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

""

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

Think I'm the greatest thing since chocolate-covered strawberries? Think I'm certifiably insane? E-mail me at segacs2.at.yahoo.ca.

Buy me a present! Visit my Amazon Wish List.

Frequently asked questions about me and this blog.

Atom site feed

Comments are open and unmoderated, although obscene or abusive remarks may be deleted. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of segacs's world i know.

---

<< List
Jewish Bloggers
Join >>

 
11:46 AM
The CSU council decided to ban Operation SICK from ever having the right to become an official club at Concordia... but the SPHR-cronies who pushed the ban vote through on council can't seem to decide on a consistent excuse.

-"We banned it cause it's racist!"

That's inconsistent to say the least.

-"No, I mean, we banned it cause it's affiliated with Israeli Hasbara."

So what?

-"We disagree with OpSICK's political stance."

But that doesn't give you the right to ban them.

-"Whoops, I meant that my problem is really that it's not honest about its affiliation with Hasbara."

Well, you found out pretty easily; it can't be THAT big a secret. Besides, how about a little honesty about who really funds SPHR?

-"Um, what I REALLY meant is that we banned it cause it's redunadant, there are already similar groups on campus."

Again, so what?

-"I mean... I mean... hell, it's run by pro-Israel people and we don't like you and we're not gonna let you become a club no matter what, so screw you and stop asking us for a legitimate reason cause we don't actually have one!"

And that, of course, is the crux of the matter. Council had no legitimate reason to ban Operation SICK (which, by the way, does not focus only on Palestinians, but on groups from countries all over the world who use child soldiers or incitement of hatred among children). They just decided that it was a group run by their "enemies" (read: Jews, Zionists) so they would come up with some reason to ban it. Just like they came up with a ridiculous excuse to ban Concordia Hillel last year.

|

 
11:15 PM
I'm very proud of myself. As a technical neophyte, I think that purchasing a new CD-RW drive and managing to install it - and get it working - in under an hour is a pretty good achievement, doncha think?

Maybe I should move to India and work for Dell tech support...

|

 
10:27 AM
It's a new record: I officially have not seen a single one of the Golden Globe-nominated movies for this year.

Frankly, I don't think I've missed much.

Update: After seeing the full list of nominees, I realized I've seen more of them than I'd thought. None of the best drama nominees for picture, actor or actress, but I did see two of the best comedy nominees and one of the best actress in a comedy ones.

What really pisses me off is the constant nomination of films that haven't even been released in theatres yet. Sorry, but can you say "marketing ploy" any louder?

|

 
10:25 AM
It's beginning to look a lot like... Chanukah!

|

 
10:14 AM
Michele has the scoop on PETA's new child abuse tactics:

PETA activists - including cuddly, costumed raccoons and foxes - are making guest appearances outside performances of The Nutcracker across the country this holiday season with a cheeky message of compassion. As children arrive to see the "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy," some will be unaware that their mothers are already starring in a real-life horror story! PETA will be there to greet any fur-clad moms and their children with their newest anti-fur leaflet-PETA Comics presents..."Your Mommy Kills Animals!"

Kids will see the bloody truth behind their moms’ pretentious pelts. Accompanied by graphic photographs of skinned carcasses and animals languishing on fur farms, children will read: "Lots of wonderful foxes, raccoons, and other animals are kept by mean farmers who squish them into cages so small that they can hardly move. They never get to play or swim or have fun. All they can do is cry-just so your greedy mommy can have that fur coat to show off in when she walks the streets."

I'm not a parent, but I can assure you that if I were and if someone tried to harass my kids in such a disgusting, manipulative way, I doubt any court would find me responsible for my actions.

If PETA activists are so concerned about the rights of animals, why don't they direct a little of that concern at the species of mammal called the human being?

|

 
12:41 PM
Harry from The View from Here got a big rock thrown at his car on his way to work yesterday (via Imshin):

I was driving to work on Road 443 bopping my head and rocking out to Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend album when I caught out of the corner of my eye a football sized rock coming over the hill to my right. When you are driving 120 kpm it's not that easy to evade object without losing control of the vehicle. I braced myself for impact as the rock came crashing down right in front of my car. Luckily, it missed me, slammed into the ground into a bunch of pieces and I drove right over it.

[ . . . ]

I reported it to the soldiers at the roadblock about ten minutes up the road. Road 443 goes through the territories and is no stranger to rock attacks and shootings. For awhile, it was pretty much a shooting gallery. There was a time that no one really took the road because of the danger. I think it was the newspaper Ma'ariv that dubbed it "The Road of Death."

Sheesh. Scary stuff. I had a big block of ice fly into my windshield yesterday, but that was due to a truck passing me, not some crazy terrorist wannabes who wanted to kill me. Not even remotely the same thing.

I'm glad Harry's ok. And I also predict that it will take about 12 seconds for someone to come on here and dare suggest that he "deserved" to be almost murdered because he's a Jew driving through the territories and a tool of the capitalist imperialist oppression, and what about those poor Palestinians, yadda yadda yadda.

|

 
11:29 AM
Liberté, égalité, fraternité... et stupidité:

President Jacques Chirac called on Wednesday for a law banning Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses from French state schools.

"In all conscience, I consider that the wearing of dress or symbols which conspicuously show religious affiliation should be banned in schools," he said in a televised speech on the long controversy over the role of religion in French public life.

"For that, a law is necessary," he added, urging parliament to pass legislation for the new school year in September 2004.

Great solution there, Jacques - let's pretend racism doesn't exist by covering it up and banning it. Sure.

|

 
1:49 PM
No, no, please, don't send me to Washington!!!

|

 
1:44 PM
Dennis Miller's back... on CNBC???

The hour-long show will ---in CNBC's own words --- bring Miller's "blazingly sharp comedic take on serious issues in his trademark take-no-prisoners, suffer-no-fools style."

[ . . . ]

"I met with Jeff (Zucker) and I liked the fact that CNBC was amping up its primetime schedule," Miller says. "I think it's an interesting play. I don't even think the line between news and entertainment is there anymore. Quite frankly, it's ripe to be obliterated. Treating Paris Hilton like the Hanoi Hilton is sort of ridiculous."

It is certainly nice to see that Dennis will be back on the air. I knew he'd land somewhere eventually... and it seems he'll have significant creative control of this show. But I somehow doubt he'll be able to get away with the kind of things he managed at HBO.

Should be interesting, anyway.

|

 
1:36 PM
Iraq to UN: You failed us:

Iraq's foreign minister accused the United Nations on Tuesday of failing his country by leaving Saddam Hussein in power for decades and appealed to the world body to assume a leading role in Baghdad immediately.

[ . . . ]

Zebari said the United Nations had failed to help rescue Iraq from "a murderous tyranny" that lasted more than 35 years and "today we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure."

"The United Nations must not fail the Iraqi people again," Zebari said.

[ . . . ]

Zebari accused the 15-member Security Council of being divided "between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wanted to hold him accountable" and said they should overcome the deep divisions over the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

[ . . . ]

Appealing for unity in the council, Zebari said "settling scores with the United States should not be at the cost of helping to bring stability to the Iraqi people."

Annan said Saddam's downfall was "an opportunity for a new beginning in the vital task of helping Iraqis to take control of their destiny -- of helping them to create a secure, stable and independent Iraq."

Of course, anti-Americans will dismiss everything Zebari says on the grounds that he's part of a US-installed government and therefore his opinion shouldn't count. But then, the anti-Americans have a long history of ignoring the actual thoughts and opinions of people who live in a country, in favour of what they believe is in their best interest. That kind of supremicist "they don't know what's good for them, we do" attitude is something I was under the impression was against liberal beliefs... but then, tell that to the guy chanting the anti-Bush slogan and trying to pretend that Iraqis would be better off still under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.

|

 
1:26 PM
Interesting reading: A column by Bret Stephens in the Jerusalem Post about the "Goodists" and why mere displays of good will are insufficient to bring about peace:

Thus, according to the Goodists, the great global challenges are poverty, hunger, disease and war. This may be true in the most general sense. But it sidesteps the hard fact that the real culprits are the foolish and sometimes ill-intentioned leaders whose policies lead to such things. Goodists would also contend that the real goal for nations at war is moral victory -- if necessary, by means of surrender -- rather than victory itself.

This is why the Goodists make a fetish of the concept of legitimacy. To liberate Iraq or not to liberate Iraq? About the only thing interesting about that debate was that so many "good" people actually believed that securing Security Council approval was morally a worthier goal than liberating 23 million people from the boot of a merciless tyrant. Or take the matter of Israel's security fence: Here again, it is left to Right-wingers to fret about militarily defensible borders, whereas to Goodists what matters is whether that fence meets with the approval of The Hague.

There's lots more.

|

 
11:07 PM
Meanwhile back at Concordia...

In the latest episode of "how the left shuts down any viewpoint they disagree with", the CSU council denied club status to Operation S.I.C.K., or Stop Inciting Children to Kill.

According to OpSick's website, the group is "is an independent network of students combatting the exploitation of children for armed conflict. We condemn any political group that recruits and incites children to hate and kill for political purposes, and view it as a flagrant violation of their basic human rights." Sections on its website discuss groups such as the Palestinian terror groups, the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, the New People's Army of the Philippines, and others that use children as weapons in warfare.

So what is the CSU so opposed to? Well, it seems OpSICK is loosely affiliated with Israeli Hasbara, and G-d forbid a pro-Zionist club earn the right to freedom of speech or freedom of assembly at Concordia! The horror!

Operation Stop Inciting Children to Kill was denied status as a CSU club. Councillors objected to the views of OpSICK's parent organization, as evidenced on its website, and told the group to disassociate itself with that some deemed an "obviously racist organization."

SPHR member Chadi Marouf said the organization was a "whitey-whitey group telling visible minority groups how to deal with their children."

Amazing, isn't it? They cry crocodile tears about their own "freedom of speech" being violated every ten seconds, but deny that right to anyone else. Next thing you know, you'll have to present your membership card in the Communist party before being allowed to vote in CSU elections.

Fucking dictatorship.

|

 
3:28 PM
Forgive me but I have to rant. (If you're a child or are sensitive, cover your eyes).

Stupid-goddamn-fucking-MORONIC-idiotic-Dell Tech Support!!!

First, Windows crashes. I nearly lose everything, and just barely manage to back up crucial documents before having to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows from scratch. 2 hours on line with tech support and I'm finally told "you have to format". Duh! Did they give you a prize for that, Einstein?

Flash forward a week, and to one of those horrifying blue screens reading "Hardware Failure: please contact your vendor". So I call. And I wait. And wait. And wait. Classical music interspersed with those "thank you for holding" preprogrammed messages that we all love so very much.

Finally a woman comes on the line and asks me for my service tag. I dutifully repeat it to her. She asks me to repeat it about 7 or 8 times until she's finally satisfied that she has it correct. Then she told me I called the wrong section, that I was speaking to home and small business tech support and I should be speaking to major accounts. I started to protest (after all, I'm not a "major account") but she had already put me back on hold.

Five minutes later, someone answers from major accounts. After putting me through the service tag exercise about another four times, he finally ascertained that I really wanted home and small business after all. Before I could even grumble about being switched back and forth again, I was back on hold.

Person number two at home and small business was more helpful. She suggested I turn my computer on and off and call if the problem recurred.

Yeah, thanks for nothing.

Well, surprise surprise, 48 hours later I'm sitting at my computer and the same blue screen comes up again. So, dutifully, I get on line with Tech Support at 1am. At 2:15, the annoying classical music finally gives way to someone who probably learned how to speak English off the top of a cereal box. I mean, far be it for a Quebec anglophone to be linguistically prejudiced, but sheesh buddy, you've been hired on a telephone tech support line and it would probably help if you could get a sentence out without having to repeat yourself 7 times.

Anyway, this tech support guy asks me to remove the side panel of my computer and start nosing around inside. At this point, I should probably explain that to me, a motherboard is something resembling a two-dimensional cutout photo of my mother. I am NOT tech-savvy. So both our patiences were wearing thin by the time I managed to figure out how to unlatch the padlock and actually open the damn computer.

Then, he told me something to the effect of "rotate the power supply and locate the memory chips" but it could just as easily have been Swahili to me for all I understood. Hey, I just use 'em, I don't build 'em. But he was getting fed up with me as well. I asked him what these pieces looked like. He told me that I should know. His descriptions were less than useless. "Horizontal" and "vertical" are NOT synonyms!!!

I finally got annoyed and said that I am still under warranty for tech support, and could a technician please come and do this diagnostic because I wasn't qualified to. Seems logical, right?

Wrong!

I found out that "tech support" doesn't mean having someone actually help to fix the computer. Silly me for thinking that! In fact, I was responsible for doing the diagnostic myself and only once it was determined exactly which part was defective, could a technician be dispatched to repair or replace it.

So what on earth is the use?

After about the twelvth time of biting my tongue and trying to explain to Mr. "How could you not know what the display card looks like?" anti-support-guy that no, I could NOT locate what he was trying to tell me, he snapped at me, "can't you find a friend or relative who actually knows something about computers to do this for you?"

Well, it was 3am by then and I was livid. I replied, "That's why I called you! You're tech support! You're supposed to know something about the computer!"

Needless to say, this 3am tug-of-words was not how I wanted to be spending my evening. My hopes of a decent night's sleep were dwindling by the second. In total and utter frustration, I finally asked if there was a supervisor or someone else there who I could speak to.

I think Mr. anti-support guy was happy to get rid of me. I waited for a few minutes listening to the classical music again, until someone else came on the line.

His English was just as bad as the first guy's... but at least he seemed willing to help and to concede that it's not necessary to have a computer engineering degree to qualify for some technical support. He patiently talked me through locating the parts inside the computer, and removing the memory cards one at a time to figure out which one was causing the problem. But, not being particularly skilled, I kept replacing them improperly. So by the time I got them back into their original configuration, it was 4:30am. And I knew I had no energy left for diagnostics.

At this point, I asked person number two what exactly he was intending for me to do. He said he wanted me to remove the cards one at a time, to see if I still got the error message. I explained (rather patiently, considering the circumstances) that the error had only happened twice in 3 days, and wouldn't show up immediately but that it could take days or even weeks to test. And I certainly had no intention of staying on the line to find out. At that point, it was time for bed, so I hung up, after person number two agreed to have someone phone me back the next day. Not show up to help, mind you - after all, what is "next day on-site support" good for if you actually have to send a technician? Nope, just to phone, so he could tell me the same useless crap as everyone else so far.

Gee, thanks a zillion!

So my hopes of actually getting my computer fixed before the warranty expires in February seem to be dwindling by the minute. And don't tell me that Dell hasn't thought of that. I may have to bite the bullet and actually pay for the damn repairs. Just as long as I don't have to spend yet another night staying up till 4:30am on the line with someone who would rather walk over hot coals than be helpful in any way.

Remind me never to get ripped off by taking any kind of extended warranty from Dell ever again. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need to go throw something at my computer.

Update: Well, I found out why nobody at Dell Tech Support was able to speak English properly. Turns out they've outsourced the whole operation to a call centre in India. So I guess I can't blame the support people for their English... but I can blame Dell for thinking this cost-cutting measure is a good idea. Silly me, I thought they'd discontinued the practice, but apparently only people with Optiplex or Latitude computers get North American support. Those of us with Dimensions are still stuck with the overseas scripted responses.

Update #2: Okay, one hour later and off the phone with yet another friendly Indian support guy. This one had me go through the whole 9 yards again, only to tell me that maybe it's the sound card that's causing the problem, so I should disconnect it and if the problem happens again, call back in the next 48 hours.

Er, I don't pretend to be that tech-savvy, so maybe one of you folks "in the know" can tell me if it's likely for a memory parity error to be caused by the sound card. Cause it seems a bit counter-intuitive to me. But clearly, Dell won't replace my memory modules until I rule out the sound card as the cause of the error... so I guess I'm stuck playing along for now.

AAAAAUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

|

 
10:52 AM
Well, it's the first heavy blizzard of the season.



And after digging my car out from under two feet of snow and then spending over an hour in traffic, I have to echo Terry DiMonte in saying "shame on the city for not getting the job done". Megacity anyone? More like mega-mess.

It didn't seem to depress these guys too much, mind you.

|

 
1:54 PM
Well, not everyone is cheering the news of Saddam's capture. The Palestinians are devastated by the news (via LGF):

For many ordinary Palestinians, the TV footage of a disheveled Saddam obediently submitting to a medical exam by his U.S. captors was painful to watch: it sealed the defeat of the one Arab leader they felt always stood by them.

Saddam should have put up a fight or committed suicide, they said, and his surrender is a stain on Arab honor. "It is a big defeat for all Arabs and Muslims," said Raji Hassan, 29, watching TV with friends in a Gaza City coffee shop.

It's tempting to write this off as the reaction of a people opposed to freedom in any form. But if the Bush administration is smart, they won't ignore the reaction of the Palestinians... because an awful lot of the Arab world has the same kind of mixed feelings: they hate Saddam but they hate "outsiders" and particularly the US a lot more.

They got Saddam. They won the war. Now the peace must be won, and it's a long hard road ahead.

|

 
1:40 PM
Got him!



US military forces caught the Ace of Spades yesterday, hiding in a foxhole under a farmhouse, "like a rat in a hole".

"The former dictator of Iraq will face the justice he denied to millions," President Bush said in a short televised address from the White House. "For the Baathist holdouts responsible for the violence, there will be no return to the corrupt power and privilege they once held.

"This afternoon I have a message for the Iraqi people: This is further assurance that the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever. You will not have to fear the rule of Saddam Hussein ever again."

Iraqis are celebrating in the streets. The German and French leadership is "congratulating" US forces for Saddam's capture. There's a spirit of optimism in the air that hasn't been seen since April 9th, 2003.

Of course, everyone - including Bush - knows that this optimism is temporary. They've got Saddam, they'll put him on trial and bring him to "justice"... but Iraq isn't going to emerge as a free, peaceful democracy overnight.

What this does present is a window of opportunity for the US to internationalize the rebuilding efforts. (And it also gives Bush's election campaign a big boost... but that's another story.) So we'll have to wait and see what the Bush administration chooses to do with this.

|