I shall now torture you with the worst thing that has ever been on TV

"IF I HAD THE TIME AND A SLEDGEHAMMER," SAID GEORGE LUCAS, "I WOULD TRACK DOWN EVERY COPY OF THAT SHOW AND SMASH IT.”

The Star Wars Holiday Special::


The Star Wars Holiday Special by FilmGeek-TV

More about this HERE

In 2008, 94% of married women in Egypt had experienced female genital mutilation. Believe it or not, that's progress

Robyn Urback in The National Post:

...While the percentage of married women reported to have experienced FGM/C (female genital mutilation/circumcision) was still a whopping 94% in 2008, according to the most recent Egyptian Demographic Health Survey (DHS), that figure was down from 97% in 2000. It is expected that the next DHS report, anticipated in 2014, will show further progress. In 2008, the prevalence of FGM/C among girls 10-18 was 50.3%, a number that is projected to fall as those girls marry and have children of their own.

There are still considerable obstacles to overcome, not least of which is the Muslim Brotherhood’s defence of the violent practice...

Krauthammer: Obama sides with Iran's mullahs over sanctions

Barry and pal doing the new anti-Semitic "Seig Heil" salute:

Which classical character are you?

Here's a bit of fun - take the Oxford Classical Dictionary quiz to determine which Classical character you resemble.

Lefty Jews declare: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising guys weren’t all that great

From Five Feet of Fury:

I saw the original last week and (almost) couldn’t believe it.

Now, Commentary rebutts: 

The article’s argument is that maybe if the fighters had not been so uppity, if they had not made a fuss–then the Nazis, who had already murdered 500,000 Jews of Warsaw, might have let the remaining 50,000 live. Maybe! It is not a new argument. Rather, the author amazingly resurrects and endorses the arguments of the Judernat, the Jewish collaboration government of the Ghetto. (…)

New York Times effort to rehabilitate Hilary Clinton & Obama on Benghazi "completely false"

Fifteen months after the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, the narrative of the attack continues to be shaped, and reshaped, by politicians and the press.

But a New York Times report published over the weekend has angered sources who were on the ground that night. Those sources, who continue to face threats of losing their jobs, sharply challenged the Times’ findings that there was no involvement from Al Qaeda or any other international terror group and that an anti-Islam film played a role in inciting the initial wave of attacks.

“It was a coordinated attack. It is completely false to say anything else. … It is completely a lie,” one witness to the attack told Fox News.

h/t Kathy S 

George Smitherman's husband Christopher Peloso found dead

Leaving behind three young children, George Smitherman's husband Christopher Peloso, who went missing last morning, was found dead this morning.

Smitherman is the former Ontario Health Minister in the scandal-plagued Dalton McGuinty government who lost the 2010 Toronto mayoral race to Rob Ford despite entering the contest as the odds-on favorite.

Peloso reportedly suffered from depression. The cause of death at this time has not been announced but is believed to be self-inflicted.

Peloso had previously gone missing in September but was found in a disheveled state in railway yards two days after his disappearance following a massive police hunt.

Gerry Nicholls reviews the year in politics (sort of)

January:

* Idle No More movement leader, Chief Theresa Spence, threatens to “bring Canada’s economy down to its knees.” NDP leader Thomas Mulcair immediately objects saying: “Hey, bringing the economy down to its knees is my job!”

* NDP says a "bare” majority enough for Quebec to separate from Canada; nudists rejoice.

More HERE

Captain eHeath Smitherman's husband goes missing again

George Smitherman's husband has pulled another disappearing act!

Smitherman is the former Ontario Liberal Health Minister and drug addict who oversaw the wasting of a billion tax dollars on the eHealth debacle.

He is Olivia Chow's top endorser so far among those who hope she makes a try for the mayoral seat in Toronto..

Yeah, Toronto would be much, much better off being run by these clowns who treat your tax money like it's confetti.

And how much time, money and police resources went into finding Smitherman's husband last time????

To rephrase Oscar Wilde, to lose your husband once may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose him twice looks like carelessness.

Hey, at least no one seems bothered that Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson thinks girls should get married at 15 or 16

Do I agree with him?  No.

Should he be suspended from his show for saying wacky stuff? Of course not! I'm not a viewer of Duck Dynasty, but I would assume that's why people watch him in the first place.

Pathologically stupid "Jewish Forward" writer implies anyone who makes fun of Obamacare Pajama Boy is a Nazi

An article in The Jewish Forward by Jay Michaelson, the vice president of the Arcus Foundation, the world's leading LGBT funder, as well as the founder of Nehirim, an LGBT Jewish organization, is so astoundingly ridiculous and idiotic, it seems as if it could only have been written for the satirical website The Onion.

But it wasn't. 

In a deadly serious tome, Michaelson reveals his bizarre pathologies, insecurities and incredible stupidity by suggesting you must be an anti-Semitic, homophobic Nazi if you make fun of the epicene spokesthingee for Obamacare known as Onesie Pajama Boy.

Whether or not the Pajama-Boy bashers are unconsciously anti-Semitic or not, I don’t know. Consciously, they are against everything “Judaism” stands for, at least as construed by its enemies: outsiderness, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, a progressive rather than nativist agenda, an opposition to the notion that there is one kind of “normal” person, a sympathy for the underdog and the immigrant as opposed to the successful and the privileged, and, yes, a rejection of a certain gendered, masculinist understanding of justice wherein the strong survive and the weak are trampled underfoot like the untermenschen they are.

That fascistic outlook has long been a part of far-right conservatism – whether in revisionist Zionism, contemporary French/Hungarian/Greek nationalism, American Republicanism, or German fascism.

For some time, imbecile leftists have lobbed the term "fascist"  at anyone who disagrees with their sanctimonious ignorance.

But even so, by making weird allegations without an iota of substantiation, other than whatever is going on within his own unhinged thought processes,  it's rare that they go to the lengths Michaelson did to demonstrate the extent to which subservience to certain leftist ideologies resembles mental illness.




h/t Kathy S

Extremist Richard Klagsbrun wants logic returned to public education

The struggle for students to escape the creepy, corrupt Canadian Federation of Students

It is usually the Canadian Federation of Students’ job to marshal student protests, not to endure them. But that day, more than 50 students clutching lobster traps and signs reading “Canadian Federation of Suing” were gathered outside to vent their frustrations at a body they alleged had calcified into a conniving, amoral organization bent on hanging onto its disillusioned membership at all costs.

“They’re like a creepy ex-boyfriend who won’t let it go,” protester Melissa Kate Wheeler told  student journalist Jane Lytvynenko.

As president of the Concordia Student Union, Ms. Wheeler was one of a vocal cadre of student leaders across Canada with Kafkaesque tales of petitioning to leave the Federation, only to be stopped by a years long odyssey of ignored calls, counter-tactics and legal action.

In the words of an official protest statement, “students can get into CFS, but can never get out.”

More at National Post 

h/t Marvin W

New Year's eve celebrations are a Jewish plot that must be cancelled according to Malaysian Muslim group

A Malaysian Muslim group has called for New Year’s celebrations to be cancelled because they reflect Jewish culture and will cause Muslim youths to commit sins.

A top Muslim cleric in the Asian state also said the New Year should be recognised with pray and religious speeches rather than parties.

“The celebrations will have excessive entertainment, which can cause the majority of Muslim youth to let their guard down and commit a lot of sin,” Malaysia International Institute of Islamic Cooperation (Ikiam) Datuk Mustapha Idrus was quoted as saying by Malay daily Sinar Harian.

h/t Jihad Watch

Female suicide bomber murders at least 16 people in Volgograd, Russia

Moscow (CNN) -- A massive explosion at a train station in the Russian city of Volgograd killed at least 16 people, including one police officer, the Investigative Committee of Russia said on its website Sunday.

The head of the committee, Vladimir Markin, said 16 people had been killed and 34 people were injured, including a 9-year-old girl.

The female suicide bomber set off the device before she could pass through a metal detector, Markin said, citing available information

He said the bomber used the equivalent of 10 kilograms of TNT and included shrapnel.

UPDATE: "According to reports, the head of the female bomber who committed the act of terror has been discovered. This "will make it possible to identify her (bomber)," a Volgograd law enforcement source said. "

Rocket fired from Lebanon sparks Israeli retaliation

JERUSALEM -- In the first border flare-up of its kind in four months, a Katyusha rocket fired from Lebanon struck northern Israel on Sunday, triggering a heavy artillery barrage from Israeli forces in response. No casualties were immediately reported on either side of the frontier.

The United Nations force in southern Lebanon urged restraint on both sides and said it was in contact with the Israeli and Lebanese authorities.    

Kathleen Wynne had the authority to declare an emergency in Toronto (but didn't)

Yesterday, I received another email from Ward 21 Councillor "Fiasco" Joe Mihevc reiterating for the umpteenth time how "disappointed" he is that Rob Ford didn't declare a state of emergency in Toronto because of a power failure following the ice storm. Within 3 days, the number of residents affected went down to less than 2.5% of the city, but declaring an emergency was never about a real need to do so - it was about Rob Ford's dishonest Council enemies trying to emasculate him by transferring all his authority to Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly.

...Ford wasn’t the only person who could have declared a state of emergency in Toronto last week.

Premier Kathleen Wynne could have done it as well, without Ford’s consent.

Under Ontario’s Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act, either the mayor or the premier can declare a state of emergency.

Under Section 4: “The head of council (the mayor) of a municipality may declare that an emergency exists in the municipality or in any part thereof and may take such action and make such orders as he or she considers necessary ... ’’ But in the same law, under Section 7, the premier of Ontario, “may by order declare that an emergency exists throughout Ontario or in any part of Ontario” if “in the Premier’s opinion the urgency of the situation requires that an order be made immediately.” Since Toronto is clearly “any part of Ontario” Wynne could have declared a state of emergency, without Ford’s permission.

Given that Wynne didn’t do that, it’s likely, she agreed with experts on emergency preparedness who said Ford made the right call.

h/t Blazing Cat Fur 

A&E's Duck Dynasty reversal and other Saturday Snippets

The might be most amazing thing about the A&E Duck Dynasty flip-flop is that the dimwits at the network that broadcast the show would think its audience would give a shit about outrage from GLAAD.

Or at least it would be for anyone who didn't know how astoundingly stupid most TV executives are. Duck Dynasty is reality show about a family or southern Christian rednecks who are upfront and proud of their beliefs and way of life. Following a GQ Magazine interview in which family patriarch Phil Robertson denounced homosexuality as sinful, which is a the traditional Christian outlook, the Gay Rights advocacy organization GLAAD pressured A&E into suspending the star of the network's most popular show.

While Robertson's comments were not going to cost the network any loss in viewership from its core audience, A&E shot itself in the foot with its overreaction by suspending him. Faced with an immediate backlash by Christian groups and fans of the show, A&E lost a quarter of the network's audience in the week following the suspension.

Faced with those numbers and a potential walk-out by the rest of the cast, A&E immediately capitulated and reinstated Robertson. A&E executives are now mumbling a bunch of stuff about dissociating themselves from Robertson's views, tolerance, and free speech, which is what they should have done in the first place without having suspended their top's show's star and rights owner.

The outcome of all this is that Robertson emerges in a stronger position, A&E executives come off looking like imbeciles, and GLAAD gets a kick in the teeth by having overplayed their hand, which will lead targets of their future campaigns to be less likely to be intimidated by the Gay Rights lobby group.


And in other news...

Joan Rivers and Hunger Games actress Jennifer Lawrence are continuing some sort of a feud. 

In a public relations catastrophe, Big Box furniture store The Brick is weaseling out of a 50% discount it offered to online customers on Boxing Day, saying they made a mistake. 

In Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood supporters torch a university and 5 are killed in clashes. Understandable really. The Muslim Brotherhood has no need for higher education, since they are semi-literates who only read one book.

Pat Condell talks about the masochistic idiocy of "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid" and their ilk

British government-mandated porn filters block access to websites of MP who campaigned for censorship, charities and Gay Rights groups

The telecoms company O2 has been forced to amend its so-called “porn filter” after it inadvertently blocked access to charity sites including ChildLine, the NSPCC and the Samaritans.

The filters have been introduced by major internet service providers (ISPs) in recent weeks after demands from David Cameron that telecoms companies act to stop children “stumbling across hardcore legal pornography”.

But the changes have led to internet users being denied access to a wide range of organisations including child protection charities, women’s charities and gay rights groups. Among institutions that have found themselves subject to the blocks are the British Library and the National Library of Scotland.

The opt-in filters also deny access to the Parliament and Government websites and the sites of politicians, including Claire Perry, the MP who has campaigned prominently for the introduction of filters.

More HERE  

Humorless, extremely stupid Egyptian author accuses Jon Stewart of scheme to conquer Egypt

This is what passes for a serious political discussion in Egypt:

The Creepy Broadcasting Corporation

Christmas Miracle Puppy springs to life 45 minutes after being stillborn

A Christmas miracle took place at an animal shelter when a puppy declared stillborn sprang to life 45 minutes later.

Vets at the Aurora Animal Shelter in Colorado were astonished by the event, which was described as ‘impossible’.

The heartwarming story begins on Christmas Eve, when a small dog in labor was brought to the front desk.

Sleazeball tactics from Toronto City Councillors Mihevc and Matlow & other Christmas tidbits

- Egypt declares Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group following a car bomb attack in Cairo that kills at least 14 people and wounded over 100.


- An American living in the United Arab Emirates was sentenced to a year in prison for making a YouTube video (below) spoofing teen culture in Dubai under their cyber crime laws outlawing posting content on the internet that "tarnishes the nation's reputation abroad "

- 34 Christians were murdered on Christmas by terrorists using car bombs, including 26 at a Catholic Church service.

- Meanwhile, here in Toronto, power has been restored restored to almost all of the less-than-10 per cent of the city that was affected. But that didn't stop sleazeball City Councillors Mihevc and Matlow from trying to exploit the local power outage by sending out Christmas Eve messages bemoaning how Rob Ford didn't hand over his powers to Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly by declaring a formal state of emergency. The fact that such a declaration would make absolutely no difference to the response and could actually inconvenience consumers and businesses over the holiday season is evidently immaterial to the pair of self-interested, opportunists. 

Ho Ho Ho!

Merry Christmas to all!!!

Toronto Imam uses the rape of Oprah Winfrey at age nine to justify child rape by Islam`s founder Mohammed

From Alternative Angles:

Here’s an excerpt of Shaykh Rageah’s lecture:

“If Allah blesses you with two daughters and you maintain them, teach them the book of Allah [Quran], put the hijab [traditional veil] on them, and you say; Aisha you look beautiful with the hijab, Temiya, you look wonderful with the hijab. And Glorious is God (سبحان الله), A lot of sisters and a lot of brothers, they don't understand that children from a young age they adopt what they see and they grow with what you teach them, and the sisters, God has willed it (ما شاء الله), [say]: ‘Oh she is so cute, she is just going to a wedding. She is only nine year old; God has willed it (ما شاء الله). Put a miniskirt for her’. A miniskirt when she bends down you can see, Glorious is God (سبحان الله), the moon from the other end. Allah is the greatest (الله اكبر).

“But this is not Islam. Aisha, may Allah be pleased with her (رضي الله عنها), she was married at the age of nine. If you think that is abuse, Oprah [Winfrey], this lady she was pregnant when she was nine year old. She is an adult. Don't treat them like other kids. No. You say, Hey, Shame on you. This is not what Allah Glorified and Exalted be He (سبحانه و تعالى) desires from you. This is not what Allah wants from you. This is not what the messenger of Allah (رسول الله), peace and blessing be upon him (صلى الله عليه وسلم), wants from you.”

Shaykh Rageah’s statement regarding Oprah Winfrey is inaccurate. In an interview to Dave Letterman Winfrey admitted that she survived a brutal rape at the age of nine, underwent constant episodes of sexual molestation between the ages of 10 and 14 and became pregnant at 14 (her son died in infancy).

h-t Blazing Cat Fur 

So on one side, you`ve got a guy who hands out free presents to kids and on the other, one who wants to behead you for drinking alcohol

More Here

Federal Court upholds Jason Kenney`s decision to defund anti-Semitic, terror-supporting Canadian Arab Federation

In 2009 as Minister of Citizenship, Jason Kenney halted federal funding to the anti-Semitic, terror-supporting extremists of the Canadian Arab Federation. Last May, the CAF took Kenney to court to try to have the funding restored.

Evidently, the CAF case was as incompetent as one would expect from such hateful buffoons. I am informed a large part of their argument rested on using quotes from articles by radical loony-leftist Judy Rebick.

Today, according to tweets from Jason Kenney, the Court has upheld Kenny`s decision.

At a press conference I attended a couple of years ago when I asked about the funding for another radical NGO called Alternatives International, based in Montreal, Kenney discussed the difficulty of getting funding removed from such groups.

Tim Uppal, another Federal Cabinet Minister, then told me following the conference how important it is for the public to speak out and pressure the government to remove funding from such organizations. Because with the tactics these groups use to keep their snouts in the public trough, public support for the government in these cases is critical.

The Court deemed reasonable my view that CAF had apparently endorsed terrorist organisations & made arguably anti-Semitic public statements.
— Jason Kenney (@kenneyjason) December 24, 2013

Glad to see Federal Court has upheld my 2009 decision to stop CIC settlement funding of Cdn Arab Fedn because of its leadership's extremism.
— Jason Kenney (@kenneyjason) December 24, 2013

Pound back a few beers and get drunk, then have a few people executed...It's good to be Kim Jong-un!

This should please the communist morons who comprise the so-called Canadian Peace Alliance, which wants the west to appease North Korea even more:

The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was "very drunk" when he ordered the recent execution of two aides close to his uncle Jang Song-thaek, reports say.

According to the Japanese newspaper YomiuriShimbun, the pair questioned an order from the dictator to hand over control of a business to the military. Sources told the newspaper Kim was "upset" when they said they needed to check with "Director Jang" first.

The leader's uncle, who was removed from power and killed as part of a recent high-profile purge, was head of the ruling Workers' Party administrative department.

 More HERE

Log Cabin Republicans Denounces Gay Stereotypes Promoted by Obamacare Advocates

Log Cabin Republicans, the only LGBT advocacy organization on the Obamacare Repeal Coalition, denounced a video advertisement by Out2Enroll exploiting gay stereotypes to encourage gay men to enroll in the Affordable Care Act.

“This cynical ad betrays the depths Obamacare advocates will sink to in order to pad their pathetic enrollment numbers,” Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director Gregory T. Angelo declared. “As a self-proclaimed ‘fierce advocate’ of gay equality, President Obama would do well to distance himself from this nonsense and denounce it immediately. This ad is also an example of the left promoting harmful stereotypes that gay men are nothing more than sex-crazed lechers. If anyone on the right made such a comparison, liberals would be apoplectic. At a time when left-wing propagandists are decrying Duck Dynasty‘s Phil Robertson for equating homosexuality with promiscuity and deviance, Out2Enroll and others should take a look in the mirror and ask if the truth is that they are the ones responsible for promoting such harmful stereotypes.”

h/t Confessions of a Closet Republican & Blazing Cat Fur

Tireless Enemies of Israel: America’s Academic Boycotters

Edward Alexander in The Weekly Standard:

If there are still many Americans who believe that college and university professors are harmless drudges obsessed with moldy futilities, people who know so much about so little that they can neither be contradicted nor are worth contradicting, they should be disabused of their illusions by the recent decisions of three (ostensibly) academic organizations to boycott the academic institutions of the state of Israel. First, the Asian American Studies Association in April, and more recently the American Studies Association, and the Council of Native Americans and Indigenous Studies Association.  All have decided that they can no longer share the globe with a Jewish-majority state, any more than the academics included in Max Weinreich’s classic study of Hitler’s Professors (YIVO, 1946) could continue to share Europe with its Jewish minority.

It was these German professors who made anti-Semitism academically respectable and complicit in raw murder.

h/t Werner Cohn

Piranhas circle for kill as Rob Ford's enemies try to use the Toronto Ice Storm to complete their coup

The struggle to restore Toronto’s power may have paled compared to the power struggle behind the scenes.

On one hand, you had a mayor trying to be a mayor and on the other, you had the deputy mayor — with appointed executive powers — waiting to, perhaps, take control.

To do that, a state of emergency needed to be called.

But Mayor Rob Ford is the only one who can do that.

If such a declaration was made, Councillor Norm Kelly — the deputy mayor — would have taken charge.

In the wake of Ford’s crack cocaine scandal, city council determined that Kelly — not the mayor — should be the one to lead in the event of an emergency. As a result, council transferred that power from Ford to Kelly.

Lots of games being played.

Read the rest of Joe Warmington's column at The Toronto Sun 

h/t Tarek Fatah

Why you MUST READ one of the most awful books ever written

It's one of the most poorly-written books ever published, at least if the most commonly used English translation is anything to go by. The late Brazilian Maoist Paulo Freire's The Pedagogy of the Oppressed is filled with trite, jargony, Marxist proselytising, and could be easily dismissed as yet another demented, anti-Capitalist manifesto, but for the fact that it is compulsory reading in teachers colleges throughout North America.

Paulo Freire (1921-1997)

If you were to learn that the textbook which is considered the seminal basis of education philosophy, affecting the teaching of children throughout every year of their public schooling, tries to instill admiration for a vicious mass murderer who invented the political concentration camp, you might find it just a touch odd.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was personally responsible for the abuse and murder of hundreds of thousands of people following the Bolshevik Revolution. He had his political rivals and opponents imprisoned, tortured and often murdered. His brutality set the stage for the horrific brutality of his successor, Josef Stalin, who was responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler. Lenin's political ideology was the basis for that of Mao Zedong, who was the most prolific mass murderer in the history of the world.

While for those of us who aren't sociopaths, such a person might not be considered the best role model to use for teaching youngsters, here's what Freire had to say in the book that your kid's teacher was forced to absorb:

...the revolutionary process is eminently educational in character. Thus the road to revolution involves openness to the people, not imperviousness to them; it involves communion with the people, not mistrust. And, as Lenin "pointed out, the more a revolution requires theory, the more its leaders must be with the people in order to stand against the power of oppression.

So when Freire discuses oppression and "the oppressed," his notion of oppression is capitalism and an education system that produced people like Robert Graves, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Robert Frost, Thomas Sowell, Jonas Salk, and T.E. Lawrence. Freire's means of addressing this "oppression" is to adopt the ideology of a ruthless totalitarian who casually had people executed because their political outlook differed from his.

Friere's oppressive

hero of "the oppressed"

It sounds insane and evil. But Pedagogy of the Oppressed, considered the basis of Critical Pedagogy, is treated like liturgical canon at places like the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, which describes itself as the largest and most influential teachers college in Canada. In fact, OISE was the at the forefront of infusing Friere's theories into educational practice in the 1970's and 80's. That might account for the regular stream of deranged, idiotic, and perverse theses and teaching approaches coming from that institution. That of itself would be troublesome enough, but OISE sees its mission as transforming public education into one of its own image. It teaches the teachers leaving its doors that beyond educators, they should be activists in the classroom.

Their goal is no less than to create a generation of anti-Capitalist revolutionaries by manipulating them in the classroom from the moment they enter school. Or, as Freire himself put it:

Lenin's famous statement: "Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement" means that a revolution is achieved with neither verbalism nor adtivism, but rather with praxis, that is, with reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed. The revolutionary effort to transform these structures radically cannot designate its leaders as its thinkers and the oppressed as mere doers.

The Toronto District School Board encourages students and teachers to read this book, and other bizarre tracts, to better understand issues of race, gender, sexuality and class.

Though it will be a tedious experience, you too should force yourself to read Freire's The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in order to understand the vile ideas behind the dangerous turn that public education is taking.

The CBC's incompetent, racist coverage of aboriginal issues

Klavan on Culture: Anti-Semitic Stalinist Eunuchs

Andrew Klavan at PJ Media:

Whatever horrifying condition deprived Pajama Boy of his genitals, I suppose we must be thankful he can’t pass it along to future generations. But the leftism represented by this genderless icon has been on full display recently — and it’s as awful to look upon as the poor, sad mutilated soul in the picture above.

Take for instance, the American Studies Association‘s recent academic boycott of greedy, big-nosed Jews. Okay, they didn’t put it that way exactly — the modern leftist anti-semite doesn’t say “Jew,” he says “Israel,” or “Zionist.” But anti-semitism is what it is both pure and simple. Whatever violation of human rights you can contrive to find in Israeli security measures, they are nothing compared to the day-to-day oppression of women (half the population, remember), non-Muslims and other humans in the surrounding Muslim countries. So why not boycott them as well?

ASA spokesman Reinhard Heydrich (Obergruppenfuhrer retired) explained the scholars’ reasoning.

"If there is one thing we learned from Adolf Hitler’s war against the Jews it is that we must not demonize the other. And if there is one thing we learned from Edward Said’s book Orientalism it is that the other is Muslim. And Muslims don’t like Jews. Therefore we must wage war against the Jews."

h/t Kathy S. 

Vladimir Putin is outflanking the west at every turn

Nick Cohen in The Guardian:

This has been the year of Vladimir Putin's ascendancy. The Russian president has made Barack Obama look like a conman's stooge – a lame duck president so weak that he can barely waddle to the pond. Putin has managed to protect his client dictatorship in Syria – even after it broke one of the few taboos limiting man's inhumanity to man by using chemical weapons. He has Edward Snowden, perhaps the most damaging leaker in recent history, under the vigilant eyes of his secret police in Moscow. He has out-manoeuvred the pro-European demonstrators in Kiev and bought off the Ukrainian government.

At home, his control over the state and civil society is so complete that he can afford to play the merciful tsar and release dissidents and his former rival Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Forbes magazine was not making a mistake when it called Putin the world's most powerful person in 2013....

More at The Guardian 

h/t Terry Glavin

Convicted terrorist attends pro-Muslim Brotherhood briefing on Capitol Hill

Sami Al-Arian was convicted of being a secret Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader in the U.S. He’s under house arrest, so he isn’t seen in public much. Except for November 5, when he was photographedattending a pro-Muslim Brotherhood briefing on Capitol Hill.

Al-Arian was able to attend because of a change in his regulations. He is now only on a curfew and can leave his home if he wears a tracker. It is unclear why security protocols at the Cannon House Office Building didn’t prevent his entry.

A new pro-Muslim Brotherhood organization named the Egypt Freedom Foundation organized the event using a room reserved by Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN)...

The Palestinian worship of death

At a Palestinian Authority event under the auspices of Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, with the participation of the Minister of Culture, the Palestinian Authority portrayed murder as a positive act.

The event started with PA Minister of Culture Anwar Abu Aisha honoring a number of released terrorist murderers by inviting them on stage and awarding them PA plaques of honor. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the PA uses cultural events to honor terrorists.

Later in the program, a play was performed by Palestinian youth. The play opens with young actors who are divided into two rival camps of Hamas and Fatah supporters. Eventually they throw away their Fatah and Hamas flags, uniting under the PA flag. Then they shoot and kill all the "Israelis." Among the dead bodies of the Israelis, they find a Palestinian who had been spying for Israel.

The "spy" begs for his life. However, the Palestinian leader makes him kneel down and shoots him in the head.

h-t Marvin W.

Martin Luther King and Merv Griffin

Martin Luther King was interviewed on The Merv Griffin Show in 1967

Muslims Shoot Each Other, Blame Zionist Snow Pig Conspiracy

Those clever, clever Zionists! Will there be no end to their diabolical use of animal agents!?

And the Arabs wonder why they get depicted negatively in western media...it's all such a mystery...

h/t Blazing Cat Fur

Mark Steyn: The Age of Intolerance

Last week, following the public apology of an English comedian and the arrest of a fellow British subject both for making somewhat feeble Mandela gags, I noted that supposedly free societies were increasingly perilous places for those who make an infelicitous remark. So let’s pick up where we left off:

Here are two jokes one can no longer tell on American television. But you can still find them in the archives, out on the edge of town, in Sub-Basement Level 12 of the ever-expanding Smithsonian Mausoleum of the Unsayable. First, Bob Hope, touring the world in the year or so after the passage of the 1975 Consenting Adult Sex Bill:

“I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory.”

h/t Five Feet of Fury 

Movie for a Saturday afternoon: Mary, Queen of Scots

Fantastic movie with an exceptional performance from Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth I. Fine performances from Vanessa Redgrave in the title role and Patrick McGoohan as her brother, as well as an outstanding supporting cast including the great Trevor Howard and Ian Holm.

The movie also features a beautiful score by John Barry, and a terrific screenplay by John Hale.

A despicable Toronto Star publisher tries to intimidate civic leaders into joining its vendetta against Rob Ford

Conrad Black in the National Post:

...In another aspect of the Ford controversy, a number of people have angrily sent me copies of a letter that the disgraceful John Honderich — the chair of the board of Torstar Corporation (the Star’s owner) and a former Star publisher — assumedly approved for distribution to 70 prominent Torontonians, urging them to agitate for the mayor’s removal in mid-term, and taking them to task as moral outcasts of the community for not joining in the full Christmas revelry of the Star’s attempted putsch....

Eye on a Crazy Planet's top 6 Christmas movies

You ain't gonna find It's a Wonderful Life on this list.

Though that movie, along with Miracle on 34th Street and A Christmas Carol (with Alastair Sim) were the staple trio of Christmas movies when I was a kid, they are so hyper-schmaltzy, with the Dickens adaptation the least egregious of the three, that they are hard to take year after year. That's probably why the very funny, quirky, and slightly cynical A Christmas Story has surpassed them in recent years as the most popular Christmas movie.

While I would recommend all of the above for Christmas-time entertainment, particularly the brilliantly filmed and marvelously-acted A Christmas Carol (which was released as "Scrooge" in the US), the Eye on a Crazy Planet top 6 are wonderful movies of another sort.

These 6 have Christmas as a major component, but they are movies that are great entertainment and the Christmas element is incidental. The beauty of this Christmasy sextet is that you won't feel that by watching them, you've not been forced into a form of liturgy.


6. On Her Majesty's Secret Service

This James Bond movie with male model George Lazenby in his one outing in the role is considered, aside from Lazenby's performance, to be one of the best Bond films. It was probably more faithful to the book version than any of its predecessors and certainly more than any that came after.

The movie tales place at Christmas time with Bond out to foil yet another of the evil Ernst Stavro Blofeld's plots for world domination. The song "Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown" was actually Incorporated into a critical part of the movie when Bond is being chased through a winter carnival by Blofeld's henchmen.

The scene is excerpted below, but this is the French version (The song was sung by different European pop stars for the various language markets):




Here is the English version from the original soundtrack, sung by the Danish singer Nina:




5. Bad Santa

Yeah, sure, Santa's in the title and it's got that obvious Christmas aspect, but this is a heist movie about a lecherous, alcoholic thief. It includes a malevolent, felonious dwarf, jokes about "not being able to shit right for a week" after anal sex. It also has one of the best scenes in any movie involving testicle punching.




4. Trading Places

Jamie Lee Curtis, topless, in her prime. If that hasn't made the sale, then you've got a very funny movie about skulduggery on Wall Street starring Eddie Murphy, Dan Ackroyd and a terrific supporting cast including Don Ameche, Ralph Bellamy and Paul Gleason




3. The Silent Partner

Filmed in Toronto in 1978, I have a particular soft spot for this movie, since my Dad was a friend of one of the producers, Joel Michaels, and I was allowed to hang around on set one day and got to meet the star, Elliott Gould.

But nostalgia aside, it's a fantastic crime movie that begins with a thief dressed as Santa Claus robing a bank in the Eaton Centre. The whole thing centers around Christmastime, and Christopher Plummer plays the thief with relish, giving a fabulous, menacing performance as a sadistic sociopath. This movie has a great screenplay with intriguing twists and turns, excellent performances, along with Plummer's, by Gould and a lovely Susannah York, and even a cameo by John Candy, before his fame in SCTV and feature films.

Enhanced by a brilliant, subtle score composed by jazz legend Oscar Peterson, if there's one weak aspect to the movie, it's the jarring editing. But that aside, it's a terrific movie and a special treat for Torontonians who get to see, in a rare exception,  their city actually portrayed as itself in a major film with big stars.



2. The Lion in Winter

So you think Christmas with your family is a trying time?  After she plotted his overthrow, Henry Plantagenet keeps his wife confined all year round except for Christmas time. But that hasn't stopped her from using the holiday season to try to usurp him using their sons. The extraordinary screenplay (based on his own play) by William Goldman sets the scene for an acting tour de force, featuring brilliant performances by Peter O'Toole, in his second screen turnout as Henry II (the first being in the wonderful film Becket, with Richard Burton in the title role), Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine, Anthony Hopkins, in his film debut, as Prince Richard (later to be known as Richard Lionheart) and a young Timothy Dalton as King Philip of France.  This is truly one of the great movies of all time and what better time to enjoy it than this week?




1. Die Hard

"Now I have a machine gun Ho-Ho-Ho" written, by the hero, on a freshly killed corpse. If that doesn't exemplify the spirit of Christmas, I don't know what does.

Die Hard is arguably the best pure action movie of all time. We know the story; New York police detective John McClane goes to LA for a Christmas visit to see his wife who works on the other coast. Instead of yuletide cheer, he has to single-handedly thwart a gang of ruthless thieves who have taken over a highrise building and are holding dozens of hostages. Once this movie gets going, it's one thrill after another. This movie will make your season's greeting, "Yippee-kay-ay, motherfucker!"

Christmas Epic Rap Battle: Donald Trump vs Ebenezer Scrooge

The very stupid academics pushing a boycott of Israel

Earlier today, members of the American Studies Association voted to confirm the organization’s decision to boycott Israel...

Lawrence Solomon: For global warming believers, 2013 was the year from Hell

Almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong for the cause of global warming

2013 has been a gloomy year for global warming enthusiasts. The sea ice in the Antarctic set a record, according to NASA, extending over a greater area than at any time since 1979 when satellite measurements first began. In the Arctic the news is also glum. Five years ago, Al Gore predicted that by 2013 “the entire North polar ice cap will be gone.” Didn’t happen. Instead, a deflated Gore saw the Arctic ice cap increase by 50% over 2012. This year’s Arctic ice likewise exceeded that of 2008, the year of his prediction. And that of 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Weather between the poles has also conspired to make the global warming believers look bad. In December, U.S. weather stations reported over 2000 record cold and snow days. Almost 60% of the U.S. was covered in snow, twice as much as last year. The heavens even opened up in the Holy Land, where an awestruck citizenry saw 16 inches of snow fall in Jerusalem, almost three feet in its environs. Snow blanketed Cairo for the first time in more than 100 years.

2013 marks the 17^th year of no warming on the planet. ..

Not Very Happy Hookers

The, deranged, "politically" correct revisions to prostitution-related terminology, as promoted on rabble.ca, is detailed more HERE.

In related news, Canada's Supreme Court has struck down current prostitution laws and given Parliament a year to re-write them. 

Political correctness is out of ducking control!

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Can cultural relativists explain if we should embrace the part of Pakistani culture that executes Gay people?

At a Toronto District School Board conference last year, Uzma Shakir, the Sharia Law-loving City of Toronto "Diversity" Manager, gave a sanctimonious speech about how paternalistic and condescending Canadians are towards people like her by assuming they come from inferior cultures.

She went on to blather about how Pakistani culture is every bit as advanced and cosmopolitan as ours and how we should be embracing it more here.

Leaving aside the obvious, unanswered question about why, if Pakistan is so great, was she and her husband so willing to abandon it, was she also referring to the "superior" Pakistani practice of executing Gay people for being Gay?

Just askin'... 

A very interesting commentary on Rob Ford by Ken Dryden

Many highly educated, politically sophisticated, well-off people voted for Rob Ford in the last Toronto mayoralty election. It was not for no reason. Despite a recent run of weeks that could hardly be worse for Mr. Ford – admissions of crack cocaine use, drunkenness, lies, cover-ups, personal meltdowns, international ridicule – 42 per cent of those now polled approve of him in his time in office. Again, it is not for no reason.

Before being elected mayor, Mr. Ford was a long-serving but not widely known city councillor. Those who knew him best are least surprised by the revelations. He promised to cut taxes. All candidates everywhere now promise to cut taxes, but Mr. Ford, with his blunt conviction, looked like he meant it.

Read the rest at The Globe and Mail