Segacs’s World I Know

Life keeps happening, but I must disappear for a few days due to real-life work obligations. I’ll be hitting the road tomorrow, returning on the weekend.

If anything really big happens, you might want to check the real media.

Ciao for now.

“Crimes against humanity with genocidal intentions”, of course.

This according to the United Nations, which displays its gutlessness even more glaringly as each day goes by. Cause calling the horrible situation in Darfur, Sudan by its rightful name would require the U.N. to actually do something, and they certainly want to avoid that:

A United Nations inquiry into the mass killing of black Sudanese in the country’s western Darfur region has refrained from calling the assassinations a “genocide” – an outcome Khartoum sought.

Instead, the UN investigators say the violence by Arab militia is evidence only of “genocidal intentions,” adding this constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The commission finds both the government and the Arab janjaweed militias “are responsible for … crimes against humanity,” including killing, rape and torture of black tribes in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

It said the attacks on villages aimed to “drive the victims from their homes,” but stops short of saying the government had a policy of genocide, saying rather that individuals had a “genocidal intent.”

[ . . . ]

Those designations fall short of the legally significant “genocide” label, which would have obliged the 15-member UN Security Council to take immediate measures under international law to stop the killing.

So what’s the U.N.’s brilliant solution to stop the violence which so far has killed more than 70,000 people?

The inquiry also says the council should use its power to have the UN’s war crimes tribunal, the International Criminal Court, prosecute people suspected in the killing.

That is likely to lead to a complicated three-way split among the Security Council’s five veto-bearing permanent members. While the United States, Britain and France support taking some sort of action, Washington opposes the ICC. Russia and China, meanwhile, have resisted taking any action. China has oil interests in Sudan, while Khartoum buys Russian arms.

This ought to destroy any delusions that anyone still had that the United Nations could protect the world. Lacking the will and the means to stop the genocide, the U.N. has taken the easy way out by refusing to call it a genocide. Like, if you don’t call it genocide, it never really happened. Or something.

So I’ve decided that I’m a serious chocolate addict, and my evil friends are all enablers. So is the genius at Jean Coutu who decided to sell mini-Toblerone at 2 for 79 cents.

A surprising number of people I’ve mentioned this to have also confessed their chocolate addictions. I’m thinking of starting my own local chapter of Chocoholics Anonymous. We can all get together once a month and eat lots of chocolate… anonymously of course.

Anyway, I was feeling horribly guilty, until I discovered this site:

So you’re on a diet- you’re being good. But you’re a chocoholic, and that’s a temptation you have trouble resisting. What to do?

First off, readjust your thinking. Chocolate is a veggie. It’s good for you.

See, now that’s what I’m talking about!

I can’t seem to find the words today to express my feelings reflecting on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz:

Horror at the atrocities that will be shocking no matter how many times we hear or read about them.

Pride that the Jewish people is today so strong and is standing at the gates of the former death camp, declaring with our presence that we are alive and that the Nazis failed.

Anger at the world that pays lip service to the anniversary and condones and promotes antisemitism the rest of the time.

Disgust that Jewish people are pitied by the world for being weak, but loathed by the world when we are strong.

Sadness at the thought that the generation bearing witness will soon be gone, outnumbered by the racists and deniers, and apprehension at what this will mean for “never forget”.

Fear for the future of Israel and for the future of freedom in the world.

Disappointment in the human race’s seeming inability to learn from the past.

As the world remembers and reacts, mostly I wonder about the lessons of the Holocaust. What has the world really learned? In the wake of horrors in Kosovo, Bosnia, the DRC, Sudan, North Korea… how can we claim that we’ve learned anything? Since the beginning of time, human beings have shown a cold genius in inventing new ways to cruelly murder one another. Was the Holocaust just another part of that?

Today the world remembers. But it does not learn.

Too busy to blog at the moment, but never fear: there is so much worthwhile reading out there that you can keep plenty busy.

Allison and Imshin pointed me towards Lisa’s story of how she came to Israel. I’m completely hooked. You will be too. So far, she’s got parts one, two, three and four.

While you’re over at Imshin’s, read this post about Hannah Senesh.

Damian has this disturbing story about how Russian nationalist lawmakers want to “investigate” and ban Jewish organizations. Meryl has more.

And in case you’re still looking for more to read, check out the Jewish and Israeli blog award nominees. While you’re there, vote for your favourites and check out some of the ones you may never have heard of.

Back to regularly-scheduled programming as soon as possible.

As the UN commemmorates the Holocaust, it seems that many Canadians haven’t learnt much about it in the first place:

In a poll released Monday by the Association for Canadian Studies, 35 per cent of Quebecers surveyed said they believe other nationalities – Poles, mainly – were the principal victims of the Nazis, not Jews.

That’s higher than any other province, but not by much: the Canadian average is 29 per cent.

In a separate question asked in the association’s telephone poll, only 36 per cent of Quebecers could identify six million as the correct number of Jews killed by the Nazis (the Canadian average was 31 per cent).

It seems the Holocaust-deniers have made some strides over the years.

I’d like to see the questions asked before I can judge this poll on its face, but it’s hard to fathom what lies ahead for the next generation, after those who bear witness are gone.

The Liberal government’s hastily-retracted plan to increase subsidies to Jewish schools has sparked somewhat of a debate on private schools in the blogosphere. Paul lists his reasons for opposing government funding of private schools.

I disagree. And I’d like to explain why, by addressing his arguments:

A/ This isn’t the US, private schooling is not something that should involve getting a second mortgage. If you are absolutely hell-bent on sending your offspring to private school yet can’t afford it right off the bat, make a few sacrifices if you value your child’s education that much.

Private Jewish school tuition, last I checked, runs in the neighbourhood of $6,000 a year or thereabouts. Per child. That may not force most families to get a second mortgage, but it’s not pocket change either. And when you factor in the fact that many families are paying this for two, three, four kids at a time, you can see how it quickly spirals out of reach for parents quickly.

B/ Wouldn’t a reduction in our overall level of taxation provide people with more than enough spare money to do this, rather than providing selective credits, vouchers, etc. from which only taxpayers with children could profit? (To coin a phrase, wouldn’t that be democracy in taxation?) Moreover, how many new civil servants would have to be hired to administer the granting of vouchers, or other things along those lines?

Of course it would, and that argument can be made about pretty much any government subsidy program. In general I believe in less government spending and greater tax cuts.

But education is something that is government-funded, at least in the public sector. Everyone pays school tax, whether they send their children to public schools or not. So parents who opt for private schools are in essence double-taxed, as they pay both for the private school and for a spot in a public school that their kids aren’t using.

C/ If parents want to send their children to fully-subsidised schools that won’t cost them much of anything, they already have that option in the form of public schools. Sure, they may not be all that they’re cracked up to be, so maybe some sort of public education reform might be in order (and one may argue that the creation of a public school curriculum that actually teaches something and is available to all might be a more equitable and responsible use of our money).

I think there’s some confusion about the Reid plan here. The intention was never to fully subsidize private schools (i.e. no tuition), it was to fully subsidize the secular portion of the private schools’ education. The religious portion – which is not available or offered in the public system – is subsidized at 0% and would continue to be. So essentially, parents would be paying only for the part of the program that isn’t available in the public system.

Quebec used to have religious schoolboards – Catholic or Protestant. If you were neither, you could either send your kids to one or the other (usually Protestant), or you could fork over the dough for private school. Now, we have linguistic schoolboards, which is a step in the right direction, but the public schools still offer Catholic or Protestant religious education courses. The Jewish option doesn’t exist in the public sector, so the private schools fill a void. And parents who select them usually aren’t doing so because they’re snobby or find the schools posh (a laughable thought, considering the state of disrepair of my high school), but because they want their kids to learn something about their background and culture that they can’t get in the public system. Ditto with the Greek schools, which are fully government-subsidized in their secular programs – students can’t learn Greek language or culture in the public system, so these schools fill that void.

So sure, parents have a choice of where to send their kids to learn the 3 Rs. But they don’t have a choice if they want their kids to have some cultural or moral education as well.

D/ If private education becomes financed entirely (or mostly) by the Government and available to all, who’s going to be left to go to public schools? Considering that private schools are located mainly in large urban areas and their surroundings, I don’t see how inhabitants of rural areas are supposed to benefit from your position on democracy in education.

There would still be plenty of people left in the public system, out of choice or convenience. If the Quebec government increased secular funding to the Jewish schools to 100%, thousands of Catholic kids wouldn’t suddenly enroll. In fact, it’s doubtful if the schools’ admission would go up at all, considering that parents who can’t afford the tuition currently receive financial aid. Anyone who wants to send their kids to Jewish school is probably already doing so.

But the broader issue is the underlying claim that if private schools are more accessible, they’ll steal students from the public system. But by creating a sort of “protectionism” for the public schools, it gives them a disincentive to improve or to hold themselves to higher standards. Give parents a choice and schools will have to shape up to compete. Many already have. It’s doable.

E/ Government funding of private schools only makes some sort of sense if public schools are privatised and forced to live up to the same standards as other private schools. I can’t quite see that happening, though. No matter what, it sort of negates the point of private schools, i.e., that they’re not public.

There’s no need to privatise public schools. There is a need to fund public schools better. And the one argument against the Reid plan that I think is valid is that of opportunity cost: the money going to the Jewish schools is needed more by the public schools. There’s something to be said for that. But that’s a problem of chronic underfunding, not one of an ideological impasse. In theory, the public school system should be able to meet the needs of most people to the greatest degree possible, with the private system filling in the holes where needed.

For the record, I’m not exactly a cheerleader for the Jewish school system. Grade school was fine, but by high school it was a bit much. But I do think that parents ought to have the option, which is why I was in favour of the Liberal plan.

Those asking me for clarifications ought to be satisfied now… hopefully.

Elie Wiesel addressed the U.N. in the first time that the world body has ever commemmorated the Holocaust:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Nobel Laureate author Elie Wiesel, a death camp survivor, both questioned whether the nations had the will to stop mass murder 60 years after the massacre in Europe.

“If the world had listened, we may have prevented Darfur, Cambodia, Bosnia and naturally Rwanda,” Wiesel said.

A better question might be, when genocides are occurring, what will the U.N. do about it? So far, the answer seems to be not much

Being the U.N., of course, it was inevitable to hear things like this:

“What sense can we make of this important commemoration, when we allow through our inaction, year after year, one people to dominate another, to deny the latter many of its most basic rights, and so, with the passage of time, also degrade it as a people,” said Jordan’s U.N. ambassador, Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the only Arab speaker.

There go those Jews-as-Nazis comparisons again. But hey, at least Jordan was represented. I suppose the other Arab countries would find it difficult to deny the Holocaust if they had attended.

Current outdoor temperature: Minus 25 Celsius, with windchill of minus 31.

Current indoor temperature: due to broken radiator, about the same.

My fingers are too frozen to blog at the moment. More when the heat gets fixed.

Update: Monday 8pm – heat still not fixed. But loaner space heater making apartment semi-bearable.