Poor people who are desperate for cash have been advised to go forth and shoplift from major stores - by an Anglican priest.
The Rev Tim Jones said in his Sunday sermon that stealing from successful shops was preferable to burglary, robbery or prostitution. He told parishioners it would not break the eighth commandment 'thou shalt not steal' because it 'is permissible for those who are in desperate situations to take food that they might not starve'.
But his advice was roundly condemned by police and the local Tory MP. Father Jones, 42, was discussing Mary and the birth of Jesus when he went on to the subject of how poor and vulnerable people cope in the run-up to Christmas.
'My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift,' he told his stunned congregation at St Lawrence and St Hilda in York. 'I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither.
'I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.
'I would ask them not to take any more than they need. I offer the advice with a heavy heart. Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift.
'The observation that shoplifting is the best option that some people are left with is a grim indictment of who we are. Rather, this is a call for our society no longer to treat its most vulnerable people with indifference and contempt.
'When people are released from prison, or find themselves suddenly without work or family support, then to leave them for weeks with inadequate or clumsy social support is monumental, catastrophic folly. 'We create a situation which leaves some people little option but crime.'
The father of two, whose parish has a wide mix of social conditions, said his advice to people in dire circumstances is that 'they should not hurt anybody and cope as best they can'.
He added: 'The strong temptation is to burgle or rob people - family, friends, neighbours, strangers.
'Others are tempted towards prostitution, a nightmare world of degradation and abuse for all concerned. Others are tempted towards suicide. Instead, I would rather that they shoplift. The life of the poor in modern Britain is a constant struggle, a minefield of competing opportunities, competing responsibilities, obligations and requirements, a constant effort to achieve the impossible.
'For many at the bottom of our social ladder, lawful, honest life can sometimes seem to be an apparent impossibility.'
Anne McIntosh, the Tory MP for Vale of York, has campaigned in Parliament for stronger sentences for shoplifters. She said: 'I cannot condone inciting anyone to commit a criminal offence. Shoplifting is a crime against the whole local community and society.'
A North Yorkshire Police spokesman said: 'First and foremost, shoplifting is a criminal offence and to justify this course of action under any circumstances is highly irresponsible. 'Turning or returning to crime will only make matters worse, that is a guarantee.'
The Archdeacon of York, the Venerable Richard Seed, said: 'The Church of England does not advise anyone to shoplift, or break the law in any way.
'Father Tim Jones is raising important issues about the difficulties people face when benefits are not forthcoming, but shoplifting is not the way to overcome these difficulties. There are many organisations and charities working with people in need, and the Citizens' Advice Bureau is a good first place to call.'
#1
Considering that Britanistan is a socialist nanny state keeping everyone in the lap of luxury, how could anyone there become desperate enough to steal?
#2
Unconstitutional? Sure. But at this point in our country does it matter?
I really don't think it does. All three branches of govt. have so twisted the intent of the Constitution that it's become merely a suggestion or an annoyance to their agendas.
#3
I have always been of the opinion that if this monster gets passed, the legal challenges will hold it up until 2012. I can see Bambie trying to stuff the courts with nominees that will keep this alive, but I think with the loss of lots D seats in 2010 the politicians will quietly repeal it.
"Abdullahi Sudi Arale is suspected of being a member of the Al Qaeda terrorist network in East Africa, serving as a courier between East Africa Al Qaeda (EAAQ) and Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Since his return from Pakistan to Somalia in September 2006, he has held a leadership role in the EAAQ-affiliated Somali Council of Islamic Courts (CIC).
There is significant information available indicating that Arale has been assisting various EAAQ-affiliated extremists in acquiring weapons and explosives, and has facilitated terrorist travel by providing false documents for AQ and EAAQ-affiliates and foreign fighters traveli
That phrase was reserved for less than twenty detainees. As far as I know, the U.S. has never transferred a "high-value detainee" from its custody.
One "high-value detainee," Ahmed Ghailani, was transferred to New York for trial. But he is, of course, still detained by the U.S. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian who faces terrorism charges for his role in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies, asked a judge to order U.S. prosecutors to surrender information about "black sites" where he was held.
Does this mean that Arale was the first "high-value detainee" ever transferred from American custody?
#1
Geeze louise. If you wanna look like a "good guy", fine. Release these pigs, go ahead. But have the good sense to have them whacked in some dark alley shortly after release, huh?
#2
Of course he was released - he cooperated in all sorts of secret anti-AQ ops over the last two years. Didn't he? I'm sure that's the only reason we would ever release any of those prisoners.
#3
Yeah - stick a US $250,000 bank deposit into a bank book bearing his name, and leaflet drop copies of that bank book all over Somaliland. Then, grab a bag of popcorn, and watch.
Because it is dependent on us. By Christopher Hitchens
Give credit to the vice president: He really does enjoy politics and "can't see a room without working it," as a colleague of mine half-admiringly remarked last Wednesday morning. We were waiting to enter the studio and comment after Biden had finished his interview with the Scarborough/Brzezinski team, in which the main topic was Afghanistan. Exiting, he chose to stop and talk to each of us. Not wanting to waste a chance to be a bore on the subject, I asked him why he had mentioned India only once in the course of his remarks. Right away Biden managed the trickseveral good politicians have mastered thisof reacting as if the question had been his own idea. Of course, he said, it was vexing that Pakistan preferred to keep its best troops on the border with India (our friend) rather than redeploying them to FATAthe so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areaswhere they could be fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida (our enemy). My flesh was pressed, and it was on to the next. The newspapers that morning revealed that Pakistani authorities showed no interest in apprehending a Taliban leader in Afghanistan whom they considered an important asset. The newspapers the following morning reported that Pakistan was refusing to extend the visas to U.S. Embassy and other American personnel, resulting in a gradual paralysis of everything from intelligence-gathering to the maintenance of helicopters.
Several questions arise from this. The first: Who is in charge of policy in the area? When some hard words had to be spoken to President Hamid Karzai about the dire and ramshackle nature of his regime, it was the vice president who drew the job of delivering them. For the rest of the time, the Af-Pak dimension is supposedly overseen by Richard Holbrooke, who seems lately to show some outward signs of discontent. Yet on one day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may appear on the tarmac at Kabul or Islamabad. On another it will be Secretary of Defense Robert Gates or the CIA or any number of a series of generals. If this is really a "team of rivals," it doesn't seem to have had the effect of clarifying policy differences by debate. It looks more like one damn thing after another.
The next question is a version of an older one. Why do the Pakistanis hate us? We need not ask this in a plaintive tone of "after all we've done for them," but it is an apparent conundrum nonetheless. The United States made Pakistan a top-priority Cold War ally. It overlooked the regular interventions of its military into politics. It paid a lot of bills and didn't ask too many questions. It generally favored Pakistan over India, which was regarded as dangerously "neutralist" in those days, and during the Bangladesh war it closed its eyes to a genocide against the Muslim population of East Bengal. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Washington fed the Pakistani military and intelligence services from an overflowing teat and allowed them to acquire nuclear weapons on the side.
This, then, is why the Pakistani elite hates the United States. It hates it because it is dependent on it and is still being bought by it. It is a dislike that is also a form of self-hatred of the sort that often develops between client states and their paymasters. (You can often sense the same resentment in the Egyptian establishment, and sometimes among Israeli right-wingers, as well.) By way of overcompensation for their abject status as recipients of the American dole, such groups often make a big deal of flourishing their few remaining rags of pride. The safest outlet for this in the Pakistani case is an official culture that makes pious noises about Islamic solidarity while keeping the other hand extended for the next subsidy. Pakistani military officers now strike attitudes in public as if they were defending their national independence rather than trying to prolong their rule as a caste and to extend it across the border of their luckless Afghan neighbor.
This is, and always was, a sick relationship, and it is now becoming dangerously diseased. It's not possible to found a working, trusting, fighting alliance on such a basis. Under communism, the factory workers of Eastern Europe had a joke: "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us." In this instance, the Pakistanis don't even pretend that their main military thrust is directed against the common foe, but we do continue to pay them. If we only knew it, the true humiliation and indignity is ours, not theirs.
This will continue to get nastier and more corrupt and degrading until we recognize that our long-term ally in Asia is not Pakistan but India. And India is not a country sizzling with self-pity and self-loathing, because it was never one of our colonies or clients. We don't have to send New Delhi 15 different envoys a month, partly to placate and partly to hector, because the relationship with India isn't based on hysteria and envy. Alas, though, we send hardly any envoys at all to the world's largest secular and multicultural democracy, and the country itself gets mentioned only as an afterthought. Nothing will change until this changes.
One reason the Pakistani army coddles the Taliban in Afghanistan is because it has recently been told that the United States will not be deploying there in strength for very much longer. Who can blame them for basing their future plans on this supposition and continuing to dig in for a war with India that we are helping them to prepare for? Meanwhile, though, it is the Afghans who get the lectures about how they need to shape up. "Lots of luck in your senior year" was the breezy way in which the vice president phrased his message to Kabul as I watched. (I wonder how that translates into Pushtun.) Speed the day when the Pakistanis are publicly addressed in the same tones and told that the support they so much despise is finally being withdrawn.
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#1
Maybe they hate us because they're on the other side.
#5
I think they pretty much hate the world, not just us.
Consider....they are the Islamic country with the largest population that has no oil. They really have nothing the rest of the world wants. They can't even say they are the most pious (that's between Saudi Arabia and Iran, pick your poison), nor the best educated. No one is interested in them culturally. Name the contest, and the best that they could ever hope for is to come in maybe third. And that's if the judges are feeling generous.
Meanwhile...they have their hated enemy, India, pulling ahead and grabbing a place in the sun that they think is rightfully theirs. They are advancing and leaving them behind. Sure, they can strike out at them like they did in Mumbai a year ago, and do the occasional border skirmish over Kashmir, but other than that...they have to privately admit that India is kicking their ass. (They will never do it publically.)
The only thing that keeps them afloat is overseas money. If you are a bright young man in Quetta, your best bet is to go to Londinistan or the US. Yep, right into infidel territory. There's nothing for you in Pakistan, there never will be anything for you in Pakistan, not even a decent retirement should you choose to return when you are old and gray.
So...you got three infidel countries "humiliating" yours on a daily basis. It is even worse than that...your leaders suck up to the richest one, and the rest of the world isn't impressed by a damn thing you have to "offer". Even Bangladesh had enough of your crap, and now that they are free of you, they are pulling ahead. Bangla-freakin'-desh, for heaven's sake!!!
If you didn't occupy some real estate that is interesting only from a geopolitical standpoint, you'd be completely and totally ignored by the rest of the world. Even then, you have to have the occasional violent temper tantrum to grab attention and remind other people how "important" you still are.
#9
I tend to agree with this guy, but I'm wary of suddenly claiming that India is the good guy in all of this. According to antislavery.org, India has more slaves than any other nation on earth. Americans have a bad habit of claiming allies and not really thinking about the unintended consequences. I wonder if we should just let India and Pakistan deal with each other and watch from the sidelines.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
