Segacs’s World I Know

Yep, good ol’ France, as expected, overwhelmingly backed the ban of religious symbols from the classroom, thus endorsing what is arguably one of the best candidates for prominence on dumblaws.com:

France’s National Assembly voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to banish religious emblems from state schools, a measure meant to keep tensions between Muslim and Jewish minorities out of public classrooms.

Deputies voted 494 to 36 to ban Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses and to expel pupils who insisted on wearing them. It will not apply to private schools.

[ . . . ]

“What is at issue here is the clear affirmation that public school is a place for learning and not for militant activity or proselytism,” Assembly Speaker Jean-Louis Debre said.

Er, no, what is at issue here is whether the public school system will actually deal with racism and militant activity, or whether it will just sweep it under the carpet. All this law will do is force Muslim girls out of the public system and into private Madrassas, where they will lose the opportunity to have a secular education. All this will do is force the militant wing of Islam underground in France, and insult all the mainstream Muslims by telling them that their symbol of faith is really a symbol of “militant activity”.

France is attempting to solve a serious problem by pretending it doesn’t exist, and we all know how well that works.

Seems the people giving out the Brit Press Awards have overlooked the one person who clearly ought to be the rightful winner of the Young Journalist of the Year prize.

Tom, they may be a bunch of wankers. But I’ll give you an honourary nomination right here. Maybe you’ll garner votes as a write-in.

I saw the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring today. It was good. A bit slow, but great acting. Recommended.

There’s been another suicide bombing in Russia, on a crowded Moscow commuter train. At least 39 are dead, over 100 injured. Vladimir Putin blames Chechen terrorists:

Putin condemned the blast, calling it terrorism.

“Only with the united efforts of the world community can we deal with this plague of this 21st century,” Putin said, according to Interfax.

The president said he would not exclude the possibility that terrorists were trying to pressure the Russian leadership ahead of March elections, and restated his position that the government would never negotiate with terrorists, Interfax reported.

In Grozny, Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov denied that Chechen rebels were behind the blast.

What Putin doesn’t mention is that the “plague of the 21st century” was the “plague of the 20th century” in Israel. People didn’t combat suicide bombings in Israel because they figured that the terrorism was “Israel’s problem”. Now the tactic has spread – Riyadh, Baghdad, Moscow – and containment is tougher because the terrorists know that their weapon of choice is effective.

My condolences to the victims of today’s cowardly attack and their families.

Evan waxes nostalgic about his childhood.

I’m around Evan’s age (a little older… shhhh) and agree with him that most of the things in the age 35+ e-mail forward also apply to us. We played hopscotch by drawing with chalk on the street. We built snow forts on the front lawn. We didn’t have “smear the queer” (can you imagine a school allowing a game with a name like that today?) but we had tag, soccer, and a game that involved throwing a tennis ball against a wall with maximum force and trying to get people “out” if it bounced back and hit them. Once a year, the school janitor would go up to the roof to retrieve all the tennis balls that had gotten caught up there, and us students would run around underneath hoping to catch them as he threw them over the side. These days, the school could get sued if one of the tennis balls were to actually *hit* a student.

Nostalgia is a tricky thing, though. We all romanticize our childhoods and assume that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket for anyone coming afterwords. Despite excessive video games, pollution, political-correctness, self-esteem, and a distinct lack of playing outside, I have an inkling that the kids being born today will make it through somehow. Call me crazy… but we human beings have been at this for a while.

North Korea finally made mainstream media headlines… but the story is about an asylum applicant being deported by Canada back to North Korea and – he claims – certain death:

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board has rejected the asylum case of a North Korean dissident even though the board agrees the man will likely be executed for treason if deported to his homeland.

The IRB has allowed the man’s six-year-old son to remain in Canada, because as the son of a dissident he would face persecution, while a removal order has been issued for his father, his only living parent.

Song Dae Ri, a trade official, was posted to North Korea’s embassy in Beijing before he defected to Canada with his son and wife in August, 2001. His wife was lured home by her parents before she had a chance to make a refugee claim, and in April, 2002, was executed in North Korea.

[ . . . ]

IRB member Bonnie Milliner ruled that Mr. Ri will likely be executed for treason if returned home, but said he was not “deserving of Canada’s protection” because he was complicit in crimes against humanity merely for being a member of Kim Jong-il’s government. She made that ruling despite written assurances from Canada’s War Crimes Unit that Mr. Ri was “not a person of interest to them” and that there was no evidence he had committed crimes against humanity.

I don’t like to leap to judgments about individual cases, because there is usually more to a story than what makes the paper. That said, if the Globe and Mail article is accurate, this is a terrible miscarriage of justice on the part of the Canadian Government.

Even the IRB isn’t claiming that Ri was involved in wrongdoings beyond simply living in North Korea. Obviously, they have some kind of rule that any member of the government is ineligible for refugee status… but in a communist country, where virtually everyone is a member of the government in some way, this rule is pretty ridiculous. Furthermore, they are allowing Ri’s son to stay on the grounds that his life is in danger because of persecution of his father. That seems pretty self-contradictory to me.

Ri is becoming yet another “poster case” for activists lobbying for a more open refugee system in Canada. If he deserves it, I hope the government reverses its decision and allows him to stay. The flip side, of course, is that if it turns out he really was involved in the horrible crimes against humanity being perpetuated by Kim Jong-Il’s regime, that it will only make it that much harder on legitimate refugee claimants to garner sympathy. From the looks of it, though, all Ri did was lose his wife and just barely manage to escape with his son. If that’s true, than sending him back is tantamount to state-sanctioned murder.

With all the priorities out there for our tax dollars – health, education, infrastructure – it looks like the new big priority is investigating Don Cherry:

Don Cherry’s recent remarks about Francophones have launched a government investigation.

An aide to Dyane Adam revealed Wednesday that the official languages commissioner is investigating Cherry’s comments about francophones aired during the Jan. 24 instalment of Coach’s Corner on Hockey Night In Canada.

Cherry, who turned 70 on Thursday, was discussing the merits of protective visors as mandatory equipment in the NHL when he said: “Most of the guys that wear them are Europeans and French guys.”

I don’t watch Don Cherry. I find him obnoxious. But millions of Canadians disagree with me, and he’s somewhat of a national icon of political incorrectness… not to mention bad wardrobes. So what was it about those remarks that were so offensive as to necessitate an Official Languages Commissioner investigation?

Mind you, the Official Languages office is pretty much the champion of squandering tax dollars on pettiness. That is, next to the OLF. (Anyone remember the dreaded unilingual matza ball?)

As to Don Cherry, I think a caller on the radio this morning put it best when he said that “using tax dollars to investigate Don Cherry is like commissioning the Canadian Space Agency to investigate the House of Commons for signs of intelligent life”.

‘Nuff said.

Instapundit linked to a Washington Post article by columnist Anne Appelbaum about why nobody seems to care:

Auschwitz Under Our Noses

Nowadays, it seems impossible to understand why so few people, at the time of the Auschwitz liberation, even knew that the camp existed. It seems even harder to explain why those who did know did nothing. In recent years a plethora of respectable institutions — the Vatican, the U.S. government, the international Jewish community, the Allied commanders — have all been accused of “allowing” the Holocaust to occur, through ignorance or ill will or fear, or simply because there were other priorities, such as fighting the war.

We shake our heads self-righteously, certain that if we’d been there, liberation would have come earlier — all the while failing to see that the present is no different.

[ . . . ]

In the days since the documentary aired, few other news organizations have picked up the story either. There are other priorities: the president’s budget, ricin in the Senate office building, David Kay’s testimony, a murder of a high school student, Super Tuesday, Janet Jackson. With the possible exception of the last, these are all genuinely important subjects. They are issues people care deeply about. North Korea is far away and, quite frankly, it doesn’t seem there’s a lot we can do about it.

Later — in 10 years, or in 60 — it will surely turn out that quite a lot was known in 2004 about the camps of North Korea. It will turn out that information collected by various human rights groups, South Korean churches, oddball journalists and spies added up to a damning and largely accurate picture of an evil regime. It will also turn out that there were things that could have been done, approaches the South Korean government might have made, diplomatic channels the U.S. government might have opened, pressure the Chinese might have applied.

Historians in Asia, Europe and here will finger various institutions, just as we do now, and demand they justify their past actions. And no one will be able to understand how it was possible that we knew of the existence of the gas chambers but failed to act.

That emphasis was mine. And it pretty much sums up why I keep coming back to this story and feeling that it’s so important. Sure, there are plenty of horrible human rights abuses going on right under our noses. But the parallels with this one have crept under my skin, because of how we – as individuals and as a society – may go down in history for failing to pay any attention.

The R-word may be a dirty word here in Quebec, but for Ariel Sharon, a referendum on the Gaza pullout may not be such a bad idea:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon revealed on Wednesday that he would be willing to support proposals from Likud MKs to hold a referendum on his plan to withdraw from settlements.

“I do not rule out going to a referendum,” Sharon told reporters in the Knesset cafeteria.” I think it’s a good idea. I don’t rule it out and I will look into the idea. It’s important to gauge the opinion of the public.”

There are two reasons why I think this is the best course of action on Sharon’s plan, neither of which has anything to do with bolstering his leadership. Firstly, we’re not talking about sovereignty-association or other such nonsense; we’re talking about people’s security, people’s lives. The people deserve a say. And secondly, because Israel – as a country with more opinions than citizens – needs to make sure that any drastic steps can be backed by the will of the people. A referendum will foster public debate among citizens, and will lead to more angles being considered.

Unfortunately, even Sharon acknowledges that there is no good answer to this one:

Singling out the Geneva Accord and the Saudi plan, Sharon said his plan is better than the alternatives.

“It’s never a choice between good and bad,” Sharon said. “It’s a choice between bad and even worse. You always have to look at what is more dangerous.”

Personally, I think that unilateral withdrawal is the “more dangerous” option because it sets a precedent of rewarding terror and swapping land without peace. But then, only Israelis will be able to vote in a referendum, and I’m not Israeli. The people whose lives are most directly affected should be the ones doing the deciding.