Environmentalist Craziness

The biggest problem facing humanity has always been and continues to be discerning truth from error. This is one of the core teachings of Christianity. God is Truth and all truth is found in him, in his perfection. The result of sin is error and a turning away from Truth and that which is true. Daily, we are bombarded with a new biggest problem facing humanity and that is environmental degradation with its climax in global warming. This has become such an ingrained religious movement, that people have succumbed to lunacy. Case in point a recent headline: sterilization to 'save the planet.'

The shrillness of catastrophic language and the hubris of these self-proclaimed prophets is exacerbated by their unquestioned moral authority. If you choose to disagree, you are labeled a shill for the fossil fuel industry, a denier (like holocaust denier), or a hater of your children and grandchildren. What is truly sad is the return to Molech worship. While not the same Idol of the Ammonites, some people have chosen to sacrifice their children to appease Mother (Molech) Nature. A consistent digestion of the Gaia theory and James Lovelock's book, "Revenge of Gaia," pointing towards and metaphorically angry, vengeful planet due to human activity, exacerbates this madness. These misanthropic undertones make me question the agenda of these people.

Some questions:

Why is it okay to destroy children in order to control population? This section of humanity seems to be outside the realm of human rights, a position agreed to by many in the Church (See Princeton 'Ethics' Professor Peter Singer for you answer)

Are humans a legitimate part of creation? Is there a ceiling on the number of humans allowed on the earth? Is God overwhelmed by/unable to commit Himself fully to the increasing population?

Has the concept of sustainable-development become the neo-colonialism of the 21st Century? The West has used this moral baton to subject the third world to the West's concept of development. I think you could draw parallels between sustainable-development and the Eurocentric colonialism of latter centuries.

Update: Another misanthropic article from a supposed "Doctor"

On the Road again...

Well its that time again...
we're headed back stateside!
The last three weeks have been busy. We got back to Toronto on Monday, October 29th, the day after our "Welcome to the Neighbourhood Party" that was held by our Virginia Beach neighbours. It was great to meet more of the people on Pinewood Road.

Highlights from the last few weeks?
There's a bunch :)
We worked tuesday-friday at Blythwood filling in for the usual church secretary who was spending some time with her daughter in Australia. I (Melissa) did most of the hours, but Mac filled in for me when i had to take care of other stuff for the fundraising campaign.

We spent a weekend in Montreal! On Saturday, November 10th my good friend Alexandra got married to a guy who is absolutely perfect for her. his name is Mark. It was so much fun to share in their day and a few friends from back in Langley. We also saw Mac's friends from Regent: Drew, Sarah and their cute daughter Jordan. We went to their church on Sunday morning. Then Mac was able to get together with him for breakfast on Tuesday when they were in Toronto visiting family.

This week also marked the end of another phase in the development of "The Glocalization Project" -- the fundraising campaign that i've been working on since september. 2 weeks ago we got our logo, and this week i finished up the main part of the campaign book. It was sent out to three churches for review. I also made up a "Glocalization in one page" that will be used as of next weekend to start promoting the fundraising campaign which starts in February next year. So i am pretty much done with that until December 10th, when i get ot hear the good, bad and uglies of the campaign from those who have reviewed it and then take their feedback into consideration as we prepare the final version of the campaign.

I have also been asked to consider leading a team that will plant a church in London Ontario. But there is a small issue with timing. We need to be down in Virginia for the next little while (once our visa comes through, whenever that is), but they would want to start planting this church in the next 6 months, which won't work for us. So we're praying and trying to figure out what's going on there.

Tomorrow we head down to Virginia for US Thanksgiving and some Christmas shopping. with any luck we'll have it all done (or at least mostly) by the time we come back. We head back to Toronto next monday (the 26th) or so and then fly to BC on November 28th to visit friends out there and help our friends Jen and Tim with their move back. Mac will be driving east with Tim.... for details on that click here. Jen and I will be flying back to Toronto on December 8th.

So we hope you are all doing well
till next time!

Warren Buffet...Again?

Sorry folks, I usually like to diversify my observations and thoughts. But, as I have learned during my studies, we must speak truth to power and Mr. Buffett is a very powerful man. Grover Norquist, a bit of a crank, has written an article overviewing how Mr Buffett has accumulated much of his wealth. While I think most of his wealth was accumulated through prudent and informed investing, I was troubled to see Mr. Buffett profitted off of the oppressive estate tax system in the US. Until recently, modest small busisnesses, where the owner has died, bore the brunt of this tax burden as asset value rarely equals available cash to pay the death tax. This forced heirs to sell businesses that benefitted the communities in which they were located, sometimes for decades. Not only do you have capital leaving a community, but a loss of jobs would be a standard outcome as well.

Buffett is pressing for a reinstatement of the death tax. While I understand his hesitancy to create an aristocracy through inheritance, I chafe at the heavy-handed use of tax laws to go after those we don't like. A prime example is the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) in the US. Upon its creation, the tax targetted 155 'super-rich' people in the USA. In 2005, 4,045,459 tax payers were subject to the AMT. Most of these people are average middle class families not the 'super-rich.' This is why I have trouble with an estate tax. While designed to tax only people like the Buffetts, Kennedys, Feinsteins, Gates, etc, it inevitably reaches down to the small business owners who employ 75% of the country's workforce. When the tax receipts start to roll in, congress conveniently forgets to index the taxable threshold. Thus, the law becomes a form of injustice and oppression as businesses are forced to sell (to Buffett no less) at firesale prices.

Just a reminder, every tax law is legally enforcible at the point of a government employee's gun.

The First Snow

Living in Toronto means a few things. First, traffic will be bad during the day. Second, the Maple Leafs will break your heart (thankfully, I am a Canucks fan) . Finally, snow will fall in November. Today, I saw snow (flurries mind you) for the first time this winter. This is by far the earliest I have witnessed snow. Today's flurries were the result of lake effect weather. When the wind blows off the Great Lakes, it carries moisture inland and deposits it in the form of rain or snow. I like snow, so it was excited to watch what little precipitation there was.

Climate Change

This article from Newsweek magazine is a must read for everyone. The teaser pull-quote to wet your appetite is, "The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it." I cannot argue with the science, these guys are always right. The last paragraph says it all. Are we ready to face this grim reality?

The visa is in!

Ok so here's the news that people have been waiting to hear
We finally have our visa into the consulate -- or mostly anyways.
It was a bit of a saga i must admit:

Last wednesday Mac travelled down to the US consulate office in Toronto to hand in our visa application. When he got there he found out 1) they don't accept Visa applications on a walk-in basis, they must be mailed in, and, 2) on top of everything listed on the visa application that we have to do there is a Toronto-specific list of things that visa applicants must do.

So he brought home the list and the application to finish it up. He had called me at work on Wednesday to tell me that i needed a copy of my birth certificate (which i took care of). But then, later in the evening upon closer inspection, we realized that the little wallet card that most people have is not sufficient. Nope. We needed the long for, i.e. the form my father filled out on Oct. 29, 1979 to submit. So after a bunch of phone calls to nail down a guarantor (can't just apply for your birth certificate, you need someone to prove who you are) $35 for the form and another $30 for speedy service (we didn't want to wait the 3 weeks to get it otherwise) we had the form ordered, and it arrived on friday. So we picked it up yesterday, and then walked to the post office to send everything off registered mail -- can't be too careful these days with all those identity theft folks out there.

So here's where "we go next" as far as we understand the process.
At some point we will get a phone call asking us to come down to the consulate office and present the originals of the identification stuff that we handed in copies of. While we are hoping it'll happen before US thanksgiving, there's a good chance we won't make it down to the consulate for this interview until January due to our travels south for Thanksgiving US-style and then our trip out west to see people and then travel back east with Jen and Tim (Tim and Mac are driving, Jen and I are flying).

Then, at some point, we'll be heading (we think) to Montreal for a second interview. We don't know when this will be.

After that... we think we get a visa, but we could be mistaken by that. There could be more steps, we're not sure.

How long should the whole thing take from this point? Officially, 6-12 months. But we've heard from an immigration lawyer acquaintance of Mac's that it could be as little as 4-6 months.

One way or another we'll get down south, we know it'll happen, we're just not sure exactly when.
until then, we'll keep enjoying married life in Toronto and Virginia Beach and finding jobs as God provides them!

Philipe Calderon Hates People from Tabasco

Sadly, Kanye West was at it again. Another destructive storm has devastated an area of the world leaving hundreds of thousands in peril. After Calderon declared that government aid was a long way off, Kanye flew in for his truly clever announcement a la Bush and Katrina. I wonder if Sojourners is going to run a cover story on this human tragedy blaming the government for ignoring the plight of people in Tabasco. Probably not, because the Religious Right cannot be blamed.

Satire off. Mac

Media Bias

Harvard has released a new study which confirms the obvious; the media is biased in favor of the Democrat Party and biased against the Republican Party. No surprises here. UCLA released a similar study a couple years back (go to the bottom of the report to see the compilation of data). True to form, the Libs are asking, "What liberal media bias?" I am sure that these studies were funded by ExxonMobil, Halliburton, Bushco, the Israel Lobby, the Religous Right, and Cheney. This seems to be the fall back position of the liberals when they have nothing to support their argument.