I have to agree with Unrepentant Old Hippie on this one:
Other than that, I’d actually be against pulling it — the fetus fetishists have as much right as organizations like PETA to flog their cause. And they sometimes get moremileage (not to mention the persecution high they’re forever chasing) from being “censored” than they do when their campaigns run themselves out and die quiet and unremarkable little deaths.
While you may not like what they say, they still have a right to say it.
A whooping cough outbreak is occurring in the BC West Kootenay region because woo-woo parents think vaccines are evil and now their children are at risk of dying. And some people ask what’s the harm in letting people believe in alternative medicine.
Speaking of unfounded woo, NDP MP Denise Savoie has claimed that evil “toxins” are to blame for NDP Leader Jack Layton’s recently diagnosed prostate cancer. Throw out the fact she doesn’t state what specific toxins cause cancer and implies all chemicals are evil. Perhaps cancer is more frequent now because we’re living longer and are better at detecting it.
Further to the Jack Layton story, it’s commendable to see everyonesetting aside partisanship to wish him the best for a speedy recovery.
The BC Civil Liberties Association is rightly backing the right of University of Victoria’s Your Protecting Youth pro-life student group. While I disagree with the groups stance, they do have a right to exist and organize and pushing them aside is the wrong thing to do. If the group crosses the lines of civil discourse and propagates falsehoods, then there may be a case for disbanding them, but the same ought to apply to any and all campus groups.
The Kamloops Atheists report that the local “Daily News” paper refused to publish any atheist material in their religion page since “the rest of the paper was for atheist material.” They subsequently didn’t publish the request article anywhere in the paper. Further they note that the Kamloops Christian School is teaching Biblical Creationism with equal time to the “theory” of evolution.
Finally, to end on a positive note, the Centre for Inquiry Vancouver has just hired Radio Freethinker co-host Ethan Clow as their new Executive Director, making him the third paid CFI employee in Canada. I look forward to see continued success for CFI and wish Ethan the best of luck. Further to that, I’ve accepted a position as CFI Canada’s Campus Outreach Director, and hope to continue the success of the dozens of student groups across the country.
A neocon tool who uses SFUs student newspaper, The Peak, to spout his views alerted me (and the 5 other readers of the Peak) that populist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is blaming the Haitian earthquake on a secret US weapon test before they turn the weapon on Iran.
Not feeling like I can trust Van Maren’s fact-checking ability, I ran a source check to see how many news articles “chavez earthquake” returns. A mere 700 if you were wondering. And most of those are because Chavez is a president of a nearby country.
But what about “chavez earthquake weapon”? Now you only get 70 hits, with such great sources as “World Press Review,” “NowPublic,” and FOXNews.
Ah, FOXNews, what a reputable source. They of course jump on the chance to blast a socialist leader as a crazy wackaloon and state the following:
The United States apparently possesses an "earthquake weapon" that set off the catastrophic quake in Haiti and killed 200,000 innocents. Don’t believe it’s true? Just ask Hugo Chavez. [emphasis theirs]
They claim the story originated on “the Venezuelan strongman’s state mouthpiece ViVe TV” (does that make FOXNews the Republican party’s mouthpiece?) but was taken down recently. They try linking to the Google cached pages which aren’t all too damning.
The only other source for this story seems to be a YouTube channel called “RussiaToday” which has this video:
This is supposedly the YouTube arm of the Russian state run RT TV station. They quote Spanish Newspaper ABC, and you can find the translated article here. It quotes the Venezuelan TV station as well.
These claims fly on the heels of the substantiated reports that Chavez claimed that the US was “taking [military] advantage of the tragedy” and moving to occupy Haiti.
Here’s the facts:
Chavez distrusts the USA and claimed they were invading Haiti
FOXNews is not known for portraying Chavez (or any other socialists) in a positive light
Someone (either ViVe TV or RT or FOXNews) published a story claiming the Haitian earthquake was caused by a secret US weapon test
That story no longer exists (or never did) as a primary source
People will believe most of the crap they read if it fits their agenda
Could Chavez had said crazy things? Probably. While I am more of a socialist than the average North American, I’m not going to march behind everything a socialist leader says (as blindly following generally ends badly), and I don’t think the USA is trying to invade Haiti (it makes no strategic sense, do they need more sweatshops in Haiti?).
So perhaps this is one of those mystical reporting times when the truth actually does lie somewhere in the middle, with Chavez a bit crazy, and FOXNews a bit loose with their journalistic integrity.
Groundhog Day is one of the weirdest traditions that we have retained from yesteryear.
I think it mainly has to do with rural towns that don’t have much else going for them, but lets them get news at least once per year.
Really, what else do you know about Wiarton, Punxsutawney, or even Balzac (my own hometown) than the fact that an obese rodent lives in each of those cities?
Anecdotally, I know that regardless of what Balzac Billy told me about the end of winter, February and March are usually really cold in Southern Alberta, so it was mostly for a laugh if the mammal suggested that winter was ending.
More empirically, groundhogs have an average that’sactually below 50%, which you might expect if shooting in the dark, however, I think in most of North America, winter tends to stretch about 6 weeks from today regardless of what the animals predict.
Even this year, you have 7 predictions of early Spring, and 4 of continued winter, with some predicting the opposite, within the same state!
Since Groundhogs aren’t worth listening too, here’s my prediction (with no meteorological or climatological training): Vancouver will be warm and rainy right through the Olympics with partial breaks in the clouds, the rest of Canada will be chilly but improving over the next 6 weeks.
He then decides that evolution is the same as the Big Bang and abiogenisis, neither of which Charles Darwin or subsequent evolutionary biologists have written about since neither of which deal with evolution by natural selection. Furthermore, both are wildly supported by facts and data, including experiments that demonstrate the basis for life. He seems to think that since it’s unobservable in a single lifetime that therefore the Bible is more right.
Finally, he obsesses about information again, with no definition of what it is that he’s talking about or demonstration that he even understands how biological evolution work.
Somehow, UBC decided to give this man a PhD in Chemistry and then hired him as an Associate Professor. I think they need to refund his money.
At least almost all of the comments on his article are trying to actually teach him science.
First, most atheist-blog readers have probably heard the story about the American military using gun sights with references to Bible passages on them in Iraq and Afghanistan. What Canadian readers may have missed was that our troops are also carrying an unspecified number of these sights in Afghanistan.
While this isn’t as constitutionally-questionable here as in the USA, it is definitely in really bad form to try to establish a democratic government in a predominantly Muslim country while carrying Christian-endorsed weapons.
Luckily it sounds like there is agreement within the Canadian military that the inscriptions ought to be removed (now hopefully they actually do before it insights further aggression against our soldiers).
The ad ends with “May our hearts be broken enough for God to enter and stir us to action to defend their lives.”
I reluctantly support their right to show this ad, as free speech is a right that I generally support.
Nevertheless, the positive result here is that this made me realize that following the wildly successful atheist bus ads, we ought to target another venue, perhaps television (especially in a cheaper market like the BC interior which can still yield earned press) could prove equally fruitful.
Finally, to end positive, the Saskatchewan Skeptics have written a letter to Premier Brad Wall to declare February 12 as Darwin Day. Provincial and local proclamations are often made for special-interest groups, and there is precedent for Darwin Day proclamations. Unfortunately, February 12th marks the opening ceremonies for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, so I foresee very few proclamations being made on that date in this province.
Nevertheless, it may be a cause worth submitting to a few city councils and media outlets.
Update: I just saw an anti-abortion ad on A Channel Vancouver from “The Signal Hill” which provided a website that offers a lot of myths and outright lies about abortions. Although this one was not explicitly religious (and neither is their website), it still demonstrates the size of their budget base.
It’s sad that a satirical Canadian public broadcast show has to take time out of its 22 minute political humour to call for news networks including NBC, FOX and even their own CBC to stop referring to the victims of the Haitian earthquake mere looters.
As they pointed out (unfortunately I can’t find the video on their website yet), Haitians are not “looting” 50” plasma televisions, Blu-Ray Disc players or even books and CDs, they are merely struggling to survive with what little is left standing in their shattered country.
Search Google News for “Haiti looters” and you get over 8000 hits, mostly from the past few days, with very few being critical of the usage of the term.
And while I have one callous acquaintance who said “[If I were a Haitian victim] I don’t think that the fact that a Canadian network called me a ‘looter’ would even show up as a blip on my radar,” the point is that all human beings, especially in our most fragile times, deserve respect.
Haiti has been the whipping nation of the West for more than 200 years, from French Colonialism, to American imperialist interventions. After all this, some have the galls to call these desperate human beings mere looters.
Perhaps with all eyes focused on Haiti now, they can be forgiven of their suffocating and criminal debts, reinstate a true democracy, and rejoice in their heritage as the world’s first black republic. They deserve at least as much.
NDP and Liberal partisans want to see this as a win for the left and for progressive causes. A reaction to Stephen Harper and all his evils over the past 4 years.
And it would be really great if we could see it entirely as that.
But when you listen to many of the quotes coming from the non-partisans in the crowd, you hear lots of “get back to work” and even on CBCs Test The Nation, the politician team was faced with similar heckles.
This leads me to feel that while their is a strong anti-Conservative element to the protests, much more of it comes from the (smart) framing by the organizers as though all politicians are getting a 3-month holiday or vacation.
Which is of course somewhat false, as every politician does have a lot of work to do outside of parliament.
I think it bears a little comparison to last years protests over the coalition (of which there were sizable pro- and con- positions, however both sides were pretty heavily partisan), in that from the average person or Conservatives point of view, politicians were being slimely and trying to change the election (I know that’s just the Con lie, but it did work). Meanwhile, on the coalition side, we saw Harper being slimely, and we didn’t like it. All-in-all, Canadians I think get really pissed when their apathy is taken for granted. We seem to want our politicians to make very slow, minor changes and to not really stir the pot. Treat our democracy like crap, and we get mad.
So we’ll have to see how this “movement” transforms between now and the March resuming of parliament. Will it translate into anything beyond a bunch of people pissed at Harper granting a paid vacation that we all wish we could take, or will it actually culminate in some real changes?
Will this result in democratic reforms on the powers of the executive as the NDP is proposing, some form proportional representation, as Ignatieff is almost now hinting at, another election that could see the end of Harper the PM (or yet another Harper minority, which might result in the same angst from within) or just more of the same partisan brinkmanship that has defined the past decade of Canadian politics?
I’m not convinced about the structural integrity of wood versus cinder block, but BC premier Gordon Campbell thinks ultra-poor Haiti ought to have bought BC lumber:
“It’s interesting when you think, ‘what would Haiti look like today if that had been built with wood instead of cinder block?’” Campbell said in a speech to the Truck Loggers Association convention in Victoria. “And the fact is there’d be a lot of buildings that would still be standing.”
Meanwhile, a pastor in Surrey had this to say about the tragedy:
“Haiti is infamous for its voodoo spiritual darkness,” he said in comments tape-recorded by a parishioner. “I can’t help think that maybe God has shaken them, shaken them against the kingdom of darkness.”
Of course he claims the words our out of context, so let’s see a bit more of it:
“We’ve got people on the ground right there in Haiti and it’s a wonderful way in which we can express tangibly the Lord Jesus in that situation.
“You know, just thinking about, ‘Why is all of this happening in Haiti, a very poor country?’ The country’s been shaken.
“Now probably some of you are aware that Haiti is infamous for its voodoo, its spiritual darkness, bleakness. I was kind of thinking maybe God has shaken that place, shaken that . . . shaken against the kingdom of darkness, maybe the light of Jesus will shine through and come out of the ashes.”
On the plus, his congregation did raise $6,500, although they don’t say who the money is going to.
Update:
DrPlatypusMan of YouTube has provided the context from the above talk. Seems like his case is pretty flimsy. Hatred, racism and bigotry are sometimes just that:
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