Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the leader of the Palestinian extremist group Hamas, was a violent leader who was not conducive to a peace-making process. However, Israel’s targeted assassination of Yassin did nothing to help end the long, bloody Mideast conflict. There are both Israeli and Arab political factions that are guilty of mass atrocities against the other, and who have produced a climate where assassination seems like the only option for progress. Unfortunately, targeted assassinations are never a winning option if they continue to sow the seeds of hatred.

There are two things that fascinate me about it: the randomness of the issue itself, and the fact no one appears to have noticed it. Except me, of course, who managed to take note of it in a flash of brilliance.

If all publicity is good publicity, the anti-globalization movement should be in great shape. The violence and destruction surrounding the major international summit meetings in Seattle, Prague, Quebec City, Gothenberg and Genoa have certainly attracted public attention to the protestors. The beating of sleeping protestors and the death of protestor Carlo Guiliani at the G8 summit in Italy two weeks ago created the most exciting headlines yet for the media industry.

When I moved into my first student house at the corner of Frontenac and Earl streets in 1999, I thought I would learn about bill payments, loan negotiation and how to make my mother’s cheese sauce. Instead, I have gotten a lesson in the painful distinction between the bureaucratic process and common sense. The lack of traffic control where I live is a dangerous problem with an obvious solution—a solution which local politicians have made far too complicated.

It’s difficult not to encounter pornography when surfing the web. But up until last week, our student government was making accessing porn that much easier.

For three years, The Brass pub has served as something of a second home for me. When school is stressful, or when I simply want to relax and have a few drinks with friends, The Brass has always been a place where I can count on a comfortable atmosphere and a table to open up before too long. It lacks the frenzied atmosphere of Stages or the painfully image—conscious crowd of The Shot, and the beer is cheap. It’s a bar, plain and simple, and I like it.

Two weeks ago, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced in the provincial budget that parents who send their children to private schools will be eligible for a tax credit of up to $3,500. Teachers’ unions have denounced the credit as an attack on public education, but Flaherty has defended the incentive, saying “this is not about reducing funding for public education.” We beg to differ.

Every day I feel more torn. I’m being split from the left and the right. After years of giving credence to all issues based on ideology, I’m throwing in the towel and issuing an official statement of non-alignment.

AMS president Paul Heisler wrote to all qlink email addresses on Tuesday, offering free movie es at Cineplex Odeon. Journal readers will also have noticed a full-page ad in Tuesday’s paper offering the chance to shape the future of Queen’s and win a trip to Florida.

This past weekend, over one hundred proud women from the Kingston and Queen’s communities, marched through Kingston’s streets chanting “no more patriarchy, no more shit.”

I’m not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination, but boy oh boy, do I ever love to watch sports on T.V. As long as it’s not baseball or football, I have no problem with spending an entire day in front of the television cheering on Canada’s finest. That’s why the Olympics are like Christmas for me. With the exception of baseball, I’ll watch whatever Olympic activity the networks deem worthy of my attention.

Last Monday, the readership program between TorStar and Queen’s kicked-off, and students are now able to get their hands on their first free copies of The Toronto Star. According to The Star, the program is not intended to expand their readership, but rather to keep people reading news in general. However, it appears that that means just more people reading The Star’s news, and fewer people reading student publications.

Last week the news of Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s illness spread with the same fever and intensity that he created in 1966 when he stepped onto the Canadian political-landscape. Millions of Canadians sent their condolences, flooded the steps of his Montreal home, and collectively tried to imagine a Canada without Trudeau — what they realized is that, regardless of Trudeau’s health, such a Canada simply does not exist.