Catholics n' Canadians [Haiti and Afghanistan]

The thing about accountability is that you know who is responsible. When you know who is responsible, you have to hold them accountable. It's pretty circular thinking I'll admit, but I can't think of any other way to say it this morning.

The Pope is the big Roman Catholic cheese. He's da man. He's in charge. He's responsible. He has to be held accountable.

And over the past few years there's been an avalanche of evidence that the Catholic Church has become a refuge for pedophiles. Now, I don't dig pedophiles. I'm a pretty sympathetic guy in most respects, and even with child molesters, I'm prepared to grant some of them that they might have had no control over their impulses. It's not like we all wake up in the morning and make a "lifestyle choice" as to whether we're hetero, or gay, or into children or small animals, (or the Eiffel Tower, or the Berlin Wall, or cars, or other inanimate objects). Furthermore, I've read tragic stories about child molesters who had been raped repeatedly in their own childhoods and whose sexuality had been distorted outside of all their control.

But at the end of the day, destroying the mind of a helpless young child for whatever reason is wrong. And the Catholic Church appears to be rank with men who do this and it appears that the Pope himself actively covered-up for such abuses while an Archbishop in Germany, as a cardinal, and now as the Pope.

And here's the thing: While the Catholic Church is obviously an intellectual dictatorship, permitting no democratic challenge to its delusional pronouncements, it isn't a physical dictatorship. Ordinary Catholics, who might receive some comfort from remaining with the institution, have to reconcile the pleasure obtained from listening to the pedestrian spirituality, the vestiges of ancient ceremonies, and the traditions of exalted culture, of the Roman Catholic Church, with the fact that the whole senior management are quite clearly conspirators in a child-molesting ring, and they (ordinary Catholics) ought to do something about that.

Nobody is forcing Catholics to go to church every Sunday (aside from the Church's own threats of eternal damnation) or to contribute financially to it. If Catholics don't feel like going through a weekly ritual of extreme hypocrisy and stupidity, they have it within them to force accountability and justice on those who make their worship so meaningless.

But it appears that they don't. They keep quiet about it. They continue to go through the motions. They continue to pretend to take moral instruction from an top-down institution run by a man who advocates covering-up child sexual abuse.

Perhaps the Catholic Church's tradition of authoritarianism on the part of its hierarchy, and passivity on the part of its "flock" are just too strong for the right thing to be done. But that brings me to Canada and Canadians. Lots of Canadians like to take pride in their country. Witness the empty-headed spectacle of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Witness the pride Canadians used to take in the fact that US-Americans sewed Canadian flag decals on their backpacks while travelling so as to avoid potential abuse for being "ugly Americans." We point with pride to the distant memory of Canada as a "peace-keeping nation" with no enemies. We pat ourselves on the back for our traditions of democracy and human rights.

But when Canadians are tortured in Syria and CSIS sends the torturers questions to ask the tortured, when the RCMP kills a man, lies about it, and gets away with it, when innocent protesters are intimidated and abused, when it becomes obvious that we're complicit in torture in Afghanistan, when our mining firms successfully resist any accountability for their criminal practices overseas, and when the unelected Senate crushes House of Commons legislation that contributes to attempts to save the planet itself, we, as people, do nothing. We continue to take pride in "Team Canada" hockey achievements, patronize people from other lands who do not enjoy the same rights we neglect, we continue to go through the motions and pretend that it'll all work out in the end (perhaps due to the uncertain efforts of unknown individuals, somewhere, sometime).

I put Haiti and Afghanistan in the title because these two examples serve as mega-indictments of Canadian evil. There's just no other way to describe it. As bad as they were, the Taliban somehow obtained enough acquiescence from the population of Afghanistan to rule the country, and contain violence in most of it, from 1996 to 2001. Canadian leaders (all NATO leaders in fact) pretend to scratch their heads in puzzlement, wondering why our puppet-government cannot do the same thing. Could it not be that the Karzai regime is vastly more corrupt than was the Taliban? Could it not be that the warlord governors often behave as conquerors of their subject peoples, rather than administrators of government services? Could it not be that the new order in Afghanistan has reintroduced child prostitution? Could it not be the case that underpaid Afghan security personnel rape and plunder their subject peoples?

Of course it's all those things. NATO leaders never gave, do not give, a single, solitary shit about the people of Afghanistan. The government of Afghanistan serves to allow the USA access to air-bases from which to project power in Central Asia. All the rest of the stuff about democracy and women's rights is just propaganda to dupe the gullible.

And Haiti? Cholera is sweeping the country as sanitary conditions deteriorate, as billions of foreign aid (billions less than was promised in any case) continues to be held up by foreign sloth and foreign and domestic corruption and incompetence. Haiti, I'll remind you, was doing so terribly before the 2010 earthquake which devastated that country, that the poorest among them were eating dirt to fill their bellies, unable to afford the cost of basic foods. And it was in this deplorable state SIX YEARS after Canada (under the detestable scum-bag Paul Martin) aided the USA and France in toppling the democratically-elected president (due to his "violence" and "mismanagement" of Haiti) in a coup. Haiti became Canada's second-largest overseas investment and our largest in the Western Hemisphere. And the results, as can be plainly seen, are atrocious. That's because Canada is not run by democratic politicians, but by cynical con-men who rely on Canadian ignorance, delusion, and apathy, to maintain the charade of an electoral process and who really exist to serve corporate-imperialist power both at home and abroad.

Haiti suffers as Afghanistan suffers, because our leaders are evil, twisted men, and because we, collectively, are so oblivious or indifferent (or so incapable of promoting alternatives) that we allow it all to happen.