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It may be that the “Me . . . . . Generation” has become so lost in trivialities that it cannot be conscious of its own peril. If so, the young people of today will be as complicit in the extinction of humanity as are we who have carried out a lifetime of planetary destruction.

If this is true, should we ask ourselves if it is worth our time and effort to try to save future generations from themselves? The answer is still “Yes” because we have a moral responsibility to the future created by our ability and imperative to reproduce our species. This responsibility extends beyond our children to encompass the totality of life on Earth, most if not all of which is being threatened by human activity.

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They have a reputation for being environmentally minded do-gooders. But an academic analysis of surveys spanning more than 40 years has found that today’s young Americans are less interested in the environment and in conserving resources — and often less civic-minded overall — than their elders were when they were young.

Twenge, author of the book “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before,” has spent much of her career publishing work that challenges or attempts to explain commonly held beliefs about young people.

. . . . . read the full article

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” So too every being has rights to be recognized and revered. Trees have tree rights, insects have insect rights, rivers have river rights, mountains have mountain rights. So too with the entire range of beings throughout the universe. All rights are limited and relative. So too with humans. We have rights to the nourishment and shelter we need. We have rights to habitat. But we have no rights to deprive other species of their proper habitat.” — Thomas Berry – The Great Work 1999

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It may be that the “Me . . . . . Generation” has become so lost in trivialities that it cannot be conscious of its own peril. If so, the young people of today will be as complicit in the extinction of humanity as are we who have carried out

“RCMP”, “serious threats”, “anonymous attacks” When those words are reported time and time again with respect to the security of a certain member of parliament, one begins to think the worst, that at the very least the member and/or his family are at risk of serious physical harm necessitating a

“RCMP”, “serious threats”, “anonymous attacks”

When those words are reported time and time again with respect to the security of a certain member of parliament, one begins to think the worst, that at the very least the member and/or his family are at risk of serious physical harm necessitating a full and comprehensive police response.

But you’d be wrong.

What we are talking about here (if it isn’t already obvious) is the Anonymous video campaign threatening to out a few skeletons from Mr. Toew’s personal (and, if Anonymous is to be believed, very full) closet.

To be clear, any attempt to coerce a particular behaviour based on a threat to release damaging information about an individual is illegal; it is otherwise known as blackmail and warrants an investigation. However, this isn’t really about that at all. It is about a minister of the crown trying to avoid being embarrassed by the release of publically-available information that would shed some light on questionable decisions he’s made and actions he’s taken in his private life. The involvement of the RCMP, the tabling of this issue at the House and Procedural Affairs Committee (which threatened to call Anonymous to testify – good luck with that), the Sun Media coverage damning everyone in sight except Vic Toews, is all in response to the potential embarrassment of Vic Toews at the hands of an anonymous video maker.

And that, in and of itself, is worth a  few observations.

First of all one would think the Anonymous videos were being watched by millions of Canadians, bringing Vic Toews and the Conservative government into broad disrepute (not that they need any help with that). The reality is that none of the videos have exceeded a few thousand hits, and the majority of those have probably been by media types and Vic Toews’ own personal staff trying to find out what the fuss was all about. Canadians are simply not watching Anonymous in any numbers.

Second, if you have so much potentially damaging information in your background that some think it could be used as leverage to control your behaviour in Parliament, then you probably shouldn’t be in Parliament in the first place. Further to that, this over-excited response seems inconsistent with Vic Toews’ thick skin, so some might wonder if there really are career-ending details out there that have been oh so carefully hidden from public view until now.

And lastly, to badly mix a couple of metaphors, public life is like living in a fishbowl, so if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

A mini-controversy is brewing in Quebec over the fact that a number of chicken processing plants are now killing poultry in a way that conforms with Muslim strictures of halal meat. This involves cutting the birds’ throats, and the abbatoirs which do it say there is nothing in the method