General Chat

Ordinary people don't care? That's a little hard Janey. Most likely they see a lot of these emails as jokes and don't actually believe them and pass them on for a laugh. Okay - you're going to say that that's totally irresponsible and it is. We should always vet what we read and what we pass on. However I repeat that passing on these comments and articles is generally done without malice. I know what you're going to say about that comment too:-)))

S

Janey

Just a general question on distressing emails received by your mother - is it possible for you to set her email account to receive all emails from an "unknown" ( by her contact list ) source - in to her Trash inbox

And then set her "Trash " to delete contents automatically

In this manner she may avoid seeing the unsolicited emails

Renes

The woman who sends the trash is a friend. My mother is not someone who "gives offence" lightly, and telling someone who is a friend that she is a disgusting bigot isn't something most people would do.

What I don't understand is how a decent person could send/forward the things she and her own friends circulate.

Actually, she is a former executive of the local International Order of the Daughters of the Empire. Classy, eh?


I'm going to give an example. This is just one example. I think everybody here has seen the same, or worse.

The really cute part is that you can actually see, in numerous of these things, where someone has deleted "America" and replaced it with "Canada". This was one.

I gather that Maxine is some sort of cartoon grouch. I actually doubt that the real Maxine character had anything to do with this.

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Leave it to Maxine to come up with a solution for the economic mess that Canada is now in.


I bought a bird feeder. I hung it on my back porch and filled it with seed. What a beauty of a bird feeder it was, as I filled it lovingly with seed. Within a week we had hundreds of birds taking advantage of the continuous flow of free and easily accessible food.

But then the birds started building nests in the boards of the patio, above the table, and next to the barbecue.

Then came the poop. It was everywhere: on the patio tile, the chairs, the table .. Everywhere!

Then some of the birds turned mean. They would dive bomb me and try to peck me even though I had fed them out of my own pocket.

And other birds were boisterous and loud. They sat on the feeder and squawked and screamed at all hours of the day and night and demanded that I fill it when it got low on food.

After a while, I couldn't even sit on my own back porch anymore. So I took down the bird feeder and in three days the birds were gone. I cleaned up their mess and took down the many nests they had built all over the patio.

Soon, the back yard was like it used to be .... Quiet, serene.... And no one demanding their rights to a free meal.

Now let's see.

Our government gives out free food, subsidized housing, free medical care and free education, and allows anyone born here to be an automatic citizen.

Then the illegals came by the tens of thousands. Suddenly our taxes went up to pay for free services; small apartments are housing 5 families; you have to wait 6 hours to be seen by an emergency room doctor. Your child's second grade class is behind other schools because over half the class doesn't speak English.
[We don't have "second grade" in Canada. We have Grade 2 -- JC]

Corn Flakes now come in a bilingual box; I have to 'press one ' to hear my bank talk to me in English, and people waving flags other than 'The Maple Leaf' are squawking and screaming in the streets, demanding more rights and free liberties.
[Corn Flakes come in a bilingual box in Canada, and banks offer messages in two languages, because Canada is a bilingual country: French and English. The original this is copied from refers to Spanish in the US, and the original didn't say "The Maple Leaf", it said "The Stars and Stripes" -- JC]

Just my opinion, but maybe it's time for the government to take down the bird feeder.

If you agree, pass it on; if not, Just continue cleaning up the poop .

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How about option 3?

If you don't agree, try to hold your breakfast down while you think about the fact that someone actualy wrote this about other human beings, and someone you know saw fit to spread it around.

Talk about poop.

But there's no way of cleaning this kind up, unfortunately.

Janey

Am totally "gob smacked" by that example - it is all totally beyond
my comprehension - I have never read or even seen an email of that ilk

I think once again I am at the back of the queue - blissfully unaware what is happening at the front -

And - I am extremely sad to say this

Renes

COR THIS TOOK SOME READING

I STILL DONT UNDERSTAND IT ALL

SO CONFUSED AS USUAL .COM IS ME

Yeah, eh, Irene?

What it all is, unfortunately, is *insidious*.

All these things are written as if it were the voice of reason speaking. It's written to draw you in, to leave you with nothing to *disagree* with. But when it isn't lies, it's pure hate. And there really are reasons why people tell those lies and incite that hate.

It's particularly galling when it's Canadians perverting our own Canadian reality by adopting the crud that originates in the United States. This was a particularly amusing one:

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Wilfrid Laurier ideas on Immigrants and being an Canadian in 1907.

'In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes a Canadian and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man be cause of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet a Canadian, and nothing but an Canadian...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is a Canadian, but something else also, isn't an Canadian at all. We have room for but one flag, the Canadian flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the Canadian people.'
Wilfrid Laurier 1907

Every Canadian citizen needs to read this!

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The funny part is ... Wilfrid Laurier was a French Canadian. (Prime Minister, 1896-1911.)

So yes, of course, he said "We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language".

How stupid are bigots anyway??

Really stupid.

A quick google found me the truth -- at a Canadian army discussion board, of all places.

"Just thought you'd want to know before passing it along, though, that this is word-for-word (except for "Canadian" instead of "American") from a letter to the editor Teddy Roosevelt wrote in 1919."

Teddy Roosevelt wasn't the good Roosevelt. That was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt was the war-mongerer ...

RUNS OF THREAD
NOT CLEVER ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND THIS

Janey, sorry to digress... re Anne of green Gables, as we were discussing the other night, the book 'Rilla of Ingleside' has a character whose dog is called Wilfred Laurier, now I know for whom it was named lol.

Dizzi --

I think you're smart enough not to get taken in by garbage like this stuff!

I think we probably all are. ;)

The people who compose this stuff are treating us like idiots. We shouldn't fall for it.

Now that example is horrible - really. I would be greatly offended if I was sent that one. I can however understand that your mother would find it difficult to chastise a friend for sending something like that. I was deleted by a "friend" on FB for taking her to task after inviting me to join a group called "Australians only for Australia" - funny really as neither her nor her husband was born in Australia.

Having said that - the example is blatant in it's bigotry. Some are way too obtuse and people don't always read the insidious message behind the words.

S

I have an internet contact who lives in the US ... she quite often sends me emails similar to the ones that Janey c&p'd ............... onyl written from the US point-of-view.

Then weeks or months later the Canadianized version comes around.


I find them quite sickening.


Equally sickening are some of the ones using members of the forces in Afghanistan as examples of what "we" should be fighting for, and what will happen if "we" let all these foreighners in.





Suemaid

I quite often find that immigrants are more rabid about "xxxxians for xxxxx" (insert whichever country you like!) than are the native-borns.



sylvia

I would like to point out that while some were offended by the email I posted that was never my intention at all, it was mean't to be a look at lack of common sense - obviously me -, and nowhere in said email was there any kind of rascist comment or slur against Canadians or any other nationality. I am NOT a rascist and never have been and some of the postings on this thread might lead people to believe that what I originally posted had a rascist content, it did NOT. Maybe you could make that clear Janey.

Cath x

I'm happy to clarify that, Catherine. There was nothing directed against racial or religious minorities in that email.

My point is that I see it as part of the whole body of these things that circulate, that present a worldview that is based on falsehood, and that convey values that aren't good old-fashioned common sense, they are hurtful and harmful.

The email in question did contain a couple of things that were aimed directly at the rights women have fought for. It bemoaned school policies that treat six-year-old boys kissing female classmates as uacceptable, and that protect the privacy of girls and young women with unwanted pregnancies.

I don't see those policies as evidence of absence of "common sense". I see them as progress, and evidence that these days actually are better than the good old days.

Schools have policies that protect girls against unwanted sexual contact, and that's a good thing, not a bad thing -- and it's important that this attitude be required of students from the start, and that means six-year-olds. And policies that protect girls with unwanted pregnancies if they are afraid of their parents' reactions, and that too is a good thing, not a bad thing. Those policies are common sense. If common sense includes consideration for other people and their needs, and not just what we want.


The email listed four things that common sense taught us:

- Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
- Why the early bird gets the worm;
- Life isn't always fair;
- And maybe it was my fault.

"And maybe it was my fault" -- that was the one that McDonalds needed to learn, and had to be taught, if its parents failed to teach it. It was its fault that the women suffered serious harm -- at least, according to the jury, it was 80% its fault.

Life isn't always fair, but people -- and corporations -- are supposed to be. And that really is one of those values we're supposed to learn from our parents: fairness. Since fairness in our relations with others is for our own benefit too, that's also common sense.

Also while Janey seized one small part of said email, there was nothing else in it that could have caused offence to anyone. I think Janeys issues are with her mothers friends and Canadas neighbours. Perhaps a word to said friends would be a good idea and put an end to distress caused.

Cath x

Sounds a bit like Chinese Whispers to me,Starts as one thing and ends uprely different. However, I personally know of some one who works for a Charity, ( No Names No Pack Drill ) he lives in a very Large house ( With a Susidised Mortgage Provided by same Charity,Has top of the range car.( Provided) very good expenses and a very generous wage.While the people who do all the work in the shops etc. do it for free.( Most of them ) meybe thats why lots of people are a but sceptical of large charities and prefer the local ones. Re McDonalds,Personally I think they are the most uncivilised way of eating food,so there is no way I would ever get scalded by coffee or anything else from there. Just my opinion for what its worth.**M**.

I think, Catherine, you should refrain from attempting to mind-read.

My issues are with people who circulate falsehoods, whether by email, by internet discussion board, at the pub or over the kitchen table.

My issues are particularly with people who circulate falsehoods expressly designed to turn other people against disadvantaged people, disadvantaged groups of people or social policies to help disadvantaged people.

That is what the "obituary for common sense" that you were happy to pass on was designed to do. And your apology is sounding extremely hollow.

I'm happy to reproduce the screed in question, since you continue to make an issue of it, although that was not really what this thread was about -- it was about the one false tale it told, and the lessons we might learn from the telling of such tales.

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Dont know if you've seen this one before but It makes you think.

Obituary to COMMON SENSE printed in the London Times.

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, COMMON SENSE, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

- Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
- Why the early bird gets the worm;
- Life isn't always fair;
- And maybe it was my fault.

COMMON SENSE lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children are in charge.

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a six year old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student only worsened his condition.

COMMON SENSE lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

It declined further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted an abortion.

COMMON SENSE lost the will to live as the churches became businesses and criminals recieved better treatment than their victims.

COMMON SENSE took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar sued you for assault.

COMMON SENSE finally gave up the will to live after a woman failed to realise that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. SHE spilled it in her lap and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

COMMON SENSE was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility and by his son Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers:
- I know my rights
- I want it now
- Someone else is to blame
- Im the victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realised he had gone. If you still remember him pass this on, if not join the majority and do nothing.

I thought I'd pass it on,

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Janey I would not even try to read your mind. My apology was not hollow. I am sorry you were offended but some of your remarks are every bit as offensive.
As for me making an issue of the whole thing you might like to also re-read some of your own posts.

To anyone else reading this thread I am genuinely sorry if I've upset you.
Cath xx

Janey - Catherine's apology isn't hollow. I believe she is genuinely mortified at the thought of offending anyone. As I have said - I can see your point but give it a rest now...eh? I think we get the message.

S

I'll never understand this "offending" business, I fear. It seems that in England, that's what one apologizes for, and one couches it as an apology "if" one has offended, no matter what one has actually done. It has nothing to do with anything in this case, but as I said, whatever.

Thread has reached its natural conclusion, hopefully.