Friday, July 2, 2010 - pre-Shabbat Blog

1. RCN - Halifax is home to Canada's East Coast Navy. Not to take away from the West Coast Navy, or other missions it has undertaken, I particularly think of the Royal Canadian Navy in terms of the heroic work in the Battles of the Atlantic in World Wars I and II, as well as its recent missions in the Persian Gulf.

In any event, 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Navy - Canadian Navy: Canadian Naval Centennial - Events & Activities - so I want to take this opportunity to wish the Navy and its members a hearty congratulations and thank you for all it has done for the citizens of Canada and its allies.

Here are a few pictures I took this past weekend.




2. Provocative Part II - (following up from last Sunday's Blog posting, item 9) You Can Be a Zionist and Pro-Palestinian: I Am - New Post by Uri Goldflam

3. I Hope They Die From Shame - French Nazi collaborators to be exposed as official reports published online | Mail Online. While on the topic of the Shoah, check out:
(the infamous Drancy Transit Camp near Paris)

4. But Are They Too Arrogant To Listen - Probably! - ‘EU doesn't understand what Israel is up against'


5. Simple But Difficult Question - Pajamas Media » What Is Israel Doing Wrong?

6. Another Simple But Difficult Question - Pajamas Media » Gilad Shalit: At Any Price?



8. Asylum Granted - In what can only be considered as a nightmare trip into the heart of Bureaucracy, it was actually suggested that Mosab Hassan Yousuf be deported - Michael Ross: A real Palestinian hero needs U.S. help | Full Comment | National Post and Townhall - Deporting the Wrong Man. Thankfully, this has been averted - Political Asylum Granted to Mosab Hassan Yousef.




11. Sounds Like An Old Karl Malden Ad For American Express:


12. Iran - never far from the front pages:

14. G20 Toronto Wrap Up - a few last thoughts:


17. This Is Satire - just want to be clear - Israel Dismantles; World's Problems End : The Current Truth

18. The Dutch Advance - I am not a football (ie - soccer) nut as are many of my European friends - but at this point in the World Cup, I do start to at least pay more attention. Congrats to the Dutch, who knocked out heavy favorite Brazil this morning with a 2-1 come from behind victory (thus ensuring that there will not be all-South American semifinals). They will play the Ghana-Uruguay winner - game currently underway and there is no score. There are 2 more semi-finals tomorrow - Spain/Paraguay and Argentina/Germany.

One "sad" note, so to speak - near the end of the match, I did see a Brazilian fan holding up an Israeli flag - maybe he will give the flag to a Dutch fan to display in the semi-final!

And of course - for a Seinfeldian perspective on a basic question - check this out!


Monday, June 28, 2010 - Video Night!

1. Now You See Him, Now You Don't: - I could not embed this video, but it is worth watching via this link.

2. Bring Him Home:



3. The Three Terrors:


4. Old Color Video of Israel:


5. BP Parody:

Sunday, June 27, 2010

1. This Is Close To Home - Congresswoman: Hizballah jihadists colluding with drug cartels on Mexican border - Jihad Watch



2. Another Human Rights Watch Criticism - but it's not of Israel (well, not directly - it manages to get in some shots anyway) - The Associated Press: Rights group criticizes Hamas treatment of Israeli. See also Michael Oren: Gilad Shalit: Hostage of Hamas - WSJ.com and Sarkozy sends letter to Noam Schalit

3. The G8 - G20 Hits Toronto - the usual small group of anarchists essentially used the overwhelming majority of peaceful demonstrators as a form of a human shield and sparked violence and destruction of property
hey, guys, here's the thing - in Canada, you can protest more or less whatever you want as long as it's not illegal (use of hate speech for example) or violent. That is your right as a Canadian citizen, and I support your exercise of that right even if I fundamentally disagree with your position.

But as far as I am concerned, once you employ violence, the game changes and you need to pay the price. For starters, I'd like to go to wherever these people live and destroy their worldly possessions. And quite frankly, if some of them ended up with some broken bones or ribs, well - that's life in the big city.


I have been told that my approach is fundamentally wrong and that you do not answer violence with violence - then "we" become no better than "them". I'm not sure so sure - these criminals, and in my opinion that is exactly what they are, need to pay a meaningful price for their actions. They are clearly not afraid of being arrested or of the court system (though they are more than willing to use the protection of Canadian civil rights and the rule of law when it suits them), so I'm guessing the message has to be brought home in another manner.

It is also interesting to see the concerns expressed about the presence of such violence in Canada's largest city, and how best to deal with it. If people have a problem handling the need for security and the violence of the protesters, then maybe they have now obtained a small taste of what Israelis have to endure - and in Israel, the bad guys don't just want to break some windows and torch some police cars - they want to kill you, your family, your neighbors and destroy your country and your entire way of life. I doubt it, but maybe this will make some prescient few a little less judgmental about Israel.

4. Obsession - and I don't mean the cologne. The World's Deadly Obsession With Israel - Forbes.com. See also:

5. UNRWA - one of my [major sarcasm alert] "favorite" organizations - UNRWA - Pajamas Media » Israel Blockade Getting in the Way … UNRWA Says and The Rosett Report » Let Turkey Pay for UNRWA


6. I'm Rooting For Spain In The World Cup - but only because of this - JPost.com BlogCentral In the Trenches Spain's Pro-Israel Tag Team


7. Flotilla Fascination - the earnest, self-righteous useful idiots (together with the hardcore terrorist types) apparently have figured out that the way to put pressure on Israel is through an endless stream of flotillas. Here are some links about that:
8. Gee, You'd Think They Went To See Some Male Strippers - Private Practice - by Elizabeth Cohen > Tablet Magazine - A New Read on Jewish Life
"This is not a story of the undoing of Judaism, but of its cancellation through silence and storage."
Maybe, but the result is the same.






12. I Do Not Know If This Is Fake - but it is very funny regardless - is it obvious that the guy being interviewed is a master of spin? If BP doesn't hire him, maybe Israel should....

Friday, June 25, 2010 - brief pre-Shabbat blog

1. I Got Mail - Someone wrote a piece that appeared on the editorial page of the Halifax Herald in April. I found the piece objectionable. I copied the entire piece from the Herald website, posted it on my blog, and then wrote about it.

Yesterday I received a letter from the guy. In what I would describe as a very officious letter, he solemnly informed me that he was the author of the piece in question, that he had never relinquished copyright nor given me permission to publish it and that I was to remove the piece from my blog and never publish it "...ever again in any form or in any medium, in whole or in part".

Well! I do not have the time nor patience to argue with the guy. I have no idea whether he is correct. I have simply removed the piece - though I stress that my doing so is not any admission of any wrongdoing on my part - I just cannot be bothered.

To the extent that I have thought about it, I guess what surprises me is that he does not mind having the letter published in the Herald, which claims thousands and thousands of daily readers, but he objects to it being published and criticized on my little old blog, where, I assure you, the readership is rather less. Seems to me that if he really believed what he written, he would not mind having it published anywhere. Oh well....


2. Big Story Of The Week - does not involve Jews as such and does not involve Israel. It is the trials and tribulations of General McChrystal - the now former top American commander in Afghanistan who exhibited a complete lack of judgement in making very disparaging remarks about his civilian overseers in the presence of a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine.

Seems to me (as a civilian) that whatever his skills as a commander in the field - and I gather that they are profound - especially in the area of counter-insurgencies - he had to go. And he did, being replaced by the extremely capable General Petraeus.

I am no fan of President Obama, but what I am reading says that he handled this situation - which was not of his own making - very capably. Here are some reflections on the story:

3. Jimmah The Dhimmah - A very large number of people suggest quite strongly that Jimmy Carter was America's worst-ever President. And his allegations of Israeli apartheid while he is in the pocket of the Saudis and having love-ins with terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah suggest to me that he is also America's worst-ever former President and a "dhimmi" - which I understand to mean a non-Muslim who has accepted Muslim rule.




5. Palestinian Bandstand - It's got a good beat, and the kids can blow themselves up to it.....Jewlicious THE Jewish Blog » “When we die as martyrs”. This is what you get from relentless Jew hatred in the Arab educational and entertainment systems. Funny, how you almost never hear about that.


6. Captain Fantastic Is In Trouble - as should be obvious, this is a joke - though it certainly makes the point - Rock'n'Roll Board of Compliance Disciplines Elton John : The Current Truth







10. It's A Dog's Life - I do not even know what to say...



Tuesday, June 22, 2010

1. One Of My "Favorite" Topics - Liberals! Why some liberals lose perspective










7. Sderot - I have had the pleasure to have visited Sderot in 2007 and 2009. It is a beautiful town within the 1948 boundaries of the State of Israel that has the misfortune to be located hard by Gaza. It suffered thousands of rocket attacks prior to Operation Cast Lead. Hamas apologists and sympathizers say that the rockets were crude items and that hardly anyone in Sderot was killed by them. I am not going to be so presumptuous as to say that I know what it was like to live in Sderot during that time, but you can easily imagine living under the constant threat of attack (with about 15 seconds warning). In any event, rather than wallow in misery as the Palestinian leadership likes to see for its people, and despite a certain amount of indifference from the Israeli Government, the people of Sderot have persevered - Sderot, the Capital of Rockets and Rock – Forward.com. My hat is off to them. That is courage.


8. Attitude Adjustment Required - Celebrating Genocide | FrontPage Magazine
"That “decent” Britons and other Europeans can today embrace Israel’s enemies and be indifferent to their Nazi-like genocidal incitement and aspirations is not an anomaly but all too familiar. We’ve seen it before."

9. Why Can't People See This? MOWBRAY: Hamas reloading - Washington Times






12. Random Seinfeld Link - Seinfeld sports episodes | Guyism