Storyville: Midwives TV - Thomas Browne - Thomas Paine - George Antonius - George W Bush - Acts 9:4 - Christopher Isherwood - George Orwell - David Brewster - Edmund Burke - George Eliot - John Stuart Mill - Sacha Baron Cohen - John Pilger - Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire TV - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Jeremy Corbyn - Good Night & Good Luck 2005 -
Myanmar is a country of many ethnic groups. The majority are Buddhists. In Rakhine State there lives a Muslim minority known as the Rohingya. In 2016, the Myanmar military began a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Muslims. Tens of thousands of Rohingya were killed. Close to one million fled the country. Those who remain in Myanmar are one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, according to the UN. Storyville: Midwives, BBC 2022
Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion. Sir Thomas Browne
Persecution is not an original feature of any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by law. Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches. For my own part, I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
No code of morals can justify the persecution of one people in an attempt to relieve the persecution of another. George Antonius
Persecution in the courts, as trade unionists, demonstrators and Leftish editors have discovered to their cost in recent months in Italy and in France, is one of the most difficult forms of persecution to combat. It isolates militants from the people they represent and wraps the process in a shroud of legal mumbo jumbo. The liberal Press, so full of ‘the rights of the individual’ and ‘equality before the law’ in the safe years of the last two decades, has scuttled for safer fields. It is up to the socialist organisations to mobilise the fight against the increasing authoritarianism in the police and in the courts, whether encouraged by Tories or Labour. Paul Foot, Law and Order April 1970
Anyone engaging in illegal financial transactions will be caught and persecuted. George W Bush, 19th September 2008
Saul, Saul, why persecuteth thou me? Acts 9:4
So, let’s face it, minorities are people who probably look and act and think differently from us, and have faults we don’t have. We may dislike the way they look and act, and we may hate their faults. And it’s better if we admit to disliking and hating them, than if we try to smear out feelings over with pseudo-liberal sentimentality. If we’re frank about our feelings, we have a safety-valve; and if we have a safety-valve, we’re actually less likely to start persecuting. Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man
If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them. George Orwell, Tribune 7th December 1945
And why does England thus persecute the votaries of her science? Why does she depress them to the level of her hewers of wood and her drawers of water? Is it because science flatters no courtier, mingles in no political strife? ... Can we behold unmoved the science of England, the vital principle of her arts, struggling for existence, the meek and unarmed victim of political strife? David Brewster, review of Charles Babbage’s ‘Reflections on the Decline of Science in England’
Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety. Edmund Burke
You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know. George Eliot
The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. John Stuart Mill
I think if you come from a history of persecution you have to develop a sense of humour. Sacha Baron Cohen
The Siege of Knightsbridge is both an emblem of gross injustice and a gruelling farce. For three years, a police cordon around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. It has cost £12 million. The quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His ‘crime’ is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.
The persecution of Julian Assange is about to flare again as it enters a dangerous stage. From August 20, three-quarters of the Swedish prosecutor’s case against Assange regarding sexual misconduct in 2010 will disappear as the statute of limitations expires. At the same time Washington’s obsession with Assange and WikiLeaks has intensified. Indeed, it is vindictive American power that offers the greatest threat – as Chelsea Manning and those still held in Guantanamo can attest.
The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up, and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks continues to expose criminal activity by the US, having just published top secret US intercepts – US spies’ reports detailing private phone calls of the presidents of France and Germany, and other senior officials, relating to internal European political and economic affairs. John Pilger, article Assange: The Untold Story of an Epic Struggle for Justice
In 303 A.D. Emperor Diocletian issues an edict against all Christians that becomes known as the Great Persecution. Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire X, History 2008
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Daily Telegraph that often carried leading stories apparently from ‘sources’ in the intelligence services which I was attacked or undermined from. Jeffrey Corbyn, Youtube 1.01.42, interview Declassified 2023
A steady stream of abuse against me, my family … ibid.
The tactic is that you say that somebody is intrinsically Anti-Semitic and it sticks, and then the media parrot it and repeat it. ibid.
Television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and incense. And television and those who finance it, those who look and those who work in it may see a totally different picture tonight. Good Night & Good Luck 2005 starring George Clooney & David Strathairn & Patricia Clarkson & Robert Downey jr & Frank Langella & Jeff Daniels & Tate Donovan & Ray Wise & Helen Slayton-Hughes & Alex Borstein et al, director George Clooney, Murrow
Fellas, the next show is going to be about Senator McCarthy. I’m going to go right at it. ibid. Fred
Twice he [McCarthy] said the American Civil Liberties Union was listed as a subversive front. The Attorney General’s list does not and has never listed the ACLU, nor does the FBI or any other government organisation. ibid. Murrow
The line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one. ibid.