Religious zealotry exposed on the Christian "right"....needs taming as does Radical Islam

There is never a day that goes by when the world is not greeted with another shameful act, statement, pontification, or report of another spurious inroad made by religious zealots into what is generally and conventionally known as secular society.

Yesterday, in Canada, from Edmonton, the capital city of Alberta, we learned of a courageous single mother and her teen-aged daughter  who began speaking out in opposition to a “sex education” program under the auspices of the public board of education for the city of Edmonton.
Contracted out to “Care.com” an evangelical, fundamentalist, pro-life corporation from the United States, the curriculum is premised on the teaching of abstinence as the “first response” for teens in relationships. Condoms are declared unreliable, and young women are made to feel shame while young men are depicted as unable to control their instincts. And these are just a few of the observations from the young co-ed who appeared with her mother on the CBC network with their complaint to the human rights commission about the content and the “values being presented in the course. Children of single parent, too, are portrayed as more likely to become involved with the law, more likely to drop out and generally less “equal” to what the curriculum considers society’s norm.

This single mother is asking for a “science-based” sexual education program that is not overlaid with “values” especially those values that are the foundation of the program currently being offered in Edmonton.

The scourge of religious fundamentalism, including a manual of do’s and dont’s for those eager and willing to drink the cool-aid of the cult, based on a literal reading and interpretation of some holy book, and too often following the leadership and guidance of some charismatic preacher, evangelist, imam, or priest or possibly even bishop, like a subjective tsunami is pouring over the hearts and minds of millions of desperate people, whose individual lives are fraught with fear, loneliness, some of the various faces of poverty, and a level of hopelessness that is ripe for the harvesting of the marauding armies of religious marketers, all determined to “carry out the will of God, Allah, or whatever name they attach to their spiritual icon.

Not only is the story from Edmonton a betrayal of the public trust that public dollars will not be used to prosletyze a particular religious and political ideology, (notwithstanding the policy statement of the Edmonton education establishment that declares its purpose to promote abstinence, thereby providing “cover” for the perpetrators of the scam) but more importantly, and also more insidiously,  the story demonstrates the deceptive, deceitful, and determined measures that the religious “right” will take in order to impose their point of view on an unsuspecting  body politic.  

Of course, anyone, like the courageous and determined single mother, defending the honour of her single parenthood as equal to other families with two parents, not to mention the honour of her innocent daughter as also equal to, if not superior to, that of children from two-parent families, who opposes this brain-washing under the banner of family values, and also under the business model of capitalistic profiteering, is and always will be considered a heretic by those engaged in this “war for the hearts and minds of the public,” no matter which side of the 49^th parallel, and no matter which side of the Atlantic, Pacific or Indian Oceans.

“Onward Christian Soldiers” is a ‘chestnut’ hymn known to most who have been reared in one of the many denominations of Christendom. “Marching as to war” is one of its more exhortative lines, urging followers  of Jesus Christ Resurrected to “bring the gospel” to all corners of the earth. However, while the analogy to the training camps operating under the banner cry of Islamic jihad is exaggerated, there is a similarity to the fervor and the zealotry and the danger to one’s sanity, maturity and healthy spiritual development  that accompanies both kinds of extremism, Christian and Muslim.
Infidels, heretics, and the perfect purgation of the evils of those infidels and heretics are welcomed and accepted tenets of the ideology of those committed to the cause of their “religion”....and that cause, however perverted it may seem to those of us who despise its very existence and who speak out against the dangers of the infantilism their ideology imposes on the innocents and the vulnerable, is one for which they are prepared to surrender their “existence” whether in literal terms (as is the case of the Islamic martyrs) or metaphoric terms, as is the case in many of the lives of those engaged, for example in shooting and killing nurses and doctors who operate therapeutic abortion clinics.

In the case of Islamic radicals, Jews, Christians and even Muslims who are not compliant with and obedient to a particular strand of Islam are considered infidels, and thereby subject to “removal,” “elimination,” “purging” and  even in some cases death, as part of the responsibility of those perpetrating these acts of what could and would in any other context be considered “war crimes”. Similarly, in the case of radical, fundamentalist, evangelical Christians, those who are willing to question the beliefs, the practices and the scriptural underpinnings of the attitudes, perceptions, beliefs and actions of those “purists” are considered “heretics” and labelled as such within the ecclesial community in which all stripes of Christianity are expected to worship. In extreme cases, such as a Roman Catholic American presidential candidate who supports a woman’s right to choose is  publicly denied access to the mass, or eucharist, by the bishop of his home church, for failing to comply with church teaching on abortion. (John Kerry in 2004!)

Previously, and in some quarters still, former Roman Catholics who marry outside the church, to a ‘heretical’ prostestant or Jew, are also considered to have ‘left the fold’ and are subject to penalties should they wish to return. (Why would they?)

In my own journey into , through and out from the path of active ministry in the Anglican/Episcopal church in both Canada and the United States, I have encountered many of these same zealots who demanded my removal, broke into my residence, left messages of hate on my phone  answering machine, spawned libellous and untrue rumours about a phony and fallacious DUI, and made public accusations and attacks on my character that warranted legal action, including action against the hierarchy of the church for its failure to provide the basis of ‘due process’. When I removed the Sunday School Curriculum promoted by David C. Cook from one of the hotbeds of Christian fundamentalism, just south of Denver Colorado, Colorado Springs, the home of “family values,” and replaced it with something the Canadian church then called “The Whole People of God,” and when I  suggested that some might like to read writings like Original Blessing by Matthew Fox and “People of the Lie” by Scott Peck, I was labelled a heretic. A silent and secret campaign was mounted to remove me from my position, conducted by the insiders who provided much of the funding for the small parish to survive,  and a verbal “shoot-out” just as in the old west occurred between one of the wardens who firmly subscribed to this poppycock of faux religiosity and me in the sanctuary of the little church which failed to accommodate both of us.

As one who has fought against all forms of religious tyranny, including the abuse of Episcopal power both through overt commission and covert omission, *

·       through such failures as the blatant failure to orient new clergy to the full truth of the situation into which they were ‘sentencing’ an unsuspecting victim, and

·       such failures as not becoming familiar with the depth and the desperation of individual parishes that remained outside their  conscious awareness and conscience through a act of avoidance and denial of having to confront the realities of their responsibilities, and

·       through their conscious and willful or unconscious and irresponsible falling into the trap of putting the accounts and the fund-raising processes of the church ahead of the spiritual lives of their parishioners

·       through the conscious and blind membership in what could be called an old boys club of insiders, thereby imposing a gate-keeping exclusion on those who did and will not belong to the club

·       through a blind submission to the demands of a radical feminism that sought and continues to hold adult women as victims in relationships with male clergy, thereby infantilizing those very women and removing any responsibility for their complicity in relationships

·       through a failure to engage in their own spiritual growth and development, including their capacity to discern, accept responsibility for and heal their  brokenness, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, including a full conscious awareness and discernment of their emotional lives

·       through a failure to accept responsibility to provide spiritual, professional and psychological support for all clergy, including the responsibility to provide leadership in acquiring the necessary funding and resources for such support

And when one combines a desperate and overt and willful determination to “grow both numbers and dollars” as a way of defining the resume of the episcopate to the exclusion of all of the failures noted above, as well as the failure to integrate first different racial demographics, including different sexual orientations and even non-gay  females from the centrality of the life of the church, and even more insidiously to sanction the exclusion of the “underclass” of society from the pews of the ‘hallowed’ upper-class high church pews, it is not difficult to see how easy it might be for zealots to seize control of too many parishes, whose public face announced moderation and acceptance of all of God’s children., (created in the image of God, imago dei) yet whose psychic and spiritual reality exposed a growing cancer of hypocrisy, deception, the abuse of power and a growing divide between the insiders and the rogues, like me.

While there were no bullets fired at me, there were clearly political, verbal assaults that were neither acknowledged nor accounted for, nor even challenged by the ecclesial hierarchy, in my decade-plus attempt to survive in a hostile environment. I know intimately of the dangers of religious fundamentalism, religious zealotry and religious bigotry, from the inside, and I clearly identify with that courageous mother and teen-aged daughter who are speaking out against such insidious  religious fundamental instruction in sexual development. And the dangers of religious zealotry are growing exponentially as the variety and deviousness of the methods of delivery of the self-righteous indoctrination by the fanatic fringes of all faiths  increase.

And it will take a significant resistance movement by those willing to take the risk of estrangement, ostracism and outright slander  to counter this cancer in all our Christian religious encampments.

*Editor’s Note: This piece is not asserting that all bishops in the Anglican/Episcopal church are predisposed to the fundamentalist, literalist, evangelical point of view; it is however, recognizing that if this radical element is not and cannot be controlled or even negotiated with toward a common “yes” within the individual congregation or parish, (they are simply unable and unwilling to moderate or compromise on their rigid, righteous and purist positions), then how is the world to expect, anticipate or even hope for a peaceful truce between such diametrically opposed factions in the Islamic world as the radical Sunni faction(s) and the moderate Sunni, the Zealot Shia and the moderate Shia factions. So before Christians start demanding an end to violence from the Islamic radicals, they might give consideration to the need for some negotiated accommodations within the Christian church.

Reflections on a small change as a considerable transformation...shared with a loving partner

Up-rooted, discombobulated, disoriented, dizzy and exhausted....these are just a few of the words that begin to describe a household move, involving the departure from and entry into three bedroom dwellings, after six years of gathering "stuff" that seemed important and worthy of its acquisition at the time, yet often on reflection, not so much!
Nearly one hundred boxes of books, those rectangular arrangements of paper, sometimes with hard covers, often the cheaper "paper-back", another half-century of "files" including university papers, reports, reviews, and sloppy piles of journalistic efforts of the mostly editorial kind....evoking memories of a world now gone, when the word digital was merely a "smile" in the incubator of a few tech companies, not ready for prime time, and clearly not ready for mass marketing....these formed dividing walls in a mover's van segregating furniture from wardrobes, china cabinets from fireplaces, and bedroom suites from book shelves and patio chairs from keyboards.
Months ago, a respectable professional real estate agent commented, "If it's about the money, sell first and then purchase without the condition of the sale of your residence. If its about the "falling in love" with the new place, then you have to purchase conditionally on the sale of your current property."
Impatient romantics that we are, both my wife and I, there really was no debate about which category we would fall into (perhaps accept some form of predestination would be more accurate!) We had been looking, intermittently, for a more restful, pastoral, and reflective piece of real estate, as compared with the city-centre townhouse we had inhabited comfortably for these past few years. In-town, out-of-town,  on water, in a forest, on a farm, a cabin, a cottage, a "reno" project of another's hands....always the discussion was urged along by a central question about how far we wanted to "commute" including naturally the rising cost of fuel, auto repairs, our calendar years, and inclement weather, especially following the marathon of snow and ice mother nature poured over south-eastern Ontario in the last twelve months.
And when we had almost given up on a search that seemed paralyzed between our champagne appetite and our lager fiscal resources, while ambling through some random listings on the internet, an address, with photos, crept onto the screen, late one night, after Michelle had retired after a long day in the office, and I was still snooping about what surprise might be lurking for an inverterate treasurer-hunter.
Some people haunt garage and sidewalk sales, antique shoppes and used furniture outlets, looking for their next "find" from a combination of perspectives including investment, conversation piece, the urge to restore a tired "artifact" into a once-again vibrant and nearly living element, for a shelf, a garage, a cabinet, or even a retirement residence. On the other hand, following directly and inexplicably in my mother's footsteps, (she who could literally not pass by a new housing development without venturing through the open walls and halls to inspect floor plans, and discover features of design she could and would later review critically, much to the fatigue of family listeners, and visitors who marvelled at the encyclopedic comparisons of architecture and interior design, I too have made something of a hobby of exploring residential opportunities, whenever and wherever they presented themselves. The one difference between mother and me is that whereas she was raised in a CNR boxcar in Brent, at the north end of Algonquin Park, her father serving as Roundhouse Manager and she and her mother as the only women in the "camp" of workers, I had the privilege of a home in a small town prior to university and following also lived in permanent residences, much more comfortable and accommodating than anything I could ever imagine from a boxcar.
So, when we learned that the latest "address" to crawl across the computer screen was hosting an open-house in an upcoming weekend, Michelle and I agreed to take another or our proverbial jaunts to discover its canvas, especially the impact its entry would have on each of us.
There were no other cars parked outside the property, late in the afternoon, when we rang the doorbell. To our surprise, a duo of agents greeted us, a mother and daughter, clearly present to help the afternoon go more quickly, and just in case one client required additional time and attention another could also be accommodated. Filled with furniture, including a substantial upright ebony piano, modest and eye-friendly appointments, the back-front-split opened up to two floors, one of bedrooms and bath, the other of a nearly 500 sq. ft. family room complete with gas fireplace. Shining hardwood floors, a contemporary colour-co-ordinated decorating scheme and a feeling of gentle and welcoming warmth and hospitality all left immediate and lasting impressions on both of us.
And then, to our surprise, because the information had not been included in the listing, a professionally designed patio and separate a private deck overlooked a small river viewed through the lens of four healthy and resonant pine trees standing tall along the rear fence.
We could hardly believe our eyes, and our shared reception of muted yet deep anticipation, still not expressed fully until we returned to the car and exhaled a joint "wow"!
Another perfunctory visit with our realtor, a visit with the banker to confirm eligibility, our prepared offer quickly accepted by the vendor, a listing of our townhome, and the process of beginning to envisage, however tentatively, the possibility of moving into this home on the river all ensued in a somewhat blizzard-like fashion.
A small number of offers on the townhome, conditional on the sale of other properties, an open house, and a small number of inspections by potential purchasers resulted in an accepted offer, conditional on the sale of another property, with a final date for the removal of that condition dotted our emotional and linear calendars for a few weeks, until three hours prior to the expiration of the offer.
And then, to our surprise, our realtor appeared with two pieces of information: first, another conditional offer ready for sign-back, and second, a text indicating that our purchasers had just that instant removed the condition of the sale of their property.
And just this week, the transforming move occurred that completed the process of changing our address and our perspective from the city to a small town, where greetings by friendly people, complete strangers, in the grocery store, the pharmacy, the hardware store, the flooring store, and the co-op have universally been welcoming, warm, friendly and generally relaxed. Neighbours too have been congenial and helpful in providing the necessary tutorials about recycling schedules and the like.
This little reflection is being tapped out on the same laptop, at the same desk with the same light, surrounded by many of the same books and furniture in which the nearly two thousand earlier pieces were generated, only in a room some twenty-five kms east of the earlier address, in a house on a dead-end street with only a half-dozen other homes, all of them adjacent to the river that flows through our new lives.
And, following some six weeks of wondering if this would be the way our little adventure unfolded, we can look back with thanks to the professional service from the realtor, the solicitor, the banker, the movers and the new neighbours. Of course, there was the occasional glitch when a document seemed to go missing temporarily; and naturally, there were the occasional moments when both Michelle and I wondered, silently and aloud, if our vision was to become our new home; and also very naturally, there have been hours of fatigue and some muscle strain, borne mainly by Michelle in the process of
underpinning the external developments with hard work of packing, marking boxes, directing movers and now the process of unpacking continues.
Each time we return to our new address, we are renewed in our conviction that we have made what is potentially a good decision for us and look forward to seeing the world from a slightly different perspective, one that includes trees, winds, water views and private spaces in almost complete silence...the kind of lens that becomes the autumn years of one's life....when the prominent sentiment, at least for me, after a rich, varied, often challenging and highly rewarding span of seventy-plus years can be and is only gratitude.

Radical Islam and human survival, two threats requiring joint international collaboration now!

While bombs and missiles rain down on Israel and Gaza, in what is being called a "revenge" war on both sides, resulting from the deaths of three Israeli young men and one young Palestinian, there is news this morning out of  Bagdhad, that ISIS has taken control of a chemical weapons facility several miles northeast of the capital. Stored there are about 1000 sarin-filled rockets plus some other chemicals, allegedly weakened by time from having being stored this past decade. Foreshadowing, in this case seems so facile as to be almost redundant, given that, should these specific weapons be even severely weakened, their deployment could nevertheless wreak havoc on any areas and people on which they are fired. Given the Iranian determination to acquire nuclear weapons, and Iran's determination to play a significant role in both Syria (supporting Assad) and more recently in attempting to assist the Iraqi push-back against ISIS, an initiative for which only President Maliki can be held responsible for his failure to assemble a coalition government of Sunnis, Shia and Kurds, how long can it be before either loose nuclear material, stored in regions like rural Russia, or more dangerously, specifically licensed and regulated nuclear weapons in Pakistan, where the Taliban are daily increasing their influence over the situation, apparently in collusion with the Pakistan military and perhaps even some elements of the Pakistan government, fall into, are seized by the hands of the Islamic terrorists and thereby become an active ingredient in the current conflicts that are being waged throughout Africa, the Middle East, and potentially in North America and Europe.
We are just recently learning that citizens of the European Union, who may have travelled to "training sites" in Yemen, or potentially in either Syria or Iraq, do not require visas to return home and to then bring their newly acquired skills in weaponry to America.
Downplaying the danger emitting from the discovery that ISIS has taken control (with apparently no resistance from Iraqi military or security forces "guarding" the chemical facility, and basing that "no alarm" approach on the age of those chemicals, as the United States government is currently doing, though both the Pentagon and the State department, will do nothing to assuage legitimate fears among ordinary Americans, ordinary Europeans, and even ordinary people in both North and South America, that the ISIS "hurricane" can and conceivably will blow ill winds into many countries whose people wonder about the capacity of their governments to act decisively, collaboratively and effectively to protect them.
We have already heard from such "insiders" to the current geopolitical machinations as former UK Prime Minister Blair, that radical Islam is the greatest threat facing the world community, including all nations. In their current "spats" over Ukraine, Syria, Iran and their competing assertiveness in Iraq (allegedly both on the same side, attempting to push ISIS back, Russia and America are demonstrating precious little evidence by way of a common front against what is clearly a common shared enemy, albeit with different implications for both countries. The major countries in the "west" including the UK, EU, France, and the United States, do now require active and committed participation from both Russia and China, as well as India and Southeast Asian countries, also considered by many to be hotbeds of radical Islam terrorists.
The worlds very faltering, at best, attempts to deal collectively with an agreed and proven enemy of all citizens of the planet, global warming and climate change, do not provide encouragement for ordinary people that the leaders of the world's most powerful and most populous and most economically independent and most educated and "sophisticated" countries, are willing or able to set aside their nationalistic ambitions and pettinesses, in favour of a strong, collective, international, sustainable approach to combat what most people agree is a monstrous threat to the future of humanity. And there is no single face or ideology or sacred text branding global warming as a specific culprit, cause or target. So it would seem, at least on the surface, that it could be more feasible to mount a conjoint campaign, without worrying about assigning blame, or enhanced responsibility, except perhaps by tonnes of toxic emissions. However, we do not have time for "the blame game" on the environment, just as we do not have time for a protracted intellectual analysis, including doctoral theses, think-tank discussion papers and diplomatic ruminations, to design a strategy with tactics, budgets, accountability and oversight through which to combat Islamic terrorism.
Never before, in the last decade have I found common ground with people like Senator Lindsay Graham of North Carolina, who has publicly stated his belief that if the world does not successfully confront and defeat ISIS, AlQaeda, AlShabab, Boko Haran, and all other derivatives of radical Islam, their attacks will inevitably be turned directly onto U.S. soil and people, not to mention the people of Europe, and too many other regions of the world to contemplate.
For those doomsday-fixated prognosticators, the world currently looks like a dangerous and unavoidable race between two vicious and unforgiving enemies, Islamic terrorism and rising temperatures, tides and climatic extremes, and all of the fall-out that each entails.
For those less steeped in the dark clouds of unforgiving nights of  interminable disaster, the world is still taking on the colours and the sounds of impending danger, militarily and from the perspective of human survival.
Never in the last half-century at least has there been a greater need for activism to demand positive action by elected leaders of democracies, and also from leaders of states whose governments are non elected, to take bold and effective and decisive and measured collective action to provide a safe place for all humans to live our lives without the anxiety and the fear of demons denied, avoided, rejected and medicated.
Nothing about either of these collosal threats is hidden, so mysterious as to be avoided or denied in good conscience, or insoluble, no matter how loud the cries of their complexity.
We each owe it to our children and grandchildren to step up to the plate, demand action from our leaders and pay the price of being "outrageous" in our actions and our demands, in order to penetrate the fog of denial that blocks the ears, the eyes and the consciences of those empowered, through our votes in many cases, to act "in the best interests" of those who cast ballots to put them in power. Political correctness is no longer an option, on either of these two fronts.
Inaction and "head-in-the-sand" ostrich avoidance is clearly not an option.
Budgetary debts and deficits are no longer any excuse for failing to take action.
Intellectual uncertainty, ambiguity and the fog of an unclear diagnosis must not impair our efforts.
Nationalism, political and religious ideologies, too, must be set aside in our efforts to preserve "life" including the lives of those currently living, and those generations about to be born to our children.
For those charged with governing, including the responsibility for forestalling panic, we are already hearing calls for restraint and calm, just as Nero did (fiddling) while Rome burned....today it is not only Rome that is in danger, but London, Washington, Berlin, Moscow, Bejing, Lahore, New Delhi, Athens, Paris, and even Kiev and Warsaw...
We are all, inevitably and hopefully, sharing the same planet, including its natural resources like air, water and land, and its legal protections....and increasingly the national "insurance" will have to surrender to the shared threats.
Are we up to the challenge?

Getting back in the saddle...after a week's absence

It has been one week since I last scribbled notes in this space.
A combination of physical disturbances focused my energies elsewhere.
For those who have remained loyal readers, I am extremely grateful.
However, there are some really disturbing pots on "low boil" around the planet that, should somehow they coalesce into a larger pattern, could be quite disturbing.
The release of five Taliban "leaders" from Guantanamo, in exchange for an American soldier who allegedly wandered away from his outpost in Afghanistan some five years ago and was held captive by the Taliban, has aroused the fury of people like Arizona Senator John McCain against the president's decision, worried that those same men, after one year in Qatar, will redouble their efforts to sabotage American interests. Presidential decisions, by definitions, especially when they are focused on  the recovery of a single person, are inevitably subject to extreme public scrutiny.
Visiting Warsaw Poland and promising increased military aid to bolster Poland, should the Russian bear come calling, as it has in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, however, is presidential decision making of a different sort, and while subject to public debate, and likely scorn from the Kremlin, and is likely to bolster NATO's efforts to take the Russian hubris more seriously than it previously has. Today, David Cameron meets Putin face to face, to ask him directly to get out of Ukraine and take his faux Russian troops with him. The outcome of that meeting, while few expect any dramatic developments, like Putin's agreement to change course, will also be watched with interest on both sides of the Atlantic.
The acceptance by the world community of the unity government of Palestine, while troubling to the Israeli leadership, has not prompted dramatic moves, although there are clear signs of increased "settlement" growth by Israel, as at least one of that country's moves to indicate their lack of compliance with the development.
In the U.S. there is a growing debate, finally, about the president's latest sortie into the only phase of governance left to him domestically, executive order, by which he, through the Environmental Protection Agency, has vowed to reduce emissions of both carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide by 30%, based on 2005 levels, by 2030. The move prompted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, from Kentucky, to call the move the single worst cut to the Kentucky economy in history, because of its potential threat to the coal industry. Rather than remaining frozen with his eyes firmly ensconced in the past, McConnell might better show some vision and leadership and get to work making application for federal support for new technologies in the energy sector for his state's people. Not only will the Obama initiative in environmental protection serve to benefit the health of individuals living in all U.S. states, including Kentucky by the way, but the moves will serve to put the U.S. back into the game of leading the world in this important aspect of governmental responsibility. For the first five years of his presidency, Obama has been blocked by a block-head congress, too many of whose members are, like McConnell, frozen in the desert of denial of the proven dangers of global warming and climate change. Obama has made good on his public promises to use all of his executive powers to do all he can to reduce the risks, and like China, another behemoth moving to reduce the choking air pollution in that country, is using the "health" argument to sell the proposals.
In it highly significant that both governments find it more "useful" to deploy the "health arguments" rather than the economic or national security or some other equally abstract argument to encourage the people to support their environmental initiatives. The spectre of sick and possibly dying children for generations is not one that people can either avoid or reject and without public support, these environmental proposals will not "fly".
Now, if the world's leaders could only convince the new Indian Prime Minister, Modi, to make similar moves to protect the environment in that country, increasingly dependent on dirty coal for its economic growth and the emissions that result from burning that fossil fuel, the people of the world would and could have some confidence that a 'world initiative' no matter how varied in each country, is finally taking shape.
The high profile visit and public address of the retired African Bishop Desmond Tutu, in Fort McMurray, Alberta, a guest of the First Nations people whose treaty rights are being threatened by the tar sands development of heavy crude, magnetized considerable media attention on the legal and environmental dangers of continued and even increased dependence on fossil fuel, a development Tutu blamed on human greed. His has to be one of the more strident and courageous statements linking profit to the oil sands production, as well as the threats the development poses to First Nations tribes adjacent.
In Ontario, sadly, in the midst of a provincial election, the debate around energy focuses on the Liberal government's closing of two gas-fired electricity plants in Mississauga, in order to protect Liberal members, at a considerable cost to the public treasury. Not a word has been heard about the larger issue to move the province off fossil fuels and into renewables, although there is debate around public funding of rapid transit, an slightly indirect initiative to reduce emissions. While polite, the public debate of issues has been restricted to "job creation," public service cuts and ethics of the current administration.
A focus on short-term management issues, and clearly not a long-term vision for the future of the province, restricts all of the leaders and their parties from engaging in something that would inspire public interest and confidence. Instead we have the making of a milk-toast election when there are some fundamental issues like the creeping "privatization" of public services, to which only a single ad from the labour movement has referred. Is that an issue that is too dangerous for the formerly "labour-supported" NDP who are attempting to position the party in the middle in order to garner enough votes to take power? If so, then public debate in this province has shifted so far to the right that the labour movement could be in danger of extinction, and that would be one of the most tragic developments of this century, in this province.
The interests of "public" needs and "public" services are too often and most dangerously being gobbled by private interests in their insatiable appetite for more opportunities to make profit from public dollars and the development can be seen in education, health care, public security, privatizing of freeways, and the list grows, without any attention being paid by the three leaders vying for the premiership of this province, and the public seems mute on the issue.
I apologize for the random wanderings of this piece, and promise a little more focus in future efforts.

"Honour killings" bring dishonour to all human beings everywhere

There is no way for a western observer to comprehend the stoning of a family member, especially the stoning of a female family member who, while pregnant, has chosen the person with whom she wishes to spend her life with. There is also no comprehension, in the west, about the manner in which women are being treated by some in various parts of the world.
Denying young girls a formal education, as part of the path to escape the kind of domestic bondage to which women have been "subjected" for centuries, and denying those same women the right to dress as they wish and also to choose the partner, for love, are also concepts we find heinous and intolerable.
We watch as young Muslim women walk a few paces behind their male partners, on our streets, covered almost in what we would consider a 'nun's' habit, so that their whole being is hidden from public view, except their faces, and we wonder what other kinds of "oppression" they are suffering under their male partners, their fathers and their brothers.
And while human rights abuses take on multiple forms, in many countries, the rights of women may well be, or will become, the primary focus of human rights abuses in this century.
In the contemporary landscape of news stories that have inflamed the whole world, the Boko Haram kidnapping of some 300 young girls from their dormitories in Nigeria ranks as a possible turning point, along with the shooting of the young Pakistani girl, Malala by the Taliban.
The west is slowing awakening to the plight of women around the world, although there is also a considerable degree of oppression of women, more subtle and based on making money through advertising, modelling, and in a perversion of the "Pygmalion" archetype, turning young women into cash-cows, through photo-shoots of their barely clad bodies both for 'entertainment' (porn) and for the purpose of selling various products.
So the perception of women's sexuality, whether for capitalistic profit or for political morality, another form of ideology, is a central issue for the world's consideration. And there seems to be a widening gap between the perceptions, values and aspirations for women in the west from that in many countries in the east and Middle East.
Yesterday we read of another stoning of a pregnant woman in Lahor Pakistan, that revolted many westerners.
Here is a brief account from the Globe and Mail:
A pregnant woman was stoned to death Tuesday by her own family outside a courthouse in the Pakistani city of Lahore for marrying the man she loved.

The woman was killed while on her way to court to contest an abduction case her family had filed against her husband. Her father was promptly arrested on murder charges, police investigator Rana Mujahid said, adding that police were working to apprehend all those who participated in this “heinous crime.” ( By K.M. Chaudhry and Zaheer Babar, The Associated Press. in Globe and Mail, May 27, 2014)
However, such 'honour killings' are also occurring in Canada, where there have been some study done on their meaning by professionals whose credentials fit the task.
Here is a brief excerpt of an report from one such professional:
Dr. Amin Muhammad is a psychiatrist at Memorial University in St. John's, N.L., who is currently working on a report for the federal government about honour killings in Canada. He said there've been 13 such cases in the country since 2002.
"We are seeing an upward trend," he said. "More cases are coming to the forefront in the legal system."Noting honour killings are not in any way condoned in the Qur'an, Islam's holy book, he suggested the idea is coming up more as a defence for murder by people hoping to take advantage of Canada's cultural sensitivity in order to receive a more lenient sentence.He also said he suspects mental-health issues are behind most cases."We cannot rule out personality disorder among the perpetrators or some sort of psychopathology," he said."I think all such cases should be evaluated from a mental-health perspective."Muhammad said that since the UN began cracking down on the issue of honour killings, no country is any longer officially supporting the practice.That said, a report Muhammad published two years ago found a number of countries actually allow for a partial or full defence against criminal charges on the basis of honour killing, including: Argentina, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Guatemala, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Venezuela, Peru and Egypt.While many recent cases in western society involve Muslims, Muhammad said honour killings have also been committed in the name of Hinduism, Sikhism and Christianity. (By Tobi Cohen, Canwest News Service, in Vancouver Sun, May 27, 2014)Unfortunately, however, while 'personality disorder' may be a significant contributing factor in these heinous events, there is also a social, political and cultural side to the issue.Can the world simply stand by, as too many in the west have done when mass killings have occurred in the United States in particular, and merely dismissed these acts as those of people suffering a personality disorder, or does the fact of these occurrences demand some collective, concerted and preventive action?Is there not, and we respectfully submit that there is, some broader social, political and cultural development in these acts which the 'body politic' cannot and must not ignore? Are we witnessing, not only the emergence of 'personality disorders' in greater numbers, but also acts that demean not only those who are victims, and those committing these acts, but also the whole of a society that countenances such acts, while not being able or willing to take collective steps to provide the safety and security of too many innocent people, like young children and women.Case studies, while necessary to the establishment of culpability in legal matters, do eventually link and combine into a coalesced mass of public opinion which says, "We have to take collective action to reduce the impact of these inhuman acts of cruelty and brutality, especially when we can see that the most vulnerable are under attack."And our response does not have to be more heinous than the acts which we are attempting to prevent. We all have a massive task ahead of us if we are to create conditions in which women and young girls, especially, are to be able to make the kinds of choices that we consider normal and acceptable, in conditions free from fear and assassination, from those whom they considered part of their family.And, while in too many places, those committing these heinous acts, in the name of 'family honour' are too often given very light sentences, if any, dependent on sloppy police and prosecutorial work, these acts will not only continue but perhaps even grow in numbers.There is, or at least there seems to be, something like penetrating education and transformation of human values that we might consider, at the highest levels of our political decision-making, to begin to address this form of terror against women and young girls.

The Muslim Brotherhood, a threat to Canada? according to a report, perhaps!

Declared a terrorist organization in Egypt, with hundreds of their members jailed, and under investigation in the United Kingdom, the Muslim Brotherhood is now named in a reported entitled, The Muslim Brotherhood in North America as seeking to provoke, incite and accomplish systemic overthrow of existing free and open societies.
This year, British Prime Minister David Cameron ordered an inquiry into the group’s activities in the U.K.
"What I think is important about the Muslim Brotherhood is that we understand what this organization is, what it stands for, what its beliefs are in terms of the path of extremism and violent extremism, what its connections are with other groups, what its presence is here in the United Kingdom. Our policies should be informed by a complete picture of that knowledge," Cameron said in April.
(Tom) Quiggin (author of the report and a court expert on terrorism and member of the Terrorism and Security Experts of Canada Network, ) believes that the organization’s period of relative moderation has come to an end and it is now becoming “increasingly aggressive in its actions."
But the threat facing Canadians is not so much physical but more systemic.
"This is cultural, this is political, this is a different kind of threat," he said.
The goal of the Brotherhood in North America is to establish front organizations and eventually gain political power, he said.
These front organizations are interlinked by a common ideology, set of beliefs and set of leaders, Quiggin said.
The Brotherhood has already tried to spread influence and raise money through these adherent groups, which have "sought to systematically and repeatedly circumvent and break Canadian regulations and laws," according to the report....
“The aim of the group in North America is to weaken and destroy the free and open societies within Canada and the U.S.A. from within and replace them with the heavily politicized views of [founder] Hassan Banna, Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood,” according to the report, entitled The Muslim Brotherhood in North America (Canada/U.S.).
The report, written by Tom Quiggin, a court expert on terrorism and member of the Terrorism and Security Experts of Canada Network, raises concerns about the Brotherhood’s alleged ties to Canadian organizations, some which have either been accused of being terrorist organizations or alleged to have links to extremist groups. (From CBC News. May 27, 2014)
Who are the Muslim Brotherhood?
The Muslim Brotherhood (known in Arabic as al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen) is a transnational organization headquartered in Egypt. Founded by Hassan al-Banna in Ismailia, Egypt in 1928, the brotherhood is the oldest and largest Islamic political group, with representation in most Middle Eastern countries.
According to the group’s founding document, it is "an international Muslim Body, which seeks to establish Allah’s law in the land by achieving the spiritual goals of Islam and the true religion." The current chairman of the group is Mohamed Badie. Due to its often fraught relationship with ruling parties across the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood operates under different names in different countries, from the Al-Menbar Islamic Society in Bahrain to Hadas in Kuwait to the Islamic Movement in Israel. Hamas, the party that currently rules Gaza, is a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. To circumvent a ban on the group in Egypt, the Brotherhood fields independent candidates in elections.(From CBC News January 31, 2011)
Muslim Brotherhood beliefs:
Al-Banna founded the group as a response to a growing secularism in Muslim society. The Brotherhood views liberal Arab governments as an impediment to the establishment of Islamic states.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s stated objectives, as laid out in the group’s founding document, are as follows:

• Inform the masses of Islamic teachings.
• Unify mankind under Islamic teachings as well as bring "closer the viewpoints of the Islamic sects."
• Raise the standard of living of marginalized people.
• Expand social justice and social insurance to cover every citizen.
• "Liberate the Islamic nation from the yoke of foreign rule."
• Establish the country as an Islamic state and defend the nation against "the internal enemies."
• Support global co-operation based on the provisions of Islamic Sharia law.

As one  born and raised in what many would consider a "free and open" society, Canada, I am sensitive to the implications of this report, given how innocent and naïve the Canadian culture is to threats from organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. Accommodating thousands of immigrants each year, and absorbing them into our workplaces, our governments and our communities has significantly enriched the Canadian "mosaic" as it has traditionally been called. Pockets of various immigrants cultures have been integrated, relatively smoothly, if not completely assimilated, in all provinces and regions of the country. However, with some exceptions, we have not witnessed, or found the need for such a report as the one just released.
Naturally, we concur with one of the report's recommendations, that Canada co-operate with Great Britain in the investigation of the Brotherhood, and that perhaps our advance scrutiny of immigrants requires additional detailed checks, in addition to uncovering the organizations within the country that have already been 'engaged' in supporting the goals and aims of the Brotherhood, perhaps even without knowledge of that purpose.
While the Brotherhood disavows "jihad" in the Al Qaeda model, systemic penetration of a non-lethal nature can be, and often is even more 'lethal' to an established culture and society's norms than what might be accomplished through violence.
Canada is not Egypt, nor any of the Middle East countries and we are not willing to move in that direction, under influence of any organization that espouses Sharia Law, whether imposed through violence and terror, or through more 'moderate' and 'modest' measures like political influence. Witness the right's victory yesterday in France, and the anti-Semitism that is finding resonance in many parts of Europe and in Russia. The world is considerably "smaller" from the perspective of transmission of information, including political interference, and there is a need in all countries to guard and protect the freedoms and the openness that have characterized our culture and our history, and even to move to enhance those freedoms and that openness, not to restrict it with a tidal wave of Islamic extremism, of any kind.

Soros: "Russism," a new word to describe Putin's percption of Russian ethnic superiority and nationalism that threatens Europe

Sometimes, we have listen to those who have no political office to maintain to find out what kind of situation we might be facing. Such people, and I am specifically thinking of American businessman and philanthropist, George Soros, have access to information and to the microphones that disseminate such information that no politician would be ready to discuss. Soros has a considerable interest in the future of Europe, has established a foundation to assist in the development of open societies in countries such as Ukraine, and studies the situation from a much broader perspective even than those whose careers focus on the needs and instruments of foreign policy and diplomacy.
In his interview with Fareed Zakaria, on CNN's Global Public Square yesterday, Soros expressed some concerns that might, or should, interest a wide and deep audience. He suggested that Putin's activities in Ukraine ("he came out of the closet in Ukraine") and his (Putin's) perception of a dangerous genetic superiority of Russia and his overt attempt to destabilize the European Union through Russian nationalism, while not precisely "fascism," is quite dangerous, and here Soros used a new word, Russism, to describe a new ideology  based on Russian superiority. And linked to China through both trade and common interests, this new Russism, according to Soros, is a development to which the world needs to pay close attention.

Here is s portion of the interview Fareed Zakaria did with George Soros yesterday (May 25, 2014) on CNN's GPS
ZAKARIA:  You have been very pessimistic or - or gloomy about Europe. Um, do you think that in this Ukraine situation, you're seeing another aspect of the tragedy of Europe, the lack of collective action?
SOROS:  Unfortunately, Europe is very weak.  It's preoccupied with its internal problems, which are unresolved.  The euro - the euro crisis is no longer a financial crisis, is turning into a political crisis.  And you're going to see it in the elections.  And - and Putin...
ZAKARIA:  Explain what that means.
It's going to be - you're going to see it in the elections because you're going to see the rise of nationalist, anti-European forces?
SOROS:  Yes.  And interestingly, they are supported by Russia and pro-Russian.  So Russia has emerged as an alternative to the European Union.  Putin has sort of come out of the closet in - in Ukraine with an ideology that is Nationalist based on ethnic nationalism.  You could call it Russism...
ZAKARIA:  Right.
SOROS:  - that's a new word to describe it, because I don't want to call it Nazi, because it is very similar to what you had in the interwar period...fascism.  You know...
ZAKARIA:  Protecting your ethnic groups with military force, if necessary...
SOROS:  Well, it's more than that.  It's - as an ideology, a new sort of myth of Russian superiority.  If you - those who watch Putin's speeches, he actually has revealed this new myth of Russian genetic superiority.  You might have heard that previously from someone else.  It's a - a new ideology based on ethnic Russian superiority.
ZAKARIA:  And as you say, a lot of these nationalists who are we - who are doing well in European - these European-wide elections seem very pro-Russian...
SOROS:  Yes.
ZAKARIA:  - whether on the left or the right. Do you think this nationalism could break up the European Union?
SOROS:  Yes.  It's a real threat.  And - and Europe needs to recognize it.  And we need to recognize it, actually.  We need to have a bipartisan foreign policy.  We used to have that and we have lost it.  So we need to reestablish it, because there is a real threat.  It's a ret - it's a threat to America, also, because what's happening in - in Ukraine and in - in Europe is having repercussions in - in Asia.  You know, the - the Chinese drilling rig that is establishing facts on the ground...(in Vietnam)
So, if the west is too focused on the short-term crisis in Ukraine, if I read Soros correctly, there is a danger that we might miss the longer-term ambitions of Putin's perception of Russian ethnic superiority and the combination of both overt and covert moves he has, is and will continue to take to magnetize a vulnerable Europe as a counter-magnet to the west. And he could and likely will use China as support for his larger design.
The word "Asian Union" was allegedly used by Chinese Premier in ShiangHi in his speech this week, announcing that $400 billion energy purchase over thirty years from Russia, as compared with the normal phrase used by President Obama, the "Asian-Pacific Union" which would and does include the United States.
If China and Russia are proposing the development of an Asian Union that excludes the United States, and that threatens Europe's congruency and stability, then Ukraine could well be seen as a minor skirmish very quickly, inspite of the many lives already lost.