Letter to NP re Church fires 12/30/2009

Church Fires Can't be Ignored

Imagine, two church fires, one in Oshawa and one in Durham region and the police have no idea who did it except to say that the latter was done by copycats. Who in Canada would want to destroy a Catholic church? There are only two probabilites. Either the fires were set by ignorant destructive young men or it was set by Islamists. Am I being Islamophobic? No. Christianity is now being attacked in Nigeria, Egypt, the West Bank, Gaza, and Darfur. In addition it is being denigrated in many of the Islamic countries. Among Islamists, Christians are negatively referred to as infidels. So let's not waste the police's time. Have them investigate local gangs and local radical Islamists. The odds are strongly suggestive that it is the latter group that is responsible. Let's forget political correctness and investigate this is as a hate crime and let's concentrate on those Islamists most likely to have had something to do with it.

letter to National Post re Christian Horizons Dec 21

Re: Christian Horizons

We all agree that the Christian Horizons are doing a great job in caring for the sick and disabled. We also agree that they are inspired by their religious beliefs and use that as a basis of their altruism. Does that however give them the right to break Canadian law or act in such a way that would be considered to be unjust by our laws and by most of our society? Do good deeds exonerate you from bad deeds? Does a religious tradition, based on the writings in a holy book justify actions that Canadian society and laws consider to be wrong or even evil? A judgement in favour of Christian Horizons would place gays in the position of being unable to obtain jobs in any religious charitable or educational organization. Is this what Canadians really want? In law, as a function of sentencing we consider the reputation of the person being sentences but we don't exempt them from their illegal actions. Should Conrad Black be acquitted of his actions because the majority of his financial transactions were within the law? Should a man who kills his wife (perhaps in a mercy killing) after 30 years of a good marriage not be charged with murder? Similarly, the Koran permits a husband to beat his wife under certain circumstances. Should we look the other way because the action is permitted in many Muslim countries and is recommended by a holy book? Isn't it time that Canadian laws and justice take precedence over religious prejudices and actions that are written in holy books and believed by some of the religion's followers?

Letter to Toronto Star Dec 18th

On the basis of climate change, I too think that the U.S. and Canada should fund the underdevelopped nations, without restrictions, with hundreds of billions of dollars. With these funds Indian companies will be able to buy more of our steel companies, China will be able to buy more Canadian resource companies, Egypt can better compete with our telecom companies, the Saudis will be able to send more Wahibis to support our mosques and infiltrate our universities, and with luck the North Koreans or the Iraquis will be able to buy our nuclear reactors. It is like the ads on television for many medicines - the medicine will help if the side effects don't kill you.

Letter to National Post Dec 18th

How can Mr. Harper not support a U.N. plan that will limit Canada's oil sands output and provide enough funding to enable underdeveloped countries like China to buy our resources, hotel chains and steel mills? How can he be so "passive"? Imagine the Canadian voters' jealousy when they look across the border to see the altruism of Americans who are giving 100 billion to underdeveloped countries while their own people are losing their homes because they are unemployed. Yes, we are disappointed that Mr. Harper is not trashing our economy in order to support all the poorer world countries, most of whom incidentally despise the west, all on the grounds of questionable global warming theories. Perhaps, when global warming forces our temperatures above the bitterly freezing temperatures that we now have across Canada, it will warm Mr. Harper's heart enough to have him follow the U.S. example and give our wealth away to others to squander, build nuclear weapons, or buy our economic treasures.

Ontario's Negligent Funding

The case of the Christian Horizons organization brings out two interesting questions. How far will the idea that all religious thought and actions are equivalent be allowed to proceed and to favour freedom of religion over all other freedoms; and how much prosyletizing and imposing of one's religious views on others will be accepted and subsibsidized by the Ontario government before it is considered to be excessive. To me, freedom of religion means freedom to practice one's religion in private, not necessarily freedom to prosyletize and certainly not freedom to impose private religious views on the public or those who are in some way reliant on you. In addition religious practices must not be contrary to criminal law. I do not want my taxes spent on people who would subtly and often not subtly push their religious views, practices, and prejudices on others. This is clearly what the Christian Horizon organization did. Recently I became aware that there was a booth in the Word of the Street festival that prosyletied for Islam. Word on the Street is Ontario's book and magazine publishers' festival and is supported by the Ontario government through the Ontario Media Development Corporation . The festival has nothing to do with the benefits of the Koran, so that booth should not have been there. In reply to my letter to the Ontario government notifying them about the misuse of their funds, and my taxes, I received a letter from Aileen Carroll the Minister of Culture, who told me to contact Word on the Street. In other words she was telling me that Ontario had no interest in what the funds were really used for and whether the funds had been misapplied. Since the real use of public funds has been ignored twice to my knowledge by the Ontario government, it appears to me that Ontario is being extremely lax or just plain negligent in its funding policies. If the name of the organization sounds good, Ontario will fund it and they don't monitor how the funds, my tax money, is spent. This is not only disappointing, but is a failure of their responsibilty to me, an Ontario resident and a taxpayer.

Letter to MacLean's re Harper's position on Global Waming

It seems like only yesterday that the Liberals accused Mr. Harper of not caring enough about Canadians because he were not spending enough money to protect Canadians from the serious economic disaster of a recession. Now that the recession has proved as mild as Mr. Harper predicted, Mr. Ignatieff is accusing Mr. Harper of gross overspending and having forgotten his and Conservative principles.
That tune seems to have played so well that again the Liberals are accusing Mr. Harper of not caring enough about global warming because he refuses to take the heart out of the Canadian economy over a now very questionable global warming caused by overuse of resources.

Whether it concerns a recession or global warming, the Harper government has acted cautiously to protect Canadians from being sacrificed on the alter of world hysteria. I think he deserves a lot of credit for his tough stand in protecting Canada from the latest
internationally fed, perhaps imaginary, crisis.

Letter to the Globe Dec 15th - re England

Jolly Old England

Tony Blair has the audacity to publically criticize Canada's position on global warming; Engand's laws permit visiting Israeli politicians to be subject to accusations of war crimes; England's new anti-semitic movie, "The Education" is enjoying rave reviews;
and the country is quickly caving in to the demands of native born radical Islamists. It seems that jolly old England isn't so jolly anymore.

Letter to the Toronto Sun Dec 13th

Banning minarets and 1930

Eric Margolis' column should be put with the funnies. His ideas are off the cuff and without any relationship to the facts. Comparing the Swiss banning of minarets to 1930 Germany is completely outrageous. In 1933 there were some 505,000 Germany Jews or 0.75% of the population. Today there are 300,000 Muslims in Switzerland or 4.26% of the population. In 1933 there were about 15.3 million Jews in the world compared to the 1.66 billion Muslims in the world today. At no time, and particularly in the 1930's, did any Jews want to take over any country in Europe. Any fear of that would have been totally unrealistic and come from the fraudulent Elders of Zion book. However today radical Islam is quite clear that it wishes to make the whole world part of Islam, based on the interpretation of the Koran. The comparing the Swiss who want to protect their country and religion against a potential and realistic threat with Germany's simple anti-semitic desire to rid the world of a small and peaceful people is unbelievable.

Letter to the Toronto Star - re Siddiqui

Siddiqui stumps no one.

Afghanistan hasn't stumped Harper as Siddiqui suggests. It has stumped the Muslim community. Why, even with the help of the West, haven't Afghanis been able to lift themselves up by the bootstraps to get rid of the Taliban and make decent lives for themselves? What is it about the interpretation of the Koran which has stopped the Afghanis men from achieving freedom and not given Afghani women freedom to benefit themselves and society?

No, it is not Afghanistan that has stumped the West but the question of how a reasonable Muslim person can become an Islamist.

letter to teh Globe - Dec 14th - Sheema Khan

Self development

Sheema Khan's story of the effects of performing the hajj is very inspiring but like tales of miraculous cures from snake oil doesn't deal with those millions of Muslims who have performed the hajj without any benefits whatsoever. However her story was worthwhile until the last line which was "Let's hope our politicians take heed". Instead of politicians, she should have encouraged the Imams, Muslim community leaders and individual Muslims to take heed and develop the atmosphere needed to reproduce as best as possible the benefits of performing a hajj like ritual right here in Canada. Each Jewish house has an amulet (called a Mezzuzah) on the door to remind Jews that they should behave in their home as if it were a religious temple. Perhaps Canadian Muslims should have their own amulet to remind them to behave as if they had just performed the hajj.

comment on Chicken Little and climate

Why are usually staid scintists yelling the Chicken Little syndrome of "the sky is falling, the sky is falling"? It is not falling. It time to quietly take some small steps, and cease the panic.

Comment on CBC reporting- December 5th

It seems to me that whenever anything obviously good is done by the Conservatives, the CBC says, " It is good even though it was done for political purposes." So now even when the Conservatives do good work, the CBC has an automatic put-down available. Perhaps its time for the CBC to be "put down".