FYI: I'm Taking a Break

I'm devoting the rest of the summer to "family time." Hope to be back at the keyboard in early September.

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is George

Let's join the Halleluiah chorus
Of those condemning George Soros.
A "progressive" Quisling
Whose Zionhass is sizzling
(And the rest of whose actions just bore us).

Would All Be Well If Muslims Jettisoned the Hadith and Stuck to the Quran?

Is Quranism (yes, that's actually a thing) the way to go? Raymond Ibrahim is dubious:

Unfortunately, [Quranism's] thesis is built on a faulty premise: Even if every single Muslim was to reject the Hadith and other “secondary books,” that wouldn’t change the fact that the Quran is saturated with violent and intolerant teachings that need little supplementation from secondary literature. 

Well over a hundred verses call for nonstop war, or jihad, on non-Muslims. 

How about jettisoning those hundred jihad verses?

Oh, wait. No can do (since the Quran is said to be "perfect" and therefore it cannot be amended).

An Under-Reported Story: Murdered Israeli Athletes Commenorated at Rio Olymics

Why wasn't this more widely publicized?:

RIO DE JANEIRO — Under the auspices of the International Olympic Committee, Brazilian senior officials joined sports activists from Israel and elsewhere at a commemoration of the 11 Israeli victims of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.
The Israeli and Brazilian Olympic committees and members of the local Jewish community attended the event Sunday evening at Rio City Hall. 

“What happened in 1972 was one of the most lamentable episodes in the history of the Olympic Games, when  fanaticism and intolerance [converged in a] deplorable act of terrorism,” Brazil’s foreign minister, Jose Serra, said on behalf of President Michel Temer. “I believe the IOC, in all these years, hadn’t held the homage it deserved.” 

Israel’s most senior representative to the games, Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev, said terrorism “does not differentiate [between] people” and reaches everyone. 

“When we fight against terror, we look for peace. We still see discrimination against the Israeli athletes,” she said. “There are countries that deny visas to competitors. We know that mixing sports and politics is against the IOC protocol and contrary to the Olympic spirit. Sport must bring people together.” 

Unlike previous Olympic commemorations dealing with the 1972 massacre, Sunday’s event was entirely devoted to the murdered Israelis. A previous homage was held Aug. 4 at a memorial site in the Olympic Village, where not only the Israelis were honored but also four others who were killed during Olympic Games. 

Ankie Spitzer and Ilana Romano, the widows of fencing coach Andre Spitzer and weightlifter Yossef Romano, were among those who lit 11 candles at the event. 

Israel’s honorary consul in Rio, Osias Wurman, told JTA: “The mayor opened the doors of his house in a gesture of great friendship with the Brazilian Jewish community and the whole people of Israel. It’s a unique moment for us Brazilian Jews.” ... 

Pace Ms. Regev, terrorism may not differentiate between people, but terrorists often do.

Anjem Iced

There once was a radical cleric,
A well-known jihadi hysteric,
And DAESH it all,
He had a great fall
For being outré and barbaric.

Once a Leftist, Always a Leftist

For some unknown reason, Tablet magazine resurrects an article from the 1960s in which actor/singer Theodore Bikel rejects the SNCC for rejecting Israel.

Fast forward several decades, and Bikel's support for Israel, in line with the Left's support for it, veers in an entirely different direction:

This year’s brouhaha centers on the opening of a new cultural center in Ariel, built with more than $10 million of public funds. More than 50 Israeli theater professionals signed a petition in late August saying that they will not perform in the new cultural center when it opens in November. The boycott also has attracted the support of at least 150 Israeli academics and authors. 

But several major Israeli theaters are scheduled to stage productions there this year, and top Israeli governmental leaders have slammed the boycott. 

Jewish celebrities again are jumping into the fight — but on the side of the artists taking aim at Israeli policy. 

More than 150 American television and film artists have signed a letter in support of the Israeli artists’ boycott. Signatories include actor Ed Asner of "Lou Grant" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and Cynthia Nixon, who played Miranda on "Sex and the City,” as well as playwright Tony Kushner and actors Mandy Patinkin and Theodore Bikel.

Question for Tablet: who cares what Bikel thought in the '60s if, on the subject of Israel, he ended up seeing eye-to-eye with Tony Kushner?

The End of Israel: A "Novel" Approach

In the well-trod tradition of Michael Chabon, a "conflicted" American Jew who, in a feat of wishful thinking, imagined away Israel (in his novel The Yiddish Policeman's Union) comes Jonathan Safran Foer, a somewhat less conflicted Jew. In his new novel, Here I Am, Foer appears to like Israel somewhat more than Chabon does (which, admittedly, is setting the bar awfully low), but Foer, too, uses Israel's non-existence as a plot point. His reason for doing so, apparently, is to show that American Jews don't need Israel; no, not at all.

At least, that's what I glean from this review in The Atlantic (my bolds):

In his first two novels, Foer turned unthinkable—but real—calamities into literary opportunities, illuminating the horrors of history with his own ingenuity and sensitivity. Here I Am does the opposite, using an invented disaster to shed light on the moods and muddles of people a lot like himself. The destruction of Israel feels like a distant abstraction compared with the upheavals of the Bloch household. While this may represent a failure of novelistic craft, it is consistent with the book’s conclusions about the place of the Jewish homeland in American Jewish life. The Promised Land is a shibboleth, a red herring, a monumental distraction.

Foer is so overtly sympathetic to the claims of Zionism—and, at least within the confines of this novel, so profoundly indifferent to the plight of the Palestinians and the schisms and snarls of Israeli politics—that Here I Am can’t be called, in any obvious sense, an anti-Zionist book. Rather, like Operation Shylock but even more insistently, it locates within the American Jewish experience a plausible counter-Zionism, a mode of Jewish identity that Foer refuses to regard as less authentic or heroic than the Israeli version. Jacob and Julia’s separation is not the only one enacted in this novel. We might end the Passover seder with “next year in Jerusalem,” but our horizons are fixed in Brooklyn and Brookline, in Bethesda and Berkeley, where we tend to our kids, our careers, and our libidos, and by means of these commitments sustain our beautiful Jewish souls.

I feel sorry for American Jews who have locked themselves into what can only be seen as an either-or construct. Who have persuaded themselves that either you can love and support Israel or you can "tend" to and "sustain" your Jewish soul solely in the U.S. Who, for their own personal reasons, are certain that the one (loving Israel) is somehow a negation of--and a threat to--the other (being Jewish in America).

All I can say is that their thinking is seriously askew, not to mention delusional, and they are missing out on something indescribably beautiful.

Why "Deradicalization" Won't Work

Majid Nawaz, who used to embrace violent jihad, explains why the Trudeau approach is doomed to fail:

Canada needs to revamp its approach to Islamic extremism if it hopes to prevent another homegrown radical from setting off a bomb, says the founder of an international anti-radicalization think tank. 

In an exclusive interview with Postmedia, Maajid Nawaz - a former Islamist radical and founder of the U.K.-based Quilliam Foundation - called for a society-wide effort to undercut the intellectual and theological planks of Islamist and jihadist ideology. 

“There certainly needs to be training. Counter-radicalization training involves de-radicalization training on how to disengage somebody from the theory of violence, and it involves taking them beyond that actually and discrediting the theory of Islamism in their minds,” said Nawaz. 

“A lot of this, Muslims simply don’t know.”

A lot this, infidels simply don't know either. 

Two years ago, Tarek Fatah expressed some other hesitations re anti-extremism--and encountered much infidel ignorance. He warned a Senate committee looking into the matter that

‘de-radicalization’ initiatives by Canada’s security agencies were doomed to failure because the very men and women partnering with the RCMP in this exercise were not just part of the problem, but in many ways the cause of radicalization.

For example, in mosques across Canada, our Friday congregation begins with a prayer to Allah for a victory of Muslims over the kufaar (Christians, Jews and Hindus). In such a climate, relying on Islamic religious clerics and Islamists to fight radicalization is like employing the fox to guard the chicken coop.

Some senators looked at me with incredulity, taken aback by what I had said.

I suggested to the senators that some Islamic clerics are taking us for a ride. For example, a Canadian cleric, a white convert to Islam who is touted as a ‘de-radicalization counsellor’ by the RCMP, was last week in the Gulf Emirate of Qatar, holding meetings with the leadership of the Taliban....

De-radicalization, I told the senators, was just an empty meaningless word. The real challenge was to prevent radicalization and this required confronting the rhetoric of political Islam rather than appeasing those who fanned religiosity and made Muslims believe their first loyalty was to Islam, not their community of fellow Canadians and Canada.

“To ask ‘former radicals’ to de-radicalize radical Islamists is like asking Marxists to convert Communists into liberal democrats,” I told the committee. ...

My take on it is slightly different: you can't expect to "deradicalize" anyone until and unless you address the siren call of jihad, a core Islamic tenet, and how compelling and all-consuming it is for those who fall under its spell. And, when someone has fallen for it, what's likely required is the type of concerted deprogramming that's used to de-brainwash someone who's become stuck in a dangerous cult. However, given the jihad's widespread appeal and its mainstream status in much of Islam, that deprogramming style is probably not feasible.

Good Move

Egyptian Judoka Who Refused To Shake Israeli Competitor's Hand Sent Home By IOC

Leftist Mishegas in Tablet Magazine

The problem isn't Black Lives Matter. The problem is the Occupation.

Wrong. The problem is the cult of victimhood Marxism (as practiced and exemplified by BLM) and the left's usefully idiotic preoccupation with the capital "o" Occupation (especially since the Palestinians and their leftist/Islamist backers have made it abundantly clear that their concept of what's been "occupied" takes in the entirety of Israel--i.e. "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free").

Update: Serendipitously, Bruce Thornton has a piece in FPM today that summarizes how victimhood Marxism arose and gained traction in the West:

In the twentieth century, however, the Western proletariat ignored Marx’s laws of history and did not ignite the communist revolution. They preferred to take advantage of the expanding wealth created by free-market capitalism, and to join the hated bourgeoisie. Communists then looked to the Third World, where the postwar anticolonial movements promised the worldwide revolution the workers of the West had betrayed. “Natives of the underdeveloped countries unite!” cried Jean-Paul Sartre, replacing the old “workers of the world” with the oppressed victims of European colonization. 

Thus was born Third Worldism, the modern reboot of the old noble savage myth. Once considered primitives that needed to be civilized, now non-Westerners were idealized. Their exotic customs and mores, and their simpler, more authentic lives, were held up as reproaches to the “air-conditioned nightmare” of the repressed bourgeois West and its soul-killing, mass-produced consumerism. The tyranny and cultural dysfunctions of these newly liberated peoples, and the persistence of their old tribal intolerance and violence, were ignored or rationalized as understandable reactions to continued Western oppression. 

At the same time, multiculturalism became institutionalized in Western politics and culture, an ideology founded on the same assumption of Third Worldism: “Every Westerner is presumed guilty until proven innocent,” as the French social critic Pascal Bruckner put it. We Westerners, he continued, “have been raised to detest ourselves, certain that, within our world, there is an essential evil that must be relentlessly atoned for . . . colonialism and imperialism.” This fashionable self-loathing, of course, came cheap, as Westerners continued to enjoy the leisure, affluence, and human rights created by Western ideas that the people they idealized lacked or hated. 

In this misguided and reductive worldview, the Islamic peoples were grouped together with the other non-Western cultures. The Arab-Israeli conflict gave this idealism a geopolitical significance that had little to do with religion. The Arabs attacking Israel were transformed into victims of neo-colonialism and “illegal occupation” by the capitalist puppet Israel. Like the Viet Cong, the Algerian Liberation Front, and Castro’s guerrillas, they were freedom fighters struggling for national “self-determination.” The Islamic roots of Arab revanchist hatred were ignored in the West, even as PLO leader Yasser Arafat issued the traditional Koranic call for “jihad, jihad, jihad” from the “river to the sea”—that is, for a war to ethnically cleanse Israelis from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. 

America’s Cold War involvement in other Muslim nations seemingly confirmed this narrative, making the Muslim people yet another Third World victim of the evil West, and so an object of admiration and idealization by leftists and progressives. The illiberal, anti-modern, intolerant dimensions of sharia law were dismissed or rationalized. Just mentioning such things became a sign of Western bigotry against the oppressed “other,” as the literary critic Edward Said argued in his still influential Orientalism.

Exactly.

Trudeau Gov't Plans to Squander $35 Million Fighting "Extremism"

How do we know it'll amount to, at best, pouring money down the drain and, at worst, empowering the wrong people (like, say, NCCM)? You can pretty much read it between these lines, which speak of "de-radicalization" and reaching those who are "vulnerable" to it, but never once mention the words "Islam," "Islamic," "jihad" or "jihadis":

Ottawa will spend $35 million over five years to fund programs that reach out to vulnerable people open to radicalization in a bid to prevent terror attacks in Canada.

The federal government will establish a national centre for de-radicalization that will coordinate efforts across Canada to fight extremism.  

Most of the money will go to groups and organizations at the community level that are best equipped “to intervene in the right way, with the right tools and at the right time,” Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale said on Monday. 

Goodale visited Montreal’s de-radicalization centre to learn what the centre is doing to help young people who are vulnerable to extremism and violence. 

Last week, police stopped an alleged terrorist attack by an Ontario man who had become radicalized. The FBI informed the RCMP about a martyrdom video that Aaron Driver made pledging allegiance to ISIS. 

“The events of the last week or so have demonstrated in Canada that we need to get better and better and better at understanding and dealing with the serious issue of radicalization,”Goodale said...

Well, Ralph, a willingness to actually say the above-cited verboten words out loud would be a good--no, an essential--first step.

Toronto Sun Editorial Undermined and (Almost) Undone By Clueless "Pearl"

In an otherwise cogent editorial in the Toronto Sun criticizing Elizabeth May's Green Party for supporting BDS, one discovers this toxic little "pearl":

[May's] opposition to BDS is not an endorsement of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Indeed even many Israelis object to that. 

Israel's treatment of the Palestinians? What about Hamas's and Fatah's treatment of them--the way their leaders leverage the populace's "suffering" in order to line their own pockets with aid money and fan the flames of global Israel-hate?

What about Hamas's ongoing construction of terror tunnels and Stinky Abbas's naming streets after fanatical Jew-killers?

What about the jihad being waged against Israel (for having the temerity to claim its right to exist on land claimed for Islam and Allah) and the entire West?

And what about the fact that the Israelis who "object" to Israel's "treatment" of those bent on its destruction are lefties whose anti-Zionism is fully in synch with the Green Party's? (Indeed, many of those responsible for bringing the anti-Israel resolutions to the table at the Green Party convention were anti-Zionist Jews.)

So many questions engendered by one tiny thought and nary an answer in sight.

Update: The Next Generation of Killers (in Gaza)

Jew-Haters' Auschwitz Obsession a Big Hit--In Belgium AND Iran

So nice to see two deranged Jew-haters with such immense "talent" finally receiving their due:

The faculty at a Catholic school in Belgium is actually proud of Luc Descheemaeker, a recently retired teacher at the Sint-Jozefs Institute in the city of Torhout, for winning a “special prize” this past May at the Second International Holocaust Cartoon Contest held in Tehran. 

The former “plastic arts and cultural sciences” teacher won for his art piece featuring the words “arbeit macht frei” — German for “work sets you free,” which was emblazoned at the  entrance of the infamous Auschwitz — “over a wall with guard posts — presumably comparing Israel’s security barrier along Judea and Samaria […],” according to Arutz Sheva. 

As if Deschumcker's "art piece" wasn't nutty enough (especially when you consider that the guard posts at Auschwitz were meant to keep Jews in--so they could be gassed to death by Jew-haters--while the Israeli security fence, little of which is actual "wall," is meant to keep Jew-haters out, so they can't kill Jews), wait'll you hear about the 'toon that got the top award:

The contest’s first prize winner was a drawing of a cash register in the shape of Auschwitz...

The implication being--what? That Auschwitz was a cash cow for Jewry?

Deschmucker and his fellow Auschwitz-obsessive should both get a prize, alright--the Arbeit Macht Stupid prize.

"Countries" Seeking Independence Given Platform to Kvetch at World Social Forum in Montreal

And, of course, the world's victims di tutti victims were front and center (my bolds):

Representatives of people from countries claiming their independence met in Montreal recently as part of the World Social Forum to share experiences and create bonds of solidarity. 

Fifteen representatives — including those from Palestine, Kabylia, Kurdistan and First Nations in Quebec, notably— met, organized by the Committee of Self-Determination. 

The objective of their meeting was to present public perspective — not the view of a politician — the different ways in which people express themselves during struggles to take control of their destinies.  

Maxime Laporte, president of the St-Jean Baptiste Society (SSJB) of Montreal and member of Cap sur l’Indépendance, which originated the lecture series, said he learned and exchanged a lot about the strategies used by each nation to assert their political independence...

How fascinating. Does that mean that "those from Palestine" "exchanged" their "strategies" of murdering as many Jews as possible via the terror tunnel, the "home-made rocket," the strapped-on bomb and the dagger?

Or did they merely "exchange" their bloodshed-free "strategy" of BDS?

Was Donald Trump Set Up By Bill Clinton, Who Wanted to Secure the Presidency for His Wife?

Seems as good a time as any to revisit this one, from a year ago (the italics are in the original):

Whom does the country have to blame for Donald Trump’s ascendancy in American politics? The Republican Party, for cultivating conservative populism to score short-term victories against Barack Obama? The media, for covering Trump’s every utterance at the expense of all other candidates? Celebrity culture, for thrusting him into the public consciousness? Capitalism, for making him rich? Tall buildings, of which Trump has many?

Wrong, says The Washington Post, which revealed the supposed truth on Wednesday: it was former president and candidate spouse Bill Clinton all along. 

According to several Trump sources (and one Clinton source) who spoke to the Post, the two men spoke over the phone in late May, shortly before Trump announced his run in June. During the call, the Trump sources said, Clinton “encouraged Trump’s efforts to play a larger role in the Republican Party” and “analyzed Trump’s prospects and his desire to rouse the G.O.P. base.”  

That conversation, said the anonymous Trump sources, certainly didn’t discourage the billionaire to run: while Clinton never outright told Trump to enter the race, he reportedly told Trump that he was “striking a chord with frustrated conservatives and was a rising force on the right,” and his tone was supposedly “encouraging.”...

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but if nothing else, Bill's "encouraging" Trump is definitely fishy. If only some news hound with cojones--say, that guy who, in the face of State Department misdirection asked, "Am I not speaking English?"--would do some digging into that fateful communication.

PM Trudeau Successfully Keeps the Jihad Out of Yesterday's Police Take Down of a Jihadi

So far Justin Trudeau, who is currently en vacance with the wife and kids, has issued but one lame comment--on Twitter--about the Canadian jihadi who didn't get to blow up the Toronto Transit system. "On behalf of Canadians," tweeted the twit, "we thank the @rcmpgrcpolice for their work in Strathroy yesterday. Your service ensures our safety each & every day."

Sure, that's about as generic and non-specific as it gets, but you have to put it in the context of our idiot PM's thinking on the subject of ISIS and those who embrace it (my bolds):

PM Trudeau made his ISIS strategy clear at an interview with Global National anchor Dawna Friesen in December, 2015. When Friesen asked Trudeau “If God forbid there was an attack on Canada like the one in Paris would that change the equation for you?”, Trudeau said the following: 

“Obviously, we are working very hard to both insure that Canadian safety, but also not to give in to the narrative that ISIS wants. 

“I mean, if they are posting beheadings on the internet and using advanced videos as recruiting tools, one of things that they need, they need people to be terrorized by terror, they need people to be afraid, people need to be polarized, and that what they are trying to do. 

“They would love for us to suddenly be afraid, be more afraid and close in and create walls because that makes it easier for them to achieve their goals. We have to be courageous and confident while we protect Canadians.”

So true (that the only thing we have to fear is Justin Trudeau's useful idiocy itself).

For the Clintons, Charity Begins--and Ends--At Home

Hillary Clinton's 2015 Charitable Contributions Went To...the Clintons

Raymond Ibrahim Corrects a Falsehood Purveyed By a HuffPo Apologist for Islam

All Islamic violence does not come from the Hadith; much of it comes from the Koran/Quran/Qur'an.

Update: The Quran is shot through with violence.

"Helpful" UN to Western Infidels: Only a Tiny Minority of "Refugees" are Extremists

Wow, that is helpful.

Though not, of course, for infidels living in, say, Germany, France and Sweden.

Wherein I Correct Donald Trump's Latest Maladroit Utterance

It's not that Obama "founded" ISIS. It's that, via his feckless policies and his general cluelessness (a function of his "progressive" worldview), he promoted it from "the JV team" to the winner of the Super Bowl.

Terry Glavin: The World Social Forum Is "The Left's Depraved Sideshow"

Actually, when you consider the lineup of its mainstream patrons (including the province of Quebec and city of Montreal), it's more of a main event. Glavin gets it right, though, when he says that "the lineup reads like a who's who of Jew haters and despot supporters."

Many of whom, no surprise, can be comfortably situated in both categories:

It took a cartoon appearing in the World Social Forum program in Montreal this week that could have come straight from the pages of Julius Streicher’s Nazi propaganda tabloid Der Stürmer to provide a fleeting glimpse into just how deeply the rot has spread. It featured a hook-nosed Jew vomiting a caricature of Uncle Sam, who’s disgorging a long-bearded jihadist. 

Put to the crude Khomeinist propaganda purpose of attributing the Wahhabi-inspired terrorism afflicting the Middle East at the moment to the United States and Israel — a lunatic conspiracy theory that enjoys generous toleration among Canada’s self-described “anti-imperialist” activists — it should tell you something that the World Social Forum’s animateurs did not notice anything untoward about the cartoon until it became the subject of a public uproar. 

That is how far the “anti-globalization” movement has fallen since the World Social Forum’s first annual gathering in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001. Conceived as an altruistic alternative to the neo-liberalism of the World Economic Forum convened annually in Davos, Switzerland, the World Social Forum is now as pleased to draw unambiguously fascist tendencies to its bosom as it is to facilitate note-swapping among vegans who have quarrels with Monsanto’s genetically modified food experiments...

I attribute the movement's downfall in large part to the pervasive and corrosive Israel hate.

Update: Poor WSF organizers. They're so gosh darn "frustrated":

MONTREAL — Canada's reputation as an open society risks being tarnished after many invitees to the World Social Forum 2016 in Montreal had their visitor visa application denied by the government, organizers said Monday.  

Twenty-four hours before the beginning of the international event, conference co-coordinator Raphael Canet told reporters the number of people denied entry to Canada hasn't changed much since he raised the issue a week ago.  

Canet said he sent 2,000 letters of inquiry to conference invitees asking about their travel plans and 70 per cent of the 315 people who replied said their visa application had been rejected by the Canadian government.  

Co-organizer Carminda MacLorin said Canada's reputation as a free and open society will be "tainted" if there are fewer people at this year's conference.  

The majority of the people denied entry visas are from Africa, and many are from Latin America, organizers said.  

Immigration Canada blamed conference officials and said rules for visitor visas need to be followed rigorously, while the event's directors said they did all they could to facilitate the visa process. ...

One can only imagine what sort of Jew hater and despot supporter didn't pass muster.

White Dudes and ISIS--It's a Gang Thang

When I saw a photo of Aaron Driver, the ISIS-supporter who had been planning to unleash a major act of jihadi terrorism, and who was killed by the cops before he had the chance to do so, I thought, "Wow, is that dude ever white."

So white, in fact, that one would expect him to have signed up with, say, skinheads/neo-Nazis and not will Allah's a-holes.

And, whadya know? Driver had previously expressed sentiments that would have put him firmly in the white power camp:

In a calm and collected tone, Aaron Driver told CBC News last year that he didn't think Muslims belonged in the West and that their ways of life weren't compatible with Canada's. 

In a nearly 90-minute phone conversation in June 2015 the then-23-year-old ISIS supporter, who was living in Winnipeg at the time, spoke about his beliefs. 

"If a country goes to war with another country or another people or another community, I think that they have to be prepared for things like [the Parliament Hill shooting] to happen," Driver said. 

"And when it does happen they shouldn't, they shouldn't act surprised. They had it coming for them; they deserved it."...

So what would make someone like that want to take up with ISIS?

Well, you don't hear about skinhead neo-Nazi types wreaking havoc and mayhem on a terrified populace, do you? Who would want to side with those slackers/non-entities when you could feel part of the biggest, baddest gangbangers on the planet, even it happened to be full of Muslims?

Update: Sounds like Aaron Driver, a.k.a. Harun Abdurahman (and I don't mean the noodles) may have been planning to bomb the Toronto transit system.

Marvin's Mimics

There's Robin Thicke for one and Ed Sheeran for another.

CAIR's Taqiyyah About Taqiyyah

You have to see it to believe it.

New Allegations of Humaniterrorism in Gaza Lead Elliott Abrams to Call Upon Donors to "Withold Funding" For Now

As Abrams sees it,

The only way to solve this problem is for donors to withhold funding unless and until the independence of their programs can be assured. Yes, the people of Gaza would suffer, but they would know why: because Hamas is more interested in its own terrorist actions than in the welfare of Gazans.

Agreed. But there's no way that donors are going to heed this call. Not when they're presented with the bait that invariably gets them to open their wallets: photos of the beaming faces of suffering Palestinian children.

How Can You Tell It's Summer in Londonistan? That's When Uber-Pricey Cars Belonging to Uber-Rich Petro-Arabs Show Up

Call it conspicuous consumption, oily Emirates-style:

From a chrome Mercedes-Benz McLaren to a silver Lamborghini Aventador, the stunning vehicles are among hundreds which have been flown into the UK from the Middle East for the summer.

The car owners, many of them from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait, will happily pay a small fortune - in excess of £20,000 for a return journey - for their metal marvels to be flown around 3,000 miles, and often leave them parked up on the streets of Knightsbridge and Chelsea.

Qatar Airways is one such airline that ships the luxury cars from Doha to Heathrow. Secured to the floor of one of their Airbus A330s, the precious cargo can either be accommodated in a single row or in a side-by-side configuration.

Using their main and lower deck, the airline offers 31 positions on each flight.

The supercars can already be seen lined up outside designer shops, such as Versace and Fendi, in the upmarket neighbourhoods of south-west London.

Wealthy: yes. Classy: not so much.

Feh!

This is what passes for great art in our decadent time:

Falling within the snapshot tradition—familiar, ad hoc, a smidgen unfocused—the stills are filled with random details like the Band-Aid on Goldin’s chest in “Buzz and Nan at the Afterhours,” the wadded-up tissue in “Sandra at the Mirror,” or the dirty feet of her “Roommates in Bed.” Many of the pictures still pack a wallop; the stranger sitting next to me held his hands to his head for most of the show. They include photos of women sitting on the toilet (I’ve read there were no doors in the bathroom at Goldin’s loft), men masturbating, a whole sequence of people shooting up heroin, the fresh scar of an ectopic pregnancy above a woman’s shaved crotch.

Move over, Vincent Van Gogh!

Donald Trump, the Media, and the "Razor's" Edge

Roger L. Simon goes into a long song and dance in an effort to explain "the real reason" why most in the media loathe, despise and abominate Donald J. Trump.

Simon thinks it has a lot to do with Trump's plan to rescue the middle class and the media's desire to put the kibosh on that one, thank you very much.

I think there's a far simpler--i.e. an Occam's razor--reason for the derision: the media, which have a leftist default setting (and are mostly leftist to a fault), are programmed to hate Republicans; Donald Trump is (an ostensible, putative) Republican; he also happens to have no filter and often says dumb and/or offensive things as soon as they pop into his head (making him the Sophia Petrillo of American politics).

Ergo, the media hate Trump.

Something Rotten in D.C.

Emails renew questions about Clinton Foundation and State Dept. Overlap

"Overlap"--what an innocuous way to describe the Clintons' obvious and egregious hanky-panky.

Something Rotten in Rio: Water in Olympic Diving Pool Turns Bright Green

Don't worry, though. Officials have ruled that it's "safe" --and they wouldn't lie, would they?

Foreign Policy Is (Also) Wrong About Islam

A Foreign Policy piece claims (falsely, foolishly) that because Khizr Khan's son was an American soldier who was killed in action, "Islam Is (Also) a Religion of Peace."

Wrong. Islam is a religion of conquest via holy war. And "peace" in the Islamic sense can only occur once Islam has successfully compelled infidels to acknowledge its supremacy.

That said, not every single Muslim subscribes to that theology, and many are quite content to ignore it. For others, however, including Major Nidal Hasan, late of Fort Hood, the theology is too compelling, and cannot be ignored.

Instead of telling fibs about what Islam is and isn't, why can't we differentiate between what Islam calls for (and it most decidedly does not call for peace as we in the West understand it) and what individual Muslims choose--or choose not to--do with it?

Nice Work If You Can Get It

Palestinians: The "Country" Where Crime Is an Official Job

"Migrants" Groping/Raping/Assaulting Infidel Chicks Both Old and Young the New Normal in Angela Merkel's Germany

Authorities are doing their best to try to ix-nay reports of the ape-ray, but it's rather difficult to hide info like this:

Germany's migrant rape crisis has now spread to cities and towns in all 16 of Germany's federal states. Germany is effectively under siege; public spaces are becoming increasingly perilous. Police have warned about a potential breakdown of public order this summer, when young male migrants are likely to see women lightly dressed. 

During the month of July 2016, hundreds of German women and children were sexually assaulted by migrants (see Appendix below). The youngest victim was nine; the oldest, 79. Attacks occurred at beaches, bike trails, cemeteries, discotheques, grocery stores, music festivals, parking garages, playgrounds, schools, shopping malls, taxis, public transportation (buses, trams, intercity express trains and subways), public parks, public squares, public swimming pools and public restrooms. Predators are lurking everywhere; safety nowhere. 

Dozens of women and children have been assaulted by migrants at summer festivals and public swimming pools — staples of ordinary German life.

And now rape has become another staple, courtesy Angela the Clueless. 

Die-versity In Action: Orlando Shooter's Papa, a Big Taliban Fan, Gets Plum Seat At Local HIllary Rally

He doesn't exactly have the same cred as that Gold Star couple whose son was killed in Iraq, but someone decided that it was a swell idea to seat him directly behind the Democratic candidate.

Living the Dream in Assadville

Syria's warlords were nobodies. Now they are rich men with sex slaves

Elizabeth May "Ponders Future" In Light of the Greens Becoming Canada's First Official Israel-Hate Party

Not only is she going to "ponder," she's also planning to "reflect":

Elizabeth May says she's going to reflect on her future role as leader of the Green Party, after its members voted in favour of a resolution supporting sanctions against Israel, despite her own opposition to it. 

The Greens became Canada's first federal party to endorse the so-called Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement during the party's biennial convention in Ottawa over the weekend. Some Canadian Jewish groups denounced the Green Party for supporting a boycott policy against Israel. The House of Commons condemned the movement in February. 

"I'm going away for the first week off I've had off since Christmas and I will be doing a lot of reflecting," May said Tuesday morning in an interview with CBC Radio's On the Island. 

"It's only been since the convention that I've been wondering what's the best way to get this position reversed so that in the next election Green Party candidates across Canada are not facing a complete distraction of an issue," she told CBC's Khalil Akhtar...

"The best way to get this position reversed"? In the words of Jewish canary Carole King (nee Klein), it's too late, baby.

Life in Gaza: Swimming Pools. Movie Stars

Well, maybe not movie stars. But the Gaza that's depicted in a Hamas election video sure looks a lot more like Beverly Hills than it does an Auschwitz.

World Social Forum 2016: Just Another Joke of an International Gathering that Gets Its Jollies By Trashing Israel

The goal of the World Social Forum 2016, which gets underway in Montreal today, is

to gather tens of thousands of people from groups in civil society, organizations and social movements who want to build a sustainable and inclusive world, where every person and every people has its place and can make its voice heard.

According to a report in the National Post, however, there's one wee nation which these virtuous ones wish to exclude from their avid inclusivity (my bolds):

Along with eco-responsibility, accessibility and security, the Forum has identified “non-apartheid” as one of its four key commitments, promising to censor pro-Israel viewpoints. “We have already taken a stand to exclude all people, organizations or activities that promote any kind of oppression, supporting Palestinians and all the people struggling for their emancipation and freedom,” its website says. An accompanying document advises the boycott of academics, artists and products it links to “Israeli apartheid.” The CIJA has identified 28 separate events that it says target Israel. Two of the event’s 21 major sessions deal with “Israeli apartheid.”

Because of the deranged focus on Israeli malfeasance, as well as the presence of an egregiously anti-Semitic cartoon on the WSF site, the Canadian government has now rescinded its support:

MPs Anthony Housefather, representing the Montreal riding of Mount Royal, and Michael Levitt, representing the Toronto riding of York Centre, also took exception to the World Social Forum’s heavy emphasis on the anti-Israel BDS movement. 

“The Prime Minister, the Government of Canada, and the Canadian Parliament have been very clear that we oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and that anti-Semitism is never acceptable,” the MPs said in a statement. 

Forum organizers cancelled a session that had been scheduled to show how Islamist terrorists are “in the service of world Zionism-capitalism.” The page for the event had featured a cartoon of a hook-nosed orthodox Jew with a Star of David on his hat, a drawing that Reuben Poupko, co-chairman of Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) Quebec, said was “not so different from those that appeared in Nazi papers.”

Not surprisingly, the chap behind the cancelled session is in major freak out mode (a la an irate Al Quds Day "protester" at Queen's Park):

For an event to be removed it has to violate the Forum’s principles, which prohibit proselytism, violence and political partisanship. Seyyed Ali Mousavi, organizer of the workshop that featured the offensive cartoon, was livid that his event was judged to contravene Forum principles. 

“World Social Forum is occupied by Israeli tanks and petrodollars Saudi Arabia,” he wrote on the Forum website. 

Hey, tell us something we don't know, Seyyed.

If Seyyed is an example of the sort of "inclusiveness" aficionado who will be participating in this event, the government should have done some due diligence before granting its imprimatur. Now that the chat is out of the bag re the forum's mindset, there is absolutely no excuse for these organizations/institutions, including the Quebec government and McGill University, to continue their partnership.

Update: From the sounds of it, this is a Marxist-Islamist jubilee (and, yes, both Naomi Klein and Harpoon Siddiqui will be speaking here).

World Social Forum 2016: Israel-hate is in the air

and on the agenda.

Meet Another Disgusting Useful Jewish Idiot--Author Ben Ehrenreich

As a piece in Tablet recounts, Ehrenreich has written a much-praised book (praised by the usual high profile anti-Israel news outlets, that is) expressing sympathy for the Sbarro bomber and his clan:

“Fire was lit in the body / Don’t just stand by perplexed / Remember the day the restaurant burned / Remember the day the roof flew away / What prevents honor from returning? / What prevents the rebels from laughing?” These are the first lines from a rhyme by Ahlam Tamimi, the proud mastermind of a bombing targeting a Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem 15 years ago, on Aug. 9, 2001. The terror attack claimed the lives of seven children and eight adults, including a pregnant woman; 130 people suffered injuries; one young mother was left in a permanent vegetative state. 

When Ahlam Tamimi posted her ghastly commemorative rhyme last September on her Facebook page—which is adorned with images of the suicide bomber who carried out the attack—she didn’t just wax nostalgic about a massacre of civilians she had planned and helped to perpetrate. She went on to urge Palestinians to intensify the wave of terror attacks that was just beginning: “Try and plan / Try and carry out / Prepare the [explosive] mix / Take the axe / What’s the plan?” One of the well over 100 “likes” for her incitement came from Tamimi’s Facebook friend and relative Nariman Tamimi—a person whom readers of Ben Ehrenreich’s widely praised new book The Way to the Spring got to know as an admirable activist, a devoted mother, a loving wife, and a gracious host. 

Nariman Tamimi and her husband, Bassem, are the first people Ehrenreich lists in his acknowledgements, thanking them profusely for their “abundant help, generosity, hospitality, kindness, laughter, encouragement, insights, and wise counsel.” A raft of highly positive reviews of the book attest to Ehrenreich’s ability to transmit his affection for the Tamimis:  

The New York Times described Ehrenreich’s book as a moving “love letter to Palestine” that is full of “heartbreaking and eye-opening” stories; similarly, The Economist praised Ehrenreich’s “elegant and moving account” and emphasized that “[it] is in the author’s descriptions of the Tamimis that the hope, and the love, are to be found.” 

For the families of the victims of the Sbarro bombing, it must be bitter to know that on the 15th anniversary of this atrocity a well-regarded American writer is successfully promoting a book that paints a glowing picture of the perpetrator’s relatives, who are to this day openly supportive of terror attacks, including the murders that Ahlam and other Tamimi family members were directly involved in.

 Do I smell a Pulitzer in the offing?

Why, yes; yes I do.

Update: Here's Ben "love letter" to Israel, penned back in '09.

WTF? Washington Times Article Tries to Drum Up Sympathy for World Vision Gaza Exec Accused of Engaging in Humaniterrorism

Is this one a function of the paleo-Right's anti-Zionism, perhaps?

Mohammed El Halabi, World Vision fixture and accused Hamas-funder,

schmoozes with some adorable Palestinian moppets in happier times.

Update: P. David Hornik writes:

However the case with Muhammad Halabi will play out, and whatever will or will not be revealed about World Vision’s relationship with this official, the problem with World Vision and many other aid organizations lies in a dogmatic insistence on viewing Palestinians as victims and Israelis as aggressors—a dogmatism that appears impervious to real humanitarian and moral considerations.   

In this case as in many others, as Israeli commentator Ariel Bolstein notes, “When devout Christian worshippers in churches across the U.S. donated a dollar or two to ‘those poor children,’ the smiling faces on the receiving end were Hamas terrorists in Gaza."

Green Party Signs Its Own Death Warrant By Embracing BDS

Just wanted to "salute" the Green Party of Canada for embracing BDS, the movement to punish Israel financially for the "crime" of failing to achieve the impossible, i.e. placate Palestinians and their self-righteous, usefully idiot infidel supporters by ending the "Occupation" (of Israel by sovereign Jews).

Instrumental in passing this pro-punishment resolution was a gaggle of Juden seeking to distance themselves from iniquitous Zion (a move reminiscent of German Jews who, in the Hitler era, sought--and failed--to distance themselves from Ostjuden).

These ardent individuals style themselves as "Independent Jewish Voices," or IJV. A more accurate name for them, though, is Anti-Zionist Jewish Quislings (AZJQ). And little do these "social justice"-loving fools realize that by signing up for Israel-hate, the Jew-hate of our time, they have ensured their own party's demise (history having demonstrated again and again that any version of "the longest hatred" is a corrosive which inevitably destroys its host).

Way to go Green Jews!

CBC Reporter Derek Stoffel's Pity Party for Palestinian Swimmer "Denied" Access to Israeli Pools Is--Yes--All Wet

A few days ago, Derek Stoffel, Ceeb mouthpiece for Palestinian suffering, reported on Mary al-Atrash. She's a Palestinian swimmer competing in Rio despite some hardships imposed by those rotten Joooos:

"It's difficult because of the lack of resources for us here. It will be very difficult to win a medal," Atrash said.

There is no Olympic-sized swimming pool in the Palestinian territories that Palestinians are allowed to use, so Atrash practises at the YMCA in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem. The pool is 25 metres long, half the length of the facility she'll compete in at Rio.

'Harder to practise'

Most Palestinians are unable to travel into Israel, where sports facilities are larger and more modern, because of the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

"Because of all the difficulties that Palestinians live under … it makes it harder to practise and compete in our sports," said Atrash.

Beyond travel restrictions, Palestinians face checkpoints and a scarcity of services such as sanitation, and in some areas clean water...

The reaction Stoffel is hoping to engender, obviously, is: Damn you, Israel! 

Of course, the truth (also reality, also the facts), happens to differ entirely from Stoffel's awful twaddle, and his propagandistic reportage is criticized in this Tablet piece (although neither he nor the Ceeb is mentioned by name):

If we were blessed with journalists who had the ability to use advanced research tools like the Internet, we might’ve benefited from knowing that the Israeli government office for coordinating activities in the West Bank, or COGAT, issued a statement last month on its Facebook page, making it clear that it would’ve gladly considered accommodating al-Atrash had she bothered applying for a permit to train in Jerusalem—which, like Palestinian athletes before her, she refused to do—and wishing her the best of luck anyway. It might’ve also been helpful to note that plenty of athletes around the world, including here in the United States, train, like al-Atrash, in semi-Olympic 25 meter pools, and that to qualify for the Olympics al-Atrash had to have qualified in a regulation-sized pool, which makes the whole access question a rather minor one. But never mind all that, because the Palestinian Territories, you see, have not one Olympic pool but several.

There’s this luxurious one in Gaza, built, maybe, with some of the leftover cement Hamas could spare after squandering billions on its terror tunnels; there’s one in Nablus; and when I called the folks over at the Murad resort in al-Atrash’s native Beit Sakhour, they assured me that their pool, too, was properly Olympically endowed. Water water everywhere, then, and not a drop for swimming.

Maybe the deprived Ms. al-Atrash could get World Vision to sponsor her.

Update: Honest Reporting Canada has filed a complaint about Stoffel's biased coverage.

Syria's "Huddled Masses"...Hate Israel and the U.S.

Are these masses "yearning to breathe free or yearning to breathe sharia?," asks a very rude Arutz Sheva opiner (who must be a "racist" for daring to express such an un-PC thought). He continues:

Regardless, the Obama administration has fast-tracked some 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States. 

Or rather, 10,000 more. 

Those that are already here will be permitted to stay and apply for benefits that normally go to actual citizens. Same deal for newer arrivals. 

Not all are Syrian, the number includes Afghans and Somalis, among others, but most are men, men without women, between the ages of 18 and 45. 

Liberals call it a humanitarian gesture. Trump and other conservatives call it “a great Trojan Horse.” 

“We don’t know who they are,” says Trump.

No, we don’t.

“We don’t know their intentions.”

True. However, we do know that over the years Syria was never a friend of Israel or of the United States. We know that when it was time to chant  “Death to Israel” and when it was time to burn the American flag, Syrians were among the first to join the performance.

There is no doubt that eventually they will be given a path to citizenship, which means a path to vote.

Which means a path to vote Democrat. That’s why Hillary Clinton wants even more of them.

Justin Trudeau, too.

Pakistan's Top Religious Body Insists That ALL the Koran's Jihad Verses Be Taught in School

I agree. Why try to hide things that are right there in the text? Why pretend that Islam is all about love and sunshine when, in fact, it's about conquest via holy war?:

Expressing concern over excluding proposed jihad verses from the school curriculum, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), top religious advisory body, has demanded the Pakistan Government to include the said verses. The concerns were raised during the CII meeting chaired by Maulana Muhammad Khan Sheerani earlier on Tuesday, reports the Express Tribune. 

The Federal Education and Professional Training Ministry had earlier finalised its proposed curriculum for public educational institutions in which it pitched to introduce teaching of the holy Quran as a compulsory subject from first to twelfth standard. The recommendations’ final draft was submitted to the CII for review, but when it found that the ministry did not include verses of jihad in the proposed curriculum, it irked the members who demanded the government to include the said verses in the syllabus. 

“484 verses of jihad are mentioned in the Quran but they were deliberately not included in the syllabus so students could not be taught about it,” said CII member Maulana Zahid Qasmi. 

Later on Wednesday the CII rejected the government’s proposal to include teachings of Quran in schools syllabus. The CII members said they found too many lacunas in the books and that they could not be incorporated in the schools syllabus.

"Lacunas"? Aren't those a type of fuzzy South American animal?

What the heck are they doing in Pakistan? ;)

Get out of those books, you fuzzy lacuna!

Lost In Translation: CBC Radio Renders the Traditional JIhadi War Cry in English

Today in Belgium, a jihadi wielding a machete attacked two female police officers. Here's how it's reported on the CBC News site:

Two female officers were attacked and wounded by a man wielding a machete and shouting "Allahu akbar" outside the main police station in the Belgian city of Charleroi on Saturday, police said. 

The assailant was shot by a third officer and later died of his wounds, authorities said. The attacker's identity and motive were not immediately known, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said, but added the "first indications" suggested it was an act of terrorism.

On CBC radio just now, however, the news reader said the man shouted--wait for it--"God is great."

Which, you have to admit, doesn't sound nearly as threatening (or as Arabic) as "Allahu Akbar," although it does sound really, really stupid (as does the contention that the man's "motive" is not yet known).