Out in Left-Centre Field

Did anyone else feel that magnitude 5.0 earthquake yesterday afternoon?

I work on the fifth floor of an office building in in Etobicoke (i.e. western Toronto), Ontario, where I was at my desk doing some estimations for a series of dams that one engineer had to choose between for a tailings pond out at a mine in Newfoundland.

It felt alternately like a strong wind was buffeting the building or somebody was doing some rather rough erasing on paper in an adjacent cubicle. Then I felt the vibration through the floor ... and I finally clued in (along with most of my coworkers) as to what it was. It lasted a good 30 seconds or more too.

What made it briefly disconcerting was that two black military helicopters chose that very minute to fly by farther south near the lake shore. Yay for the G20 effect! Which brings me to my next point ...

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Toronto police, earlier today, arrested a man sitting but a few blocks away from the big ol' G20 convention centre.

This sounds unremarkable until you realize that he was packing a crossbow, chainsaw, sledgehammer, four baseball bats, and a collection of fuel canisters! Any bets on what that could do if used to its full potential?

Seriously, you have to be a complete idiot to pack that kind of weaponry in public when you are in the midst of a city swarming with thousands of police officers -- no matter what you really intended to do with it.

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Oh, you wanted something political? Okay then.

I know I'm an NDP supporter (not a member; I don't intend to be), and I know I don't agree with all the actions that the state of Israel takes, and I think the critics are overreacting in calling for her outright resignation/removal, but Jack Layton's response to Libby Davies' comments on Israel's "occupation" of Palestine is highly inadequate.

Sure, I'm glad she backtracked and apologized. Sure, people have a right to criticize Israel like any other legitimate state -- its most fervent proponents need to stop hiding behind the hybrid shield of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism finger-pointing. Sure, it's impossible to stop all criticisms from sliding down the proverbial slippery slope into idiocy.

However, it is not enough to let someone get away with calling a sovereign state effectively illegitimate with hardly a tap on the wrist. We wouldn't like anyone calling Canada an "occupation" of First Nations land, would we? (Though, from some points of view, that's basically what the French and British did.) Did we forget the Golden Rule? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Just like Nova Scotia's Darrell Dexter should have forcefully called the local unions on the carpet for throwing the NS NDP into disrepute by trying to circumvent election financing limitations, so should Jack Layton have publicly and visibly chastised Ms. Davies for her actions, which have done a whole lot to reinvigorate the tired old -- and hopefully baseless -- idea that the NDP and leftists in general are "anti-Israel". (Newsflash: we aren't.)

While Mr. Layton is usually a highly adept party leader, his failure to take a strong stance in drawing the line between acceptable criticism and unacceptable criticism is but the latest in a series of questionable decisions that has me wondering whether that perception is true.