Segacs’s World I Know

Way too much fun on a Sunday afternoon: the Salon Passion Chocolat at Place Bonaventure. Chocolate sculptures, chocolate truffles, chocolate liqueurs, chocolate spa treatments, and every kind of gourmet chocolate imaginable. Not to mention plenty of free samples. This chocoholic was impressed, anyway.

The verdict is in for the Butcher of Baghdad: death by hanging.

I’m sure that the US administration expected this to be a pivotal moment and a resounding victory. Instead, Saddam’s execution will probably pass as a mere footnote to the ongoing violence in Iraq.

Still, there cannot be a punishment quite bad enough to befit the crimes that Saddam Hussein inflicted in the course of his dictatorship, and there really couldn’t be any other verdict but a death sentence. So, barring an unlikely appeal victory, Saddam Hussein will probably hang by next month, and one less horrible dictator will be alive in the world.

It won’t solve Iraq’s problems. Far from it. But now, that seems almost besides the point.

I have a new recommended strategy for the Habs: Always play short-handed. Whether or not you have a penalty.

Hell, we’re playing better a man down than we are at even-strength. We’re ranked in among the top 3 in the NHL right now on the penalty kill. And after the two shorthanded goals that contributed to last night’s 4-0 blanking of the defending Cup champs, this is a surefire strategy for success!

Okay, maybe not.

A Reuters article, perhaps accidentally, stumbles on the true crux of the matter when it comes to North Korea:

North Korea has committed “crimes against humanity” against its own people according to an independent report published on Monday that made a long-shot appeal for the U.N. Security Council to deal with the issue.

Released after North Korea’s October 9 nuclear test, the report describes Pyongyang’s brutal treatment of its citizens, from the beatings of pregnant women to force miscarriages to the abduction, torture and execution of political prisoners.

Commissioned by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, former Czech president Vaclav Havel and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, the paper seeks to spotlight rights abuses that have been previously reported but are often overshadowed by concern about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

(Emphasis mine).

And that, after all, is the point. North Korea has been committing horrific crimes against humanity that beg the question of why, more than sixty years after swearing “never again”, the world sits back and allows them to happen.

The answer to that question can presumably be found in two little words: nuclear weapons. The theory is that, while in the midst of dealing with the nuclear crisis, there’s little that the world can do about anything else North Korea is doing.

So what’s our excuse, then, when it comes to (nuclear-less) Sudan?

The Habs’ powerplay goal with 1.2 seconds left to lift us 3-2 over the Bruins was the kind of last-second move that traditionally would always happen against us. Sign of a turnaround this season? Sure hope so! (Oh, and WOOHOO!!!)

These women stood up to speak out against radical fundamenatalism in the middle east and in the world:

“We must speak out now, because we’ve got nothing to lose,” said Dr. Wafa Sultan, one of four Middle Eastern women taking part in a panel discussion in Montreal yesterday to argue their position on the West’s response to Islam.

The four were keynote speakers at an Institute of Public Affairs of Montreal conference. They talked before the event about the place of women under the yoke of an increasingly fundamentalist Middle East.

[ . . . ]

Iranian-born Nazanin Afshin-Jam, a former Miss Canada, has been leading an international effort to publicize the plight of an 18-year-old Tehran rape victim sentenced to death under sharia law. Afshin-Jam recalled a peaceful rally held in Iran in which the protesting women were dispersed by extremist, heavily veiled women.

“They feel more powerful,” she said of the veiled women.

Sultan said many Muslim women are not freely choosing to wear the veil, but do so because it’s in their best interest.

Islam has other ways of enforcing a bias against women, Afshin-Jam said: “In Iran, 65 per cent of university students are women but the laws say women are not allowed to be judges.”

And under sharia law, it’s very difficult for a woman’s word to be taken seriously, she said.

In the West, “we cannot afford to lose our cherished freedoms to radicalism,” Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian, told the conference audience later in a Delta Hotel meeting room.

We often wonder where the voices are, speaking out against oppression and injustice. They exist; there are too few of them so far, they tend to get drowned out, and those who speak sadly – in this country where freedom of speech is cherished – often fear legitimately for their personal safety. But more and more, they exist. And we owe it to them to listen to what they have to say. Because the more people speak out, the more courageous the next people will feel… and the next… and the next.

The BBC has long been widely-acknowledged as one of the most anti-Israel media outlets in the western world.

So the BBC, in the midst of all these complaints, went out and commissioned an independent report on whether its reporting was biased. Presumably, it hoped to be able to use the report to clear its name. But, lo and behold, the report confirmed the bias… so now the BBC is trying to cover it up:

In 2004, the BBC decided to appoint editorial advisor Malcolm Balen to pile a report about the organization’s coverage of the Middle East conflict.The BBC refused to publish the full report although acknowledged that its reporting was biased against Israel.

Ynet has a document detailing the legal saga between the BBC and Attorney Steven Sugar, who filed a court petition demanding the BBC release the report.

The publicly-funded report, which comprises 20,000 words, was withheld by the Information Commission.

Sugar told Ynet that his motivation was his belief that the public is entitled to have the full picture, especially when it comes to the complicated and entangled Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Something tells me that Reuters, CNN and the Associated Press won’t be running out to commission similar reports, now… though I have little doubt of what they’d find.

(Hat tip: Stuart).

The Habs’ 4-1 loss against the seemingly unbeatable Sabres tonight wasn’t nearly as bad as the score makes it sound. We looked solid out there, competitive even, and we had the slight edge in shots on goal and the definite edge in faceoff wins and puck control in the offensive zone.

Sure, we had some unlucky bounces and made some unfortunate mistakes, but really, if it weren’t for Miller’s spectacular goaltending, it could’ve just as easily gone the other way. A loss is always a shame, but tonight’s game was better than the outcome.

Oh well.

A phobia is a deep, irrational fear that can take over someone’s life. Common phobias include heights, spiders, snakes, small spaces… and my personal phobia, needles.

Thanks to this fear, I’ve never had a flu shot, I avoid blood tests like the plague, and I’ve even shied away from traveling to countries that require certain immunizations, which, for a travelaholic like myself, is a really big deal. It’s no use trying to argue me out of it, either; I know full well that there’s no logical basis to the fear, but then, with a phobia, that’s not the point.

Lindsay pointed me to this article talking about a study she worked on that suggests that the simple act of distracting kids can alleviate their fears. But I’m skeptical. A kid – or even an adult – who is truly phobic of needles is likely to just remember the attempt at distraction and be even more distrustful the next time around.

Instead of researching distraction techniques, I’d suggest to the medical and scientific community that they find a way to administer vaccines or take blood that doesn’t involve any kind of needles. Yeah, I know, not too likely… but it would be nice.

(By the way, in case you’re wondering, I’m perfectly fine with heights, and skydiving is awesome.)

Update: Lindsay informs me that, actually, the studies she reviewed excluded kids with actual phobias. That makes much more sense. A run-of-the-mill fear is probably easily alleviated by distraction, but a deep phobia wouldn’t fit that pattern.