Rafah is 64 square kilometers; that's the size of San Marino (61 sq km).
No, the problem is ICE, an agency both parties nursed.
I'm all for weaponizing QC language laws for good.
In fact, you know what, maybe that “Preferred bilingual in English and Spanish” phrase is an OQLF complaint that just needs to happen.
I'm not expecting harmony immediately, I'm advocating for a political project with outside pressure to get to it eventually. Israelis like to talk about deradicalization of the Palestinians, but Israeli society itself needs to be deradicalized.
There is nothing cosmically exceptional about this conflict compared to other conflicts. If Bosnia and Herzegovina can be a society for Bosniak, Serbs and Croats and if Rwanda can find reconciliation after a genocide, so can Palestinians and Israelis.
This: "Why Rwanda is held up as a model for reconciliation, 26 years after genocide" | CBC Radio https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/why-rwanda-is-held-up-as-a-model-for-reconciliation-26-years-after-genocide-1.5842139
If we can't imagine this horizon and if we don't have the courage to work for it, what are we even doing? If all we can imagine is death and hatred, we are creating a self fulfilling prophecy and precluding ever going beyond it. We need moral courage and ambition, that's all I'm saying.
Common knowledge round the Mediterranean.
The NDP's problem is not the candidate, it's the lack of policy alternative. We just spent 10 years on very incremental small potatoes. Sure non-universal dental and pharmacare is absolutely not nothing but these are not normal times. We need some Mamdani style policy proposals, a morally ambitious program to reform Canada.
Things like:
- am aggressive tax policy to curb income and wealth inequality, which is a ticking bomb for our democracy
- massive increases in non-market housing to address the housing crisis
- free university to expand and train our next generation of doctors and nurses
- a decisive energy transition and an actual war on the fossil economy, from the wells to the pumps
- a new urban strategy framed around transit and active transport
- a restorative economy and actual reconciliation and land back to indigenous people
- a program for opening our borders aiming to grow and renew our smaller towns and cities
- a renewal of our glorious Peacekeeping tradition and a positive role in the world based on an uncompromising commitment to international law
We are facing a slew of crises from the climate, to fascism, to billionaire dragons siphoning capital and throwing us into economic stagnation.
If we don't argue for our ideals, who will?
The NDP needs to do its job and present a brave democratic socialist vision for Canada and start shifting the Overton window to a future where the Liberals would be the right and the Tories the minor party.
Bad idea.
Look at that main picture 15 cars among people many times over that. It makes no sense!
Toronto needs to actually START the "war on the car" that conservative nimrods have been railing on about and WIN it.
Nothing is "viable" if you just extrapolate the present, except I guess genocide.
To take a step back, moral ambition and political courage are necessary. If Ireland could reach a Good Friday Agreement, if South Africa could overcome apartheid, so can Palestine/Israel.
A plurinational democratic state with equal rights for all, with a truth and reconciliation process, and with strong international support is the only way the middle east can ever reach peace.
And if we are putting on big boy pants and imagining a better world, why not envision the Mediterranean Union becoming a force for democratization and stabilization allowing the free movement of people throughout the region.
When realism is dystopian, fuck realism and pick utopia. Otherwise, why even live?
My pro-palestinian praxis is making sure my Jewish neighbours have no reason to even think about aliyah. Jewish safety? It's here. Reverse doikayt.
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Echoing Trump, Canada's Conservative Leader Vows to Deport Pro-Palestine Activists
(www.palestinechronicle.com)
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Canada’s Quiet Coup: U of T Snags Yale Professors as We Start Raiding America’s Brain Trust
(deanblundell.substack.com)
We are talking comparable size, population and density to Manhattan. But with zero infrastructure, and with the Israeli army liberally bombing whenever they want.
So basically, more people by square kilometer than Manhattan but zero infrastructure. Just imagine if all the infrastructure in Manhattan suddenly disappeared, and all people could not go anywhere.