Segacs’s World I Know

Hey check it out: Israpundit has featured me as their “site of the week”! I’m honoured.

It struck me yesterday how much I absolutely love this city in the summertime. Everyone emerges from hibernation, and it becomes a city of festivals, sidewalk cafes, street performances, and a general spirit of “joie de vive” that belies our underground winter gloom. Just walking around downtown, seeing everyone outside enjoying the night, keeps reminding me of just how good we’ve got it here, even despite all the shtick.

But with the first drop in temperature yesterday, and it hit me that summer is winding down. Labour day weekend is in a week, and while for me it means little, because work continues as usual, other people are heading back to the classroom or even leaving Montreal. The “lazy hazy crazy days of summer” are drawing to a close . . . and soon enough, winter will be upon us and we’ll be wistfully remembering the nice weather and warm temperatures.

Speaking of the French, the coverage of the cease-fire collapse in the Mideast according to Le Monde is very telling in explaining France’s attitudes towards Israel.

The entire article only mentions the suicide bombing that killed 20 and injured over 80, once – and in the sixth paragraph, in a single sentence (without any mention of the children killed and wounded). The focus was on Israel’s “odious crime” (the article quotes Mahmoud Abbas in a sub-header) in its assassination of Ismail Abou Chanab, the Hamas terrorist responsible for the attack. The article presents Abu Chanab in a sympathetic light, as though it was an obituary, and clearly points the finger at Israel for “only giving the Palestinian Authority 24 hours” to react to terrorism before sending in the IDF. As if 36 hours would have made any difference . . . or 48 hours . . . or a week or a year, for that matter:

Mahmoud Abbas, le premier ministre palestinien, a été informé de l’assassinat d’Ismail Abou Chanab alors qu’il était en discussion avec John Wolf, l’émissaire américain chargé de la mise en application de la “feuille de route”, le plan de paix international, qui venait de rentrer précipitamment de Washington en raison de la tournure prise par les évènements. “C’est un crime odieux qui sape nos plans d’action contre les activistes palestiniens”, a regretté Mahmoud Abbas.

La veille, son gouvernement avait décidé de contrer le Hamas et le Djihad islamique, après l’attentat meurtrier de Jérusalem, mardi 19 août, qui a causé la mort de vingt personnes, blessant une centaine d’autres. Il restait à mettre au point certaines finalités en accord avec Yasser Arafat. Comme le dit un responsable palestinien, “le gouvernement de Sharon ne nous a même pas laissé 24 heures pour prouver le sérieux de nos intentions. Il a saboté nos plans et rendu un très mauvais service à Abou Mazen”, le surnom de Mahmoud Abbas. Et cela d’autant plus qu’Ismail Abou Chanab avait été l’un des interlocuteurs privilégiés du premier ministre lorsqu’il s’était agi d’instaurer la trève.

Abbas “decided to act against terrorism”??? Yet another example of Le Monde parroting Palestinian propaganda as fact, without bothering to provide any context whatsoever. No wonder the French hate Israel, if they believe articles like this one.

The heat wave in Europe has cost over ten thousand lives in France alone:

The French funeral directors association said 10,416 had died during the first three weeks of August because of the heat wave and projected the death toll for the month from the heat wave would be 13,632.

The French government admitted Thursday as many as 10,000 people may have died in the heat wave.

Ten thousand. That’s an incredibly staggering figure. How to even contemplate it, let alone explain it? And the fact that this is happening in a supposedly modern, Westernized country with plenty of water and medical care makes it all the the worse. How could the health authorities have been so slow to react?

In the grand tradition of renaming things after dead politicians, our very own Dorval Airport will be renamed Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport (via Paul Jané).

Sure, Trudeau was a major figure in Canadian history. But I’m getting really tired of all the endless renamings. If you want to dedicate something, build new stuff and name it after them in the first place. Or, at the very least, rename the Lionel-Groulx metro station before touching a perfectly benignly-named airport!

I’m getting really fed up with this W32.Sobig.F@mm virus. (Link is to a description and removal instructions, not to the virus itself!) I had to clean it off my dad’s computer yesterday, and my own e-mail inbox keeps getting bombarded with hundreds of messages trying to send it to me. It’s filling up my inbox and preventing me from receiving real e-mail. Plus it’s annoying.

Supposedly this virus (actually a worm) de-activates on September 10th, which means that I guess I have to put up with this nonsense for another week and a half. *Sigh*. If only the people who created these viruses would devote their time and energy to something more productive . . .

Why don’t we get a National Slacker Day?

Stressed-out Britons are set for a day of doing nothing as workers and managers alike are being urged to relax and slack off on Friday.

Organizers of National Slacker Day are calling on people to “stand up for your right to sit back down again” as a reminder that life does not revolve around the office.

Oh well, those lucky Brits have an excuse tomorrow. We’ll just have to keep on slacking anyway, even without a “day” for it.

There’s a great scene from the West Wing (which, as regular readers will know, is one of my favourite shows) when C.J. tells Josh, Toby, and Sam that she’s afraid that Governor Ritchie will win the election by “overcoming perversely low expectations”:

I’m absolutely terrified we’re going to lose the expectations game. You can’t believe how many times I get asked what would be a win in the debates. At this point I feel like if and only if Ritchie accidentally lights his podium on fire does the President have a fighting chance.

Of course, on TV everything works out great for the main characters. But this is real life, and I can’t help but thinking that the Palestinians keep “winning” the media war against Israel precisely because of those lowered expectations.

Everyone expects the Palestinians to break their word, violate truces, and send terrorists to murder children and babies. So when it happens, people claim shock for about 10 minutes and then promptly forget about it.

Israel, on the other hand, is held to a higher standard. As some argue it should be, because unlike the Palestinians, Israel is a democracy with lofty ideals about freedom and equality and human rights. So when Israel engages in self-defence, people are “disappointed”.

Governor Ritchie may not have had to light his podium on fire to lose the debate against President Bartlet. But the Palestinian terrorists keep lighting themselves on fire . . . and winning the propaganda war. And it’s precisely because of these lowered expectations.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad both announce that they are ending the cease-fire with Israel “in response” to Israeli actions against their leadership. Hamas has also called upon Palestinian PM Mahmoud Abbas to resign.

Point #1: You can’t “end” a cease-fire that never existed in the first place. Throughout the so-called hudna, both terrorist groups continued to carry out attacks against Israel civilians. This announcement only recognizes the actual state that has been in place all along.

Point #2: The statement that the ending of the cease-fire is “in response” to Israel’s assassinations of a Hamas leader is hypocricy at its core. Of course, the world has a short memory. The Palestinians know that they can murder 20 innocent Jews on a Jersualem bus one day, including small children, and the next day claim that they’re ending a cease-fire “in response” to Israel’s retaliation, and that the world will blame Israel. As usual.

Point #3: Anyone who thinks Hamas’s statement against Abbas will result in civil war is kidding themselves. Abbas won’t fight back against Hamas. He hasn’t shown the slighest bit of power or courage in taking on the terrorist groups since assuming his leadership role. He’s been propped up by the US and the international community until now, but he’s got no real power. And things can only get worse, as the inevitable showdown that Abbas has been avoiding is finally called by Hamas.

Sometimes I get so angry while writing this stuff up that I can barely find the right keys to type.