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Stories about the Beijing Olympics:
Let the
pretending begin
As the number eight is considered good luck in
China, the Beijing Olympics are set to open on 8/8/08 at 8:08 p. m. It is
fitting that a little superstition and credulity should kick off the whole
affair, as nothing requires great pretending like the Olympics. The
Beijing edition should raise that to, well, Olympian heights.
Father
Raymond J. De Souza, National Post, August 8
Bush urges religious
freedom
As U.S. president, family attend Beijing church, some
faithful are left outside on street
Toronto Star, August 11
Earlier: China suppresses
religion in preparation for the Olympic Games
Stories about politicians and religion:
Why
don't Canadians want to hear about our politicians' religious
beliefs?
An Angus Reid poll released this week asked Canadians
their feelings about mixing politics and religion. Among its major
findings: 66% of Canadians thought it was wrong for politicians to talk
about their religious beliefs, while 25% thought is was perfectly
acceptable.
Charles Lewis, Full Comment, National Post, August 7
Reeling
in the right
Mark Rozell, a professor of public policy at
George Mason University in Virginia and an expert on the Christian right,
said Mr. Obama will never win anywhere close to a majority of evangelical
voters. But because his lead over Mr. McCain is so small -- about two to
four percentage points -- he will need to do better among evangelicals to
win in November.
National Post, August 9
John
Edwards and all of us operate with "mixed motives." Get used to
it.
Is it the U.S. media, or just Americans themselves, who are
so prurient and hyprocritical? The blanket media coverage of John Edward's
confession of an affair suggests something is terribly out of kilter in
American society, and anywhere else that such voyeuristic moralizing takes
centrestage.
Douglas Todd, The Search, Vancouver Sun, August 10
Stories about "human rights" tribunals and commissions:
Danish
cartoon complaint rejected
After a year-long investigation, the
Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission has rejected a complaint
by the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities against former Western
Standard publisher Ezra Levant over his republication of the Danish
Muhammad cartoons.
National Post, August 7
Crunch time
for Canada's human-rights marsupials
As an alumnus of
interrupted or unfinished revolutions, I suggest the mistake isn't cutting
off institutions such as the CHRC at the knees, but letting them stand.
Cut them off, I say, preferably with a submachine gun, followed by a stake
through the heart.
George Jonas, National Post, August 9
Earlier: Stories about the
"Jesus sucks" stunt and other "human rights" complaints
Stories about Muslims, Islam and the West:
Lifeguard
files rights complaint after YMCA tells her she can't wear
hijab
A Montreal lifeguard has filed a human rights complaint
against a local YMCA after the club told her she couldn't wear her hijab
on duty. The 21-year-old woman has been swapping her traditional Muslim
headscarf at the poolside for a "burkini," a swimsuit that covers
everything but the face, hands and feet.
Canadian Press, August 7
Mosque helping Khadr
accused of terror links
The Islamic centre offering Abdullah
Khadr a job, and helping post bail for the eldest son in the infamous
Khadr family, was frequented by individuals with ties to terrorism and
extremist activities, according to Crown arguments at a bail review
hearing yesterday.
Toronto Star, August 7
Continue article >>
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Naive
accused had no idea of mentor's 'jihadi fantasy' to attack Canada:
defence
A terrifying terrorist plot to attack Canadian targets
was an unrealistic "jihadi fantasy" that was deliberately hidden from a
young man on trial for his role in the alleged conspiracy, an Ontario
court heard Thursday. In closing arguments, defence lawyer Mitchell
Chernovsky said the Crown failed to prove the group it alleges was bent on
wanton destruction was a real terrorist cell.
Canadian Press, August 7
Talk of
jihad abroad proves accused not part of Canadian terror plot:
lawyer
An Ontario court is hearing that a young man accused of
membership in a homegrown terrorism plot talked about going to fight in
Iraq or Sri Lanka. If his client had signed on to a domestic terror
conspiracy, defence lawyer Faisal Mirza wonders, why would he talk about
going abroad in the weeks and months before his arrest in June
2006?
Canadian Press, August 8
Plot a
'delusion,' youth not involved: lawyer
A 20-year-old convert to
Islam was unaware of an alleged nefarious plot to "cripple Canada" even
though the scheme was nothing more than an unrealistic "delusion," a court
heard yesterday. Mitchell Chernovsky, who is defending a suspected
terrorist before court, said his client could not have agreed to the
alleged conspiracy because the plan was a fantasy "with zero
probability."
National Post, August 8
How
a devout Hindu teen became a stranger to his parents on trial in an
alleged terror plot
A father's curiosity trumped all else on
the day he decided to ransack his 15-year-old son's room. He swept through
the young man's desk, shelf and closet in the family's Scarborough
apartment, silently praying his suspicions wouldn't be confirmed. The
smoking gun he found that day wasn't a girlie magazine or sandwich bag
filled with marijuana, but a copy of the Koran on a CD-ROM. At the time,
the devout Hindu thought he'd been struck with the worst kind of parental
disappointment. But five years later, after spending $30 a day driving to
and from a courthouse in Brampton to watch his son go through Canada's
first terrorism trial, he has endured a worse fate - the experience of
losing his son.
Dakshana Bascaramurty, Globe and Mail, August 8
Persecuting
a gentle people
Baha'is are casteless, generally open-minded
(they actually promote interracial marriage) and -- believing there are
many paths to God -- pluralistic in spiritual outlook. They tend to be
rigourously non-partisan and pacifistic. A well-integrated and undemanding
minority wherever they congregate, with no expansionist political goals,
they typically seek neither government entitlements nor special
accommodation from society. Who could possibly resent, fear or hate this
blameless global community of a mere five-million apolitical souls? In a
word: Iran.
Barbara Kay, National Post, August 8
Earlier: Stories about
Muslims, Islam and the West
Other stories from the past week:
Man is Born
to Die
By dying last Sunday at the age of 89, the Nobel
prize-winning Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, proved at least part
of a point he made in his legendary address to the students and faculty of
Harvard University 30 years ago. "If humanism were right in declaring that
man is born to be happy," Solzhenitsyn suggested to his incredulous
audience in 1978, "he would not be born to die." The contentious part of
the Solzhenitsyn's statement wasn't that man was born to die -- his
American hosts at Harvard knew that. They were astounded because, like
most contemporaries, they considered death the very reason that made
achieving earthly happiness the purpose of man's existence. Solzhenitsyn
didn't. He called such views "the ossified formulas of the
Enlightenment."
George Jonas, CanWest Publications, August
6
Earlier: Stories about
the death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Ongoing
string of apologies not really necessary
The question of
whether the Canadian government should apologize for past injustices or
alleged injustices committed against minorities has long been contentious.
Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau took a firm stand on the issue when
he stated that today's society could not be held responsible for all of
the misdeeds of the past -- otherwise the list of demands would be
endless. The position adopted by Trudeau began to erode, however, during
the campaign prior to the 2006 federal election when an increasingly
desperate Liberal Party sought to shore up its support in the Chinese
community by promising to atone for the imposition of the head tax more
than a century earlier. Not to be outdone, the Conservatives then made
similar commitments. As Trudeau anticipated, the queue of those seeking
redress of one kind or another has now become rather long.
Martin
Collacott, Vancouver Sun, August 7
Earlier: Stories about Stephen Harper's
apology to Sikhs
Morgentaler
gets green light to fight N.B. on abortion funding
A New
Brunswick court has cleared the way for Henry Morgentaler to challenge
restrictions on abortion funding in the province. Madam Justice Paulette
Garnett of Court of Queen's Bench has granted Dr. Morgentaler "public
interest standing" to represent women in his lawsuit against the
province.
Canadian Press, August 8
Earlier: Stories
about Henry Morgentaler and the Order of Canada
The
greatness of Gershwin
Hitting the stage at the Matsqui
Centennial Auditorium on Aug. 24, the show will feature members of the
world-class Watson family along with the Serenata Strings and Show Band. .
. . "We all have our separate careers, and we're a family, so we're all
coming back together and doing a concert together so to speak," said
Elana. "We perform abroad in different venues, we perform in predominantly
church venues. We're all professionally trained musicians. This is one of
the first times we've gotten together to do a secular concert of this
calibre in Abbotsford."
Abbotsford Times, August 8
The
King James Bible: A (very) Good Book
Like Vladimir Nabokov, the
Almighty did his best writing in English. His Hebrew and German (I mean
He, not Nabokov) were also excellent, but His Greek and Latin were a bit
sloppy. Still, no one's perfect. The King James Version (KJV) of the Bible
of 1611 (also called the Authorized Version) was a new creation. If it
still is the best rendering of the Hebrew and Greek originals in English,
it nevertheless changed utterly the way the Tanakh (the Hebrew scriptures)
and the so-called New Testament are read. The magisterial language of the
KJV loses in its solemnity the Hebrew puns and word games of the Tanakh
and covers up the verbal messiness of the Greek New Testament.
Donald
Harman Akenson, Globe and Mail, August 8
August 14/2008
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