Segacs’s World I Know

Once again demonstrating his perpetual spinelessness and willingness to do anything to hang onto power, Paul Martin struck a deal with Jack Layton, making “concessions” in exchange for an NDP promise to vote for the budget.

What sort of “concessions”? The usual NDP mixed bag. Deferring corporate tax cuts in favour of $4.6 billion in additional social spending for things like Aboriginal housing, the environment, foreign aid and the like.

That’s all besides the point, though. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the changes, the main thing here is that we have the party who came in dead last among the four major parties in the last election essentially dictating the federal budget. What’s wrong with this picture?

The miracle is happening quietly: Syrian troops are withdrawing from Lebanon after 29 years of occupation.

Analysis is as varied as Mideast political opinions tend to be. And as of right now, there are more questions than answers: Is this a genuine move by Syria to recognize Lebanon’s independence, or simply a media move designed to mask the fact that Assad still plans to pull Lebanon’s political strings from afar? Will Lebanon – a country with a rocky history, to put it mildly – elect a free and democratic government? Or will competing factions pit against one another, resulting in more bloodshed? Will a democratic Lebanon be claimed by the Bush team as a victory for its policy of spreading democracy in the Mideast? Or will an unholy mess result? Where does Hezbollah fit in with all of this?

And what about Israel? Even as the Lebanon Daily Star reports that Israelis are eyeing a peace deal with Lebanon, more realistic analysis from Ha’aretz puts the prospects for this at dim to nonexistent – at least for now:

Nevertheless, Lebanon is still committed to a common policy with Syria when it comes to the regional peace process. Lebanese opposition leaders have also declared that they have no intention of dismantling either the political or the economic cooperation between the countries, and they certainly have no plans to be seen to be in a hurry to sign a peace deal with Israel.

Of the zillion different competing factions in Lebanon, the one thing they have in common is their hatred of Israel. In fact, it might be the only common base on which they will be able to work to mend and re-forge a national identity. It’s easy to see, in the context of a story like Lebanon’s, why it’s so convenient for people to unite around their one commonality: hatred with Israel. It’s either that or destroy one another. (And they’ve done plenty of both over the years).

A lot will depend on what happens in the coming months. But regardless, I don’t think Israelis will be taking shopping trips to Beirut anytime soon.

People in the know have been watching Vladimir Putin with a wary eye for quite some time now. His State of the Union today, in which he described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the last century”, is likely to make many more people take notice:

The former KGB agent said the break-up of the USSR in 1991 had left tens of millions of Russians living in new states outside the Russian Federation.

Speaking the week after Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State, said he had accumulated too much personal power, the president insisted he remained committed to reform and a strong state.

However, if actions speak louder than words, then the warning bells ought to be going off all over the place. Much of what Putin has done during his reign – er – leadership has been designed to suppress any political opponents and set himself up to be the de facto perpetual leader of a Russia that’s looking more and more like the Soviet Union he so laments each day:

He also rounded on the recent “Orange” revolution in Ukraine and similar protests in Kyrgyzstan, both former Russian allies, warning that they would not be permitted in Russia.

“Any unlawful methods of struggle … for ethnic, religious and other interests contradict the principles of democracy,” he said. Mr Putin warned that such upheavals would not be tolerated in Moscow. “The state will react [to such attempts] with legal, but tough, means.”

Putin is gaining nerve every day. The Soviet Union may be gone, but it’s not forgotten.

Is it just me, or are our politicians holding a contest these days for “most spineless”?

Martin may succumb to Layton’s blackmail by agreeing to defer corporate tax cuts in the federal budget in exchange for a promise for the NDP to support the budget:

The apparent concession came just hours after Prime Minister Paul Martin appeared to shut the door to NDP Leader Jack Layton’s demand that the cuts be scrapped. “We are prepared to discuss the possible deferral of the corporate tax measures,” the source said.

Martin’s fighting for his political life, so it’s obvious why he’s doing this. But the NDP doesn’t hold enough seats to prop up the Liberals if everyone else votes against. Martin will probably learn the hard way that Layton’s life raft is made of lead.

Whew, what a weekend! Three seders – yep, count ’em, three. Dozens of relatives. More food than some small countries consume in a year. I’m exhausted, and all I had to do was show up. I honestly don’t know how my Mom manages to do all that cooking, planning and organizing and still have time left over to bake me a sponge cake. Thanks, Mom!

Meryl has some reflections on the joys and hassles of her seders. I agree with her on the cakes – much better this year – and also on the wine. I can’t stand that cream concord stuff either. It tastes like cough syrup. We drank it on the first night, and I could barely get through the first cup. The kosher Italian dry white that we had last night wasn’t half bad, though.

Imshin shares some seder musings as well, including thoughts about the massive quantities of food. If there’s one thing that Jewish people all over the world have in common, it’s that we all cook and eat way too much on holidays.

Now that the seders are over, we can all get back to our daily Passover lives: Eating leftovers and complaining about the food.

Yep, it’s that time of year again – complete with the crazy relatives, awful kosher wine, and savoury cardboard-tasting food.

In honour of the holiday, Jewlicious has a collection of really awful Passover groaners. And there’s some good news for a certain portion of the male population. Now if only they could figure out how to finally let us Ashkenazi Jews eat peanut butter…

Chag Sameach, everyone!

The UK Association of University Teachers has passed an academic boycott of two of Israel’s most prominent academic institutions: Haifa University and Bar Ilan University:

The Israeli Embassy in London released a statement condemning the boycott as a biased and adverse move which, far from promoting peace efforts, it ignores and sabotages progress made between the Israelis and Palestinians.

“The resolutions are as perverse in their content as in the way they were debated and adopted. The AUT ignored overwhelming academic and public rejection of the proposed motions.

“The fact that no AUT member who wanted to argue against this decision was allowed to speak, and the case for the Israeli universities was not presented to delegates, speaks volumes about the relevance and fairness of this debate,” the embassy statement read.

If three years at Concordia taught me something, it was that the notion that academia supports a free exchange of ideas is utter hogwash. The academic milieu is perhaps the most totalitarian, dictatorial, one-sided environment imaginable, where you either toe the party line or find yourself pounding the pavement.

But this goes beyond the pale. A mob of anti-Israel, politically-motivated professors decided that these top-quality, world-renowned Israeli universities are not acceptable to them, and here are some of the reasons why:

Pro-boycott activists were hopeful that their motions stood a better chance of being passed this year after they were turned down in 2003. One reason for their optimism, they said earlier this month, was that they have now received the unequivocal support of the Federation of Unions of Palestinian Universities’ Teachers and Employees, a sister union of the British association. The Palestinian federation has recently released a statement endorsing the British call to boycott Israeli universities.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post earlier this month, Sue Blackwell, a Birmingham University lecturer and one of the leaders of the boycott proposal, told the Post that she “completely agreed” with comparisons between Israel and the former Apartheid regime in South Africa.

Universities are supposed to teach truth, not propaganda. But with the twisted “truths” currently being taught in Britain and in campuses across Europe and North America, it’s hard to imagine what will soon pass for “truth” among new graduates.

Memo to Stephen: Remarks like these won’t help you get elected:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s director of communications apologized Friday for referring to Canada’s Prime Minister as “Osama bin Martin.”

Geoff Norquay, director of communications for the Leader of the Opposition, said he meant the reference to the international terrorist leader as a joke.

Some joke.

There is widespread disgust with the Liberals on the sponsorship scandal. Of course, everyone has their own spin and view on what’s going on, and much of this is influenced by their political outlook and which party they support. But on the whole, it seems that the disgusted people fall into three broad categories:

• People who are disgusted with political corruption in general.
• People who are disgusted by the Liberals’ corruption in this particular case.
• People who are disgusted that the sponsorship program existed in the first place, regardless of the fact that it got corrupted.

I think it’s a critical distinction, because it can have an enormous impact on our country’s future.

The second category of people – of which I am a member – despises the way the sponsorship program turned into a palm-greasing, pocket-lining program for the Liberals and their friends. But they believe that the basic idea of fighting to promote Canada and keep the country together is a good one, and was worthy of government spending.

The last category splits between Quebec separatists who hate the fact that the Federal government is spending money to deny them their independent nation of Quebec, and people in the rest of Canada who are fed up with Quebec’s whining and wish that we’d just separate already so they can get on with their lives.

Why is this important? Because as a federalist Quebecer, I’m – according to the last two referendum results – in the majority. But I often feel like I’m in the minority. With so many people in Quebec pushing to leave, and so many people in the ROC wishing us a good riddance, I sometimes wonder who will be fighting alongside me when the next referendum is inevitably called.

The Charest Liberals are in freefall, the PQ is almost certain to get back into power in a couple of years, and Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc holds a virtual lock on most of Quebec’s seats in Ottawa. All the strongest politicians right now are separatist. And with the fallout from the sponsorship scandal, the Federal government – whoever they are – will think long and hard before spending more money on any kind of sponsorship, scandalous or otherwise.

One of the reasons we won the 1995 referendum with such a razor-thin margin was that, the weekend beforehand, thousands of Canadians poured into Quebec to show their support and solidarity. People suddenly felt wanted. Obviously this had little effect on staunch federalists like myself, but it made some fence-sitters think twice about a yes vote.

But with Quebec thinking this is a Canadian problem, and the ROC thinking this is a Quebec problem, I see the chasm between the Two Solitudes widening again. Only a couple of years ago, sovereignty almost seemed passé. But suddenly, it’s a looming threat again.

We cannot stand for corruption in government. There’s no doubt that the sponsorship program went horribly wrong. But the risk is that the fallout from the scandal will make the Federal government gun-shy about fighting for national unity in the future.

It worries me. A lot.