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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9:52 AM
Concordia responds

The Concordia administration has answered back with their side of the whole Ehud Barak mess:

Let's be fair and truthful. We have not compromised freedom of speech by our decision regarding Mr. Barak. We simply do not have the facilities that allow us to hold this particular event in a safe environment without disrupting the normal academic activities on-campus or those of our neighbors whom we consider an important part of our community. Nevertheless, freedom of speech remains alive at Concordia University as does our responsibility for the security of the community.

To support that claim, they point to a number of "controversial Jewish and Arab speakers" who have been hosted on campus.

Sadly, they have once again missed the point. It's not enough to claim that a few controversial speakers equals freedom of speech. True freedom doesn't exist selectively. Hosting speakers who the rioters find "acceptable" and calling that freedom is, de facto, allowing the rioters to dictate what speech is allowed and what speech is not allowed.

Concordia made a bad choice, and now they're trying to defend it with faulty logic.

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9:47 AM
Bush won the debate... or so it seems according to the latest Reuters poll that is now giving him a 4-point lead over Kerry, after being virtually neck-and-neck beforehand.

This is an amazing feat for a President who has stumbled his way through these debates, doing a convincing job of making it look like he was being fed the answers from offstage. The wide-eyed surprise, the long pauses, the stumbles... sure, that'll win him a debate.

But it has. Because Kerry has fought this entire campaign on the basis that people should elect him because he's not Bush. That's been fine and dandy for attracting the "we'd rather vote for Hitler than Bush" crowd... but hasn't done much to sway the undecideds.

I'm no particular fan of Bush, but it's looking a lot like four more years are coming up. In this, an election that the Democratic candidate should have won in a cakewalk. The Democrats will have nobody to blame for a loss but themselves.

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9:42 AM
The freedoms we take for granted...

Iranian bloggers have been arrested for dissent for having "illegal internet sites":

Six online journalists and webloggers have been arrested in Iran recently in a crackdown on dissent on the internet.
"People charged for having illegal internet sites... will be put on trial soon," said a judiciary spokesman.

The trials would be "open" and charges included "acting against national security, disturbing the public mind and insulting sanctities".

Web journals flourish in Iran where the youthful, reform-hungry population has gone online for news and entertainment.

The popularity of the internet has grown as hardline judges closed about 100 printed publications since 2000.

These six will probably be held up as examples and handed some frightening sentence... all for the crime of speaking freely against the repressions of the government.

But of course, everyone knows that it's Israel that is the real problem in the Middle East...

(Via Damian Penny, who astutely describes this as "thoughtcrime").

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10:03 PM
The third debate

Kerry: "Bush keeps giving tax cuts to the wealthiest 1% of Americans... yadda yadda yadda."

Bush: "Kerry's a liberal senator from Massachusetts... yadda yadda yadda."

Yawn.

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2:38 PM
Too busy with work to blog at the moment. Posting should resume soon.

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10:16 AM
Happy Thanksgiving

A non-Jewish friend asked me why it was that we don't really celebrate Thanksgiving. After all, it's not a religious holiday.

I had to answer that I wasn't really sure. Thanksgiving isn't all that big a deal here - it's not like it is in the US, for example - but most people still get together for a family meal or something. And yes, plenty of Jewish people do so as well. But upon reflection I realized she was right; the vast majority of my Jewish friends and relatives just treat Thanksgiving like a convenient legal holiday.

The best I can figure, it's because we're all holidayed out. After Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Succot... by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, we've had more than enough of big family meals and holidays for a while.

However you spent your Thanksgiving weekend, hope it was a good one.

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