Another one off the list: U. Waterloo throws Blatchford under bus

The list of universities that I would consider paying to send my kids to keeps on getting smaller. Still employing Jew-bashing professor Mohamed Elmasry, the Waterloo administration supported three lunatic protesters’ efforts to silence journalist and author Christie Blatchford, and canceled her speech on campus last Friday. Blatchford says it all:

“I long ago gave up any hope that universities were the defenders of free expression.”

Attack Jewish Businesses: Toronto 2010

You have to really hate yourself (or Jews) to stand outside a Bloor Street coffee shop and make a public ass of yourself, to serve the interests of bloodthirsty fascists who would rather see you covered in a potato sack to hide your bruises. Check out this unintentionally funny, but ultimately sad and pathetic, video of a mixed bag of Jew-haters hating on Jews at a Jewish coffee shop (Aroma Cafe). Switch the music from Lady Gaga to a Bavarian folk song, and this could be Berlin 1936.

The Cost of Liberal Tribalism: Iranian Freedom Marchers Hung Out to Dry

Much has been said about the situation in Iran over the past couple of weeks. The images of peaceful opposition demonstrators, and the thuggery displayed by the Islamic Revolutionary rulers of Iran, speak for themselves. It was absolutely clear: the demonstrations were not about vote-counting fraud, or about the non-reformist “reformer” Mousavi. The demonstrations were about freedom. Handed an opening by Mousavi and his brave wife (who seemed to be the one pushing her husband far beyond where he ever expected to go in his opposition to the Mullahs), hundreds of thousands of fed up Iranians took to the streets and shouted “Down with the Dictator”. While many in the west took this as opposition to the psychopathic lackey Ahmadinejad, Iranians know this was a chant not against the apocalyptic holocaust denier, but against the Ayatolla and the regime itself. The vast majority of Iranians are fed up with Islamic revolutionary rule. The vast majority of Iranians want a new revolution.

Now, what Western liberal wouldn’t stand with freedom-yearning demonstrators against a tyrannical theocracy? Ten years ago, you probably couldn’t find one. And yet liberals throughout the Western world followed their new messiah, Barack Obama, off an amoral cliff, ignored their own instincts, and worked overtime to justify the US administration’s official policy: do not show any support for the Iranian opposition. “Don’t meddle”…”if we speak up, they will blame us”…”we don’t want to encourage them, in case they get slaughtered”…”we still have shame because of some 1953 coup”. 

The cowardice displayed by most liberals over the past two weeks is the cost of the liberal tribalism of the past decade. Lefties everywhere spent eight years following orders: oppose, mock, and deride George W. Bush without hesitation. If it’s Republican, it’s wrong. If you’re part of the liberal tribe, you fall in line, and accept the new marching orders. Mockery of Bush’s freedom agenda, which aimed to support democracy and freedom anywhere and everywhere – a bipartisan agenda if there ever was one – was labeled “neo-con” and thus unacceptable. A principled position became Bush-bashing fodder for Democrat operatives and late-night television idealogues. Millions of Iraqis celebrating free and open elections joyously in the streets were ignored almost completely by the mainstream culture. A generation’s Berlin Wall moment was treated like it never even happened.

Liberal tribalism of this most heinous kind got Barack Obama elected. Unfortunately, it seems that the President not only accepts the anti-freedom-agenda as a tribal position, he takes it seriously. His absoulte abandonment of the young freedom protestors in the streets of Tehran led to the slaughter of many, the arresting of thousands, and the snuffing out of freedom at the hands of Islamo-fascist thugs. Would the crackdown have occurred anyway? Perhaps. But the message would have been sent: the free world supports freedom for all, and stands against thuggery everywhere. Now, we cannot say this, which is a travesty.

Now that the inconvenient little uprising is more-or-less over, Obama can return to negotiating with that “unclenched fist”. Hopefully, some of Obama’s tribal acolytes will have had their eyes opened, and understand that what has happened is an absolute moral tragedy that must never happen again. This shame cannot be washed off.

Video Diary of Toronto’s Anti-Israel Hatefest, January 10, 2009

Nine minutes of pure venom at Bloor & Avenue. Thank you, Mississauga Matt:

Pro-Gaza protesters burn Israeli flag in Toronto, Montreal orgies of hate

Aparently, this is simply “protesters gathering”, to the dhimmis, lefties, and Jew-haters at Candian Press and CP24.

If you don’t support Israel, then you support this. What’s next, oh wilfully blind ones?

Psychopathic Islamists burn the Israeli flag in Toronto 01-10-2009

 UPDATE: Montreal also got in on the action today.

Miserable human beings torch Israeli flag, Montreal, 01-10-2009

Not supporting Israel? Part II: Hamas in its own words

If you are not supporting Israel in the current campaign against Hamas, you are supporting Hamas against Israel. You can pick away, like little pests, at every little thing Israel does to defend itself; but in an existential moment, there’s no fence to sit on. If Israel has a right to exist, then Israel has a right to defeat Hamas. On the flip side, if you don’t think Israel has a right to defeat Hamas, then you don’t think Israel has a right to exist. And if you don’t think Israel has a right to exist, then you really can’t argue that any modern nation has a right to exist. In summary: Jew-hatred is the surest sign of a mental midget.

If you aren’t supporting Israel, you are supporting Hamas. Here’s your boys, in their own words:

h/t Little Green Footballs

Not supporting Israel against Hamas? Welcome to your side.

If you are not supporting Israel in the current campaign against Hamas, you are supporting Hamas against Israel. There’s no middle ground to weasel your way into, people. If you can’t distinguish good from evil, right from wrong, you’ve lost your humanity. (Is this to say that I don’t sympathize with the civilians of Gaza? Of course not. I look forward to the day that Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank can live in peace, out from under the thumb of Islamic and corrupt criminal rule; out from under the thumb of far-off Arab dictators who enjoy using the Palestinian people as pawns in their Hitlerian games).

If you’re not with Israel, you’re with these folks. No, this is not Ramallah, Islamabad, or even London…this is downtown Toronto:

(if you missed it, they’re shouting “INTIFADAH”…then, they’re shouting at the Jewish counter-protesters “You are the brothers of monkeys…you are the brothers of pigs”…then, “Allahu Akbar”…then, we see the Hizb’allah flag flying proudly…then, we see a protestor slugging a citizen-journalist who asks why he said “Hitler didn’t do a good job”.)

If you’re not with Israel, you’re with these folks – the Hamas fighters who literally drag screaming children with them through the streets as human shields:

If you’re not with Israel, you’re with the Muslim protesters of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who included the now-famous “Go back to the ovens” young woman yelling at the Jews across the street (see her at the 3:20 mark):

If you think you’re Mr.-Smarty-Pants, repeating the tired old refrain, “if Israel only acted in such-and-such a way, and did this-and-that, they would have avoided all this mess, and the world wouldn’t hate them,” consider the words of the Toronto Star’s only honest columnist, Rosie DiManno:

In defending its existence, Israel needs no advice from anybody.

It does not require the world’s approval.

That will never be granted and, in any event, wouldn’t minimize even an iota the intransigence of Israel’s many enemies – those who lob rockets indiscriminately at civilians, delete the vilified nation from school textbooks, screech venom during public protests and demand boycotts against Israeli professors in Canadian universities.

Which side are you on? Your humanity; your decency; your soul is on the line.

The speech denied by noxious liberal Jews: Sarah Palin on Israel and Iran

Yet another reason why, as one who grew up a liberal Jew, I now identify more closely with America’s Evangelical Christians than my own community when it comes to virtually any issue of importance – including, amazingly, the security and support for the State of Israel.

The liberal Jewish movement – which, in the US, is essentially an arm of the Democratic party – ultimately decided last week that hatred of Republicans should be stronger than hatred of the Iranian regime that publicly advocates the destruction of Israel, and is closing in on the nuclear arsenal that could accomplish that goal. This is the speech that Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin was supposed to deliver to the rally against Ahmadinejad outside the UN today, before she was disinvited by partisan dirtbags (as published today in Israel by Ha’aretz, the leading liberal daily; and by the New York Sun, a conservative daily). This is a friend of the Jews, and we reject her at our own peril:

I am honored to be with you and with leaders from across this great country — leaders from different faiths and political parties united in a single voice of outrage.

Tomorrow, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will come to New York — to the heart of what he calls the Great Satan — and speak freely in this, a country whose demise he has called for.

Ahmadinejad may choose his words carefully, but underneath all of the rhetoric is an agenda that threatens all who seek a safer and freer world. We gather here today to highlight the Iranian dictator’s intentions and to call for action to thwart him.

He must be stopped.

The world must awake to the threat this man poses to all of us. Ahmadinejad denies that the Holocaust ever took place. He dreams of being an agent in a “Final Solution” — the elimination of the Jewish people. He has called Israel a “stinking corpse” that is “on its way to annihilation.” Such talk cannot be dismissed as the ravings of a madman — not when Iranjust this summer tested long-range Shahab-3 missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv, not when the Iranian nuclear program is nearing completion, and not when Iran sponsors terrorists that threaten and kill innocent people around the world.

The Iranian government wants nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that Iran is running at least 3,800 centrifuges and that its uranium enrichment capacity is rapidly improving. According to news reports, U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Iranians may have enough nuclear material to produce a bomb within a year.

The world has condemned these activities. The United Nations Security Council has demanded that Iransuspend its illegal nuclear enrichment activities. It has levied three rounds of sanctions. How has Ahmadinejad responded? With the declaration that the “Iranian nation would not retreat one iota” from its nuclear program.

So, what should we do about this growing threat? First, we must succeed in Iraq. If we fail there, it will jeopardize the democracy the Iraqis have worked so hard to build, and empower the extremists in neighboring Iran. Iran has armed and trained terrorists who have killed our soldiers in Iraq, and it is Iran that would benefit from an American defeat in Iraq.

If we retreat without leaving a stable Iraq, Iran’s nuclear ambitions will be bolstered. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons — they could share them tomorrow with the terrorists they finance, arm, and train today. Iranian nuclear weapons would set off a dangerous regional nuclear arms race that would make all of us less safe.

But Iranis not only a regional threat; it threatens the entire world. It is the no. 1 state sponsor of terrorism. It sponsors the world’s most vicious terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah. Together, Iran and its terrorists are responsible for the deaths of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, and in Iraq today. They have murdered Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, and other Muslims who have resisted Iran’s desire to dominate the region. They have persecuted countless people simply because they are Jewish.

Iran is responsible for attacks not only on Israelis, but on Jews living as far away as Argentina. Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial are part of Iran’s official ideology and murder is part of its official policy. Not even Iranian citizens are safe from their government’s threat to those who want to live, work, and worship in peace. Politically-motivated abductions, torture, death by stoning, flogging, and amputations are just some of its state-sanctioned punishments.

It is said that the measure of a country is the treatment of its most vulnerable citizens. By that standard, the Iranian government is both oppressive and barbaric. Under Ahmadinejad’s rule, Iranian women are some of the most vulnerable citizens.

If an Iranian woman shows too much hair in public, she risks being beaten or killed.

If she walks down a public street in clothing that violates the state dress code, she could be arrested.

But in the face of this harsh regime, the Iranian women have shown courage. Despite threats to their lives and their families, Iranian women have sought better treatment through the “One Million Signatures Campaign Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws.” The authorities have reacted with predictable barbarism. Last year, women’s rights activist Delaram Ali was sentenced to 20 lashes and 10 months in prison for committing the crime of “propaganda against the system.” After international protests, the judiciary reduced her sentence to “only” 10 lashes and 36 months in prison and then temporarily suspended her sentence. She still faces the threat of imprisonment.

Earlier this year, Senator Clinton said that “Iranis seeking nuclear weapons, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is in the forefront of that” effort. Senator Clinton argued that part of our response must include stronger sanctions, including the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. John McCain and I could not agree more.

Senator Clinton understands the nature of this threat and what we must do to confront it. This is an issue that should unite all Americans. Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Period. And in a single voice, we must be loud enough for the whole world to hear: Stop Iran!

Only by working together, across national, religious, and political differences, can we alter this regime’s dangerous behavior. Iran has many vulnerabilities, including a regime weakened by sanctions and a population eager to embrace opportunities with the West. We must increase economic pressure to change Iran’s behavior.

Tomorrow, Ahmadinejad will come to New York. On our soil, he will exercise the right of freedom of speech — a right he denies his own people. He will share his hateful agenda with the world. Our task is to focus the world on what can be done to stop him.

We must rally the world to press for truly tough sanctions at the U.N. or with our allies if Iran’s allies continue to block action in the U.N. We must start with restrictions on Iran’s refined petroleum imports.

We must reduce our dependency on foreign oil to weaken Iran’s economic influence.

We must target the regime’s assets abroad; bank accounts, investments, and trading partners.

President Ahmadinejad should be held accountable for inciting genocide, a crime under international law.

We must sanction Iran’s Central Bank and the Revolutionary Guard Corps — which no one should doubt is a terrorist organization.

Together, we can stop Iran’s nuclear program.

Senator McCain has made a solemn commitment that I strongly endorse: Never again will we risk another Holocaust. And this is not a wish, a request, or a plea to Israel’s enemies. This is a promise that the United States and Israel will honor, against any enemy who cares to test us. It is John McCain’s promise and it is my promise.

Thank you.

Is the tedious anti-American leftist whinging over yet? Omar Khadr, getting what he deserves.

Omar Khadr, not a kid anymore. (May 2008 Courtroom Sketch)

Has the leftist hysteria over the cause of Omar Khadr subsided yet? Probably not. But the mainstream support for his return to Canada probably hit a peak the day BEFORE the “smoking gun” interrogation tapes were released last week, and is surely on the wane. As Michael Coren and Mark Bonokoski of the Toronto Sun observed this weekend, the images of a self-pitying liar showing neither a dash of remorse nor a sign of mistreatment during interrogation by Canadian officials, are more likely to have extinguished Canadians’ sympathy for him, than fuelled it.

Bonokoski’s column is a little long and plodding, but it is worth reading for its review of the history of the Khadr family, going right back to PM Jean Chretien’s personal intervention to have Papa Bear Khadr released from Pakistani custody back in 1996 so he could take his family to re-join Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan. Coren, as always, is pithy in his devastating condemnation of Omar Khadr:

If there has been any abuse over the years it is clearly at the hands of Khadr’s own kin. As the highly respected clinical psychologist Dr. Marty McKay told the Children’s Aid Society back in 2004 when Omar’s mother, Maha Elsamnah Khadr, came to Canada, “I am sure that you would agree that counselling one’s child to become suicidal or homicidal constitutes emotional child abuse, leading to physical abuse when the child acts upon these feelings.”

And this is precisely what the good woman has done, often and in public.

She has also, of course, loudly expressed her hatred for western culture and condemned Canada as a vile place where all children are drug addicts or homosexuals. She said she did not want such a fate for Omar or for her other son Karim, who suffered spinal damage after a firefight with the Pakistani soldiers who killed her terrorist husband.

The man may have suffered a different fate if the invincibly naive Jean Chretien had not, in 1995, personally pleaded with the late Benazir Bhutto, then Pakistani prime minister, to release Ahmed Khadr from prison and allow him to come to Canada. He didn’t stay long — there was work to be done with international Islamic murder gangs.

In 2004 the Khadr matriarch was brought back to Canada even though the family had lost several Canadian passports. Hey, it happens. They were flown business class from Pakistan. Hey, it happens. On public money. Hey, it happens.

Well, it happens to some people. Especially if they have friends within special interest groups and can convince credulous liberals who hate America more than they love truth and justice.

Omar Khadr is a tenuous Canadian at best, unlike most newcomers to the country who love it with pride and passion. If we feel sorry for him and his family, consider the family of the young medic smashed beyond recognition that horrible day six years ago. Good Lord, most people don’t even know his name. But they know the name of Omar Khadr.

Fact is, Khadr was captured fighting FOR Canada’s enemy, AGAINST Canada’s greatest friend and ally. Whether or not he was mis-raised by his parents is beside the point. We have no business interfering in this case, which represents: 1) Justice for Christopher Speer; and 2) Protection of America from the deranged psychos who hoped that 9/11 was only the first of many civilian mass-murders of its citizens. Sorry, Omar, but you’re getting what you deserve.

(On a related note: MR. DITHERS IS BACK! Paul Martin, Liberal PM (2003-2005) to Harper: BRING KHADR HOME! The audacity of hypocricy…this guy can’t be for real.)

The Stanley Cup of the Canadian Blogosphere: Mohammed Elmasry vs. Maclean’s

As I watch Stanley Cup Game 5 work its way through double-overtime, I thought I’d help spread the word about the Stanley Cup Finals of the Canadian blogosphere, so to speak – this week’s BC Human Rights Tribunal hearing in the case of Mohammed Elmasry vs. Maclean’s magazine. An update, in a nutshell, for the previously uninformed:

• Maclean’s Magazine, Canada’s Time, prints an excerpt from columnist Mark Steyn’s New York Times #1 best-seller, America Alone, in October 2006.
• The head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, Mohammed “Every Israeli Jew is a Target” Elmasry, decides that Maclean’s must be dhimmified. Three “sock puppet” law students with ties to Elmasry and his lawyer, Faisal Joseph, try to shake down Maclean’s publisher for both an unedited “response”, and for financial donations to Muslim groups. Maclean’s shows the students the door, probably too politely for my taste.
• Elmasry’s sock puppet students take their case to the media, and shop it to Canada’s kangaroo court alternative (in)justice system – the Human Rights tribunals. Cases are filed in Ontario (the province where the magazine, and the complainants, are located), British Columbia (a province many thousands of kilometres away, that has no connection to the individals involved, but has the country’s most notoriously far-left-activist human rights tribunal), and at the federal level (the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal). The Ontario complaint was thrown out due to jurisdictional issues, but not without a most outrageous “you’re guilty anyway” press release accompanying the dismissal.
• At least one of the sock puppets, Khurrum Awan, magically gets a lawyerin’ job at Mr. Kutty’s firm.
• Dozens of bloggers, interested citizens, and journalists from around North America, have decended on a tiny windowless room in Vancouver this week to hear a panel of three non-judges, freed from the rules of evidence, procedure, fairness, and common sense, expose themselves and their fellow star chamber wizards as the banal faces of fascist evil that Hannah Arendt so famously warned us about.

Live-blogging the proceedings on their blackberries are Maclean’s Andrew Coyne and the great Ezra Levant. All the info you’d ever want (and more) can be found linked at Free Mark Steyn. Look for other great commentary at Steyn’s own blog, my friend Blazing Catfur’s blog, and at Kathy Shaidle’s Five Feet of Fury, which was unexpectedly dragged into the opening day of the farcical proceedings.

Why is this so important? Because it so neatly shines light on two of the biggest issues facing Canada in the current epoch: the unrelenting attack on Western values by Islamic jihadists, and the unrelenting attack on freedom of expression by arrogant leftist university-trained activist grievance mongerers throughout a country that generally rejects concepts like freedom of speech and checks-and-balances for no other reason than “they’re American.” Put them together, and what do you get? One of my favorite topics, the Islamist-Leftist Alliance. And no matter what you think of the issues – it’s damn fine theatre (of the absurd)!

(Good news – the Conservative government is starting to exercise some conservative muscle. Led by St. Catharines MP Rick Dykstra, Delta-Richmond East MP John Cummins, and Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson, a Parliamentary review of the entire Human Rights Commission structure is in the works.)