User:Leoboudv
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I live in British Columbia, Canada but was born in Malaysia. My family immigrated to Canada in 1989. I have a strong interest in Egyptology and in International politics. I also do some stamp collecting as a hobby and maintain an interest on the latest archaeological finds from Egypt. I have a BA degree from the University of British Columbia in the mid-1990's, so I have some scholarly training. Personally, while I am socially liberal but fiscally conservative, I dislike extreme left or right wing takes on the issues and prefer a balance in the middle. I strongly disagree with the followers of people such as Immanuel Velikovsky or Ahmed Osman who have no academic training but make incredible claims that require the revision of the accepted Egyptian chronology by hundreds of years. Such revisions require credible evidence but the evidence offered is usually lacking or can be interpreted different ways.
On other matters, I strongly disagree with the efforts of some Left Wing or pro-Palestinian groups to ban Israeli academics from attending and lecturing at European Universities because 1)Israel has a right to defend its citizens from suicide attacks by Islamic terrorists even if it means using violence and 2)Israeli academics and professors are not responsible for Israel's policies--whether good or bad. Israel's politicians are. Besides, we need to get a balance of discussion on heated topics like Kosovo, Chechenya, Evolution, etc from all spectrums of a conflict--including the protracted Israeli and Palestinian dispute. Biased arguments from a single side and banning people from speaking at Forums removes any balance of discussion on controversial ideas and reminds me of the Year 1933 when Hitler's Nazi supporters burned books composed by left-wing writers and Jews at German Universities immediately after coming to power. If you burn a book today, you may burn the people behind the books tomorrow...which is what precisely happened in the Holocaust. Extremism only leads to more tragedy and conflict. As Churchill once famously said, it is much better to Jaw Jaw(talk) than War War. I'll make one exception and would support the censorship of fringe and/ or unsustainable views on Ancient History. The Great Pyramids of Giza is one place where speculative or nutty ideas tend to predominate about aliens or UFO's building these great ancient monuments, rather than the ancient Egyptians. They have no place on Wikipedia.
