New Media

Palestinians are celebrating a new unity government today between Hamas and Fatah. The compromise will hopefully stem a civil war and bring stability to the entire Middle East region.

But while Palestinians wasted nearly a year trying to agree on how to agree not to cut each other’s throats, the international sanctions regime instituted shortly after terror-group Hamas won the last election is still in place. The Palestinian people, already facing harsh conditions before the sanctions were imposed, naturally suffered the most.

The problem is that Israel and the international community never actually asked for a unity government.

They asked for the Palestinians democratically-elected representatives to indisputably renounce violent struggle. They were supposed to be putting a stop to rocket attacks and suicide bombings of Israeli civilian centers. That, they have not done (although the Israeli Defense Forces and the much-maligned security wall are mitigating those attacks with or without Palestinian cooperation).

And that’s why Canadians and others hoping that this part of the world is going to get better any time soon are going to be very disappointed.

The Conservative government is so panicked it’s copying Liberal ideas and policies, according to Liberal leader Stephane Dion.

Wait a minute – Liberals are accusing the governing party of co-opting the more reasonable platform planks of the opposition to make Canadians happy and help the country run better, without regard to blind partisan politics… and this is a bad thing?

It is the duty of the opposition to oppose. But the party that is actually running the country has a duty to consider ideas from Canadians of all political stripes when forming policy and legislation. That isn’t a political ploy – that’s democracy in action.

The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination “remains concerned at the extent of the dramatic inequality in living standards still experienced by aboriginal peoples” in Canada.

Rightly so. The status quo, in which native people have the worst outcomes in virtually every index of quality of life in our country, is just not acceptable.

Of course, it’s not like Canadian governments haven’t tried different solutions. Self-government, tax benefits, multi-million dollar settlements, affirmative action… it’s all been tried.

Which is not to say that Canadians should just give up. On the contrary, for everyone’s benefit, solutions must be found.

Whether that means little steps like allowing private ownership of housing on native land or more drastic action like doing away with the entire system of reserves, who knows? But for all our sakes, change better come soon.

You know our civilization is in trouble when the news category of Terrorist Attacks comes right after World news and before Election news (That’s odd. Did I miss something, or has there not yet been an election called in Canada?).

The Metro is one of those freely-distributed tabloid newspapers widely read in Canada’s major cities, including Vancouver. It’s a good read for those who like their news digesible over the course of a single cup of coffee.

But their editorial management has got to be questioned here. Are there really enough terrorist attacks going on in the world today to justify an entire news section? According to their own website, nope.

The stories in the section today are as follows:

• Wounded Afghans say U.S. forces fired on civilians after suicide bomb
  
• Ministry of Defense says two British soldiers killed in southern Afghanistan
  
• 3 killed, 33 wounded in Afghanistan violence
  
• U.S. prosecutors want new hearing on ‘millennium bomber’ sentence
  
• Former Taliban minister arrested in Pakistan, intelligence official says
  
• U.S. forces routinely fire on, pursue Taliban from Afghanistan into Pakistan

Notice that of the stories here, only two of the six (“3 killed, 33 wounded in Afghanistan violence” and the millennium bomber story) are actually about terrorist attacks.

Perhaps the Metro could do with a Sports roundup instead.

As regular readers of this site will notice, West Side Tory is no more. “Currents” is the new title for this collection of intelligent observations by yours truly.

Why the name change? Mostly, it had to do with alienating readership and clients from the 63 per cent of Canadians who seem to equate uber-Tory Stephen Harper with Faust.

My politics are firmly in the Conservative camp right now and will stay that way as long as I believe that Harper and his ilk are on the side of the good. Indeed, I fully expect to work for my local Conservative candidate in the coming federal election.

But that affiliation isn’t burned into my DNA. I couldn’t in good conscience represent myself as a true-blue partisan when my politics could very well change just a few elections hence.

That said, I think West Side Tory is a fine name for a blogger with a little more partisanship in their heart and a rough geographic proximity to Vancouver Island. I hereby relinquish any connection to the West Side Tory name. Hopefully, someone a little more hard-core Conservative will come along, use it and make a million bucks off website advertising. Cheers.

My other reason for the change? As you can see from the Youtube video above, Max Power was already taken. Damn those TV writers.