Stop Bullying in Canadian Schools

My friend DJ and some of his friends have turned the anguish and pain of the recent horrifying spate of bullying related suicides into a website resource to try to change things:  www.StopBullyinginCanadianSchools.com

It's early days, but they plan to expand it a lot.  I contributed a guest post.

My name is Cliff Hesby, I'm a writer with a lefty political disposition who's been active in politics and the trade union movement. I've been blogging for the last five years at www.rustyidols.blogspot.com.

I grew up in small town Alberta and like many visiting this site I have experienced bullying. I know the pain and fear and shame and sheer helpless rage.

When I was ten we were in a car crash that broke my mom's back, just after she had been offered a job in Vancouver in fact. Her new employer promised to wait for her and she stayed behind in Alberta for a year recovering while my brother and I moved in with our aunt and uncle in North Vancouver and started school...(Continued...)

Alienating Everybody

Harper wants to blame Ignatieff for losing our Security Council seat?  Maybe he should take a look at how much our relationship with our biggest ally has deteriorated.

In fact, U.S. State Department insiders say that U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice not only didn’t campaign for Canada’s election but instructed American diplomats to not get involved in the weeks leading up to the heated contest. With no public American support, Canada lost its bid to serve. That gives the EU more than 25% control of the body and a strong voting block to ensure EU priorities become global priorities.

And yes, I know the source is dubious, and the paranoid anti-Euro pro Harper stridency is obnoxious, but assuming that 'insiders say' lead has any truth to it at all, it would suggest a certain coolness from the Obama White House, towards the Harper government.

The angst must be intense in Harper land.  Obsequious genuflection to the US is, and always has been a cornerstone of what passes for Conservative foreign policy.  So many thundering denunciations of the Liberals for alienating our dear American friends, or showing insufficient enthusiasm for the latest American military endeavor (Although the Martin Liberals tacked toward Conservative ideas on foreign policy before the end) or not following every tax cutting and public sector gutting innovation that bubbles up south of the border - and now they're in power and after a few blissful years with their ideological soul mates in the Bush White House they have Obama.

And it probably didn't take him long to figure out that the Canadian government he was inheriting from Bush was made up of the same kind of tea-baggers who are baying that he's a  Kenyan born Muslim socialist.

I'm quite serious about that description by the way, it isn't hyperbole.  This is how they behave in a minority.

This is how they behave when they have their first date smile on and they're trying to make a good impression posing as technocratic prudent managers while keeping the craziest members of the Conservative Reform Alliance family shackled and gagged in the basement.

In other words Ministers like Jason Kenney, Helena Guergis and Maxime Bernier were the ones they thought were ready for prime time.  What does this tell you about the talent pool they have to work with in this caucus?  They need barely competent, barely presentable faces of the government who can be trusted not to get caught with a dead girl or a live boy or bay at the moon in public.  

Sky high standards that they still keep failing to meet.

Bullyboy Bluster

Stephen Harper keeps saying "My way or the highway."

The response keeps being "Ok then, the highway it is."

By most accounts, Stephen Harper and his government were humiliated Tuesday at the United Nations, losing a coveted Security Council seat to Portugal. The defeat is still the buzz of official Ottawa and political spin doctors have been working overtime.

Cabinet ministers and even the Prime Minister's own communications director, Dimitri Soudas, are blaming Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff for torpedoing the deal. This, after he publicly declared Canada did not deserve the seat because of the Harper government's foreign policy.

The Liberals, meanwhile, are blaming Mr. Harper and his international policies for the loss. Mr. Ignatieff has accused the Conservatives of ignoring the United Nations.

Potentially having even more dire consequences than the Security Council seat loss is the recent dust up with the United Arab Emirates, where the government's tough guy, 'take it or leave it' bluster ended with Canada having to walk away from a multi-million dollar air base and featured Canadian government ministers being banned from entering a putative ally's airspace - all to protect the business interests of a private corporation.

Ottawa's eviction from a Mideast military base has exposed a rift within the Harper cabinet over how far Canada should go to satisfy its Arab hosts: an internal debate in which Stephen Harper cut Defence Minister Peter MacKay out of negotiations.

Canada is set to vacate Camp Mirage, a once-secret military installation, by Nov. 5 after failing to reach an agreement with the United Arab Emirates over what would amount to compensation for nine years of accommodation near Dubai.

The UAE has been seeking additional lucrative landing rights for two state-backed air carriers at Canadian airports, and Mr. MacKay was one of several ministers, including Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and International Trade Minister Peter Van Loan, who had favoured doing more to help the Arab ally, a senior Conservative MP said.

The Prime Minister ultimately cut these ministers out of negotiations, the official said, favouring the forceful arguments against big concessions advanced earlier this year by former transport minister John Baird.

The loss of the base has left some cabinet members frustrated and angry at how Mr. Harper handled it.

"[It's] all gone because of a fit of pique and a hard [core] position that is truculent and unreasonable against Canada's short- and long-term interests," the MP said.

'Out of touch, arrogant and dictatorial' are by now well established descriptions of this, the most secretive and PMO dictated government in Canadian history.  We knew that Harper's machivellian scheming always has a tendancy to slam up against his own bitter hatred of dissent and opposition, his bully boy need to 'stick it' it to anybody who challenges him. 

He'll never learn and we can expect further sudden reversals as those he deals with refuse to take having sand kicked in their faces lying down.

Milestones

Didn't even notice. Sometime last week my blog bounded over the 100,000 hits mark and half way to 101,000. 

Less impressive perhaps, when you factor in that I've been blogging for five years.

"What the parliament does, the street can undo"

Progressives, union activists and the anesthetized majority in North America can only look at the agressive and confident activism of the engaged French citizenry with envy and awe.  If we stood and fought with these kind of numbers and this kind of determination we'd be living in a different Canada today.

PARIS - Hundreds of thousands of French workers, students and functionaries walked out on strike Tuesday and paraded through the streets in what labor unions described as the beginning of a long-term showdown with President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Air and rail service throughout the country was disrupted by the protests - the fourth in a month.
They were aimed specifically at reversing a new law requiring people to work until age 62 rather than 60 before receiving their retirement pensions. But they also were a platform for broader-based political resentments that have been building among France's salary-earners, many of whom view Sarkozy's government as callous and too close to big business.

In the souring atmosphere, union leaders declared many of the strikes that on Tuesday nearly crippled the country would continue indefinitely or recur on an irregular schedule. The result could be gasoline shortages, curtailed rail and air travel, chaos at schools and perhaps even power cuts in France's main cities, they warned.

"We are going to continue," vowed Bernard Thibault, secretary general of the General Labor Federation. "The mobilization is not going to stop just because the senators have voted."

This is what you want, this is what you get

I want to vote for Bob Hawkesworth for Mayor of Calgary.  I need to vote against Ric Mciver.

I'm a progressive, with the exact opposite social and economic positions from the far right extremism of Mciver, I'm a trade unionist and  Mciver has unambiguously expressed anti-union views, I'm a worker at the city owned utility company that Mciver has explicitly threatened with breaking up and selling.

With Hawkesworth polling in the single digits a vote for him becomes a protest vote, certainly not the first I've cast, but the same polls show that Higgins, a moderate compared to Mciver is easily within striking distance of a win.  Nenshi is polling a distant third and at least some of his supporters and those of the other trailing candidates can be expected to throw their support to Higgins come election day - while the supporters of far right candidate Craig Burrows, thankfully crashing and burning as he deserves, can be expected to defect to Mciver.

David Climenhaga makes the case for a strategic vote for Barb Higgins, and much as I may wish otherwise, he makes it well.

UPDATE: Bob concedes that he can't win.

UPDATE 2: Bob endorses Barb Higgins.

A legal approach I'd like to see here in Alberta

BUDAPEST — The managing director of the company whose reservoir unleashed a lethal torrent of red sludge on three villages last week has been arrested, the Hungarian prime minister announced before Parliament on Monday.

He will be charged with criminal negligence leading to a public catastrophe, and if convicted could face a sentence of up to 10 years, according to a government spokeswoman.

Flashback:

Oilsands giant Syncrude was found guilty Friday on both environmental charges it was facing in connection with the April 2008 deaths of 1,600 ducks in one of its northern Alberta tailings ponds.

Syncrude was charged under the Alberta Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act and the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act with failing to protect migratory birds from a toxic tailings pond.
In a decision delivered to a packed courtroom in St. Albert, Alta., provincial court Judge Ken Tjosvold said Syncrude didn't exercise due diligence in preventing the birds from landing on the water.
"I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt that Syncrude could have acted lawfully by using due diligence to deter birds from the basin, whether or not it was successful in its attempts at deterrence, and it did not do so," Tjosvold said in his written decision.
The judge pointed to evidence presented during the trial that showed Syncrude had reduced staff responsible for its bird deterrent systems because of retirements and had scaled back the number of deterrents it used in the years before the ducks died.

If you followed the link looking for how many years the corporate board of Syncrude will be serving in prison, you didn't miss it, it wasn't there.  Nobody thinks for a second they'll face any punishment other than financial, and that not to any degree that will cause any actual pain to anyone responsible.  We have carefully established corporations as responsibility free zones here in North America.

The only thing that can get an executive even limited prison time here is stealing from other rich people. 

Discrimination and the State

Two stories today, of discrimination and the state's response to it. One of the principled use of force to protect civil society and the rights of an embattled minority and the other a complete capitulation by the state and in fact complicity in the state sponsored support of discrimination.

One of the most affecting moments from the riots by far right Serbian groups against marchers in Belgrade's Gay Pride Day, is this picture of a civilian, either a bystander or one of the marchers helping an injured police officer.

For progressive Canadians right now, it's hard to visualize the police as defenders of a dissenting civil society or any kind of progressive movement like that of gay rights rather than persecutors.

And that's a shame, isn't it?

I honestly don't think it reflects the wishes of the majority of Canadian police.  I know a Canadian police officer who was at the G20 protests in Toronto, and was disturbed by some of the things he saw and the behavior of some of the officers involved.  I still believe that the majority of police officers became police because of a sincere desire to serve and protect the public.  It would be willful blindness though, to ignore that some were power tripping thugs looking for a job that would give their thuggery license and some started out with good intentions and were coarsened by a job that understandably can carry a heavy psychic toll.

The problem is a government that treats accusations of police misconduct as something to be defended and justified and accusers attacked rather than treating such incidents with the oversight they call for.

The other story is Israel's cabinet agreeing to a 'loyalty oath' requiring citizens to swear fealty to the majority religion of the state or be considered traitors.

Even within the cabinet the decision has been criticized with language so harsh, here in Canada repeating it probably risks being accused of antisemitism:

Minister Shalom Simhon (Labor) also skipped the meeting, as he was abroad on a business trip.  Herzog told Haaretz late Saturday that the resounding support for such an amendment showed that "fascism was devouring the margins of society."
"We are on a most dangerous slippery slope," he warned.

Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni condemned on Sunday the cabinet's approval of a controversial proposal requiring non-Jews seeking citizenship to pledge allegiance to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
"What we have seen today is politics at its worst. The sensitive issue of Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state has become subject to political horse-trading.

...

Writing in today's Haaretz, liberal commentator Gideon Levy said: "Remember this day. It's the day Israel changes its character ... From now on, we will be living in a new, officially approved, ethnocratic, theocratic, nationalistic and racist country."

Even some members of the hard line Likud Party opposed the law as dangerous and counter-productive.

So one state struggling against its own bigoted fringe and the other capitulating utterly to the most hateful and exclusionary urges of its far right wing.  One that the whole world united against in the last decade and came out if it striving to regain a role in the community of nations, and the other that has been enabled, excused and defended against its own interests and given every reason to believe that even such an odious piece of racism by the state will continue to be enabled, excused and defended.

The state is either the defender of civil society and inalienable rights against any who would attack them or is itself complicit in those attacks.

There is no middle ground.

None of us are free

Solomon Burke RIP

Ignoring the Contradictions

Roger Ebert tweets:

Virginia Thomas wants to return to our constitutional roots, which once denied her and her husband citizenship or the right to vote.

The context:

RICHMOND, Va. — As one of the keynote speakers here Friday at a state convention billed as the largest Tea Party event ever, Virginia Thomas gave the throng of more than 2,000 activists a full-throated call to arms for conservative principles.

For three decades, Mrs. Thomas has been a familiar figure among conservative activists in Washington — since before she met her husband of 23 years, Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. But this year she has emerged in her most politically prominent role yet: Mrs. Thomas is the founder and head of a new nonprofit group, Liberty Central, dedicated to opposing what she characterizes as the leftist “tyranny” of President Obama and Democrats in Congress and to “protecting the core founding principles” of the nation.

Quote of the Day

Dry understatement from the New York Times on how Goldman Sachs is lobbying against bank reform by arguing it would slow growth:

Growth based on risky banking has a tendency to prove illusory.

Today's Cognitive Dissonance Moment

Prostitution, while a permanent, ineradicable and arguably even necessary accessory to communal life, is an ignoble line of work and inherently unworthy of social respect. Legalization won’t change that. -Barbara Kay

Barbara Kay insists that the dirty little whores must continue to be treated like dirty little whores by the law, even if prostitution is  'a permanent, ineradicable and arguably even necessary accessory to communal life' and even if the laws struck down have been found to seriously endanger the health, safety and lives of the people engaging in this 'permanent, ineradicable and arguably even necessary accessory to communal life'

She's also very concerned that she will soon no longer be allowed to look down her nose at the dirty little whores.

Speaking of consequences, I’m taking the opportunity to call prostitution a dehumanizing and morally degraded behaviour now, because I think my right to do so won’t long continue. Since activists are already using the vocabulary of other “rights” and “equality” battles, I predict we’ll soon have to watch our judgmental language on this front. Once prostitution has been legally/morally airbrushed by the SCC, it will be deemed “offensive,” “excluding” and “intolerant” to hurt the feelings of prostitutes. Don’t be surprised if the next time you call a whore a whore, you’re hauled up before a Human Rights Commission for prostitutophobia.

Yes Barbara, your right to spit contempt at those you disapprove of is far more important than their right to not have the law endanger their lives while they are engaging in a legal activity.

See:
Barbara Kay clutches her pearls and

Before and After

UPDATE: Susan Clairmont show's us how to write a non-hysterical, well reasoned piece based on the realities of the many ways the status quo of prostitution laws contribute to the brutalization and murder of sex trade workers.  But its Barbara Kay, whose primary contribution to the debate is 'Whores are icky!' who has the national column.

UPDATE: Legal or not, prostitution continues, but an Australian study shows that decriminalization does increase safety for sex workers.

Cartoon banned for not showing Muhammed

Yesterday's Non-Sequitur cartoon was replaced with a re-run by several papers, for making the point about how fearful that newspapers are by NOT including a picture of the prophet Muhammad (Peace be unto him).

In the comment section of his strip, when one reader complained that the Boston Globe has run a different cartoon, Wiley responded saying;

"Yours along with many other papers across the country were afraid to run this cartoon. In doing so, it is rife with irony, as it is obviously satirizing the paralyzing fear in media of anything regarding Islam. Cowards indeed.


For those of you whose paper ran the alternate edition, I strongly suggest you contact the editor and voice your opinion on the matter. They are the ones who need to hear it, as they are the ones who made the decision."

Class and the lack thereof

Rick Salutin's classy final words to his readership cut by the heartless shmuckery of corporate news.  But they forgot he cross-posts to Rabble, and they didn't cut it, and now we all see what kind of people run the Globe and Mail.

Since I began these columns, now in their 20th year, I've tended to think of each as the last, which is now the case. I'm glad to end with the reasons for the Ford phenomenon, since I've always felt that saying what one thinks is cheap and easy. It's more useful to describe why one thinks it and, even better, how one thinks. 
It's been a pleasure to (try to) share that experience with you.
Most of this article was originally published in the Globe and Mail.

Moderate Muslim leader banned by government for something another Muslim said

But Defence Minister Peter MacKay has cancelled the imam’s planned appearance after learning of it Friday. His office issued a statement saying the Canadian Islamic Congress has a record of fomenting hatred and has no place at an event honouring Muslim contributions to this country.
Mr. Delic has previously been cited for efforts to help Muslims integrate into Canadian society. He was one of 13 Canadians included in a 2009 book, The 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World, penned by Islamic studies scholars at Georgetown University. One of the book’s editors called Mr. Delic “a scholar who writes about how Muslims can integrate into Canadian society.”
Mr. MacKay’s office cited incendiary comments that were made in 2004 by a then-president of the Canadian Islamic Congress as the reason for its decision.

So extending the logic of the government's decision here, this means the Conservative Party remains responsible and culpable for everything ever said by any leader of the Conservative Party or its precursors the Reform Party and the Alliance Party?

Are they sure this is a principle they really want to establish?

Neil Reynolds pants himself again

Back again after they briefly pulled it back to be sure of their numbers, Progressive Economics points out again that when it comes to economic criticism The Globe and Mails resident dishonest libertarian crank Neil Reynolds appears to have the math skills of a marmoset with a head injury.

I’m not clear on where Reynolds gets his per capita spending numbers from, but there is no evidence of government spending growth in excess of income (GDP) growth per person over the past 30 years or so

If we look at the period from Reynolds base year of 1982 to 2009, real per capita GDP grew by 52%. So if Reynolds numbers are correct, government spending growth lagged growth in GDP per capita.

Moreover, Statistics Canada data show that, between 1982 and 2009, total current spending by all levels of government in Canada fell from 47.7% to 42.1% of nominal GDP. (Calculated from data in Tables 1 and Table 3 of the Historical Statistical Supplement to the Canadian Economic Observer.)

Government spending has been falling rather than rising relative to income over the period chosen by Reynolds, and this would show up in even more dramatic form if we took the early 1990s (when government spending topped 50% of GDP) as the base.

The Revolution

J-Boogie's Dubtronic Science feat. Lyrics Born and The Mamaz

Barbara Kay clutches her Pearls

Memo to Barbara Kay:  Your distaste for the sex trade and your fretting that changing the laws detracts from treating those in it like the cheap little sluts that they are is insufficient reason to leave them to the tender mercies of the Picktons of the world - which is what the status quo amounts to.

Being a prostitute is a shameful, indecent activity, and any sex worker who demands respect as a matter of course is fooling herself. She is not respectable. Politically correct people will say she is, but she isn’t. The danger will continue, the pimps will still control the desperate girls and society as a whole will think less of itself. And all because nobody really takes a good look at the word “harm” and asks themselves what a healthy society looks like, and what kind of newly designated “normal” behaviours, stamped kosher by the courts, bring harm to that healthy body.

So Babs isn't planning on getting a happy ending massage any time soon, we get it.  Can I say that I'm very, very glad that its the Charter of Rights and Freedoms not Barbara Kay's idea of 'what a healthy society looks like' that is the law of the land?

UPDATE: Only fair to point out that while the National Post published the most bone stupid reactions to the court ruling, with a lot of ignoble competition from the Globe and Mail (New slogan: Pretty and dumb), they also printed one of the best pieces. Dan Gardner wonders how politicians and the media utterly refuse to even address that the laws struck down directly cause the brutalization and murder of women.

The Ezra Levant Story:

The context:  Ezra Levant spits venom at the doctor who brought attention to increased cancer rates downstream from the tarsands.  Antonia Zerbias gently warns him he's risking another libel suit.  He ignored her warning last time and ended up being 'refudiated' by his employer.  He seems to be taking careful aim at his own foot again.

Feeling Good

Maintenance

The Blogrolling app has now been deleted from my blog. It brought in a shitty advertising frame for all it's links last year and it's presence was routinely setting off virus and adware alerts for visitors. If you still have it, I recommend copying your links, disabling it and removing the javascript from your template. If you're using classic blogger hard code your blog list.

After five years with no design changes a major face-lift is coming to Rusty Idols, possibly today, possibly later this week. The current plan is to upgrade to the new blogger object template and go with a white background and black text for improved readability. Any thoughts from my readers?

UPDATE: Oh what the hell. It's my birthday. The transformation is done. Now the long slog of replacing all my blog links by hand...

That strange sound echoing across the land? It's Jason Kenney grinding his teeth.

TORONTO - Former British MP George Galloway is expecting to arrive in Canada this Saturday.

The aim is to continue a speaking tour he was forced to put on hold last year.

The rabble-rousing politician was told in March 2009 he would be denied entry into Canada on the basis he supported terrorism.

A recent court decision concluded the federal government interfered in the case for political reasons.

Supporters of the anti-war activist say they are looking forward to hearing the politician speak.

They say they hope the government will no longer attempt to ban critics of its foreign policy.

Galloway had provided financial support to Hamas — a group that Canada has listed as a terrorist organization.

The Canada Border Services Agency cited his involvement in an aid convoy that delivered clothing, medical items, relief money and vehicles to the elected Hamas government.

UPDATE: "I'm coming to get you"

Before and After

The current state of Canada's prostitution laws until 30 days from now:

• It's legal to exchange sex for money. No really, it is, and has been for years.
• It's illegal to say the words 'Would you like to exchange some sex for some money?' in a public place. This is known as Communication for the Purpose of Prostitution.
• It is illegal to have a safe place off the dangerous streets where you can say the words 'Would you like to exchange some sex for some money?' in private. This is known as Keeping a Common Bawdy House.
  
• If you do exchange sex for money, which remember, is legal, it's illegal to pay rent or buy food with the money you have exchanged sex for. This is known as Living on the Avails of Prostitution. Theoretically this is only supposed to be used against pimps, but has also been used against the prostitutes themselves.
  

When you look at this literally Kafkaesque patchwork of oppressive, vaguely defined prohibitions you can see why their enforcement is infamous for being inconsistent, capricious and frequently abusive. If you were trying to design a structure with the maximum amount of danger, abandonment, lack of recourse to the law and state sponsored contempt for the women living in the margins of the sex trade, you couldn't have created a better system.

It's priggishly justified, brutally enforced and organized, state sanctioned cruelty on a massive scale against the most vulnerable among us.

Bleating about human trafficking and sex slavery is contemptible hypocrisy if you also support a legal structure of such orchestrated disenfranchisement and victimization that the things you are decrying are virtually guaranteed to happen. If we KNOW that other systems, systems that bring prostitutes under the umbrella of legal person-hood drastically reduce the power of pimps, the spread of disease and the abuse and murder of vulnerable women, then the justifications for maintaining the current system crumble to bitter sand.

What we've been doing doesn't work. The current system has deformed, ruined, and ended lives.

Time to try something new.

It's those other people sucking on the government teat

Matt Taibbi knocks another one out of the park:

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them.

And underneath all the high minded, libertarian anti-government posturing: the baffled, rage and fury at the thought that in any way, any of their tax money might be spent on brown people.

The Mop and Pail slides into Irrelevancy

I'll join others in noting and mourning the eviction of Rick Salutin from the Globe and Mail's comments page. Now their conservative and/or neo-liberal readers need never fear having any of their cozy certainties unpleasantly challenged by any kind of dissident viewpoint. Here's hoping that Mr Salutin's cross post to Rabble.ca will continue there.

Update: Murray Dobbin says it better than I could. Rick Salutin is Canada and I feel like I just saw a Canadian Heritage minute end in gunfire and trophy mounting.

Consider politely but firmly expressing your displeasure to The Globe and Mail's Editor in Chief:
John Stackhouse: jstackhouse@globeandmail.com

Cartoons about murdering people you disagree with sure are funny

The Calgary Herald's editorial cartoon about the Gun Registry for Monday Sept 27:

Because what the Canadian political discourse really needs is some of the American Right's eliminationist rhetoric.

Domestic Violence isn't Crime?

Quote of the Day:

"I'm kind of watching with interest the pro argument (for the Gun Registry) that's being made. It doesn't even have to do with stopping crime in the sense of criminal activity. It has to do with domestic violence and suicide." - MP Candace Hoeppner

So a husband abusing his wife or threatening her with a long gun isn't crime to these people - not even one of those phantom 'unreported' crimes the Conservatives justify billions on new prisons with.

Today's Irony Moment

Atheists and Agnostics understand religion better than believers:

Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion.

How much do you know about religion? Try answering a sampling of questions asked in a phone survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Researchers from the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life phoned more than 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions, famous religious figures and the constitutional principles governing religion in public life.

On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith.

Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.

“Even after all these other factors, including education, are taken into account, atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons still outperform all the other religious groups in our survey,” said Greg Smith, a senior researcher at Pew.

That finding might surprise some, but not Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, an advocacy group for nonbelievers that was founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

“I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people,” Mr. Silverman said. “Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.”

Sunday Linkblast - Sept 26

• Aboriginals and Poor hit hardest by new Tory sentencing law
  Hands up anyone surprised?
  
  
• Sinéad O'Connor's open letter to the Pope
  If you and the last Pope had no idea about the way abuse complaints were being handled who was running the church since 1979?
  
  
• The most hated man in Israel
  For insisting on showing his countrymen what's happening in the occupied territories.
  
  
• Harvard gives Marty Peretz the welcome he deserves
  Despicable racist finally being treated like a despicable racist.
  
  
• If the Tea Party ran the comics page
  Oh Garfield, you lazy leech on society.
  
  
• Why the discrepancy?
  Premier Stelmach just can't understand why government scientists and independent ones get such different results on water quality downstream from the oil-sands. Maybe this article provides a clue.