News and views from SA Canada Holy smoke! How about equal time?

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Saturation coverage by the corpo­ rate media of a recent resignation and election in Vatican City showed how the ruling rich impose certain ideas.

Even in an increasingly secular world, privileged elites continue brazenly to push ideological opiates. It helps them, I suppose, that in Pope Francis the pa­ triarchal plutocracy has found a supersalesman for its damaged goods. The inconvenient fact that the former Car­ dinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio cooperated “We have nearly six unemployed workers for every vacancy. Even if a (skills training) policy somehow suc­ ceeded in filling every current vacancy, more than a million Canadians would remain unemployed.” That’s what Erin Weir, an economist with the United Steelworkers Union, told the Toron­ to Star on March 21, the day before the federal Conservative government tabled its budget in Parliament.

But Tory Finance Minister Jim Fla­ herty would not be swayed. The stated goals of his budget are to cut costs, re­ duce the deficit and balance the books by 2015—so he can deliver more tax cuts to the well off. His mantra is “bol­ ster confidence and growth.” Sadly, the main thing growing is the gap between the affluent few, and the many who are struggling to survive.

Like his Conservative and Liberal pre­ National Geographic Channel — Canada In March, the TV series “Border Security,” which airs on the National Geographic Channel, participated in a raid by border agents at an East Vancouver construction site.

The Canada Border Services Agen­ cy’s inland enforcement team ar­ rested eight workers from a number of countries for alleged immigration offences. The CBSA claimed it was looking for one individual at the condo development site, and not at­ tempting to sensationalize the situ­ ation.

However, “documentary” filmmaking of this type, produced by the Vancouver company Force Four En­ tertainment, seems to dovetail nice­ ly with the federal government’s obsession with intensified security, more prisons, longer jail sentences, stripping some dual citizens of their Canadian citizenship (Bill C-425), with a brutal military dictatorship in his native Argentina seems overshadowed by other scandals—such as Catholic Church protection of child molesters in its priestly ranks.

But how can the gross extent of the fawning coverage the Catholic rite re­ ceived be explained? Is all that atten­ tion somehow due to its “popularity?” Not according to the numbers.

The conservative Pew Research Cen­ tre reports that Christianity encom­ passes 2.2 billion people, 32 per cent of the total world population. About half that number, 16 per cent, is Roman Catholic—which is, by the way, a very generous estimate given the acres of empty pews on Sunday. Pew says that Islam claims 23 per cent, Hinduism 15 per cent, Buddhism 7 per cent.

Well, guess which philosophical out­ look equals or surpasses most of those? Atheism, agnosticism or “no religious affiliation.” That is the fastest growing section, at 16 per cent. primate, an ayatollah, a dalai lama, or a chief rabbi? Can you think of a time, even in the so-called “Western democ­ racies,” when someone representing a scientific outlook on philosophy or eth­ ics was given equal time with, or the op­ portunity to rebutt, religious supersti­ tion on mainstream TV or radio?

Off course you can’t. That is because religious propaganda is promoted by the establishment. Whether the indi­ vidual big shots believe in it or not, they know religion massively supports the institutions of a racist, sexist, increas­ ingly unequal society—the one not so affectionately known as capitalism.

Surely, one hopes, things will change. And indeed they will. After all, nothing is permanent but change. But don’t hold your breathe for radical church reform. A world socialist revolution is much more likely than the advent of a Black, lesbian, feminist pope. Besides, the revolution will be much more socially satisfying. n

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Reality TV shows harassment of migrant workers