Humanity Getting its Ducks in a Row

When I was a child my grandmother marvelled at how when she was a child she travelled by ox wagon and now we were sending people to the moon. I wondered then how the world could change in such a way that I'd be marvelling when I was her age. If I ever reached it. It was hard to believe that I ever would, she seemed so ancient. I'm not there yet, but that marvelling time has come already for me. 

There wasn't any internet when I was a kid. Distance communication was by phone, letter or telegram. Arriving by noon train stop pick me up stop don't forget stop I love you stop.

Letters were written by hand, music was played with vinyl, radios were a piece of furniture. I spent 90% of my waking leisure hours outside. We didn't even have a TV. When it came and we finally got a set, we were only allowed to watch one evening a week. And then we could have a coke as well. Bread and milk were delivered to the door. Ice cream cost two pennies, the cost of everything stayed the same from year to year and people stayed in the same job.  

On the surface of things, it was a simple life and a good one. But heaven help you if you were a schizophrenic or depressed or a girl with a sexual appetite, or one who didn't know how to say no. There wasn't a place for you. Where you could feel valuable, that is. There was a place alright; society's garbage bin. Not that it was openly acknowledged. Racism, slavery, abuse of women and children were rampant, but nobody spoke about it. The have-nots were hidden from the pleasant surface of society's fabric. Ah, the good old days.

Now nobody writes anything by hand, radios are either streamed or ugly little boomboxy things. Vinyl isn't dead but mostly it's music by download, books by download. TV on your laptop. 

Conversation happens by tweet or text. Impersonal, no risk, no real connection. Fast, though. Ice cream costs anything from R5 to R20 and the price of everything rises every day. Employees are nomads scrabbling to find work in broken economies. The world is at war; so much of mankind a well-oiled killing machine. Polar ice-caps are melting whilst people still debate if humans are destroying the environment. Women get stoned to death for wearing the wrong clothes and wanting to be educated. Child pornography and the slave trade still flourish around the world. 

Sure we've sent men to the moon and found cures for all sorts of diseases but 'experts' can't explain the outbreak of violence amongst seemingly peaceful communities. And we still don't have anywhere close to an understanding of schizophrenia and depression. Children and adults commit suicide and everybody says 'I had no idea they were depressed'. 

Very few say 'if I'd been a better friend, a better parent, a better sibling, I would have noticed because nobody gets to that final moment of despair without there being plenty of signposts along the way.' 

Has the human race really progressed much since my grandmother was a child? The way it expresses itself has changed, that’s obvious. But the percentages of different types of people are probably still the same. What also hasn’t changed is the human capacity to find joy and pleasure within, no matter what’s going on in your life. That’s a good thing. That’s a remarkable thing. 

And we've identified concepts like entitlement and self esteem. We know - or some of us do - that if those two aspects are fragmented it doesn't matter how talented a person is, they'll never make any progress. If they don't get help. And help is available. We know that we can learn to say no. That we're allowed to pay attention to what we need. That what others think of us matters a whole lot less than what we think of ourselves. That if we want others to treat us with respect we have to treat ourselves with respect. We know a lot more. We haven't necessarily learned how to put it into practise, but that will come.

An even bigger difference between when I was a child and now is that the underbelly has been exposed, that's clear. We haven't been able to keep that lovely smooth surface unruffled by the reality of society's inequalities and injustices. It’s uncomfortable to see but uncomfortable isn't necessarily all bad.

The good thing about it is that the have-nots have finally found their voice. And that makes me marvel as much as my grandmother did. Just learning to get our ducks in a row.

Google and Facebook Ads - The Advertising Industry is a Joke

Ali Velshi, CNN's articulacy maestro, said not too long ago in response to people bitching about how many ads there are on Facebook and Google products that he couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Facebook is, after all, free. We don't pay for it so we have absolutely no right to complain about how it makes money.

If we want to pay, then we can bitch and moan as much as we want. Just block the ads out, he said, impatiently, adding that he's got so good at it he doesn't ever notice any ads on any web pages. Ever.

I wonder if any Facebook and Google execs were listening. Probably not. Probably too busy figuring out how to squeeze more info out of us so they can persuade themselves they're succeeding in persuading us they love us when they show ads on topics we seem to be interested in. I also wonder what sort of ads would show on my gmail if I was doing research into child porn or Hezbollah activity in Syria or gun sales in the US.

I think Ali's right that we're lucky to have so much for free, but I still hate ads. I recently found a magazine dating back to 1955. The ads were so innocent and non-intrusive. The psychology was simple, nothing massively manipulative. The pics were adorable. I doubt the advertising industry was very big back then.

Now it's a greedy monster that feeds on your children's minds and everybody's vulnerability.  But, for all the money spent on it and the degree to which it imposes on us, how effective is it really?

I'm sure at some point, when the industry was at its peak, it was 100% effective. Advertisers ruled the world, no doubt about it. Even now, often ads are gorgeous. Entertaining. Moving. There's one of two young kids in some Latin country. They're about ten years old. The boy's crazy about the girl. When she' bullied he rescues her and gets beaten up for it. But he doesn't care. He gets the girl. It steals your heart; beautifully scripted, acted and shot. I've watched it a gazillion times and I'll watch it willingly again and again. It's a really good short film.

But I can't for the life of me tell you what product it's supposed to be advertising, and I couldn't care less. When I come across an ad that I don't like I switch off. Either literally, or, like Ali, in my mind. I just block the son of a bitch out. So either way advertising doesn't work on me.

Somehow I doubt that Ali and I are alone in this, and I often wonder to what extent. And whether the advertising industry realizes it has saturated the world and is starting to eat itself up. More to the point, whether the clients paying for ads realize it. This industry has got so good at selling itself that everybody seems to have lost the plot and nobody is noticing that it lost its edge a long time ago. Case in point are the web page ads that have a lot of flash crap and moving bits. They're annoying, they interrupt your concentration. You're more likely to want to get rid of them - and the site - than to click on them.

They're probably fun to design, though. The ad industry doesn't serve its clients, it serves itself. Obviously web owners and Google and Facebook haven't figured that out yet. It amuses me no end to think that the latter go to such lengths to snag me into buying something. There's one tiny little factor they've left out of their algorithimic equations; I have a mind and I still use it. And they don't know how to read it.

African Americans Criticized for Refusing to be Abused like Illegal Mexican Workers

A week ago I read (nytimes.com) about abuses of illegal immigrants by large scale US farmers. The abuses have been highlighted for many years by human rights activists, but recently Americans, many of them African American, who live close to the farms but can’t get work are adding their voices to the protest. They say they are discouraged from applying for work even, and treated very badly. Farmers prefer to employ illegal Mexican workers because they’re easier to exploit and abuse.

Generally, the comments to the article were expressions of disgust that abuses were happening at all. One of them, though, Amanda Burton of Oakland California, had this to say:

“Here's my experience as a California employer in food processing with close ties to local farmers: immigrant workers of all ethnicities, legal or illegal, work very hard, are generally smart contributors to their job processes, and are loyal to employers who treat them with consideration. 

“Americans of all ethnic backgrounds, on the other hand, do not want the jobs we offer and in the rare instances where they take them (or are placed into them by well-intended social service agencies) are unable to keep up with the team, have poor work skills and poorer attitudes, are untrustworthy and unreliable, and never in my experience stay longer than a few weeks.

 “Oh, and the children of immigrant workers are remarkable for carrying full academic loads AND working productively alongside their parents.”

Scary mentality; recommending a system that exploits children for their labor and believing that children who are forced to work in the fields so families can barely survive and farmers can make a fat profit, are somehow noble.  As for the racism, cheaply plastered over with Protestant work ethic, it’s beyond scary.

That American farmers are still treating illegal Mexican workers like dogs is beyond horrifying. These are the same people who don’t want the Mexican workers to have legal status because then they’ll have rights they can fight for. That African Americans don't want to work under such terrible conditions and be treated like animals is a good sign, not a bad one. Exploitation is not a good thing. 

I've found in my life that people who are neurotically entitled and are driven by greed and bigotry, and happily exploit others, are quick to stick the denigrating label "lazy" on anybody who won't let themselves be abused. It's a cheap trick. 

I've also found that people who let themselves be exploited often can't face the shame of what the exploitation says about their intrinsic worth. They side with the exploiter. The truth is, it's the people who object to exploitation even when they're desperately in need of work who are the most courageous. African Americans who refuse to let themselves be abused deserve the utmost respect. After all, it's what led to the abolition of slavery.

Sex and the City - Pedophile Protectors Vote for a Pope

Sex and the city. The Vatican city, that is. The city of the religion where priests took a vow of celibacy and got away with raping children. With the papal conclave 48 hours away, Dan Rivers reported from CNN live on a case involving a cardinal who will be part of the conclave, Cardinal Calcagno. He protected a pedophile Father Geraudo who started raping an altar boy in 1981 at least once a week and continued for 5 years. That boy was Franceso Zanardi, who spoke to CNN. He said he was not the only victim from amongst his classmates but he is the only one who is determined to seek and find justice.

Zanardi grew up very conflicted and became addicted to heroin in his 20’s. It was only after he went to rehab and had counseling that he realized he took drugs because of the abuse. That’s when he decided to find out how Geraudo had been able to get away with raping him for so long. Zanardi’s fight for the truth has exposed a trail of protection that leads directly to then Cardinal Ratzinger – who subsequently became Pope Benedict XVI.

Zinardi discovered that in 1980 a letter sent from an archbishop to bishop Calcagno of  Savona clearly shows that the church was aware of Geraudo’s crimes more than 3 decades ago. In 1980 he was reported for abuse of minors, but he was simply moved from parish to parish. He even set up and ran a home for troubled children in a church rectory.

In 2002 Geraudo confessed that he was a pedophile and even that wasn’t enough for the church to throw him out. Then in 2003 bishop Domenico Calcagno wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger who was then the enforcer of church doctrine, asking for advice on what he should do about Geraudo.

 “As far as possible” Calcagno said he intended to avoid letting Geraudo have responsibilities that would bring him into contact with children. His letter was accompanied by a church dossier on Geraudo, and Calcagno said “nothing has been leaked to the papers, no complaints have been filed with the police”.

The church was clearly only concerned with its image and protecting its priests. The victims weren’t mentioned in any of the documents and of course no efforts were made to identify them and help them. Neither Ratzinger nor Calcagno made any moves to defrock Geraudo or investigate. Two years later Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI.

In 2005 Geraudo was sent to a Catholic scout camp in Piedmont, where he abused another boy. He was convicted for this crime, but he only received a one year suspended sentence. It was only in 2010 that the church forced him to resign, even though he had admitted to being a pedophile 8 years earlier. When Bishop Calcagno had become Cardinal, he was accused of having protected the pedophile. The church’s response was “the accusations regarding Cardinal Domenico Calcagno when he was bishop of Savona in Italy were investigated by both the church and by the legal system, by the judge and the accusations were without foundation.”

Cardinal Calcagno, who is taking part in the conclave to elect the next pope, declined to comment. Francesco Zanardi took a petition to the Vatican demanding that Calcagno be disqualified from the papal conclave, but he was turned away by plain clothes police.  But Zanardi is not giving up. His case has been taken up by SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests), a pressure group representing people abused by priests. But the vote takes place tomorrow. So that’s two Cardinals that the world knows protected pedophile priests. Calcagno and Mahony.

Neither of them is considered to be Pope material, but that they have a say makes a mockery of the whole process. That Ratzinger protected Geraudo if only by default, makes a mockery of the position of Pope.  It’s the victims who speak and the journalists who help them who are the real heroes of this story that seems to never end.  Francesco Zanardi represents the Italian abuse network Rette L’Abuso. He also reports for vaticancrimes.us and has worked in collaboration with the Protect Your Children Foundation. Last year he went on a hunger strike in Rome to protest abuse by clergy.

Sex and the City: the Collapse of the Holy Roman Empire

Becky Anderson, speaking from Rome for CNN yesterday, told of how 3 as yet-unnamed Cardinals compiled a secret dossier about a gay network of Vatican clerics who have made themselves vulnerable to blackmail by male prostitutes. They presented it to Pope Benedict XVI, and as far as Becky understood, he will pass it on to his successor. “The Italian media is awash with these sex scandals at the Vatican” she said.

She added that the British media is awash with the scandal of allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct with four priests dating back to the 1980’s. The allegations are leveled at the top British Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who was, until yesterday, proclaiming his innocence and insisting he would exercise his right to vote. He was going to resign in March but the Pope forced him out yesterday.
 
Benedict XVI’s reactions to the two latest scandals are hard to understand. In all the years that he’s had the opportunity to actively investigate child rape by priests and the bishops who protected them, he hasn’t lifted a finger. Cardinal Mahony is still set to vote in the enclave. Yet Benedict XVI forced the resignation of Cardinal O’Brien, who didn’t rape anybody as far as we know. Nothing has been proved against him, any more than anything has been proved against the group of gay clerics, whose resignation Benedict didn’t force.  

Our resigned Pope is being ill-advised. Didn’t anybody ever tell these fellows that once you tell or live a lie, you have to fabricate and fabricate, weaving for yourself an illusion that fools many at first but eventually you’re the only one who believes in it. At that point, nothing that you do makes any real sense.

The Catholic church is falling apart at the seams, as it was bound to one day. It has operated with immunity for way too long, protected by its own laws that make it unassailable. Its excuse? That the hierarchy answers to a higher law because they are men of God. Well, that would be great if it did and they were, but it clearly doesn’t because they aren’t. 

Notwithstanding which the Vatican still holds huge sway over many of its subjects who deny any wrong-doing, pretty much in the same way that anti-Semites deny that the holocaust happened. But the massive power it had over minds up to the 1970’s has been waning for a long time, and the velvet curtains that once shielded the Vatican’s corruption from the world so well get more and more moth-eaten.  

The fall of Rome. If the Catholic Church was what it represents itself as, it wouldn’t have had a reason to fall. But it’s always been about the accumulation of temporal power and wealth and, under the guise of spirituality, has had a two-pronged strategy for subjugating people and limiting their capacity to think for themselves. The first is fear-mongering, using guilt and threat of eternal damnation as tools, and the second is to demonize sex, pitting it against spirituality. 

Of course the height of spirituality is to have no sex at all. So the vow of celibacy makes priests, cardinals and the Pope, more spiritual than anybody else. They take the vows of poverty and obedience, too, and that allegedly adds to their special spirituality, makes them somehow closer to God. But the vows are just for show.   

Even if they haven’t accumulated personal wealth, which many of them have, Catholic clergy don’t experience poverty. They are well taken care of, they have decent clothes – some of them  very expensive clothes and jewelry -  a place to stay, food to eat, medical care if they get sick, a car to drive, petrol in the car. They can travel and their plane fare is paid for, and when they retire they have a home to go to. 

Monseigneur Rauber, Cardinal Danneels, Monseigneurs Vangheluwe and Jozef De Kesel who took over after Vangheluwe resigned when exposed for child abuse.

As for obedience, who do they obey? Not the rules of society. Priests answer to bishops, who answer to the pope, as do Cardinals. Oh wait a moment; some of those Cardinals elect that infallible being who answers to God. 

And we all know what happens to the celibacy vow. Well, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes all have minds of their own. They can at any time say "I can't be part of an organization where the reality doesn’t match the PR." 

But that would mean giving up a life that gives them enormous power, one of the perks of which is that they can commit or conceal crimes with impunity and make unwelcome moves on men lower down the hierarchy, and of course on children. And because they aren’t men of God but are just ordinary men with as much carnality, prejudice, inner conflict and self interest as the rest of us, they abuse their power, sometimes to the fullest extent that the abuse can stretch. 

Which is why Rome is falling, falling.