Segacs’s World I Know

A group of students at Virginia Commonwealth University called Supporters of a Safe Israel is trying to bring Daniel Pipes to speak on campus. But here’s the catch: because of fear of violence, riots, and general security breakdowns for any pro-Israel event on a university campus these days, the group would need to pay for extra security in order to get permission for the event to go ahead. Meryl is trying to help them raise money, which is all very well and good and I’m sure that if you want to help out you can check out her posting and do so:

A student group called Supporters of a Safe Israel at Virginia Commonwealth University wants to bring Daniel Pipes to VCU for a lecture. However, due to the current anti-Israel climate on many college campuses, whenever a group brings a pro-Israel speaker, the colleges demand extra security due to the protests and controversy that will ensue.

SSI needs to raise an extra $5,000, and they’ve only got about a month.

To those of us who remember the Netanyahu riot at Concordia, this argument is somewhat familiar… only that it goes even further. VCU requires the pro-Israel students to pay extra, but still allows their events to take place if they do. The argument at Concordia after September 9, 2002 went something like this: “Well, bringing Netanyahu was such a security risk that the university should have never allowed him to come in the first place”.

Either way, it’s backwards. The reason that pro-Israel speakers require extra security is because of a group of shit-disturbers who think that rioting is the new black. They are not content to merely voice their disagreements with opposing viewpoints; they believe in using any means necessary – including and especially violence – to shut them down. And they are the reason extra security is required in the first place.

If you ask me, it’s the groups who organize the riots who should have to fund extra security. After all, if they stuck to peaceful demonstration tactics – similar to those used by pro-Israel groups protesting anti-Israel speakers – no extra security would be needed.

Because if the rioters have their way, it will become prohibitively expensive to bring any pro-Israel speaker to a university campus. And then they will have accomplished their goal of shutting down the views they don’t like. Rioting will have won. And that, to me, is unacceptable.

US Ambassador Paul Cellucci warned that Canada was one of the only targets on Al Qa’eda’s list that had not yet been hit with either a successful or foiled terrorist attack. And that it was very likely we could be the next targets:

Canadians need to heed the dire warning this week from U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci that major cities in the Windsor-to-Montreal corridor face an Al-Qa’ida attack similar to last week’s terrorist strikes in Madrid, says one of the country’s leading terrorism experts.

“Our turn is coming. It may be coming much sooner than we think,” John Thompson, president of the Mackenzie Institute, Canada’s leading security and terrorism think-tank, said in an interview yesterday.

[ . . . ]

In a video that aired on the Al Jazeera satellite television station Nov. 12, 2002, the Al-Qa’ida leader singled out Canada as a country that should be attacked. Canada was listed along with several other U.S. allies on the tape.

Thompson said that Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Italy — all U.S. allies in the international war on terrorism — have either been struck by Al-Qa’ida or have had terrorists plots foiled on their soil.

“We’re the only ones they’ve threatened that they haven’t gone after yet,” Thompson said.

[ . . . ]

Thompson said Canadians must be shaken from their mistaken belief that they are somehow immune from terrorism.

“There’s this strong belief that we’re the world’s nice guys and everyone loves us,” Thompson said. “We have been sheltered for far too long. … Some day soon we’ll all have to wake up and realize we’ve been hit.”

The only question is, should Canada be struck, will we react like the U.S.? Or like Spain?

Excuse me for a moment while I yield to the temptation to act like a bratty five-year-old:

HAHAHAHA! Serves you right!

Pettiness doesn’t pay. That was the message a Quebec Court judge sent to the Office de la langue française yesterday.

[ . . . ]

Central Microsystems 4000 had been working with the language police since 1999 on a French version of its online computer store, but a few English words continued to appear in some product descriptions.

The Office considered that a violation of the French Language Charter and sent the matter to the Quebec attorney-general, who in February 2002 fined the LaSalle company $604.

The company contested the fine. Judge Maximilien Polak yesterday upheld the defence’s argument although the company might have technically contravened the charter, the violation was so trivial it did not warrant the full force of the law.

The OLF’s decision to pursue the matter even after Central Microsystems repeatedly showed its willingness to make corrections went against the language police’s own stated objective, which was to correct charter violations, not to punish them, the judge found.

Ok, it’s out of my system now. But it’s about time that somebody called the ruler-wielding OLF on its anal-retentiveness…

Montreal megacity municipal workers are stifling political expression in Cote St. Luc by cutting down hundreds of blue ribbons that volunteers put up to promote their campaign for demerger:

In what may be a prelude to a complaint-riddled referendum campaign, demerger activists are accusing the Côte St. Luc/Hampstead/Montreal West borough of stifling freedom of expression after municipal workers yesterday cut down hundreds of blue ribbons that a Côte St. Luc demerger committee had posted on poles and trees.

Borough officials say employees simply went overboard in their spring cleaning yesterday.

Spring cleaning? Hah! I’ll believe that when the streets and parks don’t look like overflowing trash cans.

In the meantime, Robert Libman just lost yet another in a long list of respect notches in my book:

Housefather’s colleagues – borough mayor Robert Libman and city councillor Dida Berku – denied ordering any ribbons to be cut down. Libman added that he doubted ribbons were removed from private property.

Libman accused Housefather of deliberately plastering ribbons to provoke their removal and “to make a big political scandal out of this.”

So, wait, he didn’t remove them but they were plastered in order to provoke their removal? Which is it, Libman? Did you order them removed or not? And did it ever occur to you that they were put up, not to provoke removal, but to encourage citizen response?

The profusion of ribbons in Côte St. Luc “really goes beyond what I think is sophisticated or legitimate political expression,” Libman said.

In other words, it threatens your cushy job?

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to everyone. Sláinte!

Meryl has declared today the International Eat an Animal for PETA day. She started the day last year in response to PETA’s disgusting ad campaign comparing eating meat to the slaughter of six million Jews during the Holocaust. That’s low even for the nutbags at PETA and there’s been an overwhelming call to reprise the day this year.

I approve. I have nothing against vegetarians, but the wingnuts over at People Eating Tasty Animals (er, PETA) are the exception. Don’t want to eat meat? Fine. But shut up about it. PETA, on the other hand, is so obsessed with respect for animals that they have lost all respect for humans. Besides the aforementioned ad campaign, there was also the lovely incident where PETA decided that suicide bombings are OK as long as no donkeys are harmed, or the really classy tactic of telling children their mommy is an animal-killer for wearing fur, by approaching kids at performances of the Nutcracker and handing them flyers.

So I plan to go home after work and have a nice tasty chicken dinner in honour of IEAPD. ‘Course, I probably would’ve done that anyway. But somehow I think it’ll taste better, since I’ll know that it’s in honour of pissing off PETA.

Lynn notes that Arafat is referring to Ashdod as “Israeli occupied Ashdod”. Ashdod, of course, is inside the “green line”, for anyone who still lends that line any importance.

When the Palestinian terrorists say “end the occupation”, they mean Tel Aviv. Just in case anyone was still unclear about that. And of course, the answer is a very simple, unambiguous “no”.

That’s my message to people in Spain, in all of Europe, in North America, or anywhere. The terrorists don’t care what we do. They’ll kill us anyway.

It doesn’t matter if we make nice, and talk about “understanding” the motives of the terrorists. They’ll kill us anyway.

It doesn’t matter if we look for “root causes” or try to blame terrorist attacks on the actions and international policies of our governments. They’ll kill us anyway.

It doesn’t matter if we stand in the streets marching and chanting with the radical groups, holding signs equating Bush to Hitler or denouncing the United States. They’ll kill us anyway.

It doesn’t matter if we all flood classes about Islam to learn about the “religion of peace” and have long theological discussions about its true meanings. They’ll kill us anyway.

It doesn’t matter if we turn out in droves to throw out centrist governments at the polls and vote in socialists who are more inclined to appeasement in reaction to terror attacks. They’ll kill us anyway.

It doesn’t matter if we abstain from United Nations resolutions that would attempt to defend what’s right, or if we bury our heads in the sand on an international scale and refuse to take any action, or even if we turn on our allies. They’ll kill us anyway.

It doesn’t matter if we denounce Israel or give millions in aid to the Palestinians. They’ll kill us anyway.

It doesn’t matter what we do. To the terrorists, all that matters is who we are: Western, democratic and free. They don’t hate us for what we do, or don’t do. That’s just an excuse. They attacked Spain and people said it was because the Spanish were allied with the US and Britain in Iraq. So now the Spanish throw out their government, and we in Canada breathe a sigh of relief because we didn’t participate in the war in Iraq so we won’t be targets. But they attacked Morocco and Kenya and Bali and Turkey… how many of those places participated in the war in Iraq? If we Canadians think they won’t kill us anyway, we’re kidding ourselves. Given the opportunity, they would be just as happy to kill as many of us as they can.

They’re fighting a war. Oppression against freedom. Backwardness against civilization. They’ve gotten tired of oppressing the people in the middle east only, and they have decided to go global… and they won’t stop until we’re all dead. That’s how much they hate us. No amount of caving to their blackmail or changing our actions or ways of thinking will appease them either. Do you really think Osama Bin Laden cares how many people who died in 9/11 were registered Republicans and how many were registered Democrats? Do you really think he gives a rat’s ass whether any of the people who died when the World Trade Center collapsed had been out marching in an ANSWER rally a week before? Or had been out protesting Bush a month before?

No, they don’t hate us for what we do. They hate us for who we are. And they’ll kill us anyway. So there’s nothing left for us to do but to kill them first.

Michele on the Spanish election results:

The terrorists got what they wanted. They won.

And now the U.S. will have one less ally. One less country to count on the war against terrorism. They’ll pull out of Iraq and it won’t be long before they pull out of fighting the terrorists all together. Appeasement is the new black.

Welcome to the new age of al-Qaid and radical Islam on the whole, built on the deaths of 200 people. They’ve been emboldened by the Spanish left. They’ve been told that terrorism works, terrorism gets results.