Zionhass is a Mental Illness

Exhibit A: the OIC has approved the Ayatollah's proposal to establish a Gaza Day.

App-alling

What's more bizarre--the fact that the Apple iPhone has an app devoted to the collected speeches of Fascist brute Benito Mussolini, or the fact that said app has unexpectedly become the app di tutti appi, overtaking the Avatar video game for top spot?

Reality Check

To all those near and dear to me who continue to like the cut of Barack's jib and who think he's a friend of Israel (not the least because he coos purty words about the Holocaust), I offer this, by Ralph Peters:

ISRAEL: Civilization's last hope in the region, Israel remains the target of international leftists dreaming of another, more-thorough Holocaust. The "peace process" will continue to fail. Arabs need Israel to blame for their failures. And President Obama empowered the worst Arab elements with his Cairo speech, which convinced the dead-enders there’s no need to compromise with Israel — that the US would shift its support to the Arab cause. That Cairo speech may prove to have been the most-destructive address in the history of American foreign policy.

Update: More Obama "outreach"

Now He's a Buried 'Treasure'

The NYT's Bob Herbert calls late Marxist historian Howard Zinn "a radical treasure." Former radical David Horowitz has a somewhat different take:

...Howard Zinn was a Stalinist in the years when the Marxist monster was slaughtering millions of innocent people and launching his own ‘final solution’ against the Jews. Put another way, Howard Zinn was helping Stalin to conduct those slaughters and to enslave all those who had the misfortune to live behind the Iron Curtain. Howard never had second thoughts about his commitment to leftwing totalitarians and never flagged in his political commitment to freedom’s enemies. In the years since Stalin’s death, Zinn supported every enemy of the United States in every war, and devoted his writing talents to every socialist tyrant including Mao Zedong who killed 70 million Chinese in peacetime because they got in the way of his progressive agendas.

When the Cold War was over and freedom had won — thanks to all the political forces and figures (e.g., Reagan and Thatcher) that Zinn opposed – Zinn continued his malignant course. He supported America’s enemies right to the end including the Islamic Nazis whose first agenda is to finish the job that Hitler started and then to impose a totalitarian theocracy on the infidel world.

Zinn’s wretched tract, A People’s History of the United States, is worthless as history, and it is a national tragedy that so many Americans have fallen under its spell. It is a political cartoon which even the socialist magazine Dissent described as an intellectual fraud, which it is. All Zinn’s writing was directed to one end: to indict his own country as an evil state and soften his countrymen up for the kill. Like his partner in crime, Noam Chomsky, Zinn was a wicked man and his life’s work was a pernicious influence on the young and ignorant, with destructive consequences for people everywhere.

Don't you hate it how Horowitz minces words and suffers fools gladly?

Airport Security Smoke and Mirrors

The Fifth Estate (the CBC's version of 60 Minutes) broadcast a hair-raising documentary the other night about the holes in airport security. Its conclusion: since we continue to depend on high-tech gadgetry instead of intelligence to keep explosive holy warriors off our aircraft, the holes are big enough to drive a 747 through. The rigamarole we're subjected to--the shoe removal, the pat downs, the body scanners revealing every nekkid nook and cranny--is nothing more than a simulacrum of security, and won't keep anyone safe. Until and unless security zooms in on individuals and not their paraphernalia, boarding a flight will be like playing a game of Russian roulette (only in this case you could call it Jihadi roulette)--you'll never know if this is the time the bullet (i.e. the jihadi) clicks into the chamber, and your lights get blown out forever.

Update: You knew if they were prepared to wear a bomb in their briefs and sacrifice their external bait 'n' tackle for Allah (knowing it would be restored to complete working order once they got to Paradise), they'd be willing to wear a bomb internally and eviscerate themselves and the unsuspecting infidels unfortunate enought to share their cabin space.

Paging Dr. Drew

There's more Jihad Rehab in the the works, but this time it's on Uncle Sam's dime. From The National (H/T JihadWatch):

JAKARTA // Imagine, for a moment, a possible headline in the future: "Osama bin Laden denounces terrorism and renounces jihad."

What are the odds? Is it even possible to wean an extremist like bin Laden off his violent ideology? The likelihood is hard to envisage.

But the Obama administration is keen to attempt something very close to that. This week, it agreed to give US$11 million (Dh40m) to Yemen to build a militant rehabilitation centre in the Arab state within the next three months for released Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The centre would treat terrorists in much the same way as drug addicts: seeing Islamic radicalism as an anomalous behavioural pattern and treating it with a mix of psychotherapy, counselling and religious re-education, coupled with economic incentives to slowly steer them back into society.

This move, analysts say, underscores the realisation that punitive detention or torture in a dank prison does not necessarily reform extremists...

But a regimen of video games, fingerpainting and Snickers bars does?
 
Oh, and don't forget the hugs. If you want to "rehabilitate" a holy warrior hellbent on hooking up with a heavenly harem, he's going to need lots of hugs.

Update: Maybe they'll get to try out some rehab on these guys. (We tried to make 'em go to rehab/They said: "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.")

D.J.Harpoon's Latest Rap

Same old boring Siddiqui rap, repackaged, as per usual, with nary a trace of wit but plenty of venom. As a service to my readers, I've condensed his recent screeds and given them a beat: 

That Stephen Harper he got a hobby--
He takes his cues from the Iz'rel Lobby.
Those Jews so cruel to poor Palestinians--
He values all a their o-pin-i-ons.
Won't pay (no way) to fight for "rights".
Election time punch out his lights!
Else "social justice" be D.O.A.
And Joooos'll tell us what to say.
It's Tories, Jews, doin' all the hatin'.
Yo, don't believe me, ask my bro' Jack Layton...

Copts Protest Persecution

The seemingly ubiquitous Lumpy Grumpy & Frumpy, scourge of Code Pink harridans and other jihad-abettors, has pictures from the pro-Copt rally that took place in Toronto this afternoon. Like the Zionists, the Copts have been having their run-ins with Islamic supremacists who have taken it upon themselves to beat down uppity dhimmis. Unlike the Jews, though, the Copts don't have their own country, so the Muslims get to slay 'em with impunity.

Update: There's a video, too.

Do As We Say Not As We Do

The government of Canada is extremely concerned about the abridgment of free speech...in Venezuela.

Hey, how about tending to the mess in your own backyard, fellahs?

Does This Make Axelrod and Emanuel Like Haldeman and Ehrlichman?

When I heard a beleagured Barack Obama assert, "I am not an ideolgue" I was immediately reminded of another assertion uttered by a beleagured president--Richard Nixon. Back in the day he was heard to remark: "I am not a crook." Hmmm, thought I, who'd a thunk that Mr.Transformative and Tricky Dick would turn out have so much in common? Apparently, Michael Knox Beran would, that's who:

..The weird calm with which Obama contemplates this electoral debacle is consonant with the apparent serenity with which he accommodates the irreconcilable political identities vying for preeminence in his mind. His closest analogue may be Richard Nixon. Nixon’s energy and drive were closely connected to his ability to draw strength from a submerged aspect of his nature which, however politically ruinous it might have been, was at the same time crucial to his political élan. Nixon struggled to keep the personal resentments that burned within him out of sight even as he fed on them; Obama has generally kept his own social-justice resentments under wraps even as they mysteriously fuel his appetite for power. No more than Nixon will Obama douse these smoldering embers; they are, it would seem, too intimately involved in his deepest political fantasies and satisfactions.

We know from his first book, Dreams from My Father, that the young Obama was embittered when he discovered that people looked down on him because he was black. Nixon was no less embittered when he discovered that people looked down on him because he was Nixon. Nixon poured his bitterness into a policy of vindictiveness that he was careful to disguise but could never resist. On the contrary, he caressed and fondled his hatreds: they supplied him with the incentive he needed to go “through the damn fire,” as he put it, to will himself to the top. Eventually, of course, he lost control of his resentments and they destroyed his presidency...

Close Your Eyes and Think Of Allah?

Well-known Islamist/sex advice columnistYusuf al-Qaradawi has some thoughts on how to curb the powerful impulse to, as they say, choke the chicken.

The Bitcher and the Obamasoxer

Marty Peretz (the 'Bitcher') complained earlier in the week about Obama's glaring omission of Israel in his tribute to those nations who were helping out in Haiti. Joe Klein (the 'Obamasoxer') took great umbrage at the Bitcher's gripe and endeavoured to explain the ommission away, occasioning this retort:

I am glad Joe Klein tried to take me to task for criticizing the president about his not giving Israel the respect it deserved for its efforts in Haiti. And, boy, did it deserve that respect! But, in fact, Obama passed over Israel entirely in his enumeration of especially worthy aid providers. Here’s what Bill Clinton said about Israel’s contribution: “I don’t know what we would have done without the Israeli hospital in Haiti.” Israel’s operational unit was, Clinton noted, the only facility capable of performing surgeries and advanced examinations. Meanwhile, that unit is staying on with a change of personnel and is relocating its field hospital to an orphanage. CBS, in a moment of exaggeration, called the Israeli facility the “Rolls-Royce” of the entire aid effort.

Despite his carping, Joe concedes that I was correct. That, in fact, the president should have mentioned Israel and should do much more with the Jewish state to balance his courting of the Arab world (which hasn’t done his presidency or his policies any good).

So what is Klein’s bitch with me? He writes in his “Swampland” blog--yes, that’s what it’s actually called, and I must concede that it’s aptly titled--that Obama’s omission had no meaning and was not the result of any decision at all. So what was it? It was “an oversight.” Oh, I see. This administration which crosses every ‘t’ and dots every ‘i’ just forgot to mention Israel. You know what I say to that? Bullshit!

You took the word right out of my mouth, Marty.

India Sidelined

Don't look now, but India--along with all common sense re the Taliban--is being frozen out of discussions about Afghanistan's future. The eminently sensible Diana West unpacks the perfidy here.

About Omar Khadr...

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that, while Omar Khadr's "rights" were indeed violated in Gitmo (by Canadian interogators who knew he'd been severely sleep deprived), the Canadian government is under no obligation to demand his release.

All in all, a wise decision, though not all would agree.

"All that was missing from the drum roll in Denmark was a walk-on part for The Great Whore of Babylon"

Rex Murphy wonders why the eco-furor has simmered down since its fevered pitch in Copenhagen. (As for his droll comment re a certain "great" personage who profits from the hysteria--I could have sworn he was there.)

His Mouth Runneth Over (While the Treasury Runs Dry)

Mark Steyn and George Jonas cast both baleful eye and ear upon the golden-throated orator and his relentless, exhausting eloquence. I made similar, albeit more tuneful and Mop-Topped, observations some months ago:

Barack is the leader of the U.S.A.
Nancy is the Speaker of the House.
Barack always knows exactly what to say
And if you cross him (like FOX) he begins to grouse.

O-blah-dee, O-blah-blah, Obama, ha!
Golly, how that man goes on.
O-blah-dee, O-blah-blah, Obama, ha!
Golly, how that man goes on.

Barack takes his message to the Muslim world.
Wants to give ‘em all a great big hug.
Hopin’ they’ll all love him like the folks back home.
The Muslims look at him as they begin to shrug.

O-blah-dee, O-blah-blah, Obama, ha!
Golly, how that man goes on.
O-blah-dee, O-blah-blah, Obama, ha!
Golly, how that man goes on.

In a couple of years
Things are bound to be much worse.
That’s what happens when you’re PC
And everyone’s “diverse”.
(Ha ha ha ha)

Happy ever after in his certainty
Barack goes and gives another speech.
Nancy socializes Heath Care USA
As freedom slips away from everybody’s reach...

Save the Date

Is it coming up to that time of year already? Why, yes; yes it is, as the Canadian Arab Federation is pleased to advertise in its latest Weekly bulletin:

The Sixth Annual Israeli Apartheid Week 2010, March 01-07, 2010

http://www.apartheidweek.org/ or saia@riseup.net

Bring yer outrage and yer blood libels. It's sure to be a blast!

'Never Again" Falling on Deaf Ears as Judenhass/Zionhass Proliferates Unchecked

The great Caroline Glick observes (my bolds):

"Never again!"

So declared Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as he spoke at Auschwitz-Birkenau on Wednesday, the 65th anniversary of its liberation.

Netanyahu used his speech at the notorious death camp to nudge what he referred to as "the enlightened nations of the world," to recognize that "murderous evil" has to be stopped as early as possible to prevent it from achieving its aims. Unfortunately, the events of the past week show clearly that evil is on the march, and "the enlightened nations of the world" are on a coffee-break from enlightenment.

As Netanyahu addressed the world from the site of the most prolific genocide factory in human history, at the place where over a million Jews were gassed, starved, beaten, raped, frozen, shot and hanged and then burned in ovens, Iran's leaders were declaring loudly that they intend to finish what the Nazis started. They will destroy the Jewish people.

Iran's dictator supremo Ali Khamenei used a photo op with Mauritania's President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz — who cut his own country's diplomatic ties with Israel last January -- to renew his pledge to commit yet another Holocaust. As he put it, "Surely, the day will come when the nations of the region will witness the destruction of the Zionist regime… When the destruction happens will depend on how the Islamic nations approach the issue."

And as he spoke, "the enlightened nations of the world's" ability to deny that the Iranian regime is building a nuclear arsenal was finally and utterly wiped away. On Monday Germany's Der Speigel reported that evidence gleaned from document intercepts and from the testimony of two senior Iranian defectors who were involved in Iran's nuclear program, proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Iran's nuclear program is not a peaceful one. The Iranians are designing and building nuclear warheads for their Shihab-3 ballistic missiles. According to a summary of the findings now circulating through the halls of power, Iran will have the wherewithal to build nuclear warheads by 2012.

So the Der Spiegel report showed that Iran is developing the capacity to carry out a second Holocaust in under a hundred years. And yet, in the face of their sure knowledge that evil is on the march, as they did 70 years ago, the "enlightened nations" of Europe are siding with evil against its would-be victims.

On a popular level, as Sunday's release of the Jewish Agency's annual report on global anti-Semitism documented, there were more anti-Semitic attacks in Europe in 2009 than there had been in any single year since the Holocaust. The report stated that the attacks were carried out by Jew haters on both the Left and the Right.

Europe's anti-Semites wasted no time in proving the report was accurate. Monday Polish Catholic Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek said that Jews have "expropriated" the Holocaust as "a propaganda weapon." Jews, he claimed, "enjoy good press because they have powerful financial means behind them, enormous power and the unconditional backing of the United States and this favors a certain arrogance that I find unbearable."

Then we have the political alliance of Leftist anti-Semites with Muslim anti-Semites. Together they not only attack Jews, they provide political cover for expanding those attacks by rejecting Israel's right to exist and justifying violent attacks against Jews outside Israel as the logical outcome of their politically correct anger at Israel for refusing to destroy itself...

So you mean all the Holocaust remembrance is doing bupkes to prevent the final Final Solution? So you mean the world hates Jews and Israel more than ever?

Now where have I heard that before?

Update: These couple of lines stopped me dead in my tracks a few days ago. They're from the book A Dangerous Liaison, a bio of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir:

In April 1941 Sartre believed that the 'Reign of Evil', as he put it in Iron and Sand, had begun with the Occupation. He had learnt at the feet of his Lutheran grandfather that sometimes it was the Devil's turn.

Indeed. And it seems to me we may be living in another time when the Devil is taking a turn.

Irreconcilable Differences

The Canadian Jewish Congress  is trying to hash out its differences with the United Church of Canada (good luck with that, Jews). But since the Ceej is pro-Israel and the UCC, er, ain't, I can't really see much point to the discussion. Sure, the UCC claims that only a "fringe" of its membership is in the grip of rabid Zionhass, but this link on the UCC site asking people to stand up for KAIROS, a lefty church outfit also known as "the NDP at prayer" that has evinced a definite animus toward Israel over the years, shows that the loathing is mainstream; how could it be anything but, given the church's "social justice" mindset?

Better Be Home Soon

I've been singing this one in my head all day. Thought I'd share (my favorite Crowded House song).

Hear, Hear

"The only way to become a really good president is to love America, to respect its people, and to exert leadership based on a deep understanding of the nation's history and traditions. Obama has failed to exert this sort of leadership. Is it because he lacks a clear vision of the future based on knowledge of the past, or is it because he despises this past and wishes to cleanse the nation of its sins? If so, he is wrong. America's past is not guiltless, but it is the most exceptional, admirable, and illustrious in human history. A president who fails to appreciate this will never lead the country in the right direction."--Jeffrey Folks, The American Thinker

The Climate Jihad

Amidst all the skepticism and nay-saying these days, there's one person who's not afraid to step up and add his voice to the chorus of those who are certain an eco-catastophe is imminent. From the New York Times:

Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, blamed the United States and developed countries for not halting climate change and said that the global economy should immediately abandon its reliance on the American dollar, according to an audiotape released Friday by the broadcaster Al Jazeera.


“Talk about climate change is not an ideological luxury but a reality,” Mr. bin Laden was quoted as saying in a report on Al Jazeera’s English-language Web site. “All of the industrialized countries, especially the big ones, bear responsibility for the global warming crisis.”

The authenticity of the tape could not be immediately confirmed, and Al Jazeera, which is based in Qatar, did not say how it had obtained the message...

I have no doubt at all that it's genuine. Fingers crossed, anyway, since Osama supporting the climate change movement (really, the movement to control rampant capitalism, sharia's rival) is definitely not going to do it any good.

Adieu to an America-Basher

R.I.P. to Howard Zinn.
He brainwashed kids with Marxist spin.
His history, so snide and snarky,
Brimmed with brine.
What a bunch of malarkey!

Change of Venue for Sheiky?

Of all Obama's boneheaded decisions--and heaven knows he's managed to cram a lot of them into his relatively brief time in office--the stupidest may be his plan to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his little helpers in a New York City courtoom. Now the White House may be backtracking on the gaffe (the trying Mo in NYC part, not the treating Mo, holy warrior, as though he were a common criminal part). From CNN:

Washington (CNN) -- The White House is considering moving the site of the September 11 attack trial from Manhattan if the U.S. Justice Department sees fit, senior administration officials confirmed Friday.

"Conversations have occurred within the administration to discuss contingency options should the possibility of a trial in Lower Manhattan be foreclosed upon by Congress or locally," a senior administration official said.

The turnabout comes after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other politicians expressed great concern over the costs and disruption of holding the September 11 trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four accomplices at a courthouse near ground zero in Lower Manhattan.

White House officials said President Obama agrees with Attorney General Eric Holder's decision in November to try Mohammed in a civilian criminal court in the United States, not a military tribunal.

"Currently our federal jails hold hundreds of convicted terrorists, and the president's opinion has not changed on that," White House spokesman Bill Burton said Thursday.

White House officials said the decision about any possible alternate sites to try Mohammed and the others will come from the Justice Department.

As city officials and residents contemplated the staging of the trial in Manhattan, doubts emerged about the wisdom of the location...

Wisdom: a commondity that's in desperately short supply at the Obama White House (where there are plenty of "smart" people but not many--or, indeed, any--wise ones).

Tinfoil Beanie Building One of a Kind

"Shrine to human rights will be unlike any other museum," bleats the headline.

No kidding. It'll be a "rights" mausoleum, the tomb of the well-known victim du jour. Also, literally and figuratively a monumental waste of our hard-earned dollars.

Jennifer Lynch and the Invasion of the Rights Snatchers

One of my favorite sci-fi movies from the 1950s (remade in the 1970s, though I prefer the original) is Invasion of the Body Snatchers. A product of its times--its times being the Cold War--it took place in a small town and had to do with an invasion by aliens (who you never actually saw, as I recall). The aliens M.O. was that they killed real, live people, but not before growing pods of replicas to replace them. These "pod people" looked exactly like their originals, but, since they were not human but only plant-like facsimiles of humans, they had no minds or wills of their own. The movie was supposed to be a metaphor for what happened to people compelled to live under Communism (although there were those on the Left turned it on its head and made it a metaphor for America during the paranoid McCarthy "witch hunt" era).

Why bring up this old black and white flick? I do so because it occurs to me that we here in Canada have been invaded by rights snatchers--"human rights" Commissars who have taken away a genuine, valuable right--our right as free citizens of a free, Western society to speak freely, without fear of being reproached and punished by the state. That right has been replaced with a "pod" right, a facsimile of a right--the "right" not to be offended. Of course, that's not a real right at all but a bogus one, an excuse to censor us up the wazoo, supposedly for own good but really to make it easier for those inclined to do so (lefist ideologues, transnationalists and Islamists) push us around and make us submit.

How could such an invasion have taken place here in the true north stong and free? Easy. Most Canadians were minding their own business and going about their daily lives. They had no awareness of what was happening right under their noses--a vast "human rights" industry cropping up and compromising their freedom. And for the most part, they still don't know it's happened. Here's an experiment: see what happens when you tell an average Canadian that a "human rights" commission has the power to enter your home or place of work without warning or a warrant, rifle through your stuff, remove whatever they want and use it against you in a fake court in which you're presumed guilty and the truth is irrelevent. From experience I can tell you that what will happen is that the person or persons you're telling it to simply won't belive you. And, really, who can blame them? The whole thing is beyond comprehension.

But then, having your rights stolen out from under you--whether it's done by ayatollahs or fascists or Commissars--always beggars belief. And by the time most people have awakened to their new reality, power has been consolidated, and it's too late.

Is it too late for Canadians? Maybe. But not necessarily. There is still time to expose the rotten "human rights" apparatus for what it is, and to get Canadians riled up about the sleight of hand that has stolen their most valuable right, the right that makes and keeps them free, and put a worthless "pod" right in its place.

Shrine to Victimhood Hijacked by Jew-Haters

I just received the following e-mail:

Dear friend,

As you have probably heard, the anti-Semites are "among us", urging their supporters to deny the specific inclusion of the Jewish Holocaust in the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights. I copy from a recent message:

Please note our petition at http://www.jhcwc.org for a permanent Holocaust gallery at the future Canadian Museum for Human Rights. On January 26, 2010, we will be presenting the results of this petition to the Content Advisory Committee who will be presenting their recommendations to the Canadian government. We would greatly appreciate your signing the petition (if you have not already done so) and forwarding this information to as many people as possible from within your list of contacts...

Sincerely,
Belle Millo
Chair, Freeman Family Foundation Holocaust Education Centre
Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada

With all due respect to Belle Millo and the Freeman Family Foundation Holocaust Education Centre, I could see this one coming a mile off. See, the thing about "human rights" is that it has become the primary vehicle for bashing Israel, the world's only Jewish state. And one of the most heinous ways of getting at Israel is via Holocaust denial, the reasoning being, of course, no Holocaust, no Israel. So the Jews, who had hoped that reminding the world of the Holocaust--"Never Again!" and all that--would be the best way of preventing another genocide from occurring have had their hopes dashed. The harsh reality is that reminding the world about the Holocaust is not protecting the Jews of today. Neither, for that matter, is genuflecting before that falsest of deities, "human rights." It is evident to anyone brave enough to open his eyes that "human rights" has devolved into a cult of victimhood in whose pantheon the Palestinians and other Muslims, not the Jews, claim and are graciously accorded "most favoured victim" status.

Guidos, JAPS and Other Stereotypes

Did you know there's a Jewess on Jersey Shore, the MTV "reality" show about vapid, toasted (in more ways than one), profane Italian-Americans en vacance? I didn't--since I only even tuned into part of one episode, just to see what all the fuss was about, which was more than enough Snookie and The Situation for me. Had I kept watching, though, I would have come across the one non-Guidette (refreshingly in our hyper-P.C. age, it's what passes for "diversity" on the show), and discovered that, holy cannoli, she's Israeli! Andrew Silow-Carroll (on the JWR site) has an amusing piece about the show and ethnic stereotypes in general:

...The problem with exploitive entertainments like Jersey Shore or The Real Housewives of New Jersey is that if not for stereotypes, they wouldn’t be nearly as fun to watch. And that’s what drives anti-defamation watchdogs nuts. You can say the same thing about most stand-up comedy — it’s the rare comedian who can mine laughs without drawing on stereotypes.

Some stereotypes are worse than others. The general rule is that the closer they hint at the traits that led to the persecution of the ethnic or religious group in question, the more out of bounds they are. I’m okay with shows or jokes that depict Jews as neurotic, unathletic, and overly involved with their mothers. I’m less comfortable with jokes about cheapness, world domination, and deicide.

Italians have it rough in this regard. The Mafia thing has inspired two of the greatest motion pictures and perhaps the single greatest television series in history, but that must seem cold comfort to Italians who are saddled with goomba jokes wherever they turn. Granted, some Italians embrace the wiseguys image, the ways some Jews take pride in “tough Jews” like Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel. But it’s sad that the names Corleone and Soprano are better known than La Guardia, DeLillo, and Bertolucci.

And then there are the stereotypes that are hard to erase because they contain a grain of truth. I went to high school with about as many Italians as Jews. I recognize the “Guido” type, just as my Italian friends can name the Jewish American Princesses in our graduating class. I know, I know — I understand how the “JAP” stereotype demeans women and Jews, and traffics in ugly stereotypes about both. But even among my Jewish friends, the ability to spot distinctions was as fine-tuned as any ornithologist’s. At camp and Hebrew school, we could tell the difference between the pampered, spoiled kids and the crunchy, down-to-earth ones. JAP jokes exploited the stereotype, but didn’t invent it.

In a better world, our entertainment wouldn’t depend on stereotypes for laughs or titillation. In this world, however, the best we can hope for is that the purveyors of stereotypes do it with wit. It’s the difference between Goodbye, Columbus and The Nanny, between The Simpsons and Family Guy. The Simpsons transforms a coarse, Borscht Belt comedian into the weird and wonderful Krusty the Clown. A Jewish character in Family Guy has the last name “Hebrewbergmoneygrabber.”...

Actually, I thought the F.G. name was so over-the-top, so obviously something a kooky Jew-hater might make up, that it was kind of funny. And whatever else Family Guy is (puerile, vulgar, witless, offensive, etc.) at least it's an equal-opportunity stereotyper.

Welcome to the Department of Homeland Security

Abandon hope all ye who enter here!

Another 'Brilliant' Idea

An international fund has been created to "re-intergrate the Taliban."

And if they take the money and only pretend to re-intergrate but end up going right back to the jihad--what then? Is the fund going to sue 'em for reneging?

The Hopeychanger's Gavotte

Thanks to Ezra Levant (and Carly Simon) for inspiring this one:

Well, you swanned into the chamber
Like you were cock of the frikkin' walk.
Your eyes strategic'ly raised
To teleprompter height.
From then on it was talk, talk, talk.
You had one eye on the numbers--
They'd been taking quite a drop.
And all the swoons, seemed like they were a goner,
They were a goner and
You're so vain
You prob'ly think that they still adore you.
You're so vain
I betcha think that they still adore you.
Don't you? Don't you?

You had them not too long ago
When they were still quite naive.
Well, you said "hope 'n' change" 
As well as "Yes, I Can!"--
Some slogans they could believe.
Well, they swooned en masse like fainters,
An effect they soon would grieve.
They had some dreams that beclouded their noggins,
Clouded their noggins and
You're so vain
You prob'ly think that they still adore you.
You're so vain
I betcha think that they still adore you.
Don't you? Don't you?

Well, they hear you vowin' to 'create new jobs'--
A promise that you can't keep.
The cheque's come back with a big 'NSF'.
You've gotten in debt too deep.
Well, you're where you are for now, my friend,
But not for long--you'll have
Another one term like that worm Jimmy Carter,
Worm Jimmy Carter and...

'Boon' or Bust?

A truly disgusting article in Israeli lefty rag Ha'aretz claims that "Holocaust remembrance is a boon for Israeli propoganda."

Some boon. It's been five years since the UN, the most influential Israel-reviling organization on the planet, instituted an official Holocaust remembrance day, and guess what? The Judenhass/Zionhass is worse than ever.

A 'Fiasco'? A Fixer-Upper, More Like

Harpoon Siddiqui is splenetic because the Harper government "remains silent" about putting the kibosh on a federally-funded NGO siphoning cash to Israel's enemies--a situation Siddiqui calls "a fiasco":

Me? I'm splenetic about Harpoon's spleen. My letter:

Rights and Democracy, a government-funded NGO has been handing over oodles of taxpayer cash to those who promote an anti-Israel agenda--in the name of “human rights,” of course (because, alas, that’s gerenally how it’s done these days--witness Durbans I and II and the UN’s ironically-named “human rights” council). Realizing the situation is both counterproductive to the cause of democracy and an egregious misuse of our money, the Harper government takes steps to correct it.

The “fiasco,” as Haroon Siddiqui calls it, isn’t the Harper correction. It’s the fact that Rights and Democracy was handed carte blanche to aid and abet the anti-Zionists for so long.

Allahu Akbar!

"Moderate" Mahmoud Abbas vows Jerusalem will be the Palestinian capital.

Haiti's Prez Sez Show Me the Money

Wahhabi rag Arab News reports that Haiti's president is p.o.'d because his "government" has yet to be handed so much as a shekel of relief money:

PORT-AU-PRINCE - International charities pouring a jumble of aid into Haiti must work better together to reach and help survivors of the catastrophic earthquake, President Rene Preval said on Wednesday.

Aid groups and troops from around the world have struggled to distribute food, water and medical care to an estimated 3 million Haitians injured or left homeless in the magnitude-7 earthquake that wrecked much of Haiti's capital on Jan. 12, killing as many as 200,000 people.

"I am not in a position to criticize anybody, not in the least people who have come here to help me," Preval said. "What I am staying is, what everybody is saying is, that we need a better coordination." Some food handouts have turned ugly, with UN peacekeepers using teargas and warning shots to control jostling crowds.

Other people living in ragtag encampments around Port-au-Prince have complained that no food has reached them.

Preval said he was grateful for fund-raising efforts around the world and tried to ease concerns that government corruption might siphon off aid meant for desperate Haitians.

"The Haitian government has not seen one cent of that money that has been raised for Haiti. I presume that that means the money is going to NGOs," he said, referring to non-governmental aid groups...

This story is wrong on so many levels--not only because the Haitian government wasn't in any position to fix things in Haiti before the quake, and is even less equipped to handle the mess now, but also because Saudi Arabia, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, has yet to pony up any of its oily shekels for relief efforts. The feckless Haitian whinging to the miserly Wahhabis about how he hasn't been able to line his pockets with aid money--how nauseating!

The Queen is not Amused

The power to censor is a very powerful power indeed. That's something Canada's Queen Censor, Jennifer Lynch, well knows. And it's the reason she's so unwilling to let anyone--anyone--take that power away from her. The National Post's Joseph Bream reports on Jen's latest effort to reclaim her regal prerogative:

Canadian Human Rights Tribunal chairman Athanasios Hadjis over-stepped his authority and erred in law when he declared Section 13, Canada's controversial hate speech law, violates the Charter right to free expression, according to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Mr. Hadjis's decision to acquit far-right webmaster Marc Lemire last fall after a six-year hate-speech case brought by activist lawyer Richard Warman is the subject of an upcoming appeal in Federal Court, brought by the CHRC.

A major factor in Mr. Hadjis's decision was that Mr. Lemire immediately removed the offending material on learning of the complaint, but Mr. Warman rebuffed efforts at conciliation, and the CHRC continued to push the case toward a tribunal hearing.

In a memorandum filed with the court, CHRC lawyer Margot Blight argues that the manner in which the CHRC pursues hate speech is "irrelevant" to the constitutionality of the law that forbids it, Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

"Any question as to whether the Commission's process is sufficiently conciliatory to meet the requirements of the Charter is outside the Tribunal's jurisdiction," the memo reads.

Ms. Blight also argues that the proper course of action, based on Mr. Hadjis's reasoning, was to "sever and refuse to apply" Section 13's penalty provisions, not declare the whole thing unconstitutional...

What a feeble argument. Either the sucker's legit or it isn't. And if it isn't (and it isn't), then the whole thing, penalties and all, must get axed.

Will a real judge in a real courtroom fall for this line? I suppose that depends on the judge's ideological leanings. If he or she is someone who is wishy-washy on the subject of free speech and has swallowed the censors' and Official Jews' spin re "hate speech" (i.e. that "evil words lead to evil deeds"), then Queen Bossyboots may well get her power (the power to make you STFU in the name of "civility" and societal "harmony"--don't you pine to live in a bland Utopia like that?) reaffirmed.

Strong Speaker; Weak Leader

Someone who wasn't exactly blown away by last night's oratory: Anne Bayefsky. She thought it underscored the weakness/cluelessness of the orator's foreign policy:

President Obama’s message in the State of the Union address confirmed that he is tone deaf to the grievous threats that exist to American national security and incapable of changing course before those dangers become a terrible reality.


The catastrophe of nuclear proliferation had finally made it to the top of the agenda by the time he took office. But over the past year, this president added disarmament to the same platform. He put the retention of U.S. nuclear weaponry on the U.N. negotiating table alongside Iranian acquisition of such arms. In this State of the Union address he wasn’t shy about reasserting this world view: “We are also confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people — the threat of nuclear weapons.” By which he meant, in American hands too. The president did not first and foremost promise never to let the genocidal Iranian regime acquire these weapons of mass destruction. Instead, the first national-security priority he articulated was to seek “to reduce our stockpiles and launchers.”

According to President Obama, only by weakening America can we hope to convince our enemies to stand down.

The president alleged that it was “these diplomatic efforts” at disarmament that “have . . . strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that [are] . . . in pursuit of these weapons.” He knows Iran is closer than ever to acquiring nuclear weapons. He is fully aware that the U.N. Security Council is deadlocked on adopting new sanctions against Iran. He is cognizant that China has repudiated the suggestion of a unified front to stop Iranian ambitions. And yet he told the American people — with a straight face — that his diplomatic effort at disarmament “is why the international community is more united, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated.”

President Obama announced that in April he will hold another hand-shaking, hot-air-generating “nuclear security summit” — to control American and Russian arms. As for dealing with Iran, he could not manage to muster a single concrete move, just an empty “they too will face growing consequences.”

The president then touted the only leg on which his foreign policy has been standing: “engagement.” To Iran’s brutalized dissidents, engagement has meant crocodile tears. The State of the Union added yet another layer of verbiage over their gravestones. “We support the human rights of the women marching through the streets of Iran,” claimed the president. Why the limitation? What about the children, the men, the myriad minorities? Why did the president delicately avoid naming any Iranian victim, including the Americans now being held hostage in Iran?

This is an administration that has turned its back on inconvenient victims from Tehran to Tibet to Israel. An administration that has climbed on board the U.N. Human Rights Council, despite its being a tool of Islamic states for defeating rights. And yet the president disingenuously lectured: “America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity.”

The president concluded his perfunctory remarks on national security by analogizing the need for strength in an increasingly dangerous world to a childish game: “Let’s put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough.” In so doing, he has underestimated the intelligence of his audience. Americans increasingly understand that the weakness exuded by President Obama over this past year, and venerated in this State of the Union address, has reinvigorated real enemies, not imaginary ones.

Does anyone really believe that purty words delivered in a sing-songy cadence are going to prevent another 9/11, another Fort Hood, another Fancypants bomber? If so, they are delusional--or Democratic. (How often the two seem to go hand-in-hand these days.)

The Venn Diagram State of the Union

Here's all you need to know:

Idiotic!

The stupid people are in charge, as per this (by Dexter Filkins--love that name, Dex!) in the NYT (my bolds):

U.N. Seeks to Drop Some Taliban From Terror List

The leader of the United Nations mission here called on Afghan officials to seek the removal of at least some senior Taliban leaders from the United Nations’ list of terrorists, as a first step toward opening direct negotiations with the insurgent group.

In an interview, Kai Eide, the United Nations special representative, also implored the American military to speed its review of the roughly 750 detainees in its military prisons here — another principal grievance of Taliban leaders. Until recently, the Americans were holding those prisoners at a makeshift detention center at Bagram Air Base and refusing to release their names.

Together, Mr. Eide said he hoped that the two steps would eventually open the way to face-to-face talks between Afghan officials and Taliban leaders, many of whom are hiding in Pakistan. The two sides have been at an impasse for years over almost every fundamental issue, including the issue of talking itself.

“If you want relevant results, then you have to talk to the relevant person in authority,” Mr. Eide said. “I think the time has come to do it.”

In recent days, Afghan and American officials have signaled their willingness to take some steps that might ultimately lead to direct negotiations, including striking the names of some Taliban leaders from the terrorist list, as Mr. Eide is suggesting.

The remarks by Mr. Eide were the latest in a series of Afghan and Western efforts to engage the Taliban movement with diplomatic and political means, even as a new American-led military effort was under way here.

American, Afghan and NATO leaders are also preparing to start an ambitious program to persuade rank-and-file Taliban fighters to give up in exchange for schooling and jobs. That plan, expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, will be the focus of an international conference this week in London...

Mollycoddle 'em. Give in to their demands. Give 'em schooling and jobs as incentive to drop the jihad.

Yeah, that should work.

Totalitarian Censors of a Feather Flock Together

What  do "democratic" Canada and Communist China have in common? As George Jonas explains, both feel the overwhelming need to "censor" the Internet:

...“As is widely recognized, freedom is always relative…” says the People’s Daily. Well, yes; most municipalities prefer people to stop at red lights. While all freedoms are relative, some freedoms are more relative than others. Beijing’s experts on the relativity of freedom can probably knock Einstein into a cocked hat.

“Freedom is always relative” rings another bell, though. Let’s see. Of course! “Because no right is absolute.” It’s a Canadian source.

Look at the opening statement to the Canadian Association of Statutory Human Rights Agencies, delivered in the summer of 2009 by Chief Commissioner, Jennifer Lynch, Q.C. It fits perfectly. How can freedom be anything but relative, as the People’s Daily asserts, when no right is absolute, as the Chief Commissioner of Canada’s Human Rights confirms.

Déjà vu solved. If Ottawa is here, can Beijing be far behind? Censors of the world, unite. The Canadian Human Rights Commission and the People’s Daily are in synch.

“Most countries exert some sort of control over information …” offers China’s official organ, and “many … nations have enacted laws to limit forms of extreme hateful expression … ” Canada’s official commissioner confirms. “No responsible country takes a laissez-faire attitude towards the use of the Internet …” proposes China, and Ms. Lynch seconds the motion: “I launched a comprehensive policy review of how to prevent the harm caused by hate messages on the Internet…”

“Debate” is welcome, in theory, but critics aren’t. For sensitive commissars a fair debate on freedom of expression is a debate their opponents concede at the outset. The keyword, in Ottawa no less than in Beijing, is “respect.”...

"Respect," eh? I feel a song--by "Aretha" Lynch--coming on:

R-E-S-P-E-C-T--ending "hate" will keep us free.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T--it's our ideology.
(Sock it to you, sock it to you, sock it to you, sock it to you...)

Update: Canada's Queen Censor doesn't get how this freedom stuff is supposed to work; that, in a free society the individual is free to respect--or, more crucially, to disrespect--whomever and whatever he or she chooses. Here's a "Cowardly" song especially for Jen and her ilk, dusted off from the Scaramouche vault:

In wintery climes there are certain times of day
All the censors conspire to get the bloggers to retire.
It’s one of those tricks that the apparatchiks hurray
Because the light is too revealing
And you’ll find that they’re concealing muck and mire. 

Papalaka-papalaka-papalaka-boo. (Repeat)
Allahakbar Allahakbar Allahakbur-doo. (Repeat)

The censors fume that we won’t heed their advice
And won't be obviously, definitely nice.

'Slamists and Communists
Don’t watch you to have free speech.
The mullahs and Ayatollahs want to nix it holus-bolus.
Hamas and the Taliban
Say all backtalk at once must cease.
Such freedom, puffs those huffers, 's for kafirs.

In Saskatchewan it would make you yawn
To hear Basement Nazis blither.
And out in B.C., between you and me,
Some 'roos have been known to slither.
'Cuz freedom is dangerous,
And they practice what they preach.
And 'Slamists and Communists
Don’t want you to have free speech.

It’s such a surprise for Canadian eyes to see
That there’s an asterisk in their Charter--
You’d have thought we'd be much smarter.
But Trudeaupia doesn’t come easily, you'll agree.
And hoi polloi are often drowned out
By the powerful elitist symphony.

Bolyboly-bolyboly-bolyboly-baa. (Repeat)
Habaninny-habaninny-habaninny-haa. (Repeat)

It's quite surreal our 'Chilles Heel is that we’re mild.
But then how else could one get treated like a child?

'Slamists and and Communists
Don’t want you to have free speech.
The UN, it must be stated,
Feels such freedom’s overrated.
The OIC caliphate wants sharia to fill the breech.
Because its true ambition’s
Submission.

In the desert sands you hear loud commands
That are often hurled and flung.
And in Canada you can find a law
That will make you hold your tongue.

For Jen Lynch
To budge an inch
Is seldom, if ever, in reach.

And 'Slamists and Communists
Don’t want you to have free speech!

Rare Sighting in the Toronto Star

Harpoon Siddiqui's rag praises Israel (for the way it handles airport security)--an occurence as rare as Obama displaying humility. A Toronto Star reader, though, left this turd of a comment to remind us of the paper's demographic:

the myth of Ben Gurion

Once again, at Ben Gurion Airport it depends on your ethnic background whether you'll get to the departure lounge in 30 minutes or in 3 hours. Let's not make it the standard for airport security.

Damn right it depends on your "ethnic backgroud"--and for a very good reason. Israelis realized some time ago which "ethnicities" were trying to blow Jews to smithereens and, funny thing, Icelandic grannies and Tibetan yak-herds did not feature among them.

Obama Edits Out Israel

Marty Peretz advises up to watch out for a shameful--and cynical--omission:

I've just read the transcript of the president's remarks about Haiti, the ones he made on January 15. He noted that, in addition to assistance from the United States, significant aid had also come from "Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, among others." Am I missing another country that truly weighed in with truly consequential assistance? Ah, yes. There it is. Right there "among others." Yes, the country to which I refer is "among others," that one.

 The fact is that, next to our country, Israel sent the largest contingent of trained rescue workers, doctors, and other medical personnel. The Israeli field hospital was the only one on the ground that could perform real surgery, which it did literally hundreds of times, while delivering--as of last week--at least 16 babies, including one premature infant and three caesarians. The first 250-odd Israelis were real professionals, and they were supplemented by others, also professionals. And to these can be added the many organized Jews from the Diaspora who, in solidarity with Israel, also went on a work pilgrimage, an aliyah, in solidarity with Haiti.

It's not that Israeli participation in the Haiti horror was being kept secret. I myself saw it reported several times on television—on ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN.

So didn't Obama notice? For God's sake, everybody noticed the deep Israeli involvement. I understand that Obama doesn't like Middle East narratives that do not contain "one side and the other side" equal valence. But he couldn't have that here. The Arabs don't care a fig, not for their impoverished and backward own, and certainly not for strangers. That's why their presence in Haiti amounted to a couple of bucks from Saudi Arabia and maybe from some other sheikhs.

An afterthought: Who would want Arab participation in the rescue effort? This was serious work and dangerous work. Amateurs weren't welcome.

Yes, I think that the labors of the Israelis were edited out of Obama's speech, either by his speechwriters (who have made dissing Israel their forté) or by his own oh-so-delicate but dishonest censoring mechanism.

Hey, maybe he can throw in the Jews-in-Haiti blood libel that's making the rounds--you know, as a form of "outreach".

Unadulterated Ineptitude

A curious piece by Thomas L. Friedman today. It seems to start out on a Diana West Death of of the Grownup tack, bemoaning the lack of maturity in the land:

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve found the last few weeks in American politics particularly unnerving. Our economy is still very fragile, yet you would never know that by the way the political class is acting. We’re like a patient that just got out of intensive care and is sitting up in bed for the first time when, suddenly, all the doctors and nurses at bedside start bickering. One of them throws a stethoscope across the room; someone else threatens to unplug all the monitors unless the hospital bills are paid by noon; and all the while the patient is thinking: “Are you people crazy? I am just starting to recover. Do you realize how easily I could relapse? Aren’t there any adults here?”

Anyone have a clue what he's nattering on about so far? It sounds like he's upset about the failure to get behind Obamacare--either that or he's describing a nightmarish but not implausible scenario under the plan (i.e. frustrated health care workers throwing and unplugging things). But reading down a ways, it turns out to be about Obama's latest run-in with the banks, and how, as even rabid swooner TLF must admit, it isn't going so well:

President Obama is so much better when he takes a heated, knotty issue, like civil rights or banking reform, and talks to the country like adults. He is so much better at making us smarter than angrier. Going to war with the banks for a quick political sugar high after an electoral loss will just work against him and us. It will spook the banks into lending even less and slow the recovery even more.

In other words, the haplesschanger's screwing up again--and it has nothing to do with talking "to the country like adults" (has he ever done that?) It's about Americans, heretofore entranced by the optics and the sing-song cadences of Obama's purty speechifying, waking up from the spell and realizing that, unless they want their country to become the next Sweden--or Canada--they had better take it back.
 
Nothing "childish" about that.