a w a k e : t o : d r e a m

I just love the new(ish) “webclip” feature in gmail which adds a link to the top of the inbox featuring a headline from a recently updated website for news, entertainment, blogging, etc. I’m sure it’s just another fee-per-click advertising ploy, but I’ve read some really interesting articles I would never have seen otherwise through this feature.

Case in point: When Terrorists Go Mainstream, by Monica Duffy Toft, published in the Boston Globe and reprinted in the International Herald Tribune.
This is a really interesting article (somewhat) free from the usual rhetoric around patriotic buzzwords, dealing with the surprise Americans seem to be feeling that Hamas swept the recent democratic elections in Palestine. The real point of the article is bringing to light the fallacy that most Americans believe - that as far as “rogue nations” go, democracy = peace.

Ahhh, from the halls of academic research, where you may be highly educated, but it doesn’t make you smart:

Measuring the direct impact of war on health is difficult. Pre-war baseline data is scarce, collecting reliable information during a war is often dangerous, or even impossible, and official statistics come from a deficient health information system. Within these constraints, we will present the available information, which strongly suggests a negative impact on children’s health.

Cliff J, Noormahomed AR. The impact of war on children’s health in Mozambique. Social Science and Medicine, 36(7) 1993.
italics mine.
Since when did we not know that war is bad for kids?

For the past several years in my church, people have been warily looking to parliament to see how the passing of bill C-250 would affect the rights of people of faith as pertains to the marriage of same-gender couples. Originally a bill called An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda), this bill was meant to add sexual orientation to the list of differences that we are protected from discrimination on the basis of. I support it completely. But when people in my church got nervous and felt that our rights as people of faith would conflict with the rights of same-gender couples to be protected from discrimination (ie married if they want to be), I scoffed. I felt that since the amendment had also called for protections for religious people so that they would not be compelled to go outside their beliefs because of this, I believed them.

Yesterday, in BC:

VANCOUVER - A B.C. lesbian couple, who accuse a Catholic men’s group of discriminating against them by refusing to rent them a hall for their wedding reception, took their case to a human rights tribunal Monday.

“The hearing is sure to further inflame passions over the issue, given that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled last month that religious officials opposed to same-sex marriages do not have to perform them.
CBC News”

The back story is that the couple tried to rent a hall owned by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s service club. When the group found out that it was a same-gender marriage, they cancelled the booking and refunded the money.

Let me clarify by saying that I support bill C-250 100%. I support human rights for all people.

Tonight my dad, brother and I spent more than two hours debating discussing the issue of evolution and intelligent design.

It wasn’t as bad as it sounds.

My brother is an atheist. And not just a regular, “I’m-to-cool-for-religion” kind of atheist, the hostile kind who just lives to find a way to argue his way through any objection. I’m pretty sure he would agree with this assessment. Anyway, somehow we got into a discussion about ID vs. evolution and whether ID was a legitimate science or a theological philosophy hijacked by conservative religious leaders to protect their own scientific legitimacy. It’s a worthy argument, and one we’ve never made it into, much less through.

Needless to say, I really wasn’t sure what would happen.

From a recent e-mail I sent to Vancouver’s major municipal electoral parties, COPE and NPA, in response to this article: (what do you think about this issue?)

This e-mail is to express my extreme disgust at Tim Louis’ proposal to start a city-owned, “break-even” brothel to protect vulnerable sex trade workers. While this proposal addresses some significant issues about the sex trade and its connection to the illegal drug trade on the DTES that cannot be ignored, I believe that it is misguided. There is no way that facilitating the unsafe sexual activity of sex-trade workers - many of whom are carriers for diseases such as TB, HIV, and hepatitis - actually will protect them in the long run.

I am such a big fan of Canada’s best known political export, the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Louise Arbour. She is a former Canadian Supreme Court Justice who worked as a prosecutor for war-crimes tribunals for Yugoslavia (i.e. Slobodan Milosevic) and for Rwanda. She is so amazing to me as a woman who went far beyond the constraints of her profession to change the world - even a little bit - with her skills. I’m listening to an interview with her on CBC Radio’s Ideas right now and she is full of amazing statements. I want to have coffee with this woman. I want to hear what she thinks. I want to watch her in action.

I hope that in my career I act with such conviction and justice as she does.

Here’s my soapbox issue of the day:

Can we PLEASE, please get rid of the phrase, “the war on…” no matter what conflict it refers to? Can we just say, “the challenge to…” or “the disagreement about”? Can we please, please stop turning every hot-button issue into a slogan-machine so that more people can stick a bumper sticker on their car (or for that matter, around their wrist) and so that the backers of the issue can politicize it ever more?

The reason I rant about this is the recent release of a book, The War On Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse Than You Thought by John Gibson of FoxNews. First of all, how does Christmas have anything to do with making America hate liberals, I ask you?? Where is there room for polarized sabre-rattling like that at Christmastime? I agree that sometimes the PC machine goes too far and people try far too hard to “not offend” anybody by saying Christmas (gasp) when not everyone is a Christian, but come on.

My residents (three of whom are American) gleefully informed me of a recent news story (I can’t believe I didn’t hear of it first given my news addiction) about a local case to indict President George W Bush under the Canadian War Crimes Act for war crimes regarding his actions as the leader of a country who invaded Iraq, and more specifically, perpetrated torture against prisoners of that war, including Ontario teenager Omar Khadr.

A group of B.C. lawyers who want U.S. President George W. Bush put on trial for allegedly torturing thousands if not tens of thousands of those ghostly detainees in the war on terror was in B.C. Supreme Court Friday to argue its case. The federal government, however, argued the allegations were being made in the wrong jurisdiction and that such a prosecution must be approved by Canadian Attorney-General Irwin Cotler. The Crown says the case involves a non-citizen being accused of crimes committed outside Canada who was visiting the country as a guest of the government.

From an editorial by Ian Mulgrew, The Vancouver Sun, Nov. 27th, 2005.

I’ve always thought that a great way to make a political point is to arrest the duly (well, sort of) elected leader of a sovereign country! What are they thinking? Furthermore, Mulgrew goes on to say that Davidson, the non-practicing family lawyer who presented the brief was unprepared and inexperienced in these matters… I’m disappointed that they (Toronto legal group Lawyers Against the War (LAW)) didn’t do their homework, for starters, but also that they didn’t find a more credible person to write and present the brief - if you’re going to make a point, then make it in a way that lends credibility to your cause, not removes it!

Interestingly, if you search for it, the majority of links you will find to this issue will have to do with urban legends and internet hoaxes than actual hard news - because of an existing publication ban declared by the first judge who heard the case, Provincial Court Justice William Kitchen. It occurs to me that only in Canada could this even occur: an inexperienced lawyer from a different specialty launches an indictment as a private citizen against a world leader… and we hear nothing about it because of our tradition of publication bans on court procedings.

Beautiful. I like the way our country works sometimes.