My tribute to earth hour

Advertisement

May the diversity Force be with you

Once again the Force has bent the will of its detractors – insufficiently inclusive government employees in this case – into submission:

As any Star Wars fan knows, the Force is a powerful tool that can be harnessed to control the minds of weak-willed individuals.

So when Jedi believer Chris Jarvis was told to remove his hooded top at a Jobcentre, its staff must have been made of stern stuff.

Despite explaining he wears a cowl as part of his faith, the 31-year-old was marched off the premises by security guards after refusing to comply.

Infuriated by his treatment, he wrote a letter of complaint to the branch in Southend, Essex, and was surprised to receive an apology which said the service ’embraces diversity and respects customers’ religions’.

Despite the olive branch, the disabled father of three is planning to sue Jobcentre Plus for discrimination.

One wonders what organisation could possibly want to employ him. Hmmm.

Compulsory equality in Ontario classrooms

My grandparents used to say to my parents, “I’m glad I’m not bringing up children in this day and age”; to gain perspective, “this day and age” was when I was young and we had no TV, no car, no telephone, the milk was delivered by horses pulling a cart and we learned to write with a scratchy pen that had to be dipped in an inkwell.

In their turn, my parents said the same thing to me; in the early days, we still had no car or telephone.

Now I look at my grandchildren and say to their parents, “I’m glad I’m not bringing up children in this day and age”.

There are many reasons; here is one:

TORONTO, Ontario, January 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Ontario Ministry of Education has mandated that every school board in Ontario, Catholic and public, implement a new equity and inclusiveness policy by September 2010.

While the new initiative was devised with participation from the curriculum arm of the Ontario Bishops’ Assembly, it nevertheless would force Ontario’s Catholic school boards to recognize “sexual orientation” as a ground protected from discrimination.  The Vatican has warned, however, that such a recognition is usually part and parcel with the outright promotion of homosexuality. One prominent Catholic commentator and priest has said that this is indeed the Ministry’s aim.

The Ministry’s new initiative, called the Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy, requires school boards to address areas such as religious accommodation and the prevention of discrimination, which includes combating “homophobia.”

Alcoholic wants religion free treatment

From the CBC:

A Winnipeg man who has struggled with alcoholism for decades says he has filed a complaint with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission over the lack of a treatment program that’s free of religious or spiritual elements.

Rob Johnstone said he has battled alcoholism for 40 years and can’t find a treatment program that doesn’t rely on religion or spirituality as part of the recovery process.

“I should not be forced to participate in someone else’s religious beliefs. I shouldn’t have to add to mine,” said Johnstone, who added he has been an alcoholic for 40 years.

“I have my own beliefs and I’m happy with them.”

Rather than yet another frivolously idiotic complaint to a human rights commission, perhaps Johnstone should exercise his human right to continue being an alcoholic – a consequence, one presumes, of his happiness inducing beliefs.

Our main concern is not terrorism, but “ugly words”

That is what a UK counter-terrorism expert thinks:

Police should not focus on skin colour or religion when profiling for stop-and-searches as there is ‘no single terrorist profile’, a senior counter-terrorism officer said today.

John Yates, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations, said police need to take a ‘flexible and dynamic’ approach to profiling in order to stop suspected terrorists

He warned that al Qaida regularly changed tactics to keep a step ahead and called for security staff to use their experience to apply stop-and-search powers ‘sensitively’.

He said the failed Detroit plane plot at Christmas had reopened the debate on ‘profiling’, which he labelled an ‘ugly’ word.

Yates goes on to recommend a quota system for airport searches: for every bearded Muslim questioned, three white little old ladies must be strip-searched. In this way, the world will be kept safe from the horror of ugly words.

Calgary church feeds 150,000 people a year. Loses charitable status.

Because, even though it happily feeds anyone in need – including homosexuals – it has the gall to disagree with abortion and homosexual activity:

Calgary church loses charitable status for its “non-partisan political activities”.

A Calgary church has lost its charitable status in part because it spends too much of its time advocating on social issues such as abortion and marriage.

In October, the Kings Glory Fellowship Association, a non-denominational Protestant group, was told by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) that for several reasons, including a lack of clarity on how it spends it money, they could no longer issue charitable receipts.

But the letter highlighted that the group spent more than 10% of its time on “non-partisan political activities and therefore strayed into activities “outside its stated purpose.”

“We note … the members of the Board of Directors espouse strong negative vies about sensitive and controversial issues, which may also be viewed as political, such as abortion, homosexuality, divorce, etc.”

The CRA allows charitable organizations to spend some time on “political activities,” but the cutoff is 10%. A spokesman for the CRA was not immediately available to explain how the percentage of time a group spends on non-charitable works is determined.

Artur Pawlowski, the head of the Kings Glory Fellowship, said his group “has nothing to do with politics and we do not advertise for a party or a candidate. The only political activity you can connect us to is defending our right to speak.”

Mr. Pawlowski said the primary mission of his church is to feed homeless people. He said this group supplies food for about 150,000 a year, mainly to people “that no one else wants to deal with.”

“When we feed people we don’t care whether they are homosexuals or have had abortions or been divorced but we preach what the Bible says about those issues.”

He said the financial issues are just a “smoke screen” and the real agenda is to “keep us quiet.” Mr. Pawlowski also noted that his church has never been audited by the CRA.

I do hope that Archbishop Fred Hiltz leaps to the defence of Artur Pawlowski, since one of the Famous Five marks of mission is to respond to human need by loving service. Fred, are you there? You’re breaking up, Fred.

I wonder why the Anglican church of Canada still has tax free status, since it is almost exclusively a politically motivated organisation that is constantly petitioning the government over one thing or another while actually doing almost nothing useful itself.

The Kings Glory Fellowship Association feeds 150,000 people a year, espouses politically incorrect causes and loses its tax exempt status as a charity.

The Anglican Church of Canada, a national organisation, by comparison feeds almost no-one, peddles politically correct banalities and, mysteriously, still has charitable status.

The rise of the phylactery bomber

And the demise of common sense:

A US Airways flight was diverted to Philadelphia after a young Jewish man’s prayer items triggered a bomb scare, Philadelphia police said.

The incident arose when the man used a phylactery, a small black box Orthodox Jews strap to their head as part of their rituals, police said.

The man was not arrested and the plane landed without incident.

US airports are on high alert after a Nigerian man was held over an alleged bomb plot on a plane last month.

His device allegedly malfunctioned and he was quickly overpowered by passengers and crew on the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

The latest incident took place on a 50-seat regional jet originally bound for Louisville, Kentucky from New York’s LaGuardia airport. It landed in Philadelphia at about 0900 local time (1400 GMT).

I can understand the concern, considering the alarming epidemic of young Jewish men strapping phylacteries to their heads and blowing themselves up. Scarcely a day passes without another occurrence. It’s a new and devious strategy: forget about secreting explosives next to your testicles where anyone could find them –  put them in plain sight on your head.

Whatever you do, don’t mention the war

There is almost no-one left that it is permissible to stereotype; now Germans are out, apparently.

A radio advertisement has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for implying Germans are tyrants.

Complaints were upheld about a Reed recruitment website commercial, which had an angry boss speaking in German.

The ASA said it could cause serious offence to some listeners and was found to be offensive because it used a negative stereotype.

The advert had sparked 13 complaints from the public, but Reed did not comment on them.

The ASA also said that while the use of stereotypes was “inevitable” to establish a character in a short radio advert, this should not “perpetuate damaging misconceptions”.

The watchdog said: “We noted the ad used a German speaker, rather than someone speaking English, to portray the boss as ‘a bit of a tyrant’ and the humour derived from a stereotype at the expense of German people.

This is a shame really, since up until now I have been killing Nazis in Wolfenstein 2 with a completely clear conscience – I’d hate to “perpetuate damaging misconceptions”, though. Really.

A green response to terrorism

Jesus our Epersonnuel

I had the misfortune of attending a funeral at a United Church (of Canada) a while back; the disagreeable aspect of the service lay not in lamenting the demise of the person in the coffin, but in being exposed to the United Church’s butchery of the hymns. Lines such as:

Father-like, he tends and spares us;
well our feeble frame he knows;

were expunged and replaced with the atrocious mother-like God gently bears us (that is the gist of it – I am going by memory). I expressed my contempt for the deranged alterations by singing the correct words with a gusto sufficient to drown the tentative efforts of the others in my pew; I think there were a few conversions.

Christmas carols are being subjected to a similar assault:

Christmas carols are being re-written to make them politically correct, a music teacher has claimed.

Nic Robinson was surprised to find the words to Hark! The Herald Angels Sing have been changed to be ‘gender inclusive’ by removing the words ‘man’, ‘men’ and ‘sons’.

Attending a carol service at his 13-year-old daughter Hannah’s school, he noticed that in verse two the line ‘Pleased as man with man to dwell’ was changed to ‘Pleased with us in flesh to dwell’ on the printed sheet.

Then in the next verse the lines ‘Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of Earth, Born to give them second birth’ were changed to ‘Born that we no more may die, Born to raise us from the earth, Born to give us second birth.’

The disgruntled parent went on to note:

I am sure some bishop will write now, explaining, kindly, that hymns have been evolving throughout the ages and that this one, in particular, has known many versions,’ he said.

‘May I ask the bishop not to bother, but rather to spend his time in contacting the people who have defaced my favourite carol. They need to be told of one glaring omission in their revision, namely the line which follows the one quoted above. This should surely now read ‘Jesus our Epersonnuel’.

Bishops get no respect these days. I wonder why.

Copenhagen Climate Conference: run by anti-Christmas bigots

No Christmas trees for the climate conference:

Participants at Copenhagen’s global climate summit will be meeting during the holiday season, but they will not be surrounded by festive Christmas decor, according to Denmark’s Foreign Ministry.

Since Christmas is a religious holiday, it has no place at a United Nations event, said officials planning the event.

A sponsor providing fir trees for the conference’s Christmas trees learned this the hard way when it was turned away by planners of the international event, the Copenhagen Post reported.

Silly me: I thought the Copenhagen climate conference was a religious event; isn’t that why Rowan Williams is speaking?

Teenage criminals no longer called “youths” in the UK

In the UK teenage criminals must be called “young persons”, not “youths” – to avoid offending them.

It is not a word usually associated with causing offence, even when those referred to have broken the law.

But ‘youth’ has been banned from guidelines on the treatment of criminals aged 16 and 17 – because ministers think it is too demeaning.

Instead, offenders must be referred to as ‘young persons’ in the latest code for prosecutors. The newly fashionable phrase is used 101 times in the document.

I have a better idea. How about calling them:

inchoate hooligans

scelestious yahoos

pimply purveyors of turpitude

flagitious degenerates

iniquitous ingrates

delinquent desperados

benighted bastards.

There, I feel better now.

Another cartoon controversy

The cartoon was published by Newsday and people have been protesting:

NEW YORK Picketers demonstrated outside of Newsday’s offices in Melville, N.Y., on Wednesday to protest a cartoon that appeared in Sunday’s paper. About 20 people carrying signs that read “Boycott Newsday” also demanded that Editor John Mancini be fired for allowing the cartoon to be published.

The protesters were upset about a syndicated “Mallard Fillmore” cartoon drawn by Bruce Tinsley that was published a week after the one-year anniversary of the death of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero. They were also picketing in protest of a recent story and column about Lucero’s murder.

Authorities allege that seven teenagers stabbed Lucero to death last year, and one has pleaded guilty to first-degree gang assault and fourth-degree conspiracy.

The cartoon causing the controversy was titled “Liberals: The Early Years,” and featured a small dinosaur being chased by a larger one who said, “I’m not chasing you because you’re a pachycephalosaurus … I’m chasing you because you’re delicious,” to which the smaller dinosaur responded, “Oh, thank goodness. I was worried that this might be a hate crime.”

Here’s the cartoon – no laughing, now:

 

The politically correct Apple

Although I use a PC, I like some of Apple’s gadgets – I have a 64Gb iPod touch that serves as an mp3 player and a PDA – because they exhibit an enviable flair for design and ease-of-use; unfortunately, when they break they are hard to fix because the price for ease-of-use is inaccessibility to the contraption’s inner workings. The really irritating thing about Apple, though, is its nauseating political correctness: type “wife” into an Apple word processor and it helpfully suggests using “spouse” instead.

And now we have this:

Apple may refuse to fix your computer if you’re a smoker.

It’s well known that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is a bit of a health nut, but this may be taking things too far.

If you’re a smoker and a Mac user, Apple may refuse to fix your computer.

Consumerist is reporting that two Apple customers from different parts of the United States have seen their Applecare warranty packages voided because the computers were used by smokers and contained tar and second hand smoke.

Apparently, Apple won’t let its technicians work on computers that come from smoking households due to risks associated with second hand smoke.

Anti-Olympic signs could mean jail

The CBC reports:

A proposed B.C. law would allow municipal officials to enter homes to seize unauthorized and possibly anti-Olympic signs on short notice, civil libertarians say.

Violators could be fined up to $10,000 a day and jailed up to six months, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said Friday.

The proposed law was introduced Thursday as a bill to amend the Municipalities Enabling and Validating Act.

The government said in a statement that the changes will “provide the municipalities of Vancouver, Richmond and Whistler with temporary enforcement powers to enable them to swiftly remove illegal signs and graffiti during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.”

I can think of only one adequate response: