Here’s your Canadian Atheist Weekly Update for to .
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[] Publicly funded chiropractic care should have strict limits, leaked report says
So here’s a story that will just leave you with more questions. A report was written by the Manitoba Chiropractic Health Care Commission back in 2004 about the the cost effectiveness of publicly funded chiropractic services. It… did not go the way the Manitoba Chiropractors Association or the province thought it would. The report was highly critical of previous reports made to the government, accusing them of
grossly
exaggerating the cost savings from funding chiropractic. It also said the province shouldn’t fund chiropractic treatment of minors, shouldn’t let chiropractors use X-ray machines, and should only provide funding for treatment ofacute lower back pain
. It also warned about chiropractors claiming they could treat everything from HIV to cancer. The report was buried for years, and only came to light due to a CBC investigation into… wait for it… chiropractors claiming they could treat everything from HIV to cancer (and doing chiropractic on minors). -
The best thing about this article is the profile of the imam it gives, highlighting why the anti-Muslim “protestors” have chosen their enemy poorly.
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[] Canada committed to becoming world leader in counter-radicalization: Freeland
Radicalization is one of those things that is widely misunderstood; the realities of it are mostly completely opposite to what most people think. For example, a lot of people rant about how multiculturalism makes it easier to radicalize, for various reasons… but the opposite is actually true.
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[] ‘This simply cannot stand’: Premier says all options on table to fight Catholic school ruling
Brad Wall is a front runner for the biggest asshole among Canadian political leaders, and has been for a long time. A lawsuit filed by a public school district has resulted in a Court ruling that funding non-Catholic students is unconstitutional and discriminatory. Wall’s response? To ban public school districts from suing separate school districts.
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[] You must be kidding: Confronting key myths about Quebec’s childcare system
A beautiful point-by-point rebuttal of the many bullshit myths about why universal child care wouldn’t work. Turns out it’s working just beautifully in Québec.
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[] Edmonton Catholic board policy could derail commencement ceremony for some students
Right now there is a shitstorm going on in Saskatchewan about non-Catholic students in Catholic schools. And on cue, right next door in Alberta – which has essentially the same constitutional guarantee for Catholic schools as Saskatchewan, and which has seen its own shitstorms about Catholic schools in recent weeks – this happens.
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It’s not just Saudia Arabia. Also elected were such human rights luminaries as Iraq, Algeria, and the Congo. Because it was a secret ballot, we don’t know exactly which countries trolled the Commission.
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[] Saskatchewan parents group calls for 1 secular school system
The CBC is publishing article after article of ordinary people giving (remarkably stupid) reasons in favour of Catholic schools. This is their sole balance piece, so far as I’ve seen, but while all the other articles are little more than just an extended whine by people butthurt that the government won’t fund their non-Catholic kids’ indoctrination into Catholicism, this one is packed with good reasons for why the whole separate system should be abolished.
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[] Government won’t support calls for single Sask school system, Morgan says
And despite all the good reasons given in the previous item’s article – and the court ruling – the conservative government of Saskatchewan is digging in and protecting Catholic schools.
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[] Kevin O’Leary drops out of Conservative leadership race, endorses Maxime Bernier
Well, the biggest clown in the parade has dropped out – which is a good thing… but there are still plenty of other clowns, and some of them are even worse than O’Leary.
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[] Canada drops in world press freedom rankings
The Harper years were called a “dark age” for Canadian press freedom, but things really haven’t improved under Trudea.
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[] Lawsuit necessary to protect public schools in Saskatchewan
This is an excellent piece that gives some in-depth background into the recent Saskatchewan ruling about funding non-Catholic students in Catholic schools (note: it assumes you know that Premier Brad Wall is fighting to prevent school districts from filing lawsuits like the one that spawned the ruling). Most importantly, it puts the blame for the current mess right where it deserves to be: on the Catholic school boards that started opportunistically taking in non-Catholic kids for the funding.
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[] Salvation Army Exec In Ontario Guilty Of Selling Donations To Black Market
This was one of the biggest operations of its kind in Canadian history, with Salvation Army employees snatching donated goods and reselling them to stores to the tune of millions of dollars.
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“Morgan noted Saskatchewan’s education infrastructure — including the new joint-use schools — was created under the two-system approach.”
This government are strictly power brokers. Supporting separate schools in this province is just a good vote-getting strategy.
It is hard to pigeonhole their conservative practices. They have a huge gambling addiction that motivates them to bet everything, that we own collectively, on economic growth initiatives. When China (Communist China) purchases less potash we are left with all the growth (people, houses and infrastructures) to look after until the capitalist/communists renew their worldwide sales objectives.
Conservative governments may disparage ‘planning’ but they are enthusiastic players when it comes to ‘gambling’. Betting on big support for separate schools in this province is one of their safer wagers.
The CBC News reported today that the Saskatchewan Government will use the “not withstanding” clause to keep the separate school system operating the same way it has inspite of the court ruling that it violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Sort of pointless having a charter if any government can simply bypass it any time they want to. Since the unproven God of the charter is the supreme arbiter rather than human courts why would any reasonable person pay any attention to it anyway.
I have a particular interest in this discussion because I received my education in Saskatchewan. I was educated in the secular system but I very well remember the Catholic schools back in the 50’s and 60’s. It’s really a no brainer to any rational person in today’s world that not only Saskatchewan, but all of Canada and in fact the whole world should have secular school systems. The ideas of Christianity, and I suspect other religions also, are so outdated in the modern world as to be basically irrelevant to most advanced peoples understandings and lifestyles.
The problem with this never ending religion nonsense, atleast as far as the Christian version of it is concerned, is that it has always been and always will be just an elitist tax dodge. Probably the main reason the elites in the west always have been the elites in the west is that they’ve never paid their fair share of community support which has given them a huge economic advantage over everyone else who has. Finally, hopefully, people are catching up to these crooks and in the not to distant future they will not be getting away with it again.
The Christian Church should be treated just the same as any other economic organization in civil society. If they can get the paying customers in the door then they have something to report to the CRA and should be taxed accordingly, just like any other business. The fact that they have a book and a story to go with it doesn’t make them any different from a publisher or any other media organization. If they can convince anyone to buy it, on an equal footing with other media (story telling) organizations vying for the customers time and money, more power to them. But to single them out for preferential treatment, not to have to pay any taxes, in fact not even being required to report their business activity to the government, makes no more sense now than it ever has in the past.
Eh, I wouldn’t worry all that much about Wall’s notwithstanding gambit. Firstly, even if he actually does it and it sticks, it’s only a 5-year term, max. Then either he has to renew it (if he’s still in power), or the next government will. That can hardly go on for *too* long before someone finally puts a stop to it.
But frankly, using the notwithstanding clause is an admission of failure. There are only a few times I am aware of where the notwithstanding clause was practically applied, all of them in Quebec. There was the French sign laws in the late-1980s/early-1990s… which ended with the United Nations Human Rights Committee slamming on them, which was pretty embarrassing for Quebec, so they backed down and didn’t renew it. Then there were some exemptions given to privilege Christianity when the school system was going secular in the 2000s… which also ended in embarrassment. There were also some pointless or aborted attempts in other provinces to use it to stifle gay marriage and stomp down unions. All in all, using the notwithstanding clause seems pretty much marking yourself as an ignorant bigot.
In *this* case, the UNHRC has *already* slammed Ontario and Canada over separate schools. So for Saskatchewan to do something as drastic as invoking the notwithstanding clause to protect them is pretty much putting a giant bullseye on the whole idea. I doubt other provinces would be keen to pull the same stunt. You don’t need the notwithstanding clause to protect something that is reasonable; you only need it to protect something that is discriminatory or harmful.
I think I’ve recently found some good support for the case I made on the “Weekly Update:25-Mar-2017 to 31-Mar-2017” for the Canadian Conservatives and Muslims making good bedfellows in the future. Part of your reply (Apr. 2/17 @ 3:31pm) to my post appears below.
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> Incidentally it is pretty obvious where the Conservative Party will acquire new members. From
members of the Muslim criminal gang….
No way.
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I’ve just finished reading an excellent book which I acquired through the Toronto Public Libraries online lending service. It is ‘Ike’s Gamble:America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East’ by Michael Doran and I highly recommend it. I would like to quote from a letter, cited by Doran on p. 220 of this book, from Eisenhower to King Saud of Saudi Arabia in the summer of 1957.
Eisenhower was soliciting Saud’s support for a US effort at regime change in Syria (sound familiar, seems the more things change the more they stay the same) at the time. Eisenhower wrote “In view of the special position of Islam, I trust that you will exert your great influence to the end that the atheistic creed of Communism will not become entrenched at a key position in the Muslim world”.
Of course great hero of the Second World War, Allied leader of the D-Day landing in Europe and twice US Republican president wouldn’t have ever been any of those things if he would have been an atheist. However, a statement like this one above, of course not delivered publically at the time, certainly shows his true feelings about what really matters militarily, economically and
politically in the world.
Nothing unites the gangs like a common enemy.
Eisenhower was a complicated creature. Somewhere I read that his parents were Jehovah’s Witnesses. He led the country in national Christian revival extravaganzas. I think he was suffering from Post Traumatic Syndrome throughout the whole his presidency. He saw horrible thing up close and was responsible for horrid things even after the war was over. He even was an early guest at the Vatican to discuss the liberation of Vietnam from its hereditary prince and Buddhist guided education. The United States has never fully recovered from the leadership of this mentally ill war hero.
> Nothing unites the gangs like a common enemy.
That depends on what you mean by “unite”. On some level, it is true that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”… but only for very limited definitions of “friend”. Yes, the Conservative Party is only too happy to cozy up to Muslims and even Islamists when and where it serves their interests… but they are *NOT* really friends or allies in any sense. The true test of whether Conservatives and Muslims might be allies in general is to look to look at how the Conservatives treat Muslims in any situation where it *doesn’t* serve their political interests.
In other words, while the Conservative government may have opportunistically kissed Muslim ass to get oil or money or military advantage or whatever… what did they do to Muslims when they weren’t going to gain anything from it? Answer: They harassed and insulted Muslims at *EVERY* opportunity. They chased down *every* legal option they could muster to annoy and belittle Muslims. They deliberately and openly courted people and groups who said horrible and hateful things about Muslims, and even praised them for it. They stirred up anti-Muslim bigotry for political gains, and even encouraged Canadians to narc on Muslims. They treated Muslims *so* badly that they even got sued for it!
No. Absolutely no way. There is *NO* way Conservatives and Muslims can be called allies. The Conservative Party of Canada and its supporters are *virulently* anti-Muslim. They’re so anti-Muslim, that the *other* political parties are actually being more *pro*-Muslim than they really should, just to highlight the distinction between them and the Cons.
The only way Cons could ever find friendship with Canadian Muslims at this point would be if all the other parties suddenly do an about face and start using the kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric that Conservatives are now using. If that happened – if *everyone* was as nasty to Muslims as the Cons are – then Muslims might just pick the Cons as the least of all evils, because Muslims tend to be (small-c) conservative. But as it stands, there’s really only one major federal political party that is openly and shamelessly anti-Muslim, and that’s the Conservatives. So Canadian Muslims can easily find allies elsewhere.
Incidentally, with regards to Ike’s apparently pro-Muslim views… let me point out that the dear general, only a decade or so before he made that quote, was a *staunch* ally of the “atheistic Communists”. In fact, Ike actually made nice with Stalin behind the backs of his other allies, like Churchill, pissing them off. Even after the war, Ike was an enemy of American anti-Communists like McCarthy.
Even today in America, the American conservatives – the Republican Party – are all over kissing the ass of the Saudis for their oil and money… all while treating Muslims like shit at the same time. Kissing up to dictators, even to Muslim dictators, is just standard practice; being friendly to Muslim dictators doesn’t equal being friendly to Muslims. That hasn’t changed since Ike’s time.
So don’t read too much into that quote. It was just politicking; he was opportunistically kissing the ass of someone he wanted something from. A decade before he wrote it, he wrote a letter talking up the importance of Communism in opposing the spread of Nazism. In an alternate universe, a decade or so after that quote, he could have been writing a letter praising the importance of Hinduism in opposing the spread of fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East. That’s politics.
Well, the biggest clown in the parade has dropped out
Clowns in the sense of a clown in a Stephen King novel.
Or the insane clown south of the border.
I suppose you could say that while O’Leary was the “biggest” clown in the sense of being the most well-known, there are plenty of other clowns left in the race that are much closer to the Stephen King model.