People Who Ruin it for everyone

So there is a Rule hear on Arbitration. I wait one month after a major disaster before I talk about how I like to jerk off to the body count. okay I do not actually do that, but in a very Carlin-esque way I love watching disasters. I work in an industry (life insurance) where death is a fact of life, and can even be seen as the cost of doing business. so when I watch a city disappear because most of the homes were not built to any sort of safety regulation, and in regions explicitly flagged off from development because they were not safe to build on, I admit I laugh.

Seeing one of the poorest countries on the planet almost literally collapse to non existence in terms of governance, and exist as a pseudo anarchy has been fascinating. The fact that it HAS turned into a survival of the fittest scenario and WORKED indicates that sometimes we just need to leave other peoples problems alone.

lets face it the relief effort in Haiti, has been another colossal failure. Medicine is not getting to proper people, language barriers (Creole is not French UN Peacekeepers!) are causing hostility, and a society who used to revere the dead to the point of graves being more elaborate then homes, are no kicking as many people into deep holes as possible and trying to move on.

there is no greater example of people failing to help however, then the story of ten Baptist-Christian Missionaries from Idaho. In this case, ten people have tried to take about 30 children they declared orphans across Haiti's border to the Dominican Republic for eventual adoption by American families. they now sit in a half demolished prison cell awaiting child trafficking charges

the problem of course was, some of these kids were not orphans. Yes there were some parents who gave away their children in hopes for a better life, some other children where, on a fundamental level, kidnapped from parents.

as a result of this case, many of the life saving medivacs that have taken children from hati to nearby Miami, Florida or aboard hospital ships like the USS Comfort have ground to a stand still.there is a mountain of paperwork that is supposed to be done when a child is to be removed from Haitian soil. in the immediate aftermath of the Earthquake, a lot of that paperwork (by necessity) was waived in favor of saving lives. in light of this however, what is left of Haitian law enforcement is spent on making sure NO CHILDREN leave Haitian soil.

when one listens to the stories of these ten missionaries, you get the sense that they had no idea what the hell they were doing. It almost sounds like ten idiots with no sense of protocol or sense were closing their eyes and letting their God point them where they should go and what they should do. I am all for making it up as I go along, but that usually applies for things like dinner menus.

the end result however is that yet again we have a group of religious nut jobs, who by their actions have made life hard on the rest of the world. like any Islamic Terrorist their choices are costing lives every day, and making a government paranoid and over protective of its people.

for 100,000 years human beings have used the Gods and Demons we worship for whatever reason as a good excuse for doing anything. and it has erupted into wars, changes in a nations governance, persecution of minorities, and abuse of our fellow man.

I am not saying that human beings must reject religion, far from it. What I do think we as a species need to do though is stop accepting religion as an acceptable argument to justify ANYTHING. We need to have a higher standard, a higher and more universal rulebook that applies not to the spiritual world, but the physical one. with something like 5 major religions and over 50 sects combined therein, too of "God's Laws" intersect each other.

"God told me to take this children and provide a better life for them!"

Thats great, the world wide rule book says that you need to make sure, along with one of our state department reps, that these kids are actually orphans, here is a ton of paper work to fill out, in the mean time this hospital needs triage nurses, so the other nine of you follow me."