Quote of the day

"I fear that those of us who stand up in front of America’s children every day have made a Faustian bargain. In accepting history courses shaped by war and structured around war, we allow our students to internalize war as normal, constant, at times attractive. In telling stories about war, we fall back on noble explanatory devices and encourage our students to appreciate high moral outcomes over bodies on the ground." -- Dwight Simon

Anti-gay group calls gays Nazis

Is this starting to sound familiar?

In a post on OneNewsNow, a "news" site run by homophobic hate group the American Family Association on August 1, Becky Yeh writes:

"Goal: Bringing end to Gov. Brown's 'Nazi state'"

Regular readers of this blog will recall that this is the third incident in as many weeks in which gays have been compared to Nazis. 

The article concerns efforts to reverse a new state law requiring public schools to teach students about LGBT people's contributions to history.  The group must collect 505,000 signatures within 90 days to place the repeal on the ballot for June 2012.

It is worth reposting (again!) the chairman of the Australian Anti-Defamation Commission Anton Block, originally made in response to the Rudd scandal:

"It is completely unacceptable for anyone to co-opt and trivialise the name of . . . the Nazi machinery for their own political purposes. To use [it] in this context shows a level of ignorance and insensitivity that has no place in contemporary political discourse. It is highly offensive."

Hate group is "alarmed"

Parents’ Voice member Homara Ahmad is "alarmed," according to the hate group's latest press release.  The group was created to oppose the Burnaby School Board's anti-homophobia policy.

According to the release, Parents' Voice members decided to file a freedom of information (FOI) request after reading a story in The Province about a student being bullied because he was skinny:

"Parents’ Voice members wanted to know the extent of the 'bullying' problem: who the perpetrators are--staff or students--and their targets."

It is unclear why Parents' Voice twice decided to use scare quotes around the word "bullying."

Allegedly, group member and spokesperson (they all seem to be spokespeople) Homara Ahmad made an FOI request for "copies of all reports, incidents recorded, and/or complaints made involving students, staff or any other person related to the operation of the Burnaby School District, that has been party to any form of bullying, assault, harassment, verbal abuse or any form of mean-spirited conduct, that has occurred on or near any property owned, managed or operated by School District 41," and demanded an exemption from fees, which was refused, leading the group to lose its collective mind.

Gordon World, another "spokesman," said:

"it seems highly unlikely that the incidents of reported bullying will justify the special attention directed to the political agenda of the sex activists involved in creating Policy 5.45. I believe this last point is the real issue. If the claims of sex activists were true, and a disproportionate number of children were being attacked based on sexual orientation, wouldn't the Burnaby School Board be more than willing to release this information to back up their claim?"

World is known for his outrageous homophobic lies, such as claiming that the murder of Aaron Webster was not an anti-gay hate crime and that gay men are responsible for most HIV infections and have a significantly shorter lifespan.

In another staggering display of homophobia, the press release goes on to add:

"Burnaby trustees, and others in positions of trust, should know better by now than to rely upon data and research generated by homosexual and other sex activists. Our children deserve better than to have policies developed by hyperbolic-spin propaganda, masquerading as research, generated by sex activists who want to promulgate their version of diversity politics and practices among our children, via the public education system. Parents’ Voice is against all forms of child abuse, including bullying, the political sexualization of children and the intellectual abuse of children by indoctrinating them with propaganda that falsely portrays sexual and emotional practices that can and do result in provable harm, as being 'acceptable.'"

Not coincidentally, this hate-filled press release coincides with the Outgames and Vancouver Pride.

Singapore: The Caning Country

Beating with a 1.2-metre, 1.27cm thick rattan cane soaked in water to maximize its weight and make it more flexible. This  punishment is mandated not only by the Singaporean military and court system, but in secondary schools across the nation-state.


Caning is a legal punishment for all males under the age of 50, with a maximum of 24 strokes.  In 2007, 6,404 offenders were sentenced to caning.  Caning is performed on male members of the Singapore Armed Forces, again to a maximum of 24 strokes.   Caning is also used to punish boys in Singaporean schools. In May of 2004, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Acting Minister for Education, encouraged schools to

“punish boys by caning for such offences as fighting, smoking, cheating, gangsterism, disrespect or vandalism.”

Students can receive up to 6 strokes.  According to a survey by The Straits Times, 20 per cent of parents in Singapore use caning for punishment.

Read the whole thing here, and watch the disturbing video below.

TransLink introduces idiotic new changes to the U-Pass programme

TransLink has made substantial new changes to the U-Pass programme.  The U-Pass was introduced as a mandatory programme for University of British Columbia students in 2003.  Under its conditions, students paid a fixed rate as part of their student fees, and received a pass by mail which was valid for unlimited public transit use, one for the winter term (September - April) and one for the summer term (April - August).  Fees for the winter term were $190, or $23.75 per month.  The pass had the student's photograph, a magnetic strip, and was colour-coded according to which specific period it was valid for (an example of an old UBC U-Pass is pictured at left).

Since the programme was introduced various other Lower Mainland universities and colleges have signed up, often with great resistance from TransLink, which demanded significantly higher fees from students at some schools.

One of the requirements of the programme is that it is very difficult to opt out.  Most registered students cannot opt out unless they have a medical condition which requires them to take alternative forms of transportation, or they are already covered under a different transit pass programme.  This applies even to students in graduate programmes who do not attend classes and do most of their work off campus.  Subsidies are available to some students who are not eligible to opt out but who cannot afford the cost of the pass.

Under the new changes, set to come into effect in September, fees are increasing to $30 per month, or $240 for the winter term.  An extra $50 in fees may not seem like much over an 8-month period, but for most students it could easily pay for one or two text books, school supplies or a much-needed item of clothing, or cover the cost of food for a week.  Still, for students who rely on transit, $30 per month remains a significant savings over the roughly $80-$150 it costs for a full-price monthly transit pass, although the introduction of the Pass has caused other problems, like overcrowding on buses; car users driving partway to campus, taking up all the parking in nearby residential areas, and taking the bus the rest of the way; and ongoing complaints from people who use alternative forms of transportation like cycling.

Besides the price hike, the new passes will no longer bear the student's photo; instead, every U-Pass holder will now be forced to carry her or his student ID, which must be produced along with the pass when boarding transit vehicles or when proof of payment is demanded.  This is idiotic enough, but even more stupidly, instead of the 4- or 8-month passes which were mailed to continuing students in the past, each new U-Pass will now have to be replaced every month.

The new cards will be dispensed by a machine, which will presumably check the student's continuing eligibility before spitting out a new card.  While the logical place for TransLink to put these machines is at train stations, the "disaster circus" that is TransLink doesn't do logical.  Instead, unbelievably, every student will be required to physically go to their campus U-Pass carding office to get a new card every single month during the period in which the student is eligible for a pass.

Most carding offices are located at campus book stores, and anyone who has ever braved one of these otherwise wonderful places at the start of term will immediately understand what a colossally cretinous plan this is: 50,000 students trying to buy text books in one shop means queues that rival the bread lines in former Soviet nations, extra staff working extra hours, general frustration, and a less than pleasant shopping experience.  Indeed, one of the major complaints when the U-Pass programme was introduced was the long lines at carding offices at the start of term. This problem was solved by switching to the system of mailing the passes shortly before the start of term.  In its wisdom, TransLink has obviously forgotten about this, or it simply hasn't occurred to its Board (most of the overpaid, under-worked members of which likely never even use public transit) that giant lineups might be a problem.  Or they simply don't care.

New machines, new cards, and the need to produce 8-12 passes per student per year instead of 2, also mean extra expenses and less money to pay for transit services.  So why is TransLink making this latest in a long line of stupid decisions?  As usual, because the inmates are running the asylum.  TransLink is notorious for making bad decisions, ignoring its users, and generally mismanaging its money (see our earlier story on the decision to finally install fare gates at train stations, 25 years after the SkyTrain made its debut).

The only possible explanation for this new rule is the fraudulent use of U-Pass cards.  A U-Pass is non-transferable, meaning it may only be used by the person in whose name it is issued (which is to say, on the old passes, the person whose photograph is on the card).  Each student must pay in advance for the 4 or 8 month period during which he or she will be eligible for the programme.  If the student leaves the participating school for any reason during that time, his or her U-Pass privileges are cancelled and the student's card disabled.  However, Because SkyTrain currently runs on the "honour system" and bus drivers do not usually inspect passes or require pass holders to insert their cards in the fare box for verification, it is fairly easy to illegally use a cancelled, stolen, or borrowed U-Pass.

But as usual, TransLink has provided no rationale, no evidence that this is actually a widespread problem, and no explanation of how the new system will solve it.  What could help solve the problem, if it actually exists, would be returning to requiring each bus passenger to insert the card into the fare box for verification; this system was abandoned long ago because it slows boarding to a molasses-like crawl, throwing off schedules, increasing trip lengths, and irritating everyone.  Additionally, there have been problems in the past that caused fare boxes to read all U-Passes as invalid, requiring the re-issuing of all U-Passes.  And now that the new passes will no longer bear the holder's photograph, drivers are even less likely than before to be able to verify at a glance whether a given U-Pass user is the legitimate holder of that card.  Requiring riders to show both their school ID (which has a photo) and their U-Pass (which no longer will) would only be making the latter less efficient than it used to be.

Requiring users to acquire a new card every month will certainly reduce the use of stolen cards, although there is no evidence that this is a big problem anyway.  But it will not reduce the use of borrowed cards (for example, people who drive cars loaning their passes to friends who do not), because U-Pass holders can have their card collected by someone else if they choose.

Additionally, while under the old system TransLink (or its armed goons) was able to confirm on the spot whether a given U-Pass was current or was being used by its legitimate user by simply scanning its magnetic strip and looking at the photograph, it has not announced whether it will still be possible to confirm by scanning an expired monthly pass that its holder is actually still enrolled in the U-Pass programme.  It is very easy to imagine busy, stressed out students forgetting to make a special trip to update their bus pass, particularly those who do not ordinarily have to go to campus.  It is also obvious that many students will be out of town during the period when old cards expire and new ones become available, leaving them without a legitimate pass on their return.  It is outrageous that people who have been forced to prepay for a transit pass might face fines or arrest simply for forgetting to have a new card printed.

The only thing this new plan achieves is to purposely make a system (one that was surprisingly efficient by TransLink standards) more costly and less efficient.  It will result in increased traffic to universities and colleges on already overburdened roads and transit routes around the beginning of each month, and will cause headaches for book stores and carding offices.

Call TransLink's "customer feedback" centre at 604.953.3040 between 8am and 8pm, or use their online form.  Head office, open weekdays between 8am and 4pm, is at 1600 - 4720 Kingsway, Burnaby, BC V5H 4N2, and the phone number is 604.453.4500.

The importance of cursive

by EraPhernalia Vintage

As cursive handwriting is increasingly being dropped from school curricula, Danielle Magnuson reports that writing by hand stimulates the brain in a way that keyboarding does not.


As Magunson points out, someone who never learns to write cursive will also never learn to read it:

"The neglected art has already created a generation of schoolchildren, from third graders on up through high schoolers, to whom cursive is a foreign alphabet."

She points out that it is "wildly practical" to avoid turning handwritten documents into "indecipherable codes.

Meanwhile, in some countries handwriting is still considered enormously important.  In Japan, for example, children take fully six years of calligraphy lessons as part of the public school curriculum using a traditional brush and ink.  Although this may have something to do with the writing system (it is virtually impossible to read Chinese characters written quickly by hand unless you also have experience of writing them and understand the forms they take on as they become increasingly cursive), it may also reflect the importance that writing by hand has in the culture: while email and texting are firmly established, most Japanese still consider that personal letters are ideally written by hand.

Burnaby hate group to form new civic party

Burnaby, British Columbia--Members of a group opposed to the Burnaby School Board's anti-homophobia policy intend to form a new civic party.

The group The Parents' Voice was formed to oppose the Burnaby School Board's Sexual Identity/Gender Identity Policy. Policy #5.45 (PDF) was created to "ensure that all members of the school community work together in an atmosphere of respect and safety regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity." The Policy has an 8-fold purpose:

a) Support inclusion of all students and employees in all aspects of school life, irrespective of their real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
b) Improve understanding of the lives of LGBTQ+ people and their positive contributions to society.
c) Define appropriate terms, behaviours and actions to promote greater awareness of, and responsiveness to, the deleterious effects of homophobia, transphobia, anti-gay harassment and exclusion.
d) Provide effective procedures to respond to complaints of homophobic, transphobic and heterosexist behaviours including discrimination, harassment and exclusion.
e) Promote a systemic response through staff and professional development which strives to identify and address educational practices, policies, and procedures that perpetuate homophobia, transphobia and heterosexism..
f) Make resources and support services available and visible for LGBTQ+ students and staff throughout schools.
g) Act collectively to reduce homophobia, transphobia and other systemic barriers that are faced by LGBTQ+ students and staff who are ‘in the closet’ and feel they must hide their true identities.
h) Commit to ongoing, constructive and open dialogue with communities who identify themselves on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity to increase co-operation and collaboration among home, school and the community.

Right-wing "pro-family" group wants to repeal California LGBT history law

Paulo Sibaja, acting on behalf of Sacrament0-based right-wing "pro-family" group Capital Resource Institute, filed documents July 15 to start a voter referendum to repeal the recently signed LGBT history law. Sibaja claims that a coalition of groups backs his organization's move, but declined to name them. Over 400,000 signatures are required to allow the referendum to proceed.

The law, the first of its kind in America, requires public schools in California to teach students about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. Democratic Senator Mark Leno, who introduced the bill, called the Capital Resource Institute "extremist," adding that it will be a challenge for them to get the signatures required, and even if they did succeed, Californians would reject the proposal.

A "fair, balanced" debate on Fox "News"

Today Fox "News" hosted what it referred to as a "fair, balanced debate" on the California LGBT History Bill we reported on yesterday.

The debate featured Peter Sprigg, a "senior fellow" at American hate group The Family Research Council, and Mitchell Gold, founder of Faith in America, whose mandate is to "counter-message the bigotry, prejudice and hostility toward the LGBT community being sold to the public for several decades under the guise of religious belief and religious teaching." Sprigg has linked homosexuality to paedophilia; publicly called for criminalizing homosexuality and for "exporting" gay Americans to other countries; and claims that gays are trying to brainwash children into accepting homosexuality through public schools.

Sprigg claims that "the purpose of history is to teach history," and that the bill is a direct attack on, and a violation of the religious liberty of those who believe in the three major monotheistic religions. He also repeated the argument frequently employed by homophobes that anti-bullying efforts should target all who are bullied, and not just "special groups."