The Tamils Aren't Refugees

When the UN isn't on the side of the Tamil refugees, you know the refugee ships should be looked at with skepticism.

Sri Lanka's brutal 26-year civil war, one marked with ghastly terrorist actions by the Tamil Tigers (including the invention of the suicide bomber, a now widely used horror), finally came to a close last year. I therefore find it odd that in the year of the closet thing to peace the country has known in a generation, Tamil "refugees" are now arriving in Canada.

In July, the UN said that the country was no longer in such dire straits that refugees should be accepted no-questions-asked. Instead, now that the war is over, any refugee claims should be closely considered and evaluated on their merits. There are serious questions as to whether these people are Tamil terrorists, or terrorist sympathizers, a distinction which should mean little. There are suggestions that the Tamil diaspora in Canada, the largest anywhere other than Sri Lanka itself, is using this country to organize, fundraise, and recruit for a future effort to restart the civil war. There is also questions about Canada's Tamil population. As you'll remember, thousands of Tamils in Toronto shut down traffic in the city last year when the Tamils were being defeated in Sri Lanka. So many Tamils showed up to the protest that authorities noted that we didn't even know that many were in Canada. With these many questions, this much concern, Canada should be taking a much firmer approach with dealing with these refugee boats, of which there are already reports of two more preparing to depart Sri Lanka.

Racism is the go-to attack today

Read a great article today by Victor Davis Hanson about using the charge of racism to silence your opponents and critics. You can read it here.

"We live in a complex, multiracial and religiously diverse society. A majority of black voters in California opposed gay marriage. Most Muslims probably concurred. Some 70 percent of Americans expressed support for the Arizona law, an overwhelming figure that would have to include some Asians, blacks and Hispanics. White and Hispanic congressional officials have faced ethics charges, often more serous than those leveled against Rangel and Waters.
In other words, there is no simple ideological, racial or religious divide between a monolithic "us" and "them." Instead, we have devolved to the point where promiscuously crying "Bigot!" and "Racist!" signals a failure to persuade 51 percent of the people of the merits of an argument.
It is too often that simple -- and that sad."

Enforcement Works? Get OUT!

Stumbled across this article in the Vancouver Sun last week and couldn't beleive what I was reading. Just look at the headline "Vancouver's homicide rate on pace for record low due to anti-gang efforts." Note that due to in there? You mean, the enforcement of laws and punishment of criminals may actually reduce crime and recidivism? Who would have ever thought, eh? What I propose going forward is we try to apply this novel concept to drug dealers, murderers and thieves too. Maybe if our "justice" system--and nothing deserves those quotations more than "justice" in Canada--actually punished the people who steal our cars, shoot up on our streets and murder our neighbours, we might see even less of these crimes and people might begin to have more confidence in our legal system.

BC Lottery Lawsuit a Joke

A gambling addict in BC has filed a lawsuit against the BC Lottery Corp. because it didn't do enough to stop her from losing over $331,000 in its casinos. Joyce May Ross says she couldn't help herself from gambling and even though she signed up for the self-exclusion program, she was allowed to continue gambling. The self-exclusion program involves the gambling company putting your name on an exclusion list, taking your photograph and having you sign a contract agreeing to not enter a BC casino for 6 months, with penalties up to $5000 in fines available for those who go anyways. Sounds like a reasonable program to me. But Ms.Ross just couldn't help herself, and even though she had signed up for the program, sh went back to the casinos, over and over and over until she had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now she's blaming the government and wants it to pay her back the money she lost. Can I get in on that? I dropped 60 bucks in a Wheel of Fortune machine and all I got was a smile from a digital Pat Sajak. There was no digital Vanna, or it was so waif-like that I missed it. But regardless, could I get reimbursed now too, now that I've had time to think about it and knowing that it didn't end with bells and whistles? I wonder if this lawsuit would still be waged if after Ms. Ross snuck back into the casino she had struck proverbial gold. I bet not and that's the safest wager around.

The NDP has predictably come a-running, backing this lawsuit with vigour. "She's a victim," they cry. "Oh horrors," they scream. "The government should have helped her," gaming critic Shane Simpson wails. Well, what about personal choice and responsibility? This woman chose to gamble. She made that choice besides not having the money for it, besides having been self-excluded, besides being told not to come back. She put the quarter in the machine, and she made the choice again, and again, and again and each time she sent the slots spinning, she made the choice again.

Is another government program really what we need here? More educational commercials? More money coming from hard-working taxpayers to fund some bureaucratic project to help people who don't even help themselves? Clearly, what is instead needed is an emphasis on personal responsibility. I know that in today's world, an especially in the Vancouver part of the BC part of the Canada part of today's world, personal responsibility is largely unheard of. We give hand-outs to everyone, treatments for everything, we are ordered to feel sympathy and understanding for all sorts of bizarre behaviour. But nonetheless, personal responsibility is what we need here and that is what Ms. Ross needed too. While it is easier to look to government to blame, to blame society, to blame addiction, to blame someone, anyone, other than yourself, the buck stops with you. And in this case, if Joyce May Ross had made the buck stop with her, she'd have at least one more buck than she has now.
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SarahPAC

sigh :)