Those old terrorist tendencies – 19th Century

2014/12/08 Leave a comment

Valid points, reminder that extremism, terrorism and radicalization have long been with us, with just the particular ‘flavour’ being different:

It helps us understand lone terror improvisers of today to look at their forebears in the mass, as provided by the forgotten history of the 19th century. Certainly, it reminds us that our time is just a great deal less violent. And it suggests that Islam is more or less an excuse, a convenient outlet for revolutionary fervour. But the main lesson we instinctively know already: that the trick is not to let terror take hold of us, to maintain our democratic temperament in the face of what are essentially accidents.

Those old terrorist tendencies.

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Refugee health cuts: Not cruel but unusual – Colby Cosh

2014/07/12 Leave a comment

Colby Cosh takes a self-critical look at journalists and commentators on how they influenced the refugee claimant healthcare decision:

This is pleasing to the ego, yet I am not as confident as Justice Mactavish that the Conservative cuts to the old refugee health arrangements are shocking to Canadians. One obvious problem with using pundits as an index of conscience is that people who are angry about something will write about it, and people who aren’t, won’t.

The old IFHP provided not only the health care ordinarily given free to citizens by the provinces, but also extra entitlements working Canadians typically devote part of their paycheques to, including drug coverage, vision care, dentistry and contraception. Refugee claimants typically became eligible for IFHP immediately upon setting foot in the country—and remained eligible until they were removed from Canada, even if their refugee claims failed. ….

These [diabetic Afghan, Colombian eye surgery] are hard cases that could have been rectified by means of modest tweaks. Justice Mactavish instead threw out the whole 2012 IFHP revision, citing a further panoply of ill-documented or downright hypothetical cases in which the effects of the revised IFHP might also be “cruel and unusual.”

This procedure has met with near-universal approval from journalists. We, after all, sort of helped write the ruling. But what if the Conservatives run against it in 2015, challenging the media’s reading of the nation’s “general conscience”. . . and they win? Should we really be so sure we speak for you?

Valid points, but part of the role of journalists is to draw issues to our attention, and the decision likely relied more on the testimony of doctors and healthcare experts than journalists. And the Government, as in so many cases, by aiming for simple and simplistic solutions, along with its apparent lack of evidence (not to mention rhetoric), did not help itself. Refugee health cuts: Not cruel but unusual.

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Calgary Mayor Nenshi’s diversity problem

2014/01/28 Leave a comment

I am not sure that greater attention to employment equity means that each and every group will argue for parity. That hasn’t been the case at the federal level, and there is something out of whack when senior management, in any organization, is monolithic:

Albertans really are colour-blind, most of ’em. They can afford to be. The province is an affluent land of individualistic, relatively independent farmers, entrepreneurs and non-union workers. But the broaching of racial grievance is not vexing only to those who are racists simpliciter. When well-meaning people hear the mayor talk about how there are not enough women and minorities in the upper ranks of Calgary’s government, they know perfectly well that, as soon as it does recruit some women and minorities, questions about minority women will follow. And then individual ethnic groups will start agitating for parity. And, before long, everybody is plunging into a thicket of mutually irresolvable claims and ad-hoc affirmative-action programs, with no one ever explicitly mentioning “quotas,” while overall institutional quality is neglected.

This is not what the mayor is proposing, but then, no one ever proposes such a thing explicitly. Nenshi’s complaint about city hall is obviously valid on its face—and yet the validity is quite irrelevant to the fears it will tend to arouse.

Nenshi’s diversity problem – Blog Central, Canada, Colby Cosh – Macleans.ca.

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