Jim Flaherty trashes the common good

Ontario, Canada’s biggest province and its economic engine just witnessed an extraordinary event. The day before Dwight Duncan the Finance Minister released his budget the Federal Minister, Jim Flaherty in an unprecedented stunt gave a news conference promoting the failed economic nostrums of a government he was part of,the Mike Harris Tories of late unlamented memory.

Flaherty who represents Whitby or WHITE_BY as some call it ( a white privileged community to the east of Toronto) never missed an opportunity to cut corporate taxes, beat up on the poor and give tax breaks to those who did not need them. While Harris and Flaherty held sway in Ontario the Common Good, one of the cardinal tenets of Catholic Social Teaching was trashed.

The Tories of the Seven Lean Years (1995-2002) eviscerated the public sector. We saw unprecedented line ups in hospitals, loved ones stacked in corridors, educational chaos, an extraordinary rise in tuition for students and utter disrespect for the poor.

Ontario’s well off received a cheap $200 rebate. The same amount put into public coffers would have ensured that every poast-secondary student would have free education—like the 15 European nations which guarantee this. Flaherty sold off the 407 highway for a paltry sum to balance his books and feed the corporate trough.

Ontario now has lost $16 billion every year in lost tax revenues because of Flaherty-Harris.We are terminally underfunded. The progressive tax system we had has been gutted.and now the arrogant Flaherty had the gall to suggest a drop in corporate taxes from 14% to 10 %.this would steal about $3 billion from state coffers.

While the Liberals slowly move toward this “Third Way” they still maintain a scintilla of the ameliorating role of the government in the lives of ordinary folks.

Teacher candidates

The future  Catholic teachers I addressed yesterday are encouraged to think critically about who they are as teachers and members of the people of God. I suggested a career path of downward mobility might be what Jesus expects. Also that they might look forward to “a life in teaching” and not a career.Here are some of their musings :   

PROPHECY IN THE CHURCH

 

 

 

We regret:

 

As teachers we often are not open to change by accepting new ideas

 

Incorporate student questions and ideas to course curriculum in an effort to include real student life situations.

 

Understand the negative cogitation associated with words and address them appropriately.

 

Initiate a club in the school that focuses on social justice event that are relevant to the school community.  Recycling club, cancer walks, food and clothing drives, etc.

We hope

Addressing other religious holidays and incorporating them to school life.

 

When possible, actively participate in the dialogue regarding the ordination of women, married men, and the issue of same sex marriages.

 

We recognize

Make a presence in your parish and catholic community.

 

As an educator, take action in social issues, such as human rights, equity, and take a stance.

 

While recognizing the diversity within a society, we need to foster the strength of the Catholic faith.

 

Decorate your classroom with Catholic symbolism, themes, and artifacts.

 

 

“Mission Accomplished”-5 years later

No finer words were spoken on the the anniversary of the Iraq debacle than those of Jesuit commentator Ray Schroth. Fr. Schroth excoriates the “war wimps” who so cavalierly, in the name of Empire, sent other peoples children into the fiery furnace. One could also add the blowhards on talk radio, the editors of major papers who did not do due diligence via a vis the lies which were served up on a daily basis.

This war was engineered by four men who never wore a uniform except for the commander in chief who used the National Guard to avoid combat in Vietnam. They never saw the headless corpses in the marketplace, the children with their arms and legs blown off. They never in their calculations considered the civilian dead, or the countless veterans who will go through life blind, legless, brain-damaged, wounded in mind and soul. They never saw the citizens of their abstract “evil empire” as individual human beings.

Jesuit Fr. Raymond A. Schroth is author of The American Jesuits: A History, recently published by NYU Press. 

American Catholic education has failed-here

A prominent Catholic high school in New York state allowed the following piece of embarrassing phantasmagoria to be sent out to its alumni. It is riddled with irrelevancies,hysteria and worst of all American imperial exceptionalism. How is it that seriously educated Dogans could allow such nonsense to be published and distributed. It makes a mockery of critical thought, geopolitical analysis and worst of all, gospel fidelity to create a world of justice in the name of the basilieia, God’s reign which Jesus heralded. Read and duck! 

Read down to the very bottom highlightedin green, IT’LL GIVE YOU GOOSEBUMPS!!!

 

 

You don’t want to miss this! ((*_*) )

 

 

-VERY INTERESTING-

 

1. The Garden of Eden was in Iraq!

 

2. Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq, was the cradle of civilization!

 

3. Noah built the ark in Iraq.

 

4. The Tower of Babel was in Iraq.

 

5. Abraham was from Ur, which is in Southern Iraq !

 

6. Isaac’s wife Rebekah is from Nahor, which is in Iraq !

 

7. Jacob met Rachel in Iraq.

 

8. Jonah preached in Nineveh – which is in Iraq.

 

9. Assyria, which is in Iraq, conquered the ten tribes of Israel.

 

10. Amos cried out in Iraq !

 

11 Babylon, which is in Iraq, destroyed Jerusalem.

 

12. Daniel was in the lion’s den in Iraq !

 

13. The three Hebrew children were in the fire in Iraq (Jesus had been in Iraq also as the fourth person in the Fiery Furnace!).

 

14. Belshazzar, the King of Babylon saw the “writing on the wall” in Iraq

 

15. Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, carried the Jews captive into Iraq

 

16. Ezekiel preached in Iraq ..

 

17. The wise men were from Iraq .

 

18. Peter preached in Iraq …

 

19. The “Empire of Man” described in Revelation is called Babylon , which was a city in Iraq !

 

And you have probably seen this one: Israel is the nation most often mentioned in the Bible.

But do you know which nation is second?

It is Iraq !

However, that is not the name that is used in the Bible.

 

 

The names used in the Bible are Babylon , Land of Shinar , and Mesopotamia … The word Mesopotamia means between the two rivers, more exactly between the Tigris

And Euphrates Rivers …

 

 

The name Iraq, means country with deep roots.

 

Indeed Iraq is a country with deep roots and is a very significant country in the Bible.

 

No other nation, except Israel , has more history and prophecy associated

With it than Iraq

 

And also, This is something to think about:Since America is typically represented by an eagle.

 

 

Saddam should have read up on his Muslim passages …

 

The following verse is from the Koran, (the Islamic Bible)

 

Koran ( 9:11 ) – For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle.. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah;

And there was peace.

(Note the verse number!) Hmmmmmmm?!

 

I BETTER NOT HEAR OF ANYONE BREAKING THIS ONE OR SEE IT DELETED.

 

 

This is a ribbon for soldiers fighting in Iraq.

 

 

Pass it on to everyone and pray.

 

Barack-good but no prophet

Pastor Wright’s remarks] expressed a profoundly distorted …  view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.       Barack Obama deserves all the accolades for his honest speech about his former pastor Wright and the plight of that generation’s deep internalization of racism. Sadly Obama had to curtsey to Israel with the above remarks. Necessarily, and this is the awful fact, no person, black, white or polka dot has a shot at the American presidency without  bending their forelock to Israel.   Politically this is understandable. But it is wrong.Radical Islam is not the problem in Israel. Israel and the Occupation is. For any person to say this in present day America, it would mean political oblivion. True prophets will never gain political office. Obama is the best of the remaining three but do not look for any major change from him  

True Brit

Surely the most pathetic photo in a year. Prince harry smiling with his gun in Afghanistan—all with the collusion of the press.

And the fawning headlines in the tabloid capital—England.

Harry had proved himself.

I guess the Empire has not totally died. The mad Thatcher stoked this atavistic fury in 1982 with the Falkland War and got elected. Aren’t we tough. They can’t push us around.

Now Harry has won his spurs as a true Brit with true grit.

How about reading to a kindergarten kid in Brixton or East Ham.

Wouldn’t it be loverly?

The narrow world of Rabbi Marmur

The Globe and Mail on March 1 reported that  Israeli troops killed 54 Palestinians in the deadliest day of fighting in Gaza. Two dozen civilians died, including a baby and a young child. The Gaza Health Ministry official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said 160 people were wounded and 14 of them, including a baby, were in critical condition.  The Palestinian death is now  80 since fighting flared Wednesday and half of those have been civilians. This is typical Israeli behaviour-collective, indiscriminate punishment of a whole people, flaunting international law-because it can. Despite a majority of Israelis who want the state to talk to Hamas, it continues on its blinkered barbaric way.

Rabbi Marmur in his Globe column printed the names of 10 Israeli citizens who had died in the past few years from the Qassam rockets launched in the last few years. 

The Talmud phrases it beautifully . Each life lost is a universe, a world, precious and to be mourned.

Letter to the editor writer on March 1, Joe Behar from Baie Vete N.B.  asks the impertinent question: “Will you please take a page or two to also publish the names, ages and circumstances of the Palestinian victims of Israeli attacks on Gaza.”