Segacs’s World I Know

I know I’ve been incessantly linking to Allison lately. But I can’t recommend her blog enough, especially while she keeps writing posts like this one:

They see that when we try to make nice and compromise we get terror attacks. And when we’re tough and aggressive we get terror attacks. Nothing we do seems to lower the motivation to slaughter Israeli civilians — men, women, or children — and in the case of Hamas, to see the state of Israel destroyed. So since there’s absolutely nothing to lose by getting Yassin, and something to possibly gain — at least temporarily derailing the Hamas leadership structure, and hopefully weakening it long-term — so why not go ahead and do it?

It’s a similar equation as the fence. Yes, building this fence is pissing off the Palestinians big-time. But does anyone think that if we stopped building it, they would be so happy and grateful, terror attacks would stop? No. No fence equals attempts at terror attacks, and a fence equals attempts at terror attacks. So why in the world shouldn’t we support building a fence in the hopes of foiling a number of these attacks?

With nothing left to lose, let’s try to do what we can to protect ourselves. That’s the sentiment of the man on the street.

Harry disagrees:

I’m reading a lot of non-Israeli bloggers who are touting this as some huge victory for Israel and the best thing to happen since Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley made out at the MTV awards. It’s not. Yes, the man is evil. Does he deserve to die? Yes, of course. But could the security cabinet have really really thought about the consequences of this? I mean really?

Seeing as how I’m one of those “non-Israeli bloggers” that Harry accurately chastised for not being close enough to the situation to be able to fully appreciate the sentiments of Israelis, I won’t comment, except to say that somehow, I get the sense that Allison’s reaction is closer to the grim reality.

As I drove through Côte St. Luc on my way into work this morning, I saw them: dozens – even hundreds – of blue demerger ribbons tied to tree trunks, flapping around in the wind.

The other thing I noticed was how much better the roads had been salted on the Côte St. Luc side of the road, as opposed to my side, technically in N.D.G.

Yep. The demerger battle continues. May it succeed.

And to all the municipal workers who felt it so very necessary to “clean up” the ribbons, how about starting by “cleaning up” your trucks by removing the “Défusion = Confusion” stickers that you’ve stuck all over them?

Toronto has been hit with a wave of antisemitic vandalism… at exactly the same time as the massive one-year anniversary protests of the war in Iraq.

Coincidence?

Reactions on Yassin’s death are beginning to filter in:

Allison posts her stream-of-consciousness thoughts when she first heard the news, and also a knock-knock joke by Lair.

Those great folks over at Israpundit have, of course, been all over this story, posting news roundups and perspectives.

And here’s Meryl on her first thoughts and then again on targeted assassinations. And LGF has some grisly photos.

Big journalism is reacting as well. The Jerusalem Post has the oh-so-cheery predictions of retaliatory attacks against Jews and Israelis abroad. Haaretz has wasted no time putting together an in-depth feature section, including its view that Yassin’s assassination was a part of Israel’s disengagement plan. Ma’ariv’s editorials run the gamut, from the predictions of more violence or Palestinian civil war to the view that Yassin’s killing was necessary to protect innocent lives.

Away from Israel, we have CNN reporting the condemnation of world leaders for killing a terrorist, with a fervour they rarely employ when busloads of schoolchildren are murdered. BBC has a regional news roundup, with immediate reactions from both Israeli and Arab news sources. The Los Angeles Times says that Yassin wanted to be killed by the IDF, because “martyrdom” was his greatest goal. And the Guardian wastes no time coming out with stupidities, writing an obituary for Yassin that, among other things, compares the terrorist to Nelson Mandela.

More reactions to follow.

LGF has the breaking news, starting to come over the wires that the founder and “spiritual leader” of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin was the target of an IDF strike. Haaretz is reporting that Yassin was killed by the strike:

Israel Air Force helicopters fired missiles at Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin as he left a mosque near his house at daybreak Monday, residents said, and Hamas officials and witnesses said he was killed.

This is big. Huge, in fact. Yassin was personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Israelis. It’s the Israeli equivalent of getting Osama. Bigger, because of the power jockeying that’s going on between the Palestinian terror groups. In that war, Hamas has just been dealt a full-on body blow.

Of course, Hamas supporters are vowing revenge. And unfortunately, the revenge is likely to be more than just empty threats. The PA is also screaming about this, calling Yassin a “moderate”:

The Palestinian Authority on Monday condemned the assassination. “This is a crazy and very dangerous act. It opens the door wide to chaos. Yassin is known for his moderation and he was controlling Hamas and therefore this is a dangerous, cowardly act,” said Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia.

It is precisely the fact that the Palestinian Authority can call Yassin a man “known for his moderation” that sheds a lot of light on what “moderation” means in Palestinian society.

My heart goes out to all the people who will likely suffer as Hamas supporters take their “revenge” for the murder of this terrorist. But ultimately, Yassin didn’t even come close to getting what he deserved. Death was far, far too good for him.

Update: CNN, CBC, and BBC all have the story. The BBC, of course, has its typical reaction:

As well as the possibility of reprisals by Hamas militants, the killing could affect diplomatic efforts to get the peace process back on track, says our correspondent.

What peace process?

This news is just emerging, so we are only starting to see some of the “analysis” that is sure to follow in the coming hours and days. But the BBC is also asking for reader reactions… that ought to be interesting sickening.

Update #2: First reaction from Gaza U – er – Concordia.

LGF reports the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade’s reaction to finding out that the man they murdered in a drive-by shooting in Jerusalem was not Jewish but Arab:

A leader of a Palestinian militant group behind the drive-by killing of an Israeli jogger apologized on Saturday after the dead man was identified as an Israeli-Arab university student.

“The fighters thought [George Khoury] was a settler jogging in an area full of settlers. It was a mistake and we extend our apology to his family,” a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed group in President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, told Reuters.

“We will consider him as a martyr like hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation forces,” the al-Aqsa brigades leader said, adding that the group would send a letter of apology to Khoury’s family.

How long until the media starts reporting that Khoury was killed by the IDF? Hey, it worked with Mohammed al-Dura…

Stephen Harper has won the Conservative Party leadership on the first ballot, with 56% of the vote compared to 35% for Belinda Stronach and 9% for Tony Clement.

Harper spent a lot of time in his victory speech talking about how the Conservatives were going to overthrow the Liberals and form the next government. But he couldn’t beat the Chretien Liberals as leader of the Alliance, and he won’t beat the Martin Liberals this time.

What he will do is regain his job as leader of the official opposition… only this time, the Liberals might only have a minority government. Which will give Harper’s Conservatives a lot more power. However, I don’t believe that Harper will ever be Canada’s Prime Minister. The conservative fiscal policies may appeal to many, but Harper is still perceived as too Western, too socially right-wing, too alienated from the sensibilities of mainstream Canada.

I think Harper himself said it best, when he said that “it might be a few years too late, but welcome to the 21st century”. The Conservative Party is continually being several years behind the times. Until that changes, neither will the government.

More horrors from North Korea (via Paul Jané):

North Korea built [a gulag system] on the Chinese model and added a new depravity — child political prisoners. Neither the Soviets nor the Chinese sent children to the concentration camps but the Dear Leader sends the entire family. One of the best accounts of the North Korean gulag is written by someone who was sent to the camps at the age of nine, because his grandfather had offended the system. His sister was only seven; she was also sent to prison. In North Korea, the children of political prisoners are called “seedlings.” Official propaganda proscribes the proper treatment of these children, “desiccate the seedlings of counterrevolution, pull them out by their roots, and exterminate every last one of them.”

The camps are designed to exploit the prisoners’ labor until they die. Prisoners are given difficult and dangerous labor such as mining under unsafe conditions. Children are assigned heavy work as well, such as logging. Even before the famine of the mid-1990s, prisoners, including children, were on rations that would not sustain life in the long run, much less allow for any sort of normal growth. Since the political prisoners are never released, there is no danger of them divulging military secrets; they are assigned to work on missiles and other special weapons. One camp, Camp #14, is notorious for its use of prisoners “as guinea pigs for developing chemical warfare technology,” according to information obtained by the Seoul Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights.

This stuff makes my stomach turn. And there’s more:

It’s bad luck to be an even moderately attractive young woman in the camps. High Communist Party officials troll the camps looking for victims to be used as sex slaves. If the women become pregnant, they are forced to have an abortion without anesthesia. When their usefulness is over, the women are murdered. Their deaths are covered up as “shot while trying to escape.” In much the same way, the Nazi “Death Doctor,” Josef Mengele, used to comb the arriving trains for an attractive evening companion, only to have her shot the next day.

No, this isn’t Germany 60 years ago. It’s happening in North Korea right now. And the world is content to do nothing about it, because North Korea is communist and communism is the solution to the evil capitalism of America and the Zionist Cabal and the evil Joooos that everyone’s so much more concerned about condemning. And besides, Kim Jong-Il has nuclear weapons probably and he’s crazy and he might use them so what can anyone do anyway? And it’s so far away so it’s easy to close our eyes and pretend it doesn’t exist, right? Especially cause nobody ever escapes from Camp #14 so there are no eyewitnesses to write books or go on speaking tours to raise awareness.

Sickening and disgusting, all of it.

The Quebec Court of Appeal has ruled that barring gays from marriage is discriminatory, upholding a lower court ruling and effectively paving the way to gay marriage in Quebec:

The Quebec court case pitted some religious groups against Michael Hendricks and Rene Leboeuf, who want to marry after being together for 30 years.

The religious groups were appealing a September 2002 ruling by Justice Louise Lemelin of Quebec Superior Court that said restricting marriage to a union between a man and a woman was unjustified under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

This isn’t really too surprising, as public opinion in Quebec is overwhelmingly supportive of gay marriage. And it’s only a matter of time until the rest of the country follows suit.