The normalization of Jew-hate in Canada's left-wing media

A year or so ago, a federal Cabinet Minister, while we were discussing the people involved in demonizing Israel as an "apartheid state," described them as "intellectually vapid hatemongers."  He quickly added, realizing the force of the language he had used, "let's keep that off the record" and so I won't mention the Minister's name. But having met and listened to a number of the sort of people he described, I concur with  his assessment.

A Queer Against Israeli Apartheid
from Toronto's 2013 Pride*

I've heard them describe Israel as a "racist apartheid regime," without their being able to cogently explain how Israel's policies are racist. Israel affords the same rights of enfranchisement and ability to serve in the legislature and judiciary to all its citizens, including Muslim Arabs. It does not afford those rights to non-citizens living in The West Bank, but for the intellectually-challenged fanatics who want to see an end to the Jewish State, in the sole case of Israel, this natural legal distinction that every country makes between citizens and non-citizens becomes "racist apartheid."

These same anti-Israel hatemongers express no objection to any form on national self-determination movement anywhere in the world, with the one exception of Zionism, which is Jewish national self-determination. While claiming this unique discrimination they practice is not anti-Semitism, there is no other convincing explanation for it.

Writers like University of Washington English Professor Emeritus Edward Alexander and University of Utah Professor Emeritis of Philosophy Bernard Harrison have described at length the new leftist anti-Semitism that manifests as anti-Zionism. Most insidious about it is that while other forms of bigotry would be reviled by the so-called progressive left, the casual hate expressed through anti-Zionism has been socially normalized for them. While that is more the case in Europe, with its traditions of Jew-hate extending back millennia,  this phenomenon is becoming more frequent in North America, as one can see in an article in yesterday's Toronto Star.

The lead article on the Star's online edition yesterday was the Dyke March at Toronto's Pride festival, essentially extolling it as a symbol of Toronto's diversity and progressiveness.

Worked into the article were three paragraphs, about a quarter of the whole piece, about a couple named Jacquie Buncel and Lorraine Gale, that unaffectedly and completely uncritically, as if recounting a fashion accessory like flowers on sunhats, described the hateful anti-Israel slogans of the pair's placards.

Jacquie Buncel and Lorraine Gale, both of Toronto, have participated in the Dyke March with their daughters, Aviva, 12, and Maya, 10, since the girls were infants. Buncel said it was unusual a decade ago to take children to the Dyke March but it is more common now — evidenced Saturday by parents pushing baby strollers and youngsters carried on shoulders. 

“We haven’t met with a lot of homophobia as a family” said Buncel, who noted Toronto crowds — some people standing three deep in places along the Yonge Street segment, most with cameras — are supportive of marchers. 

Buncel and Gale, both in their early 50s, were part of a group carrying black placards that stated in pink lettering: “Boycott Gay Tourism to Israel” and “There’s nothing hot about cruising in an apartheid state.”

The inclusion of the deplorable bigots of the group calling itself Queers Against Israeli Apartheid has been a source of division and controversy for both the Pride festival and Toronto. But for The Toronto Star, the hatred they express for Israel is just another minor descriptive element of an ordinary family outing with the kids. If this is the state to which the left-wing media in Canada has descended, then we are in for truly sad times ahead.

As an interesting aside, the pair of anti-Israel protesters featured by the Toronto Star are an odd duo who seem to have been on a natural path to their particular fold.

A Lorraine Gale is listed as the Coordinator of the Children's Aid Society of Toronto's Out and Proud Program. If this is the same Ms Gale, given the sad, radicalized state of contemporary university Sociology programs from which Children's Aid workers usually spring, it would be unsurprising if unthinking bias came hand-in-hand with that type of education.

Jacquie Buncel is the Executive Director of an organization called The Sunshine Centre for Seniors and who describes herself as a "Holocaust Educator." She is also a graduate of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, a hyper-politicized institution where emotion is frequently privileged above fact, and is notorious, among other causes, for producing a facile, anti-Semitic Master's thesis that alleged Holocaust education is a racist, Zionist plot.

Whether that is the same view of Holocaust education taken by Ms Buncel, I do not know. But if someone is making the types of pronouncements ascribed to her in The Toronto Star article, it would appear the only lesson she learned from the Holocaust is the appalling, specious one that you may get to live a little longer if you abase yourself to your oppressors.

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*Curiously, this Queer Against Israeli Apartheid has no plans to deliver the same message in the same manner in Gaza or Ramallah, or Tehran, where one would expect they would be receptive to his anti-Israel message. Why ever could that be?

Alec Baldwin's Real Twitter Problem - the peasants can talk back

...Baldwin sputters that the very tools he can use to bypass "the mainstream media and talk directly" to his audience also empowers all those dim people out there in the dark. What's more, his followers have minds of their own. They may enjoy his turns in Glenngarry Glenn Ross and 30 Rock and guest-hosting on Turner Classic Movies but not really find his views on fracking to be worth a damn. It's a real kick in the pants for a celebrity to be reduced to asking, "Do you think I'm really changing anybody's mind?"

Sanctimonious Hypocrisy: ex-President Jimmy Carter - the world's premier moral equivocator

Former US President Jimmy Carter equates female genital mutilation and sex slavery with Catholic Church's refusal to ordain women:

ATLANTA — Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says religious leaders, including those in Christianity and Islam, share the blame for mistreatment of women across the world.

The human rights activist said Friday religious authorities perpetuate misguided doctrines of male superiority, from the Catholic Church forbidding women from becoming priests to some African cultures mutilating the genitals of young girls.

Carter said the doctrines, which he described as theologically indefensible, contribute to a political, social and economic structure where political leaders passively accept violence against women, a worldwide sex slave trade and inequality in the workplace and classroom.

President Jimmy Carter bravely fending off the approach of an aquatic bunny rabbit  in 1979

Rare bird last seen in Britain 22 years ago reappears - only to be killed by wind turbine

There had been only eight recorded sightings of the white-throated needletail in the UK since 1846. So when one popped up again on British shores this week, twitchers were understandably excited.

A group of 40 enthusiasts dashed to the Hebrides to catch a glimpse of the brown, black and blue bird, which breeds in Asia and winters in Australasia.

But instead of being treated to a wildlife spectacle they were left with a horror show when it flew into a wind turbine and was killed.      

h/t Lorrie Goldstein

U of Toronto develops 3D printer that can print skin (and maybe organs) for medical treatment

...The device is still at a prototype stage, with live-animal testing of its output to begin later this year. If successful, Leng’s tissue printer could mark a huge advance in quality of life and survivability for severely burned patients, and dramatically reduce treatment costs. Eventually it could morph into a machine for fabricating internal organs.

Tissue engineering has produced various techniques for building up fabricated skin, usually layer by layer. But that’s a time-consuming process that doesn’t offer much help for people with extensive, life-threatening burns.

“We were interested in easing this process of creating organ-scale tissues,” says Leng, referring to the large patches of skin that could be needed to treat extensive burns. She advanced the idea of the device in her master’s thesis in 2010, and began working on the prototype a year later, with a team that includes her PhD supervisor Axel Guenther, a professor in U of T’s Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.

More at The Globe and Mail

Jonathan Kay: How 9/11 killed Canadians’ appetite for human-rights speech codes

...Even before 9/11, the notion that neo-Nazism and KKK-style racism was still a real and lingering threat to Canada’s social fabric was beginning to wear very thin. But Section 13 and its provincial equivalents remained on the books anyway. Canadian society, then as now, felt vaguely guilty about the (very real) mistreatment historically doled out to Jews, blacks, aboriginals and immigrants. And though many Canadians rolled their eyes at the manner by which human-rights commissions were expanding the definition of “discrimination,” most bien-pensant types still saw eliminating racism as a more important project than protecting free speech.

All of this changed on October 20, 2006, the publication date of Mark Steyn’s famousMaclean’s magazine essay “The future belongs to Islam” (adapted from his book,America Alone. Its theme was that an enfeebled West was under demographic siege from Muslim immigrant populations bristling with militant attitudes and unassimilated young men. Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress launched complaints with the Canadian Human Rights Commission and its provincial equivalents in B.C. and Ontario. Around the same time, the (now defunct) Western Standard magazine, published by current Sun News talking head Ezra Levant, printed the infamousJyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, which elicited a separate set of human rights complaints from Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada. The backlash against these two (unsuccessful) human-rights prosecutions ultimately is what led to the elimination of Section 13 of the Human Rights Act.

Read the whole article at THE NATIONAL POST

Toronto Mayor Ford's statement on the slimy, lying, incompetent government of Kathleen Wynne

Kathleen Wynne's government "told me to raise taxes on the backs of hard working Torontonians"

International survey shows damage done by Stephen Harper's NeoCon government to Canada's reputation

By making it the most reputable country in the world for the 3rd year in a row 

Maybe all those brain-dead socialists who keep saying Harper "has destroyed Canada's reputation" really just want to keep new immigrants out by scaring them away.

Two wasteful Canadian institutions bite the dust

Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the part that allowed for kangaroo court Human Rights Commissions to fine and censor Internet and phone messages based on the "likelihood to cause hate" has finally been voted out of existence by Parliament. There will be a one year phasing out period.

And in other good news, the wasteful Canadian International Development Agency, which was a trough for lunatic, anti-Western NGOs in Canada to feed from, has been eliminated and its functions merged into the new Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.

Despite the warnings of fear mongers, Hate Speech will remain illegal in Canada, but prosecutions will have to meet the standards of courts of law, not the opinions of 3rd rate patronage appointments without law degrees.

Canada will also continue to provide foreign Aid, but in a more sensible, cost effective way.

Rick McGinnis reviews Brian Lilley's CBC Exposed

...The corporation’s cavalier use of public money is the meat of Lilley’s book, as he details how the CBC has used its billion-plus dollar budget to expand beyond its mandate and set up a digital music service, competing unnecessarily with private businesses in the same over-serviced market. They’ve also dipped into their funding to finance campaigns against the adversaries they’ve created among private broadcasters and cable companies, as well as paying for a private party at the Toronto International Film Festival to fete George Stromboulopoulos, host of a CBC chat show and one of the broadcaster’s stars. (As I write this, Stromboulopoulos has announced his move to US cable news channel CNN, whose own viewership has been shrinking to approach the same cozy numbers George will have enjoyed at the CBC.)

While funding all of this and more with taxpayer money, the CBC has been pointedly unwilling to share details of its own spending, pleading the need for journalistic immunity and protection from their competitors in the media marketplace. Even when ordered to make their operations more transparent by the government that acts as a conduit for their funding, they’ve delayed and obfuscated at nearly every opportunity, a tactic embodied by CBC president Hubert Lacroix, who arrogantly told a House of Commons committee in 2011 that “we believe that only a judge should have the right to demand the disclosure of information that relates to our creative activities or is journalistic or program related.”

Be careful walking around One Yonge Street - You may slip on goo from Toronto Star staff's exploded heads

Mayor Ford’s approval rating up from May

TORONTO – A new poll has found support for Mayor Rob Ford is on the rise, despite the allegations of drug use that surfaced more than a month ago.

According to a Forum Research poll conducted for the Toronto Sun, Ford’s approval rating is at 47 per cent — up from 42 per cent in May.

The president of Forum Research said the approval rating isn’t surprising now that the alleged drug video allegations have died down and Ford is focusing on issues at city hall.

More HERE

Pride Toronto promotes group with ties to murder and persecution of Gays

Pride Toronto had maintained the lie that they included the hate group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, not because they were interested in promoting anti-Semitic message of the fanatical activists, but because they did not want to 'censor' the Pride Festival.

Pride Toronto promoting the hate group
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid

Toronto Sun reporter Sue Ann Levy has long maintained that Pride Toronto`s supposed neutrality when it came to Queers Against Israeli Apartheid was a sham. Now, with the commitment from Toronto City Council to deliver almost $150,000 in cash plus provide far more in services like Police support to the annual event, the veneer has fallen and Pride Toronto has shown its overt support for the anti-Israel group, promoting its most recent event on the official Pride website.

This comes as no surprise. Last month, after delivering a deputation to Toronto's Executive Committee about  the inappropriateness of providing tax funds to Pride if it is a platform for a hate group, I overheard something interesting outside the Committee Room.

The heads of Pride Toronto and the representatives of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid were discussing and coordinating strategy between them.

However, Pride Toronto`s involvement with Queers Against Israeli Apartheid should be of serious concern, and not just because it is an affront to every taxpayer in Toronto who is subsidizing the festival.

Pride Toronto has chosen to promote a group whose senior members have shown support for countries and individuals that promote the persecution and even murder of Gays because of nothing other than their sexuality.

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid`s spokespeople have supported and held banners at Toronto`s al Quds Day rally, which along with its goal of eliminating Israel is also a show of solidarity with the Islamic Republic of Iran, where the persecution and execution of homosexuals is entrenched policy.  The rally is largely driven by one of Iran`s chief acolytes in Canada, the notorious Islamist hatemonger Zafar Bangash.

Bangash has called for Muslims to dominate what is now Israel and impose Sharia Law there. Given his outspoken devotion to the Khomeinist leadership of Iran, it is safe to assume that the version of Sharia Bangash wants for Israel would be the same as Iran, which he describes as representing  `the true values of Islam today. They make us proud of Islam!`

Israel is the only country in the middle east to recognize Gay marriage and have laws protecting Gay Rights. The values of the nation admired by the man who holds rallies that Pride Toronto-promoted Queer`s Against Israeli Apartheid`s leaders attend in support include hanging Gay men from cranes as punishment for their `sins.`

Pride Toronto nor even the vapid hatemongers of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid are likely to condone the persecution of Gays.

But in the case of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid,  they are a group comprised of fanatics who are devoted to an anti-capitalist, anti-western ideology and they are willing to make common cause with virtually anyone they see as allies.

Their interest is not Gay rights, but taking down America, and America's allies, of which they consider Israel to be particularly vulnerable, and therefore a ripe target.

Making the fatuous argument that Israel, where Palestinians enjoy more civil rights than in virtually any Muslim country, is an apartheid state, is transparent bigotry as well as absurd propaganda. But Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, as the preposterous name of the group suggests, are not comprised of particularly intelligent individuals. Many of them have obvious psychological problems. They make the absurd, narcissistic claim that Israel's support for Gay rights is not based on respect for Human Rights but is what they call "pinkwashing". From the appearance of the ratty group of unkempt clowns in Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, "pink" isn't the only type of washing they oppose. These HamasSexuals might better describe themselves as Queers Against Personal Hygiene. 

These idiotic, posturing radicals blame Palestinian persecution of Gays on Israel. So how do they explain the persecution of Gays throughout the Muslim world that is so closely linked with the Palestinian cause? Is the persecution of Gays in Iran, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia also all because of Israeli Apartheid?  In the unlikely event that Queers Against Israeli Apartheid ever got their way, that same murderous oppression would extend into the one sanctuary that Gays have in the Middle East.

At last month's Toronto Executive Committee meeting, a Gay physician, Dr. Paul Druzin, said he does not want his "Gay tax dollars" to fund Pride if it includes a hate group like Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. 

The fact that Pride Toronto supports such a group is an insult not just to Gays in Toronto like Dr. Druzin, but to anyone who is concerned about the persecution of Gays throughout the world. This obscene cooperation between the so-called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid and Pride Toronto not only discredits Pride's leadership, but calls the suitability of Toronto to host the World Pride Festival next year into question.



UPDATE: Blogwrath was there, enduring the whole tedium. You see the videos he put up of the entire lecture HERE

Hamilton Police finally evict illegal Enbridge protesters after letter fro CANACE's Gary McHale threatens legal action

A group of professional protesters have been illegally occupying an Enbridge pumping station in Hamilton, Ontario in opposition to the Gas company's involvement with the Alberta Oil Sands pipeline.

Until today, Hamilton police refused to enforce the law to remove the protesters and actually supported them.

However yesterday, Gary McHale of the rights group CANACE sent a letter to Hamilton police:

..promising that he and his supporters would gather evidence and lay charges using Canada’s Private Prosecution provisions in the Criminal Code, including against police officers who might obstruct the gathering of that evidence:

“Starting next week we will, without notice, appear at the illegal occupation in order to video tape criminal behaviour, which includes mischief, and then file private prosecution charges against the protesters. Apparently these protesters believe they can block people from videotaping them – this, of course, is mischief as ruled by the courts.

“If your officers attempt to interfere in the gathering of evidence they too could be arrested and prosecuted on a charge of obstructing justice. Police cannot aid in criminal behaviour and they cannot interfere with the justice system.

Within 24 hours of receiving McHale's threat, Hamilton police finally acted to enforce the law, clearing the Enbridge site and arresting a number of the protesters.

Of course, the timing could also have had something to do with Enbridge getting a Court injunction yesterday to clear the protesters...

McWynnety's F-you message to Toronto: "Raise taxes"

Kathleen Wynne's Provincial Liberals have reneged on a promise which the Globe and Mail had reported verified in a letter to the City of Toronto, to maintain annual transfer payments until 2018.

The clear reason is to punish the city for electing a capable fiscal conservative who highlights Wynne's inept, unmandated government's incompetence.

The incredibly biased Toronto Star, which inserted a gratuitous crack cocaine reference in its article, reports:

“Relationships involve more than one party,” Wynne said curtly Tuesday.

Her comments came after the mayor’s tumultuous one-hour meeting Monday with Finance Minister Charles Sousa at Queen’s Park.

Ford left saying he was “furious” at a change in funding arrangements that will leave the city with a $50 million budget hole to fix next year.

“He told me to increase taxes. This was a complete waste of everyone’s time today. I’m very disappointed,” a visibly seething mayor said afterward.

Mark Steyn: Nigel vs the Lunatic Mainstream

t's all but impossible to launch a new political party under America's electoral arrangements, and extremely easy to do so under Continental proportional representation. The Westminster first-past-the-post system puts the task somewhere in between: tough, but not entirely the realm of fantasy. The Labour party came into being at the dawn of the 20th century, and formed its first government in 1924. The United Kingdom Independence party was born in 1993 and now, a mere two decades later, is on the brink of . . . well, okay, not forming its first government, but it did do eerily well in May's local elections. The Liberals were reduced to their all-time lowest share of the vote, the Tories to their lowest since 1982, and for the first time ever, none of the three "mainstream" parties cracked 30 percent: Labour had a good night with 29, the Conservatives came second at 25, and nipping at their heels was the United Kingdom Independence party with 23 percent.

More of this article by Mark Steyn HERE

I was fortunate enough to have been at a Panel a few months ago which featured both Mark Steyn and UKIP's Nigel Farage

The socialist brainwashing of Canada's public school students

From Matthew Lau:

...Schools have been teaching critical race theory and pushing radical sex-ed to students. They ignore climate science and try to shape their students into left-wing environmentalists. Yet another piece of their left-wing political activism is the anti-capitalist brainwashing that teachers continually push onto their students.

Teachers have no problem displaying their hatred of capitalism. They write for socialist websites and attend seminars where they are told that “high taxes, big government and big social programs are the key to creating a globally competitive and equal society”. Many teachers hate capitalism so much that they believe all of society's problems are a direct result of capitalism. Capitalism is supposedly responsible for “multiple structures of oppression” including “heterosexual privilege”. Teachers further allege that “racism as an ideology and practice has a history rooted in... capitalism”. They claim that “capitalism has completely destroyed” the “normal basis for child development” and blame capitalism for “creating particularly perilous times for educators”. The Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA) believes rich people are at the centre of what they call the “circle of oppression”.

According to the British Columbia Teachers' Federation (BCTF), “Capitalist societies serve to further the interests of dominant, elite groups in society”, and capitalist societies are propped up by media propaganda. The BCTF also claims, “capitalism has entered an ugly new era, one that may work well for the shareholders of the world, but not for the rest of us” and that “global capitalism is ecologically and socially unsustainable”. The ATA is more blunt: “Come up with an attainable goal. How about ending capitalism? Noble”.

If teachers don't want capitalism, what is it that they are trying to achieve? Apparently, the ATA doesn't think communism is too bad.

Read the rest HERE

CBC report on Hamilton Enbridge Occupation fails to tell you who the bad guys really are

A group of anarchist professional protesters were behind the takeover of an Enbridge pumping station in Hamilton, Ontario.

The CBC's in-depth journalism, as usual, fails to provide the details about who the protesters really are and their actual agenda. Fortunately there are blogs like GenuineWitty that has background on these matters.

The best way to deal with those clowns is prosecutions for criminal trespass combined with civil law suits against them individually.

NDP and Union-linked groups aid the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is a federal agency which, in the words of its mission statement is "dedicated to the protection of Canada's national security interests and the safety of Canadians." Like any other branch of government, it's not perfect, but their goal is to serve Canada and to foil its enemies, so who would say that Canadians should not cooperate with it under any circumstances?

Operation Maple at Occupy Toronto

The obvious answer is: Canada's enemies and those working in tandem with them.

The first time I heard of group called "Operation Maple" was when I encountered its representative among the angry radicals and mentally-ill street folk that comprised the disorganized, cult-like, public service union-financed Occupy Toronto campground a year and a half ago.

The Operation Maple representative, dressed in an astronaut costume, was one of a slew of self-promoting weirdos who appeared at the outdoor loon-fest. So despite looking like a finalist in a Halloween costume contest, he blended in perfectly with his surroundings.

But rather than a one-off, Operation Maple, like Occupy Toronto's initial incarnation that has since crumbled,  turns out to be a well-financed, partisan, NDP and union-linked astroturf (fake grass roots) effort designed to promote a disturbing agenda. That includes demonizing politicians who aren't on the far left, and bizarrely, to act as promoters for fanatics allied with Canada's enemies in the terror-sponsoring regime in Iran.

NDP MP Olivia Chow palling it up
with Operation Maple spokesman

Operation Maple's website lets visitors know they are the same people behind a film called "Poor no More" which stars CBC comedienne Mary Walsh. The film is an unabashed polemic promoting union interests.  Mary Walsh may be far from the peak of her career, but renting her costs more money than the typical grass roots group has at its disposal. Still, her fee would be insignificant to the affluent Public Service and other unions.

More ominously, a recent Operation Maple video devoted to paranoid ravings about "criminalizing dissent" in Canada, that doesn't actually delineate how in any way dissent has been criminalized, features a creepy Hamilton, Ontario activist by the name of Ken Stone.

Olivia Chow stands shoulder-to-shoulder
with Khomeinist hatemonger Zafar Bangash

If all you had to go by was the information provided by Operation Maple's paranoid Scott Garland, this time sans spaceman outfit, one could easily draw the conclusion that CSIS agents arrived unannounced at Stone's home to intimidate him simply because he is an activist who dissents from government policy.

Bolstered by Stone's self-serving account, it seems these agents of the Canadian police state approached him merely because he wrote an editorial proposing Canada soften its stance towards the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Ken Stone at Zaraf Bangash's
Khomeinist al Quds Day rally

The truth, however, is substantially different than Operation Maple's version of things.

It was not because of criticism of the Harper government in Stone's asinine editorial in The Hamilton Spectator that instigated an inquiry from CSIS. It was that combined with the fact that he went to Iran as a paid guest of the world's leading state-sponsor of terrorism.

Back in Canada, Stone continues to serve the interests of the dictatorship of Iran's brutal mullahs. He has done radio interviews to try to promote the homicidal dictatorship of Bashar al Assad in Syria, one of Iran's few regional allies.

Iran has tried to influence radical groups in Canada.  It is little wonder that Ken Stone has also tried to infuse himself in that Native movement, which is being courted by Stone's allies in Iran.

Operation Maple's anti-CSIS video
promotes pro-Iran Ken Stone

Interestingly, in the Operation Maple video, Stone describes receiving a phone call from someone he describes as an "Imam in Toronto." What Stone fails to mention in the video but has noted elsewhere is that the Imam was none other than the notorious Khomeinist hatemonger, Zafar Bangash.

Bangash is a racist fanatic who has delivered anti-Semitic threats in Canada on behalf of the Iranian Mullahs

Operation Maple's  recommended links are almost identical to those affiliated with rabble.ca, a website published by the spouse of NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies. They include the NDP think tank The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the radical, anti-globalization and anti-Israel group, the Council of Canadians, Public Service Unions like OPSEU, and other organizations on the hard left that have expressed positions that were soft on Iran's apocalyptic, misogynistic dictatorship.

Take back Canada for whom? ...Iran?

Hamilton radical Ken Stone has resembled a clownish parody of far-left activism dating back to the 1960's. According to the Toronto Star, when accepting his Bachelor's Degree at the University of Toronto, Stone  "ripped his diploma in two." Then, " "Fellow niggers" the 21-year-old shouted in front of other University of Toronto graduates, professors and his uncomprehending parents. "Look what Mr. Charlie's done to your minds." (Mr. Charlie was a disparaging reference to white people.)."

CSIS is charged with defending the interests of democracy in Canada, while people siding with dictatorships like Iran and Syria pretend they are democracy's champions. It doesn't take much to figure who, between them,  is more credible. For some time, radical groups have been utilized, sometimes wittingly and sometimes not, by foreign nations hostile to the west.

Operation Maple and radicals like Ken Stone may appear too ridiculous to take seriously. But  the implications of powerful public unions, Native movements and even Canada's Official Opposition being utilized by Canada's enemies in Iran is something that we disregard at our own peril.

CBC comedienne Mary Walsh fronting for the anti-CSIS people's film.

Rick McGinnis reviews the crappy documentary, Hellbound

...the world needs a good feature-length documentary about hell, but I’m afraid that Kevin Miller’s Hellbound? probably isn’t it. There are a lot of reasons, including first-time director Miller’s reliance on a single music cue – an ominous piano figure playing over a faintly keening drone – to tell us whenever he thinks somebody is right. And then there’s the copious screen time he gives to the Westboro Baptist Church, deputized to embody everything Miller’s film considers harmful and sinister and wrong. 

Not that this is a challenge for the Westboro Baptist Church crowd – those people who’ve decided that their form of missionary outreach involves picketing the funerals of soldiers and celebrities holding a variety of signs varying only notionally from their trademark message: “God Hates Fags.” This is the group – one hesitates to call it a church, though the U.S government still affords it tax-exempt status – that even the Ku Klux Klan calls “hatemongers.”

Westboro have taken up residence in a prominent spot in the liberal imagination, showing up in movies and TV shows whenever the spectre of Christian intolerance needs to cast a long shadow; this tiny group, comprising little more than pastor Fred Phelps and his extended family, has become one of the bogeymen resident in red state, Republican America. (Ironic, considering that Phelps has run for office in Kansas several times as a Democrat, and that Phelps and Westboro were supporters of Al Gore’s 1988 presidential primary bid. Facts that, strangely enough, never seem to intrude on most media depictions of Westboro, and appear nowhere in Miller’s film.)

Read the whole review HERE

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne's inept Liberals determined to screw over Toronto to punish city for electing Rob Ford

TORONTO — Toronto Mayor Rob Ford says he’s furious that the province won’t reconsider its decision to make funding changes for Toronto’s social programs.

He says the changes will mean cuts to vital services that affect the city’s most vulnerable residents.

The conservative mayor was fuming as he left his meeting with Finance Minister Charles Sousa, saying the province is trying to make him raise taxes.

Ford says he’s being punished for running an efficient government, while the governing Liberals continue to spend in the red.

Sousa announced last week that the province is ending a special “pooling” arrangement for Toronto to pay for welfare and disability support programs.

More at The National Post

Defense attorney in George Zimmerman trial for murder of Treyvon Martin starts with knock-knock joke

Maybe not the best way to start a trial...

Knock, knock. 

Who's there? 

George Zimmerman. 

George Zimmerman who? 

All right, good, you're on the jury.

Live trial coverage HERE

Liberal Liar? Public Service Union's $20,000 payoff to Justin Trudeau

Justin Trudeau claimed he never took a penny while speaking as an MP. Any reasonable person could conclude he lied.

Your tax dollars paying for CBC anti-Israel bias

The CBC's Neil MacDonald doesn't like Israel.

He has every right to his opinion.

But the tax-funded Canadian Broadcast Corporation employs the least talented of the MacDonald brothers as a journalist, not as a pundit to pontificate about his inane biases against the middle east's only liberal democracy.

However that is what he has done time and time again.

As in the past, MacDonald has troubled himself to inject his detestation for Israel in a report that has absolutely nothing to do with the Jewish state titled: How to tell a slap on the ass from rape.

Perhaps, like other gauche CBC "journalists" more interested in reporting their opinions than the news, he is jockeying for a new job at al Jazeera.

But what MacDonald is currently doing has no business being paid for out of Canadian taxes.

You can contact CBC Editor-in-Chief Jennifer McGuire at Jennifer.McGuire@CBC.CA  and let her know how you feel about your public funds paying for MacDonald's personal smear campaign.

Honest Reporting Canada has the details:

In an analysis piece published on the CBC’s website on June 6,Macdonald included the following irrelevant smear against Israel and Canadian support for the Jewish state (emphasis added): “In Canada, do Stephen Harper and his most partisan supporters actually think, down deep, that Israel may actually bear some of the blame for its troubles with the Palestinians?”  

Apart from being gratuitous, this question disguised personal opinion as news by phrasing declarative statements into questions.  

There is no evidence to substantiate claims that Canada’s Prime Minister and his “most partisan supporters” deep down assign blame to Israel for the impasses and quarrels with the Palestinians, but MacDonald has no problem raising this question that serves to malign Israel, Canadian support for the Jewish state, and which exonerates Palestinian transgressions and elevates the Palestinian cause. 

But wait, aren’t CBC journalists tasked to be politically neutral and to embargo their personal views in their professional work? Macdonald’s apparent preoccupation with Israel seems to be the exception to the rule allowing him to use CBC resources to attack Israel, time and again.

More at Honest Reporting Canada 

New Theory on Why Men Love Breasts

Why do straight men devote so much headspace to those big, bulbous bags of fat drooping from women's chests? Scientists have never satisfactorily explained men's curious breast fixation, but now, a neuroscientist has struck upon an explanation that he says "just makes a lot of sense."

Larry Young, a professor of psychiatry at Emory University who studies the neurological basis of complex social behaviors, thinks human evolution has harnessed an ancient neural circuit that originally evolved to strengthen the mother-infant bond during breast-feeding, and now uses this brain circuitry to strengthen the bond between couples as well. The result? Men, like babies, love breasts.

When a woman's nipples are stimulated during breast-feeding, the neurochemical oxytocin, otherwise known as the "love drug," floods her brain, helping to focus her attention and affection on her baby. But research over the past few years has shown that in humans, this circuitry isn't reserved for exclusive use by infants. 

Read the rest at Live Science 

Incompetent Ontario Premier Wynne set to punish Toronto for electing Rob Ford

...[Kathleen Wynne's] government plans to make up the cash it needs to sustain the Sunshine List lifestyle the public sector is accustomed to.

Within seconds of seeing this disgraceful sight came word from the provincial government that it will be cutting Toronto’s funding thanks to their incompetent money management.

But it was more of a direct shot at Mayor Rob Ford personally — on the backs of Torontonians but designed to hurt his chances of re-election.

The message was made disgracefully clear by, in essence, sending the message, “So you want to be fiscally prudent, eh, fat boy? Watch this.”

Survey Finds that 41 Percent of Small Business Owners Have Frozen Hiring Because of Obamacare

A new poll of business owners about how Obamacare has affected employment decisions is positively brutal for the health law.Via CNBC:

Forty-one percent of the businesses surveyed have frozen hiring because of the health-care law known as Obamacare. And almost one-fifth—19 percent— answered "yes" when asked if they had "reduced the number of employees you have in your business as a specific result of the Affordable Care Act."

More at Reason.com

and also at CNBC 

Kelly McParland: Rob Ford’s enemies prove to be his greatest strength

Anyone wondering how Rob Ford manages to retain a solid core of supporters despite his sea of troubles need only look at the nature of his challengers. With enemies like this, who needs friends?

...The more the privileged core of “activists”, “progressives” and downtown-dwellers vent about Rob Ford, the more determined his fan base becomes to keep him in office.  The Toronto Star, chief cheerleader for the anti-Ford forces, keeps searching for polls that suggest the mayor is toast, but instead finds voters think he’s the target of a jihad. An Ipsos Reid poll conducted weeks after Ford was alleged to have used crack cocaine found that half the people polled thought the claims were proof of a media (read: Toronto Star) agenda against Ford. The core of his support, not surprisingly, was in the same suburbs that made him mayor and resents the downtowners’ unending crusade to negate the election. When the Star sent a reporter out to mock Ford supporters — standing on a roadside with a sign seeking interviews — it discovered they don’t care about imagery and are happy that he’s controlled taxes. “They believe there is a vendetta against the Fords and that we journalists are making money along the way,” sighed the reporter.

Read all of Kelly McParland's column at THE NATIONAL POST 

h/t Marvin W.

For $25,000 your Guinea Pig can be extremley well protected

The current bid for hand-made Guinea Pig armor on eBay is $24,300 as of the publishing of this post.

Obviously, some Guinea Pigs are going on an important quest and need the proper protection.

More HERE

Tin Foil Tom Mulcair proud to have killed bill that would revoke citizenship for convicted terrorists

Good thing Tin Foil Tom appointed even loonier Deputy Leaders to make him look slightly less crazy

A legal loophole that lets bureaucrats search your home without a warrant

by Brian Lilley

Imagine being at work one day when a platoon of government bureaucrats bust in and begin to raid the workplace. Would you assume your bosses were doing something illegal, like running a marijuana grow-op in the backroom? 

Or, it might be as simple as asking to hire someone under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program. 

As part of the changes to fix the troubled program, bureaucrats could soon have the power to raid a workplace that is part of the program without a search warrant. 

Here’s how the proposed regulations currently read: 

“An officer, while exercising their powers and performing their duties, and any person accompanying the officer, may enter on or pass through private property and is not liable for doing so. Unless the property is a dwelling-house, no person has a right to object to that use of the property and no warrant is required to enter on or pass through the property.” 

Think about that for a moment.

Federal NDP Deputy Leader promotes vibrator-dispensing sex party on her website

You've got to hand it to NDP leader Thomas Mulcair. He has a reputation for anger management issues and being a bit...off in the head.

So what better way to make himself look even-keeled and reasonable than to assign the two Deputy Leader roles to a pair of whack-jobs next to whom, by comparison, he is the model of sanity.

In that context, it makes sense he assigned those roles to Israel-hatin,' 9-11 conspiracy nut Loony Libby Davies, from the the junkie-haven of East Vancouver and on the Atlantic side of the country, Israel-hatin' Megan Leslie, who is promoting a sex party where free vibrators are on offer.

Given the NDP's constituency, this may be a good move for Leslie, but how it makes the national party look opens up other questions.

h/t BC Blue

Too stupid to be Prime Minister: Justin Trudeau gets asked a non-softball question and assumes it's from Sun News

Justin "le Dauphin" Trudeau was asked whether he thinks it's wise to talk to the Taliban by a CBC news reporter on Parliament Hill. Obviously not used to getting asked serious questions by the Canada's consensus media, Trudeau immediately assumed the reporter was from Sun News.

Trudeau then avoided giving a straight answer to the question. But in fairness, it's Justin Trudeau we're talking about, so maybe he didn't understand it.

Russell Brand takes over MSNBC's Morning Joe

Canada's mainstream media has given up its role as journalists to work as Liberal Party press agents

Death threats received over my support for Rob Ford

On two separate occasions in the last week, women have threatened to kill me because of my support for Toronto's persecuted mayor, Rob Ford.

They aren't the usual types you'd expect to menace someone over political expression. One of them is a middle-aged suburban housewife, the mother of two daughters, who hasn't done a day of real (i.e. paid) work in fifteen years. The other, younger, is an extremely, almost exaggeratedly, feminine single High School Art teacher. Making it even more surprising was that, in both cases, the discussion about Rob Ford was initiated by them. I learned long ago not to raise the subject of Ford with people whose outlook may differ from mine, since his name evokes seething hysteria from some people.

But still, I thought threatening to kill me was a bit much.

In all fairness, the threats, made by the two women with whom I have been friends for many years, but to my knowledge have never met each other, were not meant literally. At least, so I hope.

How could anyone not like this guy?

The irrational, hyper-emotionalism that Rob Ford sometimes inspires is a remarkable phenomenon.  But there are, as far as I've observed, consistent patterns to it. The people subject to it tend to be moderately intelligent but not exceptionally so, and tend to be highly susceptible to the opinions of others. Such people also only read certain, select media and accept it uncritically.

Intriguingly, not only the death threats, but responses to questions I posed to these very different women were almost identical.

When I asked the women how they could be so certain of what they considered Ford's malfeasance, and how 'terrible' a mayor he was, the response from both was that it was because of things they read in The Toronto Star. As it was, their opinion about Ford was shaped by Star editorials as much as by that newspaper's slanted reporting.

My response that The Star wasn't really a credible source about Ford and that it had printed demonstrable lies about him just agitated them further.

A big part of their anger was that Ford was a so-called "embarrassment" and "Toronto has become a laughing stock." Unfortunately, I've encountered that reaction from a number of people before and it's borne of a particular type of bizarre insecurity. Sure, Ford's alleged "crack" scandal has made the news in North America and beyond. But does anyone who isn't prey to this weird pathology really think people in New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Tokyo are dwelling on anything going on in Toronto, let alone what's its  mayor may or may not be doing?

Pointing out to them that their lives haven't been genuinely altered by that perception not only didn't seem to alleviate their anger, but made it worse.

But let's look at another example. Yesterday, news broke that Montreal's mayor was arrested on charges related to fraud and civic corruption. Contrast that with the unproven allegations about Rob Ford made by unnamed sources related entirely to his personal behavior outside of his work as mayor.

Are Montrealers, other than a few sad, chronic whiners, going about saying how "ashamed" they are to be from that city? Of course not. If anything, it's the opposite.

Whether there's something about Quebec culture that's superior to Ontario's and gives them enough security to not continually obsess over what others think of them, I couldn't say. But it does highlight a pathetic trait of far too many Torontonians who do.

When railing against what a terrible mayor Ford was, I asked a simple question to the two women, both of whom are financially comfortable. The question infuriated them.

"Name one thing that Ford has done or is responsible for, something that you've seen with your own eyes or has involved you personally, that has in any tangible way affected you negatively?"

That really got them flustered. They both have "heard of things" that they couldn't actually verify and "knew" how Ford was "destroying Toronto" without being able to factually identify how.

So stymied, both of them, these two lovely, normally kind women, one on Saturday and the other on Sunday, said I can't say anything more about Rob Ford or they would kill me.

Maybe it's a woman thing. After the second instance on Monday, I spoke about it to my most recent ex-girlfriend, who lives just outside Toronto and with whom I am still on very friendly terms.

"Hey, L*** just threatened to kill me!"  I complained on the phone.

In a blatant display of victim-blaming, my ex responded, "What did you do to her?"

"I didn't do anything! I was just saying nice things about Rob Ford and she threatened to kill me!"

"It was probably your fault."

"What do you mean it was my fault!?  I don't go around being violent or threatening anyone. I just explained how Rob Ford is a good mayor who is being unfairly maligned and she threatened to kill me! So did another woman I know on Saturday for the same reason!"

"It was still probably your fault."

That's what things are like these days. You can be innocently walking around the city and some nut case will pelt an orange slushie at you, or sitting on a restaurant patio discussing urban affairs and the next thing you know, your companion is threatening to murder you. And only because you support a municipal politician committed to a small government that is responsible to taxpayers

It's a good thing I don't believe in stereotypes or conspiracies. Because if I did, I'd think this is all down to a bunch of women who like spending money and are out to eliminate people who believe in fiscal accountability.