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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11:30 PM
I won't be rolling out the welcome wagon

Looks like Karla Homolka's moving to N.D.G. That's my neighbourhood. And I'm not exactly thrilled she's planning on moving in.

It's fairly obvious to everyone that Homolka has no business being out on the streets... let alone my streets. If there was any justice in the world, they'd lock her up for good and throw away the key.

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3:55 PM
By the way

Anyone else think it's cool that today's date is 05/05/05?

Okay, I'm easily amused.

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3:11 PM
Yom HaShoah

Today is Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It is a day to remember the 6 million who perished.



But beyond that, it is a day of reflection: on the world that let it happen, on Jewish identity before and after the Holocaust, on Israel and its role, and on where we go from here.

Sadly, this day gets more and more relevant each year, as antisemitism rises and the world sits idly by.

Meryl has some must-read links. Jewlicious has the story of the MTV Holocaust commemoration special, which is probably not as irreverant as it sounds (at least I hope not). Allison has second-grade humour with a bitter Holocaust twist. And Jewschool promotes a rally against the genocide going on in Sudan's Darfur region - only the latest chapter in the countless episodes of "Again" that have occurred since we resolved "Never Again".

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12:14 AM
Biased or just plain dumb?

Lisa has some insight into why so much of the foreign media coverage of Israel is so shoddy:

While standing in a tiny area reserved for the press, I struck up a conversation with a European photographer who had arrived in Israel three weeks previously. He had not yet been out of Jerusalem, and asked me about Tel Aviv. I told him that it's very different from Jerusalem, gave him my card and told him to give me a call if he ever wanted a tour of my city. Don't make the mistake that so many foreign journalists make, I told him, of getting stuck on the Jerusalem-Ramallah route. Israel is a lot more interesting and complicated than that.

Yes, he said, I heard that there's a really big Jewish neighbourhood in Tel Aviv.

I laughed, then stopped when I saw that he wasn't joking.

Um, listen, I said. That's like saying you heard there's a big black neighbourhood in Addis Ababa.

So maybe the journalists aren't all pre-biased after all. Maybe they're just too idiotic to know any better than to report the soundbytes that are fed to them on a silver platter. That would actually explain an awful lot.

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12:11 AM
Blair poised for third term

It looks like today's UK election will put Tony Blair's Labour back into power, according to the latest polling data.

My friends in England have their gripes about Blair, but on the international front he's been reasonably solid. I'm sure this election will be anti-climactic and not much will change.

Hey, anyone but George Galloway, I say.

Update: As predicted, Blair won a third straight majority, albeit a slightly reduced one. The bad news is that George Galloway also won his seat, narrowly upsetting Labour candidate Oona King thanks to his virulently antisemitic tirades that appealed to many in his constituency.

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11:57 PM
Speaking of schools...

These idiotic teenagers won't be seeing the inside of theirs for a while:

Three students have been expelled from an elite private school for posting pictures of Nazi rallies and Jews being tortured on a Web site and then using anti-Semitic slurs to lash out at a student who objected.

The boys, one of whom is Jewish, thrown out of Royal St. George's College after posting "heinous" images of the Holocaust on a chat board used by several private schools, headmaster Hal Hannaford told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Is it just me or is there some kind of cold comfort to the fact that idiotic teenagers looking to rebel see Nazism as a kind of "worst of the worst" tough image to adopt?

If they were trying to get a reaction, they sure got one. Let's hope those kids learned their lesson that antisemitism is not, in any way, "cool".

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11:47 PM
No more religion in Quebec schools

Since the elimination of denominational schoolboards in Quebec in 1997 in favour of linguistic ones, Roman Catholic and Protestant instruction in public schools has been on the decline. Already, such instruction was optional; students not participating could take a Moral Education class instead. This was seen as a fair compromise on a sensitive issue, though it created scheduling headaches for the schools.

Now, it's been announced that it will be phased out entirely by 2008.

In sharp contrast to the controversy stirred back in 1997, most people in Quebec seem to be backing this new plan, with polls showing about 75% in favour of the elimination of instruction and replacement of it with a "culturally inclusive" course about religion in general. Quebec is a fairly secular society these days, and it seems most people are inclined to accept that education belongs in the classroom and religious instruction belongs in the home.

As it happens, I agree. Ironically perhaps, since I'm a product of religious school myself.

Many Americans are surprised to know that religious instruction still exists in public schools here. It's admittedly not been a huge issue since most of Quebec outside Montreal is overwhelmingly Catholic by denomination, even if their level of adherence to the religion varies. The Protestant schoolboards were mostly English and that was where most of the Jewish kids went if they weren't attending private Jewish schools. By the time my generation attended, they were fairly secular and the religious aspect was mostly nominal.

But the system still created awkward situations. And in some cases even the new linguistic system as it stands can ostracize kids if they're the only ones opting out of religion classes. That's not cool. Montreal is a diverse, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic city, and even if this diversity isn't reflected province-wide, schools that offer only Christian instruction are really limiting when we consider how many religions coexist among the student populations.

Religion doesn't really have a place in public schools, in my opinion. But parents should still have the option to send their kids to (heavily subsidized) private schools if they feel religious instruction is important. That's what a large portion of the Jewish community does. I think we'll be seeing more private Christian schools cropping up after 2008, to fill a need that the phasing out of such education in the public system will create. And that's okay too.

It'll be interesting to see whether this gets more press in the coming days, or how people will react.

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11:22 AM
Revolving door

The Palestinian Authority is so serious about stopping terrorism, that they free terrorists soon after arresting them:

Palestinian police, enforcing a ceasefire with Israel, arrested two men from a suspected Hamas rocket squad after a gun battle in the Gaza Strip but freed the militants soon after, officials said on Tuesday.

[ . . . ]

In return for their freedom, the two militants, promised to abide by an agreement that militant factions reached with Abbas in Cairo in March to respect the ceasefire the Palestinian leader declared along with Sharon in February, Abu Khoussa said.

Yeah, right. Because that agreement has been respected oh-so-well:

Describing the clash, Abu Khoussa said, a third militant had escaped arrest: "The three were in a car, en route to fire rockets, when police waved for them to stop. Gunmen opened fire at the police, forcing policemen to fire back.

"Policemen controlled the situation, took away the car, arrested the gunmen and took away their arms," he said, adding that the third man ran away and avoided the police.

A Palestinian security official said police found rockets in the vehicle.

The Hamas gunmen accused the police of opening fire first and said there was no plan to launch rockets. Another militant group, Islamic Jihad, said it carried out a rocket attack on Israel from nearby shortly before the Hamas men were arrested.

Oh yeah, that cease-fire. The nonexistent one. Why didn't you just say so?

But the media continues to pretend that a cease-fire exists, just as they continue to pretend that Abbas is actually interested in fighting terrorism. Why tell the truth when the lies sound so much prettier?

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9:32 AM
Weekend Update

...with Tina Fey. Okay, maybe not. But here are some of the tidbits from the weekend.

It looks like there might not be an election after all, as the Conservative's polling numbers slip and Harper looks increasingly like a vengeful opportunist each day. The Conservatives are going to have to come up with a better argument than "we're not the Liberals" if they want a turn in power. In the meantime, Martin's gamble seems to be paying off, and his shaky government might get its life support extended a little longer.

More idiocy on parade as the annual workers' event of May Day results in "clashes with police". That's the media's non-judgmental way of saying that a bunch of idiots smashed things and then reacted violently to police who tried to get them under control. Oh yeah, and they really really don't like Jean Charest. Just in case we didn't know that already.

North Korea's getting bolder as the Dear Leader of Death Camps slowly realizes that the rest of the world can't or won't do anything to stop them. Canada won't sign onto the US's missile defense plan, but Japan certainly sees the value in it.

Violence is on the rise again in Egypt, as suicide attacks on tourists by Islamist terrorists sent a chill through the region. This pretty much rules out any hope that last month's attacks at Taba were isolated incidents. One thing we can pretty much count on: if Egypt's tourism industry suffers, they'll find a way to blame Israel somehow.

And last but certainly not least, Passover is over and I'm back to eating real food again. It's great to have a meal that doesn't taste like cardboard!

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8:05 AM
Happy birthday to me.

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