The Home Office have now ratcheted up the ante by re-introducing slavery through the form of 'voluntary service for people who have failed the Asylum System and needing subsistence and accommodation' with the assistance of the National YMCA Organisation.
Liverpool YMCA is going to be the first voluntary sector agency to collude with the Home Office in the immigration slavery scheme introduced by section 10 of the 2004 legislation.
While Liverpool is parading on its City Of Culture, 2008 Status (more like Culture of Capital, Here & Now), it would be worthwhile stating historical fact - Liverpool was home to the Slave Trade - and now in 2005, Liverpool could and may well become home to the New City Of Slavery.
The YMCA and the Home Office have called for a 'Closed Door' Meeting to be held at Liverpool City Councils Millenium House on Tuesday 24 May 2005 from 12:40 - 14:40hrs.
The aim of this meeting from what I can gather, is to 'embrace community dialogue' - through restricting the meeting to just a few (highly-paid & self-anointed) NGOs (whose own sources of revenue are probably paid for by the Home Office...)
The question is, can real community dialogue be achieved like this?
The meeting was posted on the SmartGroups Liverpool asylum seeker and refugee support group:
http://www.smartgroups.com/message/viewdiscussion.cfm?gid=1256290&messageid=2609 ----Section 4 Support - 'Voluntary Service'
>> There is a consultation meeting with the YMCA and
>> the Home Office about this on 24th May - 12.40 - 2.40
>> at Millenium House in Liverpool.
As you can see this is the only outside knowledge of this meeting.
I contacted the Liverpool YMCA today which people believe to be the site of the Pilot Scheme, and the Office Administrator has denied any knowledge of the meeting, but said that, "if it's not Liverpool then it might be Chester which will do it."
If the meeting is being held within Council premises, can Trade Unionists based within Millenium House please make and take action with regards to this?
UNISON, and other Unions the call-out for you is here.
Individuals with a conscience, please make your views heard on this subject.
The following links are related to this meeting:
YMCA slave labour scheme
Section 4 Support - 'Voluntary Service'
There is a consultation meeting with the YMCA and the Home Office
about this on 24th May - 12.40 - 2.40 at Millenium House in Liverpool.
http://www.smartgroups.com/message/readmessage.cfm?gid=1256290&messageid=2602 IND has announced that YMCA England will be running a pilot exercise for Section 10 of the Asylum & Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc) Act in Liverpool.
Word document:
http://www.asylumpolicy.info/mayiapnews.doc YMCA England Statement following meeting with Church Action on Poverty, Boaz Trust and Churches Commission on Racial Justice
Word document:
http://www.asylumpolicy.info/ymcastatement.doc It is important that no-one allows this 'Pilot' to get off the ground.
While the YMCA may or could agree to the scheme, it can only be made unworkable if YMCA Staff take a stand on this issue - strike action, refuse on moral grounds, refuse on Health & Safety issues (will the refugees be given proper H&S training?)
Or perhaps I could 'release' the person out, if I saw a refugee doing what I called anything like 'labour'?
Or maybe, the homeless people within the YMCAs will start "getting refugees to do their 'dirty-work'", or cause deep divisions within already dis-enfranchised communities?
If this doesn't happen here, it could happen near YOU.
Maybe meet up at The Egg, Tuesday 24/05, 11:30am?
Anyone into it?
Banners, drums, trumpets, anything to make a party & noise.
Can the 'Outside Media' meaning The Echo/BBC do something on it?
Read more >>
I saw atrocities committed by the US financed Death Squads of Central America in 1998 and 1989...to understand the crisis of the church and of politics in Latin America we need to identify the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the church and its Pope (s) ... !
Special on Pope John Paul
[Titled: Pope a War Criminal and Hypocrite for Bush ]
http://publish.nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/update/i ndex.php
Martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero to Become a Saint - John Paul to Be Tried for War Crimes and Genocide;
Having watched the Pbs Special on the Pope - and Knowing (seeing) the atrocities committed by the US financed Death Squads of Central America (during my visits in 1998 and 1989) - I copied the transcript for the show and was searching around the internet when i found this report on indymedia - Wow - It is true...
I believe that in order to understand the cirisis of the church and of politics in Latin america that we need to identifiy the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the church and its Pope (s) ... !
Special on Pope John Paul
[Titled: Pope a War Criminal and Hypocrite for Bush ]
Martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero to Become a Saint - John Paul to Be Tried for War Crimes and Genocide;
a Report by Enrique Munoz, CNI correspondent in Mexico City
The defining moment in John Paul's legacy was his unjust and disrespectful treatment of Arch Bishop Oscar Romero in 1980. Romero thought that the church's place was with the poor and to back radical social change to end the suffering and repression.
After meeting with the Pope, Romero said to an aide: " Help me to understand why I have been treated so badly by the Holy Father." The Pope had told Romero to get along with the government of El Salvador that with US money training and moral support was frantically killing priests, peasants and organizers by the tens of thousands yearly.
Romero himself called the Pope's response to his pleas and the situation in El Salvador as "Unjust." One month later the Arch Bishop was assassinated while saying mass. Romero's funeral turned into a bloody riot as the US-backed death squads (the Salvadoran Government) opened fire on the crowds.
From a letter to President Carter by Oscar Romero:
"You say that you are Christian. If you are really Christian, please stop sending military aid to the military here, because they use it only to kill my people."
http://www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/rom ero.html
The Pope made similar statements to GW Bush before the illegal and criminal invasion of Iraq.
Millions of people all across Latin America call for sainthood for Oscar Romero.
Next the Pope turned his attention to destroying the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua and the many priests who supported the revolution in the sprit of Romero, particularly Ernesto Cardinal. The Pope put the unity of the church ahead of the salvation of the world and its role to defend the poor.
As a US PBS television special on the Pope stated: "It was a tragedy what the Pope did in Central America and Latin America in the 1980's." The show goes on to cite a number of observers who question whether the pontiff's judgment was clouded by his personal experience with communism in Poland.
The Pope continued his right wing purge of Church officials, seminaries and Liberation theology activists throughout Latin America until his death, though he also increased his attacks on capitalism and the imperialist designs of the US and its hero GW Bush.
Since 1990 the Pope intervened in Mexico - especially in Chiapas - installing conservative Bishops and seeking to discredit or silence Bishop Ruiz and others who supported the Zapatista revolution and called for an end to oppression and oppressive structures in Mexico..
The torment of the Pope - or a grand act of hypocrisy - can be seen in the pope's focus on the Culture of Death: Modernity. He opposed birth control, abortion, homosexuality and women in the church because he ( Unlike anyone we know of on the left or right) understood that these were band-aids seeking to cover up or justify a sick and evil society promoted by the US of materialism and self-centeredness. He said that a self-centered concept of unlimited freedom allowed no place for solidarity and that this drew attention away from the violence done to millions forced into poverty. This freedom top him became a Culture of Death... a new holocaust. He rightfully saw only darkness in modernity and he was appalled at the betrayal of humanity exhibited in his native Poland with their sex shops, McDonalds and materialism.
The Pope changed Eastern Europe and single handedly destroyed the Stalinist Communist system and yet he ultimately saw this as a terrible failure as he witnessed materialism grow there.
In Latin America he stopped the change that was so necessary and surely went to his death knowing the evils that he spawned.
"We agree with almost every single thing that that John Paul wrote or said. He was the greatest and most powerful person to live in at least 100 years and probably ever again given the weakness and disrepute of the Catholic Church today due to the sex scandals.
But what the Pope did was one of the greatest evils in all of history. His systematic destruction of the popular church and Liberation Theologists constitutes a war crime, a crime against humanity and genocide. he should be tried in absentia and all of the church's property and wealth should be transferred to the poor people of Latin America that he persecuted and betrayed so utterly.
Only by acknowledging these crimes - crimes that the Pope did admit to some degree in his trip to Mexico, can the church reclaim its mission and that of Christ for a preferential option for the poor. If the church does not move immediately to recognize Oscar Romero as a saint and the true leader of the church then all Catholics, and all people should boycott and attack this decrepit and evil institution."
Anamaria Salvedra, speaking for the underground remnants of Liberation Theology in Central America.
Remembering Oscar A Romero
http://www.stpetersnottingham.org/saints/romero.ht ml
One priest, Fr. Rutilio Grande, was particularly outspoken in denouncing the injustices against the 30,000 peasants working thirty-five sugar-cane farms in his area. Archbishop Romero defended Fr. Grande against official criticism: "The government should not consider a priest who takes a stand for social justice, as a politician, or a subversive element, when he is fulfilling his mission in the politics of the common good". In March 1977, Fr. Grande and two companions were murdered. Archbishop Romero was summoned to view the bodies - a hint of what happens to meddlesome priests. This and the lack of any official enquiry convinced him that the government employed - or at least supported - people who killed for political convenience. He responded by prohibiting the celebration of Mass anywhere in the country on the following Sunday except at his own Cathedral, a celebration to which all the faithful were invited - and came - overflowing in their thousands into the plaza outside. The event served to unite the faithful and remove any doubts about Romero's commitment to justice. The government of course was furious, even more so as the church began to document civil rights abuses and seek the truth in a country governed by lies. Visiting the Pope in 1979, Archbishop Romero presented him with seven dossiers filled with reports and documents describing injustices in El Salvador.
New pastoral letter blasts economy
Meanwhile, despite the conservative turn of the Mexican hierarchy ecclesiastically, the bishops just recently released a new pastoral letter which denounces the structures of the Mexican economy for being "poverty-generating."
The letter, entitled, "From the encounter with Jesus Christ to solidarity for all," calls on all the people of Mexico to engage the struggle "to build a more just society" (IPS, Mar. 24).
The product of a year's worth of dialogue, input from many social sectors, sharply divided debate, writing and re-writing, it is said to be the broadest and most "consensus-driven document in the last 30 years, [according] to Archbishop Luis Morales, president of the [Mexican] Conference of Bishops."
With Ruiz's departure, Mexico loses one of its last remaining exponents of liberation theology. Bishop Arturo Lona of the Diocese of Tehauntepec in Oaxaca, the last of this line of bishops, turns 75 later this year.
In a recent interview, Lona said that the impact of liberation theology will remain at the grassroots, in base communities and among the poor. It is the poor, he said, who "evangelize us and help us awaken the message of Jesus" (IPS).
He also criticized the "official" church and "my superiors" for their "obsession...with obedience andauthority, which I believe is authoritarian at times. The church is hierarchical, but it really must be democratic, which is not a contradiction."
Former nuncio Prigione, who retired in 1997, has left a staunchly conservative imprint on the hierarchy in Mexico, having overseen the replacement of 86 of Mexico's 100 bishops over his 19 year tenure.
The country's newest nuncio, the recently-named Leonardo Sandri, is also a staunch conservative, opposed to the liberationist line.
The bishops, responding to these economic realities, proclaim that an economic model that prioritizes the market as "the central factor in development," "is unstable and immoral."
The bishops also critique the problems of democracy in Mexico, saying the country must develop alternatives to "anti-democratic and fraudulent structures that are obsolete and unjust, and deteriorated by corruption, impunity and authoritarianism."
http://www.rtfcam.org/report/volume_20/No_2/articl e_12.htm
-- IRENA ALBERTI, Editor, "La Pensee Rousse," Friend: The Pope believes that the 20th century is the most evil of all of mankind's history.
See also:
http://pbs.org
Read more >>
