Author: Ophelia Benson

  • An Epistemologically Instructive Experience

    Suave and sinuous prose now preening and overelaborate; fearless cheekiness now truculent bravado.

  • More Scary Doesn’t Mean More Likely

    When that supervolcano erupts we’ll be at the mercy of bullies with melanomas.

  • Papa Boys Whoop it up at Rome Bash

    The new religion of celebrity worship at work.

  • Papal Obsequies

    I usually like David Aaronovitch’s columns (even though, or perhaps because, they sometimes make me squirm slightly – not enough to rattle the chair, but enough to rearrange a few dust particles), but I take issue with something in this one. It’s about the pope and the ructions last week, and what to make of it.

    The cover of last week’s New Statesman, for example, proclaims of the dead Pope that ‘he did more to spread Aids in Africa than prostitution and the trucking industry combined’. By opposing the use of condoms, the argument went, the church had created intense and unnecessary suffering.
    But this won’t do, either. The church has only succeeded in Africa by tolerating polygamy, and, as the Statesman admits, its teaching on birth control hasn’t prevented a dramatic drop in family sizes in some African countries. It seems unlikely, therefore, that the church is being magically obeyed on condoms, while being ignored on everything else. In other words, where doctrine conflicts with culture, doctrine loses. It wasn’t the Pope that done it.

    Wait. One, Aaronovitch doesn’t know (or if he does he certainly doesn’t say) how many people in Africa do ‘magically’ obey the church on condoms. Two, is it likely that the number of people obeying the church on condoms is actually zero? None at all? Surely not. If not, doesn’t that dismissal seem a little quick? A tad hasty? It does to me. Three, the stakes are high – a horrible lingering early death that often leaves destitute orphans, some of whom go into prostitution for want of alternatives and soon die of AIDS themselves, leaving even more destitute siblings – so again the dismissal seems too quick. Four, what about the rest of the world? Especially the rest of the Third World? The Vatican’s murderous condom-ban was certainly not confined to Africa; it was global. Five, as is well known, there is already difficulty in getting men to use condoms, because men don’t like wearing them; the more subordinated women are, the harder it is for them to insist that men wear condoms; this is especially true for prostitutes – some of whom are the very young daughters of AIDS victims and other destitute people; therefore any religious edict that could give an apparent moral or religious gloss to men’s reluctance to wear them will be warmly welcomed and used by many men who will cheerfully ignore other religious edicts; such religious edicts are therefore extremely, lethally harmful to women. And six, even if not one person on the planet heeded the Vatican’s ban, it would still be wicked and disgusting of the pope to have tried it. Bottomlessly disgusting. Mindless, superstitious, pointless, stupid, and savagely cruel. The putative ‘reason’ for the church’s ridiculous insistence on banning contraception is so wildly out of proportion to its disastrous possible effects – a horrible slow degrading miserable death at an early age – that it’s surely beyond defense. And that’s the relevant point when talking about the pope, isn’t it? The fact that he tried to ban condoms, not whether or not he succeeded? He wanted to succeed, and that’s an incredibly bad, savage thing to have wanted to do. He was a bad man. Yes no doubt he meant well by his own lights – but he was desperately wrong about the lights, wasn’t he.

    No, I much prefer Polly Toynbee’s take on this one. Toynbee rocks, as Chris Whiley said in sending me the link.

    With the clash of two state funerals and a wedding, unreason is in full flood this week. Yet again, rationalists who thought they understood this secular, sceptical age have been shocked at the coverage from Rome. The BBC airwaves have disgraced themselves. The Mail went mad with its front-page headlines, “Safe in Heaven” and the next day “Amen”. Even this august organ, which sprang from the loins of nonconformist dissent, astounded many readers with its broad acres of Pope reverencing.

    We had some idiotic headlines here, too. Of course that’s less suprising here – sad to say.

    It shows how far people have forgotten what the church really is, how profoundly ignorant and indifferent they have become to history and theology. Hell, he was just a good ol’ boy, wore white, blessed folk, prayed for peace – why not?…The Vatican is not a charming Monaco for tourists collecting Ruritanian stamps or gazing at past glories in the Sistine Chapel. It is a modern, potent force for cruelty and hypocrisy…With its ban on condoms the church has caused the death of millions of Catholics and others in areas dominated by Catholic missionaries, in Africa and right across the world. In countries where 50% are infected, millions of very young Aids orphans are today’s immediate victims of the curia. Refusing support to all who offer condoms, spreading the lie that the Aids virus passes easily through microscopic holes in condoms – this irresponsibility is beyond all comprehension.

    That’s more like it. It really is beyond comprehension. The more you think about it the more beyond comprehension it is. They must have known their ban would cause people to get a horrible fatal illness – and yet that didn’t stop them. It is hard to understand.

    This is said often, even in this unctuous week – and yet still it does not permeate. He was a good, caring man nevertheless, they say, as if it were a minor aberration. But genuflecting before this corpse is scarcely different to parading past Lenin: they both put extreme ideology before human life and happiness, at unimaginable human cost.

    In 1971 I interviewed Mother Teresa and asked how she justified letting starving babies be born to die on Calcutta streets for lack of contraception. She said sublimely that every baby entering the world was another soul created in praise of God, even if it lived only a few hours. She was never keen on cures: suffering was a gift of God that enabled those who cared for the afflicted to demonstrate their love. She was beatified by John Paul II for their shared religious mania. Those who met them talk of an aura of love, power, listening and intensity. But goodness is in doing good; good intent is no excuse for murderous error.

    Another soul created in praise of God, even for only a few hours. How beautiful, how ‘spiritual’ – except that the praise-hungry god doesn’t exist, while the woman who had the baby that died does.

    At the funeral will be a convocation of mullahs, rabbis and all the other medieval faiths that increasingly conspire together against modernity. Islamic groups are sternly warning the Vatican to stand firm against liberal influences on homosexuality, abortion, contraception and the ordination of women. What is it about religion that unites them all on sex? It always expresses itself as disgust for women’s bodies, leading to a need to suppress women altogether. Why is controlling women’s bodies the shared battle flag of every faith?

    Because women are sluts, obviously. Hail Mary.

  • A fresh breeze in the labour movement in Iran

    Fariborz Pooya: What’s the news in the labour movement in Iran?

    Bahram Soroush: There are many strikes that are taking place. They follow the recent successful textile workers’ strike in the city of Sanandaj, western Iran, which we have talked about on the TV previously.

    Fariborz Pooya: What were the demands of the strikers?

    Bahram Soroush: They had a series of demands: reinstatement of six sacked workers; payment of overdue wages, improvement of health and safety, an end to contract work, and the revoking of the disciplinary rules. Those were the main issues around which the strike took place. An important point to bear in mind is that this was a long-running strike; it went on for 17 days. It received a lot of support from the people in the city and from around the country, from workers in other industries, as well as from the labour movement internationally. The workers remained very united, despite the fact that the management and the government tried to intimidate the workers back to work.

    Fariborz Pooya: Effectively, it turned into a national dispute. Everybody was focusing on it and there was daily reporting of the strike on TV International.

    Bahram Soroush: On New Channel TV (which TV International is broadcast on) we had two live programmes about the strike in Farsi. As you know, the New Channel TV runs 24 hours a day. The textile workers and their families could follow the programmes live, and they were very happy that the strike was being covered on the TV. A lot of people from around the world called in to offer their support. The Iranian regime was saying this is a political strike because the Worker-communist Party of Iran (WPI) is involved. They said the WPI is showing it on its TV and is supporting it. The workers responded by saying, ‘meet our demands, so nobody will be involved’!

    Fariborz Pooya: Absolutely.

    Bahram Soroush: The radicalisation of the workers’ movement was very evident. That just shows the new developments in the labour movement in Iran.

    Fariborz Pooya: That’s quite significant, because everybody in the city of Sanandaj could follow the strike as it unfolded. So it wasn’t as if the workers were facing the management and the oppressive forces of the Islamic government on their own. The government had to face not only the workers, but the people of Sanandaj and, to some extent, the whole of the people of Iran. Also, international opinion was constantly putting pressure on the Islamic government. Many trade unions from around the world in fact responded to the request and put their support behind the textile workers.

    Bahram Soroush: Exactly. 51 Union Locals in the USA wrote solidarity letters. Oil workers in Norway supported the strike. The ICFTU (International Confederation of Free Trade Unions) actively supported the strike, just as they had done previously. The Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU) in British Columbia, Canada, supported the workers, writing protest letters to the president of the Islamic Republic, Mohammad Khatami. There was support from the public sector workers in Canada as well. These are just examples of the support we saw. So, as you rightly say, it became a national issue and the government sensed that as well. For them the victory or defeat of the strike was going to be decisive because the outcome of other strikes would depend on that. The other point is that although the strike was successful, what you are now witnessing is that the Information Ministry (the regime’s secret police) has started to intimidate workers’ representatives. The workers kept a united rank and voice by holding general assemblies. So whenever their representatives, who were elected by the general assembly, were threatened, they asked the management to come and face the assembly. That’s because they had the backing of the assembly. So holding general assemblies became like a tradition, and that’s something the Worker-communist Party of Iran and its predecessor organisations have been advocating for about 25 years. Workers’ general assemblies could be the precursors of a workers’ council movement in Iran. They allow the workers to exercise their will, directly, and increase their power and unity. So that was very significant. What’s happening now is that the Information Ministry is summoning the strikers’ representatives, in particular Mr Farshid Beheshtizad and Mr Sheis Amani, to the Information Ministry and making threats on a daily basis. That’s why the campaign in their defence is continuing.

    Fariborz Pooya: So this is the campaign in support of the textile workers. Interestingly, the other sections of the workers’ movement in Iran came out openly in support. The workers of a plant in Sanandaj (Shaho) in fact dedicated a piece of music (‘Life is Life’) to them and solidarity messages were sent from different factories and workplaces in support of the workers. The strike was successful not only in the way the workers conducted the strike – holding general assemblies, electing representatives, successfully confronting the government – but also in igniting a wave of solidarity acts and networks in Iran.

    Bahram Soroush: If you cast your mind back to a few years ago in Iran, it was very rare, because of the repression and the brutal suppression of the workers’ movement in Iran, for workers to come out openly in support of each other. But during the past six months to a year we are witnessing that workers more openly and publicly are supporting each other. So we had groups of workers from different industries sending solidarity messages – for example, from the huge Iran Khodro car manufacturing company, as well as from Mashinsazi-e Tabriz, a large engineering tools manufacturer. Let me also mention another point about the strike which I believe made it significant. One of the demands of the strike was the payment of the wages for the strike period. This is very interesting and refreshing. And that demand was won too. The workers really fought against all the odds. You see, during the previous episodes of the strike, the factory had been surrounded by the security forces, by the military, and workers even managed to break that. The strike received tremendous support, which was crucial.

    Fariborz Pooya: So a combination of very clear demands, knowing what to do, TV International constantly broadcasting the news of the strike on live programmes, and solidarity from the international labour movement and by various sections of the workers in Iran actually led to the success of the strike. Recently, another group of workers near the Caspian Sea, the workers at Foomenat factory – who are textile workers as well – have been on strike. What has been happening there?

    Bahram Soroush: Probably the reason we are hearing a lot from the textile workers’ strikes – and there have been a number of them – is because of the privatisation and the contracting out that is taking place in that industry. Actually, that is one of the issues uniting a lot of the sectors in Iran. The workers are afraid that the government and the employers are turning all contracts into temporary, often three-monthly, contracts, which is leading to a tremendous deterioration of the conditions in terms of job security, pay, benefits and protections. So the workers are taking a lot of strike actions around that issue and also on the issue of non-payment of wages, or overdue wages, which is an acute issue. If you bear in mind how low the level of workers’ pay in Iran already is, which even with overtime work is not enough to eke out a living for many workers’ families, you can imagine the disastrous consequences of that. The workers of Foomenat Spinning and Weaving Company in northern Iran have not been paid for 11 months! The workers were holding a protest assembly in front of the factory when riot police savagely attacked them, resulting in a number of injuries, with some workers ending up in hospital with broken limbs. We know that the Iranian regime has done that previously, and its record is one of killing, torture, imprisonment of workers and workers’ leaders, the smashing of labour organisations, etc., in its 25-year existence. The difference is that now the regime finds itself on the defensive. So the security forces quickly denied that they had attacked the workers and said that in fact they cared for workers! Of course, they talked rubbish, because the evidence was there, but what’s important is that now they have to go on denial from the next day. The workers are continuing with that fight. That incident has received widespread coverage in Iran and led to outrage among the people. The Foomenat workers have said they intend to sue those responsible for the attack.

    As in the Foomenat strike, the issues around which workers are organising are more and more general issues, common to all workers, such as non-payment of wages, threats of redundancies, contracting out, and the dramatic rise in temporary and even so-called ‘blank’ (with no terms and conditions specified) contracts, which is creating, as the workers have called it, slave labour. The difference with six months ago, a year ago, is that the mood in the labour movement has changed. The demands are not just defensive, but increasingly offensive, with workers calling for improvement in conditions, pay increases, etc. Of course, it is still early days, but we are seeing a fresh breeze in the labour movement. That is what is interesting.

    Fariborz Pooya: So the demands of Foomenat textile workers are still outstanding. They are calling on various solidarity organisations to express support for their struggle, first of all condemning the fact that they have been brutally suppressed, and also putting pressure on the Iranian government and demanding that they meet the workers’ demands.

    The above is a transcript of a TV International interview conducted by Fariborz Pooya on March 7, 2005.

  • Quebec Government: Sharia Out of the Question

    `Door is closed and will remain closed,’ justice minister says.

  • Malaria, DDT, Africa, the Environment

    Is DDT the best way to prevent malaria?

  • Roger Kimball on ‘On Bullshit’

    Bullshitter as performance artist, keener to make an impression than tell the truth.

  • Lynn Margulis on Ernst Mayr

    An appreciation of Harvard’s visionary of modern evolutionary synthesis.

  • Andrea Dworkin 1946-2005

    Feminist activist and writer.

  • Victim of Bullying Sues Posh School

    A school tradition for boys to hit with cricket stumps, billiard cues, belts.

  • Postal Voting Makes Intimidation Easier

    Particularly of women by men, Nick Cohen points out.

  • Time to Get Really Scared

    When a Senator excuses murderous violence against judges as understandable reaction to their decisions.

  • Legislator and Philosopher Discuss Florida Bill

    ‘Dogmatic’ professors who don’t want to teach ID…

  • Toynbee Nails Papal Funeral Travesty

    ‘With its ban on condoms the church has caused the death of millions.’

  • Anti-Japanese Protests Spread to South China

    Japan’s disputes with China and South Korea rooted in differences over the past.

  • Many Chinese Say Textbooks Whitewash Occupation

    Nanjing massacre of 250,000 called ‘incident.’

  • One Thing to Learn

    This is good fun – although a few of the answers will give people like Philip Blond fits. But that’s good, that will give him something to talk about next time he’s on the radio. No doubt producers are calling him all the time, now that he’s an expert on What’s Wrong With Science.

    Anyway. Lots of good ones.

    I would teach the world the importance of staying actively intellectually engaged throughout our lives, especially as we become elderly. There are good data now that point to the fact that continuing to challenge yourself late in life — taking up a new hobby, learning to play a musical instrument, doing crossword puzzles, etc — actually helps to maintain cognitive function, and protects against the onset of cognitive decline.

    Yeah. I did one or two N&Cs on that nun study a few months ago. And it would be worth doing even without the protective effect – though the protective effect means you can do it that much longer, so it comes to the same thing.

    Paranormal phenomena do not exist. Magic, witchcraft, mind-reading, clairvoyance, faith healing and similar practices do not work and never have worked. It makes a crucial difference whether we imagine ourselves surrounded by supernatural beings and happenings or whether instead we see ourselves in a world that science can help us understand.

    Tell it, brother.

    Science is not a catalogue of facts, but a search for new mysteries. Science increases the store of wonder and mystery in the world; it does not erode it. The myth that science gets rid of mysteries, started by the Romantic poets, was well nailed by Albert Einstein —whose thought experiments about relativity are far more otherworldly, elusive, thrilling, and baffling than anything dreamt up by poets.

    Beautiful. Take that, Philip Blond!

    Frighteningly, most people do not understand Darwin’s great insight…Once you see it —copy, vary, select; copy, vary, select —you see that design by natural selection simply has to happen…Then, the scary implications follow. If everyone understood evolution, then the tyranny of religious memes would be weakened, and we little humans might find a better way to live in this pointless universe.

    Yeah, but then we’d miss the fun of an occasional papal funeral. Are we sure that would be a good idea?

    I would teach the world that scientists start by trying very hard to disprove what they hope is true. When they fail, they have a good reason for believing what they hope is true, and can even convince others of its truth. A scientist always acknowledges the possibility of error, and is less likely to be mistaken than one who always claims to be right.

    Yeah but if everyone did that then we’d miss the fun of stuff like papal infallibility and mullahs telling everyone what to do. Are we sure that would be a good idea?

  • History Protests at Japanese Embassy in Beijing

    Japan approved school books which China says gloss over Japanese atrocities.

  • New History Textbook Prompts Rock-throwing

    Truth in history does matter then…?