My evening with bitter fanatics

A seemingly innocuous storefront operation called Beit Zatoun, in downtown Toronto`s funky Mirvish Village, peddles cheap anti-Israel propaganda literature and expensive Palestinian olive oil. A couple of weeks ago, it was the scene of a gathering of grungy fanatics intent on venting their hatred for a democracy surrounded by barbarity. 

I was asked to observe by The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC), an organization that advocates for tolerance and provides education about the Holocaust and other examples of the horrors that befall civilization when the basic rules of human behavior break down. I do some work for FSWC on occasion and they wanted me to check out a lecture by Eva Bartlett, a member of the extremist anti-Israel organization, the International Solidarity Movement. 

Some of the propaganda art on display

A dismal turnout of about two dozen hard-core anti-Zionists (and I) were the only attendees of the two and a half hours of tedium on June 14^th that had been promoted by the free weekly Toronto newspaper NOW.  

With a backdrop of an exhibit called “A Child’s View of Gaza,” a handful of drawings depicting Jews as bloodthirsty killers and Palestinians as innocent victims, Ms Bartlett narrated a slide show that duplicated the message of the artwork. The Canadian Arab Federation’s former President and Vice President Khalled Muammar and Ali Mallah, Sea Hitler Gaza boat hysteric David Heap, anti-Israel zealot Karin Brothers and a smattering of familiar faces from the local anti-Zionist scene made up the whole of the audience. The room resembled a residents’ dietary committee meeting at a geriatric centre but with worse fashion-sense; the average age of the attendees being about 68.   

The anti-Israel community in Toronto is relatively small and close-knit, characterized by a paranoia and narcissism which makes for a curious conflict of needs. On one hand they relish attention, but on the other, they deplore being made to look ridiculous, which given what they say and do is a frequent outcome.  It was therefore a little amusing and not unexpected when, prior to Bartlett beginning her talk, she and a frumpy, white-haired woman wearing a Canadian Gaza Boat t-shirt gave me the distinction of approaching to ask my identity. I told my name to Bartlett, who is wispy, high-strung and appears to be in her mid 30's,and she further inquired, "are you Blazing Cat Fur?" 

Blazing Cat Fur is a conservative, pro-Zionist Toronto blogger who has been responsible for breaking a number of stories about Islamic extremism and abuse of authority by government and unions at the local, provincial and federal levels. A soft-spoken fellow, he does this all on his own time and expense and his work has often attracted international attention, as in the case of the Valley Park Middle School Mosqueteria. That the coterie of kooks at Beit Zatoun would be so intimidated at the possible presence of that lone, mild-mannered, independent citizen journalist tells volumes about their neurotic fear of being deprived of approbation.

The message of Bartlett’s talk was as vicious as it was facile, saying, “all of the problems in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria are because of the Zionists.” The so-called peace activist stated that “violent resistance is legitimate,” while making continual reference to Palestinian “martyrs.”  What made this all the more ironic was that the lecture was sponsored by an organization that deceptively calls itself Canadians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East . 

Photographs of one Palestinian family after another appeared on the screen with Bartlett describing each as “desperately poor.” These families had two, three, six, eight children or more with most about to expect another soon. Without her realization,  Bartlett’s lecture undermined the message she was trying to convey, that Israel is the sole cause of the Palestinians' problems. Any middle class North American family would also be desperately poor if they were to continue to have households of up to a dozen children without  the means of supporting them. Bartlett provided the additional example of the family of her husband, a Palestinian from Gaza, who she said had fifteen (15) siblings and also grew up “desperately poor.” This brought to mind the saying of Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir, that "peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us." The lack of responsibility in producing multitudes of children they cannot properly care for reiterated that in Palestinian society, children are often just another weapon for propaganda and fodder for jihad. With their pathological fixation on Israel being the cause of all the world's ills, such obvious insights eluded Bartlett and her cultish audience. 

She blamed the traumatisation of children in Gaza on Israel while not once mentioning Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel or the Palestinians' own traumatisation of their children by encouraging them to hate and be killers and suicide bombers from kindergarten age.  

The tragedy of events like Bartlett’s speech, as uninfluential and unimportant as they are, is that by investing all their energies into trying to delegitimize Israel under the guise of peace activism, such people merely entrench lies and polarize fanatics into postures that make achieving peace in the middle east an even more difficult prospect.

David Heap with Eva Bartlett (left)

An unusual addendum to the evening came about in the question and answer period following Bartlett's presentation in a furious tirade by Sea Hitler organizer David Heap.  A pudgy, slovenly-looking man with a double-chinned face and neck perpetually full of stubble suggesting an impersonation of the late Yasser Arafat, were you to see Heap while driving past a street corner, your immediate concern might be that he would try to wipe your windshield with a greasy rag. Like so many of his cohorts, he comes off as unrelentingly bitter and aggrieved.

On this occasion, when considering why the media didn't give nonentities like him and Bartlett more attention, Heap angrily railed against a small but effective organization called Honest Reporting Canada. Run almost single-handed by a thoughtful young man named Mike Fegelman, Honest Reporting Canada (HRC) monitors media for distortions and falsehoods they broadcast about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and publicizes them.

Heap indignantly alleged that Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reporters had privately told him they would like to do more stories on Palestine, but the focus from HRC had made their editors wary of it. The attention has compelled the CBC to have to apologize and correct a number of erroneous reports. If Heap's account was true, then having to ensure accuracy in their reporting on a subject must have been a daunting enough prospect for the frequently inept news service of Canada's state broadcaster to make them reluctant to approach it.

Thus Heap's confession of frustration at an evening of bias confirmation, like Bartlett's lecture itself, provided an unintended value; not to them, but to others. The truth that emerged from their huddle of self-affirmation and self-congratulation is not of how much they have accomplished, but of how little and how self-discrediting they are in the process.

-------------------------------------------------------

I'll get you, you Zionist antagonist!
And your little dog too!

UPDATE (July 7): Ms Bartlett came across this piece which was graciously recommended by National Post Comment Editor Jonathan Kay. Apparently she became so upset that she took to writing an angry essay about it in an anti-Semitic, 9-11 conspiracist website called deLiberation. It also features writers like Jew haters Greg Felton and Gilad Atzom, lunatic Jihad-advocate Lauren Booth, and a slew of 9-11 conspiracy nuts such as Alan Hart and Martin Iqbal, plus links to the Holocaust-denying site Veterans Today.  The approving user comments on her piece equal or surpass in hate and bigotry the sort of things one would expect from the neo-Nazi website Stormfront.

"Peace" activist Bartlett, who is a big fan of the terror group Hezbollah, cites discredited 9-11 conspiracist Richard Falk as a "respected" source along with other equally vapid and dishonest attempts to obfuscate an obvious truth. If the leadership of Gaza would explicitly recognize Israel's right to exist and unequivocally commit to a cessation of violence, there would be peace. But we never hear that from these fake "peace" activists, do we?

Oh, and here's an important video about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, home to one of the fattest populations on Earth:




More "human rights abuses":

Now this, I gotta see!

The trailer for the new movie The Man with the Iron Fists, produced by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Wu Tang Clan's RZA - it looks great!

Is It Israel Alice Walker hates or her Jewish ex-husband?

It's difficult work being one of those class of people who define themselves as activists. It requires you to push a cause all the time, even if there isn't a great one going. The reason for such pathology frequently has less to do with a desire to make the world a better place than it does with people who are severely psychologically damaged acting out their need for attention and approbation.

Alice Walker in 1989

Thus an interesting psychological profile emerges from moral imbeciles like Alice Walker, for whom the only country in the middle east that protects rights and has equal enfranchisement, regardless of race or religion, for all its citizens is an "apartheid state."  In so many cases of the fanatics who seemingly devote all the waking hours to finding new ways to abhor the Jewish homeland, bizarre, hyper-emotional, histrionic behavior seems to be a facet of their personal characteristics. 

Walker has managed to recapture a moment of attention for herself recently with the very public, if not particularly significant gesture of denying the right of an Israeli publisher to translate her book The Color Purple into Hebrew. Ostensibly, her reasoning is that it would be some sort of punishment for Israel's "oppression" of the Palestinians. 

On the surface, the preference for Palestinian culture that is not democratic has no free speech, that discriminates against women and persecutes gays and teaches its children to hate and kill over a free democracy seems irrational. 

But it doesn't take much examination of Alice Walker's background to see that she presents as a stereotype of a scorned, bitter woman driven by personal demons and resentment of people she feels wronged her rather than a passionate crusader for a misdirected sense of social justice. Not having written anything that has come close to matching The Color Purple, she comes off as desperate to regain the limelight. But with her flash in the pan literary talents waning, the only way she can command headlines now is through clownish stunt activism.  

In the 1960's when such unions in the United States were rare and in some places illegal, Walker was in an interracial marriage with a white Civil Rights lawyer named Mel Leventhal. As his surname suggests, Leventhal was Jewish and the marriage ended in divorce when their daughter Rebecca was eight years old. 

In that context, it could easily be viewed that Walker's hatred for Israel is really a transfer of her hate for her ex-husband in a venue that is more socially acceptable in rad-chic circles. If that sounds far-fetched, consider this account from Walker:

"I gave her [an old Palestinian woman] a gift I had brought, and she thanked me. Looking into my eyes she said: May God protect you from the Jews. When the young Palestinian interpreter told me what she’d said, I responded: It’s too late, I already married one. I said this partly because, like so many Jews in America, my former husband could not tolerate criticism of Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinians

Adding to the full picture of Alice Walker is the account of her daughter Rebecca, who wrote of being the only child of a woman who despised motherhood. Walker feels that motherhood is a 'form of slavery' and one can only imagine the sorrowful childhood that Rebecca Walker must have had being raised by a woman who clearly resented her maternal role. 

Although I knew what my mother felt about babies, I still hoped that when I told her I was pregnant, she would be excited for me. 

Instead, when I called her one morning in the spring of 2004, while I was at one of her homes housesitting, and told her my news and that I'd never been happier, she went very quiet. All she could say was that she was shocked. Then she asked if I could check on her garden. I put the phone down and sobbed  -  she had deliberately withheld her approval with the intention of hurting me. What loving mother would do that?   

Worse was to follow. My mother took umbrage at an interview in which I'd mentioned that my parents didn't protect or look out for me. She sent me an e-mail, threatening to undermine my reputation as a writer. I couldn't believe she could be so hurtful  -  particularly when I was pregnant.

Devastated, I asked her to apologise and acknowledge how much she'd hurt me over the years with neglect, withholding affection and resenting me for things I had no control over  -  the fact that I am mixed-race, that I have a wealthy, white, professional father and that I was born at all.  

But she wouldn't back down. Instead, she wrote me a letter saying that our relationship had been inconsequential for years and that she was no longer interested in being my mother. She even signed the letter with her first name, rather than 'Mom'.

What emerges is a portrait of someone who portrays herself as a social justice champion, but is really an awful human being. Having demonstrated some literary talent decades earlier doesn't pave over Walker`s being an unpleasant narcissist acting out her personal resentments and pathological need for constant attention.

Indeed that would make her completely typical of the neo-leftist radicals who act out their personal issues in their very public hatred of Israel. 

Rebecca Walker wrote about her mother Alice, " She finds it impossible to step out of the limelight." But the limelight has veered away from Alice Walker for some time. Her desperation to have it illuminate her again has led to an examination that shows her to be a rather poor specimen of humanity.

Canadian Federal Court Says No Copyright Infringement For Linking, Posting Several Paragraphs

The Federal Court of Canada has issued an important decision involving copyright and posting content online. The case involves a lawsuit launched by Richard Warman and the National Post against Mark and Constance Fournier, who run the FreeDominion website. Warman and the National Post sued the site over the appearance of two articles and an inline link to photograph that appeared on the forum. The court dismissed all three claims. 

While the first claim (Warman's article) was dismissed on the basis that it took too long to file the lawsuit, the legal analysis on the National Post claim involving an article by Jonathan Kay assesses the copyright implications of posting several paragraphs from an article online. In this case, the article was 11 paragraphs long.  The reproduction on the Free Dominion site included the headline, three complete paragraphs and part of a fourth. The court ruled that this amount of copying did not constitute a "substantial part" of the work and therefore there was no infringement. The court added that in the alternative, the reproduction of the work was covered by fair dealing, concluding that a large and liberal interpretation of news reporting would include posts to the discussion forum.  The decision then includes an analysis of the six factor test and concludes that the use was fair.

More at Michael Geist's Blog

Rot in the Toronto District School Board

More here on this at The Toronto Star.

and at Blazing Cat Fur

Thanks very much to SDAMatt2a for the video!

By crying wolf about `abuse` NDP`s Horvath does a disservice to women in politics

Politics is a tough business.

It`s not for the thin-skinned. It gets personal, it gets nasty, and the higher up you go,  the meaner it gets and that is how things have been since democracy began in ancient Greece.

Ontario NDP leader Horvath

For a politician to succeed, they have to be able to project strength and fortitude. So it was a bit of surprise last week when Andrea Horvath, the Ontario NDP leader, made a point of her own weakness and inability to  withstand pressure by accusing Premier Dalton McGuinty of `workplace abuse`and `bullying` because his Liberal MPPs criticized her demands for passing the budget and her personally.

Welcome to the big leagues, Ms Horvath,  And in her first big match up at the plate, she struck out with no balls. 

Aside from blinking when McGuinty threatened an election rather than enacting her amendments to his Budget, she embarrassed herself and her party by suggesting that her political rivals criticism of her was a form of workplace abuse and mistreatment. When making the nonsensical allegation, she even went so far as to engage in ludicrous theatrics by having her staff hand out postcards to reporters citing a Woman Abuse Research Consortium website on the impact of verbal abuse and other mistreatment in the workplace. 

Too bad she couldn`t squeeze out a few crocodile tears for added effect. 

The implication being that women can't handle the rough ant tumble world of professional politics at the same level as men, which as anyone who's seen Margaret Thatcher of Hillary Clinton in action knows couldn't be further from the truth. But it does appear to be the case with Ms. Horvath.

Compared to some of the insults politicians regularly endure, the Liberals saying she is `not to be trusted` and she `betrayed a deal`` are pretty mild. If those minor barbs were too much for Horvath to handle, imagine how she`s fold like a house of cards if she came under real pressure. 

Actually, you don`t have to imagine;  it`s a matter of public record. 

It`s unfortunate that we live in a time and a place of societal self-absorption, where anyone who disagrees with you is a `bully`and the highest status one can achieve is that of `victim.` 

We have a right to expect better than that from those who aspire to lead and make decisions for the public. 

I`ve argued before that attack ads, decried by some, are in fact a critical and necessary component of the political process. If a politician can`t withstand criticism from relatively benign domestic rivals, imagine how poorly they would  represent their constituents` interests when facing a real foreign adversary.  

The ability to withstand pressure is a process that weeds out politicians who aren`t up to the task of leadership.  Ms Horvath`s petulance and whining to the media in the face of that pressure showed where she falls in that process.

Rabble.ca: Canada's regressives who want to censor you

The ridiculous website rabble.ca is a favorite target of this blog for a variety of reasons, and not just because its writers are so radical, vapid, and histrionic that they make easy subjects for mockery (although that certainly is the case).

But the site itself is, in one place, the manifestation of a destructive, stupid and hateful strain in Canadian politics and social engineering policy that has influential support in parliament, organized labor and the media.

Rabble was founded by anti-Conservative fanatic Judy Rebick. Rebick started her public life as a feminist activist in the long gone days when lascivious curiosity seekers would attend rallies in the hopes of seeing a flash of skin through the orange flames of a bra-burning. Now many decades later with all the feminist battles won, Rebick and her cohorts still leech onto any number of far-fetched grievances, like the vapid Occupy movement, in the hope of regaining long-lost relevance.

These unions and radical organizations keep rabble.ca afloat

Lately, it is to one Kim Elliott, the same-sex partner/spouse of NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies, to whom the reins of rabble.ca have been passed. The website is financed almost entirely by Labor Unions and NDP- linked advocacy organizations like the Council of Canadians and the Centre for Policy Alternatives. So it is no surprise to find that all rabble's articles essentially act as advocacy pieces for them. In fact, in their online discussion forum, called babble, users can and do get barred for making anti-union (or  pro-Conservative, Republican and Israel) comments. Rabble is not influential outside of its narrow circle, but it is indicative of the thinking of the neo-Marxist elements in Canadian political, academic and other spheres..

Under the guise of being crusaders for progressive politics, rabble pushes backwards policies that are more reflective of Soviet statism than liberal democratic values.

Indicative of the regressive attitudes they would impose on the whole of the Canadian public are three articles published in rabble last Tuesday.

One comes under the very telling title, Why progressives want to turn the clock back.  It was written by rabble.ca columnist and Board of Directors member Duncan Cameron. Naturally,  the era to which progressives want us all to regress is to the socialist paradise of Pierre Trudeau in which government grasped at more and more domination of every segment of society and culture. Trudeau had the wisdom to pronounce that `government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.` Regrettably, that was the only place Trudeau felt that government shouldn`t be able to dominate every aspect of people`s lives.

It would obviously be wishful thinking to expect the failures of EuroSocialism like Increased taxation, spending and deficits,  government control of commerce and industry to have taught anything to people so ideologically indoctrinated that they still have faith that Karl Marx will someday be recognized as the enlightened savior of mankind. Instead, they want a return in Canada to the type of policies that have sent Europe teetering on the precipice of economic ruin. The rest of us need to learn that this is the company kept by the some of the senior echelons of our Official Opposition, and is what lies in store for us if the Canadian public ever makes the catastrophic mistake of ever making them a federal government. 

The other two articles are about something that on the surface is so absurd, it should be the subject of comedy routines. It has to do with outrageously outspoken Sun News Network host Ezra Levant`s rant against the anti-Canadian policies of the Chiquita Banana corporation. Levant infamously ended his invective against the company by telling, on air, one of it`s executives to `chinga tu madre`which is the colloquial Spanish way of inviting him to have carnal relations with his mother.  

A complaint was made to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (SBSC)  by rabble.ca columnist David Climenhaga about Levant' supposed "lack of civility."  While claiming membership is voluntary, the CSRB is a regulatory body that non-government broadcasters are compelled to join in order to secure a broadcast license. The motive for Climenhaga's complaint seems to be a vendetta against the "right wing" Sun network, since by his own admission, he didn't see the broadcast on TV, but in an online video which is not covered by CSRB guidelines. But aside from the hypocrisy of the complainant whose demands for civility appear to be only directed at those with whom he disagrees, it points to the deplorable, totalitarian, censorious nature of the union-beholden NDP cheering squad in radical media.  

Climenhaga makes a laughable, self-contradictory claim that his complaint "  is obviously not a call or censorship, but merely for the enforcement of minimal standards of civility on a publicly owned resource. "

In other words, Clininhaga wrote that obviously he doesn't want censorship, but for a government-affiliated panel with the power to enforce rules and impose penalties to be able to prevent broadcasters from saying things that he doesn't like. Which, as anyone but an imbecile would realize, is censorship.  

In the same day's posting on rabble,  a transgendered woman named Mercedes Allen   parrots Climenhaga's mantra by writing, "freedom of speech also comes with a responsibility to maintain some civility and decorum."       

The radical left, whose marketable skills are limited to the part time food serving jobs some may have held while picking up Equity Studies degrees, are our contemporary Blanche Doboises, dependent on the kindness of strangers (or in some cases cronies) who hand out tax-funded government grants.

And in that spirit, Ms Allen, in the true nature of the mindset of rabble's writers, lets us know what censorship really is, accusing the Harper government of  "waging an economic stifling of speech through the defunding of environmental science, Status of Women groups, Aboriginal advocacy and human rights organizations."   

Among the self-indulgent, cultish, dimwits who populate the pages of rabble, censorship has a different definition than a rational person.. or a dictionary. This is a consistent theme among socialist leeches. They want government commissions to be able to tell you what you cannot say or publish and that's not censorship, that's civility.  But in their minds, censorship is when the government doesn't hand out large tax-funded grants to subsidize their radical causes, including supporters of terror groups, that are in direct conflict with government policies. 

That kind of upside-down idiocy may sound too preposterous to take seriously.  Yet if nothing else, the petty totalitarians at rabble.ca trying to remake Canada into a warped Trotskyite vision are very serious about want they want.

Women`s Coalition storms Capitol Hill

h/t Blazing Cat Fur

Be careful what you eat! Korean woman mouth raped by her dinner

A South Korean woman got quite a mouthful when a semi-cooked squid she was eating reportedly inseminated her mouth.

The 63-year-old suffered "severe pain" and a "prickling, foreign-body sensation" in her mouth after taking a bite of the partially-cooked seafood...  

Toronto Councillor Michael Thompson says he accidentally voted the wrong way on "Israeli Apartheid" condemnation

A motion proposed by Councillor Josh Colle condemning the use of the term "Israeli Apartheid" was passed overwhelmingly by Toronto City Council last week on June 7.  The vote tally was 26 to 7, in favor, but there was one 'no' vote that surprised many observers of Toronto municipal politics.

Ward 37 Councillor Michael Thompson is known to be one of the most intelligent and reasonable of Toronto's municipal politicians. It was a shock to many of his fellow councilors and others at City Hall when he voted against the condemnation of the hateful language used by anti-western, anti-capitalist and Islamist fanatics to slander and attempt to delegitimize the only genuine democracy in the middle east.

At a meeting of the City's Executive Committee last week, Councillor James Pasternak mentioned he too was shocked by Thompson's vote and that Thompson had told him the vote was made in error.

In a conversation I had with Councillor Thompson last Thursday afternoon, he confirmed that he indeed does condemn the use of the term "Israeli Apartheid" in the strongest terms and his vote against supporting the motion to that effect was a mistake. Thompson said the reason for his vote was because he was mislead by one of his Council colleagues.

Most City Council meetings last for many hours and are, for the most, part taken up by minor housekeeping issues, be it matters like zoning, whether a street gets speed bumps, if more money is allocated for tree trimming, etc. Councilors frequently come and go during sessions in order to attend business or for something as simple as going to the washroom - that's why on any given vote, there are frequently a  number of absentee councilors even though they are at City Hall.

Thompson said he had just re-entered Council chambers after Colle's motion was put to the vote and he asked a colleague what the vote was. His fellow Councillor, who Thompson declined to name, led Thompson to believe it was one of those minor housekeeping matters and told the Scarborough representative "this is one you want to vote no on" knowing  full well that Thompson held the opposite view.

Such is the sleazy, deceptive behavior of some municipal politicians, particularly those on the far left of Toronto's political spectrum. The six who voted against Colle's motion to condemn the hate speech were the original owner of the Queers Against Israeli Apartheid website, Kristyn Wong Tam, Gord Perks, Janet Davis, Mike Layton, the son of the former NDP leader, Sarah Doucette, and Maria Augimeri.

At the Executive Committee meeting on June 12 Councilor Thompson moved that the matter that was supposed to address the City's revised anti-Discrimination Policy should be deferred until September and the motion passed. This move also came a a surprise to many, since it would have been an opportunity to decisively address the issue of whether the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid or such groups in city funded events violated the city's policy and would preclude municipal funding for them.

Councillor Thompson said that the reason he wanted the issue deferred is that, despite the fact that the City Manager was directed to produce a revised policy and had a year to do so, the new policy was in no substantive way any different than the old one. He said that as it would have taken a great deal of Committee time to deal with the matter and there were a number of other issues before them, deferring it until a time it could be given sufficient seemed the best way to ensure the policy could be properly addressed.

Although Thompson did not discuss it directly, he acknowledged that another matter related to the City's revised anti-Discrimination policy that failed to adequately address the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid was the apparent conflict of interest in the City Department charged with advising on the new document.

The City's Office of Equity, Diversity and Human Rights, which was primarily responsible for the revisions to the policy, is headed by Uzma Shakir, who has a long history of extreme anti-Zionist pronouncements. In addition to being a proponent of the use of Islamic Sharia Law in Ontario Family Court, Shakir has made  radical, extremist statements in which she suggested that Muslim immigrants to Canada do not owe full loyalty to their new country because of the Canadian government's stance towards the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.Thomson said that he welcomes community input into how the new Anti-Discrimination Policy should look and encourages concerned citizens who live in Toronto to contact his office.

One simple way of making sure the new policy is effective would be to state that any term or agenda specifically condemned by City Council that undermines the values of tolerance and diversity would be deemed to be in violation of the City's anti-Discrimination policy.

Councillor Thompson can be contacted at councillor_thompson@toronto.ca

Mondoweiss founder shows he's both a self-hating Jew and an idiot

Self-hating Jew is a term that gets bandied about too easily and usually incorrectly. There are some in the pro-Israel community who apply the term as a blanket to any anti-Israel Jew. That's clearly not the case for many. In the case of a number of radical anti-Israel Jews, they are not the least bit self-hating (although if they had more self-insight, they probably should be), they are self-promoting narcissists who hate other Jews.

But in a recently published piece, Philip Weiss, the founder of Mondoweiss, a fanatically anti-Israel, nutbar leftist website, demonstrates actual Jewish anti-Semitism with idiotic conspiratorial nonsense worthy of a David Duke rant.

Writing about US Vice President Joe Biden's daughter having married a Jew, Weiss states:

 I believe people want to marry Jews because we're successful (and we are overall the wealthiest group in the U.S. by religion). People want to get ahead, people want to get in with the in crowd. Of the moderators of the Republican debates this year, most were Jewish media guys.

The stupidity of what Weiss wrote is obvious. American Christians and Jews are not subject to forced, arranged marriages common in Islamic states. They marry because they fall in love with someone, not to grasp at Jewish power and wealth. Jews are one of the most integrated, assimilated  ethnic groups, so it's no wonder there is a great deal of intermarriage.

It`s not news when a Protestant marries a Catholic of a Buddhist, but in Wesis' bigoted mind, when a member of a prominent family marries a Jew and it doesn`t make the front pages, it is part of some conspiracy or as he puts it, `one of the great bans on reporting, alas because of Jewish insecurity...But there's a lot of denial of this, because of the fear that pointing out the obvious about our social position would bring about pogroms`

The insecurity, fear and cowardice is on the part of Weiss, which might well account for why he is so desperate to endear himself to the enemies of Jews and the Jewish state.

Is this the apology and confession the nitwits at the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council wanted?

I'm guessing it isn't.

Does Canada need an unaccountable body of censors telling us what we can watch and hear?

Background on the story of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) complaint and ruling against Ezra Levant is in the video at the bottom of the post. The complaint was made by originally by a David Climenhaga, an obtuse writer for the union financed, fanatical neo-Marxist propaganda organ rabble.ca, a genius who has written that "there can be no doubt that there is a connection between the North American right's increasing invocation of the language of violence and the actual use of violence."

So perhaps his complaint was motivated by the earnest fear that Ezra Levant and Charles Adler were going to home invade a Chiquita Banana executive's home and force him to have incestuous sex with his mother.

After all, the terrible urban violence in Detroit and Los Angeles that has been going on for decades, but is actually decreasing lately must have something to do with the "right's" use of language. And those Occupy movement imbeciles who assaulted and raped each other were undoubtedly driven to their uncontrollable psychological limits by something Rush Limbaugh said, no doubt.

The great brain of Climenhaga also came up with this gem, that "our own right-wing derives all its political ideas, strategy and style from the United States."  

And his conclusive proof being a link to the facebook page for The Tea Party of Canada which has less than 1500 members, none of whom is a prominent conservative. Come to think of it, perhaps, as his writing suggests, Mr. Climenhaga just isn't a very smart person. ( Although that would still make him above average compared to other rabble.ca writers, many of whom fit the dictionary definition of moron.)

In his latest blathering stream of consciousness on rabble, he crows about how the CBSC's censorious attack against Levant is "a victory for civility in Canadian political discourse."

Let's see what civility means to this dolt..he has written that conservative academics at the University of Calgary are a " group of right-wing ideologues and propagandists," and that Conservative pundit Ann Coulter is an  "offensive hate-mongering American proponent of the murder of her political opponents."  Climenhaga seems to harbor a special hatred for Conrad Black, whom he has described as a "right-wing drivelist" and an "international neo-Con blowhard."  Climenhaga also alluded to Immigration and Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney as a  "jumped-up little twerp of a citizenship minister."

Now there's civility for you!

Climenhaga has every right to his opinions, and in fact it's a good thing he expresses them, as they make him look a far greater fool than any of his intended targets. But for him to whine and complain like a sulky, stupid brat about the "lack of civility in Canadian political discourse" when he is one of the least civil writers in Canada demonstrates both a dearth of intellect and a new height of hypocrisy. Of course, if he wasn't a hypocrite, he probably wouldn't be allowed a regular column in rabble.ca

Marc Garneau is the Liberals' only hope

With Bob Rae announcing today he will not seek the Liberal leadership, it seems the right moment to post a link to a piece I wrote back in October 2010 about how Marc Garneau is the only chance the Liberals have to revive themselves for the next election.

If only they had listened to me last time!

And if the Liberals think the Conservative attack ads they faced against Stephane Dion, Michael Ignatieff and now Bob Rae were tough, wait to see what happens if they are suicidal enough to put Justin Trudeau in charge of the party.

New York Democrats may nominate the next Cynthia McKinney

Former Black Panther Charles Barron is a huge fan of murderous dictators like Robert Mugabe and Muammar Gaddafi, he thinks schools should teach Ebonics,  he is contemptuous of Jews, and he hates Israel.

Apparently, the Democrats are terrified that he may actually get the party`s nomination for Congressional candidate in Brooklyn`s 8th District and make the national party look like idiots.

h/t Doug D.

Toronto City Council wimps out on Pride funding issue - again

This weekend I had tapped out what I thought was a lovely little speech about the responsibility of the municipality not to fund a platform for the vapid hatemongers called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (al-Quaia)  that I was planning to deliver to the Executive Committee of the City of Toronto today . But thanks to a motion put forward by Ward 37 Councillor Michael Thompson that passed overwhelmingly, deliberations about the revised Anti-Discrimination Policy, which would have provided an avenue to address the conditions for Pride Toronto's 2012 funding, will be deferred until September .

Last year, the room was overflowing with so many people speaking about the issue, the meeting went late into the night despite the reduction of deputants' usual talking time from five to four minutes. Even though there were only a handful of people who had signed up to deliver a message this year, it's not surprising the Executive Committee avoided dealing with the contentious matter until after Pride was over. It is a highly contentious and controversial issue at the best of times, but a fight was certainly in the brewing this year.

In a compromise motion proposed by Councillor James Pasternak that that passed last week  27 to 7, rather than make funding to Pride conditional on the exclusion of the hate group al-Quaia, Toronto Council instead voted to condemn the use of the term Israeli Apartheid. (Councillor Thompson, who voted against the motion was allegedly told Councillor Pasternak he made a mistake and intended to support the motion - I have a call in to Councillor Thompson's office to clarify whether that is the case.)

Armed with that official condemnation, Councillor Pasternak had intended to show that the term Israeli Apartheid was hateful and violated the City's Anti-Discrimination Policy, something the revised policy itself did not address. If that was made clear by an amendment to the policy and If Pride were to include the group using the term, it would therefore violate its funding conditions.

But this year that would have engendered a huge fight, which would have been made all the more vicious following revelations first published on this blog and later picked up by the Toronto Sun, the person who was tasked with revising the policy had a clear conflict of interest. Uzma Shakir, the City's Manager of the Office of Equity, Diversity and Human Rights, has a long history of making anti-Israel pronouncements, going so far as to suggest that immigrants do not owe their full loyalty to Canada because of the government's stance towards Israel.

Council would have had to deal not only with the volatile issue of hardcore, radical Pride activists advocating for unfettered funding versus Jewish groups outraged that their tax dollars are being used to fund anti-Semitism. But on top of that, municipal politicians were blindsided with having to explain how a partisan ideologue evidently vehemently opposed to Israel was placed in a position of oversight of such a controversial matter in which she had already demonstrated bias.

In the end, the Executive Committee bought time to look into a matter that could have made everyone at the City Manager's office look like an idiot.

However as Pride funding has already been approved, the anti-Semitic hate group that has exists for the sole purpose of demonizing the Jewish state will be allowed to march in this year's Gay festival in Toronto.

Tremendous pressure will now be brought to bear on Pride's corporate sponsors who will be tarred as funders of Jew hate if they support an event featuring the hate group.

UPDATE: Gay Jewish group Kulanu files complaint with Toronto Pride over hate group's participation (h/t Scaramouche)

Kathy Shaidle on The Arena with Michael Coren:

If you ever doubted the Toronto District School Board was run by communist fools..

Take a look at this:

they are celebrating the totalitarian mass murderer Che Guevara 


TDSB Hagiography Ernesto Che Guevara

Toronto City Council Wimps out on Pride Funding

An expected battle between those who wanted unconditional funding for Toronto's Gay Pride Festival and those who wanted civic contributions withheld until it was clear that the hate group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid would not be allowed to participate resulted in an inconclusive compromise.

Councillor Colle proposed a motion that affirmed Pride's value as a cultural event while condemning the use of the term "Israeli Apartheid." The motion did not address funding at all and unless the city's revised anti-discrimination policy, which will be unveiled next week, expressly prohibits it, the fanatical anti-Israel group will be able to participate with tax funds subsidizing their vapid, discriminatory message.

Colle's motion passed 27-7 following snide questioning from radical leftists councilors Gord Perks and the original owner of the hate group's website, Krystin Wong-Tam.

As tax funds may yet give a platform to the hate group, Pride Toronto will come under continued economic pressure, as boycott and protest campaigns are anticipated against sponsors of Pride who support an event that  promotes hatred of the Jewish state.

More here from Sue Ann Levy in the Toronto Sun

UPDATE: The councilors who supported use of the term "Israeli Apartheid" in Toronto's Pride parade by voting against the motion were:

Gord "aptly named" Perks, Sarah "even more aptly named" Doucette,  Krystin Wong-Tam (the owner of the hate group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid's website), Mike (I'm not very smart but I have a job because my last name is) Layton, Janet Davis, Michael Thompson and Maria Augimeri. Remember these names next municipal election and what a waste of your tax dollars these individuals are.

Iran's 5th Column in Canada teaches children to admire suicide bombers

From David Harris in the Huffington Post:

Immigrant sources say Iranian embassy sympathizers and collaborators shaped and influenced a weekend Iranian language and culture course offered by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB), on the premises of the board's publicly-funded Lady Evelyn Alternative School. The course was attended mainly by children of Iranian background. The school describes itself as "a nurturing environment" and prides itself on its "diverse, multicultural population."

Several of the course's Farsi language textbooks -- authorized by Iran's Ministry of Education, bearing the Islamic Republic's crest, and the motto "Teaching and learning is worship" -- were obtained by parents and given to this blogger: They feature prominent photographs of Ayatollah Khomeini, one showing Khomeini giving a grandfatherly cuddle to a young boy. Khomeini -- who killed hundreds of thousands of citizens, installed torture chambers, hunted Bahais, and sent children into the Iran-Iraq War meat grinder, adorned in burial shrouds and carrying plastic keys to paradise -- is referred to as "The Kind Imam,..

A Grade 3 Iranian text used on site at Lady Evelyn glorifies child soldiery and suicide-martyrdom operations. It celebrates 13-year-old Iranian child soldier and suicide bomber Mohamad Hossein Fahmideh. Children read how the boy "tied a grenade to his belt and sacrificed his own life under the tracks of the [Iraqi] enemy's tank" in the Iran-Iraq War. A handsome portrait of Fahmideh accompanies; the background shows him throwing himself in front of a tank..

h/t Blazing Cat Fur

Labatt's Blue gets free advertising on CBS News

And if they hadn't threatened to sue a newspaper about this picture, who would have even noticed?

Toronto is governed by a City Council comprised mainly of idiots

Toronto City Council just voted to ban plastic bags for single use i.e. the ones you get at grocery stores. This silly motion was carried by a combination of left wing and mushy middle councilors However the motion was so poorly crafted, Council can't figure out whether the wording allows them to continue imposing the current 5 cent plastic bag tax until the ban takes effect next year.

Council also has no idea whether they have the legal authority to impose such a prohibition. Councillor Minnan-Wong proposed a motion that the City Solicitor offer a legal opinion as to whether the ban is allowable. That simple, rather obvious necessity did not get enough votes from the geniuses running Toronto to pass. 

Council Speaker Nunziata warned that the ban is going to face an expensive legal challenge but what do our idiot Councilors care? They have no problem spending loads of your money on their half-baked ideas.

The behavior of Toronto's municipal councilors, mainly ones from the downtown wards is shocking. Many of them behave like spoiled, petulant, stupid children.

You can watch Toronto Council in session at this link, but do so at your own risk. Witnessing the how these facile simpletons make decisions that affects everyone who lives in the city is a heartbreaking sight that can shatter your faith in government.

What it means is that all of us have to get more involved in our democracy.

City of Toronto's anti-Israel Diversity Manager doesn't think immigrants owe loyalty to Canada

Toronto City Council will vote today in what is anticipated to be a contentious debate over whether the anti-Israel hate group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid's (al-Quaia) participation in the Pride festival should preclude the involvement of tax funding.

Those who support the fanatical anti-Semitic group that wants to deny national self-determination for Jews have disingenuously framed the issue as one of free speech, when in fact it is one of allocation of public funding.

Last year, City Council instructed the City Manager to revise the Anti-Discrimination Policy since the one that was utilized, and of which al-Quaia was not considered to be in violation, was unsatisfactory to a majority of Councilors. 

One of the major contributors to the City's Anti-Discrimination Policy is the Office of Equity, Diversity and Human Rights, which is headed by a person named Uzma Shakir. As well as being an advocate of the application of Sharia Law in family courts, Ms Shakir has expressed anti-Israel views in her blog for the neo-Marxist website rabble.ca. 

On rabble, which is the media sponsor of  "Israeli Apartheid Week" and the Sea Hitler "Canada Gaza Boat," Shakir wrote:

“when we adopt a partisan policy stance towards conflicts that are unresolved like Palestine and Israel when both Arabs/Muslims and Jews are Canadian citizens and deserve our 'equal' consideration, it is hard to be grateful or indeed hopeful. No! Immigrants do not owe their loyalty to Canada unquestioningly -- Canada needs to earn that loyalty..." 

The obvious question is whether someone who has expressed such views should be involved in forming policy related to anti-Israel, anti-Semitic discrimination. A larger question is how it makes the City of Toronto look to have a senior position held by an individual who thinks immigrants' loyalty to Canada is something that should be qualified to particular, subjective circumstances.

UPDATE: Toronto Council has deferred the vote of Pride funding until tomorrow at 2 pm

The welcome death of Section 13 and the arrogance of Canada's censors

Depending on who you talk to, a government lawyer named Richard Warman is either admired or reviled for his unrelenting effort to punish hate speech  in Canada. Joining neo-Nazi online forums, Warman has identified a number of public hatemongers and successfully pursued judgments against them through Human Rights Commission rulings.

His goal of working towards a Canada without racism and illegal discrimination  is an admirable one. From all credible accounts, Warman's efforts are the result of the noblest of motives; the desire to contribute to society and continue, in a different form, the fight against Nazism and fanatical racism that his relatives had done in battle during the Second World War.

But there is a dangerous flip side to the Human Rights Commissions that Warman and others have utilized to serve their aim. Conceived for the purpose of fighting illegal discrimination in employment, housing, education and so on, they have morphed  into tools used by special interests to try to prevent any form of speech that they consider offensive.

They have been used to intimidate people who have not promoted discrimination or racism but have merely expressed ideas. Some of the most notorious abuses were the cases of Ezra Levant being prosecuted for publishing cartoons of Islam's founder Mohammad and Mark Steyn and Macleans magazine for an article about the affect of Islam on western society. Though both cases were ultimately dismissed, there are obvious  problems with a quasi-judicial system presided over by individuals of questionable qualifications and dubious judgement, that forces defendants to appear at their own expense, while plaintiffs can launch frivolous publicly funded cases.

The notion that an ideology that is antithetical to the freedoms that western civilization has achieved is above criticism, because of an idolatrous deification of the secular concept of multiculturalism, should be abhorrent to anyone who believes in liberty and democracy. But that is precisely how Human Rights Commissions have been used, with the assistance of its petty-minded functionaries who believe that free speech is only "an American concept" without value in Canada.

Yet that is how Canada's Human Rights Commissions have been employed by defenders of Islamism. While in Canada, the majority of Muslims have rejected violent jihad, but that rejection is not universal, and Islamic nations like Iran are ruled by leaders who embrace the murderous methods of terrorism.

There is a regrettable, though somewhat amusingly illogical arrogance to the Human Rights censors who appear to think they possess a secret knowledge of the human capacity for hate. I was going to ask Richard Warman a question about that a few months ago at a public forum put on by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. At that event, Warman debated Canadian Civil Liberties Association General Counsel Nathalie Des Rosiers about the soon to be undone Section 13 of Canada's Human Rights Act that deals with hate speech. That debate took place, somewhat ironically, at the same place that almost exactly a year earlier was the site of an anti-Israel forum featuring the author of an anti-Semitic thesis sanctioned by the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Warman had described a short film called "Fitna"  about Islamic radicalism produced by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, as "criminal hate speech."

Fitna is not the ravings of xenophobic "right wingers" against Muslims and Islam. It is a compilation of images of Islamic leaders and demonstrators expressing approval of terrorism,murder, and repressive dictates against Muslim and non-Muslim alike. To be sure, those portrayed in Fitna are not representative of all Muslims. But Wilders did not invent those images and they are a significantly sizable minority within the Islamic world to be of serious concern to those in the West who believe in democratic ideals.

Wilders himself was described by Warman as a "far right" politician. Fitna is a warning against a religious and political ideology that suppresses women and denies them abortion rights, persecutes and kills Gays for their sexuality, persecutes religious minorities, and has no respect for free speech. In what kind of bizzaro world is someone who seeks to defend abortion rights, women's rights, gay rights and free speech against those who suppress them considered  a "right-winger"?

The question I intended to ask Warman was that as he had seen Fitna and had not been transformed into a raving Islamophobe, how is it that he sees fit to try to deprive others of that right on the basis that it would affect other people differently than it did him? Does Warman believe he is so intellectually and morally superior, like some inner party member of Orwell's 1984, that he is of a special class of person capable of correctly processing information the rest of us can not?

As it happened, I didn't get the chance to ask Warman that question, because just as it was my turn at the microphone, I was cut ahead of by Bernie Farber, the anticipated next head of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Farber, another proponent of civil hate speech regulation, used his time with Warman to engage in the verbal equivalent of mutual masturbation in which the two men lavished praise on each other, and so consumed all the remaining question and answer period.

Fortunately, questions related to Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act will soon be moot. As a result of a Private Members' Bill put forward by Alberta MP Brian Storseth, the law that let unqualified censors determine the free speech rights of Canadians will soon be repealed. Hate Speech will still be a crime in Canada, but it will have to meet the test of standards necessary for criminal prosecution in genuine courts presided over by real judges. Given the plentiful opportunities for abuse and mischief afforded by Section 13, its death is not only welcome, but long overdue.

Canada's arrogant censor class need to understand that free speech is not a privilege over which they have final say, but a basic human right that should be infringed on only under the most serious of circumstances.

NDP Leader Mulcair dissembles about anti-Israel fanaticism in his party

The perception of being basically honest was one of the few assets possessed by the leader of Canada's Official Opposition. Though intelligent, his propensity to arrogance and divisive, angry outbursts,made the best thing Thomas Mulcair had going for him was that most Canadians just don't know him very well.

Last Friday, his deceptive claim that the NDP is not anti-Israel because the party isn't officially calling for its destruction has sent the pretense of Mulciar's integrity flying out the window.

Not only does the NDP contain some of the most hateful, vociferously anti-Israel politicians in Canada, but he has appointed them to senior positions in his party.

His Deputy Leader Libby Davies was known for being a fixture at anti-Israel demonstrations. Davies effectively denied Israel's legitimacy in 2010, then "apologized" in a manner suggesting she was either completely insincere, or was pathetically uniformed about a subject she has obsessively pursued during her political career.  Then the next summer in France, NDP Deputy Leader Davies appeared at a Sea Hitler support rally featuring a French politician who had been prosecuted for anti-Semitism.

Davies is intimately involved with the fanatically anti-Israel website rabble.ca which is published by her same-sex spouse Kim Elliott. That union-funded, neo-Marxist alternative media site is the "media sponsor" of Israeli Apartheid Week, an anti-Israel hate fest condemned by both the Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Party.

Unlike many in his caucus,Mulcair himself is not an enemy of the Jewish state and does not want it eliminated. But his motives are fairly obvious. Much of the NDP adhere to simplistic, facile notions of oppression theory and view Israel as a capitalist, imperialist outpost in the middle east. Indeed almost all of the other NDP leadership candidates and the energetic activist wing that admires Davies takes that view.

Were Mulcair to repudiate them, it would cause a rift in his party that he wants to avoid, particularly so early into his leadership.

Yet by denying the obvious, and his recent gaffes the pitted western Canada against the interests of the anti-oil sands environmental lobby, he has shown that he can neither be trusted to be truthful nor can he make the New Democrats a credible party fit to govern the nation.

Here's a treat- Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings

This is the full movie from 1978. Bakshi intended to make The Lord of the Rings into two movies and this was the first part, which covers most of the events in The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. But for a variety of reasons, the second movie was never made.

It uses some fascinating experimental animation techniques and features top notch voice talent, like John Hurt as  Aragorn and Anthony Daniels as Legolas.

Peter Jackson was obviously influenced by this Bakski version; the scene where the Ring Wraiths attack the hobbits in their beds in the Inn in his live action The Fellowship of the Ring is shot nearly identically to the animated film you can see here.

More info on the Bakshi Lord of the Rings