Segacs’s World I Know

So Britney Spears’ first marriage lasted 55 hours. Who’s taking bets on how long this one will last?

Israel kicks off the new year by taking out another Hamas terrorist leader:

Palestinian sources said late Sunday evening that a leading Hamas militant had been killed in an Israel Defense Forces missile strike on his car in northern Gaza City.

Palestinian sources said that Khaled Abu-Shamiyeh, 30, a resident of the Shati refugee camp next to Gaza City, was killed and three other Palestinians were wounded in the attack. Their identities were not immediately known.

Let this be a message to all the terrorists: you can run but you can’t hide.

Americans: don’t like your choice between Bush and Kerry? Tired of political races having too much attack and too little chic? Vote Carrie for President.

Go check out the site; it’s a hilarious spoof on celebs in politics.

L’Shana Tova u’Metuka to my fellow MOTs. Best wishes for a happy and healthy new year. See you all in 5765.

Canada wins the World Cup!

Our team managed to edge Finland in a 3-2 victory that proves that hockey is still our game.

Vinnie Lecavalier won tournament MVP. Marty Brodeur overcame a wrist injury to display some of his sharpest goaltending ever. And this bunch of all-stars really came together as a team to play exciting, unbeaten hockey for the entire tournament.

Now, I guess we will all have to settle in for what looks like it’s gonna be a long lockout.

I sure as hell hope not. I hope that Canadian journalist Scott Taylor was released without any promises by Canada. I hope that someone in Al Qua’eda just decided to release him, for some strange unexplained reason.

But this sounds very fishy:

“Turkish intelligence people say I’m the only Westerner ever released by the Al-Qaeda group and they can’t understand why,” he told the daily.

In Ottawa, the foreign affairs ministry said little about the story. A spokesman said Taylor was received late Monday at the Canadian embassy in Ankara. “I will not tell you anything more,” the spokesman, Reynald Doiron, told AFP.

I know that the Canadian policy has been to try to stay out of the line of fire as much as possible, in hopes that we won’t become a target. And as far as I can tell, nobody’s suggesting that Taylor’s release was anything other than spontaneous.

I hope that’s the end of the story. For all our sakes.

It used to be called the Canada Cup. And tonight, our boys demonstrated why. In a tense nailbiter, we edged the Czech Republic 4-3 in overtime. Once again, Vinny Lecavalier, the golden boy from Ile Bizard, was the big hero.

Bring on the Finns!

Witnesses saw a mushroom cloud. Little else is known so far.

Update: Both the US and South Korea are saying it’s unlikely to be nuclear. Which, of course, begs the question of what it was.

Update #2: North Korea says it was for a hydroelectric project. But this is North Korea we’re talking about, so the credibility of that statement is somewhat suspect. Just look at their statement:

Paek, who was providing the first North Korean word on the explosion, said it was part of a construction project to build a hydro-electric dam in the remote mountainous region of Ryanggang on the Chinese border.

The BBC said that when Paek was asked why North Korea had not explained earlier about the blasts he told Rammell Pyongyang had not done so because all foreign journalists were liars.

I suppose that’s a good reason… if you subscribe to the North Korean version of logic.

That’s what people call September 11th, 2001. Three years ago today. They say it’s the end of the innocence of the world. That, when the towers fell, three thousand people died. But what also died was our faith in the goodness of people and our sense of security. That it, too, lay in the rubble.

But it wasn’t the end of the innocence, of course. Not really. Maybe the end of the delusion, but that’s it. Human beings have never had a true age of innocence. We’ve been warring with each other, killing each other, and destroying each other’s civilizations since time immortal.

It’s the third anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, true. But, even considering only the latter part of the 20th century until today, it’s also:

• Thirty-two years since 11 Israeli athletes were massacred by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympics.
• Twenty-one years since 241 American Marines were killed in a suicide attack in Beirut, Lebanon.
• Sixteen years since Pan Am flight 103 crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland after being hijacked by Libyan terrorists, killing 259 people aboard.
• Eleven years since the last World Trade Center bombing that killed six and injured more than 1000 people.

And let’s review what we have learned since then:

• October 12, 2002, over 200 killed in a terrorist bombing in Bali, most of them Australian tourists.
• November 2002, a bombing in a hotel in Mombassa, Kenya targeted Israeli tourists. 13 people were killed.
• May 12, 2003, bombing attacks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killed 34 people.
• March 11, 2004, over 190 people were killed and nearly 2000 wounded when bombs exploded on commuter trains in Madrid.
• Last week, hundreds of children and adults were killed as a school siege in Beslan, Russia came to a horrifying end.
• More than 70 major terrorist attacks in Israel have claimed 400+ innocent lives since 9/11 alone.

These are just a few examples. Here are many more. The thing is, evil has been present and trying to take over for a very long time. It’s not the end of the innocence. Maybe it’s just acknowledgement that innocence never existed in the first place.

Despite that, we have not been defeated. Despite all the attacks, all the lives lost, we continue to flourish.

Which is why, today, I propose not just sadness and remembrance, but also celebration. Celebration that we’re alive, that we’re free people living in a free country. Remembrance not only that we’re fighting, but what it is we’re fighting for.

If that’s the only lesson to come out of 9/11, maybe it’s enough.