Archive for March, 2012

The silly initiative of spending an hour in darkness on the last day of March didn’t look very successful today. Even in my area of Toronto…

I live in the stronghold of the city leftists, the Olivia Chow’s bunker. Most people here would vote even for a donkey, if it has the NDP logo painted on its head. Often it is hard to hold a normal conversation in the numerous cafes here without getting into an argument about some silly political issue – yes, the Annex looks like a war zone to me (even Margaret Atwood lives somewhere nearby).

That’s why you may expect a strict observance of the Earth Hour in our area. I personally hate it, because the only people who benefit from it are the eco frauds like Al Gore and David Suzuki and the few “green” corporations, which exist only because of our subsidies.

So, when I went to my balcony in the middle of the event, shortly after 9 p.m., I expected to see gloom and darkness. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that my righteous lefty neighbours kept their lights on.

 

 

As you can see, all the lights are on, all the way to Casa Loma, which you can see on the horizon.

I don’t think that those people were celebrating the new human achievement initiative. The truth is probably much simpler – other than presenting themselves as progressives in talks, my neighbours simply don’t care (and that’s a good thing).

On the other side, things were not much different.

 

Other than the areas obscured by trees, the lights are on all the way to the CN Tower.

It was a nice evening…

It was great to see that the majority of people are not that dumb and brainwashed as St. Suzuki and Fat Al want them to be. I guess that there next step would be to force us to turn off the lights…

© 2012 Blogwrath.com

Just a few days after the death of the Muslim terrorist Mohamed Merah, who killed seven people, some of the French Muslims already mourn his death.

That put a dent into the carefully crafted image of the lone wolf who doesn’t represent the Islamic community at large. That fantasy created by the mainstream media is hard to swallow when the French people witnessed the following demonstration of Muslim supremacy:

 

 

 

As you can see, a crowd of fanatical Muslims bagheads tried to make a hero out of him. The riot police were involved, but nobody got arrested. That makes you wonder how seriously the French take their laws. As of now, promoting and abetting terrorism in France is illegal and so is the wearing of the disgusting burqa.

Later on, a group of similar “moderates” tried to lay flowers near Merah’s home, as shown in this video:

h/t BNI

I have always found fascinating the double standards of the European multiculturalism. Imagine if somebody tries to lay flowers at the grave of Rudolf Hess in Germany or the birthplace of Adolf Hitler in Austria. How long do you think it would take to deal with them? I bet you they’ll be arrested and tried as soon as they show up.

Yet at the same time Muslims are free to worship a mass murderer and violate the law wearing those barbaric garments and nobody gets charged with anything.

If this is France’s normal way of dealing with Muslim fanaticism, we can expect plenty of new Merahs in the near future…

 

© 2012 Blogwrath.com

 

5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.

6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.

7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations”!

Psalm 137

 

 

When these beautiful verses were recorded, thousands of years ago, the ancestors of the savage warmonger who created Islam were illiterate Bedouins who roamed the deserts. That’s why it was odd that Jews from Toronto and their friends had to confront Muslims claiming Jerusalem as their own…

The same Jerusalem, which is the eternal capital of the Jewish State… Jerusalem – the most Jewish of all Jewish cities…

Apparently, that’s the sign of our messed up times – earlier this year, following the initiative of the Arab terrorists from Hamas, a million people were called to march to Jerusalem to reclaim it for the Arabs. As it happens very often, history repeats – Hamas is willing to do to Jerusalem what the ancient Edomites did to it.

However, there is a slight difference. While in antiquity Israel wasn’t able to confront the mighty invaders and avoid the Babylonian capture, now the country is more than well prepared to deal with its enemies.

And I suppose that most of the Arabs and the lefties knew that and didn’t follow blindly the Hamas insanity. As of this writing, it appears that the march to Jerusalem has been an utter failure. Not many idiots approached the Israeli borders and even fewer tried to cross them.

The same happened in Toronto – instead of the hundreds of Arabs and their lefty buddies, who were supposed to show up at the Israeli Consulate, we only saw a few dozens of the usual assortment of the standard characters – hippy leftovers from the 1960’s, a few students desperately trying to join a group that likes them and very, very few Arabs.

 

 

 

The Jewish side was a little bit bigger, but when you consider the fact that the 14 million Jews in the world are up against over a billion Muslims, you may wonder why the Muslim cause’s supporters were underrepresented.

 

Other that the members of JDL-Canada, the rally included people from different backgrounds, who wanted to support the right cause.

 

You could see members of the Hindu Advocacy group:

 

Even the activists from Caledonia joined the rally. Just like the Jews, they have a first-hand experience in confronting extremists (in their case the extremists act with the provincial government’s blessing). I saw Merlyn Kinrade, the hero veteran from the 1956 Suez Canal peacekeeping mission, and Mark Vandermaas (from the Caledonia Victims Project) who recently started the highly successful Israel Truth Week, aimed at confronting the blackmail of Israel:

 

 

Later they were joined by Gary McHale from CANACE, one of the major moving forces of the fight for justice in Caledonia:

 

 

The participants were not shy about stating their opinions. Their signs clearly explained why the ridiculous Hamas claims were wrong:

 

 

 

 

 

In a short speech, JDL’s Director Meir Weinstein condemned the intended aggression and clearly explained that Israel is not going to sit and take the abuse. He also emphasized the constant efforts of the Muslim extremists in Canada to undermine the Jewish community. However, thanks to the vigilance of the Jews and the fair policies of the government, those extremists are not going to achieve their goals. Many of their organizations are a front of the Muslim Brotherhood, which tries to gain the same control in Canada as in the Islamic countries. They all will eventually fail, just like the anti-Jewish Palestine House, which was recently defunded by the Federal Government.

 

The confrontation was more or less civilized. The only odd thing was that when the Jewish side played the Canadian National Anthem, the “progressives” across the street and their Arab friends didn’t show much of respect – they kept hissing, booing and shouting. But that’s not a surprise – as Karl Marx used to say, “The proletariat has no homeland”, so hating Canada is just a part of their lives…

© 2012 Blogwrath.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watch the video below. It shows how low the great country of the USA has fallen. As long as people like those in the line are considered valuable voters, there’ll always be politicians like Barack Obama willing to steal from people’s hard-earned money and redistribute it to those weird characters.

This is not about poverty… This is about the total self-destruction of all that’s left from the values that made the country great.

h/t FFF

By the time I am writing this, I am sure that everybody in North America knows that in a Florida town a person named George Zimmerman shot and killed another person named Trayvon Martin. I am not going into a guessing game about who is guilty in this case. That’s up to the courts to decide (if they are still independent).

This article deals mostly with way the US government, mainstream media and assorted activists tried to use the case to impose their twisted agenda on all of us. Right in the beginning I would like to firmly state that at the bottom of that agenda lies simple racism.

Obama was supposed to be post-racial, hopey, unifying president, but he has proven time after time that he is either an incompetent idiot who tries to divide the country or a skilful leftist on a mission to completely destroy it.

When the incident was first reported, the media and the race hustlers salivated over the opportunities – imagine, somebody called Zimmerman shot a young chap with the first name Trayvon. Zimmerman implies a very white person, possibly German, or maybe even Jewish (the latter is even better for the media). And the victim’s name definitely implies a black guy (mostly blacks choose such weird made-up names for their children).

According to the preliminary information, Zimmerman was not arrested after the shooting – a dream scenario for the media, showing that a white guy got away.

When the first picture came out – it was a mug shot from a previous arrest – it turned out that Zimmerman wasn’t white at all. In fact, despite his name, he looked very brown, he was Hispanic.

 

That caused some cracks to the perfect racist crime, but not for long. As soon as the old racist idiot Al Sharpton showed up to help Trayvon’s family benefit in the best way from the situation, suddenly the racial determination was corrected – it was announced that Zimmerman was a “White Hispanic”. That is a totally new race, but it doesn’t really matter when big money is at stake.

The correction came from the fact that Zimmerman’s father was white. I am not sure if I can follow the complex logic of Al Sharpton’s style of racism, because from their point of view Barack Obama should be classified as “White Black” or “White African” so we basically don’t have a black President.

The issue is so complicated that only a specialist like Dr. Mengele or other authority from the old South Africa would be able to resolve it.

On the other hand, from the very beginning, the “victim’s” family and the media started showing a very old picture of his, in which he looked like an angelic creature that fell from heaven.

It was contrasted with the mean-looking Zimmerman:

 

However, that was not enough – George still looked too dark, too ethnic and didn’t fit the white villain paradigm. Thanks to the miracle of Photoshop, some progressive souls made him look whiter. With the change of his face colour and the background he is supposed to look like nasty white guy:

 

Doesn’t he strike you as more evil now? So when you pair him with Trayvon again, you can create much more powerful rage and indignation:

 

As you can expect, the other side is not sleeping either. After an easy search they uncovered Trayvon’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, with a few pictures. Here is one of them:

 

It looks like that Zimmerman didn’t deal with a cherubic kid –  by the time he met him, the kid has already turned into a nasty gangsta type, going under the name NO_LIMIT_NIGGA (on his Twitter account). And another one:

 

But that huge guy (already 6’3”) hardly could fit Al Sharpton’s narrative of the innocent violated kid. So you are not going to see that picture juxtaposed with Zimmerman’s.

And the “tolerant” left racists are going even more extreme:

 

Can you believe that? The neighbourhood watchman Zimmerman turns out to be the last reincarnation of a line of villains, which includes Adolf Hitler and Timothy McVeigh. Only in the twisted minds of the lazy ghetto blacks and their leaders Al and Jesse it is possible to make such a statement. But that’s not a surprise either – in that layer of society robbery and extortion are the easiest sources of income.

The whole case shows what a disgusting racist shithole America has become under Obama’s leadership. People are willing to turn a Hispanic into a white guy just to “prove” their case of “hate” crime.

At the same time, every hate crime committed by blacks on whites is conveniently ignored. Just a two weeks ago a white schoolboy was set on fire by two of his black classmates. Did you hear old Al talk about it? A few years ago Christina Eilman, a mentally disturbed person, was arrested by the Chicago police and instead of sending her to a mental institution, they released her into a high-crime black area. Then she was raped by a black gang an thrown out from the seventh floor of an apartment building.

 

By some miracle she survived but remained paralyzed and in need of constant care. Guess how much the rapists paid for that – you guessed right – ZERO. And I won’t even go into the black on black crime. Every day dozens of blacks, many (unlike Trayvon) really small innocent children get killed by stray bullets, drive-by shootings or direct violence, but the gang of racist idiots – Obama, Sharpton, and Jackson – don’t give a damn, because you can’t make money from the welfare black criminals.

We really live in a messed up world…

© 2012 Blogwrath.com

 

 

 

 

Time: Friday, March 30, 2012, 3:00 pm until 7:00 pm

Place: Israel Consulate 180 Bloor Street West, Toronto

The Jewish Defence League is calling on all people of good will to defend freedom and stand outside all Israel Embassies and Consulates on March 30. Raise the flag of Israel high and proclaim your support for battle against Radical Islam.

 

This is a photo of Miriam Monstango, 8 years old. It’s the typical parents-staged picture, where they ask you to stand in a certain way to make the photo cuter, while you think how much longer this is going to take. Then, years later, you’ll laugh at yourself every time you look at the picture again.

Well, Miriam won’t be laughing. She was the last victim of a Muslim animal named Mohamed Merah, who terrorized France a few weeks ago. While he was completing his killing spree in the Toulouse Jewish school, she was the only one who managed to run away. Merah shot the little Jewish girl and when he caught her, he grabbed her by the hair and shot two bullets in her head, while at the same time shooting the scene with a camera attached to his chest.

I don’t know what she was thinking seeing that big gun near her face, but I suppose it was the same that millions of Jews were thinking when a few decades ago they all were in exactly the same situation. However, instead of the Nazis, now we have a “good” specimen of the barbaric Muslim cult doing the job. Still, there is not much of a difference, because it is a well-known fact that many Muslims eagerly joined Hitler’s Waffen SS to exterminate Jews.

 

Mohamed Merah was devoted follower of the cult’s founder – a warmongering pedophile, who “married” his last “wife” when she was 6 years old and dutifully waited to rape her until she was 9 (I admire his restrain!). Miriam fits that age, but since according to the Islamic definition she was a pig or a monkey of Jewish origin, she was supposed to be killed.

Although I am outraged at what happened, I am still thinking that it was the most natural course of action for people like Merah. The same happens when you leave hyenas or coyotes to run around unattended.

What makes me totally mad is the way the mainstream media and the lefties presented the case. This is what this article is all about. You’ll see below other opinions, which you may consider right wing, but they are influenced by exactly the same point of view championed by the multicultural, Marcuse-influenced Left.

After the killings started, it became clear that the “progressives” desperately hoped that we were dealing with another Breivik-style rampage. Guardian published a nasty piece, which aggressively attacked the European values and blamed those who tried to uphold them for the violenece:

The French airwaves have been full of such ugly equivocation these past few weeks as Nicolas Sarkozy has lurched his party wildly to the right in an attempt to save his skin, claiming there were “too many immigrants in France” and stoking Islamophobia with a ridiculous claim that the French were being secretly forced to eat halal; his prime minister François Fillon even said Jews and Muslims should put their dietary laws behind them and embrace modernity.

Claude Guéant, the interior minister who took personal control of the investigation, has been the most consistently xenophobic, championing the superiority of European Christian civilisation over lesser cultures who force their women to cover up – yes, observant Jews and Muslims, he meant you. The nadir came last week when Sarkozy’s new immigration chief Arno Klarsfeld – the eldest son, ironically, of Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld – called for a wall to be built between Greece and Turkey to save Europe from barbarian invaders.

Police are a long way yet from catching, never mind understanding, what was going through the head of someone who could catch a little girl by the hair so he wouldn’t have to waste a second bullet on her. But some things are already becoming clear. He shouted no jihadist or anti-Semitic slogans, going about his grisly business in the cold, military manner oddly similar to Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian gunman who massacred 77 people at a social democrats summer camp last summer.

Isn’t that a masterpiece? It mixes blatant lies and hatred into a stinky brew, which then tries to shove down the throats of the “stupid” masses.

The criticism of Muslim fanaticism is branded again as “Islamophobia”. The proven fact that most of the meat supplied to Paris is halal and is never labeled as such is called a “ridiculous claim” (in Toronto we are facing exactly the same deception, where large fast food chains hide the fact that they serve halal meat).

Suddenly, the Jews are grouped together with the Muslim barbarians, who force their women to wear burqas. I wonder where the idiot who wrote that has seen a Jewish woman in a burqa?

And the fact that the terrorist didn’t shout jihadist slogans, supposedly makes him “oddly similar” to Breivik. That’s plain dumb. (Not that if he shouted it would’ve been any different – Major Hassan in Fort Hood shouted “allahu akbar”, but for Barry Hussein Obama the whole thing was just a work-related incident.)

Once the police revealed the identity of the killing animal, you could’ve expected reversal in the tone of the press. When they realized he was Muslim, they switched right away from the idea of the evil white guy inspired by sinister politicians and bad bloggers, who want to get rid of the angelic Muslims. The narrative immediately turned into a lament for the poor Muslim boy, who went crazy under the pressure of the Western society. No link to the “saintly” religion of Islam or any terrorist groups.

Guardian again was quick to show the “complex” personality of the Muslim terrorist. In an interview with one of his friends we read:

A 25-year-old French man, whose parents were born in Algeria, said: “I grew up with him. I’m totally shocked and surprised, I can’t believe that he could do this. His mum was French of Algerian origin — she brought him up alone. He didn’t have a dad. This has absolutely nothing to do with Islam, or with us, and I really hope that all the young people of our type of neighbourhood won’t be sullied by this. It has always been hard enough living in France with prejudice but now it’s going to be much worse.”

He also said Merah’s mother — and his elder sister, to whom he was close — despaired of him somewhat.

He said Merah had been imprisoned at 18 for bag snatching in the entrance hall of a bank in 2005. Even so, he added, Merah was not someone who you could call violent.

Unlike a lot of others who grew up alongside him in that area in the north of the city, he was not involved in drugs. His thing was petty theft … As for political or religious beliefs, he was very discreet. He never said anything that might lead one to believe he had these views.

What a wonderful person – no drugs, no violence, just a few bags snatched (but we can write this off as wealth redistribution, a payback by the oppressed Muslim to the evil French colonialists). And he was so discreet about his religious views… Boy, don’t these Muslims know how to lie or what? And of course the friend finds a way to spin the murderous rampage committed by a member of his own cult into a complaint of a potential backlash.

Tariq Ramadan, another fanatic from the Muslim Brotherhood, who has the task to present the “human face” of the Muslim fanaticism, released a statement of his own:

Religion was not Mohamed Merah’s problem; nor is politics. A French citizen frustrated at being unable to find his place, to give his life dignity and meaning in his own country, he would find two political causes through which he could articulate his distress: Afghanistan and Palestine. He attacks symbols: the army, and kills Jews, Christians and Muslims without distinction. His political thought is that of a young man adrift, imbued neither with the values of Islam, or driven by racism and anti-Semitism. Young, disoriented, he shoots at targets whose prominence and meaning seem to have been chosen based on little more than their visibility. A pathetic young man, guilty and condemnable beyond the shadow of a doubt, even though he himself was the victim of a social order that had already doomed him, and millions of others like him, to a marginal existence, and to the non-recognition of his status as a citizen equal in rights and opportunities.

Here Merah looks even better – just a confused young man, not a racist, not an anti-Semite, not even a real Muslim. And the seven people whom he killed are depersonified – they are just symbols, which attracted his rage, which was basically caused by Afghanistan and “Palestine”. I am not sure if Ramadan realizes how stupid his “logic” is – it means that every ordinary person who is unhappy of something going on in a foreign country can start killing people indiscriminately. The pool of potential killers then will include all the lefties and the majority of Muslims. Is Ramadan sending a death threat against our civilization?

Our own Canadian lefties were not far behind in whitewashing the horrible crimes. Matt Gurney published a column in the National Post (which is supposed to be a conservative paper) stating that the Jews in Europe have nothing to worry about – actually the continent is a bed of roses:

The idea that the continent has become an anti-Semitic hell hole has attained a curious popularity in the media — and especially the right-wing media — since 9/11. In many cases, the pattern is the same as the one display here: A single episode of violence against Jews is taken as a stand-in for the views of the entire continent, or at least much of it.

In fact, this week’s events suggest the opposite: France’s entirely appropriate response to a crime committed by an isolated, hate-addled extremist should be cause for reassurance, not despair.

Other than telling again the fable about the “isolated extremist”, Gurney also displays his astonishing ignorance about the situation of the Jews in modern Europe. The murders are just the latest result of the systematic harassment against them in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, France and many other countries, where the policy of demonizing them as “Zionists” is silently supported by their governments.

The only one who has some justification for lying is Tariq Ramadan, who is paid to do so. He is part of the Muslim terrorist network whose job is to make Islam look better. However, there is no excuse for the journalists, who are supposed to reveal the truth.

If they had the intention to be honest, all the fact they need are right in front of them. Merah wasn’t a lone lunatic. He was a member of extremist Muslim organizations, he travelled to terrorist camps and his family was well aware of his activities. He even was on the US no fly list.

Merah was a proud member of Forsane Alizza, a Muslim extremist organization based in France, whose purpose was to fight criticism of Islam online, but they also openly announced on their site plans to  recruit fighters-terrorist. Despite the mass outrage, it took the French government very long time to act against those extremists.

Last January they were still calling for terrorist applications:

 

The French text says that the organization is growing and needs people with all kinds of skills but mostly soldiers. This time they are looking for “brothers” who can work “in the field”. Those who enjoy combat sports and are able to get engaged in activity are the most valuable. All applicants’ information will be kept confidential. “We are looking for disciplined brothers who have the love of the Sunna. We will give a particular attention to this recruitment.”

It looks like they found a perfect applicant in Mohamed Merah – his fighting skills were very well used to kill seven people. I wonder how many more Muslim savages has Forsane Alizza recruited and when they are going to strike.

But that was not his only involvement – he was also involved with Al Qaida. He went to Afghanistan and collaborated with terrorists:

“That is one of the big questions people in France are asking coming out of this,” Christophe Bauer, a producer at French broadcaster France 24, told Yahoo News Thursday. “There’s a sense he just came back from Afghanistan. French officials said they had been tracking him. But what does that tracking mean? Apparently, the French intelligence services in Toulouse talked to him when he got back from Afghanistan.”

I don’t know how reliable the French anti-terrorist forces are, but even in Barry Hussein’s land a person coming from a terrorist-controlled area will be arrested and prosecuted. Instead, the government that Gurney praises for taking care of the Jews, let Merah freely roam, acquire an astonishing amount of weapons (task difficult in Europe without being a part of a terrorist organization) and go on a killing spree.

And it turns out his family knew about him and were proud:

A police source said on Saturday that at a closed hearing in Toulouse he had declared himself “proud” of his brother’s killings and had admitted helping Mohamed steal the scooter used in all seven murders. He had denied any knowledge of his brother’s murderous plans, however, the source added.

The way the “progressive” press tries to justify the actions of a murderous terrorist is not just despicable, it’s criminal. Thanks to people like those, we will be sure to have many more murders in the future simply because the journalists are trying to obfuscate the real issues in the name of some utopian future in which the Muslim fanatics and the Left will live in harmony.

However, for all of us who live in reality, it is more than clear that here we are dealing with propaganda that tries to destroy our civilization. How else would you explain the fact that we are expected to give up our values in the name of accepting a primitive medieval cult?

But all that is a very clumsy propaganda – it aims at creating feeling of guilt in people who are the victims of the Islamic barbarism. How can you claim that the Muslims are suffering, if most of them are the main beneficiaries of the European welfare state? In Great Britain 50% of the male Muslim immigrants totally depend on social assistance and the percentage of women is even higher – 75%. In France it is prohibited to collect religion-based information, but probably the situation is just as bad.

You simply can’t have successful propaganda if you try to make people who pay for everything feel guilty. You can’t present people who are at the bottom of anti-Semitism, violence, rapes and numerous other assaults as angelic victims. The problem in that is that they are in front of everybody, except the elites in the gated communities, who are totally unaware of the real danger.

There has never been such a detachment between the media and the ordinary people. No matter what pathetic attempts the Muslims and the media make to impose their psychotic ideas on us, that is not going to work.

 

© 2012 Blogwrath.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few months ago I wrote about the decision of the Metropolitan Toronto Police to actively seek recruits among the Muslim women wearing hijab.

I thought that the outcry generated by that weird intention would be enough to make the police board and the Chief to reconsider it.

I was wrong. In an interview of SUN TV with Tarek Fatah it was revealed that not only didn’t the police give up the hijab issue, but they also went further and are now considering the niqab (or the veil), one of the worst garments that the fanatical Muslims wear. Here is the interview (h/t BCF):

 

That made me think that I can help to design the new sharia-compliant uniform – you can see it at the top. I should tell the lefties and the Muslims that the picture is a satire (that’s necessary, because the sense of humour in the politically correct lefties and the Muslim fanatics is usually excised at birth).

It is very odd that in a highly developed and democratic country like Canada somebody could seriously contemplate adopting one of the most barbaric symbols of Islam. And it is horrific when that somebody is the police force of the largest Canadian city.

If the members of the police board think that a woman could wear that body bag voluntarily, they must be out of their minds. The niqab is the piece of clothing designed to reduce women to a non-entities – without face, without shape, without presence.

The worst part is that they want to make such non-entities, which can’t even be identified, control the free citizens of Canada.

Even in those countries, which have adopted the most awful and primitive forms of sharia (like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan) they don’t allow veiled women in the police force (if they allow any women there at all).

So the Metropolitan Toronto Police want us to look even worse than Saudi Arabia. Are these changes disguised as an “accommodation” a preparation for the future takeover of Canada? It is hard to believe that a woman who appears in public in those weird clothes would come from a family that yearns to accept the Canadian values and customs as their own.

The idea of veiled police officers patrolling the streets of Toronto is not only stupid; it is horrible, hideous, atrocious and dreadful.

Dear Toronto Police, what have we, the ordinary citizens, done to deserve to be policed by scary Muslim fanatics?!

 

© 2012 Blogwrath.com

 

It was exactly a year ago today… It was long after midnight – my wife was already sleeping, while I was still typing trying to finish an urgent project.

Suddenly, the phone rang (I hate those late night calls; it’s usually some unintelligible drunk). The call display showed the name of a Japanese friend from Toronto, so I picked it up. She quickly said that Japan has just been hit by a large earthquake. She had to hang up to try to connect with her family (for your information – nobody of them was killed or injured).

I woke up my wife and we spent the rest of the night trying to connect with her family. After several failed attempts we managed to talk to them on the phone. They live far from the shore, so the waves didn’t affect them.

Several tile-stones on the roof broke down, but there was no other damage (the traditional Japanese houses usually can survive a strong earthquake). A couple of minutes before the disaster hit, their four cats went totally berserk – screaming and running around.

There wasn’t that much damage in the town either.

The picture was totally different a few kilometres away, near the shore, where the tsunami hit the houses. Pieces of information were coming through the night, painting a picture of devastation. Only the next day it became clear that this was one of the worst earthquakes in recorded history.

Then came the news that the Fukushima nuclear power plant was badly damaged by tsunami – almost everybody thought that a new Chernobyl was unfolding.

The rescue operations started immediately. Although Japan is well-prepared for such events, the magnitude of the disaster needed much wider mobilization. Common people donated their time and contributed money. Help from abroad also was welcome – from USA, Canada, European countries and other places (Israel was one of the first countries to provide medical equipment and send medics).

Even the Yakuza (the Japanese Mafia) quickly sent trucks with food and other supplies. The Nippon Foundation, a large charity, which had worked for decades to eradicate leprosy in India and tried relentlessly to make Aung San Suu Kyi and the generals to work together to improve the medical conditions in Burma, found an efficient way to help. Yohei Sasakawa, its chairman, came up with the idea to distribute thousands of envelops with 50,000 yen in each among the survivors, assuming (rightfully) that the government will be slow in covering the needs that go beyond food and shelter.

With everybody working, the results were spectacular. Here is the well-known picture of a highway, which was restored in one week:

 

When we visited Japan a few months later, in most places the damage was almost completely repaired. The debris were removed, the fields cleared, and only the remaining foundations of houses remind you of those who might have been swept away by the waves:

 

Most of the people affected do their best to continue with their lives, like the woman with the blanket in one of the iconic photos taken shortly after the disaster:

 

Of course, not everything was perfect – many still complain about the incompetence of Naoto Kan’s government and his Democratic Party, which didn’t work efficiently enough. (Still, they were much better than Murayama and his Socialists, whose work after the Kobe earthquake was disastrous.)

There are still unanswered questions about Fukushima, especially about the actions of Tepco, the company, which owns the plant. Often their information was incomplete and even deceptive. There is also anger about General Electric, which built the reactors, but didn’t provide complete information about them (they even refused to share the information in the reactor’s black box).

 

Despite all that, I think there is at least one thing we can agree about – the year that just passed showed that the collective efforts of well-organized people, working in conditions of adversity, can achieve results, which are truly miraculous. Nobody expected that Japan would recover that quickly, but the recovery is already a fact.

Maybe that’s the lesson we can learn here (but applying that lesson would be very difficult elsewhere in the world).

© 2012 Blogwrath.com

 

A few days ago, a gang of fanatics desecrated a military cemetery in Libya, in which soldiers from the USA, Great Britain, Canada and Italy have been buried. Actually, the word “desecrate” is way too mild – I have heard it used even if somebody draws graffiti on a tombstone.

As you can see in the video, the newly freed people of Libya simply destroyed the graves, proudly posing for their “documentary”. The most horrifying thing about the incident was that soldiers from the same armies, whose heroes lie in the Libyan Desert, helped bring those brutes to power.

If it wasn’t for the military intervention of USA, Canada, and other NATO countries, those idiots, who are not afraid to fight with the dead, would still be running like cockroaches from Kaddafi’s army.

In a statement, issued by The National Transitional Council (NTC), Libya’s interim leadership, we can find the following:

“This action does not reflect Libyan public opinion because Islam calls for respect for other religions.”

Even though now it’s only March, I think that this statement could be easily voted the joke of the year. Islam has never respected other religions. When the Turks took over the Balkan countries in the 14^th century, the destruction of Christian cemeteries and using the gravestones as construction material was common. I wouldn’t even start to discuss how the Arabs destroyed the Jewish cemeteries in the Holy Land before the restoration of the Jewish State.

And here is the worst part – everybody knows that Kaddafi (Gadhaffi or any other way his name is spelled) was a bad person. He was a terrorist; he repressed his people; he bombed and airplane and a large disco; he falsely accused 5 Bulgarian nurses in infecting 400 children with HIV, etc., etc., etc.

Yet he had the decency to never touch those cemeteries. If the savages, whom we liberated, start with such a despicable act, I wonder how much worse it is going to become… And most Western countries have pledged money to finance the “recovery” of those sharia bums. It’s nice to see that they have their priorities straight.

Now the West is under pressure to do once more the dirty work of the lazy Gulf Arabs. This time the issue is the “liberation” of Syria, meaning that again, with money and casualties from USA, Canada and the other countries, the West will bring to power another batch of Muslim Brotherhood savages, the same way it did in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco.

How much more terrorism do we have to endure to figure out that those fanatics will hate us no matter what? Isn’t it time to leave them alone (that means no financial or any other type of aid) and let them solve their own problems by killing each other any way they want?

© 2012 Blogwrath.com

 

Aid needed! The UN agency, which provides assistance only to the Palestinian “refugees”, is $75 million short and appeals to the goodness of the hearts of a few additional donor countries.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNWRA) was created specifically to provide money to the constantly swelling number of its clients. Other than being one of the largest UN agencies, it is also known as one of the worst managed. Theft and misuse of funds have marred its existence ever since it was created in 1950.

The money, which comes from a few UN donor countries, has often been redirected to the pockets of its bloated staff or to the coffers of terrorists like Hamas and PLO. UNWRA’s disregard for honesty didn’t go unnoticed – many of the regular suckers, like the USA and Canada, are reluctant to waste their taxpayers’ money on supporting terror anymore.

That’s why the funds are short $75 million and new donors are needed. And that’s why Filippo Grandi, the commissioner general is appealing to new countries, like Brazil, China, and India. It is questionable whether he would get the desired response.

The usual donors, among which are the USA, Japan, Canada, Germany, and France, have that very valuable trait, which allows any unscrupulous Third World schemer to exploit them. It is very easy to make them feel guilty over past or present, real or imaginary, deeds to extort a good chunk of money. However, observing the way the savages and the fanatics, who run the UN, spend the donors’ money, those countries have smartened up. The fact that many of them are in a not-so-good economic situation doesn’t help either.

 

But Signor Grandi will have hard time using the same approach with the other countries. It would be very difficult to make China feel guilty about anything (actually it would be impossible). I don’t see how anybody can force them to give money to people who do nothing. If China had the opportunity to create a few sweatshops with Palestinian employees, they’ll be more likely to chip in, but in that case UNWRA would be the first to raise a stink about the poor exploited Palestinians (and the organization itself would become useless).

Actually, the Palestinian refugee issue is one of the largest international scams ever perpetrated. And, as with many of the problems in the Middle East, it’s a “gift” from Great Britain. The same British, who gradually robbed the Jews from the historic land allocated to them in the mandate determined at the San Remo conference, came up with the idea of UNRWA. After the Arabs tried unsuccessfully to exterminate the Jews in 1948, the British helped to create that large welfare organization.

Normally, when we talk about refugees, it is self-evident that those are people who are displaced – they are usually returned to the place where they came from or absorbed by the country, which gave them shelter. In almost all cases, the refugee status is temporary.

That’s not so with the Palestinian “refugees” – the original (inflated) number was about 750,000. Instead of being reduced due to death from old age, that numbered had mushroomed to nearly 5,000,000. The Holy Land has seen plenty of miracles, is that one of them? Not really. According to Daniel Pipes, we owe this to the creativity of UNRWA:

UNRWA’s staff has taken three major steps over the years to expand the definition of Palestine refugees. First, and contrary to universal practice, it continued the refugee status of those who became citizens of an Arab state (Jordan in particular). Second, it made a little-noticed decision in 1965 that extended the definition of “Palestine refugee” to the descendants of those refugees, who are male, a shift that permits Palestine refugees uniquely to pass their refugee status on to subsequent generations. The U.S. government, the agency’s largest donor, only mildly protested this momentous change. The UN General Assembly endorsed it in 1982, so that now the definition of a Palestine refugee officially includes “descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children.” Third, UNRWA in 1967 added refugees from the Six-Day War to its rolls; today they constitute about a fifth of the Palestine refugee total.

What an elegantly simple solution! It shows that when large sums of money are changing hands  (UNWRA’s budget is $650 million), the bureaucrats would always find a way to get it.

If we project those trends into the future, the situation becomes even more insane:

In other words, rather than diminish 5-fold over six decades, UNRWA has the population of refugees increase almost 7-fold. That number could grow faster yet due to the growing sentiment that female refugees should also pass on their refugee status. Even when, in about 40 years, the last actual refugee from mandatory Palestine dies, pseudo-refugees will continue to proliferate. Thus is the “Palestine refugee” status set to swell indefinitely. Put differently, as Steven J. Rosen of the Middle East Forum notes, “given UNRWA’s standards, eventually all humans will be Palestine refugees.

Unlike the guilt-ridden industrial countries, which provide the bulk of the UNWRA budget, the Arab countries pay very little. Not only that, but they also do everything to keep those refugees in the cramped camps built on their territories.

In the clumsy game of checkers the Arabs play with those people (the game is too simple to be called chess) the whole scheme is seen as providing a triple benefit.

Firstly, as long as the Palestinians live in those camps, the situation will feed the anger of the anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic leftists and Muslim fanatics.

Secondly, they give them the false hope that one day all 5,000,000 of them will return to Israel, which would commit a collective suicide by allowing in millions of people more than willing to hunt Jews.

Thirdly, those unemployed people in the camps are a fertile environment for creating and supporting of every imaginable organization ran by Muslim fanatics or terrorists.

As with everything in the UN cobweb, here we have an agency, which has created many more problems than it has ever resolved. Isn’t it time to get rid of UNWRA and let those “refugees” become a part of the Arab countries, which host them?

And while we are at it – why don’t we get rid of that sinister organization called “United Nations”, which has proven over the years that it is much better in disuniting nations than bringing them together?

© 2012 Blogwrath.com

 

 

 

The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, issued the following statement on ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’:

Like many Canadians I am concerned with the rise of anti-Israel activities on campuses across Canada, culminating in the so-called ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ (IAW), which is often promoted in a manner that disregards the rights and safety of Jewish students and professors.

Universities are meant to offer an environment in which academic discourse can take place freely. Jewish faculty and students have the right to engage in this debate without feeling the need to conceal their identity, or to self-censor.

The irony of this week cannot be overlooked.  While singling out the only liberal democracy in the Middle East for condemnation, the organizers of IAW ignore Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s brutal slaughter of his own people and the suppression of basic human rights in many countries around the globe.

Debate over Israeli policy is legitimate and encouraged through academic dialogue. However, there is a point at which well-intentioned debate is overrun by hatred and intolerance, creating a toxic environment that prevents meaningful dialogue on important issues from taking place.

;The organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week use the cover of academic freedom to demonize and delegitimize the State of Israel. In reality, this week is nothing more than an unbalanced attempt to paint Israel and her supporters as racist. This week runs contrary to Canadian values of tolerance, mutual respect, and understanding.

As Minister for Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, I call on all Canadians to reject anti-Semitism and all forms of racism, discrimination and intolerance, which are unacceptable and completely contrary to Canada’s fundamental values.

 

Yesterday the Sun TV talk show host Michael Coren interviewed Mark Vandermaas and Stuart Laughton, focusing on their initiative named “Israel Truth Week”. Other than being very articulate and speaking with a true conviction, they impressed me with their sophisticated suit look. I said sophisticated, because so far I had seen them wear only the bare minimum of simple clothes that would make it easier to get into the police van when they get arrested.

I guess if they appear in those suits at DCE, the OPP and Ruby “The Red Riding Hat” would be less willing to detain them (don’t mind me, I am just fantasizing).

The point is that from all gentiles confronting the Israeli Apartheid Week, those two are some of the most qualified. Being on the receiving end of police indifference and aboriginal brutality, they have a first hand experience of apartheid – in Caledonia, where McGuinty the Coward gifted government land to a gang of junkies, banning everybody else – whites, Jews, Blacks – from setting foot on it, access based on race is a painful reality.

Comparing Mark and Stuart’s experience with the experience of the Arab citizens in Israel, who can go wherever they want, may show the absurdity of the IAW. Unfortunately, the idiots who maintain that event are far beyond saving, so let’s hope that the remaining rational people in Canada learn from Mark and Stuart what real apartheid looks like.

 

At the opening of the Israeli Apartheid Week at the University of Toronto last night they invited a representative of Palestine House. Presented as a “martyr” organization defunded by the evil Conservative government, they had the opportunity to state their points.

The points are clear – inviting anti-Semitic speakers is a free speech right; all Palestinians in Israeli jails are political prisoners; the map in their logo is right, because you can’t define the Israeli borders; and Palestine might be liberated by the next year.

Here is the speech, as I wrote it down in shorthand and transcribed it:

“Good evening, with the Canadian government – Harper, Kenney – they state they share the same values as Israel, you would expect that they will take actions against Palestine House and other organizations that support the Palestinian struggle. We were surprised when we haven’t heard from them. Why? Were we doing something wrong, were we not political enough, are we not supporting the BDS campaign? And on January 31 they brought it to us: no, you guys are doing the right thing and that’s why we are cutting you off.

Unfortunately, 31 employees lost their jobs because of Kenney’s action. Fortunately, now we are independent from any pressure by this government. They used to come and put conditions on us: you don’t have to do this and you don’t have to do this. Even the charity BBQ – we were not allowed to do it. We didn’t listen; we continued to work in support of our struggle, in support of the Palestinian people’s struggle.

Mr. Kenney mentioned three issues in this letter for cutting the funding. The first one that we invited Abdul Atwan, the senior journalist based in London, who stated that Iran has the right to defend itself. We invited him and we were punished for inviting Atwan. By doing so he is telling us that we don’t have the right to (free) speech – and this is the Minister of Immigration.

The second issue was that Palestine House celebrated the release of 1000 political prisoners. Can you imagine that someone cut you off, because you celebrated the release and freedom of a thousand political prisoners? Mr. Kenney, we will not only celebrate the liberation of our political prisoners, our heroes, we will use all source of power, any action, any effort to release all the Palestinian prisoners.

The third issue Mr. Kenney mentioned is that Palestine House put a map of Palestine on the outside. (laughter in the audience) And by putting that map he said that you are denying the right of Israel to exist. We sent a letter: please Mr. Kenney, would you define the Israeli borders? We never heard back. We don’t deny anybody’s right to exist, we support the Israeli people, the Jewish people who live in Palestine to exist, but no one can pressure us to recognize the right of an apartheid state to exist in our land. Palestine belongs to the Palestinian people, those people who are living in Palestine; we will not rest until the last Palestinian refugee returns to Palestine. Palestine will always be unified regardless of who is living there.

The funding should make the Palestinians activists and those Palestinians, who claim that they are the leaders of the Palestinian Canadian community, they should show leadership to their community. And they should show that they can provide services to the Palestinian community without any funds, and we are planning to do so.

Before I end, let me just say one thing – today many people received an e-mail from an Israeli think tank. They are saying that they are coming to Toronto on March 26 to discuss with those organizations that criticized Israel. And why are they criticizing Israel? Isn’t that stupid? In their words, they’ll discuss the gradual erosion of the Israeli international support. And that’s a proof that the struggle of the Palestinian people, the anti-apartheid movement and the BDS campaign is solidifying and spreading, while the image of the Israelis and their supporters is shrinking.

Thank you, and don’t underestimate that work that Canada is doing, and let’s hope that the next year we will not have the ninth apartheid week – we will have a celebration of the liberated Palestine.”

 

The 8^th Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) started last night with an opening event at the University of Toronto. It was much less enthusiastic than last year when the hall was packed and they didn’t even have seats for everybody. This year they attracted a much smaller audience, probably about 70 people, in a half-empty hall, including the same elderly people, who want to experience again the passion of the 1960’s, with a few progressive students; not many Muslims and only one hijab.

Even the speakers’ level was downgraded – last year they had Judy Rebick from Rabble and Abigail Bakan, who is a real professor at U of T.  This year they invited some fringe characters to speak (and I couldn’t even find Rabble among the endorsers).

Still, the fighting spirit was there. In the short movie they showed in the beginning (the same we saw last year) the statement was clear:

“When people fight the occupation, it is not terrorism, it’s resistance.”

Just like the last year, the event started with badmouthing Canada as a “colonial apartheid country”, which exists thanks to the theft of land and resources from the “indigenous peoples”. And the girl, who said that, urged all in the audience to work diligently to decolonize Canada. (They can easily do that if they just leave the country.)

Then they announced that (for some strange reason) this year’s IAW emphasis will be on fighting the global imperialism. And like in a nightmare from the last year, they started by peddling the old petition about divesting from Hewlett-Packard, Northtrop, BAE and Lockheed Martin for their involvement in Israel. Over 100 faculty members already signed it (wasn’t the number the same last year?) and even luminaries like Judy Rebick supported it. Then they played exactly the same propaganda movie about the companies we saw last year.

 

Then we had to listen to an address by a representative of Palestine House, which wasn’t announced in the schedule (I have a separate post for that speech).

The first speaker was Justin Podur. According to the information about him, he is a Toronto-based writer and editor, who writes on political conflicts and social movements, primarily for Z Communications.

He started by saying that the recent statement of Norman Finkelstein about the BDS campaign was to be accepted as a friendly challenge to do a better job. (As you may know, Finkelstein, one of the staunchest supporters of the Palestinian cause, recently said that the Boycott-Divest-Sanction movement is a failure, it scares many people, who see it as an attempt to destroy Israel. This view is far from being a “friendly challenge”.)

Podur stated that his presentation will be a response to Finkelstein’s statement. It wasn’t clear what Podur’s real intent was, because he said that he would present the forced nature of apartheid through a series of maps. The first map showed a settlement in South Africa, where the area was divided between white people, Indians, and different African tribes. The division was imposed and maintained by force.

Then he showed a map of the railroad system of North America. Pointing at it, he said that because of their greed, in the 19^th century the capitalists of Canada refused to use the US railways to transport their goods. Instead, they built railways in Canada, which ran East to West, destroying forests and lands of “indigenous people”. (This was one of the most idiotic statements I’ve heard for ages – how are the goods to be delivered within Canada, if the railways are only in the USA?)

After that we saw a map of the forests in Canada, combined with the Indian land claims – the mining, he said, was destroying the forests and ruining the chances of “native self-determination in the future” (not a word about who is going to cover the native welfare payments, if no industry is developed).

Then finally we saw an Israeli map, showing the settlements and the Arab areas in the West Bank. The “apartheid” should be ended by dismantling the settlements and allowing all “refugees” to return. Podur even had a solution to the return problem, which supposedly won’t affect Israel that much, developed by Salman Abu Sitta, an Arab architect and sociologist (you can read his book at plands-dot-org, sorry, don’t want to give him a link). Sitta works with 1998 numbers, which estimate the number of the refugees at about 5,000,000. That includes both registered with UNWRA and unregistered. Since the Palestinians are the only refugee group that constantly grows by both births and adoptions, the number now must be much larger.

Sitta says that the “refugees” can move to areas, where there are not that many Jews, like Negev and Galilee, and also around the cities and the towns. That would create a harmonious transition. I wonder if the author is out of his mind. That plan would’ve worked if people were chess pieces, but they are living beings, whose actions are determined by upbringing, beliefs and convictions. Doubling the population of Israel overnight with people, who have been exposed all of their lives to terrorist and fanatical ideologies, is not going to bring anything good.

The next speaker was a real Israeli. Dalit Baum, a lesbian “queer activist” was a “feminist scholar and teacher in Israel, who has been teaching about militarism and about the global economy from a feminist perspective in Israeli universities”. God save Israel, if most of the teachers there are like her.

First of all, every time she mentioned Israel, she called it “Israel-Palestine”, a sure sign of the one-country solution supporter.

She started off by bragging how she and other activists used to go for protests to the West Bank, where they were regularly shot at and sprayed with water by IDF. After going back to Israel, they suffered internally from having that “Jewish privilege”. Going back to Israel was probably better, because with her very lesbian look, I am not sure how long she would’ve survived among the Muslim fanatics in the West Bank.

She spoke at length about the apartheid and the BDS movement, but failed to provide convincing examples of success. She gave a complicated example with Lev Leviev, one of the richest Israelis – a bunch of BDS activists picketed his diamond store in New York. As a result, one of the public construction companies doing work in the West Bank, that he had interests in, didn’t receive credit and had to curtail its activities and drop projects in the area. However, that didn’t affect his private companies operating in the West Bank.

Then there was more confusion – the occupation costs billions of dollars, mostly for security and for the wall, but at the same time not only Israel, but also the Palestinian Authority benefit from those expenses. Israel was accused of stopping the exports from Gaza and destroying the industrial sector in the West Bank (did it even exist?). In her words, the purpose of the “Zionist project” was to reduce the “industrial competition from the indigenous people”.

The major strategy of the movement is to make the 20 richest families in Israel suffer financially. So far, the BDS people have been successful in driving one Belgian bank out of Israel. The final purpose is to turn Israel into an international pariah, the same way South Africa was treated years ago.

That woman left me wonder – how is it possible to hate your country that much?! And how could she be so ignorant? If the Arab fanatics ever take over in Israel, “queer Jews” like her will be the first to be exterminated. Obviously, progressive liberal arts education causes total mental meltdown…

The last speaker, Eva Bartlett, was presented as “an independent Canadian activist and freelance journalist who has spent long periods in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and reporting from the ground.”

She brought quite a lot of pictures and video material, designed to prove Israel’s “state-sponsored terrorism” in Gaza.

She basically described the Israeli army patrolling around Gaza as a bunch of merry sadists, who shoot Palestinians for fun. There is a safety zone supposed to be 300 meters, but the army arbitrarily increased it up to 2 km in certain areas of Gaza. Supposedly, the farmers close to that area are often shot at. She had a movie to illustrate the situation.

The footage showed a group of “farmers” cutting grass. Among them was a Western activist with a bright orange jacket (the kind that the roadside workers wear) holding a speaker and observing the area. Suddenly, we heard something sounding like shots. Some of the people jumped, but none of them ducked or lied down, which would be the natural reaction. Even the person holding the camera didn’t change position. The activist started to yell through the speaker, facing the border: “Don’t shoot, we’re farmers!” The “shooting” continued, with all the people running around in circle. Suddenly, one of them screamed and dropped to the ground, supposedly he was hit. However, the cameraman didn’t go next to him to show the wound, but kept showing the others, who were screaming. (Wouldn’t showing a close up of the wounded person be a nice propaganda move?)

It was just another example of the Palliwood propaganda – a movie that can easily fool only dedicated lefties, who desperately want to believe in the evil of the “bloodthirsty Jews”.

Her pictures of the “mass atrocities” in Gaza didn’t show anything on a mass scale either. Then we saw a few destroyed buildings, which she said were razed by army bulldozers for no reason.

And that was the common thread joining all the presentations – the Zionists monsters tortured and mistreated the saintly Palestinians for no reason.

Not a word that the checkpoints exist to stop Arab terrorists from entering Israel.

Not a word that the wall stops suicide bombers from blowing up children in Israeli cafes and discos.

Not a word that the IDF patrols around Gaza because 10,000 missiles have been launched against Israel.

Not a word that all of those destroyed houses are either entrances to underground tunnels or missile launching pads.

Nothing strange about that – telling truth has never been a priority for the Left…

© 2012 Blogwrath.com

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just spoke at the AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee). He covered the threat from Iran and the options of Israel to confront that threat. The position of his country on terrorism and other external threats has been very clear for decades, and that’s not why I am posting the video.

What I want to show is a true leader, who doesn’t mince his words, doesn’t build his speech with the caution not to offend this or other group or people (who hate you anyway) and is not afraid to affirm his position. Unfortunately, that type of leader is rapidly disappearing in the West, being replaced by spineless creatures, which try to show empathy and understanding toward barbarians, who hold knives to their throats. The best example – Barry Obama, who incessantly apologizes to delusional savages over every imaginable offence committed by the once great country of the USA.

Anyway, the speech is well worth watching:

 

On March 1 a discussion under the title ‘Media Perceptions of the Middle East’ took place at the University of Toronto. It was organized by Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC). As with everything related to the Middle East, not only did the event provide insights and varying views, but it also caused an eruption of stormy passion among the participants, which made it even more interesting.

The four panellists included Michael Coren (Sun TV), Carole MacNeil (CBC), Jonathan Kay (National Post), and Tarek Fatah (journalist and radio talk show host), with Avi Benlolo, Presisdent of FSWC acting as a moderator.

 

 

The discussion revolved around several questions posed by the moderator, and the first one covered:

IS THERE A MEDIA BIAS IN THE COVERAGE OF THE MIDDLE EAST (AND SPECIFICALLY ISRAEL)?

According to Michael Coren, before 1973 the coverage of Israel was very favourable, Israel could do no bad. Starting with the Yom Kippur War things changed and during the last 20 years, especially in Europe, it became much worse. Carole MacNeil added that when journalists cover the Middle East, they often don’t want to touch a story, because the reactions could be unpredictable and they’ll be intimidated. She often did coverage of stories from that area for CBC, but was never censored – there is no bias in CBC. Her impression is that people in Canada usually are willing to stand with Israel.

In Jonathan Kay’s opinion, media bias against Israel is not such a problem anymore. There are several reasons for that: first, the wide spread of the Internet, which made it very difficult for the media to hide or distort facts. Second, a turning point were the Jenin events of 2002, where in a battle 13 Israelis and 55 Palestinians were killed, yet that was misrepresented in Europe as a massacre with thousands of victims, but in reality it was just Palestinian propaganda, which was revealed quickly. Third, the issue with the suicide bombers – that type of terrorism is so repulsive that nobody can applaud them, even the most fanatical leftists have no other choice but to distance themselves. Fourth, the Arab Spring – since those ground-breaking events unfolded, they became a much better story for the media than the tired Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Tarek Fatah provided a wider perspective, stating that we often forget that the Middle East is not only Israel and Palestine – it’s appalling how other peoples are ignored (like the Kurds). The Arab Spring was misrepresented by journalist who knew nothing about the area. For example, they ignored the black people who were mistreated in Libya (he didn’t mean the black “mercenaries”, but the native population – 10% of the Libyan population is black). There are many other cases of ignorance. Saudi Arabia and Iran, which play significant role, are ignored as well – the Iranian missiles, which target Ormuz, are the real story, not Israel and the Palestinians.

Here Avi Benlolo noted that the Toronto Star has a certain bias – they provided a very positive coverage of the Gaza flotilla last year.

Jonathan Kay then remarked that the Toronto Star might be biased, but they had reporters in Libya. Besides, their columnist Haroon Siddiqui is a representative of the mainstream Muslim ideas.

That was enough to stir up Tarek Fatah’s emotions: “Mainstream” is a terrible word to use about Haroon – he defends Saudi Arabia, Ahmadinejad, and sharia law. The Toronto Star is very biased, some people even call it “Toronto Crescent”. Just like The Globe and Mail, which employs two hijab columnists, they look to hire strange-looking and hostile Muslims in order not to be accused in racism.

(I was really shocked by Kay’s remark – reading the Toronto Star almost every day, I see absolutely no reason to call Siddiqui “mainstream”. On every issue he writes about, he finds a subtle or blatant way to attack Israel or the West and to show how much better Islam is. In his recent article against the defunding of Palestine House, he defended their “logo” showing the whole territory of Israel as Palestinian land:

He even defended their celebration of the released terrorists in exchange for Corporal Shalit. And that’s just one article. Haroon is criticized overwhelmingly even by the Star’s lefty readership – often the paper turns off the comments under his articles.)

The second question discussed was:

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY NEWS ABOUT ISRAEL?

Carole agreed that the country receives a disproportionally high coverage compared to the size of its population. Among the many reasons are the constant threats against it, especially from Iran.

Michael Coren found a particular aspect that’s very important: Israel has a much more democratic way of treating journalists – they are allowed everywhere, except in areas with military secrets. Hezbollah, on the other hand, takes journalists to specific locations and tells them what to write. Many lefty college kids from the Western countries go to the West Bank to play heroes, because that is a safe area, where they don’t risk their lives (they would never go to Syria, where they can get killed).

Tarek Fatah pointed out at a very specific perspective – we often forget that Israel is attacked as a Jewish state; it is not even recognized by most Muslim countries as an independent state. Its situation is unique – for example, Iran wants to destroy it, no other country is in such position. Imagine if two European countries are in a similar situation – that would cause immediate outrage. That strange situation is reflected in Toronto Star’s anti-Israeli stand. The editorial content of the newspaper is appalling – they even romanticized the flotilla. (At this point Jonathan Kay whispered “Haroon!” to Tarek, apparently thinking it was a good joke.)

The next question covered

THE ISRAEL AND MIDDLE EAST SITUATION ON CAMPUS

Avi Benlolo started by noting that Israel is attacked in the universities as an apartheid state, which it is not, the comparison is absurd.

As a possible reason, Tarek Fatah stated that the supporters of Israel failed to affirm convincingly their point. There are many countries in the area, which are truly apartheid states. For example, in Saudi Arabia only Arabs can become citizens, while Pakistanis and blacks cannot and they are even mistreated. In Egypt, a Christian is not allowed to run for President. It’s wrong to single out Israel, while the countries with real apartheid problems are ignored.

Jonathan Kay added that this year’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) will be the most unremarkable in memory – when people are dying in Syria, it doesn’t make sense to have that week. However, it will be bad to ban the IAW, because we live in a free country. Most of the participants in IAW are not anti-Semites; they are actually veteran anti-racists from the 1970’s. They want to recapture their lost moral purpose, so they go to Gaza.

(Again, I have to disagree with Jonathan. Downplaying the vitriolic hatred, which is displayed during IAW both by speakers and participants, as a misguided hippy moral quest, is not correct. Portraying IDF as a bunch of vicious killers in a poster they sold at the University of Toronto last year, is simply poorly veiled anti-Semitism:

 

They even sold it at a premium price, because it was supposedly banned.)

Carole MacNeil then said that we should let the marketplace of ideas to decide what will happen. Michael Coren shot back right away – CBC doesn’t believe in marketplace of free ideas – in many of its programs the religious people are ridiculed. In his opinion, IAW is profoundly anti-intellectual. It doesn’t go into discussing the reality – the Israeli Arabs are part of Israel, it is absurd to compare Israel to South Africa. In the Haifa University about 30-35% of the students are Arabs, many with anti-Israeli sentiments. The real purpose of IAW is to create a climate of hostility and discomfort.

Then came the fourth question:

ARE THE JEWS THE GROUP THAT IS MOST TARGETED FOR HATE?

The participants went immediately into discussing hate speech. According to Tarek Fatah, when discussing hate and hate crime, we must have an open debate and not charge people with hate speech. Those people should be challenged openly in public.

Jonathan stated that the hate crimes against Jews are exaggerated – every little thing is reported and presented as a hate crime. In reality, Jews play a very important role in the universities – they have a good representation.

Michael Coren expressed his discomfort with the hate speech idea. For example the Mormons baptized Anne Frank – this is not strictly anti-Semitism. In Europe we have real attacks, conducted mostly by Muslims, while the rightists, who are often blackmailed, embrace Israel. IAW is not anti-Semitism, it’s an expression of a lack of empathy especially with the problems of Israel.

Then Avi Benlolo asked: why shouldn’t we consider the BDS movement anti-Semitic? In Michael Coren’s opinion, the people in that movement are radical minorities. There are not many Arabs, only aging white people.

THE “FIXER” INTERMISSION

After that the discussion drifted to the actual field coverage of the events in the Middle East. Somebody brought up the point that the limited budgets force the media to reduce the number of reporters. Carole MacNeil said that because of that the remaining journalists have to rely on local “fixers”. She obviously meant that those local people help in obtaining information about events.

At this point, Tarek Fatah expressed his displeasure with the term, saying that it implies an inferior position. Those people should be treated the same way as the Western journalists. Jonathan Kay tried to help out Carole by sharing an experience he had with a “fixer” in the West Bank. That Arab woman helped him arrange interviews with people, whom he would’ve never been able to see otherwise. On top of that, she had a souvenir shop in Ramallah, where JK spent over $500 on gifts and both of them were happy.

At this moment Tarek literally went ballistic – he said that both of them had a racist attitude toward the local people and Kay even treated his “fixer” like a pimp, because he paid her. Frankly, I wasn’t able to figure out the reason for his rage. Neither Carole, nor Jonathan had used the word in any racist context. In fact, if Tarek had the same reaction after Kay’s remarks about Haroon being “mainstream”, I would’ve supported him completely.

 

Tarek got up and said he wanted to leave; he couldn’t stay with people expressing such outrageous views. Coren tried to stop him, but after a heated verbal exchange Tarek left. His daughter Natasha tried to explain to Jonathan why the talk about “fixers” is racist and “paternalistic” and to make him apologize, but frankly she wasn’t very convincing. Jonathan Kay didn’t apologize.

 

 

Due to that exciting experience, we lost 20 minutes of the discussion.

That lengthened the question and answer session. Many were deeply concerned with the danger coming from Iran. There were a few Muslim students, who after the discussion went straight to MC with the usual questions. I didn’t hear everything, but remember how one of them, standing next to me asked him why the 6 million Palestinians living in Israel and under occupation are not allowed to mark their “Nakba”. When did they multiply to such numbers?

 

 

Overall, it was a nice discussion, even with the “fixer” incident – a nice exercise in free speech, which makes you feel good that we live in a country, which is still free.

 

© 2012 Blogwrath.com

It’s amazing how the priorities of the army change over the years. A few decades ago, when the US Army was fighting in Europe, the priorities were very simple – they just had to defeat the evil order created by Adolf Hitler. Most of the people, who suffered under Hitler, wanted the same.

It was clear what the goal was and so were its symbols. You can see in the old documentaries how the officers used to present the girls performing for the troops: “Here is what you are fighting for!”

You could see those girls even in the military airplane art:

 

…and one more…

 

 

That might not be considered art from the point of view of the highbrow aesthetics experts, but it explained simply what the fighting was about.

Fast forward to the 2000’s – after an attack against the USA, the politicians decided that the best solution was to bring the US Army to Afghanistan and turn the locals into a highly civilized society. Nobody paid attention to the fact that people, who were supposedly oppressed looked and acted exactly like their alleged oppressors, the Taliban.

After years of sacrifices in the name of the mythical democracy in Afghanistan, it became clear that things were not going to work.

The ultimate absurdity became evident last month when the Afghanis rioted after the Americans accidentally burned several Korans (they should’ve burned more). Despite Obama’s whiny apology, the Muslims paraded their rage for days, killing each other (and even two Americans).

Here is the ultimate result of NATO’s relentless efforts to civilize those people:

 

No hot babes… No sophisticated people…

Just a bunch of savages who place bathing at the very bottom of their to-do list (if it’s in the list at all). Such a crowd can hardly inspire even the most delusional lefty to fight for it.

There is a big difference between fighting to protect beautiful girls or to civilize a few dozens of caveman tribes. The latter is impossible, no matter what the Marxists, globalists, neocons, trilateralists or any other group says.

Stop those sacrifices and get the troops out of Afghanistan. The locals will enjoy rotting in their filth much better, if there is no foreign presence (and don’t forget to seal the borders)…

© 2012 Blogwrath.com

 

Barack Obama is gradually turning into one of the worst American presidents. It is sad to watch his almost masochistic pleasure of apologizing to every imaginable authority. Thanks to him the USA becomes a laughing stock among dictators and fanatical savages.

The woman in the video below is smarter and more courageous than him.

Too bad she is not the President of the United States of America: