Telling People Things They Don't Want To Hear

Fellow Canuck Irshad Manji fiercely condemns Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank and other crimes against the long-suffering Palestinians, but she is also capable of defending Israel, especially against ridiculous charges that it is "an apartheid state." She points out that Arabs in Israel can vote, and are eligible for election, and in fact Israel granted voting rights to women and the poor for the first time in Palestinian history. Manji suggests that there's an important question that's extremely helpful in navigating through the weird mire of arguments about Israel: Who's willing to hear what they don't want to hear?

Elsewhere, philosopher Stephen Gimbel asks impertinent questions about how it came to pass that the Left ended up nearly incapacitated by its own contradictions in the challenge posed by the corporate-evangelical alliance in the great global-warming debates. Looking for answers, he's onto something: "Whether it was the rise of McCarthyism or a sense of displacement in their adopted home, the European scientific left stopped being overtly political. But the humanistic side, with the arrival of Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno, continued to wage their side of the battle. With the scientific left quiet, the anti-scientific contingent won the day, largely shaping the character of the intellectual left after the first half of the 20th century."

More on the embattled "pro-science" Left in these exchanges; other stuff people don't want to hear can be readily found via Butterflies and Wheels, and in the Globe and Mail, Nigel Fisher, president of Unicef Canada, reports:

"In 2001, an estimated 30,000 Afghans (mostly children) died of measles. Thanks to an enormous increase in immunization efforts, supported by the Canadian government, measles deaths have markedly declined. More than 43,000 women are enrolled in literacy centres around the country, including almost 1,000 Kandahar-area women who recently graduated and are now able to apply for employment that was formerly beyond their reach. In 1999, under Taliban rule that banned girls from school, just 3 per cent to 6 per cent of girls were receiving an education, mostly in secret home-based schools. Enrolment increased by 30 per cent thanks to heightened efforts in 2002 and 2003, including public education, teacher training and the provision of school supplies. Despite recent security threats, enrolment levels now stand at 66 per cent for boys and 40 per cent for girls. Millions of girls and boys are now in school."

But it's an uphill grind, the CBC reports:

"Canada's military says it only has half the doctors it needs to serve in Afghanistan — 40 instead of 80. To fill the gaps, the military has been hiring local civilian doctors. In Canada, the military needs 150 family physicians, but only has 120. "There is a critical need for specialists right now, in particular in areas of general surgery and orthopedics," Lt.-Col. Randy Russell, who is in charge of recruiting physicians, told CBC News."