1 SYRIA IS AN AWFUL PLACE TO BE Five thousand people are estimated to have been killed in August thanks to the country’s civil war.
2 IT’S 200 YEARS BEHIND THE TIMES That’s what an Italian cardinal said about the Roman Catholic Church in has last interview before passing away on Friday. Condoms and passive euthanasia are apparently two examples of this out-of-dateness. Meanwhile in places like Seattle, the Catholic Church continues to waddle into politics to block same sex marriage, a position which isn’t technically 200 years out of date but is still a miserable, stupid battle to fight. Oh and in unrelated dead religious dude news, 92-year-old Sun Myung Moon has passed away. Remember when “Moonies” were a thing? Ha ha, you’re old.
3 LONG GUN DE-REGISTRY UPDATE Destruction of the gun database is well underway, apparently, though at the same time there’s an injunction preventing actual deletion of data until October. Wanna know more, go read it yourself–I just skimmed it. The anti-gun registry crowd won their stupid fight, which for a lot of them was more important than real issues like homelessness, child poverty, climate change and environmental destruction, high unemployment and the ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor. Oh, but I want to add this, from a second article (link below):
Police and victims’ groups are big supporters of the registry. Police say the database helps them evaluate a potential safety threat when they pull a vehicle over or are called to a residence. They also say it helps support police investigations because the registry can help determine if a gun was stolen, illegally imported, acquired or manufactured. [Last] year, the RCMP says police agencies accessed it on average more than 17,000 times a day.
I’ve been told by lawyer friends that Saskatchewan police didn’t check the registry which is too bad if true. What a great tool for a cop investigating possible domestic violence who needs to know if there’s a gun in a home.
I think opposition to the gun registry is loathesome. But you could figure that out. Here’s the neutrally written, aforementioned feature on what the gun registry was. It’s worth reading for people who still want to keep arguing about yet another bad policy decision by the federal Conservatives, Canada’s Worst Government Ever. (Yes, worse than Mulroney, who had his moments.)
4 AN INTERESTING FEATURE ON THE RELEVANCE OF UNIONS Lots of food for thought in this timely, pre-labour day piece but I was attracted by the stuff about the times being ripe for union renewal. Oh, and if you missed it, here’s a piece I liked in prairie dog’s Labour Day coverage. Greg wrote a solid analytically piece about the Sask Party’s labour consultation malarkey*, as well. I liked that too.
*The Sask Party is encouraged to make me eat my words by proving their consultation is not a farce undertaken to justify a bunch of anti-union policies proposed by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Fraser Institute and other anti-union organizations.
BOMBER FAN OBI-WAN KENOBI COMMENTS ON THE LABOUR DAY CLASSIC RESULT (Note: this joke has been updated for comedy purposes. Speaking of comedy: Blue Bombers, ha ha!)
