"Ghomeshi" Becomes a Verb

Here, I'll put it in a sentence: Dude wraps his hands around a sweet young thing's throat during sex play and asks, "Is this okay for you 'cuz I don't want to get Ghomeshi'd."

Convicted "Honour Killing" Shafia Trio Play the Racism Card in Bid for Appeal

So...predictable:

TORONTO - An honour killing expert’s testimony risked fuelling “racial and cultural hatred” against a trio convicted of murdering four female members of their Afghan family, Ontario’s highest court will hear Thursday. 

Lawyers for Mohammad Shafia, 62, his second wife, Tooba Muhammad Yahya, 46, and their eldest son, Hamed, 25, will try to overturn their clients’ first-degree murder convictions for killing three sisters and another family member based on several grounds — including the use of this honour-killing expert’s testimony — at the Ontario Court of Appeal. 

The use of “overwhelmingly prejudicial evidence” by University of Toronto Prof. Shahzrad Mojab on honour killings enabled the jurors to understand “how a mother, father and brother could kill their own flesh and blood,” lawyers Jonathan Dawe and Michael Dineen wrote in their factum. 

Four years ago, Shafia, Yahya and Hamed were sentenced to life imprisonment for the June 2009 drowning deaths of the couple’s three teenaged daughters — Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, Geeti, 13 — and Mohammad Shafia’s first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, 52. 

The women’s bodies were discovered submerged in a family car in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills...

Update: Here's how Christie Blatchford reported on the purportedly "prejudicial" expert testimony:

Dr. Mojab, a political refugee from Iran, is a University of Toronto professor who was testifying as an expert in honour killing and its relationship to “culture, religion, patriarchy and violence against women in the Middle East and the diaspora across the world.” 

Multilingual, she has conducted original research, written hundreds of scholarly articles and chapters, and co-edited a 2004 book called Violence in the Name of Honour. 

She acknowledged her perspective is that of an advocate and a feminist, but also said flatly that there is “no serious debate about the phenomenon” in academia, only arguments about its forms and “how to name it and how to deal with it.” 

In patriarchal cultures such as Afghanistan’s, Dr. Mojab said, “cleansing one’s honour of shame is typically handled by the killing of a loved one,” almost always female, with the murderer often ending up being “respected as a true man. 

“What masquerades as ‘honour’ is really men’s need to control women’s sexuality,” she told Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger and a jury. 

Though she was not asked for comment about the case at bar, her general descriptions of the phenomenon certainly seems to fit the evidence called by prosecutors. 

Jurors have heard, for instance, that the Shafia daughters were so desperate for more freedom that Zainab ran away, Sahar tried to kill herself and Geeti begged to be taken into foster care, and that Ms. Amir was deeply unhappy and had raised the possibility of a divorce. The oldest girls also had boyfriends they tried to keep secret. 

Any or all of these behaviours, Dr. Mojab said, may be interpreted as stains upon male control of the family — particularly any hint that a woman is having a relationship, especially a sexual one. 

“It could be only a rumour which causes the killing of a young woman,” Dr. Mojab said.  

“The mere perception that a woman has behaved this way is sufficient to trigger an attack on her life.” 

The trio on trial here are jointly accused, and though Dr. Mojab said the perpetrators of honour killings are most often “fathers, brothers, uncles,” there are also cases “where females [mothers] participate in the process of meditating [upon], planning and sometimes directly participating” in the slaying...

What's "overwhelmingly prejudicial" isn't an explication of what motivates murderous behavior. It's the murderous behavior itself. Hence the conviction.

Bernie Sanders, Radical Schmuck

It's so amusing that some Jews are excited to see Saunders where he is because he's "of the tribe," but Daniel Greenfield has Old Yeller rightly pegged as one of those non-Jewish Jew of the "useful idiot" variety who consorts with some highly dubious characters and whose  real religion is universalist utopianism (i.e. Socialism):

When Bernie Sanders reached out for perspective on the Middle East during his campaign, he contacted James Zogby, who defended Hamas and Hezbollah, and Lawrence Wilkerson, who had accused Jewish officials of dual loyalty and suggested that Israel was behind Assad’s chemical weapons attacks. 

The truth about Bernie Sanders is that he is not Jewish in any sense other than the genetic. He is a left-wing radical who is uncomfortable with any mention of his Jewish background because he does not like Jews. Even his time on an Israeli Kibbutz, a staple with which his Jewish fans nurtured their fantasies of a Jewish Bernie, fell apart when it emerged that his Kibbutz had flown a red flag and admired Stalin and the Soviet Union as part of a radical leftist movement that had initially opposed the creation of Israel. 

His first and foremost allegiance has always been to the left at the expense of the Jews...

I won't be sad when this radical ranter shuffles off center stage and gets on with the next (and, one presumes, the final) phase of his life: a well-deserved obscurity.

NBC Report: Romney Set to "Eviscerate" Trump, Exposing Him as a "Phony" and a "Fraud"

Would that Romney had done exactly that when he faced Barack Hussein Obama. The fact that Romney was overly genteel in his interactions with that POTUS, evincing none of the determination he's showing now, is what put America in its current pickle--and gave rise to the Trump phenomenon that's giving the Republican establishment, Romney included, its current conniptions.

Sometimes, I must confess, I don't get American politics at all.

Another Trump Doppelgänger?

Move over, Mussolini. There's another grumpy-faced Trump twin in da house:

Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall when President Grumpy Trump first meets Prime Minister Sunny Boy Trudeau?

Update: NBC statement of the obvious: Rivals have just two weeks to stop Trump.

Wishful thinking. Unless the Grumpster is found to have, say, ordered a hit on the old lady who was the target of his "eminent domain" wrath, he has it in the bag.

A Great Debate That Sounds Like It's an April's Fool Joke--But Isn't

Given the date, I hope I can be forgiven for thinking at first that this was Steyn pulling our collective legs:

If you haven't made plans for April Fool's Day, you won't want to miss this: 

EIGHTEENTH SEMI -ANNUAL MUNK DEBATE ANNOUNCED
HOW DO WE RESPOND TO THE GLOBAL REFUGEE CRISIS?

Louise Arbour, Nigel Farage, Simon Schama, and Mark Steyn convene in Toronto, Canada, to debate the pressing issue of our time 

Mme Arbour, former UN High Commissioner for Refugees and Chief Prosecutor for the Yugoslav and Rwandan war crimes tribunals, will be joining with Professor Schama, the eminent British historian, to propose the motion: 

Be it resolved, give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free... 

Mark and UKIP leader Nigel Farage will be opposing it.

Now that I know it's for real, I don't know if I could bear listening to Louise "I Hate Israel" Arbour and Simon Schama Schama Schama Chameleon arguing in favour of this nonsense, even if Farage and Steyn make up the "nay" side.

Dear America: I Love You But You're Out of Your Frikkin' Mind

Are Mrs. Clinton and The Donald the best you can come up with?

Really?

My message to you: you're much better than that/them.

Stefan Kanfer on the Larger Meaning of Mattew Yglesias's "Evelyn" Ignorance

Kanfer weighs in on the ignorance of a notable leftist blogger (who thought Evelyn Waugh was a chick) and what it betokens for the survival of Western civ:

When the dustup hit the Net, one of Twitter’s most popular commentators, Matthew Yglesias, owned up to his ignorance like a man—an unlettered man. “Confession time,” he wrote. “Until today I thought Evelyn Waugh was a woman, because his name is ‘Evelyn’ and that is typically a woman’s name.” Whereupon, a derisive Twitterer asked, “Have you ever read anything?” Answering in kind, Yglesias shot back, “Yes, several books but none by Evelyn Waugh.” 

Very amusing, but Yglesias isn’t your average blogger. He’s a graduate of Dalton—a tony Manhattan progressive school—and attended Harvard where he graduated magna cum laude in 2003. If Waugh is untaught—and perhaps unknown— in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that lends credence to an essay in the education-watching site Minding the Campus. Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen laments, “My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture.”

Can a civilization that "has achieved perfect indifference to its own culture" survive? Perhaps. But I have my doubts.

Update: Here's a Waugh observation that seems to be completely up-to-date re The Donald:

He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.

The Eliminationists of Palestine House Cordially Invite You to Their Annual Gala

Part and parcel of Arab eliminationist efforts in these environs:

Trudeau Factotum on Meeting Syrian Immigration Target: "This Is a Terrific Day For Us"

Mark my words: we will soon be reaping the whirlwind that these preening moral narcissists are sowing.

Update: Refugee process 'amateurish and dangerous,' says expert

The Toronto Leftist-Islamist Nexus Brings You "Israeli Apartheid Week" 2016!!!

Don't be fooled by their purported concern for Palestinian "victims." That's the excuse these Israel-haters use to further their relentless and obsessive agenda aimed entirely at the destruction of Jewish statehood, a desire that's both implicit and explicit in all these events (their bolds):

Please come out for our events marking the 11th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week in Toronto from March 24th – March 28th:

Steven Salaita: Palestine, Academic Freedom and Decolonizing the University
The dehiring of Steven Salaita from a tenured position is one of the most serious assaults on academic freedom in recent years. Steven Salaita is one of a number of prominent academics who have paid a huge price for Palestine advocacy and/or anti-colonial expression. He was hired to a tenured position to teach in the American Indian Studies program at University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). He was denied this job in August 2014 on the basis of tweets during the Israeli assault on Gaza that summer, having left his previous job and uprooted his family.
Join us to hear Salaita discuss academic freedom & the struggle to decolonize the university in relation to his own scholarship on indigenous expression.
Tuesday March 24th at 7pm
Steelworkers Hall, 25 Cecil St., Toronto
https://www.facebook.com/events/1607819416118630/

Buidling the Divestment movement: A teach-in with a Stop the Wall Coordinator and member of the BDS National Committee
We are looking forward to welcoming the coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign and hearing about the Palestinian Boycott National Committee (BNC), which leads the Palestinian BDS movement. 
This teach-in is a great opportunity to learn about the material effects of Zionist settler colonialism on Palestinian lives, from an organizer that is involved in popular resistance on the ground. It is also a great opportunity to engage in conversations about solidarity with Palestine, and taking action to tactically build the BDS campaign in Toronto. 
Wednesday March 25th at 6pm
Beit Zatoun, 612 Markham St., Toronto, M6G 2L8
https://www.facebook.com/events/1085821148107693/

Gaza: Perspectives from the ground with Dr Rand Askalan and Professor Haidar Eid (by video link)
This is a unique opportunity to learn more about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement within Palestine and to show solidarity particularly in light of Israel’s recent assaults on the Gaza Strip.
Dr. Rand Askalan, who currently works at the Toronto Sick Kids, completed her PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge in 1994, and then obtained her Medical Degree from the University of Toronto in 2001. She is the founder and director of the Palestinian Healthy Child Fellowship, which aims to provide fellowships for the training of Palestinian physicians. Dr. Askalan goes to Palestine on an annual basis to run clinics and provide medical services. She has therefore seen first-hand the consequences of the Israeli Apartheid regime’s assaults on Gaza: the scarcity of tools and resources, the high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as limitations to the movement of people in need of life-saving operations. 
Dr. Haidar Eid is Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature in the Department of English at Al-Aqsa University in the Gaza Strip. He is also a founding member of the One Democratic State Group, an organisation of Palestinian activists who are calling for the establishment of a secular, democratic state as a means to end Israeli Apartheid. Dr Eid is also an active member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). He has written widely on the situation in Gaza, with published articles in Al Jazeera, Electronic Intifada and the Palestine Chronicle, amongst others. 
Friday March 27th 2015 at 7pm
POD366, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria St.

Rhythms of Solidarity: A Night of Multilingual Music, Spoken Word and Poetry
Saturday March 28th at 7pm
Margaret Laurence Room, Student Centre, Ryerson University, 55 Gould Street

Students Against Israeli Apartheid stands in solidarity with the workers of CUPE 3902 and 3903 on strike, who are fighting for safer, stronger and better living, learning, and working conditions. All events during IAW will be moved off campus to respect the picket lines.

That last line encapsulates the Israel-haters' worldview: they have all "respect" in the world for "picket lines" but none at all for Jewish statehood.

Update: How fitting that the "Rhythms of Solidarity" event is being held in the "Margaret Laurence Room." Laurence's novel,  The Stone Angel, is arguably the most victim-focused and depressing novel ever inflicted on Ontario High School students and is thus fully in synch with the Palestinians' victimhood narrative.


Update: Invaluable website Canary Mission fills us in about IAW speaker Steven Salaita:

Purveyor of anti-Semitic Incitement
Salaita became a focal point of controversy when the University of Illinois (U of I) withdrew its offer of employment for the position of professor of American Indian Studies in 2014, after attention was drawn to Salaita’s anti-Semitic tweets regarding the 2014 Israel–Gaza war. 

One tweet, posted shortly after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped by Hamas from a bus stop (and later found murdered,) read: “You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” A month later, Salaita tweeted, “Zionists: transforming “antisemitism” from something horrible into something honorable since 1948.” 

U of I defended its decision to withdraw its job offer to Salaita on January 29, 2015, in a press release, noting: “[Salaita’s tweets] demonstrate that Dr. Salaita lacks the judgment, temperament and thoughtfulness to serve as a member of our faculty in any capacity, but particularly to teach courses related to the Middle East.” 

Salaita’s antagonism toward Israel and Jewish national self-determination continues to inspire his social media postings and scholarship. 

After the 15 month-long saga, U of I offered Salaita a financial settlement in November of 2015, which he accepted. The settlement ensures that Salaita will drop his “pending legal claims against U of I, including a lawsuit alleging breach of contract and First Amendment violations.” Furthermore, the settlement specifies that Salaita will not work for U of I in the future. 

On July 8, 2015, he tweeted that Zionists take sexual pleasure in the death of Palestinians. On January 11, 2016, he tweeted that he considers any success he has in deligitimizing Israel to be an achievement. 

In December 2015, Salaita broadcast his continued rejection of Israel’s legitimacy and his belief that all Christians living in Israel are “Palestinian.” Salaita believes all Jewish residents of Israel, on either side of the 1949 armistice lines, are “settlers.” In January 2016, he advised liberal Zionists wishing to dialogue with Palestinians: “… Palestinians have the annoying habit of criticizing pre-1967 settlers, whom you adore. The best way to dialogue about [settlements] is to tell Palestinians that Israel must be preserved as an ethnocracy in which non-Jews are legally dispossessed because a few thousand ideologues from the American suburbs need a spare country to fulfill their Orientalist fantasies.” 

Salaita began a national speaking tour after the controversy surrounding his firing became national news. He speaks primarily on “Palestine and Censorship,” alleging that pro-Palestinian speech is censored by the university system...

He sounds utterly bonkers--which makes him the perfect speaker for the IAW crowd.