Tony At 10: WHAT THE HELL? BLOG # 2169; FRI JAN 04, 2019

THE MESSAGE:

When is enough too much? Some speculation exists that Trudeau and the Liberals will be re-elected in the coming election. Our system is built on the idea that voters living in a specific area can choose the candidate that is to represent them. Now Trudeau has taken the step that will deprive us of that local connection. It is a fact that expats living in other countries will join jailbirds in casting ballots in Canada. One would suppose that this is part of Trudeau’s mantra that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, even the ones that chose to leave for good. Please people don’t let the man get elected again!

The impending danger is presented with much concern. The last Conservative majority government benefited from a surge by the NDP that stripped seats away from a weakened Liberal Party. Now, according to some preachers of doom, it would seem that the situation is reversed. Unlike the Liberals and Conservatives, Elizabeth May has provided a consistent position that man-made climate change is the most important issue facing voters in the Oct. 21 election as well as the most important issue facing humanity. Please people don’t allow this to happen!

Here is more trauma for Canada. Vancouver city officials considered joining a campaign demanding that oil companies pay for costs associated with climate change. The West Coast Environmental Law is recognized as being the trusted authority on environmental policy, legislation and regulation in British Columbia. It is an activist group, based in Vancouver, that began a recent campaign in which municipalities write letters to 20 of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, “demanding accountability” for their contribution to climate change.

THE BLURB:

ANTI SEMITISM

THIS IN THE USA

Dr. Lara Kollab’s prescription was hatred. This anti-Semitic doc has triggered a firestorm around the planet after a series of incendiary tweets became public months after her simmering hatred cost the 27-year-old her job at The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio where she worked from July 2018 until September.

Kollab has been posting anti-Semitic missives on social media for years, vowing to “purposely give all the Jews the wrong meds,” saying “Allah will kill the Jews” and calling Jewish people “dogs”. The Cleveland Clinic confirmed that Kollab's departure was related to her social media activity. It also emphasized that she was under constant supervision during her residency. This was an apparent response to her tweet about giving Jewish people incorrect medication.

THIS FROM LONDON

A study has found that the murder rate at the height of the Holocaust was almost three times higher than previously believed. It only declined once there was “no one left to kill,” . At the Nazi regime’s peak about 15,000 Jews were being murdered every day in the death camps of German-occupied Poland. Previous estimates suggested that 6,000 people were murdered daily at Auschwitz alone, but exact figures were difficult to verify because the deaths were covered up by the Nazis. The new estimates are based on work by Yitzhak Arad, an Israeli historian who compiled data on 480 train deportations from 393 Polish towns and ghettos during the German offensive.

FROM CANADA

An Ontario judge has acknowledged the “spiritual trauma” that can be done to observant Jewish people who unwittingly eat non-kosher food. The judge ordered a cake mix company to pay $25,000 to Canada’s largest kosher food certification agency, the Kashruth Council of Canada for misusing its logo.

“The kosher Jewish community takes their dietary habits extremely seriously, and thus have placed enormous trust on this Council to maintain high standards of control.

ANOTHER MATTER FOR CANADIANS

FREDERICTON Police are warning parents after four young New Brunswick children voluntarily shared nude images of themselves online. The RCMP say that children, between the ages of eight and 12, shared nude pictures or videos on unspecified free websites in recent months. The children were identified by the RCMP’s Internet Child Exploitation Unit, and all have been confirmed to be safe.

ANOTHER AMERICAN DILEMMA

It is disturbing that Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders and his chief lieutenants are offering contrition as some of his 2016 campaign staffers face allegations of sexual harassment that threaten to derail a second White House bid for Saunders before it begins. Please U.S. people not Hillary!

HOLY CRAP!

KURAVILANGAD,

India — The stories spill out in the sitting rooms of Catholic convents, in church meeting halls and over cups of cheap instant coffee in convent kitchens. Always, the stories come haltingly, quietly. Sometimes, the nuns speak at little more than a whisper.

Across India, nuns talk of priests who pushed into their bedrooms and of priests who pressured them to turn close friendships into sex. They talk about being groped and kissed, of hands pressed against them by men they were raised to believe were representatives of Jesus Christ. “He was drunk,” said one nun, beginning her story. “You don’t know how to say no,” said another.

At its most grim, the nuns speak of repeated rapes, and of a Catholic hierarchy that did little to protect them.

The Vatican has long been aware of nuns sexually abused by priests and bishops in Asia, Europe, South America and Africa, but it has done very little to stop it, The Associated Press reported last year.

CATHOLIC HISTORY

It is filled with women who became martyrs to their own purity: Saint Agatha had her breasts torn off for refusing to marry. Saint Lucy was burned alive and stabbed in the throat for defending her virginity;

Saint Maria Goretti was 11 years old when she was killed by a man who tried to rape her. Silence is the armour that sisters use to protect themselves and the lives they have created, even if it also means struggling with their memories, and protecting the men who abused them.

ONE CULPRIT

Over the past four months, Roman Catholic dioceses across the U.S. have released the names of more than 1,000 priests and others accused of sexually abusing children in an unprecedented public reckoning spurred at least in part by a shocking grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania.

The investigation, led by state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, identified nearly 300 “predator priests” dating back seven decades and accused church leaders of covering up for the abuses, in some cases by returning priests to duty after short stays in treatment centres or reassigning them.

Nearly 50 dioceses and religious orders have publicly identified child-molesting priests in the wake of the Pennsylvania report and 55 more have announced plans to do the same over the next few months, the AP found. Together they account for more than half of the nation’s 187 dioceses.

In his Christmas address last month, Pope Francis called for priests who had abused children to turn themselves in and vowed the church will “never again” hide their crimes. The world’s bishops will hold a summit at the Vatican next month to forge a comprehensive response to the crisis.

THE QUESTION: