A Hezbollah-friendly Public School Board candidate in Toronto

I'm running for Public School Board Trustee in Toronto's Trinity-Spadina. My opponent is someone who went out to speak to and support a pro-Hezbollah rally.  Now imagine if someone like that was making decisions about how public education was delivered in Toronto:

TORONTO - During the heat of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon in July 2006, Ausma Malik was front and centre at a peace rally denouncing the conflict and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s support of Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah missile fire.

Pictures from that day show the Muslim woman, wearing a headscarf and attending the University of Toronto at the time, outside the U.S. Consulate, speaking beside Ali Mallah, a well-known pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas activist and CUPE official...

... (Toronto Sun reporter Sue-Ann Levy) asked Chow at a Toronto Sun editorial board how she could align herself with a woman who reportedly contended publicly that Israel committed “state-sanctioned murder” and whether such a woman espoused “caring” values.

At first Chow, looking like a deer caught in the headlights, said she wasn’t 100% familiar with Malik’s background or her “foreign affairs point of view.”

Asked whether she checks people out before she endorses them, Chow said she does know “who she is”...

...Malik’s opponent for trustee, Richard Klagsbrun, who happens to be Jewish, said he is running to “rid the TDSB of the egregious politicization” that has made its way into the curriculum.

“Ms. Malik, a speaker at a rally that was out supporting an Islamist terror group ... represents much of what’s wrong with public education in Toronto,” he said.

See also:  

Downtown Toronto NDPers refuse to condemn actions of election candidate who spoke at pro-Hezbollah rally

Rob Ford on Jimmy Kimmel

The usual hateful, biased media suspects are railing about how Rob Ford was "mocked" and "embarrassed" but if you actually watch the videos below, which are Ford's complete appearance on The Jimmy Kimmel Show last night, you'll see he comported himself well, gave a great promo for Toronto, and that Kimmel genuinely likes and seems to respect him.

Rob Ford has delivered most of what he promised as mayor and he certainly didn't lie about his policies, only to change them once in office. That if nothing else makes him stand out from his political rivals and opponents.

Try not to think of this the next time you see Hillary Clinton

 

Doug Ross fixed the New York Times Magazine's 'Planet Hillary' cover (below)

Ross has another (almost) equally disturbing image HERE

Oppressive Canadian Prime Minister victimizes Palestinians by attacking one of their journalists

Solidifying their reputation as the world's most professional victims, a Palestinian reporter is claiming he was "attacked" by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's security detail.

Harper, a Christian, entered the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, one of his religion's most sacred sites, with only one of his own staff members allowed to film him.

Canadian media were the first to accompany Mr. Harper and when a Palestinian reporter protested not being able to film the Prime Minister in the Church, one of the Palestinian reporters alleges, "..we protested against that, but the guard punched Al-Mahid TV cameraman Amer Hijazi by a metal piece on his fist to Hijazi’s chest."

The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedom, which is reporting the incident, does not clarify whether the "metal piece" on the fist of the Prime Minister's guard was a wedding band or a set of the brass knuckles which Canadians are notorious for carrying when traveling abroad.

The Palestinians are condemning the "attack that is a violation of freedom of expression," demanding an apology, an investigation, and call on all journalists not to cover the Canadian Prime Minister's visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

In other news, Mr. Harper, who is frequently accused by enemies of Israel of being anti-Palestinian, oppressed them further when he committed an extra $66 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority.

David "Sock Puppet" Soknacki is a tool of the media trying to oust Rob Ford

"David Miller's Budget Chief"

NOW magazine's "fiscally conservative"
alternative to Rob Ford

Those four words are all anyone really needs to know about David Soknacki, a former Scarboough City Councilor who was the budget chief for the former mayor who hiked taxes and spending in Toronto to astronomical levels.

The media is billing Soknacki, who has no known policies or ideas, as a "fiscal conservative. " How exactly do we know about Soknacki's "conservative" bona fides? Is it from his record? No.

The only evidence we have is that The Toronto Star and the hard-socialist weekly tabloid NOW magazine and some other media that detest the genuinely fiscal conservative Rob Ford tell us so.

The first time I heard of Soknacki was when I was speaking with a writer from The Toronto Star-owned BlogTO, who was extolling him as a sensible "fiscal conservative" alternative to Ford. That writer is both very left-leaning and despises Ford, which are traits that invariably go together in Toronto.

In fact, I haven't met anyone outside the media who had even heard of David Soknacki prior to a month ago. For all we know, he could be Sarah Thomson in drag. After all, has anyone seen Thomson and Soknacki in the same place at the same time?

The way that an unknown whose only accomplishment was to help Miller drive city spending through the roof is being lauded by media outlets that either hate fiscal conservativism, or hate Rob Ford, or both is particularly revealing.

Rob Ford's support is holding firm and a sanctimonious, self-obsessed Toronto media is already anxious that the man who they think has embarrassed Toronto could win a second term.

John Tory, as is his fashion, has been vacillating and hinting, without committing to entering the 2014 mayoral race, but odds are, like in the last election, he won't enter as long as Ford is running. Tory is intelligent and decent, but is a poor campaigner who has no real support base. He has never held elected public office other than a brief stint as an MPP prior to his leading the Ontario Progressive Conservatives to a devastating loss in the 2007 election, in which Tory also lost his seat.

With the prospect of Ford carrying the vote from Torontonians who still cringe at the thought of David Miller-era spending, taxes  and total subservience to public service unions, the anxious media needed a faux-conservative sock puppet to bleed away those voters from Ford.

"Sock Puppet" Soknacki fit their bill. The clue is when The Toronto Star is friendly to what they tern a "right-leaning" candidate, it's a lot like when the Grand Ayatollah of Iran endorses a US presidential candidate. With friends like that, we should all be worried.

Rob Ford apologizes to The Toronto Star's Daniel Dale

Interestingly, the apology confirms just about everything that was anticipated in this blog post...



UPDATE: The reporter for the Toronto Star, which has conducted a pathological, political vendetta against Ford, says he will continue with his lawsuit despite Ford's apology and clarification.

It would be in Mr. Dale's best interests that the Star has committed, in writing, to cover all expenses and awards in the law suit, because a plaintiff can be hit with costs in what is determined to be a nuisance suit.

"They're all going to laugh at you!" Toronto's loony left goes full-on Carrie's mom

Five Feet of Fury's Kathy Shaidle has been saying for weeks now that the pathetic, insecure loony left in Toronto has been acting like Carrie's Mom. These of course are people who are pathologically obsessed with how other people think about them, and they believe their worst fear, that they are being laughed at, has come true.

The belief that Rob Ford's troubles reflect directly on them is something that would only go on within diseased minds.

Yesterday, at a sparsely attended anti-Ford rally at Toronto's City Hall, in which the media almost outnumbered the protesters, Kathy's Carrie's Mom comment was fully realized.

A protester named Linda Keigher furiously, bitterly seethed into a bullhorn in front of the two and a half dozen or so assembled malcontents that:

"The world is talking about us, they're laughing at us, and they're finding it to be very funny!"

Oh, the horror!

Actually, I'm finding it pretty funny too. It's something I can share a laugh about with friends who aren't from Toronto. When they ask, "so why is his popularity going up?" it's an easy answer. "Because of the other morons we'd have to choose from if we get rid of Ford."

A couple of weeks before things blew up with the latest Ford brouhaha, the Mayor went on an excursion to Austin, Texas to find ways of emulating their success as a live-music hub. Ford has accomplished something better now, making Toronto a global center of live comedy, and all his stupid opponents do is gripe!

Take a look at the idiotic, petulant, juvenile behavior of the rest of his Toronto City Council opponents when Ford spoke a couple of days ago. Like spoiled 8 year-olds, as a group, they decided to turn their back on him.

This is more disgraceful than any behavior I've seen from Ford in his role as a public official and it's completely typical of the half-wits we have sitting as Ward representatives in Toronto. Why would no other media show this picture that reveals the real face of Toronto's hateful, insecure, self-obsessed, would-be ruling class? Because if they did, they know they'd be laughed at even more.

For them, nothing could be worse than that.

Am I really supposed to be outraged because Rob Ford talked about eating pussy?

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Toronto's media hates you stupid people for liking Rob Ford

Rob Ford's support numbers means something his obsessive opponents haven't figured out

The recent Forum Research poll, taken after Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair disclosed the existence of a video in which Toronto Mayor Rob Ford puffs on a glass pipe, shows some pretty good approval ratings for the embattled civic leader.

Particularly noteworthy is that Ford's highest approval rating, 55%, comes from Scarborough, for which Ford successfully managed to get funding for subway expansion from Kathleen Wynne's heel-dragging Provincial government.

Ford opponents in politics and government have been insisting how unnecessary the Scarborough subway is and how the eastern borough would be so much better served by what would have been a fully-funded Light Rail Transit system. Much of that attitude is illustrated by The Toronto Star's Urban Affairs columnist Christopher Hume, when he bravely, and obviously painfully, ventured out of his elitist downtown enclave to Scarborough recently to assess the surroundings and reiterate his preformed conclusion about Scarborough's transit needs.

Here's the funny thing, though. Why is it that the people who actually live in and know the Scarborough area best are the ones most supportive of Rob Ford?

Therein lies a clue to much of Ford's success, and why the media and his obsessive detractors have such little success is swaying support away from him.

It's because Ford actually listens to his constituents and tries to give them what they ask for, rather than condescendingly and paternalistically deciding what is best for them, whether they want it or not.

Weird, isn't it, that the public will loyally support a politician who listens to and seems to care about them, even though their intellectual betters and moral superiors in the media and politics tell them they shouldn't?

More public masturbation by the Toronto Star over Rob Ford

CBC radio's Q had a panel with three of Toronto's media personalities, including Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank gloating about the Rob Ford video.

More interesting is the obsessive hate and sanctimony that has him in in a ridiculous denial of the obvious vendetta his paper has had against Ford for the last 3 years.

My buddy Jon Kay makes some good points on the panel, but I would add to an important observation he made. Jon says, in essence, that there is a crisis in conservative thought reflected in the election of Rob Ford and his like in a single-minded focus on low taxes and reducing government spending.

There is a lot more to it than just that.

Ford is also a reaction to the paternalistic, sanctimonious social engineering foisted by incompetent politicians on a public outraged by a lack of their ability to simply provide competent management.

We have an incompetent provincial government that has wasted, and for all intents and purposes stolen billions in public funds, while imposing radical nanny-state social policies.

Ford has not wasted any public funds and is someone who is genuinely concerned with the wishes of his constituents, in contrast to wanting to impose a "vision" on them.

Yet The Star is, as it has been, primarily concerned with the superficiality of image. Which is why as a media source, they still have little credibility and as Kay astutely notes, Ford may indeed get reelected.

You can watch and hear the panel below:

Separating the personal from the political with Rob Ford

A news leviathan that dominated today's headlines across Canada was confirmation, from Toronto's Police Chief Bill Blair, of the existence of the elusive Rob Ford "crack video."

It would be pointless to argue the authenticity of the video. Anything can be faked, but the apparent efforts of associates of Toronto's Mayor to procure the video suggests it was not a fabrication concocted by special effects experts.

That's the bad news for supporters of the embattled chief magistrate.

But for Torontonians who fear the demise of their only mayor to show demonstrable concern for fiscal accountability in over a generation, there is in fact a great deal of good news to counterbalance today's revelations.

Barring some new shocker, there will not be any charges against Ford, and quite reasonably so. A video with a man smoking a pipe with a puff of smoke coming out of it is not conclusive proof of any criminal wrongdoing.

Ford has said he's not resigning. And there's something that the ecstatic media buzzards that despise Ford have forgotten in their current euphoria; the next municipal election is a year away.

A year is an eternity in politics.

Ford has kept property taxes down to the rate of inflation, as he promised. He eliminated the Municipal Vehicle Registration Tax, as he promised. His influence has managed to get federal and provincial funding for subway expansion, as he promised. Ford has saved millions and improved garbage pick-up for half the city by privatizing that service, as he promised. Because the municipal unions knew he would play hardball, Ford was able to negotiate a fair contract with them, staving off any strike. That in stark contrast to his predecessor David Miller who forced the city to endure a prolonged, fetid garbage strike in the hottest months of the summer of 2009. At a point where the length of the strike would have forced union workers subsisting on strike pay to negotiate a deal more favorable to the city, Miller completely capitulated to the unions.

Miller is relevant to any current discussion about Ford. Because if one of  Ford's presumptive rivals gets into office, like the straw man candidate David Sonacki, Miller's Budget Chief, to whom all of Toronto outside of the offices of The Toronto Star remain indifferent at best, a return to the fiscal ineptitude and high taxes of the previous administration is virtually guaranteed.

The orgy of sanctimonious revelry at The Toronto Star over the disclosure of the existence of the Ford video will probably turn out to be short lived.

Ford lied about the video. But in terms of lying, The Star also lied about Ford, when during his mayoral campaign, the newspaper published false accounts of Ford having physically assaulted a high school football player he was coaching. Even after the alleged victim of Ford's non-existent assault denied it ever happened, The Star still did not print a formal retraction of their lie.

And we all know that the public is not as inclined as partisan media and partisan politicians to become histrionic about politicians lying about events in their personal lives. Indeed, a hysterical overreaction to personal foibles can backfire in a big way against the people trying to exploit it.

Newt Gingrich thought he had Bill Clinton on the ropes after the lies the former President told about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. But in the end, it wasn't the President, but Gingrich, who lost his job. The Speaker of the House role was taken away from Gingrich after the charge he led plummeted the GOP into a disastrous performance in midterm elections, when the public rejected their exaggerated hysteria about the Clinton affair.

Toronto's media mavens have been scrambling over each other to demand the crucifixion of Ford, whose indiscretions have cost taxpayers nothing. Yet strangely, most of them have remained complacent and silent about the billions of tax dollars wasted by the corruption Kathleen Wynne's provincial government.

The public are not as stupid and oblivious to that hypocrisy as the media might hope.

The milquetoast, mushy middle Councilor Josh Matlow and leftist Councilor Joe Mihevc both rushed today to exploit the news about the Ford video to their advantage. That is the same Mihevic whose incompetence and mismanagement of the St. Clair streetcar fiasco cost the city tens of millions only to see a neighbourhood divided, no discernible improvement in transit service and increased traffic congestion in his ward.

"It pains me to see the City of Toronto in the situation we currently face,"  Mihevic gloated about Ford. No more, I can assure you, than it pained me to see a $40 million project mushroom to over $120 million largely because of Mihevic's ineptness.

A year from now, when Torontonians go back to the polls to select their mayor, the Rob Ford video may or may not be on their minds. But so too will the high taxes, the incompetence, and the paternalistic arrogance of David Miller and his acolytes on City Council.  Knowing that horrible stewardship of the city, and union-bosses' and developers' domination of City Hall would return if one of Ford's potential rivals like Olivia Chow, David Sonacki or Karen Stintz should replace him will also be on the minds of voters.

Which weighs more heavily on Toronto's voters in the fall of 2014 remains to be seen. But I wouldn't count out Rob Ford yet. Not by a long shot.

Hey Look! After Sun Media and bloggers have been doing it for 2 months, the mainstream media finally gets around to telling the truth about fanatics Greyson & Loubani

Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail:

John Greyson and Tarek Loubani have been portrayed as innocents abroad, humanitarian do-gooders who were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. This picture is inaccurate and incomplete. The two are hard-core anti-Israel activists who’ve been mixed up in Middle East politics for years. They should have known what they were getting into.

When they were arrested, the two were on their way to deliver medical equipment to a hospital in Hamas-controlled Gaza. The whole world knew that the situation in Egypt was highly volatile. The government was determined to shut down the Muslim Brotherhood (an ally of Hamas) and unlikely to look kindly on a couple of foreigners who decided to film a bloody crackdown.

Jon Kay in the National Post:

Egyptian military authorities have been co-operating with Israel in controlling the flow of weapons and militants to and from Gaza for years. But till now, Western pro-Palestinian activists generally have preferred to play down this fact. The case against Israel works best when it is presented as a simple morality play about indigenous Arabs battling neo-colonialist Jews. And so the fact that many Arab leaders in the region (including not only those in Egypt, but also Lebanon and Jordan) share Israel’s fear of Palestinian militancy is seen as an embarrassment to the conceit of anti-Zionist solidarity. 

(to be fair to John and the NP, they did do a couple of articles touching on the radical fanaticism of Greyson and Loubani before.)

I think Jon's article is overly optimistic in its assessment that the Greyson/Loubani saga will refocus the Canadian radical left away from its anti-Israel depravity onto real human rights crises, but he does make some very valid observations about the other facets of this episode. 

Sun News, as its viewers are aware, has been providing the complete story on Greyson and Loubani from the start:

A pathetic mainstream media that refuses to call terrorism by its name

How it works between the press and the PMO

Former Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish has asserted that Press Conference questions to the Prime Minister have to be submitted in advance.

Ms Parrish is as uninformed out of office as she was an embarrassment to her party while she was in.

Sun Media's David Akin explains how it all works.

The pathetic, paranoid and hilarious world of Canada's nutcase, far-left radicals

The vapid Canadian far left sees "oppression" in just about everything.

To illustrate their cognitive impairment, it should suffice to say that they live in the most prosperous, egalitarian society in the history of the world, and complaining of its "oppression," these geniuses want to replace it with a system that has invariably lead to totalitarianism, poverty and mass-murder of civilians.

Aside from their many imagined "oppressions," there is something the intensely earnest, humorless egotists of the radical left despise even more. Whet  riles them more than anything is when they are exposed as foolish hypocrites. To observe their self-discrediting idiocy, all one has to do is pay a modicum of attention to what they say and do. But the radical left has benefited from the laziness and sympathy of the mainstream media which frequently reports only a fragment of the radicals' activities and omits their most glaring acts of intellectual seppuku.

Which is why they are really, really pissed off at a blogger named Greg Renouf who operates a blog called GenuineWitty.

I've written before about the radical left's animus towards Greg. It seems that their rancor has reached new levels now that Renouf is a regular guest on Ezra Levant's show on Sun News Network. Levant is an outsider who routinely exposes the hypocrisy and stupidity of the leftist fanatics. With the inside knowledge that Greg brings, they have incurred the absolute fury of the radicals by revealing them as clownish objects of ridicule.

Componding the amusement are the pathetic efforts of some leftists to strike back. Filled with prose doused in a melange of sanctimony, vitriol and self-pity, it's hilarious reading.

Patrick Ross at Bad Company provides more detailed background here, but for a great laugh, there's no substitute for the original material at this link.

Zimmerman, Martin, the media, racism and hypocrisy

There is another terribly sad facet to the Martin/Zimmerman tragedy.

Racism does still exist. It is deplorable when it occurs and needs to be addressed. But the Zimmerman case is indicative of the approach that the media and our political leaders take to racism. They don't deal with facts but promulgate symbols and falsehoods. Worse, they rely on what others have asserted without ascertaining facts for themselves. In the process. by seeing "race" in everything that happens anywhere, these people are practicing a new form of racism that lacks the self-awareness to recognize what they are doing.

What happened in Florida when Treyvon Martin was shot was the result of two people making stupid mistakes. The aftermath saw one life ended and another ruined, and it was needless. However, as people like Bill Cosby have noted, there is no proof that is was caused by racism.

Denouncing the Zimmerman verdict and Zimmerman himself as "racist" has become emblematic of proclaiming "I am not a racist." Despite the facts, which all point to the fact that race was not the cause of the events that led to Treyvon Martin's death.

So as much as racism is a horrendous ongoing blister in our society, we are facing a devastating cancer which is equally problematic. That being the poisonous, self-destructive instinct to accept narratives without ascertaining their veracity. There is nothing new to this manifestation of most people to want to be seen to be "a good person" without actually putting in the most basic work of finding out whether what they are saying is true.

Because the real tragedy we a\re viewing as a result of the Zimmerman verdict is that being perceived to be a good person is valued more highly than actually being one.

The article below from Reason.com tells important facts that have escaped most of the mainstream narrative:

More than a week after George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the fatal shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin, the backlash against the verdict continues. President Obama spoke some undeniable truths when he noted that the African-American community’s intense reaction to the case must be seen in the context of a long, terrible history of racism. But there is another context too: that of an ideology-based, media-driven false narrative that has distorted a tragedy into a racist outrage.

This narrative has transformed Zimmerman, a man of racially mixed heritage that included white, Hispanic and black roots (a grandmother who helped raise him had an Afro-Peruvian father), into an honorary white male steeped in white privilege. It has cast him as a virulent racist even though he once had a black business partner, mentored African-American kids, lived in a neighborhood about 20 percent black, and participated in complaints about a white police lieutenant’s son getting away with beating a homeless black man.

Read the rest of this article at REASON.COM 

Barack Obama honors anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist

"Michelle and I were saddened to learn of the passing of Helen Thomas.  Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism.  She covered every White House since President Kennedy’s, and during that time she never failed to keep presidents – myself included – on their toes.  What made Helen the “Dean of the White House Press Corps” was not just the length of her tenure, but her fierce belief that our democracy works best when we ask tough questions and hold our leaders to account.  Our thoughts are with Helen’s family, her friends, and the colleagues who respected her so deeply."

From Thomas' 2011 Playboy interview:

PLAYBOY: Let’s get to something else you said more recently. In a speech in Detroit last December, you told an Arab group, “We are owned by the propagandists against the Arabs. There’s no question about that. Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question, in my opinion. They put their money where their mouth is. We’re being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.” Do you stand by that statement?

THOMAS: Yes, I do. I know it was horrendous, but I know it’s true. Tell me it’s not true and I’ll be happy to be contradicted. I’m just saying they’re using their power, and they have power in every direction.

PLAYBOY: That stereotype of Jewish control has been around for more than a century. Do you actually think there’s a secret Jewish conspiracy at work in this country?

THOMAS: Not a secret. It’s very open. What do you mean secret? ... [Jews have] power over the White House, power over Congress. ... Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies, which are funded by wealthy supporters, including those from Hollywood. Same thing with the financial markets. There’s total control.

PLAYBOY: Who are you thinking about specifically? Who are the Jews with the most influence?

THOMAS: I’m not going to name names. What, am I going to name the Ponzi guy on Wall Street [Bernard Madoff] or the others? No.

PLAYBOY: Then how do you make the claim that Jews are running the country?

THOMAS: I want you to look at the Congress that just came in.

PLAYBOY: In America you’re talking about a relatively small community. Jews make up roughly two percent of the U.S. population. On a worldwide level, the percentage is well under one percent. Those numbers don’t exactly spell domination.

THOMAS: I get where you’re leading with this. You know damn well the power they have. It isn’t the two percent. It’s real power when you own the White House, when you own these other places in terms of your political persuasion. Of course they have power. You don’t deny that. You’re Jewish, aren’t you?

PLAYBOY: Yes.

THOMAS: That’s what I thought. Well, you know damn well they have power.

PLAYBOY: Were you surprised that people like David Duke and even Hezbollah came out and said you were courageous and a hero for them?

THOMAS: I don’t want to be a hero to anyone. I just want to be me, and I want to tell the truth. I want everyone to accept the truth.

h/t Werner C.

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.

-----

*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?

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.