Catholicism and Political Obligation

Pope John Paul II's recent passing presents a unique opportunity to re-evaluate the political role of the Catholic church.

Catholicism is in decline in Europe and North America, yet it is expanding in the developing world, most notably in Africa and South America. This puts the Vatican in a unique position not only to strengthen its position spiritually, but to influence the expansion of human rights where they are most lacking.

As Karol Wojtyla helped bring down the oppressive Communist regime in Poland, the new pope can help save millions of lives from AIDS and other diseases, ensure proper living conditions and help alleviate poverty. Instead of shortsightedly preaching a doctrine of blind faith, the Catholic church can preach a doctrine of exercising the rights that God gave to the Catholic people: that the earth be enjoyed in its natural splendour, as God intended; that people have fair accesses to the world's resources, which cannot be owned by companies, but are owned by God; to make use of scientific advances, such as contraception, so that rather than dying from AIDS, they can live and raise healthy families when they have the strength and ability to do so; to respect the differences we see in the world today, different races, genders and sexual orientations, as these are the differences divinely created but heretically disrespected; and to insist on a proper education for all, particularly the disenfranchised in the developing world, so that they may support and defend themselves against those who would exploit them and their resources.

The Vatican purports to guide their flock. Well, I say let them truly do so. Their guidance should not only be spiritual. It should not only serve the static-nature of the catechism, it should enhance the dynamic nature of the world. That world is social, political, cultural and economic. If religion and spirituality are to guide us in the whole of our lives, it must fundamentally address these issues.

If the Catholic church truly is concerned for the state of their followers, or of humanity in general, it must demonstrate a lack of self-interest. It must refrain from displays authoritarian stodginess and move towards a greater inclusivity. That it, the Vatican must work not for the preservation of themselves, but for the preservation of all of God's children.

Smokers and the Litter in the Streets

This morning on CBC Radio, Daybreak's Dave Bronstetter et al. discussed the garbage strewn state of Montreal's streets. I've included a link to the interview, but I don't know how long the interview will be up.

Basically, some people don't think the city does enough to keep the streets clean. Now, Montreal is a pretty clean city by comparison, but there is some truth to this claim. However, as annoying as Montreal's maintenance workers can be with their slowdowns and as "I don't know, it's not us" as Montreal's municipal management can seem, I wouldn't place the full blame on poor city planning and execution of maintenance. Nope. I say take a closer look at the smokers.

It is a well known fact that Montreal is off the mark on smoking and smoking regulation, especially when compared to a reasonable chunk of North American cities. Smoking is still permitted in restaurants, bars and those "smoke ten metres from the door" rules outside hospitals are rarely enforced. In fact, people frequently smoke their cigarettes (and not just those of the tobacco type) in the elevator and lobby of my building. Smokers, I have to ask, why are you so selfish?

At this point, it's ridiculous to claim that second hand smoke is not a health risk. That's like saying we should put the "coke" back into Coca-Cola because it gives us just so much energy! Smokers will inevitably say that it is their right to smoke. Fine. Screw up your health if you want to, but remember to pay for all your own health bills instead of using the provincial health insurance for all your otherwise preventable diseases and assorted yummy bodily misfunctions. Also, when you're "exercising your right to smoke," just remember not to exhale right into my face. There are people behind you when you're smoking and walking in the streets, you know...

But I digress...back to the subject at hand: litter. Smokers, if you are going to engage in this burdensome habit, please don't throw your matches, cigarette butts, ashes, foil linings of cigarette packs and cigarette boxes into the street. The world is not your ashtray/garbage pan. Demonstrate some responsibility for your habit. Acknowledge that what you are doing isn't the greatest smelling, cleanest habit in the world and compensate for it. I guarantee that if smokers do this, Montreal will be a much prettier, happier, shinier place.

Didn't the government say they were going to ban this habit in public places? Finally!

Besides, smoking makes your skin all gray and yucky looking! Wrinkly too...ewww!

People are stupid, Part I

Here we go...

See the original story below my ever so insightful commentary.

Now, as we all know, foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, and many other countries both in the Middle East AND in North America, are in a bad situation. This story is a good example of the abuses that Filipinos, Indonesians and others face as "slave labour" in Saudi Arabia, a strong American ally for what reason, we have yet to discern. *cough*oilandforeigninvestments*cough*

However, my rant today will not focus on the corrupt American or Saudi regimes. Today, my point of contention lies with the "comments" to the story on the Yahoo message board.

Here's a little sampling for you:

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Re: I not see problem here!by: shakespeareandbach
04/05/05 09:45 amMsg: 175 of 176
Typical comment coming from an idiot from Sudan - why don't you keep your trash on your own message boards - stay out of the US message boards - or come here in person and we'll kick yours back to sudan! and if you insist on posting - LEARN ENGLISH - dumb ass
Posted as a reply to: Msg 148 by addilghafar

ISLAM IS SO PEACEFUL AND PERFECT?by: brunocaronte
04/04/05 10:55 amMsg: 2 of 181
Then, how come former muslims are under constant death threats after abandoning Islam? Easy to get in, impossible to get out? And to think all the bad things I used to say of American Jews and Israelis? Hey! They are boys scouts compared to muslims!

Re: HEY BLACK PEOPLE..LOOK AT THIS....by: his_name_iz_robert_paulson
04/05/05 09:15 amMsg: 13 of 186
Funny how nigs in prison gravitate towards Islam....
Posted as a reply to: Msg 10 by serbianking79

This is Israel's Faultby: most_informed_poster
04/05/05 09:20 amMsg: 32 of 195
This whole article was fabricated by the jew media to make arabs look like woman abusers. The truth is this Indonesian woman fell down a flight of stairs and all these jew lawyers told her to claim abuse so they can sue. Just ask yourself: who benefits?

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Now, this being the Internet, I have no way of knowing where these people are from, nor does it matter. The people posting on Yahoo USA come from all over the world. However, clearly Yahoo attracts total idiots.

My powers of detections tell me that "most_informed_poster" is an Arab of some unknown nationality, "brunocaronte" is a Christian and that "shakespeareandbach" is an American.

As an aside, "shakespeareandbach" is probably a White American of some sort who thinks that (1) he knows great music and literature and (2) that he can claim great members of the European intelligentsia as belonging to his group. I'd just like to let "shakespeareandbach" know that claim number 2 is false and claim number 1 is partly false. I'll save my Shakespeare rant for another day.

Now, back to the issue at hand: idiots. You just know that people on all sides of this argument were ecstatic to come across this article. These kinds of people just look for inflammatory pieces of "evidence" to prop up their baseless prejudices. So, right-wing Americans who want to cast Arabic people as demons loved coming across an article implicating a Saudi citizen in criminal and morally abhorrent activity. Left-wing Americans loved the opportunity to see one of Bush II's allies painted in a negative light. Defensive Arabs loved the opportunity to respond to such an article to feed their hatred. Anti-semites love to implicate Jewish people in any negative situation. And "his_name_iz_robert_paulson" just loves using racial epithets and variations thereof.

You see, these super intelligent people enjoy making themselves instruments of the people in power. Rather than formulate their own opinions based on the evidence right in front of their faces, they look to some top-down explanation for the things that they see and hear. So, someone says Arabs are evil, they selectively jump on pieces of evidence to prove their point. If an American makes a racially motivated post against Arabs, an Arabic person has to respond with some typical "Americans are evil idiots" post.

Silly, silly, people. Don't you know that the powers that be like it when you all hate each other? As long as you are all fighting, the money and power-sharers can continue to indulge in extreme cronyism. As long as you are distracted, you won't notice that, hey, Arabs and Whites and Blacks and all sorts of people just want a fair share of the financial pie, and who has the biggest piece of that pie anyway? What? Not you, the people I so blindly hate? Who has it then? Who has millions and billions of dollars when I only have a couple grand if I'm lucky and you have even less? Should we hate each other, or should we mobilize against them? Cue comments stating that I am a "liberal pacifist, expletive, expletive, inarticulate phrase." All I want is for everyone in the world to have one nice Versace gown, a couple of Nars lip lacquers and some food, clean water and shelter. Is that too much to ask?

I'd continue to rant, but I'm getting disorganised and I actually have to work...

Oh, as an afterthought, since it doesn't really matter to most people who polarize around a constructed issue, what about poor Nur Miyati? Think she will survive? Will she get justice? Will she get a fair wage? Will conditions for women and the poor improve in Indonesia so that she can get an education, earn a living and maybe help support her family without being being to death? Stay tuned...

Bruised and Bandaged, Maid's Tale of Saudi Abuse
Thu Mar 31, 8:13 AM ET
By Dominic Evans
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Nur Miyati lies on a Saudi hospital bed, her hands bandaged, her toes black from gangrene and her body still marked with bruises.
Reuters Photo

Whispering hoarsely, the 22-year-old Indonesian housemaid tells of the abuse she says she suffered at the hands of her employer, who beat her when she asked for her salary and locked her up when he left the house.
She became so ill that when he finally brought her to a Riyadh hospital -- nurses say he warned her to say she hurt herself falling over -- doctors feared they might have to amputate part of her foot.
"Assault. Gangrene both hands and legs," says a medical report hanging above her bed. Another lists bruising around Miyati's eyes, lips, shoulders, ears and the sole of one foot.
Miyati is one of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians who leave home to work in Saudi Arabia, part of a 6-million strong foreign labor force in the oil-rich Gulf state which includes workers from India, the Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Saudi officials say instances of alleged abuse like hers are isolated cases which are fully investigated. Indonesian diplomats say they receive between 10 and 15 complaints a day of mistreatment, withholding salaries and sexual harassment.
Four days after being admitted to the hospital, Miyati was too weak to explain exactly what happened to her. But medical staff and diplomats have pieced together parts of her story.
The frail woman from Sumbawa Island in central Indonesia had worked for eighteen months in Riyadh for a monthly salary of 600 riyals ($160) -- money she never received.
"The first time she asked for her salary, that's when it started," said Mohamad Sugiarto, labor attache at the Indonesian embassy in Riyadh. "It wasn't only the man, the wife beat her too."
She developed gangrene in her hands and feet, perhaps from infected cuts or bruises, a nurse said. When the gangrene began to smell unpleasant, the family made her sleep in a bathroom outside the main house, he said. For a month, they locked her up whenever they went out.
COMPLAINTS OF TORTURE
Sugiarto said 4,582 Indonesians complained of mistreatment by their employers in Saudi Arabia last year. Nearly a quarter said they had not been paid. Another 800 complained of "torture or maltreatment" and 400 said they were sexually harassed.
Those numbers reflected less than 1 percent of the 600,000 Indonesians, most of them housemaids, working in Saudi Arabia. All but a tiny fraction of the cases were "resolved" by the embassy, working with Saudi officials, he said.
"I hope the others are well-treated," Sugiarto added. "But we only hear about those who come to the embassy. We don't know about the others who might have run away."
A report by the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said last July that many of the millions of foreign laborers in Saudi Arabia work under conditions that resemble slavery and said the situation of women migrant workers was of particular concern.
It blamed "unscrupulous private employers and sponsors as well as Saudi authorities" for what it said were cases of extreme labor exploitation.
Saudi Arabia said the report exaggerated the experience of a few of the 6 million foreigners working in the kingdom and noted that families around the world depend on remittances from those workers.
Violations are referred to labor committees which enforce Saudi Arabia's employment laws, officials said, and those committees investigated 7,000 complaints in 2003. "All are taken seriously," said Labor Minister Ghazi Algosaibi.
Sugiarto said one case he dealt with in the western city of Jeddah involved a woman who was raped and beaten until she died. Her employers paid her family around $15,000 compensation.
"Cases like this never come to court -- even killings," he said. "They finish up by giving money."
Under the version of Islamic Sharia law practiced in Saudi Arabia, families of victims can forgive their killers and spare them punishment -- usually public beheading for murder or rape.
"If someone is treated so badly that they die, the employer comes directly to Indonesia to get a letter of forgiveness (from the family)," he said. "If a woman dies (they pay) 50,000 riyals ($13,000) and a male 100,000 riyals ($26,000). That's the standard for any Indian, Filipino or Indonesian."
Sugiarto said his country imposed a one-month moratorium in March on sending workers to Saudi Arabia and four other Arab countries -- Kuwait, Jordan, Oman and the United Arab Emirates -- while it improved ways of keeping track and protecting Indonesians in those countries. ($1=3.750 riyals)