Does Trump himself believe his own falsehoods?

Ignoring everything else and just looking at Trump's false assertions, I have three concerns in degrees of comparative greatness when I read The complete list of all 33 false things Donald Trump has said as president so far.

NICHOLAS KAMM / AFP/GETTY IMAGES

1. I am greatly concerned that the President of the United States publicly tells untruths on what appears to be an habitual basis.
2. It concerns me even more that millions of the American public either believe these falsehoods unquestioningly or don't seem to care that he may be lying and continue to support him in Congress and the Senate and in the media.
3. My greatest and deepest concern, however, is that Trump himself appears to believe many, if not all, of these untrue assertions, many of which are oft repeated by him. If that is indeed the case, then the President of the United States is delusional, even if sincerely so. Can it really be that a delusional man has access to "the codes" that could trigger nuclear war?

Christmas storm in a coffee cup

As a Christian I feel the need to speak out and defend the right of coffee vendors not to put Diwali decorations on their take-out coffee cups, nor Eid decorations, nor Chanukah decorations nor Christmas decorations. They have the right to decorate or not decorate their coffee cups in any way they choose subject to the law of the land. If we do not uphold and defend this right then the alternative will be too ghastly to contemplate.

Denigrating them for not decorating their coffee cups with our particular flavour of religious celebration may be free speech, but it borders on harassment, badly models our own religion and is certainly one way of opposing the vendor's right. Tolerance is a prerequisite for the love that most religions claim as their hallmark. Let's at least get that much right as the festive seasons unfold.

(Photo credit: adweek.com)

Children without a voice

Writing his regular column for the Toronto Star Martin Regg Cohn's piece today is about the failure of Ontario's children's aid societies to properly protect some of the most vulnerable and needy children.

He concludes, "Unlike the grown-ups who get all the attention, kids can’t vote, and lack a voice. But they still need politicians in power to hear them."

True as this is about the children Cohn is explicitly writing about, I believe this to be even more cogently true about kids in the womb. Kids 'in utero' do not even exist as humans in Canadian law. They suddenly appear, Voila!, and enter into the ambience of law with human rights and freedoms when they pass through the magical birth canal, or, like rabbits from a hat, are yanked out by C-section 'deliverers'. Until that moment, these are the most voiceless kids on the planet.

"The Scream" by Edvard Munch

You can read Cohn's column online here: Premier ponders blowing up our CAS mess. It's an excellent piece and I recommend it to Canadians living in Ontario. For non-Canadians, CAS is an acronym for Children's Aid Societies.

Picture credit: "The Scream" by Edvard Munch - WebMuseum at ibiblioPage URL: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/munch/munch.scream.jpg. 
Licensed under Public Domain via Commons

Sssh! Single Issue Voting Not Encouraged By Canadian Catholic Bishops

One of the problems bedevilling many elections is the phenomenon of 'single issue' voters. The issue is usually a very worthy one such as 'healthcare' or 'care for seniors' or 'right to life for the unborn' or 'education' or 'immigration' or 'jobs' or 'the environment' or 'higher/lower taxes' or 'crime and punishment' or 'national security' or (your pet issue here). The trouble is that real life is never about one single issue even if that appears to be front and centre at a point in time for you and me.

It seems to me that voting on the basis of a single issue is very much like choosing a particular expensive gourmet restaurant over other candidate restaurants based purely on the fact that the restaurant of your choice is the only one that offers Pacific Blue Fin Tuna in its third course, and without regard to what is in the other courses at that or any other competing restaurant. Don't you care that your Valentine partner will have ethical issues with Confit Foie Gras? It seems silly, doesn't it? But isn't that what single issue voters do? I've had emails from well-meaning friends urging me to join this or that political party and then vote for this or that person to be leader of that party because he/she is the 'only one' taking a stand on a pet, controversial issue.

Contrary to what many people might presume, the Canadian Catholic bishops are not single issue voters. I know this because I have read their Guide for the 2015 Federal Election. As with previous federal elections the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued an 'Election Guide' for Catholics. I get the impression that it is meant to be kept a secret as I never hear anybody talk about it and no priest of my experience has ever mentioned it, privately or publicly, in my hearing. If it was not for the fact that I have an email subscription for new publications from the bishops' conference I myself would have no idea of its existence.


The email begins: (CCCB – Ottawa)... With the federal election campaign underway, the Commission for Justice and Peace of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) has issued a guide inviting Catholics to vote with discernment. In its "2015 Federal Election Guide", the Commission lists some basic principles from Catholic moral and social teaching to help voters analyze and evaluate public policies and programs.

It then provides this link to their web page titled Guide for the 2015 Federal Election.
http://www.cccb.ca/site/eng/media-room/4243-guide-for-2015-federal-election

How incredibly circumspect, inviting Catholics to vote with discernment, Obviously the bishops do not want to alienate anybody by being forceful in any kind of way about Catholic moral and social teaching! The web page in turn provides three more links which I reproduce below for your convenience and invite my family and friends to read with discernment - and anybody else who cares to. I expect you will find, like me, that none of our political parties measures up. Sometimes the way to find the best is find the least worst.
Link to the Guide of the CCCB (PDF)
Link to the Guide of Development and Peace
Link to the Guide of The Canadian Council of Churches

Are we betraying the true Charlie Hebdo legacy?

What has happened in Paris with Charlie Hebdo is horrendous.

It is unfortunate that news outlets have allowed coverage of that shocking event to eclipse reporting of other happenings that we really ought to be told about. In particular there has been a second attack in a week on the town of Baga, Nigeria.

Soldiers walking in the street in the town of Baga, Nigeria in 2013.
Photograph: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images

The death toll from both attacks is thought to be around 2,000. Nearly 600 others have been stranded on an island on Lake Chad without food, water or shelter. There are countless refugees on a hopeless march to nowhere: women seperated from their husbands and children, not knowing whether they be dead or alive; bewildered children severely traumatised by the unspeakable savagery upon their loved ones that they have witnessed.

It is understandable that we Western Europeans and Americo-Canadians will be transfixed by an event in Europe or the Americas such as the Charlie Hebdo attack but if we allow our world to shrink to one view of the globe what will we become? That would not be the true Charlie Hebdo legacy but the legacy of our fears.

(With material from The Guardian, 10-Jan-2015)

Do Conservative Party MPs represent Stephen Harper or their constituents?

This is obviously a question which leads to a lot of confusion in the minds of parliamentarians today - right up to the Government House Leader, the Hon. Peter Van Loan. If MPs are confused I can be forgiven for my own confusion in the matter, and so can you. Fortunately we now have Elizabeth May in Parliament to explain it to all of us in very simple words that even I can understand.

Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague from Langley, as well as the hon. member for Vegreville—Wainwright. As a specific case, may I say this is one of the most important points of privilege I have heard in the brief two years, almost, that I have been serving here? It cuts to the core of what is wrong with parliamentary democracy that the hon. government House leader could put before you a sports metaphor that we are here as teams, as brands or colours, and we are all to take instructions from our team boss.

We are not here as teams. The principle of Westminster parliamentary democracy is that we are here as representatives of our constituencies and our constituents. We are merely incidentally members of political parties. Political parties do not exist in our Constitution. They are not an essential part of our democracy. They have grown to be seen to be the most interesting thing going on, and we have grown to see politics as some sort of sport. However, democracy is not a sport. We are not playing on teams, and each individual member has individual rights, and the members for Langley and Vegreville—Wainwright feel their rights have been infringed.

I would add that I rose on a point of order to you some many months ago on the question of S.O. 31s and the fact that they were increasingly being used for purposes that, while not against our Standing Orders as they are written, are against the spirit of Standing Orders as described by former Speaker Madam Justice Sauvé, who pointed out that they should typically speak to matters of local concern in our constituencies and should not be used as a place for attacks on others, specifically ad hominem personal attacks.

At the time you said you might comment on that later. Perhaps this point of privilege might give you a chance to further elucidate when it is inappropriate for the approved S.O. 31s from the Conservative war room to be very vicious attacks and the ones that members wish to make about the concerns of their own constituents to be censored and prevented from being presented in this place.

from Elizabeth May's Parliamentary web site.
http://elizabethmaymp.ca/parliament/statements/2013/03/26/privilege-s-o-31/

Faith and Atheism

One of my FaceBook friends posted the following on his wall:

"Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated." - Christopher Hitchens
According to Wikiquotes this is taken from "Holier Than Thou", Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, 23 May 2005.

Before going any further let me clarify that none of my friends agrees with me on everything. Even my wife and I have some areas where we disagree but still remain the greatest of friends. Things only get tense when you don't like me or my friends based on some form of group prejudice (race, religion, sexual orientation.) And now, back to Hitchens...

I will concede that his first sentence above is a definition of faith even in the minds of some "believers". Clearly, this is the definition of faith in the minds of Atheists as this quote is held up as a quotable quote among Atheists. However, that definition is by no means universal among "believers."

While my definition of faith includes believing that which cannot be empirically demonstrated, it precludes the surrender of the mind and the surrender of reason. On the contrary, it is precisely the use of the mind and reason that enables humans to have faith and the other mammals not. Faith is a peculiarly human quality not to be found among any other species on the planet.

Deductive reasoning
Astronomers, astro-physicists and other scientists tell us that the universe is finite in space and time; that its size and age can be approximately calculated. They tell us that "before" the universe was born there was "nothing"; not even empty space. Nothing.

I am not a scientist but my mind reasons that something cannot create itself out of nothing before it exists. It is not a surrender of reason but an exercise thereof to conclude that some "thing" beyond the confines of the time and space of this universe was responsible for the coming into existence of this universe. That "Something" I choose to call the Creator.
I deal with this topic a bit more fully in my blog of 19 Dec 2010 "I am sceptical of skeptical atheism"
http://terryin-sites.blogspot.com/2010/12/i-am-sceptical-about-skeptical-atheism.html
...and its follow up on 24 Jan 2011.

In my opinion, in the face of the evidence of the finite nature of our universe, it requires a greater and more irrational faith to say, we cannot prove a creator's existence empirically therefore a creator does not exist.

Sent from my BlackBerry

ACTA: Latest threat to the Internet

Photo: K.L Macke 

I understand the essential thinking behind intellectual property and copyright law in order to safeguard a person's livelihood. I understand the concept of making an investment in order to get a return. I understand the notions of spirit and letter when it comes to laws, treaties, rules and regulations. Which is precisely why I am opposed to SOPA and PIPA and am now staunchly opposed to ACTA. These seek to apply the letter of the law in a manner contrary to the spirit thereof and against the common good.

What's ACTA, you say? If you do not know what ACTA is then you are not alone. ACTA is a global treaty to allow corporations to censor the Internet. Apparently the US and Canada have already signed on. I did not know that until I did some reading today.

Here are some extracts from a statement about ACTA by European Parliament Member Marietje Schaake:

As a Member of the European Parliament (EP), I am concerned about the ACTA treaty in the international trade committee (INTA).

The Anti-Counterfeiting and Trade Agreement (ACTA) is the next controversial treaty which may be about to become law. This is an international trade agreement which aims to halt counterfeited products, but also affects the internet.

A wide range of NGO's, scholars, civil society organisations, engineers, industry and activists have expressed concern about the impact ACTA will have on online freedom and freedom of speech. But there are also serious questions about access to medicine and the fact that ACTA may violate international law. Certainly, the lack of transparency of the negotiations has made it very difficult for both civil society and the European Parliament to monitor the drafting process.

The European Parliament has the decisive voice on ACTA and the INTA committee has the lead. Other committees will be developing their opinions on ACTA in the coming months.

Important dates for ACTA in the European Parliament:

• European Commission and Member States sign ACTA on Thursday January 26th in Japan.

• 29 February/1 March: Discussion in international trade committee,

• April or May: Vote in international trade committee,

• 12, 13 or 14 June: Final vote in plenary (most important vote).

(Please note, all dates may be changed)

What can you do?

1. Educate yourself about A.C.T.A.  Google Stop ACTA and find out why you should be concerned.
2. Sign the Avaaz petition that will be presented to the EU Parliament.  This had significant success for SOPA and PIPA. Let's make it work for ACTA.

http://openclipart.org/detail/167262/

The Commonwealth and South Africa's Shame

When I was a teenager, South Africa left the Commonwealth and stepped into isolation because of the 'shaming' action and condemnation undertaken by other member nations of the Commonwealth.
Once again, South Africa is 'shamed' in the eyes of all in the world who value human rights. South Africa has chosen to join with those Commonwealth countries where human rights are being trampled upon - forced marriages, laws against homosexuality, political repression - in objecting to a proposal for a rights commissioner.
A shame on you, South Africa.
I wonder if there is any moral relevance to the continued, not inexpensive existence of this no longer august body which is the Commonwealth?

Blatchford could have learnt from Jack Layton

It's fitting his death is a public spectacle - National Post today.


What a pathetic, ill-timed, inappropriate, vainglorious piece of journalistic spectacle expectorated by Christie Blatchford. As I listened to the news today somebody was quoted as saying, "She has the right to write it, I have the right to trash it."  I couldn't agree more.

As someone who has cancer myself I have to ask what or where is the journalistic ethic of pitting one cancer sufferer against others? Or of comparing one grieving family against others? Her behaviour in writing this "piece" is common and completely lacking in the common touch - something she could certainly have learnt from Jack Layton. Stephen Harper himself could teach her a lot about largesse and a spirit of generosity - and regular readers of this blog will know that I am not a fan of his.

This sort of "journalism" is fit only for the garbage.

"Stop Harper." Has Brigette Marcelle DePape drafted the rallying cry of the next election?

C.E.S. (Ned) Franks, professor emeritus in political studies at Queens's University, says that Brigette Marcelle DePape set a bad precedent with her "Stop Harper" silent protest during the Governer General's throne speech last week. In an opinion published in The Star (Page’s protest sets poor precedent) he says that this should not be seen as a legitimate act of civil disobedience because, he says, she was not protesting a specific law or policy. "She was simply objecting to the results of a democratic nationwide election in which she, along with every other citizen 18 years or older, was entitled to vote."

Well, that last statement seems to me to be a leap of logic based on at least two, if not three, questionable premises.

Firstly, I am not alone in questioning how democratic a first-past-the-post election process can be when the winning party and leader is imposed upon the nearly 60% of the voters who voted against that party and leader. Being a professor of political studies, Ned Franks must be even more aware of that than I am, which makes his statement all the more puzzling to me. Certainly Marcelle believes, as do I, that Harper doesn't reflect the majority of Canadians.(Page with 'Stop Harper' sign fired from Senate)

Secondly, rather than protesting the outcome of an election, saying "Stop Harper" might simply be saying "Stop Harper"; simply objecting to what Harper is doing; simply saying, "Harper's agenda is disastrous for this country and for my generation." She certainly concedes that Harper and the Conservatives have a majority parliament for the next four years and seems to be of the opinion that it is time for some kind of moral majority to stand up and protest in some kind of extra parliamentary way, even using civil disobedience.

Thirdly, language is something living and evolving. Maybe there is a narrow definition of "civil disobedience" accepted in the university halls of political science. But there is a wider understanding that is generally accepted in the broader population. That caring about social issues and the environment as principles of conscience can lead someone to civil disobedience does not violate any semantic understanding of the term "civil disobedience" in my mind nor, I suspect, in the minds of ordinary speakers of the English language.

From my personal point of view, this is the first time in my thirteen years in the country that I have seen any kind of passionate, political engagement on the part of university age young people in Canada. I don't think DePape is going to get her "Arab Spring" in the Canada of 2011. I do hope that she and her friends can be somewhat successful in raising the awareness of Canadians to the very serious issues facing our country and the world beyond our own pocket books and wallets.

I think that Brigette Marcelle DePape may well have drafted the rallying cry of the next election. Which will be more important for each of the opposition parties in the next election in four years time: to be the official opposition or to "Stop Harper?" There is a big difference. One is relevant to the important challenges facing our country and the world. The other is about party politics - and quite irrelevant.

Response to Reinier's letter re U of C wasting money

Dear Reinier,




Whether we are talking about abortion or free speech, the essential premises of the pro-life group are based on the following aphorisms:
1. human life begins with conception
2. there is a human being from the moment there is human life.

Syllogism 1 (Abortion).
Human beings have a right to life.
This foetus is a human being,
Therefore this foetus has a right to life.

Syllogism 2 (Free speech)
Human beings have a right to be heard.
All those foetuses (fetuses,foeti) about to be aborted are human beings,
Therefore all those foetuses have a right to be heard.


Obviously my presentation of the pro-life premise is heavily flavoured by my faith as a Roman Catholic but I believe that this, purely and simply, is the crux of the great divide. If pro-choicers are basing their conclusions on premises contradictory to these then all discussion on the conclusions will sound like a discussion with the Mad Hatter.

It seems to me that people are spending too much time debating, arguing, fighting, whatever, over conclusions to syllogisms based on different or contradictory premises instead of discussing the differences between the critical premise. (For readers who don't know, a syllogism is a conclusion based on two propositions called premises, e.g.: all dogs are mammals; Lassie is a dog; therefore Lassie is a mammal.)

Before going on further down this road I would like to get your response to the above. Also, I have presented you with what I believe to be, at least the Catholic cohort's version of, the essential premise of the pro-life movement. I would be curious to know how you would state the essential axioms and premise(s) of pro-choicers.

Best regards
Terry

A response to "U of C wasting money"

On Feb 3 I posted an article published by the Calgary Herald, U of C wasting money.  My brother-in-law in Scotland, Reinier, sent me an email expressing reservations and defending the university's position. Reinier and I have had many debates and discussions on many things. I love him dearly, as he does me, and we have a deep respect for each other. We simply do not agree on some issues - this being one of them. With his permission I post his response here. The photos are nothing to do with the article or Reinier's response but were taken when Ingrid, Judith and I visited Glasgow two years ago. The one on the left is Judith, Maya, Reinier and Ingrid walking along the bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond. On the right is Fleshmarket Close in Edinburgh where Ian Rankin had somebody murdered in his book of the same name.

Hi Terry

I, too, expected you to disagree with me. But, perhaps, both of us are wrong to’expect’ these stances from one another. On second reflection, me, you, and people generally are far more complex in their emotions and reactions to life’s challenges than we would credit.

I know that the ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ debates conjure the most bitter and emotionally-charged arguments. Your  blog entry and links to the U of Calgary and their SU webpage (I’m sorry! …don’t know how to do these links!) reveals an abundance of opinions regarding the rights and wrongs of abortion. 

The issue regarding banning the particular group, though, seems to be about the rights and wrongs of free speech. And the right – if that is claimed – of a group of people to confront very vulnarable women regarding their fucundacy or pregnancy. I believe that’s wrong - and if you go to the U of C website and read the comments I think you’ll agree that, at the very least, the pro-life campaign is problematic.

Of course you are welcome to publish my response. Like, you – even if from the opposite angle – I would welcome further debate. 

Fond regards,

Reinier

University of Calgary trampling on free speech

The following is taken from today's online edition of the Calgary Herald

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/wasting+money/1246995/story.html

U of C wasting money

In pursuing trespassing charges against students who set up a pro-life display on campus last fall, the University of Calgary is not only trampling on free speech, it is wasting money on an expensive court case at a time when the global economic crisis has cost the university $78 million of its endowment fund. The money the U of C is about to fritter away on lawyers and court costs in its oppression of students whose only "crime" is publicly espousing pro-life views, could be better directed to research, infrastructure, scholarships for underprivileged students or other practical purposes.

The university's hypocrisy is appalling and not just because a university by its very nature is supposed to be a forum for free speech, dissent and debate. As the Campus Pro-Life club points out, theirs is the only group whose graphic display the university ordered turned inward so passersby couldn't see it. A bare 30 metres from the pro-life display, graphic pictures of atrocities inflicted on members of Falun Gong by the Chinese government were al-lowed to be on display with nary a word of protest from university authorities. The university clearly appears to be muzzling views with which it does not agree -- a shameful stance for any institution worthy of the name "university" to take.

Last November, the club received a letter from Paul Beke, the U of C's lawyer, claiming that the university is private property and has a right to control what happens on that property. The university, in reality, is a publicly funded institution, and students who have paid tuition to attend the U of C cannot be accused of trespassing when they're on campus. They also have a right to express their views, regardless of how unpopular those views may be with the administration.

A court must rule on the side of freedom of expression, for if students' opinions are successfully muzzled today, then perhaps tomorrow the university's professors need to start looking over their shoulders, too.

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