Boris Johnson, Brexit and the End of the United Kingdom

Previous posts have looked at the parallels between Trump supporters and pro-Breixt voters in the United Kingdom: both groups are motivated by racism and a longing for a past that will never return. Now, in the person of Boris Johnson, the United Kingdom has a prime minister who is the equivalent of Donald Trump who is antagonizing allies and causing division with in the country.  Some believe it could end in the dissolution of the United Kingdom, with Scotland leaving the union and Northern Ireland ultimately joining the Irish Republic.  If this happens, Brexit supporters will find themselves in a much smaller and far weaker country that will only make the past they so long for even more impossible to recreate. With both groups - Trump supporters and Breixt supporters - racism and delusions have set them on a course for long term national disaster.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the potential collapse of the UK as a untied country.  Here are highlights:

In his first speech last week as Britain’s new leader, Prime Minister Boris Johnson exhibited his customary bravado: “The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts because we are going to restore trust in our democracy,” he said, reiterating his promise to lead the country out of the European Union, “and we are going to fulfill the repeated promises of Parliament to the people and come out of the E.U. on October 31st. No ifs or buts.”

But already, it’s Johnson who is starting to look like the prime minister with no clothes.

On Tuesday, the British pound dropped to its lowest level in two years, a reaction to growing alarm over the likelihood of Johnson’s government crashing Britain out of Europe in a “no-deal” Brexit. His cabinet is packed with hard-line Brexiteers who, like Johnson, want to see Brexit achieved at almost any cost. One minister has already indicated that the government is operating under the “assumption” that it must prepare for a “no-deal” departure: a scenario that would see tariffs immediately slapped on British exports to the continent, financial chaos, lines and delays at border checks, and an endless assortment of other (in some cases, still unforeseen) problems.

Johnson, undaunted, has engaged in a game of brinkmanship with Brussels and Dublin. Over the weekend, he talked tough on his Brexit intentions, voicing his opposition to the “Irish backstop” — the current understanding forged between Britain and the European Union that would preserve a soft border between Ireland and Northern Ireland and therefore theoretically keep all of Britain in the E.U.’s customs union.

Officials in Brussels, meanwhile, may be hoping that Johnson is compelled to blink first and that Britain’s Parliament acts to block a no-deal Brexit. That also may be a scenario Johnson actually wants. Another impasse at Westminster could prompt a snap general election that may yield a Parliament more inclined to back Johnson’s agenda.

[T]he domestic picture for Johnson is hardly rosy, either. For two days in a row, the prime minister was greeted by jeering crowds of protesters as he embarked on a tour of the United Kingdom’s home nations. On Monday, he received an icy welcome from Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, and was compelled to leave her residence in Edinburgh through a back door to avoid the angry demonstrations.

"The people of Scotland did not vote for this Tory government, they didn’t vote for this new prime minister, they didn’t vote for Brexit, and they certainly didn’t vote for a catastrophic no-deal Brexit, which Boris Johnson is now planning for,” Sturgeon said before his arrival. As my colleagues reported, the chaos and damage of a “no-deal” Brexit may speed calls for a new independence referendum in Scotland — a cause backed by Sturgeon’s Scottish Nationalist Party.

The next day in Wales, Johnson met a similarly dubious Welsh first minister. Mark Drakeford, a member of the opposition Labour party, warned in an interview with the Guardian that a no-deal Brexit would endanger Wales’s agricultural and manufacturing sectors and “a whole way of life that has existed for centuries.” He stressed that Johnson’s characteristic “bluff and bluster” was testing the unity of the United Kingdom itself.

“The prime minister’s twin ambitions are on a dangerous collision course,” noted an editorial in the Financial Times, referring to Johnson’s stated desire to both strengthen ties among Britain’s four home nations and lead the country swiftly out of the European Union. “Brexit in any shape promises to weaken the bonds between the nations of the British Isles. In the extreme form that seems to be the working assumption by Johnson’s new administration, it will impose intolerable strains. This could set in train a process that ends with the break-up of the union.”

On Tuesday, almost a full week after taking office, Johnson placed his first phone call to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. Their exchange was reportedly “testy” and not particularly productive. According to an Irish readout, Varadkar reminded Johnson that the backstop was “a consequence” of Britain’s political decision to embark on Brexit and that Ireland had the full strength of the E.U. behind it.

On Friday, Varadkar hinted at the possibility of Northern Ireland severing its ties with the United Kingdom in the event of a no-deal Brexit. “I think increasingly you see liberal Protestants and Unionists who will start to ask where they feel more at home,” he said. “One of the things that ironically could really undermine the union of the U.K. is a hard Brexit, both for Northern Ireland and for Scotland, and that is a problem they are going to have to face.”

Not for nothing did former British prime minister Gordon Brown remark at a London event last week that Johnson could be remembered “not as the 55th prime minister of the U.K. but as the first prime minister of England.”

Vladimir Putin must be truly smiling.

400 Children from Catholic Orphanage Believed Buried in Mass Grave

The every exploding sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church continues around the world, especially in Australia and now Guam (India is also seeing more exposes of abuse).  It seems that literally, wherever the Church went and proselytized, sexual abuse by clergy followed.  Now reports out of Scotland - once a Catholic bastion - are rivaling some of the most horrific stories out of Ireland where Catholic religious orders that were supposed to care for children inflicted untold suffering. Like many of the nuns from my childhood, these Scottish nuns seemed to take coldness and  cruelty to terrible levels.  The Church says a "full investigation" will be made - most likely in an effort to cover up the truth.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at these revelations.  Here are highlights:

The children taken to the notorious Smyllum Park orphanage in Lanarkshire, Scotland came from poor, working-class families and broken homes. About 11,600 children passed through the institution from its opening in 1864 through its closure in 1981, left in the care of an order of Catholic nuns.

Former residents have detailed allegations of being brutally beaten, kicked in the head, neglected and publicly humiliated by the orphanage’s staff, and being forced to take freezing cold showers, according to British and Scottish news outlets. One former resident’s physical and psychological abuse was described in the Scotsman newspaper as “hideous treatment at the hands of nuns.”

For many years, an unknown number of children were believed to have died in the home, but exactly how they perished — and where they were laid to rest — remained a mystery.

Then, in 2003, two former residents uncovered a troubling discovery: an overgrown, unmarked burial plot at a nearby cemetery, which they believed might be filled with the bodies of children. The religious organization that ran the home, the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent DePaul, confirmed that Smyllum residents were indeed buried there, according to the BBC and Scottish newspapers. In 2004, the group said records suggested that 120 children had died at the orphanage.
 But the two former residents who found the unmarked graves believed the number of children buried was much higher. It turns out, they may have been correct. According to a lengthy joint investigation by the BBC and Scotland’s Sunday Postpublished Sunday, up to 400 children are believed to be buried in the mass grave.

By sifting through archived death certificates, the BBC and Sunday Post found 402 certificates listing Smyllum as the place of death or normal residence. After checking with surrounding cemeteries and local authorities, the reporters found only 2 two of those 402 were buried elsewhere, according to the BBC.

Based on the death records the reports cited, an average of one child died every three months at Smyllum. In some periods, the recorded death rate was about three times the average for children in Scotland, . . . About a third of those who perished were age 5 or under, the BBC reported.

The revelations evoked comparisons to a home for mothers and children in Tuam, Ireland, where a forensic examinationrevealed 17 underground chambers containing “significant quantities of human remains,” the remnants of young children of “unwed mothers” dating from 1925 to 1961. Estimates have put the number of bodies at Tuam at 700 to 800.

“The true scale of the horrors of Smyllum long hidden by the Roman Catholic church are only being now revealed,” the organization White Flowers Alba, which advocates for survivors of the orphanage, said in a statement to The Washington Post.

In an interview with The Post, the group’s founder, Andi Lavery, said the residents at Smyllum were given a stipend from the Scottish government for food and proper medical treatment. Lavery said he read the death certificates cited by the BBC and Sunday Post, and said many causes of death included malnutrition and blunt trauma to the head.

“Why should they be dying from starvation? Why should they be dying from treatable infections? Why should they be dying from beatings?” Lavery said. He said he is currently working with about 20 of the home’s remaining former residents, but has heard from more than 100 survivors over the years.

“The kids were put in sacks and thrown in the ground in the hole,” Lavery said. “They were harshly beaten and quite a large number were sexually abused.”

The Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent DePaul, which ran the home, refused to comment on the findings, according to both reports.

Following the BBC and Sunday Post reports, a spokesperson for the Catholic Church in Scotland told Scottish newspaper the National that a “full investigation” should be made into the allegations.

Horrific accounts from survivors of the orphanage have been detailed in Scottish press over the years.

I ask again a question I pose often: how and why can decent, moral people continue to support the morally bankrupt and hypocrisy filled Catholic Church?

Scotland Rejects Independence From Britain

In a historic vote that had many wringing their hands in fear, Scotland has voted against independence from Great Britain.  Now, with the "No" vote having prevailed, many expect Britain to make moves that will lead to more Scottish autonomy within the larger nation - a more federalized system, if you will.  Like the perennial separatists in Quebec, I am sure that those on the losing side will continue to roil the political waters.  Here are highlights from the New York Times:

Voters in Scotland decisively rejected independence from the United Kingdom in a referendum that had threatened to break up the 307-year union, but also appeared to open the way for a looser, more federal Britain.

With results tallied from all 32 voting districts, the “no” campaign won 55.3 percent of the vote while the pro-independence side won 44.7 percent. The margin was greater than forecast by virtually all pre-election polls.

The outcome was a deep disappointment for the vocal, enthusiastic pro-independence movement led by the Scottish first minister, Alex Salmond, who had seen an opportunity to make a centuries-old nationalist dream a reality and forced the three main British parties into panicked promises that they would grant substantial new power to the Scottish Parliament.

The decision spared Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain a shattering defeat that would have raised questions about his ability to continue in office and would have diminished his nation’s standing in the world.

Mr. Salmond, while conceding defeat, insisted that the 1.6 million people who voted for independence showed the depth of yearning for the promises made by British political leaders to stave off disunion.

“Scotland will expect these to be honored in rapid course,” Mr. Salmond said, while promising to work to heal the divisions the referendum created.

The vote preserved a union molded in 1707, but it left Mr. Cameron facing an angry backlash among some lawmakers in his Conservative Party, angered by the promises of greater Scottish autonomy that he and other party leaders made just days before the vote, when it appeared that the independence campaign might win. Some lawmakers called for similar autonomy for England itself, and even the creation of a separate English parliament.

The outcome headed off the huge economic, political and military imponderables that would have flowed from a vote for independence. But it also presaged a looser, more federal United Kingdom. And it was unlikely to deter Scottish nationalists from trying again, in the future, to attain independence.

President Obama had made little secret of his desire that the United Kingdom remain intact. Indeed, Britain has long prided itself on a so-called special relationship with the United States, and Britain’s allies had been concerned, among other things, about Mr. Salmond’s vow to evict British nuclear submarine bases from Scotland, threatening London’s role in Western defenses.

Scotland Passes Gay Marriage Bill

While the Virginia GOP continues to pander to religious extremists and the forces of ignorance and reaction, the Scottish Parliament has enacted a gay marriage bill that will bring same sex marriage   The main opponents of the measure were - as is always the case - religious groups (principally, the Catholic Church and Church of Scotland) that sought to force their religious beliefs on all of Scotland.  Thankfully, the measure passed by a landslide vote.  Weddings will begin on March 29, 2014. Here are highlights from MetroWeekly:

Same-sex couples are celebrating in Scotland as the Scottish Parliament has passed the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill, which legalizes same-sex weddings in the country. It was a landslide victory for the bill, which passed with 105 votes in favor and just 18 against. Ministers of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs), who were granted a free vote outwith party lines, further rejected amendments which aimed to include protection for those groups or individuals opposed to same-sex marriage.

Mr Neil called the passing of the bill "a historic day in the history of the Scottish Parliament", while gay rights organizations have similarly lauded its success, including the Equality Network and Stonewall Scotland. Several religious groups have also championed the legislation, with Quakers stating they will allow ceremonies to take place on their premises, while Buddhists and the Pagan Federation have also shown support. 

[F]or those religious groups or celebrants who do not support the bill, there will be no legal repercussions for refusing to conduct ceremonies, with protections against claims of discrimination. Religious groups that do wish to conduct ceremonies are free to do so, with the bill matching the "opt-in" status for religious groups in the Marriage Act which passed in England and Wales last year. 

Incidentally, the first same-sex marriages as a result of that legislation will take place from March 29.  . . . .   any same-sex marriages conducted overseas will be recognized in the country.

Vatican Orders Cardinal Into Exile Over Gay Sex

Protecting sexual predators as a bishop or cardinal gets you a plum position in Rome if things get to hot with the law - remember Cardinal Law? - but admit to gay sexual conduct and you find yourself banished sent into exile.  That's the message the Vatican is sending with its order to Scotland's Cardinal Keith O'Brien to leave the country.   Be assured that I have ZERO sympathy for O'Brien who has proven to be a lying hypocrite who used his position to take advantage of seminarians and young priests.   The Scotland Herald reports on O'Brien's forced exile.  Here are excerpts:

Friends of the cleric have said he has been told by Rome to shelve his plans to retire to a church-owned cottage in East Lothian and instead leave the country.

The Herald understands Cardinal O'Brien was given the news yesterday afternoon, three days after being photographed moving his personal belongings from his official residence in Edinburgh to the residence in Dunbar where he had been spending regular weekends over the past few years.

It is the clearest indication yet of the Vatican's unwillingness to let the matter drift and concern that the Cardinal's admission of gay activity over decades and allegations of abuse towards trainee priests continues to damage the Church.

Investigations also continue into claims made by a serving priest in Lanarkshire of a "gay mafia" running seminaries in the 1980s and naming leading Catholic figures.

The Herald revealed on Thursday Archbishop of Glasgow Philip Tartaglia was behind an appeal to the Vatican to intervene after Cardinal O'Brien's re-emergence in Scotland this week.

[S]enior figures in the Church said he was "still causing immense damage".

Blogger friend Father Tony who once served at the Vatican suggests that O'Brien go public with his full story - something that certainly would have the potential to embarrass Rome if others knew of his sexual trysts:

Since the Vatican has cut him loose, he ought to do the same to them. Come on, O'Brien, tell your story. Nothing to lose. Much to gain. Start with Letterman. Say the F word and get bleeped. Everyone already knows you did it.

Catholic Cardinal was in Physical Same Sex Relationship with Accuser

The dirt just keeps on coming out about disgraced Catholic Cardinal Keith O'Brien and it underscores his utter hypocrisy in attacking gays and gay marriage.  And, I suspect, O'Brien is but one of many in the Church hierarchy who preach against gay Catholics and gay civil rights and marriage even as they engage in physical same sex relationships themselves or molest subordinates and altar boys.   The irony is that O'Brien's anti-gay stridency in his official position may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, if you will, and pushed those with  whom he had been sexually intimate to to decide to take him down.  The phenomenon is similar to what led to former Congressman Ed Schrock's down fall:  he voted consistently anti-gay in Congress yet sought same sex hook ups and tryst.  The hypocrisy caused myself and others to ultimately help out him.  The moral is that if one is in the closet and playing around, being publicly anti-gay is the last thing one should do.  A piece in The Scotland Herald looks at what seems to have triggered the actions of O'Brien's acusers.  Here are highlights:

Cardinal Keith O'Brien had a long-standing physical relationship with one of the men whose complaints about his behaviour sparked his downfall as leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland.

The man left the priesthood in the middle of the last decade but rejoined and is living on the continent in a post the cardinal helped him secure. 

The complainant is known to have been in regular telephone contact with Cardinal O'Brien until recently and was a frequent visitor to St Benets, his official residence in Edinburgh's Morningside.

Catholic Bishops Knew of 20 Sex Abuse Allegations Against Priests

As the College of Cardinals assembles to select the next Pope to replace retired Nazi Pope Benedict XVI, the PR spin doctors for the Catholic Church strive to dupe the public and the Church laity into believing that things have changed in terms of the Church hierarchy's behavior towards predator priests.  As news reports out of the United Kingdom reveal, the truth of the matter is that little if anything has changed.  A story in The Guardian shows that it is still the same old pattern of cover ups and deception.  Here are some story highlights:

The hierarchy of Scotland's Catholic church was on the defensive again last night over claims that bishops knew of as many as 20 allegations of child sex abuse by priests in the 1980s and 90s, along with a separate revelation that the Vatican is currently considering the case of a Scottish priest accused of child sex abuse.

The claims about the 20 cases, which were made by an academic previously involved in advising the church on sexual abuse and how to respond to it, also came as a report suggested that Cardinal Keith O'Brien was summoned to Rome to answer charges of sexual impropriety as early as October last year.

O'Brien was forced to resign last month by Pope Benedict XVI, barely 36 hours after the Observer disclosed that three serving priests and one former priest were accusing him of "inappropriate acts" against them nearly 30 years ago.

While he made a dramatic admission last weekend that he was guilty of sexual misconduct throughout his career in the church, new questions about the handling of his case have now been raised by a report by the Catholic weekly, the Tablet, which claimed that he was called to Rome last year after a priest lodged an allegation with the Congregation for Bishops. 

A separate report by the BBC, which claimed that bishops knew of as many as 20 allegations of child sex abuse by priests, was based on correspondence between senior clerics and Alan Draper, an expert in social work and lecturer at Dundee University who compiled a report for the church on how to deal with abuse.

He remains scathing about the hierarchy's response to the report drawn up by him and a working party and last night called on the church to open up its files and records to an independent assessment.

"Certainly there's strong evidence to say some of the priests were out of control sexually, whether they be homosexual or heterosexual," he said. "The file should be made open to an independent group, preferably chaired by a judge."

The Church hierarchy remains a veritable cesspool.  How anyone can honor and give deference to these horrible men is dumbfounding.