kar0ling

On the longest night, we gathered at Home Street Mennonite Church for an Advent vigil for Palestine. The liturgy below was adapted from  Preach Palestine 2025: Advent of a revolution and birth of a movement by Freedom Church of the Poor; FOSNA; Kairos - the Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice and Red Letter Christians: God with us: faith in the face of genocide and the service was a response to the Red Candle Advent challenge . In longing and grief, we also heard about Kairos II, the “Moment of Truth,”  whose challenge we took up to name occupation , apartheid , and genocide . From Preach Palestine, opening reflections included... “We live in a time of monsters. “The story and tradition of Advent reminds us that the time of monsters is also a time of powerful expectation. A time when we see the signs of something new breaking through. “The Advent story was intended to affirm a new way, realized in the lives and struggles of the poor and dispossessed, that se...

It’s not just Gaza anymore (it never was). The attempted erasure of Palestinians from the West Bank – the West Bank *of the Jordan River*, not of Israel – is ramping up. The spitefulness of the tactics is appalling: in a moment of climate change, in a precarious desert-adjacent ecosystem, would who uproot thriving olive trees that are 100s of years old, providing shade, water cycling and beloved food? And so, a letter to the foreign minister courtesy of Kairos Canada (not to be confused with Kairos Palestine).  I am deeply concerned that the Israeli military and settlers are escalating the displacement,  dispossession and violence of Palestinians in the West Bank.  Ms Anand, your failure to say anything substantive in condemnation of Israel’s denial of entry to 6 MPs deepens that concern. In a recent report (Dec 4, 2025) the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) provides the following update on the humanitarian situation in the West Bank (Januar...

...but sent anyway. I discovered the link to this message languishing in my inbox long after the budget had been voted on but I still wanted to get my voice out on this subject.  This message is too late, I know. The budget has passed -- because our silly system forces budgets to be nonconfidence votes, which is the exact opposite of collaboration and negotiation, which is how budgets should be approached by all parties seeking the best for Canadians -- and I didn't get this message to you in time to urge you to vote it down.  But budgets are always a plan not a fait accompli, so I'm writing anyway, in hopes there is the possibility to alter course.  I am alarmed by the federal budget tabled by the Carney government. The corporate handouts, vast expansion of military spending, and outright attacks on public services will hurt everyday people and put more public money in the hands of corporations and billionaires (who, in case you aren't following why that's a problem, ...