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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6:25 PM
Another day, another anti-Israel biased headline

Some things never change. Anti-Israel media bias is one of them.

From today's Reuters: Israel rejects Hamas ceasefire call.

From the headline, the casual reader would make the assumption that big bad Israel is at it again, rejecting the perfectly reasonable offer of a peace-loving Hamas.

Hah!

Rocket attacks? Kidnapped soldiers? Terrorist attacks? The fact that any cease-fire offer by Hamas is nothing but a ruse anyway? Well, none of those are even suggested by the headline, and are only vaguely referred to in the text of the article itself.

A better headline might read something like "Israel stands strong against Hamas's blackmail" or, perhaps, "Israel sees through Palestinian terrorist government's transparent cease-fire ruse".

But of course, headlines like that would be called - what else? - biased.

Update: Here's Meryl with more anti-Israel-media-bias-of-the-week, this time from AP.

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6:04 PM
The world's biggest sport

...but not Canada's.

As the rest of the globe prepares for tomorrow's World Cup final, Montreal is not entirely quiet. Flag-spottings and car-honkings are a lot more prevailant than I'd expected, especially given Italy's presence in the big game. But soccer is still nowhere near the sport here that it is in most other places around the world.

Here's Josh Freed's take on the subject, from today's Gazette (link requires subscription):

I've spent the last week at Italian and Portuguese cafes enjoying World Cup fever. I like the passion, the flags - even the honking car horns that go by my house until 1 a.m.

Yet soccer itself mystifies me. Like many North Americans I grew up on sports like football, basketball and hockey, filled with high scores and simple rivalries between cities - not nations.

But soccer is totally different, an often scoreless game whose blood feuds go back centuries and feel practically medieval.

Soccer also has a slow and, dare I say, dull pace which isn't suited to many of us hyperactive North Americans. It's like European films - where the pauses are as important as the action. In fact, it's so low on thrills that last week, New Yorker magazine called soccer "the Canada of sports."

So, as half the planet prepares to watch tomorrow's World Cup final, here are some thoughts from a soccer know-nothing on why "the beautiful game" is a mysterious one to me.

To start with, North America is a goal-oriented society, literally. We like goals and points - and our sports are filled with them. A typical football score is 45-35, while basketball games often break 100. Even "boring" baseball has scoring extravaganzas of 11-8.

But in soccer your basic score is 1-0. Or even 0-0, which they craftily call "nil-nil," obviously to disguise the fact nothing has actually happened. And we're watching World Cup. In the regular season I hear scores are sometimes so low they give them in fractions: Denmark 1/15th, Argentina 1/37th.

There are rumours of a game where Croatia beat the Ukraine by minus 3 to minus 5.

Even when North American athletes aren't scoring, they're almost scoring, as hockey announcers scream: "He shoots ... Ohhh! - what a save!," every three seconds. But soccer announcers just say things like:

"Ronaldo passes to Ronaldinho ... who passes back to Ronaldo ... who passes back to Ronaldissimo ... who passes back to the goalie ... who was out having an espresso but returns to kick the ball."

There are long four-minute stretches when even the wildest fans at my local cafe are utterly silent - though they're not actually bored like me. They're just tense. North American sports are about action and excitement, while soccer is about anxiety and dread.

In Montreal, it seems to be mostly about car-honking and flag-waving. But it's nice to see at least some excitement in the air here. Isn't it time we Canadians joined the rest of the planet and got on board? After all, it's not even hockey season. Who knows, maybe one day we'll even have a team good enough to participate? (I'm not holding my breath).

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4:41 PM
I found Canada Day

A week late, but better late than never. Went to see Great Big Sea at Ottawa Bluesfest last night, and finally found all the maple leafs, cheesy t-shirts, and Canadian pride that had been sorely lacking from last week's Canada Day festivities at the Old Port. The guys put on a great show, as usual, and went on for a while about their newfound obsession with Beaver Tails.

Moral of the story? Want Canadiana? Leave Montreal and head to Ottawa.

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12:26 AM
Senseless

July 7, 2005, this was the scene in London. Less than 24 hours after the city jubilantly celebrated being awarded the 2012 Olympics, terror struck on the London public transport network, claiming 57 lives and shaking the city, country and world to the core.

There was little evidence of the scene a year ago as I rode the Underground around London last week. There are posters up everywhere urging vigilence about things like unattended baggage or suspicious characters, much like those in the New York City subway, but for the most part it seemed to be business as usual (complete with typical line delays and suspensions wreaking commuter havoc).

One year ago, people were reacting in shock and horror. But today, even as memorial services are held, what has changed? Can we really say that things have improved, any more than we were able to say so a year, or two, or three, or four after the 9/11 attacks rocked New York? Whether people are fearful of threatened "anniversary attacks", still mourning personal losses, or trying to come to grips with "what it all means", it's hard to find any lessons to learn here. Maybe that is the lesson after all; terrorism is senseless and teaches us nothing beyond what we already knew, that it is terrible and must be wiped out. Maybe to reach for any other lessons is to attribute too useful a purpose to such a senseless act. I don't know, and I don't pretend to have the answers.

Today, London and the whole world remembers. Another senseless anniversary, another senseless tragedy.

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12:24 AM
Ribeiro signed

Mike Ribeiro will be back in a Habs jersey next season.

After a stellar breakout season in 2003/04, Ribeiro struggled this past season, finding the net only 16 times. He's talented but he seems to have hit a slump, so the question is whether he can dig out of it next year. Maybe the coaching change will help.

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11:15 PM
Old Montreal good, potholes bad

The latest summer fluff exercise from the Montreal Gazette took the form of a survey about Montreal, which, by design, generated the sort of stereotypical answers you might expect from a Montreal of perhaps 20 years ago. I mean, who would really elect Leonard Cohen mayor? Nobody, except that even less people would choose the other three options. According to the survey, we love Old Montreal and hate potholes (duh) and we prefer smoked meat to poutine or Orange Julep (well, some of us, I suppose).

The Gazette may try, but it's still got nothing on the Mirror's Best of Montreal. After all, who can resist lines like "here's to the Big O, finally paid off 30 years after a man had a baby." And it says a lot that in the Montrealer closest to hell category, Karla Homolka was beaten out by Gerald Tremblay AND Jean Charest. (The latter is particularly ironic in light of this).

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1:56 AM
Quoteable quotes

"The country is run by extremists... because moderates have $@#! to do" - Jon Stewart

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11:25 AM
Some things never change

... and I see that Loto-Hydro is one of them.

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10:47 PM
Cheap Europe flights? Not for long...

Cheap budget airlines in Europe such as Ryanair, EasyJet, SkyEurope, Wizzair and others have revolutionized European travel, making it often cheaper to fly halfway across the continent than it is to get a bed for the night. But that's all about to change:

AIR passengers will be charged up to £40 extra for a return ticket within Europe to pay for the environmental impact of their journeys, under plans approved by the European Parliament yesterday.

MEPs voted in favour of the "immediate introduction" of a tax on jet fuel for flights within the 25 member states of the EU. The charge would double the cost of millions of budget airline flights.

Well, it was great while it lasted, anyway.

I don't know what this will do for the environment, but being quite familiar with the budget of the average backpacker, I have a fair idea of what it will do to European tourism.

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6:18 PM
Honk

Montreal's streets are alive with honking horns. I guess that means Italy won.

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5:04 PM
Red and White

If Saturday evening's Canada Day festivities at the Old Port are any indication, then federalism in Quebec is in serious trouble.

Sure, it was raining, the Jazz Fest offered better music just a short walk away, and most people in Montreal were busier with moving vans than with parades. But the organizers of the Canada Day festival - excuse me, "Celafête" - have taken such pains in the past few years to erase anything Canada-related from the day, that what is left over is nothing but a hollow shell.

The music was an odd combination of Afro-Caribbean and gospel, the decorations lacked any sort of flags, maple leafs, or - apart from a few generic streamers - even a red and white colour scheme, and the fireworks display was accompanied mainly by Quebecois music. A few people had dressed in maple leafs for the occasion or brought along flags, but they were in the minority; I saw more Italy, France and Portugal flags on Saturday in Montreal than I did Canadian flags. Looking around in the crowd, an outside observer would be hard-pressed to find any clue that there was anything more than a Saturday night concert going on. I almost wish I'd stayed in London, where there was a big party in Trafalgar Square.

I missed the St-Jean Baptiste parties this year, but I'm sure that - as usual - there would have been a sea of blue and white, popular local music, Quebecois customs and celebrations, and a decisive air of Quebec national pride in the air. Not that there's anything wrong with that, either. But the Canada Day organizers have downplayed the "Canada" in the Canada Day festivities so much, that they have lost the true meaning of the day. It you want to foster Canadian pride here in Quebec, it needs to be done openly, not by being ashamed. Make no mistake about it, there's a colour war here in Quebec, and right now, the red and white is losing badly.

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4:58 PM
Speaking in tongues

I had the opportunity this summer to watch World Cup matches in about seven different countries. In five of those seven, I didn't speak the language and therefore couldn't understand the commentary. Not that it really matters. Bunch of guys running after a ball, if it goes in the net it's a goal, right? But it was amusing listening to the games in English, particularly the wry commentary of the British sportscasters who lace their play-by-plays with ironic observations.

Even more entertaining has been watching the games on RDS since getting home. Not only does RDS have the novelty of a female commentator (let's hear it for gender equality, folks!), but the Quebecois accents punctuating a game that usually gets little more notice in Quebec than snowshoeing - and considerably less than mini-golf - are good for a laugh. Actually, it's a lot like watching hockey, listening to the Quebecois-inflected phraseology that's so familiar from our national sport: "il a râté son tire", "un passe vers le centre", "hors jeu", or the rare but enthusiastic "et le but!!!"

If soccer (excuse me, British readers, football) ever catches on in a big way here beyond the World Cup, then you can expect to hear very distinctive commentary and terminology emerge from La Belle Province. After all, we're unlike the rest of the world in all other things - sport or otherwise - so why should this be any different?

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4:55 PM
I'm back!

Yep, it's really me! Not a mirage or an illusion, I'm actually up and running again.

So... did anyone miss me? Didn't think so. But on the off chance that someone is actually checking this site, regular blogging resumes as of now. Sorry for the long hiatus, but those of you who know me know where I was and understand why I couldn't blog. As for everyone else, well, suffice to say that I've been travelling for a while, and I'm sure that stories from the road will be creeping into my posts from time to time.

It may take me a bit of time to catch up on what's actually been going on in the world, but I promise to entertain you with random thoughts and tidbits until I can get some meatier postings going.

It sure is good to be home! (Where's my ticker tape parade?)

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