Weekly Update: 23-Dec-2017 to 29-Dec-2017

As I mentioned last week, this week’s Weekly Update is a “mini-update”, because I’m taking a bit of a break with visiting family (and very much lubricated by BEvERages and other psychoactive substances).

This is also the last Weekly Update of 2017, and it’s been a good year. Thanks to everyone who follows these updates; your readership and responses really do make it worthwhile for me to do every week. I promise to keep it up in the new year, and to try to get even better.

So with no further ado… here’s your final Canadian Atheist Weekly Update for 2017, covering the week of 23-Dec-2017 to 29-Dec-2017.

The Québec mosque shooting may be the most under-reported story of 2017. I’d bet most Canadians know Heather Heyer’s name… I strongly doubt many could name even one of the people in this image.

• [21-Dec-2017] Right-wing extremism ‘growing concern’ in Canada, federal report says

  Experts have been pushing authorities to recognize that right-wing extremism is a growing problem in Canada, and probably more serious than the threat of Islamist-inspired extremism. It seems authorities are finally listening.

• [22-Dec-2017] Born again … as condominiums

  One wonders how much the process would be accelerated if the tax privileges churches enjoy were removed as well.

• [27-Dec-2017] How powerful is the religious right in Canada?

  Michael Coren makes an interesting case for Andrew Scheer being a test for the political power of the religious right in Canada. It’s an interesting idea.

• [27-Dec-2017] Quebec City Mosque Shooting: Canadians Raise Nearly $200,000 In 10 Days For Aymen Derbali

  I admit with some embarrassment that this wasn’t even on my radar. I hadn’t even heard the story of Aymen Derbali before this. That bothers me; it bothers me that we haven’t talked a lot more about the Québec mosque shooting. The story sort of faded out of the news after only a few weeks… but so much more has slipped under the radar. Alexandre Bissonnette’s lawyers successfully petitioned for a publication ban, so we haven’t even heard anything from that end – there was a blip in Octoboer, but that’s about it. Did you know about the saga of trying to bury the victims of the shooting? Did you know about the firebombing of the imam’s car? There is a lot of story there just waiting to be told, and I want to make a plea to journalists: tell it. Tell it all.

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