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Human avarice is once again put on display. The victims ultimate are us as we continue to destroy the environment we live in. When will the balance shift when we can actually honestly answer that he environment is more important that the jobs created by eroding said environment. It is not happening yet, and certainly not in Hungary where they are erecting a sludge dam to keep more the toxic outflow away from people.
“Hungarian workers are building a dam 620 metres long and up to five metres high to contain the toxic red sludge that flooded out of a breach in the wall of an industrial waste pond last week, killing at least seven people.
The dam is intended to hold back any subsequent spill that might flood the town of Kolontar, the hardest-hit area in last Monday’s spill, and nearby communities.”
Notice that the media, even CBC, is going great lengths not to call the containment area a “tailings pond” which of course is precisely what it is. Is it a coincidence that because we have a couple of hundred of these ponds up in northern Alberta we do not want to link the two ideas together in the public’s mind?
“If a wall fails, a new wave of red mud could ooze north. The mud is the toxic byproduct of the industrial process that refines raw aluminum ore (bauxite) into alumina (aluminum oxide), which is then made into aluminum.
But if that happens, officials believe they will have enough time to evacuate Devecser, about four kilometres north of the pond. Devecser residents were told Saturday to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
“This hasn’t changed,” Dobson said. “We are still on guard in case of any more spills.”
“Officials believe…” How nice. We should be able to get you out of harms way before you and your family are submerged in caustic red doom sludge. Peachy! But wait, company officials are sorry.
“MAL Rt., which owns the alumina plant, expressed their condolences Sunday to the families of the people killed and hurt. At least 120 people were injured, several seriously.
Hungarian investigators are trying to determine whether carelessness was a factor in the spill.”
Somehow I do not think that MAL Rt. is particularly sorry. I mean I bet they are sorry that their stock and profits are going to take a hit, but as to being genuinely sorry for the loss of human life because of their malfeasance? Highly unlikely.
Care to argue against tougher environmental regulations?
Start with the jobs angle and the economy…
Wow, if you ever need to get your blood pressure up just look up the abortion tag in wordpress. The amount of anti-woman propaganda that is out there is deeply depressing. Thankfully the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has a nice mission statement summarizing why abortion is necessary:
Our Mission
Our Mission: To ensure women’s reproductive freedom by protecting and advancing access to abortion and quality reproductive health care.
Our Vision
The ARCC is “pro-choice” and affirms the following:
* To achieve equality, all women must have the right to decide for themselves whether and when they will bear children, and how many. Without control of their fertility, women cannot have autonomy over their lives and cannot play a full and equal role in society.
* Women have a constitutionally-based right to unrestricted, fully-funded abortion, without legal or other barriers or discrimination due to gender, class, ethnicity, race, age, location/region (or area of residence), or any other characteristic, including reasons for choosing an abortion. The rights of pregnant women must not be abridged—a pregnant woman is “one person” under the constitution.
* Women have the right to receive a full range of reproductive healthcare options, services, and information, including (but not limited to) medical and surgical abortion, contraception, family planning services, and comprehensive sexual health education.
* Women have the right to access reproductive healthcare services safely and in a timely manner, in an atmosphere of dignity, privacy, respect, trust, and compassion.
* All abortions are medically required—not “elective”—and fall under the protection of the Canada Health Act (just like all childbirths). The delivery and funding of abortion and other medically required reproductive healthcare services must meet the Act’s five principles.
* Providers of reproductive health care services have the right to deliver such services free of discrimination, harassment, and violence.
Doctor Myers is one of the great atheist luminaries of recent times. I pilfered his speech from his blog Pharyngula because the speech describes much of what rational secular people are up against in our societies today and the battles that have been fought and are being fought today. I also believe it is a heartening speech that demarcates what has been done and still what needs to be done with no reservations and no regrets for rocking the boat as far as offending religious “sensibilities” are concerned. It may look TL:DR, but it is worth your time to peruse all of what PZ has to say, you’ll just have to trust me on this one. :)
I’m going to begin with where I entered this conflict — and make no mistake, it’s a real battle — with my experience in science education, and specifically with the teaching of evolution. Biology has been a lifelong passion for me, and when I first began teaching way back in the 1980s, it was a shock to discover students who had nothing but contempt for the great unifying principle of my discipline, who were happily wallowing in self-inflicted ignorance and who outright denied plain and simple facts about science. And when I discovered that there were ministers who came onto our campus and lied to our students, presented half-truths and weird fantasies to substitute for evidence, i was outraged. We Gnu Atheists have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake: we didn’t start this war. If you want to place blame, put it on the backs of religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the young for a long, long time.
This is another theme in this conflict: Gnu Atheists are so dang angry. Damned right we are. The real question is why everyone else isn’t. If you aren’t angry about what’s being done to undermine education in this country, you haven’t been following along.
But we also respond rationally. My early incredulity about the nonsense being promoted by creationists was followed by a lot of fact-finding. You can do it too — look up the history of creationism, and you find that we’ve been fighting this same battle for at least half a century, and dealing with the same inane arguments over and over again. Where once Duane Gish was the creationist dinosaur roaming the earth, he was replaced by Kent Hovind, and he is now superseded by Ken Ham and Ray Comfort and Eric Hovind. Nothing has changed but the names. We have had a succession of court cases: Epperson v Arkansas in 68, McLean v Arkansas in 82, Edwards v. Aguillard in 87, Kitzmiller v Dover in 2005 — are they coming to an end? Did any of these trials diminish the influence of creationists? One flareup will be squelched, and next year there will be another. Similarly, we see a succession of politicians come and go, and nothing changes. Ronald Reagan becomes Santorum becomes Bush becomes another dreary chain of Republican know-nothings at every election cycle. It’s 2010, and guess what: Christine O’Donnell is running for the senate, and I’ve still got a local fundamentalist pastor coming on to my campus every week to instruct my students in the video fables of Brother Kent Hovind.
We have been treading water for 50 years. In one sense, that’s a very good thing: better to stay afloat in one place than to sink, and I am deeply appreciative of organizations like the NCSE that have kept us bobbing at the surface all this time, and please don’t ever stop. But isn’t it also about time we learned a new stroke and actually made some progress towards the shore? Shouldn’t we move beyond just reacting to every assault by Idiot America on science education, and honestly look at the root causes of this chronic malignancy and do something about it?
The sea our country is drowning in is a raging religiosity, wave after wave of ignorant arguments and ideological absurdities pushed by tired dogma and fervent and frustrated fanatics. We keep hearing that the answer is to find the still waters of a more moderate faith, but I’m sorry, I don’t feel like drowning there either.
There is an answer, and it’s on display right here in this room. The solution, the only longterm solution, is the sanity of secularism. The lesser struggles to keep silly stickers off our textbooks or to keep pseudoscientific BS like intelligent design out of our classrooms are important, but they are endless chores — at some point we just have to stop pandering to the ideological noise that spawns these unending tasks and cut right to the source: religion.
That’s where the Gnu Atheists get their confrontational reputation. We’re fed up with fighting off the symptoms. We need to address the disease. And if you’re one of those people trying to defend superstition and quivering in fear at the idea of taking on a majority that believes in foolishness, urging us to continue slapping bandages on the blight of faith, well then, you’re part of the problem and we’ll probably do something utterly dreadful, like be rude to you or write some cutting sarcastic essay to mock your position. That is our métier, after all.
Some of the prostitution laws of Canada have been successfully challenged in Ontario.
“An Ontario court has thrown out key provisions of Canada’s anti-prostitution laws in response to a constitutional challenge by a Toronto dominatrix and two prostitutes in 2009.
Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice ruled Tuesday the Criminal Code provisions relating to prostitution contribute to the danger faced by sex-trade workers.”
Specifically: prohibitions on keeping a common bawdy house, communicating for the purposes of prostitution and living on the avails of the trade have all been deemed unconstitutional and need to be replaced or revised by parliament.
“The women and their lawyer, Alan Young, held a news conference Tuesday afternoon and expressed elation. “It’s like emancipation day for sex-trade workers,” said Bedford, adding the ball is now in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s court. “The federal government must now take a stand and clarify what is legal and not legal between consenting adults in private.”
Ah yes, the clear letter of the law scrubbed clean of any of the realities of the world of the sex trade and human trafficking. Statements like the above seem handcrafted out the dreams of Utopian libertarians, how quickly the privileged point of view obscures the reality for many women for which the highly touted notion CONSENT has never existed. But, before more doom and gloom more pretty flowers!
“We don’t have to worry about being raped and robbed and murdered,” she said. “This decision means that sex workers can now pick up the phone, and call the police and report a bad client. This means that we no longer have to be afraid, that we can work with the appropriate authorities.” Moreover, sex workers can set up guilds and associations, health standards, workers’ compensation programs, as well as pay income tax. “We want to be good citizens and it’s time, now we finally can,” said Scott.”
Wow, it is like just totally amazing. Organize crime and others who exploit women will just disappear from the scene because now the dehumanized, marginalized women won’t have to worry about being raped, robbed and murdered. They can simply call the police. Holy Frak Batman, it is just like 911 suddenly became available to sex trade workers now! All the coercive pressure they experienced before must also magically disappear because wow, you gain power as you further legalize the commodification of your body. That must be how it works! Who knew?
Apparently Austrailia, the Netherlands and other jurisdictions that have legalized the sex trade it works a little too well, human trafficking has also increased in these areas. It is also a very Canadian problem. Letting the laws lapse will not help the causes of sex-trade workers or victims of human trafficking. We need to have laws against the purchase on any sex act and reverse the onus of responsibility when it comes to the legal sharp end of the stick. The Johns must be made fully responsible for their actions and we should spare no legal expense to go after those who exploit vulnerable women and children.
We in Canada should adopt the Swedish model of prostitution laws which makes the the act of procuring sex illegal, while maintain the act of selling sex to be legal. The people who work in sex trade are to be treated as victims of sexual exploitation and assault and provided with counselling, housing, and addiction programs to get them out of the egregious cycle of having to sell themselves to others.
What a crazy egalitarian notion this is? Treating all people as human beings instead of commodities? You have to hand it to the Swedes for leading the way in this area. We’re still talking about it here in Canada. At least the Conservatives get some things right this from the National Standing Committee on the Justice and Human Rights 2007:
“Prostitution as a Form of Violence, not Commerce
In contrast, like many witnesses who appeared before the Subcommittee, members from the Conservative Party see prostitution as a degrading and dehumanizing act, often committed and controlled by coercive or opportunistic individuals against victims who are frequently powerless to protect themselves from abuse and exploitation. They believe that the most realistic, compassionate and responsible approach to dealing with prostitution begins by viewing most prostitutes as victims.
Questioning Consent and Harmlessness
Unlike other parties, the Conservatives do not believe it is possible for the state to create isolated conditions in which the consensual provision of sex in exchange for money does not harm others. They believe that all prostitution has a social cost, and that any effort by the state to decriminalize prostitution would impoverish all Canadians — and Canadian women in particular — by signalling that the commodification and invasive exploitation of a woman’s body is acceptable. In their view, such a notion violates the dignity of women and undermines efforts to build a society in which all members are respected equally, regardless of gender. Furthermore, considering that gender-linked social and economic hardships are often what push women into prostitution in the first place, the Conservatives question how often “consent” is truly given out of choice, and not necessity.
These members also feel that because of the negative elements it attracts, prostitution is unacceptable in any location — commercial, industrial or residential, including massage parlours and private homes. They feel it would be unethical for a government to voluntarily degrade or endanger any community by permitting increased prostitute, john and pimp traffic, and subsequently exposing locals to elevated levels of harassment, luring and drug use.”
It is nice when the Conservatives actually get something right, for once.
I am going to use the discussion points found on RichardDawkins.net as the basis of this feature.
Calilasseia is the author of the post and deserves many rich accolades for assembling so much useful information in one spot. This constitutes an open thread of sorts, please leave your opinions and observations in the comment section.
Enjoy!
[21] “The universe is meaningless without my magic man”
To which the short answer is “so [frakking] what?”
Leaving aside for the moment the total failure of supernaturalists to support the assertion that their particular pet species of magic man actually exists, which also impinges upon [20] above, the idea that the universe needs this entity to impose meaning upon it is a piece of intellectual constipation that I, for one, find mind-numbingly boring, tedious and unimaginative. Douglas Adams said it best – “Isn’t it enough to realise that the garden is beautiful as it is, without having to imagine fairies at the bottom of it?”
Likewise, why should the universe be required to genuflect before supernaturalist anthropocentric conceit, and be required to be meaningful only because an invisible magic man that we have invented decrees thus?
We are beings that are capable of eliciting meaning for our own lives, and the world around us, without outside interference. Erecting an imaginary source of outside interference is nothing more than a gargantuan Little Orphan Annie complex, a wish to remain a child with a nice Daddy figure to run the world around us so that we don’t have to get off our arses and expend the effort. This is such an utterly lame stance to adopt. It’s indolent, naive, simplistic and dumb. Surely there is far more majesty in knowing that the universe, quixotic and capricious though it may seem to be at first sight, is comprehensible by diligent intellectual human effort, and that exercising that effort not only leads to a breathtaking vista of understanding that adds to the majesty, but gives us the power to work toward a better destiny for us all in a manner that produces real, substantive results? Once again, the evidence we have is that fabricated magic men are superfluous to requirements and irrelevant in this vein, and indeed, are increasingly a hindrance. “Magic man did it”, once again, is little more than a synonym for “don’t bother asking questions, don’t bother being curious, don’t bother trying to learn”. What gives meaning to the world around us is the effort we exert to understand the world and put that knowledge to constructive use.
Inchoherent Policy? Quick to the batshite cave! We got this.
Have you ever wondered when the Conservative Government would stop adhering to reality? One would think that they would not just come out and admit they base their policy squarely on the ideological ass-cake that oozes from Steven Harpers well fertilized mind. Cue Vic Toews, and enter the zany ‘tough on crime’ talk. The rate of criminality in Canada has been in an overall decline for at least a decade. What is the gilded Conservative Answer? Let’s build more prisons!
Intellectually speaking, it is the same as being hit in the face with a fresh wriggling bag of minnows after you order your morning coffee. It just does not make any frakking sense whatsoever. Observe what Mr.Toews announces and watch for errant sacks o’ minnows.
“Public Safety Minister Vic Toews announced Wednesday the Conservative government will spend more than $155 million to increase capacity at prisons in Ontario and Quebec, […]
“Our government is proud to be on the right side of this issue — the side of law-abiding citizens, the side of victims who want justice, and the side that understands the cost of a safe and secure society is an investment worth making,” Toews said in a statement.
Toews’s statement suggested that over the coming years, the Correctional Service of Canada will add more than 2,700 beds to men’s and women’s prisons across the country.
The Tories have pledged tougher sentences for violent crimes, which would keep inmates convicted of such offences in prison longer.
*Splat* Reap the slorpy minnowy whirlwind. Yes, my gentle fishily besotted readers, because of the declining crime rate is it not obvious we need more prisons. Let us check back in with reality just to reinforce the Conservative break with evidence based policy:
“In July, the statistical agency reported that “both the volume and severity of police-reported crime fell in 2009,” three per cent from 2008 and 17 per cent from 1999.”
Okay, good. Crime going down, therefore the answer is more prisons! Vic, bring the noise!
“The crime isn’t going down,” Toews insisted. “It is still unacceptably high. Canadians should not be subjected to that kind of crime rate.”
I think tricky Vic and Stockwell Day are starting to use the same brand of hallucinatory. (Not that Conservatives hate evidence based policy… much.) Objections?
“But critics quickly jumped on the announcement to expand the prisons, pointing to falling crime rates and charging that increasing prison space has proven to be ineffective at combating crime.
Liberal public safety critic Mark Holland accused the Tories of adopting a failed strategy in California, where tough anti-crime laws boosted the prison population but drove up recidivism rates to 70 per cent and nearly emptied state coffers.”
Bankrupting state coffers? Driving up recidivism rates? Sounds exactly like protecting Canadians to me!
“Justin Piche, a PhD candidate at Carleton University who studies federal prisons and government response to crime, said no academic evidence shows that increased reliance on incarceration enhances public safety.
Instead, she said the Correctional Service of Canada should increase the current 2 per cent of its budget it spends on programs that will allow prisoners to safely integrate into society.”
Come on Vic what do you have for us?
“Toews dismissed reports from Statistics Canada that the crime rate is falling“. – More cowbell minnows!
Don Davies, public safety critic for the NDP citing facts that, unlike current Conservative mythology, are based in reality said:
“And what this government has to do is start putting resources into programs that will help those offenders not re-offend. You can’t just lock them up for longer and harder, that won’t work. If you could punish your way to a safe society, the United States would be the safest place on Earth.”
Amazing what happens when you look to the real world as opposed to your own ideology to base policy on. Stay tuned for more fishy wriggling as our beloved Conservatives try to explain how the census will be better by having less people answer it.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…