The Second Amendment is not protecting life

CHICAGO, Ill- Scott Simon, of NPR, (National Public Radio) interviewed Cardinal Blase Cupich at the Archdiocese of Chicago Pastoral Center on Wednesday.  Scott Simon asked Cupich about his recent remarks about gun violence and the Second Amendment. By Jamie Kelter Davis for NPR.

NPR's Scott Simon (l) with Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich

Chicago archbishop Cardinal Blase Cupich has called for gun safety legislation in the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting, which left 19 children and two teachers dead.

While some Roman Catholic Cardinals have sidestepped political discussions, Cupich spoke out against gun violence on Twitter, hours after the shooting at Robb Elementary School, in Texas.

"The Second Amendment, unlike the second commandment, did not come down from Sinai," Cupich told NPR. "There is an understanding that we all have in our hearts, engraved in our hearts, a natural law about the value of human life. And there is no amendment that can trump that."

Cupich tells NPR that he hopes elected officials will take action and listen to the voices of "the vast majority" of Americans. Cupich says no law will be perfect, but legislation could help curb the number of mass shootings in the United States.

This week's Tulsa, Okla. hospital shooting marked the 233rd mass shooting in the U.S. this year. The shooting came at the heels of other shootings, including the one in Uvalde, Texas, and one at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket.

Cardinal Cupich told NPR that the U.S. could learn from the gun safety restrictions apparent in other nations. 

As a House Democrats take steps toward gun safety legislation, he urged senators to take action.

"It's a moral duty because it's about saving lives," Cupich said. "People who are elected to public office have responsibility and take an oath to serve the common good of the country, and that includes making sure that public safety is a top priority."

Still, while some might be onboard with Cupich's views on gun restrictions, they might disagree with his opinion on abortion. For Cupich, both issues are about "respecting human dignity and human life," whether it's a fetus or a student in a classroom. Other issues are also linked to life, he added.

"I would also link with that issues with regard to poverty and homelessness where people's lives are shortened because they do not have adequate resources to live a full life including health care," Cupich said. "If we have respect for the unconditional right to human life then we should look for ways in which we enact laws to protect that human life."

P.S. Maine Writer: Guns do not make the US safer!

President Elect Joe Biden promises to give refugees hope!

Good news and essential information!

(Religion News Service- RNS) — President-elect Joe Biden announced he will raise the number of refugees allowed into the United States to 125,000 in his first year in office, a major reversal from President Donald Trump’s steep cuts to the U.S. refugee program.

It’s not the first time Biden has made that pledge. He previously floated the number in a statement he made during the summer on World Refugee Day.

But it is the first time he has confirmed that number as president-elect.

And, notably, he made the announcement Thursday (Nov. 12) to a Catholic group that works with refugees.

“The United States has long stood as a beacon of hope for the downtrodden and the oppressed, a leader of resettling refugees in our humanitarian response,” Biden said in a prerecorded video set to air during the virtual event celebrating the 40th anniversary of Jesuit Refugee Service.

“I promise, as president, I will reclaim that proud legacy for our country. The Biden-Harris administration will restore America’s historic role in protecting the vulnerable and defending the rights of refugees everywhere and raising our annual refugee admission target to 125,000.”

In the brief video, shared beforehand with Religion News Service, Biden praised Jesuit Refugee Service as a “great organization” and framed the country’s historic commitment to refugee resettlement in theological terms.

“This organization was founded to serve the needs of some of the most vulnerable among us: refugees and displaced people. JRS - Jesuit Refugee Service, believes that, in the stranger, we actually meet our neighbor. And that every society is ultimately judged by how we treat those most in need,” he said.

Jesuit Refugee Service is an international Catholic organization committed to serving refugees and other forcibly displaced people. That work includes advocating for refugees, serving as chaplains to those in detention and supporting other projects and programming around the globe.

A number of prominent Catholic church leaders, government officials and celebrities also were scheduled to appear at the virtual event. Among them were Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor-at-large of America Magazine; comedian Jim Gaffigan; Olympic swimmer Katie Ledecky; Filippo Grandi, United Nations high commissioner for refugees; and the Rev. Arturo Sosa, superior general of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits.

“That he chose to make this announcement with us tonight is an indication that President-elect Joe Biden is following his faith when it comes to American policy to protect and welcome refugees,” Jesuit Refugee Service Director of Advocacy and Operations Giulia McPherson said in a written statement.

“Not only is it exciting that the United States will once again welcome refugees at an historically high number, but it is also significant that we are hearing the President-elect speak in the language of social justice about the rights of refugees and our call as people of faith and as Americans to accompany them to safety.”

Faith-based organizations, like Jesuit Refugee Service, have long played an important role in refugee resettlement work in the U.S.

In fact, six of the nine agencies tasked with resettlement by the federal government are faith-based. They include Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and World Relief.

Most of those agencies have released statements pledging to work with Biden in the days since the presidential race was called in his favor.

“We urge President-elect Biden to uphold his campaign promise to pursue comprehensive immigration reform within his first 100 days in office and to reverse current immigration and refugee policies that put vulnerable individuals in danger, especially the travel ban and the historically-low refugee ceiling,” read a written statement from World Relief President Scott Arbeiter and CEO Tim Breene.

Weekend Edition - National Public Radio (NPR): President Donald Trump has set the refugee ceiling — the maximum number of refugees admitted to the U.S. each year — to a new historic low every year he has been in office.

Trump recently put that number at 15,000 for the current fiscal year, which started in October.

By comparison, former President Barack Obama set that number at 110,000 his last year in office. Faith-based organizations have rallied each year for Trump to return the number to its historic average: 95,000.

HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield said Biden has a record of standing with refugees, noting that as a senator, Biden had co-sponsored the Refugee Act of 1980, which codified the U.S. refugee resettlement program and asylum system.

“The election of Joseph Biden marks a return to (American) values, an acknowledgment that refugees and immigrants have always been a benefit, not a burden to our great country,” Hetfield said in a video message.

LIRS President Krish O’Mara Vignarajah said in a written statement that Biden’s election is a “new dawn” after a “dark chapter for our immigrant brothers and sisters.” She pointed to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy at the U.S.-Mexico border and his so-called travel ban, which limits travel to the U.S. from a number of mostly Muslim countries.

Biden promised during his campaign he would end the ban, also referred to as a “Muslim ban,” on the first day of his presidency.

And an ad run by the Biden campaign in late October also promised he would issue an executive order on day one creating a federal task force to reunite the 666 children who remain separated from their families after seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.

National Public Radio, Weekend Edition with Scott Simon reported: President-elect Joe Biden pledged to reassert America's commitment to refugees after the Trump White House's slashing of the resettlement program, part of the current president's anti-immigration drive.

In 2016, President Barack Obama aimed to admit 110,000 refugees. President Trump lowered the cap on refugee admissions every year of his presidency.


For fiscal year 2021, Trump set the cap at 15,000, the lowest on record.

Biden promises to take a starkly different approach from his predecessor: to "set the annual global refugee admissions cap to 125,000, and seek to raise it over time."

For decades, the United States led the world in offering protection to people fleeing persecution in other countries. Now the Biden presidency will mark a return to the political consensus that the U.S. should continue to do so, refugee policy experts say.

But while the president has the authority to set refugee admissions numbers, it will take time to rebuild the nation's resettlement program after four years of the (evil!) Trump administration (Stephen Miller!) largely dismantling it, according to Becca Heller, executive director of the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Interesting history and perspective - the Jehovah Witness experience

Thank you to NPR's Scott Simon for this information, about the Jehovah Witnesses. They have been steadfast in support of their religious beliefs in the face of extraordinary pressure and oppression, to force them to change.  

Scott Simon commentary Feb. 23 on NPR Weekend Edition

I never considered this point of view about the Jehovah Witnesses and, therefore, find this opinion by Scott Simon to be helpful and interesting. His commentary on Feb. 23, Weekend Edition, helped me to better understand a point of view I had not previously considered about the devotion of this particular religious group.  

Scott Simon reported: Away from daily deadlines and breaking news, there seems to be a campaign against Jehovah's Witnesses, going on in Russia.

Russia's Supreme Court branded the church "an extremist organization" in 2017. Witnesses do not recognize any authority but God, governments especially. That puts them into conflict with Vladimir Putin's Russia, where there are an estimated 175,000 Jehovah's Witnesses.

Last month, Dennis Christensen, a Danish Witness who lived in the western city of Oryol until his arrest at a prayer service in 2017, was sentenced to six years in prison for "religious extremism." The Independent newspaper and human rights groups say "dozens" of Witnesses have been arrested in more raids that began last week in Siberia. The Jehovah's Witnesses told The Moscow Times at least seven of their members were beaten, suffocated and jolted by electric shocks.

Some Witnesses have left Russia; many take their faith underground. Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch says, "It's shocking that in post-Soviet Russia authorities are putting people through the ordeal of a criminal investigation and prison for nothing more than peacefully practicing their faith."

Jehovah's Witnesses are used to challenging and confounding governments — all governments. They refuse to serve in any military, salute any flag, or swear allegiance to a country.

During the Second World War, many Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany and occupied countries gave the world an extraordinary display of courage.

Jehovah's Witnesses refused to give allegiance to the Nazi regime or say, "Heil Hitler." They refused to join the military, Hitler Youth, or work in war industries. Thousands of Witnesses were sent to concentration camps, where their clothing was marked with purple triangles. And they continued to meet, and pray, in secret.

Holocaust scholars have noted Jehovah's Witnesses could have saved their lives, or escaped torture by signing a card to renounce their faith and pledge allegiance to the Nazi regime. Most refused. Many Witnesses died in those camps.

When many other people found ways to just go along with an immoral and murderous regime, Jehovah's Witnesses refused. They honored their faith. Will nations that honor religious freedom now dare to speak up to Vladimir Putin's Russia about the imprisonment of Jehovah's Witnesses for following their faith?


A representative of Russia's Investigative Committee told Tass, Russia's official news agency, security officials acted entirely "within the realm of the law." More than 120 Jehovah's Witnesses now reportedly face criminal investigation.

El Paso Texas volunteers helping migrants - thank you (muchas gracias!)

Weekend Edition- El Paso support for migrants:

Scott Simon, host

Donald Trump said this week his administration is no longer releasing migrants from custody. We're going to catch. We're not going to release. That's what the president said, but that's not what's happening right now along the southwest US border. 

Instead, the number of migrant families apprehended there has reached record numbers. So a few weeks ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began to release hundreds of families from custody, and that places a strain on nonprofit groups and communities along the border. 

From member station KRWG, Mallory Falk reports.

By line - MALLORY FALK, : 

About 40 minutes from El Paso at the Holy Cross Retreat Center in Mesilla Park, N.M., volunteers line up to greet a bus of migrant families being dropped off by ICE. About 20 parents and children step off the bus. A volunteer named Orlando Carrillo Jimenez ushers them into the retreat center.

ORLANDO CARRILLO JIMENEZ: Whoo. All right. (Speaking Spanish).

FALK: Jimenez welcomes them to the United States and explains what's about to happen; first, dinner.

JIMENEZ: (Speaking Spanish).

(LAUGHTER)

FALK: Next, medical evaluations. Then, volunteers will help them make travel arrangements so they can get to their final destinations - usually with relatives in other parts of the country. Jimenez has done this nearly every week for the past two years when Holy Cross started taking in migrant families. In the past along this part of the border, immigration officials would either help families arrange transportation to relatives around the U.S. or bring them to a so-called hospitality center like Holy Cross. If those centers didn't have enough space, some migrants remained in custody until there was more room. Two things changed in recent weeks. Officials aren't helping families with travel plans, and they're releasing large numbers of families regardless of whether shelters in churches have the space to accommodate them. ICE recently dropped around a hundred immigrants at a Greyhound station in downtown El Paso with no advance notice. Ruben Garcia runs the city's main immigrant shelter, Annunciation House. He hurried over to meet them.

RUBEN GARCIA: Can we cross?

FALK: Garcia quickly arranged for a nearby church to house the families and walked them there himself. Annunciation House is working with local officials to find more housing and volunteers.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ: I think it's unconscionable.

FALK: State Senator Jose Rodriguez represents El Paso.

RODRIGUEZ: And now they're just simply dumping them here in the border communities like El Paso and expecting the community to provide the support services.

https://annunciationhouse.org/  

FALK: Annunciation House is renting out 70 motel rooms, and the Catholic Diocese of El Paso set up an emergency shelter with dozens of cots. In a statement, an ICE spokesperson said, quote, "family units continue to cross the border at high volumes as they face no consequence for their actions" - unquote. With legal limits on how long families can be held in detention, ICE said it no longer has the capacity to review travel plans. But Rodriguez suspects these sudden releases are a political ploy to create a sense of chaos on the border right before the midterm elections. 

Back at Holy Cross Retreat Center, the scene is controlled chaos. Orlando Jimenez tries to figure out how to get a Guatemalan father and child to their sponsor in South Carolina. 

He calls up the sponsor on his cellphone and a bus company on a landline, all while looking up airfares and tossing the father pumpkin candies for his kid. He takes a moment to reflect.

JIMENEZ: You know, this is not "fake news," quote, unquote, and that's the only political statement I'm going to make. These are real people's lives. This is not a caravan. These are actual, real people that need our help.

FALK: With limited resources and already stretched thin, advocates are scrambling to make sure families don't simply end up on the street. For NPR News, I'm Mallory Falk in Mesilla Park, N.M.

www.npr.org   NPR transcripts 

A Valentine from Donald Trump to Kim Jong Un

Echo Opinion: Donald Trump 'Fell In Love' With Kim Jong Un

An essay by Scott Simon on National Public Radio Weekend Edition

MaineWriter - With Trump, Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump the world is witnessing a strange and real time ménage à trois.

Simon commentary:  In the crush of urgent news, some astounding events can almost slip past.

At a rally in West Virginia last Saturday, President Trump told the crowd about feelings he has developed for Kim Jong Un. Remember when the president mocked North Korea's supreme leader as "Little Rocket Man," and Kim ridiculed Trump as a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard"?

Something else was going on.

Trump said, "I was really being tough. And so was he. And we'd go back and forth. And then we fell in love. OK? No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they're great letters. We fell in love. But you know what? Now, they'll say 'Donald Trump said they fell in love, how horrible. How horrible is that? So un-presidential.' "

At least unprecedented.

Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt were uncommonly close leaders during the darkest hours of the Second World War. FDR once cabled Churchill, "It is fun to be in the same decade with you."

But Kim Jong Un, the leader for whom Donald Trump has declared his devotion, presides over a cruel kingdom of repression, torture, starvation, assassinations, abduction, forced abortion, public executions and slave labor. It isn't fun to even be in the same hemisphere with Kim Jong Un.

It wouldn't be surprising for any president to toss an occasional bouquet toward Kim, if it encourages him to abandon nuclear weapons. When Hitler's Germany invaded the U.S.S.R. in 1941, Winston Churchill, who had long denounced Stalin, welcomed him into alliance, and explained, "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."

But Senator Lindsey Graham, who has recently supported the administration, said this week, "I'm telling President Trump: Enough with 'I love you.' ... There's nothing to love about Kim Jong Un."

The letters between President Trump and Kim Jong Un haven't been made public. But don't you wonder what charm and blandishments have made President Trump so besotted with a man who had his own half-brother poisoned, and his uncle executed? Maybe there's just something about a despot in a high-buttoned pinstripe suit.

Incendiary attack on brave journalists has consequences

Dangerous slander of journalists will lead to incendiary consequences. It always does. 
Here is proof:
Committee to Protect Journalists

Calling The Press The Enemy Of The People Is A Menacing Move  ~ essay by Scott Simon on NPR Weekend Edition

"Enemy of the people" (NPR) is an incendiary phrase. 

It's been uttered by some of history's most vicious thugs — Robespierre, Goebbels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao — to vilify their opponents; who were often murdered.

Donald Trump must know that history by now when he calls the press "the enemy of the people." As he must also know the anti-Semitic and racist history of the America First slogan, by which the president describes many of his policies.

But Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, pointedly declined the chance this week to say, as Ivanka Tump did, "I do not feel that the media is the enemy of the people."

We should be careful about calling President Trump's attacks on the press unprecedented. Abraham Lincoln shut down newspapers during the Civil War. President Wilson signed the Espionage Act that made it illegal to print, "any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States," which would put many Americans behind bars today for a tweet.

Richard Nixon had journalists on his enemies list. President Obama's Justice Department used Wilson's old Espionage Act to prosecute government whistleblowers.

But in this age of trolling, public profanity, and angry, frothing crowds who harass reporters at rallies and sputter coarse slogans, there is something menacing about a president of the United States who cheers on mobs and brands a free press, "the enemy of the people."

I am not starry-eyed about the news business — and it is a business. A lot of us got into journalism with a high-minded ambition to inform the American public. But I think a lot of us make it a living because it's gratifying and fun to try to find and tell stories, see history in the face, ask sharp, critical questions of people in power, and tell the stories of people who feel overlooked.

A free press is the fresh air you need to keep a democracy breathing.

But journalism, as this (MaineWriter edit: Trumpzi) president, who became a media celebrity because of the New York tabloids should know, can be a contact sport. Civility and professionalism are welcome. But reporting is the profession of All The President's Men, not Mary Poppins. Its purpose is to find flaws, raise doubts, discover secrets and air differences.

If the president had called reporters nosy, cranky, contentious, or smart-alecky, many reporters would have laughed and agreed. 

But calling them — us — enemies of the people is the kind of curse made by tyrants.

Survivor speaks- Las Vegas mass shooting

"But there's still in the back of my mind: Did he really work alone, did he carry all that stuff up to his (hotel) room by himself?"~ Melissa Barham on NPR Weekend Edition

Thank you Scott Simon Weekend Edition Saturday on National Public Radio!

She escaped the Las Vegas shooter's bullets, but her mental scars remain: On the night of October 1, 2017, an evil infected gunman named Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd of concert goers at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada, leaving 58 people dead and 546 injured. Between 10:05 and 10:15 p.m. There were 23 firearms, a large quantity of ammunition, and numerous high-capacity magazines capable of holding up to 100 rounds apiece found in the murderer's hotel suite.

Melissa Barham is a survivor.

Melissa Barham, April Treadway, Jake Barham, Emily Barham~ photo by Melissa Barham

The deadliest mass shooting in modern American history claimed the lives of 58 people, injured 546, and profoundly affected thousands more.

Melissa Barham was at the Jason Aldean concert on Oct. 1 when the shooter began his fusillade. She was sitting with her son and his girlfriend. Barham's daughter sat not far away, near the stage.

She told NPR's Scott Simon on December 16, 2017, Weekend Edition, it was only after she spotted a bloody woman being lifted to safety that it became clear the audience was under fire. In the scramble for the exits, Barham sought desperately to be reunited with her daughter; she counts herself lucky to have found her just before leaving the concert area. And more lucky that she and her loved ones escaped physical injury.

Barham says she can't shake that day. Being part of a national nightmare makes her feel other stories of national despair all the more keenly. And she has struggled with the lack of a clear explanation why the shooter did what he did, leaving her to be tempted by what she characterizes as conspiracy theories.

Since the attack on October 1, 2017, she said, "I'm sad. I'm depressed. I feel like I've aged. I'll look at my reflection in the mirror when I get out the of the shower — or you know how you catch a glimpse of yourself when you're out and about — and it's like, I'm startled at what I look like."

"And then I feel like, two days after that there's something else big that broke — like whether it's the fires, or the Weinstein sexual scandals, or the shooting in Texas — it's just like it's a continual thing of these events that are just rocking people's lives. And I used to just be a viewer, and I used to just go from one event to another."

"And now I'm stuck in one of those events because I could list all the things that we've done as a family — like soccer practices, and I haven't missed a day of work, and booster meetings, and we've gone to our dentist appointments and our doctor's appointments — but I still feel like it's Day One."

"What bothers me more than the motive, or lack of motive, is lack of information. Whenever we get a little tidbit of something we just jump on because we just have a desire to know."

"Like, the first week after it happened I was obsessed with like my escape route. I was just looking at Google images, pictures of the event — like, where did I go?"

"And then my next thing was: I want to know where the shooter went, where he came from. I want to see him walking into the hotel, walking out of the hotel."

"And they haven't released any of that."

"I just want to know that he worked alone, that it was all him."

"Because there's a lack of official information coming out, that area has just been filled up with conspiracy theories. And with time I've come to say, 'OK, it's just one person who was fully loaded with ammunition'."

"But there's still in the back of my mind: Did he really work alone, did he carry all that stuff up to his room by himself?"

Five years after Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting:

Barham said, "Yesterday (the anniversary) was so hard on me, thinking about those beautiful, beautiful children. And I'm a teacher, and thinking about the educators that were killed. It is such a sad day in our history."

"And then seeing that it happened at our (Las Vegas) concert. And then seeing what happened in Texas a couple weeks later. It's just not stopping and it just affects so many people."

"And what did we really change? Did we help anyone with mental illness? Did we change anything about gun control or school safety?"

"It's just a really sad brotherhood or sisterhood, but you feel connected because you understand what they went through. And some of them just have such a long road to go."

One way she copes:  "I wake up every morning and I journal. I pick one of the victims and I write down their name and their age and where they're from and then just details about them. And I just think about them. And this time of year, the holidays, make it really hard." ~ Melissa Barham

Addendum by MaineWriter- Yet, nothing has been done to prevent gun violence in spite of numerous mass shooting incidents.

Will Canada become European? Accepts Syrian refugees

Many fearful Americans are supporting an extremist position about making Syrian refugee immigrataions into the US even more onerous than it is already. Yet, our friendly Canada neighbors are moving forward with accepting 25,000 of them.  

Eventually, as Canada accepts the refugees from Europe, the numbers will impact the nation's North American culture. 

Moreover, nothing will prevent Canada's good Syrian citizens from entering the US, after they becine naturalized Canadian citizens! 

In the absence of evidence about Syrian involvement in the November 13th attacks on innocent people enjoying a Friday evening in Paris, the possibility of a terrorism connection has fueled American right wing extremism against allowing desperate refugees, who are fleeing the evil Assad regime, from entering the US. 

On the other hand, Canada is supporting the refugees, by allowing them to enter without unusually special considerations. Is it possible the Canadians' welcoming culture will align North Americans with Europe? Afterall, Iceland is located in the North Atlantic and is already European. Canada could conceivably become the fiscally solvent alternative to Greece in the European Union. Couldn't it?

Scott Simon's Weekend Edition on National Public Radio aired this report about the Canadians:

Syrian refugees in Vancouver, Canada report on NPR Weekend Edition

Mohammed Alsaleh came to Canada a year ago, after being tortured in Syria by the regime of President Bashar Assad. 

Now, the 26-year-old sits in a Starbucks in Vancouver, dressed in blue scrubs from his nurse's aid training and he recalls the shock of arriving in this peaceful, rainy city.

"I was saying to myself, 'What did I do?' " he laughs.

The newly elected liberal government in Ottawa is pushing ahead with a plan to let 25,000 Syrians into Canada by the end of the year — a stark contrast to the U.S., where the past week has seen Congress and governors, mostly Republicans, opposing the arrival of Syrian refugees.

When he first arrived in Canada, though, Alsaleh didn't know a single person in the whole country. He wondered how he'd survive, being so alone."

But that changed the next day," Alsaleh says. "The Canadians, I can tell you, they are the most friendly population in the whole earth."

Canada is generous with its refugees, offering free medical care, subsidized language classes and stipends. When they arrive in Vancouver the first stop for refugees after the airport is at the "Welcome Center" — a lobby in a special hostel for refugees downtown.

Pretty soon, this room is going to get a lot more crowded.

"We're talking about 25,000 refugees coming to Canada in a matter of weeks," says Chris Friesen, of the Immigration Services Society of British Columbia. 

His organization alone will go from processing 900 refugees a year to maybe 3,000 — just in the next six weeks.

He's scrambling to find places for all of these people to sleep.

"We've developed — you know, it's sort of like the Air-bnb on steroids," he says. "We're doing a housing registry for refugees."

And offers of spare rooms and basement suites are streaming in. 

A real estate developer has offered free apartments.

"You know, I've got a lot of self-imposed bruises, because I'm pinching myself here. After 10 years of negative discourse on refugees, suddenly they've become sexy — everybody wants a refugee!"

What's the difference between Canada and the U.S., where President Obama's controversial plan to welcome 10,000 Syrians is still just a fraction of the numbers arriving in Europe? 

Well, one big factor is that Canada already had its election — before the attacks in Paris.

During the fall campaign, refugees got a lot of sympathy, partly because of that famous photo of the little boy who drowned on his way to Europe. It turned out, his family had applied to come to Canada — and had been denied. 

The boy's aunt lived in British Columbia, and Canadians saw her on TV, weeping over his death.

The Liberal Party's Justin Trudeau promised to bring in 25,000 Syrians, and now that he's prime minister, he says he's sticking with that plan — though his government hasn't yet released the details of how it will work, and there are some rumblings that the deadline will slip. The Paris attacks have had an effect on the public: One newspaper poll this week showed that a majority of Canadians now oppose fast-track resettlement.

Brad Wall, the premier of Saskatchewan, raised the possibility that rushing things could let a terrorist slip in.

"Usually, one miss out of 25,000 would be acceptable for government or for business, or for almost any organization," Wall said on CTV earlier this month. "I don't know that it is in this instance."

Still, this is Canada. Unlike some of the governors south of the border, Wall said he had no intention of trying to block the refugees from his province.

As a Maine Writer footnote -the ambitious Syrian refugees will undboutedly move quickly to become Canadian citizens and obtain their legitimate passports. After they're naturalized, nothing will prevent these new Canadians from entering the US.  Moreover, as the Syrians adapt to their Canadian nation, there will undoubtedly be cultural changes resulting from their assimilation. As the Syrians becomme prosperous and repay their adopted nation, they may well consider changing the culture to be more like Europeans than North Americans. 

It's possible.

Nevertheless, the result of bringing 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada is a wonderful Canadiann contribution to the humanitarian effort to help the desperate people who  are fleeing Syria and Iraq by the millions. Americans who oppose bringing in a mere 10,000 people are responding to unfounded fear and the governors who are cowardly about admitting these desperate people in their states should never call themselves Christians.  

Navy ship christening named for immigrant in Bath Maine

The USS Rafael was christened on Saturday. The Navy warship was named in honor of Marine Rafael Peralta, who died in Iraq. NPR's Scott Simon speaks with the Marine's brother, Sgt. Ricardo Peralta.

Rafael Peralta USMC

Americans are largely unaware about the number of immigrants who are defending our nation in the US military.

Today, October 31, a naval ship was christened in Bath Maine, at the Bath Iron Works, named after one of these brave immigrants. 

We learned about this important ship christening while lsitening to Scott Simon's "Weekend Edition" on National Public Radio. Unfortunately, to our knowledge, jusa a few of the Maine media covered this local story. Thank you NPR Scott Simon!

Marine Times newspaper also reported this story.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:  The U.S. Navy has named ships after cities - the USS San Diego and Chicago, states, the Alabama and the Texas, presidents, the Lincoln, the Roosevelt, the Reagan, and battles, the Iwo Jima, the Antietam. Now and then, they name warships after fallen warriors. The USS Rafael Peralta will be christened today at the Bath Iron Works in Maine. Sgt. Peralta, was killed 11 years ago in Iraq when he threw himself onto a grenade to protect his fellow soldiers. 

Ricardo Peralta is his brother, and he joins us now from Maine. Thanks very much for being with us.

RICARDO PERALTA: I'm honored to be here, sir. Thank you.

SIMON: What can you tell us about your brother? Why did he join the Marines?

PERALTA: I was in the - around second grade. I witnessed him, his excitement. He wanted to be a part of something greater than him. He would watch the - I remember seeing the Marine Corps commercials and him, you know, being in high school getting excited. His pride in being in a Marine just - that's all he wanted to do. And in the letter, he tells me that if anything did happen to him that he already lived his life to the fullest, and he's happy with what he lived.

SIMON: This is a letter he sent you.

PERALTA: Yes, sir. Since I got the word of him being killed in action, I received a letter. And those words where he states that if anything did happen that he was happy with what he lived is what's kept me at ease throughout the years, just knowing that at the end, he died doing what he wanted to do and that was to fight for his country as an infantry rifleman.

SIMON: Mr. Peralta, what happened the day your brother died?

PERALTA: The day my brother died, he volunteered to go out there with another squad, and they got to a room where ultimately he was shot and wounded, and he was just laying in between the insurgents and the Marines. You know, the insurgents threw a yellow grenade that rolled over towards my brother's perimeter where he grabbed the grenade, cradled it. My brother absorbed the blast, and that ultimately was the end of him. He saved the lives of his fellow Marines, and I'm actually fortunate enough to meet, again, Cpl. Robert Reynolds. He's actually attending the ceremony. I can call him my brother because going through something like that, all you have is nothing but respect. And I stayed in touch with the other Marines that my brother saved. They've remained honorable men. I mean, my brother did not die in vain at all. Those men, they deserve another shot at life.

SIMON: Your family's from Mexico City, right?

PERALTA: Yes, sir. I was the only one born here.

SIMON: But your brother was born in Mexico City, right?

PERALTA: Yes, sir.

SIMON: And he loved America.

PERALTA: I have a quote here from the letter where he says, I'm proud to be a Marine, a U.S. Marine, and to defend and protect the freedom and constitution of America. You should be proud of being an American citizen. After all, our dad came to this country and became a citizen. He was proud of his Mexican heritage. He was proud of where he came from as much as he was proud to be an American citizen. He was just the ultimate American. There's nothing more American than to volunteer, fight for your country, and give your life for your men. There's nothing more American than that.

SIMON: What's it mean to have a ship named after your brother?

PERALTA: For me, this christening ceremony, the USS Rafael Peralta, I feel like it holds the spirit of what my brother fought for, that fighting spirit. The courage until the end is the ship's motto, and, I mean, my brother defines that. I've never been able to compare my brother's letter to a certain thing, and the USS Rafael Peralta is that. In his letter, he states that, be proud of me, bro. I'm going to make history. Those were his words. And I felt for the first time that the USS Rafael Peralta is that history that he's talking about.

SIMON: Mr. Peralta, thank you for your service and your family.

PERALTA: Yes, sir. Thank you.

Marine Times:
Warship honoring Marine Rafael Peralta christened at Maine shipyard
First in English, then in Spanish, the mother of a fallen Marine who shielded his comrades from an insurgent's grenade christened a new Navy destroyer in his honor.

The mother of Sgt. Rafael Peralta asked God to bless the ship named for her son and keep the crew safe before smashing a bottle of Champagne on the ship's bow Saturday.

The ceremony to christen the future USS Rafael Peralta paid homage to the slain Marine, who gave the ultimate sacrifice in service of a country to which he emigrated as a boy.

Peralta, who pulled a grenade against his body to protect his fellow Marines during close combat with insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq, on Nov. 15, 2004, is believed to be the first serviceman born in Mexico to have a naval warship named in his honor.

"He believed more about the goodness of America than most Americans, to the point of fighting and sacrificing everything for what America stands for," Gen. Robert Neller, the Marine Corps commandant, said as he quoted from Peralta's former commanding officer from the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, the Hawaii-based "Lava Dogs."

Peralta came to the U.S. with his family, attended high school in San Diego, then enlisted on the day he received his green card. He hung only three things on his wall: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and his Marine boot camp graduation certificate.

Among Marines, Peralta is well known for his heroism.

The sergeant was nominated for the Medal of Honor — the nation's highest military honor — after fellow Marines said he covered a grenade after being shot and wounded during close-quarters combat. The defense secretary at the time ultimately rejected that honor because of questions over whether the mortally wounded Marine was conscious at the time.

Peralta's family, which has no doubt about his valor, said the naming of the 510-foot guided-missile destroyer in the fallen Marine's honor has eased some of the bitterness.

The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer is one of a handful of Navy ships to be named for Mexican-Americans.

The USS Gonzalez bears the name of Master Sgt. Alfredo Cantu Gonzalez, a Marine who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in Vietnam. 

The cargo ship USNS Benavidez is named for another Medal of Honor recipient, Raul Perez Benavidez. 

There's also a ship named for labor activist Cesar Chavez, a Navy veteran who died in 1993.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any Maine media that reported on this important and poignant story. WCSH - WGME- Portland Press Herald and Bangor Daily News were absent.

Greta Garbo Privacy Queen in a Digital Age

NPR Weekend Edition's Scott Simon provided the following excellent commentary about the changing concept of privacy.

"As a noted expert on privacy, Greta Garbo once wrote, 'I never said, I want to be alone. I only said I want to be let alone!' There is all the difference."

"Online privacy is dead. Millennials understand that, while older users have not adapted," said Jeffrey Cole, director of the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future. "This demonstrates a major shift ... there's no going back."

Did ATMs Represent The Dawn of the Digital Era?

by SCOTT SIMON June 15, 2013 7:16 AM

Sometimes history stares you in the face, and you look in the wrong direction.

As a young reporter in the late 1970s, I did stories about some of the first Automatic Teller Machines as they came into use. Most of my stories bore in on the concerns that seemed most urgent back then: will people trust getting money from a machine, not a person? What if you ask the machine for $50 and it spits out $20?

Today, those worries sound as antique as wondering if the Iron Horse would put a lot of blacksmiths out of business; which I guess the automobile did.

What I did not foresee — and I don't recall that any of the truly learned persons I consulted did, either — is that the instantaneous inter-connectedness of the ATM would portend, before mobile phones and laptop computers, an age in which we scatter trails of personal information each day; even each hour.

Make a call, get some cash, check the news, buy a pair of socks, ride the subway: lights, cameras and microchips record it. You don't need to be a government security agency to discover what pills we have in our cabinet, the route we take to work, who we call, what we had for lunch, what we're buying to read, even if the book just sits on the kitchen table (or, increasingly, in digits), what size socks we wear and what color. And who our friends are.

If you post a note on a social media site to say you're rooting for the Blackhawks or Spurs, the next site you visit may have ads for their caps and T-shirts.

You might be startled to first notice that you're being tracked by retailers, and who knows who else. But if we're going to live in the real world these days, that includes the World Wide Web. It's a crime to open someone's mail, but not to follow what they say and where they go on the Internet.

Has what we mean by privacy changed in the digital age? A study by the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center conducted in April — before stories broke about the National Security Agency collecting cellphone and Internet records — found that people between 18 and 34 are markedly less bothered by the idea that their every click leaves a trace.

"Online privacy is dead. Millennials understand that, while older users have not adapted," said Jeffrey Cole, director of the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future. "This demonstrates a major shift ... there's no going back."

But is that the way we'll want to live in the future — susceptible to suspicion because of what we read or who we know? As a noted expert on privacy, Greta Garbo once wrote, "I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said 'I want to be let alone!' There is all the difference."

Dorothy Day - A Saint for the Modern Woman: A Cause Worth Following

http://www.npr.org/2012/12/01/166291580/catholic-hero-dorothy-days-road-to-sainthood

This isn't any ordinary romanticized "soon to be a saint" story.  Indeed, it's far from it. As a writer, Dorothy Day (1897-1980) was ahead of her time.  She created controversy for the purpose of raising awareness about the plight of the poor and the working poor in New York City.  As a working woman, she overcame serious challenges to her choice to become a devout Roman Catholic.

Dorothy Day (1897-1980) should be a transformational heroine for working women throughout the world because of her startling personal story. Her cause can change the way women perceive themselves and how the Roman Catholic church views working women.

I was privileged to attend a seminar at our local St. Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Church in Brunswick Maine, several years ago, presented by advocates for the cause of the advocate for the poor, Dorothy Day. Although I expected to hear her heroic story,  I learned much more about her courage and religious faith, maintained in the face of extraordinary personal and organizational challenges.  

Although Day began her career as an ambitious journalist, her life took a totally unexpected turn following a love affair which resulted in her having an abortion.  During her recovery from the trauma of being jilted by her lover and the loss of her child, she experienced a religious conversion.

Weekend Edition host Scott Simon talks with Father James Martin sj (from America Magazine) about the cause in process for the canonization and eventual sainthood of Dorothy Day, the American born mother of the Catholic Worker Movement.

I found this feedback on Father Martin's facebook page:

Steven Karl Szmutko  By her own admission, Dorothy Day was not a person who was "saintly" throughout her entire life. Her challenges and weaknesses are well known. However, through her faith, she turned away from sin and remained faithful to the Gospel. Her humility and journey to Christ is a wonderful example to those who have not always lived as a disciple. It shows how a person can come to Christ at any time in their lives and be transformed in him. In that, she is more saintly (not that there are degrees of sainthood), more real to those who seek to turn to the Lord. In that, she is a marvelous example of sainthood to those who most need conversion and healing.

What is the Catholic Worker Movement? On May 1, 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, The Catholic Worker newspaper made its debut with a first issue of twenty-five hundred copies. Dorothy Day and a few others hawked the paper in Union Square for a penny a copy (still the price) to passersby.http://www.catholicworker.org/

The Catholic Worker Movement is grounded in a firm belief in the God-given dignity of every human person.

Today 213 Catholic Worker communities remain committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken. Catholic Workers continue to protest injustice, war, racism, and violence of all forms.

Day's life was marked by controversy. The Catholic Worker lost many subscribers when it took a pacifist stance in World War II. Subscribers also decreased when Day visited Cuba and praised Castro's "social reforms" in the 1962-1963 issues of the Catholic Worker. Day seemed unaffected by Pope John XXIII's excommunication of Castro on January 3, 1962. She also ignored the request of New York Chancery officials, representing Cardinal Spellman, that she stop using "Catholic" in the title of her paper.

As a writer, I will do what little I can to support the cause for the canonization of Dorothy Day.  As a woman, I applaud her exemplary courage and religious faith.