As for Thought for the Day, it seems unnecessary to discuss the absurdity of a select group of individuals being given this platform simply because they are inclined towards one of six of the world’s many religious persuasions. It is as insulting to the religious as it is the irreligious, but they will no doubt continue to consider themselves entitled to exercise this discriminatory privilege.

What I’ve found far more infuriating than that though is the speakers’ empty or ill-informed opinions. For any individual to be given an uninterrupted slot during the Today programme, they should have something of substance to say. They should be people with experience or expertise in the topics they are tasked to discuss (that being any of the range of things currently occurring in this complex world). Instead we have a group of people who have no particular knowledge of the topics they speak on but insist on disseminating their vacuous views to their audience despite that. This makes Thought for the Day little more than a middle class microdose of Live From Studio Five.

Received pronunciation does not intelligent speech make.

I’ve said pretty much those very words before about Iran, and probably elsewhere too. That’s because both Iran and Haiti and many other countries have been subjected to the post-colonial economic oppression of the West, and the most recent disaster will no doubt provide opportunities for more of the the same.

So it’s interesting that Winkett suggests ‘we’ should use our superior expertise to “offer help to re-imagine for the long-term what a good city can be”. Here’s what Brian Concannon, the director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, has to say about the formation of Haitian cities under the tutelage of the West (the US government, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the UN etc.) :

Those people [city/slum-dwelling earthquake victims] got there because they or their parents were intentionally pushed out of the countryside by aid and trade policies specifically designed to create a large captive and therefore exploitable labour force in the cities; by definition they are people who would not be able to afford to build earthquake resistant houses.

It’s not like the West, wealthy as we are, shouldn’t help Haiti out of catastrophe and towards prosperity, it’s just that we should offer them help without attaching strings that pull apart the democratic process and tie them up in poverty so we can go to Walmart or Asda and fill shopping trolleys with dirt cheap t-shirts. We should offer them a chance to be ruled by the leaders they elect and allow them the freedom to build their country in their image, not Washington’s or London’s.

We should stop thinking we know best or even have the best intentions. Our nations contain plenty of poverty, misery and inequality masked by the glass and steel façades of our modern metropolises. Haiti needs agrarian reform in the countryside, not overcrowded cities filled with the ramshackle shacks sewing XXL seams pays for.

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Not to knock Lionel, who once again shared with us his first-hand experience (that’s not a reference to my inappropriate remark) but this is a topic on which it would benefit listeners to hear someone like Claire Rayner talk. Not because she has herself been a contributor to an alternative Thought for the Day, but because she’s a former nurse who has interesting and insightful things to say about the nature of modern nursing. Perhaps if she was a nurse, journalist, agony aunt, broadcaster and churchgoer they might have given her a slot. She happens to be a humanist though, so her views are unfit for the airwaves without the interruption of John, James, Sarah, Evan or Justin. Shame, that.

It’s a bit dated now, but perhaps you’ll find this interesting all the same.

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The earth isn’t just beautiful like the alien world in Avatar (which I still haven’t been to see yet because I still a haven’t seen Pocahontas and I like to see the originals before the remakes) but it’s also fearsome and ferocious and grrrrr. So we have to respect it because the Pope said so and also ’stewardship’ is a word that Christians shoehorning environmentalism into their belief system like to use.

While that’s all well and irrelevant, Pepinster also shoehorned Haiti into her ramblings on Gaia and other guff saying that:

time after time, as details emerge of what happens to people caught up in these natural events, it becomes apparent that the situation is made worse by a lack of respect for the earth. Buildings which bury innocent people beneath their rubble have been erected by others without due regard to the fault lines they are sitting on or suitable construction techniques.

The situation is not made worse by lack of respect for the earth, it is made worse by lack of respect for people. Haitians aren’t an industrial megapower pumping carbon and toxins into the environment, they’re a poor people oppressed by megapowers. The slums of Haiti are built like dominoes waiting to fall at the first tremor because they have been kept in a state of enforced poverty. People are going to suffer in the aftermath because Haiti lacks some of the basic infrastructure that countries allowed to develop rely on to rescue survivors and care for them.

Our religious talky people seem more concerned either about their own personal and spiritual dilemmas or about spuriously retrospective theology than they are about understanding why people suffer and how their suffering is made worse by the ‘kingly rule’ of a few over the many.

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I have as yet to do any in-depth reading on Haiti, but I’ve gleaned some of the analysis and context that has been provided by informed thinkers on the topic and would simply like to provide a couple of links that might prove illuminating of a particular narrative, that being the power narrative. Haiti has for years been crushed under the oppressive weight of the West, particularly the US government which, through organisations like the IMF, have squeezed the life blood out of the country. The quake has had an exaggeratedly catastrophic impact on Haitians because the miserably impoverished always suffer more when disaster strikes.

For some context, follow this link to watch an interview with Randall Robinson, founder of global justice organisation, TransAfrica. Here is a pertinent extract from what he had to say:

Of course, President Bush was responsible for destroying Haitian democracy in 2004, when he and American forces abducted President Aristide and his wife, taking them off to Africa, and they are now in South Africa. President Clinton has largely sponsored a program of economic development that supports the idea of sweatshops. Haitians in Haiti today make 38 cents an hour. They don’t make a high enough wage to pay for their lunch and transportation to and from work. But this is the kind of economic program that President Clinton has supported. I think that is sad, that these two should be joined in this kind of effort. It sends, I think, the wrong kind of signal.

Follow this link to watch Naomi Klein discuss the approach endorsed by the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation. Their advice that the US capitalises on the disaster to secure their own concerns is typical of US foreign (and domestic) policy. She also discusses the context further, and warns against the very real danger that the suffering of the Haitian people will be used as a pretext to force an unwanted economic agenda upon them that will perpetuate their misery to satisfy foreign interests.

The reason I refer to this narrative (and it is a narrative, requiring prayer critical digestion) is because the Christian voices we hear seem entirely unable to criticise power, or perhaps simply unaware of the way its uneven distribution continues to crush the weak. With some history in Britain of protestant groups challenging authority and empowering the people, you might think there would be at least some discussion of power; but no. At least liberation theology in South America has played a role in revitalising people’s movements in recent times. But I wonder if all those things Jesus said in defence of the poor were undermined by his advocacy of rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.

Economic tyranny is an evil that has doubled the suffering of Haitians in this disaster, and may prolong their suffering in its wake. It’s about time that Christians started telling Caesar to go fuck himself, but as long as they’re established, they are Caesar, so perhaps they should go fuck themselves. In the meantime we should all give what we can spare and pray on it educate ourselves about how power works in the world and speak out against all forms of oppression.

Here’s a pithy place to start regarding Haiti.

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This is one of those few stories that gives the broadsheets an excuse to talk about sex and sell a few more papers on the back of the promise that salacious details might be found within. And it’s one of those many stories that gives people like Kelvin MacKenzie a little needed excuse to be a cunt. He commented during Question Time that Iris Robinson should be the new face of the Northern Irish tourist board “because, you know, you’ve got golf courses and lakes; well, they don’t do much good; well, why don’t they put Mrs Robinson on; ‘come over to Ireland, boys…’” Cue much deserved boos and hisses. Twat.

Brook decided to use it as reason to discuss hypocrisy at great length. Hypocrisy on the part of Iris Robinson seems certain. There’s the dodgy financial dealings, of course, and also the affair. Not least because it involved apparently lying to her husband, but because she is known for her strictly biblical views on homosexuality. Two men loving each other faithfully is an ‘abomination’ to her, but being unfaithful whilst loving two men was apparently permissible. An investigation may or may not clear Peter Robinson of hypocrisy but given that he shared wife’s views, it still won’t clear him of bigotry.

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