You Can't Get One Past Her

Admittedly, it has been a while since I have turned my thoughts to crazed evangelicals. Ever since Pat Robertson left the scene, no doubt having retired to better await the rapture, it just hasn't been the same.

Nonetheless, although not necessarily a worthy successor to Pastor Pat, preacher Sharon Gilbert proves she is ready, willing, and most able, should the call come:

End Times preacher Sharon Gilbert says that an alien imitated her husband, and then it tried to have sex with her, and then it claimed to be Xerxes, and then Jesus got involved, and then the alien turned out to be a reptile with a posse of gargoyles.

Jailed For Doing Their Jobs

It is an action worthy of a third-world nation. You know, the kind run by an authoritarian who takes it as a personal affront whenever someone demonstrates against or writes about human rights abuses, lashing out with incarceration or worse for the offending parties.

Only this time it is happening in Canada.

Two journalists reporting from the Wet’suwet’en territory were among 15 people arrested and detained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia Friday night. Both remain in custody.

Since last year, media has covered RCMP raids in the territory, Indigenous rights and police removal of defenders of the land who are blocking the logging of old-growth forests in the area.

Photographer Amber Bracken was on assignment for The Narwhal when she was arrested. Filmmaker and photographer Michael Toledano, a freelance reporter who has been living in Wet’suwet’en territory in order to create a documentary about what Indigenous people face in the region, was also arrested.

Despite having all the right credentials attesting to their journalistic enterprises, both are still in jail and slated to be transported to Prince George tomorrow for a bail hearing.

Anyone who reads this blog regularly may know that I have a deep respect for the work journalists do. Despite the odd number being mere mouthpieces for propaganda, most are hard at work in an often thankless job, disseminating the kind of information crucial to an informed democracy.

None of  this, it would seem, matters a whit to the RCMP, despite the fact that they are now engaging in clearly illegal action.

The Narwhal said in statements posted to Twitter that they are “extremely disturbed” to learn that Bracken was arrested and that the RCMP is refusing to release her in violation of her charter rights.

Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), says that the two arrests are unjustified.

“It’s completely and utterly shocking the extent to which the RCMP are going to prevent journalists from covering events that are happening in the public interest,” he said. 

The action is especially shocking in light of a court ruling last summer.

In July, the Canadian Association of Journalists, a non-profit that works to defend press freedom and connect reporters across the country, along with multiple other journalism organizations won a court challenge at the Supreme Court in B.C. on press freedom in the Fairy Creek area.

 They urged the court to modify an injunction that would tell the RCMP to stop restricting media from the area without an operational reason to do so. The final decision from the judge agreed with the media groups, explaining that the RCMP had failed to prove why they needed to exclude media from covering the region.

Media have argued they need to be present to document police actions on the territory, where the Wet’suwet’en people say they have never ceded or given up their land.

Jolly says the recent arrests demonstrate that the ruling has fallen on deaf ears.

Our country has many things to be proud of. Suppressing freedom of the press clearly is not one of them.

 

 

 

When Words Fail

 Editorial cartoonists step into the breach.

H/t Patrick Corrigan

And The Answer Is ...

Education. Well, it's part of the answer anyway. And the question? How does society mount a serious effort to combat racism in its many forms, be it directed against Muslims, Asians, Jews, Blacks, Indigenous or anyone else who falls within the sights of  the benighted and the evil?

The stakes are high. Elmira Eleghawaby writes:

Recent data from Statistics Canada paints a disturbing picture about who is involved in hate crimes. According to the agency, nearly a quarter of those accused of hate crimes between 2010 and 2019 were between the ages of 12 and 17, a majority of whom were male.

And the effects of racism are even higher:

Hate crimes, described as message crimes by the American Psychological Association, are a threat to the safety and well-being every person in Canada deserves to feel.

“Hate crimes send messages to members of the victim’s group that they are unwelcome and unsafe in the community, victimizing the entire group and decreasing feelings of safety and security,” reads an analysis by the association. “Furthermore, witnessing discrimination against one’s own group can lead to psychological distress and lower self-esteem.”

The role of education in all of this should be obvious. While many advocate teaching so that students have a better grasp of things like Islamophobia and how online hate is propagated, it seems to me that a better counter-strategy would be to establish a mandatory course, likely attached to the history department, in which students can learn from a Canadian perspective about the various cultures that are under attack, thereby, if you will, better 'humanizing' them. Such a course would include our own country's mistreatment of the Indigenous, the Asian, the Sikh, the Jewish and the Muslim, as well as stories of collaboration and easy co-existence. How many know, for example, that the first mosque in Canada was established in Edmonton in 1938?

Such an approach would not, of course, eradicate the stench of racism that will always linger. And my experience as a teacher, despite education's perceived role as an equalizer and answer to society's woes, is that we have limited impact in countering the home environment that sometimes fosters an array of attitudes that infect children, much to their detriment.

Education has often been described as shedding light on the darkness. Even if it has only limited impact in addressing all that ails us, it seems a good place to start.

Unflappable No More

As the world continues its devolution, it becomes clear that few things can be taken for granted anymore. One of the casualties of the times is the erstwhile British unflappability, as the following amply demonstrates. 

Tesco’s festive TV ad featuring Santa Claus bearing a Covid vaccine passport has prompted more than 1,500 complaints, making it the most complained-about advert of the year.

The advert, titled “This Christmas, Nothing’s Stopping Us”, shows the public determined to enjoy a proper Christmas with family and friends after lockdown restrictions prevented gatherings last year.

However, in one scene a reporter appears on TV with “breaking news” telling viewers that “Santa could be quarantined”. Father Christmas is then shown presenting his Covid pass at border control, proving he has been vaccinated to a customs officer so he can enter the country without restriction. Most of the complaints made to the UK advertising regulator state the scene is coercive and encourages medical discrimination.

 The scene sparked controversy on social media, attracting criticism from those in the anti-vaccination movement.

Before clicking on the offending ad, deliberate carefully on whether it might be too unsettling for your sensibilities. 

I Guess It Would Reduce Confusion

 

Change Of Pace Friday

A former colleague of my sent me this. I guess it has been around for a while, but it is new to me, and seems relevant given our current spate of dysfunctional Titans.