Magic Statistics

The Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) recently received an application for a revoltingly offensive personalised licence plate.  The ever-vigilant brain trust at MTO promptly did their civic duty and hurled the application in the trash.  Good on them.

Here’s the rejected licence plate text:

EH.MEN2U

Say what?  Glenn Penner of Voice of the Martyrs Canada explains that it is to be read as “Amen to you”.  His personal friends, Gary and Patti Sullivan of Mississauga, were the applicants.

They wanted to have a plate on their Honda that would be a statement to their Christian faith with a clever Canadian twist (eh??).
. . .
Well, the MTO rejected their application. In a letter to the Sullivans from the MTO's Licence Renewals Unit, supervisor of licensing Sandi Wood said the plate was rejected because the government cannot issue a plate with words or slogans that the public would consider "offensive or inappropriate." The letter stated, "The Ministry's concern, in your particular case, is that the plate would be considered by some members of the public to have a religious connotation," the letter stated. Earlier in the letter, Wood wrote that the Ministry has a difficult task determining what's considered offensive and inappropriate because, many times, it's entirely up to the individual. "However, a decision has to be made one way or the other," she stated. "Therefore, we can only hope for the understanding and cooperation of either the requester or the public at large, depending on the decision made."

Sounds like MTO rejects any plate that someone, somewhere might think religious.  Given what passes for religion these days, it’s a wonder anything gets approved.

In a futile bold attempt to stick a finger in the eye of Ontario’s plate police, I went over to Acme License Maker and whipped these up.

Take that, Ontario Transportation tyrants.

Previous related post: Pro-family letter deemed “hate propaganda” by Canada border agents

Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, 22-year-old Egyptian blogger and former law student, has been convicted of insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment.  The charges arose from his online writing.

Rights groups and opposition bloggers have watched Suleiman's case closely, and said they feared a conviction could set a legal precedent limiting Internet freedom in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country.

The London-based rights group Amnesty International said in a statement: "This is yet another slap in the face of freedom of expression in Egypt." The group considers Suleiman to be a prisoner of conscience, jailed solely for peacefully expressing his opinion, the statement added.

The Paris-based press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders said the sentence was "a disgrace" and the United Nations should respond by disqualifying Egypt from hosting an Internet Governance Forum in 2009.

Egyptian media are dominated by state-run news outlets, and the internet has emerged as the freest arena for expression of anti-government opinions. The verdict presents an obvious threat to online freedom of speech in Egypt.

As a defiant response to the verdict and sentence, Index on Censorship announced that Kareem has been nominated for this year’s Freedom of Expression Awards, given annually to people and organisations that have made a significant contribution to freedom of expression.  The awards will be given in London on 14 March.

Visit Free Kareem! for more news and information.

h/t: Global Voices Online

Previous related posts:

• Egyptian blogger goes on trial for insulting Islam
• Egyptian blogger Kareem Suleiman still in detention
• Egyptian blogger arrested for insulting Islam

Al Gore's speech at the University of Toronto last night was accompanied by adulation usually associated with Britney or Paris.  The show sold out in minutes when tickets went on sale two weeks ago, but people without tickets turned up just to hang outside the hall, basking in the aura of environmental righteousness.  Religious vibes were evident all around.

"From my perspective, it is a form of religion," said Bruce Crofts, 69, as he held a banner aloft for the East Toronto Climate Action Group amid a lively prelecture crowd outside the old hall.

"The religion for this group is doing something for the environment."

Well, there's religion, and then there's religion.

There were vegans seeking new recruits, people calling for the closing of Ontario's coal-fired power plants, a Greenpeace mascot dressed as a polar bear — even the UFO believers showed up.

"I know you won't believe this," one of them, a man named Victor Viggiani, said with a practised tongue, "but the extraterrestrial technology involved in this . . . it's free energy, man. Absolute free energy, and it'll be the end of fossil fuels."
. . .
Across the driveway in front of the hall, a large banner exhorted the crowd to "Heed the Goracle." Belonging to a fledgling group called ecoSanity, it was still there hours later, as Mr. Gore enjoyed a reception at the adjacent Simcoe Hall and the dispersing crowd voiced its praise.

The guy exhorting onlookers to dig heed the prophesy omen hunch guess fantasy oracle insists he didn't really mean to be so pious.

"It was not our intention to have a religious approach," ecoSanity group founder Glenn MacIntosh said, "but it was our understanding that it was that kind of movement that people were craving; that kind of spiritual connection in their gut."

Yeah, I really feel it in my gut, man.  Ken Kesey lives.

So, what did Mr Gore say?  Besides his customary science fiction, he ventured into Canadian politics, with about as much success as in the past.

"Canada in the past has been known for its leadership, and I think now is a time when some people put a question mark after Canada on this," Gore said, after alighting from a limousine — gas-operated, by the way — for his sold-out speech to 1,500 at the University of Toronto's Convocation Hall.

"I'm not a citizen of Canada but it's awful important for Canada to live up to its reputation," he said. "I love Toronto, I love Canada. Canada, I'm convinced, is going to come back on the right path."

Preach it, brother.

Gore must have missed the disclosure by a top-level Chrétien advisor that the Liberals knew Canada's Kyoto target was almost certainly unattainable when they signed on to the deal in 1998.  It was a big PR exercise from the get-go.  What do you think of Canada's "reputation" now, Al?

h/t: Darcey at Dust My Broom

Source of graphic image: The Prophet Gore first appeared on the front page of National Post on 10 February.  I downloaded it from Proud To Be Canadian.ca blog.

Previous related posts:

• Al Gore needs to review his American history
• The Gore Effect
• Where was Al Gore before the election?

An Anglican canon makes an astonishing claim at the very end of today’s Anglican Journal article on Canadian reactions to the primates’ communiqué. According to Canon Joyce Sanchez, chaplain to Montreal’s Integrity chapter and associate priest at Christ Church Cathedral,

Each [Anglican] province, or country, “has its own context and own understanding of the Gospel.”

That’s the article’s final sentence.  I think that’s called “burying the lede”.  I do wish the reporter had asked for elucidation.  I sure would have.

I am absolutely flabbergasted to discover that the Anglican Church of Canada has its very own understanding of the Gospel.  Where is this written down, that I may learn what my church professes concerning the Gospel?  I’d also like to know where I can read about the unique understanding of the Gospel held by The Episcopal Church.  How about the Church of England?  Church of Nigeria?  Church of South India?  And the rest of the Anglican provinces?

Wow!  They’re all different.  I had no idea.

OK, enough sarcasm.  What’s going on, really, is that Canon Sanchez is employing multicultural rhetoric to obscure the fact that there are two different understandings of the Gospel abroad in the worldwide Anglican Communion.  The first is what can be called the historic orthodox Anglican understanding, as summarised, for example, in the Thirty-Nine Articles.

The other understanding holds that words in the Bible and in creedal statements can be willfully redefined to mean something quite different from what the church has always understood them to mean.  This understanding is the root of the contention that, in many areas, the Bible does not say what the church has always understood it to say.  Thus, for example, the claim that the Bible does not teach that homosexual behaviour is contrary to God’s will.

Clearly, the two understandings of the Gospel are radically different.  In fact, some have argued that there are two gospels in the Anglican Communion.

In that connection, St Paul said something that bears consideration:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel– not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Too bad Anglican Journal didn’t get into that with Canon Sanchez.

Previous related posts:

• Episcopal Church asked to “slam doors”
• Time for Anglican Church of Canada to get serious
• Anglican Church of Canada still has a chance to do the right thing