I expect simple behaviours here. Friendship, and love. Any advice should be from the perspective of the person asking, not the person giving! We have had to make new membership moderated to combat the huge number of spammers who register
Location: Worcester, England
Registered: January 2005
Messages: 1561
For anyone who believes that a reasoned approach works better than polemic, and who is in the UK, can I suggest that writing to one's MP with a clear explanation of why taxpayers money should not be wasted on protecting this murderous ex-Nazi might be useful?
And for those fancying a little gentle stroll, why not accompany me on Saturday week - 18th September? Details of this and other delightful suggestions on http://www.protest-the-pope.org.uk/ , if you're not already aware of it.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
There have been some successes in the history of peaceful protest in the UK – not world-changing, perhaps, but certainly nudging public opinion in the desired direction. There is, of course, an ever present risk that violence will break out; if it does, the whole protest can so easily become counter-productive. The New Statesman article is, I think, a little suspect in that it creates the impression that disruption is in some way constructively bad. Like protest, disruption comes in two forms, active and passive. A protest causes passive disruption simply by taking place in the area where the subject of protest is expected to be, and thus generates a large amount of useful publicity, so long as violence does not break out. I don’t see anything inherently wrong in that.
As I’ve already said elsewhere, I suspect that refusing to allow the visit would cause more damage than it would resolve. It isn’t really an ‘invitation’ in the normal sense; failure to provide an invitation would of itself give rise to diplomatic problems. The Pope is the head of state of a miniscule territory, but his powerbase rests on his leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. Something like 7% of British residents claim to be Roman Catholic, though by no means all are active churchgoers. To deprive British Roman Catholics of an opportunity to see their spiritual leader every few years would be seen as an unwarranted attack on a minority group, and we know how effective the RC publicity machine can be. Allowing the visit and protesting while he’s here is potentially a more effective way of drawing attention to the inhumanity of the RC leadership.
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
] 
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