly disrespecting America as intrinsically racist, and she required the school to exhibit similar gross disrespect to its nation and its flag.   The graduation was held without painting over the American flag and there were no Black Lives Matter displays. The row, however, continued and provoked Riley’s remarks. And this was the“denigrating” and “derogatory” statement that she made:  I firmly believe that Black Lives Matter, but I DO NOT agree with the coercive measures taken to get to this point across; some of which are falsified in an attempt to prove a point. While I want to get behind BLM, I do not think people should be made to feel they have to choose black race over human race. While I understand the urgency to feel compelled to advocate for black lives, what about our fellow law enforcement? What about all others who advocate for and demand equity for all? Just because I don’t walk around with a BLM sign should not mean I am a racist. For this entirely reasonable — indeed, anti-racist — point of  view, Superintendent David Baker told Riley that her comments were “inflammatory, “incendiary” and “racist” — and then expressed shock that she took offence. Now look at what’s going on in Britain. The Sunday Times reports that the headmistress of Benenden, an independent boarding school for girls, has   “unreservedly apologised” for using the word “negro” in an assembly. Shocked? Wait. Look at the context:   Samantha Price, 46, headmistress at Benenden, the Kent girls’ boarding school where Princess Anne was a pupil, was explaining to pupils the origins of the month in 1926. At the time it was, according to Wikipedia, called “Negro History Week” in America, she said. … Price said that “by using this word in this context I was attempting to show how far language around black people has come since then”. However: Some of the senior girls protested about her use of the word, fearing that other pupils would think they were also entitled to use a word some find as offensive as the n-word. A robust head would have explained to these pupils that she had used this word precisely to show how language developed to reflect changing cultural attitudes. She might have illustrated this with other examples of words once in mainstream use but now deemed insulting or offensive — for example, “Red Indian”, “mongol” or “retarded” for Native Americans, people with Down’s Syndrome or those with learning difficulties. She might have pointed out that, if nothing could be taught if there was any risk that some pupils might misinterpret it, very little could be taught at all. Instead, Price said this: However, in hindsight I recognise that it was not necessary to use the specific word and I accept that by using this word at all I have caused offence to some pupils. Clearly, this was never my intention and I unreservedly apologise for that error. In effect, the error for which this head teacher was apologising was imparting historical and cultural knowledge to her pupils. She was apologising for the “error” of engaging in what was once known as the education of the young. That once-revered vocation, it seems, now has to give way to the cult of offended feelings, coerced conformity and the diktats of the young. Thus a society implodes thanks to the “trahison des clercs,” or the betrayal of the intellectuals. In the same story, The Sunday Times reports that Halima Begum, the director of the Runnymede Trust race equality think-tank, said she would like to see works by Bernardine Evaristo such as Blonde Roots replace texts such as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies at GCSE. Some might think that not just Lord of the Flies but George Orwell’s 1984 are no longer fiction but have become, terrifyingly, our contemporary reality.

Birdie.

Wisdom Is Still Available To Those of Few Intellectual Abilities.

Defund The BBC.

 Sick of the BBC wasting your money on unconscious bias training and eco consultants? Fed up of failing presenters being rewarded with million pound pay rises?

Switch to on-demand and help #DefundTheBBC by joining the 550 households per day legally cancelling their TV licence.

Big Government Is Worse Than Capitalism.

Nice Move On The Hypocrisy Front, Frankie Baby.

 A Vatican document from 2003, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and expressly approved by Saint John Paul II, forbade Catholics from supporting civil unions for gays.

“Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimisation of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalisation of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil,” the text states.

“In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognised or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty,” the document declares, calling such laws “gravely unjust.”

The text lays out a series of arguments as to why Catholics can never support legislation recognising homosexual couples as civil unions. Breitbart.

Fish: The Classic Unreasonableness of The French (and chums).

Just take a look at the French coastline.Now look at the coastline of Great Britain. Now consider just how much access Macron's French have to fishing waters.

Against this backcloth, the French government is insisting that their fishermen must have access to the waters of a sovereign, independent nation. (It has overtones of Hitler's lebensraum.)

Now ponder how much coastline other EU countries possess for fishing.

Against this backcloth, the EU is insisting that their fishermen have entitlement to access the waters of a sovereign, independent nation.

EU 'hoover fishing' has devastated the N.Sea. Perhaps with the UK in possession of its own waters we may see a movement away from the CFP which has been an ecological disaster. 

 

Just So Long A Frankie Keeps The Liberal Politicos Happy.

 The decision by Pope Francis to offer his tentative support

for civil union laws for same-sex couples was praised Thursday by U.N. chief Antonio Guterres.

A devout worshipper from Catholic Portugal, the former socialist political leader said the cautious papal thumbs-up was “extremely welcome.”

“This is a clear demonstration of a fundamental principle, which is the principle of nondiscrimination,” said Guterres in New York during an interview with the Associated Press. “And one of the things that has been very clear in the U.N. doctrine on this is that non-discrimination is also relevant in the questions of sexual orientation.

“So this is decision of the Pope is, of course, extremely welcome from our perspective.” Breitbart.

Reflection of The Heart.