Post 235--"Human Rights"

Recently the European Court of Human Rights upheld an Austrian woman's conviction of calling Prophet Muhammad a pedophile. The conviction, it ruled, did not restrict her freedom of speech. The "Court's" judgement was approved by a higher court apparently who ruled that the earlier one had "carefully  balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected."  She is said to have publicly declared that the Prophet's marriage to a young girl was akin to "pedophilia."  Back in 2011 she was convicted of "disparaging religious doctrines" and ordered to pay a fine of  $713 plus costs, a ruling that was also upheld in higher places (The Associated Press, Vancouver Sun, October 26, 2018). 

I do not know enough about that marriage to argue for or against the woman's opinion.  Even if I had enough data to support her opinion, I would definitely not state it this way in public. As a Christian, I have no desire to insult what my neighbour holds dear and precious, even if I disagree with him. I may wish to convince him of another truth and change her mind about his own, but I would do so with respect in the fashion of dialogue, where two partners explain their different opinions, opposing, contradictory opinions even, but always with respect. 

The only time I would turn more vociferous would be when "the other" becomes unjust or oppressive. If it were an extreme case, I might lose it.

You may have noticed that I placed quotation marks around "court" in the first paragraph. There's a good reason for that, at least from the Canadian point of view. Canadian human rights "courts" are anything but courts. Not infrequently they are described as "kangaroo courts." They hand out sentences without the solid data that characterize the more standard courts.  I've had no experience with them, but I read the newspapers and too often read about the soft "legal" --there's those quotation marks again!-- reasoning practiced in these  "courts," reasoning based more on bias and prejudice than on facts and legalities. Whether this holds true for their parallels in the EU, I am not sure.   

Of course, Christians who read the Bible literally can find plenty of excuses for berating other religions. The Old Testament (OT) makes short thrift of the pagan religions that surround Israel without any attempt at showing respect. The New Testament (NT) has its own examples. Jesus, in fact, castigates the leaders of His own religion something fierce, for having twisted its spirit and turning it into a vehicle of oppression. He leaves our Austrian woman far behind in the dust with His insults! The issue for Him was that the good of the best religion was so thwarted and abused that it became impossible for our Lord even to control Himself. He became totally disrespectful in public! He became a model revolutionary!

So, there is a place for lack of respect, for telling it as it really is, but there has to be a pretty good reason for that. Jesus pushed the line for appropriateness; I would  not go beyond Him, for His was based on true insight and wisdom and on love for the poor who were the victims.

In today's Vancouver, the egoism and greed of the property owners would probably evoke the same outburst from Jesus as did the religious leaders of His day. It is no wonder that entire groups of residents blare and yell it out in often brutal language. It is a shame that the Church and individual Christians are playing the same game as their secular counterparts. I am ashamed of them and am moving closer to shouting down especially church leaders who only bring bandages and ambulance service to the homeless, instead of attacking the systemic issues of greed and selfishness. 

But, to come back to our Austrian lady, should she have said what she did?  I would probably say "no."  But should she have the legal freedom of speech to say it?  I would probably say "yes."  Freedom of speech should not be restricted by emotions and bias. Political correctness is going too far. But that's human rights "courts" for you.  

Post 230--Away with Gangsters

I've written about gangsters before.  I was almost going to write that it's a topic that fascinates me, but that would not be true. It's a topic--no, it's not a topic or a subject; it's a person or a group of persons, mostly male, if I may still use that term! And it's hardly a fascinating person or group. I really want to say that a gangster or a group of them are probably among the most despicable of all human beings. That's how I feel, deep down in my heart.

Now I know a Christian is not to despise anyone. Heh, God so loves the world...!  And if He can love a world that has offended Him time and again, 24 X 7 over the centuries and millennia, perhaps even over billions of years, who am I to despise people who really have hardly affected me?  I read about them in the papers and I cut out many articles to file away for occasions like this one, when I write about them. No, I really need to change my attitude radically and seek forgiveness. Learn to love them even, perhaps? 

You may remember that in the previous post I treated you to an article I translated from my favourite Dutch daily, Trouw. It told the story how a Dutch court has criminalized the most vicious of Dutch gangs, the Hell's Angels.  Not sure I used the right word: "criminalized."  Lawyers, like us theologians, have a way with words and distinctions that are hard to follow for others. Perhaps the word "ban" would be more correct, though I would not know the difference. At any rate, both mean something like "away with them."

Now I do not regret their banning, for this is not banning persons from life, but their organization and their way of life or, rather, their way of death. If you were to spend a few hours reading my newspaper cuttings about gangsters, I don't see how you could defend them or how you could tolerate their culture, their way of life and their organizations. The Dutch have declared them not wanted and illegal. They have decided there no longer is place for them in Dutch society.

Here in Canada?  We put a protective shield around them. We call it "human rights." Human rights allegedly protect every body in Canada--yes, allegedly.  In reality, they protect criminals with their violent behaviour more than the ordinary law-abiding citizen. For the latter, human rights seem more like a prison that prevent us from protecting ourselves and each other. Gangsters do not care about anyone's rights; they step on them; they shoot and kill without genuine provocation. They spread terror left and right, but the authorities protect them with their gentrified legal system. They even spend unlimited time and money to find out who killed one of them.

Why on earth should society be so concerned and so protective about gangsters, people who have voluntarily chosen a most dangerous life style?  When a proven gangster has been killed, why not just bury the guy and move on? That's one less to worry about. Now the police can spend time protecting law-abiding citizens.

In my mind, people who chose violence should lose their human rights. Finish. Why should we protect them from their own choices? So, I appreciate their criminalization in the Netherlands. It's an important step forward.  But I recommend the next step also: Deny them their human rights. Quit protecting them while the ordinary citizens live in fear or just get shot.

Canada, when will you close the door to your prison of false human rights?  You have criminalized terrorists. What's the difference between those, apart from their motivation? 

==========

PS--I was planning to copy one of the many newspaper cuttings I have on the subject of gangsters. However, you will have noticed irregularities in the fonts used in these posts. I have not been able to overcome that problem; I'm just not a techie.  However, a techie friend has just promised to help me fix the problem.  So, I resist the temptation to include that cutting. Hopefully he will be able to help me out this evening.  Once that is done, I may well succumb to the temptation of listing quite a number of such articles by their web access.  We'll see what happens--but he first has to help me with the immediate past posts. 
      

Post 223--Gentleman Law vs Foreign Thugs

One of the topics on which I collect data, especially newspapers, and even more especially, The Vancouver Sun.  One of the columnists I follow on this topic in that paper is Kim Bolan. She does a great job of reporting on all the shenanigans of criminals, especially gangsters.  Did I use the term "shenanigans?"  That's way to mild a word. These guys are thugs, murderers, professional murderers. For them human life has no meaning or value.  Money, power, lifestyle and girls are more important to them than anything else. If someone stands in their way along one of these lines, they do not hesitate to kill.  Either they do the killing themselves or they'll pay someone to do it for them.  

Now it's bad enough to have local boys engage in all this, people born in the country, but I consider it even more intolerable for immigrants or refugees turn into criminals and gangsters.  I am in no way suggesting that there is a disproportionate number of that scum among criminals and gangsters; that they harbour more than their share of those pigs. I am an immigrant myself and I know that the vast majority of us are industrious citizens that are eager to contribute to Canadian society.  But there are some and I have no use for them.  In fact, I promote the denial of human rights and protection to them.  

I once wrote to Kim Bolan that all members of gangs should be considered free from the law's protection. They have chosen a life of violence and the police and other security bodies are spending fortunes in terms of time, resources and money on these idiot. In the meantime, the killing goes, not infrequently even victimizing innocent people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Kim seemed to be horrified at this barbaric proposals. Absolutely, we don't want to go there, she "yelled" at me in writing. I suggested this once to a retired policeman who similarly reacted very negatively. Perhaps he was trying to protect the interest of the police establishment, for I saw no other good reason for his rejection of the proposal.  

Anyway, I am going to leave you with a link to the latest article from Kim to show you how confused the various government entities are with regard to these barbarians. It's ridiculous, nothing short of it. They obviously have no clear ideas or, perhaps, courage, when it comes to dealing with that underworld. In addition they are hampered by a lot of laws that tend to be contradictory or, at the very least confusing. Gentlemen laws cannot cope with thugs without moral or conscience.  

The title of her piece is "Federal court stays order releasing gangster gunman." The link is:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=kim+bolan+federal+court+stays+order+releasing+gangster+gunman&rlz=1C1AVNG_enCA658CA662&oq=kim+bolan++federal+court+stays+order+releasing+gangster+gunman&aqs=chrome..69i57.20407j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 I will have more to say about this in the next blog. If you've been with me a long time, you may remember some of the things I wrote in times gone by.  You're likely to get some more of the same. 

  

Post 200--Canada's Quasi-Judicial Courts

Christian Roots Canada's Lynette's heart is bleeding. She sees Canada's Liberal Federal Government in the hands of extremists. And while the Liberals are pushing their agenda unrelentingly, the church is asleep, she complains.  Well, that's been my view of the  Canadian church since a long time ago. Even when I was still in Nigeria during the 1970s through most of the 1990s, I observed the same from reading the magazine Mclean's. Of course, it is true not only for the national scene, but also for the provincial. Here in BC a few years ago the government passed a new family law and the churches were silent. Not a sound; not a peep. Was it good or was it bad?  The church slept through this entire procedure--as if it did not even know about it!  The government fiddling around with the family, the basics of society and the church has nothing to say?  Incredible.  You don't know how embarrassed I increasingly am about such a gutless church!  No wonder so many people are leaving the church. What does it have to offer in terms of important social issues? 

The rest of this post amounts to Lynette's lament. Read it. Follow her links and take whatever action you can. The next post is a short letter from Nick Loenen, a friend of mine and an ex-MLA here in BC, also calling for action.

OK, here's Lynette's lament:

===============

Friend, My Heart Hurts… for Canada Twenty-eight years ago, I was a new immigrant to Canada. I lived in Toronto and got to know my husband through the church we both attended at the time. He was passionate about how to live life in such a way that it did not just intersect with ‘church’ on Sunday, but in such a way that he could live a life of ‘applied theology’. He introduced me to his vision of impacting the culture for Christ. He saw how the culture of the day was beginning to be swayed by political correctness and sexual immorality. At that time, religious people depended on the ‘abstinence’ message to be a unifying force against the onslaught of sex ed in public school classrooms. But that was hardly enough. By 1992, the notion of sexual ‘orientation’ was already taking root in the classroom with the advent of books like, ‘Heather has Two Mommies’. Teachers were given ‘sensitivity training’, as were members of the local government, provincial government and the emergency services. This was to force employees to accept those who practiced alternate lifestyles, as equally worthy of legal recognition similar to the legal recognition given to a family consisting of one man, one woman, and children.   By about 1996, liberal politicians rammed through a bill to read ‘sexual orientation’ into the Human Rights Code. The ‘Church’ was caught sleeping at the wheel, and by the time we roused ourselves, the horse was out of the stable before we could shut the gate. And the Church went back to its slumber...  until the next time. The progression of an apathetic willingness by the Church corporate to accept the mores of a decadent culture, has now led to a Liberal Prime Minister forcing Christians, and anyone who does not believe abortion is wrong, to put his/her conscience in a tiny box, seal it well, and throw it out, if they want to receive some of the $200 million of Government Grants. These Grants are applied for by NGOs and other faith-based organizations, to pay high school and college students a fair wage over the summer, so that they could save some money to defray some of their college education costs. The kids got work experience, the employer hired more kids with a lower overhead cost and everybody won. Para-church organizations benefited from that. Will the Church corporate stand against this legislation of conscience by a corrupt government?  Even if the Church doesn't, you can.  Keep reading to learn what YOU can do. There is another far-reaching issue looming ahead, and it would be wise to rouse yourself and do something about it NOW.  Scripture says that the wise man sees the danger coming and avoids it, but the foolish pass on and are destroyed (Prov. 22:3). Next on the Liberal agenda is a consideration to reinstate Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) which was repealed by Parliament in 2013. See the article here This article states, ‘Instead of proceeding through the criminal courts, complaints made under Section 13 were dealt with in the quasi-judicial Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, which hears complaints made under the Act. If a Section 13 complaint was upheld, the tribunal could levy fines of up to $10,000 and issue cease-and-desist orders.' First, remember that this a 'court' made up of 'quasi-judicial' persons (aka untrained laymen practicing law on the basis of feelings of perceived hurt).  Why is this important? Ask Connie and Mark Fournier. Their case of freedom of speech went all the way to the Supreme Court.  Internet companies thought it was important enough to get involved. If you think that Christians fared terribly with rogue Human Rights Courts under a Conservative Government, think what evil can be unleashed by this God-hating Liberal Government. They are up to no good, and the 'money for your conscience' issue will pale in comparison to what is to come.  Friends, this hate crimes legislation which masquerades as freedom of speech will encompass so-called ‘internet crimes’ which, most assuredly can be used by our wicked leaders and Human Rights Tribunals, to take aim at the Church. Make no mistake about it. Why is the progressive slide of the country into a stinky, messy, manure-pond, of any importance to ChristianRoots Canada right now? Friends, this generation of Christians, WE (collectively) have failed to raise an army of defenders of the faith. Thankfully, organizations like ARPA and others are doing double duty in galvanizing efforts to hold back the onslaught. So WHAT can YOU do about it? Please go to ARPA’s website here  And get your kids signed up for programs that educate and equip them for action. Read their Lesson Plans on how to teach against the post modern, degrading, issues here Take action using their formatted letters to your politicians here.   STAND UP FOR CANADA!!! And may I ask a favour of you? Before you go, hop over to our latest blog here, and leave us a comment. OR, Learn  a little more about the crew behind ChristianRoots Canada at our Facebook Live video, and join the discussion in our Facebook Group here. If you would like copies of The Biblical Legacy of Canada's Parliament Buildings, you can order them here.  These booklets can be used to encourage your brothers and sisters with the fact that Canada had such a Christian ethos at one time, that the architects who built the Peace Tower were more conversant with the Old and New Testament than we are today. Check out the Scripture verses!! The booklet is proof and we can get there again.

Post 177--Millennials and Political Correctness

Again, someone else's article with my comments attached. It seems that Scott Masson of Toronto does not wish to accord the transgender population their full recognition.  I feel very sorry for that group and do not think their condition was part of what God intended when He created humanity. At the same time, they are here and not be their own decision or choice. By birth, would be my opinion. As such, they do not have a lot of choice in the matter. I know a couple of them and know they suffer because of their condition.  It is my firm opinion that they must be given their full human rights same as I do, even though I do not think their condition is desirable and should not be considered standard.  So, it seems I disagree with Masson on this aspect.  

What interests and concerns me in Masson article below is that millennials seem to have lost the traditional freedoms and rights that families have enjoyed for centuries in our Western civilization. They are, in fact, quite prepared to trample on them and force their opinion on everyone else, even to the extent of disregarding the rights of families and of breaking them up when they hold opinions contrary to those of millennials. The sense of social justice, according to Masson, has gone completely topsy-turvey. That to me is a serious issue and does not bode well for the future of freedom and democracy. So, have a listen and see where you find yourself.

=========

A new survey was released in the US last month, and it showed just how far society has moved on the issue of gender confusion. The poll focussed on “millennials” – generally people under 30 – and it found almost half of them would be OK with the notion that the government should take children away from parents if those parents refuse to affirm those children’s gender identities. Scott Masson is an Associate Professor of English at Tyndale University College in Toronto. He says the survey shows that traditional views of family are starting to change, especially in a certain segment of society. “It says that those that are most animated by issues that we would call ‘social justice’ are in favour of breaking into the family and its historic freedoms in order to justify the ends of what they would call ‘social justice’.”

He says the survey shows that respondents don’t have “any notion of what we would call ‘sphere sovereignty’.” Masson says the poll’s focus on millenials shows the impact that political correctness has had in the education system over the past 30 years. “I’ve been living with that in the university system ever since the 1980’s, and certainly it’s the case that millennials (have) experienced nothing but that. They’re not used to freedom of expression. If they find a view that they don’t like, they’re gonna have no tolerance for it.” He says that demographic is not bothered by the loss of liberty that we’ve seen in recent legislation in Canada, because “they never really thought those liberties really ought to exist as long as social injustice was being done.”

Post 146—The PM on Violence against Women

Many of my posts are critical of our young PM, though not because of his age. Of course, his age may have something to do with it, for during the last Federal campaign did we not frequently here that he was not yet ready?  In other words, not experienced enough; not old enough.  I do believe that to be the case. He is far too rash and does not think things through adequately. I’m hardly the only one to talk this way, of course. It is frequently repeated even in the liberal press.

But credit to whom credit is due. I will give him credit when he deserves it, since, like some people, I do not get paid to oppose him no matter what he says or does. The item I am sharing with you today has been on my “to do” or “to write” list ever since end November last year, but other things were always crowding it out. They still do, even today, but this time I’m elbowing them out of the way and let the PM have his say on a very important subject. 

On November 25, 2016, the PM’s office published the following statement:

Statement by the Prime Minister of Canada on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women:

“An estimated one in three women around the world experience violence in their lifetime. This statistic is unacceptable. It is crucial for all of us – women, men, and youth – to work together to put an end to this violence.

“Violence against women is the world’s greatest and most persistent violation of human rights, leaving women and girls vulnerable and unable to fully participate in society. It damages families, communities, and countries.

“Violence against women is not a women’s issue. Men must boldly work alongside women to combat this violence – and not simply because they have wives, daughters, or sisters. Women deserve the full depth of respect, safety, and dignity, regardless of their relationships with men.

“To change the prevalence of this violence, we must first challenge the attitudes and behaviours that allow this violence to exist, and that allow disrespect for and abuse of women to become commonplace. We must teach our daughters and sons the importance of gender equality and the need to treat everyone with equal respect.

“That is why the Government of Canada is investing in several programs both in Canada and around the world to help promote gender equality, support efforts to prevent gender-based violence, and stop human trafficking.

“Today and throughout the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, I encourage all Canadians not only to think about how their actions matter, but also to stand up against gender-based violence. Get started by joining the conversation online using the hashtag #ActionsMatter. Together, we can create a world that does not tolerate violence against women.”

Mostly well spoken, PM.  Thank you.  But it raises a question….

I’m back to make one comment on the above. I’m a missionary and we missionaries are often accused of imposing our religion and culture on other peoples. My point today is not to argue against that, but, rather, to indicate that our Federal Government does the very thing we are accused of. It tells other cultures what to do, impose western values on non-western people.  To oppose gender violence is a good thing, no matter where it occurs. However, when you start talking about gender equality you are talking about the basics of a culture and you are telling those “others” that they must change their culture. Has anyone invited the PM in to undermine their culture?  Just because he thinks genders should be equal, does that give him the right to force that on others?  Of course, if it is accompanied by dollars, then other nations often pretend to agree just to get access to those dollars, but they often get diverted to a cause the men can accept!

Just askin’.