Richard Dawkins: "I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI"

[RuleBritannia]

Vatican City is not recognised as a state by the UN. Nor, following from that, is the Pope recognised as a Head of State by the UN (do you think Geoffrey Robertson would be pursuing the course he is if this was the case? If you do, then stop being stupid.) The ICC, then, also doesn't and will not (cannot) recognice Ratzi as a Head of State and immune from prosecution.

Robertson possesses and uses one of the finest legal minds on the planet when it comes to international human rights law. He wouldn't make such a fucking amateur error if he was falling-down drunk, covered in ferociously hungry meat-ant/hooker hybrids, and receiving a fly-agaric enema.

ETA: One of the reasons people think the bastards qualify as a State is because the bastards keep claiming that they are a State, and GW Bushtard fucking fell for it, granting (by executive order, IIRC) Ratzi Immunity from Prosecution under the misapprehension that Ratzi qualifies as a Head of State - this in response to a legal bid launched in the US to take the Ratburger to court over involvement in or responsibility for (or something regarding) child sex abuse in the Catholic Kidfucker League.

Got any links?

It's not true, the Holy See is reconised as a permanent observer state. See here, here and here.

[Randydeluxe]

[Goldenmane]

Vatican City is not recognised as a state by the UN. Nor, following from that, is the Pope recognised as a Head of State by the UN (do you think Geoffrey Robertson would be pursuing the course he is if this was the case? If you do, then stop being stupid.) The ICC, then, also doesn't and will not (cannot) recognice Ratzi as a Head of State and immune from prosecution.

Robertson possesses and uses one of the finest legal minds on the planet when it comes to international human rights law. He wouldn't make such a fucking amateur error if he was falling-down drunk, covered in ferociously hungry meat-ant/hooker hybrids, and receiving a fly-agaric enema.

ETA: One of the reasons people think the bastards qualify as a State is because the bastards keep claiming that they are a State, and GW Bushtard fucking fell for it, granting (by executive order, IIRC) Ratzi Immunity from Prosecution under the misapprehension that Ratzi qualifies as a Head of State - this in response to a legal bid launched in the US to take the Ratburger to court over involvement in or responsibility for (or something regarding) child sex abuse in the Catholic Kidfucker League.

Got any links?

Robertson's own: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- ... -to-court/

[charlou]

Robertson's own: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- ... -to-court/

This just gets better and better, doesn't it? Fuck yeah.

[charlou]

As an aside, from the article linked above ...

The U.N. at its inception refused membership to the Vatican (U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull said emphatically that it could never attain statehood) but has allowed it a unique and anomalous “permanent observer status,” permitting it to become signatory to treaties like the Law of the Sea and (ironically) the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and to speak and vote at U.N. conferences, where it promotes its controversial dogmas on abortion, condoms, and homosexuality. This has involved the U.N. in blatant discrimination on grounds of religion, as other faiths are unofficially represented, if at all, by NGOs. But it has encouraged the Vatican to claim statehood—and the immunities from liability that attach to heads of state.

[Twiglet]

Robertson's own: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- ... -to-court/

Excellent link.

I especially liked: "It hinges on the assumption that the Vatican or its metaphysical emanation, the Holy See, is a state. But the Papal States were extinguished by invasion in 1870 and the Vatican was created by fascist Italy in 1929 when Benito Mussolini endowed this tiny enclave—0.17 of a square mile containing 900 Catholic bureaucrats—with “sovereignty in the international field... in conformity with its traditions and the exigencies of its mission in the world.”

The notion that statehood can be created by another country’s unilateral declaration is risible. If it weren’t, Iran could make Qom a state overnight and the U.K. could launch the city of Canterbury on to the international stage by the same process. But it did not take long for Catholic countries to support the pretentions of the Holy See"

and

"In any event, head of state immunity provides no protection in the International Criminal Court (hence its current indictment of President Bashir). The ICC statute defines a crime against humanity to include rape and sexual slavery and other similarly inhumane acts causing serious harm to mental or physical health committed against civilians on a widespread or systematic scale if condoned or tolerated by a government or a de facto authority. ...//...If acts of sexual abuse by priests are not isolated or sporadic events but part of a wide practice both known to and unpunished by their de facto authority—i.e. the Catholic Church—then under the command responsibility principle of international law (laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court) the commander can be held criminally liable. He falls within the temporal jurisdiction of the ICC so long as that abusive practice and the policy to tolerate it continued after July 2002, when the court was established."


Seems clearcut enough.

[charlou]

I sooooooo think we should change the thread title to give the right man some credit here ...

[Hermit]

I sooooooo think we should change the thread title to give the right man some credit here ...

Seconded.

Faithfree, what say you? I'm asking because you created this thread, so it's your call.

Here is Richard Dawkins' own comment on the article cited in the opening post:

Needless to say, I did NOT say "I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI" or anything so personally grandiloquent. You have to remember that The Sunday Times is a Murdoch newspaper, and that all newspapers follow the odd custom of entrusting headlines to a sub-editor, not the author of the article itself.

What I DID say to Marc Horne when he telephoned me out of the blue, and I repeat it here, is that I am whole-heartedly behind the initiative by Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens to mount a legal challenge to the Pope's proposed visit to Britain. Beyond that, I declined to comment to Marc Horme, other than to refer him to my 'Ratzinger is the Perfect Pope' article here: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5341

Here is what really happened. Christopher Hitchens first proposed the legal challenge idea to me on March 14th. I responded enthusiastically, and suggested the name of a high profile human rights lawyer whom I know. I had lost her address, however, and set about tracking her down. Meanwhile, Christopher made the brilliant suggestion of Geoffrey Robertson. He approached him, and Mr Robertson's subsequent 'Put the Pope in the Dock' article in The Guardian shows him to be ideal:
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5366
The case is obviously in good hands, with him and Mark Stephens. I am especially intrigued by the proposed challenge to the legality of the Vatican as a sovereign state whose head can claim diplomatic immunity.

Even if the Pope doesn't end up in the dock, and even if the Vatican doesn't cancel the visit, I am optimistic that we shall raise public consciousness to the point where the British government will find it very awkward indeed to go ahead with the Pope's visit, let alone pay for it.

[Twiglet]

Some further clarification appears in todays Guardian here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ap ... nedict-xvi

Excerpts follow:

"Prominent atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are paying lawyers to investigate the possibility of prosecuting the pope for crimes against humanity, their solicitor confirmed today." ...//... Dawkins and Hitchens believe that because he is not the head of a state with full United Nations membership, he does not hold immunity and could be arrested when he steps on to British soil.

This is the advice they have been given by their lawyers – solicitor Mark Stephens and human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson QC. "I'm convinced we can get over the threshold of immunity," said Stephens.

Stephens said there are three lines of approach to put the pope in the dock. "One is that we apply for a warrant to the international criminal court. Alternatively, criminal proceedings could be brought here, either a public prosecution brought by the Crown Prosecution Service or a private prosecution. That would require at least one victim to come forward who is either from this jurisdiction or was abused here. The third option is for individuals to lodge civil claims," said Stephens.

[JimC]

Dedicated to a future statue of El Putrid Papa (may the pigeons forever crap on it):

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ratzinger, Pope of Popes:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

[Twiglet]

Dawkins published an article today on this subject in the UK Guardian, linked here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... on-dawkins

[charlou]

Why is anyone surprised, much less shocked, when Christopher Hitchens and I call for the prosecution of the pope, if he goes ahead with his proposed visit to Britain? The only strange thing about our proposal is that it had to come from us: where have the world's governments been all this time? Where is their moral fibre? Where is their commitment to treating everyone equally under the law? The UK government, far from standing up for justice for the innocent victims of the Roman Catholic church, is preparing to welcome this grotesquely tainted man on an official visit to the UK so that he can "dispense moral guidance". Read that again: dispense moral guidance!

Exactly.

Unfortunately I must end in bathos, with a necessary correction of a damaging error in another newspaper. The Sunday Times of 11 April, on its front page, printed the headline, "Richard Dawkins: I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI." This conjures up – as was doubtless intended – a ludicrous image of me ambushing the pontiff with a pair of handcuffs and marching him off in a half Nelson. Blood out of a stone, but I finally managed to persuade that Murdoch paper to change the headline in the online edition.

The headline now reads: Richard Dawkins calls for arrest of Pope Benedict XVI

Any objection to changing the thread title to that?

[Chinaski]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8618878.stm

I knew it was the gays all along...

[RuleBritannia]

Dawkins published an article today on this subject in the UK Guardian, linked here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... on-dawkins

There's a fantastic comment by "expro" below the article:

"I guess the catholic logic is that God has chosen the pope as his representative on earth.

So either God himself approves the silencing of child rape investigations to protect the image of his church, or he fu*&ed up royally in appointing the wrong guy, and then doesn't have the power to discipline his staff.

Possibly because he doesn't exist."

[RuleBritannia]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBody5RP ... r_embedded#![/youtube]