They also invited Inayat Bunglawala to contribute to an anniversary piece. This guy called Osama a “good Muslim” not long before the attacks and has been representing an organization which not only defended terrorists but also supplied the ideological indoctrination to British Muslims, the MCB. 

 

You’d think that ‘America’ was a sleeping giant rather than a superpower almost constantly at war, or in some sort of conflict, all over the Islamic domains. Osama bin Laden’s name and face have become so numbingly familiar to Americans as in effect to obliterate any his tory he and his shadowy followers might have had before they became stock symbols of everything loathsome and hateful to the collective imagination. Inevitably, then, collective passions are being funnelled into a drive for war that uncannily resembles Captain Ahab in pursuit of Moby Dick, rather than what is going on, an imperial power injured at home for the first time, pursuing its interests systematically in what has become a suddenly reconfigured geography of conflict, without clear borders, or visible actors. Manichaean symbols and apocalyptic scenarios are bandied about with future consequences and rhetorical restraint thrown to the winds.

There is something to be said about the mind of the artist, sensitive, emotional, always searching for drama .

It is what fuels the creative process.

Waters, who hasn’t really written any new material since the late 80s, has embarked on a road which he first padded with the last Pink Floyd album he wrote, The Final Cut.

The album sealed the fate of his membership in the band as, by this time, he refused to accept the material his partner David Gilmour wrote for the project, opening the door for one of the nastiest break ups in the music industry. Law suits followed in which Waters attempted to prevent the rest of the group from using the name Pink Floyd.  Fans were divided, and Waters was left on the sidelines writing two solo projects, both resembling old Pink Floyd records, while the rest of the group moved on with a series of big sellers and sold out tours.

In The Final Cut, Waters sings about the state of current affairs at the time, opening with the verses:

“Brezhnev took Afghanistan and Begin took Beirut, Galtieri took the Union Jack”

Those were 80s.  The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979; the Lebanese civil war has been raging on, aggravated by the the PLO’s destructive presence. Argentina just invaded the Falklands and Thatcher was just elected PM, taking the UK away from a long line of Left leaning Labour governments.

These events, I guess, marked Waters as the whole record was devoted to mocking Thatcher, the uselessness of the cold war and other mundane political topics which diverted Pink Floyd away from the psychedelic style they were known for, the symbolism which rendered the songs open to interpretation while, musically, it suffered from a lack of originality, a quality which previously defined Floyd.

Originality and innovation were out, political activism was in. It was painful to listen to. Instead of the magical sounds and poetic lyrics, fans were treated to monologues by a bitter self-indulgent man.

The Final Cut sounded like an attempt by a 70s band to fight on in the 80s where New Wave and Punk were taking the youth away into a more apolitical anti establishment direction. Waters sounded like a professor lecturing a group of students who no longer seemed to “need no thought control”.

Notice his reference to Israel “taking” Beirut, as if the PLO just entered the country with student visas. Nor did his artistic and political sensibility allow for burdensome nuance, such as the fact that Israel was defending itself against mounting PLO terrorist attacks (which upon expulsion from Jordan had nestled into Beirut) launched from Lebanon. Aside from killing Jews, the PLO was responsible for atrocities committed against the Lebanese: rapes, robberies, killings and kidnappings. This mounting violence and terror, committed by the Palestinians under Arafat, was so severe that at one time the three warring sides of Lebanon put their differences aside and came together in an effort to oust this terrorist entity from their country.

However in Waters’ fanciful imagination the PLO never “took Beirut”. Israel did.

Little has changed since. Israel is still besieged by rocket attacks.  There were over 30 in this year alone and, despite withdrawals from S. Lebanon and Gaza, terrorism persists – as morbidly noted by the recent slaughter of a Jewish family sleeping in their beds in Itamar.

Israel’s enemies (and “critics”) haven’t changed either. Israel takes, attacks, conquers, occupies and oppresses while its enemies are granted impunity over their violence and fanaticism.

I watched Roger Waters recently on Al Jazeera and am glad he was frank in acknowledging that he gets his news from the BBC and Al Jazeera.  No wonder he considers Israel the bad guys.  And, it is only natural that his contribution as a reporter would appear on the pages of CiF.

The “Holy Trinity” of biased news and anti-Israel hate sits well in his head it seems.

Waters’ uses his masterpiece work, The Wall, to not so subtly advance his demonization of Israel.

He brings up the requisite South Africa Apartheid analogies, the hallmark of such efforts at delegitimizing the Jewish state.

Granted, “The Wall” was a masterpiece. It was based on Waters’ life story, one which begun in the early years of WWII and the wounds of losing his father (who died fighting the Nazis in Italy) as it festered through his private and creative life.

Today he is just a has been.

While its difficult to not appreciate the artistic genius which produced the Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, and Wish You Were Here, his politics lacks the edge his creative mind was able to express for four decades.  The analytical part of his mind does indeed seem quite comfortably numb.

Waters, writing for CiF, March 11, calls for sanctions against Israel, accuses the Jewish state of practicing apartheid, and demands that their security fence be torn down – a barrier which has dramatically reduced terrorist attacks.

This barrier is what gave rise to the rockets which, though deadly and capable of instilling terror for residents within their menacing range, doesn’t compare to the carnage caused by suicide bombings before the “wall” was erected.

He calls the people of Gaza “besieged”.

By whom?

To Waters the answer is easy: Israel, of course, and certainly not the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood which took power after Israel evacuated every last Jew from the territory - a regime which just the other day attacked Gazans who demonstrated peacefully for Palestinian Unity; A regime which forbids women from smoking and men from cutting their beards, and one which destroyed every bit of infrastructure left behind by the Israelis in order to build bunkers, tunnels and rockets.

Waters wants to lift the blockade so that ships like the Victoria could sail into the Gaza and equip its Iranian backed terrorist regime with more weapons, explosives, missiles and guns which will be used to kill more Israelis and kill and intimidate more Palestinians who dare speak out.

Waters’ doesn’t mention the Nazi ideology embedded into the Hamas charter, along with the Protocols and the Islamist dogma which, if left to its own devices, would turn Gaza (and all of Palestine if they had a chance ) into another Taliban-style polity.

Not once does the word “terrorism” grace his essay.

And it doesn’t even stop there. Waters demands that Israel allow the “refugees” to settle back to Israel proper. The code for the dismantling of the Jewish state.

This puts Waters solidly into the camp of those who want more from Israel than mere territorial compromise – those who want it to become the 51st majority Muslim state, where Jews would, yet again, become a minority vulnerable to the whims and wishes of a hostile majority.

What could possibly go wrong?

The wall (and lunatic) is in his head…

Muslim Brotherhood

Jack Shenker and Brian Whitaker are rolled out by the Guardian to teach its readership about the Muslim Brotherhood as they become prominent in the Egyptian revolt to oust Mubarak.

In an “exclusive” interview granted by the Brothers to the Guardian we are treated to the same old platitudes and shades of dark grey learning less about who the Brotherhood is but more about the Guardian – shown once more as the central place to whitewash Islamism, bigotry and hate.

Yes it is mentioned that the Brotherhood is not supportive of gay rights. Wow. I suppose many readers may have thought the Brotherhood is some grander version of “Queers for Palestine” before being educated by Whitaker.

However there is zero mention of the fascist roots of this movement. The Guardian, expectedly omits the direct Nazi links and Nazi inspiration both in the article and the accompanying picture album showing the “turbulent” history of the Brotherhood.

That turbulence, according to the Guardian, stems from the anti-colonial nature and roots of the movement, opposing British industry and Arab dictators from Nasser to Mubarak.

Here’s another example of how Guardian writers express their lost novelist side when educating their readers on aspects of Islamist fanaticism:

“But placating foreign powers was not what Hassan al-Banna founded the movement for in 1928. It was Britain’s presence in Egypt that led to the brotherhood’s creation. Six Egyptian workers employed in the military camps of Ismailiyya in the Suez Canal Zone visited Banna, a young teacher who they had heard preaching in mosques and cafes on the need for “Islamic renewal”.

Cafes, students and mosques. One might think this was a Middle Eastern version of 1968 Paris by reading this.

In this passage we are led to believe that this movement is a peaceful one and has not been linked to anything nasty since 1954.

“The brotherhood was also implicated in an attempt to assassinate President Gamal Nasser in 1954, but it has long since renounced violence as a political means in Egypt. By the 1980s it was making determined efforts to join the political mainstream, making a series of alliances with the Wafd, the Labour and Liberal parties. In the 2000 election it won 17 parliamentary seats. Five years later, with candidates standing as independents for legal reasons, it won 88 seats – 20% of the total and its best electoral result to date.

Well they were also implicated in the assassination of Anwar Saddat but I guess that fact may not jive well with the phrase “long since renounced violence”

No mention of Quttb’s association with – and ideological affinity for – Adolf Hitler, nor any mention of the central role played by the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem in establishing this movement.

Should we even mention the plan to take over and destroy the West from within?

Probably not, as that would disturb the romanticization of such extremists that the Guardian often succumbs to.

No mention that Al Queda’s number 2, Ayman Al Zawahiri was originally a Muslim Brotherhood activist. (He was supposedly more of the mosque type than the café type.)

It seems that the Guardian must lack access to Google, as even a cursory search would provide a clear outline of the fascist links and roots of the movement – how it was inspired by the emerging Nazi party in Germany (how anti-colonial is that) and influenced by its ideals, and how the brotherhood was the leading purveyor of anti-Semitic propaganda in the Middle East.

The Brotherhood is exactly the opposite of what Whitaker and Shenker would want us believe. They are the ultimate colonizers. They lack the means at present but their plans and ambitions are anti-colonialist only to the extent that they oppose the colonialism of others. They want a Caliphate ruled by Sharia where non-Muslims pay Jiyzia to the Ummah for protection.

From Mein Kampf to the Protocols, the Brotherhood has been influenced by the vilest hate literature – an enmity responsible, in large measure, for the current state of affairs in Muslim-Jewish relations.

The Guardian omits the links to Hamas and other nasty outfits, omits that the Brotherhood is at the root of modern Arab-Muslim anti-Semitism and whitewashes once again a nasty hate based movement as some progressive assembly of well-meaning pious men whose only imperfection is that they do not get on board with rights of sexual minorities.

I mentioned that it was the Guardian coverage of the Lebanon war of 2006 which prompted me to actively enter the blogging world. It was then when I started posting at Comment is Free (CiF) fighting the enemies of Jews and Israel who inhabited that space between out right anti-Semitism and leftist “anti zionism”.

What I did not write about was how I stumbled upon CiF, and the coverage the Guardian afforded to the war on terror and issues pertaining to Israel. Finding out that the Guardian had contributors seemingly sympathetic to Hamas and Hezbollah (and radical Islam more broadly) was not an easy pill to swallow. It was actually quite shocking. It was also jarring to learn that comments were so anti-Semitic in some instances that they competed with the vile rhetoric typically associated with the far right. Aryan Nations, the KKK and similar outfits were infamous for such explicitly anti-Semitic rhetoric, and it was quite counter-intuitive to see echoes of such hateful narratives at British liberal mainline publications.

The place where I got my education in Guardian variety anti-Semitism – as well as the broader threat posed by radical Islam – was Little Green Footballs. Charles Johnson’s blog, was, at the time, the go to place for discovering the nastiness inhabiting the radical left. It was on LGF that I learned about the Al-Durah fraud, the Guardian contributors sacked for terror sympathies and allegedly even threatening Johnson with throat cutting for his exposes by Inayat Bunglawala, who was also the CiF contributor, and who praised Osama Bin Laden as a “good Muslim”.  I read the investigation Johnson did on that post. Though it wasn’t conclusive, it was still extremely creepy and must have been frightening to receive.

Johnson was so angry at the Guardian that, as a LGF reader, my first posts actually ended up landing on CiF, and not his blog  - which I used more for news than discussion.

Johnson was diligent in exposing Pallywood productions and Palestinian media savvy rituals following deaths in their ranks. I think he coined the term car swarm – depicting the crowds of Palestinians gathering around a wrecked vehicle (for transporting terrorists) hit by the Israeli Air Force.

Johnson exposed Rachel Corrie as something other than a “peace activist” (he ran that famous picture of the ISM activist burning the American flag together with Palestinians) and he ran with the nickname given to Corrie by one of his posters “Saint Pancake” after she met her fate under an Israeli bulldozer.

Like everyone else in the blogging world, I too was aware of Charles Johnson’s ideological metamorphosis from right to left. He had his reasons, but what was disappointing, aside from losing such a diligent researcher and ally, was the way he went about his change of sides. He made it a personal issue between himself and some of his previous blogging friends.

I was always of the view (perhaps by spending too much time in management school) that one should not bring one’s personal life into the professional one and vice versa, as both will ultimately suffer.  Most importantly, personal issues cloud one’s vision in the work they do.

Case in point: this Guardian article which was later reposted at LGF and Harry’s Place.

This piece which was called an “investigation” was one which encompassed all great anti-Semitic tropes. Money, subversion, manipulation, influence and conspiracy.

It argues that certain right-wing American Jews are intent on funding and consulting the EDL in return for assistance for the Tea Party to be more like the EDL (read violent anti government fascist insurrection).

Press TV would have been impressed with this stuff. Yet it was run by major center left blogs. The fact that none of the meetings and associations actually existed (even the article talked about plans of meetings) escaped those who wanted to attack their political enemies. In this case, the Tea Party and Pamela Geller.

This CiF comment following the article best illustrates the typical Guardian pattern we have been exposing since our inception — how articles inspire the conspiracy theories which follow, such as the Joo-Tea-EDL conspiracy theory.

In my view, had it not been in the context of the personal conflict between Charles Johnson and Pamela Geller, Johnson (based on his ability to detect these things) would have caught it with his bigot catcher net. Yet this time he promoted it because it was useful in a political but also a nasty personal conflict.

He forgot to read it without his Geller shades on.

Soon after this, Johnson wrote an essay for CiF – the very blog he inspired me to monitor 5 years ago.

I also admit that I once joked about this with someone a couple of months ago. The idea was one of those hyperbolic what ifs usually told at the end of some semi joking shop talk.

Readers can imagine how it felt seeing my “imagine if…” scenario actually occur.

It was also noteworthy that Johnson again used his enemy Geller to enter the stage of CiF.

He wrote a piece claiming credit for creating a few now popular bloggers and used Geller as the example of who should be prohibited. Ironically he furnished no examples of nasty LGF comments by Geller, the partial premise of his article.

Needless to say I have no interest in the Johnson / Geller spat. (But, for those who are curious, you can see here and here.)

I am perplexed about the Guardian. What’s in it for them? Have they merely not noticed that they were entering into the middle of a very nasty personal conflict?

(Today Robert Spencer was allowed to answer Johnson’s attacks in his own CiF post. Judging by this comment by Matt Seaton, they seem to be aware and seem to also enjoy joining Johnson in his quest of ridding the internet of “undesirable” ideas. During the discussion on the Johnson Cif thread, moderators deleted posts linking to the rebuttals Geller and Spencer offered in their respective blogs.)

Was the Guardian aware of the stuff Johnson used to write?

Are we to expect better moderation from them because of Johnson’s contribution?

Are we going to see less contributions to CiF now as some ideas will become intolerable? They featured Hamas on CiF and George Galloway, but also Richard Perle and Sarah Palin. I find it hard to imagine what a blog which featured real terrorists would find so objectionable that their voice shall not be heard or tolerated.

If there’s a brand of hatred the Guardian needs to be warned about it’s not Geller’s — of whom they had never heard before the Ground Zero Mosque controversy. The enmity they need to guard against is the new anti-Semitism – which disguises itself behind the thin veneer of anti-Zionism.

What possible warning do they need about the alleged hate speech of so-called right-wing American bloggers? It isn’t as if they were a regular feature there.  This is why I find this visit amusing.

Johnson’s wasn’t a good article but it made that up in entertainment value in the comments section.  Shortly after it reached about 80 or so comments the thread looked like a Seumas Milne post generated deletion orgy.  The nasty feud came right onto CiF.  Supporters on both sides hijacked the thread.

It must have been fun for the moderators getting into the middle of this ruckus – not knowing what was really going on over three years leading up to it. Posts were deleted for asking questions or challenging the claims made by Johnson.

I don’t think anybody did any favours to anyone with this funny exercise.

Who’s using who is a 50/50 bet here.

At the end it was probably great at helping the hit count but there was little discussion concerning what Johnson was actually trying to say in his piece — something, which, in my view, is worth examining.

Johnson’s main point comes through well in the conclusion of his piece.  It is interesting because in some way it relates to what we do here on CiF Watch. We attempt to expose anti-Semitism and jihadism within articles and comments at the Guardian. Johnson argues for something similar but he takes it to a level which suggests outright censorship.

“Since the days when Pamela Geller commented frequently at LGF, I’ve made a serious effort to develop tools for effectively moderating blog discussions, so that LGF will no longer become an inadvertent breeding ground for Geller’s brand of hatred. The web’s inherent anonymity makes it far too easy for extremists and trolls of all kinds to hijack a blog’s comments; only by taking more control of the tone of the discussion can sane bloggers start to pull things back toward the centre…Controlling the tone of the discussion is the responsibility of moderators. They set up moderation rules and they enforce them.”

In my view control is in the hands of individual blogs. What I sense from Johnson is an argument for some universal virtual rule book about where lines are drawn to discern when “hijacking” is hijacking, “trolling” is trolling and “hate speech” is hate speech.

My first concern is that something like this could become a tool for some blogs to monitor others and impose rules as to who can post where, who should be banned, or who can link to whom, by threatening them with exposes and campaigns of humiliation if certain perceived associations are alleged.

An intellectual stoning is what comes to my mind with the accused not being able to defend his/her ideas as all are forced to condemn him/her or face the same fate. I cannot see how that could be helpful in the free exchange of ideas.

Who decides what idea is to be no longer tolerated?

Who determines then really who is beyond the pale?

And if that one is brought down, who will be next?

How would this work between blogs who should be independent?

Who decides on the infraction definitions above?

How are they to be enforced?

By whom?

Who will be able to exert more influence by being “bigger” in the fish pond the blogosphere is?

The better funded ones? The more popular ones?

The notion automatically reminded me of Queens University a few years ago when they instituted a campus talk policy whereby monitors would actually walk among students in the cafeteria and the lounge to make sure no “offensive speech” was occurring.  These monitors had the school administration’s power behind them. A real Orwellian scenario was playing out in the last place it should – at a university, where exchange of ideas are supposed to be the very founding premise.

The blogosphere is like a little world. A campus, a network of clubs if you will.

Do we want to really monitor speech and ideas? Johnson speaks about ideas as well as specific speech.

The internet has indeed empowered people who previously had lived on the margins of society. From criminals to terrorists, and hate groups, it added to their arsenal. However I am not aware of blog posts killing people. Incitement to violence is well-defined by existing laws in Western countries. Whether it is occurring online, in flyers, or talk radio, we know what it is.

I would not like the internet to become Singaporized, to borrow the term from the brilliant George Jonas, where ideological infractions are punished by banishment.

Fighting toxic ideas is best done by actually debating them. Democracy is about the free exchange of ideas. If we want the internet to reflect our values we should strive for it to remain democratic and free.

Along with that comes the right to offend and disagree.

As John Stuart Mill said:

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

I sense there is a wish by some in the blogging world to purge the internet of certain ideas. We sensed that, at CiF, each time we defended Israel. We are accused of being part of conspiracies or expressing racist views.

Johnson’s is perhaps a well intended idea, but one which cannot lead to a healthy internet world – one which takes seriously the value of a free market of ideas. Power always corrupts and those who wield it always end up either abusing it or misplacing it. This is happening every hour of every day in the real world. How would that not be happening in the blogging world?

Why would we want to bring these power plays into what is still a free medium which allows divergent voices to speak – regardless of their power or status.  In other words, online, a simple citizen can challenge the NYT, the Guardian or Fox news and CNN – citizens like Charles Johnson who took CBS and Reuters to task in the past for peddling fraud. I recall CiF first deleting references (and LGF links) to the Reuters Fauxtography evidence. The idea that Israel was right in defending itself was simply not acceptable on some of those threads. Are we now to believe this will not happen again? It is that cliché again and I hate to use it:  A slippery slope, filled with wet leaves and banana peels.

One may ask: How is it not hypocritical from someone at CiF Watch to complain about web moderation and unacceptable ideas.

We monitor anti-Semitic hate speech based on definitions that have been unambiguously codified. We use the EU definition of anti-Semitism as a guide to defining what anti-Semitism.   Can Charles Johnson say the same about his red lines? We are not policing Jewish jokes here.

We also discuss issues we were not able to discuss on CiF because of moderation which we perceived to be unfair when it came to articles about Israel or the Middle East. We wanted a voice. Our ideas were not afforded tolerance. Some of them were called racist and bigoted. We wanted to add to the debate as well as expose what we see as specific examples of anti-Semitism. None of us practiced hate speech yet many of us were still banned from posting.

We are willing to discuss the issues with those whom we criticize. They are most often not. We invited them on a number of occasions. Most of those writers turned us down. We still debate and allow CiF posters to spar with us and argue their case here.

We do not banish posters unless they break one of the golden rules all blogs had in place since this medium begun.  We learn from our allies and our adversaries. We can safely say we are democratic and that we defend free speech.

Our speech was silenced on CiF. Some of our ideas were “out of bounds”.  We wanted to be heard and we wanted a frank discussion. I think this is what blogging is all about. There is no need for blog police.

That narrative was a usual one when discussing wars involving Israel and Arabs despite that, by this time, we have seen the Coalition invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq unfold and have seen the tactics deployed by Jihadists seeking martyrdom. As a matter of course, they were hiding behind civilians, civilian structures, and even dressed like civilians when ambushing American, Canadian and British soldiers who were seeking out the enemy among an undeniably unfortunate civilian population.

Yet when Israel responded to the kidnappings and rocket barrages of Hezbollah, the media reported Hezbollah casualties as “civilians”. Each day, 100, 200, 300 “Lebanese civilians” died while Hezbollah declared (and the media reported) that they lost 3 or 5 fighters on a given day. It sounded insane. I recall one report near the end of the war which stated that Israel lost 138 soldiers, but killed 1200 Lebanese civilians, while Hezbollah lost 15 fighters. No sane person would believe such nonsense so why, I asked myself, was this on the news.

Something seemed out of tune here. Something seemed really wrong with that picture.

Like many of us, 9/11 changed me. I was always aware of terrorism and radical Islam but starting that day, I entered the online world of news and commentary, and discovered scholars, experts and personalities who‘s work probably did not matter as much on September 10, 2001. During those long nights sitting at the computer reading people like David Horowitz, Robert Spencer and Steven Emerson, to name a few, I plunged into a new world. A world where I have discovered issues and conflicts similar to the ones my father told me about when he was growing up during WWII. One of those issues was anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews. Not long after the attacks on New York and Washington, conspiracy theories were spreading that Jews were the actual culprits and Israel was the one benefiting from this and that Bush was under the control of a Jewish cabal and as such needed to declare a war on Muslims.

I found these ideas so silly that I laughed at them and assumed nobody could possibly believe such nonsense. I was wrong. Many have, and many more believed other, even crazier, conspiracy theories. I also realized that these 9/11 Jewish conspiracies were not created in a vacuum but were the culmination of a long and steady effort of demonizing Israel and the Jewish people, which started before I really cared to notice. The internet was always a crazy place. Conspiracy theories were all over it for years. How those ideas managed to find themselves in mainline publications was the question I needed answering.

In 2006 when the Lebanon war coverage was taking up most of the afternoons on CNN, and occupied most of the space on the popular blogs (which I read but never commented on seeing no real purpose to do so), I read a couple of articles and exposes on the Guardian and its comments section which was, according to these reports, filled with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Islamist propaganda. In fact I recall the Guardian being in the news when it was revealed that CiF contributor Inayat Bunglavala had praised Osama Bin Laden.

During the start of the Lebanon war, I started to read the blog of the Guardian, called ‘Comment is Free’. I was curious to find out what the fuss was about as much was written about CiF on American Blogs, exposing the often explicit anti-Semitism and, at times, apparent sympathy for terrorist movements.

What I found was more than I could have ever bargained for. Comments about the inhumanity of Jewish fighters during the 1948 war, and even rhetoric about the “savagery” of the Jewish fighters during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising (according to SS officers) caught my eye. This was a rude awakening.

What I saw was the complete and perfect merger of anti-Israel rhetoric with old anti-Semitic tropes. It was like reading a magazine from 1936 Germany but instead of “Jew”, “Zionist” and “Israeli” were the descriptive words.

“Israel is stealing water from Palestinians”, “Israel is polluting Palestinian terrorizes…Zionists control the media …Israel is killing children as a matter of course and Israel is stealing money from the Palestinians. Old anti-Semitic tropes of the “Jew poisoning the well”, “The Jew killing our children…” “The Jew embezzling the collective wealth” and the Jew controlling our leaders and armies.

What I also discovered was that the articles in CiF seemed to inspire such comments, as the tropes they employed inevitably led their readers down a path of hate and vitriol. Much like when one starts to learn to swim or ride a bicycle, they held onto these ideas, not crossing ideological lines which commenters were ready to cross, who were merely following the direction of the writer – who then could wash his/her hands of bigotry knowing that the nastiness was taken up by someone else under the cover of anonymity.

What I concluded was that the Guardian was incubating what Melanie Phillips called the ‘New anti-Semitism” It was also incubating the alliance between the radical Left and Islamism.

Now I understood the power of comments sections. Before I never really cared, as I thought they were just a new version of ‘letters to the editor’. Now I understood what they could be used for. They often served as a gateway between the mainstream media and the conspiracy peddlers – bigots inspired by “respectable” writers who would advance tropes which carefully skirted around the edges of acceptable commentary.

We have since covered, and exposed, many examples of this phenomenon during the last year on CiF Watch. We commented on the Guardian’s defense of Saddam Hussein.  We demonstrated how they attempted to defend the comments of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – arguing that he didn’t actually call for Israel to be “wiped off the map” – and make excuses for, or rationalize, the malicious propaganda which not only was targeting Israel and Jews, but also America and the West.

I am still posting on CiF. Came close to being banned and do not expect to stay much longer. During that first summer, I felt almost alone in the sea of hate. A part of me enjoyed my contrarian position and I felt that at least this asymmetric situation will make me a better debater and will sharpen my mind.

However I wasn’t alone. There were others there on my side. I slowly started to watch out for kindred spirits who, like me, were immersed in a sea of hate and posting relentlessly in attempts to debunk the nasty and hateful posts which were attempting to spread such vile ideas.

It was on one of those days that I was invited to communicate with another poster who was part of a small group of commenters always re-appearing under moniker after moniker after having been banned by CiF moderators apparently more concerned about towing the ideological line, and defending their writers, than monitoring the hate speech appearing on their blog.

We assisted each other by alerting one other when a thread was open, and we helped each other in the many side debates which occurred between ourselves and posters attacking us. We were never part of, or working on behalf of, any government or non government agency, though we were continuously accused of it. Those accusations came not only from lunatic posters obsessed with Israeli spies infiltrating their sacred lair, but also by editors like Brian Whitaker who accused posters defending Israel of being part of a conspiracy.

Slowly our group grew and around late 2007, I suggested that we create our own blog and expose the Guardian for what it is – an incubator of radical Leftist apologists for radical Islam and the snake pit of the new anti-Semitism.

The first person to respond was Medusa. She said, “I would write for it.” Others joined in the discussion and the idea morphed into this watch site.  Those discussions took a long time, as most of us being Jewish, just could not agree on a format which could address the issues all of us, liberals, conservatives, religious and secular cared about  – which says quite a bit about the merit of Jewish conspiracy theories.

The only common denominator was the moderation policy – and radical slant of the Guardian which we found to be a nesting place for anti-Semitism as well as a conduit through which such toxic ideas, typically the domain of extremist groups, end up in main stream political discourse.

This idea was tossed around and we decided to launch CiF Watch after Hawkeye and AKUS joined the original group of Medusa, Louise, Peter, Omar and Yours truly.  The reason it became CiF Watch, and not something else, was due to the moderation at CiF, which we tried to influence with letters and meetings to no avail. That was what motivated all of us and that was what the Guardian promised to improve – but clearly failed to do.

The anti-Semitism kept coming, as did the rhetoric which clearly fostered it.  And, the stories were sometimes accompanied by simply vicious cartoons – imagery which could have appeared in Der Stürmer 70 years ago.

This Martin Rowson cartoon appeared in the Guardian in 2006

This cartoon, by Steve Bell was published in the Guardian in 2009 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall,

This Steve Bell cartoon appeared in the Guardian in 2009

The Guardian published this Steve Bell cartoon during the flotilla incident

We kept going back to threads and posted, on our new blog, nasty comments from CiF, which survived CiF moderation as well as those comments which exposed the hatred and bigotry at CiF, which the moderators subsequently deleted.

“Why was this deleted” became like the obituary section of our “publication” as it kept being filled with reasonable posts calling out anti-Semitism or factual errors in Guardian pieces.  It was also voluminous like a major city newspaper obituary section.

What did the Guardian do?

Well they thanked us for assisting in their moderation.

Ironic as, according to them, we were fast becoming an unpaid moderation service for them.

That would have been tedious and boring and serving them not us so we embarked on a more aggressive task to writing pieces about the stories the Guardian manipulates to serve its agenda – and ended up becoming reporters in the process.

We have covered rallies for Hamas where we exposed Jew haters singing Christmas carols and covered press conferences by the IDF during the Flotilla incident.

In the process of writing and researching our pieces we have learned a lot about the people inhabiting the Guardian world. Some of the stuff we dug up even shocked us, though we had no illusions going into this in the first place. We have exposed a totally incompetent editorial board, where editors and contributors often behave like the nasty critters who inhabited their comments section. We have exposed blood libels on organ harvests, Israel allegedly arming South Africa with nuclear weapons, poisoning Arab children, and unmasked supporters of terrorism and Islamic supremacy who were writing pieces decrying their victim status in the “Islamophobic world”: The Guardian continually  attempts to smear people who stand up to the most dangerous ideologies.

We have shown that it isn’t all about comments but an effort by a major, some call international, paper to de-legitimize Israel, the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, and unwittingly advancing the interests of extremists.

We have also learned a great deal about the stories themselves and learned – as we weren’t journalists but, rather, professionals from different fields – that journalism is a trade practiced with varying degrees of competency, and that what we encounter in our daily paper, in what passes for professional journalism, is often just propaganda or really, really bad reporting.

What was most painful to discover was the way the Guardian uses Jewish contributors to advance its anti-Israel narrative, and inoculate them from charges of anti-Semitism.

Writers were at the ready to deny the prevalence of the world’s oldest of hatred as soon as an incident made the news – such as Richard Silverstein, who actually suggested that Israel was to blame for the Mumbai attacks. It is one thing to discover Jonathan Cook being featured on David Duke’s website and quite another to read a Jew advancing tropes based on classic Jewish conspiracy theories.

The Guardian is not alone in this. The anti-Semitism of the 21^st Century has infected the political left on both sides of the pond. The Daily Kos and Huffington Post are very similar in their comment sections, again proving that anti-Semitism is once again hip and mainstream as long as it is directed against the Jew of Nations, Israel.

Though, it needs to be said that often they don’t even bother with the Israel/Zionist label anymore. One can see, when looking through a Huffington thread, that Jews “this” and Jews “that” are back in full force.

Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of this often depressing endeavour is seeing other so-called “Watch sites” appears. Now Huffington and others need to take extra care, as they are also, a bit more frequently, exposed for harboring and providing license to such hate.

One may ask how we deal with this all day and every day. It must be boring and discouraging going through threads fishing for hate and bigotry. I admit that it is.

This is why we try not to take ourselves too seriously and inject humour, when possible, to lighten up. That has become another facet of who we are.  We love a good laugh and we especially love pointing out when our opponents’ commentary is blatantly hypocritical or even, at times, just plain ludicrous. They are so often such perfect targets of ridicule – such perfect self-parodies – that we chuckle all the way through writing a piece or researching some character.

In one year we have arisen from nothing – the proverbial business operating out of our parent’s basement – to become a leading watch site. We have attracted many Guardian readers and have offered a mirror debate for threads which some could no longer participate in for having been banned by CiF.  We have attracted reputable writers and contributors and have been featured in some of the leading pro-Israel mainstream blogs. We have been praised and vilified and we have been complimented and threatened with law suits.

It’s been an exciting ride and we are (quite unfortunately) confident that the Guardian will not cease to provide us with more goodies to denounce, debunk, dispel or mock.  The news continues and the stories are and will be bountiful.

The story which, for me, started with 9/11 and re-booted during the 2006 Lebanon war is still continuing. The Guardian still routinely vilifies Israel and America. We are mere little hell demons for now but our wings and horns are growing.  They blamed America for 9/11, Israel for anti-Semitism and now are defending Iran’s nuclear program. We will keep exposing their BS and we promise to keep our readers informed and give them a platform to speak their minds and discuss issues – allowing them to comment freely.

Special thanks to Adam Levick for taking up the task of being the only fully exposed face of our group. We often wish to emerge from our of anonymity but, unlike our subjects, we are not paid to do this and need to make a living elsewhere.  We are looking forward to our second year, we have shed our diapers and started to walk. We are happy that CiF Watch is clearly growing – both in terms of our web traffic, and our editorial scope – and are happy to see a unity of sorts between people who otherwise would be at different ends of the political spectrum. The Guardian managed to unite secular socialists with Ayn Rand individualists. That’s quite a feat, I must say.

Happy Birthday CiF Watch!  And, thanks to everyone who assisted, supported and promoted us.  You know who you are and we know who you are. If there is a birthday wish to blow the candle with, it would be that we should no longer be necessary.  This is, however, quite wishful thinking.

See you a year from now with another summary of events.

The Alchemist

Recently Hezbollah, CiF’s favorite Fascist terrorist group (sorry, “resistance force”) lost one of its “spiritual” leaders.  Hussein Fadhallah entered the gates of hell on July 4th 2010.  His “Guardians” were promptly at those gates attempting to assure his passage to progressive heaven.

Ian Williams, writing in The Guardian, even made a snide remark about the date of the passing of this creep, being the 4th of July.

“Some might even see significance in his death, at 75, on July 4th, which will doubtless bring up his support for the attack on the American marine barracks in Beirut. But then they might also think about the joint Saudi/alleged CIA operation that tried to kill the Ayatollah with a massive bomb but ended up killing 80 men and women worshippers at his Mosque.”

Ian should have known better. The 1983 bombing was not just an attack on Americans. It was an attack on the UN. The same day a similar attack killed dozens of French peace keepers also sporting the Blue Berets. The reason Ian should know better is because he used to work for the UN .

In fact Hezbollah hung an American UN officer, video taped the murder, and presented it to the world. Nice progressive “resisters” they are.   Those Hezbollah attacks ended US participation in UN peace keeping.

Of course nobody has figured out what Hezbollah is currently “resisting”, after Israel withdrew its forces from every last inch of Lebanese territory in 2000.  Aside from the existence of Jews as a people, there is little left to resist.

He also should have known that this Mullah, who has supported the right of women to wear lipstick and nail polish – indicating his strong feminist credentials – denied the Holocaust and expressed genocidal intent toward Jews a number of times.

Merely entering his name into Google will yield this wiki quote:

“The Hebrew state is preparing to celebrate its 60th anniversary – 60 years since it plundered Palestine – in a festival, which will be attended by the countries of the world, most of which still support the Jewish state and consider the resistance movement to be terrorism. This is what led German Chancellor Merkel to visit that plundering country, which extorted and continues to extort Germany, using as a pretext the German Hitlerist-Nazi past, and the placing of the Jews in a holocaust. Zionism has inflated the number of victims in this holocaust beyond imagination. They say there were six million Jews – not six million, not three million, or anything like that… But the world accepted this [figure], and it does not allow anyone to discuss this.”

These are basically a repeat of the words of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the leading official Holocaust denier and President of Iran – patron of Hezbollah, its proxy terrorist force. Was Ian Williams lacking internet access when he was writing this piece?

No, likely he just took a page out of The Guardian’s “progressive” manifesto – an ideology which influences otherwise sharp minds to minimize the relevance of ideas such as Holocaust Denial and Fascism by insisting on putting such messy hatred in its proper political “context”.

Many of us are aware of the Islamic Nazi alliance from World War II.

Many of us are aware that Mein Kampf is still a best seller in Muslim countries.

From Arab nations like Syria and Jordan to Asian nations like Bangladesh and even nations at the doorstep of Europe like Turkey.

In fact the connection between the Nazi executed genocide and the Armenian genocide (a term which can land one in jail in Turkey) happens to be the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during WWII, Amin Al Husseini.

Yet mere mention of these connections and the whole idea that Jew hate is at the center of the rabid anti-Israel scene forces us to the fringes.

Shortly after the flotilla incident, among the many demos where we no longer even notice signs that say “Gods chosen terrorists”, one in Vienna has presented a sign which said “Hitler Wake Up!!“. This would actually be a crime in Austria. Praise of Hitler, Nazis and Holocaust denial are crimes in the birthplace of Hitler, as well as in Germany, the birthplace of Nazism. Yet when confronted with this evidence, the authorities reaction was apparently one of confusion. How can a leftist demo praise Hitler? “Strange” was the exact term used. Its strange so therefore no need to worry or enforce the laws.

Now there is another example surfacing and making the rounds on the web: a Nazi flag flown at a Turkish demonstration in Istanbul supporting the flotilla “peace activists” organized by the Islamic Saadet Party.

[Source: http://www.habervesaire.com/haber/1868/]

Along with a sign saying: “Legendary leader Adolf Hitler, our patience is running out, we need your spirit.”

Again not a peep from the media. Denial mode is still in effect. The narrative that Israel is a racist aggressor would not fly far when its “victims” fly Nazi flags and sing praises of Hitler.

In “Death of a Jew Hater” David Frum writes:

But unlike other European anti-Zionists, Saramago explicitly connected his dislike of Israel to his feelings about Jews.

In a speech in Brazil on Oct. 13, 2003, Saramago reportedly unburdened himself of this thought about the world’s Jews: “Living under the shadows of the Holocaust and expecting to be forgiven for anything they do on behalf of what they have suffered seems abusive to me. They didn’t learn anything from the suffering of their parents and grandparents.”

It was Judaism itself that Saramago blamed for everything he disliked in Israel. He wrote in the Spanish newspaper El Pais on April 21, 2002:

“[C]ontaminated by the monstrous and rooted ‘certitude’ that in this catastrophic and absurd world there exists a people chosen by God … the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner. Israel seizes hold of the terrible words of God in Deuteronomy: ‘Vengeance is mine, and I will be repaid.’”

A few weeks previous, Saramago had visited Ramallah. The visit occurred shortly after the Passover 2002 suicide bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel that killed 30 people and wounded 140 more. Saramago expressed no grief for these murdered innocents. Instead, he toured areas damaged during fighting between Israeli and Palestinian armed forces and pronounced to a Portuguese radio interviewer: “[I]n Palestine, there is a crime which we can stop. We may compare it with what happened at Auschwitz.”

Sounds like a familiar mind. Compares Israel to the Third Reich, pisses on Judaism from the perspective of an atheist sophisticate (makes no mention of the monstrous certitudes in Islam) and makes excuses for leftist dictatorship. The perfect personality for a Guardian eulogy which came promptly.

…He was born into a humble rural household in the small village of Azinhaga. The family moved to Lisbon when he was two, and Saramago left school early to contribute to the household bills by working as a mechanic. Gradually, he progressed through numerous jobs towards his central literary interest. He worked as a draughtsman, publisher’s reader and freelance translator, and in the editorial and production departments of a publishing house. He also worked on several newspapers, including a stint as a literary reviewer for Serra Nova and, after the death of the dictator António Salazar in 1970, as political commentator on the Diário de Lisboa…

…Political wranglings, and Saramago’s own uncompromised and uncompromising communism, were at least partly responsible for his being fired in 1975. The following year, he devoted himself exclusively to his books. “Being fired was the best luck of my life,” he said. “It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer.”…

As expected, no mention of Saramango’s antisemitism and his participation in the left wing dictatorship installed in Portugal after the death of their fascist dictator. No mention that Saramango was not a mere “political commentator” but a parachuted editor to a former regime friendly paper which had to be transformed into the communist propaganda rag of the new regime. A task Saramango took on with enthusiasm.

As Frum also mentions in his piece, Saramango called Portugal’s transformation into a democracy a day of blackness.

Amanda Hopkinson ends her Guardian eulogy of this creep by saying:

Given his late start as a novelist, it is perhaps not surprising that one of the wishes Saramago’s last expressed wishes was to pause the world for 50 years. Not, he hastened to add, to win another innings for himself, but for us, collectively, to “find the courage to say that the stage of development we have reached is good enough.

Paused for 50 years. Nice. Like Eastern Europe I guess, paused for 45 years still playing catch up.

The Guardian interviewed him back in 2008.

New ways of seeing : ‘I don’t make excuses for what communist regimes have done. But I have the right to keep my ideas’

This interview, or encouraged speech as some may call it, was as one sided and deceitful as the eulogy served up by the Guardian.

Take a look at this excerpt:

Still a Communist party member, Saramago describes himself as a “hormonal communist – just as there’s a hormone that makes my beard grow every day. I don’t make excuses for what communist regimes have done – the church has done a lot of wrong things, burning people at the stake. But I have the right to keep my ideas. I’ve found nothing better.” Yet he did write in 2003 that, after years of personal friendship with Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader “has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes, cheated my dreams”. In Reis’s view, “Saramago lives his communism mostly as a spiritual condition – philosophical and moral. He doesn’t preach communism in his novels.” His fable of consumerism and control in a globalised culture, The Cave (2001), shows the focus of life shifting from cathedral to shopping mall. But for Jull Costa, its strength is in his “writing so humanely about ordinary people and their predicaments”.

I will never figure out why the Guardian acts like some propaganda vehicle for communists and Islamists, let alone Jew haters. It is one thing to sympathize and another to lie and deceive as if there were no other media out there. Perhaps they are rehearsing for their dream of one day being the only approved publication in the world they hope to usher in. Fat chance. That world will never come as each day the truths of the monstrous ideals the Guardian promotes or hides, depending on the day, come to the surface like the excrement comes back up when one lets one go into the lake.

The B movie section of the news never ceases to entice us to dip our feet into the weirdness, often serving up that frightening scene once in a while.

A Seumas thread is like that speech by Nicolai Caucescou, the last one he made when his adoring crowd turned on him and revised the chant from “o great leader glorious party” to down with the bastard down with the tyrant“.

Moderation on Seumas threads is like a Caucescou regime. Posters are so afraid of criticizing him that I see often posts referring to him as Mr Milne. How goofy is that? Otherwise they descend into a mock fest of the author. A result mods are much too keen on avoiding. So instead of sparing us from Seumas, they hyper-moderate his threads.

Goofy is the way Seumas always takes his time adding his bit to a current event. His posts usually come late in the news cycle, when most facts are already out and a debate is already taking place. Still his posts are the most one sided and are ridiculously off-base, more likely to illicit laughter and eye rolls than an actual desire to respond.

Until the first frightening statement appears.

“they have just shot dead at least nine unarmed human rights activists and wounded dozens of others while suffering no fatal injuries themselves.

Seumas doesn’t take the side of the one who does not self sacrifice. Seumas needs bodies to consider debating an issue. He is one of those old school remnants of a movement which worships stories of self sacrifice. Israel did not contribute to the dying (though two soldiers were seriously injured and would have been killed had they not shot those who attacked them) so therefore their side is not believable. Only the dead speak the truth. So in Seumas’ world, suicide terrorism and ambitions of martyrdom will always garner his sympathy. This is why many supported the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Because more Soviets died in the war than Allies. The fact that perhaps Stalin may have had anything to do with those scary figures escapes them as probably Stalin’s ideology convinced them that those were “self sacrifices”. Poor Ivans running toward German fire without helmets as they were shot at by their own from behind was “self sacrifice”. Much like probably how volunteers are picked in N Korea today.

Seumas should of course know better. Ambassador Richard Peck, no friend of Israel and member of the flotilla organizer group,  said also  that this mission was not properly executed and admitted on Canadian TV that ideas of martyrdom and confrontation with Israel have crept into the aid mission and have caused this incident.

Seumas doesn’t care about these witnesses. He prefers Hanin Zuabi, an Arab Knesset member (to whom Seumas refers to as Palestinian Israeli) who’s account he quotes in his suspiciously low on links article.

“a more credible picture started to emerge: of shooting even before the commandos landed, according to Haneen Zuabi, a Palestinian Israeli MP; of stun grenades, electric shocks, tear gas – and reports of bullet wounds to the head.”

A more credible image. This from a woman, who praised the Iranian nuclear program in the Israeli Knesset (something she is allowed to do in Israel, the savage apartheid rogue state).

In Turkey people go to jail for “Insulting Turkishness”

Seumas then goes on about how right Erdogan is and praises Viva Palestina, who were kicked out of Egypt earlier this year for causing the death of an Egyptian soldier,  then brings up yet another jolt inducing statement:

“We were told, after all, that the people of Gaza were being subjected to this treatment because of Hamas rocket-fire into Israel. For more than a year since Israel’s devastation of the strip in 2008-09, Hamas has maintained an effective ceasefire and the rocket launchers have been mostly silent”

Mostly silent. Again Seumas wants blood. He feels that not enough Jews are dying or are injured to justify a blockade which is directly responsible for the dip in rocket attacks. Seumas wants those rockets to fire again. He doesn’t want ships to be even searched because Turkey has already inspected them. The inspection which missed the Yemei Jihadis and the suicidal fanatics. Just for his information, mostly silent meant that from just after January 18th 2009 and up through February of that year, rocket attacks were occurring daily. So just right there, we are looking at 25-30 rocket attacks. Seumas doesn’t count mortars of course, why would he because adding them to those “silent” rockets results in a total of 280 attacks on Israel since the end of Cast lead. 280.  This doesn’t include rockets and mortars fired this year. So 280 in less than a year is “mostly silent” for Seumas. This is almost one per day. I wonder what hatred or deep seethed issue on the part of Seumas compels him to lie like this. He is a sick individual. It is also obvious that Seumas will never understand the other side. He is too far gone. His hatred is beyond Israel also. He wouldn’t express more mercy at dying Americans or probably Brits either if they died at the hands of radicals he sympathizes with. He showed no mercy to the countless Iranians a year ago who were shot, beaten, raped and crushed by Ahmedinejad’s thugs. Seumas called them burgeois spoilers of a democratic victory by a terrorist theocracy. He condemned UN diplomats for boycotting Ahmedinejads Holocaust denying tirade.

This takes me right back to that mental image. What kind of a world we would live in where media people would be no more than abject propaganda tools of evil ideologies, cults of death and absolute deception. Such is the contribution of Seumas to journalism.

Of course there are lighter moments when Seumas becomes once more that entertaining clown telling stories so ridiculous that we almost forget the morbid thoughts he conveyed a few paragraphs above:

” Sanitation has broken down, the economy has collapsed, 80% of the population are on UN subsistence handouts, and postwar reconstruction is impossible because Israel has blocked the supply of cement – along with anaesthetics, baby formula, books, fresh meat, canned fruit and donkeys. If the underground steel wall now being constructed by the US and Egypt on the Egyptian-Gaza border is effective, even Gaza’s lifeline of tunnels will be shut down.”

Israel bans donkeys, anaesthetics, meat and baby formula. Right out of Saddam Hussein’s school books.

Sanitation did break down in Gaza because once shipments of rockets from Iran and Syria were blockaded, those industrious democrats of Hamas startedusing piping to make more rockets.

To close his newest hack job on Israel and civilization, Seumas calls for more martyrdom and praises death once more.

“What is certain is that while some will have been intimidated by the Israeli military’s violence, many more volunteers will now try to bring boatloads of aid to Gaza to widen that breach. The denial of Palestinian rights has become a great moral as well as political cause of our time. If relief for Gaza’s people is even a step nearer, the victims of the Mavi Marmara will not have died in vain.”

A political cause of our time ! The martyrs of Mavi Marmara have succeeded for Seumas. He demands their death to have a purpose for he sees death as a tool for political discourse. What world is that Seumas world.

It was around 5 30 AM my time, I said “OK Sure” and went back to sleep.

She called me back once more knowing this hasn’t registered with me enough, being still in slumber and forced me to turn the TV on.

Wow.

Around noon and already immersed into CNN, another friend came to visit me. He was of Lebanese Christian background and I recall him yelling out of his car “Hezbollah!!” as he was approaching my driveway. He used to do this when he was expressing shock, displeasure or dismay. It was his personal curse word. He told me he just came from the Donair shop we always frequented when downtown to see movies or shopping. He told me that the shop owner, a Lebanese Muslim, was cursing at the TV in front of his customers saying “I know this was an (expletive) Arab who did this and now we are doomed, the world will hate us. Needless to say, I still love this guy’s falafel, the best in town among the Arab style falafels. (Israeli and Greek falafels are different as are their pitas). He is a sweet man as is his overworked family hustling this product from morning until late night from a 250 sft spot always with a smile and always with his accompanied complaints about rising rents, rainy weather and hard to come by reliable help.

When I was researching this piece about the Guardian’s stupid response to the Time Square attack I wanted to look at the writers whose pieces the Guardian published on the subject.

Was I delighted in more ways than one…

One of them was Wajahat Ali, a Pakistani American writer whose piece Against Terror, our liberty is our best defense. appeared on Cif a day after the arrest.
His Guardian piece reads like…well a Guardian piece.

An attack piece on “right wing” Americans who now will come after Muslims like never before. Of course 9 years ago close to 3000 people died a few blocks away from the parked smoking Pathfinder and none of the fears of revenge attacks have materialized. Still the writer goes through the events of the last few terrorist attempts on America using the typical code language diminishing the reality of the origin of these attacks. The “mentally disturbed” Nidal Hasan, the “Nigerian Student” Underwear bomber and the FBI “entrapped” Pakistani Americans caught joining a terror group in their old country. He goes into a great straw man argument alleging that Sarah Palin will come out swinging or something:

“Sarah Palin and her ilk will argue passionately on Fox News to “profile away” evil-doers – in effect, advocating racial profiling of ethnic minorities, especially of Middle Easterners and South Asians. Anticipating public anxiety, Obama reacted to calls for “greater security” following the failed Christmas Day bombing by implementing catch-all measures – recently amended – to extend special pat-downs and heightened profiling to individuals returning from 14, mostly Muslim, countries.

Despite overwhelming evidence showing that racial profiling and the erosion of civil liberties and due process are counterproductive in fighting terrorism, I worry that fear and divisive rhetoric will be used to undermine the mutual trust and co-operation that has been painstakingly built over the past two years between American Muslims and law enforcement agencies.”

Ignorant statements to say the least. But I guess an attack on Sarah Palin will always work. Bush with lipstick is what she became and now she is preemptively attacked in supposedly hated Bush fashion for statements she never even made. Neither did she make them since. Of course there is no overwhelming evidence of racial profiling not working. Because there is no racial profiling. There is terrorist profiling which does contain religious and ethnic elements among a long list of other signs security officials look at when they check our bags, walk through the detector and stand in front of customs upon arrival. Nether is there any mutual trust between security agencies and Muslim groups. The FBI dropped its liaisons efforts with CAIR when they finally realized CAIR had no interest in the safety of Americans but an interest in advancing the Muslim Brotherhood agenda in America and advised Muslim Americans not to co-operate with the police before contacting CAIR first.

I would have dismissed Wajahat Ali as just another Guardian crank had it not been for finding his other, much better articulated and insightful piece in Salon, which he also ran in a blog he edits called Goatmilk. In there he has a piece written really from the perspective of a Pakistani American Muslim finding out that another Pakistani Muslim has been involved in a terror attack.

He writes:

“A Muslim born and raised in America with Pakistani parents, I was the “token” at early age. Growing up, I was like any other socially awkward, overweight, dorky American kid who wanted to date Alyssa Milano and beat Contra on my Nintendo without using the secret, unlimited life code — except my T-shirts were smeared with turmeric and lentil stains instead of PB and J, and in place of Lunchables my mom fed me homemade, green-colored, lamb patty burgers. I was the kid comfortable with all his identities — Muslim, American, Pakistani — and as such, I became the one people consulted when uncomfortable questions had to be asked, or misconceptions and stereotypes needed to be explained.”…

I too used to have a secret crush on Alissa Milano. Watched whole episodes of Who’s the Boss while being totally annoyed by Tony Danza and the rest of the cast. Only to see Alissa. She did age well I might add. A gorgeous lady today as she was a heart throb back then.

A word of advice to Ali: If he wants to condemn negative stereotyping of Muslims and Pakistanis, he better argue for that without negatively stereotyping Americans in that process.

“…America has a long tradition of scapegoating (see African Americans, Jews, Irish and Japanese Americans), in which the criminal and moral bankruptcy of a few perverse individuals becomes an archetype for multitudes.”

Ali goes on:

…”After news of the averted attack, I was hit with a blitzkrieg of texts, Facebook updates and gchat pings. Friends from varying backgrounds — Mexican-American, African-American, Arab-American — wanted to know what I thought about another “Rage Boy” foolishly attempting to commit violence with an amateurish terror plot. Several made a similar confession: How glad they were that the suspect didn’t belong to “their tribe.” What I did know, with a sinking feeling, was that many moderate, peaceful Pakistani Muslims like me were further doomed to collective mistrust and suspicion.”.

This reveals the true nature of the fear among decent Muslims of discovering that another of their coreligionists has just caused a terrorist incident. The so called sinking feeling reminds me of the Lebanese falafel store owner who basically suspected like many others that indeed Muslims/Arabs were behind the 911 attack.

If even Muslims’ first instinct is to suspect other Muslims after an incident like this then one has to wonder why the rest of us need to be force fed the idiocy of suspecting the Tea Party, the right wing militias and opponents to socialized medicine. The moronic diatribes following this attack, and other similar attacks are as much an insult to Muslims as they are to the rest of us. Let alone insults to intelligence itself.

This brings us to the other silly and probably completely nonsensical and moronic article about the Time Square Pathfinder bomber, Time Square bomb plot: Don’t rush to judgment by Robert Dreyfuss.

A writer for the far left rag, The Nation, known for its communist subversion during the 50s and being home to the most radical left of the brain writers of which Dreyfuss seems to be no exception. The funny thing is that he is actually a LaRouchian. Far from the left and closer to the lunatic far right. The fact that the Guardian commissioned its first piece on this new event from such a clown is quite telling to say the least. The joke was on Robert and the Guardian as the piece came out accusing the Tea Party (no rushing to judgment there I suppose) when the news was already reporting on the arrested suspect, Faisal Shahzad.

For those unfamiliar with the Larouche movement, it is a conspiracy club founded by Lyndon Larouche, a former Reagan administration official involved in the Star Wars space arms program who had a falling out with Reagan and also reality.

They are well funded and have a strong presence in France and the USA where they publish magazines and newspapers.

They can be found at any protest march, even used to have kiosks at airports next to the krishnas. They were at those famous anti-Bush and anti-war marches and also crashed the Tea Party protests and those now infamous town hall meetings Obama called to discuss his health care plan.

The essence of their conspiracies are founded upon the belief that Britain still controls the USA via MI5, the Free Masons, Satan worshipers, abortion providers, Columbian drug cartels (that way Her Majesty is drugging the youth of America) and of course Zionists. Amusing stuff for pot smoking university students needing a good laugh and messianic truth for the movement’s adherents. I always wondered how can they get so much funding and so much exposure, being the lunatic fringe club they are.

-Telling of the world we live in for sure.

For the Guardian to lead the Time Square story by deploying such a freak is another of their face loss moments.

” But it seems far more likely to me that the perpetrator of the bungled Times Square bomb plot was either a lone wolf or a member of some squirrely branch of the Tea Party, anti-government far right. Which actually exists in Connecticut, where, it seems, the car’s licence plates were stolen.”

Gee thanks Inspector Cluseau…sorry Chief Inspector Cluseau…what a brilliant natural police mind you have.

They “exist” in Connecticut where the license plate is from. Wow. So Larouche this line of thinking is. Reflecting the moronic reasoning behind the various outlandish conspiracy theories this AGAIN surprisingly well funded group is peddling, drugging the minds of Guardian youth in this case.

As someone who has been guilty of a sick hobby of reading about terrorist and extremist groups, I can confidently say that the whole idea that any so called American Patriot Militia would mass murder people in Time Square is so wrong and baseless that it merits a little sidetrack into American Patriot Militias.

These groups, not all racist or antisemitic nor religious, though many of them are openly so, originate in the American revolution when the young recently declared independent republic was defended by a mixed group of locally raised volunteer militias as America was then absent of a real army. To those on the American far or extreme right, the idea that the Federal Government would institute any policy without the explicit consent of the respective state(s) is treasonous. They base this upon the treaties the Continental Congress negotiated with the 13 colonies later becoming the founding states of the USA which stipulated their commitments to defending the revolution with their respective militias in exchange for help by the new republic which was usually through payments of grants and salaries to fighters. Generally helping each other out across state lines. Back then states awarded US citizenship to immigrants, not the Feds. That was also one of the grievances of the Confederates, the issue of who can award citizenship as until the 1860s, states had that authority.

From these treaties grew the Constitution and also its 2nd Amendment, which calls for ” an armed citizenry… and a well regulated militia”.

What they actually got was the National Guard which is the volunteer reserve Army and under the command of state governors. These groups see the establishment of the National Guard as insufficient to satisfying the second amendment and resent the Federal Army and the Federal Agencies (especially armed ones) on their soil. Those on the left point to the National Guard as a reason and justification for disallowing the ownership of guns by Americans, except to members of the National Guard. Hence the gun debate and the militias mostly clashing with the Federal Government over gun issues.

The only way these groups resemble jihadis is that they too, have among them some very intelligent or wealthy yet creepy individuals, experts in combat skills and other trades as well as a bunch of buffoons in need of a girlfriend or more exercise. They will not attack Americans unless they work for the federal government. In Oklahoma City, their intent was to time the bomb to go off before the children showed up to the daycare (which was for children of employees). McVeigh miscalculated and the rest is history. Of course, in the minds of these people killing a mother of a 2 year old is OK as long as she works for the government but killing her kid is not. Oh well.

In short, these are populist, isolationist movements who despise the federal government and the international agreements it signs which are seen to limit national sovereignty (some of them are actually) and want to rally the people to this cause, Thus they are not likely to attack civilians in a tourist area. That would be 100% contrary to their objectives, which is to rally Americans to defeating the Federal Government. They would attack government buildings and international institutions like the IMF, World Bank and the UN. As they did in Oklahoma 15 years ago last month. Seeing so called experts mix them up with the Tea Party shows the level of nasty propaganda some in the media have succumbed to distributing of late.

Jihadis aim to kill masses. Why is it so hard to understand that?

They are trying so hard to convince us themselves, each time they kill or try to kill as many people as possible!

It is natural that an article linking the Tea Party with a car bomb is gobbled up by the editors of the Guardian. They must have been salivating at the idea, no matter how off base, of the American Right being linked to an incompetent mass terror attempt.

The blind leading the ignorantly blind. Or call it the cluster of stupid thoughts.

I am sure they would have even mentioned that stupid Sarah Palin must have been the one who built the ineffective bomb made up of household chemicals, firecrackers, fertilizer and gasoline. (Drill Baby Drill huh!!)

Of course the bomb was no silly rig as portrayed. The ingredients were perfectly selected for New York City which is equipped with radiation and bomb sniffing sensors, K-9 and otherwise. It could have killed dozens and injured hundreds changing that magical place forever. There goes the expertise of the so-called reporter experts who get paid for sitting in a chair babbling about bull crap wondering how come less and less believe or trust them. The self sacrificial nature of self righteousness is amazing.

On goes Dreyfuss, confabulating some more because it seems even he feels somewhere in his gut that this might after all be another Jihad attack. At least that is what this next passage sounds like:

“As always, it is important to point out that even if the Times Square bombing turns out to be the work of jihadist zealots, it shows that as an enemy they rank about on a par with the guy who crashed his plane into the IRS building. President Obama took the opportunity to proclaim his vigilance and his determination to track down the perpetrator and to keep America safe.”

Oh really. Jihad ranks equal to the guy who killed a night watchman in the IRS building. This is getting better. One victim vs over 3000 on American soil alone is on par. I can just imagine Dreyfuss on the golf course. Robert you must be on par with Mike Wier because you once hit the green with your first shot.

What a magical game that could be.

-Or not as he may think golf is a secret MI5 plot to install landing pads for Satanist British Intel UFOs for the final occupation and enslavement of the free.

Brian sprung to action by entering the thread defending against the attempted “smear” of HRW. Needless to say, he was proven wrong.

What has since emerged though is that we at CiF Watch may have been wrong also. Not about the Saudis, HRW or Whitaker but about Mark Garlasco. The Nazi memorabilia collecting military expert at the employ of HRW at the time. It turns out Mark is a collector of army memorabilia from a few nations along with Germany and it also seems that despite his fetish of having iron crosses on his T shirts, he was among the few actual defenders of the Jewish state’s military actions due to his military background himself and general familiarity with the Middle East and its complexities.

We stand corrected.

- Still, Mark, the Iron Cross T Shirt wasn’t the best wardrobe choice.

Of course having satisfaction at seeing Mark as the strongest defender of Israel at HRW is still a big pill to swallow. So for water lets read this next piece by Benjamin Birnbaum in the New Republic published yesterday, titled Minority Report Human Rights Watch fights a civil war over Israel.

Please read the whole thing as it not only sheds light on the increasing anti-Israel and anti-war (of any kind) bias of the organization but tells us about how some members of this organization, up to its founder and former chairman, have found themselves in a climate so biased against Israel that only through airing these dirty sheets in public would they have any chance at redressing them. A decision not taken lightly by any institution these days. The piece navigates the reader through the famous road marks of Goldstone, Gaza, phosphorous and Hamas tactics with the occasional view of the “Right of return” and other goodies guaranteed to satisfy any reader familiar with the Israel-Palestinian conflict and familiar with the workings of institutions built on noble callings only to become servants of the self righteous.

1)The “Kill the Kulak Thread”
Attacking a group of people (neocons, zionists, capitalists, the West etc). Posts disputing the wisdom of the mob call get deleted.

2) The Sing along thread
Posters must sing along the thrust of the argument of the thread. Mild solo-ing is permissible however once out of tune, you re deleted !! Songs praising Chavez, Palestinians, Arab rulers and Iranian populism are to be expected and the music will be loud and dissent prohibited.

3) The Cry with us crocodile tears thread
Thread where one is demanded to mourn together with the writer. Usually appears when a Hamas leader dies (preferably via means of an Israeli strike or a new blood libel is on promotion (blue kids, poisoned water, starvation, excessive noise from F-16s). Disputing the tears shed by the author or his/her motivation will be deleted.

Mockery of the author in times of mourning will be met with force by placing in pre-moderation or outright banning.

4)The  Praise Allah Thread.
Threads which appear on the regular making sure we are reminded that Islam is only about peace and tolerance and terrorism is our fault. Islam is the root of all Western knowledge and advances in science and Islamic norms should be internalized into the West.

Any reference to texts disputing this “call to prayer” (including the Koran itself) will be deleted. Any criticism of Islam will be deleted. Any criticism or exposing of Tariq Ramadan as anything other than a polite, noble sage will be deleted.

Any reference showing the author being either paid for by or member of Islamic pressure groups will be deleted.

Attacks on Christianity and Judaism are encouraged and rewarded with many recommends. Posts not fully praising Allah the all Mighty but in receipt of more than 7 recommends will be deleted.

5) The I am the Ideal Jew for the Party Thread.
Great example of one of these was the Weingarten thread and I must say probably the best so far in demonstrating the ideological purifying of the debate practiced by the so called “moderators”.

The ideal Jew will appear on the Guardian usually after some controversy (real or manufactured) occurs in the ME/IP conflict.

The Ideal Jew thread will get periodic posting access, usually to prevent North American Jews from posting (unless they re unemployed loners up at 3AM).  This way the Guardian makes sure the debate is fair and balanced given that Jews own North America and its people have been brainwashed by Zionist ideology making their opinions less valuable than the intellectually superior posters from Europe who are free of Zionist mind control.

The ideal Jew thread commands that other Jews will not dispute the wisdom the Ideal Jew has put forth. No challenge shall be mounted, not from Talmudic references (even if the ideal Jew used such references in a callous and self serving way), not historic truths and most of all NO DISPUTING of the IDEAL JEW’S assessment of Antisemitism.  Such posts will be automatically deleted and violators are to be warned of being segregated into the ghetto of pre-moderation.

The Ideal Jew thread is the one which will change Judaism to the benefit of the GWV. Thus it is imperative that the Ideal Jew Threads remain clean of dissent, mockery, humour (except jokes about Bush, Palin and Lieberman).  Readers must learn that Jews are ashamed of having their own country and ashamed for being hated by the intellectually advanced and ultra sophisticated European Left. The ideal Jew thread thus serves both Jews and gentiles for a peaceful co-existence devoid of distracting debates and ideas which disturb the great work of the Guardian Counsel.

Any questions?

The site is popular, in fact influential and is home to commentators and public figures revered in society and the corridors of power. This is the first on line publication to get a White House Press pass and is the most funded (and rumored to be losing money) e-magazine attracting the biggest advertisers in America. In other words, this is supposed to be the CiF of America.

It is the Huffington Post. Founded by former conservative millionaire trophy (and pretender) wife turned extreme leftist, Ariana Huffington. Ariana is a celebrity in the USA. She is a frequent guest on Larry King and other prime time shows and has won an Emmy. She is number 42 in the Guardian’s Top 100 in Media List.

Since almost the site’s inception, people started noticing that her liberal progressive site was attracting hate speaking posters who promoted, from the most bizarre to most hateful conspiracy theories regarding conservatives, republicans and of course Jews. Still, the site which Bill O’Reilly refers to as a “hate site” became a mainstream gathering place of the media and liberal elites where they swap posts from subjects as wide ranging as fashion to domestic and international politics. Along with the Daily Kos, Huffpost has also become a window through which we can observe the tragic (for some) descent of progressive thinking into the oldest bigotry, antisemitism.

The similarities to CiF are telling. Yet few even in the USA realize how the liberal left which, in America used be centered around the ideals of tolerance and compassion, is following its European cousins into the abyss of Jew hatred and the most extreme anti-Zionism.

When I was in College, I enjoyed chemistry. Being an economics major, I found the similarities between the cognitive routes of the two disciplines striking. I also learned that for a change to occur in a system, a catalyst needs to be introduced and if conditions are controlled, theories can be proven as to what results we may end up with.

When we started to toss the idea around about creating a website to allow our dissident voices of CiF to appear somewhere and to expose what we found at CiF in terms of bigotry, we wondered how this bigotry flourished there and why.

Actually we have not wondered long, but figured it out. The theory was that CiF would invite these maggots with its otherwise palatable yet deeply one-sided and ostensibly inciting articles, which like some catalyst would start the fermentation, resulting in the nasty stuff we spend days  documenting and exposing on CiF Watch.

The fact that a strikingly similar phenomenon is occurring in America with the same ingredients, the same catalyst and thus the same results serves as proof that indeed the editorial stance of a certain world view in given articles, will without fault result in a number of posts giving us reason every day to get back to work. Like a chemistry experiment of adding element A to elements B and C will result in the very same compound each time, we repeat the same exercise.

The compound being conspiracy antisemitism coupled with a mix of age old blood libels appearing like the alcohol rich vapor upon distillation of progressive internationalism and victim narrative as observed in the Huffington Post, 8 to 10 posts along the way and CiF similarly within a few posts after a thread opening.

Then comes the controversy and promises of better moderation but no end in the incitement as if one wanted to heal a wound, rubbing one’s knees onto the pavement each time after a bandage change will yield no better result. The puss still flows as it is fed and incubated by recurring themes and recurring posters who do not get banned as promised by the talk policy, but are placed into some denial mechanism which automatically turns on those doing the exposing. So like in Communist China, the whistle blowers go to jail, the problems persist, kids get poisoned, the rivers continue to be polluted and buildings built recently collapse on top of tenants.

We all saw this before. What is astonishing is that this is so simple. Why then not remedy it?

Well, Frontpage magazine proposes some possibilities. It refers to, for example the site visitors from places like Iran and Pakistan who contribute to the hit count thus allowing Ariana to put these statistics into her glossy advertisers brochure showing how loyal, diverse and numbered her readers are. Given that rumors persist of investor concerns and cash flow problems, it seems logical that Ariana would not want to dump hits when those hits are the only yet weak measure of return for her and her advertisers’ business plans. Which still leaves the question about CiF which is supposedly a non profit organization being part of the Guardian Media Group. I assume even non profits do not like losing money and hits are what they call internet money in the on line world.

Still I don’t think this is the main issue. The main issue and story here is antisemitism finding a new home on the left side of the street and the left feeling increasingly uneasy to live near Jewish areas. Save the Jews, of course who dedicated their lives to progressive pursuits seeing their house taken over by bums ending up blaming themselves for not being “progressive enough” and blaming their fellow Jews for not following suit.

I guess and I can only guess as I never understood this phenomenon in economics nor chemistry and wish not to have to adapt to the understanding of psychopathology.

Can I hate him now Michael?

Then we had Dan Kennedy who in Finding the truth at Fort Hood wrote the following: