It had to be oblique, of course. The Toronto al Starzeera's editorialists consist of pathological Israel-haters like Tony Berman, Linda McQuaig, Heather Mallick, Haroon Siddiqui, Rick Salutin, etc and even what is supposedly "straight-up" reporting in that rag usually reflects their extreme biases. So they would never tell you the truth about the blatant hatred for Canada, the overt support for terrorism, and vicious anti-Semitism that is a regular feature of "pro-Palestinian" activism in Canada.
But it's Sunday, and one of al Starzeera's weekend reporters did slip in something that is very telling, and very typical of pro and anti-Israel demonstrations - the people who are pro-Israel are also pro-Canada, while the leftist anti-Semites and bloodthirsty Islamists, who make up the entirety of the anti-Israel protests, hate Canada too:
...Brandishing Canadian flags and placards calling to free Gaza from Hamas, the pro-Israeli contingent stood on the north side, in front of the Israeli consulate, and played Bob Marley over the loudspeakers...
Here's a shock. Ford Fest is the annual gathering where legions of Rob Ford's supporters come out to party with Toronto's most popular municipal politician. But it's no news that Ford has plenty of detractors too, and a handful of these bitter characters with nothing better going on in their lives decided to crash Ford Fest to heckle the Mayor. Today, some of those Ford-haters presented themselves as being from the LGBT community, and they came carrying insulting placards and shouting abuse at Ford.
It would seem pretty natural and predictable that party-poopers who turn up to crap on other people's fun would get booed and insulted. But Toronto's mainstream media has a hate-on for Rob Ford, so with glaring, unprofessional bias, CTV characterized the exchange between Ford's fans and foes as if it were an unprovoked outburst of homophobia from 'Ford Nation.'
Ford has been viciously depicted as a bigot in the media, but as local writer Mitch Wolfe observed, Ford's supporters at this year's Ford Fest, as has been the case in years past, were overwhelmingly comprised of people from Toronto's multi-racial, multi-ethnic communities.
That monkey wrench in the media narrative has Toronto's latte-sucking pseudo-intellectuals in a tizzy. There's a panic going on among the elites in our city now that despite his travails, Ford is back on the scene, beating his rivals in debates and polling evenly with the other two top contenders.
Get ready for plenty of media histrionics about Ford in the weeks and months to come before the October municipal election.
Yesterday morning, at a public press conference, an hysterical opponent of Rob Ford named John Furr whipped off his shirt to reveal a pasty, doughy, 52 year-old torso and screamed abuse at Toronto's mayor for the entire proceeding.
Toronto's mainstream media, which for the most part shares a detestation for Toronto's embattled mayor, was more than happy to give Furr air-time and promote a sanitized representation of him. Doing absolutely no homework, or at least not willing to report any of it, they played accomplice to Furr's efforts to portray himself as someone who, as the Globe and Mail uncritically reported, "wanted to represent normal people."
So how 'normal' is John Furr, someone who histrionically screamed at Rob Ford while the mayor was trying to explain his opposition to a proposed LRT line along Eglinton Avenue?
The blog Socialist Studies, which concerns itself with education issues, took an interest in Furr when he declared himself a candidate for the Toronto District School Board. Furr's campaign garnered virtually no support and ended quickly, however the intervening picture revealed someone who is anything but 'normal' by most people's standards.
The image of a weird, obsessive twitter stalker is also something that comes into focus through Socialist Studies' reporting on Furr.
I've had my own twitter encounters with Furr, when he decided to take it upon himself to make unsolicited replies to tweets of mine. Those episodes show someone who promotes the hateful slur, which Canada's Prime Minister described as "the new face of antisemitism," about Israel supposedly being an apartheid state, when all facts belie that.
In fact, Furr is someone who is either so stupid or dishonest (or both) that he tried to extrapolate an insult against the fanatical anti-Israel group "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid" as a "smear" against the entire LGBT community.
If that's what 'normal' people are like, then normal doesn't mean what it used to. But then, Toronto's mainstream media has its own definition of normal by which thinking exactly what they want you to think is a part. And if there's pertinent information which contradicts their version of normal, they obviously think it's better that you never know about it.
I've been to City Hall during press scrums and if anyone wants to know why (one of the reasons) I'm so contemptuous of The Toronto Star'ssemi-literate reporters and the organization in general as well as most local media, they should check one out for themselves. You can't get anything like a real taste of it from watching it on TV, because the "journalists" and TV coverage makes sure to hide the egregious behaviour of the media. But it's truly astounding. While there are a handful of people who act professionally and with dignity, like Sun Media's Brain Dunstan, it's incredible watching these "media professionals" behave like angry, hysterical, autistic children in public. And then they have the temerity to accuse Rob Ford of bad behavior after their relentless efforts to provoke him, the overwhelming measure of which he stoically ignores.
...After ordering the hot dogs — Ford declined, saying he was watching his weight — the phalanx of media descended “and it was crazy,” Coren said.
“It was over the top, seriously. I’m British and the British press is famous for acting aggressively to land a story, but I’m going to be honest and say the press (around Ford) behaved abominably and were very aggressive, and, in my opinion, crossed a line to get (Ford) to react.”
The rush back to Ford’s offices was “unreal,” said Coren. “Apart from being a bit sweaty, he acted like nothing had actually happened and took what had just happened in stride.”
...The remainder of Greenwald’s rebuttal is his usual mix of bluster and self-contradiction. Having said he has no opinion of his boss’ co-investments with the US government, he then spends hundreds of words defending them…
“Wasn’t it just 72 hours ago that the widespread, mainstream view in the west (not one that I shared) was that there was a profound moral obligation to stand up and support the brave and noble Ukrainian opposition forces as they fight to be liberated from the brutal and repressive regime imposed on them by Vladimir Putin’s puppet? When did it suddenly become shameful in those same circles to support those very same opposition forces?
Of course, at no point in his piece did Ames argue that Omidyar should not be allowed to invest in foreign opposition groups, nor did the piece say Omidyar should he feel ashamed for supporting the Ukrainian revolution. They’re his billions and he may do with them as he pleases...
The point of the piece — aside from to convey facts to our readers — is that Omidyar and First Look have made statement after statement about how they aim to be a thorn in the side of the US government, and yet in several cases Omidyar has co-invested with that same US government in order to shape foreign policy to suit his own worldview. (A wag might point out that it’s far easier to put a thorn in someone’s side if you’re sitting next to him at an investment meeting.)
In a move that is entirely typical of the delusional arrogance of Canada's leftist political establishment, their response to a poll indicating that a majority of Canadians have lost confidence in the justice system is not to fix the system but to want to reeducate the pubic to be satisfied with it.
The Conservative government has committed to introducing legislation to impose tougher mandatory sentences for crimes such as sex offenses against children and for the system to place more importance on the right of victims. But Opposition critics in the NDP and Liberal parties, as well as some federal bureaucrats argue that declining rates of crime in some areas mean that Canadians need to be "educated" about the virtues of the existing system.
These opposition critics probably do not live in crime-ridden areas of Toronto, however one or two may represent areas of Vancouver where during elections, junkies are reportedly given sandwiches and are bussed to polling stations with instructions to cast a vote for a particular candidate.
Remarkably, in its usual effort to spin the news to its own biases, the CBC reported this story as "Canadians think fix for courts lies in education, report says" implying it it is not a small number of politicians and bureaucrats and CBC wonks who think that, but the majority of Canadians who in fact hold the opposite view.
This CBC headline implies the exact opposite of the study's conclusion
The antics of Rob Ford are so infuriatingly embarrassing that they taint every single citizen of Toronto with a cloud of shame. At least that is the inescapable impression one gets from reading The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Now Magazine and a variety of other self-obsessed media orifices is the world's most world-classiest city.
If the media is any reflection of popular will, Ford has made being a Torontonian in 2014 so overwhelmingly humiliating, it is mind-boggling that Ontario's entire capitol city hasn't filled up an armada of U-Hauls and embarked on a mass exodus to more progressive pastures, such as in the enlightened Pacific metropolis of Vancouver.
Still, Ford seems to enjoy unassailable popularity with a subhuman class of citizen known by the sobriquet Ford Nation. But the cultivated people who comprise the rest of the city understand the damage caused by the daily assault on the self-esteem of the thinking Torontonian as a result of being vicariously associated with Rob Ford.
Toronto's media nabobs have assumed a near-unified voice that was best expressed by an outraged protester at a City Hall demonstration, her pain reflected in her sour, prune-faced declaration:
Ford has used cocaine, he has been drunk in public, and yet his support remains rock-solid. But what if Ford was to do something far worse than any of these past transgressions?
What if Ford were to be involved in the type of scandal where he was caught in a brothel, perhaps of the type that exploited poor, immigrant women, turning them into virtual sex slaves?
Imagine Rob Ford being caught by police naked in such a place. Then, with a prostitute leaving his rented cubicle holding a kleenex freshly damp from Ford's venereal excretion, he lied to a police officer and claimed he was just getting a "shiatsu."
Then imagine if higher-ups in the police department colluded to keep the matter a secret.
A "community clinic." Seriously?
Of course, though we're used to Ford lying, what an insult to the intelligence of every one of his constituents it would be, if when caught, he tried to excuse himself with the laughably implausible claim that he mistook a place that any teenager would recognize as a hand-job parlor for a "community clinic."
Surely then, all of Canada's media would be clamoring for Ford's head and the public along with them?
Let's take this scenario another step. What if this denizen of sleazy, disease-ridden bordellos were to contract a "mystery illness" which he and his family refused to disclose? Were Rob Ford to tragically die from a malady of that nature, there would be no end to the media speculation of the nature of the illness, how he came by it, and why it was being kept a secret.
Or take it just one more unlikely step further. What if Rob Ford's wife, who has no real noteworthy political accomplishment to her name, and who is a dismal public speaker with no real achievement in life other than being the wife of a famous person, was then practically dragooned into running for mayor?
No doubt the media would be united in reviling such a candidacy, wouldn't they?
Naturally, this is all just fantasizing. Nothing so far-fetched could happen in real life, could it?
I read the Doug Saunders column to which Lauryn Oates refers, and it was one of the worst pieces of journalism I've ever seen appear in a major newspaper. Either Saunders has a cognitive disability or he was intentionally manipulating and lying about data. He referred to one report that indicated that the current NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan was creating a situation in which Islamists were feeling more at liberty to mistreat women. Among other egregious distortions, Saunders implied it was because of the NATO forces presence in Afghanistan that conditions for women were worsening in that country.
Media coverage of Afghanistan over the past decade is notoriously prone to selective coverage of the negative -- the latest bomb blast or kidnapping -- while doing a dismal job of telling the story of the transformative progress that has occurred, and what exactly is at stake should security deteriorate this year upon the withdrawal of foreign troops.
Then there are the armchair pundits, who further help colour public opinion in the NATO countries towards unjustified pessimism. Last SaturdayThe Globe & Mailran an opinion article by Doug Saunders called"Was our Afghan saga useless -- or worse?"in which he suggests that Afghanistan may be worse off now than it was before international intervention (while simultaneously contradicting himself by noting that there are gains, though they may not last).
...He pointed out the indisputable fact that as university students who had almost no experience working an eight hour day on the floor of a factory, every single person listening to his talk — regardless of gender, race or sexuality — was a member of a very privileged, exclusive and elite group. This caused many to shift uncomfortably in their seats and others to angrily confront Levant’s own self-proclaimed status as a “rich, white conservative pundit.”
While the rest of Levant’s speech wasn’t a huge difference from what the pundit usually talks about on his TV show The Source, the University of Alberta alumnus seemed to derive pleasure from the numerous, random outbursts vilifying him throughout his speech. The loud comments from the crowd included implications that he was homophobic, racist and misogynistic even after he explicitly stated that he thought women, African-Americans and gay people were equal to men, white people and heterosexuals, and referenced women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement and the fight for LGBTQ rights as reasons for the necessity of “offensive speech.”
While the shouting came from an extremely vocal minority, that small number of outraged delegates only served to undermine the professionalism that, up until that point, had been maintained and was extremely well displayed throughout the conference. If anything, it’s their opposition to Levant that looks ridiculous.
The reason The National Post has done so much better in the last year is in large measure due to the precipitous decline in the standards of journalism at its rival, The Globe and Mail. Doug Saunders' overt biases and manipulation of data to suit a personal, ideological agenda is a prime example.
Terry Glavin wrote today that:
I can't decide whether Doug Saunders' most recent attempt at journalism is downright creepy, disturbingly incompetent or merely comical. In any case, in his error-riddled essay he deceptively attributes any number of horrible things to UNAMA/NATO's "huge exercise" since 2006 that should accurately be attributed to late Obama-era half measures and a general shabbiness of the UNAMA/NATOs dismantling and withdrawal. Saunders claims a huge poll shows Afghans "overwhelmingly favour the Taliban over NATO forces and their own government," when the poll shows nothing of the kind - all polls that delve into that question in fact show the exact opposite. Saunders also claims that Afghan life expectancy (45-46) was actually better in the Taliban time, when in fact the WHO reports Afghan life expectancy today at 59 (m)and 61 (f). I even pointed out his misreading of the data to him several weeks ago, and sent him the references. He ignored them and reported what he knows to be untrue anyway. There's bullshit in almost every paragraph. Disgraceful behaviour by "Canada's national newspaper" today, and by Saunders.
In his column in The National Post last month, Conrad Black described the attempt by The Toronto Star to intimidate him into speaking out against Rob Ford.
Thornhill MP Peter Kent received the same crude effort by The Star to intimidate him into denouncing Toronto mayor Rob Ford.
His response is an example of integrity and courage that other politicians would do well to emulate and is well beyond the moral grasp of the fatuous, self-absorbed, sanctimonious garbage running the show at One Yonge Street:
DEAR MR OVED,
WHENEVER A REPORTER FOR THE TORONTO STAR MIGHT WISH TO ASK FOR MY THOUGHTS ON AN ISSUE OF THE DAY, I STAND READY TO RESPOND. HOWEVER, AND DESPITE YOUR "EXTENDED DEADLINE"' I WILL NOT ANSWER THE DEMANDS IN YOUR LETTER OF DECEMBER 16TH, 2013, WHICH I CONSIDER TO BE A CRUDELY CRAFTED, VEILED THREAT THAT I (AND OTHERS) ENDORSE AN EDITORIAL COLUMN WRITTEN BY TORSTAR CHAIR JOHN HONDERICH...OR FACE CONSEQUENCES IN YOUR EVENTUAL STORY. YOUR LETTER IS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF WHAT MIGHT BEST BE DESCRIBED AS CRUSADE JOURNALISM; A NEWSPAPER'S ATTEMPT TO IMPOSE ITS EDITORIAL WILL FAR BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF ACCEPTABLE JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE. MR HONDERICH IS CERTAINLY ENTITLED TO HIS OPINION. I WILL NOT BE BULLIED INTO COMMENTING ON THAT OPINION. YOUR MANNER OF NEWS-GATHERING IS, I BELIEVE, AN UNFORTUNATE EXAMPLE OF THE DECLINE OF A CRAFT I ONCE PROUDLY PRACTICED. SINCERELY,
A second-generation drug addict and welfare mom, with six kids from three different fathers and a long history of criminal activity, is bringing up her children in poverty. So rather than attribute it to the obvious abrogation of personal responsibility by the parents, The New York Times blames "income inequity." via City Journal:
Dasani Coates, the 11-year-old homeless child profiled in Andrea Elliott’s highly praised five-part New York Times feature, arrived on stage at Wednesday’s inauguration ceremonies to serve as a poignant symbol of—in Mayor de Blasio’s words—“the economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love.” But far from providing a window into inequality, the Times series, “Invisible Child,” is better understood as a beautifully reported but muddled revival of decades-long evasions about underclass poverty.
Dasani’s story is moving but hardly new. Anyone who lived in New York—or D.C., Detroit, or Chicago, for that matter—in the 1980s and early 1990s or who has dipped into books like Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family knows the general outline. Chanel, Dasani’s mother and herself the daughter of a welfare-dependent drug addict in Brooklyn, has six children by three different men, a long history of debilitating drug use, an explosive temper, and numerous arrests. Her husband, Supreme, has brought his own drug addiction and two more children by a deceased wife into the mix; Elliott makes vague reference to previous children as well. At some point, Supreme worked as a barber, but as far as we can tell, Chanel has never held a job. In truth, she isn’t much of a mother, either. She is often “listless from methadone”; the family’s room is filled with “piles of unwashed clothes.”
Even if you're convinced you're in the right and that you will eventually win, lawsuits suck.
They're time consuming and stressful and very expensive.
So even though a number of legal authorities were fairly certain Rob Ford could have won the defamation suit launched by The Toronto Star's Daniel Dale, the apology, and subsequent clarification of the apology the day later was a smart move by Toronto's mayor. The suit, the costs of which were funded by The Star, was dropped by Dale and there were probably reasons other than the spirit of forgiveness involved.
In the first place, Ford never said Dale was a "pedophile". The only people accusing Ford of having implied that were Dale's media cronies. Ford was talking about his own feelings of concern when he was told by a neighbor that someone was taking pictures of his backyard (which Dale denies and Ford has now said was not what Dale was doing). Thus, aside from the obstacle of proving Ford had defamed him, it would have been difficult, if not impossible for Dale to establish any damages even in the event of a ruling in his favor. As Ford never said Dale was a pedophile and nothing Ford has said has led anyone to believe Daniel Dale is a pedophile, how could Dale establish that his reputation has been harmed?
As a tactical move, the Ford apology, which clarified that he retracted any negative interpretation of Dale that could be attached to the TV interview the mayor had with Conrad Black, changed the equation. Almost certainly crafted with assistance from lawyers, the apology placed Dale and The Star in a position where they would very likely have been hit with all of Ford's costs if the matter went to trial and a judgement were reached against them.
Moreover, as much as the law suit was seen, from the onset, as another example of The Star's obsessive agenda to go after Ford using any means they could think of, following his initial apology, the tides had turned a great deal.
Even people not necessarily sympathetic to Ford were viewing the continuation of the suit at that point as petty, vindictive, and a substantiation of a vendetta The Star has had against Ford for the last 3 years.
The Star has come off as the major loser in all this. When Dale stated that with his employer's support, he would continue to be the City Hall reporter while suing the mayor, it became obvious beyond any doubt that even the pretense of objectivity could no longer be maintained by The Toronto Star.
Now Ford can concentrate on his campaign for re-election, with issues working in his favor such as his opponents' wastefulness, their penchant for taxation, and their corrupt subservience to unions.
So for Ford, the lawsuit has gone away, whereas for The Toronto Star, the stigma of bias, pettiness and unprofessionalism will stick around for a very long time.
Compare and contrast these two responses from the CBC Ombudsman:
Talking about terrorists and terrorism
The complainant, Bruce McMinn, questioned why CBC reports on the attack and siege of the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya did not refer to the perpetrators as terrorists or the attack as a “terrorist attack.” ...MANAGEMENT RESPONSE
Jennifer Harwood, Managing Editor of CBC News Network, replied to your concerns. She explained that it is a long standing practice to use the words “terrorist” or “terrorism” when they are attributed by others. She explained that the practice is “to describe the act or individual, as ‘bomber’, ‘militant’, ‘extremist’ or ‘gunman,’ for instance, and let the viewer, reader or listener make his own judgment about the nature of the event. The purpose of journalism is to reflect reality, to inform, and to give viewers and listeners enough information so that they can reach their own conclusions.”
She pointed out that the use of the word can be highly politicized and therefore it is preferable that there be a consistent practice to be as specific as possible in describing an event without labelling it. She pointed out that many other leading news organizations also avoid using the words “on their own as a form of description without attribution.” CBC has been following this practice for over 30 years.
Here's a tip that one might think a "journalist" or someone in charge of oversight for a News Deprtment might be aware: "terrorism" is a word. Words have definitions. If a person or persons act meets the definition of "terrorism" than the act is terrorism and the perpetrator is a terrorist.
It is very clear that what happened at the Westgate Mall was terrorism. But the CBC didn't mention that there are a number of supporters of terrorism among the network's supporters, so offending them is something they wouldn't want to do.
On the other hand conservatives aren't, as a rule, big fans of the CBC, so who cares if the CBC exhibits blatant bias against them?
Twerking is not a four-letter word
..COMPLAINT
You felt an analysis column by Neil Macdonald about the politics of the shutdown of the United States government was highly inappropriate. The column, which you referred to as a diatribe, is titled: “Analysis: Republicans twerking for the cameras like Miley Cyrus.” You felt that Mr. Macdonald was “engaging in obscenities” because he used the word twerking and he compared Republicans to the singer Miley Cyrus. You cited these lines from the piece to make the case that the essay contained “mean-spirited, obscene language”:
“Like the utterly shameless woman-child Miley Cyrus, modern Washington understands the mortal risk of banality, and so occasionally needs to make a singular spectacle of itself. Republicans are doing that now: sticking out their tongue, grabbing their crotch, waggling their rear end and ‘twerking’ for the cameras, to use that awful neologism.” You said the essay indulged in “rather hysterical name-calling, instead of putting forth rational arguments.”
Aside from the language, you objected to the placement of the essay on the news home page. You said it was the only reference to the situation in Washington you saw on the page. There were no “objective” articles listed, so that you might check on the latest news of the day. “So instead of informing Canadians as to what is happening in Washington, we are treated to an opinion essay lobbing obscene insults at Republicans.” You felt this harmed “CBC’s supposed journalistic integrity.”
Have you ever heard a tale from a pathological liar that is so mind-numbingly stupid you wondered why they even bothered to tell it?
You know, one of those lies that is so obviously, demonstrably untrue that by telling it to you, they either have complete contempt for your intelligence or are such idiots that they don't realize that their attempt at deception is completely transparent.
That's what I heard yesterday night from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about their rationale for concealing the fanatical activist and lawbreaking history of the two Canadians, Tarek Loubani and John Greyson, who had been imprisoned in Egypt since August.
In his report yesterday about the return of the two Muslim Brotherhood-enabling radicals to Canada, CBC reporter Ron Charles treated viewers to this little gem:
`While the men were in jail, great care was taken back home not to reveal too much about them for their safety. Few people mentioned that Greyson is a prominent Gay filmmaker, pro-Palestinian activist and member of a controversial group called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. He was to have been part of a failed flotilla of boats carrying activists in 2011 intending to breech Israel`s blockade of Gaza.``
Think for a moment how incredibly facile that CBC assertion sounds.
Greyson is an openly Gay York University professor who has gobbled up vast sums from the Canada Council and other tax-funded bodies to make his homoerotic pseudo-artistic trash. He even has a long-standing Wikipedia entry that highlights his so-called "filmmaking" career as well as his radical anti-Israel activism.
Greyson has a long history of Hamas-enabling fanaticism
Beyond that, bloggers and Sun News were reporting on the truth about Greyson and Loubani`s background from Day 1 of their arrest.
So for the CBC`s explanation for why they covered up Greyson and Loubani`s background to be plausible, it would mean that Egyptian prosecutors were incapable of typing the two men`s names into a Google search.
What then is the real reason media like the CBC and the Toronto Star hid the background of Greyson and Loubani, not from Egyptians, but from their fellow Canadians who get their news from those sources?
The answer is obvious. The left-wing media are sympathetic to Greyson and Loubani. The CBC and the Star, for the last two months, have been manipulating Canadians into thinking the duo were "innocents" caught "in the wrong place at the wrong time" to contrive pressure on our, not the Egyptian government, to act on their behalf.
Greyson in particular is part of a narrow clique of Canada Council darlings including overrated Canadian media personalities Atom Egoyan and Sarah Polley. The CBC and Star were more than happy to manipulate the news and hide facts from the public to keep their friends happy and agitate for the public to pressure the government to act on behalf of two fanatics.
Don't get me wrong, I too thought the government should have advocated for them to receive just treatment in Egypt and even made an appeal for them (sarcastic as it may have been).
But I knew who John Greyson and Tarek Loubami really were.
We now know that Greyson and Loubani's story is just that, a story, and it's full of holes.
Why were they breaking curfew to attend a banned Muslim Brotherhood rally that turned into a violent riot?
Why were they carrying surveillance equipment, including mini-drones, and offering the implausible excuse that it was for the transport of medical supplies?
Whereas the CBC and The Toronto Star didn't want anyone to find that out.
This goes to show that what we see from the CBC is not fair, objective, unbiased journalism, but activism pretending to be reporting.
It would be nice if that backlash was strong enough to get the CBC to actually do its job properly, or as an impetus for it to be sold to someone who could see that it does.
