Coming to a Bargain Bin Near You.

Antony Loewenstein is now desperately flogging "On Utoya", an 'e-book' about Anders Breivik's shooting rampage in Norway. His contribution, a chapter entitled: "Strange bedfellows: the new nexus between Israel and the far right". Nice to see Antony diversifying.

According to Antony's bio on the book's website:

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN is a Sydney-based journalist and author who has written for the Guardian, The Nation, the Sydney Morning Herald, Haaretz, and many others. He is the author of two best-selling books, My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution

A second best-seller? Mazal Tov Antony! (Someone please explain to proud Jew Antony what Mazal Tov means).

If you're stupid enough to actually pay for the e-book on Amazon.com, the first thing you'll read is the "Creative Commons" licence which means you are free to copy and distribute the material. As if you'd want to.

555

Via Gav, a cute compilation of the phone numbers in American film and television, purposefully used howsoever realistic the drama, because there will always be someone who can't help but dial to see what happens.




Did you know Australia has its own bogus numbers?

Hates Jews. Hates Women.

Antony Loewenstein is appalled at a fashion magazine cover.

The current issue (Issue 44 Nov/Dec 2011) of Frankie magazine, a magazine aimed at young Australian girls, has on the back page a full page advertisement headed “Israeli Girls”.

Such advertisements play a key role in glamourising/normalising Israel and the IDF while, almost subliminally, linking Israel with the US. Occupation, violence or racial discrimination are ignored.

Have a look at the offending ad and decide for yourself.

Antony demands someone's head:

Write to the magazine’s editor (Jo Walker: jo@frankiepress.com.au) telling her that such material shouldn’t fool the readers and depoliticise Israeli actions.

Yes. Who ever heard of fashion advertising trying to fool readers? Speaking of fools, according to Antony, two moderately attractive Israeli girls wearing shorts is a political issue.

More evidence of Israel's brutal inhumanity here:

(Warning: Strong language and exposed Zionist flesh)

In a later post, Antony reminds us why he couldn't get a gig working at Ms Walker's magazine, or anywhere else.

Any illusions about the American empire’s footprint reducing in the Middle East is fictional.

As opposed to those illusions which are real.

Washington is keen to more closely partner with any dictatorship it can.

An astonishing claim, naturally unsupported by any actual evidence.

But of course this isn’t meddling, it’s just what empire’s do.

Poor boy can't even use an apostrophe. Isn't he lucky that he can call himself an "independent journalist" rather than the more traditional "unemployed". Must be Zionist media control which stops all those multi-million dollar offers rolling in.

Da English Payshent

British actor Ralph Fiennes says social networking sites such as Twitter are dumbing down the English language.

...Says nothing about calling himself "Rayf".

Why not Blame Canada?

Follow the sequence. The Union movement, given carte blanche by the ALP pressures Qantas. Qantas fights back and grounds planes. So according to some on Twitter, this is:

a taste of what we'll get if Abbott ever becomes PM...

Even though Julia Gillard is in charge, and Abbott isn't, it's still Abbott's fault.

At least they aren't blaming John Howard or George W. Bush.

Mark Shove's description of himself on Twitter:

Retired psychiatric nurse...rusted on and proud Labor supporter & progressive thinker. Love politics...music...reading...all VERY boring...but who gives a fuck?

Hopeless political parties don't have to try too hard when they know there are people like Mr Shove that will vote for them no matter what.

Literally Illiterate

Antony Loewenstein on immigration detention centres:

Last week’s ABC TV 4 Corners, on the mental trauma suffered by refugees inside Australia’s immigration detention centre network, was a devastating portrait of dysfunction. We are literally breeding individuals who are going mad, if not worse.

Loewenstein is literally the sort of writer that wouldn't make it past a ninth grade English exam. But he's good enough for 'our ABC' and Crikey.

Despite numerous corrections after publishing Loewenstein (who simply made things up), Crikey apparently haven't learned from past mistakes. Are Crikey really that desperate for content?

Suggest you click on the above links and read the articles while Crikey can still afford the web hosting.

In Space Nobody Can Hear You Mike Check

Via Facebook, an invitation to the political event of the year.

Spicoli's Best Work

I guess Monica wasn't available for a crawl-on cameo.

Lynch Mob

The Australian reports:

UNIVERSITY of Sydney scholars set to exchange ideas with visiting Israeli experts on neuroscience, tissue regeneration and other cutting-edge research areas are being warned the event will offend potential Muslim undergraduates.

Associate Professor Jake Lynch, director of the university's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, has urged his colleagues to withdraw from the research gathering, and the university administration to cancel it.

It's interesting that the so-called "Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies" would seek to prevent meaningful dialogue between the two groups. Jake Lynch is a good mate of Antony Loewenstein and Loewenstein is terribly upset that Lynch, who supports a boycott of the Jewish State, is being held to account by The Australian. Like Loewenstein, Lynch's idea of "peace" seems to involve the destruction of the Jewish state.

Lynch should consider the intellectual output of Jewish scientists. Jewish scientists have even won the Arab World's equivalent of the Nobel Prize the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine.

Lynch wailed to The Australian:

“The university risks sustaining reputational damage if the forum goes ahead,” Dr Lynch told The Australian yesterday.

“It risks being seen as condoning the complicity by Israeli universities in Israel’s breaches of international law and indirectly raises problems with the university’s social inclusion policy.”

In an email to staff due to take part, Dr Lynch condemns the lack of Palestinian involvement and the failure of Israeli universities to teach in Arabic.

Perhaps he might condemn the failure of the Arabic world to teach at all. As Masada 2000 notes:

There are a mere 12 Million Jews in the entire world yet they have received 185 Nobel Prizes.

The Muslims number 1.4 Billion, or 117 times the number of Jews! Based upon this 117:1 Muslim-to-Jewish ratio, one might expect the Muslims to have 24,920 Nobel Laureates.

They have nine! and one of them [Arafat] was a murderer

Another, Najib Mahfooz was stabbed in the back by Muslem fundamentalists simply because he supported the Peace Process between the Palestinians and Israelis. Najib was partially paralyzed as a result. Perhaps Lynch's Centre for Peace Studies can study that?

Rather than being offended, the Muslims should be trying desperately to emulate Israel, rather than destroying it. Having said that, there's every chance that the Muslims on campus aren't involved in this Jihad du Jour, and it is instead a braindead lefty academic getting "offended" on their behalf.

Update: Even the Palestinian representative to Australia thinks Jake Lynch is a fool.

Izzat Abdulhadi, head of the General Delegation of Palestine to Australia, said yesterday he did not support a full-scale boycotts, divestment and sanctions campaign designed to isolate and delegitimise Israel, and was scathing about recent BDS-inspired protests outside the Max Brenner chain of shops, which are Israeli-owned. "BDS is a non-violent process and I don't think it's the right of anybody to use BDS as a violent action or to prevent people from buying from any place," Mr Abdulhadi said of the Max Brenner protests, which have occasionally turned violent.

I look forward to Antony Loewenstein telling the Palestinians he knows better. Abulhadi continues:

"Our objective is to build our own state, not to delegitimise any other state," he said.

"We recognise Israel."

I suspect he's in a 'bit of trouble' for saying that.

Unsurprisingly, Dr Lynch declined to comment.

Srupid

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on moves to ban local councils adopting sanctions against any nation. This likely stems from the earlier attempt by Marrickville Council to boycott Israel (instead of say, collecting garbage and mending potholes).

Check out the placard held by one of the Israel-hating illiterates.


Apparently Scooby Doo is now working for Hamas. Councils should Stop Funding Error.

Loewenstein shows his Sensitive Side

It's hard not to be moved by Antony Loewenstein's tribute to freed terrorist hostage, Gilad Shalit. He writes:

"There’s so much blather in the mainstream press about the Gilad Shalit deal this week. Mostly written by the Israeli Foreign Ministry."

The Foreign Ministry must have been very busy churning out each of those tens of thousands of articles (in the mainstream media alone). Antony found time in his busy media schedule to offer his expert opinion:

I was invited onto current affairs show The Wire yesterday to offer a different perspective and argue that the press humanises one man, Shalit, while Arabs are largely invisible and faceless

You can be invisible with a face?

Loewenstein insists he doesn't condone or approve of what happened, before doing precisely that. At 1m40s (if you could bear to listen) Loewenstein insists Shalit wasn't kidnapped but was a legitimate prisoner of war. He reluctantly concedes that Shalit shouldn't have been kept in a basement.

In case you're not familiar with "The Wire", according to the website:

The Wire is a daily current affairs program broadcast exclusively on Community and Indigenous radio stations around Australia.

More than 5 million people across Australia can tune into

"Can", but don't, actually. I'd be surprised if even Loewenstein's parents tuned in.

Now that any schmuck can create a podcast, community radio faces irrelevancy and chooses to tackle the problem head-on by inviting Loewenstein on-air.

Update: There is plenty of coverage of Arab views. Neither faceless nor (ahem) invisible:

A failed Palestinian suicide bomber released in a prisoner swap with Israel has promised to sacrifice her own life.

Wafa al-Biss, 26, said that her people must continue 'on the path of struggle and resistance' despite being one of the 477 people freed in exchange for Sergeant Gilad Schalit.

al-Biss is another example of what happens when Israel tries to do the Palestinians a favour:

She had a permit given to her by Israel allowing her to leave Gaza for treatment for burns she sustained in an accident at her home in Gaza's Jebaliya refugee camp.

Translation: She could come to an Israeli hospital for world-class medical care, instead of the third-world treatment she'd receive in any Arab country.

Click on the article to see more "invisible" Palestinians, lounging around hotel swimming pools overlooking a beach. These people are murderers. Schapelle Corby, rotting in a Balinese prison cell must wish she'd killed a few Jews rather than schlepp a bag of marijuana.

Vale Gadaffi

Correspondents to the Sydney Morning Herald are already crying in their cornflakes about the despatch to Hell of Colonel Gaddafi.

Libyans have been fooled. Maybe Gaddafi was a dictator but he shared all the oil profits with people in such terms as education and health.

Now that they have successfully disposed of that regime under the instruction of the West, all the profits will go to global corporations that have not spent all this money fighting the war just to give freedom to the people of Libya.

It wasn't democracy - but true democracy doesn't exist anywhere, even though we are told it does.

Gaddafi died fighting for independence of his country.

Alex Boromisa Liverpool

Many dictators in the past, when faced with a revolution, have bravely stated they would ''fight until the end'', only to do a runner when the end approaches. On the other hand Gaddafi was true to his word only to be summarily executed instead of being brought to trial.

Libyans would have benefited greatly had he been tried, found guilty and sentenced according to the rule of law.

Richard Broniman Chifley

At least Israel didn't kill him. Can you imagine the outcry?

Letters in The Age aren't quite as praiseworthy of Gaddafi but instead demand a warm fuzzy approach to the problem of Islamism:

Messages of hate

THE media have celebrated the death of Colonel Gaddafi like bloodthirsty dogs. When will society be able to punish these people appropriately without such lustful vengeance?

We send messages of hate to those who hate us. This is not a game, rather it is a battle for decency and for the human species to move to a more civilised plane where we might begin to believe we can actually live peacefully together.

Gaddafi was a criminal of the worst kind but we need to demonstrate that we can deal with these people according to world laws and that the world's police can carry out this task in a decent and lawful manner. If we can't, then what separate us from him?

Andrew Dowling, Torquay

Due process threatened

FIRST Osama bin Laden was killed in what looked like a summary execution. Now Colonel Gaddafi has met his death in questionable circumstances. Where is due process - the rule of local and international law - in all this? Is this really the way forward in creating and maintaining a better and fairer world?

Terry Hewton, Henley Beach South, SA

They pulled an unarmed, unprotected Saddam Hussein out of a hole and he was subject to a trial. Bin Laden and Gaddafi weren't exactly sitting at home watching CNN when there was a polite knock at the door. It's amazing the number of letter writers who have no idea how things work in the real world.

More interestingly, having apparently misspelled Gaddafi, I now realise that the name appears in the spell-checker dictionary of my web browser. Fame!

One more to go...

Geez they come out with the snarky t-shirts quickly these days.

Foxtrot Foxtrot Sierra

In need of a list of the 'phonetic alphabet', I turned to this Wikipedia article.

In nearly every country, the phonetic equivalent of the letter w, is "Whisky". So "wow" would be spelled as Whisky Oscar Whisky.

According to the Wikipedia:

In Saudi Arabia, where a diverse population results in English being used for many commercial communications, the NATO alphabet is used. However, because alcohol is banned, "Washington" or "White" replaces "Whiskey" for "W".

In Pakistan, where tolerance of alcohol varies, "Washington" often replaces "Whiskey" for "W". Additionally, "Indigo" or "Italy" replaces "India" because of historical and present conflicts between Pakistan and India

At least they tolerate Washington.

With a Baseball Bat

I remember watching this video when it went viral a few years ago.



I wonder how his military career has progressed since. The video links to lots of other mostly amusing examples of soldiers blowing off steam.

Lataan: Loser

Conspiracy theorist, antisemite and all-round moron Damian Lataan in 2006:

"I don’t know what has happened to Cpl. Gilad Shalit. I don’t know if he was captured, or, if he was, I don’t know how he was captured. Frankly, I don’t even know that he actually exists."

Questioning how and if Gilad Shalit was even kidnapped by terrorists, Lataan asks:

if not, then what’s the real story? Why have the Israelis lied – again?

Yes. Well.

The headline of Lataan's blog: "Telling the History of the Twenty-First Century as it Really Is".



History as it really is if you're a moron.

Does he get Paid Per-Error?

Antony Loewenstein reminds Fairfax why they were smart to fire him. From his latest book review.

From his first paragraph:

The war in Afghanistan is the longest in modern American history.

Presumably Antony thinks the Vietnam war took place during the Middle Ages.

Occupy this...

Somewhere, deep inside Socialist Resistance headquarters, probably in between the archived anti-Bush and Howard puppets and "Land Rights for Gay Whales" placards is a whole section of signage, banners and placards against Israel.

Several of these state "End the Occupation". They are never entirely honest about which bit of "the occupation" they are referring to. Some would claim it's the land outside the 1967 armistice line, e.g. Gaza (occupied solely by Palestinians and terror groups) and the West Bank. however when they start shouting "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free" it becomes clear they are referring to all of the land of Israel, and thus oppose (as Hamas does) Jews 'occupying' any space whatsoever.

How confusing it must have been for career Israel-haters to attend the latest Jew-hating mob rally outside Max Brenner in Melbourne. Watch from 1 minute and 30 seconds in.



Apparently they are now in favour of occupation. Dumbarses.

Fields of Clover

Can we get some of these animals to educate Sydney's more sanctimonious lane-hogging bike riders?

Sweet Profits

This kid is awesome. Boo to the school for squashing free enterprise.

I wonder if HM Revenue (UKs tax office) will come after him. 200 quid a day certainly beats the hell out of a paper route.

Sign Language

Via Tim Blair, Occupy Wall Street protesters (now franchised to other states) wave their hands in the air. The "Mic Check" call and repeat seemed like a novel way to spread a message through a crowd when amplification was banned in certain protest areas. However when the 'leader' is using a megaphone, it's just sad to watch.

What do we want? Jazz hands! When do we want it? [wiggle fingers].

Via Boingboing, perhaps the best protest sign I've seen to date.

Quote of the year

Sydney barrister Charles Waterstreet reveals the secret to getting laid:

Sex and money go hand in gland. Rich men get more sex than the poor.

Surely Charles isn't saying females are gold-diggers who only part their legs if the price is right.

Good money

John Quiggin expresses admiration for the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is exactly what you’d expect from an academic who has twice received million-dollar grants from Big Government. No word from Quiggin on whether he endorses cop car crapping.

Not Fired

The stupid accompanying news graphics continue.

News.com.au reports that:

A quick handed New York Police Department (NYPD) sergeant stopped a violent felon from shooting him in the gut Saturday by jamming his ring finger under the hammer of the felon's .38 revolver, police said.

The graphic which accompanies the article depicts a technique that would only have saved the officer's life if his name was Bugs Bunny.

Gaffe gaffe

Blinded by hatred for News Ltd, Crikey media expert Jeremy Sear blames The Australian for what he thinks is a poor choice of words, Jeremy's anti-News fanboyz piling on in comments:

"Good one, NewsCorp."

"The company isn't called News Limited for nothing"
 
"It's just the usual cliched habit of Mudorc's gutter gotcha applied to something without any awareness of the inappropriateness."

"... 'gaffe' is part of Limited News' war on science."

Trouble is none of them, Jeremy included, have noticed that News Ltd wasn’t responsible for the story. Look in the top left-hand corner and you’ll see the letters AFP – this piece was filed by Agence France Press. A good lawyer might have checked the small print.

The Australian wasn't the only outlet to run this AFP piece, by the way. Let's see if Jeremy posts a correction.

Update  According to Jeremy, News Ltd's David Penberthy's fondness for "béchamel-rich lasagne" damns him as an elite. This is, of course, silly considering that lasagna is an inexpensive dish, whereas Jeremy's typical meals – pricey lamb cutlets, duck breast, chocolate strawberries and the like – are fit for a king.

Sheridan FTW

The Cut and Paste column in The Australian is one of the first sections I read. Every day full of wonderful 'gotchas' and a nice round-up of stupidity in other newspapers, that you might not realise was stupid if they were the only papers you read.

On the last episode of Q&A, Greg Sheridan called bullshit on a claim made by yappy philosopher Slavoj Zizek and Mona Eltahawy, an Arab-American journalist who really likes to swear a lot on television. (Update: Full transcript now available here. The Q and A Transcript is inacurate. Below version is corrected. It was Eltahawy who made the claim about Bush, not Zizek. Watch the video from about 35 mins. ).

SLAVOJ ZIZEK MONA ELTAHAWY: You talk about the Muslim Brotherhood, let's talk about the Christian Brotherhood of the United States because I always tell my American friends we might have the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt but there is a Christian Brotherhood in the United States and . . . unlike [the] Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, it actually had an impact on foreign policy because George Bush apparently heard God tell him to invade Iraq and in the name of this . . .

GREG SHERIDAN: Where did George Bush ever say that? That's ridiculous.

MONA ELTAHAWY: You want me to get that for you from the news conference?

GREG SHERIDAN: Yeah, you show me the quote.

MONA ELTAHAWY: I will. I will. I will email it to you.

GREG SHERIDAN: That is complete rubbish.

MONA ELTAHAWY: I will send it to you by Twitter. No, it’s actually true.

GREG SHERIDAN: George W Bush never said that.

MONA ELTAHAWY: He did. He did.

GREG SHERIDAN: You made it up.

MONA ELTAHAWY: No, I did not make it up.

GREG SHERIDAN: There’s something in your coffee.

MONA ELTAHAWY: No, actually, no. I wish.

TONY JONES: Hang on. Hang on. Jon wants to get in here.

MONA ELTAHAWY: Wait. Wait. Wait. Let me finish. Let me finish.

TONY JONES: On his behalf, I’m going to say, please let Jon come in.

JON RONSON: No, can I just say that, just to support what Mona said, George Bush not only said that, but he had his...

MONA ELTAHAWY: Thank you.

TONY JONES: He had a presidential prayer team who would meet every week and pray for...

MONA ELTAHAWY: Exactly. Thank you. Thank you. And the Christian Brotherhood of the United States...

GREG SHERIDAN: You can mock George W Bush for saying prayers ...

JON RONSON: I’m not. But - no, no. This isn’t mocking.

GREG SHERIDAN: ...but that’s not same as saying...

MONA ELTAHAWY: It’s not about prayers he said - didn't he say, “God told me to liberate Iraq"?

GREG SHERIDAN: ...that God told him to invade Iraq?

JON RONSON: Yeah, this is...

MONA ELTAHAWY: He did. He did. And not just that...

TONY JONES: And this is the...

GREG SHERIDAN: No, he didn't. No. No. No. That's completely crazy. That’s...

Within seconds, the #qanda twitterstream was full of Sheridan-haters pointing to various questionable references as definitive "proof" that he was wrong and piling on Sheridan.

@katrin_jane Katrin Long
@monaeltahawy The extent to which Greg Sheridan argued with you about the validity of the Bush/God/Iraq comment was so embarrassing for him.

Except Sheridan was right. (Update: Link corrected.)

The quote was at worst a total fabrication, at best the result of poor translation and second-hand retellings of events by untrustworthy Arab liars. You know, the Palestinian leadership.

Eltahawy's response to The Australian is simply sneering that it's a whiny article. No wonder she follows Antony Loewenstein and vice versa. They both make stupid mistakes and then refuse to correct them, albeit one of them has a job.

I previously reported on a blatant falsehood getting the audience into a frenzy. Q and A's Twitter pile-ons demonstrate Churchill's observation that "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on".

Update: Here is a conversation (term used lightly) I had with Mona Eltahawy on Twitter. She flat out avoids to answer a very simple challenge but does manage to defame Sheridan and I as drug-takers. She's a classy broad.

(Try this link if it's not displaying properly)

Eyes Wide Stupid

Is this the most pointless graphic ever to accompany a news article?

Sign of the Apocalypse?

I almost agree with Antony Loewenstein's review of the Andrew Bolt case:

The Left shouldn’t celebrate legal victory against Murdoch’s Andrew Bolt...it makes me extremely uncomfortable that the law can tell us, as writers, journalists or citizens, what may be offensive. Should we not have the right to offend and be offended?

Pretty soon however, Loewenstein (a citizen but certainly not much of a writer or journalist) returns to his usual error-riddled stupidity.

I even agree with the Murdoch editor David Pemberthy who argues today that the laws that hammered Bolt could be used for other purposes,

What is there to stop a group of Jewish Australians from suing the Greens for their boycott of Israel and arguing that the boycott is anti-Semitic?

something I raised with colleagues last week

It's Penberthy, you chucklehead. And he's no "colleague" of yours, being employed at an actual media organisation. Loewenstein predicts embarrassment

My guess is that such a move against those backing BDS against apartheid Israel will be coming soon, and those on the Left cheering the verdict against the odious Bolt will have egg on their faces.

They are however quite comfortable and shameless boycotting Jewish organisations and partying like it's 1939.