High class hookers
for everyone!

[Re: “Visiting governors consult pages 60–61,” Under the logo, March 13] I watched in amazement the hypocritical outbursts of moral outrage directed at the former New York governor, Eliot Spitzer. 

Look, long before the invention of mass entertaining attractions such as radio, television, spectator sports, tabloids etc., the average working stiff found a bit of escape from the drudgery of his daily labours and the monotonous routine of matrimony in what a poet elegantly called “a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou.” 

The “thou” part came in various forms, including an occasional hour or so spent in the company of a hooker. No major crime, right? Just a mutually beneficial arrangement among folks.

However, the thing that outraged me is the unfairness, the inequality between the powerful elites and the ordinary Joes in the affordability of the above described pursuits of joie de vivre. While the hardworking fellow trying to keep his head above the waves of the high cost of living must content himself with cut-rate hookers, the wealthy, powerful politicians are happily frolicking with exotic $5,000/night “escorts.”

Sure, from time to time (especially before an election), they throw us a few cookie crumbs made from the enormous amounts of dough they extract in every imaginable form of taxation; crumbs like shaving a penny off the federal sales tax, a few miserly income tax deductions, or as the politicians of yesteryears were promising, “a chicken in every pot.”

We say: Enough!  We demand equality!  We will no longer vote for any political party unless its leader personally guarantees the universally equal access to high class, quality hookers for every taxpaying citizen. 

A leader whose political platform will be centred around a pledge, such as: “A $5,000 hooker in every voter’s bed!” will get our votes.

And yes, since Canadians are not unreasonable people, should the politicians plead that the national budget will simply not permit to provide both a chicken in every pot and a high class hooker in every bed, then okay, we’ll skip the chicken.

>> Ed Binder

Middle East, revisited

[Re: “Back to the Middle East,” Letters, March 27] Joan Rossy’s error-filled rant shows us that the agenda of the Muslim-run Mirror is to bring up the Middle East every other week to incite hatred towards Israel.

Even though hundreds of Tibetans were slaughtered over the past few weeks with outrage reaching around the globe, the Mirror editors decide to post Joan Rossy and bring the focus once again back on Israel.

The “Apartheid Wall” is working, Israel haters. There have been 99 per cent fewer suicide bombings in Israel since its erection. And qassams aren’t little toys Joan Rossy, they’ve killed and maimed many Israelis.

Yes, let’s talk peace with a group called Hamas who refuses to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and has declared its goal as Israel’s destruction. Yes...let’s talk. Your insight is pathetic!

As the last few weeks have shown, there are numerous local issues that beg discussion, yet this local rag doesn’t bother to give them the time of day. I hope the readers who view this page see through the Mirror’s sick agenda.

>> Harvey Huffenmeuller

[Re: “Back to the Middle East,” Letters, March 27] Barry Merson severely underestimates readers of the Mirror. Far from being a “little known reality of Middle Eastern ethnic cleansing,” the examples he cites are the two most commonly parroted and discredited Israeli myths.

The tiresomely familiar Arab-leaders-told-Palestinians-to-leave line was first debunked more than 20 years ago by Irish journalist Erskine Childer, who examined all radio broadcasts of the period and discovered no evidence of such Arab exhortations. But, on the contrary, found several appeals for Palestinians to stay put and fight the invaders. These findings have since been corroborated by countless Israeli historians.

The second “little known reality” is the similarly popular but debunked exchange-of-population argument that attempts to draw a moral equivalency between the exodus of Palestinians from their homeland with that of Jews from Arab countries. The vital and crucial difference is that while Palestinians fled because of the atrocities of the Irgun and other terrorist groups, Jews left Arab countries at the explicit behest of Zionist leaders who desperately needed them to create a Jewish majority in Palestine.

While animosity towards Jewish communities in Arab lands as a result of the Zionist takeover of Palestine is undeniable, Israeli historians have documented how in some cases Zionist agents planted bombs in Jewish neighbourhoods of Arab capitals to sow terror and “encourage” their emigration.

Mr. Merson overestimates the efficacy of the repeat-lie-until-it’s-accepted-as-truth strategy by accusing Palestinians of the very crimes Zionists are guilty of, be it terrorism or ethnic cleansing. To be successful, this tactic requires a continued ignorance on the part of the audience, something that to his chagrin, is proving to be an increasingly unrealistic expectation.

>> John Dirlik

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