For the second Wednesday in a row, workers are braced for a round of the "affected" notices, which triggers a complicated process negotiated with the 18 federal unions that departments are using to manage job losses of more than 19,200 over the next three years. This will be the largest round of notifications so far but unions expect another next week.

Gary Corbett, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), confirmed the union was given the mandatory advance notice from departments last week that notices will be delivered to employees in 10 departments.

Canadians are willing to pay more taxes to help close the growing income gap and want corporations to pay higher tax rates too, according to a new poll released Tuesday.

The survey of 2000 Canadians, commissioned by the left-leaning Broadbent Institute, found that 23 per cent are "very willing" and 41 per cent are "somewhat willing" to pay slightly more tax in order to protect social programs such as health care, post-secondary education and pensions.

A majority of Canadians – even wealthy ones – are behind the idea of raising income taxes on people who earn more than $250,000 and more than $500,000. The poll found 83 per cent are in favour of that idea.

And 73 per cent agree with raising corporate taxes back up to 2008 levels. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has steadily lowered the rates since taking office in 2006, arguing the tax breaks help corporations create more jobs. The NDP and Liberals are opposed to the lower rates, saying they haven’t helped create new jobs and that corporations are just sitting on higher profits.

As a country, Canada ranked fifth behind a quartet of northern European nations — Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands, in that order — but well ahead of the United States and the United Kingdom, which ranked 11th and 18th, respectively out of 156.

Pointing to the “five important facets of life” — family, good health, income, sense of freedom and lack of corruption — Canada performs better than the United States in all but income, said John Helliwell, a University of British Columbia economist and co-editor of the 155-page report.

Why are governments paying private financiers to generate credit they could be issuing themselves, interest-free? According to Professor Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University, it was all part of a concerted plan by a clique of international financiers. He wrote in Tragedy and Hope in 1964:

The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.

Each central bank . . . sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.

A historical charity that receives millions of dollars from the federal government each year has been paying the Conservative Party’s main call centre company for fundraising work.

Historica-Dominion Institute has been using Responsive Marketing Group (RMG) for telephone fundraising to supplement the $5 million to $7 million the charity has received from the federal government over each of the past three years.

The privately-owned RMG performs voter identification and fundraising work for the federal Conservatives using the party’s sophisticated Constituent Information Management System (CIMS) database.

The company was thrust into the media spotlight last month when some RMG phone operators from Thunder Bay said they had filed complaints with the RCMP and Elections Canada about calls they made for the Tories during the last election campaign.

In a comment on my blog, arensb made a point on this topic that was so insightful, I'm still smacking myself on the head for not having thought of it myself. I was writing about how believers get upset at atheists when we reject religion after hearing 876,363 bad arguments for it, and how believers react to this by saying, "But you haven't considered Argument #876,364! How can you be so close-minded?" And arensb said:

"If, in fact, it turns out that argument #876,364 is the one that will convince you, WTF didn't the apologists put it in the top 10?"

Why, indeed?

If there's an argument for religion that's convincing -- actually convincing, convincing by means of something other than authority, tradition, personal intuition, confirmation bias, fear and intimidation, wishful thinking, or some combination of the above -- wouldn't we all know about it?

Wouldn't it have spread like wildfire? Wouldn't it be the Meme of All Memes? I mean, we all saw that Simon's Cat video within about two weeks of it hitting the Internet. Don't you think that the Truly Excellent Argument for God's Existence would have spread even faster, and wider, than some silly cartoon cat video?

If the arguments for religion are so wonderful, why are they so unconvincing to anyone who doesn't already believe?

And why does God need arguments, anyway? Why does God need people to make his arguments for him? Why can't he just reveal his true self, clearly and unequivocally, and settle the question once and for all? If God existed, why wouldn't it just be obvious?

It is not up to atheists to prove that God does not exist. It is up to believers to prove that he does. And in the absence of any good, solid evidence or arguments in favor of God's existence -- and in the presence of a whole lot of solid arguments against it -- I will continue to be an atheist. God almost certainly does not exist, and it's completely reasonable to act as if he doesn't.

Holding a can of iced tea and wearing a hooded sweatshirt should not arouse fear or suspicion in any American neighborhood. But popular culture's influence on the public is strong and leads people like Zimmerman to view the mere presence of a black youth as cause for alarm -- and in this case, deadly action. This is hardly surprising when primetime crime procedurals inundate us with storylines featuring young black men committing violent acts and dealing drugs. Movies routinely portray the American black experience as poor, violent and terrifying. When black men appear in the news, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, the stories are almost completely restricted to sports or crime coverage. Our society views young black men as inevitable criminals that we should lock away before they have a chance to do real damage. Geraldo Rivera serves as a perfect, if disgusting, example of how our country views young black men when he said, "No one can honestly tell me that seeing a kid of color with a hood pulled over his head doesn't generate a certain reaction -- sometimes scorn, often menace."

But the anger we feel over the loss of Trayvon cannot die with him; our work is only beginning. We must repeal "Stand Your Ground" laws so they are no longer used to protect people like Zimmerman who take the lives of innocent citizens. To change the law, we must first change minds. It is the responsibility of people like you and me to stop accepting distorted images of young black men in our popular culture and to transform the way our society views and treats black boys. Lasting change, however, requires our work to go beyond reforming any individual law to reaching hearts and minds and dealing with the underlying bias current cultural norms reinforce.

Pascal Abidor was riding an Amtrak train from Montreal to New York. (snip)...

A team of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers boarded the train and advanced through each car, questioning passengers. Pascal had made this trip countless times before, so when a customs officer approached him, he didn’t give it a second thought. But Pascal had never met Officer Tulip. After looking over Pascal’s U.S. passport and customs declaration, Officer Tulip asked two simple questions: Where do you live, and why?

Pascal answered that he lived in Canada. He lived in Canada because that’s where he was pursuing a PhD in Islamic Studies.

Next, she asked him where he had traveled in the previous year, and he answered Jordan and Lebanon. He showed her his French passport (he’s a dual citizen) with the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” stamp, and the Lebanese stamp with the little cedar tree on top.