Justin Trudeau fights back tears as he apologizes to the indigenous people of Canada for their horrendous treatment they suffered at the hands of the government.

Justin Trudeau fought back tears as he apologized for Canada's role in mistreatment of Indigenous children in residential schools. pic.twitter.com/zEjGH2AOQP

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) November 24, 2017

I was really touched by this video as it brings up our shame as Alaskans for how we treated our own indigenous people.

The white man's government, often using religion as a bludgeon, tore families apart and demanded that native children only call each other by the Biblical names given to them by Christian missionaries/educators and were punished for speaking their own language, or for being slow to adapt to western culture.

The destruction of the native people's sense of identity and connection to their culture was horrific, and is often cited as one of the main causes for suicide and alcoholism even among today's population. 

This shame that Prime Minister Trudeau speaks of is shame that should be shared among the people of Alaska, as well as the people living in the Lower 48.

Our ancestors all participated in the destruction of the history and culture of the people that were here when we arrived, and we have yet to really make amends for what we did.

Reverend Sarah Palin warns parents to "arm" their children with a Christian worldview. You first.

Sarah Palin flaunting her Christian values.

Courtesy of Sarah Palin's Holy Mother of Hypocrisy: 

Sing for joy to God our strength; shout aloud to the God of Jacob! Begin the music, strike the timbrel, play the melodious harp and lyre. Psalm 81:1-2 

Let these two quotations wash over you: 

“I am the art in your arthouses, the ideas in your institutions, the laws in your land, the message in your movies, the thoughts of your teachers, the values your kids value. I affect you. Do you affect me? – Culture 

And also this one, from the fifth-century BC Greek musician Damon of Athens: 

Give me the songs of a nation, and it matters not who writes its laws. 

I wish more of us especially our politicians – realized that ideas have consequences in the real world. When we embrace certain ideals in our movies and songs (sex without restraint, for example, which happened during the “free love” 1970s), it affects our culture in ways that rules and regulations can’t undo. (You mean like having several grandchildren born out of wedlock? That kind of "affect?")

Today, don’t let movies, songs, and the arts be dominated by liberals. Instead, arm your Christian children and grandkids with a solid worldview and encourage them to enter these areas boldly and with excellence.

Palin then attempts to hawk her own never selling book as, I suppose, an example of the kind of Christian worldview that she believes children should wield against a culture which may inflict those damn liberal facts upon their tiny little brains.

Methinks in this case Palin doth protest too much.

After all her own children's alcoholism, infidelity, and hooliganism could hardly be blamed on a culture that they were supposedly restricted from sampling.

However it could be that they learned those behaviors from that so-called "Christian" upbringing inflicted on them by their parents, which featured knock down drag out fights, multiple affairs, worship of the all mighty dollar, and of course heaps of hypocrisy.

On the other hand I know dozens of well adjusted adults who were allowed to enjoy the liberal culture as children who are NOT philanderers, drug addicts, or wife beaters.

I'm just saying.

Revisiting Canada's (And Alaska's) cultural genocide.

If you are disturbed by that video, you should probably know that the exact same destruction of the native culture happened right here in Alaska:

Several generations of Native people — many of whom are still alive today — would become targets of a tragic, frequently successful campaign of cultural elimination. Demanding that Natives abandon the cultures and languages of their grandfathers and grandmothers, Natives were given a clear message that one way of looking at the world was superior to the other. That the survivors did as they were told — abandoning their feasts and ceremonials, their dances and even their languages — is testament not to the correctness of the Western message but to the survivors' states of mind. Having lost multitudes of spiritual and political leaders, artisans, historians, and elders, those who were left were orphans — spiritually as well as physically — destined to live in a world of emotional and material poverty. 

In the schoolhouses and boarding schools, in the churches and in the orphanages, Native children would learn how to become good Christians and good Americans. 

What they really learned was to be ashamed of their language, they were often beaten for using it, and to become reliant on the whites that invaded their lands and stole from them their way of life, self reliance, and sense of pride. 

The federal government also restricted when they could fish and hunt, making their traditional subsistence lifestyle all but impossible.

When you see a homeless native on the streets of Anchorage, you have to realize that that is not a choice they made for themselves. That was what they were reduced to after their culture was all but destroyed, and alcohol and drugs were the only things that seemed to ease their pain.

There has been a great effort in the last few decades by Alaska, and its native people, to put things right.

But the reality is that the damage done by the interference of outsiders, first the Russians and then Americans, has caused deep and potentially irreparable damage to the Alaska native culture.

In that way Canada and Alaska have much in common.

Matter of perspective.

God Loves Uganda. Christianity's impact on Africa.

This film seems to focus mostly on how missionaries have brought a dangerous type of homophobia to Africa which has resulted in the deaths and persecution of many its citizens.

However that is only ONE negative aspect of evangelism within the "dark continent."

Courtesy of the Guardian:

Children accused of witchcraft number in the thousands in the DR Congo, the Central African Republic, southern Nigeria, and parts of Angola. Anthropologists have identified the combination of crises as the underlying cause for the epidemics of witchcraft accusations against children. Economic hardship, conflict, urbanization, displacement, family breakdown and HIV/AIDS have spread insecurity in large parts of Central Africa and have profoundly undermined many communities. In parallel, revivalist and Pentecostal churches have proliferated in many parts of Africa, offering spiritual stability in times of uncertainty. 

Some of these churches, run by unscrupulous preachers and self-appointed prophets, have seized upon the fears of the population and are offering exorcism services at exorbitant costs. These rituals subject children to further violence and abuse and have become a lucrative business for some pastors. In Nigeria's Akwa Ibom State in the Niger delta, the explosion of witchcraft accusations against children have been traced back to a film produced by a prominent priestess, which has fuelled popular beliefs in child witchcraft. 

At the dawn of African independence it was widely assumed by modern elites and by development agencies that formal education, media, monotheistic religions, economic development and democratic political systems would sweep away traditional African beliefs. Instead, as the case of witchcraft accusations against children shows, traditions are being reinvented and adapted to the challenges and insecurities of a globalised world. 

Since the phenomenon of accusing children of witchcraft emerged only within the last 10-20 years (and in Nigeria more recently), there is hope that it has not yet become deeply entrenched.

Essentially in replacing the "pagan" beliefs of the African people with Christianity, the missionaries believed they would immediately transport them to the 21st century and transform their culture overnight into one that closely reflected the one these Americans enjoyed back home.

However they forget, or choose to ignore, the fact that Christianity has a long and bloody history of  oppression, genocide, and intolerance. Modern western Christians are viewing their religion from the coziness of their two story homes while sitting in front of their big screen televisions, and receiving religious instruction while sitting in a warm church on padded pews.

The African tribal people on the other hand are coming to Christianity in its infancy, and attempting to rationalize it along with their other superstitious belief systems. The moral framework from the Bible is one that teaches aggression against those who are labeled heretics, witches, or infidels. And without a strong set of laws to govern the people, there will be murder, torture, and harassment of those deemed different.

African Christianity may someday more closely reflect Western Christianity, but not at first. At first it will more closely reflect the older version of Christianity that burned witches at the stake, punished non-believers as Satan worshipers, and wiped out whole civilizations deemed primitive or pagan.

You know I once spoke to a missionary about her work.

She started off telling me of all the good she and her husband had done in Africa, China, and India, such as bringing in medical supplies, building schools, and of course "saving souls."

I asked what happened to those who did not accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior and she casually explained that they would burn for all eternity in the fiery pit of hell.

"What happens to all of the people that you don't reach, and who DON'T even know about Jesus?"

"Oh well God will not abandon them, they will not be forced to suffer if they were never given the opportunity to accept the Lord." she explained.

"So let me get this straight. If you leave these people alone, and never tell them about Jesus they are assured some type of afterlife, and are spared the punishment of hell. But once you tell them there is a choice to make and they choose incorrectly they doom themselves to eternal torment?"

"Well sort of I guess." She replied.

"So what do you think your success rate is?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't know. About two out of every hundred probably."

"Okay so to be clear, by reaching out to these people you have doomed roughly 98% of the innocent people who come into contact with you? I'm sorry WHO are you working for again? Because from my perspective it appears that you are sending the devil souls faster than he can think up new methods of torturing them."

As you can imagine that was the end of the conversation. And of the friendship.

You know sometimes we westerners simply assume that our way is the best way, and that every culture will be improved by our "correcting" them in how they live, how they raise their children, and how they believe.

That type of arrogance has done immeasurable harm in the world.

While I admit that our technological and medical breakthroughs have undoubtedly provided valuable assistance to many people around the globe, the fact that it often comes gift wrapped in religious doctrine and culturally insensitive attitudes poisons our contribution. And in some cases leave a people in worse shape than their "white saviors" found them.

NRA First VP claims that they are fighting a "culture war." Apparently they think a culture war involves actual bullets.

Courtesy of ABC News:  

NRA First Vice President James Porter, who will take over the top job Monday, issued a full-throated challenge in the opening hours to President Barack Obama after the NRA's major victory on gun control and a call to dig in for a long fight that will stretch into the 2014 elections. 

More than 70,000 NRA members are expected to attend the three-day convention amid the backdrop of the defeat of a major gun control bill in the U.S. Senate that was introduced after December's mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. 

Porter's remarks came in a short speech to about 300 people at a grass-roots organizing meeting and set the tone for a "Stand and Fight"-themed convention that is part gun trade show, political rally and strategy meeting. 

"This is not a battle about gun rights," Porter said, calling it "a culture war." 

"(You) here in this room are the fighters for freedom. We are the protectors," said Porter, whose father was NRA president from 1959-1960.

Let me get this straight, these idiots think they are "fighters for freedom" in the middle of a "culture war?"

What "culture" are they "fighting" for?

Could it be the culture that allows a room full of kindergarteners to be gunned down in their elementary school with an assault rifle?

Or perhaps a culture that allows a man to purchase an Uzi, without background checks, in the parking lot of a Babies-R-Us?

Or perhaps a culture that allows a five year old boy to kill his two year old sister with a gun made specifically for him to handle more efficiently?

Or perhaps one that makes sure that a boy who attempts to rape his one mother can then riddle her body with bullets from his 22 caliber?

Is that it? Is that the "culture" they are trying to protect?

And by the way it is not lost on me that the NRA has usurped evangelical talking points in order to make their case.  There is no more fertile ground to plant your seeds than that tilled by a lifetime of exposure to religion.

And Christians are tailor made for those who want to convince a constituency that they are being persecuted. I would suggest that if somebody were to walk around this NRA meeting and ask each person their religious affiliation, almost ALL of them would self identify as Christians. Most likely Fundamentalist Christians.

And the hypocrisy of worshiping a man of immense peace and acceptance while arguing for access to weapons designed for murder would be completely lost on them.

Gee I wonder how many more bodies will pile up while these "patriots" fight for their freedoms? Personally I think the death toll is too fucking high already!