
In End of the World: Civilization and Its Fate, philosopher Jon Mills reflects on the Taliban attack with machine guns and explosives on a school in Peshawar, in which 132 schoolchildren were slaughtered. The act is almost incomprehensible. “The immediate dislocation of understanding any rational means behind such atrocities,” he writes “is emotionally unfathomable for the simple fact that it disrupts our psychic need for a moral order in the universe.” It represents a “pathological breach” in our implicit conviction that we live in a civilized world. “It takes only one act of barbarism,” he concludes, “to remind us that evil is no illusion.” Of course, the single act of barbarism can be and is multiplied exponentially all over the world every moment of the day, but there exists one world-historical belief system in which such occasions are both justified and mandated.
h/t PA Cat

The recently appointed chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission says he has agreed to resign today after an investigation into comments he made in the past related to Israel.
Anthony Furey is running for council. He owes some explanations to the Muslims he seeks to represent




An extremely dangerous Somali migrant, who had previously killed a man by stabbing and beheading him, was inexplicably let out of a psychiatric ward for an escorted visit to the cinema on Thursday, August 8th, during which he escaped,
As far as breaches of the peace go, Dominic Cardy’s effort last week looked pretty tame. The former New Brunswick cabinet minister and current independent MLA was in Toronto with his wife when he noticed the ruckus from hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters thronging the city’s Yonge and Dundas intersection.

