A new stained glass window on the Hill

Cynic that I am, I thought maybe this:

 

But no, it's something else that's to be enshrined in stained glass on a Parliament window, and proof that 900 doesn't hate everything, I like this plan.

Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan announced Thursday the legacy of Canada's Indian residential schools program will be permanently etched on Parliament Hill in stained glass...Duncan said he's consulted with aboriginal leaders about the window as an "important gesture of reconciliation" and "they get it."

Now if the government actually does something to deal with the current problems First Nations still face, I'll be really impressed. 

 

How about getting tough on these crimes?

Remember the video of a woman tossing unwanted puppies into a river?    People all over the world were outraged.  You just don’t do that to puppies, people said.  They are living creatures. 

Have you read last week’s high profile article on how bones found near Vimy Ridge in 2003 were identified last month by a research team in Thunder Bay, ON, and now Pte. Thomas Lawless of Calgary, killed at the Ridge in 1917 can receive a proper burial, with honours?  Relatives who never met him have been notified by Veterans Affairs and they will attend the service.

Did you read an article published February 17, 2011 about what are likely hundreds of children’s bodies lying unidentified in unmarked graves?  You may not have seen it.  It appeared in section H of the Winnipeg Free Press. 

It is not a new story but it never seems to catch the attention that you would think the mass murder of children would.

You would also think that if researchers in Thunder Bay could use genetic testing to identify a man who died at Vimy Ridge in 1917, they could identify many of these bodies of children who still have living relatives who knew them.  You think they would make it a priority.

But it seems that aboriginal children are like those unwanted dogs drowned in a river.  Just a nuisance.  Worse, even, because being human on paper at least, the deaths have to be covered up, hidden.  And our oh so enlightened society has to relegate the knowledge of such murders and unmarked graves of children to the barest, faintest reaches of our peripheral thoughts.  Things of nightmare, to be sure.  Don’t look, don’t talk about it, and for god’s sake (and here I use the name of that mythical deity intentionally), don’t stir up the dirt that hides the horrors.

No one knows how many children died in residential schools. No one knows how many graves were dug for them.

Chilling.  Horrible.  So where are the cries of outrage?  The demand for justice?  The kindly, compassionate folk who understand that living relatives of these murdered children deserve to know what happened and should have the chance to bury their dead?

Research at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is underway to get a grip on the approximate number of missing children and unmarked graves at residential schools in Canada, including on the Prairies.

There is no doubt that many of these children died from neglect, and little doubt that more than a few were murdered.  In any event, when dealing with so many bodies lying in unmarked graves, and knowing that many of those responsible for the deaths are walking free right now, these deaths should be investigated as any other deaths would, not handled as an historical dig managed by a Commission that so far has had little support and no authority to enforce.

But hey, it’s not like they’re white kids, right?

"We are, quite frankly, not going to be able to say how many children died in the schools or say where they are all buried, and what happened to them after they died," Sinclair said recently at the commission's downtown Winnipeg offices.   Nevertheless, he said it's essential to tackle the issue as part of the residential schools legacy.

Part of the legacy?  How about tackling it for what it is - brutal crimes of neglect, rape, and murder of numerous children taken by force from their families?

While residential school deaths may have been reported, there are few death certificates attached to student files in old archives. Finding out what happened to each child would involve matching church and government records to Vital Statistics files.

This tells us a lot about how governments and churches of those decades considered aboriginals to be less entitled to rights than non-natives.  That those same churches and governments are treating this matter as a historical event that may eventually require some sort of resolution tells us that little has changed.

The commission hopes to have enough information to suggest further research and ways to commemorate the graves.

A nice plaque or two providing a lovely photo op for some bastard politician to appear somewhat human.

"We've heard stories from survivors that babies were born in the schools to mothers who'd been impregnated by teachers and by priests. They say their babies were taken away. They think their babies were killed," Sinclair said. "We don't know the extent to which that occurred, if at all."

OK.  Stop.  Enough with the euphemisms.  Impregnated?  No, these were children.  That makes it rape, every damn time.

Teachers and priests.  Well, wingnuts, at least they didn’t let the children have abortions, right?  They rape the kids, take away the living, crying baby that resulted from their rape crime, and...murder it.

Teachers and priests.  God-fearin’ folk to want to take the savage out of The Savage.  Drive out the heathen beliefs and insert the holy ghost.  You know, civilize them, teach them the good ways of the white, enlightened society, and have them embrace that loving god while following the teachings of christianity.

I realize that atheists also commit child rape and murder, but they are held accountable for their crimes, and they don’t have an entire sheltered religion enabling further crimes and covering up past ones for them.

In a YouTube broadcast posted this month, Favel, now an elderly woman, describes her hard life as a child in residential school. She recalls the day she saw school staff carry a newborn baby wrapped in pink through the kitchen and into the adjacent furnace room.

..."They took that baby into the... furnace room and burned it alive. You could smell the flesh cooking," Favel says, her voice soft but clear.

Gotta protect those priests.  Have to protect the name of their god.  Can’t have people thinking badly of them because, you know, religion does a lot of good, right?  Like bring enlightenment and christianity to aboriginals?

In 1944, a priest levelled the rest of the cemetery, removing all traces of it, according to an elder interviewed by the working group who had attended the school as a child in the 1940s.

That’s the christian way, isn’t it?  Just remove all traces of past crimes, move on, and preach to others on morality.

Crimes were committed.  That doesn’t suggest we should reconcile a damn thing.  It demands we investigate aggressively and hold those responsible for the rapes, deaths, murders, and cover-ups accountable in courts of law.

And all efforts should be made to identify every single child’s remains, determine how that child died, notify families, and provide support for a proper burial which family can attend.  Just like was done for Pte. Thomas Lawless of Calgary.

Nice. Now don’t back down

Carleton University's student association said Thursday it will vote in December on whether to change its policies and allow an anti-abortion group to register as a club.

Carleton Lifeline, an anti-abortion group on campus at the Ottawa university, said this week its club status had been revoked as part of the student association's policy against discrimination, which specifically bans any group that opposes a woman's right to have an abortion.

Some defenders of free speech are saying this is an infringement on the right to express differing views, but the foetus fetishists can still post their foetus porn in public areas since the group will continue to be offered public space and tables on campus which is consistent with the university's practice with respect to other student groups.

The Lifeline group wants the legitimacy a club would give them, I think, as well as the funding for clubs, of course. 

They aren't being prevented from speaking, but the student association is right in this case because funding the group would show support for their efforts, and that means they would be supporting a group that is attempting to take away some of women's rights.

Going to watch this one.

Because doing nothing takes practice

Mr. Bramley (director of climate change at the Pembina Institute) said, however, that although Mr. Baird's term as environment minister was not as successful as he had hoped, he's happy that Mr. Baird was appointed the interim minister because he already knows the file.

And he sure knows how to implement harper’s agenda on climate change.  Make sure Canada does nothing and make sure Canada does what it can to slow international agreements.

So it really helps that Baird knows the file, because this may come up again -

The federal government raised the prospect that northern aboriginals might seek more money if countries signed a climate-change treaty in Copenhagen last year, new documents show.  Officials at Foreign Affairs flagged the issue in a memo to Canada's former climate-change envoy before a major United Nations conference in the Danish capital.

“There is a possible link between an agreement at Copenhagen on international funding for adaptation and an increased demand for funding by indigenous groups in the Arctic,” the document says.       

Have to know ahead of these tiresome summits what exactly is at risk for harper’s Canada.  Have to know what you want to block, after all.

Saving the savage heathen from themselves...again.

In this year's federal budget, Ottawa allotted $199 million for residential school survivor programs. But this money will not be administered by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, already set up, but by Health Canada.

"Not only is this a horrendous waste of money and time," says Grand Chief Ron Evans, "but it puts our healing programs into the hands of the federal government, which erected the federal residential schools in the first place."

Because Whiteface knows better what being Aboriginal is all about.

I don't want to fund a god's plan, do you?

If someone wants to financially support and help propagate a myth along with its narrow ideology in the name of a mythic creature, hey, that’s their right.  But this should not come out of the tax dollars of people who may not feel the same way: those who believe in a completely different mythos, atheists, or even those who share similar beliefs but are opposed to the goals of the group.

Seems Vic Toews doesn’t agree.  At least when it comes to Youth For Christ, a religious group passing itself off as a youth centre for troubled kids.

Their own mission statement makes it very clear that their agenda is a religious one, extending to mixing church and state.

With a focus on junior and senior high school ministries, YFC Canada aims to take the gospel to the youth of the nation and trust God to surface leaders for the future who can become part of His plan for our nation.

God has a plan for our nation, does he?  But he needs our tax dollars to help indoctrinate vulnerable youth to accomplish it?  Mm-hmmm...

This group doesn’t just want to take the gospel to the kiddies, it is actively targeting what it views as vulnerable groups.

Strategy - ...Expanding chapter ministries: "YFC will boldly move into areas where we do not now exist, both geographically and culturally. The aboriginal youth community is a prime area for development."

Yeppers.  Boldly braving hostile lands  and dangerous cultures.  

I find it more than a little obscene that the very religion that abused aboriginals and committed cultural genocide  now seeks to use them to suppress the rights of all Canadians by imposing their religiously driven morality on all citizens through changing our laws according to a two thousand year old book written by several patriarchal types and loosely interpreted by whoever happens to claim to have insight into the will of a non-existent being.  Whew!  Long sentence, yes, but that happens when you try to give clarity to something as nonsensical as a god’s will.

We are committed to a journey of faith fully trusting our Lord to supply the resources and strategies to impact the youth of Canada.

I have trouble believing that this group faithfully trusts their lord to supply resources - for two reasons: first off, I don’t believe in gods.

Secondly: I apparently jabbered in my sleep last night, and what one of my co-pilots took to be nonsense must have been in fact, a magic spell because some god or other monster (which I don’t believe in) later directed me to read this article  and made me read these very lines:

Toews said Youth For Christ's evangelism was irrelevant to the funding process, although CBC reports one of the group's directors contributed to his political campaign.

So with family values  Vic Toews’ palms coincidentally greased,

The Conservative government in Ottawa and Winnipeg's city council are poised to help non-profit Youth For Christ build an $11.7-million, 50,000-square-foot youth centre at the northwest corner of Higgins Avenue and Main Street.

Seems the holy partisan patronage invisible sky monster worked some more magic for his faithful:

That plan, which faces a council vote on Feb. 24, is being lambasted by two opposition councillors and MP Martin, who claim it was rushed through city hall, contravenes Winnipeg's recreation policy and effectively shuts out other inner-city organizations.

"Councillors received one page of information about this. It was walked onto (executive policy committee) a week before we have to vote on this. It didn't go through the proper process," said Gerbasi, who shares Martin's concerns about the evangelistic aims of Youth For Christ.

Transcona Coun. Russ Wyatt said it's unfair to give millions to Youth For Christ without even a report from city staff, when the city makes dozens of small community organizations jump through procedural hoops to obtain small amounts of public funding.

I wonder - had the group had been named Youth For Allah, Boys For Buddha or Kids For Krishna, would it have received such funding as easily, or rather, at all? (Yes, that is a rhetorical question)

I was thinking...for just under 7 mill, I could be persuaded to start a youth group as well.

Been thinking of Kids For Cthulhu. 

Should have a pretty good shot since being amoral, such a group can hardly be accused of forcing narrow, religious values on tender, little kiddies.  And since Cthulhu has a physical form, kiddies can strive to emulate his image.

(photo)
It would offer extensive challenges:

And it encourages children to strive for the highest goals:

Cthulhu really has that tough guy image working for him as well.  That's very popular, lately.

Best of all, there’s some terrific Cthulhu rock to lure in the youngsters: