It’s Friday, a Friday in May . . . the weekend is coming. So, given that, I’d like you to think about:
The pond that needs to be removed, the fence that needs to be built, the shingles that need replacing, the fire-pit that needs to be moved, the Saskatoon’s that need to be replanted, the groceries that need to be bought…sigh, the hockey that needs to be watched?
and don’t what-ever you do, don’t think about our favourite friend1,
ensuring a Liberal defeat,
or worrying about old school reactionaries who aren’t happy unless everyone toes their line. As an aside, there is a difference between “editorial”, “journalism”, and “reporting”.
Please bear w/ me, I’m not nearly as diligent as Kate when it comes to checking scheduled (meaning written in advance and published at a time in the future) posts. Apparently, they have to be rebuilt before accepting comments. Many of you are in time-zones that really don’t jive with mine (hello, computer geek!). Don’t be surprised if you have issues commenting on this post until 9 or so CST.
1 I’ve been deleting comments related to that person as per Kate’s ban. I don’t know enough about MT to set up a more elegant system. Please refrain from responding to that person until I can viciously and gleefully “restrict his right to free speech”. (That would be lance at catprint dot ca, Mr. Johnny DownInTheDumps.)
Cheers,
lance
Iberia,why did Bill Graham get a free pass from everyone on Metherel? The kid was hooking at 14 years of age ,He was put up as a sex toy by a man in his fourties,who paid his rent. This man later held various cabinet positions in the liberal cabinet,including MINISTER OF FORIEGN AFFAIRS,a sensitive position,not to mention the kid’s anus.WHY?
me no dhimmi, I guess we’ll have to ‘agree to disagree’.
I put the plight of the Palestinians on the heads of both the Arab States and Israel. It should not be occupying or settling the West Bank/Gaza.
You may think it’s amusing that I consider that the Arab States don’t want an Arab democracy in their midst, but I think it’s a reasonable opinion. Arab tribalism is the only political mode in that region and it’s been that way for centuries; they don’t want an Arab democracy in that region as it would diffuse to their populations who would rebel against tribalism.
The Arab nations rejected a Palestinian state in 48 because they didn’t want a Palestinian democracy and also, because they consider Palestinians ‘the lowest’. The Olso Accord was, of course, a municipal governance offer, not an offer of a state. Arafat didn’t want a Palestinian state; he’d lose power.
I disagree that the 1948 plan divided up the land according to village religious majority. After all, at the time, Palestinians were living in the towns and villages and farms that were given to Israel; Israelis/Jews weren’t the majority there at that time.
I think that Jerusalem should be a ‘global city’, because of its historic bonds with all three religions.
The reality is, the West Bank was part of the Palestinian land base. What land base would you have offered? After all, Gaza is only 360 sq km, with no water.
I don’t know what you mean by ‘a people’. There’s no such thing as a genetic definitive ‘people’, ie, Jewish (which is a religion); or Israeli (which is a national construct) or Palestinian (also a national construct). There is no such reality as ‘a people’. If you are talking about a cultural construct, then, there IS such a thing as a ‘people’ – and that includes Palestinians. But cultural constructs can change, remember; that’s what immigration is about!
So what, if Israel has 22 Arab countries around it? France has non-French countries around it! Brazil, whose population speaks Portuguese, has lots of Spanish speaking countries around it. So what?
As I’ve said many times before, there’s no such thing as a land base that inherently belongs to any religion or ethnic group or any ‘people’. A nation is entirely and only a political construct; it’s not an essentialist thing linked to some genetic cell in the body of a person or people. There’s no such thing as a ‘Jewish homeland’. Do you seriously suggest that the people who became the Jews emerged out of the ground in the ME? Where did they come from before? There IS a historic background of Jewish religious development and presence in Israel. Equally, there’s an historic background of another religion developing there – the Christian. And other groups.
After all, as I’ve pointed out and you ignore, the natives here in Canada/USA can, using your essentialist logic, claim full rights to Canada and the USA, for they were here long before any Europeans.
You keep ignoring my comments about Israelis in the West Bank and Arabs in Israel. I’ve answered your question many times. Israel will not permit an Arab majority in Israel, so, presumably, they will ‘push out’ these people, or will refuse to give them citizen rights. If a Palestinian state develops in the West Bank, and Jews want to live there, they’d obviously have to agree to be Palestinian citizens.
After all, we object to people living here in Canada and yet, still considering themselves citizens of, eg, France. Or Pakistan. And refusing to obey our laws.
As for Israel ‘making the desert bloom’, your romanticism ignores that they brought Western industrial technology and money with them, to irrigate land which was being farmed using non-industrial tactics. Israel, for example, has a land base at present of 20,770 sq km; it irrigates 1,940 sq km.
The West Bank, which is 5,860 sq km and Gaza which is 360 sq km, only irrigates 150 sq km; that’s because Israel will only let them use water for household personal use; not for farm irrigation. So much for blooming deserts.
I suggest you take a look at the CIA data base, called the CIA World Factbook. It provides a wealth of factual data about all countries of the world – such details as arable land, population, GDP, etc, etc.
I don’t think Jordan wants the West Bank. You may define the Palestinians as Jordanian, but they dont. And frankly, I think their views are more important than yours. The only solution that I can think of, is the two-state; but it has to be viable, ie, there has to be enough land, and importantly, water, for a Palestinian state to function.
And a very real problem, I maintain, is that the Arab States don’t want a democratic arab people in their midst…That’s why Iraqi and Afghanistan democracy is so important.
Posted by: Mississauga Matt at May 9, 2008 10:59 AM
Thanks for that.
Them’s dangerous werds for some people (mostly the cowardly set).
yeah,I am still waiting for an answer. From anyone,esp. the left out there,and even the rest of you. Why was the interim leader of the liberal party given a pass on diddling boys? Is it a ‘it is a gay thing and if we mention it we will be labelled as knuckle draggers? Is it because there is no real proof,except for the kid’s admission? Is it because,hey ,he is married and why ruin a man’s reputation because of a little 18 month fling with an underage ‘child prositute’? And we all know that BG is straight as an arrow and would never ever lie? Why expose him as a pedophile ? Why hurt his family? Well,I will tell you why. He has,in all likelihood condemned a person to a life of drugs and sexual abuse. A child prositute looks for love in all the wrong places. They rarely find it. Billy boy,you are scum!!!!!
Just a followup: I watched the TVO thing I’ve heard so much about.
Both those Muslim lawyer girls were totally babelicious, pro-model level of TV “attractiveness”. Both were nines or better.
The moderator was surprisingly non-smarmy and refused to be trampled. What the hell has gone wrong with TVO?
World Hockey Championship Report:
Today was my second day at the WHC, and it was another day of incredible hockey. So far, I have been to three games – Canada-Norway, US-Germany, and Finland-Latvia. Each one has been a different combination of same three elements: one team spectacularly outshoots the other, one team receives a number of cheap penalties in the 3rd period (often leaving them two men short), and the games are tied into the middle of the third or later.
I’m sure many of you watched Canada-Norway; just let me tell you the energy level in the building was amazing. Watching Canada pour shot after shot at the Norwegian net (52 in all), and just fail time and again to get that elusive second goal set the tension level very high. When Norway tied it up, you could feel the anxiety – would some lucky bounce lose a game that we had so thoroughly dominated? Then, in the 3rd, the referees decided to help things along by calling 5 penalties in a row against Canada, resulting in two lengthy 5-on-3 situations. I was so impressed by the discipline of the Canadian players in those situations; they didn’t chase the puck or try to take out a man – they stayed in their lanes and weathered the storm. I’m sure you’ve all seen Nash’s goal, but I have to tell you that having it seen on the TV news, it was much more impressive in person. The Norwegian goalie was player of the game for them, and he received a standing ovation from us – he deserved it.
The US-Germany game featured a bit more scoring (probably because the US starting goalie has been lost to injury), but parts of the same script – the US team buzzing around the German net, taking shot after shot, and an opportunistic German squad making the most of their opportunities. (Before changing US goalies, the Germans had 3 goals on 10 shots.) In the 3rd, with the game tied 4-4, the refs again tried to decide the game, sending a parade of Germans to the box for fouls both real and imagined. Unlike Canada, the Germans couldn’t hold back the tide, and gave up a power play goal, and an empty-netter. Still, it was a very exciting game, and it wasn’t decided until the last half of the third.
Today, it was Finland-Latvia, which featured the introduction of Saku Koivu to the Finnish lineup. Since Halifax is Montreal’s AHL farm team, he was greeted with roars by the home town crowd. However, the biggest treat was the 1,200 Latvian fans, who met or exceeded the noise generated by the many Finns present. Wearing outlandish hats (including five wearing Native American feathered headdresses; what’s up with that?!), featuring drums and other musical instruments, they kept up a steady din throughout the game. Again repeating the basic script, the Finns poured it on in the first; shots on goal after the first period were 36-5 for Finland. Unfortunately, they were on the wrong end of a 1-0 score. My friend told me it was quite impossible to buy beer during the intermission; the Latvians were mobbing every available counter. The second period saw much the same, but the Finns couldn’t keep up the pace; they only had 50 shots by the end of the second. In the third, the Finns tied it, and once again, the refs decided to take a hand, this time sending a parade of Latvians to the box. They couldn’t keep killing off the 5-on-3’s, and eventually, Finland popped in a second goal. It seemed to be all over, but in the dying seconds, with the net empty, Latvia had a chance. With less than 3 seconds to go, the Latvian forward sat at the edge of the crease, with the Finnish goalie flat on the ice. If he had lifted the puck six inches off the ice, it would have sent the game into overtime, but he couldn’t, and the game ended 2-1 for the Finns.
Later, they announced the player of the game for each team, and when it came to Latvia, we expected it to be the goalie, who had faced 64 shots, and stopped 62. When it was given to a defenceman instead, the entire crowd – Latvian, Finn, and uncommitted – booed lustily.
Later today, it’s Canada v. Germany. I’m looking forward to it!
I retract my previous statements regarding “babelicious” Muslim lawyer girls (just so everyone knows), now I am like totally in love with Noa Mendelsohn Aviv. What a woman!
I’m safe posting this ’cause no one reads this far down on outdated comments.
ET:
I’ve reviewed a section of Howard Sachar’s monumental History of Israel for the partition plan. It does not mention assignments based on majority populations. Not sure where I got that — maybe Efraim Karsh’s little book I just finished (Osprey Publishing, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War of 1948) which I’ll take another look at.
From Sachar:
In favouring the partition the majority scheme envisaged an Arab area comprising western Galilee, the hill country of central Palestine except for the Jerusalem enclave, and the coastal plain from a line south of Isdud (Ashdod) to the Egyptian border. The Jewish territory would include the rest, except for the Jerusalem-Bethlehem promontory, which would be internationalized..
The minority plan, which the Arabs grudingly accepted as a last resort, had some kind of cantonical governance but also extreme limitation of Jewish immigration — limited to “Palestine’s absorptive capacity”.
The ideal solution would have been a bi-national unitary state, but of course the Jews had centuries of understanding about the desperate plight of non-muslim minorities.
This from the CBC
The Greater Vancouver Zoo in Langley will be holding a memorial ceremony for Jocko, a spider monkey that was killed when thieves broke into a cage with bolt cutters on Tuesday night and likely made off with his mate, Mia.
A memorial ceremony for a monkey?????
thanks for your comments, me no dhimmi.
As for the ‘ideal solution’ – a binational unitary state’ – I wonder if that would work. Maybe it might. The only example I can think of, also a created state, is Belgium, which is quite literally divided into two linguistic and cultural self-governing areas; Flemish and French.
I think it’s useless to debate about ‘moral rights’ to the land, ‘historic rights’ to the land, ‘religious rights’ and so on. I think you can only work with practical reality. Rather similar to the fact that despite our government ideology that Canadians are bilingual, we in fact are not and never will be bilingual.
So, the reality is that in particular after WWII and with the devt of the UN, the international world acknowledged Zionism, an ideology of a state, defined by religion (Jewish in this case), in the ME. Again, no arguments of ‘we were there 1,000 years ago (so were others); or ‘god gave it to us’ are relevant. The only thing that is relevant is that – the international community, with whatever international authority it had, agreed to it. Period.
The other reality is that people were already living there. For centuries. It is useless to say that ‘they were not a nation but colonized by Turkey, or Britain or France or… It is useless to say that ‘they didn’t farm properly’..and so on. They were there. Period.
So – what to do? Israel would have preferred that the people living there would get out, be ‘absorbed’ by ‘other arab states’. That’s a rather ‘racist’ comment if I may say so. It defines someone by their ethnicity (in this case, arab) and says that ‘all who are this ethnicity are all alike and should all live in one place’. Rather like our multicultural policy. Or our native reserves.
But the reality, and that’s what we have to work with – not hopes and ideals – is that these people didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to be ‘absorbed’ by others such as Jordan, Egypt, Syria etc, with whom, quite frankly, they felt no filiation. All arabs aren’t alike..a Jordanian does not consider himself a Saudi Arabian. And certainly, the Arab States didn’t want them, for they defined them as ‘Not Us’..and the lowest of the low.
I think the only solution is a two-state entity. The thing is, the best solution might actually be similar to what you are suggesting – a bi-national unitary state – but more like Belgium. Each section self-governing but with a larger overall governance. The reason for this ‘binary state’ is that Israel will insist on a Jewish political dominance in its zone. I think the sticking point might be that larger overall governance..but..who knows..
And the reason I’m agreeing with this is that the Palestinian population is now more ‘Israeli-like’ than it is ‘arab-like’. It’s been a generation where the focus of Palestinians has been on Israel. Many have actually worked there before the border crossings made it impossible. Worked there – rather than in Jordan or Egypt etc.
Plus, there is the important fact that the other arab states never wanted them; and, are still trapped within a tribal political mode. Palestinians have moved out of tribalism only because their own status has been so messed up. They are in ‘no-man’s land’ but have been exposed to israeli democracy.
So, in a way, I see Palestine’s future as more filiated with Israel than with the arab states. Again, the arab states have always sneered at palestinians as ‘lowly scum’. Always. They don’t want them.
But, a unitary bi-national state, with each group more or less living in separate domains, as in Belgium, and each self-governing, but with a SHARED overall democratic governance..might, just might..work. I’ve always seen the Palestinian economy as necessarily linked to the Israeli one.
It would take another generation for the mutual hatreds to cool. But what other solution is there? Again, the only ‘facts’ one ought to deal with is the bare realities. Israel exists; Palestinians exist. What does one do about both, considering that neither is going to disappear? Possibly, that bi-national state is the best solution.
The only thing that is relevant is that – the international community, with whatever international authority it had, agreed to it. Period..
Indeed, indeed. Well put.
So – what to do? Israel would have preferred that the people living there would get out
Maybe I’m naive ET, but I just don’t get this from my reading of the history. I feel that Zionists were idealists who had every intention of honoring minority rights and have indeed proven that on the ground with their fair (tho not perfect) treatment of Israeli Arabs who indisputably have the best humans rights regime of any Arabs in the ME.
Here’s a passage from Karsh’s book about the sad, tragic and unnecessary exodus of Arabs from Haifa, a very important Arab centre:
Excerpt:
There, after an impassioned plea for peace and reconciliation by the town’s Jewish mayor, Shabtai Levy, the assembled delegates went through the truce terms point by point, modifying a number of them to meet Arab objections. Then the Arabs requested a 24-hour recess ‘to give them the opportunity to contact their brothers in the Arab states’. Although this was deemed unacceptable, a brief break was approved and the rneeting adjourned at 5.20 pm. When the Arabs returned that evening at 7. 15 pm, they had a surprise in store: as Stockwell would later put it in his official report, they stated ‘that they were not in a position to sign the truce, as they had no control over the Arab military elements in the town and that, in all sincerity, they could not fulfil the terms of the truce, even if they were to sign’. They then offered, ‘as an alternative, that the Arab population wished to evacuate Haifa and that they would be grateful for military assistance’. This came as a bombshell. With tears in his eyes, the elderly Levy pleaded with the Arabs, most of whom were his personal acquaintances, to reconsider, saying that they were committing ‘a cruel crime against their own people’. Yaacov Salomon, a prominent Haifa lawyer and the Hagana’s chief liaison officer in the city, followed suit, assuring the Arab delegates that he ‘had the instructions of the commander of the zone … that if they stayed on they would enjoy equality and peace, and that we, the jews, were interested in their staying on and the maintenance of harmonious relations’. Even the stoic Stockwell was shaken. ‘You have made a foolish decision,’ he thundered at the Arabs. ‘Think it over, as you’ll regret it afterward. You must accept the conditions of the jews. They are fair enough. Don’t permit life to be destroyed senselessly. After all, it was you who began the fighting, and the jews have won.’
But the Arabs were unmoved. The next morning, they met with Stockwell and his advisers to discuss the practicalities of the evacuation. Of the 30,000+ Arabs still in Haifa, only a handful, they said, wished to stay. Perhaps the British could provide 80 trucks a day and in the meantime ensure an orderly supply of foodstuffs in the city and its environs? At this, a senior British officer at the meeting erupted: ‘If you sign your truce you would automatically get all your food worries over. You are merely starving your own people.’ ‘We will not sign,’ the Arabs retorted. ‘All is already lost, and it does not matter if everyone is killed so long as we do not sign the document.’ Within a matter of days, only about 3,000 of Haifa’s Arab residents remained in the city.
What had produced the seemingly instantaneous sea change from explicit interest in a truce to its rejection only a few hours later’? It later transpired that during the brief respite in the negotiations granted to them, the Arab delegates proceeded to telephone the AHC office in Beirut for instructions. They were then told explicitly not to sign, but instead to evacuate the town. Astonished, the Haifa delegates protested but were assured that ‘it is only a matter of days’ before Arab retaliatory action would commence, and ‘since there will be a lot of casualties following our intended action … you would be held responsible for the casualties among the Arab population left in the town’. Reluctant to shoulder this heavy burden, the startled delegation returned to City Hall to announce its decision to vacate Haifa’s Arab populace.
Another one for the CHRC:
“Islamic group accuses newspaper of hate crime over cartoon”
(Canwest News Service)
A Halifax Islamic group has filed a complaint with the police and the Human Rights Commission of Nova Scotia over an editorial cartoon published in a local newspaper.
The Centre for Islamic Development filed the complaints because the cartoon creates “an environment of hate,” said the centre’s community relations officer, Will King.
The April 18 cartoon published in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald was of Cheryfa Macaulay Jamal, whose husband was arrested along with 16 other men in a 2006 anti-terrorism raid.
Email to a friendPrinter friendly
Font:
Canadian authorities accused the 17 men of being part of an Islamic terrorist cell planning to bomb a series of targets in Southern Ontario.
After the charges against her husband were stayed on April 15 Jamal, a Halifax native, was quoted in the Chronicle-Herald as saying she wanted “millions” in compensation from the federal government.
The cartoon showed Jamal holding a sign that reads “I want millions” and saying “I can put it towards my husband’s next training camp.”
King said he and the director of the centre, Zia Khan, respect a newspaper’s freedom of expression, but in this case the cartoon crossed a line.
“If someone wants to offend us, no problem,” said King. “But when someone draws . . . references between terrorism and Islam and creating an environment of hate, that’s where we have a problem.”
———–
The irony is Muslims are the ones creating hate against themselves though these types of complaints, not to mention everything else. A sleeping public is becoming informed and as a result Muslims will likely become persona non grata in Canada.
I like pretty nekkid women, but why is this big news?
http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/424039
Smells like “Look at us! Canadian babe in Playboy! Hasn’t happened for decades! We’re important now!”