Category Archives: Politics

Israel Shouldn’t Have Swapped Thousands of Terrorists for Gilad Shalit

19 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

When Brian Burke made a multi-player swap to land Dion Phaneuf, it was pronounced that the Leafs won the trade since, of all the players dealt, the Leafs got the best one. Unfortunately, this logic doesn’t transfer well when dealing with terrorists.

Now that Israel has its longed after kid soldier they are in more danger than they used to be, though you would never know this hearing Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations’ Secretary-General: “This release will have a far-reaching positive impact to the stalled Middle East peace process.” Perhaps the moon isn’t only in Ban’s name, but his place of residence.  To be fair, he’s in the UN, so preposterous statements are his mandate. I fail to see how rearming a sworn enemy with their fiercest combatants will help the cause of peace.  Amongst those released are Yehive Sinwar, founder of Hamas’ military wing, and other notable vicious and vile perpetrators of mass murder who have been candid in their desire to kill again and express no remorse. Sure, it’s unlikely over 13,000 former prisoners will re-offend, but does anybody doubt that a serious number intend to?  Shouldn’t “1” constitute a “serious number” of blood-thirsty terrorists?  Not all prisoners released founded Hamas’ military, but I doubt there’s even one among them I’d like to have a beer with. Or vice versa.

I’m not alone in thinking there’s trouble ahead.  The Popular Resistance Committee (the Hamas dominated coalition that captured Shalit) had a representative vow: “We are going to capture another soldier and cleanse all the Israeli jails.” This is the most obvious thing for them to do, something everybody should expect, except of course Ban Ki-moon. I usually take a terrorist’s words with a grain of salt, but I believe them this time. They have all the incentive in the world to do it again and nothing to lose.

With Israeli citizens overwhelmingly happy about the swap, it’s hard to fault Netanyahu.  If they don’t blame him and they have to live next to Hamas, who am I to say? But that’s just it: it seems Netanyahu put political expediency ahead of national security. The response of my friends Facebook status’s has been joy over doubt at Gilad’s return, but unless you think rearming Hamas in exchange for Shalit actually helps the cause of peace, this is bad news.  This is the question it boils down to.

I’m obviously happy for Shalit.  Five years of living with Hamas must be an unimaginable horror beyond description, far worse than any quarrel I’ve had with my roommate. When I was in Rome in 2009 I walked by a Shul which posted a sign with Gilad’s face.  I didn’t understand Italian but the message was clear. It goes without saying Israel wanted his return, and for obvious reasons, but it doesn’t seem prudent, and possibly it’s even a breach of duty, to privilege emotional resolution over national security. Israel today is undoubtedly less secure than it was a week ago.

Israel might be giving Hamas something to crow about after the PA went to supplicate the UN, or perhaps now Hamas will stick to their word and take more innocent hostages, creating a pretext for an Israeli military response.  The only thing that won’t come of this is peace. I like Burke’s trade better.

Toronto Needs the Arts to Balance the Budget

11 Tuesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Toronto is apparently suffering a deficit of over $700 million.  It might be interesting to consider that during the mayoral election nobody mentioned this shortfall, and that this crippling debt seems to have appeared from nowhere, yet dominates the budget.  But that’s a topic for another day. The fact is, the city is poised to stop funding frills in the name of austerity–no surprise, Ford’s sawed off shitgun is aiming straight for the arts.  Fuelling this is the assumption that anything enjoyable or soul-nourishing must be unaffordable–literally, Ford can’t afford it. Har har har.  But according to a visual graph from the Grid (the kind that unfortunately looks cute and has the undesired effect of not being taken seriously), far from a decadent expense, the arts is an economic engine.

Consider: Nuit Blanche got an initial investment of $600,000 and brought in $34.7 million; TIFF received $800,000 in grants this year and brought in $27 million in tourism from out of town visitors.  There’s no need to exhaust similar stats, the trend is clear: even accounting for exaggeration and faulty methods, the return is irresistible.  So why is it being resisted? Are these numbers that wrong?

As an innate sceptic, I find a return this crazy hard to swallow whole, but the graph is pretty compelling. Though admittedly I’m not an economics major, in my humble opinion it behooves our mayor to receive millions of dollars, especially when he’s searching desperately for every penny.  I know if I had millions of dollars coming at me on condition I suffer some art, I’d oblige. Hell, for millions I’d do all kinds of unmentionable things. But what I can’t ever imagine is being too poor to buy beers after refusing to be paid handsomely to watch Leaf games.  Is it possible our mayor hates art more than he loves money?

Unless the Grid’s numbers are a severe misrepresentation, the mayor is under heavy obligation to explain why a cherished and lucrative revenue stream is being cut while the belt is tightened all over the city.

Militant Left-Wingers Overburdening Young Children

16 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in Politics, Statements

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

When I was six, nothing was more important to me than pizza, the Blue Jays, and X-men.  By certain contemporary standards, I was a selfish boy guilty of neglecting the plight of the marginalized.  The National Post reported Wednesday that a father was angered when he saw the calendar of his six year old son’s day planner.  December 17 was marked International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, Feb. 6 was International Day of Zero Tolerance against Genital Mutilation, and what would an equitable, inclusive day planner for infants be without a call for Palestinian solidarity?  The Toronto District School Board issues the planners at a cost of $10 each.  Today, the TDSB is dedicated to extinguishing the ever present danger of childhood innocence.

A spokeswoman for the TDSB, Shari Schwartz-Maltz, explains that the board uses several suppliers to make the planners, plus some planners have specific pages unique for individual schools, making it hard to know how many schools received this exact planner.  Couldn’t there be other planners running amok?  Infants elsewhere might be readying for “9/11 conspiracy day,” or something similarly inclusive and equitable, but I suspect there are no “days of significance” honouring Milton Friedman or Maynard Keynes, those heroes of capitalism.

In one breath, a professor of education at OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) named Kathleen Gallagher clearly identifies the problem, then defends it nonetheless: “…no educator wants to overburden a young child with difficulty that he or she is unequipped for, but at the same time I have to say with equal vehemence that sometimes these prompts provide an opportunity, however difficult, for parents and children to have important conversations.  And when it’s instituted in a calendar, it’s more likely that a child might ask their parents because walking around in the world, a child is going to encounter those ideas.”

The first part is lifted from Curb Your Enthusiasm when you say one thing before immediately negating it by saying “at the same time.” It’s less funny here.  To be a nitpicker, you can’t argue both something and its opposite “with equal vehemence”…it’s clear what she vehemently believes.  What’s really illustrative is her belief that six year old children require shielding from older kids on the playground who will inevitably talk about genital mutilation.  She confuses her hyper-political OISE world of urgent causes for the world surrounding a six year old child.  Kids only talk about genitals if they’re hit by a projectile, and that’s normally good for a laugh.

And Palestinian solidarity for six year olds?  Outrageous.  This supposes a highly partisan cause is universal, and even if it presented the issue in balanced terms, which of course it doesn’t, to discuss and learn about such a polarizing, complicated topic with kids so young is scandalously inappropriate.  Perhaps the TDSB and OISE’s Gallagher expect parents to compare and contrast Theodore Herzl and Edward Said for their six year olds?  This is standard issue from the school who awarded Jenny Peto a master’s degree for producing a rambling annotated autobiography.  This is no accident, it’s propaganda.  In another time and place, these children would be given machine guns and orders.  Having an “important discussion” like this with a six year old is designed to go horribly wrong.  Mommy, why do Jews love killing Arabs so much?  Like Dicaprio in Inception, they’re planting a very controversial idea in somebody’s unguarded mind.  Under the guise of enlightenment, militant lefties are brazenly and perniciously seeking to convert defenceless infants to their vile ranks.  This isn’t a noble but “difficult conversation,” it’s child abuse. And I’m not in the least surprised.

Reckless, radical progressives make pilgrimages to OISE en masse because, even though OISE dabbles in education, the “school” is merely a front for its true purpose as an activist haven.  During my year at OISE, I had a conversation with one of these humourless, disgruntled boors wherein he reduced Fifth Business, an internationally acclaimed novel about the way history is viewed, magic, and Jungian psychology, to a novel written by a dead white Christian man (I doubt it occurred to him that eventually he too would be a dead white Christian man). Immune to complexity, it never occurs to this species of philistine they can be mistaken, so they’re convinced they have a patent on morality.  In the same class, “Actively Educating for Social & Economic Justice,” a kindergarten teacher-to-be volunteered that he was perfectly willing to reveal his political beliefs to the infants in his class.  Politics in Kindergarten.  Nobody in the room batted an eyelash. There’s a scene in Lord of the Rings where the evil Saruman watches his demonic beasts being formed from the nether regions of hell to wage war on the innocent. Such is OISE forming their teachers.

The National Post points out that OISE and the TDSB are not alone.  The McGuinty government got heat last year for trying to introduce changes to the health education’s curriculum that would teach grade threes about homosexuality and grade sixes about masturbation—the latter a subject which, unlike say math or English, many students are autodidacts.  Jan Wong in October’s Toronto Life reports on the growing number of Toronto public schools (more than 200 of nearly 600) have gardens where kids learn to grow vegetables while one in five can’t pass the grade ten literacy test administered by the provincially funded Education Quality and Accountability Office. (As of publishing, sadly this interesting article wasn’t available online).  At this rate, believing school should have at least something to do with education will be seen as radical.

Help!

Getting Over 9/11

12 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by in Politics, Statements

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Though I feel it’s necessary to acknowledge 9/11 in this space, with such an overwhelming amount of coverage I didn’t think I had anything to add. Then I considered my time in Berlin and Munich a couple years ago and got to thinking about xenophobia and the way we view history.

People wonder how to explain 9/11 to children and students without offending them and with sensitivity.  Honesty would be asking a lot.  The US suffered the destruction of two monumental buildings, crowded and symbolic, but there was a prelude.  Dresden was eradicated and major city centres like Cologne, Munich, Berlin were bombed beyond recognition, but it goes without saying that Germany waged no small amount of warfare themselves.  This makes sympathizing confusing at best, impossible at worst.  It’s easier for us decades later to forgive Germans, but not so for people who lived close to it.  In the words of Mordecai Richler in 1966, “Germany is still an abomination to me.”  People’s opinions of what provoked 9/11 seem to depend on their sympathies more than historical accuracy, but the case of Germany is considerably more clear cut.  Accordingly, I didn’t know how I would feel when I arrived in Berlin.

I heard Germany had changed a lot, but what exactly did that mean? Perhaps I’d only be spat on or beat up.  What would I think when I first laid eyes on some hulking blonde, blue eyed Aryan type?  Would I innocently ask him for directions, or wonder where his grandfather was during the war?  What might he be thinking?  Better not abuse this kike or he’ll tell some lawyer and there’ll be yet another stain on our national reputation.  Perhaps, but perhaps not.  This nice tourist looks lost. I didn’t want to believe the former, but I’d be lying to say it wasn’t somewhere in my head.  In any case, it didn’t stop me from going.

We met Dutch tourists who laughed when I told them the Bahn (subway) was cheap, as they never paid.  From that moment on neither did I.  Maybe it was out of financial self-interest, but Germans had extended this courtesy to Jews before and I convinced myself they owed me.

I toured the city by foot and saw the remarkably imposing Nazi architecture of the Luftwaffe’s former headquarters (our Scottish tour guide said ‘it’s still evil, home now to the tax revenue’); Kathedral Bebelplatz where Jewish books were burned; the unmarked plot of grass under which Hitler was buried (unmarked so neo-Nazis don’t make pilgrimages there…in fitting symbolism, residents bring their dogs to piss and crap on the grounds);  a massive sculptural installation consisting of six thousand stone tablets called “to the murdered Jews of Europe” located just metres besides their parliament; and many other testaments of the horrors that happened.  So how did I feel at the time?  I wasn’t angry, bitter, sad, or depressed.  I was fascinated and I was thirsty.  Whatever I felt about the past, I was positive the Germans wouldn’t do it again.

I got the overwhelming sense that German’s felt tormented by their history, but were absolutely determined to move ahead.  Hell, they were already moving beyond the Berlin wall, which fell during my lifetime.  Later in Munich, I spoke to some local kids over a Stein of some potent brew who, without knowing I was Jewish, volunteered their eagerness to leave Germany.  “Hitler ruined it for us…we are ashamed.”  My advice was not to let something out of their control ruin their lives…just don’t do it again.

One day I encountered the tall blonde German I feared.  He was a tour guide in Berlin’s Jewish Museum.  With conspicuous excitement he asked the group of German teenagers, “and vat is vun stereotype of ze Jews?”  Hands didn’t exactly shoot up.  Someone whispered inaudibly and the tour guide’s smile lit the room.  “Money lenders! Bankers! Good.  Do you know how zis came to be?  You see, Christians were forbidden from exchanging money vith interest, so ze Jews were forced to, you see?”  Maybe those Aryans aren’t so bad once you get to know them.  The innumerable Holocaust museums were as detailed and thorough as the Nazi’s own documentation—no coincidence.  There’ll never be too many museums and monuments, yet you couldn’t really expect Berlin to have more.  If the Germans can confront their history, so can anyone.  Yet it can be hard to attribute blame when both sides suffer, as Mordecai so poignantly put it on a visit to Dresden in 1978: “I vacillated between being upset by the bomb damage that was evidently wanton in some places and feeling that it was not enough.”  Frequently with worrying superficiality, people denounce or support decades of American foreign policy in one sentence, trivializing history and missing the point.

Unless there’s a breakthrough in medicine, 110 years from now everybody currently on earth will be dead—it’d be needlessly tragic for those who are alive to be killing because they’re embroiled over our problems.  If every country dealt as thoroughly and sincerely in their past as Germany, and was as resolved to move forward without being crippled by victimhood, the world would move on.  Upsetting Muslims and Americans is the only proper response when upsetting things have happened.

I went to Germany to learn about history and I did. Germany felt compelled to face their demons (as monstrous as they were), but they ambitiously built back their cities day and night.  It’s easy to play victim, and it’s hard to blame people for not getting over real grievances they’ve suffered, but it gets you nowhere and it halts all progress.  I should have paid a couple Euros to ride German trains.

The Mordecai Richler quotes were excerpted from:

Shovelling Trouble, “the Holocaust and After.”

Belling the Cat “Germany 1978.”

Toronto’s Latest Snafu: Fords Frontin’ on the Waterfront

09 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Depending on your perspective, the Mayor Fords are modern day Medicis, visionaries about to lavish our city’s waterfront in historical splendour, or their corruption and short-sightedness will replace moderate gains with an irreversible blight.  I just want trees and sand, but their plans are larger.

In Wednesday’s issue of the National Post, Natalie Alcoba relays the highlights of the redesigned Ford waterfront: a sports complex in a decommissioned power plant, high-rises, hotels, a “retail-leisure town centre destination” (which is apparently not a mall), an “ice palace” (skating rink), a monorail, and for good measure a Ferris wheel. Oh, and an extended parkland/harbour jutting into Lake Ontario made from the earth burrowed under the Eglinton LRT.  “This is an opportunity for Canada and Toronto to redefine a 21st century waterfront for the world,” said Eric Kuhne, the architect who drew the initial sketches. And he should know–no slouch, he’s completed major waterfront designs on five continents. Perhaps only in this modern, Google age rife with plagiarism redefining our world constitutes installing Dubai’s harbour, London’s “Eye”, and Springfield’s monorail. “This is a plan that will create jobs,” Doug Ford said in response to the old plan that was to emerge from the ground of its own volition.

Kelly McParland knocked the current (previous?) route of development in Thursday’s National Post: “in a decade of existence it has spent $900 million on what still strikes the untrained eye as a dusty stretch of parking lots, industrial sites, and kitschy tourist outlets.” Fords say the 25 years allotted to this development is too slow, they can do theirs in 10.  What’s not to like? To hear the National Post, we should have started building yesterday.

Well, others have seen more than McParland’s “untrained eye.”  Edward Keenan of the Grid attributes the slow pace of development to the fact that the environmental assessment, required by law, was just recently completed.  It took years and cost $19 million.  A new plan will require another lengthy, costly assessment.  That’s bad, but Keenan gets to hotter stuff: “research by York University professor Robert MacDermid shows a link between one developer who owns a 50-year lease on Port Lands property discussed in the plan and $30,000 in donations to Rob Ford’s mayoral campaign.”  Corruption! Insider deals! Sexy.  Ford’s freely admit they don’t have money, and to fund this thing they’d need to borrow against the increased land value.  In other words, Toronto would sell undeveloped land to a private firm at low rates before the development takes place. Keenan estimates the losses could be in the billions and compares it to selling off the Distillery District before it became the Distillery.

Enzo Dimatteo of Now, the city’s most rabid Ford basher, is dubious, to put it politely.  Dimatteo reports that Doug Ford sat in on the recorded meeting of the Toronto Port Lands Company board where the decision was made to sole-source preliminary drawings for the revised plan.  Taking Now seriously isn’t easy.  This alleged “paper” has such low esteem for truth that the “pictures,” even the covers, are merely photo shopped assaults, and for this I wrote them saying I don’t even trust the veracity of their concert listings.  But they’re far from alone in finding something shady.

Rob Mackenzie of the Toronto Standard pointed out that Fords failed to consult with the councillor under whose land it lies, and that they hired Kuhne three months ago even though developing that land is in another agency’s mandate, Waterfront Toronto.  Mackenzie cites more abuses of procedure and voices doubts about the project’s practicality.  In stark contrast, David Dick-Agnew, also from the Toronto Standard, invokes comparisons of New York’s Central Park and Paris’ Champs Elysees.  Sure…New York and Paris will be obsolete when Fords are done. The Globe and Mail’s John Loring mentions an additional quarter billion needed to naturalize the mouth of the Don River to prepare a flood plain in the event of a hurricane the magnitude of Hazel. Keep the sober calculation coming.

Under the polarizing reign of the Fords, the shocking and bizarre appear inexhaustible. Just how good or horrible this gets, or even whether it’s legal, remains to be seen, but it’s doubtful their plan will materialize in full. Despite the talk of Ferris wheels and ice palaces, the Fords are immune to both fun and culture. This is about high rises and shopping. If something needs to be sacrificed for this plan to work…

In any case, expressed in only his characteristic, lucid terms, Rob is determined for a showdown: “…We’re going to go out, we’re going to consult, but this is step one…It’s a proven fact, we’re moving the ball down field; we’re getting things done and we’re going to make this just like a gold mine.”

The Layton Letter…not really a huge deal

29 Monday Aug 2011

Posted by in Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Given the public outpouring, it’s obvious great sadness accompanied Jack Layton’s death.  It really sounds like we lost a person who, despite being a politician, was a human being. No small accomplishment.  Most were surprised at the scale of public grieving, and the responses to his letter to the country in print have ranged from callous scepticism (Blatchford, National Post) to raving sentimental nonsense (Klein, Now).  So what to make of this letter?

The left never tire of the mantra, “everything is political,” yet Layton boosters took umbrage with any notion that the death scored political points (read Blatchford’s 2355 comments, linked above).  But why should it be surprising, or insulting, that Layton would use such a poignant moment to further the cause to which he devoted his entire life?  Having the composure and stoicism to produce such a letter (even if, according to Blatchford, it was “crafted” with party president Brian Topp, chief of staff Anne McGrath, and Olivia Chow, who presumably weren’t just there for grammar) was the sensible thing for an astute politician like Layton, and just because it helped his party doesn’t mean he was insincere. Nobody denies the letter obviously benefited the party, so why waste the opportunity?  It’s a commendable political and personal move. To assume this letter was written without consideration of its effect on the country is hopelessly naive.  Does anyone really doubt Layton could imagine the effect it would (rightly) have on the country? That opinion seems to doubt Layton’s intelligence and political acumen, and fails to recognize the admirable truth that the man was devoted enough to give his final moment to the party.

Let’s look at what Now called one of “the most remarkable political speech ever” (Pericles’ Funeral Oration being a close second).  Sandwiched between an inspiring, hopeful message for Canadians, and those suffering cancer, are directions for the party and pragmatic messages for caucus members, Quebecers, and the youth.  It’s touching, as he knew it would be, but when a politician talks about politics it can’t be taken as only personal. Layton obviously wanted to inspire Canadians while helping his party.  Success.

And is the letter’s content even remotely surprising?  It would be shocking if he suddenly made a candid statement diverging from his lifelong  positions. That would be historic, but the letter echoed the platitudes and sentiments he spoke in life.  No surprises here.  The letter didn’t add anything to his story, it was just a ghost authored overview.

Layton’s death is tragic, and it’s easy to see people loved him.  Even those who detest his policies frequently have affinity for the man himself.  Stories published in the Grid, CBC, and others from Now (there were 7 features on Layton last issue) describe an artistic, convivial man most at home in community meetings and drinking while talking politics in pubs. These stories paint a full picture of a fun, engaging person with character devoted to his cause he believed in (for better or worse).  He showed tremendous courage facing a horrible disease.  This letter should have little bearing on his legacy. He did enough in life.  Let his enthusiasm and his spirit in the flesh be remembered, not his talking points.