Nut sentence:

When a society worships death, honours suicide attackers and forces civilians to serve as human shields, they are going to have a high death count.

 

A couple of things I left out of the article for space considerations included referencing two excellent sources for information on the ‘dialogue’ that actually goes on in the Palestinian Territories.

These are www.palwatch.org, and www.memri.org, invaluable sources for understanding the horrific death-cult nature of Hamas in particular. Hamas is not shy about what they believe, we just need to listen to them. When you hear public figures talking about how Jews drink the blood of Palestinian children, when you see little children on kids shows talking to stuffed animals about killing Jews, it will forever change the way you view this conflict.

I think many Westerners are trying very hard not to look behind the curtain at the Palestinian society and leadership. I urge people to check out these sites to learn what Israel is facing, and keep that in mind when judging Israel’s actions- or better yet, take a moment to judge the Palestinians by the same standards.

Another short ‘graf I left out is the truly disgusting, anti-Semitic news reporting on the Stabbing Intifada:

Israel is now actually being portrayed as bloodthirsty for shooting these knife attackers. One CBS headline read, “2 Palestinians killed after stabbing attack in Jerusalem”. Not mentioned is that these two Palestinians were the attackers, nor that they had stabbed to death two Israelis before being shot.

CNN, AP, NY Times, all managed similarly dishonest headlines multiple times over the last several months. I believe that the demonization of Israel among university students, other civil rights movements, and the Left in general, is largely flourishing because these headlines are completely misleading the general public. No one reading the NY Times or watching CNN will come away with any idea that there might be something nasty going on behind that Green Curtain. When facts are presented COMPLETELY IN REVERSE as in the above headline, Israel has an insurmountable obstacle to overcome.

In particular, I referred to Foreign Minister Dion’s statement, which is itself quite mild, because I believe we need to stop meekly accepting the rhetoric that everyone is to blame (or just Israel, when they’re winning a battle). Jews are harassed on campuses across North America, and attacks on Jews are shrugged off, because of a portrayal of Israel as uniquely evil*. No, Dion’s statement did not do so, but it shied away from the responsibility to destroy that charade. If we are to change the Bizzaro-world up-is-down understanding on this subject, we need to demand better from public figures and news sources.

(*In part. Of course, this is a complex subject and involves the multi-faceted nature of anti-Semitism.)

Pol Pot, leader of the communist Khmer Rouge: Approximately one quarter of Cambodia’s population were killed, worked to death or starved during his four-year rule.

My new op-ed in our excellent local small town paper, The Low Down to Hull and Back News.

This was not meant as a defence specifically of the planned memorial to the victims of communism in Ottawa, but to explain why, more fundamentally, we should respect and understand this theme of 20th century history.

In-situ here:
http://www.lowdownonline.com/we-should-not-forget-the-victims-of-communism/

Text below:

In John Urban’s recent contribution to Valley Voices (Aug. 12), he derides Ottawa’s planned monument to victims of communism as irrelevant. “Communism is tres passé,” he says, before obliquely defending it, by critiquing capitalism.

That attitude is proof of how important it is to remember. In the three years of Communist China’s Great Leap Forward, tens of millions of Chinese starved, due solely to political reasons. Last week I was out with a Chinese-Canadian friend. Discussing his family coming to Canada he explained simply, “My father escaped the communists after they murdered my grandmother.” Do refugees escaping capitalist North America tell stories like this?

People don’t like to talk about this history. About Pol Pot’s killing fields, or Stalin’s purges, or the Ukrainian Holodomor. The 20th century was an era of tremendous human-caused terror, but no cause, including Nazism, killed a tenth as many as communism. We should not forget.

Mr. Urban asks scoffingly who the real victims of communism are. To answer, no, it is not people using a Chinese computer (which would have been built, in fact, by a private company, and since we’re on the topic, China has lifted tens of millions of people from poverty by abandoning communist dogma). But just asking that question, who the victims of communism are, illustrates the problem. These victims are not hidden. I wish I could say it takes great imagination to pretend they don’t exist, but apparently many want to forget: tens of millions killed by dictatorial followers of a seductive panacea for the world. Many fled those regimes to seek haven in Canada. Not the other way around. In particular, we owe remembrance because so many of our own intellectual leaders were apologists for those regimes.

By lumping all that is not related to communist nations as being “capitalist history”, we can blame capitalism for all the catastrophes in human experience. Slavery is not a by-product of capitalism. It existed in tribal societies, and feudal; in Christian empires and Islamic fiefdoms. The elimination of slavery from the world began with democratic, capitalist Great Britain. Slavery is not uniquely tied to capitalism, but democracy historically has been.

To sweep aside the horrors of communism by saying, well, bad things have happened outside communist countries too, is to abdicate our ability to make moral judgments about our world. I note that our current MP began his political career in affiliation with the Communist party. In the 1940s, my grandfather was imprisoned for passing technological secrets to the Soviets. Then, we didn’t know the extent of destruction communism was already causing. I can only wonder how, since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the documentation of the atrocities committed by the Eastern regimes, anyone could now wish to stand under their banner.

David Sachs is a Chelsea resident and author of the bestselling thriller, ‘The Flood’.

I wouldn’t normally re-publish a comment on an article website, but the Canadian Jewish News actually deleted my comment, so I thought I’d repost it here.

A CJN op-ed by an off-and-on Liberal operative named Adam Goldenberg caught my eye because of its provocative headline, on one of the news aggregator sites:

Will Stephen Harper resign? Jews will know first.

I don’t know anything about Mr. Goldenberg, but I have seen his articles before, trying to move Jewish voters away from the Conservatives.

This article is basically a Trojan horse for that mission. The putative story “Jews Will Know First” is silly, and I think the author knows this, but he uses it as an excuse to get a few digs in at Harper for a Jewish audience.

The article uses substantial words to paint an unflattering history of Harper’s relationship with Canadian Jews, before Goldenberg makes his claim that Jews  (and a few other well-organized minority groups) will be the first to know when Harper is leaving because Conservative candidates to replace him will be in our shuls pandering for our votes.

First of all, Goldenberg’s whole argument here is premised on the contentious and totally unsubstantiated assertions that a) Jews are a holy grail of Canadian politics (at approximately 1% of the Canadian population, or one third the Muslim population), and b) that Harper has supported Israel and been aggressive with Islamic terrorists not because he believes it’s right, but to coax the Jewish vote.

But even forgetting that shaky stuff, the argument really turns on the (again unsubstantiated) theory that the actions of contenders to replace Harper will be the clue as to when Harper will leave. Here’s a clue: post-Harper contenders are already working as hard as they can to build their profiles, and they will have no more clue as to Harper’s intention than the general public. Or even the Jews. The column is a thinly veiled excuse to give a negative view of Harper to Jewish readers.

It’s fine if someone wants to lobby for the Liberal party to Jewish or other audiences. But they should have the honesty to argue their case straight up, not just use false arguments to toss drive-by smears. Perhaps more importantly, the click-bait headline for the article is irresponsible and perpetuates the adBusters style propaganda that Jews control everything. How many will see that headline and just add another note to their mental file on the too-powerful Jews?

If you’re reading this, and you’re Jewish, ask yourself, have you ever known what political leaders were going to do before anyone else? Do you think that’s an appropriate headline?

A final clue that the argument itself is bogus is that when you have 600 or 700 words to make a point you care about (in this case, ostensibly, that “the Jews will know”), you usually want every one of those words to make your point; you don’t want to waste them on filler and background flab. Look at this article. Almost the first HALF is “backstory” (re-told with a certain political slant) before it even gets to the point. Does this seem like someone genuinely trying to argue a case?

It’s such a silly little article, written as a cute cover for some hidden jabs, and it’s unfortunate that it had to promote itself with an irresponsible headline and theme. I doubt Goldenberg is trying to race-bait or promote anti-Semitic ideas, but in trying to be provocative he should try to be more responsible. Perhaps the CJN as well.

We celebrate Canada Day! But why is Canada worth celebrating?

Relax, I’ll tell you.

It’s not a nice world out there, to be honest. Much of the world suffers poverty, violence, dictatorships, or all three. There are, however, plenty of great places, and I won’t say that Canada stands alone in wealth, peace or freedom. We are, however, a good example of them, and maybe the greatest example of the ideals that protect them.

The “New World”, the Western colonial child-states of the Americas, means a lot of things to different people, and in terms of history, includes totally divergent courses. But to my mind there is an idea behind the New World as an opportunity for Enlightenment ideas to take hold, free of the class and race and religious based divisions of Old Europe. These days, there are many challenges to the ideals of Liberal Democracy, but for better or worse, our lot in Canada is with those New World values: democracy, freedom, tolerance, equality of rights, support for the poor and vulnerable, and protection from government abuse.

Many countries espouse those ideas, but few display them as well as Canada. There are certainly failures and shames in our country, foremost being the historic treatment and current conditions for Native Canadians. But I can’t name another country which aspires and succeeds on such a large scale as ours: we do not suffer from the blight of killing poverty, we feel safe in our homes and in our streets, and our neighbours by and large have opportunity to climb to a better life.

Nationalism is a frightening thing, we’ve seen so much evil perpetrated through it. But it’s not wrong to celebrate if you celebrate the right things. We are the waving flag of the New World. When we celebrate Canada, we are telling the world that our way works. For the most part, it does.

Let’s drink to that!

And oh yeah, beer, Rockies, winter, Gretzky, Stompin’ Tom, etc, etc.

The Queen

VS. 

A monkey

Back in October of 2002 I wrote one of my first op-eds for the Toronto Star after a typically embarrassing royal visit by Her Highness. To set the stage: John Manley, then one of Chretien’s star ministers, mused about dumping the monarchy, and poor John was piled on fast for the crime of speaking common sense honestly, and I believe did some back-pedalling. I picked up his baton, picking on the defense-of-monarchy from the Monarchist League of Canada’s website. The League soon took down those arguments.

Now, the version the Toronto Star ran with was not my preferred version. It was the no-monkey argument. So, instead of the published article, I will print here, for the first time ever, my preferred version. The Monkey Argument:

In the TV show The Simpsons, there is a running joke where the grandfather tries telling a story of something from the old days. As the kids become bored, they begin speaking to each other over the poor grandfather’s voice. I was reminded of that scene in listening to MP Elsie Wayne’s recent rant about the Prime Minister’s alleged disrespect for the Queen. I could almost picture the younger members of her party yawning and passing notes to each other.

To those of us in our twenties and thirties, the attention being given the Queen’s visit by pundits and politicians remind us of nothing so much as how different old people are. The arguments being made so passionately in support of the monarchy seem so antiquated they make reading the newspapers seem like walking through a museum. Can I claim to speak for all of my generation? Sure, why not? I have at least as great a claim as the Queen does to representing Canada. Greater in fact, as I actually COME from that generation. As an example of the modern importance and relevancy of the monarchy I can say this: I am senior editor for a Canadian magazine which reaches close to 500,000 readers, most of them men in their twenties and thirties. Our magazine promotes and examines Canadian icons and images of all types. One thing we’ve never discussed in our magazine, and our readers have never missed, is the monarchy.

It is a testament to the accomplishments of older generations of Canadians that ours was brought up with hope and belief in an egalitarian society. We were taught to believe in certain Canadian values. The monarchy makes a mockery of them. The lessons the monarchy teaches are that some people are born better than others: not smarter or stronger, simply ‘better’. The monarchy teaches us that the power to govern our own affairs doesn’t come from us- it comes by the grace of outsiders. The headlines screaming pride over whatever bland praise Her Majesty generously throws our way, like a rock star shouting out to a city before rockin’ it,  gives a pathetic lesson that we need the approval of our betters. As if she says anything different in her visits to Jamaica or New Zealand.

Perhaps I am being unfair. Let us look at the arguments made in support of the monarchy. As a test, we shall compare how some other choice for head-of-state, say, a blind monkey, would fare by those same standards. True, it may be said that monkeys are not native to Canada. But then, neither is the royal family. According to the website of the Monarchist League of Canada,

“The Queen of Canada is more democratic than a President of Canada ever could be because she represents all Canadians. An elected president would owe his selection to a political faction… The Queen and her heirs have been trained from birth for one vocation — that of discharging the duties of sovereign of Canada. Therefore, they are the only Canadians fit to assume this important position.”

We will ignore the ridiculous idea that those borne into power are ‘more democratic’ than those elected. We will let go the obvious objection that the Queen is, of course, not Canadian. I will simply note that on the basis of this first argument, our unelected, non-partisan monkey comes out even with the Queen. Let us move on along the Monarchist website.

“The Monarchy gives Canada a distinctive political system at a time of strong North American Continental trade, social and cultural influences.”

 Today’s Canadians have no trouble with ‘identifying’ ourselves. Furthermore, there could be nothing more distinctive than having a monkey head of state. Monkey 1, Queen 0.

“There is a sense of easy communication between monarchy and people, which politicians by nature are unable to develop.”

Hmmm. Somehow I have a hard time buying the concept that Liz is ready to hang out in ‘easy communication’ with her subjects. But don’t monkeys make you laugh? Monkey 2, Queen 0.

“Many newcomers to Canada have come from countries with monarchies. They readily identify with our Canadian Monarchy”

Many newcomers to Canada come from countries with monkeys. We’ll call his one a wash.

“Perhaps Canadian historian Jacques Monet has said it best. “…a king is a king, not because he is rich and powerful… He is King because he is born. And in choosing to leave the selection of their head of state to this most common denominator in the world — the accident of birth — Canadians implicitly proclaim their faith in human equality.”

Okay, I will give you all a moment to stop laughing. It is true that the Queen is human, and a monkey is not. So she has that going for her. This still sounds more like an endorsement of Ruler-By-Lottery, which would not only be more egalitarian than our current system, but might also earn lotto revenue for our hockey teams. So we’ll concede this point. Monkey 2, Queen 1.

“The French-Canadian tradition, in common with the British and other European traditions, is also monarchical.”

Let’s remember what eventually became of those oh-so-popular French monarchs. In Quebec, the monarchy is viewed at best as an embarrassment, at worst as an insult. But everybody loves animals. Monkey 3, Queen 1.

Finally, I will turn to the argument put forward by the Ottawa Citizen, in their Oct. 8 pro-monarchy editorial:

“Queen Elizabeth’s very distance from current events and political factions, especially in Canada, gives her a disinterested gravitas in the event of a crisis that also helps make such crises unlikely.”

Okay, I grant the royalists the point that the Queen probably doesn’t keep up with Canadian affairs. But what could be more clueless than a blind monkey? Monkey 4, Queen 1. Game over.

There are those who will say it would be cruel to force an animal into a lifetime of such hard work, something for which they may be completely ill-suited and are given no choice in. How much worse to force such ignominy on a human being? Pity the royals. Set them free.

History may repeat itself, but every show gets cancelled eventually. After a decades-long run, it may be that Quebec’s PQ vs Liberal show, and everything that went along with it, could be cancelled due to low ratings.

The Action Democratique promised to upend this programming a decade ago, but the old ying-yang  of Quebec politics proved resilient. You had to ask, how long could everything take a back seat to one issue? There have been other battles, but Separatist vs Federalist is forever the framework. Surely, some day, some thing had to give. Perhaps it gave Monday night.

The sovereignty movement has never suffered a loss like the one this week: the ’95 referendum was a squeaky victory for Non (thanks to tens of thousands of Non voters denied their ballots). But it was so close! It felt like a coin flip. Quebec nationalists couldn’t help but feel their time would come.

This week, nineteen years since that referendum, came the most obvious, unmistakeable declaration of Non! we’ve seen.  It came through a sudden, dramatic upside-downing of public opinion. Premiere Marois and the PQ, who had won a minority government against a tired Liberal party just a year and a half ago, chose the early timing for this election because they were on a roll, and on course for a majority government. Polls showed it. Pundits proclaimed it. We Quebec anglophones began to sweat.  Perhaps their popularity came from the Secular Charter, perhaps it was NOT being the long-ruling LIberal party, but it was certainly not by virtue of being a sovereigntist party that the PQ was on path to victory. Still, we all are true to our nature… sometime. Thinking, perhaps that voters liked her because she was PQ, and not because she was NOT Liberal, Premiere Marois began to talk independence. Immediately following her, and her nuclear weapon PKP, getting feisty and loud on independence…

PKP gives it up for an independent Quebec

…the polls turned.

Which led to Le Shove.

Cause and effect are never clear in politics. Except here.

Instead of the PQ majority expected just weeks ago, the Liberals won big time, the PQ hit record lows (since their first election) and the new player, CAQ, almost equalled the PQ.

Why is this loss different from others? Because never has the rejection of sovereignty been so strong and clear.

Paul Wells spells out the policy problems the PQ face here. He boils it down to this: three policy planks so define the party to their supporters, they cannot be pulled back. They are the most important issues for the PQ’s last voters. But they piss everyone else (i.e. the voting majority) off.

1) The party is built on the premise of seeking independence. If they acknowledge Quebecers reject independence, what do they exist for?

2) The Secular Charter. Too much Charter. With the amount of daylight this issue received in the campaign, the mean-spirtidness of it shone through all of Lisee’s poetry.

3) The freeze on education fees. Terribly important to Quebec and Montreal students. Rejected by everyone else in the province.

I don’t believe 2 and 3 are so defining to the PQ that they can’t be walked back. If George HW Bush could raise taxes, well… But #1 is a tough one to hide.

There is also a demographic problem. A few years ago, I had personally become pessimistic on independence (that is, as a federalist Quebecer, I expected it to come about) after a Oui friend explained to me how dead Canada was among Quebec’s youth. It just had no place in their hearts. So, it was inevitable that youth would get their way, in time.

My friend was right. Quebec’s young people are less connected to Canada than previous generations (after decades of Canada being set up as an enemy, what a surprise!). Young Quebecers, by and large, don’t feel pride or passion in Canada.

The problem for the independence movement though, is most Quebecers don’t need to love Canada to like it. It works for them, maybe like EU works for some Germans. They don’t love it, it doesn’t define them. But they like it, it works practically for them, and perhaps they feel something good in the idea of diverse peoples working together.

So there’s that. Of course, this pragmatic federalism isn’t a guarantor of Canada’s unity. But the strength of it, measured in 2014, is impressive.

The other demographic problem is that there aren’t as many young Quebecois as there used to be. Quebec has a lower than replacement birth rate. On the other hand, it takes in about 55,000 immigrants a year. For years, the PQ and BQ have supported immigrant candidates, and nurtured relations with immigrant communities, trying to overcome Parizeau’s “money and the ethnic vote” excuse in ’95. All that progress blew up with the Charter. Quebec’s immigration is based to some extent on language. Unlike the rest of Canada, where immigrants are mostly of East Asian origin, Quebec immigrants are predominantly North African or Arab, and familiar with French. These communities are predominantly Muslim, and some of them wear, or have family members who wear, hijabs, burqas, niqabs, etc. These communities have been hustled from the PQ tent with the Charter, which attempts to banish these religious symbols from public life.

I do think the PQ can walk back their Charter fine-print and sales job to bring themselves on-side with general public opinion; a kinder, gentler Charter (as the CAQ and PLQ have each supported at some time) might go over with a majority and still appease the base. But I don’t think the immigrant communities will forget this. For a long time. 55,000 is about 2/3 of a per cent of Quebec’s 8,100,000+ population, per year. Seems small, but that’s a few percent growth between elections. In ten years, that’s a whopping change to voting patterns, and it will be overwhelmingly antagonistic to the PQ.

So where does the PQ go? With Drainville or Lisee as next leader, and double-down on the Charter? Or with super-capitalist PKP and further bleed votes to Quebec Solidaire on the left?

I remember the challenges working as a Conservative communications strategist in Quebec a decade ago. We faced voters that were suspicious of the party, and suspicious of Harper. But we believed that, in much of Quebec, Conservative policies and ideas could play well if we explained them. I can’t imagine where the PQ goes to get out of this mess. The better they explain where they stand, the less support there is.

Here is the more dignified former PQ leader as we remember him best:

Philipe Couillard, Liberal contender for Quebec premiere, has hit on a key secret truth, as quoted here in the Montreal Gazette.

From the Gazette article:

“They (the PQ) say that Quebec is weak and besieged, that everyone is against us,” Couillard said at a stop at another seniors’ residence in Laval earlier in the day.

“They say that the rest of Canada is against us, the federal government is against us, that foreigners are out to get us, too. So (they say) we have to create barriers, we have to fold in upon ourselves, We can’t be open. That is not the type of nationalism we want. For us, it is the opposite. We want a nationalism that is open and confident.”

Asked whether the 1982 repatriation of the Constitution without Quebec was an insult to Quebec, Couillard said it was “regrettable.”

“It is regrettable episode. . . . That said, we are not crying. We are not sad. We are not oppressed. We are not besieged. We are not humiliated, despite what the Parti Québécois tries to make us think.”

Preach it. We are not sad and oppressed. Is that so difficult to say? We practice too much the politics of losers, in Quebec and in Canada. One segment or another is always complaining of how bad they have it and how unfair it is.*

It’s not good for us. It’s not healthy to systematically paint oneself as a victim, so that the solutions are always someone else’s responsibility. It’s also not true. Some Quebecers may not like our status as a province, they may believe they will feel more personally fulfilled as part of a Quebec nation, but separation is not going to be any cure for the real problems that ail Quebec: economic stagnation, mass corruption, the country’s highest drop-out rate. I want to be part of a project that tries to solve these problems, and feels pride in that, rather than chasing shadows and teaching ourselves that we are shamed. Reciting grievances from battles two hundred years ago will not solve the problems we face today. (Nor will a ban on hijabs).

Too often, our federalist leaders in Quebec have been too eager to play this game, to show that, although they think separation or sovereignty is too much solution that there are still battles that must be fought against Ottawa. They have to show that they too are tough on Ottawa. Does anyone really believe this is the most productive way to build our province in the long term? Couillard has teased us with the victim card too, as recently as a few days ago. I’m glad to hear him speaking some brave truths now. I hope he keeps saying it. If we want to be masters in our house, we should start by adopting the posture of masters, not aggrieved peasants.

*****

*The self-shaming cries that ‘we can’t support ourselves without demanding more of our neighbours’ may be a byproduct of socialism and wealth redistribution: the more we expect to be supported through government intervention, the more we are in competition with each other, the more we all become squeaky wheels. You see it in every level of our politics, and in every region. It’s not a fatal flaw, but it should be taken into account as a social cost when we discuss social programs. Maybe I’m wrong and this is a function of politics itself; I’d be open to debating this!

Current Liberal leader, le dauphin, Justin Trudeau

“Insider” favourite for next Conservative party leader, Minister (for Curry in a Hurry) Jason Kenney

“Outsider” favourite for next leader of the Conservative party, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall

New PQ heavyweight, media and news mogul, sovereigntist-out-of-the-closet, and billionaire everyman, Pierre Karl Peladeau

Note: I live in Quebec, my next prime minister may not be the same as yours.

Seems like a lot of money to me. But does it make sense for the minister of Defence to be sticking his nose in and making comments before the case is sorted out? This government has taken a lot of heat lately for seeming to fail to support our soldiers. Do they want to appear to be smearing a general for partisan reasons? Oh yes, this general is a Liberal adviser and possible candidate*. It could well be that the moving bill was inappropriate. It just seems to me, if I were a minister, I would pass on publicly commenting, and defer to the “proper oversight mechanisms” or some other way of fire-walling yourself from accusations of partisan smearing.

*The general was also the author of a major report on reshaping the military, which was, for reasons still unexplained, not welcomed by the government.