doberman pizza. a baha'i (bahai, bahá'í) blog.

shame on me for not posting about this earlier! the Baha’i community of Vietnam, after many years of patience, elected its National Spiritual Assembly this year for the first time since the mid-1970s. the procedures for recognition were set in motion several years ago, coming to a head at Naw-Ruz of 2007, when the Vietnamese government issued a certificate to the Baha’i community authorizing their operations in the country. The final certificate, granting full recognition as a religious community, was presented to the community this July. From the Baha’i World News Service:

A certificate was presented to representatives of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Vietnam at a ceremony on 25 July.

It was the final act in a series of steps that included the election four months ago of the Baha’i Assembly – itself a landmark event in that it was the first time in many years that elections for the governing council were held. Government representatives were on hand to observe the balloting.

[…] The official government news agency reported the event and referred to comments by the chairman of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is, Mr. Nguyen Thuc: “(He) said the Government’s recognition of the Baha’i religion ‘charts a new course of development for the entire Baha’i community’ and motivates followers to make more contributions to social and humanitarian activities and to drive to preserve traditional spiritual values.”

Accolades and congratulations have followed steadily from government, institutions and sister Baha’i communities throughout the world, with one of the latest expressions of praise coming from Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister, Truong Vinh Trong, who “expressed his appreciation of the Baha’i Faith’s philosophy and its active contributions to the community”.

more kidney stone craziness. i ended up in the emergency room lately with nasty kidney stone pain, which of course, has often been described as the worst pain imaginable, second only to childbirth (a minority of women report that kidney stones are worse). after getting nice and morphined up, the doctors had me zapped with x-rays, ultrasound and the kitchen sink to find out that the 1cm stone that came out of my kidney last year had shrunk to 8mm (yay -_-) and had moved down to just above the bladder (O_O). zounds. does that mean this whole episode might soon be over? my next step is to call up my urologist and book an appointment, hopefully to blast the living daylights out of the stone before I get even more attacks. so yeah. exciting health news. kidney stones are bad craziness. my dad was particularly worried about me, especially after hearing about the tens of thousands of children in China who got kidney stones after drinking melamine-tainted milk and/or milk products. apparently the levels aren’t as dangerous for adults, but damn is that ever messed up. you’ve got to be a pretty callous monster to put an industrial chemical like melamine into milk. apparently it’s a huge crisis in China though, with estimates saying up to 20% of Chinese dairy companies sell melamine-tainted products. yikes. I guess I’ll wait a little while before buying more yakult. o_O

on my semiweekly trips to the gym, I phase out for fifteen to twenty minutes or so watching the closed-captioned news on the TVs as I dutifully jog my heart out on a treadmill. last month it was olympics, olympics, olympics, which I enjoy for sure, but this month it’s all elections, elections, elections. bleah. and this year, we may very well have federal elections in Canada AND the United States at about the same time, which (as far as I can remember) doesn’t happen very often. Canadian elections I’ve always watched somewhat in the spirit of a deranged game; they’re short, vicious, and get your adrenaline going. American elections I watch more in the spirit of a slow-motion train wreck. Why anyone would want to spend over a year going through so many motions, procedures and ceremony to elect their leadership invariably elicits a reaction of horror and awe from me. In reality, though, either system has such glaring flaws that I find it genuinely difficult to participate — and impossible to involve myself — in election mania in any meaningful form.

First off, I don’t think I’ll ever understand the partisan political system really, or how anyone could claim that a “party” can ever truly represent them. God gave to humanity the gift of a diversity of views — how do they suppose that aligning oneself with or subscribing to the ideals of a “party” will advance the process of exchanging such views? Instead, all it does is obscure the truth and make every problem more difficult to solve, because people are too busy watching their backs, toeing party lines instead of being open, honest and frank. Second off, why are we to vote only for the rich and lucky ones who can pony up the most cash to pay for a glitzy campaign? Why can’t we vote for those people who, in our hearts, we truly believe deserve the station of servitude to their country, who show forth actual merit, virtue, character and solid worth? Why narrow the field to only a select few? Third, if our goal is to promote a unified nation, what is the point of such an adversarial system, both in the process of electioneering and campaigning, and within government itself? Why do we have to listen to week after week of pundits on Side A slam the pundits on side B, or the candidates on side B denigrate those on Side A? It’s not pleasant, for Pete’s sake. Why do we have to argue over whose kids are alcoholics, whose are pregnant and who forgot Poland? Unified societies are built upon cooperation and consensus. Why not try those out for a year and leave the bickering behind? If we find that we prefer the bickering afterwards, well, we can always go back.

In short, my impression of the prevailing partisan electoral systems in Canada and the US is that they don’t seem to support human dignity or its unity. To me, all they seem to do is to make problems harder to solve, because those who are elected to serve are too busy dealing with matters of the human ego. And I’m afraid that’s enough rambling for now; it’s getting late. Got more TV to watch at the gym tomorrow. As usual, I’d love to hear your comments.