Sort of a Protest Blog

I was reading through yesterday’s 24 when I saw a picture of Mr. David Basi (aka Mr. Scandal). One person came to mind, the butler with a foot fetish from Mr. Deeds.

Here. I have a friend who works as a manager at Wal-Mart. We talked about unions. He told me that Wal-Mart doesn’t allow them. I look in the daily paper. Wal-Mart is closing out 2 Wal-Marts in BC for attempting to unionize. It disgusts me that they would rather close down their store than give people decent pay and benefits. It makes me sick that I can’t do anything about it either. Better yet. They close a unionized Wal-Mart and open a new one a block away a few months later. Monsters. Pigs. Monsters. Tommy Douglas must be rolling in his grave.

So, some things to remember: nothing in life is set in stone.

If you do believe in God, a god, or whatever - you have to remember that you have free will and you can do whatever you want. The Bible isn’t a history book, you can’t prove or disprove anything in it. A critical thinker would not take it literally but instead a book that conveys ‘good messages’ and morals. Just remember that God didn’t actually write it himself and that the stories within it likely changed as they were passed down generations. It could very well be like the telephone game. Don’t take offense, it could very well be all true for I know but nobody can prove it. It’s more a matter of faith, but with faith comes blind faith.

Everything the bible or the church says doesn’t have to be right. Remember, a person said that the church was infalliable - but who’s to say that they really are? One of the popes probably said that as well. The church also recently admitted that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute but an infalliable pope said that she was. Take note that the Bible also never said that she was a prostitute either, there was a passage in another story about a prostitute and the next story spoke of Mary Magdalene - that was the sole reason that she was imbued with the title. The church also ostracized Galileo and Coppernicus for their beliefs… which were also later proved to be right as well. If you think about that, this means that the church and the bible aren’t always right - they’re just trying their best to maintain a message. That message is, I think, to love one another and to forgive. Now look at the things the church condemns: abortion, same sex marriage, women priests. These were decreed by popes, not by God.

You can’t really tell if a God told us to do anything, free will right? Exactly. Just remember that nothing is set in stone and that if you believe in God, he gave you free will because he wanted you to use it. Don’t be a blind follower, think about things once and awhile eh? As for politics, just because you support a political party doesn’t mean everything they do is right nor does it mean that you have to back everything they do or decide. Think for yourself and think about who will be affected. All organized religion and politics has really brought us is death and hate. Sure there’s some good from both of them but they shouldn’t be tied together. Just because you believe in one thing based on your religious beliefs doesn’t mean that the rest of the people have to abide by the same belief. But that goes both ways, the thing you have to think about is that you don’t have to believe in it or do it. Abortion for example is frowned upon by some religious groups. Women also don’t have rights in some middle eastern countries. It may seem right to you but isn’t necessarily for everyone else. Lowering the flag to half-mast for fallen soldiers may seem like a good idea but others may not believe in it. With religion and politics also comes the creation of the idea of war. Do animals have wars? It doesn’t seem like they do.

Being a Catholic myself, I know that in the past the popes have declared war on others for not believing in what they believe, Holy Crusades. Jihads are just like this, people kill blindly for what they are told to believe and they do so because that is what they believe to be right. Is it right though? Why can’t women be priests in the Catholic faith? Why shouldn’t gays be allowed to marry outside of the church, what right does the church have to keep them from marrying in City Hall? Why can’t a woman choose to have an abortion when God gave her free will? There’s a lot of things to think about right there. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have faith or that you should, I’m not saying that you’re wrong or right either.

I’m just saying that people should think about things for themselves as well. Don’t just blindly follow what others have told you, make your own opinions. There’s nothing to stop you from asking questions. I’m also not saying that the Bible is a work of fiction, I’m betting a lot of it was based on fact or I could be wrong and it could be completely true. I don’t care whether or not it’s true, you believe what you want to believe. It’s about the message. Politics is pointless, not everyone is going to believe what you believe. Just try to remember that politics exists in order to benefit everyone not just a specific group of people. People have to compromise no matter what their beliefs are to hopefully benefit everyone. It’s not a matter of who’s right or wrong, it’s a matter of opinion.

I’ve forgotten what I was going to say. Heh.

As per request on The Bored.

An homage to our Pope, Harper Youths!

On a sidenote, happy birthday Dan!

Preparations are in place for the next episode of the Anton show. This one is big and I promise you it’ll be great.

Synopsis! How famous people dance and how Anton dances.

Features! The Chris Martin dance and the Matt Good dance.

Release Date! Soon.

Neat Stuff! There might be a title sequence but if not I’ll need your help for one.

I’m treating you niggas out for a movie on my birthday. I’m also thinking about going to Japan for six months!

ETA: Wear white tommorow (Sept 10th) and your MPH armband if you can. It’s global white band day. Click here for information on your local Canadian event.

Why? The U.N. is having a meeting in New York on the tenth. We can’t keep making the third world repay us for something they’ve already paid for.

There’s another one going on this December 5th too.

I feel like I should be down in Louisiana and I’m actually thinking about going down with one of the teams (if they let us in).

It’s kind of funny to see that all it takes is a bit of water to get people to start shooting at each other. The alleged racism, the rapes, and the murders at the emergency shelters are despicable. The US Federal government doesn’t seem to want to help either. They’ve only just sent in rescue and recovery teams two days ago. People were left without food and clean water for almost eight days. The Feds also didn’t know about a stadium full of people which resulted in more people dying. What’s making this all worse now is that the US Gov is being too arrogant to accept any help from what they obviously cannot handle on their own. The Mayor of New Orleans, The Hon. Ray Nagin, was left to fend for himself. The Reverend Jesse Jackson had to step in to get the people’s attention.

If you’ve been watching the news — don’t watch CNN. Watch the BBC, CBC, or CTV if you can. Do you know why they’re not allowing us (non-Americans) into the disaster zone? Because of the thousands of bodies they’re trying to shelter the people from seeing. The whole situation was and is being handled with completele inadequacy. Mr. Bush cut down on the disaster response budget not too long ago and this is the backlash. But I suppose nobody can really prepare for this kind of thing.

Now you can’t exactly blame anyone for a natural disaster and that’s true so I’ll stop playing the blame game myself and hope that the US Gov will start accepting more outside help.

As I’ve watched the news over the last week or so I’ve come up with a few theories on why the US Feds took so long to respond to this disaster. The most prominent factor was money. The disaster response budget was cut down and I’m assuming that it will cost about 10 billion US dollars to re-imburse 10,000 people. That would mean a big cut out of the war machine budget but that probably isn’t it. The US government couldn’t possibly be worried about money when it concerns the lives of their citizens. The most likely and most possible situation is that the US has spread their forces too thin and thus could not respond to the disaster in time. Most of the US military, helicopters, etc. are currently in Iraq. It takes time to get the much needed helicopters back to the USA from the middle east so this is another backlash from the Iraq war. Blunder after blunder.

The flood water won’t recede until the levees are repaired but that still means they’ll need to pump the water out of the city. That could take anywhere from three weeks to three months. Maybe if they hadn’t clear-cut the forests that surrounded the city the flooding would have been a little less? Let’s not even get started on the pollutants that have now entered the Louisiana flood waters. All the bleach, kitchen-cleaners, soaps, and acids we store in our houses multiplied by hundreds of thousands of homes are now in the flood waters of Louisiana. Let’s not forget about the diseases now cultivating in the water too and the mosquitoes that will spread them. The in-country refugees were also herded together into a confined area and still are. The spread of disease will be multiplied because of that.

There aren’t enough doctors to help this many people. A retired Senator has even gone in to help treat people. Now hopefully the US military is letting in the foreign doctors or else these survivors won’t be survivors anymore. I still can’t believe that they are/were actually turning away foreign assistance. I don’t mean just India but even Canada.

This rant’s gone on too long. There’s so much more we all need to know.