Segacs’s World I Know

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.

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”.

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.

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?

…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 Conservatives’ 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!

Happy birthday to me.

So it looks like there’s going to be another referendum in a few years. And with the federalist forces in complete disarray, the result could be disastrous. Even if most Quebeckers don’t really want to separate, they may be persuaded to vote yes if the yes side runs a much better campaign. We all know that there will be no more federal government-funded sponsorship programs. And the provincial Liberals will need someone in opposition better equipped to fight than Jean Charest, that’s for sure.

But mostly, what is sorely lacking is vision. Though the vision of a sovereign Quebec is an unrealistic pipe dream, many Quebecers buy into it because people prefer vision to pessimism. The brightly-coloured posters advertising that a “yes” vote would “make it possible” didn’t really need to get into the details of what exactly would be possible; it was a vision. A sharp contrast to the the “no” campaign in 1995, which was a negative, fear-based campaign focused mainly on dispelling the “yes” campaign’s lies.

In that spirit, here are some things that the federalist side can do to campaign for Canadian unity:

• “Federalists Come Home” campaign

Invite as many former Quebecers who have moved to the Rest of Canada to move back home for the minimum period required in order to be eligible to vote in the next referendum. Open the floodgates and welcome back our expats from Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary just in time to give the federalist side the needed numbers at the polls to deliver a resounding defeat to the sovereignty forces.

• “Birthright Canada” trips

Hey, it’s a big success for Israel. Send groups of Quebec college students on free 10-day trips to some of the most beautiful parts of Canada. Air Canada could provide free flights in exchange for their government subsidies. After 10 days of partying in Whistler or Banff, my bet is most young Quebecers will think twice before giving up being Canadian.

• Colour War

So Gerald Larose wants a colour war? Fine, we’ll give him one. Let’s show our Canadian colours by celebrating the “anniversaries” of all dates relevant to Canada with “pro-Federalism signs on balconies, marches, conferences and cultural events” of our own – but more, bigger, and louder. Canada Day, Flag Day, Law Day, the anniversary of the 1972 Canada-Russia hockey summit… there’s no shortage of opportunities.

• Switch the Question lifeline

“Yes” sounds so much nicer than “No”, doesn’t it? Since the question of the next referendum is sure to be just as confusing as the last one, let’s lobby to get a question written that would make “Yes” a vote for federalism. Not only do we get the nicer, more positive campaign term, but the 40% of Quebecers who don’t have a clue what the vote means might accidentally vote “Yes” thinking it’s a vote for sovereignty. Which would be OK, because most of them want to stay in Canada anyway. So really, we’d be doing them a favour.

• Secret Weapons

How much money do you think it would take to bribe Gilles Duceppe into working as a secret agent for the Federalist side?

Feel free to tack on your own.

As if living through the referendums wasn’t bad enough, now we have to suffer through referendum anniversary celebrations???

Quebecers can expect to see pro-sovereignty signs on balconies again, as well as marches, conferences and cultural events over the next six months as the sovereignist movement prepares to mark the 25th and 10th anniversaries of the referendums on Quebec independence.

The Conseil de la souverainete du Quebec has organized several activities designed to prove to Quebecers that the referendums were not failures for the sovereignist movement, but rather important steps in the right direction.

“These two events were significant democratic exercises which advanced the Quebec people toward independence, and the third exercise will be the final one, because we will achieve our goal,” said Gerald Larose, who heads the two-year-old Conseil.

In other words: “we’ll keep asking the question until we get the answer we want”.

Here we go again…

Let’s play which photo of the week is weirder.

This one?

U.S. President George W. Bush walks arm in arm with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at Bush's ranch in Texas. Source: Reuters.

Or this one?

Russian President Vladimir Putin visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem on the first trip ever by a Kremlin leader to Israel. Source: AP.

Shall we put it to a vote?