Toronto City Council Wimps out on Pride Funding

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

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

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

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

More here from Sue Ann Levy in the Toronto Sun

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

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

Hate group may get thumbs up from Toronto City Council

A radical anti-Israel hate group that goes by the name Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, along with the leadership of Toronto's Pride Festival, have been quietly lobbying Toronto's city councilors to secure funding if that hate group participates in the annual event. According to Martin Gladstone, the Gay activist lawyer who has been countering the fanatical organization that seeks to delegitimize the Jewish state, the anti-Israel group has enough votes lined up at present to win the vote.

The group was the source of enormous controversy last year when it threatened to participate and then later  and withdrew from the Pride Festival, ostensibly to ensure the event didn't lose funding. The real reason for their withdrawal was more likely that the loss of funding from the city and corporate sponsors that their involvement would have spurred would make them pariahs in the Gay community to a greater extent than they are currently.

The year before, amid threats from the to withhold funding from Pride, the festival's organizers first promised that that anti-Israel group would not be allowed to [participate, then once they secured City funding scammed the City by reversing that decision to the outrage of many on City Council including the current mayor, Rob Ford.

Councilor James Pasternak had proposed a resolution last year that was adopted by Council that required Toronto's anti-discrimination policy to be revised,in order to address funding to events that include hate groups. By lying about the nature of the Jewish state,  seeking its destruction by falsely labeling it a nation that practices crimes against humanity, singling it out and holding  the only country in  the middle east that respects Gay rights to a standard they hold no other country in the world, the so-called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is an anti-Semitic hate group. Yet Councilors such as Kristin Wong-Tam, who is the original owner of that group's website, along with City Councilors Gord Perks and others on the left wing of Council support the participation of the anti-Semitic group in Pride.

Pride and the anti-Semitic group have been effectively lobbying councilors such as the pliable Mary-Margaret McMahon with the deceptive and ironic claim that Pride is being held to a higher standard than any other city-sponsored event. As there is no other city-sponsored event that gives a platform to a hate group whose sole purpose is to vilify and demonize an entire nation and community, Pride's argument is clearly disingenuous.

Toronto City Council will vote on funding for the Pride Festival on Wednesday, June 6. Councillor Pasternak has proposed that funding from the city be withheld until after the event and submitted to Pride only on the condition that Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is not a participant. Torontonians concerned about their tax dollars being used to subsidize the hateful anti-Semitism and anti-western fanaticism of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid should contact their councillors and hopefully sway them to act responsibly.

(A form that can be used to contact city council is available through Martin Gladstone's website, Reclaiming Our Pride)

The inside story of the demise of CKLN Radio

An anonymous blogger calling him or herself "Your CKLN Insider" created a blog called The Real CKLN Exposed, which presents a story of waste, corruption and malfeasance with a rogues' gallery of characters. The blog purports to give the details of what led to the Canadian Radio Television Commission revoking the license for Ryerson University's student radio station.

I don't know how accurate it is, but it makes for very interesting reading.


UPDATE: An anonymous commenter suggested this link to a story from the Ryerson U paper The Eyeopener, which provides some more info on the fall of CKLN.  Thank you and reader tips are always welcome!

There's a neighbour Eye on a Crazy Planet readers would like even less than Omar Khadr

The last Eye on a Crazy Planet poll asked:

Who would you least like to have as your next door neighbour?

The choices were:
 
Karla Homolka, Omar Khadr, Roman Polanski, Kristen Wong-Tam, and Avi Lewis.
 
I thought home-grown convicted and self-confessed terrorist and murderer, Omar Khadr, would be a hands-down winner.
 
But I was wrong. I forgot to take families into account. While the Khadr clan are generally considered to be Canada's most reprehensible family, Omar Khadr's parole conditions are expected to prohibit contact with the rest of Canada's "first family of terrorism."
 
Whereas, with Avi Lewis, you'd also get, in between bouts of camp-following protests, his wife Naomi Klein. All things considered, Khadr's not looking so bad after all.

George Smitherman wants to be the conductor on the Gravy Train and only you can stop him!

Adam Vaughan, the councillor for Ward 20, came by my house the other day, campaigning for re-election and...

On a personal level, Adam's a nice, sincere guy. I think he's wrong about quite a few things in his political stances. His support for the despicable Krystin Wong Tam, one of the people behind Queers Against Israel Apartheid, is inexcusable. Adam is one of the councillors who appears content with the Miller status quo and from what I inferred, he thinks Miller's greatest failing is that he hadn't effectively communicated all the wonderful things he'd accomplished during his time as Toronto's mayor.

Vaughan doesn't appear to believe Toronto needs spending cuts and that a lot of our financial woes and the deterioration of roads and infrastructure not being properly addressed is because of the city's growth and the costs of transportation.

Some of those transportation costs being due to the incredible waste that happened during the St. Clair street car construction that cost than 300% of its proposed budget. Vaughan's leftist council colleague Joe Mihevc, as Deputy Chair of the TTC and a principle proponent of that mismanaged disaster, bears a huge measure of responsibility for that, and hopefully the electorate in Ward 21 will remember that and put in an alternative like Shimmy Posen.

The conversation with Vaughan took a strange turn. Vaughn has pretty much a lock on his downtown Trinity-Spadina ward. He's not facing any serious competition, so he seemed more interested in investing his time, not to advocate for himself in his ward, but to advocate voting against Rob Ford as mayor.

It was bizarre. First Vaughan started making comparisons between Ford and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Obviously the comparisons were meant disparagingly and I interrupted Adam to point out that he was making a big assumption to posit that I shared his views about Limbaugh and Beck. (While I find neither  to be exceptionally profound individuals, I don't find their positions so outrageous as to share the socialist "progressives" assessment of their being devils incarnate.)  Adams' response suggested he wasn't taking me seriously. It appeared incomprehensible to him that an intelligent person couldn't feel the same way. Particularly an intelligent person who lived south of Bloor Street.

As I said, the conversation was a bit bizarre. Adam made some very cogent points about Ford's council record being less impressive than his campaign would suggest, and then he undermined his arguments, in my mind, by trying to suggest I shouldn't vote for Ford because of Ford's father's record as an MPP when Mike Harris was Premier.

Adam then proceeded with an argument that may play well with some of his constituents, but struck me as the ultimate in political cynicism. He brought Ford's having lied (or forgotten about) his DUI/marijuana incident 11 years ago in Florida and his drunken outburst at a hockey game. The cynicism of harping on those matters is that it suggests Annex voters are more concerned with image than substance. My concern is with having a mayor who is determined to get our roads fixed, our municipal costs down, and who isn't in the pocket of detestable unions like CUPE Ontario. I told Vaughan I don't care if Ford smokes joints during council meetings, as long as he can cut the waste at city hall.

Ford is still preferable to councillor who spends $13,800 on their website or one who launches libel suits at the taxpayers' expense.

As far as I was concerned, the conversation reached its nadir when Adam told me "Ford is like George Bush, he tells you he's smart, but he's not."

It became apparent then that I was speaking with someone so blinded by their ideology that it was impossible to recognize or acknowledge any truth beyond it. George Bush was the president of the United States for two terms. In debates, he bettered supposedly more intelligent opponents like Ann Richards and Al Gore. You may disagree with what he did, but one of the reasons for his successes was that he was faced by adversaries so arrogant that they refused to concede the fact that someone who disagrees with them might actually posses some intellect. And he mopped the floor with them.

Adam conceded that Smitherman is not someone people could bring themselves to vote for. That part of the conversation was like his tepid Smitherman endorsement. I like Joe Pantalone in the same way I like Adam. I disagree with him, but at least I know that I'm talking to someone who is communicating what they honestly believe. Vaughan's endorsement of Smitherman is not based on any enthusiasm for Smitherman but on an all-consuming abhorrence of Rob Ford.

The 'strategic voting' endorsements of Smitherman by Mihevc and Vaughan should be instructive to voters. Smitherman has lately been talking about himself as a "progressive" candidate. Those paying attention need no reminder that "progressive" is also a code word that Marxists and radical socialists use to describe themselves.

Is Smitherman a Marxist or a radical socialist? Absolutely not. But he appears to be someone who will make shady deals and talk out of both sides of his mouth to achieve power. He's a McGuinty Liberal. The "progressive" who is going to cut taxes and waste? Don't hold your breath.

Yesterday the Globe and Mail endorsed him. It was the least enthusiastic endorsement I have ever read from a newspaper.

Here is some of the Globe's "endorsement" of Smitherman:

"Mr. Smitherman is vague. The risk in supporting Mr. Ford is what he might do as mayor, the risk in supporting Mr. Smitherman is what he might not do. The latter of the two has failed to articulate a vision or a strategy of his own, and he could easily end up as a second David Miller..He is essentially a professional politician, an office-seeker with a taste for managing, but not for transformation."

One of Eye on a Crazy Planet's readers provided this rendition of what we could look forward to if Toronto doesn't have the sense to reject Smitherman