Gauntlet - About: Eric Mathison

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Public policy events diversify
2010-08-12 - Eric Mathison, Opinions Editor

Students can expect a curriculum that spans beyond the classroom as the University of Calgary School of Public Policy will once again host its Harold N. Kvisle Academic Lecture Series. While last year's series was primarily focused on regional issues, such as energy and business in Alberta, this year's series tackles a wider focus with 15 events planned throughout the upcoming year.

"We really tried to broaden our scope," said Emily Bailey, public policy's coordinator of executive programs and outreach. "Public policy is so multi-disciplinary, it involves fields such as economics, political science, international relations and business. Exploring the connections between these subjects is important for academics, government and the corporate world."
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Child soldiers aren't to blame
Omar Khadr deserves to be repatriated to Canada so that justice can be served
2010-08-12 - Eric Mathison, Opinions Editor

After years of interruption, the trial of Omar Khadr began Tuesday at Guantanamo Bay. Khadr, the youngest of the 176 men interred at Guantanamo, is a Canadian citizen. His story has become well-known: he was born in Toronto in 1986, moved back and forth between Pakistan and Canada and, after he moved with his family to Afghanistan in 1996, was captured by American soldiers following a firefight in 2002. In Afghanistan the Khadr family frequented Osama Bin Laden's compound. Khadr's father was arrested but released on insufficient evidence for the 1995 bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan.

Khadr was captured after being shot in the back twice. He allegedly threw a grenade after the firefight had finished which killed an American soldier. For the past seven years he has been held at Guantanamo Bay as two American presidents and no less than four tribunals have attempted to establish the legality of holding prisoners of war (though that title is avoided) and determine what ought to happen to them whether found guilty or not.
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After WikiLeaks, Afghanistan is the same but international law must change
2010-08-05 - Eric Mathison, Opinions Editor

Loose lips used to sink ships, but now they work in more mysterious ways. When the founder of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks received 91,000 classified U.S. documents, he must have known a jackpot had arrived. The military records were published on the WikiLeaks website July 25. Despite withholding another 15,000 documents at the request of the source, there is no doubt that the leak has endangered the lives of individuals previously protected.

Immediately the American government denounced the release of the files. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, and those responsible for the leak are morally culpable for the harm caused. Assange, an opponent of the Afghanistan war, maintains that the public deserves to have access to the classified materials as they give a detailed description of how the war has unfolded. WikiLeaks is an important interlocutor, he claims, and free speech justifies its actions.
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Arizona immigration reform: a bad solution to a real problem
2010-05-20 - Eric Mathison, Opinions Editor

Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico, is in the United States this week building ties between the two countries. Plenty of work is needed. Mexico is in the midst of attempting to decrease the power of drug cartels across the country, which are doing as much as they can to retain power. They're kidnapping, murdering and extorting to stay in business.

Calderon's chief concern at the meetings, though, isn't the war on drugs but the immigration bill Arizona passed last month.
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Editorial: Campus Pro-Life has a right to speak
2010-05-13 - Eric Mathison, Opinions Editor

Editorial - For a brief spell it looked like Campus Pro-Life was safe. The trespassing charges the university laid last year were dismissed before the case went to trial, and CPL thought they had won their case. But after the group put up their provocative display again in April, the university charged the members of the group with non-academic misconduct.

The university administration has responded poorly. Having threatened action for years, the university should have acted more promptly to handle this situation. When the real charges were stayed, the administration acted in bad faith by issuing violations. The situation was aggravated by the manner of the hearings: blocking legal representatives from attending and prohibiting the accused from making their case (or even asking questions) makes the administration's case look weak. Their covert handling of this issue is cowardly.
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The Catholic Church deserves investigation
2010-04-08 - Eric Mathison, Fighting Words

Column - The Vatican is in a tough spot. When news broke over a month ago that Irish Cardinal Sean Brady admitted to taking part in a secret tribunal to make rape victims take an oath of secrecy, the Vatican had enough to deal with. Then, things got worse. Reports arose detailing the cover-up of Rev. Peter Hullermann's abuse of children in Germany. This abuse came to the attention of church authorities in 1980 when Joseph Ratzinger, then archbishop of Munich and current pope, was in charge of Hullermann's area.

Never before has such condemning evidence found a pope personally responsible. America saw a far-reaching scandal in the 1990s and Europe is now undergoing the same event. Each week new cases are being brought forth. The most shocking thing about each case is that they all have the same thing in common: evidence of a concerted effort by church authorities to protect the rapists from secular law. In Ireland, details about police involvement in those cover-ups makes the situation worse. The Vatican is increasingly finding itself between a rock and a hard place, and they are actively trying to ensure that the metaphorical walls don't become the walls of a prison cell.
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The cure for the common e-reader? Espresso!
Espresso Book Machine solves many electronic dilemmas
2010-04-01 - Eric Mathison, Fighting Words

Column - Last August, I wrote an article discussing the imminent fall of the book. The e-reader, I suggested, was going to overrun the market just as soon as people realized what a great idea it was for many of the uses that the traditional book fills. Few agreed with me. There is something important about the physical book, they said. I agree: lacking a television in my apartment, the books that my partner and I have collected are something like a status symbol. Even though I haven't ready the majority of novels she has -- as a masters student in English, she has quite a few -- their presence inspires me to write.

A book is tangible; you can hold it in your hands. E-readers, as they are now, don't seem to be a good replacement because all of the reasons for collecting books -- like having bookshelves with lots of books on them -- are rendered unnecessary. When the iPad was announced, hopes rose. Perhaps Steve Jobs and his armada of geeky-cool workers would be able to make the e-reader fashionable. But the iPad isn't the panacea some were expecting. Its screen is similar to a computer, so reading on it for long periods of time is arduous. It really isn't a replacement for many of the things we carry around (it can't take pictures, for instance, or make phone calls). Instead, it's more like another thing to add to all the others.
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The case against home-schooling
Recent cases show it's not an acceptable measure
2010-03-25 - Eric Mathison, Fighting Words

Column - Two cases in the last month have brought Germany's education policy under scrutiny. In the first, a family fled to America, sought asylum and were granted it by a Tennessee judge, because the parents wanted to home-school their children. The second is much the same, but it strikes closer to home: after fleeing Germany for Denmark, a family ended up in Canada because Germany doesn't allow home-schooling. This past Tuesday, the family went before the Alberta Immigration and Refugee Board to plead their case.

Seldom does a developed country have to decide to give asylum to people from another developed country. Germany isn't a cultural backwater where people are denied basic human rights, but the lawyer for the Alberta family is arguing that in this case rights are being denied. Parents, the argument goes, have a right to raise their children how they see fit. If the parents decide that the educational system is inappropriate for their children, then they should have the right to educate them themselves.
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Our national anthem needs revision
What kind of love is "patriot love," anyway?
2010-03-11 - Eric Mathison, Fighting Words

Column - "O Canada" has a storied past. Canada's national anthem was commissioned in 1880 by the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec for that year's Saint Jean-Baptiste Day ceremony. Some of the English version used today was penned in 1908 by Robert Stanley Weir, who wrote new lyrics instead of using the French version. Weir's lyrics were amended twice in the 20th century and the variation, in addition to the French, became Canada's official national anthem in 1980. People rarely think about it. Besides hockey games and Remembrance Day it rarely gets played, and even then it isn't sung with much gusto.

In the speech from the throne last week, Michaëlle Jean, Canada's Governor General, announced that a committee would be formed to consider rewording a portion of "O Canada." The line, "True patriot love in all thy sons command," is problematic. For one thing, it is factually incorrect. Canada may inspire some men to be truly patriotically in love with it, but not all (The "true" was taken from a Tennyson poem; it means faithful or loyal). The bigger problem is that it leaves out more than half of the population of Canada. Presumably Canada's daughters should be allowed to love and feel faithful and patriotic towards it. The line as is suggests that women can't feel emotion or that Canada doesn't command it.
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Baby Isaiah should be allowed to die
2010-02-25 - Eric Mathison, Fighting Words

Column - In late October, a boy was born in Rocky Mountain House. His umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and, by the end of the 40-hour labour, the baby needed to be flown to Edmonton to be placed in neonatal intensive care. Over two months passed before doctors determined that the boy -- Isaiah James May -- had severe oxygen debt during his delivery and would be permanently damaged. With that, the doctors sent a letter to the Mays, informing them that Isaiah would be taken off of life support within a week.

That was in January; Isaiah is still on life-support. His parents challenged the doctors' decision in court and the judge decided that additional time was permitted for an independent assessment of Isaiah by a specialist not related to the hospital. Dr. Richard Taylor from Victoria performed the examination last Friday; the case will go back to court on March 11.
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