Blog about politics (mideast and pro-Israel, Canadian and local Montreal), world events, and random thoughts.

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The World I Know is updated on a semi-regular basis by segacs.

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1:59 PM
The Federal Government has announced legislation to legalize same-sex marriages by redefining the term "marriage":

The landmark legislation will be drafted within weeks, then sent to the Supreme Court of Canada for fine-tuning and put before the House of Commons in a free vote by MPs months from now. But the prime minister made it clear Ottawa would not impose the new law on religious groups, who can still refuse to perform same-sex weddings. Canada would join Belgium and the Netherlands as the only countries allowing gay and lesbian weddings.

"What we're doing at this moment might put Canada at the forefront of any solutions that exist," Chretien said.

I guess I should join other bloggers such as Damian Penny on weighing in with my opinion on the subject, which is that this is one of the best pieces of legislation tabled by the Liberal government since . . . well, in a long time, anyway. And it's long overdue.

I've heard a lot of BS arguments against allowing gay people to marry, usually by thinly-veiled homophobes who spout a lot of claptrap about "definitions" and whatnot. Some argue that it's a slippery slope to allowing other forms of marriage, such as marriages involving more than one person. Others seem to be perfectly happy to restrict the right to marry to heterosexuals, perhaps afraid that if gays can marry, we'll no longer be allowed to. I don't know. I've thought long and hard trying to come up with some rational explanation for their objections, and came up with nothing. It's not as though granting basic rights to someone else means that we have to give up any ourselves.

Especially considering no religious institution will be compelled to marry a same-sex couple, in much the same way that the Catholic Church won't recognize or remarry divorced people. If you want to follow the tenets of a faith that discriminates, nobody's stopping you, and there are plenty to choose from. Even Judaism discriminates broadly in who can be married in an Orthodox synagogue. But there are plenty of ministers (and even rabbis) out there who will gladly marry a same-sex couple, or else gay couples can be married in a civil ceremony. So why should the Federal Government be allowed to get in the way?

Marriage is essentially a contract. Sure, a religious marriage is considered holy, and any marriage is an affirmation of love and commitment. But why shouldn't same-sex couples be allowed to have that love or make that commitment? And why shouldn't they be granted the same privileges as heterosexual married couples?

I'm reminded of some of the arguments that were put forth before black people had the right to vote in the United States. "Voting is just for whites" or "Why would they even want to vote anyway?" or other ridiculous assertions like that one. Well, here we are again, in a time when we can no longer deny basic rights to 10% of our populations. Let's end discrimination once and for all.

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1:38 PM
Demergers are the hot topic everyone hates to discuss lately. After the PQ undemocratically forced through mergers of our municipalities, the new Charest government appears to be making good on its election promise to table legislation that will allow the whole fiasco to be undone.

To those of us who were royally pissed off at losing our cities, this should be welcome news. To the people with the "Je me souviens des fusions forcées" license plates, and to those who picketed in Dominion Square, it seems we were just waiting for the time when someone would recognize what a disaster the mergers were and allow us to undo it.

But, as Don MacPherson explains in today's Gazette, it's not that simple:

You can't go home anymore. Not if your home was one of the 212 municipalities forcibly merged into 42 by the former Parti Québécois government three years ago.

Sure, you'll be able to get back a town with the same name and boundaries as the one you had before it was annexed by Montreal or one of the other new megacities across the province.

But it won't be quite the same. The Charest government's demerger legislation, the second part of which was introduced yesterday in the National Assembly, doesn't flip the calendar pages back to November 2000, before your town was reduced to the status of a borough.

For one thing, it might lose the official bilingual status it had then - and still has now.

[ . . . ]

But wait, there's more. If you take advantage of the Liberals' demerger offer, you might also get higher taxes than you paid before, with less say in how the money is spent and maybe less service.

Looks like my hopes of being a Dollardian again are problematic indeed.

The merger was supposed to lower taxes. It raised them. It was supposed to increase services. It reduced them. It was supposed to make Montreal better able to compete internationally for investment and development. This remained unchanged.

So if merging was a disaster, and demerging would be another disaster, then why didn't they just leave our cities alone in the first place?

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1:28 PM
When it was first suggested that a Palestinian state would be nothing more than a terrorist-run entity, people scoffed at the idea. But now, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has offered to share power with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Both are extremist terrorist factions committed to Israel's destruction. Both enjoy widespread popular support among the Palestinian "we're not all terrorists, it's a stereotype" people:

In an attempt to persuade Hamas and other radical Palestinian factions to agree to a temporary cease-fire with Israel, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas offered to give the groups political representation in a newly formed body called the unified national leadership.

Abbas, who met with leaders of all the Palestinian factions in Gaza City Tuesday and Wednesday night, told them that PA Chairman Yasser Arafat agreed to form a unified national leadership within the PLO.

Abbas had a critical choice to make. He could confront Hamas and the other terrorist factions head-on, or he could capitulate to them. It looks like he chose the latter, and this is the worst possible news for the Palestinian people, who are being relegated to live under terrorist leadership for a long time in the future. Now, these terrorists will be given legitimacy in the Palestinian government:

Hamas leaders said following Tuesday's talks with Abbas that they might consider a proposal that restricts terrorist attacks to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Abdel Aziz Rantisi, one of Hamas's top officials who participated in the discussions, said his movement is studying the proposal according to which it would halt its suicide attacks inside Israel but continue targeting IDF soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Abbas himself has been quoted on many occasions making this distinction between innocent lives on one or the other side of the "green line". Apparently if you live in Tel Aviv, your life is worth more than if you live in Efrat.

The US government has been propping up Abbas, and will probably live to regret this, as he is making it clearer by the day that he intends to give the terrorists full reign and control over Palestinian society. I wish it were different for them. I wish they could break free of this oppressive leadership and institute a government willing to make concrete steps towards peace. I have untold sympathy for the millions of Palestinian people who keep falling victim to corrupt leaders that throw them at the mercy of the terrorist groups.

But my sympathy doesn't extend so far as to excuse terrorism and murder of innocent Israelis. Only the Palestinian people can decisively change their society by choosing en masse to reject Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and their terrorist ilk. And this doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime in the near future.

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7:25 PM
If it looks like a publicity stunt, and sounds like a publicity stunt, and smells like a publicity stunt . . . then instincts tell me this is probably just that.

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7:07 PM
A 7-year-old girl was killed in Israel today by Palestinian gunmen. Reuters, of course, just chalks the incident up to the "cycle of violence" terminology that refuses to assign blame:

Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli girl on a road near the West Bank, feeding a cycle of violence that has battered a peace plan Secretary of State Colin Powell will try to rescue in a new Middle East visit.

The attack on a car near Kibbutz Eyal in central Israel late on Tuesday was launched shortly after Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas failed in another bid to persuade militants to call a truce with Israel.

Medics said the dead girl was aged seven and identified two people wounded in the attack as her five-year-old sister and father. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting which the army said was carried out by Palestinians.

Just watch as the world excuses the murder of a 7-year old and the wounding of a 5-year old as politically correct. Sickening.

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10:26 PM
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has today's hysterical quote of the day:

"We call on Hamas to demonstrate that they are against all terrorist activities."

What are they putting in that wine?

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5:27 PM
What if . . . Gore had won the 2000 election?

The game of "what if" can be endless and pointless but it can also be fun. So I was thinking about what might have happened if the outcome of the 2000 election was different. What if the whole Florida ballot scandal never happened and Al Gore was voted into office in 2000?

In light of the events of the past few years, a lot of people might think that this would have been the worst possible thing for the US. But I'm not so sure. Because September 11th, 2001 would have happened no matter who was in the White House. Clearly, the US government had to strike back. Republican or Democrat, no US president could have reacted otherwise to an attack on American soil. The speeches might have been worded differently, but ultimately the reaction against Al Qua'eda and against the Taliban would have been military, just as it was - swift and decisive.

Where the difference might have come in is in events since. Oh sure, you could argue that a Democratic government might not have attacked Iraq. There's no way to really know but I somehow doubt that's the case. Faced with the same situation, the same set of facts, and the same military procedures, I have a feeling any government would have come to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein needed toppling. The world is a different place than it was in 2000.

So then what? Right now we have a polarized US - indeed, a polarized world. Bush is, to all but his supporters, only about a step worse than the devil incarnate. The decisions of his government are easily attacked and dismissed as hawkish, right-wing, gun-slinging Texas cowboy acts, when in truth Bush is merely acting on the advice of the experts 99% of the time. But as a Republican, he's an easy target.

But a Democrat making those kinds of decisions? Well, he'd be a bit tougher to attack, wouldn't he? For one thing, there would probably be a lot of money directed to CYA reports on politically-correct issues to try to appease the naysayers. For another thing, where would the Left go, after abandoning Gore? To the Republicans?

Ironically, it would probably have been a lot easier for Gore to get United Nations support and backing than it was for Bush. And as a result, the anti-American sentiment that is so heightened right now in Europe and around the world might not be nearly as prominent. It's one of the paradoxes of politics, that a dovish leader has an easier time making war, just as a hawkish leader has an easier time making peace.

Is this what would have happened if a few hundred ballots in Florida were counted differently in 2000? Short of inventing a time machine and changing the past, we obviously can't know. There are too many variables. But with the next election coming up in a little over a year, it makes interesting food for thought.

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2:23 AM
Tonight the fog was so thick that I could barely see ten feet in front of me. With the full moon out, and the dark mist covering the roads, driving through the rolling clouds felt like passing through some restless spirits, or ghosts, that were out for a stroll. Not that I believe in ghosts . . . but if there was ever a night to contemplate their existence, tonight would be a good one. Either that, or it would make a great backdrop to film a horror movie. The Montreal Witch Project, anyone?

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