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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10:48 PM
When democracy fails:

Democracy is a great thing. But it's imperfect - everyone knows that. Some things are just not meant to be decided by popular vote. Things like basic human rights and justice, for example.

Someone I was talking to (who shall remain nameless but he knows who he is) said it well. What would the result be, he asked, if they called a vote in Quebec asking people whether the Jews should be charged more tax than everyone else?

Or, to put it another way, democracy doesn't give three guys on a lifeboat with no food or water the right to kill and eat the fourth.

So when I see things like this, it really makes me squeamish:

Two federal Liberals are preparing a legal bid to have the Supreme Court butt out in favour of letting the "High Court of Parliament" settle the contentious issue of gay marriage. MP Roger Gallaway and Senator Anne Cools, both from Ontario, said Thursday they are asking the Supreme Court to allow them to appear as "interested parties" when, at the behest of the Chretien government, the court reviews the constitutionality of draft legislation redefining marriage as the "lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others."

Gallaway and Cools oppose allowing homosexuals to marry and say they believe Canadian sentiment is running their way.

What if this were rewritten but replace "gays" with "Blacks" and "to marry" with "to vote"? Think about that for a minute.

Human rights should not be decided by opinion polls.

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12:27 PM
This was the last thing on earth that embattled Air Canada needed to happen right now.

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12:22 PM
A flicker of good news, for a change: at least it's not SARS.

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12:20 PM
Less than two days after two terrorist bombings in Israel elicted a response from Sharon not to make any more gestures until the violence stops, Israel has done a 180 and is releasing more prisoners:

Israel began releasing more Palestinian prisoners Friday, but Palestinian leaders have said such releases in small numbers fall far short of their demands of a mass release.

A van believed to be carrying five prisoners emerged from the Damum Prison just outside the coastal city of Haifa early Friday.

They were among 68 Palestinian prisoners expected to be freed Friday.

Prison officials said others were released during the night, though it was unclear how many.

The 68 were held on criminal charges like illegal entry into Israel or car theft.

Palestinians demand that instead, Israel must free many of the 7,000 other prisoners it is holding, including uprising leaders, but Israel refuses to release Palestinians involved in terror attacks.

Excuse me, Palestinian demands for release??? Since when is Israel bound to uphold Palestinian demands for anything?

There have been no steps taken to stop the terrorism. None. It continues daily - truce or no truce. It is only due to Israel's security measures that there haven't been more fatal attacks lately.

There is no mention of prisoner release in the road map. Especially those arrested for terrorism. In fact, this isn't a main issue at all. It's being used to divert attention from the Palestinian non-compliance to the road map.

Israel is playing right into this strategy. It is clear that the prisoners released would have been freed soon anyway. So maybe it is using this as an attempted means to put off revenge attacks for the death of Islamic Jihad leader Muhammed Sidar. But if Israel really thinks that will work, then they really ought to know their enemy better than that.

Only in this twisted world can the death of innocent Israeli civilians be equated to the death of a Palestinian terrorist mastermind. And Israel keeps backpedalling, trying to frantically make further "gestures" to an enemy that wants nothing more nor less than its annihilation.

When will people learn?

Update: In even more "gestures", Israel has agreed to hand over control of 4 West Bank towns to the Palestinian Authority. Israel has also agreed to temporarily lift the siege of Yasser Arafat, allowing him to travel from his Ramallah compound to visit the grave of his sister, who died this week.

While the latter is a humanitarian gesture that probably will do little to alter Arafat's isolation from the so-called "peace process", the handing over control is one of the worst moves Israel can make right now.

Israel has set conditions on the transfer of control of Jericho, Qalqiliya, Tulkarem, and Ramallah:

She said the conditions include: "No terrorist attacks, the Palestinians begin to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure and the Palestinians create an apparatus for dealing with wanted people."

But the world media will ignore the conditions, which are certain in advance to not be met by the Palestinians. Terror will contine and increase, Israel will be forced to re-enter the towns, and the world will cry foul at Israel when they do so.

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10:04 PM
The power outage that has shut down New York, Toronto, Ottawa, Detroit, Cleveland, and virtually everywhere in between somehow managed to escape us in Quebec, for once. Maybe the gods of power figured we paid our dues with Ice Storm 98?

Like a lot of people I'm sure, my initial reaction was to ask whether it was terrorism. But now it seems pretty clear that it wasn't. CTV News is reporting that the cause was a fire at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, although they still seem to be trying to sort that out.

The impact is absolutely staggering. To me, it says a lot about how dependant we are on electricity. Literally nothing works without it - the lights are the least of the problem. Transportation, business, the stock market, ventilation, even drinking water . . . it's like mankind existed happily for thousands of years without electricity, but as soon as it was discovered, we moved ahead in a lit-up world so quickly that we can't survive without it anymore. I remember having these conversations during the Ice Storm, and hearing the panic again in 1999 as we approached the millenium with trepidation that everything would simply shut down. That didn't happen, of course, but the fear that it would just underscores this point.

I hope everyone in the affected areas makes it home safely and gets their power back soon.

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12:01 PM
Lybian dictator Muammar Gaddafi is calling for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has published a "white book" outlining his ideas for a resolution of the Middle East conflict. Gaddafi's plan for a bi-national Jewish-Muslim state, to be called "Israstine," is presented on a Hebrew language website in an attempt to promote his vision for peace directly to the Israeli public.

According to the website, Gaddafi's Israstine state would be based on the following basic principles:

- Return of Palestinian refugees to their land
- A multi-national state, based on the Lebanese model
- Free elections, under UN supervision
- Joint Jewish-Palestinian parliament
- Total dismantling of weapons in Middle East

As tempting as it is to dismiss this crackpot idea, it should be noted that this has been the de facto policy of the Palestinians, the surrounding Arab states, and their advocates since 1948 or earlier. It hasn't wavered. They all know full well that "Israstine" would take about 10 seconds to become Palestine, another Arab dictatorship and Muslim theocracy that expells its Jews or relegates them to second-class citizenship. Whoosh! Bye-bye Israel. That's been their wet dream for as long as Arafat's uniform has sported the map of "Palestine" as being the entire area of Israel.

Gaddafi's willingness to admit this in the press, and even to publish it on a Hebrew-language website, shows how bold the Arab leaders have become of late. They've realized they can openly call for Israel's destruction and the world will continue to support them, and throw them bones. This coming from Lybia, a brutal dictatorship with one of the worst human rights records in the world, and with no diplomatic ties with Israel. The same Lybia that chairs the UN Human Rights Commission.

In a backwards world, dictators can call for "one-state solutions" and nobody blinks an eyelash. The Palestinians can continue to blame Israel while refusing to take a single step on their cherished road map, and the world sympathizes. Innocent Israelis keep dying and the world blames them.

Well, hear this: "Israstine" will never, ever exist. Israel will keep on defending herself - alone and isolated if necessary - for as long as it takes until the world accepts the fact that the Jewish People have a state and it's here for good.

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10:53 AM
Hands off our boroughs!

Yes, Je Me Souviens des fusions forcées. And I probably always will.

When Pierre Bourque first floated the megacity idea, everyone thought he was a megalomaniac who had gone off his rocker. But alas, the mergers were forced through, despite the opposition of everyone who claimed they would result in higher taxes, reduced services, and lower quality of life.

Back then, we said "Hands off my city!" and implored the provincial government to leave well enough alone. They didn't listen. So now, instead of living in the city of D.D.O., I now have the dubious privilege of being a citizen of the borough of D.D.O./Roxboro.

And guess what happend? We now have higher taxes, reduced services, and lower quality of life. What a shocker!

Pierre Bourque was tossed out on his ass in the first megacity municipal election, widely despised in the suburbs for orchestrating this whole merger fiasco in the first place. I can't say I think Gerard Tremblay has done a wonderful job as mayor, but at least he's not Bourque. At least he's advocating decentralization, and giving borough councillors as much power as possible.

So now we hear that Bourque (having returned as opposition leader after a disastrous stab at provincial politics, running for the ADQ), has a new idea: it wasn't enough to merge the city, now he wants to merge the boroughs:

According to a report published Tuesday in La Presse, Vision Montreal's proposal calls for the merger of the former municipalities of the predominantly anglophone West Island into one or two boroughs.

The proposal from former Montreal Mayor Pierre Bourque's party would reduce the number of boroughs elsewhere in the city and eliminate the function of borough councillor.

This strategy seems fairly obvious. Consolidate as much power as possible under Montreal's reign, and eliminate even the remnents of decentralization that have survived the merger. Get rid of the last vestiges of Anglo influence by reducing all of the West Island to a single borough with no say, councillors, or power. Destroy any hopes of ever demerging and getting our cities back.

People might think it's a crazy idea, and it will never happen. But remember, they said that about the mergers too.

I have no great attachment to my borough, but having local representation has got to be better than feeding the Pierre Bourque power machine. So I call on suburbans to unite in one strong, unified voice. Let's write letters. Let's protest. Let's make sure that people know damn well what will happen if they vote Vision Montreal next municipal election. Let's tell them hands off my borough!

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8:22 AM
A pair of Palestinian suicide bombings killed two people, one in Rosh Ha'ayin, and one in Ariel. At least dozen other people were wounded.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they still insist that the "truce is intact".

Hah, right. This gives some excellent insight into their idea of a cease-fire. That's when they go on killing innocent people, all the while insisting that Israel make concessions because, after all, it's a truce.

Some truce.

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10:27 AM
An interesting column by Bret Stephens in the Jersualem Post on media bias, in which he claims that the BBC is no better than FOX News, and, in many ways, is even worse. Because FOX has a sort of self-awareness that it is often more of a parody of a news station than an actual news station. But the BBC thinks of itself as serious, and wants to be taken seriously:

According to a study conducted last year by Media Tenor, a Bonn-based media research group, 85% of the BBC's coverage of Israel was "negative"; another 15% was rated "neutral"; none was "positive." This has been going on for decades. Nobody noticed in part because Israel is far away, in part because the negative coverage conforms to existing prejudices. With the Kelly story, however, Israel's once-dismissed complaints about the BBC are beginning to seem like part of a larger pattern of questionable reportage and editorial spinning.

In other words, the journalism on offer from the BBC is often no less tendentious than what you get on Fox. This is not to say that it isn't better than Fox's: the breadth of the BBC's coverage is vastly greater, its biases are not so crudely expressed, and the general tenor of its programming isn't so sophomoric. But these advantages are offset by the fact that the BBC is so desperately in earnest. It really does see itself as an "independent" and "objective" voice merely because it isn't governed by considerations of profit. And it also sees itself as a bulwark of decency, duty bound to enlighten the masses and speak truth to power.

[ . . . ]

I'VE DEVOTED this column to Fox News and the BBC because they are often viewed as being the opposite poles of broadcast news: one baldly partisan, the other scrupulously objective; one populist-conservative, the other high-toned and cosmopolitan; one relentlessly profit-driven, the other "in the public interest." As with most poles, too, they have a great deal in common - political agendas and moral smugness above all. I resent both of them; one for having given a bad name to conservatives, the other for having given it to journalists.

Well worth a read.

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10:18 AM
Lynn rings in on the subject of gay marriage, and of course says everything I would have wanted to say, but better than I ever could (as she so often does):

For the record, the only real argument I've ever heard against homosexuality is Biblical. The Bible says it's bad, end of story. That's what people mean when they say it's "unnatural." ("God created Adam and Eve, not . . . .") That's what they mean when they talk about protecting the "sanctity" of marriage. What "sanctity?" Marriage is a sacrament in the Catholic church. It's a religious rite of passage in the Jewish faith and in just about every other faith as well. Exclusive control over marriage has traditionally been usurped by religious authorities and they don't like giving up their grip on it because it's a very powerful institution to control.

Problem is, in this country, in the United States of America, we recognize civil marriage. In the United States of America, we recognize the rights of individuals to marry without the blessing of any priest, minister, rabbi, mullah or guru. In other words, without the approval of any god or his/her minions. Here in America, control over marriage is shared by religious institutions and our civil government. But the last word belongs to the state, not the church, and the First Amendment to our Constitution says that the rules and regulations of the latter do not govern or dictate to the former. Religious doctrine does not, can not and must not determine the rights of citizens under the civil law.

So if a gay couple wants to get married in a synagogue, they need to take that up with the rabbi. If they want to get married in a church, they're going to have to find a minister who'll perform the ceremony. A member of the clergy can say "I won't agree to do that because the Bible says it's wrong. What you want to do violates the religious beliefs of this institution." If you don't like it, you have to lobby to change it or find a different religious institution that's freed itself from this particular form of bigotry. But neither the U.S. government nor the governments of its constituent states or municipalities have any business discriminating against some citizens on the basis of Biblical invective let alone invoking such invective in support of such discrimination.

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