2009!

I know it's a bit late to be celebrating the arrival of 2009 but it's mostly because I've been too busy celebrating this year in person to do any blogebration about it. 2008 hasn't been one of my best years so I'm really hoping for better things from 2009. In the meantime, here are a few updates: after that wonderful month in London, I'm back in Toronto -- which is snowy, cold, slushy and slippery (I've already landed on my butt once). So delightful to look at after a fresh snowfall but so unpleasant if you actually have to wade through it. Given that I was in India at this time last year, it's hard not to go down the "I'd rather be..." road. I'd love to be in India right now but I think I'd be just as happy to be somewhere else: Egypt really appeals (though perhpas it's not the best place to go to right now). But the plan is to stick around here and do some writing and reading. I went to a huge rally for the people of Palestine yesterday -- ah, to be at a demo in 20 below weather makes me feel truly at home in Toronto again!

Naomi Klein has an article in the Guardian calling for a boycott of Israel: and it makes for an interesting read whether you agree with it or not. For the record, I do agree with her -- this has gone on long enough. And I don't buy the propaganda about it being retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks -- there are other and better ways of dealing with Hamas than through launching a war against the civilian population of Gaza. The morality of defending Israeli citizens against rocket attacks palls against the grim visions of the hundreds of Palestinian civilians being killed in cold-blood by Israeli forces. Also, I don't understand how or why the Israeli government thinks it can displace the elected Hamas government in Gaza by targeting it militarily: surely this is the kind of thing that strengthens rather than weakens it as a political force??? By all means launch a battle "for the hearts and minds" of the people of Gaza and explain to them why you think Hamas is a terrorist organization that should not be elected but to attack them is this is just to make them look persecuted and align them with the people of Gaza (who must, at the very least, be feeling persecuted). To my mind, this war is the definition of insanity and I can only see one reason for it: the Israelis decided that for all of Obama's hand on heart support of Zionism, they would be better off acting now when they still had "Israel can do no wrong" man in the White House. Bluergh.

In other news, not as important to the world at large but still critical, my friends at York (CUPE 3903) are still on strike and it's not pretty: as of Friday, the University has asked the Ministry of Labour to hold a supervised vote. What that means is that the Administration has decided to bypass the elected bargaining committee and take their proposal to a vote of the entire membership: under Ontario law, employers can do this once in a round of bargaining and it's usually a sign of an unusually poisonous relationship between the sides. It means that the employer thinks that the barg team isn't where the membership is -- historically, employers usually lose such forced votes (Ottawa transit workers just went through this and roundly rejected the offer). But I guess we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, check out a few of these videos from CUPE 3903 on Youtube. There's at least 8 of them and some of them are quite funny. And then there is some really unfunny stuff out there on the same topic too -- this is one that is not just offensive but racist.

On that happy note, I'm going to leave y'all. Will be back in the next few days with posts about travel-writing, though. If I can't actually be somewhere warm, I can still read about it and then write about it!