Segacs’s World I Know

The CJC is reporting that the Canadian government has finally listed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade as a terrorist organization: (link not yet active)

Hon. Wayne Easter (Solicitor General of Canada, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I rise today to advise the House that the government has listed seven more entities pursuant to the Criminal Code and under the Anti-terrorism Act.

The newly listed entities are as follows: Jemaah Islamiah; Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan; Basque Homeland and Liberty; Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia; United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia; and National Liberation Army.

This listing is a public confirmation that these entities are engaged in terrorist activity. The consequences are severe, not only for terrorists but for those who support them. It is now a crime to knowingly participate in, contribute to, or facilitate the activities of these entities. Any person or group that is listed may have its assets seized and forfeited. Those who deal with the property or finances of these entities are subject to severe penalties, including up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, as most of you know, is the “militant” wing of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.

Update: Here’s a link to the story.

Israeli and Palestinian youngsters are learning about diplomacy at an Israeli mock U.N. conference:

Ramzi Sfeir, a 17-year-old from the Palestinian village of Bet Jalla, never believed that Palestinians and Israelis could agree on anything.

But after he was offered a chance to sit at a mock negotiating table with Jewish Israelis his own age, he says that many of his preconceived notions just faded away.

“I learned that you can talk without fighting,” he said, after participating in a model United Nations in Israel, aimed at teaching diplomacy skills to youth. “I also learned that Jews have convictions we can’t change and that Judaism is like a nationality for them. [The Jewish participants] also came to understand us better.”

Though there are hundreds of model UN programs in countries around the world, Israel is one of the only Middle East nations to host one; and is the only one with a special committee that brings Israelis and Palestinians together to negotiate regional issues.

This won’t create peace in the middle east. But it seems to be an extremely valuable step, because unlike other left-wing efforts to “bring together” Jewish and Arabic kids and teens in Israel, this one doesn’t shy away from the thorny political issues. Instead, it gives the participants a forum to attack them head-on, but in a non-violent, diplomatic way.

There are no miracle solutions. Only baby steps. This seems like a good one.

A group of students from the high school down the street from me got to miss class time to protest the war in Iraq. Understandably, parents are incensed – but, in my opinion, for the wrong reason:

Theresa Leblanc was appalled to learn that her daughter spent her time in art class on Monday at École secondaire Des Sources making anti-war posters while students were ridiculing U.S. President George W. Bush.

Then when she heard the posters were for an anti-war march that would take place during school hours, she hit the roof.

“I’m just up in arms,” said Leblanc, who has a nephew in the U.S. marines, fighting in Iraq.

“This is such a lack of respect. You can have a debate but it’s another thing to have a demonstration like this during school time. It’s appalling.”

Another parent, who didn’t want to be named, said she was also furious when one of her two daughters said she had been forced to make posters.

She, too, was unhappy about a demonstration during school time. “My girls missed physics and French – that’s more important than a march.”

It’s not as though it’s a big sacrifice for most high school students to miss class time. We used to invent any reason we could think of, from play practices to charity walkathons, all in effort to spend as few hours as possible behind a desk.

But this crosses the line, since it is essentially pressuring the students into all thinking the same way. While the Gazette reports that “students who didn’t want to participate in the march had the option of attending a debate on the Iraqi situation”, I bet I know exactly what form that so-called “debate” took.

I’m sure there were students who wanted to demonstrate because they read up on the issues and formed educated political opinions. But I’m also sure that there were equally as many who did not. Consider the following quote by one of the organizers:

“I’m against killing innocent people,” said Grade 11 student Ruba Al Karan. “Saddam (Hussein) did a lot of stupid things but Bush is no better.”

Other students spoke of U.S.-bashing going on while the students used their time in art class to draw up posters.

High school can be a difficult time for students with dissenting opinions. There’s an incredible amount of pressure to follow the crowd. Not to mention, about half the students at the school had probably never taken a history course in their lives. Students are entitled to their opinions, but this was incredibly inappropriate.

The National Post fisks Robert Fisk. Well, okay, it’s not really a fisking. It’s more of a direct attack on his credibility and views:

But it’s his moral certitude that seems, in a way, most enviable. He never lacks a strong opinion, and it’s always the same: Whatever goes wrong in the Middle East, he blames the Americans and the Israelis.

If an Arab nation commits some outrage, that’s because Washington supports Arab dictators. If Palestinians kill, it’s because Israel stole their land. He dislikes Yassir Arafat (“corrupt, vain little despot”) but believes he’s Israel’s fault because Israel helped create the Palestinian Authority and brought in Arafat “as a colonial governor” to control his people.

[Most journalists are biased, but Fisk paints himself into a particularly narrow corner. He has one subject and only about two opinions, which he expresses with an abundance of sneering pride and a total absence of nuance. He loves recalling Israel’s occupation of Lebanon (which he covered) but usually neglects to mention that the army went there to silence the artillery that was bombarding Israel.

At any moment, apparently, Fisk’s brain contains several pre-packaged articles, lacking only specifics. When something happens, he fills in the blanks. On Sept. 11, 2001, he happened to be on a plane as the news broke. No problem. He phoned his office and dictated a piece blaming America. It sounded just like every other Fisk piece.

[ . . . ]

Fisk claims to feel sympathy for the Arabs, but it’s the sympathy of condescension. To him the Arabs have no responsibility for their destiny. They are all pawns of the West. And sometimes he writes as if he personally carried on his shoulders the guilt of the West.

Nothing we haven’t all said before about Fisk at one time or another, but the National Post is a major national publication. Read the whole thing.

The Canadian Jewish News also has more on the suppression of Jewish students’ rights at Carleton.

And in an interesting twist: the Concordia administration has asked the Quebec government to de-certify the CSU:

[Lowy] said Concordia has approached the ministries of education and justice to strip the CSU of its certification because it has not acted in the interests of the undergraduates it represents.

[ . . . ]

Quebec, he said, is the only province that permits student governments to be certified like labour unions. This status allows the CSU a great deal of autonomy, he said. It obliges the university to collect dues from students and turn them over to the CSU to use as it wishes. Currently, the CSU has $1.3 million at its disposal.

With Evolution’s victory in the CSU electons last Friday, this point may be seemingly moot. After all, a moderate slate has been elected, that will likely protect the interests of students without imposing a radical agenda like the past four years’ CFS-backed executives. So why bother trying to de-certify?

Well, the simple answer is that this is just one election. A year of peace will be very nice at Concordia, but there’s nothing to stop the Left from gearing up and getting right back into power next year. I’m sure they’re already strategizing as we speak. A CSU with drastically-reduced power may reduce Evolution’s power this year – but it would also ensure that the system was a lot less prone to abuse in the future. So hey, sounds like a good idea to me!

Sure, the Left will cry foul as it always does, and accuse the administration of trying to strip students of their legitimate rights to representation. But I bet that, with the exception of the radicals, nobody would ever miss the CSU and its ridiculous amount of power. When a union does more harm than good for its members, then what exactly is the point?

Update – 04/20/03: These reports appear to be erroneous as Lowy now claims he did not, in fact, ask the government to de-certify the CSU:

“The administration has not asked the government to de-certify the union,” he said. “Two years ago, when we were having trouble with the union, we put in a request that the four ministries responsible for accreditation look at the CSU. We felt [the CSU] were going beyond their mandate. We never asked them to de-certify.” Lowy maintains that the Quebec government decided against investigating the CSU two years ago, and the administration has never asked again.

That’s really too bad. At the very least, the government ought to review the expansive amounts of power given to student unions to ensure that, ultimately, they are accountable to someone.

You know, I’m getting really tired of people who analyse or critique political races, institutions, or policies by claiming that “there aren’t enough minorities”. I’m not talking about situations in which minorities are excluded or systematically discriminated against. Rather, I’m referring to instances where a person is given a position, an award, or an advantage specifically for being a member of a minority group. Not only is this “politically-correct”, but it’s considered very politically incorrect to criticize this practice.

A while back, I ranted about affirmative action. But right now, the issue at hand is the debate over minority candidates in politics. In today’s Gazette, an opinion piece by Don MacPherson criticized the three parties running in the upcoming Quebec provincial election for having an insufficient number of minority candidates:

As a result, the linguistic, cultural or ethnic minorities are consistently underrepresented in the National Assembly. While 19 per cent of Quebecers had mother tongues other than French at the 2001 census, non-francophones held less than half that proportion of the seats in the last legislature. When the legislature was dissolved for the April 14 election, minority members held only 11 seats out of 124, (there was one vacancy) or nine per cent.

The Quebec parties aren’t the only ones facing criticism. The CSU elections at Concordia have come under fire for having too few minority candidates. Prior to the election, slates were interviewed on their opinions on diversity. And in an editorial in the Link, racism is cited as a factor in last week’s election, in which the presidential candidates in all the slates running for executive happened to be Caucasian. The conclusion drawn was that “systematic racism against Arabs and Muslims” kept many of them from being elected.

A comment posted in response implied that the CSU will inadequately represent students because of the racial background of many of its members.

Might be shrill, but the article gets it partly right – this CSU is about the colour of rice pudding with a couple of raisins in it. Not really an improvement over the last batch, raisin-wise.

Nevermind Arabs – where are all the other non-whites in this most diverse of schools?

I posted the following comment in response:

All of you, are you even listening to yourselves?

That a group of seemingly educated, intelligent, reasonable people could claim to be opposed to racism, and yet spend an entire thread judging people by the colour of their skin baffles me beyond belief!

Does the fact that Natalie Pomerleau is white make her less capable of doing the job? Or Youri Cormier? Or Adam Slater, for that matter?

There is far, far too much “token”-ism in politics already. Political parties run their “token” minority candidates in order to appear diverse, and it’s starting to get far out of hand.

Here’s a new idea: why not *gasp!* vote for people based on their platforms? Their ideas? Their competence, their experience, and their ability to do a good job?

Nobody stopped minority candidates from running – in fact, they were encouraged! I’ll also note that the most recent three CSU presidents (including the president-elect) were women: Natalie Pomerleau, Sabine Friesinger, and Sabrina Stea. Should men cry gender discrimination?

You claim to be against racism. And yet which one of us here is making judgements based on the colour of a person’s skin? Think about that for a moment.

Every time a party is blasted for having inadequate minority representation, this only serves to encourage token-ism all that much more.

Maybe we ought to pass a law barring any photos from being disclosed of a candidate, or even preventing his or her name from being released. We should get presented with platforms and candidate CVs, listed under “Candidate #1”, “Candidate #2”, and so on. Maybe that’s the only way to ensure that people vote for someone based on competency, not racism.

But, since this isn’t likely to be implemented anytime soon, shouldn’t we do everything in our power to eliminate racism from elections? And this includes judging parties and candidates based on skin colour. To me, doing so is nothing more than politically-correct racism.

Meryl Yourish has the latest on the Palestinians, Israel’s “supposed” partner for peace.

The Jerusalem Post has stories about how the Palestinian Authority’s representative at the UN Human Rights Convention publicly called for Israel’s destruction and made disgusting comparisons to Nazism, UNRWA was implicated once again in aiding and abetting terorrism, and Palestinians named a square in Jenin after the suicide bomber who killed 4 U.S. troops in Iraq. And all that in the past two days!

But sure, Israel should just give them whatever they want, and make nice, and all will work itself out. Yeah, right.

The blog was experiencing technical difficulties most of today. They should hopefully be all resolved now. Thank you for your patience.