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The Citizen, 2010-03-11, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2010. PAGE 5. S pending an evening on the World Wide Web is much like sitting down to a dinner of Cheetos … two hours later your fingers are yellow and you’re no longer hungry, but you haven’t been nourished. – Clifford Stoll Hey, did you see Jimmy Kimmel get bitten by that rattlesnake? Unbelievable! Happened live on his late night TV show! Two zoo guys brought out this huge rattler supposedly restrained by a neck clamp but it broke loose, lashed out and bit Kimmel right on the hand! Happened on prime- time TV. You can check it out yourself on YouTube. On second thought, don’t bother – it’s a crock. Never happened – or rather it seemed to, but it was faked. It was all part of a razzle- dazzle setup to introduce Kimmel’s guests that night – some of the actors who appear on the TV show “House”. I only mention it because at least five people have emailed me the original YouTube video. All of them fervently believe it actually happened. Hey, I was sucked in too. I only got suspicious when there was no mention of the incident in the next day’s newspapers. Surely a TV show host getting fanged by a rattlesnake on prime time TV would make the front page? It surely would. And that’s my problem with the Internet. The very thing that’s trumpeted as the beauty of the beast is its major problem – nobody’s in charge. Everything that appears on the Internet has the weight of a lead story in The Globe and Mail about regime change in Ottawa. Or a National Enquirer exclusive about Martians snatching Obama and replacing him with a robot. How can you tell if what comes out of your laptop is legit? You can’t, for sure. Newspapers have grumpy and suspicious editors, not to mention reporters with “news sense” and a resistance to being conned by fraudsters. The Internet, by contrast, is peppered with pimply geeks with perverted tastes and 24-hour access to online photograph manipulation programs such as Photoshop. They get their kicks by gulling the gullible and they answer to no one. Six years ago, the world was stunned when a tsunami swept shorelines along the Indian Ocean killing tens of thousands. Soon after, horrific photos appeared on the internet, including one iconic shot taken from the window of a high-rise in Phuket, Thailand. It shows a massive foaming wave sweeping across a coastal highway and about to crash into the downtown area. The photo is chilling, horrific, stupendous. And a complete fraud. The skyline it depicts bears no resemblance to the actual skyline of Phuket. The wave that’s crashing ashore is right out of Avatar special effects. It would appear to be at least 20 storeys high. The waves that devastated the Asian coastline were powerful but none of them was more than 20 feet in height. Whoever put up the photo even got the highway traffic flow wrong. Thais drive on the left-hand side of the road, not the right. An expert who analyzed the photograph determined that it actually shows the skyline of the city of Antofagasta, Chile. Different ocean, different continent. As for the killer wave supposedly poised to strike…can we say “Photoshop”? The World Wide Web is awash with bogus news stories shored up by fake photographs. Have you see the 800-pound razorback hog shot by a hunter in Arkansas? The giant human skeleton found in the Arabian Desert? The catfish with a basketball stuck in its mouth? The carcass of the Mermaid that washed ashore on a beach in South Africa? Or in the Philippines. Or at Fort Desoto Beach in Florida, depending on what the faker who posted the video has been smoking. A guy by the name of Rich Wurman figured out that a weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information that the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in 17th-century England. We’re in the 21st century now – when a school kid has access to more information in her handheld iPod than she’d find in a year’s worth of New York Times . The difference is, most (well, much) of the crap has been edited out of the newspaper. The scary fact is, newspapers are an endangered species; the Internet is thriving. There is one thing you can do for yourself – put www.snopes.com in your “favourites” file. It’s a website devoted to exposing frauds, rumours, myths and outright lies. If you come across a story that sets your BS antennae waving, check it out at snopes. Oh yeah – and keep buying newspapers. We need them more than ever. Arthur Black Other Views Internet: you get what you pay for In what may be extremely poor form, journalistically, my third-ever column will be somewhat of a sequel to my second-ever column. As I mentioned last week, I felt a tremendous sense of pride surrounding Canada’s record- setting performance at the Vancouver Olympic games. It seemed like a unifying glow had been cast over the entire country after Sidney Crosby scored in overtime to win gold for Canada. Apparently that feeling was not mutual. In a poll conducted by the Association for Canadian Studies after the conclusion of this year’s games, nearly one third of Quebec residents said the province should have its own Olympic team, separate from the Canadian team. And while this is hardly a majority, it can’t help but drag up ugly feelings of separation, referendums and chew up and spit out the aforementioned unifying glow across this great land of ours. It certainly is true that Vancouver saw an exceptional showing from athletes who call Quebec home, but these were triumphs that were shared by all Canadians. There was Alex Bilodeau winning Canada’s first-ever gold medal on Canadian soil, Joannie Rochette’s bronze medal in the wake of her mother’s death and Charles Hamelin, Canada’s top podium finisher, winning two gold medals in Vancouver. It’s understandable that there is a certain pride that comes from watching an athlete excel who walked the same streets you did and sat on your arena’s home bench. In recent weeks Blyth has risen as a village to support its native son Justin Peters, who has now started a handful of games between the pipes for the Carolina Hurricanes. I have felt hometown pride on an Olympic scale as well. Shelley-Ann Brown from my hometown of Pickering was part of the women’s bobsled team that won silver in Vancouver. However, it was also Pickering’s Perdita Felicien who was favoured to win the 100-metre hurdles at the 2004 games in Greece and fell into her first hurdle. Felicien was welcomed home with open arms and it was evident that when we fall, we fall as a nation and when we triumph, we triumph as Canadians. I was too young to understand the 1995 referendum for what it was. At my public school, St. Anthony Daniel, we had our own referendum and we voted to keep Quebec as part of Canada and my teacher, Mr. Mahoney dressed in a super hero outfit, declared himself Captain Canada and proclaimed that his Canada included Quebec. There were questions about trade, government funding and rights to resources. These issues have been debated in subsequent years by many. One friend of mine even went through the painstaking task of constructing a map of the “New Canada,” illustrating how separation could work, while Canada retained the rights to valuable resources and kept continental ties to the Maritime provinces. However, I was a 13-year-old Shawn Loughlin at the time and I knew nothing of politics. I just couldn’t understand why someone would want to defect from this country. And while optimists may look at these numbers and see an overwhelming majority of Quebec residents who are happy to watch the red and white rise to the rafters beside their Canadian brothers and sisters, I can’t help but see this as a blemish on one of the most patriotic times of my lifetime. Perhaps I was the optimistic one, enjoying the solidarity of a nation for a fortnight, only to have the honeymoon end one week later. MPPs tip-toe around a touchy issue True patriot love? Ontario’s MPPs have taken a superficial look at a fringe issue related to the world’s most dangerous continuing conflict, but ignored totally those that matter. Progressive Conservative Peter Shurman asked the legislature to approve a motion condemning “Israeli Apartheid Week” organized annually by students in several universities and it did so without a dissenting voice. Shurman, whose riding has more than 40 per cent Jewish residents, pointed out the term apartheid was used to describe South Africa, when its white minority ruled and discriminated in many ways against blacks. He argued it should not be applied to Israel, because that state gives full rights to all citizens, and unnecessarily inflames debate. New Democrat Cheri DiNovo, a minister in the United Church, which has led charges Israel mistreats Palestinians, would be highly critical of Israel in any discussion of the whole issue, but seemed relieved she could escape merely by agreeing the word apartheid is inflammatory and supported the motion. Liberal David Zimmer, with many Jews in his riding, said people of all races in Israel are free to come and go as they please, and Mike Colle, another Liberal with many Jewish voters, said those who claim Israel practises apartheid hate it. Shurman and fellow-Conservatives Ted Arnott and John O’Toole contended Ontarians should support Israel because it is a democracy, meaning different from Arab countries that surround it. The issues the debate ignored are that western countries designated a small part of Palestine as a state for Jews, trying impossibly to atone for the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were murdered by Europeans, and which should never be forgotten. The Israeli Jews expanded this territory through wars, some forced on them, expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and told them they can never return, brought in several million Jews from other countries, continue admitting more and show no signs of giving up the land they occupy by force. The legislature has never discussed these issues fully in the more than four decades this writer has covered it and only two MPPs, a New Democrat and a Liberal, have said the Palestinians have some ground for feeling mistreated. There is evidence many Ontarians share this view and common sense suggests they include some MPPs, but the latter keep silent to avoid incurring the wrath and losing the votes of the aggressive pro-Israel lobby, which labels anyone who raises the slightest concern about Israel as anti-Semitic. News media, churches, the United Nations, Amnesty International and the Red Cross among others have said Israel has jailed Palestinians without cause, tortured them, demolished their homes to provide houses for Jews and humiliated them in many ways, including forcing them to wait, sometimes for days, at hundreds of road checkpoints Jews can ignore. Those who have said this amounts to apartheid include South African Bishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, so respected Ontario invited him to be among the handful of non-residents ever to speak in its legislature, admired South Africans with experience of both countries: and United Nations investigators, who are more balanced than MPPs looking for votes. Those who pushed to condemn Israeli Apartheid week seemed determined to stick to shouting narrow slogans rather than discuss all the issues. The three Conservatives said the legislature should support Israel because it is a democracy, unlike Arab states, but democracies do not always have worthy motives; a recent example being when U.S. president George Bush attacked Iraq, causing many deaths, on the false claim it hid nuclear weapons. Arab dictators also usually are sustained by western nations, who sell them the latest military equipment to keep their citizens in line and safeguard their interests. Shurman repeated the frequent cry Israel has a right to defend itself, which seems self- evident until it is asked whether a nation has a right to defend land it has seized and occupies by force. These are among the many questions that should be asked in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, but the legislature wanted to answer only what seemed an easy one. Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk Shawn Loughlin SShhaawwnn’’ss SSeennssee In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: “It goes on”. – Robert Frost Final Thought