Segacs’s World I Know

Refugees from war-torn Liberia, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Congo, and others are finding a safe haven… in Israel:

Israel has provided refugee status for 500 foreign residents from countries in which civil wars are taking place, according to the UN High commissioner for refugees’ representative in Israel Mickey Bavli.

Speaking to reporters on the occasion of World Refugee Day, Bavli said that over the past three years, status has been given to people from countries such as Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast, as a result of which an inter-ministerial department that examines such requests was established two years ago.

At present, a further 200 applications are being examined.

Even while lobbying for urgently-needed reforms to the UNRWA – the agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, which Israel claims is facilitating terrorism – Israel is working with UNHCR to help legitimate asylum seekers and refugees from elsewhere in the world.

The UNHCR representative in Israel explained the thinking last January, when Israel set up an internal body to review refugee claims:

UNHCR’s honorary representative in Israel, Mickey Bavly, said Israelis understand the plight of refugees, since more than three million citizens of the country were themselves forced into exile.

“The Israeli people have a very personal understanding of what it means to be a refugee, you don’t need a real effort to persuade them,” Bavly said. “But what was needed was to persuade the Israeli government to take the action and not rely solely on the U.N. [to examine claims].”

Israel has always been the safe haven for Jews all over the world. But these claimants are different. Israel is signalling its openness and willingness to reach out a hand to help people who need it, regardless of their background… as long as they want to live in the state, not destroy it. A critical distinction.

Who woulda thought? South Korea is refusing to cave to threats and kidnappings, resolving to send troops to Iraq despite the terror tactics:

South Korea will go ahead with its plan to send 3,000 troops to help rebuild Iraq despite a threat from Iraqi militants to behead a South Korean hostage, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

[ . . . ]

The group holding [33-year-old businessman Kim Sun-il] said South Korea had 24 hours from Sunday night to withdraw its decision or they would behead him, Arabic television station Al Jazeera reported.

“I am telling you that there will be no change to our government’s basic spirit and position — our plan to send troops to Iraq is for the support and reconstruction of Iraq,” Choi said.

[ . . . ]

“If we accept the terrorists’ demand this time, the terrorists will continue threatening the world,” he said.

South Korea knows a thing or two about tyrannies. Their next-door neighbour has taught them well. Still, who woulda thought that the country that has shown so little spine lately in dealing with their Northern counterparts would stand so firm on their Iraq commitment?

A sperm donor was awarded visitation rights by a Quebec judge:

A man who donated his sperm so that a lesbian couple could have a child has been given visitation rights by a Quebec judge.The Journal de Montréal reported this morning that Quebec Superior Court Justice Suzanne Courteau granted the man the right to visit the child, three times per week, even though he isn’t officially recognized as the father’s child.

And why should he be recognized as the father? Is he helping to raise the child? Support it? To be its father in any way whatsoever? Does he even meet the most liberal, loose definition of fatherhood imaginable? No, absolutely not.

Yesterday was father’s day. A day to appreciate our fathers and all they have done for us. This man has done nothing for this baby. Being a father is about a lot more than simply donating some sperm. The courts should recognize that, and leave the decisions like these up to the baby’s real parents.

Well, the demerger results are mostly in now. Radio-Canada has the breakdown with cute little traffic lights. Looks like 15 of 22 are out of the Montreal megacity. There were less demergers in other regions.

Stay tuned for the political fallout.

Update: As predicted, both sides are claiming victory:

“I think the word is jubilation that one would apply to what is going on right now in Westmount,” said Peter Trent, former mayor of [Westmount].

And Gerard Tremblay is playing the spinning game, trying to see the silver lining:

“Montreal is bigger and stronger than it was before,” he said, noting that places like Anjou, St-Laurent, Pierrefonds, LaSalle and Roxboro, which weren’t part of Montreal before the forced mergers, now are.

Two of those lost their bids by tiny margins. And all of them had a majority Yes vote, but failed to get the 35% required. If I were Tremblay I wouldn’t be so proud that most voters wanted out.

8:30pm: The polls have been closed for 90 minutes and the results are starting to come in.

So far on the Montreal island, the Yes side has pulled it off in Anjou, Baie D’Urfé, Beaconsfield, Dorval, Kirkland, Île-Bizard, Île-Dorval, Montreal-Est, Montreal-West, T.M.R., Pointe-Claire, Roxboro, and Senneville, among others.

Dollard, my hometown till recently, is still up in the air. The Yes side is leading with 83.95%, but so far only 33.02% of voters have cast a ballot. The magic number of 35% must be reached for the result to count. There are still a number of polling stations to report, though, so it’s looking encouraging.

8:35pm: We did it!!! Dollard has 39.43% voter turnout.

8:40pm: Côte St-Luc and Hampstead are still up in the air; neither has hit the 35% mark yet. Westmount is just a few votes shy, with a lot more polls to count. And Pierrefonds and St-Laurent are both very far away and it doesn’t look like either of them are going to make it.

8:45pm: Off the island of Montreal and around the province, a number of former municipalities reached 35% but voted “No”. These include Aubert-Gallion, Beauport, Black Lake, Bromptonville, Buckingham, Canton Sutton (by a narrow margin), Cap-Rouge, Charlesbourg, Charny, Gallix, Hull, Maple Grove, Melocheville, Metis-Sur-Mer, Mont-Brun, Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel, Petit-Matane, Robertsonville, Saint-Athanase, Saint-Élie-d’Orford, Saint-Émile (also by a narrow margin), Sainte-Rosalie, Sainte-Veronique, Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Saint-Jean-des-Piles, Saint-Luc-de-Matane, Saint-Rédempteur, Sillery, and Val-Bélair. There are close races in a number of others. Oh well, that’s their democratic right and at least the people had the opportunity to decide. And besides, I can take consolation in the fact that the “no” victory isn’t a victory for Gerard Tremblay.

8:50pm: The 35% mark has been surpassed in Westmount, with over 90% of ballots cast voting Yes. As if there was ever any doubt. Cote St-Luc and Hampstead are still shy of the cutoff.

8:55pm: Hampstead has pulled it off. I guess the largest polls reported last because the turnout in the end was over 50%, with more than 90% of the votes to demerge.

9:00pm: Cote-St-Luc has surpassed 35% and thus voted to demerge. It seems that on the island of Montreal, only Pierrefonds and St-Laurent have not yet reached 35%. Neither seems likely to either, though it might be close.

9:10pm: Final results in Dollard are 85.21% Yes, with 44.12% voter turnout.

9:25pm: Of the 22 former cities on the island of Montreal that held referendums today, 18 have now voted to demerge. Only Ste-Genevieve, Pierrefonds, LaSalle, and Saint-Laurent are still short of the 35% turnout needed to make their yes majorities count.

9:35pm: As several people have correctly pointed out, I’ve made an error. The 35% rule actually states that 35% of all people in each municipality must vote yes in order for the vote to count.

Therefore, the cities of Anjou, Île-Bizard, and Roxboro, contrary to my earlier report, actually failed their bid to demerge. All three had Yes majorities and more than 35% of people voted, but less than 35% of the total people voted Yes.

Ste-Genevieve and LaSalle also lost their bids to demerge, and Pierrefonds and Saint-Laurent appear to be headed towards losses as well.

Therefore, of the 22 cities on the island of Montreal that held referendums, it looks like only 15 will successfully demerge.

9:50pm: Pierrefonds has officially failed its demerger bid.

9:55pm: Dollard’s final results were actually perilously close. 37.36% of registered voters cast a “Yes” ballot, which surpasses the 35% required but is a lot closer than I would have thought. I’m glad now that I urged my friends and relatives in Dollard to take the time to vote. Unlike in most elections *ahem Federal*, every vote actually counts in this one.

Oh well, Dollard is out of the megacity and that’s what matters.

10:00pm: The results are in. 15 Montreal cities have voted to demerge. Anjou, Pierrefonds, St-Laurent, Ste-Genevieve, and LaSalle have all fallen well short of the required 35%.

And 132 people in Île-Bizard and 74 people in Roxboro are kicking themselves right now for staying home.

Hmmm, considering that Dollard and Roxboro had been merged into a single borough, I wonder what happens now that DDO has voted to demerge and Roxboro hasn’t. Does Roxboro become its own borough? Will it be merged into Pierrefonds?

Happy Father’s Day to all you fathers out there.

And to whoever invented the father’s day barbecue, with all sorts of evil foods, I simultaneously thank and curse you.

Tomorrow is the last chance to save your cities. So to residents of Anjou, Baie d’Urfé, Beaconsfield, Côte-St-Luc, Dollard, Dorval, Hampstead, Île-Bizard, Île-Dorval, Kirkland, LaSalle, Montreal-Est, Montreal-West, Pierrefonds, Pointe-Claire, Roxboro, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Ste-Genevieve, St-Laurent, Senneville, T.M.R., and Westmount… make sure to take a moment tomorrow and exercise your right to vote. Unlike most elections, this one actually can make a real difference.

A particular shout-out to people living in places where the advance polling turnout was especially low… particularly my home-until-recently, Dollard des Ormeaux. I can’t vote there anymore but I would hate to see voter apathy result in a loss of this chance. Remember: under the system, staying home is effectively the same as voting no. So get out there.

Despite all the dirty tricks, threats, false information and propaganda that has tainted this campaign, one fact remains and that is that the mergers were imposed by steamrolling over democracy in order to placate the unions. And while Bill 9 isn’t a magic bullet, it will go a long way towards righting the wrongs and sending the government a strong message that the will of the people cannot be ignored.

For more information on how and where to vote, see this site.

I was watching former NDP leader Alexa McDonough be interviewed on CBC Newsworld about her party’s foreign policy.

In predictable fashion, she ranted about the need to “choose” what Canada’s role would be in the world, and how “most Canadians” agree that force should only be used under the UN, and how Canada should expand its peacekeeping roles under the UN and distance itself from the “Bush administration” (the last bit was said with a disdainful sneer).

When she talked about needing to make the “choice”, I realized something: she – and many Canadians, both within the NDP and outside of it – still think that the War on Terror is a choice. They harbour the delusion that if Canada “chooses” to stay neutral, to stay out of it, that the terrorists will leave us alone.

They don’t get that we’re in a war whether we “choose” to be or not. The terrorists haven’t struck on Canadian soil – yet – but they’ve been planning to and trying to. We’re on the list of Evil Western countries, merely for being a free democracy, and none of McDonough or her ilk’s “choices” will change the fact that they have unilaterally declared war on us.

So the choice they’re really asking Canadians to make is between reality and denial.

Beyond whatever anyone’s opinion of all the NDP’s rhetoric about renegotiation free trade as “fair trade”, ending tax cuts to multinational corporations, or any of their policies… that is the choice that voters will be making on June 28th.

Damian Penny for Prime Minister!

Hey, who else thinks it’s a good idea? Besides, he wants to appoint me to his cabinet as Minister of External Affairs. I’m honoured… and a little frightened. Hey Damian, do I have your permission to dispatch Bill Graham to Denmark?