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 >>

 
3:35 PM
Happy Chanukah

Chag sameach... enjoy the latkes, and hope the heartburn isn't too bad!

|

 
9:31 PM
Oops

Ehud Olmert found out the hard way that Prime Ministers aren't allowed to have slips of the tongue. . . especially when the subject in question is nuclear weaponry:

Israel's prime minister spent Tuesday trying to put the nuclear genie back into the bottle after a remark in an interview was interpreted as confirming that Israel has nuclear weapons - widely assumed to be true, but never officially admitted by Israel.

Meanwhile, ambiguity has never been the strong suit of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today told delegates at an international conference questioning the Holocaust that Israel's days were numbered.

Ahmadinejad, who has sparked international outcry by referring to the killing of six million Jews in World War 2 as a "myth" and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map", launched another verbal attack on the Jewish state.

"Thanks to people's wishes and God's will the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want," he said.

"Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out," he added.

Was Olmert's statement a deliberate warning in response to Ahmadinejad's blustering? Or was it an honest mistake? If the latter, then just chalk it up to Olmert's long list of gaffes. But if the former, it seems nobody has ever bothered to explain Israel Double-Standard Time to Olmert. Either way, he's likely going to pay the price for this one.

(Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denial conference, by the way? It's amazingly sparking protests among Iranian students. This is bound to be deeply embarrassing to the Iranian dictator, and he will probably take some sort of steps to quell the dissent. Keep an eye on this one - it could be a big story.)

|

 
8:29 PM
The requisite Christmas tree rant

Since this story about a Chabad Rabbi who threatened to sue the Seattle-Tacoma airport unless they took down their Christmas trees has been getting so much media attention, I figure I'd better weigh in with my two cents.

My opinion? Quite simply, Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky is a first-degree horse's ass. Why?

• Displaying a Christmas tree is harmless. It's not forcing anyone's faith on anyone else. It's merely displaying it. It's no more a threat to me as a Jew than a display of a menorah would be to a Christian. And if Rabbi Bogomilsky is so threatened by a friggin' tree, then perhaps he ought to re-examine his personal faith rather than rallying against the world.
  
  
• I've always been uncomfortable with Chabad's campaign to display menorahs everywhere at Chanukah. To me, it's propagating the myth that Chanukah and Christmas are somehow related, or in competition, or have something to do with one another. Chanukah, as Rabbi Bogomilsky ought to know full well, is not a major religious holiday, and the fact that we've allowed it to become part of the generic "holiday season" and a symbol of gift-giving, commercialism and one-half of the semi-merged "Christmakah" is bad enough. This is worse.
  
  
• It's not a competition. It shouldn't be a competition. This isn't about "my symbol is bigger than your symbol". If people are proud of something, they should be allowed to express that pride without some other group feeling the need for one-upmanship. Judaism shouldn't be about one-upmanship at all.
  
  
• Rabbi Bogomilsky is claiming to speak for all Jews with this stunt, which I personally resent an awful lot. Who voted him spokesperson of North American Jewry, anyway?
  
  
• I like Christmas trees, okay? I think they're pretty. I think the lights and decorations are pretty. I enjoy looking at them. I know it's not my holiday, and I'm not going to run out and get a tree for my living room or anything... but why shouldn't I be allowed to get enjoyment out of someone else's holiday?

Bottom line? I'm glad the trees are back, and I hope everyone learns to chill out and enjoy whatever holiday or holidays they choose to celebrate.

For more on the subject, see last year's rant about the whole "Happy Holidays" / "Merry Christmas" debate.

|

 
7:48 PM
Search ends in failure

Sympathies for Bob Gainey and his family on the loss of his daughter, Laura, 25, who was officially declared lost at sea after more than 80 hours of searching.

It's obvious that the Habs are saddened by the Gainey family's loss. The team held a poignant moment of silence before the start of tonight's game against Boston, and it was obvious that the thoughts and prayers of the crowd were with the family as well.

|

 
9:18 AM
30 Years

However you look at it, 30 years is a friggin' long time.

Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad.

|

 
11:04 PM
"Er, which one is Al Qaeda again?"

Under Republican control, the House Intelligence committee may have been stubbornly ignorant. But under Democratic control, it appears that they will be just plain ignorant:

Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, who incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tapped to head the Intelligence Committee when the Democrats take over in January, failed a quiz of basic questions about al Qaeda and Hezbollah, two of the key terrorist organizations the intelligence community has focused on since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

[ . . . ]

While Stein said Reyes is "not a stupid guy," his lack of knowledge said it could hamper Reyes' ability to provide effective oversight of the intelligence community, Stein believes.

"If you don't have the basics, how do you effectively question the administration?" he asked. "You don't know who is on first."

Aside from not knowing the difference between Sunni and Shi'ite, there's no evidence that Reyes is a bad guy or anything . . . but I'm tempted to apply my basic Bush-rule here: if you can't pronounce nuclear, you shouldn't be allowed to have your finger on the button.

The intelligence level of elected members of government - from both parties - is frighteningly low. Is anyone else more than a little scared that these are the people making the big decisions?

|

 
9:47 PM
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men

Frustration is: Anticipating a million details and getting screwed by detail number million-and-one.

Yes, that was random. But I just had to get it out.

|

 
7:15 PM
My enemy's enemy is not my friend

That's the key lesson from Augusto Pinochet's death today, which some Chileans are mourning while many others celebrate:

More than 3,000 people died in political violence under Pinochet's rule, many at the hands of repressive secret police. Some 28,000 people were tortured in secret detention centers and hundreds of thousands of Chileans went into exile.

Car horns blared as detractors of the deceased former dictator danced and cheered in Plaza Italia, a major intersection near the city center where Chileans usually congregate to celebrate sporting victories.

"I'm going to celebrate with my family the death of the tyrant. I even have a bottle of Brazilian cane alcohol we've been saving for 25 years to celebrate this day," said Santiago Cavieres, a 75-year-old lawyer.

"I was in the National Stadium (a sports stadium used as a concentration camp in 1973) and from there they sent me to the Chacabuco concentration camp, where I was for eight months... Everyone there was tortured," he said.

Despite Pinochet's human rights record, many Chileans loved him and said he saved Chile from Marxism. Supporters say his economic reforms put Chile on track to become Latin America's model economy.

Pinochet's coup to gain power, supported by the Reagan administration, is often pointed to as yet another example of American interference gone wrong. And while it's easy to understand why - at a time when Communism was perceived as the biggest threat facing America - the decision to support Pinochet was made. The United States is not the only country guilty of this, but there have certainly been numerous prominent examples of it in the last number of years stemming from U.S. policy.

The problem is, the world isn't divided into good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats, Cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers. Politics isn't like a bad Western movie (and Reagan knew a lot about bad Western movies). Oftentimes, the enemy of my enemy is also a bad guy, and is also an enemy.

We're still making that mistake today. The U.S. allying with extremist Shi'ite Muslim groups in Iraq, post-Saddam, is just one more chapter in this saga. And we can already see just how well that's working out.

The trouble is, often the only person strong enough to oppose one bad guy is another bad guy; moderates tend to be weak in countries facing war and lack of law and order. Faced with the choice of backing the strong extremist or the weak moderate, most will choose the strong extremist and close their eyes to his darker deeds.

But it didn't work then, and it's not working now. It's time to change how we look at the world, to stop breaking it into good guys and bad guys, and to stop supporting an enemy's enemy that will only come back to bite us in the ass.

(By the way, who had Pinochet in the Dead Dictators Pool?)

|