Netanyahu Must Stay the Course

It can't be easy being Israeli Prime Minister Binyanmin Netanyahu, or Bibi, as many Israelis including myself like to call him.  Nowadays, it seems like Bibi is everyone's favourite whipping boy.  But even with all the hatred directed towards him, the worst thing that Netanyahu can do now is cave in to it.  And if I know anything about the man, he is not one to cave in, whether the pressure to do so comes from at home or abroad.  He is a straight talker that pulls no punches and tells it like it is.  So if all you Bibi-haters want to accuse him of being a fear-monger or a harbinger of doom and gloom, then go right ahead, because it's not going to stop him from telling everyone what reality is and what it will be if leaders make the wrong decisions.

Many of the latest salvos against Prime Minister Netanyahu have to do with his plans to address the American Congress in the coming weeks.  Yes, everybody's upset because Bibi seems to be thumbing his nose at the world's best Neville Chamberlain impersonator, namely U.S. President Barack Obama.  The fact of the matter is that Bibi has tried again and again to convince Obama that playing nice with dictators and terrorists just doesn't work.  But unfortunately, the American President still refuses to heed the wise words of the Israeli Prime Minister and continues to live in a dream world where evil does not exist.  Personally, I think Obama is no more than a preacher on one of those Sunday televangelist shows.  Do you know what I and many other people do whenever we see one of these preachers on our TV screens?  We change the channel so we don't have to hear any more of their BS - and this is exactly how Prime Minister Netanyahu deals with President Obama.  He just tunes him out.  He also knows that there are plenty of other politicians in Washington who are more in touch with reality and who are willing to listen to what he has to say, hence his decision to address the Congress.  So why waste time trying to placate a preacher who pretends to be a president?

If I had the opportunity to tell Prime Minister Netanyahu how I think he should proceed during these difficult times, I would say the following: Mr. Prime Minister, many people don't like what you say or do, but history will prove you were right.  Stay the course.

NATO Finally Considers Sending Arms to Ukraine. Too Little, Too Late

So apparently after Putin the Terrible gobbled up Crimea and then moved to take over eastern Ukraine, the illustrious members of NATO are finally considering assisting the Ukrainians militarily by sending them arms that they can use to fight back against the Russian tyrant and his allies.  Maybe they've finally figured out that it will take the force of arms to stand up to the man who fancies himself as the leader of a new Russian empire.  Uh, ya' think?  Too bad they didn't clue in a lot earlier, because now I think it may be too little too late.

When are the democracies that comprise NATO going to learn?  The only thing that can stop a power-hungry dictator like Russia's Vladimir Putin is force.  Not halfhearted condemnations, not economic sanctions, but pure brute force.  So trying to deal with Putin the same way Neville Chamberlain dealt with Hitler is just not going to work.  If NATO members had learned from history, they probably would have placed their troops in Ukraine long ago to prevent any further land grabs by Putin.  But instead, they decided to let the Ukrainians fend for themselves, offering them only "non-lethal" aid. 

So why are NATO and the West being too soft on Putin?  There are several reasons, but perhaps the biggest stumbling block is the failure of the U.S. under President Barack Obama to reassert its leadership of the free world.  President Obama might as well be the reincarnation of Britain's Neville Chamberlain, because he thinks in the same naive way that the late British prime minister did.  I can't believe I'm saying this, but I kind of miss President George W. Bush, because although I strongly disagreed with his decision to invade Iraq, I can say almost for certain that if he was still in power instead of Obama, both Crimea and eastern Ukraine would still be entirely in Ukrainian hands today.
But alas, the reality is that Obama, not George W. Bush, is the U.S. president and that's highly unlikely to change until the next presidential elections, due to take place late next year.  I can only hope that by then, Americans will choose to put someone in the White House that is more Winston Churchill than Neville Chamberlain.

In the meantime, Obama and the rest of the NATO bunch are still twiddling their fingers and debating whether or not to support Ukraine militarily.  But as I already said, even if they do decide to send arms to the Ukrainians, it won't make the situation any better.  In fact, it might make it even worse because Putin may preempt NATO's export of arms to Ukraine by launching a full scale invasion of the country, rather than just continuing with his current strategy of gradually sending Russian forces into Ukraine to support the pro-Russian terrorists. 

So if sending arms to Ukraine isn't the answer, what is?  To put it simply, only the presence of NATO troops' boots on the ground will halt the advance of Putin's gradual invasion.  The fact of the matter is that Putin is not yet ready for a conflict with the West.  He still needs time to build his military forces and solidify alliances with countries like China and Iran, which will be his allies for the foreseeable future.  Placing NATO troops in Ukraine will ensure that any future conflict with Russia happens closer to its borders than Putin would like.  Failing to do this, however, will probably mean that if and when a conflict between the West and Russia does ensue, Putin's forces will be on NATO's doorstep; on the doorstep of the free world, from where they can advance into most of Europe within a space of hours.

The Rise of Mixed Martial Arts...And the Fall of Decency

How do I know that society is going down hill?  Increasing crime, growing poverty?  These are a couple of good indicators.  But here's another more unorthodox one: for the last decade and a half or so, one of the fastest growing sports in the world has been something called mixed martial arts, or MMA for short.  Okay, so what does MMA have to do with measuring the decline of society?  Well let me put it this way: when the one of the world's fastest growing sports is one where two individuals beat the living crap out of each other for people's entertainment, I think society is in big trouble.  Now I know some of you reading this will want to tell me that there's plenty of violence in sports nowadays and MMA is no worse than football, hockey or boxing.  To those of you who do make this argument, my answer is simple: MMA, unlike football or hockey, is dependent on its participants beating each other up and inflicting as much pain as is necessary to win.  In MMA, violence isn't just part of the sport.  It is the sport.  Now of course, the same can be said about boxing and other martial arts-related competitions.  But MMA is the worse than any of these sports because it's essentially a combination of all forms of unarmed combat into one - everything from boxing to muay thai to jiu-jitsu - basically, anything that you can do to hurt someone.  But now that MMA has become so popular, it's not simply a negative reflection of society.  It's a threat to moral decency.

The so-called sport of MMA sets a bad example for everyone.  It sends a message that violence for the sake of violence is okay; that fighting is fun; that it's great to jump for joy when someone gets knocked out.  Actually, MMA fighters are sometimes paid extra if they knock their opponents out.  Pretty disgusting, isn't it.  And yet, more and more people now consider MMA to be a legitimate sport on the same level as hockey or basketball.  Here in Canada, for example, Rogers Sportsnet, one of the country's leading sports networks, selected Georges St. Pierre, one of the most well-known MMA fighters, as Canadian athlete of the year for three years in a row, from 2008 to 2010.  I'm sorry, but in my opinion, a person who makes a living beating people up and taking beatings himself is not worthy of such a distinction.  It's not that I think Mr. St. Pierre, or GSP as he is popularly known, is a bad person.  In fact, I would argue that most of the well-known MMA fighters are not bad people at all.  They're certainly not the mindless barbarians that MMA makes them look like.  Before they became involved in MMA, some of today's most popular fighters did great things.  I still remember hearing about one fighter who used to be a math teacher.  I think we can all agree that teaching is a very noble profession.  Another well-known fighter, Ronda Rousey, who is now arguably the most recognized face of women's MMA, became the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in judo back in the 2008 games.  But unfortunately, both the former Olympian and the former math teacher, who once did noble deeds, eventually turned to the dark side, so to speak, just like many others who are now MMA fighters.  What I'm basically trying to demonstrate is that MMA has become a way of turning good people bad.  And if this is the case, imagine what it can do to some of the most vulnerable people in our society - our young.

Yes, MMA is for the most part adult entertainment.  But I've begun to notice its popularity creeping into the younger demographic of people under 18.  So just imagine how I felt when I heard a school here in Canada was going to invite MMA fighters to talk to kids about bullying.  When I heard about this on the radio just a couple of years ago, I was shocked and dismayed to say the least.  I can also remember how one person on the same radio show said that having MMA fighters talk to kids about bullying is like having strippers talk to kids about body image.  Whoever this person was, I agree with them 100%.  It's bad enough that adults are being corrupted by the likes of MMA, but now we have to worry about our children being exposed to it.  I cringe at the idea of any child of mine wanting to be the next Georges St. Pierre.  Actually, I don't have a child, but if I did, my advice to him or her would be, if you want to fight, go fight for king and country, not pride and a paycheck. 

              

A Victory for Canadian TV Viewers. We Finally Get the Superbowl Commercials...Starting in 2017

Canadian TV viewers have waited a long time for this.  Years and years of having to sit through boring, annoying and all too repetitive Canadian commercials during the Superbowl, while our neighbours down south get to see the eagerly-anticipated ads designed especially for the big game.  But now the unbelievable has happened.  The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, has decided that starting in 2017, Canadian TV stations will no longer be allowed to substitute Canadian ads in place of the Superbowl commercials.  Can you believe it!?  The CRTC actually giving Canadian TV viewers what they want, instead of pandering to the big, monolithic Canadian corporations and the Canadian Content lobbyists, or as I like to call the, the Can-Con Heads.  For decades, Canadians have been at the mercy of the CRTC's protectionist policies of always favouring Canadian content, regardless of how mediocre it may be.  This recent decision by our national telecommunications regulator to allow the Superbowl commercials to air in Canada is a great victory for the Canadian consumer - the first of many, I hope.

Could it be that the pendulum is finally swinging away from the Can-Con Heads and towards the average Canadian taxpayer?  Perhaps, but for those of you who are looking forward to viewing those Superbowl commercials live during the game instead of having to search for them on the internet later, don't let this one small victory get you too excited.  There's still a long way to go.  After all, we're still paying for TV channels that we don't want; many of which are Canadian stations forced on us by the CRTC and backed by the Can-Con Heads.  And we're still listening to endless repeats of songs by the Tragically Hip and other Canadian artists, because the stiffs at the CRTC and their Can-Con Head supporters make our radio stations play a certain amount of Canadian content.  Canadian media consumers will never have true freedom until communistic policies like these are ended.  So allowing Canadians to watch the Superbowl commercials during the big game is just one small step.  But at least it's a step in the right direction. 

Canada's Eroding Democracy

The older I've gotten, the less faith I have in Canadian democracy.  In fact, I would contend that Canada may be the most undemocratic country in the industrialized, democratic world.  Why?  Well, where should I start?  How about our electoral system?

Canada is one of the few industrialized democracies that still uses the winner-take-all, first-past-the-post voting system.  This is a system that allows one party that wins less than half of the national vote to hold more than half of the seats in a legislature and 100% of the power.  It's like electing a one-party dictatorship for up to five years, or whenever the Prime Minister or provincial premier sees fit to call an election.  We inherited this method of voting from our former British colonial masters.  But even Britain has begun to move away from this system.  The parliaments of Scotland and Wales now use a form of proportional representation, as do most of Europe's democracies.  Most recently, Chile has moved to adopt a more proportionate electoral system.  I can only dream of the day when a party that contests provincial or federal elections in Canada and wins twenty percent of the vote, wins twenty percent of the seats.  Then again, reforming this country's antiquated electoral system is only one change we should be making.

We also need to re-democratize the federal parliament and provincial legislatures that we vote for.  For as long as I can remember, legislatures in Canada have been ruled by fear, or more specifically by ironclad party discipline imposed by autocratic party leaders.  MPs or MPPs who don't vote the way their party leadership tells them to vote can find themselves kicked out of caucus in the blink of an eye.  This excessive party discipline has turned our federal parliament and provincial legislatures into rubber stamps, where nearly every vote is a forgone conclusion because it's almost always considered a confidence vote that can bring down a government if the nays outweigh the yeas.  And who is the most dictatorial of all party leaders?  Our prime ministers and provincial premiers, of course!  Since nearly every vote at the federal or provincial level is considered a confidence motion, the leader of the party who also heads the government must keep his or her MPs or MPPs in line.  If not, there could be a new election, and of course no one wants to risk their highly-coveted seats if they don't have to. 

The fact of the matter is that all major policy decisions at the federal or provincial level are not made by the lowly MPs and MPPs sitting in the backbenches; they are made behind the closed doors of the cabinet.  Contrast this with Israel, the other country whose political system I am most familiar with.  Ministers in the Israeli government are hardly ever in lockstep with the Prime Minister.  In fact, even though they may be in the same government, it usually seems like they're at each others' throats on a daily basis.  Descent within a government, not to mention the discord between ordinary parliament members, is always on public display in Israel.  But here in Canada, the thoughts, words and deeds of cabinet members are closely guarded secrets.  In fact, the only other forms of government that I can think of, which are more secretive than Canada's, are those of communist China and the former Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, the way government works in Canada is very unlikely to change, simply because Canadians don't want it to.  Resistance to political change is ingrained in the Canadian psyche.  Heck, Canadians have been resisting political change all the way back to the American Revolution when the residents of Upper and Lower Canada decided to remain loyal to the British Empire rather than revolt against it.  Canadians on average are just not the kind of people who want to rock the boat.  So for those of us who want more democratic elections, legislators that are accountable to us, the voters, instead of their party leadership, or more open government that doesn't resemble the politburo of some communist country, I guess we'll just have to keep on dreaming. 

The U.N.'s Latest Anti-Israel Resolution: Oh the Hypocrisy!

Just hours before I wrote this, the United Nations Security Council voted down a resolution that would have set a two-year deadline to end Israel's "occupation" of so-called Palestinian territory.  The resolution faced a veto by the U.S., but that wasn't needed because the resolution fell one vote shy of the nine it would have needed to pass.  This resolution was just the latest in a series of countless resolutions chastising and condemning the only democracy in the Middle East.  And like all anti-Israel resolutions made at the U.N., its supporters reek of hypocrisy. 

So who supported the resolution?  The countries of Jordan, France, China, Russia, Luxembourg, Chad, Chile and Argentina.  Jordan's delegation was the one that brought the resolution to the floor of the Security Council.  How hypocritical can you get?  This is the regime led by the Hashemite dynasty that rules over territory that was once part of the former British mandate of Palestine and that was intended to be the homeland of the Holy Land's Arab population.  But instead, the British handed it to the Hashemites, whose origins are in what is now Saudi Arabia rather than the Holy Land itself.  How this tyrannical regime can accuse Israel of illegally occupying Palestinian land when it is the real occupier of Palestinian territory defies any sense of logic.  But unfortunately, this hypocrisy didn't stop seven other countries from voting for the Hashemite-sponsored resolution.

In fact, several of the other seven states that supported the resolution are just as guilty of hypocrisy as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.  Israel's presence in the West Bank is in no way illegitimate.  The West Bank, more accurately called Judea and Samaria, is part of the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people, and since Israel is the embodiment of Jewish independence, it has every right to this territory.  But let's just say for the sake of argument that Israel's presence in the West Bank was illegitimate and that there was actually an illegal occupation taking place.  Even if this were all true, the governments of countries like France, Russia and China are in no position to condemn Israel because they themselves are perpetrators of illegal occupations.  Perhaps someone should put forward a resolution at the U.N. Security Council setting a deadline for France to end its illegal occupation of Brittany, Occitania, Corsica, and Polynesia, which are just some of the territories that were unlawfully conquered by the French.  How about a resolution setting a deadline for China to end its illegal occupation of Inner Mongolia, East Turkestan (in northwest China), Manchuria, and Tibet?  We can top off the list with a resolution calling on Russia to end its illegal occupation of - well, over half of the land mass that it now controls - in two years or less.  Of course, none of these resolutions would ever come to the floor of the Security Council, let alone be supported by anyone - unless perhaps it was Jews that occupied the aforementioned territories instead of French, Chinese or Russians.  Oh, the hypocrisy!

Voice Mail: Press 1 For Aggravation

There are a lot of things that annoy me and near the top of the list is something I have to deal with on an almost daily basis: voice mail.  Anyone who has ever made a phone call knows exactly what I'm talking about.  I can still remember the old answering machines.  Whenever you called and no one was there to answer the phone, you would get a voice recording of the person you were calling telling you to leave a message, then you would hear a beep telling you to begin recording.  Plain and simple, right?  But now, for some stupid reason, getting a voice recording of the person you're trying to call isn't enough.  Now you often get a voice recording, then a really annoying automated message telling you something like this: "At the tone, please record your message, when you are finished your recording you can hang up, or press pound (#) for more options.  To leave a callback number that you can be reached at, press 1."  What a mouthful!  What's the point?  Is the voice recording telling you to leave a message not enough?  Are we so stupid that we need another automated message telling us how to leave a message?  The answer to these questions is definitely not.  People have been using voice mail since the 80s, or maybe even before.  It's not like we don't know how to leave messages and we need some annoying machine to tell us how to do it.  Though just to be fair, at least most people leave a personal recording on their voice mail.

Some people don't even bother leaving voice recordings on their answering machines.  At most, when you call them, you might get an automated recording that says, "you have reached," then you hear the voice of the person you're calling saying their name followed by another automated voice telling you to leave a message.  And then there are the folks that want to remain anonymous, where you get an automated recording saying, "You have reached," followed by the machine reading out the phone number then telling you to record a message.  This drives me nuts!  Okay, I understand if people want privacy, but how am I supposed to know if I'm calling the right number when I can't hear anything that tells me who it belongs to?  As you can tell, voice mail belonging to individual people is annoying enough.  But what about when you're trying to call a company?  Oy veh!

I'm sure that everyone reading this has had to go through the aggravation of calling companies like Rogers, Bell or Telus whenever you have a problem with your phone, cable or internet.  We all know that before you can speak to a real person, you have to go through their annoying automated service.  "For customer service, press 1.  For technical support, press 2."  You get the idea.  Unfortunately, pressing one number on your phone usually leads you to another automated message giving you another set of options, then another, then another.  Is rage building yet?  Well I hope you packed some patience, because when the company's automated system finally tells you that it's transferring your call to someone with flesh and blood, that message is usually followed by another telling you that all representatives are assisting other customers and that you have to hold for the next available representative.  If this isn't bad enough, they usually put on some really crappy music for you to listen to until a human being finally takes your call.

Even smaller companies will often have annoying and unnecessarily complicated voice mail.  It usually begins with an automated voice telling you to begin speaking after the tone and press any key when you're done.  Once you've recorded your message and pressed a key to finish recording, you have to listen to more automated mumbo jumbo telling you to press 1 to send your message, press 2 to re-record your message, press 3 to mark your message urgent...Oh man, enough already!

Unfortunately, I don't see any of this changing any time soon.  In fact, it will probably get worst since we seem to be replacing everything that used to have a human touch with machines.