Link It, or it never happened...

A collection of various links and stories. From me to you. Enjoy.

The biggest news in Toronto: A Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) worker (he takes subway fares from people) is caught napping on the job. Why is it such a sensation? It's another straw on the fire as people are fed up with the horrible service, rude employees, and fare increases. Most of the ire is directed at the union whose job it is to protect the rude employees who make as much as Registered Nurses or other similarly skilled workers.

Official responses to the story: TTC promises an investigation, the union's only response is to blame the photo taker for not trying to wake their sleeping employee, and said employee actually says on the record, "God bless the Union." Toronto public respond by snapping more pictures of sleeping employees and employees watching videos in the booth. If I had a union who protected me from being fired I might sleep on the job and be rude as well. I for one have personally experienced the outlandish rudeness of said employees though have yet to see a sleeping one - though I often see them doing crosswords or reading the newspaper. Yet another reason that slowly pushes me from pro-union to anti-union...

Africa = AIDS. According to Twitter, it's true!

Remember a while back when I wrote piece on using images of Starving Children in Africa? What, you don't? Well, it seems to be the most viewed page on my blog. I also found a chap who works in Ethiopia that seems to agree with me and wrote a great post on Poverty Porn, check it out.

Want to know more about Haiti's history? Did you know it was the first independent nation in Latin America and the first black-led republic in the world? Check out these two books which I am in the process of reading, The Black Jacobins by CLR James and Avengers of the New World by Laurent Dubois.

I've been following a great blog by a photographer in Liberia. Great photos to check out at Scarlett Lion.

Big news today: Ethiopian Airlines jet goes down off of Lebanon. Despite this, they remain one of the best, safest, most reliable airline on the continent - I would gladly fly them again.

The Holy See (And what he doesn't see)

As you may (or may not) have heard, the Pope is currently on a tour of Africa and has followed in his precursor's steps by confirming that the Catholic church is against the use of condoms - and that, in fact, condoms are contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Let me say a couple things. The Pope is absolutely correct when he says the only sure-fire way to stop HIV/AIDS is abstinence. He is also 100% correct when he says that condoms alone will not stop the tide of HIV/AIDS.

But there are far more things that he is simply turning a blind eye to. The first and most important is this: Abstinence is a good idea but it is simply not reality for most people. The goal of faith communities should be to engage with the real world. Caedmon's Call (on an old old album) had the lyrics, "How can I preserve and light the way for a world I can't admit I'm in?" People are having sex with multiple partners, Catholics are having sex with multiple partners - heck, even some priests are having sex with multiple partners. That doesn't mean it is right, but it is most certainly reality. For those who preach abstinence as the only way to attack HIV/AIDS, they are closing their eyes to reality.

I don't believe condoms are the answer to HIV/AIDS. I don't believe there is one answer. We must piece together many prongs of attack of which condoms is one that has proven to work in some situations. There has been tons of work with condoms in Africa and despite some serious deficiencies, the work has certainly helped people stay HIV/AIDS free. For someone with the clout of the Pope (or the President) to come out and say condoms are a sin seriously hampers the good work that is going on in Africa with condoms. The Pope has, by what he said, most certainly caused someone in Africa, this minute, to be infected with HIV - someone who might have used a condom except that the Pope told him on the radio that it was wrong.

It frustrates me to no end when I hear respected leaders spout off about what is right or wrong for people in Africa - especially when what they say is in direct opposition to the facts. It makes me even more upset when these leaders use God to gain currency for their ideas.

At the bottom of the CBC article there is space for people to comment. The highest rated comment on this article was, "Organized religion is the worst thing to happen to God." I clicked, Agree.