Shaming us All

Shaming us all


By Janice Kennedy, Citizen SpecialDecember 27, 2009Comments (28)



The news has been filled lately with many important stories, what with the transgressions of Tiger Woods and the impending nuptials of Mike Fisher and Carrie Underwood. (And hey, kids. Congratulations.)
In fact, there's been so much important front-page news that other things have, of necessity, been buried. So you may have missed the story about our federal government and a bunch of Christian do-gooders.
Our government -- or, more accurately, the triad of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Bev Oda, minister for the Canadian International Development Agency -- have cut off funding (to the tune of $7 million) to KAIROS, the ecumenical Christian organization that works for peace, development and social justice in hard places around the world.
The organization (which counts among its members the Anglican, Evangelical Lutheran, Presbyterian and United churches of Canada, as well as Quakers, Mennonites and Catholics, including bishops) has been receiving funding for its international projects for 35 years through CIDA and fully expected to receive it for its latest proposal.
Its dual focus for 2009-2013 was on human rights and ecological sustainability, and it had been approved by CIDA at each level of submission -- until Nov. 30. That's when KAIROS was suddenly informed (after being made to wait two extra months after the deadline) that the proposal did not fit "CIDA priorities." In short, no money.
That's bad enough. Given KAIROS's track record, past and present, it shows appalling judgment on the part of the Harper Conservatives. And it says something worrisome about the current workings of the federal bureaucracy.
But the story got a whole lot worse when Kenney stepped into it. While Oda had announced that KAIROS was being cut off because its priorities didn't match CIDA's, Kenney took it up a notch. A notch? Make that a whole mountainside. Speaking in Jerusalem, he said the de-funding of KAIROS was part of the Canadian government's vigilant efforts to disempower anti-Semitic groups.
Anti-Semitic. He effectively called KAIROS anti-Semitic.
The charge is horrific. For people of good will who are not Jewish, the very idea of being or appearing anti-Semitic is chilling. I speak personally. We have seen the result of anti-Semitism at its most horrendous in film, literature, the powerful testimonials of those who lived and died during the Holocaust. We have heard our Jewish friends and neighbours, and we understand without question the need for both the concept and state of Israel, as well as the worldwide duty of vigilance. "Never again" is the understandably passionate cry of every heart that is Jewish -- but it also has a resounding resonance, a powerful resonance, in hearts that are not.
Anti-Semitism, in short, is a crime against humanity, something loathsome that emerges from the hatred and wilful ignorance of shrivelled souls and the lowest of the low. To label persons or groups anti-Semitic is to condemn them, rightly, to contempt. And a minister of the Crown has just done that to a Christian humanitarian group.
Earlier this month, Kenney said, "We have de-funded organizations, most recently like KAIROS, who are taking a leadership role in the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign" against Israel. This was at a conference on combatting anti-Semitism, which effectively labels KAIROS anti-Semitic.
Trouble is, Kenney is flat-out wrong about KAIROS's position. While it has indeed expressed concerns about some Israeli government policies regarding the treatment of Palestinians (something even Jewish Israelis debate), it has not promoted, and does not support, any anti-Israel sanctions, divestment or boycott. Period.
But it does, perhaps, stand for things the Harper government at home seems to have little interest in, such as ecological justice and the international advancement of human rights. And when the Harper government doesn't like what established organizations stand for, it cuts them off. Just ask women's groups across the country that felt the sting of its dismissal in 2007.
For that matter, when the Harper government doesn't like what some people are saying about the way it operates, it tends to cut them off, too. Just ask Peter Tinsley (departing chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission), Linda Keen (fired head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission) or Richard Colvin. What is sad here, besides the Harperites' unconscionable and politically motivated mudslinging, is the damage to both the reputation KAIROS has built up so powerfully over the years, and its role as a champion of responsible global citizenship.
In Sudan, where its humanitarian work focuses on developing livelihoods for the community; in Indonesia, where it investigates human rights violations and military atrocities; in Colombia, where its community development work is a bulwark against kidnappings and assassinations; in the Congo, where it is involved in the fight against rape as a weapon of war -- in so many places, in so many ways, KAIROS does the good, honourable and difficult thing.
Any well-meaning Canadian -- left, right, centre -- should feel a justifiable sense of shame that our government, in our name, has so ill-used an organization that walks the walk, fights the fight and does all those other things for which most of us lack the time, inclination and stomach.
In a world with no shortage of self-interest, though relatively trace amounts of hands-on compassion, KAIROS can count itself squarely among the good guys. The Harper-Kenney-Oda gang, with all due respect, can not.
Someone needs to apologize and make amends. And it's not the good guys.
Janice Kennedy writes here on Sundays.
E-mail: 4janicekennedy@gmail.com
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

CBC News - Nova Scotia - Astral mystery endures in Nova Scotia church

CBC News - Nova Scotia - Astral mystery endures in Nova Scotia church
Astral mystery endures in Nova Scotia church
Last Updated: Thursday, December 24, 2009 12:04 AM AT Comments54Recommend99CBC News
The mysterious chancel ceiling at St. John's Anglican Church in Lunenburg, N.S., was reconstructed in 2004 after a fire three years earlier. While locals now know what the star pattern represents, they don't know who originally designed it, or how. (CBC)
Parishioners at one of Canada's oldest Anglican churches will be puzzled by an enduring enigma when they gaze heavenward this Christmas.

The chancel ceiling at St. John's Anglican Church in Lunenburg, N.S., has a special pattern of gilded stars on it, and while locals now know what it represents, they have yet to find out who originally designed it, or how.

The conundrum emerged after the church, built in 1754, burned on Halloween night in 2001 as a result of arson. The parish sought to reconstruct the building's interior as closely as possible, and it brought in parishioner Margaret Coolen in 2004 to re-create the ceiling over the altar.

A fire ravaged St. John's Anglican Church in 2001. (CBC)
But the church didn't have a complete set of photographs of the original star pattern, so Coolen, hoping the pattern reflected the actual alignment of heavenly bodies in the night sky, sought the help of astronomer David Turner of Saint Mary's University in Halifax.

That's when the first mystery emerged.

Turner recognized the constellation Perseus in the photos of the eastern part of the chancel ceiling. But Perseus, seen from Lunenburg, always lies in the northern part of the sky and never due east.

"We looked at them and didn't recognize any of the star groups," Coolen explained of the constellations' positions. "It looked like they might just simply be put up at random, but it didn't seem like someone would go to that trouble to put just random stars on the ceiling."

Coolen suggested that Turner instead look at the stars' alignment around 2,000 years ago — on Christmas Eve in the year of Jesus' birth.

Then, using software that plots the positions of heavenly bodies throughout history, Turner had a revelation: The chancel ceiling's pattern indeed reflected quite closely how the night sky would have looked from Lunenburg all those years past, when constellations appeared in somewhat different locations than today.

"I set the scene for sunset, and bingo! I found myself looking at Perseus in the eastern sky," he said.

But while the finding has excited parishioners at St. John's Anglican, who now know that they are gazing up at the heavens as they would have appeared on the eve of their Saviour's birth, it has also perplexed them.

The ornamentation they once merely called "Mariner's Sky" holds a stellar motif of immense astronomical significance. But who could possibly have calculated the astral positions, and how, remains a mystery.

Remove Fill Pipe When Removing Oil Tank in Basement

Heating oil poured into wrong house

Last Updated: Friday, December 11, 2009 | 10:58 AM AT

CBC News

A heating company truck is parked outside a Saint John house where oil was accidentally poured into the basement. (CBC)

A Saint John family is looking for a temporary new home after about 30 litres of home-heating oil was accidentally pumped into their basement.

Saint John fire crews responded to complaints of a furnace-oil spill in an east Saint John residence on Friday morning.

Jerry Morris, the district fire chief, said between 20 and 30 litres of home-heating oil was delivered to the wrong house. Morris said the driver misread the delivery ticket and put the oil into the pipe on the wrong house.

"What happened there, this residence there, they didn't have a furnace for practically 15 years," Morris said.

"But the fill pipe was still on the outside of the building. So when he put the fuel in the pipe it just went directly right into the basement."

Morris said the oil flooded the home's fully furnished basement and the fumes are so bad the home will not be liveable for several weeks.

Irving Oil Ltd. has put the residents up at a hotel at the company's expense and crews spent the day cleaning up the mess, said André Landry, district manager of operations.

"We have a process first of all to avoid these type of incidents, so we're investigating that now internally. But the first priority this morning was ensuring that the homeowners were tended to and that their needs were met."

Meanwhile, fire officials said residents who are no longer using home-heating oil should have the fill pipe removed so similar accidents do not happen.

This Digital Age

In the first place let me acknowledge the irony of my posting this particular discussion on an electronic forum. Although I recognize the convenience of reading MacLean’s Magazine via an electronic subscription especially when I’m on the road and admit that I presently have no less than four electronic book readers installed on my computer I remain essentially a book  person; there is no substitute for holding the page in one’s hand. Books may have copyrights but there is no such thing as digital rights management issues to printed text. At present I am struggling with the fact that Microsoft Reader will not allow me to read the books I have transferred to this laptop after a necessary re-imagining of the operating system.

 

Last spring I read the letters written home by a young WW#2 soldier edited by his son after they were found in a packet behind his grandfather’s basement furnace. In this age of instant messaging, tweets, and text messaging no such records will be left behind. Even E-mail and Word Documents exist only as positives and negatives on a hard drive and as we all know all hard drives fail sooner or later.  When famous people and authors die it is common to see published edited editions of their correspondence. In a time when these exist only as electronic media the opportunity to release such publications will become less possible as old versions of software, encryption, and password protected files and computers make accessing these documents more difficult. Just ask people who had their cell phone data stored in the ‘cloud’ and lost it when the servers failed without backup.

 

Those who have followed this blog for any length of time have already read that my father didn’t trust the phone, when he wanted to talk to someone he got in his truck and drove to see them in person. Today people send tweets or text messages to relatives located in the same building. Letters are something one sends when a text copy of a document is absolutely required or one needs to communicate with the few people who have not yet entered the digital age. People still feel the need to send Birthday, Valentines, and Christmas Cards. However these days I send messages by E-mail and do much of my ordering and financial transactions online. However since I hit the road I have not felt the need to possess a cell phone and do not feel a pressing need to be constantly in contact with the world at large online.

 

Not everything about our online digital age is a negative. Etymologists are finding electronic access to texts a boon in discovering when a word was first used or when it was used in a particular fashion. However were there to be a catastrophic electro-magnetic storm that wiped out all electronic media worldwide what would be left for archaeologists of the future to study in assessing the culture of our age?