A Religious Rant

Rant in Three… Two… One…

Listen,

I’ve about had it up to my blessed eye holes over this nonsensical Muslim bashing that we’re seeing from Steve Harper on down to the morons people populating the comments sections of every freaking article on Islam.

The one that set me off is the idiot judge in Quebec who threw a woman’s case out of her court because she was wearing a hijab.  She wasn’t suing someone nor was she charged with a crime.  She just wanted to get her car out of jail.

He son had been caught (illegally) driving the car without a valid licence.  The police had impounded her car.  I have no issues with that.  My issue is this piece of work told the woman she could not be in their court with a hijab on because the court is a secular place.

Just to get her car back.

Now tell me, do you think if someone was wearing a yarmulke or a turban for religious reasons this judge would have told them to take off their hat?  Maybe her honour should call Steve Harper and warn him about the guy in the second row of the House of Commons who has the temerity to wear that blue thing on his head.

After all, this is Canada.  The House of Commons is a secular place, well isn’t it?

Maybe I’m way off base here, but a secular society doesn’t mean you can’t live your religion, you just can’t jam it down my throat.  It means we don’t base our laws on some book written hundreds or thousands of years ago by someone who had a mystic vision or maybe just gathered up a bunch of legends and said this is the word of Diety.  Simple, no?

We’re also supposed to have Freedom of Religion or Freedom from Religion (whatever floats your boat) but that seems to be changing too.

What this means is neither the Queen nor Steve nor anyone else gets to tell you or me what religion we have to belong to, and they can’t tell us what religion we can’t belong too.  That part still seems to be working, at least for the most part, but now it’s turning into you can still have your religion, but only if you do it our way!

When people first started to come to North America, a lot of them were trying to get away from people who told them they were doing religion wrong.  People are still coming here for the very same reason.  And what does Steve and Jason and Chris say?  You’re doing religion wrong!

Isn’t that what’s happening in Iraq right now?  ISIS isn’t running amok killing everyone, just the ones who do religion wrong.  ISIS is religious bigotry on steroids, the same religious bigotry that we get from Steve Harper’s minions.

Think about it.

Look, if it is so all fired important to see the faces of people taking the citizenship oath, wouldn’t it be a lot simpler to have a woman judge with an all woman staff to handle these events?  We wouldn’t need many, a few teams that would go out every few months or when the need arises to welcome the new Canadians into our citizenry. 

I almost use “our family” there, but Steve has gone and tainted that too.

And as for the judge in Quebec who doesn’t like hijabs?  She’s as bad as the rest.  She claims that his court room is secular, but I’ll wager there’s a Bible sitting on the corner of her desk.  It isn’t all that long ago we had to change the rules to allow atheists the ability to promise to tell the truth because they wouldn’t swear on a Bible.

I’m no Biblical scholar, but I have read the stories.  Remember when Jesus told the story about the Samaritan? From that story, I’d say that Jesus wouldn’t have stopped the Samaritan from getting into heaven.  He’d probably welcome that Samaritan with open arms.

Why do I mention this?  Well you see the Samaritans were a lot like the Jews at that time… But they did religion wrong.

The way I figure it, when we shuffle off this mortal coil, the first question at the Pearly Gates will not be which book did you follow or whether your house of worship had pews or mats.  The first questions will be were you kind to strangers?  Did you help your neighbours?

And I think that Steve, and Jason, and Chris, and the Quebec judge are not going to have comfortable eternities.

End rant.

Peace.

BC

Has Tony Clement Twitter Blocked You Yet?

In the last while I’ve seen more and more people wondering why they have been Twitter blocked by Tony Clement.  Quite a few of them seem perplexed as to why Tony blocked them.

Well I was blocked by Tony ages ago, I didn’t even realize it for a while.  I didn’t stalk Tony, but if I saw him comment I sometimes replied.  I don’t agree with Tony on many things, I don’t expect him to agree with me. 

Democracy.

We live in a Democratic country.  Part of that means we should have the ability to exchange ideas, and disagree.  Just because we disagree on Twitter is no reason to block someone, I don’t even bother blocking trolls.

I ignore them.

If someone sends me a tweet that is not worth replying to, I don’t reply.  It’s that simple.  I have blocked a few on Twitter, most of them tried to send me to a corrupt website to try and steal my Twitter information or infect me with a virus, a few were trying to raise money for nonexistent causes.  I blocked and reported them.  Done.

What I think that Tony doesn’t get is that Twitter is a communication medium, a crappy one, but it is a means to getting your ideas out.  If you decide that you don’t want people seeing your thoughts and ideas it’s like you’d prefer to preach to the choir or to the “Amen corner”. It doesn’t help get your idea out, it just gives you a false sense that what you are saying is right. 

It’s a bit like the old saw, “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room”.

The other thing I don’t think Tony realizes is that if he is involved in a Twitter conversation with someone who I follow, I get to see snippets of that conversation.  If it interests me, I can just click to see the conversation and lo and behold I can see what Tony is typing!

Now for those of you thinking big deal, you can’t interact with Tony, that’s not why I reply to those tweets.  I’m sending my message to the others who are following the same conversation.  I’m not talking to the “Yay” people or the “Boo” people, I’m looking for the people in between, the ones that don’t drink anyone’s Kool-Aid.

So should you take it as a badge of honour that Tony blocked you?  I don’t really think so.  I think it’s sad that a Cabinet Minister doesn’t want to hear from his constituents and doesn’t want them to hear his message, he doesn’t want you to know what he thinks.

Maybe Tony failed civics or maybe he just forgot how government is supposed to work.  If one is named to a Cabinet position, one no longer represents the riding that elected him.  A Minister represents all of Canada, not just a small segment.  And in the same vein of MPs sending updates to their constituents, Tony should be communicating with us, all of us.

And he should be listening.  He doesn’t need to agree, but he should hear what people are saying.

I guess what I’m saying is that if Tony thinks this is going to shut me and other people up, he’s got another thing coming.  That, and if you’ve got something to say, say it.  Who cares if Tony sees it, other people will.

TTFN

BC

BTW I don’t mean Twitter is crappy, it’s just a bugger to try and get a point across in 140 characters or less, especially with long twitter handles like @canada_bearcat.  Cheers!

UPDATE:  I am no longer being blocked by Tony Clement.  Not only that, he's following me now... Welcome aboard,  Tony.

Enough With The T-Word (Terrorist)

In light of the recent killings of Corporal Cirillo and Warrant Officer Vincent, some have taken to referring to their murderers with the T-word or in a few cases, even the J-word.

This needs to stop.  In a twisted way, using the T-word or the J-word is how they probably want to be remembered.  I’d suggest using the C-word.

Criminals.

These were two individuals whose lives were in disorder who reached out to a religion and then committed a heinous act.  Did they do these acts because of their new found religion?  I don’t know.  Years ago they might have shaved their heads and gotten swastika tattoos or before that worn white bed sheets to try and scare people.

But we didn’t use the T-word to describe those people.

And we didn’t use the T-word to describe the person who gunned down three RCMP in Moncton NB… we shouldn’t be using it now.

Maybe we should use another C-word to describe these acts.

Cowardly.

In St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, the attacker waited for two hours before striking two members of Our Forces leading to the death of W.O. Vincent.  In Ottawa, Cpl. Cirillo’s murderer stepped out from behind the National War Memorial and fired two shots fatally wounding Cpl. Cirillo and firing a third shot at Cirillo’s guard partner.

None of these soldiers were armed.

Cowards.

And that brings me to yet another C-word.

Canadian.

In the aftermath of these killings, we did what Canadians do.  In Ontario, people lined the sides of the 401 and the overpasses to pay tribute to one of our fallen, Cpl. Cirillo.  In Quebec, the family of W.O. Vincent is reaching out to the family of his assailant.  In Cold Lake Alberta, Canadians came to erase the graffiti left on a local Mosque by some other cowards.

This is the Canada I know.

These are the Canadians that I choose to stand with.

In the mean time I’ll go about living my life pretty much the same way I did before these attacks.  I’ll leave hiding in closets to other people.

BC

Harper Family Values

As a rule, I believe the families of our politicians should be off limits.  We don’t vote for their spouses, kids, or parents and they didn’t run for office.  The exemptions are a certain politician’s famous father and if a family member steps up and answers a question that they might better have ducked saying something about that being a government issue and that I cannot speak for the government.  OK?

Stephen Harper wants your money.  Again.

In his party’s recent begging letter they are telling all the faithful about their Family Values and how much better theirs are than say one or two other political parties’ Family Values.

Which brought me to pondering, what are Stephen Harper’s Family Values?  What do they look like?

From what I can tell, Steve looks to be something of a doting father.  He makes time for his kids’ events even if it means putting a school on a veritable lockdown because he came to see his boy play volleyball.  Most of us would do the same if we could, my parents were good about coming out to see our games when I was growing up.

He takes his kids on vacations with him to his summer hideaway, we went to a camp ground, but it boils down to basically the same thing.

And he has taken pains to keep his family, at least his kids out of the spotlight most of the time.  Any one of us would likely do likewise.

But the true worth of a person is shown by how they treat people who can do nothing for them.  A wise person once said “Be nice to your children, they’ll pick your old age home.”

Steve and Laureen, just wrapped up the ninth tour of Canada’s Arctic.  One of the stops was at Iqaluit where Steve brought hockey equipment courtesy of Canadian Tire.  There was no time for the Press as Steve was involved in a game of floor hockey with the local kids and so it fell to Laureen to handle the questions.   APTN news was there and asked Laureen, who was standing in for Steve about the problems that people in the North have feeding their kids.

There had just been a report that Northern Aboriginal children are shorter than other kids because of a lack of food in their growing years.

APTN asked Laureen how they could help the kids in the North who go to bed hungry because their parents cannot afford to buy food to feed the family.  You can see the news video here: APTN News Story.

Laureen tries to give an answer mentioning that Canadian Tire donated hockey equipment to Iqaluit and finally gives up saying that free hockey equipment would allow the parent to have more money to feed their kids.

I’m going to ask you, what would you give up to ensure your kids had enough to eat each day? 

I seriously doubt if any of the Harpers have been truly hungry.  Like most of us, a hunger pang means that you skipped lunch because you were running late and if your child goes to bed without supper it’s usually a punishment, not that you ran out of food before your next paycheque came in.

A while ago I read an article about a single mother who told how she skipped meals to stretch the food budget to make sure that her child had enough to eat.  And sometimes that wasn’t even enough.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that parents of these kids in the Far North are not skimping on their kids to buy a new TV or something of that kind, it is just that the cost of food, even the cost of hunting is prohibitively high and these people just cannot make do with what they have.  If putting food on the table means hand me down and borrowed hockey equipment, I’m sure they do that.  If putting food on the table means sitting out of hockey, I’ll bet that happens too.

The saddest part of all this is that for the most part, no one even noticed.  The Arctic Tour is more or less a snooze-fest.  A few photo ops and a little military pageantry that most of us choose to ignore.  The APTN story is a blip that no one seems to be interested in following up on.

This is a real issue and deserves to be acknowledged and addressed by the Harper government.  Obviously the current way of handling the issue is not working and we need a better way, but I don’t see that coming from Steve and his pals.

Once again Steve spent most of his tour ducking the questions of the Press and the questions of the residents of the North.  They want answers, but Steve only wants photos for his album.

Comments are always welcome, but that’s it for now.

Laters,

BC