Segacs’s World I Know

Reports from Israeli intelligence sources seem to indicate that war in Iraq could be only days away:

The US attack on Iraq could be launched “any day” after the beginning of next week if the Turkish parliament gives the go-ahead for American troops to operate via its territory, the head of IDF intelligence told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

[ . . . ]

On the Iraq issue, Ze’evi said that if the Turks are not persuaded to let the US use their bases as a launching pad, a US attack could be delayed “for some time.”

But Ze’evi said the weather would not present an obstacle for a military operation through the end of April or May.

This is pretty much the same as most people are speculating. But Israeli intelligence is usually fairly accurate. A lot will come down to this week’s events.

Andre S. posted a great collection of anti-idiotarian soundbytes to use as snappy answers to the most common objections to going to war in Iraq. They may not be the most diplomatic answers in the world, but if you’re feeling impatient, they’re worth a read.

In today’s Gazette, L. Ian Macdonald gives his view on why Bush is losing the PR game on Iraq:

The problem with U.S. foreign policy under the Bush administration is that it is unilateralist much of the time and multilateralist only some of the time. And the problem with U.S. war policy on Iraq is that the U.S. government hasn’t made a conclusive case linking Saddam Hussein to terrorism.

[ . . . ]

The world knows Saddam is a thug but is not convinced he is a terrorist, or even hosting terrorists. The world knows he’s playing a game of cat and mouse with his missiles and other forbidden weapons, but then there’s a really scary guy named Kim Sung Jong-Il in North Korea, and the United States is trying to talk him out of nuclear brinksmanship with food and money.

Not only has the White House failed to connect the dots on terrorism, there is a logical disconnect between Iraq and North Korea. And on the world street of public opinion, war on terrorism is one thing, war in Iraq quite another.

Macdonald is not saying he necessarily agrees with this opinion, but merely observing that it exists. His article is a pretty fair and accurate description on where the U.S. foreign policy went wrong.

Josh pointed me towards this great article by Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times on the issue of school prayer in the U.S. In it, Ebert argues that while he has no problem with personal prayer, the problem comes with public prayer aimed at either recruiting others or else making them feel excluded. He defines the distinction as “vertical” and “horizontal” prayer:

This is really an argument between two kinds of prayer–vertical and horizontal. I don’t have the slightest problem with vertical prayer. It is horizontal prayer that frightens me. Vertical prayer is private, directed upward toward heaven. It need not be spoken aloud, because God is a spirit and has no ears. Horizontal prayer must always be audible, because its purpose is not to be heard by God, but to be heard by fellow men standing within earshot.

To choose an example from football, when my team needs a field goal to win and I think, ”Please, dear God, let them make it!”–that is vertical prayer. When, before the game, a group of fans joins hands and ”voluntarily” recites the Lord’s Prayer–that is horizontal prayer. It serves one of two purposes: to encourage me to join them, or to make me feel excluded.

[ . . . ]

This simple insight about two kinds of prayer, which is beyond theological question, should bring a dead halt to the obsession with prayer in public places. It doesn’t, because the purpose of its supporters is political, not spiritual. Their faith is like Dial soap: Now that they use it, they wish everyone would. I grew up in an America where people of good breeding did not impose their religious convictions upon those they did not know very well. Now those manners have been discarded.

I agree with all of that so far. Individual prayer is fine. After all, I went to a religious school most of my life, where daily prayer was just part of the routine. But of course it wasn’t compulsory for me to have gone there – I could have gone to a public school where religion wasn’t forced down anyone’s throats. Prayer aimed at excluding those different from oneself is another story.

And here’s the kicker:

Because our enemies are for the most part more enthusiastic about horizontal prayer than we are, and see absolutely no difference between church and state–indeed, want to make them the same–it is alarming to reflect that they may be having more success bringing us around to their point of view than we are at sticking to our own traditional American beliefs about freedom of religion. When Ashcroft and his enemies both begin their days with displays of their godliness, do we feel safer after they rise from their devotions?

Good question.

There’s been another terrorist attack in Israel. A bus bombing in Haifa has left 8 people dead and the death toll could rise even further.

The explosion tore the roof off the bus and turned the vehicle into a charred wreck. The blast hurled bodies out onto a main street at the entrance to the Carmeliya neighborhood in Israel’s third largest city.

My heart goes out to the victims and their families. You’d think by now that we would have figured out a way to react to this kind of news. But, I can’t speak for others, but I haven’t. My initial thought is always this sinking feeling of dread, followed by fear for the friends and family in the area, and total and utter loathing for the terrorist murderers responsible.

"The center of the bus lifted up into the air; the roof was torn off."

Goddamn bastards.

Update: Ha’aretz reports at least 12 dead and 30 wounded. And I fear these numbers will increase further.

Second update: I’m feeling a bit better now, having gotten through on the phone to Haifa and assured myself that my friends are all okay. This one just hit way too close to home.

With Concordia’s CSU elections now less than a month off, there’s a new feeling of life among students, apparent from reading the latest version of The Link. For example, this letter is by a disgruntled student:

As if pretending to be left-wing and concerned with social causes isn’t enough, this executive has done nothing but damage the Union, and make us more divided than ever. How are we to unite against the Administration when we are squabbling amongst ourselves? How are we to jointly pursue progressive, student-minded causes when the executive divides Union membership at every chance that it gets?

The constant involvement of the CSU in non-union issues such as the occupation of Palestine is the first nail in the coffin of Concordia student unity. In addition, the CSU executive should remember that Jews at Concordia are just as much students as their Islamic brothers and sisters. Why does it seem as if the executive constantly sides with the Muslim cause? Why is the CSU picking on Hillel? Why did it inflame tensions resulting from Sept. 9? The Union has gone the opposite direction of where it should be over the past two years, and has further divided students along ideological, racial and religious lines.

We need a cooling off period at Concordia. We need a Union that will grow out of this immature shell that it seems to have gotten itself into. We need a CSU that is no longer preoccupied with anarchist vs. capitalist, coloured vs. white and Muslim vs. Jew. The CSU elections are March 25-27. Students of Concordia: make yourself heard!

Ethan Moore, Communications

No longer a student, I can’t do much but watch from the sidelines. But around this time each year, I’m filled with a sort of optimism that maybe – just maybe – this will finally be the year when students wake up and make a positive change at the ballot box.

Maybe students are finally waking up to how damaging the past few CSU executives have been for everyone. If letters like the one above are any indication, it seems students are increasingly aware – or if they’re not, they should be – that their only opportunity to turn things around is by voting.

I hope I’m right.

The Israelis captured and arrested a Hamas founder yesterday. Sheikh Muhammad Taha was nabbed yesterday as part of an IDF incursion in Gaza.

Interestingly enough, the army says that he wasn’t even the original target – the army was after his son, Ayman, who seems to have links to Hamas’s chief bomb maker. The army captured three of his other sons in the raid.

The part I find the most telling is that today’s Gazette contained a large photo of Taha – probably one of the worst terrorists and murderers of Israeli civilians anywhere – being tended to on a stretcher and taken to an Israeli hospital for treatment.

Pieter Dorsman has launched his blog, Peaktalk, and it promises to be an interesting one. Subject matter appears to be Mideast politics, Canadian politics, and world politics. Here’s a preview:

Even though I was very young I must have sensed what it meant to bring your own security wherever you went: you are nowhere safe and, more importantly, you can rely on absolutely no one to provide that security for you. It was so different from the way we lived. At the time I was impressed with and proud of those great Israelis who took care of their own affairs and it must have instilled the importance of being self-reliant and independent in me. This feeling was reinforced a little while later when Israeli commandos liberated a group of Jewish hostages on the airport of Entebbe in Uganda were they were held captive by a group of Palestinian and German left-wing terrorists. And a few years later the Israelis again took matters into their own hand by bombing a nuclear facility under construction in Iraq, knowing very well that the country’s security would be fatally impaired if that facility would ever become operational.

Israel’s security has not improved one inch in the 28 years that separate today from that great evening at my parents house. On the contrary, the threat that was facing them and forced them to bring out their own security detail has now come to visit us. It reinforces the need to be self-reliant, tough and independent for we can not rely on anyone to provide us with that great blanket of security for it does not exist.

I recommend you check it out.

Discover has 20 ways the world could end. (Via Jonathan).