Segacs’s World I Know

Well, the Expos will be back next season . . . but it’s unclear how many of them will still be on the team after the inevitable fire sale.

Such a shame.

Well, enough with baseball. Time to pin the great white hope on hockey – which isn’t looking good either.

Tomorrow, Montreal will be one of 954 cities around the world participating in car-free day. During off-peak hours, a core area of downtown will be closed to cars.

This is one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard.

Okay, so the objective is to point out how dependant we are on our cars. We already know that . . . and most of us hate it!

You want us to get rid of our cars? Fine. Give us a real alternative.

In Montreal’s climate, walking or cycling is really only viable a few months a year. The metro doesn’t go west or north, and the buses only circulate locally and come every half-hour or hour.

City planners constantly complain about “urban sprawl”. In the meantime, people are forced to spread out from downtown cause – in case nobody’s noticed – there’s nowhere to live in the downtown core! Montreal is facing one of the most severe housing shortages in years, with prices for tiny one-bedroom apartments spiralling out of control.

The city’s growing, but the infrastructure hasn’t kept up. West-islanders don’t get a metro or decent buses because there’s no political incentive for any provincial government to make us promises. The commuter trains only run at rush hour and only straight downtown – they’re of no use for those of us who don’t work in that area. And have you ever tried to go out on a Saturday night and get home after midnight without a car?

Give us decent and convenient public transportation, and I – like many others – would be more than happy to get rid of my car and use it.

But no such decent public transit exists – at least not where I live. So I’m stuck taking the car, like it or not.

In the meantime, tomorrow’s road closures will only aggravate people trying to get where they need to be, and create traffic and parking nightmares that will augment, not reduce, pollution.

People who drive aren’t all greedy fat cats with SUVs trying to take over the road. We don’t all have love affairs with our cars. High gasoline prices, parking nightmares, and insurance and maintenance costs are certainly not our best friends.

But until there’s a real alternative, we’re gonna keep driving. And no token “car-free day” is going to have any effect other then pissing off a whole lotta people.

Parliament has voted to extend hate law protection to gays by a wider margin than yesterday’s vote on gay marriage. But the motion still passed only by 33 votes.

This bill was kind of a rock-or-a-hard-place issue. It’s tempting to lump it together with yesterday’s marriage vote, but in reality, the issues are separate. Sure, both votes involved gays and human rights, but that’s where the similarities end.

Firstly, today’s vote was proposed by idiotarian Svend Robinson (and for the record, it’s his politics, not his sexual orientation, that I object to).  Remember Svend? The guy who nominated the ISM for a Nobel Peace Prize? And made the announcement on IndyMedia? Yeah, forgive me for being a bit skeptical of him.

In this case, though, I find myself agreeing with Svend . . . because the alternative is people like this:

Opponents of the bill had complained that the legislation would stifle free speech, particularly among religious groups.

Some worried that passages in the Bible condemning homosexuality could be declared hate literature.

“We’ve seen through the courts that when religious freedom comes up against gay rights, that in fact religious freedom intends to be more often than not the loser in those particular cases,” said Derek Rogusky, of the group Focus on the Family.

Actually, the main difference is that the issue here is not marriage – where, granting the right to gays to marry doesn’t infringe on the rights of straight people to do so. The issue is much more controversial than that. A debate has been raging about hate laws right here on this blog, and I can’t say that there’s any black and white clear answer on the notion.

However, it seems clear to me that, considering the fact that these hate laws already exist, and that it’s already illegal to incite hatred against people based on colour, race, ethnicity, or religion, then it seems logical to me that sexual orientation be included as well.

In other words, either the law should be for everyone or no-one. Either extend it to gays or scrap it altogether. Anything else is just plain hypocritical.

Arafat has said he’s willing to die a martyr:

“Is there anyone in Palestine who does not dream of martyrdom?” Arafat asked. “Is there any Palestinian who could not be martyred by daily Israeli shelling or missiles?”

Willing??? More like anxiously frothing at the mouth. Arafat’s dream is to be killed by Israeli troops, so that he will go down in history as a “martyr” and set off a whole new generation of bloodshed. His worst nightmare is to die of old age, alone in his bed.

There’s a fundamental problem when an entire culture would prefer to die for a cause than to live for it. I’m reminded of a quote from the autobiography Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, where he says that:

The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.

Well, the Palestinian leadership wants their people to die for Palestine, and the terrorist groups want them to die for jihad against Israel, and (unfortunately) many Israelis don’t care much if they live or die because they’re sick of terrorism. And of all the international groups, human rights groups, and the like who go on and on about Palestinian rights, they’re defending terror and armed struggle too . . . so who’s left that actually wants them to live?

Like Golda Meir said, many feel that peace will come to the Middle East only when the Arabs want their children to live more than they want ours to die. The problem is, a society needs more than that to live for. They need a love of life, an embracing of progress, and of the notion of a future. When the stakes are brutally high, they’ll fight to defend peace instead of war, just as Israel is doing. Because the stakes are high for Israel. The Israelis didn’t sit for fifty years languashing in refugee camps and blaming others for their woes. No, they built a country, and consequently they built up something to live for.

The reaction from the Arab world to the U.S. veto of a UN security council resolution calling for Israel to stop threatening to expel Arafat was fairly typical:

Arab League:Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, said he hoped the veto doesn’t mean the United States supports Israeli policies “which are opposed by the whole world.”

Egypt:“The pretext saying that the draft resolution was unbalanced is baseless,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said Wednesday. Maher echoed concern Israel might see the vote as a license to go after Arafat. He said that if nations don’t pressure Israel to desist from its “provocative and aggressive” policies, it would show the international community’s “powerlessness.”

Syria: Syria’s UN Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad expressed regret at the veto, calling it “extremely regrettable” and warning that it “will antagonize the feeling of Arabs in the region.

The Palestinians:“Clearly this is not a neutral position,” Ziad Abu Amr, a member of the outgoing Palestinian Cabinet, said. Senior Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rdeneh told reporters the veto could jeopardize the U.S-backed “road map” for Mideast peace. The vote “is a real encouragement for the Israelis to continue their escalation,” he said. Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian UN observer, said the United States lost its credibility as an honest broker and warned that “serious consequences may follow.”

(It seems that “honest broker” has been translated as someone who condemns both sides of a dispute equally, regardless of who is at fault. That’s like a parent being criticized for grounding only one child and not both, when the grounded kid crashed the car and the non-grounded one brought home straight As.)

Jordan: In Jordan, the opposition Muslim Brotherhood said it was not surprised at the U.S. veto because “the Zionist lobby … controls the American policy in the Middle East.”

Oh, and I suppose we should include France: France said it regretted that the UN resolution on Israel didn’t pass. The resolution “had a balanced message that we believed could bring a consensus,” Cecile Pozzo di Borgo, the French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said in Paris.

Balanced??? I think Israel is making a political blunder by threatening to expel Arafat, but that doesn’t make the proposed UN resolution any more balanced:

The rejected draft resolution would have demanded “that Israel, the occupying power, desist from any act of deportation and to cease any threat to the safety of the elected president of the Palestinian Authority.”

It would have condemned Israel’s targeted assassinations of militant leaders and Palestinian suicide bombings, “all of which caused enormous suffering and many innocent victims.” It would also have called for a cessation of “all acts of terrorism, provocation, incitement and destruction.”

In other words, yet another UN condemnation of Israel without any mention of Palestinian terror. Sure, France, that looks balanced all right.

The UN seems to believe that a simple “majority rule” decides the difference between right and wrong. If the Arab nations and the Europeans gang up on Israel, then it must be okay, because they’re outvoting the US. More votes, more right? Only in a morally bankrupt world where right and wrong no longer exist. Unfortunately, this is increasingly the world where we live.

Constitutional lawyer Yaffa Zilbershats offers a rebuttal to the Palestinian claim of a “right of return”, demonstrating that this so-called right exists nowhere in international law:

Palestinians refer to various human rights treaties to assert their right of return. They cite general human rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966 which was ratified by Israel in 1991 and international legal sources dealing specifically with issues of citizenship and nationality law, refugee law and humanitarian law.

A careful study of those sources leads to a very clear conclusion that none of them imposes a legal obligation upon Israel to repatriate the Palestinian refugees.

[ . . . ]

Palestinians do not have a legal right to return to Israel. Any negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians should start from the understanding that this is the legal situation. The sole right possessed by the Palestinians is to obtain compensation. The parties should start discussions and negotiations regarding the amount of the compensation and the method of its payment.

This is what we refer to a lie being repeated so often, that people start believing it. Arab leaders spent decades telling the Palestinian people that it’s their “right” to return to their homes and villages (and presumably, to get rid of all the Jews currently living there). It would be a bitter pill for the Palestinian population to swallow to learn that this right does not exist. As such, negotiations often begin from the starting point that the refugee problem is somehow Israel’s to solve, even though Israel was the one attacked in the first place. This shifts the advantage in a negotiating situation immeasurably.

The Liberal government escaped full-scale embarrassment today when a motion by the Canadian Alliance to reaffirm the definition of marriage as “the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others” was narrowly defeated in parliament:

The Canadian Alliance’s motion asking MPs to reaffirm the heterosexual definition of marriage was defeated by a vote of 137 to 132 Tuesday night.

[ . . . ]

Tuesday’s motion was similar to one passed by a vote of 216 to 55 by the House in 1999, in which many Liberals voted to preserve the traditional definition of marriage.

Because of the 1999 vote, the Alliance succeeded in embarrassing the Liberals who voted against today, but in favour of the similar motion only four years ago. But their hopes of pre-empting the Liberals’ planned vote on extending marriage rights to gays, and embarrassing the government even further, were dashed.

So what’s changed in 4 years? Has society become that much more in tune with human rights? Or did the recent court decisions in Ontario and B.C. act as catalysts for change? Either way, Martin Cauchon is right:

“I believe it is about equality, dignity and respect for all Canadians,” said Cauchon.

“We are at a historic moment in time. We have the opportunity to challenge our simple assumptions and beliefs and do what is right in terms of equality,” he added.

The defeat of today’s Alliance motion, of course, doesn’t mean that the Liberal motion to legalize gay marriage will pass. The tiny margin indicates that it’s a contentious topic that isn’t going to be clearly resolved anytime soon. It’s likely to become an election issue, which, given the Liberals’ virtual assurance of getting into power, will probably be used as leverage to weaken their majority and strengthen the religious right.

But besides all the politics, we have to remember that a society makes progress by recognizing and correcting past and present wrongs. “It’s always been that way” is a lousy argument for the status quo, if we’re slowly recognizing that the status quo denies basic rights to a minority population. “My religion says so” is even worse. These are just excuses that the majority likes to use in order to keep the minority from attaining rights, and we should look back in shame at how long it took us to recognize that when it came to the rights of women, or people with different skin colours.

You can see how your local MP voted on today’s motion here.

Once again, the international media is twisting the Mideast situation, reporting that Israel “rejected” a Palestinian truce offer.

Rejected, you say? Wouldn’t casual readers assume, from this headline, that the Palestinians were frantically working towards peace, but the war-loving Israelis were thwarting their efforts?

Let’s see if that’s really the case:

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat wants to reach a truce with Israel, his national security adviser said Tuesday, but Israeli officials brushed aside the offer and demanded that the Palestinian Authority crack down on extremist groups.

Ohhhhh . . . so in other words, Arafat wants a truce that does not include a crackdown on extremist groups.

Meaning that the extremist groups will be allowed to continue to kill Israelis during the proposed “truce”, just like they did last time. And that the world will blame Israel’s retaliations against these attacks, instead of the attacks themselves, for breaking the truce, just like they did last time.

Well, Israel’s skepticism makes a lot more sense in that context.

And doesn’t anyone find it suspicious that Arafat is supposedly extending his hand in friendship right at the moment when he’s enjoying a resurgence in popularity among his people and in the international press, because of Israel’s threat of expelling him? This couldn’t possibly be another one of Arafat’s two-faced ploys to try to rally sympathy while simultaneously funding and encouraging terrorism, could it?

The bottom line is that a “truce” is meaningless when the Palestinians have no intention of respecting it, or of doing anything to stamp out violence. By repeatedly stating that they’re unwilling to confront and dismantle the terrorist groups, the PA is making crystal clear the kind of “truce” it has in mind. And Israel is perfectly right not to give it to them.

Hey Arafat, you want a truce? Quit sending terrorists to bomb buses and cafes. It’s really that simple. You stop doing that, and the truce will follow.

Update: A suggestion for a more accurate headline is what Ha’aretz used: “Israeli officials dismiss Arafat truce proposal as ‘deception’“.

Sorry for the lack of updates these past few days; I was feeling a bit under the weather, and things have been crazy at work. More regular posting should resume shortly.