Segacs’s World I Know

I invite you to check out Enough is Enough, a website dedicated to remembering Israel’s victims of Palestinian terrorist attacks since September 2000.

This site is one of many that remembers the people, not just the statistics. There are videos and presentations, and on the righthand side, there is a list of Israeli victims of terror. Each name is a link to a page about the person, including a photograph and brief details about the victim’s life, age, home, family, and the circumstances of his or her death.

They had hopes and dreams, families and friends and communities who cared about them and miss them. They were people who, just like you and I, just wanted to live their lives. And all of them had their lives cut tragically short. Media reports tend to quote the death tolls as crisp statistics, and few of the victims are truly remembered outside of their home communities.

It is far too easy to get caught up in the numbers game and to reduce victims to mere statistics. It’s harder to remember them as the living, breathing people that they were. But we must try, because if it could be one of them, it could just as easily be one of us.

If a tree falls in the forest and it doesn’t make a sound . . . then I want to work in that forest. It’s gotta be quieter than my office.

With Affirmative Action back in the US courts (and the news), now may be an opportune time for me to weigh in with my two cents on the subject.

I don’t support affirmative action in university admissions – or in the workplace, or other such domains for that matter. It’s a dangerous thing to say that, especially for politicians. Anyone who speaks out against affirmative action is considered to be racist, bigoted, discriminatory towards minorities, or all of the above. The perception is that these policies are a politically correct way to help counter discrimination and under-representation of minorities in certain spheres, and it certainly hasn’t been very politically correct to oppose them.

My reason for opposing these policies is hardly original: to me (and to a lot of people) they’re just another form of discrimination. If student X has higher grades and test scores, but student Y gets admitted in his or her place simply because of the colour of student Y’s skin, then that’s wrong in my book – whether it’s discriminating against blacks, whites, or purples. Any decision based on skin colour is just another form of racism.

Oh, sure, it’s not that simple. Of course it’s not. Certain groups are dramatically under-represented in the top schools and workplaces, and these policies are only a way to counter years of past discrimination, proponents argue. Because of systematic bias against minorities, these policies are necessary in order to make up the difference.

But I don’t agree that two wrongs equal a right. Past wrongs cannot be corrected by committing present wrongs. And there are a lot of reasons why affirmative action, especially in the context of university admissions, is wrong. On the one hand, it creates separate sets of standards. In order to be “good enough” to get into a certain school, students from some ethnic groups have to achieve one set of standards, while those from other groups have another set of standards. All this does is widen the gap between these groups, because mediocre performance is considered “good enough” for some people and not for others. What sort of future community leaders does this create? Furthermore, some schools are so desperate to fill their enrollment quotas, they accept students who are clearly under-qualified. You can’t take a student who graduated from an inner-city school and has a sixth-grade reading level and plunk him into a university classroom and expect him to keep up. And since it looks bad, politically, for a university to have higher failure rates among certain ethnic groups, some schools even resort to passing students who should never have been there in the first place.

When transplanted into the context of Quebec, some of these wrongs may become a little clearer. Recently, it was announced that medical schools in Quebec will boost the CRC-scores of applicants from regions outside of Montreal by a half-point, because there’s a shortage of doctors in the outlying regions and students from those regions are considered more likely to go back home to practice medicine when they graduate. But tell that to the student who pulled straight As all her life, volunteered at every hospital in her spare time, participated in every extra-curricular activity, and devoted her life to her dream of being a doctor – and who had all the qualifications but was rejected from medical school because of this policy. Don’t we want our doctors to be the best? In med school applications, where a tiny fraction of a point can make all the difference in the world, a half-point is huge. Why should someone’s zip code be a more important factor in admissions than the qualifications of the candidate?

In another example, lobby groups have pressured the provincial government to hire more anglophones and minorities in the Public Service, claiming that they are vastly under-represented. The government complied, making a whole host of positions available to specific minority communities – and nobody applied! The government is having an extremely difficult time filling these quotas. Speculation is that the positions are of little interest to the members of these minority groups, as most qualified people are already working at jobs in the private sector for better pay.

Therein lies the crux of the problem. Unlike McGill University’s quotas for Jews in the early part of last century, where many Jewish applicants were rejected due to lack of enough places, these new quotas are creating just as many problems – but in the opposite direction. There aren’t enough applicants from certain minority groups to fill the quotas – and so schools have had to lower the standards in order to fill them.

A related problem is that minority groups are under-represented in universities because of a lower degree of economic affluence in certain communities leading to a reduction in the affordability of the schools. But there are ways to combat these problems. More financial aid can and should be made available to students who need it. There’s nothing wrong with scholarships or grants designated specifically for certain groups.

But admissions quotas? Hiring quotas? Different standards? Those have got to go. It may not be politically correct of me to say so, but in the long run it’s the only right thing to do. The only way to end racial discrimination is to stop institutionalizing policies that legitimatize it – no matter who they favour.

Hypocrites International (a.k.a. Amnesty International) is dismissing a British report about human rights abuses in Iraq as propaganda and – get this – “selective attention to human rights”.

“This selective attention to human rights is nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists,” said Irene Khan, Amnesty International’s secretary general.

Yes, this is the same Amnesty International who selectively targets Israel for what it perceives as human rights abuses, while turning a blind eye to those committed in most of the Arab world. Are you laughing yet?

The following quote is from a Letter to the Link by a member of Amnesty International at Concordia:

You can’t fight all causes at the same time; you have to make choices. For example, I am an anthropology student. I believe in the equal value and richness of all cultures, but I cannot be an expert on all of them. I have to pick.

In fairness, this author claims to have chosen West Africa and the Caribbean as her areas of expertise – but then, most of her letters to the Link seem to pick on Israel. In a discussion thread about that letter, the same author posted the following comment:

Please don’t get me wrong, I condemn HRs violations equally on both sides each time they happens but since HRs violations against Palestinians happen more often than against Israelis, I personally condemn the Israeli military, in particular, not Jews, more often then Palestinian suicide bombers! Palestinians impact on Israel is also much less significant than the other way around, assuming they had a state anyway. Also, my little finger told me that when Palestinians rights will be respected, suicide bombers will cease to react that way because they will have no more cause to fight.

Obviously, this is one individual and she does not represent all of Amnesty International. But it can be enlightening to see how some of these people think. It is unbelievable that criticism of Israel is fine by Amnesty International, but criticism of a totalitarian dictatorship such as Iraq, with a madman like Saddam Hussein at the helm, is “propaganda”.

Just to put things into perspective, imagine for ten seconds that Israel were a Muslim country, and Palestinians and Iraqis were a Jewish. (Yes, I know, that sounds absurd, but just pretend for the sake of argument.) What do you think all the so-called “human rights activists” at Amnesty International would be doing? My bet is that they would be lobbying daily for war against Iraq, while defending Israel’s legitimate right to self-defence and mounting an international campaign against suicide bombings and terror attacks!

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

For all you quiz-addicts out there, now you can answer ten short questions to determine your true political beliefs with the World’s Smallest Political Quiz.

Instead of the traditional left-right spectrum, this one scores you on a chart, with personal issues along one axis and economic issues along another. People fall into the “Left Liberal”, “Right Conservative”, “Libertarian”, “Authoritarian”, or “Centrist” categories, based on the answers they give. The quiz is run by a Libertarian site, so it seems to be a bit biased in that direction, but it’s still kinda fun. Even if it did describe me as a Centrist but on the border of Left-Liberal . . . hmmmm . . .

Oh, and according to this clock, it’s 1:28am, which is way past my bedtime. Time for sleep.

The Passing Phrase project set up by Eli Birnbaum may not teach you your aleph-bet or turn your bar mitzvah Hebrew into fluency. But it sure is entertaining. If you want to know what the Israeli taxi driver was really shouting, check it out.

Sovereignty is back on the PQ agenda with the creation of a new fund to promote Quebec independence.

Premier Bernard Landry said on Friday the fund will be announced at the party’s annual convention this weekend in Quebec City, as the Parti Quebecois gears up for a provincial election, expected next June.

The fund will be made up of contributions from citizens, and donations are expected to be tax deductible, Landry said.

On the one hand, we’re all so sick of hearing about sovereignty that I’m not overjoyed to hear it being discussed again. On the other hand, we’re all so sick of hearing about sovereignty that this will probably end up hurting the PQ come election time. Certainly, current polls seem to indicate as much:

Friday’s polls suggest the Action Democratique and the Liberals are neck and neck in the run-up to the elections.

On the issue of Quebec’s separation from Canada, one of the polls showed 61 percent of Quebecers opposed independence while 39 percent were in favor.

Mind you, with the riding system, a Liberal-ADQ split could mean a PQ majority victory. It depends on the geographical spread, which generally favours the PQ. The ADQ will probably lose considerable support between now and next spring, while the PQ and the Liberals will likely gain support, mainly because of money – the two major parties have it, the ADQ doesn’t. The winner will probably be the party who loses the least support to the ADQ – the party that has managed to give a whole new meaning to “fence-sitting”.

Of course, support for sovereignty may be at a low right now, but that doesn’t mean anything. Who could’ve predicted such a close referendum result in 1995? Who could forget the tension, watching on two or three tv stations at the same time while they counted the votes that would decide our future? Who could forget the panic, the droves of people who made the trek down the 401? Who could forget the suspicion and divisions in our society, as we somehow expected anyone who’d voted Yes to have horns hiding in their hair or something? I had very little political perspective back in 1995. All I knew was that people were scared of what might happen.

But today, I’ve found my attitude shifting somewhat. I still think the arguments for sovereignty are stupid. I still hate having my rights infringed upon as an anglophone, or listening to endless debates on how to outlaw English on the Internet or blame Ottawa for the latest Quebec goof-up. I’m sick of referendums and of electoral fraud and of the hard-line buffoons who love to blame everything on “money and the ethnic vote”. And if it should ever happen that a Yes vote passes in a future referendum, I’ll probably pack my boxes and move to Ontario or the States in tears and sadness.

But there’s a part of me that’s relieved, too. Relieved that the sovereignty debate is a bunch of people debating in government and passing dumb laws and holding neverendum-referendums, and that’s about the extent of it. Because I look around the world, and I see that almost every movement for nationalism has been through violence and bloodshed. I look at places like Ireland, Croatia, or the current conflict in the Middle East, and I think to myself: wow, it could be a whole lot worse! With the notable exception of the FLQ, the Quebec nationalism movement has been refreshingly free of violence for the past 30 years.

Therefore, if endless political debate is the price we pay for a non-violent nationalism movement, then I’m more than happy to pay it.

I hate – HATE – HATE shopping at this time of year.

The mall is disgustingly crowded. Everyone pushes and shoves their way through the stores. A fight over a parking space can evolve into World War III. All this stress in order to spend our money!

And to think I used to look forward to the Christmas Season . . . but then, that was when I was actually working in the mall.

Fête de Dollard, the holiday formerly known as Victoria day, is undergoing yet another name change, courtesy of our thumb-twiddling separatist government:

Premier Bernard Landry announced last Sunday at a commemorative gathering on the sacred ground of the rebels’ lone military victory that the holiday formerly known in Quebec as the Fête de Dollard – and before that Victoria Day – will be decreed the Journée nationale des Patriotes.

The ostensible reason is that Dollard des Ormeaux, the former namesake of the holiday (and of my city/municipality-cum-borough), wasn’t really such a hero after all. Okay, fine, I buy that. But what was so wrong with calling it Victoria Day, like the rest of Canada? I mean, like it or not Landry, we are still part of Canada here.

Of course, that’s just it. The new name is seen in many circles as pandering to the ultra-nationalists in the PQ:

But the only ones clamouring for a Patriotes Day have been the ultra-separatists, a constituency the PQ needs to keep under its wing, and giving them their day is a convenient way to mollify their growing suspicions about the premier’s sovereignist commitment.

From the beginning of the movement in modern times, Quebec sovereignists have conscripted the Patriotes as spiritual brothers-in-arms for the cause of Quebec independence.

Most notoriously, the terrorist Front de Libération du Québec adopted the vintage image of a rifle-toting Patriote in habitant costume as its trademark during the 1970 October Crisis.

Of course, the article goes on to explain that the true history of the Patriotes isn’t what most people believe. But I somehow doubt this will become an issue. People are, in general, much happier to buy the fairy-tale condensed version of historical facts than to actually review them and see them for what they really are.

Whatever really happened in 1837 becomes moot. Papineau’s true nature and beliefs don’t really matter. As long as the legend is preserved, and the separatists mollified, it takes the pressure off Bernard Landry in the leadup to the election. And with the general population (with the exception of the hard-liners in the PQ) becoming increasingly tired of the sovereignty debate, Landry desperately needs the distraction. The PQ has already lost a lot of support to the ADQ, and Landry lacks the personal charisma that Lucien Bouchard used to keep the hard-liners at bay.

I don’t know if a holiday will make the separatists shut up for more than 30 seconds . . . but hey, if that’s all it takes, I’m more than happy to let them have it. Whatever it takes to avoid another neverendum-referendum.