The Church should apologize.

 

The Church should apologize.

If you are anything like me you probably feel like spreading your arms wide and shouting to the sky, “what’s going on?”

It was a short time ago when we were sharing the pain of so many seniors who were dying alone in their under-funded Care facilities. Canada, one of the richest nations in the world, found out that our parents and grandparents received a lower level of care than most industrial nations offer. When things got rough, the most vulnerable amongst us paid the price.

Our dilapidated health care system that has been robbed of resources for years by austerity cuts didn’t hold and needed surgeries were delayed for a long time. We pay but the service we should expect is no longer there.

When a vaccine was discovered, we found out that our research facilities, experts, and factories capable of manufacturing vaccines were long gone leaving us at the mercy of the “markets” far behind other countries.

As we were reeling, trying to absorb the fact that Canada is behind, a new news item hit us hard. We who feel comfortable telling other countries to observe human rights discovered a new historical reality. When countries like China tell us to straighten our own mess, they have a provable case. Canada jailed children for the crime of being Native and hired churches of white people to “take the Indian out of the child” in Residential schools.

Now using ground-penetrating x-ray technology, we are seeing how many of those children died and were buried without ever seeing their families. Like our seniors recently, they died alone with strangers around who didn’t have enough resources to comfort them or even give them proper human burial. Social media spread the news fast and the official news soon caught up. No hiding the facts.

The Prime Minister, eager to protect the government, jumped on the opportunity to blame the churches, particularly the Catholic church, demanding that the Pope will apologize and an apology could lead to demands of money that simply is not there. It could force me to pay for what a past government caused. Soon after, church buildings were burning on and around Indian Reserves.

 

I am all in favour of saying sorry when I am guilty or paying if I knowingly do wrong. I wasn’t even born when the Canadian government designed an evil way to rid itself of the past owners of the land. I would like the church to apologize for participating in what they were ill-equipped to handle but I don’t think it will bring the expected solution.

If the biggest church on earth is going to do some soul searching and initiate action to make amends there are issues bigger than the role it played in the Residential Schools fiasco. The church in one form or another existed now for two thousand years and other churches sprang from it. When it started it was a new religion but it was based on a much older religion.

Until Christianity religious faiths were competing on different grounds. It was a test between whose God is more powerful. The people who worshipped Gods didn’t think in theological or philosophical ways. They “feared” God not “believed” in God. Often religions won or lost by torturing people, starving them to submission, or chasing them out of their countries.

The Catholic church was one of the pioneers of bringing health and education as a tool for conversion but failed miserably to notice the biggest drawback. Based on the Jewish faith, it adopted a patriarchal system that set half of humanity against the other half. It failed to follow Christ in treating males and females equally, and all others followed suit. In the process gospels and teachings were destroyed or went missing, only to be rediscovered recently. That is the bigger problem that must be corrected ahead of all others and the hierarchy is not ready to reconsider.

The Israelites in biblical times treated women as property belonging to a father, husband, or another family. Women were looked after, not independent equals. Pope Gregory the Great declared Marie Magdalene a harlot and remained so with no proof until 1969 when the Church clarified that the theory lacked any basis.

In 1945 we discovered the Gnostic gospels revealing that early Christians believed that women, especially Marie Magdalene, were treated as equal by Christ. Magdalene started the Christian faith by being the first witness to the resurrection. Compare that to Paul, who only saw Christ in a dream.

There are people around the world claiming to be the lost tribes of Israel, most notable the people of Afghanistan today. It seems as if the Church adopted their view of women instead of the teachings of Christ. This historical mistake formed modern human social order and is still at play today.

We have formed woman's nature not as the half of humanity that is able to produce new humans but as humans who need special consideration from the males. We see it clearly in our fight for males to have the right to use women and control what they wear and do with their bodies. We see it evident in trials about sexual abuse and it affected First Nations women most severely.

The aboriginal nations in North America often had costumes that allowed women better consideration than Europeans had. The European migrants assumed that technological superiority was equal to moral and religious superiority which led us to today’s problems.

In my humble opinion, the biggest church in the world should consider updating its information and seriously entertaining sweeping changes. There is no shame in learning new things and changing behaviours accordingly. Each of us has done so many times.

If we are going to ask for apologies, I would go for the big one first. If a Pope is going to apologize, I would ask for an apology to the 52% of humans who are females.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

A Canadian kid, Yumna made Canada search for its soul.

 

A Canadian kid, Yumna made Canada search for its soul.

The Canadian nation is going through what Catholics call an examination of conscience. Jewish people also do the exercise and others also set time to ask, have I done what I should, or do I need forgiveness. Show me a human that has never done something he or she is sorry for. There was one clean from sin, but they crucified him.

Two weeks ago, we were mourning the poor First Nations children who were taken from their families, stripped of identity, and “made better.” As we were talking, a new act of violence arrested the media’s attention. A Canadian family was mowed down by a truck driven by a young man. His co-worker, who knew him well, said, I can’t believe that Nathaniel (Veltman) did that. He was such a good home-schooled Christian.

Nathaniel admitted his guilt at intentionally killing the family who came here from Pakistan years ago. He singled them out by what they were wearing. Others were passed by because they stripped themselves from national identities and wore regular attire. Canada faced another shock, and it forced us to face reality. We hurt others by not doing enough to rid ourselves of prejudice. It is we who need forgiveness.

One victim, dead on the scene, was fifteen-year-old Yumna Afzaal. She came to Canada as a one-year-old and was a regular Canadian kid. One minute she was going for a walk with Mom, Dad, Grandma, and a nine-year-old brother, and the next they were all broken bleeding on the sidewalk a short distance from home. She could see that they were all irreparable and knew that death was here.

Dying mostly is not instant. I know. The body fights and minutes can feel like hours as they do in a dream. Probably the girl had a chance to see before tears filled her eyes and they glazed over forever.

She was at the age when a girl turns into a woman. From the picture, we can tell that she was pretty and on her school wall she left a mural that includes her image. Now she faced finding out if a dying person really sees their whole life flash before their eyes. A dream sometimes lasts less than a minute but you wake up realizing that your mind covered a complete story.

She may have seen her brother’s broken body trying to move and people rushing out to help. She knew that most Canadians are good, peace-loving people, but she was the one who babysat him all his life. Trying to move… her body would not obey. Who will look after him now?

An old Jewish prayer, “shma Israel” says that when the heart stops the soul is screaming. Yumna’s soul was hollering to God, Allah, they call him. She realized she would not hold her brother again or her own children. She had a tender feeling towards some young man in school, but never. In some corner of her mind, she dreamt of a wedding dress and her parents happy at her future wedding, but never. She wandered how they will dress her for the funeral.

The terrible pain was giving way to numbness. She was a young woman now and remembered that she never had her first kiss. They didn’t talk about sex at home, but she was a Canadian kid and knew what it was. There will be no awkward loving boy and girl exploring each other and no grand moment of ecstatic joy. God is calling over a dark chasm, and she trusts him, but she is so scared. He always favoured boys, she knew. Or was it people did? There was no chance to run away. What if He is like the driver and doesn’t like people like her? She didn’t wear a hijab, her mother did, but God knows everything. What if He is like the people in Quebec? Every human wears something that forms their identity.

Yumna wasn’t sure if her heart is still beating but felt that it was silently crying. God can do all things and Allah is great, she remembered. She felt alone. Time stopped all together. She didn’t want to go. She saw the white young man who killed her holding the steering wheel aiming for her and didn’t feel hate, only sorrow. Her arm jerked and her legs trashed, like an animal that a hunter has shot, and her beautiful long black curls were soaking up the blood from the pavement.

Let it be over, a whisper in her mind, and ”I am so tired.” Sirens came closer, but she didn’t hear. Dead on the scene said the news. Yumna felt, not heard, the voice of God. “Be at peace angel, all is within.”

So many people, like me, left life somewhere else to emigrate to Canada, since it’s known as a place of peace. The USA is the melting pot and Canada is the mosaic. It’s not the oil or wheat and minerals that draw people to Canada, it’s the image of good kind peace-loving people that attract newcomers. Humans who want to compete, hoard, and win go further south. Here is where the runaway slaves came for shelter. Here is where the young soldiers who liberated the Netherlands and kept the British Empire free came from. We are polite but we are not pushovers. All of us coloured little pieces make the great mosaic.

Our heaven is now under assault by far-right ideologies we fought against. Our sins of the past are being exposed and there are a new kind of people here wanting to change us into the place we run away from. It is tempting but we must resist.

The day after Yumna’s murder, thousands from all faiths came out to march. The next day her coffin draped in the maple leaf flag was wheeled with the coffins of her beloved family to be buried. Did she change our beliefs?

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

The good old days and unmarked graves.

 

The good old days and unmarked graves.

My wife’s parents were students in the Grouard Residential school. They told me about the poor conditions. It doesn’t make me an expert but:

People are shocked to hear what took place just a little while ago. We discover evidence of horrific abuse of native Canadians and all of us are rightly upset. Yet we don’t realize the level of brutality that existed not long ago, in my lifetime. The horrific part is that much of it was done by those who loved us.

I remember reading the book Young Winston, by Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the British Empire, during the war. Winston was being educated in a rich private boarding school. He describes in detail a little room by the chapel where the kids suffered corporal punishment. He was a sickly child and after a beating got sick and almost died.

Sexual abuse, as we call it today, was a regular behaviour also, and no one gave it a second thought. At home, girls and boys endured what today would be punishable by jail time. We exposed kids who had no way to know about sex to sexual behaviour as a part of life. I was a teen when I saw touching and pinching take place in public. It intensified when youngsters began to work in low-paying jobs where protection from bosses was nonexistent.

When society allows very few people to enjoy most of the riches, the last on the totem pole suffers most from deprivation. Here it was, the children of the First Nations. They would be made “useful” or deemed expendable. Tears escape my eyes, thinking about their suffering.

In those days boys had privileges unavailable to girls while girls had to be “nice” by smiling or laughing at sexual advances. Some of what we bring up now as reasons to demote people in prominent positions was commonplace. I witnessed remnants of that kind of abuse right until recently. Older folks who grew up with sexual abuse have done it all their lives never learning that it’s wrong. Now generals can be fired for making sexual comments. Their sin is simply not changing fast enough when society did.

The problem is that moral norms change relatively fast and people’s careers span over a few generations. Everything changes fast these days but people’s behaviour stays the way they learned it.

Governments, churches, and schools are leaders but also a reflection of current public opinion. Just look at the rates of deaths from the Coronavirus in the US by the end of last year compared to now. The same people, the same virus, different government.

When Canada became a country, the emphasis was on building a new country on the lands previously occupied by indigenous “primitive” tribes, who were viewed as a problem. The motherlands of our population were fighting for domination in Europe and people as cattle were moved around subjected to the whims of whoever had bigger armies. It was normal.

What was done to the native population was horrendous, yet the intentions at the period in history were considered good and most voters supported it. The government intended to educate and convert people to give them a better chance of surviving in the newly formed country. The churches were involved in education and health care so they were contracted.

I listened to a nun who worked her entire life in boarding schools and she was a good person who sacrificed her life to help kids using the approved methods at the time. She didn’t know that a tiny percentage of people are born pedophiles.

Like most people, I was born into my religion and tried to be good. I don’t wish to excuse the injurious behaviour of individuals belonging to my faith or any other. I think we should apologize when we do wrong and do what we can to make it right. Sometimes we can’t. What is important is to ensure that we don’t continue or repeat mistakes from the past. “Lest we forget.”

Asking around, I found out that nobody knows which documents are requested from the church. Anything that we know of has been released. The religious orders have paid and apologized. All I do know is that the government Indian Boarding Schools were significantly under-funded as First Nation’s schools are today. Over the hundred years, we had Spanish Flu, diphtheria, smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, polio before vaccines, and much more.

 The RCMP and other agents were sent to take kids away from parents, but who was in charge of keeping communications between children and their families is not clear.

I am also aware of graves all over the place that were marked with wooden crosses that disappeared over time. The government didn’t pay for funerals. I don’t suggest that the churches were innocent or that we as a society hadn’t done wrong. My heart is bleeding for the victims and their families. I wish I could cry with the families who lost kids. My soul is shouting with unbearable pain.

However, when I hear the Prime Minister demanding the Pope apologize for what governments here caused, I become upset. We should apologize but it was politicians who possibly were not aware of what they should have been, that caused a huge painful problem. I call upon politicians today to do better and not play politics with people’s most painful memories. Sir, the Catholic Church is not the WE organization, and the Pope is not the owner of the corporation. Do your homework before making statements. Politicians hired churches to “take the Indian out of the child.”

The universal church was hardly aware of local schools situations but the Government was in charge. Then as now, politicians choose not to invest money in powerless people who couldn’t influence elections. First nations got the right to vote in 1967 and didn’t know how to vote strategically until many more became educated above what was thought in the Boarding Schools. Don’t blame, fix what is broken.

 Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

 

Body or soul?

 

Body or soul?

In a galaxy called The Milky Way, there is a bluish planet that the inhabitants call Earth in one of their languages. It is a water world populated by water and carbon creatures. The dominant species are Humans who falsely believe that they rule the world. They sort of do, to some degree. The truth is, they are able to destroy themselves, but not much else.

Humans are truly marvellous creations if they could act together and use the gifts instilled in them in creation, but we have one great enemy preventing us. It is ourselves. We realized our potential at the beginning of the agricultural revolution and were divided up to keep us in our place and not challenge God. We have been divided in many other ways since.

In Babylon, it was languages that blocked us from reaching God’s level and now it is politics, economic theories, and religions dividing us. The latest is beliefs in God versus believing that there is no God or supreme being. The biggest division amongst us is between humans who believe that we are physical beings and those who maintain that we are spiritual.

Now there is an additional dimension entering the fray. Over the last fifty years or so, we built machines that can rival our intellect. Artificial intelligence can physically mimic a human and do what we do with no understanding of the spiritual aspect. Machines are unable to believe, only to follow programming. Used as a tool they are incredibly efficient but they lack our greatest potential. Yet, there are already machines that can kill us without direct human instructions.

God as we know Him is a soul or a spirit who created us in His image. He didn’t make us only a spirit, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and other gobbledygook; nor a physical, limited being like the machines. We are both at the same time and space. The material part, the body, exists by using physical sensors that are not capable of sensing the soul.

Researchers embedded in a primitive tribe were amazed to see a young girl spending most of her time with an ancient grandmother and asked a wise elder why. The elder explained that the young child, just came from the spirit world so she felt a closeness to the old woman who is ready to go back to the spirit world. The belief in the existence of a soul is strong in humans and goes back thousands of years.

We will never know when it began, but all human groups have a belief in the existence of souls. It is not a wish to live forever, not believing in an imaginary Sky God, it is recognizing that something is there. It is not visible to any physical sense, but a soul can think and act, perhaps more powerfully than anything physical.

Many studies prove that all of our senses are regularly fooled. Ask any magician about it. Open a psychology textbook and view proof of how the eyes chose what to see or not. Our sense of time and speed is also all wrong. To be honest, we have a lot of evidence that what we call “the world” is not what we think it is. Old people told us over many generations that when we get old, we learn how much we don’t know. It’s true.

Opposing forces formed all of creation. You can’t paint light without black, there is no heat without cold, no life without death. The value of all that we desire is dictated by its scarcity. We derive pleasure from what is denied to others. A human always strives to tell others what to do and not allow others to tell us what to do. We often risk our lives for the “freedom” to do what we ourselves determined to be harmful to us. The police make a steady income by catching drivers acting dangerously.

Our opinions of what is dangerous change regularly. My mother, and all other mothers at the time, smoked during pregnancy and later while breastfeeding me. Now someone would call the police if a mother smoke with kids in the vehicle with all windows open. In France, smoking isn’t considered dangerous. We thrive on conflicts and preach peace.

The whole controversy about the existence of spirits or even the reality of material things could be only a question of human beliefs. Our latest research in quantum physics leaves the door open to human interpretation. Are we a physical form? Spiritual? Or none of the above. Were we just influenced by Christ telling us that material things are not valuable?

You must remember the parable about the guy who found a great pearl and sold all else to get it. That pearl was the discovery of the immaterial soul.

There is substantial power in being only a spirit like God himself, yet He created us a body and soul. Do we just go back to being a soul when the body dies? The all-knowing God must have had a reason to do what He did, and we are not even approaching his level of knowledge. Try to create a human or even a mouse and you will find out. He built a universe in which all things exist in balance with each other.

The first commandment is to love God with all your heart. In English, there is only one kind of love but there are many. The second is to never attempt to visualize the spirit we worship as God. I wonder why. Is it so we will know that a spirit is completely not material? Why is that important?

The knowledge creates the needed balance. God gave us that which he denied himself. The gift of being a soul with a physical, limited body. He did it because he loves us more than himself. He demands that we will love each other as he loves us for our benefit.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Hugging Grandma.

 

Hugging Grandma.

So many people now lament that they can’t hug their grandparents. Stories surface about old folks dying alone and care workers stretched to the limits unable to take care of them or even hold their hand while they die.  

I have a few older friends who need regular medical help to stay alive. They have done their share of work and were looking forward to the “golden years” when they would use their lifelong savings and enjoy life without a need to work. What they saved for is not what they have. A group of political “representatives” who use them for their advantage governs the worker’s savings and investments.

Most of my life I worked, studied and volunteered on top of it. My understanding was that we had a social contract. Wake up in the morning, make yourself useful, and look for ways to make yourself even more useful. People were ashamed if someone discovered that they were not contributing their share to the best of their ability. Work was honoured and laziness abhorred.

The problem we all faced was that most of us ended up doing things we didn’t feel very fulfilling. Our work was contributing to someone else’s wealth and doing more didn’t advance our personal well-being. A few did, but most didn’t. People became clock watchers and most looked forward to the weekend or the next holiday. Why are so many of us doing what we don’t like?

My group, which we can name the middle class, lived by a simple rule. You survive, save for retirement, build a good health care system, and provide education and work for those that will come after you. Our loyalty was to family, community, and country. The rest of the world only mattered as competition.

We are born helpless and start growing, learning about life by playing. School is considered “education” and after school comes “working.” We call God “father” indicating that we are children. Let’s assume that we are children and this whole life we are playing. The world is enormous and provides us with all that we need. The only way for some to not have enough is if others take more than their share.

Humans are social beings and soon after birth indoctrination to groups begins. Catholics baptize, Jews circumcise, and the child is initiated before it knows it. You learn your religious beliefs, your language that sets you in a nationality, your gender practices, and prejudices, and so on. Later you will join the class you belong to, intellectual, noble, or peasant as well as your race. The child learns to distinguish physical characteristics that set it apart from others. These are all learned behaviours.

When children are educated about their assigned groupings, they learn about traditions and other cultural aspects that set them apart from others. We all do this without ever realizing what we do. Soon we are willing to fight others and dominate them, viewing it as winning the competition.

The choice that we make is which game we are spending life playing, and is one game better than another. We all know what would happen if we left a group of pre-schoolers unsupervised in a nice new show home and came back in an hour. Play is great but must be regulated and safe. We supervise kids but neglect adults who are just larger kids.

We all know the feeling of joy that comes from winning. Here in Canada, most people have their favourite hockey team. People spend many hours of their lives being emotional about “their team.” The team has nothing to do with them aside from residing in their city. Most players are not local, the owners and shareholders could be from anywhere and wins or losses are mostly related to the amount of money spent on buying contracts of the best players of the time.

Loyalty to a group or a team is admired, and people see nothing wrong with competition. After all, competition is a driving force that advances humanity in all directions. We made some of the best discoveries during hard times like wars or lately even pandemics. However, it always leads us to rejoice at someone else’s loss and even deprive them of life’s necessities without feeling shame or remorse.

Since we are material beings, we must have some land from which we draw the resources needed for life directly or indirectly. As we go, we learn how to sustain more of us on less land, but competition leaves many without the necessary minimum. Even knowledge is rationed, hoping the less fortunate groups will contribute more to the leading few. This will lead us to disaster.

In my lifetime, I observed wars and analyzed the results. Mighty armies and powerful nations can destroy countries, cities, and infrastructure but not the human spirit. People will find ways to get other people back.

This leaves us with two options. Destroy the enemy and ourselves or abandon teams and other groups and figure out how to hug grandma and all humans. It is not hard.

There is enough “stuff” in the world to sustain all of us. In short, learn what the Daycare teacher told us when we were small. Play all the games but take turns and share. Remember that we are just big kids playing a game called life. We can easily make it a great game. Instead of a teacher, we can set ourselves a list of rules and follow them, adjusting when needed. The rest God, or whatever you call him, takes care of.

Just as we have laws setting the top speed limit, we can regulate how much each individual or group can hoard and share the rest. We can ensure that all people have what they need and let the top performers compete for what they want without keeping life’s necessities out of reach for the needy, and they will not need to fight.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment

Let’s make a bet.

 

Let’s make a bet.

I bet that in ten years this world will hardly be recognizable. If I would have slept since 1950 and woke up today, I wouldn’t know that it is the same world. Now things change a lot faster. All things have changed, but a bigger change is coming. Technology will grow by leaps and bounds and science will not be what it is. The tools that we use will allow us to have what a short time ago was considered a miracle. However, the real change will be humans themselves. We will either change into corpses or into a society involved in constructing its future. We worked ourselves into a corner and there is no way to go on without changing.

The world is getting smaller as the internet gets bigger. There are attempts to control the information flow, but they fail rapidly. No longer can only one group of people keep information locked up. Every person can obtain the knowledge of their choice and every person must make up their own mind.

Numerous groups are fighting to spread their messages and all claim that truth is on their side. Often people choose sides by supporting what will give them a material advantage but there is a new kind of people entering the fray. I see it clearly by just watching the news from around the world. In the age when religious affiliations are on a decline, young people are drawn towards universal morality that didn’t exist a short time ago. I see Black Lives Matter marches where white people are the majority, and campaigns against misuse of fossil energy dominated by western looking youths. Christian folks object to discrimination against Muslims. Young healthy folks are upset with the far-right forces panicking over their “right” to spread a pandemic that is destroying people and the economy. People make their own choices even without leadership. I wonder why.

We conducted a social experiment upon ourselves in the last quarter of the century and now the results are in.

After the second world war, people came back, and countries like ours absorbed them. In Canada, we even took in many people from other nationalities, some of who fought against us like Germans, Italians, Japanese, and many more. The country just finished a war and was deep in debt, but we prevailed. From 1945 to the early seventies, we had the best period in memory. All that count was growing. Better health care, education, unionized jobs, and productivity was rising while being tied into wages.

Around 1980 things changed, and it wasn’t because of immigration. People developed a new belief that some folks who do well should do even better and will share the results with the rest. Trickle-down economics. The belief translated into a major change in taxation, trade deals and contracts. Myriads of young folks tried to get ahead by working harder, getting educated, taking unreasonable risks and failed. Success was mostly not tied to personal merit but simply to the luck of the draw. It’s not what you know, but who you know.

In 2020 the world advanced, productivity improved, but most regular working people found themselves worst off than we were in the 1960s. Older folks like me can see that the earth itself is in danger, our kids can’t expect the social mobility that we had, and everyone is in debt. Poor folks both at home and abroad are merely trying to stay alive. It is at a critical level creating a dangerous situation. I feel that we have taken a wrong turn.

The memory of Peter Lougheed campaigning and winning our confidence is fresh in my mind. To be fiscally Conservative meant to use money responsibly and do as much as possible for the province with it.

Now I see politicians making impossible promises and lying under the same party name. The provincial tax didn’t go up but local taxes do. Why? Since the province cut most grants.

The few who prospered are trying hard to retain their entitlement and using shady methods to gain public support. There was the drive to blame Canadians of minority groups for our problems and lately a new campaign. This time it is seeding fears that our freedoms are threatened by attempts to save people from viral infection.

In 1940 London England came under heavy bombardments. Some wanted to capitulate as France did. One bomb fell on Buckingham Palace and the Brits changed on mass. Canadians, Australians, and Indians in turbans came to help and after great suffering that touched everyone, Great Britain won. This was no longer a good time to speak about surrendering.

As we see maps of Canada where it seems that Conservative provinces are leading in infection rates, people are waking up ready to fight and win the war against the virus. I keep a close eye on world news and read comments on the net. While some folks wish to give in, protect imaginary freedoms, and let the Coronavirus do what it will, others are resolved to fight and win.

In Toronto, the police had to protect the anti-maskers from enraged citizens. In the Western provinces, people are reporting businesses that don’t follow safety measures and BC set up roadblocks at the Alberta border. Canadians, like the Londoners eighty years ago, are fighting back and everyone can see who is winning. Those who lost confidence seeing their leaders vacationing abroad during shutdowns, now cheer when those who spread the disease are being fined and arrested. Even the excuse that Christ told them to disobey health regulations no longer works. He didn’t tell the same to other denominations.

Presently the majority is learning that no one is entitled to take advantage of them, use them and risk their lives. It’s happening on a small scale at home and internationally with entire countries. The internet information lines are humming. In ten years, we will see a world of awakened people who know how to secure their share of everything.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Freedom of speech test.

 

Freedom of speech test.

One thing I can say about myself with little doubt. I speak my mind openly. In Israel most people do and in Canada, there is more British influence. Perhaps we can summarize by saying people expect more diplomacy. The culture is more refined.

The cultural rules that guide communication should not be designed to make opinions vague, but perhaps soften the blow. Truth should be true, and the rest is a method of delivery. We don’t say to a person; you are a liar; we say what you told me is a bit disingenuous. However, all of us seem to be confused about freedom of speech and Human Rights.

At university, one professor used to tell a story. Apparently, a guest speaker that people didn’t like came to give a talk. Students locked up the exit doors where he was speaking and pulled the fire alarm. The prank ended up with ambulances delivering the injured and the police arresting the pranksters. The story was meant to teach us that there are limits to freedom of speech.

I have been getting messages from acquaintances for about a year now, trying to convince me that there is no threat from the COVID pandemic. Some even have a video with a fake archbishop and others show teams of white-gowned “doctors” awkwardly using medical terms saying that we are being fooled by a conspiracy theory about a virus. One person mixed up old statistics claiming that all the deaths in America are now being portrayed as COVID-related.

In the last couple of weeks, the campaign intensified. I am receiving a barrage of “evidence” from an old friend. A big factor in those is the hoax that they make the vaccines from aborted babies. I researched and followed up on some sources. Needless to say, it comes from old and proven Far Right organizations. The Americans have a few Far-Right outlets and we have our own far-right News that even the Tories don’t use. They are all complaining that their freedom of speech is being censored by Internet organizations. I am surprised that no one is suing them for the deaths resulting from their activity.

Why are the Far-Right or Alt-Right organizations making an effort and spending a lot of money to lead people to act dangerously? It’s easy to understand. The people who are now on top of the world are scared of the virus. Not because it kills, they got their shots, but because it is threatening their domination over other people.

COVID revealed to people that our economy could function differently than the way it does. Mainly it shows that our countries can survive without everyone working all of their free time or being constantly terrified of not having a job. The “bug” revealed that people will tell you to believe their stories instead of fighting for your life. Now we know that the economy can go on with a lot less make busy work. Mostly we need the essential workers. We can borrow money from our bank and payback with our work as long as nobody skims the profits. We can supply all that we need with a little trading on the side. The world would be better off. In the seventies, we planned to do it, but greed got in the way.

A year ago there was no vaccine and predictions floated that it will take 5 years to get one. The only defence was social isolation or we would end up like India is now. The President was telling people not to worry, and the USA topped the world in COVID deaths. Now we have vaccines and the people are being influenced not to use them. Noone is considering who and why is advocating the voluntary destruction of our society.

I don’t consider it Free Speech or a human rights issue. I have a copy of the Bill of Rights on my wall. It is all about improving our lives and protecting us. Nothing about disobeying the government’s health rules and risking lives.

I find it difficult to listen politely to my “friends” who in this case are trying to risk my life by telling me to listen to them instead of to my doctor. Will they pay for my funeral? We have a lot of funerals. Did they buy shares in the funeral industry?

All humans know that life as we know it ends with death. We try to stay alive as long as life is pleasant. Should I take the word of a “friend” and die or the other way. Should I be careful, use a vaccine and let nature or God deal with the virus as it always does.

My guess is, do what I can, trust our best minds, follow our government’s skimpy advice, and remain alive. I don’t need to sacrifice my life to keep the existing social order intact.

Consider the other option. If the pandemic is left unchecked, the hospitals will overflow with COVID cases. Our Canadian doctors will have to decide like the “selection” doctors did in the German concentration camps and treat only those who have the best chance to live for a year. People like me will not pass the test, and my doctor may have to let me go for lack of ICU beds. It may happen very soon. We have executed all the “selection” doctors after the war in 1945. Do we want to honour the wishes of the “freedom” fighters and not follow government directions for public safety?

I respect my friends, who circulate propaganda against what all the governments say is a serious threat. I don’t want to remove their RIGHT for free speech or their “RIGHT” not to wear a mask away. Yet, my right to live will be denied if their assumed constitutional freedom is allowed to win. If we end up like India, they and all those who support them will be responsible.

Remember. The numbers you see on your devices' screens and in News Papers are real people.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.