CANADA
#1 — CNews | New $20 bills to phase-in over two years
TORONTO — Despite the pending release of polymer $20 bills, Canadians have up to two years to empty their pockets and bank accounts of paper versions.
[...]
#2 — CS | Red Deer pilot program provides GPS locator for abused women
While it won’t prevent an attack, a pilot program in Red Deer is helping women trying to escape abusive relationships feel safer, said the head of that city’s emergency shelter.
[...]
#3 — LFP | Liberals choose Maple Leaf Gardens for leadership convention
Ontario Liberals will choose their next leader – and the premier of the province – at a convention to be held in Toronto in January.
[...]
Spooked by visions of harbours clogged with floating shantytowns, cities across the B.C. coast are stepping up efforts to push out communities of “liveaboard” boaters.
[...]
VANCOUVER — The Haida Gwaii region continues to feel the aftershocks of a violent earthquake measuring 7.7 that jolted British Columbia’s north-central coast Saturday night, frightening residents and forcing many to temporarily leave their homes for higher ground ahead of a possible tsunami.
[...]
WORLD
#6 — BBC | Iraq hit by deadly attacks on Eid al-Adha holiday
At least 30 people have been killed in a series of attacks around Iraq, with dozens more injured.
[...]
#7 — CNN | Top U.S. supercomputer guns for fastest in world
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — A new kind of global arms race is unfolding — and this one is measured in petaflops.
[...]
#8 — Fox | Trick or treat? Trend to ban Halloween is mixed bag for educators, parents
The one time of the year when kids are free to dress up as monsters, superheroes and reality TV stars while eating candy until their bellies hurt is on the endangered holiday list in communities around the nation.
[...]
#9 — DM | Manned mission to Mars would threaten life on the Red Planet, scientists say
It could be decades if ever before man steps foot on Mars, but if he ever does he’ll bring with him trillions of tiny invaders that could be a danger to the planet’s natives.
[...]
#10 — Telegraph | China’s People’s Daily launches attack on The New York Times
The mouthpiece newspaper of China’s Communist Party has launched a blistering attack on The New York Times, accusing it of “faking” and “distorting” news and being a government “propaganda tool”.
[...]
How very amusing – the NYT is under attack from their favourite Communist hero – China. Looks good on them!!! What is black and white and Red all over? lol
Jack, I put up a post about Halloween in # 8.
Bookmarked, Sandy. Tomorrow and thanks.
Political correctness is only the latest idiocy Halloween has had to deal with. Before that it was the Christians mumbling about their devils and demons, satan worship, and witches sacrificing newborn infants on bloody alters – all of it is as ridiculous as the political correctness being complained about now.
Fact is that Halloween, and many of the traditions it claims, (as is the case with the majority of western/christian “traditions“) comes from the Pagan faiths – in this case Samhain. An annual event upon which the Christians and western society had no trouble forcing their beliefs, strictures, and mythology — that being the case you can reasonably assume that my sympathy levels for their current plight in this regard is somewhat low.
What’s that famous bible verse about sowing and reaping again
My grand-kids will dress up and go out trick-or-treating tomorrow evening in the spirit of Samhain, and I and mine [and hundreds of thousands of others in North America] will celebrate Samhain at home on November 15th (which is the date it falls this year) as we have done for years and years regardless of what the politically correct and Christian crowds may think or believe.
Stop it with that history stuff, you April fool
I swear Cy, these people who have for centuries violently forced themselves, their beliefs, their language, their customs, and their mythologies, on others screaming in moral outrage and indignation when others now refuse to bow to them, their beliefs, their language, their customs, and their mythologies, are gonna raise my blood pressure enough that I’ll soon be needing more medication than just a few shots of Drambuie.
Good grief! A love in like this makes Woodstock look like a hatefest.
Multiply it by 1000 and you can imagine what reading your daily Obama-hate lovefest with Ward, Joe etc might be like.
Stage –I just added a link to your comment because a commenter named Billy seems to think Halloween should be banned because it offends newcomers in that our founding principles are like gum, they can be stretched or reshaped to suit everyone. See here.
2,000 years? It is so very much older than that, millenia older.
Integrated into All Saints Day? How? Samhain is an ancient and complex multiday New Years spiritual and cultural celebration from which western society took a few of the fun elements that they now claim as their own (dressing outlandishly, trick or treating, and jack-o-lanterns) and demonized the rest as heathen devil worship – All Saints Day venerates Catholic saints with a near compulsory Catholic mass.
The church demonized Samhain as part of a program of suppressing the beliefs, culture, and language, of the indigenous peoples it encountered in the Gaelic lands. A program that included prisons for those engaging in cultural activities, removing children from their families and sending them to the residential schools of the day, and forcing an hitherto independent people into subservience through force of arms. The church and civilized society of the day was unsuccessful in ending those beliefs entirely so it modified a few of them and adopted elements of a few others in an attempt to make itself more palatable to those people.
Neither the church nor western society had any difficulty what-so-ever in forcing their beliefs, customs, and mythologies, upon the people of the lands they moved into…. in other words, the very thing it is now complaining about others supposedly doing.
You are right about one thing – in a little while it “will be about Christmas” (another event that that Christianity cobbled together from the beliefs of other cultures it encountered and attempted to suppress) and the church and western society once again trying to force its beliefs, customs, and mythologies, upon all, while complaining about how they are so much maligned and hard done by in the public square for doing so.Gah !! I’m gonna go knock back a couple of good stiff shots of Drambuie and see if I can relax.
Sorry Stage but Pope Gregory did the deed. I got my information here (which unfortunately does not have a source of any kind to let us know if it is reputable — see link at update below) and and here. where it clearly says 2000 years ago.
Update: I would recommend this A&E history site as it is the best I could find.
Stage, the link is fixed in my last comment. As my links show, it is well known that Pope Gregory, in the 8th century placed All Saints Day on November 1st and All Souls Day the day before so that he could take part in Samhain. It then became known as Hallowe’en as in All Hallows Eve. No need for Drambuie.
This Wikipedia source is pretty good in terms of the history as well.
Oh come on Sandy don’t get in the way of a leftist and his anti-Christian rant. Poor sod doesn’t even know the difference between Catholic and Christian. (not all catholics are Christians and not all Christians are catholic. The same applies to every other church in existence as well).
My particular brand of Christianity recognizes Halloween as being a pagan festival that has NOTHING to do with Christianity. My brand of Christianity also recognizes that the Christmas tree is pagan and again has NOTHING to do with Christianity. But then again my brand of Christianity does not try to force anyone into believing one way or the other beyond a good reasoned argument. A good number of parishioners won’t even vote in an election lest they be tempted to exert power over someone else.
Didn’t you say you were a Baptist?
Actually Cy my Faith tradition is not strictly denominational. While the Church I attend has the name Baptist over the door the faith being preached is very close to the Mennonite tradition with a healthy dose of Orthodox tradition and a smattering of Reform tradition. In other words a well thought out Evangelical Church. What’s more we accept that the parishioners belief structure varies within those traditions with some emphasizing one tradition over the other.
Oh I am quite aware that Catholics make up just one of the great many Christian sects and their individual beliefs and tenents – I don’t see anything in my comment that indicates otherwise.
What – no threats of eternal pain and damnation in the lake of fire?
OK, I’ve had my Drambuie, I’ve taken a few deep breaths, and I promise I’m not gonna rant any more — at least not tonight
As with pretty well anything on the Internet it’s worth verifying information. I checked the halloween-history.org site and the first thing that jumped off the page at me was “Their New Year was November 1…” – the Celtic culture was primarily lunar, festivals were held on/near new moons, the Gregorian Calendar is solar and wasn’t introduced until the late 1500′s.
Next was, “Other versions say the Celts dressed up in outlandish costumes and roamed the neighborhoods making noise to scare the spirits away“. For 35 years I have been reading about the Celts. For the last 20 years of that I have been studying Celtic culture and art, and reading as many pieces of scholarly anthropological material as I can get my hands on. I have joined with others in searching out, reading, and working at de-christianizing the legends, stories, and mythologies, that the monks wrote in christianized version. Many (many) hours have been spent discussing Celtic culture and belief with elderly people from Scotland, Ireland, and Cornwall – both in person and via the Internet. In no reputable description of Samhain have I heard of Celts dressed up in outlandish costumes and scaring the spirits away. Indeed, such a practice would fly in the face of a people and culture who invited the dead into their homes during Samhain.
I read no further into the page.
You will obviously make your own decisions as to what you believe, the Celtic people, culture, and belief structure is important to me, so a word of friendly advice when making your decisions. The Celtic people and their culture has infatuated many (many) people, has been heavily romanticized by almost an equal number, and misinterpreted by more than can be counted. That means that there is a tremendous amount of tripe out there, much of it propagated by the new-agers based on what they want to believe as opposed to what is actually known, or may be reasonably speculated based on what is known. Your best source of reliable information is not necessarily going to be the Internet, it is going to be the written work of people like Lady Gregory, James Roche, Lady Charlotte Guest, Stuart Piggott, Michael Steven Newton, Alexei Kondratiev, Caitlin Matthews, and their like – if you are interested in the Celtic culture, or are looking for solid sources, please do check them out.
Stage — I checked out that Halloween site more carefully and I couldn’t find a source, who is writing it. I just looked at it quickly last night. I did not use it on my post. However, besides the New Year stuff, it is quite accurate when I compared it to the A&E history.
However, since it doesn’t have an attribution, I will put that in brackets after my link at 9:03pm.
Anyway, my point about useless political correctness still stands. What is Western society today and has been for over a hundred and fifty years is still valid, no matter what happened 2000+ years ago. My ancestors were Celtic and from Scotland. I also have Native ancestors. Yet, I don’t rant over what was then compared to what is now.
I would think you would be just as ticked off as I am that there are some newcomers and do-gooders in this country who want to ban Halloween.
Let’s continue this discussion on today’s post instead of here.
You might think so – but the idea of mainstream western society getting slapped up the side of the head with the philosophies of
* what goes around come around
* karma
* biblical sowing and reaping
makes me chuckle.
Is that petty?
ProbablySure, but it may also be the only way western society learns any lessons about its own behaviour — but I’m not gonna hold my breath on that one.BTW, I fell asleep on the couch with the TV on the other night and woke up to a Christian infomercial about Halloween with the pastor (or whoever he was) saying Jesus wouldn’t dress up and trick-or-treat and true Christians don’t participate on any level in the annual celebration of Satan either. They were calling for an end to this pagan celebration of the dead as well — I don’t see too many Conservative blogs complaining about that growing segment of society that wants to either change Halloween into Jesusween or end it completely, maybe if it was immigrants making those calls………..
Stage — I am against all the politically correct do-gooders interferring. Not just immigrants.
If the Pastor you are talking about read the history of Samhaim and the early Roman rites, he would know that Satan has nothing to do with Halloween.
It is simply folks like him who attribute the recognition of the reality of death and the other side as somehow always being evil. I never understood that view and I am a Christian — but perhaps I look at things differently because I am, what my grandmother called fey.
But, I am also open to the idea of Karma because it just seems too logical.
In other words, don’t ever make the mistake of lumping all Christians into one swarming mass of humanity. I agree with Joe on that because t’aint so my friend.
Actually, Pastors like you described give me the creeps because they seem to be claiming they know the mind of God. The ultimate in arrogance IMO.
Related. Some Christians don’t agree with using creative drama to teach creative writing or meditating in general because they are afraid it is of the devil. Never could understand that. Imagination. Creativity. Christian mysticism, etc. I mean, what is prayer but a type of meditation?
Anyway, that commercial was essentially giving the devil more credit than God. Strange.
Can’t disagree with you Sandy on the radio/tv preachers. I don’t call them pastors unless they have a pastoral charge which BTW most of them gave up for the radio/tv ‘ministry’.
I often think that those who do radio and tv have too much time to fill and too little time to do prep work. Thus coming across as complete goofs at times. Its one of the reasons I never watch or listen to them.
From my experience I know that it takes me quite a number of hours spread over 4 or 5 days to prepare a sermon. It helps me not say stupid things that may mislead people and it gives the Lord enough time to correct my mistakes by pointing out to me that what I want to say may not be what He wants me to say. It also gives me time to realize that sometimes the tank is empty and I should ask someone else to give His point of view.
Pingback: Sandy: Is Halloween being destroyed by political correctness? | Jack's Newswatch
For those who are interested, I found an excellent site for the history of Halloween and have added an Endnote to my post. It is from an A&E History Page.
For example, the Romans integrated Feralia and Pomona, followed by both Popes Boniface and Gregory celebrating the martyrs and the departed.
Then, when the Irish, Scottish, English and European settlers came to N.A., those earlier traditions mixed with Native traditions.
However, it wasn’t until the mid 19th century that those NA traditions included going door to door — what has become Trick or Treating.
Which means, to my mind, that today’s Halloween is quite different from any ancient Pagan or Roman Festivals or medieval celebrations of the dead.
Today, October 31st simply means an end to the harvest and having fun!!
And, oh yes, it also means it’s my grandson’s birthday! LOL
The site you link and are promoting as “an excellent site for the history of Halloween” goes off the rails in sentence #2 Sandy.
All you have to do is ask yourself if 2,000 years ago a calendar with a square marked “November 1″ existed anywhere on the planet – unless the answer to that question is “yes” the information presented is wrong.
I quit reading when I got to the part about how Samhain is the end of the harvest – the end of harvest/harvest festival is Lughnassadh, first celebrated by Lugh (of the Tuatha de Danann – children/people of the Goddess Danu) in honour of his foster-mother Tailtiu on her death.
– and once again we see inaccurate information posted as “excellent”, and the mis/disinformation (as unintentional as I believe it to be in this case) further propagated.
This debate needs to stop. Halloween is not about what adults think. It is about fun times for children and it is what they think that is important. Back in the day I loved the evening and I didn’t give a damn about the history.
For me it was dressing up and “pigging out” on free candy. Let’s try to remember what is important to our children. Sometimes adults interfere and spoil all the fun because we forget our childhood as we contemplate the deeper, darker arguments.
Christmas is another example of fun times for kids now under attack by adults for no intelligent reason I can fathom.
Why do we twist our minds when it is not about us at all?
Point: Children don’t care where the idea came from and neither should we. It’s their time and they deserve it just as we did growing up. In their own good time they will learn and will make their own decisions about the reasons “why”. I don’t understand why adults want to spoil it all for them as they grow.
Why are we doing this?
Goodnight (again).
Awh man …. and me and Sandy were actually debating stuff instead of fighting this time
A timely opinion piece to backup your own, Jack. The first 13 words of the article describe exactly what the liberal progressives would like to see Canada become.
“Canada can’t become a blank slate that everyone can write on except us.”
http://www.winnipegsun.com/2012/11/01/seeing-red-over-black-and-orange-spirit-day