Weekly Update: 22-Jul-2017 to 28-Jul-2017

Here’s your Canadian Atheist Weekly Update for 22-Jul-2017 to 28-Jul-2017.

A Terradyne Armored Vehicles Gurkha tactical armoured vehi― no, wait, transport vehicle! Totally no arms trading happening here, move along.

• [14-Jul-2017] Canada’s sordid history with white supremacists involves a Caribbean coup plot

  Not long after I moved to the city I live in now, I was surprised to learn that there had been a cross-burning in the neighbouring town back in the 1930s. Apparently, a gang of thugs in KKK robes separated a (black) WW veteran from his (white) fiancée, took her back to her mother’s house, then made him watch as they burned a cross in front of his house. The Mayor, at the time, approved of the KKK’s actions. It ended happily, though, as the couple eventually married, and the perpetrators of the cross-burning became the first KKK convictions in Canada. What surprised me was not so much that it happened, but how it seemed to have been completely forgotten by all historic accounts of the area – I only learned about it from a non-mainstream “alternate” media source that focuses on social justice concerns. As for the attempted takeover of Dominica, I actually knew about that (I grew up in Barbados, which was involved, and might have been their second target), but I didn’t know that one of the masterminds was Canadian. There is a lot of racist history I don’t think Canadians are aware of, and maybe it’s time we started talking about it.

• [24-Jul-2017] Man tied to $1K reward for videos of Muslim students praying charged with hate crime

  The only thing surprising about this is how long it took to happen. The CBC story focuses on the charge and the impact on those Johnston harassed and threatened, but the National Post goes into a lot more detail about Johnston himself, if you’re curious.

• [25-Jul-2017] Justin Bieber Canceled His World Tour So He Could Spend More Time with Jesus

  Apparently even Jesus doesn’t want to go on a Justin Bieber concert tour, so Bieber has to quit to be with him. Also, thank goodness Hemant Mehta reads TMZ so I don’t have to.

• [25-Jul-2017] Providence Health Care suspends discussions with Glacier View Lodge

  This story was covered earlier this week on CA, so you can check that post for the details, but it has now been confirmed that the amalgamation is off. (Or at least, that talks have been “temporarily suspended”.)

• [25-Jul-2017] Daphne Bramham: Blackmore welcomes being found guilty in B.C. polygamy case

  No one is surprised by the verdict, but in a bit of legal technicality, there is a guilty verdict, but there hasn’t been a conviction yet. That’s because Blackmore, and probably Oler, are going to try a last-ditch constitutional challenge… but their challenge sounds fairly incoherent, so they’re probably destined for jail time. This is a difficult case for humanists and freethinkers, because on the one hand, one should be free to marry not only whoever they choose to (assuming consent on both sides, of course), but also as many people as they choose. On the other, there is the harsh reality that group marriages in religious contexts are almost always one-man-many-women, and the women are usually treated very badly.

• [28-Jul-2017] Professor Jordan Peterson: Charlatan Conservative Christian Perpetually Paranoid about Pronouns & Postmodernism

  For some bizarre reason beyond my ken, Professor Jordan B. Peterson is popular among nonbelievers. No, check that; I know exactly why he’s popular. It’s because he says the things assholes want to hear, and they reward him handsomely for saying them. Well, Nice Mangos took one for the team, and actually took the time to wade deep into Peterson’s crap. And there she found: more crap.

• [28-Jul-2017] Ottawa calls for investigation into Saudi Arabia’s apparent use of Canadian-made armoured vehicles against citizens

  This shouldn’t be surprising, but it’s okay if you it makes you feel a bit sick. We had evidence as far back as early last year that the Saudis were using armoured military vehicles against their civilian population. But those vehicles weren’t Canadian-made, so it wasn’t really our problem, and the Saudis were going to promise us they wouldn’t use the armoured vehicles Canada was selling them against civilians. Well… now there is evidence of Canadian-made armoured vehicles being used against civilians. (To be clear, not the vehicles the Liberals signed off on selling the Saudis shortly after taking power, but vehicles sold to the Saudis earlier, by the Harper administration… although, Harper insisted they weren’t “weapons” but rather “transport vehicles”. No statement from him about these vehicles transporting munitions into the bodies of Saudi Arabian citizens yet.) Nothing is yet confirmed, but the evidence is strong enough that Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has been forced to issue a statement about how quote-unquote “deeply concerned” she is. As of now, the deal with the new set of armoured vehicles still seems to be underway.

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