(London, England)
Two rather strange new programmes are currently gracing English television screens. First the BBC announced it would hold a competition which looked for the country’s best butcher and then Sky said it would air a programme in which celebrities went bird-watching with another celebrity.
The BBC programme is typical of the national station in that it is bland and lacking in direction. While a competition which promotes winning by merit is evidently better than being famous for nothing, and in spite of the fact that butchery is an honourable and traditional trade which should be preserved and not plastic-wrapped and relegated to the supermarket shelves, making television from people cutting meat is bizarre. Watching it is even more absurd. The Sky programme is also appropriate to the station – banal and lacking in intelligence – but no less ridiculous for its predictability.
Yet these programmes are almost logical in the recent timeline of English television which reveals an unhealthy and voyeuristic obsession in unspectacular activities realised by uninteresting individuals with an emphasis on moralising and crushing criticism. The reality of reality television is that we are not being entertained, we are being controlled more than ever – the television tells us how to clean our dirty houses, how to re-educate our hooligan children, how to dress our unattractive bodies, how to cook, how to drive, what books we should be reading and even how we should have lived had we been around over a hundred years ago. The celebrities that are so cheaply created are happy to take this phenomenon to the next level in order to perpetuate the control.
English people love it but this should not be a surprise. This is simply an extension of every middle-class English person’s petty, mean-spirited desire to spy on other people with the sole intention of catching them out in some way and gaining the all-elusive moral superiority. It is also the logical past-time for a country which contains one security camera for every handful of people, some accompanied by a loudspeaker which tells people how to behave in the street.
English society is its own Big Brother – that’s a character from a novel called 1984, written by a writer called George Orwell – and it is presiding over its own demise. It deserves the governments it votes in, it deserves the television it pays for and above all it deserves to be told home truths. Perhaps they should do it in the form of a reality TV show. They could call it “I have a personality, get me out of here”.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Friday, December 11, 2009
Flocking around the abusers
(Rome, Italy)
As the row surrounding the findings of the Murphy Report rumbles on in Ireland, the priests and the flock appear to be competing with each other to scandalise the rest of the country with their reaction.
Bishop of Kildare Jim Moriarty is the latest in a long list of priests to refuse to resign because he believes he has done nothing wrong in covering up the abuse. At the head of that list is Bishop of Limerick Dónal Murray, who claims that his resignation was a matter for the diocese. He ignores the fact that priests are moved around the country – especially the child abusers – so it is actually a matter for the general population. He is now in Rome, supposedly in order to tender his resignation, but the Vatican has only broken its silence to issue platitudes.
Back in Ireland the faithful are becoming more and more vocal. One woman rang in to a morning radio programme and claimed that the priests should be left in peace because at the time of the abuse “they didn’t know how much pain it would eventually cause”. She likened it to a pharmaceutical drug that a company produces in good faith but which only turns out to kill people much further down the line. She went on to echo many other callers in claiming that child abuse is something that “happens everywhere in society” and called on politicians to resign for their own mistakes.
The woman’s first comment is obviously ridiculous and is not even worth answering. The general claim that abuse happens in every walk of life is true – this is not a problem exclusive to the Catholic Church, but everywhere else it is rejected and punished. In any other organisation the offender would be handed over to the police (and of course sacked). The call for ministers to resign is also completely reasonable, but there is a clear difference between government and Church – at least with the government there is a periodic opportunity for renewal even if a sense of accountability is as absent as within the hierarchy of the Church.
It might be a good idea for the faithful to show some degree of disgust towards the Church for the betrayal – perhaps a one-day strike, a mass refusal to attend Mass or to put the coppers into the plate that pay the priests’ wages. Instead they have compounded the sins of the priests, the government and certain members of the Garda Siochána by sending out a very clear message to child abusers around the world – come to Ireland, get yourself into Maynooth and you will be untouchable.
As the row surrounding the findings of the Murphy Report rumbles on in Ireland, the priests and the flock appear to be competing with each other to scandalise the rest of the country with their reaction.
Bishop of Kildare Jim Moriarty is the latest in a long list of priests to refuse to resign because he believes he has done nothing wrong in covering up the abuse. At the head of that list is Bishop of Limerick Dónal Murray, who claims that his resignation was a matter for the diocese. He ignores the fact that priests are moved around the country – especially the child abusers – so it is actually a matter for the general population. He is now in Rome, supposedly in order to tender his resignation, but the Vatican has only broken its silence to issue platitudes.
Back in Ireland the faithful are becoming more and more vocal. One woman rang in to a morning radio programme and claimed that the priests should be left in peace because at the time of the abuse “they didn’t know how much pain it would eventually cause”. She likened it to a pharmaceutical drug that a company produces in good faith but which only turns out to kill people much further down the line. She went on to echo many other callers in claiming that child abuse is something that “happens everywhere in society” and called on politicians to resign for their own mistakes.
The woman’s first comment is obviously ridiculous and is not even worth answering. The general claim that abuse happens in every walk of life is true – this is not a problem exclusive to the Catholic Church, but everywhere else it is rejected and punished. In any other organisation the offender would be handed over to the police (and of course sacked). The call for ministers to resign is also completely reasonable, but there is a clear difference between government and Church – at least with the government there is a periodic opportunity for renewal even if a sense of accountability is as absent as within the hierarchy of the Church.
It might be a good idea for the faithful to show some degree of disgust towards the Church for the betrayal – perhaps a one-day strike, a mass refusal to attend Mass or to put the coppers into the plate that pay the priests’ wages. Instead they have compounded the sins of the priests, the government and certain members of the Garda Siochána by sending out a very clear message to child abusers around the world – come to Ireland, get yourself into Maynooth and you will be untouchable.
Hot air
(Copenhagen, Denmark)
This week world leaders enjoy another junket at the expense of the taxpayers as they gather in the Danish capital to achieve nothing and then issue the usual self-congratulatory statements. The subject apparently under scrutiny this time is the thorny question of climate change, upheld as a crusade by some and dismissed as hot air by others. However, the money the politicians waste is symbolic of the money we worship, and the arrogance of the politicians is nothing more than a reflection of our own.
The issue of climate change is apparently based on empirical facts, and those who attack the critics use this as a weapon of immutability and finality – you cannot dispute a fact. However, scientists can be wrong, they can be paid to be wrong, they can lie, they can be paid to lie and they always, without fail, contradict each other. If the statistics and models of climate change were facts, everyone would agree about them, in the same way that everyone agrees that the moon orbits the Earth and not the other way round.
But nobody agrees, principally because of the different vested interests – the same vested interests that pay for the tests that provide the “facts”. Why should I believe a “green” scientist any more than I believe a scientist who works for a tobacco company or a car manufacturer? This is not to say that there is no climate change or that the world is not about to come to an end – it is simply a belief in questioning everything, especially what we are told by governments and journalists.
We are told that we can say goodbye to our way of life – which in simple terms means that we will have to find another way to pay the rent. This means that those who are heeding the warnings and are manoeuvring themselves into a position of advantage are doing so in order to be able to continue making money – it’s not ecology it’s economy. It’s not about survival in a post-global warming world it’s about survival in the new, revised capitalist system.
The whole issue is not even about the world per se, it’s about the world as a place in which humans can continue existing. The whole thing is fuelled by the same human arrogance that has put us in this position, and that is reprehensible.
We are also told that our children and grandchildren will lead damaged lives – perhaps they will by today’s criteria, but this is simply an extension of the way we, with an equal mix of stupidity and vanity, judge all things past and future by present criteria as if this was a perfect moment in time and that that perfection came from our superior intelligence and morality. We believe our children and grandchildren to be incapable of finding a solution, to be as ignorant in their treatment of the planet as we have been and to be too blind to see that they simply have to deal with the problems they inherit from their parents like every generation has done since the dawn of time.
I recently heard the climate change situation likened to a man’s daughter getting on a plane. The man asks the pilot about the probability of an accident, and on hearing the pilot’s reply that the probability would be around one in a hundred the man takes his daughter off the plane because the “potential loss is so great that the odds are unacceptable”. Quite apart from the obvious chauvinist slant, this story is indicative of the arrogance of the present-day West with regard to all future generations, but more importantly of the West towards the developing world. I’m worried about my affluent future, so you have to stop trying to drag yourselves out of poverty.
Whatever the politicians decide this week it will be irrelevant. We will continue to go out to work in order to make more money while the vast majority of the population that lives in poverty will slide further into misery. We will continue to claim higher moral ground at dinner parties based on an over-reliance on what we are told are facts and we will continue to believe that the world should be saved in order to provide a safe haven for us, and only us, because it’s everyone else that is wrong. And unfortunately we will continue to vote in the same suits and ties so they can burn more oil to attend a conference where they will spout hot air and do nothing.
And so on until the end of the world.
This week world leaders enjoy another junket at the expense of the taxpayers as they gather in the Danish capital to achieve nothing and then issue the usual self-congratulatory statements. The subject apparently under scrutiny this time is the thorny question of climate change, upheld as a crusade by some and dismissed as hot air by others. However, the money the politicians waste is symbolic of the money we worship, and the arrogance of the politicians is nothing more than a reflection of our own.
The issue of climate change is apparently based on empirical facts, and those who attack the critics use this as a weapon of immutability and finality – you cannot dispute a fact. However, scientists can be wrong, they can be paid to be wrong, they can lie, they can be paid to lie and they always, without fail, contradict each other. If the statistics and models of climate change were facts, everyone would agree about them, in the same way that everyone agrees that the moon orbits the Earth and not the other way round.
But nobody agrees, principally because of the different vested interests – the same vested interests that pay for the tests that provide the “facts”. Why should I believe a “green” scientist any more than I believe a scientist who works for a tobacco company or a car manufacturer? This is not to say that there is no climate change or that the world is not about to come to an end – it is simply a belief in questioning everything, especially what we are told by governments and journalists.
We are told that we can say goodbye to our way of life – which in simple terms means that we will have to find another way to pay the rent. This means that those who are heeding the warnings and are manoeuvring themselves into a position of advantage are doing so in order to be able to continue making money – it’s not ecology it’s economy. It’s not about survival in a post-global warming world it’s about survival in the new, revised capitalist system.
The whole issue is not even about the world per se, it’s about the world as a place in which humans can continue existing. The whole thing is fuelled by the same human arrogance that has put us in this position, and that is reprehensible.
We are also told that our children and grandchildren will lead damaged lives – perhaps they will by today’s criteria, but this is simply an extension of the way we, with an equal mix of stupidity and vanity, judge all things past and future by present criteria as if this was a perfect moment in time and that that perfection came from our superior intelligence and morality. We believe our children and grandchildren to be incapable of finding a solution, to be as ignorant in their treatment of the planet as we have been and to be too blind to see that they simply have to deal with the problems they inherit from their parents like every generation has done since the dawn of time.
I recently heard the climate change situation likened to a man’s daughter getting on a plane. The man asks the pilot about the probability of an accident, and on hearing the pilot’s reply that the probability would be around one in a hundred the man takes his daughter off the plane because the “potential loss is so great that the odds are unacceptable”. Quite apart from the obvious chauvinist slant, this story is indicative of the arrogance of the present-day West with regard to all future generations, but more importantly of the West towards the developing world. I’m worried about my affluent future, so you have to stop trying to drag yourselves out of poverty.
Whatever the politicians decide this week it will be irrelevant. We will continue to go out to work in order to make more money while the vast majority of the population that lives in poverty will slide further into misery. We will continue to claim higher moral ground at dinner parties based on an over-reliance on what we are told are facts and we will continue to believe that the world should be saved in order to provide a safe haven for us, and only us, because it’s everyone else that is wrong. And unfortunately we will continue to vote in the same suits and ties so they can burn more oil to attend a conference where they will spout hot air and do nothing.
And so on until the end of the world.
Friday, November 27, 2009
The Catholic Church should cease to trade
In late 2001 Enron, a global blue-chip energy company with roots in the 1930s, declared itself bankrupt following revelations of accounting fraud, criminal insider dealing and corruption. Accounting firm Arthur Andersen, the company responsible for auditing and therefore hiding Enron’s accounting malpractice, fell with Enron for prevarication and obstruction of justice. Individuals such as Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow were prosecuted and found guilty of their crimes.
In 1945 the death of Adolf Hitler hastened the demise of the German Nazi Party, the organisation responsible for the extermination of over twelve million Jews, homosexuals, Roma, mentally and physically handicapped people, Slavs, Communists and dissidents. Individuals such as Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann, Alfred Rosenberg, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Konstantin von Neurath were prosecuted and found guilty of various crimes. Allied governments prevented the resurrection of the Nazi Party after the war.
The Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, a Protestant sect formed after a schism in 1955, effectively came to end after the siege of Waco in 1993. The sect had been accused of child abuse and rape, among other things more important to the US authorities, and although the charges at the eventual trial reflected the authorities’ priorities there is no doubt that Vernon Howell would have been prosecuted had he survived the siege.
The Ryan Report, published in May 2009, and the Murphy Report, published this week, have concluded that the Catholic Church in Ireland is guilty of perpetrating systematic and institutionalised physical and sexual abuse of children for the last seventy years, of protecting and retaining the services of priests accused of these crimes, of failing to release information about these practices to the relevant authorities, of obstructing any efforts to prosecute or even publicise the abuse and of continuing to allow the abuse within its organisation. Successive governments (in the case of the Ryan report) and members of the Garda Síochána (in the case of the Murphy Report) have been shown to share a large part of the blame for failing to act on accusations and actively protecting the Church and its criminal element. Although it is not a criminal offence, the Church is also failing to show any remorse for the crimes committed under its auspices and within its ranks.
The Church in Ireland is not alone in these accusations, as priests in Canada, Australia and the United States have also been accused – and in some few cases convicted – of child abuse and independent reports have echoed the findings of the reports in Ireland. In total there are thousands of accusations and thousands of priests implicated in the abuse. Many dioceses in the US have been forced to file for bankruptcy either because of paying or in order to avoid paying compensation. And the only response from Rome has been to suggest that homosexuality is a pre-requisite for paedophilia.
Whether the Church is to be regarded as a religious organisation, a political organisation or an economic organisation there is considerable precedent to support the idea that as an organisation it should be dismantled in its entirety and should cease to exist in its current form. The Catholic Church has become not only obsolete and irrelevant to modern life but also a dangerous enemy to modern society. It has strayed so far from Christian principles of charity and protection as to be unrecognisable as a Christian entity, and instead shows the principal characteristics of a mafia-like organisation or a totalitarian regime.
There is no doubt that not all Catholics are bad people, in the same way that not all Germans were Nazis and not all bankers are thieves. They have a right to a church in the same way that Germans have a right to membership of a political party and businessmen have a right to trade; this is beyond dispute.
However, the Catholic Church as it operates today must close its doors permanently and the people who are responsible for the abuse – including those who have attempted to cover it up – should be prosecuted in a civil court and punished for their crimes. Only then can a new church be constructed on the basis of more acceptable ideals, if that is what the Catholic faithful want, and only then can the rest of us see that justice has been done.
In 1945 the death of Adolf Hitler hastened the demise of the German Nazi Party, the organisation responsible for the extermination of over twelve million Jews, homosexuals, Roma, mentally and physically handicapped people, Slavs, Communists and dissidents. Individuals such as Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann, Alfred Rosenberg, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Konstantin von Neurath were prosecuted and found guilty of various crimes. Allied governments prevented the resurrection of the Nazi Party after the war.
The Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, a Protestant sect formed after a schism in 1955, effectively came to end after the siege of Waco in 1993. The sect had been accused of child abuse and rape, among other things more important to the US authorities, and although the charges at the eventual trial reflected the authorities’ priorities there is no doubt that Vernon Howell would have been prosecuted had he survived the siege.
The Ryan Report, published in May 2009, and the Murphy Report, published this week, have concluded that the Catholic Church in Ireland is guilty of perpetrating systematic and institutionalised physical and sexual abuse of children for the last seventy years, of protecting and retaining the services of priests accused of these crimes, of failing to release information about these practices to the relevant authorities, of obstructing any efforts to prosecute or even publicise the abuse and of continuing to allow the abuse within its organisation. Successive governments (in the case of the Ryan report) and members of the Garda Síochána (in the case of the Murphy Report) have been shown to share a large part of the blame for failing to act on accusations and actively protecting the Church and its criminal element. Although it is not a criminal offence, the Church is also failing to show any remorse for the crimes committed under its auspices and within its ranks.
The Church in Ireland is not alone in these accusations, as priests in Canada, Australia and the United States have also been accused – and in some few cases convicted – of child abuse and independent reports have echoed the findings of the reports in Ireland. In total there are thousands of accusations and thousands of priests implicated in the abuse. Many dioceses in the US have been forced to file for bankruptcy either because of paying or in order to avoid paying compensation. And the only response from Rome has been to suggest that homosexuality is a pre-requisite for paedophilia.
Whether the Church is to be regarded as a religious organisation, a political organisation or an economic organisation there is considerable precedent to support the idea that as an organisation it should be dismantled in its entirety and should cease to exist in its current form. The Catholic Church has become not only obsolete and irrelevant to modern life but also a dangerous enemy to modern society. It has strayed so far from Christian principles of charity and protection as to be unrecognisable as a Christian entity, and instead shows the principal characteristics of a mafia-like organisation or a totalitarian regime.
There is no doubt that not all Catholics are bad people, in the same way that not all Germans were Nazis and not all bankers are thieves. They have a right to a church in the same way that Germans have a right to membership of a political party and businessmen have a right to trade; this is beyond dispute.
However, the Catholic Church as it operates today must close its doors permanently and the people who are responsible for the abuse – including those who have attempted to cover it up – should be prosecuted in a civil court and punished for their crimes. Only then can a new church be constructed on the basis of more acceptable ideals, if that is what the Catholic faithful want, and only then can the rest of us see that justice has been done.
Keeping your house in order
It seems Google are in hot water. Four executives are being prosecuted in a Milan court after four high school students bullied a teenager with Down’s Syndrome, filmed the bullying and posted the video on the internet. The father of the victim, as well as an organisation that defends the rights of people with Down’s, are accusing the Google executives of “defamation and failure to exercise control over personal data”.
Of course, none of the executives will go to jail, as has been suggested in various reports. Apart from the fact that journalists use the word “could” all the time to fill double the space, create a higher volume of news and increase interest in mundane outcomes, executives rarely go to prison. Judges the world over sympathise more with suits and ties, especially those who work for wealthy companies, than they do with the common person.
This comes in the same week that Google were forced to apologise to Michelle Obama after a racially offensive doctored photograph of the First Lady appeared as the number one hit on Google images. Google, however, refused to remove the image, in the same way that in the Italian case they failed to remove the video for two months.
The comment from the spokesman in the bullying case was as follows: “This prosecution is akin to prosecuting mail service employees for hate speech letters sent in the post.” No, actually it isn’t. As there doesn’t appear to be a convenient alternative following the postman analogy, let’s change the scenario. The Google postman story would be the same as somebody renting out a holiday home to a person who commits a serious crime in the holiday home.
The reality of Google’s situation is akin to somebody inviting a person into their own home and allowing them to commit a serious crime there. You should know what’s happening in your own home, and you have a responsibility to stand against things which harm other people. A website administrator has the responsibility of looking at the content that he or she invites onto the site.
Much has been written on the fear that Google will eventually become some sort of internet police, and perhaps they are conscious of this and are trying hard to give the impression that they have no desire to control any content on the internet. But it’s much simpler than that – Google should monitor site content like any other administrator and take responsibility for their omissions. For their own good too – if they are seen to be above the law, all the more reason why people will think they are trying to be the law.
Of course, none of the executives will go to jail, as has been suggested in various reports. Apart from the fact that journalists use the word “could” all the time to fill double the space, create a higher volume of news and increase interest in mundane outcomes, executives rarely go to prison. Judges the world over sympathise more with suits and ties, especially those who work for wealthy companies, than they do with the common person.
This comes in the same week that Google were forced to apologise to Michelle Obama after a racially offensive doctored photograph of the First Lady appeared as the number one hit on Google images. Google, however, refused to remove the image, in the same way that in the Italian case they failed to remove the video for two months.
The comment from the spokesman in the bullying case was as follows: “This prosecution is akin to prosecuting mail service employees for hate speech letters sent in the post.” No, actually it isn’t. As there doesn’t appear to be a convenient alternative following the postman analogy, let’s change the scenario. The Google postman story would be the same as somebody renting out a holiday home to a person who commits a serious crime in the holiday home.
The reality of Google’s situation is akin to somebody inviting a person into their own home and allowing them to commit a serious crime there. You should know what’s happening in your own home, and you have a responsibility to stand against things which harm other people. A website administrator has the responsibility of looking at the content that he or she invites onto the site.
Much has been written on the fear that Google will eventually become some sort of internet police, and perhaps they are conscious of this and are trying hard to give the impression that they have no desire to control any content on the internet. But it’s much simpler than that – Google should monitor site content like any other administrator and take responsibility for their omissions. For their own good too – if they are seen to be above the law, all the more reason why people will think they are trying to be the law.
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