New Media

I’ll be touring around Israel all week and plan to provide regular dispatches on my experiences and some mostly sober thoughts inspired by what I see. A few essays I whipped up on the flight from Toronto to Tel Aviv:

From the Promised Land to the New World and Back Again

I Am A Bacon-Flavored Kind of Kosher

A Country Where You Can Not Get Away from Politics

I’m dead tired and a bit flustered at not being on my home turf for what will be a game-changing event when it comes to Canada’s role in Afghanistan. Must retire for a bit.

Come quick, CBC! I have access to top-secret documents proving that the Canadian government officials at the highest levels deliberately handed over enemy combatants in Afghanistan to Lex Luthor and Gorrila Grod for super-villain style interrogation. My research shows that the prisoners were probably subjected to unhealthy doses of Kryptonite and freeze rays.

I can’t actually show you the documents, of course. In fact, I can’t offer any proof to substantiate my claim due to legal technicalities. But I assure you, my evidence is 100 per cent verifiable and I have no motivation beyond the desire to share the truth with my fellow Canadians.

That should be good enough for the CBC, right? I mean, you’ve set a precedent.

Further reading for those interested in the background on this bizarre saga:
Maybe some former Liberal ministers should be worrying about their asses

Facts: The previous Liberal government and Afghan detainees

“Torture in Afghanistan: The Liberals knew” redux

Afghan detainees and the former Liberal government/Human rights Update

More interesting moments in journalism:

The Size Doesn’t Matter campaign is a brilliant counter to the Israel Apartheid Week. When debate is rendered meaningless, but turning the other cheek isn’t your bag, satire and counter-culture jamming makes a lot of sense.

Instead of images of Palestinians at checkpoints, we get a shot of a nearly-naked supermodel. Forget Gaza — look at this Mediterranean beach! What happened to the kids throwing stones at a Merkava tank? They must be hiding behind the stage at that rock concert. Forget for a moment the statistics on the number of Palestinians living below the poverty line. Let’s have a look at some facts about Israel’s achievements in the fields of science, medicine and the protection of civil rights (for both Israeli Jews and Arabs in equal measure, naturally).

Cynics will look at this social media campaign and its publicized events at campuses across Canada as an offensive distraction to the grim IAW movement. But that’s the point. It’s meant to be.

IAW is itself a distraction and a decisively unhelpful one when it comes to actually solving the horrendous challenge of Middle East peace. Putting out Size Doesn’t Matter as a distraction to the distraction is exactly the strategy to use.

We live in a culture where political correctness has dulled the ability of both students and their teachers to distinguish between a liberal democracy and a lawless tyranny. In that context, sowing confusion among the holier-than-thou fundamentalists and proto-fascists with a campaign of big boobs, bright lights and some reminders about the gay-friendly, women-friendly and eco-friendly nature of the Jewish state just plain works.

“It may be small, but it has brought the driest places to life!”

They need our help now more than ever. Will Canada stand by the people of Afghanistan post-2011? Will we support our ally or turn our backs? It’s not too late to change course from where our foreign policy seems to be headed in the absence of strong moral and political leadership from all parties.

I hope the people of Canada are not going to leave us alone and they are going to support us after 2011 as well. Afghans cannot make their lives stable without the support of other international friends, especially Canadians.

Especially after spending lots of time and lots of energy, and we together have spilled a lot of our blood in support of Afghans. If Afghanistan is not stable, then stability of all countries around us in this global village will be at risk. It’s very important to remember that Afghans are also human beings. They also wish to have a better future for their families and their children and it’s not possible for us to make it alone. We need the support of friends, especially Canadian friends.

If you’re going to be in Ottawa on March 9 and want to learn more about the future of Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan, you have to attend this. It’s about keeping our promises.

The federal government’s conservative-minded (surprise!) budget aims merely to avoid spending more than last year on programs without any deep cuts to try to tame the deficit. There will be those who criticize this sleep-walking sort of economic policy for lack of courage or ideas. Then again, “stay the course” is not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to an economy that outperformed almost every other developed nation last year. We could have done a worse — a lot worse.

A few examples of boondoggles our boring fiscal policy has managed to avoid spending on recently:

* Ninety-two upgraded T-72M1M main battle tanks for a bargain-basement price of four billion dollars. As Venezuela’s economy implodes under the rule of strongman Hugo Chavez and the people face food and power shortages, it’s nice to know that the Venezuelan people are safe from… who, again?

* Bailing out Greece for $6.5 billion. Whatever it takes to make sure sclerotic Greek unions and their olive-scented bureaucrats can keep raking in bloated salaries for serving the public with traditional incompetence. Oh, wait. Since we contribute to the IMF, taxpayers may be on the hook for this after all.

* Three gold medals for $120 million over four years. Russia may have spent more on their athletes than we did, but their return on investment was dismal. Better luck in Sochi, comrades.

* $1.5 billion for a Babel-sized skyscraper in Dubai — basically, in the middle of nowhere. It closed a month after it opened due to technical problems.

* $85 million for bomb detectors for Iraqi security forces. This sounds like an essential investment for a nation that routinely suffers mass casualties from terrorist attacks. That is, until you realize that you could get the same level of effectiveness at half the price by simply waving $42.5 million worth of stacks of cash at security checkpoints.

Of course we have our own share of stupid spending priorities. The millions spent on HRCs that seem to spend far too much time protecting such important values as the “human right” of not washing your hands before serving food to customers is just one example. That said, maybe we’re not so badly off in the big picture.

Screw You, Taxpayer!