Everybody loves a clusterf*#k. The Imam should have known that an invitation to interview on SUN News had great potential to be some kind of bushwhack, and Ezra was at his nastiest to boot. Some things were a little unfair, though. The pro-Pal rally did have one or two clowns with Hezbollah flags, but none that I could see being held by the Imam himself. And without fully researching the 2004 Calgary Herald article that Ezra quotes from, it's impossible to tell whether the other fellow has been quoted properly or not. It's all shoot-from-the-hip stuff and I don't think it has a lot of value in exposing or remedying dangerously radical fanaticism. My 2 cents.
Those Hezbollah flags are a pretty common sight at pro-Palestinian (read anti-Israel, since they don't give a crap about abuses Palestinians face in Lebanon, Kuwait, or anywhere else) rallies. The sympathy for that listed terror group is very high in those circles. When they do tell people to put the terror flag away, it's not because they don't share Nasrallah's genocidal aspirations, but only because they have finally come to realize it's bad PR.
As to the Imam who wanted to criminalize the Mohammed comics, well, maybe this will help with some background: http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/columnists/story.html?id=5162d29c-ffe4-4f4a-8d25-fe5e097c0963
Sorry, I just don't see this Imam Soharwarty as the thoroughly malevolent threat that you do. Hapless, even hypocritical perhaps. Or just going along to get along in his particular constituency...but he agreed to be interviewed here about a news issue concerning radical Islam as a community representative and was suddenly confronted on air by an old enemy with an ax to grind on another series of issues. Ezra was playing the bully, in my view, acting unethically and unprofessionally here.
I'm not sure where you got your reading of me viewing him as a "thoroughly malevolent threat." I think he's a representative of some very bad, repressive ideas, but he's not nearly so influential nor, as far as I can tell, dangerous to be in the category in which you think I've placed him.
OK. Still it didn't help a thing for the Ez to badmouth Pakistan..just to insult the guy. I've seen Levant do credible, useful journalism. About a month ago when he interviewed the anti-pipeline demonstrators in Vancouver, he did something unique that was needed. But this latest thing was ill-conceived and boorish.
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Everybody loves a clusterf*#k. The Imam should have known that an invitation to interview on SUN News had great potential to be some kind of bushwhack, and Ezra was at his nastiest to boot. Some things were a little unfair, though. The pro-Pal rally did have one or two clowns with Hezbollah flags, but none that I could see being held by the Imam himself. And without fully researching the 2004 Calgary Herald article that Ezra quotes from, it's impossible to tell whether the other fellow has been quoted properly or not. It's all shoot-from-the-hip stuff and I don't think it has a lot of value in exposing or remedying dangerously radical fanaticism. My 2 cents.
What do you mean we wouldn't see this on the CBC?
I am sure if it wasn't for the loss of advertising revenues that the CBC would want to give the imam his own talk show.
Those Hezbollah flags are a pretty common sight at pro-Palestinian (read anti-Israel, since they don't give a crap about abuses Palestinians face in Lebanon, Kuwait, or anywhere else) rallies. The sympathy for that listed terror group is very high in those circles. When they do tell people to put the terror flag away, it's not because they don't share Nasrallah's genocidal aspirations, but only because they have finally come to realize it's bad PR.
As to the Imam who wanted to criminalize the Mohammed comics, well, maybe this will help with some background: http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/columnists/story.html?id=5162d29c-ffe4-4f4a-8d25-fe5e097c0963
Sorry, I just don't see this Imam Soharwarty as the thoroughly malevolent threat that you do. Hapless, even hypocritical perhaps. Or just going along to get along in his particular constituency...but he agreed to be interviewed here about a news issue concerning radical Islam as a community representative and was suddenly confronted on air by an old enemy with an ax to grind on another series of issues. Ezra was playing the bully, in my view, acting unethically and unprofessionally here.
I'm not sure where you got your reading of me viewing him as a "thoroughly malevolent threat." I think he's a representative of some very bad, repressive ideas, but he's not nearly so influential nor, as far as I can tell, dangerous to be in the category in which you think I've placed him.
OK. Still it didn't help a thing for the Ez to badmouth Pakistan..just to insult the guy.
I've seen Levant do credible, useful journalism. About a month ago when he interviewed the anti-pipeline demonstrators in Vancouver, he did something unique that was needed. But this latest thing was ill-conceived and boorish.
How is it possible to badmouth a failed nuclear state that executes people for blasphemy and produces more terrorists than anywhere else on earth?
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