Segacs’s World I Know

If it looks like a publicity stunt, and sounds like a publicity stunt, and smells like a publicity stunt . . . then instincts tell me this is probably just that:

Thousands of copies of the long-awaited fifth Harry Potter book have been stolen from a warehouse just days before the book’s eagerly-awaited launch. The books were in a white TNT trailer parked on a trading estate in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, waiting to be distributed to stores ahead of the launch at 0001 BST on Saturday.

Merseyside Police said: “A man with the front cab of the lorry turned up at the trading estate and presented himself as legitimate and was able to get away with the trailer full of goods.

“How he did that is still under investigation.”

A 7-year-old girl was killed in Israel today by Palestinian gunmen. Reuters, of course, just chalks the incident up to the “cycle of violence” terminology that refuses to assign blame:

Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli girl on a road near the West Bank, feeding a cycle of violence that has battered a peace plan Secretary of State Colin Powell will try to rescue in a new Middle East visit.

The attack on a car near Kibbutz Eyal in central Israel late on Tuesday was launched shortly after Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas failed in another bid to persuade militants to call a truce with Israel.

Medics said the dead girl was aged seven and identified two people wounded in the attack as her five-year-old sister and father. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting which the army said was carried out by Palestinians.

Just watch as the world excuses the murder of a 7-year old and the wounding of a 5-year old as politically correct. Sickening.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has today’s hysterical quote of the day:

“We call on Hamas to demonstrate that they are against all terrorist activities.”

What are they putting in that wine?

Gore had won the 2000 election?

The game of “what if” can be endless and pointless but it can also be fun. So I was thinking about what might have happened if the outcome of the 2000 election was different. What if the whole Florida ballot scandal never happened and Al Gore was voted into office in 2000?

In light of the events of the past few years, a lot of people might think that this would have been the worst possible thing for the US. But I’m not so sure. Because September 11th, 2001 would have happened no matter who was in the White House. Clearly, the US government had to strike back. Republican or Democrat, no US president could have reacted otherwise to an attack on American soil. The speeches might have been worded differently, but ultimately the reaction against Al Qua’eda and against the Taliban would have been military, just as it was – swift and decisive.

Where the difference might have come in is in events since. Oh sure, you could argue that a Democratic government might not have attacked Iraq. There’s no way to really know but I somehow doubt that’s the case. Faced with the same situation, the same set of facts, and the same military procedures, I have a feeling any government would have come to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein needed toppling. The world is a different place than it was in 2000.

So then what? Right now we have a polarized US – indeed, a polarized world. Bush is, to all but his supporters, only about a step worse than the devil incarnate. The decisions of his government are easily attacked and dismissed as hawkish, right-wing, gun-slinging Texas cowboy acts, when in truth Bush is merely acting on the advice of the experts 99% of the time. But as a Republican, he’s an easy target.

But a Democrat making those kinds of decisions? Well, he’d be a bit tougher to attack, wouldn’t he? For one thing, there would probably be a lot of money directed to CYA reports on politically-correct issues to try to appease the naysayers. For another thing, where would the Left go, after abandoning Gore? To the Republicans?

Ironically, it would probably have been a lot easier for Gore to get United Nations support and backing than it was for Bush. And as a result, the anti-American sentiment that is so heightened right now in Europe and around the world might not be nearly as prominent. It’s one of the paradoxes of politics, that a dovish leader has an easier time making war, just as a hawkish leader has an easier time making peace.

Is this what would have happened if a few hundred ballots in Florida were counted differently in 2000? Short of inventing a time machine and changing the past, we obviously can’t know. There are too many variables. But with the next election coming up in a little over a year, it makes interesting food for thought.

Tonight the fog was so thick that I could barely see ten feet in front of me. With the full moon out, and the dark mist covering the roads, driving through the rolling clouds felt like passing through some restless spirits, or ghosts, that were out for a stroll. Not that I believe in ghosts . . . but if there was ever a night to contemplate their existence, tonight would be a good one. Either that, or it would make a great backdrop to film a horror movie. The Montreal Witch Project, anyone?

More fun news from Concordia (where else?) as a CSU-appointed hearings panel ruled that it’s ok to draw a swastika on an Israeli flag:

A student panel at Concordia University has dismissed a harassment complaint against activist Laith Marouf for drawing swastikas on an Israeli flag during a March 12 protest at the downtown campus.

In a 2-1 decision, the board ruled that while “Marouf’s gesture was in very poor taste,” it was made during a tense confrontation and did not qualify as harassment under the university’s code of rights and responsibilities, or warrant expulsion or other sanctions.

Adam Spiro, the finance student and Hillel member who filed the complaint, said he’s disgusted by the decision.

“It sends a terrible message,” he said, noting his paternal grandparents are Holocaust survivors. “It says that in the heat of protest, there are no boundaries.

“It legitimizes the swastika as a symbol of political discourse, which it’s not. It’s the worst symbol of hatred, racism and the genocide of 6 million Jews.”

So what is this, complaint number 912 against Laith Marouf that he gets tossed out? He was banned from Concordia two years ago, along with his buddy Tom Keefer, for spraypainting anti-Israel vandalism and threatening a security guard. But the university lifted that ban, and he’s been merrily shit-disturbing and displaying his intense hatred ever since. Apparently anything goes as long as you wrap yourself in the Palestinian flag and make ridiculous excuses for your actions, like this one:

At a May 14 hearing, Marouf testified he drew “the inverted swastika, the Hindu circle of life, not the Nazi swastika” on the Israeli flag, as a lesson in symbolism. However, he conceded he realized some people might not make the distinction and would be deeply offended.

Maybe it’s just cause it’s Friday, but I can’t seem to stop laughing at that one.

Oh, before I forget, today is Friday the 13th.

For those of you who are interested, you can read up on the superstition behind the date that gave Friday the 13th such a bad rap. And of course, if you’re looking for a little good fun scare, you can always rent the horror movie that goes by the same name.

To us Jews, apparently, 13 is supposed to be a lucky number. Boys become bar mitzvah at age 13, there are 13 months in the Jewish year if you count leap year, and when Israel declared independence in 1948, its provisional government deliberately had 13 members for good luck. With Friday being the start of the Sabbath, arguably Friday the 13th is one of the luckiest days of the year.

Or, if you’re like me and not at all superstitious, you can just view today as the day between Thursday the 12th, and Saturday the 14th. Either way, I hope it’s a good one!

To those of you who may have noticed that blogging has been extraordinarily light lately, don’t think it’s cause nothing’s been going on. Quite the contrary. Actually, we’ve simply been doing some renovations in the office, so access to the web – or even to my computer – has been spotty at best. I hope to return to normal blogging pace by next week.

I knew something like this would happen. I knew it was only a matter of time since the “road map” talks began until the terrorists would murder more innocent people to prove their point.

Now, 16 people are dead and 112 more wounded in the latest horrific bus bombing in Jerusalem:

Sixteen people were killed and another 112 were wounded when a Hamas suicide bomber, dressed as an ultra-Orthodox Jew, detonated his explosives belt on a bus in downtown Jerusalem Wednesday.

Minutes after the attack, Israeli helicopters fired rockets at a car in Gaza City, killing eight Palestinians, including two Hamas terrorists, one of whom orchestrated a series of recent rocket attacks on southern Israeli towns.

[ . . . ]

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack as revenge for Israel’s strike Wednesday on the organization’s co-founder Abdel Aziz Rantisi, which left him wounded. The claim came in the form of statement aired on television networks, Hamas spiritual head Ahmed Yassin.

Now, the two sides are further away from peace than they probably ever were. And I’d like to be able to say that this shattered some great white hope of mine, some optimism that maybe this time things would be different. But instead, I just feel a sort of resignation and numbness to the whole affair. It’s hard to feel let down, never having gotten my hopes up in the first place.

I want to be able to make some noble speech about how these innocent Israelis were heroes, how they didn’t die in vain but in the pursuit of peace. But it would be nothing but an insulting, ridiculous lie. These people were no more heroes than you or I, and they no more deserved to die than any of us. They were ordinary citizens, going about their ordinary lives. They got on a bus, or went shopping at a market, and their lives were stolen.

And so, the familiar song and dance begins again. Israel retaliates. The world condemns violence “on both sides” without making the distinction between the instigator and the defender. Arafat pays lip service to “condemning” terrorism, while continuing to fund and encourage it. Abbas expresses sadness but says he’s unwilling to confront Hamas. Israelis mourn. And then it all begins again, until the next time.

So to all the people out there who want to sacrifice the lives of these sixteen people, and those of hundreds of others, I say fuck that. It’s enough already. How many more terrorist bombings of busses, cafes, restaurants, or nightclubs will it take until we get the message? We don’t have a partner for peace. We never had a partner for peace. All we have is an enemy who wants nothing more nor less than to see every last one of us dead.

And to those of you who say that their intent was to kill this latest round of peace talks, and that cutting off the talks would just be giving them what they want, well, that may be. But I don’t care anymore. How many times do you extend your hand in friendship, only to have it slapped, before you stop offering it?

16 people are dead today for no other reason than the fact that they wanted to live. There’s no logic anymore. There’s only sadness and senselessness.