Oh what ever will I do?

So, over the past 2 semesters, I found myself more and more unhappy with engineering. As a result, my grades began to slide. Well, I just received a letter telling me I'm on academic suspension. So I've pretty much been rejected for the semester. I know it's going to piss my parents off, and that sucks. I had just changed majors and was actually excited about going back to classes. Oh well.

So, that, combined with my distaste for our country's unconditional support of Israel, has convinced me I should move to Canada.

Canadians, how hard is it for an American to get a citizenship or visa? How hard would it be to live there illegally?

Other ideas on how to spend my free semester or two are also welcome. Also, I'm not planning on bumming it out, I plan on finding a part time job, just not here.

 

So basically I just have to knock up a Canadian?

 

I didn't actually join just to ask this question, I had an account earlier, but hadn't used it at all over winter break and forgot my password and which email address I registered it to. So, I had to make a new one.

That's what I'm planning on doing; I have a decent amount in savings so if I went for Canada I wouldn't exactly be starting from scratch, it just seemed like a fun option.

My main thing is: how did you tell your parents? My parents are pretty serious on this shit and they are not going to be happy.

 

Shooting rockets out of nowhere? Try again. Even the UN reported that Israel is the one that broke the cease-fire by failing to improve living conditions in the Gaza strip.

Look at a map of Israeli land since the land was taken from the Palestinians and given to them. And for the last 40 years, all they've done is take more land, create more illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, and build a seperation wall. They've taken land from the Palestinians and forced them into what is basically an open air prison. They've continually blocked aid, electricity, water, and food from reaching the Palestinians.

Ask who the aggressor is, the Palestinians, who have been forced from their homes into a concentration camp and have retaliated against this by launching rockets which have killed maybe 5 people in the past year, or the Israelis, who have continued to take more and more land, build more and more settlement, and torture and harass the Palestinian people they've blockaded and laid seige to?

You try reading.

 

According to the UN, Israel is an occupying power of Gaza. They agreed to leave in 2005, but left their roadblocks, and numerous checkpoints along the Israeli/Gaza Strip border.

Here's a nice little read for you:
http://heathlander.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/un-end-this-inhuman-blockade/

They may not have a presence within the strip, but they control everything that goes in and out. Heavy economic restrictions and a limited supply of basic goods are causing a “progressive deterioration in food security for up to 70 per cent of Gaza’s population”. People are being forced to cut household spending to “survival levels”. “[T]he embargo has had a devastating effect for a large proportion of households who have had to make major changes on the composition of their food basket,” causing a “[steady] rise” in “chronic malnutrition”. The poorest two-fifths of the population now survive on only 50p per person per day, and many have been forced to sell jewellery and even household appliances to buy food and other necessities. The Red Cross concludes that if the blockade is not halted “economic disintegration will continue and wider segments of the Gaza population will become food insecure”, while “the prolongation of the restrictions [on trade] risks permanently damaging households’ capacity to recover and undermines their ability to attain food security in the long term.” Only a removal of the embargo “can reverse the trend of impoverishment”.
The Red Cross’ findings, shocking as they are, are fully consistent with what the UN, the World Bank and leading human rights organisations have been reporting since early 2006, when the current siege began. To call the present situation in the occupied territories a “humanitarian crisis” is slightly misleading in that it suggests a lack of agency behind it. In truth, the civilian population of Gaza has been “intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution” with the tacit complicity or, in our case, the active participation of the entire international community.

In June of this year a ceasefire was agreed between Israel and the various militant groups in Gaza. Hamas had been calling for a comprehensive ceasefire with Israel for months, a proposal Israel repeatedly rejected in favour of a sharp escalation in violence, killing more than double the number of people in Gaza in the first three months of 2008 than in the corresponding periods of the previous three years combined. When this failed to weaken Hamas’ hold on the Strip, or even to decrease the number of Qassams being fired at Israel (indeed it, of course, achieved precisely the opposite), the Israeli government finally, reluctantly agreed to a ceasefire.

There had been hope that the truce would lead to an end to the blockade and a substantial easing of the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Instead, Gaza has remained in a state of “virtual siege” (.pdf) in which “hortages of electricity, fuel, safe water and sanitation frame daily life”, while the general population has seen “few dividends from the ceasefire“. Israel permitted virtually “no improvement in the movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza” and there was “no relaxation of the total ban on exports” (.pdf), a prerequisite for the revival of the Gazan economy.

All of which meant that the eruption of violence over the past week, precipitated by an Israeli strike in Gaza, was always a mere matter of time.

If you're unaware, an Israeli force entered into the Gaza strip and killed 6 Palestinians on November 4th, again breaking the cease-fire by military force, if that better suits you.
([ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KntmpoRXFX4"]YouTube - CNN Confirms Israel Broke Ceasefire First[/ame])

And ok, not a concentration camp. Open-air prison, better?

 

Yes, it's a blog, but it contains plenty of credible sources if you'd like to check. Here's one from the Independent containing the Red Cross report.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...trition-in-gaza-blamed-on-israel-1019521.html

And in case you don't like the Independent, and you seem like the type, here it is from Fox News:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,476627,00.html

The thing is, there are Red Cross reports, UN reports, that all point towards Israel as the aggressor, and yet you totally ignore them. Now, I'm not agreeing that Hamas is in the right, violence isn't going to fix it. But forcing them into a tiny strip of land and destroying their lives isn't going to solve anything either.