Disney Princesses Not Inclusive: Jolie

Angelina Jolie is ticked off because Disney doesn’t have a black princess.

Busy creating a wonderful international family with children in every shade imaginable (an admirable task), I guess she has turned her concern with how to mould her children to looking blindly at the physical signs of genetic variation found in people from different areas of the world.

What - Princess Jasmine not black enough for you?

Believe it or not, it is possible to do this without having Walt Disney’s marketing department involved, Angelina!

I don’t pretend to be perfect as a parent, but I know one thing is for sure - your kids will be as racist as you are, or less. We know black people, Filipino people, Chinese people, Indo-Canadians, etc. When we meet them, we treat them like anyone else. My kids never see us act differently, so they don’t either. I recall just last week, a lady and her two sons came to our church for the first time. They were Indo-Canadians. I wanted to make sure her kids were having a good time, so afterwards I quizzed my 7 year old about the new kid. My son is almost as bad with names as I am so I asked him if he noticed a new boy in his class. I asked him to describe the boy. He told me everything about the boy but no matter what I did I couldn’t get him to volunteer the skin colour even though it was the most obvious difference between himself and the boy. I didn’t teach him that - it just doesn’t register when you have been raised without being told that people are different.

It doesn’t matter if Disney has made a movie about their culture or not. In fact, it is insulting to think that you can’t teach inclusivity without inculcating it into every single media your children interact with.

Cyclone Nargis continues genocide in Burma

I am accusing the Burmese junta of ongoing genocide in the wake of cyclone Nargis. First, they deny immediate international aid which arrived at their doorstep, then they refuse to distribute the aid saying the local population does not need it. Now, they force survivors to go back to the ravaged region.

Burma is a heterogeneous population. The vast majority of the Burmese population is ethnically Burmese but about a quarter of the population is ethnic minorities — some of which have fought for autonomy. The cyclone hit the region of an ethnic minority that was previously targeted by the Burmese military. A little more political history of the Karen region tells me that these poor people are hopelessly doomed.

When Rights Aren’t Rights Anymore…

On the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean this past week the world was introduced to two different debates over the role that human rights play in our society. Over in Europe, the European Court of Human Rights has agreed to hear the case of a British woman who wants to adopt a 26-year old chimp and would require the homonid to legally be declared a human being in order to do so. In essence, this is the latest volley fired off in Europe by a movement that wants to extend human rights to other species. More locally, the York University Federation of Students (YFS) passed a motion that would ban all non-religious clubs from holding pro-life views on campus. When asked to justify her decision, motion sponsor Gilary Massa responded by saying that every group against abortion was “sexist” and should be suppressed for going against our long-held norm (leave it to a 20-year old to think that a decision made in 1988 is long held…). The two might not seem very related, but they are, and are in fact the latest example of how the secularist, anti-family agenda that Western nations have been engaging in over the past 50 years is starting to chew itself up.

First, to understand the blatant hypocrasy and moral inconsistency (or “intellectual dishonesty”, as our seculatarian friends like to say) of the YFS, you need not read the pages of the National Post, Michael Coren’s column, or the Blogging Tories; just head on over to the Federation’s website, where a big red button titled “Denial of Free Speech at McMaster” which links to this — a letter attacking McMaster for banning “Israel Apartheid Week”. That’s right, the YFS which is making national headlines this month for trying to oppress diverse views on its campus, was the same group that was also making headlines back in March for vigorously defending a campaign that wasn’t just about free speech but was also known for a history of violence and harassment of an prominent ethnic group on campus.

This inconsistency might go a long way to explain why, in the months and years ahead, when Canada starts to examine whether a primitive primate can “argue” for human rights, the YFS will probably be there, strongly backing the cause and at the same time oppressing groups which speak out for unborn humans which can also not speak in a court of law but can, unlike chimps, meet the biological argument for species validation in that all non-genetically defective fetuses have the capability of breeding with humans and producing sustainable, fruitful offspring. Save the primates, scourge the people, as it were. Don’t expect facts to get in the way of York’s student leaders or their cheerleaders on The Left as the entire abortion argument for them has long been one about passion and emotion, but not much beyond the principle that guilt-free sexual incidents should be an absolute right that trumps all others.

Their argument, founded around the reality that men can walk away from affairs without the risk of pregnancy while women cannot, betrays this in that their natural conclusion is that women should have the freedoms that men do in this regard, instead of examining whether men should have the responsibilities that women do for a pregnancy instead. Nor does the rights and realities of the growing child become a discussion point during this whole debate either. Wouldn’t you expect more from scholars, charged with examining all aspects of the issue at hand?

Update:Steyn’s insight into the future of abortion, and a small tip ‘o’ hat to the York affair…

Elvis to Olympians: Take a stand

Sure, Elvis Stojko may seem to be telling the young ones to forego benefits that he enjoyed in the past but his opinion is still valid. He is not telling them to boycott but rather to take a stand. He wants them to be a little more aware of the context in which they are competing.

I say tough luck for the current athletes if they get offended. They may want to think they are separated from the politics — fine — the athletes benefit from state privilege and my taxes go to fund their activities without my choice, mind you. Therefore, their connection to politics is fair game. Without political power, they would not be there and the Olympics may not even exist. If every single Canadian voted to abstain from participating in the Olympics or to even fund the sports, well, sorry! they are out of luck. What the state giveth, the state can taketh away. They should be grateful that they are not competing 25 years ago.

If athletes compete in China, any of them who step on the podium should have the courage to make a real difference like these guys did. Maybe they could just stick their tongues out and take a bow:

TIBETAN SALUTE
In Tibet when one man greets another it goes beyond the mere shaking of hands. A Tibetan bows, extends both hands palms open and sticks out his tongue!

By the way, Matthew was right first.

Polygamy Amongst Ontario Muslims

You know what would straighten out these guys who insist on flouting Canadian law?

A few child support orders, all from different ex-wives, enforced by the garnishing of wages.

When you have 4 exes with kids and they all come asking for $1000 a month in child support, you will be destitute.

And it will serve you right for entering into such stupidity.

No, You Don’t Give Poor Fat People More Money for Food.

Ok, hold on a minute.

Ontario already has a program by which people who are on welfare, who are overweight, are given more money for food to support their obesity?

And now they want to give them even more money because and extra $20 isn’t enough?

1.  The treatment fat people need to deal with their fatness because obesity is a health problem, is less food!

2.  Therefore giving them more money to spend on food is like buying heroin for addicts giving a stipend to welfare smokers to support their habit.

3.  If they need more money for food they can work for it.  There are thousands of jobs that people can do that require minimal training and minimal physical activity (thought if they are obese they could probably do with more physical activity, but I am willing to grant that some obese welfare recipients may be obese because of physical problems that inhibit them getting proper exercise).

4.  If someone can’t work and the government is supporting them, then they have agreed to accept that the government will act as their caregiver and steward.  As such, this means that Welfare will act in the interests of the person’s welfare.  Which means they will take such steps as to maintain the person’s optimal health given their situation.  Which means we should not be giving them more money for food when they are already fat!

5.  If a person doesn’t want the government telling them how to eat, then they should quit accepting the government’s money for food and make their own choices about what to, or not to eat!

End rant.  Hat tip to FFoF and Halls of Macadamia.

When the Grade “F” No Longer Means You Fail

Apparently some schools in the United States are going through a policy change that would give minimum scores of 50% to students who fail:

Their argument: Other letter grades — A, B, C and D — are broken down in increments of 10 from 60 to 100, but there is a 59-point spread between D and F, a gap that can often make it mathematically impossible for some failing students to ever catch up.

“It’s a classic mathematical dilemma: that the students have a six times greater chance of getting an F,” says Douglas Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center, a Colorado-based educational think tank who has written on the topic. “The statistical tweak of saying the F is now 50 instead of zero is a tiny part of how we can have better grading practices to encourage student performance.”

John Gruber, from Daring Fireball, pretty much sums up my feelings on this topic:

This is so profoundly stupid it’s hard to believe it isn’t from The Onion. That F covers 0-59 doesn’t make it six times more likely that a student will get an F than any other grade, unless test scores are based on random numbers rather than actual performance.

GTA IV, Morality Tale?

Once and a while, the mainstream media picks up and follows the release of a particular video game because of its impact on society. Such is the case with any entry of the Grand Theft Auto series. IV, which is actually the eighth title of the popular anti-hero series, was released at the end of April and went on to break all the records the previously existed for first week sales. Listening into Z103 on the way to work on launch day, the morning crew found some bright light who camped out all night and, when interviewed, said he didn’t care too much for many of the new features that the game introduces, “I just want to shot people!” And so begins the controversy again where the game will be blamed for every homiside, shooting and violent crime on this side of November while the supporters of the series will do themselves no favours like the young man Z103 talked to just by acting like the thugs that the game portrays.

As a Christian, I won’t ever own the game and highly doubt whether I’ll ever play a friend’s copy, although GTA IV did strike up some curiosity last week when speaking to one of my gaming friends who holds no allegiances to God but is pretty observant. He mentioned that the game, with fancy next-gen graphics and a deeper, longer story was different than its predecessors since, in this new, more detailed version, the wounds you inflicted were actually graphic and not fuzzy, pixilated renditions; the game code was more realistic so that people didn’t just keel over and die but actually begged for their lives, cried out in agony and added a sense of victimhood that never existed before; and the game was more open-box (a challenge given the freedom this game gave you before) where as the anti-hero, you are now charged with making moral decisions as you go about your life of crime and immorality.

Yesterday, while visiting another friend, I got a chance to see the game in action by watching a mission through which the hero, Neco, was sent to kill the biker-boyfriend of the mob boss’s daughter. The mob boss, my other friend observed while we were chatting, was messed up — there was a strong correlation between his drug habits and the deteriorating relationships he had with friends, family and *business colleagues*. Later on, during online mode, the game spit out “player 1 2nd amendmented player 2″ after the former shot and killed the latter in an airport. It seemed to me like the rumours of hidden messages in this game were true, even to the point where I now wouldn’t be surprised if I was told that Nico could get STDs from some of his dating activities that take place in the game (and which caused the infamous “Hot Coffee” affair in the last GTA game). Could it be that publisher Rockstar games is actually trying to explain to young and impressionable gamers that bad choices in life have consequences?

While it’s still a little premature to say, it might also be suggested that just by striving to give gamers that more realistic experience — right down to going to a bar to play pool — Rockstar is inadvertently making its games so life-like that the ugly side of crime, promiscuity and general ungodliness are all seeping out of the woodwork. If it is this intense, the publisher of GTA IV might have also found a way to reach out to a demographic law enforcement, governments and churches have struggled decades to make contact with. Ironically, Rockstar’s realism might just have the unintended consequences of making the acronym GTA a cultural fossil, given enough upgrades to gaming hardware.

Starving Multitudes < Warming Planet

I thought this was clearly decided a few years ago.

Someone should tell those Asian bankers.

Nobody cares if people are starving as long as we can stave off ferns growing in the Arctic.

Because if the earth were to get warmer, dinosaurs might re-emerge to terrorize the planet, and then we all know what happens then: (besides hungry dinosaurs hunting the polar bear into oblivion faster than ice melt ever could)…

ASTEROIDS AND EXTINCTION!

Christian Horizons: Coren’s Thoughts

Michael Coren has a piece in the Saturday Sun today. He also touches upon the point that I made earlier this week, that state Atheism is going to beat the charity out of our society as long as the government attempts to squeeze every vestige of Christian presence and no other group in our new, fancy multicult society steps up to the plate to do the jobs that aren’t as profitable or glamorous. He even offers an example of what those who relied on Christian Horizon’s services can expect in the coming years:

In California the Salvation Army was forced to close down several inner city missions because officials refused to sign a document approving of homosexuality. The destitute suffered terribly as a consequence. In Britain the Roman Catholic church similarly was obliged to shut the doors of its adoption agency.

Aside from also speaking about our government-imposed unhealthy relationship between employees and employers, Coren got me thinking by phrasing the incident that sparked this whole thing in the way he did:

One employee announced to colleagues that she was a lesbian and began discussing her sexuality. Eventually she was let go. She complained to the Human Rights Commission, which fined Christian Horizons and demanded the change. Demanded, in fact, that they not be Christian.

I hadn’t considered it until reading Coren’s column, but what if we flipped this around and an employee started sharing their Christian faith with colleagues? I doubt it would end up before a HRC. And even if we buy into the secularist axiom that homosexuals are born wired to be homophilic (one that, like all such axioms on fetal tissue, the origins of life and the universe, and climate change conveniently lacks that indisputable proof that axioms usually come with), can the state successfully argue that a believing Christian isn’t just as equally inseparable from their faith and what it makes him or her? Think of the parallels: some people in churches leave to join other religions, and some homosexuals realize they just aren’t homosexuals any longer; both groups claim that their respective affiliations colour everything they do; and both groups have their affiliations protected under the current legal community’s consensus.

It’s an interesting situation: one where a group tasked with going out into all the world to spread their Good News has their constitutionally recognized right to do so repressed, while another had beneficial rights literally penciled into the highest document of the land is allowed to ignore the acronym every employee should know: NSFW (Not Safe For Work). It wasn’t the lesbian woman’s decision to become a lesbian that got her fired, it was her insistence on preaching the news to the rest of her co-workers that did. Curious that, when any Christian who pulled a similar stunt would be out by 3pm, box of belongings in hand. To use Coren’s wording, a sane nation would actually follow it’s own laws and both groups would be able to share away but that would also presume that groups like HRCs would be under the law too, now wouldn’t it?

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