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.

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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.

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9:44 PM
It's FRIGGIN' FREEZING out there!!!

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4:23 PM
A Gazette reader has this to say about the widespread availability of porn on Canadian TV:

Evidently, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is less rigorous in regulating Canadian viewers' access to porn (Gazette, Jan. 4., "Canada leads world in TV porn") than in allowing Canadians the opportunity to pay for Fox or NBC's 24-hour news channels. I am not particularly concerned with how the CRTC regulates pornography, but I cannot help but observe Canadian identity is deemed to be more symbiotic with pornography than American cable news availability.

One can only hope that the CRTC is properly vigilant in assuring porn actors and productions are Canadian and reflect our diverse, multi-cultural mosaic.

The CRTC's recent decisions to deny broadcasting licenses to several US channels including HBO, Showtime, Starz, Cinemax, TMN, Lifetime, Flix, Fox Sports, ESPN, Fox News, Nickelodeon, and WAM were taken on the premise that they would "compete with existing Canadian channels", and presumably that would be bad:

Further, the Commission's general policy with respect to such requests precludes the distribution of non-Canadian services that it determines to be either totally or partially competitive with existing Canadian specialty or pay services.

The Commission notes that, under its current policy, a range of foreign programming services is available for distribution in Canada. Moreover, a number of broadly-distributed Canadian programming services provide a wide variety of non-Canadian programming, including programming available within the services that CCTA requests be authorized for distribution.

[ . . . ]

Most significantly, the Commission is concerned that adoption of CCTA's proposal would make it more difficult for Canadian services to obtain the Canadian rights to broadcast foreign productions. The loss of the revenues generated by such foreign programs could result in a decrease in the production and broadcast of Canadian programming.

So we can't get HBO because CTV would lose money when it tried to broadcast episodes of the Sopranos that are three years old. But no worries: we can have all the porn we could possibly dream of! I guess there aren't too many concerns about preserving Canadian culture and preventing American competition when hot naked chicks are involved. (So then why is Sex and the City still not permitted to air?)

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3:52 PM
David Janes defends bloggers:

One of the things I enjoyed about the blogosphere [is the] commitment [of] most of the bloggers I read to "anti-idiotarianism", a commitment to truth even if it doesn't promote their narrow political prejudices. Many of the top-tier warbloggers were Democrats, not out-of-the-closet unreformed Neanderthals. Check it out, if you need to. And it's just not a case of "conservatives are liberals who have been mugged": there's a great diversity of opinion, civil debate and politic belief within the blogosphere, because there's a basic commitment to the non-distortion of reality and the truth.

We'll never have a "vibrant new global thinking process" if one's concept of debate is to declare "blue is red" just because some guy you hate mentioned the colour of the sky the other day.

I'm not entirely convinced that bloggers are necessarily more honest or "committed to the truth" than mainstream journalists, professional writers, politicians, or the average guy on the street. Blogging is a tool. Like any other tool, it can be used to educate, provoke, spew nonsense, or (in my case) spout off.

In its infancy, blogging was perhaps "purer", in the sense that most blogs were individuals writing on their own time and budget, as opposed to some of the big blogs we see now that have emerged into moneymaking careers. (Note to readers: that's obviously not the case here.) In addition, bloggers are generally not journalists with professional training and a research staff. It's extraordinarily easy for just about anyone to set up a blog, and they can just as readily be used to spread lies, propaganda, and disinformation. If a sort of "anti-idiotarian" courtesy emerged in the blogosphere, it is only because people decided that they want to be good neighbours and play by the rules. But blogging is just as open to abuse as any other medium, and perhaps more so. And with the emerging of a few major blogs that dictate the sphere, it seems that the rest of us mortals have been reduced to begging for scraps... or the ever-coveted link from Instapundit to generate Instatraffic.

That said, I think it's illogical to lament the fact that someone is blogging a different point of view from yours. With so much going on out there, the only way to really figure anything out and have opinions is to read a wide variety of opinions, often dissenting ones. And blogs have made that much easier.

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3:35 PM
This tidbit comes, rather appropriately, via Balagan:

The Interior Ministry has a list of 137 nationalities, including Abkhazi, Assyrian and Samaritan - but you won't find "Israeli" among them. The State of Israel doesn't recognize the existence of "Israeli" as a nationality.

[ . . . ]

Among the petitioners are those categorized on the identity cards as "Jew," "Druze," "Georgian," "Russian," and even one "Hebrew." Not one of them is "Israeli," and the reason is simple - the Israeli state does not recognize any Israeli nationality that isn't Jewish. Even the Supreme Court ruled in 1970 that there was no such thing as Israeli nationality.

Must be part of that Israeli plot for world domination... convince 'em that they don't exist.

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3:22 PM
Don't do it!

Doug Camilli reports that Katie Holms and Chris Klein are engaged:

This surprised nobody, because they've been a couple for five years, an eternity in young Hollywood. They are said to be looking for a movie project they can do together.

Please god, not a project together! Katie and Chris, I have one word for you: Bennifer.

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3:18 PM
Losing our bragging rights?

Us Montrealers are a hardy lot, we like to argue. We laugh at snow. We shrug off sleet. We survived the Ice Storm of 98, for cripes' sake! We're not like those wimpy Torontonians, who call in the army when the snow falls.

But I think somebody needs to tell that to the average Montreal driver.

Yesterday it was snowing. It's January. This is not an atypical or unusual event. Okay, so it was icy underneath the snow. But that happens frequently as well. Temperature drops are not exactly news to us here.

So why is it that a little bit of snow caused rush-hour panic on the roads? Could somebody please explain to me why it took almost triple the amout of time as usual for me to drive home, all because of a little snowfall?

The salt trucks and snowplows exist. I know they do, because our tax dollars fund them. So where were they yesterday? Certainly not near any roads that I was on. And most Montrealers have snow tires... and if they don't, they should and they are idiots with no excuse. After all, where do they think they're living anyway? It's not exactly news that Montreal gets snow in the winter. It's happened every year for a very long time. Why does it come as such a shock to people? And why does snow seem to give every moron out there a license to drive like a total idiot? News flash: an inch of snow on the ground does NOT entitle you to run red lights, block intersections, or clip somebody's bumper and drive along because it's too cold outside to stop and exchange insurance information. (If the asshole who did that last one to me yesterday is reading this, you're lucky that your license plate was too dirty and salt-stained for me to read).

If Montrealers want to keep our bragging rights that life goes on as usual here when it snows, then we have to grow up and learn how to deal with winter. After all, we can no longer make fun of Toronto for their hockey team... we need to hold onto something!

So get proper tires, a shovel, a snow brush, winter wipers, and top off on the windshield washer fluid before you head out on the roads this winter. Snow is no excuse for sheer idiocy.

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2:50 PM
The Tribune has an update on the La Presse nomination of Arafat for "person of the year":

Eric Clement, who is in charge of the paper's Web site, Cyberpresse, told JTA that the paper had been deluged with e-mails and letters, "mainly from the Jewish community."

"We have withdrawn Mr. Arafat's name," he said. "In fact, we have stopped the competition altogether."

"Initially, we wanted to just suggest names among many that people could vote for. We wanted the public to come up with names," he said. "After all the letters and e-mails, we decided it had not been a good idea. We made a mistake."

In the words of C.J. Cregg, that's a pretty good "non-apology apology", coupled with a pretty standard Jew-blaming. And of course there's also the fact that La Presse wasn't big enough to admit it did wrong on its own website. Cyberpresse didn't print an apology, retraction, or explanation as far as I can tell. It simply removed all the links or any mention of Arafat's nomination, as though it never happened. As though their journalists never called Arafat a "noble freedom fighter" dedicated to "advancing the cause of peace".

By the way, I'm still looking for a hard copy or the full text of the Arafat profile that has been so cleanly removed from the website. If anyone has it, let me know.

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1:17 PM
My new theory is that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has been kidnapped, and a lookalike puppet controlled by the US government is replacing him. Yep, I sound like one of those wacky conspiracy theorists! But how else do you explain his recent 180s? First, voluntarily giving up Libya's WMDs and allowing weapons inspectors free access. And now the announcement that Libya will be making peace with Israel (via LGF):

A high-ranking Israeli delegation is expected to visit Libya with the aim of reaching a mutual understanding on the signing of a peace agreement, Kuwaiti newspaper A-Siyasa, quoted on the Al Bawaba website, reported Tuesday.

Meanwhile, in comments published Tuesday, Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi was quoted as saying he is ready to compensate Libyan Jews whose properties were confiscated. He also said he is prepared to allow Libyans to travel to Israel, according to Arab press reports.

Call me cynical and jaded, but I'm having a hard time believing that there's no catch to all of this. What's next? Will the Islamic Jihad throw its suicide bomb manufacturing equipment into the sea? Will North Korea destroy its nuclear programs? Will Michael Moore wear a voluntary muzzle? (Ok, maybe that last one's a bit too much to hope for...)

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11:57 AM
If the incident below is the first big overstatement of 2004, then here's the biggest understatement of the year so far, about a man who rammed a truck into the Bell Centre during last night's hockey game:

"He called me and said, 'You wouldn't believe what happened. A guy just backed into the (Bell) Centre with an old pick-up,' " Makarios said.

"You can't be very brilliant to do that," said Guy Bergeron, as he filed out of the Bell Centre.

No, I don't suppose you can.

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11:52 AM
This has to be one of the worst examples yet of gratuitious comparison to Nazism: A Brazilian judge compared the new US fingerprinting program to the "worst horrors of the Nazis":

The United States began fingerprinting and photographing visitors from most countries on Monday in a controversial program to try to prevent potential terrorists from slipping in through the borders.

[ . . . ]

But the Brazilian fingerprint program of U.S. visitors that began last Thursday came on the orders of a judge who angrily compared the new U.S. controls to Nazi horrors.

"I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis," said Federal Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva in a court order to authorize the program in Brazil.

Hmmmm, I bet if you asked a thousand Holocaust survivors whether they thought that comparison was justified, they'd say that fingerprinting is horrifying. /sarcasm

I also find it interesting that the judge was making the comparison in the process of implementing a similar program in Brazil, to fingerprint Americans. As far as I can tell, there is no security reason for that program, and it is being done purely out of childish spite. Talk about wasting public funds!

As for the US program, for the moment Canadians are exempt, but even if we weren't, I'd have to agree with this guy:

"I think it's good with everything that's going on," said Scott Murray, a Jamaican arriving at the airport. "If you have nothing to hide, it shouldn't be a problem. I wasn't offended.

When I got on a plane in the US last week, I was asked to remove my shoes to go through the metal detector, and place the shoes on the X-ray belt. Everyone else had to as well. Nobody cared. I'd rather take an extra five seconds to take off my sneakers than be on a plane hijaked by terrorrists. And if a simple fingerprinting program could be helpful, then why not?

But if I have to travel to Brazil, remind me to protest the fingerprinting as barbaric and horrific.

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