More public masturbation by the Toronto Star over Rob Ford

CBC radio's Q had a panel with three of Toronto's media personalities, including Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank gloating about the Rob Ford video.

More interesting is the obsessive hate and sanctimony that has him in in a ridiculous denial of the obvious vendetta his paper has had against Ford for the last 3 years.

My buddy Jon Kay makes some good points on the panel, but I would add to an important observation he made. Jon says, in essence, that there is a crisis in conservative thought reflected in the election of Rob Ford and his like in a single-minded focus on low taxes and reducing government spending.

There is a lot more to it than just that.

Ford is also a reaction to the paternalistic, sanctimonious social engineering foisted by incompetent politicians on a public outraged by a lack of their ability to simply provide competent management.

We have an incompetent provincial government that has wasted, and for all intents and purposes stolen billions in public funds, while imposing radical nanny-state social policies.

Ford has not wasted any public funds and is someone who is genuinely concerned with the wishes of his constituents, in contrast to wanting to impose a "vision" on them.

Yet The Star is, as it has been, primarily concerned with the superficiality of image. Which is why as a media source, they still have little credibility and as Kay astutely notes, Ford may indeed get reelected.

You can watch and hear the panel below:

Why people seem to hate activists

A female activist at
a Toronto demonstration

A close-up of the female activist's lower calf

An interview with the author of a recent study which found that most people think activists are icky

One of Canada's most prominent activists

Making their hate for Canada explicit: NDP and Public Service Union-supported rabble.ca's "Why I don't celebrate Canada Day and never have"

Judy Rebick is the founder of, and a regular columnist for the neo-Marxist website rabble.ca, which exists primarily from funds bestowed by public service unions and NDP-affiliated organizations like The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Its current publisher is Kim Elliott, the spouse of federal NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies.

It's no secret the people on the radical left hate Canada and the enlightened western values that our country represents.

But rarely do they make it so explicit as Rebick did in her Canada Day column for rabble: Why I don't celebrate Canada Day and never have

It seems Rebick is determined to add "self-hating Canadian" (although she immigrated from the US, which she also despises) to a litany of reasons for her to be able to loathe herself.

And if that weren't enough, here's more anti-Canadian tripe rabble saved for Canada Day. Canadian Federation of Students' Nina Loreto's rabble piece in which she offers the following blather (and she does not mean these questions rhetorically):

Why give "Canada" the honour of being a symbol for anything and everything that is good?

Why buy into the national myth that upholds how great life is for many of us, while at the same time ignoring or erasing the strife, struggle or challenges that also come with living in "Canada?"

Toronto - the city where stupid leftists' self-esteem is tied to municipal politics

Does your sense of self-esteem fluctuate depending on whom is your municipal councilor or mayor?

Do you feel better or worse about yourself and your ability to hold your head high depending on whether you have a socialist or a conservative being called "Your Honor" at City Hall?

If the answer is no, then you're obviously not a "progressive" Torontonian.

It's a fascinating phenomenon that only affects one type of political class  I've heard it in conversations, seen it on facebook postings and the National Post's Chris Selley noted in a tweet that the Toronto Star's dunce columnist Christopher Hume is feeling personally humiliated because Rob Ford is the mayor of Toronto.

When the pompous, inept David Miller ruled Toronto for two previous terms and imposed a preposterous agenda while sending taxes skyrocketing, I don't remember a single conservative whining about how they were personally embarrassed. Have I missed something where socialist websites have been offering a discount on those online genealogy packages and a bunch of them have discovered they are related to Rob Ford though their bloodlines?

When David Miller utterly capitulated to civic employees unions after leaving the city with six weeks worth of stinking garbage piled high in the height of the summer, was anyone on the right ashamed to be a Torontonian because of him?  Again, a resounding nyet.

To understand this, one has to know a little about the "progressive" mindset. They are hopelessly insecure and see their entire value as human beings being based on what others think of them. By that extension, being in a city where a boisterous fiscal conservative won the last civic election by an enormous margin over all his rivals must come as a painful personal blow. It must be so shameful for them to have to explain that to their enlightened friends who live in places like Vancouver.

They must hang their heads low when they travel and go to diner parties with friends from other locales.  Sitting at tables with flowing chardonnay and Joan Baez' singing playing on the sound system to remind them of their youth, while their comrades can talk about how much progress they have made, the Toronto progressive must have to cower in shame. It must be incomprehensible for such a gathering to grasp how a modern Canadian city chose to be governed by someone who believes government shouldn't spend more than it can afford.

Clearly this sort of personal affront must have been caused by the progressives not being progressive enough. If only they had raised taxes even further, incurred more civic debt while doling out public funds to  any grievance-monger capable of filling out a form and found new laws to restrict personal liberties, more people would see things their way.

Oh, the sorrow and humiliation. And the worst part is, when they create a performance art interpretive dance piece to express their dismay, it might be a little harder to get that tax-funded arts grant so that a total of 14 people in an audience can experience their plight.

"Ford must go," declares Christopher Hume. bit.ly/TbBMje Replaces former slogan, "Ford won't win." thestar.com/news/gta/toron…
— Chris Selley (@cselley) November 19, 2012

Canada's "Old Left" still pushing the vapid, irrelevant Occupy Movement

From Greg Renouf's  blog Genuine Witty:

..They’re the people who hijacked the Occupy movement and changed the focus from being about problems with the banks and corporations to focussing on issues like identity politics, and promoting the NDP. In Canada, one of the commonalities of the Activistocrats is that most of them have connections to Judy Rebick- one of the queens of this country’s old-left…   

Rebick is a well-known feminist, and a professor at Ryerson university. Rebick is also deeply connected to the NDP- including radicals like CAW economist Jim Stanford, Former NDP MP (and shoplifter) Svend Robinson and radical NDP  MP Libby Davies. Rebick also has very tight ties with Alex Hundert, a currently incarcerated criminal who was a ringleader for the violence at Toronto’s G20- and, with Harsha Walia (who was at the G20 wearing a mask) an advocate for the violence on Vancouver’s streets during the 2010 Olympics.

Rebick was also the founder of Rabble.ca, a radical online publication funded by the unions. Rabble is famous for it’s lock-step support of old-left policies- they’ve been caught publishing a number of outright lies. Rabble has also labelled the vandals from the G20 as ‘political prisoners’, and has given a lot of support to Black Bloc anarchists. Rabble is also well-known as the slander machine of the old-left, I know this from experience after they published (and quickly retracted) two stories slandering your’s truly.

When it comes to the radical old-left, and violent anarchists, Judy Rebick is the Kevin Bacon of both worlds…

At Occupy Toronto in Oct. 2011
Does the woman holding the sign understand the irony?

My strange Israeli Independence night

About a dozen years ago, a friend of mine who was then president of a north Toronto Synagogue said that Stephen Harper had come to speak to the congregation and had impressed them with his strong commitment to the security of Israel. My friend said the young political leader was markedly sincere about a friendship based on the shared values of Canada and the middle east`s sole liberal democracy.

Years of ethnic pandering by the Trudeau and Chretien Liberals, who would make all the right noises to whichever minority they were addressing at the moment, while meaning very little of what they said, made it easy to be cynical about a politician professing any such commitment. Now, six years after Stephen Harper became Canada`s Prime Minister and almost a year into his first majority government`s term, nobody doubts that sincerity.

The absolute seriousness of the bond between Canada and Israel was strikingly evident in the speech delivered by federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver at a Yom Ha`atzmaut (Independence Day) celebration hosted by Toronto`s Israeli Consulate at the Liberty Grand Ballroom at Exhibition Place on Thursday night.

The cavernous, quasi-palatial venue was filled with over a thousand luminaries from the local political, diplomatic, business and social worlds. And somehow I got invited, probably the same way Hrundi V. Bakshi got invited to the party in that eponymous movie. After a mostly cloudy, intermittently wet morning and afternoon, the clear sunny early evening was too beautiful to waste in a car, so I roller bladed town to the complex near Dufferin Street and the lake shore. Fortunately the evening was cool enough so that, despite wearing a suit, I wasn't all sweaty on my arrival, unlike the circumstances of my last appearance on Sun TV's The Arena with Michael Coren.

Remarkably, I was the only person to have travelled there that way, providing a bit of a surprise to the security people and the coat check girls. The invitation I received said it was a desert reception, and in retrospect, using a travel method requiring exercise for the trip home proved to be a good idea, given the calories I packed on in the three hours of the gathering.

There must be only one decent kosher desert caterer in Toronto because the assortment of mini cheesecake tarts with three blueberries on each, the iced cake balls impaled on sticks, the lemon meringue tarts and a variety of other carbohydrate laden items looked extremely familiar. In fact, I would be surprised if I don't see them again at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center's Spirit of Hope debate and fundraiser at the end of May.

There was a surprisingly palatable kosher red wine, full glasses of which kept finding their way into my hand. A friend of Jewish Tribune reporter Joanne Hill, who was there covering the event, had the temerity to ask me how many I'd had, necessitating an etiquette reminder that one doesn't ask such questions in polite company.

And the company was indeed polite despite the assortment of characters ranging from mushy Liberal censorship advocate and rumoured-to-be new Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Bernie Farber to Mark Steyn fan and uber-Zionist blogger Laura Rosen Cohen. Plus there was a healthy smattering of citizenry from around the world with consulates in Toronto representing their nations.

Outgoing Consul General Amir Gissin looked almost Hefneresque as he was flanked on stage by two very attractive, young, shapely, short-skirted consular officials while delivering his speech and presenting awards to local philanthropists. As it turned out, the beautiful consular employees were more than just eye candy. The Consulate's Communications Director, a stunning blond named Natalie Weed, was an articulate, poised mistress of ceremonies for the presentation. Her onstage female colleague, Cultural Affairs Director Simone Blankstein, who spoke briefly, was equally impressive. She is a raven-haired beauty who wore a frilly, low-cut, high-hemmed frilly black dress that made her look like a Bond girl dressed by the wardrobe mistress on a Gothic Tim Burton movie. Frankly, I don't remember much of the awards, because the two female presenters were far more appealing than the recipients and my empty wine glass was making me impatient for an opportunity to escape. There was a noteworthy, unusual moment when Astral Media's Sidney Greenberg declined to speak after being presented with a totem pole shaped, glass mosaic award statue.

Consul Gissin's  remarks combined an emotional personal farewell, a celebration of Israel, and a heartfelt expression of affection towards the Canadian government which has become Israel's best friend and most steadfast supporter.

The affection was enthusiastically reciprocated by Joe Oliver, who spoke on behalf of the government and described the Canadian relationship with Israel in the most effusive terms. His speech was much more than the usual tribute to a friendly nation. It reflected an understanding possessed by leaders in a world besotted by undemocratic Islamic radicalism that remains elusive to an archaic media and educational hierarchy  - that democracy  requires vigilance in the face of implacable enemies. While Canada is firmly committed to the defence of liberal democracy, Israel stands guard on the front line of a battle that is far from over.

That idea is a significant component of the new reality of Canada's relationship with Israel. The academic and media domination by useful idiots devoted to a neo-Marxist world view who see Israel as a "capitalist, imperialist outpost in the Middle East" is starting to give way to the sensibilities that the truth presents. The enmity towards Israel was an outlook that was and is promoted by the likes of radical dinosaurs such as Judy Rebick, who has admitted in a biography that her and her fellow travellers' activism is as much as anything else motivated by their own emotional and psychological deficiencies.

But Rebick and her outdated bigotry didn't make the invitation list on Thursday, and the evening was one of pure celebration.

After it was over, with my roller blades retrieved from the coat check and back on my feet, I snaked my way through the city's streets. Loud music and a friendly vibe made me pause outside a funky, very narrow bar on Spadina south of Richmond Street with what I assume is the ironic name Wide Open. A voluptuous blond woman in her 20's who had stepped outside for a cigarette decided she should help me to a bench because she thought I looked unsteady on my wheels. I wasn't, but I took the help anyway because as a matter of principle, if hot blond women want to take hold of me and guide me somewhere, I think it makes sense to say 'yes.'

She suggested I come inside the bar, and as a corollary to the aforementioned principle, I took her advice, and the night just got stranger from there. All-in-all, it was a rather entertaining Yom Ha'atzmaut in Toronto.

What fear does Stephen Harper share with Judy Rebick? That Libby Davies will be shut out of power under Mulcair

Frumpy and hysterical, prone to "eat the rich" and "politics of oppression" style rhetoric, Vancouver East MP Libby Davies is a walking caricature of 1970's style radical politics that has rendered the New Democratic Party unelectable and non-credible among an overwhelming majority of Canadian voters.

But the antiquated, white, middle class, neo-Marxist faction of the NDP Davies personifies is the core of the activist base that has been at the centre of the party for the last four decades. With the Quebec breakthrough the party had in the 2011 election, there may be a coming  marginalization of the radicals who continually look to re-fight old victories like abortion and health care, and to push divisive, unappealing policies like cozying up to Islamist radicals and 9-11 conspiracy theories rather than looking ahead to forming responsible economic policies.

And so that, in a nutshell, sums up the current angst faced by the old-school NDPers like Ed Broadbent and Judy Rebick, who are seeing their treasured, ineffective values threatened by the modernity represented by current leadership frontrunner Thomas Mulcair.

One aspect of the race and the potential loss of Mulcair's leadership bid is the possibility that the NDP's support in Quebec could totally collapse along with it. As Chantal Hebert wrote in an article in the Toronto Star earlier this week, no one is hoping for a Mulcair loss more than Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois, who sees Mulcair as being a force for federalism in Quebec and someone who could grow federal support in the province.

Conversely, a Mulcair loss would be seen as a slap in the face to Quebec and would almost certainly create an anti-NDP backlash there.

Interestingly, that fact was acknowledged by the ancient lefttist radical Judy Rebick in an interview on CBC Radio`s The Current a few days ago. But Rebick`s main area of concern is not for the future of the NDP as much as it is for maintaining the influence of Libby Davies` extremist brand of politics within the party.

Rebick who has been actively pushing an `anyone but Mulcair` ticket said her greatest fear is that Thomas Mulcair will shut Libby Davies out of the NDP.

Coincidentally, that is probably Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Bob Rae`s greatest fear too. Because by so doing Mulcair would make the NDP a viable, credible party in the eyes of the broader Canadian electorate.

UPDATE: Mulcair is consolidating his victory, but is it a matter of time before Davies is relegated to obscurity within the NDP to limit the damage she can do to the party?

The people pushing the "robocalls" scandal have their own credibility issues

From a small office in Vancouver,  rented in a shared space with the Canadian branch of PBS station KCTS, Jamie Biggar and the people behind LeadNow.ca want to undo the decision reached by almost 15 million voters in Canada's 2011 election.

Biggar, LeadNow's Executive Director,  is a thoughtful, personable young man who was once the Chairman of the Sierra Club of British Columbia, the provincial branch of a US-based environmental group. In a talk last week,  Biggar pointed out that his organization is not partisan in that it doesn't endorse any particular political party and its goal is to hold the government, any government, to account for its potentially destructive policies. The goal, he said, is to serve the interests of democracy.

However the campaign to have democratic elections undone based on conjecture and unsubstantiated allegations would not appear to support those goals.

Biggar acknowledged that the much vaunted "31,000" number of complaints to Elections Canada were not actually people complaining about receiving calls misdirecting them to non-existent poling locations. That number, which has now grown to over 43,000 is merely automated messages of pre-written "concern" that are generated from LeadNow's website with the ease of clicking a "send" button. As we now know, the actual number of complaints to Election Canada about 700. But more significantly, not a single one of those complaints, on the basis of which LeadNow suggests new elections should be held, alleges that they did not cast their vote because of those calls.

In fact, LeadNow's campaign to delegitimize the 2011 election is based entirely on stringing together a bunch of ifs, could-haves, and maybes, without a solitary piece of solid evidence of wrongdoing by the Prime Minister of any senior Conservative Party member. One such piece of so-called support that Biggar referred me to was a report produced by Simon Fraser University Professor Anke Kessler which is based entirely on guesswork, corollaries and false postulations, such as the figure of 31,000 complaints being from people having reported receiving the robocalls rather than the actuality of that number only being LeadNow generated emails of "concern."

If one is going to make reasonable guesses based on corollaries, something more indicative of reality can be inferred from the people involved with LeadNow. Biggar was adamant that media reports of financial involvement from far-left activist funders like George Soros and the Tides Foundation were not true.

But LeadNow's Advisory Board reads like a who's who of vociferous enemies of the Conservative government, who have been known to become hysterical in their opposition to not only almost anything the Harper government does, but its very existence.

Zafar Bangash speaking at
robocalls rally in Toronto
(photo by Blazing Cat Fur)

People like Judy Rebick, who founded the fanatical website rabble.ca, which is financed almost exclusively by public service unions and NDP-linked organizations, Ian Capstick, a former top-level NDP backroom fixture, Jim Stafford, an economist in the employ of the Canadian Auto Workers union. The LeadNow-inspired rallies decrying the government over the robocalls issue went so far as to involve people like Zafar Bangash as organizers. Bangash is a Khomeinist propagandist and notorious hatemonger who advocates Sharia-Law and supports the Iranian dictatorship of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. One of the many absurd ironies that the robocalls hysterics have produced is a criticism of Canadian democracy supported by the radical left coming from one of the most brutal, undemocratic regimes on earth. That came in the form of Rebick's rabble.ca republishing a report from Iranian state-owned Press TV condemning Canada's so-called election fraud.

Whilke LeadNow may not be dishonest in any outright, planned way, their zeal and hatred of the Harper government has made their commitment to honesty highly suspect and what they purport to be facts to be false. As an investigation proceeds into the robocalls matter, LeadNow's efforts to damage the credibility and validity of the Harper government may just have the reverse effect and discredit LeadNow and those associated with it.

Three reasons why Canada's radical leftists are so humourless

Those of us familiar with the radical left know they do some things very well, like sanctimony, hypocrisy, and emotional hysteria, but something they haven't mastered is having a sense of humour.

It's not that they aren't funny. They are frequently hilarious, such as instances when an obese leftist claimed that by being ignored in a hardware store, she was a victim of sexual oppression, or proto-activist Judy Rebick's insane claim that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's criticism of NDP House leader Libby Davies, when she effectively denied Israel's legitimacy, stemmed from his being a sexist.  But the problem is that when they say these comically outlandish things, they aren't trying to be funny; they mean them.

So in order to understand this strange phenomenon, this (pseudo) scientific analysis will examine the three main reasons why the Canadian far left is so pathologically incapable of having a sense of humour.


1.  They're afraid of offending anyone (and conversely, are offended by everything)

Of course by anyone, we aren't including Christians and white conservatives. They go to great effort to offend those groups. And they now have expanded to trying to offend Jews (which isn't that hard in some cases), whom they dislike, but being sensitive to charges of anti-Semitism, try to use the code word Zionist for Jew, although sometimes the veil does slip.

But getting back to their fear of offending, let's take this for example:

Q: Why did the Gay chicken cross the basketball court?

A: He heard the ref was blowing fowls on the other side.

The willingness to offend is central to humour, and really nothing should be off limits. Most leftists would be appalled at that joke. That joke isn't anti-Gay, it's pro-blow job. The reason the chicken has to be Gay in it is because all pro basketball referees are male. And the joke is a word play joke based on a homonym. OK,  I've made it totally unfunny by explaining and analyzing the joke, but you get the point. If you're anxious to find offense in everything and at the same time overly sensitive to the potential hurt feelings of everyone, you're lame.



2. They are mainly motivated by jealousy

Contemporary Canadians live in a time and place where we are better off then just about anyone else, anywhere, ever. Sure, there`s always room for more improvement, but we live in times where the average lower middle class person has more luxuries and privileges than an 18th Century European nobleman. We have free education, free health care, home computers and on-demand music and videos, and mobile personal communication devices with instant, global reach..

We live in a society where one of the cause celebres is childhood obesity.

That`s right, we live in a time and place where a lot of people are complaining because they eat too much! If  the average person three hundred years ago were to learn that overeating would be a major complaint in the future, they would think their descendants insane. And perhaps they would be right.

It's hard to be funny, avaricious and and bitter at the same time and jealousy is what is really the motivation behind Canada's radical leftists.They would never admit jealousy is what drives them. In fact, they probably don't even recognize that trait in themselves. 

But the way the radical left looks at things is not what they have, but what others have. They obsess that if someone else has something, then they too should be entitled to it. It doesn`t matter if people better off than them worked harder, are smarter, took risks to achieve their advantages, or just made better decisions. That`s not important. What`s important is that someone else has something that they want. And because they recognize that their own limited talents and the potential of their Equity Studies degrees limits them to a life not much better than the one they have now, rather then trying to improve their lives, they want to tear down the achievements of people more successful than they.

That type of bitterness just isn`t funny.


3. They're stupid

A sense of humour is a sign of intelligence and the radical left is not comprised of particularly intelligent people. If there was ever any question about their utter intellectual incompetence, the Occupy Movement put a stake through the heart of any remaining doubt.. These are people who hate the government and saw the solution to their problems being a bigger government with expanded powers. The imbeciles thought that squatting in public parks was a profound way of addressing income inequity. Their notion of economics consisted of imagery of the tuxedoed Monopoly man or Scrooge McDuck sitting atop a pyramid of gold coins. The money that they are complaining about is for the most part used to create new jobs, finance ventures which improve society, and serve as security for funding that is used to build new businesses. That's aside from the fact that the top 1% of income earners they sought to vilify contribute over 30% of tax revenue. And that figure doesn't include the billions for targetted philanthropic efforts, such as Bill Gates' campaign to eradicate Malaria.

Gates' effort has led to thousands of saved lives, whereas the entire Occupy Movement combined has saved zero lives but is responsible for at least 3 deaths, a dozen rapes and countless physical assaults. Say what you will about the Tea Party, they tend not to rape and murder each other at their demonstrations.

All the Occupy Movement managed to conclusively accomplish is to prove that the radical left is made up of idiots. They have enablers, like Michael Moore, Keith Olbermann, Naomi Klein and others who tried to project their own issues into Occupy Whatever, but the movement was too disorganized to come up with any coherent message despite the prodding.

Aside from their lack of comprehension of basic economics, they are too stupid to recognize their own hypocrisy and racism. These are people who will rush to condemn the slightest perceived insult or offense to the feelings of one of their myriad categories of oppressed peoples, but at the same time will excuse the most depraved barbarity from radical Muslims or if it is perpetrated by a what they call racialized minorities. Why? Becuase the radical left who purport to be anti-racists are really racists of the worst kind. They clearly view their so-called oppressed brothers and sisters as barbarians too primitive to be held up to the standards of the Great White West.

The Can Rad Left's stupidity,sanctimony and hypocrisy requires them to view the world in a bigoted way suggesting such a lack of personal insight as to disqualify the possibility of any sense of humour in them.



Still, the left's absence of humour doesn't mean they aren't good for laughs; but as the old saying goes, it's laughing at and not with them.

Today's Top 10: You're probably an idiot if...

10.  You think Naomi Klein is brilliant

9.   You think the Occupy Movement's message will affect real global change

8.   You think the Occupy Movement had a message

7.   You have a home subscription to The Toronto Star

6.   You think the Arab Spring has brought social justice and democracy to the Arab middle east

5.   You think Canada needs an Arab Spring

4.   You want to ban Jews from teaching in schools but call other people "Nazis"

3.   You're still fighting for abortion rights more than two decades after that battle has been won.

2.   You're still fighting against the Viet Nam War more than three decades after that war ended.

1.   You're married to Naomi Klein.

OISE embarrasses U of T with a new, vapid anti-Israel thesis

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education is a wonderful centre for self-esteem. Its tax-supported programs are living proof that lack of intelligence need not be an impediment to getting an advanced university degree.

Fortunately for prospective employers, these degrees are offered in easily identifiable programs with fatuous-sounding names like Sociology and Equity Studies in Education. (SESE). That program achieved its greatest fame for having produced an anti-Semitic thesis in 2010, which broke ground for being the first student paper to be denounced by both the governing party and Opposition in the Ontario Legislature.

Now Sheryl Nestel, the same academic advisor to a pair of poorly researched, bigoted polemics that caused the controversy last year, has a new protege who has created a vapid anti-Israel screed to remind the public of the wasteful spending we throw into certain areas of academia.

In "The Appeal of Israel: Whiteness, Anti-Semitism, and the Roots of Diaspora Zionism in Canada," its author, Corey Balsam, who was awarded a Master's Degree on its basis, cites marginal academics and pseudo-academics such as Abigail Bakan, a board member of Mohamed Elmasry's anti-Semitic Canadian Charger website, anti-Israel fanatic Yves Engler, the deranged anti-Capitalist website Znet, and in his acknowledgments, thanks notorious 9-11 conspiracy theorist Diana Ralph.

Filled with anti-Semitic tone ("the elite British Jew Baron Walter Rothchild"),  half-baked efforts at psychoanalysis ("In Freudian terms, the end of a Jewish state is perceived as akin to castration and therefore something to be resisted at all costs"), and obsessively focussed on circumcision and Jewish body types, Balsam's thesis is a reminder of Judy Rebick's admission that radical activists often are acting out from their own personal psychological and emotional problems. That was clearly the case of the two previous anti-Israel theses for SESE guided by Nestel, both of which had lengthy introductions in which the authors described their childhood traumas and how it led them to their present-day activism.

Another question that arises in the case of individuals like Mr. Balsam is, are they too stupid to understand the material they reference or are they intentionally deceitful about it? A case in point is his assertion that "Under the leadership of Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky (1880-1940), the revisionist movement took a much more right-wing, even fascist, approach to the achievement of Zionist goals." 

Balsam cites Jabotinsky's famous "Iron Wall" article as proof of Zionism's "fascist" approach. But what fascist would write (in the same article, but which Balsam omitted):

"this does not mean that there cannot be any agreement with the Palestine Arabs. What is impossible is a voluntary agreement. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall. Not till then will they drop their extremist leaders, whose watchword is "Never!" And the leadership will pass to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions. Then we may expect them to discuss honestly practical questions, such as a guarantee against Arab displacement, or equal rights for Arab citizen, or Arab national integrity. And when that happens, I am convinced that we Jews will be found ready to give them satisfactory guarantees, so that both peoples can live together in peace, like good neighbours."

The "Iron Wall" that Jabotinsky alludes to is an enforced creation of a democratic Jewish state, and as he says in the essay:

"What need, otherwise, of the Balfour Declaration? Or of the Mandate? Their value to us is that outside Power has undertaken to create in the country such conditions of administration and security that if the native population should desire to hinder our work, they will find it impossible. And we are all of us, without any exception, demanding day after day that this outside Power, should carry out this task vigorously and with determination.  In this matter there is no difference between our "militarists" and our "vegetarians". Except that the first prefer that the iron wall should consist of Jewish soldiers, and the others are content that they should be British."

Say what one will about the British during the Palestinian Mandate, but their behavior was honorable and no intelligent, honest person could possibly describe it as "fascist."

One need not look far for other ludicrously misleading statements from Balsam, such as "many Canadian Jews, particularly workers in the garment industry, “rejected Zionism as unfeasible, in favor of class solidarity, or out of loyalty to a project of internationalist struggle for progressive social change."

Balsam doesn't even seem able to follow his own arguments from one paragraph to the next, because only a few pages earlier, he wrote, " Labour Zionism became the dominant Zionist ideology in the 1930s and remained so into the nascent years of Israeli statehood." Perhaps Balsam is unaware that the Garment industry was heavily unionized and formed the core of the Zionist Labour Movement in Canada in the 1930's.

Of course, intelligence and honesty are not hallmarks of OISE's SESE program, which seems exclusively devoted to demonization of western capitalist democracies, fanatical hatred of Israel and the promulgation of hare-brained racist theories hiding behind the veneer of "Equity Studies." The program  promotes values that are the polar opposite of what fair-minded democracies have been striving towards. As we as a society aspire to treat everyone on their own merits as an individual, SESE continues to proselytize an ideology that views everyone less as an individual than a representative of a racial group. An ample illustration is another Master's Thesis recently guided by Nestel that asserts that Western feminists opposed to female genital mutilation are motivated by racism and their obsession with genetalia.

It is an approach that can lead nowhere but continued racism, and the University of Toronto would be well advised to reconsider the continued existence of a program such as SESE which remains an embarrassment to the university's reputation.

UPDATE: Werner Cohn's analysis elucidates the total absence of scholarship in Balsam's thesis

h/t Sassy Wire

One of the leaders of Canada's radical left acknowledges they are acting out from emotional damage

Anyone who has interacted with radical leftists will notice certain consistent attributes among them.

They are highly emotional and irrational. Their conclusions are not based on logical assessments of a situation, but on their personal identification with one party and the projection of their own emotional damage into incommensurable issues.

One can easily observe this phenomenon repeated over and over. It is evident in the histrionic behavior of Code Pink activist Sandra Ruch and the rest of her crew during their failed effort to sail The Sea Hitler to Gaza to try to break an embargo against the terrorist group Hamas. It's evident in the unbalanced behaviour of OCAP activists who disrupted a Toronto City Council meeting a few months ago. It's evident among radical university professors who are mired in marginal areas of study, such as "Critical Race Theory" "Gender Studies" and others permeated with self-absorbed nonsense that bears little relevance to the rest of the world.

While people not directly involved with radical, anti-capitalist politics recognize the absurdities of that movement, it is interesting to note that some rare self-insight has been exhibited by the Godmother of Canadian radicalism, Judy Rebick.

In an article at rabble.ca, the radical leftist website she founded, Rebick wrote:

In addition to the sadness about the state of society and of nature, almost all of us whatever oppression we might have experienced for social or economic reasons suffer from some kind of deep personal wounds. And if we don't face that sadness, that pain, we will inflict it on ourselves and others in a way that is hurtful. Much of the dysfunction on the Left comes not from political differences which can be creative and productive but from people acting out this pain. We become part of the problem instead of the part of the solution.

I was in therapy at the time when I was most busy and most recognized as an activist. I went through a lot of change both from the activism and from the therapy but I kept the therapy private. Only a few close friends knew what I was going through. We have privatized our emotional problems.

When psychiatrists assess people with mental illness, one of the considerations in the diagnosis that is a predictor of an individual's capability to respond to treatment is their insight into their condition. Rebick frequently makes statements that suggest that she is detached from reality, but she is not unintelligent.  Most of her cohorts in the radical left lack her intellect, such as it is, but have an even lesser degree of understanding of their own issues, to say nothing of the political postures they uncomprehendingly assume.

Whether or not the radical anti-capitalist movement can recognize that a great deal of what they do is an unfortunate outgrowth of their tainted psyches, Rebick's admission contributes the basis for understanding what really drives the Far Left.

NDP's Socialist Caucus sees a silver lining in Layton's cancer diagnosis

The NDP's Socialist Caucus is a manifesto-driven group of fanatics who want to drive the agenda of Canada's Official Opposition in Parliament.

Jack Layton was able to translate his personal popularity into major gains for his party in Quebec, and was the glue that held the party's disparate moderates and the radical socialists together. Layton's recent announcement that he is taking a leave of absence to fight cancer for the second time bodes as badly for his party as it does for him personally.

Without anyone who comes close to Layton's popularity or ability to moderate the NDP, an internecine, knives-drawn free-for-all is all but inevitable. Layton made an aged, uncharismatic former labour leader from Quebec as interim leader, anticipating his return, but realistically, a second cancer battle is a journey that leaves that likelihood remote.

The NDP's Socialist Caucus is still resentful that the party attempted to remove the word "socialist" from its charter and has fought bitterly to introduce its agenda of anti-capitalist, anti-Israel, pro-Castro Cuba socialism to prominence.

Could it be just a coincidence that only a few days after Layton announced he was stepping down to fight cancer that the Socialist Caucus presented its revitalized website and campaign to move the NDP firmly into the anti-Capitalist camp.

Without a strong leader, this could be a golden opportunity for this faction to insinuate itself  as a force in the national NDP. This group co-sponsored a rally calling for violent revolution in Canada, they want to abolish private ownership of industry and property ,and wants to destroy democratic Israel while celebrating totalitarian, Communist Cuba.

The head Commissar of the NDP's Socialist Caucus is one Barry Weisleder, a substitute teacher with the Toronto District School Board.

Like anti-Israel fanatic Judy Rebick, Weisleder thinks Layton's NDP has gone too mainstream, so while offering condolences whose sincerity can only be guessed at, they assuredly welcome the chance that the absence of a strong mainstream leader presents to them.

"Progressive" Jew hate at rabble.ca

rabble.ca is the radical left website founded by Judy Rebick, who no doubt has ingratiated herself to her wretched Marxist pals by her denunciations of the middle east's only liberal democracy as an "apartheid state" and gets double progressive bonus points in the process for being an Israel-hating Jew.

A supposed home for anti-oppression, anti-racist activists, the rabble talk forums are pretty Orwellian in their approach to free speech. Users who criticize unions (who keep rabble.ca afloat with large disbursements) or political Islam, or are too forward in their praise of "the Zionist entity," or use "sexist" terminology are given the boot post haste.

But in keeping with the current trend, hating Jews and saying so is super cool as you can see from some of their user forum comments below.

We're seeing a lot more of this from the far left, where they don't even pretend it's about Israel anymore, it's just about hating Jews.

Welcome to the future if the party of the spouse of the publisher of rabble.ca ever gets into power.

(click comments below to enlarge or links to direct source)

This POS is calling Michael Coren a "damped Jew" which allegedly explains his Zionism. (I have no frickin' idea what a "damped Jew" is supposed to mean, unless the moron just can't spell 'damned') UPDATE - later in the thread, he explains that a "damped Jew" is a term for a fake convert - I never heard that one before.

UPDATE 2: That "damped Jew" Coren replies

This idiot is defending douchebag Richard Falk's anti-Semitic cartoon folly:

Canadian politicians denounce "self-loathing hatemongers" of the Israeli and now 'Canadian Apartheid' movement

Radical activist Judy Rebick, whose raison d’etre seems to be to have something, anything to shout into a megaphone about, implicitly admitted the dishonesty of anti-Israel activists’ agenda at an “Israeli Apartheid Week” meeting on March 7 of this year. She confessed that use of the term “Israeli Apartheid” is a propaganda tool. 

“There’s the brilliance, the propaganda brilliance of calling it Israeli Apartheid Week,” she gleefully asserted, “every time these people, you know, put a motion through parliament or through the legislature..they have to say Israel’s not an apartheid state ..and so over time, it really is a brilliant propaganda tactic because each time it becomes more familiar.”  

What Rebick seems not to have understood is that her stand has become familiar as one of deceitful propaganda. But that distinction hasn't been lost on Canadian parliamentarians who denounced the “Israeli Apartheid” movement in the strongest terms yet following the declaration by Canadian "Israeli Apartheid Week" organizers that Canada is an 'apartheid' state. 

At the same anti-Israel event at the University of Toronto where Rebick spoke, the Israeli Apartheid Week organizers issued a statement saying that: 

" In crucial ways, the Canadian state's treatment of indigenous peoples, historically and currently, can be described as an apartheid system. .. As non-natives, we have a role within our communities to further the process of decolonizing Canada. If you are with us in opposition to Israeli Apartheid, we encourage your consistent opposition to apartheid right here in Canada."

Peter Kent, Canada's federal Minister of the Environment, didn't mince his words when describing the "Israeli Apartheid Week" organizers' statement and the ideology that drives them.

"These people, if they're Canadians, are either self-loathing, ignorant, or very poorly informed. Successive Canadian governments have spent tens of billions of dollars to improve the lives of our First Nations peoples, who enjoy the same rights, opportunities and privileges as all Canadian citizens. By saying that contemporary Canada practices apartheid, the so-called Israeli Apartheid Movement betrays itself as being made up of intellectually dishonest hate-mongers."

The Liberal Party's Critic for Democratic Renewal, St. Paul's MP Carolyn Bennett, offered the following: "Use of the word "apartheid" is inflammatory and inaccurate and works against any meaningful conversation on the peace process in the middle east or the plight of our aboriginal peoples here in Canada ." She also made reference to Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's recent statement about 'Israeli Apartheid Week' which describes it as "a dangerous cocktail of ignorance and intolerance."

Canada is one of Israel's closest allies and that support has made them frequent scapegoats of the anti-Israel movement, which now appears anxious to vilify Canadian policy as well. These sentiments are regularly expressed on the website rabble.ca, which is the media sponsor of "Israeli Apartheid Week." Rabble was founded by Judy Rebick and is published by Kim Elliott, who is the spouse of the same NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies who in June 2010 expressed support for the boycott, sanctions and divestment campaign against Israel. The anti-Israel activists' ‘Canadian apartheid’ statement was foreshadowed by Rebick who, in defending Ms Davies, said "I don't think the establishment of the state of Canada is just."

Olivia Chow, the NDP MP for Trinity Spadina, the downtown Toronto riding which includes The University of Toronto campus where the "Canadian Apartheid" statement was made, has not responded to requests to comment for this article.

However, Ontario Provincial legislators were not shy in their condemnation. The response of Steve Clark, the Progressive Conservative Critic for Citizenship and Immigration was concise, saying "It's unbelievable to see that level of ignorance."

The representative for Ontario provincial riding of Thornhill, Peter Shurman, expressed disgust at the accusation of 'Canadian Apartheid.' "Idiots" was how he described the Israeli Apartheid Week organizers, adding "and you can quote me on that!"

Mr. Shurman, who last year was a co-sponsor of a unanimously adopted motion in the Ontario Legislature denouncing Israeli Apartheid Week, continued: "Canada and Israel have shared democratic values. Neither country is perfect, just as no country in the world is, and people of good conscience are working to improve conditions in democratic countries every day. But to describe these two countries that place democracy as their highest value as 'apartheid' is beyond absurd. Apartheid describes a racist legal system of enforced racial separation and discrimination that existed in South Africa until 1993. No rational person could possibly say that ‘apartheid’ in any way describes either Canada or Israel in 2011. These fanatics have revealed themselves to be not just bigoted against Israel but opposed to basic Canadian democratic values too."

'Canadian Apartheid' proponent Alan Sears, a Sociology professor at Ryerson University, provided some revealing insight in a recent interview where he suggested the movement to delegitimize Israel is the first step in a broader campaign to combat capitalism. He said he supports "targeting..capitalism at (its) deepest..the question is how do we get there?.. The way that struggles begin to start is with specific targets that are achievable and then ..the movement can get broader."

As a champion of Canada's relationship with Israel, Environment Minister Kent's constituency office has been the target of demonstrations by anti-Israel groups. He has praise for the people who are working towards peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but was adamant that groups and individuals seeking to falsely label Israel as an apartheid state do not fall into that category.

Of the latter, Mr. Kent's condemnation was unequivocal, "They're making absolutely no contribution to the peace process in the mid-east and are clearly operating on a selective, hateful agenda; peace between Israel and the Palestinians is obviously not on that agenda."

"Canadian Apartheid Week" and anti-Canada boycotts next? Israeli Apartheid Week organizers declare Canada an "apartheid state"

What has been particularly stinging to the Canadians behind the odious bigot-fest called "Israeli Apartheid Week" (IAW) are the irrefutable charges of hypocrisy they face.

Here they are, immigrants, and the descendants of settlers, all occupying land taken from the victims of an actual near-genocide of our indigenous population. Yet rather than address the injustice that they benefit from, they devote all their energies to demonizing a liberal democracy on the other side of the world for its defensive policies. Policies that are far less oppressive than those enacted against North American natives which created advantages for colonial settlers and their successors.

This hypocrisy makes the IAW gang look like the person who dumps toxic waste into a lake and then yells at someone else for peeing into it.

Clearly affected by this criticism, Israeli Apartheid Week organizers have just announced that Canada too is an "apartheid state."

At Toronto's inaugural IAW hate event this year, Chadni Desai, speaking on behalf of the organizers, announced:

"We as the organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week in Toronto believe that we cannot speak meaningfully about Israeli apartheid without speaking first about the realities of apartheid here in Canada. Canada's reservation system and the treatment of indigenous peoples is (sic) closely studied by the planners of apartheid in South Africa, although this is a hidden chapter of our history. From its very foundations, Canada has been based on the theft of indigenous land and the genocide and displacement of indigenous peoples. In crucial ways, the Canadian state's treatment of indigenous peoples, historically and currently, can be described as an apartheid system.   

.. As non-natives, we have a role within our communities to further the process of decolonizing Canada. If you are with us in opposition to Israeli Apartheid, we encourage your consistent opposition to apartheid right here in Canada. .. From Palestine to Turtle Island* there is no justice on stolen land."

So there you have it. They have proclaimed that 'Canadian apartheid' was the inspiration for South African Apartheid, and our version is still going on.

It's possible these bigots think that formally declaring they recognize Canada as an "apartheid" country absolves them of charges of hypocrisy. Actually, it makes it worse. Now, not only are they hypocrites, but it becomes clear that they are also irrational anti-Semites who are willing contributors to "Canadian apartheid."

All countries in the world have had prior occupants with some sort of land grievances. But if contemporary Canada is the living spiritual mother of apartheid, then what are these self-declared "anti-apartheid" activists doing here, continuing to colonize, settle and steal native land?  If they honestly believe the foolishness they put forward, why don't they live up to their commitment of  "decolonizing Canada" by packing up their bags and take Helen Thomas' advice to Israelis to "go back where they came from"?

Ironically, these are the same people who as a group want to make immigration (i.e. the increased and ongoing theft of Native land) easier. Yet each new immigrant simply increases the crime against Canada's original occupants, adding to "apartheid".

Have these hypocrites in the "Israeli Apartheid" movement actually done anything substantive to end "Canadian apartheid"? There doesn't seem to be any evidence of it. Are they calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Canada? No. That would be inconvenient for them, considering if they did, they would actually have to put their money where their mouths are.

Instead, they do what these types of bigots usually do. Utter meaningless platitudes and then go after the Jews.

The festival of anti-Israeli hatred and bigotry is run mostly by racialists who subscribe to various faddish "critical race theories". These people who allege the falsehood that Israel is in denial about being an apartheid state are themselves racists in denial about their own racism.

This gang of bigots appear to think they have cleared themselves of charges of anti-Semitism by placing a few useful idiot, pitchfork-carrying Jews like Norman Finkelstein and Judy Rebick at the front of their mob.

But the reality remains that of all the many countries in which gross violations of human rights are routine, they decide to go after the one that has the best human rights record in its region, because it's the Jewish one.

They participate in and perpetuate a worse type of "apartheid" than that of which they accuse Israel, and yet it's the Jews who they single out to be the only people to whom they would deny national self-determination.

Unless they act on their statement, it proves that "Israeli Apartheid Week"  is just a trendy pretense put on by bigots and marginalized radicals, while even they aren't stupid enough to believe the preposterous words coming out of their own mouths.

Or if they're sincere, you can expect a "Boycott Canada" movement and "Canadian Apartheid Week" coming soon to a campus near you.

UPDATE: See and comment on The National Post version of this piece.




Go to 2:48 of the video above to hear the "Canadian Apartheid" statement.

 *For the uninitiated, "Turtle Island" is a recently invented "native-sounding" term to describe North America used by radical socialists who want to prove their cred in 'the movement'. There's no evidence actual Natives or anyone else used this term prior to 1974, nor is there compelling evidence that natives mistakenly believed the North American continent to be an island.

Israeli Apartheid Week in Gaza: Celebration of the murder of 3 children, aged 11, 3, and a baby, by passing out candy and dancing in the street.

The headline tells the story. It's disgusting and incomprehensibly barbaric.

This week, Judy Rebick, slow-witted Queen's University professor Abbie Bakan and some others did their best to enable making these attacks easier by trying to weaken Israel's ability to defend itself.

The answer is clear. Forget about Gaza for the foreseeable future. It's a hole. Concentrate on peace with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

WARNING: This video contains horrific, graphic photographs taken at the murder scene:



h/t Blazing Cat Fur and Sassy Wire

Why I love the anti-Israel movement

Canada's Marxists and radical socialists represent a threat to liberal democracy.

Or at least they would if they weren't incompetent buffoons.

Still, the unfortunate fact of the matter is that many of them have insinuated themselves into our educational system at the university level, and even in some high schools and use their position to influence impressionable, weak minds. Generally dishonest about their political goals and motives, they get most upset when they are exposed.

Marxism has always led to totalitarianism in governmental practice and some of Canada's radicals have made no secret of their anti-democratic, violent intentions.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, with China's Communist party committed to that country's traditional local interest, and with Cuba's Castro ailing and nearing death, Communism just doesn't get people concerned anymore. And while for the most part it shouldn't, that doesn't mean that it can be completely dismissed.

As far as threats to western civilization go these days, extremist Islam, which combines irrational fanaticism with bloodthirstiness, presents the greatest danger.

But fanaticism of all kinds that oppose liberal democracies represent a danger to the freedoms we enjoy.

And that's one of the reasons Israel does such a service to the civilized world.  What cause unites moonbat socialists with hateful theocrats who want to kill apostates? There may be a passing issue, in that any time the west acts in the interests of itself and against totalitarianism in the middle east or third world, these two seemingly opposite ideologies converge.

But it's the matter of Israel where these ridiculous fanatics reveal their true nature. Unable to stomach the idea that a liberal democracy with a Jewish majority should be allowed to exist and defend itself from anti-democratic, violent, totalitarian enemies, they beclown themselves in their hysteria.

Sometimes it takes a bit of work to find ways of revealing how these radicals are indeed preposterous (ok, not so much work in the case of the 9-11 conspiracy nuts), but no one does all the work for you like the Israel-hating crazies. They make themselves look so utterly demented that it surpasses any possible parody.

These are people who have religious zealots who think homosexuals should be killed marching arm-in-arm with a group that calls itself "Queers against Israeli apartheid." How is it possible to make that look any more idiotic than it actually is?

Today's installment of our ongoing comedic adventure is provided by nutbar website rabble.ca, the neo-Marxist, union-financed mouthpiece for Canadian radicalism.

Rabble.ca has provided countless laughs to readers of this blog, so I am eternally grateful to Judy Rebick for having founded it.

Two Israel-haters, University of Western Ontario French Professor David Heap and Wendy Goldsmith, collaborated on a little paean to The Sea Hitler, the Canadian attempt to get a boat to break Israel's Gaza blockade.

I don't know if there's anything funny about Heap that I could write that isn't done better by his official University of Western Ontario faculty picture.

But it's Wendy Goldsmith, a London, Ontario social worker, who provides the clearest example of how it's really impossible to make these people look more foolish than they do on their own.

And she does it with a poem about her hatred for Israel that she wrote for rabble, an excerpt of which follows.

The poem is titled "in memory of the nine brave, courageous peace activists whose lives were stolen by murderous war criminals who spin lies, black out independent media, violate international law repeatedly! repeatedly! yes, this is for them...in memory of the nine brave, courageous peace activists who were murdered by Israeli soldiers, in the name of TRUTH."

No. That's not the excerpt. It's not the dedication. It's the title.

No, I'm not kidding. I only wish I could create parody that inventive.

This is the excerpt:

as long as the israeli lunatics

float down to deck

guns blazing like a bad scene in a low budget spaghetti western

or a disney kids' movie 

as long as conventions and international laws

mean no more than the toilet paper i use every morning

for as long as democracy rhymes with hypocracy

Really - how is it possible to expose the ridiculousness of fanaticism any better than something like this? It does all my work for me.

And that's why I love the anti-Israel fanatics!

Explicit calls for political violence come from the radical left in Canada

Any mass murder in North America has ramifications beyond the transparent tragedy that accompanies the death of innocents in a society that is comparatively among the safest in the world.

In trying to make sense of the incomprehensible, there are some who will try to find a culprit beyond the obvious, sometimes without any rational basis. The atrocity perpetrated by demented killer Jared Loughner over the weekend in which six innocent people were murdered and Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was critically wounded has, what seems to be, an obvious explanation. The perpetrator, whose public pronouncements suggest an incoherent, unbalanced madman, was mentally ill and acted out out of psychosis.

But one of the tragedies in this case, that compounds the original one, is that there are no shortage of people who are happy to exploit these deaths for political and ideological motives.

Because the central victim in is a Democratic legislator whose district was identified by Sarah Palin as a "target" for  Republicans to take, Democrats and others on the left, both in the US and in Canada, have ebulliently grasped the opportunity to lay blame on the former Republican Vice Presidential candidate,the Republican party and "right wingers" in general for allegedly creating a climate filled with violent rhetoric that supposedly created these events.

Nothing could be more absurd.

From The Democratic Leadership Council website

Despite preposterous suggestions from people like Paul Krugman in The New York Times, there is no evidence whatsoever establishing that anything Sarah Palin, or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh said that played any role in Loughner's deranged violence. Sarah Palin may be a bit of a buffoon more famous for celebrity itself than for political adroitness, but her use of political rhetoric never called for violence of any kind and it falls within the scope of discourse that typifies much of American politics.

Responsible conservatives are as opposed to violence as much as responsible liberals. We live in a democratic society where change can be achieved through persuasion and elections.


Sane people are appalled by and reject the idea of initiating transition by terror.

But what may be shocking to some is that in Canada, explicit calls for violence to achieve political ends are coming from none other than the radical left.

Or perhaps not so shocking. The most recent acts of publicized political violence in Canada came from The Black Bloc during Toronto's G20 conference. It was radical leftists who rioted and caused millions of dollars in damage to make a political statement.

But it doesn't end there. Prominent Canadian leftist Judy Rebick founded a Marxist-leaning website called rabble.ca. It's now published by the spouse of the NDP's Deputy Leader, Libby Davies and is mainly funded by Canadian unions like CUPW and CUPE. That site's discussion forum recently hosted a thread entitled, "When is the time for violent revolution?" in which its contributors made comments like:

"I was wondering when it would be ok to overthrow a government, violently if need be."

"Perhaps the reason the ballot box isn't working is because the ballot box isn't the way to the solution."

"I think 9/11 was just a test run. The people failed with flying colours. And I think it's an example of what's in store for the future if fascists back themselves into another corner."

"How many more decades should we wait? It appears that Canadians arent catching on, so should we suffer in silence for 30 more years? maybe a generation or three? Dont the better people of our society have a responsibility to the stupid?"

and worse.

Beyond that,  CUPE, CUPW, Independent Jewish Voices (an anti-Israel group) and the NDP's Socialist Caucus were all endorsers of a recent rally where one of the speakers called for violent revolution in Canada.

At a Toronto rally in support of convicted American cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamar, one of the speakers was an organizer from the Communist newsletter BASICS. Following a rambling speech about conspiracies and praising violent revolutionaries, he said "we haven't had any threat of insurrection or any, you know, revolutionary uprisings in Canada quite for, for quite some time, right? But that that doesn't mean that operation is not still in play."

This suggests that the Canadian radical left is not only advocating violence, but planning it.

This type of organized insurrection against democracy is far more dangerous than a lone madman. Violence for political means is deplorable, and no ideology or political movement has a monopoly on it. But its strongest proponents these days are not the "right-wingers" and "neo-Cons" but their opponents.

Professor Werner Cohn: Prolegomena to the Study of Jews who hate Israel - Not to Weep or to Laugh, but to Understand

Professor Cohn is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of British Columbia

"Broadly speaking, Jews who hate Israel fall into three categories: a) the famous, of which Noam Chomsky is about the only one; b) the well-known, like Norman Finkelstein and Tony Judt, and c) others who are not known beyond their immediate circles but who do lurk in various crevices of the Internet. Altogether, as I will explain below, it is not likely that there are more than a few thousand of these haters active worldwide, say fewer than 10,000 and probably no more than half that number. Considering that there are more than 13 million Jews in the world at the moment, the proportion of those who actively hate Israel, about 0.04 of one percent, might well be considered to be modest indeed. "

In Canada, we have one or two in the locally "well-known" category, such as non-credible players like Naomi Klein and her husband, what's-his-name, and Judy Rebick.

For more about this very interesting look at a sad phenomenon, read Professor Cohn's entire piece here.