"Torture Report" - Jen Sorensen, US
Friday, June 19, 2015
'Grueling & hazardous': HRW exposes Palestinian child abuse in Israeli settler farms
So, apparently, the Holocaust allows Israelis to employ Palestinian children as low-wage workers, & the world stays silent on it, because Palestinians need to suffer now for the suffering of the Israelis in the Holocaust.
Now, some may say, why am I bringing up the Holocaust in an article about child labour in Israel. The reason is that you say anything, which seems to be against Israel, & the answer is always, from Israelis & Zionist supporters, is that Jews have suffered a lot from the Exodus to Holocaust. Although, that is nothing to do with the topic at hand, the answer is always the same.
So, apparently, everyone else, regardless of whether they ever did anything to any Jew or Israeli, need to suffer now.
It's funny how Israelis always find a nice loophole. Child labour is illegal in Israel BUT if child labourers are employed through a middleman contractor, then it's all legal.
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Human Rights Watch has heavily criticized the abuse of Palestinian children working on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying that children are working in hazardous conditions & in violation of Israeli & international law.
The report, called “Ripe for Abuse,” said that children as young as 10 are working on the settlement farms in the Jordan Valley, sometimes in conditions that are harmful to their health.
HRW also said that much of the produce cultivated & harvested by child labor is exported to Europe & the US.
"Israel’s settlements are profiting from rights abuses against Palestinian children. Children from communities impoverished by Israel’s discrimination & settlement policies are dropping out of school & taking on dangerous work because they feel they have no alternatives, while Israel turns a blind eye," HRW's Middle East director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a statement.
The head of the settlement community in the Jordan Valley dismissed the HRW report as “lies.”
"They've made up lies. The entire goal of this organization is to sully Israel's image. If they'd show me a farmer employing a child, I'd report it to police immediately," David Elhayani, a former farmer, told AFP.
He insisted he would lose his exporting license if he were caught employing child labor, although he did acknowledge that the Palestinian contractors he works with use middlemen who could employ children without a farmer knowing about it.
HRW interviewed 38 children & 12 adults to research their report in the Palestinian communities of the Jordan Valley who were employed by settlement farms in the area. HRW acknowledges that children are the minority of workers employed on settlement farms, but says that they do so because of a lack of any real alternatives.
Israel’s policies throughout the occupied West Bank restrict Palestinian access to land, water & fertilizer as well as their ability to transport & sell their goods.
“Ask [the children] if they have any bread in the house,” a Palestinian middleman who supplied Palestinian workers to settlement farms told an Israeli human rights worker.
The researchers found that most of the children working on settlements had dropped out of school & the rest were working part time while still attending school.
“It’s very obvious which kids go to work in the settlements, because they are exhausted in class,” a school administrator told HRW.
On average, children said they began working at the settlements when they were 13 or 14, but HRW found one boy who said he started working when he was 10. Work starts at 5:30 a.m. or 6 a.m. & lasts for 7 to 8 hours, which increases to 12 hours during harvest time, often for 6 or 7 days a week.
“The work that children perform can be both grueling & hazardous,” the report says. Some children complained of skin rashes, dizziness & vomiting after spraying crops with pesticides without adequate protection while others were injured by sharp blades & machinery used to cut crops.
Temperatures can exceed 50 degrees Celsius in summer & so many of the children as well as the adults are susceptible to heat stroke.
The children working in settlements are paid very low wages, far less than the Israeli minimum wage, which is $6.20 an hour. Most of the children interviewed by HRW earned $16 to $19 a day.
Israeli & Palestinian law makes it illegal to work if you’re under 15. Under military orders issued by Israel in the West Bank, Israel’s domestic minimum wage law is applicable to Palestinian workers in settlements.
But the practice of using middlemen to hire workers means there’s mostly no contract linking an employee child or otherwise to their employer.
Workers are paid “in cash, [get] no pay slips, & there are no [work] permits, so there is no paper trail to demand severance pay or anything else,” a Palestinian middleman told HRW.
Children working in Israeli settlements not only violate Israeli & Palestinian law but also international law. Both Israel & Palestine are party to the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which protects children from being economically exploited & from performing work which is hazardous or interferes with their schooling.
HRW also called on the US & Europe to stop importing produce from the settlements, much of which is given preferential tariffs.
"The EU has moved to exclude Israeli settlement products from the preferential tariff treatment it provides to Israeli goods... but [member states] have not instructed businesses to end trade with settlement-based entities. The US in practice continues to grant preferential treatment to Israeli settlement products under the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement," HRW said.
Now, some may say, why am I bringing up the Holocaust in an article about child labour in Israel. The reason is that you say anything, which seems to be against Israel, & the answer is always, from Israelis & Zionist supporters, is that Jews have suffered a lot from the Exodus to Holocaust. Although, that is nothing to do with the topic at hand, the answer is always the same.
So, apparently, everyone else, regardless of whether they ever did anything to any Jew or Israeli, need to suffer now.
It's funny how Israelis always find a nice loophole. Child labour is illegal in Israel BUT if child labourers are employed through a middleman contractor, then it's all legal.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Human Rights Watch has heavily criticized the abuse of Palestinian children working on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying that children are working in hazardous conditions & in violation of Israeli & international law.
The report, called “Ripe for Abuse,” said that children as young as 10 are working on the settlement farms in the Jordan Valley, sometimes in conditions that are harmful to their health.
HRW also said that much of the produce cultivated & harvested by child labor is exported to Europe & the US.
"Israel’s settlements are profiting from rights abuses against Palestinian children. Children from communities impoverished by Israel’s discrimination & settlement policies are dropping out of school & taking on dangerous work because they feel they have no alternatives, while Israel turns a blind eye," HRW's Middle East director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a statement.
The head of the settlement community in the Jordan Valley dismissed the HRW report as “lies.”
"They've made up lies. The entire goal of this organization is to sully Israel's image. If they'd show me a farmer employing a child, I'd report it to police immediately," David Elhayani, a former farmer, told AFP.
He insisted he would lose his exporting license if he were caught employing child labor, although he did acknowledge that the Palestinian contractors he works with use middlemen who could employ children without a farmer knowing about it.
HRW interviewed 38 children & 12 adults to research their report in the Palestinian communities of the Jordan Valley who were employed by settlement farms in the area. HRW acknowledges that children are the minority of workers employed on settlement farms, but says that they do so because of a lack of any real alternatives.
Israel’s policies throughout the occupied West Bank restrict Palestinian access to land, water & fertilizer as well as their ability to transport & sell their goods.
“Ask [the children] if they have any bread in the house,” a Palestinian middleman who supplied Palestinian workers to settlement farms told an Israeli human rights worker.
The researchers found that most of the children working on settlements had dropped out of school & the rest were working part time while still attending school.
“It’s very obvious which kids go to work in the settlements, because they are exhausted in class,” a school administrator told HRW.
On average, children said they began working at the settlements when they were 13 or 14, but HRW found one boy who said he started working when he was 10. Work starts at 5:30 a.m. or 6 a.m. & lasts for 7 to 8 hours, which increases to 12 hours during harvest time, often for 6 or 7 days a week.
“The work that children perform can be both grueling & hazardous,” the report says. Some children complained of skin rashes, dizziness & vomiting after spraying crops with pesticides without adequate protection while others were injured by sharp blades & machinery used to cut crops.
Temperatures can exceed 50 degrees Celsius in summer & so many of the children as well as the adults are susceptible to heat stroke.
The children working in settlements are paid very low wages, far less than the Israeli minimum wage, which is $6.20 an hour. Most of the children interviewed by HRW earned $16 to $19 a day.
Israeli & Palestinian law makes it illegal to work if you’re under 15. Under military orders issued by Israel in the West Bank, Israel’s domestic minimum wage law is applicable to Palestinian workers in settlements.
But the practice of using middlemen to hire workers means there’s mostly no contract linking an employee child or otherwise to their employer.
Workers are paid “in cash, [get] no pay slips, & there are no [work] permits, so there is no paper trail to demand severance pay or anything else,” a Palestinian middleman told HRW.
Children working in Israeli settlements not only violate Israeli & Palestinian law but also international law. Both Israel & Palestine are party to the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which protects children from being economically exploited & from performing work which is hazardous or interferes with their schooling.
HRW also called on the US & Europe to stop importing produce from the settlements, much of which is given preferential tariffs.
"The EU has moved to exclude Israeli settlement products from the preferential tariff treatment it provides to Israeli goods... but [member states] have not instructed businesses to end trade with settlement-based entities. The US in practice continues to grant preferential treatment to Israeli settlement products under the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement," HRW said.
Burma's rush for economic growth leaves its villagers homeless & jobless
Isn't it ironic that as more & more wealth is being created around the world, more & more people are suffering?
Be it Myanmar, Cuba or Iran (& one day, most likely, North Korea), there is such a hurry to open up these countries for foreign investments. As soon as these countries open up, national leaders (political & business elites) benefit greatly with the huge pouring of money from foreign lands, but poor of the country suffer the most. So what's the point of this development when the most vulnerable of the country suffer?
The most common reason is given then is providing jobs. That's a funny answer, since the jobs are the one thing, which are not created. Foreign companies are businesses, after all. They will still look for the cost & benefit. They are still responsible for one thing & one thing only; increasing their net incomes. They will still look for paying a minimum wage (as low as possible ... perhaps, nothing) to manufacture products for the worldwide markets & all the profits go into the pockets of the business elites.
As I have said in another post, money is the new "religion". It requires no ethics or morals. It requires no sense of any humanity. It requires ruthlessness & treating another human with such disdain that even pet animals are treated far better than another human.
And then, people wonder, rather foolishly or perhaps, naively, why is there so much pain & suffering in the world?
No God / Allah / Yahweh / Waheguru / Brahman created this pain & suffering. We, humans, ourselves, created this pain & suffering.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Less than an hour south of Rangoon, Burma’s bustling commercial capital, Aye Khin Win sits cross-legged in the middle his small, makeshift house on the edge of a vast construction site. Sipping a cup of traditional tea, the 29-year-old farmer is asking how he & hundreds of neighbours have ended up impoverished & without hope in the midst of his country’s historic economic transformation.
Mr Win grew up just a few kilometres from where he is sitting. But last year he was evicted in the name of development, resettled after his family’s plot became prime real estate & part of a flagship project part-financed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) that coordinates developmental projects for the Japanese government. The Thilawa Special Economic Zone, which has taken over the land Mr Win & his neighbours used to farm, has been billed as a key pillar of the country “big bang” economic transformation & a project that could create tens of thousands of jobs. Dozens of foreign corporations have already signed up to open factories here.
But for Mr Win it has been nothing short of a disaster. “All we have ever done is farming. And now we have no land,” he says. “We have no hope, only despair.”
The Burmese government has offered the farmers compensation for the loss of their land, but many are still unclear how much, & whether it will be enough.
“I can’t even sleep at night, because of the stress,” adds his neighbour, Daw Win. The 56-year-old said she used to grow fruits & raise livestock, but now lives “day to day, worrying about meals. I have a lot of stress.”
The villagers’ plight is not unique in Burma, where a clamour to reintegrate the country into the global economy has created what some call a “two-speed” transformation. While there has been a historic rush by foreign investors to set up shop in the country, increasingly in cooperation with aid agencies & NGOs, there is growing concern that Burma’s economic metamorphosis has far outpaced its transition to democracy. Local activists say it is difficult to oppose the economic programme in any respect, as many remain fearful of the government.
The attraction of Burma for big business is not hard to understand. The country, one of south-east Asia’s poorest, is the ultimate “frontier market”. It sits between India & China, the world’s two most populous countries, & is rich in natural resources such as oil & gas, as well as precious stones such as jade.
“Everyone wants to have an influence & get in, in terms of business. Whether it’s China or the UK or the US, I think everybody is looking at opportunities,” says Keith Win, founder of the Myanmar-British Business Association, set up to help British firms move into the country. Foreign investment in Burma reportedly rose to a record high in 2014-2015, reaching $8bn (£5.47bn).
The Burmese government, for its part, is rushing through dozens of new laws & programmes to make the country more “attractive” to foreign capital. Aid money & agencies have also flooded in, announcing enormous spending plans. But in a report last month, Global Witness warned that new investment flows, in the context of a repressive political system, risk “fuelling human rights abuses”.
One local aid worker, who is supporting the farmers displaced by the new Thilawa economic zone but did not want to be named, said there is a sense of fear.
“The villagers feel they cannot go against the government,” he said.
Some are concerned, too, about the ideology guiding the “transformation”. In addition to supporting the Burmese government’s market-based reforms, the World Bank’s private-sector arm has invested millions in luxury real-estate & hotel projects.
One investment is in the Shangri-La, a five-star hotel in downtown Yangon, where the buffet costs $40, more than the average Burmese citizen will earn in a week.
Like the farmers at Thilawa, the Shangri-La’s expansion is also displacing people who work in the area. One woman, a street hawker who also did not want to be named, said she had sold coffee in this spot for 7 years. “I can make a living here & support my family. But I will have to move when the construction is over,” she said. “I don’t have any idea of where to go.”
When questioned, the World Bank says such investment is vital for Burma. “It’s not about poverty eradication, it’s about creating jobs, it’s about shared prosperity,” said Vikram Kumar, the bank’s top investment official in the country.
Back at Thilawa, U Mya Hlaing believes his home will soon be bulldozed. The 69-year-old insists he is not against the Thilawa project, but says that too many locals are suffering as a result of it.
“It’s true that it is good for the development of the country,” he said, “but the people are suffering.”
Matt Kennard & Claire Provost are fellows at the Centre for Investigative Journalism. Travel funding for this article was provided by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Kennard’s new book The Racket is out this week.
Be it Myanmar, Cuba or Iran (& one day, most likely, North Korea), there is such a hurry to open up these countries for foreign investments. As soon as these countries open up, national leaders (political & business elites) benefit greatly with the huge pouring of money from foreign lands, but poor of the country suffer the most. So what's the point of this development when the most vulnerable of the country suffer?
The most common reason is given then is providing jobs. That's a funny answer, since the jobs are the one thing, which are not created. Foreign companies are businesses, after all. They will still look for the cost & benefit. They are still responsible for one thing & one thing only; increasing their net incomes. They will still look for paying a minimum wage (as low as possible ... perhaps, nothing) to manufacture products for the worldwide markets & all the profits go into the pockets of the business elites.
As I have said in another post, money is the new "religion". It requires no ethics or morals. It requires no sense of any humanity. It requires ruthlessness & treating another human with such disdain that even pet animals are treated far better than another human.
And then, people wonder, rather foolishly or perhaps, naively, why is there so much pain & suffering in the world?
No God / Allah / Yahweh / Waheguru / Brahman created this pain & suffering. We, humans, ourselves, created this pain & suffering.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Less than an hour south of Rangoon, Burma’s bustling commercial capital, Aye Khin Win sits cross-legged in the middle his small, makeshift house on the edge of a vast construction site. Sipping a cup of traditional tea, the 29-year-old farmer is asking how he & hundreds of neighbours have ended up impoverished & without hope in the midst of his country’s historic economic transformation.
Mr Win grew up just a few kilometres from where he is sitting. But last year he was evicted in the name of development, resettled after his family’s plot became prime real estate & part of a flagship project part-financed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) that coordinates developmental projects for the Japanese government. The Thilawa Special Economic Zone, which has taken over the land Mr Win & his neighbours used to farm, has been billed as a key pillar of the country “big bang” economic transformation & a project that could create tens of thousands of jobs. Dozens of foreign corporations have already signed up to open factories here.
But for Mr Win it has been nothing short of a disaster. “All we have ever done is farming. And now we have no land,” he says. “We have no hope, only despair.”
The Burmese government has offered the farmers compensation for the loss of their land, but many are still unclear how much, & whether it will be enough.
“I can’t even sleep at night, because of the stress,” adds his neighbour, Daw Win. The 56-year-old said she used to grow fruits & raise livestock, but now lives “day to day, worrying about meals. I have a lot of stress.”
The villagers’ plight is not unique in Burma, where a clamour to reintegrate the country into the global economy has created what some call a “two-speed” transformation. While there has been a historic rush by foreign investors to set up shop in the country, increasingly in cooperation with aid agencies & NGOs, there is growing concern that Burma’s economic metamorphosis has far outpaced its transition to democracy. Local activists say it is difficult to oppose the economic programme in any respect, as many remain fearful of the government.
The attraction of Burma for big business is not hard to understand. The country, one of south-east Asia’s poorest, is the ultimate “frontier market”. It sits between India & China, the world’s two most populous countries, & is rich in natural resources such as oil & gas, as well as precious stones such as jade.
“Everyone wants to have an influence & get in, in terms of business. Whether it’s China or the UK or the US, I think everybody is looking at opportunities,” says Keith Win, founder of the Myanmar-British Business Association, set up to help British firms move into the country. Foreign investment in Burma reportedly rose to a record high in 2014-2015, reaching $8bn (£5.47bn).
The Burmese government, for its part, is rushing through dozens of new laws & programmes to make the country more “attractive” to foreign capital. Aid money & agencies have also flooded in, announcing enormous spending plans. But in a report last month, Global Witness warned that new investment flows, in the context of a repressive political system, risk “fuelling human rights abuses”.
One local aid worker, who is supporting the farmers displaced by the new Thilawa economic zone but did not want to be named, said there is a sense of fear.
“The villagers feel they cannot go against the government,” he said.
Some are concerned, too, about the ideology guiding the “transformation”. In addition to supporting the Burmese government’s market-based reforms, the World Bank’s private-sector arm has invested millions in luxury real-estate & hotel projects.
One investment is in the Shangri-La, a five-star hotel in downtown Yangon, where the buffet costs $40, more than the average Burmese citizen will earn in a week.
Like the farmers at Thilawa, the Shangri-La’s expansion is also displacing people who work in the area. One woman, a street hawker who also did not want to be named, said she had sold coffee in this spot for 7 years. “I can make a living here & support my family. But I will have to move when the construction is over,” she said. “I don’t have any idea of where to go.”
When questioned, the World Bank says such investment is vital for Burma. “It’s not about poverty eradication, it’s about creating jobs, it’s about shared prosperity,” said Vikram Kumar, the bank’s top investment official in the country.
Back at Thilawa, U Mya Hlaing believes his home will soon be bulldozed. The 69-year-old insists he is not against the Thilawa project, but says that too many locals are suffering as a result of it.
“It’s true that it is good for the development of the country,” he said, “but the people are suffering.”
Matt Kennard & Claire Provost are fellows at the Centre for Investigative Journalism. Travel funding for this article was provided by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Kennard’s new book The Racket is out this week.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Confessions of a failing Catholic
A good opinion piece. This is one of the main reasons why Catholic Churches in Europe & North America are sitting empty, while other religions are thriving. Although, there are some different reasons for other religions increasing their numbers, the main reason is the community support, which in itself is done through the leadership.
Most psychologists agree that humans have an innate desire to follow a supreme being. And in following that, they look towards the supporters & leaders of that religion. Most do it through an organized religion but some also do it on their own. I'm not judging here, who is right or wrong.
But when leaders themselves are not principled, their actions don't follow what they preach. People are not stupid enough to not see that. When they see their religious leaders not doing what they preach, they start to lose their own faith, which, in turn, adversely affects the perception of the whole religion.
This is also happening in other religions, albeit more slowly than the Catholic Church. Money is the new religion, which requires no rules & restrictions. No morals or ethics are required in this new "religion". Religious leaders are losing their principles (assuming they had principles in the first place) & people losing interests in their religion & faith.
Seeing the corruption of their "childhood" religions, some people start to look elsewhere & convert. However, that's a very involved & soul-searching process, & not everyone wants to mentally tire themselves in finding out the meaning of life. Sometimes, those people who convert start to see the corruption of their newfound faith, & then they move again or they lose interest in organized religion at all.
At the end of the day, religious leaders need to be principled & do what they say. If they believe that they can't uphold the principles & values of the religion they are preaching, then they should resign themselves from their posts, so they don't spread their own corruption into the community. Leadership is a very responsible post; be it of any organization, secular or religious. Leaders need to keep in mind that the eyes of the whole community are on them. If they slip up, then it will adversely affect the whole community.
A strong sense of community is very much in demand in today's world, & people will flock to that organized religion which offers them that sense of community, the most. They may even join a cult just for that community feel. So, religious leaders have to correct their compass & be steadfast on it, because, if they lose their compass, the whole community starts to go astray.
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I’ve had bad luck with my priests.
The first one was Father Albert, a warm, charismatic & eloquent man who figures prominently in my childhood memories. He was almost a member of our family. But then one day he disappeared without explanation.
Father Albert was replaced by a young, bearded, barrel-chested priest who played bass guitar. I once saw him throw a football 60 yards. Then he also departed in a hurry. We heard later he’d been sleeping with a woman in his band.
In my twenties, my priest was earnest & awkward, with an off-kilter wit. I didn’t get to know him very well before he, too, fell in love with a woman in the parish, someone who he had been counseling. The Church sent him away quickly.
Father Joe, my last priest, was a friendly man who disarmed everyone with his maritime accent & humorous sermons. As far as I know, he never started a romantic relationship with anyone. Instead, he went to jail for stealing several hundred thousand dollars from the parishioners.
You would think with spiritual mentors like that I would walk away. I did, for a few years after college. It wasn’t a conscious decision of humanist rebellion. I was simply busy. Sundays came & went, & there were far too many things to distract me.
In my thirties I moved to a new city & found a tall stone church down the street. The nave was cool in the summer heat, & colourfully lit by soaring stained-glass windows. The oak pews were dark with age & worn smooth by generations of use. I felt at home, & began to attend mass again, albeit irregularly.
But I’m not a natural joiner & always sat at the very back. I was raised a Catholic, attended Catholic schools, & even have priests in the extended family. But I am only comfortable attending mass if I am near the door, to reassure myself I am merely stopping in, & can leave at any time. And I have. Not long ago a guest priest began to explain how families were being torn apart by the professional aspirations of women. I gathered up my 2 daughters & we went for ice cream.
But my problems with Catholicism go well beyond the occasional fatuous sermon. The Church’s treatment of women remains medieval. Its discrimination against gays & lesbians would be considered criminal were it any type of secular organization. And even though 39 million have died from HIV/AIDS, Rome still fights to restrict access to condoms. If the Pope had given each of those people Last Rites, one after the other day & night, it would have taken him over 30 years.
I also have struggled hard with my faith itself. As a child I listened to the Book of Genesis with a skeptical ear. Growing older, I struggled with the idea that even the most virtuous non-believers (like my father) would go to hell. Later I tried & failed to reconcile the concept of free will with God’s will. I have never understood why the Supreme Being, ruling over the entire universe, would smite me unless I flattered him with rote prayers. And the few times I have found myself in extremis, it wasn’t Christ who came to mind; it was thoughts of my parents, or in later years my children.
I am technically a heretic but I still call myself a Catholic. My ethical compass, wavering though it may be, is clearly Augustinian. I still go to mass. I still sit in the back. I close my eyes & listen to the hymns & feel the sun on my face as it filters through the great windows. My church, though, is steadily emptying. Obviously, Father Joe’s arrest cleared out many of the pews. But across the country, attendance has declined while atheism has risen. Only one of my friends attends a weekly service with any regularity. I go less & less, myself. But I still go.
For me, church is not about my faith; it is about my community. I never linger for the bake sales & I can’t tell you the name of the new priest (my history suggests he won’t be around very long anyways). I don’t even know any of the other parishioners by name. But I recognize most of their faces, & from my vantage point in the last pew all of their backs. And that is a profound comfort.
My life is lived by email & phone call. My friends are dispersed, my family spread far & wide. My relationships are mostly virtual, kept alive by text messages & Christmas cards. Like most of us, I am connected to thousands, but honestly know only a few. Even though we never speak, the sight of the familiar strangers in church gives me a physical sense of community, of tangible belonging.
For millennia, humans were born, lived & died within the same few miles. They did not know very many people, but they knew them well. Their sense of identity was less about who they were than where they belonged. Then, in the span of a few generations, this all changed. We began to travel, to disburse, to bond with TV characters, to create online networks, to disappear into our inboxes. At the moment when we have never been more isolated & more in need of a real community, the Church has failed to provide it. It is perhaps one of the great ironies of our age. Archaic doctrine. Repressive rules. Institutionalized bigotry. Abuse scandals. Unapologetic bishops. It was almost as though Rome was trying to alienate us.
After drafting this column, I decided to find out what happened to Father Albert, the smiling man who gave me my first communion & then vanished. A couple of calls informed me that he’s gravely ill, apparently, in an old age home. And, while it took 20 years, he is now facing charges for sexual assault & gross indecency. They are not sure if he will live to see his trial date later this year.
Most psychologists agree that humans have an innate desire to follow a supreme being. And in following that, they look towards the supporters & leaders of that religion. Most do it through an organized religion but some also do it on their own. I'm not judging here, who is right or wrong.
But when leaders themselves are not principled, their actions don't follow what they preach. People are not stupid enough to not see that. When they see their religious leaders not doing what they preach, they start to lose their own faith, which, in turn, adversely affects the perception of the whole religion.
This is also happening in other religions, albeit more slowly than the Catholic Church. Money is the new religion, which requires no rules & restrictions. No morals or ethics are required in this new "religion". Religious leaders are losing their principles (assuming they had principles in the first place) & people losing interests in their religion & faith.
Seeing the corruption of their "childhood" religions, some people start to look elsewhere & convert. However, that's a very involved & soul-searching process, & not everyone wants to mentally tire themselves in finding out the meaning of life. Sometimes, those people who convert start to see the corruption of their newfound faith, & then they move again or they lose interest in organized religion at all.
At the end of the day, religious leaders need to be principled & do what they say. If they believe that they can't uphold the principles & values of the religion they are preaching, then they should resign themselves from their posts, so they don't spread their own corruption into the community. Leadership is a very responsible post; be it of any organization, secular or religious. Leaders need to keep in mind that the eyes of the whole community are on them. If they slip up, then it will adversely affect the whole community.
A strong sense of community is very much in demand in today's world, & people will flock to that organized religion which offers them that sense of community, the most. They may even join a cult just for that community feel. So, religious leaders have to correct their compass & be steadfast on it, because, if they lose their compass, the whole community starts to go astray.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’ve had bad luck with my priests.
The first one was Father Albert, a warm, charismatic & eloquent man who figures prominently in my childhood memories. He was almost a member of our family. But then one day he disappeared without explanation.
Father Albert was replaced by a young, bearded, barrel-chested priest who played bass guitar. I once saw him throw a football 60 yards. Then he also departed in a hurry. We heard later he’d been sleeping with a woman in his band.
In my twenties, my priest was earnest & awkward, with an off-kilter wit. I didn’t get to know him very well before he, too, fell in love with a woman in the parish, someone who he had been counseling. The Church sent him away quickly.
Father Joe, my last priest, was a friendly man who disarmed everyone with his maritime accent & humorous sermons. As far as I know, he never started a romantic relationship with anyone. Instead, he went to jail for stealing several hundred thousand dollars from the parishioners.
You would think with spiritual mentors like that I would walk away. I did, for a few years after college. It wasn’t a conscious decision of humanist rebellion. I was simply busy. Sundays came & went, & there were far too many things to distract me.
In my thirties I moved to a new city & found a tall stone church down the street. The nave was cool in the summer heat, & colourfully lit by soaring stained-glass windows. The oak pews were dark with age & worn smooth by generations of use. I felt at home, & began to attend mass again, albeit irregularly.
But I’m not a natural joiner & always sat at the very back. I was raised a Catholic, attended Catholic schools, & even have priests in the extended family. But I am only comfortable attending mass if I am near the door, to reassure myself I am merely stopping in, & can leave at any time. And I have. Not long ago a guest priest began to explain how families were being torn apart by the professional aspirations of women. I gathered up my 2 daughters & we went for ice cream.
But my problems with Catholicism go well beyond the occasional fatuous sermon. The Church’s treatment of women remains medieval. Its discrimination against gays & lesbians would be considered criminal were it any type of secular organization. And even though 39 million have died from HIV/AIDS, Rome still fights to restrict access to condoms. If the Pope had given each of those people Last Rites, one after the other day & night, it would have taken him over 30 years.
I also have struggled hard with my faith itself. As a child I listened to the Book of Genesis with a skeptical ear. Growing older, I struggled with the idea that even the most virtuous non-believers (like my father) would go to hell. Later I tried & failed to reconcile the concept of free will with God’s will. I have never understood why the Supreme Being, ruling over the entire universe, would smite me unless I flattered him with rote prayers. And the few times I have found myself in extremis, it wasn’t Christ who came to mind; it was thoughts of my parents, or in later years my children.
I am technically a heretic but I still call myself a Catholic. My ethical compass, wavering though it may be, is clearly Augustinian. I still go to mass. I still sit in the back. I close my eyes & listen to the hymns & feel the sun on my face as it filters through the great windows. My church, though, is steadily emptying. Obviously, Father Joe’s arrest cleared out many of the pews. But across the country, attendance has declined while atheism has risen. Only one of my friends attends a weekly service with any regularity. I go less & less, myself. But I still go.
For me, church is not about my faith; it is about my community. I never linger for the bake sales & I can’t tell you the name of the new priest (my history suggests he won’t be around very long anyways). I don’t even know any of the other parishioners by name. But I recognize most of their faces, & from my vantage point in the last pew all of their backs. And that is a profound comfort.
My life is lived by email & phone call. My friends are dispersed, my family spread far & wide. My relationships are mostly virtual, kept alive by text messages & Christmas cards. Like most of us, I am connected to thousands, but honestly know only a few. Even though we never speak, the sight of the familiar strangers in church gives me a physical sense of community, of tangible belonging.
For millennia, humans were born, lived & died within the same few miles. They did not know very many people, but they knew them well. Their sense of identity was less about who they were than where they belonged. Then, in the span of a few generations, this all changed. We began to travel, to disburse, to bond with TV characters, to create online networks, to disappear into our inboxes. At the moment when we have never been more isolated & more in need of a real community, the Church has failed to provide it. It is perhaps one of the great ironies of our age. Archaic doctrine. Repressive rules. Institutionalized bigotry. Abuse scandals. Unapologetic bishops. It was almost as though Rome was trying to alienate us.
After drafting this column, I decided to find out what happened to Father Albert, the smiling man who gave me my first communion & then vanished. A couple of calls informed me that he’s gravely ill, apparently, in an old age home. And, while it took 20 years, he is now facing charges for sexual assault & gross indecency. They are not sure if he will live to see his trial date later this year.
In India, exam cheating is just a symptom
A good opinion piece. Although, the piece is focused on India only, the problem of rote learning / memorization is a problem all over South Asia. Heck, Muslims in South Asia feel proud to memorize the whole Quran, without understanding a word of it. Most don't even know the Arabic language. Those people become masters in rote memorization but don't understand what words are coming out of their mouths.
This problem of rote memorization & writing only prescribed answers in exams also lead to "in-the-box" thinking. Creativity is stifled. Silo thinking is encouraged. That's why, most South Asians don't go into subjective or abstract studies (philosophy, religious studies, political sciences etc.) in their lives. Their studies are focused in sciences & math, & even in them, students are encouraged to regurgitate what they memorized in class.
As per my knowledge, this problem of rote memorization is not only limited to elementary or secondary school levels, but, in some cases, go all the way up to professional studies. For instance, students of the Chartered Accountant professional designation in Pakistan are required to memorize the whole international financial regulation book & then pretty much regurgitate it in their exams. So whoever is great in rote memorization & dumping it all in the exams ends up becoming a Chartered Accountant. How can they solve a problem which will require integrative, subjective, & creative thinking?
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It was the picture that gave rise to worldwide derision – an image of relatives & friends scaling the facade of a four-storey building in Bihar, India, to help the pupils inside cheat on their school-leaving exams.
Clearly, cheating cannot be tolerated. But beyond the immediate offence, India needs to tackle the root causes of such large-scale cheating, which happens in various parts of the country. A prominent cause is the system of rote learning common in Indian schools.
Rote learning turns students into parrots, capable of memorizing anything but understanding nothing. The syllabus of the Indian Central Board of Secondary Education relies on memorization & so do the exams. In many subjects, students don’t write essays; they merely tick long lists of multiple-choice questions.
What few sentences they do write on their own have to be identical to what’s found in the textbooks to win high marks. Any variation, even if they represent an improvement or show originality, receives low marks. Students who aim for originality & answer questions correctly but in their own words are penalized.
If rote learning is abolished, then cheating will vanish on its own. Students will only be able to succeed if they have understood the concepts taught, because their exam answers will have to reflect their understanding, rather than their memory.
With the exception of new & improved cheating techniques, rote learning kills creativity, along with originality & critical thinking, which is why India is so rarely in the vanguard of anything new in science, technology or design.
It’s not that Indians are not capable of creativity. You only have to look at the magical skills of Indian craftsmen to appreciate the beauty they can produce. And you only have to look at Indians based abroad to know their abilities. But India’s domestic education system discourages innovation, exploration, risk-taking & the questioning of accepted wisdom.
Who are the educational reformers who can take on this job? Few names but one come to mind: Sugata Mitra, who won the 2013 TED Prize for his fascinating experiments in the use of the Internet in education. Prof. Mitra advocates the benefits of letting children loose in a room with computers, an Internet connection & minimal supervision by teachers. (If nothing else, this would solve the problem of absentee teachers, another bane of the Indian system.)
Prof. Mitra was once asked to name one single measure the Indian government could take to instantly raise the abysmal standards in government schools.
“Let students use the Internet in exams,” he replied. “In doing so, the whole system would have to change. The kind of questions set in exams would have to change. You can’t ask, for example, simple factual questions because they would be too easy to answer. The questions would have to be framed instead to probe students’ understanding of concepts & principles. Educators would also have to teach differently, just as officials would have to rethink the school curriculum.”
Unfortunately, Prof. Mitra has taken himself off to Newcastle University in Britain because the Indian government has shown no interest in his ideas, even though they could lead to enormously improved outcomes.
In other words, the radical reforms India needs are not likely to happen soon. In India, change only happens very slowly & gradually – the country’s culture & mentality are Menshevik, not Bolshevik.
Meanwhile, children continue to endure an education system that is a joke. Last year, an annual independent status report on rural schools found that after 5 years of primary education, more than 60% of children were unable to read simple text at a second-grade level.
Yet these same children will leave school & face ferocious competition for jobs where the only qualification that counts is their exam grades.
When the State Bank of India advertised 1,500 menial vacancies in 2013, it received more than 17 million applications. That’s not a typo: 17 million.
So while it’s easy to scoff at the people perched on those window sills, the reality is that Indian parents will go to any lengths – or heights – to help their children succeed in their last exams.
This problem of rote memorization & writing only prescribed answers in exams also lead to "in-the-box" thinking. Creativity is stifled. Silo thinking is encouraged. That's why, most South Asians don't go into subjective or abstract studies (philosophy, religious studies, political sciences etc.) in their lives. Their studies are focused in sciences & math, & even in them, students are encouraged to regurgitate what they memorized in class.
As per my knowledge, this problem of rote memorization is not only limited to elementary or secondary school levels, but, in some cases, go all the way up to professional studies. For instance, students of the Chartered Accountant professional designation in Pakistan are required to memorize the whole international financial regulation book & then pretty much regurgitate it in their exams. So whoever is great in rote memorization & dumping it all in the exams ends up becoming a Chartered Accountant. How can they solve a problem which will require integrative, subjective, & creative thinking?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was the picture that gave rise to worldwide derision – an image of relatives & friends scaling the facade of a four-storey building in Bihar, India, to help the pupils inside cheat on their school-leaving exams.
Clearly, cheating cannot be tolerated. But beyond the immediate offence, India needs to tackle the root causes of such large-scale cheating, which happens in various parts of the country. A prominent cause is the system of rote learning common in Indian schools.
Rote learning turns students into parrots, capable of memorizing anything but understanding nothing. The syllabus of the Indian Central Board of Secondary Education relies on memorization & so do the exams. In many subjects, students don’t write essays; they merely tick long lists of multiple-choice questions.
What few sentences they do write on their own have to be identical to what’s found in the textbooks to win high marks. Any variation, even if they represent an improvement or show originality, receives low marks. Students who aim for originality & answer questions correctly but in their own words are penalized.
If rote learning is abolished, then cheating will vanish on its own. Students will only be able to succeed if they have understood the concepts taught, because their exam answers will have to reflect their understanding, rather than their memory.
With the exception of new & improved cheating techniques, rote learning kills creativity, along with originality & critical thinking, which is why India is so rarely in the vanguard of anything new in science, technology or design.
It’s not that Indians are not capable of creativity. You only have to look at the magical skills of Indian craftsmen to appreciate the beauty they can produce. And you only have to look at Indians based abroad to know their abilities. But India’s domestic education system discourages innovation, exploration, risk-taking & the questioning of accepted wisdom.
Who are the educational reformers who can take on this job? Few names but one come to mind: Sugata Mitra, who won the 2013 TED Prize for his fascinating experiments in the use of the Internet in education. Prof. Mitra advocates the benefits of letting children loose in a room with computers, an Internet connection & minimal supervision by teachers. (If nothing else, this would solve the problem of absentee teachers, another bane of the Indian system.)
Prof. Mitra was once asked to name one single measure the Indian government could take to instantly raise the abysmal standards in government schools.
“Let students use the Internet in exams,” he replied. “In doing so, the whole system would have to change. The kind of questions set in exams would have to change. You can’t ask, for example, simple factual questions because they would be too easy to answer. The questions would have to be framed instead to probe students’ understanding of concepts & principles. Educators would also have to teach differently, just as officials would have to rethink the school curriculum.”
Unfortunately, Prof. Mitra has taken himself off to Newcastle University in Britain because the Indian government has shown no interest in his ideas, even though they could lead to enormously improved outcomes.
In other words, the radical reforms India needs are not likely to happen soon. In India, change only happens very slowly & gradually – the country’s culture & mentality are Menshevik, not Bolshevik.
Meanwhile, children continue to endure an education system that is a joke. Last year, an annual independent status report on rural schools found that after 5 years of primary education, more than 60% of children were unable to read simple text at a second-grade level.
Yet these same children will leave school & face ferocious competition for jobs where the only qualification that counts is their exam grades.
When the State Bank of India advertised 1,500 menial vacancies in 2013, it received more than 17 million applications. That’s not a typo: 17 million.
So while it’s easy to scoff at the people perched on those window sills, the reality is that Indian parents will go to any lengths – or heights – to help their children succeed in their last exams.
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
That $75 Million in ads you paid for
Millions are being spent on self-promotion & self-advertisement by Canadian government, but nobody sees this before complaining that taxpayer money is always misappropriated in only the corrupt "developing" countries. "Developed" countries are seemingly all free of corruption & clean. Remember that what you see externally in developed countries is completely different to what is actually happening inside.
Social services are being cut, education budget is being reduced, health budget is constantly decreasing ... all because of not enough of taxpayers' money being in the governments' coffers to spend on the taxpayers' welfare, but there's definitely enough for self-promotion & advertising how great the government is doing.
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What is the proper word? Is it brazen? Shameless? Unprincipled? Immoral? Choose the word that you think best suits the Harper government’s unprecedented use of public money for self-promotion.
Let’s not be precious, of course. Other federal governments have promoted themselves using what the Harper government jokingly calls “hard-working taxpayers’ ” money. None, however, has done it so openly, lavishly, frequently & unashamedly.
With just six months between the budget & October’s federal election, the sluice gate of advertising spending will be open wide. The money will come from taxpayers & from the party itself.
Recently, the government had to report the amount it spent on advertising. It was $75-million a year for 2013-14, up from $69-million the previous year. This being an election year, the figure will likely be higher still. We already know that the government has allocated $7.5-million for spending to tout the budget’s virtues.
That means anyone who watches the forthcoming Stanley Cup playoffs can expect a deluge of advertising, because the government prefers to use hard-working taxpayers’ money in the most expensive time slots: hockey playoffs, Super Bowl, Academy Awards.
The explanation given for this spending is shameless, the kind of explanation that gives politicians a bad name everywhere as systematic liars. We need to spend the money, the government says, in order to explain how taxpayers’ money is being spent. Yet anyone who has watched the Harper government’s advertisements knows they are there for promotion, not information.
They use government websites, too. Check out the Fisheries and Oceans one, for example. There, you will find advertisements for the government’s recent announcement of millions of spending for harbours & ports across the country.
Recently, the Conservative Party sent an urgent letter to its supporters asking for money. After the budget, it said, the party needs money to promote the document’s low-tax, pro-growth policies in the face of what the letter described as the “Liberal” media that always deforms Conservative accomplishments.
The letter conceded briefly that there were a few pro-Conservative voices in the media, but insisted the bulk of the media is systematically hostile. This media-baiting is typical of all Conservative cash appeals: The party is surrounded on all sides by enemies, elites & hostile media voices. Only if supporters give generously can the party’s message be communicated.
Which is ridiculous, of course, since the Liberal media argument flies in the face of AM talk radio, the Sun Media chain (whose leader, Paul Godfrey, is a strident pro-Conservative voice), the National Post, plenty of private television & many other columnists & editorialists across the country. But “them against us” is a proven money-earner for the Conservatives, so they will stick with it.
Before the election writ is issued, parties can spend what they want of their own money. Since the Conservatives have more of it than the Liberals & New Democrats, they will spend this advantage & marry it with the government advertising.
The use of public money to promote the government has been much commented upon, usually negatively. But the Conservatives don’t care about such criticism, believing that their supporters like seeing & hearing positive things about the government. They also believe that many Canadians don’t know where the money comes from for the ads, or they don’t care, having been conditioned to think that all politicians will do just about anything to get re-elected.
Who can blame voters for being cynical?
Social services are being cut, education budget is being reduced, health budget is constantly decreasing ... all because of not enough of taxpayers' money being in the governments' coffers to spend on the taxpayers' welfare, but there's definitely enough for self-promotion & advertising how great the government is doing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is the proper word? Is it brazen? Shameless? Unprincipled? Immoral? Choose the word that you think best suits the Harper government’s unprecedented use of public money for self-promotion.
Let’s not be precious, of course. Other federal governments have promoted themselves using what the Harper government jokingly calls “hard-working taxpayers’ ” money. None, however, has done it so openly, lavishly, frequently & unashamedly.
With just six months between the budget & October’s federal election, the sluice gate of advertising spending will be open wide. The money will come from taxpayers & from the party itself.
Recently, the government had to report the amount it spent on advertising. It was $75-million a year for 2013-14, up from $69-million the previous year. This being an election year, the figure will likely be higher still. We already know that the government has allocated $7.5-million for spending to tout the budget’s virtues.
That means anyone who watches the forthcoming Stanley Cup playoffs can expect a deluge of advertising, because the government prefers to use hard-working taxpayers’ money in the most expensive time slots: hockey playoffs, Super Bowl, Academy Awards.
The explanation given for this spending is shameless, the kind of explanation that gives politicians a bad name everywhere as systematic liars. We need to spend the money, the government says, in order to explain how taxpayers’ money is being spent. Yet anyone who has watched the Harper government’s advertisements knows they are there for promotion, not information.
They use government websites, too. Check out the Fisheries and Oceans one, for example. There, you will find advertisements for the government’s recent announcement of millions of spending for harbours & ports across the country.
Recently, the Conservative Party sent an urgent letter to its supporters asking for money. After the budget, it said, the party needs money to promote the document’s low-tax, pro-growth policies in the face of what the letter described as the “Liberal” media that always deforms Conservative accomplishments.
The letter conceded briefly that there were a few pro-Conservative voices in the media, but insisted the bulk of the media is systematically hostile. This media-baiting is typical of all Conservative cash appeals: The party is surrounded on all sides by enemies, elites & hostile media voices. Only if supporters give generously can the party’s message be communicated.
Which is ridiculous, of course, since the Liberal media argument flies in the face of AM talk radio, the Sun Media chain (whose leader, Paul Godfrey, is a strident pro-Conservative voice), the National Post, plenty of private television & many other columnists & editorialists across the country. But “them against us” is a proven money-earner for the Conservatives, so they will stick with it.
Before the election writ is issued, parties can spend what they want of their own money. Since the Conservatives have more of it than the Liberals & New Democrats, they will spend this advantage & marry it with the government advertising.
The use of public money to promote the government has been much commented upon, usually negatively. But the Conservatives don’t care about such criticism, believing that their supporters like seeing & hearing positive things about the government. They also believe that many Canadians don’t know where the money comes from for the ads, or they don’t care, having been conditioned to think that all politicians will do just about anything to get re-elected.
Who can blame voters for being cynical?
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