Via LabourStart, news from that workers’ paradise Dubai, where 45 Indian construction workers have been imprisoned for:

illegal gatherings, vandalism, and violating public security following their participation in a strike last year for better working conditions.

In Jordan, 176 Vietnamese garment workers have been attacked by police for striking to protest against their exploitation:

The workers were promised wages of 220 USD a month in Jordan, but once they arrived, their employer confiscated their personal documents, forced them to work for up to 16 hours a day, and paid them between 80 and 150 USD per month.

To force the workers to return to their jobs, the company cut off food and offered compensation only to those who were the most productive. Ten days later, while the majority of the workers were still on strike, the employer called the police. Many workers were injured during the assault.

Meanwhile Indian workers are seeking action against traffickers:

The workers are demanding that the U.S. Department of Justice open a criminal investigation against their traffickers and that it act to ensure that future workers and their families do not face the same modern-day slavery. Reportedly, on the same day a law suit has been filed on behalf of about 500 Indian dock workers. The 82-page complaint accuses Signal International, a marine construction company, and American and Indian recruiters Malvern Burnett and Dewan Consultants respectively, of subjecting over 500 Indian workers to forced labour, trafficking, fraud and civil rights violations.

To return briefly to Tibet, in Letters to a Young Contrarian, Christopher Hitchens writes of:

[T]he unashamed recommendations of the mindless […] offered to us every day. In place of honest disputation we are offered platitudes about ‘healing’. The idea of ‘unity’ is granted huge privilege over any notion of ‘division’ or, worse, ‘divisiveness’. I cringe every time I hear denunciations of the ‘politics of division’–as if politics was not division by definition.

On cue, the god-king-in-exile of Tibet pops up and utters blandishments of the ‘why can’t we all get along’ variety, and says Tibetan independence is ‘no option’, offering to resign ‘if violent protests in Tibet get out of hand’.

Quick! Somebody give him a pen and paper.

His concilliatory approach to China has been criticised by Tibetans, who have condemned his ‘middle way’, demanding nothing less than full independence. In fact those of a cynical bent might think the Dalai Lama was manouevring for something.

The Dalai Lama can stick his ‘middle way’ up his jumper! Independence and self-determination for Tibet!

According to researchers at the Paris School of Economics and the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research in Vienna, religious believers have “higher levels of life satisfaction”.

Study leader Andrew Clark says that believers are better able to cope with life’s tribulations. He also suggests that religion acts as a protective “buffer”, and adds that believers are happy in the here and now, rather than focusing on the promise of eternal life:

“What we found was that religious people were experiencing current day rewards, rather than storing them up for the future.”

There are, however, a number of caveats attached to this, and these include the influences of lifestyle and upbringing, and the stability of family life and relationships.

The researchers surely know that correlation does not imply causation, but still they appear to claim that religion is a force for good. Clark goes so far as to conjecture that the supposed benefits of religion might stem from an increased “purpose of life” felt by believers:

On the other hand…

“These findings are consistent with other studies which suggest that religion does have a positive effect, although there are other views which say that religion can lead to self-doubt, and failure, and thereby have a negative effect.

“The belief that religion damages people is still in the minds of many.”

I think it’s safe to say that people who live without hope are joyless creatures. And hope, in whatever form it comes, can provide at least temporary respite from life’s disappointments. But religious hope is at root illusory, and it is difficult to understand how anyone with an open and enquiring mind could allow themselves to be fooled by it.

The obvious conclusion is that religious believers are either stupid, or, as is more often the case, they wilfully anaesthetise themselves to reality.

In his “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”, Karl Marx wrote:

Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again… The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”

Surely it is better to be open-minded and aware than closed and insensate.