GayandRight

Bruce Bawer Reviews our CBC Documentary!

2012-01-26T11:25:00.000-05:00

Acclaimed author Bruce Bawer reviews our documentary on the CBC: This Hour Could Have 10,000 Minutes: The Biases of the CBC.

Cohen and Litwin don’t just take on CBC’s news programs. On the CBC, as they tell us (and show us), “even the game shows have a political bias.” On one such show, for example, contestants are asked: “Which city in Palestine is recognized to be a place of pilgrimage for Christians, Jews and Muslims?” Answer: Jerusalem.

Needless to say, a major staple of CBC programming is reflexive anti-Americanism. The CBC regularly provides a forum to people who argue that Islamic violence is the fault of American foreign policy. Republicans get especially disrespectful treatment: in one clip, CBC columnist Heather Mallick makes snide personal remarks about John McCain and calls Sarah Palin a “porn actress” type who appeals to “the white trash vote.”

The CBC is, of course, also hostile to Canada’s own Conservative Party. The documentary showcases a shameless piece of trickery by the network, in which a clip of Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper is taken out of context to make it look as if he’s putting down Canada’s Muslim community. After showing us the CBC version of Harper’s statement, Cohen and Litwin present us with the uncut version, which makes it clear that Harper was making a respectful comment about both Jews and Muslims. On this occasion, too, the CBC was forced to apologize.

The CBC bias against the Conservatives manifests itself on all kinds of shows and in all kinds of ways. In one clip, a weather girl makes snide remarks about Conservative policy. On a comedy show, an actor imitating Harper wishes viewers “a happy gun-toting, anti-abortion, heterosexual new year.” Another “comedy” program actually includes a sketch in which the actors shoot at Harper and George W. Bush. Skits mocking the left are few and far between.

We see a CBC interviewer giving Michael Moore a royal welcome, hailing him as a “right-wing bogeyman” and praising his “memorable Oscar acceptance speech.” (Moore repays the compliment, calling the CBC “a national treasure.”) By contrast, when Ayaan Hirsi Ali expresses her love of America in an interview with Avi Lewis, he laughs at her with breathtaking condescension and accuses her of embracing pro-American clichés. (She responds smoothly: “You grew up in freedom and you can spit on freedom.”)

Please read the whole thing.

You can now buy our documentary through Paypal.

If you want to order by Snailmail, then please visit our website for details.

Germany sours on solar power....

2012-01-21T13:17:00.000-05:00

It's proving to be a disaster...

The Baedeker travel guide is now available in an environmentally-friendly version. The 200-page book, entitled "Germany - Discover Renewable Energy," lists the sights of the solar age: the solar café in Kirchzarten, the solar golf course in Bad Saulgau, the light tower in Solingen and the "Alster Sun" in Hamburg, possibly the largest solar boat in the world.

The only thing that's missing at the moment is sunshine. For weeks now, the 1.1 million solar power systems in Germany have generated almost no electricity. The days are short, the weather is bad and the sky is overcast.

As is so often the case in winter, all solar panels more or less stopped generating electricity at the same time. To avert power shortages, Germany currently has to import large amounts of electricity generated at nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic. To offset the temporary loss of solar power, grid operator Tennet resorted to an emergency backup plan, powering up an old oil-fired plant in the Austrian city of Graz.

Solar energy has gone from being the great white hope, to an impediment, to a reliable energy supply. Solar farm operators and homeowners with solar panels on their roofs collected more than €8 billion ($10.2 billion) in subsidies in 2011, but the electricity they generated made up only about 3 percent of the total power supply, and that at unpredictable times.

Nothng like a good sermon....

2012-01-15T12:21:00.002-05:00

The Biases of the CBC

2012-01-12T10:44:00.000-05:00

This Hour Could Have 10,000 Minutes:
The Biases of the CBC

Our DVD on the Biases of the CBC is now ready to be ordered.

Included on the DVD are my opening comments from our event at the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival on November 13, 2011, the documentary (49 minutes) and our panel discussion about the film.

Included on the panel are Brian Lilley from Sun News, Mike Fegelman from HonestReporting Canada, Stephen Taylor from the National Citizens Coalition, Eric Duhaime from Le Journal de Montreal, and David Krayden from the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies.

To order our DVD, please send us a cheque for $22 (HST included) and $2 for postage to The Free Thinking Film Society, 39 Birch Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario K1k 3G5.

The Free Thinking Film Society is a not-for-profit corporation and is 100% volunteer-driven. We pay no salaries to anybody.

We also have a bonus DVD of extra clips about the CBC that will be sent out to anybody donating $50 or more to the Free Thinking Film Society.

Hate rally in Germany...

2012-01-05T09:21:00.002-05:00

This Hour Could Have 10,000 Minutes....

2012-01-04T17:07:00.000-05:00

The Biases of the CBC

"This Hour Could Have 10,000 MInutes: The Biases of the CBC" covers CBC bias against Israel and against conservatives.

Included on the documentary are my opening comments from our event at the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival on November 13, 2011, the documentary (49 minutes) and our panel discussion about the film.

Included on the panel are Brian Lilley from Sun News, Mike Fegelman from HonestReporting Canada, Stephen Taylor from the National Citizens Coalition, Eric Duhaime from Le Journal de Montreal, and David Krayden from the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies.

To order our DVD, please send us a cheque for $22 (HST included) and $2 for postage to The Free Thinking Film Society, 39 Birch Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario K1k 3G5.

The Free Thinking Film Society is a not-for-profit corporation and is 100% volunteer-driven. We pay no salaries to anybody.

We also have a bonus DVD of extra clips about the CBC that will be sent out to anybody donating $50 or more to the Free Thinking Film Society.

Is Anti-semitism moving to the mainstream???

2012-01-04T10:01:00.002-05:00

Alan Dershowitz reports...

For the first time since the end of World War II, classic anti-Semitic tropes—“the Jews” control the world and are to blame for everything that goes wrong, including the financial crisis; The Jews killed Christian children in order to use the blood to bake Matzo; the Holocaust never happened—are becoming acceptable and legitimate subjects for academic and political discussion. To understand why these absurd and reprehensible views, once reserved for the racist fringes of academia and politics, are now moving closer to the mainstream, consider the attitudes of two men, one an academic, the other a politician, toward those who express or endorse such bigotry. The academic is Professor Brian Leiter. The politician is Ron Paul.

You’ve probably never heard of Leiter. He’s a relatively obscure professor of jurisprudence, who is trying to elevate his profile by publishing a gossipy blog about law school professors. He is a colleague of John Mearsheimer, a prominent and world famous professor at the University of Chicago.

Several months ago Mearsheimer enthusiastically endorsed a book, really a pamphlet, that included all the classic anti-Semitic tropes. It was entitled “The Wandering Who” and written by Gilad Atzmon, a British version of David Duke, who plays the saxophone and has no academic connections. Atzmon writes that we must take “very seriously” the claim that “the Jewish people are trying to control the world.” He calls the recent credit crunch “the Zio punch.” He says “the Holocaust narrative” doesn’t make “historical sense” and expresses doubt that Auschwitz was a death camp. He invites students to accept the “accusations of Jews making Matzo out of young Goyim’s blood.”

Books and pamphlets of this sort are written every day by obscure anti-Semites and published by disreputable presses that specialize in this kind of garbage. No one ever takes notice, except for neo-Nazis around the world who welcome any additions to the literature of hate.

More outrage from Caledonia...

2011-12-28T13:10:00.000-05:00

A very serious crime...and a very light sentence...

Mr. Gualtieri was a construction worker who was developing four homes at the Stirling South subdivision, located a kilometre from the disputed territory. On Sept. 13, 2007, Mr. Gualtieri and members of his work crew arrived at one of those houses, and found three natives inside. A confrontation ensued, and Richard Smoke, a then-18-year-old native man, began to fight with Mr. Gualtieri while his underage companions fled. When Mr. Gualtieri’s work crew entered the half-built home, they found him badly injured on the ground, while Smoke beat him with a piece of lumber he was swinging with both arms.

Mr. Gualtieri suffered severe injuries to his face and head, and sustained permanent brain damage. To this day, he has trouble reading, speaks slowly and walks with difficulty. He has not been able to return to work.

The guilt of the assailant, Richard Smoke, has been established by the courts — he was found guilty of break and enter and aggravated assault in September. And no one disputes the seriousness of the crime: Judge Alan Whitten described the assault against Mr. Gualtieri to have been “just a notch below culpable homicide.” He added that this “very serious and grave offence” did not advance “any ideology or idea” — was not politically motivated, in other words. It was a brutal assault, well removed from the actual occupation, and one that continues to have lasting ramifications for Mr. Gualtieri, who will, as Judge Whitten wrote, “live life as a brain-damaged man.”

Yet Smoke’s lawyer argued that her client was raised in a culture of racism, and negatively impacted by the legacy of the residential school system (of which Smoke himself was never a part, having been born a full 15 years after the last residential school in Ontario closed). She asked Judge Whitten to consider the “aboriginal perspective” when determining Smoke’s sentence.

Consider it, Judge Whitten most certainly did. For a vicious assault on an unarmed man who was going about his lawful business on private property, Smoke was sentenced to only two years and 11 months. With time served, Smoke will serve less than two years behind bars for a crime even Judge Whitten believes was barely below intentional murder.

Why Hamas wants to join the PLO....

2011-12-27T10:42:00.000-05:00

Good article by Khaled Abu Toameh....

Hamas is joining the PLO not because it has changed, but out of a desire to make the Fatah-dominated organization stick to its true mission: the liberation of Palestine from Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea -- in other words, all the land that is currently Israel -- and to achieve the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees to their original villages and homes inside Israel.

Once Hamas takes control over the PLO, it will seek to cancel all agreements and understandings reached between the organization and Israel, above all the 1993 Oslo Accords. Hamas also wants the PLO to withdraw its recognition of Israel.

Hamas leaders and spokesmen are openly saying that joining the PLO does not mean that they would recognize Israel's right to exist or abandon the "armed struggle" against the Jewish state.

"Anyone who thinks that Hamas has, or will, change is living under an illusion," declared Hamas representative Osama Hamdan.

Hamdan is one of several Hamas officials who have been trying in the past few days to explain to the world that his movement has not abandoned its radical ideology and will in fact continue to fight for the "liberation of all Palestine."

Hamas is very clear once again: Our goal is the destruction of Israel...

2011-12-27T10:28:00.002-05:00

A Traditional Jewish Christmas!

2011-12-25T12:36:00.000-05:00

First, Merry Christmas to everybody! Here's a nice article on a traditional Jewish Christmas...

Mile End opened in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, at the beginning of this year, a deli specializing in Montreal Jewish cuisine: smoked meat instead of pastrami; poutine instead of cheese fries; those flat, sweet things they serve up there instead of what New Yorkers call bagels. Foodies loved the sandwiches. Hipsters loved the Brownstone Brooklyn setting, the Stumptown coffee, and the brunch, which is just exotic enough to be adventurous and just familiar enough to be, well, brunch.

Then, last month, Mile End began to offer an ambitious dinner menu that took your Eastern European Jewish grandmother’s evergreens and ran them through up-to-the-minute, fat-happy trends: shmaltzed radishes, veal cholent, kasha varnishkes with confit gizzards. What was this cool Canadian place doing serving traditional food? “To me, this is what deli is,” Montreal-born Noah Bermanoff, the place’s founder and co-owner, said earlier this week. “I’m not trying super-hard to be Montreal. I’m trying super-hard to serve food as I know it.”

So take a guess what Mile End is serving on Christmas Day. That’s right: Chinese food.

Titled a “traditional Jewish Christmas,” the $35 prix fixe—served to two seatings on Christmas Eve and four on Christmas Day and made right in the kitchen—will start with wonton eggdrop soup, continue to roast duck with smoked-meat fried rice and Chinese broccoli, and end with fortune cookies and orange wedges. (Mile End’s printed menu is here.) It’s your traditional Chinese meal, made hip, and—with that crucial addition of smoked meat—brushed gently with Mile End’s idiosyncrasy.

An appreciation of Christopher Hitchens...

2011-12-16T13:36:00.001-05:00

An appreciation of Christopher Hitchens – from the right

I believe I owe my sanity to Christopher Hitchens. After 9/11, when many of my friends were questioning the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan; when so many people were wondering if Osama Bin Laden was really behind 9/11; when it seemed that the mere mention of the name George Bush prompted an immediate allergic reaction; and when that ridiculous slop called Fahrenheit 9/11 seemed to be in every cinema, it was calming to know that Christopher Hitchens had my back.

It was comforting to know that I had traveled some of the same roads as Hitchens. I was a lefty in University (I occupied the library once) and active in the anti-nuclear movement in Canada in the 1980s. I left Canada in 1983 and returned in 2000 to find Canada firmly ensconced in cultural relativism. Then 9/11 happened and the left seemed to go bonkers. For a while it was unclear whether I was the one who had gone bonkers – but Hitchens made sense of it all.

He understood the evil of Radical Islam and he understood that we had to fight terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He saw the rot of the post-modernist left and he was determined to stand for what is right. No matter if writing jobs or friends were lost – Hitchens had to stand up for the Kurds in Iraq, the Muslims in Bosnia, and the Cubans in Cuba. The left had changed, not Hitchens.

Back in 2005 and 2006, it seemed that Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 was everywhere. It was in the repertory theatres, the first-run cinemas, on campus, on TV, in book form, articles, you name it. I couldn’t believe how so many people could be taken in by such ridiculous propaganda. But not Hitchens, and who could say it like him:

“To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of “dissenting” bravery.”

Hitchens was unafraid to take on the left after 9/11 – he went after Noam Chomsky and George Galloway to name just two – but he also took on the right as well. What other journalist would have himself waterboarded to see if it was really torture? And, unafraid is the operative word. When he wrote “God is Not Great” about atheism, Hitchens went out of his way to go to the Bible belt in the US to debate. He went to North Korea, he went to Iraq, he tore down posters of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in Beirut (getting beaten up in the process), he waged a massive campaign of support for Salman Rushdie, and he took on cancer with grace and determination.

And, while I will always be reading and re-reading Hitchen’s political writings, it is his writings on male friendship that have left an indelible impact on me. His ode to Martin Amis is his autobiography is essential reading – he describes their friendship as “the most heterosexual relationship that one young man could conceivably have with another.” The lunches, movies, dinners with Amis, James Fenton, Salmon Rushdie, Clive James and others reminds us that men are capable of incredibly strong bonding and incredibly strong feelings (something that we ignore in this feminized world).

While I didn`t always agree with Hitchens (for instance on Zionism) I would never have wanted the opportunity to debate with him. Just have a look at his many debates on YouTube. Not a pretty picture for anybody on the opposite side of Hitchens. And, that is his legacy – agree or not agree, few people could use words like Hitchens. And, few people who can use words like Hitchens have the moral strength to say what is right.

CBC Documentary now available....

2011-12-07T17:02:00.001-05:00

This Hour Could Have 10,000 Minutes: The Biases of the CBC

You can now order copies of This Hour Could Have 10,000 Minutes. Our DVD features my opening comments from our event on November 13th, 2011, the documentary, and the panel discussion with Brian Lilley of Sun News, Stephen Taylor of the National Citizens Coalition, David Krayden of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, Eric Duhaime of Le Journal de Montreal, and Mike Fegelman of HonestReporting Canada.

The DVD is available for $22 (includes HST) + $2 for shipping in Canada. Please make your cheques payble to The Free Thinking Film Society, 39 Birch Avenue, Ottawa Ontario K1k 3G5.

We also have available a bonus disc with over a half hour of additional clips about the Biases of the CBC. This disc is available to anybody who donates $50 or more to the Free Thinking Film Society.

We are a not-for-profit corporation and we are 100% volunteer driven. We pay NO salaries to anybody.

CBC Bias easy to find!

2011-11-12T23:52:00.000-05:00

Here's a link to my article in the Ottawa Sun.

Don't forget - Don't miss our documentary: "This Hour Could Have 10,000 Minutes: The Biases of the CBC" on Sunday, November 13th at 2 PM in Ottawa.

Tickets available at the door.

Time to Remember.....

2011-11-11T09:44:00.000-05:00

You can't remember if you don't even know. Terry Glavin on what Canada accomplished in Afghanistan...

That Canadian soldiers were able to hold Kandahar is key to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. And it’s too bad that not enough Canadians know that.

Years down the road, there will be all sorts of clever people who will be happy to tell us that our soldiers should never have been sent to Afghanistan. That’s why it will always be handy to remember what it took a British House of Commons defence committee to point out, back in 2007:

“If Kandahar fell, and it was a reasonably close run last year, it did not matter how well the Dutch did in Uruzgan or how well the British did in Helmand. Their two provinces would also, as night followed day, have failed, because we would have lost the consent of the Pashtun people because of the totemic importance of Kandahar.”

Don’t remember? Don’t be hard on yourself. You sure didn’t hear it from any Canadian parliamentary committee.

If all Canadian soldiers ever did was win the Battle of Panjwaii in 2006, it would all have been worth it.

Panjwaii was Stalingrad. Between that summer and July 2011, fewer than 3,000 Canadian soldiers kept the Taliban at bay. U.S. President Barack Obama’s “surge” of 30,000 soldiers is still having a hard time matching Canada’s accomplishment.

And even now, sneers disfigure the faces of our country’s clever “troops-out pundits” whenever they’re reminded that millions of girls would have never gone to school had it not been for the gallant sacrifices of Canadian soldiers and their families.

Had Kandahar fallen, Afghanistan would have been lost to the Taliban, and you don’t want to think about what would have come next.

In the years to come, millions of Afghans will fondly recall that in their darkest hour, Canadian soldiers were watching their backs. Most Canadians still don’t seem to have a clue.

Jack Granatstein takes on the peacemaking myth...

2011-11-11T07:43:00.000-05:00

A short preview of the History Wars debate tonight between Jack Granatstein and Michael Byers on the future of the Canadian Military.

For those of you in Ottawa, don't miss this important debate:

History Wars!
Jack Granatstein debates Michael Byers
November 11, 2011, 7 PM
Bronson Centre, 211 Bronson

Guess what CBC did for Remembrance Day???

2011-11-11T07:41:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I was listening to Q with Jian Ghomeshi - always a dangerous thing when driving - and just what did he do one day before Remembrance Day? He actually had that crackpot Robert Fisk [an extremely anti-Israel journalist with the Independent in the UK] on for a segment on why people should not wear the poppy.

I guess they want to show us how 'cool' they are - and sort of give us permission not to wear poppies. The gall. The chutzpah!

Too late to add to our documentary, "This Hour Could Have 10,000 Minutes: The Biases of the CBC". But, it will highlight our second film.

This Hour Could Have 10,000 Minutes - November 13th in Ottawa

2011-11-10T15:53:00.000-05:00

Don't miss our upcoming documentary - "The Hour Could Have 10,000 Minutes: The Biases of the CBC" this coming Sunday at 2 PM in Ottawa.

This Hour Could Have 10,000 Minutes
November 13, 2011, 2 PM
Library & Archives Canda
395 Wellington, Ottawa

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival 2011

Please join us for our first self-produced documentary which examines whether the CBC is biased against Israel and biased against conservatives. After the film, we will have a panel discussion with Mike Fegelman of HonestReporting Canada, Stephen Taylor of the NCC, Brian Lilley of Sun News, Eric Duhaime from the Le Journal de Montreal, and David Krayden from the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies.

This event is part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival which runs between November 11-13th, 2011.

For more information, please visit www.freethinkingfilmfest.ca

Admission to this event is just $15! Or you can buy a festival pass for $75 and see all the events in the Festival.

This event is co-sponsored by Le Réseau Liberté-Québec.

1 Day until the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival...

2011-11-10T08:58:00.000-05:00

The 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival
November 11-13th, 2011
Ottawa, Canada

Please visit our website for complete details...

Highlights include:

- History Wars! Jack Granatstein debates Michael Byers on the Future of the Canadian Military.
- The Biases of the CBC - a look at whether the CBC is biased against Israel and biased against conservatives.
- Unmasked: Judeophobia and the Threat to Civilization.
- The Living, a film about the Ukrainian fmaine of the 1930s.
- Angryphone: The Struggle for Canada in Quebec.

And many many more films....

Prince Arthur Herald profiles the Free Thinking Film Society...

2011-11-09T19:17:00.002-05:00

A really nice job by Delroy Dyer of the Prince Arthur Herald. If you don't know about the Herald you should - they're the shining light amongst student newspapers...

Just a few days to the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival 2011!

Where to buy tickets for the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival...

2011-11-09T09:32:00.002-05:00

Where to buy tickets for the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Society:

Tickets for all events and all passes will be available at the door. You can also buy tickets right now at Compact Music (785 Bank, 190 Bank), Ottawa Festivals (47 William) and Collected Works (1242 Wellington). And, tickets are also available online - if you buy online you can collect your ticket at our will call desk at the venue.

Please visit our website for more details.

Only 3 days till the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival...

2011-11-09T00:09:00.000-05:00

The 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival
November 11-13th
Ottawa

Time to get your festival passes!

I really hope you can make it to the our 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival which will run in Ottawa between November 11-13th, 2011. This year, we will feature three major events, two panel discussions and 23 films. There will also be a Free Thinking Alley where attendees can buy books and DVDs, and enjoy food and drink.

The Festival's three main events are as follows:

History Wars, a debate between Jack Granatstein (Historian and former director of the Canadian War Museum) and Michael Byers (Professor of Political Science at UBC) on the future of the Canadian military, moderated by Michael Bliss. This event is co-sponsored by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

"The Living," a film about the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s that was perpetrated by Joseph Stalin.

"Unmasked: Judeophobia and the Threat to Civilization", the Canadian premiere of a documentary about the current political assault against Israel. Producer Gloria Greenfield will be in attendance to answer questions.

On Saturday, November 12th, we'll be presenting the documentary, "Angryphone: The Struggle for Canada in Quebec," followed by a panel discussion with Howard Galganov, William Johnson, Jurgen Vollrath, Jimmy K (the producer) and Beth Trudeau.

And, please don't miss our first self-produced documentary - "The Biases of the CBC" which documents CBC bias against Israel and against conservatives. After the film, we will be conducting a panel discussion with Brian Lilley of Sun News, Eric Duhaime of Le Journal de Montreal, Stephen Taylor of the National Citizens Coalition, Mike Fegelman of HonestReporting Canada, and David Krayden from the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies.

"The Biases of the CBC" will be held on Sunday, November 13th, at 2 PM at the Library & Archives Canada (395 Wellington).

Other films include "Angryphone," about English language rights in Quebec; "The Power of the Powerless," a look at the velvet revolution that toppled communism in Czechoslovakia; "Freedom of What?cott," a documentary about free speech in Saskatchewan; "Freedom Fighter," Rev. Majed El Shafie's campaign against discrimination against religious minorities around the world; "The 10 Conditions of Love," about Rubiya Kadeer, the leader of the Uyghur people and their fight to save their culture; "Cool It," why we should 'cool it' when it comes to global warming; "3 Billion and Counting," tells us why we need DDT to fight malaria in Africa; "Guilty Until Proven Innocent," about how fathers are discriminated against in the family court system; and "An Inconvenient Tax," shows how the income tax has been misused by politicians, and many more films.

Please note that all events during the day take place at the Library & Archives Canada, and all evening events take place at the Bronson Centre.

I look forward to seeing you at the Festival!

This Hour Could Have 10,000 Minutes - November 13th in Ottawa

2011-11-08T08:50:00.000-05:00

Our new documentary on the CBC has a new title: The Hour Could Have 10,000 Miutes: The Biases of the CBC.

This Hour Could Have 10,000 Minutes:
The Biases of the CBC
November 13, 2011, 2 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington, Ottawa

Please join us for our first self-produced documentary which examines whether the CBC is biased against Israel and biased against conservatives.

After the film, we will have a panel discussion with:

- Mike Fegelman of HonestReporting Canada.
- Stephen Taylor of the NCC.
- Brian Lilley of Sun News.
- Eric Duhaime from the Le Journal de Montreal.
- David Krayden from the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies.

This event is part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival which runs between November 11-13th, 2011.

For more information, please visit www.freethinkingfilmfest.ca

Admission to this event is just $15! Or you can buy a festival pass for $75 and see all the events in the Festival.

This event is co-sponsored by Le Réseau Liberté-Québec.

The documentary and the panel discussion will be available for purchase on a DVD after the festival.

Angryphone to play in Ottawa on November 12th...

2011-11-07T20:27:00.000-05:00

Angryphone: The Struggle for Canada in Quebec
November 12, 2011, 2 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington
Ottawa

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival

Out of the ashes of two Quebec referendums on independence and 30 years of restrictive language laws, emerged a Canadian counter revolution in the province of Quebec in the 1990s. The Angryphone movement. Filmmaker Jimmy K sits down and speaks with the prominent players of this Angryphone movement and others. Topics of discussion: the Quebec language laws and language police; the mass Quebec exodus; the two Quebec referendums; the lead up to the Clarity Act and various Canadian civil and language rights events, boycotts and protests.

Panel Discussion to follow the film.

Free Thinking Film Festival Starts on Friday in Ottawa

2011-11-07T09:19:00.000-05:00

5 Days left to get your passes to the Festival - You can buy passes at our retailers - Compact Music (785 Bank, 190 Bank), Collected Works (1242 Wellington), and Ottawa Festivals (47 William). You can also buy online (see our website for details) and at the door when you arrive at the venue.

Fred Litwin on Brian Lilley - The Biases of the CBC

2011-11-05T12:50:00.002-04:00

The Biases of the CBC
November 13, 2PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington
Ottawa

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival

Please join us for our first self-produced documentary which examines whether the CBC is biased against Israel and biased against conservatives. After the film, we will have a panel discussion with Mike Fegelman of HonestReporting Canada, Stephen Taylor of the NCC, Brian Lilley of Sun News, and David Krayden from the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies.

This event is co-sponsored by Le Réseau Liberté-Québec.

Unmaksed: Judeophobia to play in Ottawa on November 13th...

2011-11-05T12:32:00.000-04:00

Overdose - The Next Financial Crisis to play in Ottawa Nov. 12th

2011-11-04T23:45:00.000-04:00

Overdose - The Next Financial Crisis
November 12, 2011, 1:30 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington
Ottawa

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival 2011

When the world’s financial bubble blew, the solutions was to lower interest rates and pump trillions of dollars into the sick banking system. The solution is the problem, that’s why we had a problem in the first place. For Economics Nobel laureate Vernon Smith, the Catch 22 is self-evident. But interest rates have been at rock bottom for years, and governments are running out of fuel to feed the economy. The governments can save the banks, but who can save the governments? Forecasts predict all countries’ debt will reach 100% of GDP by next year. Greece and Iceland have already crumbled, who will be next? Have you taken out a mortgage, invested capital or bought shares? If you have, likelihood is you lost out in the latest bust. Governments promised decisive action, the biggest financial stimulus packages in history, gargantuan bailouts: but what crazed logic is this, propping up debt with…more debt? This documentary brings an entirely fresh voice to the hottest topic of today.

Speaker: Matt Bufton of the Institute for Liberal Studies

The CBC refuses to join our panel...

2011-11-04T09:20:00.000-04:00

Here is the transcript from the Annual Meeting of the CBC held in Ottawa this week.

Fred: My name is Fred Litwin and I am the President of the Free Thinking Film Society. On November 13th, we're actually showing our own self-produced documentary on the biases of the CBC. It covers CBC bias against conservatives and CBC bias against Israel. You talk about linkages [in the community] - I've sent many e-mails and I am very anxious in having someone from the CBC sit on our panel. Will you send someone to sit on our panel?

M. Lacroix [President and CEO of the CBC]: Thank you for the invite. We know about this event. We think this is more an opportunity for people of like-minds to have a conversation amongst themselves - let's call them activists - that's their right. We will not participate because we don't think that as a public broadcaster we should get involved in something like this. If you have issues about the CBC and our biases, we have people like the ombudsman in French and in English, and we welcome you to go through normal channels.

Fred: We will have more people at our event than here.

I would have thought that he would have shown some curiosity to seeing our film. Isn't it a bit crazy - we're going to have 200-300 people talking and discussing the national broadcaster...and they won't even turn up?

Oscar's Cuba to play November 12th in Ottawa

2011-11-03T23:20:00.000-04:00

Oscar's Cuba
November 12, 2011, 12:30 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington
Ottawa

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival 2011

Shot undercover inside Cuba, Oscar’s Cuba tells the story of Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience who has just been released from a 25-year prison sentence for the crime of “disrespecting the revolution” through his promotion of human rights, democracy and respect for human life in Cuba. Oscar’s Cuba reveals the truth about the Cuban government’s unjust detention of Dr. Biscet and thousands of other human rights supporters who have risked and sacrificed everything for the betterment of their nation.

"I am convinced of my ethical principles, the suffering of another human being is also mine, I cannot accept evil, because if I did my bones will erode and my soul will never be at peace."
-- Dr. Oscar Biscet, clandestine letter from prison (date unknown)

2011-11-03T15:58:00.000-04:00

Guilty Until Proven Innocent
November 12, 2011, 12:00 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington
Ottawa

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival 2011

For decades, sociologists, psychologists and academics have examined the plethora of social ills children of divorce encounter over their lifetimes. For the first time, the fathers of divorce are given a platform and a voice to share their most intimate feelings around the challenges of not having full and complete access to their children. We have all heard the stories of biases family courts, bitter spousal retributions, exorbitant alimony, child-support and lawyer fees, but have we ever stopped to wonder what goes on in the heart of a father, when his is alone, with no knowledge of where his children are?

The CBC says NO to being on our panel...

2011-11-03T09:22:00.000-04:00

I was actually at the CBC Annual Meeting today in Ottawa. I was leafleting outside about our upcoming film and panel on the Biases of the CBC. I went inside for the presentation and I actually got to ask M. Lacroix a question. I told him about our event and I asked him if the CBC would like to be on the panel. He said he was aware of the event, but that the CBC would decline because the event appeared one-sided and just full of activists.

I then told him there would be more people at my event than at his!

You'd think he's show some interest in actually seeing our documentary, no?

The Biases of the CBC
November 13, 2011, 2 PM
Library & Archives Canada
Ottawa
Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival 2011

Here I am on Ezra's show last week talking about the CBC....

2011-11-02T14:28:00.000-04:00

The Biases of the CBC
November 13, 2011, 2 PM
Library 7 Archives Canada
Ottawa

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival

Please join us for our first self-produced documentary which examines whether the CBC is biased against Israel and biased against conservatives. After the film, we will have a panel discussion with Mike Fegelman of HonestReporting Canada, Stephen Taylor of the NCC, Brian Lilley of Sun News, Eric Duhaime from the Le Journal de Montreal, and David Krayden from the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies.

This event is part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival which runs between November 11-13th, 2011.

For more information, please visit www.freethinkingfilmfest.ca

Admission to this event is just $15! Or you can buy a festival pass for $75 and see all the events in the Festival.

This event is co-sponsored by Le Réseau Liberté-Québec.

The Making of a Martyr - November 13th in Ottawa

2011-11-02T09:36:00.000-04:00

The Making of a Martyr
November 13, 2011, 12:30 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival

On March 24th 2004, a fifteen year old Palestinian boy named Hussam Abdu was apprehended at an Israeli border checkpoint with live explosives strapped around his waist. Instead of detonating the bomb, Hussam voluntarily gave himself up to the Israeli army and is now serving time in the HaSharon prison for attempted murder. In the weeks that followed Hussam's arrest, news media from around the globe received conflicting reports. The Palestinian Authority claimed that Hussam had been set up by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), while the IDF maintained that Hussam was the latest example of children recruited for suicide missions by terrorist organizations. The Making of a Martyr documents the ongoing education and recruitment of innocent Palestinian children to become human bombs. The film is composed of first-hand interviews with families of suicide bombers, leaders of terrorist organizations, children imprisoned for participating in violent activities and others.

Speaker: Producer Brooke Goldstein.

Cool It! to play in Ottawa on November 13th

2011-11-01T23:04:00.000-04:00

Cool It
November 13, 2011, 12:15 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival

Are the staggeringly expensive actions now being considered really helping to save the world – or are we just burning money? In this eye-opening documentary, author Bjorn Lomborg (The Skeptical Environmentalist) asks us to question the facts and the solutions. Why in the world are we spending so much money on ‘green’ initiatives....for such little gain? Are there better ways to solve the problems? How else could that money be spent? No matter what our opinions are on the environmental movement, Cool It is an “engrossing film” (New York Times) that asks us to rethink our polarized views.

“Far more convincing that An Inconvenient Truth”
-- Peter Foster, Financial Post

"Enlightening, eye-opening, brain-nourishing stuff!"
-- Steven Zeitchik, Los Angeles Times

We're on CBC exposed....

2011-11-01T20:41:00.000-04:00

Don't forget about our upcoming documentary and panel discussion the Biases of the CBC - bias against Israel and bias against conservatives...

The Living to play in Ottawa on November 12th..

2011-11-01T11:19:00.000-04:00

The Living
November 12, 2011, 7:00 PM
Bronson Centre
211 Bronson
Ottawa

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival 2011

Tickets for The Living can be bought at Perogies, 1129 Baxter Road in Ottawa (613) 321-0734)

The Living, feature documentary by Serhiy Bukovsky made in 2008 to mark the 75th Anniversary of the genocidal Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, a.k.a. the Holodomor. The Living (Живі) tells the story of the tragic events in Ukraine in 1932-33 and one Welshman’s attempts to tell the world what was happening. It presents a new angle on Stalin’s man-made famine as Ukrainians who were witnesses to the millions who died and the millions more who suffered horrendously, tell their heartfelt stories.

Side by side with their story, is the story of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones. He travelled through Ukraine, by train and on foot, to see for himself what the people were enduring. Jones published articles in British newspapers drawing attention to the lack of even basic food in once rich Ukraine and told of the suffering and death. But on the whole he was ignored and even ridiculed for suggesting such things. Gareth Jones was killed in 1935 in Manchukuo and some claim that his untimely death at 29 years old was the result of Russian revenge for Gareth Jones’ willingness to expose wrongdoing.

Oscar's Cuba to play in Ottawa on November 12th

2011-11-01T09:33:00.000-04:00

"I am convinced of my ethical principles, the suffering of another human being is also mine, I cannot accept evil, because if I did my bones will erode and my soul will never be at peace."

-- Dr. Oscar Biscet, clandestine letter from prison (date unknown)

Milk War to play in Ottawa on November 12th

2011-11-01T09:30:00.000-04:00

Milk War
November 12, 2011, 12:15 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington
Ottawa

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival

Milk War is the story of organic dairy farmer Michael Schmidt’s battle to legalize the sale of unpasteurized milk in Canada. In defiance of federal law, Schmidt has supplied his friends and neighbours with raw milk for over 20 years. On November 21st, 2006 Schmidt’s dairy farm was raided by 20 armed officers, his equipment was seized, all dairy products were destroyed and farmer Schmidt was charged with 20 criminal offences for distributing unpasteurized milk. A David and Goliath story; when asked if he was willing to go jail Michael said: “Whatever it takes to give people the freedom to choose healthy nutritious food.”

Speaker: Karen Selick of the Canadian Constitution Foundation

Justice for Sergei - Shows in Ottawa on November 13th...

2011-10-31T12:50:00.000-04:00

Justice For Sergei
November 13, 2011, 11:00 AM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington
Ottawa

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival 2011

Justice for Sergei is the shocking story of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in November 2009 at the age of 37 under excruciating circumstances in a Moscow detention center, still awaiting trial. His death fuelled international outrage, but inside Russia the corrupt government officials responsible were never brought to justice. One year after his death, Justice for Sergei tells the story of an ordinary man who paid the ultimate price while trying to expose the extraordinary corruption gripping Russia today.

Awarded First Prize of the Human Rights competition at the ‘Docudays’ Human Rights Film Festival in Kiev, Ukraine, on Wednesday, March 30, 2011.

An Inconvenient Tax - Shows in Ottawa on November 12th

2011-10-31T09:52:00.000-04:00

An Inconvenient Tax
Saturday, November 12, 2011, 4 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington
Ottawa

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival 2011.

Sponsored by the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation

An American look at the history of income tax and brings to light the causes of its many complexities. The film follows the tax through wars, economic booms, and the most significant presidencies in U.S. history. This whirlwind tour includes everything from early IRS propaganda films to the tax reform campaigns of Ronald Reagan, whom historian Steven Weisman describes as “the poet laureate of capitalism.” The film uncovers redefinitions of income, the creation of corporate loopholes, and even a brief moment in 1986 when Congress actually tried to simplify everything.

Speaker: Derek Fildebrandt of the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation

“The Hardest Thing In The World To Understand Is The Income Tax”
-- Albert Einstein

The Power of the Powerless shows in Ottawa on November 12th...

2011-10-30T23:02:00.000-04:00

The Power of the Powerless
November 12th, 2:45 PM
Library & Archives Canada, 395 Wellington
Ottawa
Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival 2011

Narrated by Academy Award winner Jeremy Irons, "The Power of the Powerless" explores Czechoslovakia's legacy of communist rule and the struggle against it: From the iron-fisted Stalinist government of the 1950s; through the vibrant and politically active Prague Spring of the 1960s; the hard-line backlash of the 1970s; and finally the bloodless revolution of 1989. At the heart of the film is the story of blacklisted playwright Václav Havel and his fellow dissidents who, for two decades, spoke out against totalitarianism. The film culminates with the student-led movement in Prague, which sparked 1989’s Velvet Revolution and drew a half-million people into the streets, catapulting Václav Havel into the presidency. The documentary features rare and never-before-seen interviews with key figures of the Velvet Revolution including Václav Havel. "The Power of the Powerless" is currently being used by human rights organizations to encourage dissidents struggling in non-democratic countries including Burma.

Winner Documentary Feature Audience Award Sacramento Music & Film Festival, USA
^

Freedom of What?cott to show in Ottawa on November 12th...

2011-10-30T12:59:00.000-04:00

Freedom of What?cott
November 12, 2011, 1:15 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington
Ottawa

Part of the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival

This documentary walks the fine line between comedy and controversy, between tolerance and hate, capturing one man’s unforgettable journey to the Supreme Court of Canada. Bill Whatcott is a Canadian social conservative who actively campaigns against homosexuality and abortion. On February 25, 2010 the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal overturned a Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal ruling against him alleging discrimination against 4 gay people and fining him $17,500. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission has appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, where we are awaiting a ruling. This documentary looks at both sides of this issue.

Speaker: Karen Selick of the Canadian Constitution Foundation

"New Canadian movie about a hard-to-love free speech hero looks surprisingly good... I don’t know who 'the Moon Brothers' are, (and I hope they didn’t use taxpayer money to make this movie) but really: Isn’t this one of the most intriguing trailers you’ve seen in a while? A bit Errol Morris?"
-- Kathy Shaidle, blogger

Unmasked: Judeophobia - November 13th Ottawa

2011-10-29T14:41:00.000-04:00

O Canada!

2011-10-28T15:36:00.002-04:00

I want to thank my dear friend Fred Litwin for inviting me to post here all week. It has been a delight, and then some. Thanks to Fred, I now think of Canada as my fourth home, after the U.S., Norway, and the Netherlands, the three countries in which I've lived. Thanks to him, I've come to appreciate even more the glories of his wonderful country, a land that he obviously loves greatly and that, again thanks in no small part to him, I now love as well. Through him, I have met so many wonderful Canadians whom I now count as friends. Indeed, never have I met so many people in such a short time whom I have truly come to think of as friends. What they say about Canadians appears to be entirely true: I've deliberately stepped on all their feet, and they've all apologized for it. Well, that's not exactly literally true, but it's a metaphorical truth. The fact is that I've been treated so terribly kindly by so many of the Canadians I've met through Fred, and have come to feel so very quickly that they are indeed my friends, that I can't help feeling that there really is something very special going on up there, above that 49th parallel, something that I have been very fortunate to be a part of. I hope to be among all of you again very soon, and until then, God bless you all, and God save the Queen, and God give Fred Litwin everything he needs to continue his important work.

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen

2011-10-28T15:17:00.001-04:00

This is real stuff going on, folks, and it's happening all over Western Europe.

A Muslim group in Denmark has launched a campaign to turn parts of Copenhagen and other Danish cities into "Sharia Law Zones" that would function as autonomous enclaves ruled by Islamic law. The Danish Islamist group Kaldet til Islam (Call to Islam) says the Tingbjerg suburb of Copenhagen will be the first part of Denmark to be subject to Sharia law, followed by the Norrebro district of the capital and then other parts of the country, the center-right Jyllands-Posten newspaper reported on October 17.

Call to Islam says it will dispatch 24-hour Islamic 'morals police' to enforce Sharia law in those enclaves. The patrols will confront anyone caught drinking alcohol, gambling, going to discotheques or engaging in other activities the group views as running contrary to Islam.

Integration Minister Karen Haekkerup told Jyllands-Posten "I consider this to be very serious. Anything that attempts to undermine our democracy, we must crack down on it and consistently so."

A look back

2011-10-28T14:01:00.000-04:00

Well, partly just for old time's sake, and partly to give younger folks an idea of what gay politics was like in 1994, here's an episode of the Charlie Rose Show from that year, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, featuring among others Ian MacKellan, Tony Kushner, Andrew Sullivan, and moi. I hardly get a word in edgewise, but it was interesting to be there nonetheless. In any event it all seems like a million years ago.

Free speech in the UK

2011-10-28T12:33:00.002-04:00

God knows the UK today needs all the vigorous defenses of free speech and a free press that its gutsiest scribblers can come up with. Here's a spirited one at Standpoint.

On WikiLeaks

2011-10-28T08:21:00.001-04:00

An interesting takeon WikiLeaks:

WikiLeaksis predicated on the assumption that the social order—the set ofstructures that channel and legitimize power—is both deceptive andbrittle: deceptive in the sense that most people who observe thesocial order are unaware of the ways in which power is actually used,and brittle in the sense that it is at risk of collapse once peopleare shown the true nature of things. The primary goal, therefore, isrevelation of the truth. In the past it was difficult to do this,mainly because primitive technologies made it difficult to collectand disseminate damning information. But now these technologicalbarriers are gone. And once information is set free, the theory goes,the world will change.

We haveseen some of the difficulties with this viewpoint. Even in the age ofthe Internet, there is no such thing as the instantaneous andcomplete revelation of the truth. In its undigested form, informationoften has no transformative power at all. Raw data must be distilledand interpreted, and the attention of a distracted audience must becaptured. The process by which this is done is complex and easilyinfluenced by commercial and governmental interests. This was truebefore the advent of the Internet and remains true today.

Beyondthis, there is a final and larger problem. It may well be that manyof the things WikiLeaks imagines are secrets are not really secretsat all. It may be that what WikiLeaks revealed when it drew back thecurtain is more or less what most Americans already suspected hadbeen going on, and were therefore prepared to tolerate.

Another advertisement for myself

2011-10-28T08:15:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I mentioned my forthcoming e-book The Marrying Kind, a collection of essays on gay-related topics. My other forthcoming e-book is entitled Debating Islam, and it contains pieces on, not surprisingly, Islam, as well as other subjects. A couple of excerpts:

I would never have believed on 9/11 that in 2006, most Europeans would still be surprised to learn – to pluck two examples at random – that over seven in ten immigrant women in Sweden (according to an EU study) are affected by “honor-related violence” and that Jewish children (according to a French government report) “can no longer get an education” in France because of abuse by Muslim classmates. Some law-enforcement authorities have already thrown in the towel: in 2004, Swedish police admitted they “have no control over the situation in Malmö,” a city plagued by Muslim rapes and robberies; this August, after a Muslim gang shootout in Oslo, police said they were “reluctant to crack down on the gangs out of fear for their own safety.”

- “9/11 Five Years Later,” De Volkskrant, September 2, 2006

The last few decades in Europe have made three things crystal-clear. First, social-democratic welfare systems work best, to the extent they do work, in ethnically and culturally homogeneous (and preferably small) nations whose citizens, viewing one another as members of an extended family, are loath to exploit government provisions for the needy. Second, the best way to destroy such welfare systems is to take in large numbers of immigrants from poor, oppressive, and corruption-ridden societies, whose rule of the road is to grab everything you can get your hands on. And third, the system will be wiped out even faster if many of those immigrants are fundamentalist Muslims who view bankrupting the West as a contribution to jihad. Add to all this the growing power of an unelected European Union bureaucracy that has encouraged Muslim immigration and taken steps to punish criticism of it — criminalizing “incitement of racism, xenophobia, or hatred against a racial, ethnic, or religious group” in 2007, for example — and you can start to understand why Western Europeans who prize their freedoms are resisting the so-called leadership of their see-no-evil elites.

- “Heirs to Fortuyn,” City Journal, Spring 2009

Rapes in Oslo

2011-10-28T07:44:00.002-04:00

Here's my latest piece for Front Page Magazine, about the rape situation in Oslo.

The LRB, true to form

2011-10-28T07:34:00.000-04:00

All you need to know about what the London Review of Books stands for these days is that shortly after 9/11, it ran a special issue on the subject that set the standard for vile post-9/11 anti-Americanism. Now the LRB has published a full-scale attack on the brilliant and principled Niall Ferguson, whose offenses, in the eyes of the LRB, are having dared to stand up for the West (and especially the U.S.) and to be honest about Islam. The LRB's attack dog, one Pankaj Mishra, actually has the audacity to begin his screed by comparing Ferguson to the character Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, who, you will recall, was a major asshole and a big fan of a book called The Rise of the Colored Empires. The implication, of course, is that Ferguson (who is married to Ayaan Hirsi Ali) is a racist. Despicable.

At the honour-killing trial

2011-10-28T07:17:00.003-04:00

In the Shafia honour-killing trial, it has already been established that the suspects used Google to try to find a suitable place to commit a murder, but yesterday more details about their Googling emerged:

While prosecutor Laurie Lacelle in her opening address to jurors told them that the “where to commit a murder” search on Mr. Shafia’s laptop took place 10 days before the four women were found dead, it wasn’t until Thursday afternoon that Kingston Constable Derek Frawley, who was qualified as an expert in forensic computer analysis, took the witness stand.

Only with his evidence was it apparent how big and broad was the presumed search for a suitable site.

For six days that June, someone used the laptop to search for bodies of water in Quebec, for “mountains on water,” for “where to rent a boat in Montreal,” for a list of crossings on the St. Lawrence and other rivers in the province.

The searches were all conducted in English, and prosecutors allege it was Hamed, the most fluent English speaker of the three, who conducted most of them.

The Google searches, Const. Frawley said, kicked off in earnest on June 3, when several were performed, the keywords as follows: “Montreal jail”; “Can a prisoner have control over his real estate”; “Montreal jail” again; “Can a prisoner have control over their real estate” and “Can a prisoner have rights to sell his real estate.”

Cool video

2011-10-28T07:04:00.002-04:00

Video of the U.S. at night from the International Space Station.

Not from the Onion

2011-10-28T06:44:00.003-04:00

Muslim students at Catholic University complain about being surrounded by crosses.

In praise of middlebrow culture

2011-10-28T06:33:00.003-04:00

Ina laudatory review of Gunther Schuller's autobiography, Terry Teachout writes:

Iwas especially interested in what Mr. Schuller had to say about"Fantasia," Walt Disney's 1940 animated feature film aboutclassical music, which he saw for the first time when he was 14:"That film masterpiece truly changed my life, particularly itsStravinsky 'Rite of Spring' sequence, which, as far as I canremember, was the first time I heard that remarkable music. Itcompletely bowled me over. I knew then and there that I had to be acomposer."

Needlessto say, snobs of all kinds have long taken a dim view of "Fantasia,"with its dancing mushrooms and cavorting hippos. Not so Mr. Schuller:"I hope [Stravinsky] appreciated that hundreds—perhapsthousands—of musicians were turned onto 'The Rite of Spring' (andby implication lots of other modern music) through 'Fantasia,'musicians who might otherwise never have heard the work, or at leastnot until many years later."

Whichleads Terry to reflect on the important role that middlebrow cultureonce played in introducing young people (and not-so-young people) tohigh culture:

Backin the days of middlebrow culture, the movies weren't the only wayfor children to get a taste of the classics. I initially made theacquaintance of such literary gems as "Macbeth" and"Moby-Dick" in comic-book form, courtesy of the unjustlymocked Classics Illustrated series ("Featuring Stories by theWorld's Greatest Authors").

Sodid I. (Terry and I are the same age.)

Alexander the OK?

2011-10-28T06:12:00.002-04:00

In a considerationof five books about Alexander the Great, Mary Beard asks “Alexander:How Great?”

In oneof the first known attempts at counterfactual history, Livy raisedthe question of who would have won if Alexander had decided to invadeItaly. Predictably, Livy concluded that the Roman Empire would haveproved as invincible against Alexander as it had against its otherenemies. True, Alexander was a great general, but Rome at that periodhad many great generals and they were made of sterner stuff than thePersian king, with his “women and eunuchs in tow,” who was by anyreckoning “an easy prey.”

Besides,from early on, Alexander showed signs of fatal weaknesses: witnessthe vanity, the obeisance he demanded from his followers, the viciouscruelty (he had a record of murdering erstwhile friends around hisdinner table), and the infamous drinking. An invasion of Italy wouldhave been a tougher test than the invasion of India, which “hestrolled through on a drunken revel with an intoxicated army.”

If you're interested inAlexander, the best place to start may not be with any of thehistories Beard reviews but with Mary Renault's magnificent novels Firefrom Heaven, ThePersian Boy, and FuneralGames. Renault not onlyknew every detail about how people lived then, but she seemed to havean intuitive, preternatural understanding of how they thought.

(Ha,I notice I also used the word “preternatural” in this 17-year-oldreview of abiography of Renault.)

Petty tyrannies

2011-10-28T05:46:00.000-04:00

An important article by Myron Magnet about the inappropriate exercise of eminent domainand similar abuses of local government power:

A U.S.Supreme Court justice recounted over cocktails a while ago histravails with his hometown zoning board. He wanted to build anaddition onto his house, containing what the plans described as ahome office, but he met truculent and lengthy resistance. This is aresidential area, a zoning official blustered—no businessesallowed. The judge mildly explained that he would not be running abusiness from the new room; he would be using it as a study. Well,challenged the suspicious official, what business are you in? I workfor the government, the justice replied. Okay, the official finallyconceded—grudgingly, as if conferring an immense and specialdiscretionary favor; we’ll let it go by this time. But, he snappedin conclusion, don’t ever expletive-deleted with us again.

Don't let's be beastly to the Germans

2011-10-28T05:40:00.001-04:00

An explosive articlein yesterday's VG here inNorway reports on author Tor Bomann-Larsen'sabout-to-be-released book, Æresord (Word of Honor), in which he writes that Norway's belovedKing Olav (who reigned from 1957 to 1991), while he was crown princein the 1930s, encouraged England to cozy up to Hitler in the interestof European peace. In 1935, he wrote to his friend and cousin, thePrince of Wales, urging him to negotiate with the Germans, sayingthat “the only thing that could help to straighten things out a bitwould be a close relationship between England and Germany.” In1939 he wrote to George VI, begging him to talk to Hitler. As VGnotes, by this time Hitler hadinstituted the Nurenburg Laws and Krystallnacht had taken place. (Thearticle also points out that Olav's father, King Haakon, totallydisagreed with Olav and refused to have anything to do with theGermans.)

Helga Weiss's story

2011-10-27T13:04:00.000-04:00

Another Holocaust diary sees the light of day:

On an Auschwitzstation platform in 1944, Helga Weiss and her mother fooled one ofthe most reviled men in modern history, Josef Mengele, and managed tosave their lives. Not long into her teens, Weiss lied about her age,claiming she was old enough to work for her keep. Her motherpersuaded the Nazis under Mengele's command that Helga was in facther daughter's older sister, and she was sent to the forced labourbarracks and not the gas chamber.

The story is one ofmany recorded in a concentration camp diary that was sold topublishers around the world at the Frankfurt book fair. The privatejournals of Helga Weiss are to be published in the UK for the firsttime next year by Viking Press, while foreign rights have beensnapped up by publishing houses across the world.

More Kirchick

2011-10-27T10:08:00.003-04:00

Another day, another strong piece by Jamie Kirchick....

Higher education

2011-10-27T08:33:00.001-04:00

In my book Surrender I wrote about the pro-jihadist hijinks of a certain Kent State professor:

...in March 2007, it was reported that Julio Pino, an associate professor of history at [Kent State], had been posting at a jihadist Web site. Pino, using the name Assad Pino, had also written to the student newspaper in 2006: “You [that is, the United States] are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of drugs, gambling, the sex trade, spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past, such as AIDS, and turns women into commodities for sale. . . . The ill done to the Muslim nations must be requited. The Muslim child does not cry alone; the Muslim woman does not cry alone, and the Muslim man is already at your gates.”...in 2002, in the same newspaper, Pino had praised a suicide bomber.

Now (via a link from jihadwatch.org) here's the latest on Pino:

A Kent State history professor, who has allegedly been linked to elements of Muslim extremism, reportedly lashed out at a former Israeli diplomat speaking at the university Tuesday night.

The event was co-sponsored by the undergraduate student government and entitled “An Evening with Ishmael Khaldi.” Khaldi spoke in regards to his book, A Shepherd’s Journey, which details his life journey from a small tent in a Bedouin village to the inner-circles of the Israel Foreign Service. When his speech ended, Khaldi opened the floor to a Q&A, where History Professor Julio Pino rushed to be the first to question Khaldi.

John Milligan of KentWired, an independent student publication, reports that Pino began to question how Khaldi could justify speaking of foreign aid given from Israel to countries like Turkey, when that aid was financed by “blood money that came from the deaths of Palestinian children and babies.” Milligan, a senior majoring in magazine journalism, then captured the the most shocking part of the exchange:

“The crowd fell into an awkward silence as the two continued to exchange words from across the auditorium.

‘It is not respectful to me here,’ Khaldi said.

Pino responded by saying ‘your government killed people’ and claimed Khaldi was not being respectful to him.

‘I do respect you, but you are wrong,’ Khaldi said. ‘It’s a lie.’

The exchange ended as Pino stormed out of the auditorium shouting ‘Death to Israel!’”

Greater Islamophilia in Norway?

2011-10-27T07:50:00.001-04:00

According to a studyfor Norwegian state television, 25% of Norwegians think there are toomany Muslims in Norway and that Islam is a threat to Norwegianculture. This number sounds low to me, and it also sounds low toresearcher Anders Ravik Jupskås atthe University of Oslo, who told NRK that he “believes the terrorattacks of July 22 have had an influence on people's attitudes. Ithink we are facing a long-term trend of greater tolerance for othercultures.” I think the low figure is indeed a result of theatrocities of July 22 (in which an anti-Muslim maniac gunned downdozens of teenage members of Labor Party Youth), but the reason forthe low figure, I would wager, is not tolerance; it's fear andinsecurity – after the vicious public demonizing of Islam criticsthat took place in the wake of the massacre, Norwegians areunderstandably loath to tell pollsters what they really think aboutIslam.

Cat story

2011-10-27T07:26:00.001-04:00

Having anxiously entrusted my cats toairlines on several occasions, I couldn't help noticing thisstory:

After a nearlytwo-month-long search, American Airlines has finally found 'Jack theCat,' a pet that went missing at New York's JFK during a the wildtravel weekend that saw Hurricane Irene bearing down on the city.

How does a cat survive – and staymissing – for two months at an airline terminal? If only Jackcould talk.

Advertisement for myself

2011-10-27T07:12:00.002-04:00

A couple of new collections of my essays are about to be published as e-books. One of them is The Marrying Kind, which brings together a few dozen of my essays about gay life and gay rights, the earliest dating back to 1994. It should be available on Amazon.com some time within the next few days. Here are some excerpts:

What these reactions signify to me is a powerful tendency among some homosexuals to recoil reflexively from the vision of an America where gays live as full and open members of society, with all the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of heterosexuals. Many gay people, indeed, have a deep, unarticulated fear of that metaphorical place at the table. This is understandable: gay people, as a rule, are so used to minimizing their exposure to homophobia, by living either in the closet or on the margins of society, that for someone – even a fellow gay person – to come along and invoke an image of gay America sitting openly at a table with straight America can seem, to them, like a hostile act.

– “The Stonewall Myth,” New Republic, June 13, 1994

“Stonewall 25,” exulted a friend after the march in June [1994], “saw the last gasp of the radical gay left.” Perhaps. Certainly things are changing dramatically. Left-wing gay groups are floundering; the Log Cabin Republicans grow apace. While the gay left seems increasingly barren intellectually and unable to distinguish tactics from strategy, moderate gay voices are being raised and listened to. Unable or unwilling to address the important questions that openly gay moderates are raising, gay-left honchos have chosen instead to paint us dishonestly as a bunch of bigoted, reactionary, self-serving, upper-class conformists.

Last spring in Gay Community News, Urvashi Vaid lodged a by-now-familiar complaint: “By aspiring to join the mainstream rather than continuing to figure out the ways we need to change it, we risk losing our gay and lesbian souls in order to gain the world.” But nobody’s “aspiring to join” the mainstream; the point is that most gays live in that mainstream. What Vaid apparently hasn’t been able to reconcile to her worldview is the emergence from the closet and from political silence of increasing numbers of gays whose politics differ dramatically from her own. The more visible such people become, the clearer it will be how out of touch many gay-left leaders are with the majority of those whom they claim to represent.

– “The Road to Utopia,” The Advocate, September 20, 1994

Nor are we clear among ourselves about the goals of the gay rights movement. Do we want social acceptance and respect, equal rights under the law, sexual liberation, increased self-esteem, Marxist utopia? All of the above? Or do we simply want to vent our anger at society, get the rage out of our system? Is the movement’s role to provide gays (or, perhaps, the world generally) with a more ambitious vision of sexual pleasure or human relations than that reflected in the relationships of our parents? Or do we just want an excuse to throw condoms at priests or run naked up Fifth Avenue?

– “Confusion Reigns,” The Advocate, October 18, 1994

Take James Wolcott, who in a 1989 issue of Vanity Fair ridiculed David Leavitt's novel Equal Affections for presenting “a gay version of that nice young couple down the block.” Gays, Wolcott made it clear, should be “sexual outlaws.” That review was an early salvo in what has since become an assault on “gays next door” by straight liberals who often don’t see how offensive they’re being. Consider an editorial in the New York Times that appeared in June on the morning of the Stonewall 25 march. After declaring support for gay rights, the editorial criticized “gay moderates and conservatives” for seeking “to assure the country that the vast majority of gay people are ‘regular’ people just like the folks next door.”

– “The Folks Next Door,” The Advocate, November 15, 1994

Burning veils in Yemen

2011-10-27T06:59:00.002-04:00

In Yemen, women burntheir veils:

SANAA, Yemen (AP) --Hundreds of Yemeni women on Wednesday set fire to traditional femaleveils to protest the government's brutal crackdown against thecountry's popular uprising, as overnight clashes in the capital andanother city killed 25 people, officials said.

In the capital Sanaa,the women spread a black cloth across a main street and threw theirfull-body veils, known as makrama, onto a pile, sprayed it with oiland set it ablaze. As the flames rose, they chanted: "Whoprotects Yemeni women from the crimes of the thugs?"

Don't get too excited about what thissignifies, however:

Wednesday's protest,however, was not related to women's rights or issues surrounding theIslamic veils - rather, the act of women burning their clothing is asymbolic Bedouin tribal gesture signifying an appeal for help totribesmen, in this case to stop the attacks on the protesters.

Obama = Nixon?

2011-10-27T06:39:00.001-04:00

The San Francisco Chronicle comparesObama's White House to Nixon's:

If anything, there isalmost a Nixonian quality to the level of control, paranoia - andlack of credibility - this White House has demonstrated on the issueof media access to President Obama's fundraisers.

Bay Area reporterswill not be allowed inside the W Hotel today when the president meetswith hundreds of contributors paying $7,500 or more to attend. OnlyWashington-based journalists were allowed in the pool - continuing adisturbing trend by this White House to severely limit access tofundraisers. Even former President George W. Bush, hardly a championof transparency, allowed local reporters to cover his fundraisingevents.

Fundraisers are notprivate events in this post-Watergate era. Contributions are a matterof public record, and the public has a right to know what is beingsaid to and by the president. Local journalists are better positionedthan their Beltway brethren to recognize who is there - and why.

At PJMedia, Bryan Preston addsa few comments of his own:

This White House hascome to fear and loathe local reporters, ever since Dallas reporterBrad Watson queried the president about his rocky relationship withTexas. In that episode, note that the local reporter (Watson) askedsome tough questions, tough enough to get a rise out of Obama, andthen USA Today rode to the president’s aid and criticized Watsonfor doing his job. After that, the WH implied that reporters withenough gumption to ask tough questions of The One will get the freezeout. And back in May, the Obama White House went after a tiny localCA newspaper and got it to scrub a story about FLOTUS that was barelynegative.

Fear and dhimmitude

2011-10-27T06:23:00.001-04:00

Moreon that Nashville hotel that cancelled the anti-jihad event. Thehotel guy's argument: "at least two of your speakers have ahistory of enraging people to the point of violence." Of coursehe has a perfect right to cancel the event; this isn't about denyingpeople their freedom of speech. But it is about fear and dhimmitude,and it's terribly inauspicious.

Loving Islamists

2011-10-27T06:14:00.001-04:00

AtTime magazine, astupefyingly idiotic article,even by current Time standards. The headline pretty much says it all: “As Tunisia Countsits Votes, Can the West Stop Worrying and Learn to Love theIslamists?” Writing confidently that “[t]here's no inherentcontradiction between Islam and democracy,” author Tony Karoncontrasts the “[s]ecular liberal parties, based largely in arelatively well-off segment of the urban middle class,” but “unableto connect with the language and priority concerns of theimpoverished majorities,” with the Islamist parties, whose“extensive social and welfare programs, designed to ease the burdenof the poor,” he extols. He seems totally clueless about whatIslamism even means. How is it that so many of the readers who haveposted comments on this article “get” Islamism while a Timeauthor does not?

Happy birthday, Adolf

2011-10-27T05:56:00.003-04:00

I always felt the laws in someEuropean countries forbidding parents from giving their kids certainnames were outrageously, intrusively statist, but a story like thismakes you think again:

The Campbell’sthree small children were removed from their Holland Township home bythe state in January 2009 after they asked a grocery store inGreenwich, N.J., to write “Adolf Hitler” on their son’sbirthday cake.

Though a localWal-Mart honored the birthday cake request, Adolf Hitler Campbell andsiblings JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler JeannieCampbell were put into foster care.

So just remember -- if your kid is named after a mass-murdering genocidal maniac, get his birthday cake at Wal-Mart!

A brightly burning flame

2011-10-27T04:59:00.003-04:00

Here's my latest piece at Front Page Magazine, a profile of the courageous Italian writer, activist, and legislator FiammaNirenstein.

Occupy Hollywood?

2011-10-27T04:58:00.000-04:00

Somebody named Jo Piazza makes thisargumentat Huffington Post:

Americans arecurrently occupying cities across the country as a part of OccupyWall Street, demanding an end to corporate greed and a more equitableshare of the pie for the middle class.

Yet, the middle classcontinues to prop up the .01 percent: Hollywood celebrities who makemillions just for being themselves. When it comes to making money,celebrities are abnormal. Their enormous salaries make them outliersin the American economy, on a pay grade above most CEOs, surgeons andlawyers -- the professions that typically come to mind when we thinkof the wealthy.

So how about amovement to Occupy Hollywood?

Here'sa good comeback at Big Hollywood.

Ebert on Kael

2011-10-27T04:42:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I linked to a New Yorkerpiece on Pauline Kael,occasioned by a biography of her and a Library of America collectionof her work; now here'sRoger Ebert writing about her:

We met often. Therewas a night of drinking during the festival in my hotel room, withScorsese and me sitting on the floor at her feet. (It was circa 1970,and sitting on the floor was commonplace, I suppose as some kind ofstatement, just as wearing blue jeans everywhere had become). Whenshe was on the jury at Cannes, I was invited to a little bistro whereshe introduced Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy. When she briefly tookleave of the New Yorker to accept a job offer from Warren Beatty atParamount, she invited me to a dinner at an Italian restaurant withsuch as Ray Bradbury, Toback and Robert Towne. "Honey," sheconfided, "I can't stay out here. They're all whores." Notincluding present company, it was implied.

Our upcoming panel on The Biases of the CBC is driving people nuts!!!

2011-10-26T09:52:00.000-04:00

I love it...but those post-modernist lefties are going beserk over our upcoming film and panel discussion on the Biases of the CBC! Our film looks at CBC bias against Israel and against conservatives. We'll follow the film with a panel consisting of Brian Lilley of Sun News, Eric Duhaime from Le Journal de Montreal, Stephen Taylor from the National Citizens Coalition, and Mike Fegelman of HonestReporting Canada.

To see how beserk they've gone...check out our facebook event page.

Here are the details:

The Biases of the CBC
November 13, 2011, 2 PM
Library & Archives Canada, 395 Wellington
Ottawa
Admission $15 ($10 for students) or free with a Festival Pass.

Rubin on revolution

2011-10-26T08:08:00.001-04:00

Barry Rubin doesn't mince words atPJMedia:

On February 11, orOctober 23, or November 28, 2011, the Middle East entered a new era.Whether you date it to the fall of Mubarak, the Tunisian election, orthe Egyptian election, what do you think is going to happen in thenext half-century in the region? This is now — I call it officially — the Era of Revolutionary Islamism.

Kirchick on Khadafy

2011-10-26T08:06:00.000-04:00

Jamie Kirchick, who is as brilliant ashe is prolific, chides those who would compare the overthrow of Libya's dictator withthat of Saddam Hussein:

Tactics aside,likening American involvement in Libya to its overthrow of SaddamHussein in Iraq is worse than comparing apples and oranges. It's akinto equating the arrest of a mugger to an FBI sting of a nationwidemob operation.

As brutal a leaderas he was, Moammar Khadafy did not pose a strategic threat to theUnited States as did Hussein's Iraq. In 2004, Khadafy gave up hisweapons of mass destruction program and in 2006 the United Statesremoved Libya from its list of state-sponsors of terrorism (Khadafyundertook these moves in response to the overthrow of Saddam, apositive outcome of the war which the President's supporters haveneglected to include in their estimations). Were Libya still inpossession of such capabilities, it's far from certain that NATOwould have intervened.

Moreover, Iraq isat the geographical and political heart of the Arab world - aregional power bordered by other key states like Saudi Arabia, Iranand Turkey. Libya, in all senses, is on the periphery. Simply put,what happens there is not nearly as important to American strategicinterests as what occurs in Mesopotamia.

To segue from the serious to the frivolous, the most interestingthing to me about the Libyan dictator was, of course, the fact thatthere seemed to be an infinite number of ways of spelling his name. Here'san article from earlier this year on this all-important topic:

TheAssociated Press, CNN, and MSNBC spell it "Moammar Gadhafi." The New York Times spells it "Muammar el-Qaddafi." At theLos Angeles Times, it's "Moammar Kadafi." Reuters, theGuardian, and the BBC go with "Muammar Gaddafi." The IrishTimes goes with "Muammar Gadafy." ABC News – which spellsit "Moammar Gaddafi" – has posted a list of 112variations on the English spelling of the Libyan strongman's name.

AtThe Christian Science Monitor, we go with "Muammar Qaddafi,"a spelling that is no more or less defensible than anyone else's.

Allthis would just be a matter of idle curiosity if it weren't for theWeb. Go to Google News and type in “Gadhafi.” Now try “Qaddafi.” And now try “Gaddafi.” Notice how it returns three completelydifferent lists of stories? How you choose to spell it determineswhat news you get.

Here's the ABC list mentioned above. Enjoy!

French justice

2011-10-26T07:54:00.000-04:00

Well, he shouldn't have been arrestedin the first place, of course, but an acquittalis at least better news than a conviction:

An appeals court onTuesday confirmed the acquittal of a French man accused of incitingracial hatred after posting an Internet video of himself burning aKoran and then urinating on it.

Ernesto Rojas Abbatewas arrested in October 2010 after posting footage of himself wearinga devil mask and tearing pages from the Islamic holy book beforesetting it on fire and later urinating on it to extinguish theflames.

Prosecutors, who hadbeen seeking a three-month suspended sentence and 1,000 euro ($1,400)fine, appealed after a court acquitted him in May on charges ofinciting racial hatred.

Honour killings, V

2011-10-26T07:31:00.000-04:00

Mark Steyn has his sayabout the Shafia case:

The Kingston Trioplus the first Mrs Shafia weren't victims of a crime passionnelcommitted by a momentarily angry father unable to bear what he saw ashis daughters' disobedience, but of a cold, pre-meditated, wellplanned act of quadruple murder in which pretty much everyone in thefamily who wasn't a designated victim was in on the crime. Thinkabout it: This is a world in which a father and mother sit around thekitchen table with their son plotting how to kill their threedaughters. At a certain level, such people are not fully human.....

It's hard to see whatCanada has to gain from admitting significant numbers of people fromthe culture that spawned the Shafias. Perhaps in time one could makefunctioning western citizens of them, but it would be a slow processand, even if we had the stomach for it, would be unlikely to justifyitself in cost-benefit terms. So instead they come and settle into aculture that asks nothing of them. And slowly but remorselessly weadapt to them: Police departments learn to tiptoe round touchysubjects like "honour killing"; hospitals evolve from "FGM"(the pejorative "female genital mutilation") to "FGC"(the less judgmental "female genital cutting"); and acourthouse in Ontario discreetly reorders its day in order not toinconvenience the translators that "Canadian citizens" nowrequire:

On Fridays, thejudge told the jurors, the lunch schedule will be shifted so theinterpreters, all male, can get to mosque for prayers.

The multiculturalexperiment is not worth it. By the time those who foisted it on thepost-war west acknowledge that, it will be too late.

Material girl

2011-10-26T07:10:00.001-04:00

Finally, a reason to live: Madonna hasdirecteda movie about Wallis Simpson. The question, of course, is this: willit turn out to be deliciously bad, or just bad?

Honour killings, IV

2011-10-26T06:59:00.001-04:00

Ayaan Hirsi Ali weighsin on the Shafia case:

Horrific details ofan alleged mass honour killing emerged in a crowded Ontario courtroomlast week: Three young sisters and their polygamous father's firstwife were murdered in the name of religious purity, according to theCrown prosecutor: A staged car accident, plotted and executed,allegedly by the father, mother and brother of 19-year-old Zainab,17-year-old Sahar, and 13-year-old Gheeti Shafia, whose reportedlybrazen refusal to comply with the traditions imposed on Afghanfemales so polluted the family's honour that only death could removeits taint. In the chilling words of the girls' father, MohammadShafia, "They betrayed Islam" by consorting with boys,posing seductively for cell phone photographs, and refusing to wearthe hijab. "God's curse on them for generations. May the devil(expletive) on their graves. Is that what a daughter should be? Woulda daughter be such a whore?"....

If anything can betaken from the untimely death of the four Shafia women, it is this:honour violence is happening in North America and our institutionsneed to quickly educate themselves to be able to properly respond tosave lives. These girls embrace our culture and expect that we willprotect them from the savagery they left behind in their homescountries -- we owe it to them to do no less.

One man's 9/11

2011-10-26T06:57:00.001-04:00

On 9/11, the American writer William Deresiewicz andhis wife were in a remote Indian hotel with a bunch of non-Americanstrangers:

The TV was bolted toa corner of the ceiling, and the only channel it received was FoxNews. First we got Newt Gingrich. Then we got Pat Buchanan. Then wegot Al Haig. It was like a trip down Republican memory lane. “Whoare they going to roll out next?” I finally snorted. “BarryGoldwater?” Then came the news that the president was circling inAir Force One. The German guy—he was just about the only otherguest who hadn’t left by that point—made a critical remark,something about a coward. I knew this was a way of reaching out tous, the offer of a little shared Bush-bashing, but I couldn’t stopmyself from acting like my suspicions had been confirmed. “It’s aperfectly understandable security measure,” I snapped. “What doyou want them to do?” A few minutes later, he left, too. I hadgotten what I wanted. We were alone.

L'amour, toujours l'amour

2011-10-26T06:47:00.002-04:00

Jay Nordlingerin National Review:

I’ve quoted to youbefore what Jimmy Carter said in 2009 on receiving an award from thePLO: “I have been in love with the Palestinian people for manyyears.” He has been far less in love, of course, with the Israelipeople, and with Jewish people in general.

Most of us fall in love withindividuals. I believe it’s true that Carter
fell in love withPalestinians as a class. I think his love is not pure,
however,because I think it comes from, or at least is fed by, his
hatred ofthe Israelis.

Honor (sorry, honour) killings, III

2011-10-26T06:40:00.001-04:00

Barbara Kayon the Shafia case:

If we are to combatthis social scourge, it is no use hiding behind politically correctfeminist and multicultural mantras. At a panel discussion lastwinter, for example, a Toronto therapist took the reflexive feministline that honour killings are just another form of domestic violence,a product of a generic "patriarchy" that could happen toany Canadian girl or woman: "It's not a [product of] South Asianor Muslim culture." Another panellist suggested there was anelement of Islamophobia in "how these things keep gettinglabelled." The Canadian Council of Muslim Women claims that anyconnection between Islam and honour violence is "coincidental."

Advertisements for himself

2011-10-26T06:37:00.001-04:00

The Atlantic runsa few excerptsfrom Norman Mailer's massive trove – over a thousand boxes!– of correspondence. In 1965, he writes to William F. Buckley,Jr., about Joan Didion (who, without any premeditation on my part,seems to be turning into the recurring theme of this week'sblogging):

What a marvelous girlJoan Didion must be. I think that’s one conservative I would liketo meet. And who would ever have thought that the nicest [review ofAn American Dream] I am to read about myself four weeks afterpublication should come in the National Review. Well, this is theyear of literary wonders. What do you think the odds would have beenfor a parlay of good reviews in National Review, Life, the New YorkTimes Sunday Book Review, Paul Pickrel at Harper’s, and the ChicagoTribune. One hundred fifty million to one, or would we have picked itby light-years?

Anyway, I write youthis letter in great envy. I think you are going finally to displaceme as the most hated man in American life. And of course thatposition is bearable only if one is number one.

A thousand boxes! Could it be thatMailer is one of those writers who will end up being admired more fortheir collected letters or journals than for the work publishedduring their lifetimes?

Honor killings, II

2011-10-26T06:27:00.000-04:00

Brian Seaman, a researcher with theAlberta Civil Liberties Research Centre, makesthe familiar multicultural attempt to soft-pedal honor killing byreminding us that domestic violence already exists in the West:

For example, take thehot button issue of “honour killings”. Barbaric as the practiceadmittedly is, it is tritely obvious too that Canadian women who arewhite and of Anglo-Celtic or other European backgrounds will sufferabuse and some will die at the hands of their boyfriends, husbands orexes in a domestic example that could attract the label of barbarity.

For the thousandth time, honor killingscannot be compared to ordinary acts of domestic violence. These arenot crimes of passion. People in any culture are capable of crimesof passion. No, these are cold-blooded executions performed bypeople equipped with an on-off switch for love for their own children– a phenomenon that is impossible for a healthy Western mind toconceive of. To admit, on a large scale, people with such a culturalmindset into a civilized Western country is to welcome into our midsta systematic, dispassionate barbarism that is beyond our imagining.

Achtung!

2011-10-26T06:21:00.002-04:00

A colorful profileof Kaiser Wilhelm II:

He was given tobombastic speeches, once warning newly sworn-in recruits that, ifordered by him, they would have to shoot their parents. He gaveastounding orders to departing soldiers at the time of the BoxerRebellion that they should arouse fear as had the Huns of yore. Hedetested liberal critics. And he spoke disparagingly of foreignnations, especially of Great Britain. Some of this had to do with hisAnglophobia; he totally distrusted his mother, the daughter of QueenVictoria. Worse, though, than his arrogant, bombastic statements, hesupported ministers and military personnel who called for an evergreater German army—and, most ominously—for a high seas fleetthat would eventually be strong enough to defeat the British navy.The details of government he shunned, for they interfered with hisdiversions. He wanted to reign, and he enjoyed his huge court—overtwo thousand subordinates from generals to servants to gardeners,whom he would at times affront with crude jokes and offensive pranks.

Honor killing in Canada

2011-10-26T06:07:00.001-04:00

In Kingston, Canada, a man, his son,and his second wife are on trial for the honor killing of the man'sfirst wife and three daughters. At Front Page Magazine, a pieceabout these horrendous crimes:

It is believedMohammad Shafia, a prosperous businessman who owns a shopping mall,killed his daughters for the same reason that Aqsa Parvez’s fathermurdered her: They were living too Western a lifestyle. Shafia’sdaughters would wear Western-style clothing, have boyfriends,disrespect traditions such as the hijab, and be defiant of hisauthority. They also apparently suffered the same mistreatment attheir father’s hands that Aqsa Parvez did for behaving so. Onedaughter was even kept out of school for a whole year when it wasdiscovered she had a boyfriend. Shafia, however, was apparentlyparticularly hostile to the friendship and alliance the three hadformed with the childless Rona, which was probably the reason she wasalso killed in this mass honor murder.

“They committedtreason on themselves. They betrayed humankind. They betrayed Islam.They betrayed our religion…they betrayed everything,” Shafia toldTooba, the murdered children’s mother.

To show perhaps heisn’t completely unfeeling, Shafia also told his second wife hebecomes “consoled” over his daughters’ deaths whenever he viewsthe cell phone photos Zainab and Sahar took of themselves, posing intheir underwear or with boyfriends.

“I say to myself,‘You did well.’ Were they come to life, I would do it again,”the wiretap recorded him saying....

The Shafia family istypical of some immigrant families from Third World countries withstrict religious cultures. They arrive in the West but never actuallylive here. They want to take economically from their new environmentbut still want to live their lives by the laws, rules, customs andvalues of their country of origin. They want to adopt nothing in thisrespect from their new society, believing in some cases their newcountry’s culture inferior to their own and that it even poses athreat. For them, integration is simply out of the question and noattempt is ever made, choosing self-segregation from the host societyinstead.

But problems oftenarise when their children attend school and encounter values thatcontradict those of the family’s, especially if a strict religious,patriarchal culture reigns at home. Girls face heavy restrictions insuch homes, particularly in Muslim ones, and therefore can beespecially affected by a school environment where equality betweenthe genders is stressed, and they notice female classmates from othercultures enjoying unheard of freedoms. Wanting to fit in with theothers and enjoy life, these girls then rebel against theirrestrictive home environments, but sometimes with deadlyconsequences.

Attention, cartographiles

2011-10-25T15:41:00.000-04:00

Here's an entertaining read for anyone who's into maps.

Deconstructing Woody

2011-10-25T14:08:00.000-04:00

At Slate, a grab-bag of diverting pieces by and about Woody Allen.

An exhilarating moment for Europe?

2011-10-25T12:02:00.001-04:00

Wow – something sensiblein the Guardian!

Atthis point "pro-Europeans" have to stop talking rubbish andstart on realpolitik. Alaric is not at the gates of Rome. Washingtonhas not crossed the Delaware. Napoleon has not returned from Elba.All that may happen is that Europe's democracies, disregarded,distorted and corrupted for a quarter century by the oligarchs ofBrussels, will crawl out from the shadow of the very Acropolis wheredemocracy was born. For all sceptics of grand federations, gildedalliances, and upmarket mafias hatched down the ages in Europe'scloud-capped spas, this could be an exhilarating moment.

Scientology versus South Park

2011-10-25T10:42:00.000-04:00

Creepy.

Dhimmitude?

2011-10-25T10:17:00.001-04:00

A Nashville hotel cancels a conference by Islam critics.

Books!

2011-10-25T10:09:00.001-04:00

I wish every school system in the Westernworld would learn a lesson from this:a Silicon Valley school where the IT people send their kids becauseit doesn't have computers.

A voice from Zion

2011-10-25T09:42:00.002-04:00

In the American Scholar, astraight, non-Mormon Utah woman offers an absorbing personal accountabout Utah, Mormons, and gays:

Almost three out offour people in Utah are Mormon, but you can’t fully understand whatthat means until you live here. Knowing that the Church of JesusChrist of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is one of the fastest growing inthe world with more than 14 million members, or watching Big Love onHBO or The Book of Mormon on Broadway cannot prepare you. Even theintense media attention on Mormonism with the presidential campaignsof Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman barely touches the surface of thefaith. Mormons themselves who come to live in Utah from other partsof the country make the distinction between Mormons and Utah Mormons.The climate is so different here. In this theocracy, in a placeMormons refer to as Zion, I will always be an outsider, but I havemade a kind of peace with the state. You have to if you want toremain. The peace is both hard earned and uneasy, tested continually.And it has been the stance of the LDS Church on homosexuality thathas most recently challenged any goodwill I have fostered over theyears.

Our betters know better

2011-10-25T08:42:00.001-04:00

Most Britons would like to see areferendum on EU membership – but the EU doesn't like referendums,and neither does David Cameron:

David Cameron onMonday suffered his largest parliamentary rebellion since becomingprime minister as around 80 Conservative lawmakers defied theirleader to vote in favour of holding a referendum on Britain's EUmembership.

Cameron'sgovernment, which is against holding a referendum, in the end won theHouse of Commons vote 483-111 due to support from the LiberalDemocrats -- the Conservatives' euro-friendly junior coalitionpartners -- and the main opposition Labour Party.

Hanson on Pericles and America

2011-10-25T08:33:00.000-04:00

In the New Criterion, a wise,eloquent essayin which Victor Davis Hanson brings his rich knowledge of ancienthistory to bear on today's America and Americans, asking, in essence,what Pericles would make of us and our “presentism,” and what wewould make of him and his “reverence for the past”:

The mark of a greatleader and an even greater people is precisely such reverence for thepast—not a vague past, but one of real people who lived, suffered,achieved, and died for others. In our age of presentism and pride inour high-tech affluence—in which Americans use the standards of thecontemporary university to judge prior generations as inferior to ourown sensibilities in terms of race, class, and gender equality—suchblanket praise of our ancestors seems reactionary and illiberal.After all, the President of the United States has recently apologizedfor American behavior of a half-century earlier in Iran; for supposedpast indifference to the Palestinian issue; for maltreatment ofNative Americans, blacks, and other minorities; and for dropping theatomic bomb in World War II. Nowhere does Barack Obama hint that hehimself—so unlike the anonymous of the past whom he easilycastigates—might lack the physical stamina or bravery to withstanda bout with pre-antibiotic diphtheria, to drive a mule team in summeracross the Utah desert, to survive a Banzai charge on Okinawa, or toretreat from the Yalu River in November 1950.

Hanson's conclusion:

The real lesson ofthe Periclean Oration is not merely that some Athenian values shouldbe our own, but that in our place, according to our station, we toomight have the imagination to articulate the singularity of ourculture and the bravery to proclaim it without apology orqualification. To do otherwise, is to enjoy the unmatched bounty andfreedom of the United States without gratitude to those of the pastwho bequeathed it, and without present awareness that what we enjoymakes us blessed beyond the comprehension of most of the six billionothers on the planet.

In short, Periclesreminds Americans that, should a great culture not feel that itsvalues and achievements are exceptional, then few others will aswell—a fact injurious to a small and insignificant state, but fatalfor a power with aspirations of global leadership. A leader whorelentlessly reminds his countrymen of their shortcomings willnaturally apologize abroad for them as well, and what starts asself-critique becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of national decline.

Horse abuse

2011-10-25T07:58:00.001-04:00

So one of those Central Park carriage horses, the ones romanticized in films like Manhattan, collapses in the street and dies. I'm amazed it doesn't happen more often. Every time I see one of those horses I shake my head in pity. Does any horse in the civilized world live such an agitated life, clomping every day through the most hectic and noisy traffic anywhere, constantly being cut off by lunatic cab drivers, and being taken care of (supposedly) by people many of whom do not seem, to put it kindly, to be the most sensitive of souls? Time to put an end to this animal abuse once and for all.

Bellovian reflections

2011-10-25T07:21:00.002-04:00

In the New York Review of Books, an engagingly reflective, previously unpublished pieceby Saul Bellow about being a Jewish-American writer:

The condition I amlooking into is that of a young American who in the late Thirtiesfinds that he is something like a writer and begins to think what todo about it, how to position himself, and how to combine being a Jewwith being an American and a writer. Not everyone thinks well of sucha project. The young man is challenged from all sides.Representatives of the Protestant majority want to see hiscredentials. Less overtly hostile because they are more snobbish, theEnglish want to know who he is or what he thinks he is. Later hisFrench publishers will invariably turn his books over to Jewishtranslators.

The Jews too try toplace him. Is he too Jewish? Is he Jewish enough? Is he good or badfor the Jews? Jews in business or politics ask, “Must we forever bereading about his damn Jews?” Jewish critics examine him with acertain sharpness—they have their own axes to grind.

Pauline Kael's back in the New Yorker

2011-10-24T14:46:00.007-04:00

The New Yorker has a long piece on Pauline Kael, who, as it happens, was no fan of Joan Didion:

She hated what she viewed as Didion’s fashionable despair. She used the adaptation of “Play It as It Lays” (1972) as an occasion to sneer, in print, at the novel’s style. (“I read it between bouts of disbelieving giggles.”) The following year, Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne, published an essay pointing out that Kael’s ignorance of the moviemaking process meant she sometimes praised or chastised directors for choices they didn’t make.

Dunne, it turns out, wasn't the only Hollywood insider who chided Kael for being insufficiently savvy about what actually happens on a movie set. After Kael, in a takedown of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, complained that each line of dialogue in the film “comes out of nowhere, coyly, in a murmur, in the dead sound of the studio,” the picture’s director, George Roy Hill, who had, in fact, shot it outdoors, shot off a letter to her:

“Listen, you miserable bitch,” he began, “you’ve got every right in the world to air your likes and dislikes, but you got no goddam right at all to fake, at my expense, a phony technical knowledge you simply don’t have.”

Fun stuff.

Up close and personal

2011-10-24T14:29:00.002-04:00

I am not a fan of Joan Didion, for reasons I explained at length in a Hudson Review article in 2007 (available here to subscribers), but this intimate profile of her makes interesting reading nonetheless. I found the following admission especially striking, because it confirmed my own major reservation about her work:

She admits that her writing might lack empathy, even human curiosity. “I’m not very interested in people,” she says. “I recognize it in myself—there is a basic indifference toward people.”