TV '09's Last Scary Gasp

 

Okay, first the good news:

The current TV season will be over on May 31st: by that time, the major networks will have decided what god-awful ill-thought shows have gasped their last and whether the gang of Scrubs will be back (don't bet on it) and if Jack Bauer will continue keeping us safe (yup). Oh, yeah, and there's the new fall lineups (we'll get to those in a few weeks). But before that, it is my duty as this site's resident TV/media guru of sorts to take you on a tour of the few remaining shows still to debut, many of which will have only a scant few episodes to become hits. And I wouldn't recommend any of them to your kids. Let's see what's still upcoming this spring — bear with me as we roll out the last of the (eeewww) season.

Harper's Island
Created by Ari Schlossberg
Executive producers, Ari Schlossberg, John Turteltaub, Jeff Bell
(CBS/Global TV Canada, debuts in April) ) This new serialized mystery/horror show appears to have been lifted from every slasher film of the past 20 years (with a touch of the recent CW horror game show 13: Fear is Real). A group of people are invited to a wedding celebration but each week, get gruesomely bumped off one by one. It's little wonder there's those like accused beheader Vincent Li running around when the supposedly-regulated-for-too-much-violence networks get to run this kind of dangerous tripe; why worry about nasty video games like Killzone when regular TV can show this blood-fest for free (along with episodes that can be accessed over YouTube)?

In The Motherhood
Created by Alexandra Rushfield
Produced by David Lang, Stu Bloomberg
(ABC, Thursdays 8 pm) It's three gals playing Murphy Brown (the fictional 1990's media whore Dan Quayle tried in vain to get off TV): One's a married, neurotic perfectionist (like the 50s really-feminine homemakers you just don't see anymore); the second, a divorcee with a baby and a teen to care for, and a third, who goes through boyfriends like I go through Doritos. Oh yeah, the married, more "traditional" mom, is the kind of "abnormal" one of the trio. The industrialists behind Suave Shampoo and Sprint/Nextel communications are at the bottom of this atrocity, so cross them off your list, future consumers....

The Unusuals
Stars Amber Tamblyn, Adam Goldberg
Produced by ABC Studios (Robert Iger heads its parent company Disney)
(ABC/Global, debuts April 9)
Quirky cop shows haven't done too well for the past few years (i.e., Life On Mars, Blind Justice) but ABC is at it again with one about a newly-transferred policewoman whose day-to-day encounters with crime alternate between horror and weird. This show has already been described as this century's M *A*S*H, and with any luck, will get the boot by May. There's already too many gore-fests showing up at all hours of the day and night (I just heard that this fall the ailing MyTV Network will air back-to-back episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent as its Monday lineup).

Cupid
Produced by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Gwartz
(ABC, debuts March 31)
If at first you don't succeed ... this one is a revival of a failed 1998 comedy-drama about — you guessed it — a guy who pushes romance. Actually, it's a second revival, if you count last fall's CW network stomach-churner Valentine. Do we really need another chick-flick series in prime time?

Parks and Recreation
Stars Amy Pohler, Nick Offerman
Produced by Ben Silverman (NBC Chairman) and Michael Schur
(NBC, debuts April 9)
Much in the style of The Office, this new comedy (?) centers on an Indiana civil servant juggling a mentoring job with constructing a park. That's the premise. (And you thought Mr. Personality was a dumb show).

During the first half of May will be presented the upfronts, the announcements to the press and to advertisers of the networks' fall 2009 schedules. Between sixty and eighty new offerings are expected on five broadcast networks, most of which will air on Canadian stations and networks as well. Be here for my take on what you'll have to sit through when the weather gets cold again. Meanwhile, check out the above for yourself, and have a notebook handy to jot things down, including sponsors to write to when you see something you don't like.

And contact them!

 

 

Robber Baron Busine$$men

 

"Spread sunshine all over the place, just put on happy face"
— old standard song

"Greed is good"
— Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street

In October 1929, the greatest financial disaster of the twentieth century hit the United States and the world after the crash of the stock market in New York. Millions of lives were destroyed, families uprooted, businesses went belly-up, and it took a devastating war on Europe and the conniving con man Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to "pull America through.” Almost eighty years later, we have the cataclysmic devastation, again, on Wall Street, and throughout the world, after years of fraud, flim-flamming and outright theft of billions upon billions from hard-working whites, causing damage that is so bad that (we're told) it will take trillions in order to set things right. Yeah, everybody's angry at high rollers like the executives of insurance scammer AIG, who after getting bailed out with $170 billion of dough from the US Sucker Taxpayer's pocket, now wants to pay bonuses to its head scumbags in excess of $73 million, and that's just for starters (the latest is that the feds may try to tax AIG to get it back). Yet AIG, for all its contemptible arrogance (they're still running ads in Canada) and despite the fact that they are under direct federal control, still has its hand out wanting to reward their own "goniffs."  The public is not angry enough.

Banks, financial institutions and their predecessors have been operating in America since before the days of the cowboys; Wells Fargo is one of the oldest, and now even they got a pile of bailout money. But in the period from the late 1920's to the 1980's, even with all the government institutions, laws, and alphabet-soup "regulators" from the IRS to the SEC. these dark-suited bastards (yes, you read right) have in spurts, and in the horror of last fall,  pulled off the total wreckage of the world economies and have now earned them the hatred of so much of the world that some now are asking for bodyguards; hatred of bankers looks to soon replace hatred of certain ethnic groups. And with straight faces, everyone from new US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to AIG honcho Edward Liddy wisecracking on Capitol Hill to the representatives in the House and Senate, were giving phony mea culpas and/or pleading ignorance (As Liddy faced the feds, AIG's Chief Financial Officer David Herzog was conspicuous by his absence).

The "walking wounded" and destroyed of the past few years are mostly familiar names: Ford, GM, Chrysler, Tyco, Citibank, Bank of America, Enron. Yet in each case, there is one or more of the following: A massive company that sold out its American workers for cheap foreign labor and foreign facilities, gorging in greed on a scale not heard of even my dad's day; incredible incompetence and a callous hedonistic disregard for employees for the sake of a few (billion) dollars more.

"Robber barons" is a term whose popular use goes back to the 19th century and referred to industrialists like the Rockefeller family, Henry Clay Frick, E.H. Harriman, and J.P, Morgan (of today's J.P. Morgan Chase). Many of today's 'barons' of finance and the media are more familiar: Donald Trump, Bernie Madoff, Sumner Redstone (CBS), Mark Ruben, Barry Meyer and Howard Rosen, (Time Warner), Peter Chernin (Fox Entertainment) Dawn Ostroff (CW Network) and Arthur Ochs Sulzburger (New York Times). With few exceptions, the media is a recession-proof industry. and has done a great job of crying crocodile tears for those hit most severely by capitalist greed, particularly recently-defected Fox News phony Glenn Beck, whose fake anger is as credible as the mania act of CNBC's Jim Cramer.

Turn on any business channel, Fox, Bloomberg, BNN, and you won't see continuous stories of what scumbag people and outfits like Madoff and AIG and Michael Milliken have caused. Some people, like the producers and distributors of movies like Other People's Money and TV series like Traders and Mad Men have exploited it quite profitably.

Up here in Canada we weren't hit as badly, but we were hit nonetheless, thank you, free trader traitors. The smugness of people like Stephen Harper that we're still doing okay is indicative of the callousness that has been a hallmark of the federal Tories since before the days of Brian Mulroney, a former lawyer who shares the businessman's code of no boundaries.

 

Internationalism is an ideology that only the already-rich benefit from. The rest of us pay and pay and pay through our taxes for harebrained economic schemes and worldwide "good will" as the well-known financial manipulators meet behind closed doors at the G7, G8 and recently the G20 conferences, try to cover their dung-encrusted tracks.

A Canada First economic policy is long overdue in this nation, one that prefers Canadian labor at a decent wage and keeps our factories here instead of outsourcing. Sadly, I don't see any Canadian political party even coming close to developing one.

But let's keep bugging our so-called representatives for a Canada First fiscal policy. Charity begins at home.

Finally, let's stop worshipping the businessman as a pillar of society, the backbone of a healthy community. They can yap all they want; they're mostly skunks and skanks, frequent flyers who really now would love to get away to Third World lands where their ill-gotten gain is worth more and they can get away with their shameless arrogance.

 

 

Creepy Kids' Cartoons

 

It's Saturday morning, 8 am. Do you know where your children are? If they're in front of the TV, don't breathe a sigh of relief yet; better, grab a cup of coffee and join them as they watch what passes for educational and children's programming these days.
And if they leave, keep watching.

Lots of parents, understandably, are worried about what's lurking out there beyond the familiarity of home: The Internet's anonymous chatrooms, text messaging and images that can go on their phones and I-Pods, to name a few. But long before the computer became part of so many households, the omnipresent Cyclops of television has been there. TV for kids isn't just Romper Room or the slapstick mayhem of Bugs Bunny and Popeye anymore; there's a lot that's disturbing out there, propaganda pumped out by The Family Channel, YTV, Teletoon and its Retro channel in Canada, and in the U.S., Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel, as well as the fare on regular broadcast television. It's a surreal world of witches, alternate universes, mutants, masked vigilante "superheroes," sexual imagery, politically correct subliminal and obvious political messages, and some pretty scary scenarios, and I'm not just talking violence.

Several years ago, the US Federal Communications Commission, under pressure from parents and religious groups, mandated that a certain portion of broadcast television be devoted each week to programs of "an instructive and educational nature." Some broadcasters found ways in the 1970's to get around it; ABC used short animated musical snippets known collectively as Schoolhouse Rock, while CBS countered with Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, now seen daily on Retro. Some shows like the 1960's Linus the Lionhearted and Hasbro's GI Joe were blatant propaganda saying in the former, buy Post Cereals and the latter case, buy our soldier dolls and don't mess with the American military. Messages such as "be tolerant" and other leftist boo-wash were mixed in with "don't be a bully" and "crime doesn't pay." By the eighties and nineties, and even today, anti-racist, anti-family, anti-religion and gender-confusion themes became staples of live-action and animated fare all over the airwaves, from the CBC-produced (with your tax bucks) Fraggle Rock to the numerous X-Men cartoons.

 

 "Constructive ways of resolving conflict" ended up replacing relatively harmless stuff like The Road Runner with The Tom and Jerry Show (wherein they're now buddies instead of adversaries). Here in Canada, the government's Canadian-content rulings gave birth to animation studios like Nelvana (now owned by Corus), who put out shows like Beetlejuice (a smelly, creepy adult specter has adventures in our world and his "Neitherworld" accompanied by a teenage Goth) and Care Bears Family, about a group of bears, and various other animal species who fight un-politically correct "negative feelings" with rainbow-rays they shoot out of their tummies (I'm not kidding).

The nasty kind of Harry Potter sorcery and its popularity had its first incarnations in the 70's "Sabrina" cartoons (Sabrina and The Groovy Ghoulies) and its latter-day incarnation Sabrina's Secret Life of a few years ago. The animated "other realms" and fantasy world are amply displayed in 'toons of the past and present such as Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Cardcaptors and Chaotic — all Japanese anime and anime-styled shows with grotesque character designs, monsters, violence and explosions aplenty — and dirty old Japanese men animators who have seemed to have a disturbing thing about the young white female anatomy ever since the days of Sailor Moon.

The new cartoon "family" is usually missing a parent or having some weird relationship between adults and adolescents, displayed in shows like Alvin and the Chipmunks, Beetlejuice Fox's New Adventures of Peter Pan, and Disney's Goof Troop and The Replacements. Kids are always smarter and hipper than the adults, who are usually absent-minded bumblers (Kim Possible, Inspector Gadget) or bumblers and strict authority figures (the entire adult 'cast' of Disney's Recess, and the dad of Teletoon's Johnny Test).

Political correctness gets sneaked into all kinds of toons, from X-Men (preaching tolerance of the bizarrely super-powered), The Batman (forget the cops enforcing the law when a masked, beefy rich guy can just take it into his own hands); even the ultra-leftist Star Trek had a late-sixties animated version, with many of the live-action show's cast reprising their roles. Longtime staples of Saturday like Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones and The Jetsons got multicultural makeovers in the 1980's, adding non-white characters as supporting players (but rarely as villains).

If you want your kids to learn about, say, Mezo-American history, steer 'em clear of ABC's The Emperor's New School. Here, a vain young leader bumbles his way through an education in order to keep his throne. This one's from Disney, who also created Fillmore! about a black kid who chucks a life of delinquency to be a middle-school safety patrol cop, fighting crime with the aid of his partner, another Goth girl, On this show, there are only four regular white characters: a bellowing principal, her wimpy vice-principal assistant, a background-character young cop, and a clumsy. screechy-voiced Irish kid. Oh, did I mention that most of the perps Fillmore nails are messed-up white kids? On Disney's Goof Troop, there is no mention of the mom of Goofy's son Max — we assume Goofy is a widower. The Replacements has a creepy premise: Adults hassling you? Just call a shadowy company called Fleemco and they get replaced with "cooler" versions.

Cartoon Network/Teletoon's My Gym Partner's A Monkey is all about a boy named Adam, the only human student of Charles Darwin Middle School, a slap at religion as a rejection of a spiritual side of Man's nature. In one story, a character relates a tale saying he would rather throw a baby monkey off a bridge and keep the diaper that it wore (real family values, huh?). In another story, a giraffe flirts with Adam in an unfunny parody of Single White Female.

Even the most seemingly-innocuous cartoons can be fishy. In Smurfs Adventures, the adaptation of the tales of the diminutive blue elf-like inhabitants of a tiny village, it is stated that the one female character of the village, Smurfette, is the one and only and last of her kind (the rest are all males...hmmmm).

The saturation of disgusting themes, sexual innuendo, queer ideology and a certain penchant for exposing the naked rear end, (as well as flatulence) is a lot more blatant in today's toons than it used to be (thank you, Fox's The Simpsons), but no one seems to complain about it to the North American broadcast regulators; Much of what's on animated entertainment is made to-order for "guys" like Toronto broadcaster Stephen LeDrew, whose bow tie would be set spinning if he were to see enough of these bizarre and worrisome shows aimed at kids. Yet, it's dangerous fare for developing kids, and it needs looking into and regulation, now more than ever.

Don't take my word for it — check it out for yourself every Saturday morning (and weekdays between 3 and 6 pm). It's something you as a parent should keep an eye on. And write about it to your TV provider and to the following:

FCC (Federal Communications Commission)
445 12th Street West, Washington DC 20554
Email: fccinfo@fcc.gov 

CRTC (Canadian Radiotelevision Telecommunications Commission) K1A ON2
Chairman: Konrad von Finckenstein
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/RapidsCCM/Register.asp?lang=E

Also, contact the animators and producers:

Nickelodeon
1515 Broadway, New York City NY 10036 USA
Corporate Parent: Viacom
Phillipe Dauman, Chairman
http://www.viacom.com/contact/Pages/default.aspx 

Time Warner (parent of Cartoon Network and the CW Network)
Jeffrey Bewkes, Chairman
One Time Warner Center, New York City NY 10019-8000
http://www.timewarner.com/corp/contacts_support.html

The Disney Channel/Disney XD/ABC Kids
Robert Iger, Chief Operating Officer
The Walt Disney Studios, Burbank CA 91521 USA
http://corporate.disney.go.com/index.html

Corus Entertainment (parent of YTV and Nelvana Ltd.)
John Cassaday, President
101 Bay St., Suite 1630 Toronto Ontario M5J 2T3
http://www.corusent.com/home/Corporate/Contact/tabid/1740/Default.aspx

Astral Media (parent of Family Channel Canada)
Ian Greenberg, President
2100 Rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest Bureau 1000
Montreal, QC H3H 2T3
http://www.astral.com/en/users/contactus/default.idigit

Remember...You're the parent.

 

 

A Toronto Birthday Card:

 

Those of you who are regular visitors here know that I rail regularly about this city — or rather, against the pinheads who run it like some kind of royal fiefdom. But I love Toronto. I was born and bred here, and am among a vanishing breed among those who truly appreciate this town's rich and colorful history, its natural beauty and its uniqueness. How many burgs do you know sporting rivers on either side and right down the middle of them, and are situated on one of the Great Lakes? Our weather, once we get really into spring, is pretty good, and the trees in my favorite season, autumn, are a sight to behold.

But given that it is Toronto's 150th birthday, it is our past that I want to share not only with you living here who are unfamiliar with that past, but also with those outside Canada whose knowledge of us is only that of a nice place to go on vacation where you can still get a Starbucks Latte. So sit (and back and enjoy a few historical morsels.

The city's name is derived from the Mohawk word "Tkaronto" or "meeting place" of tribes. Once, this town was called "Hogtown.” During agricultural times (when we were known as York) pigs ran through our muddy streets. In 1813, as part of the war of 1812, we were invaded by the Americans, who, among the other nasty things they did while occupying York (including the burning of old Fort York), took and kept the Mayor's Scepter of office. To this day it sits in a museum in the USA, and they haven't returned it. Oh, yes, and to the best of my knowledge, no one here has bothered to even ask for it back.

The Yanks weren't the only ones who kept things lively here. In 1837 an angry man (who would become our first mayor) named William Lyon Mackenzie took his anger over the Family Compact (an Anglo Conservative clique that ruled Upper Canada) all the way to a rebellion that began in Montgomery's Tavern and ended in Mackenzie having to flee to Buffalo, New York.

The Anglo presence here once had a commanding dominance over Canadian politics. Toronto was the place where rallies were held to advocate the hanging of Métis leader Louis Riel; the resentment against all who didn't support the British Crown, and against non-white and “subversive” elements was palpable.

Another sobriquet our city once enjoyed was "Toronto the Good." The God-fearing administration of this town saw to it that Sunday was kept peaceful, religiously observant and quiet; stores were closed and the only institution open was church. That changed when a furrier named Paul Magder fought in court to have the prohibition on Sunday shopping struck down — and won. Today you can do anything from buying a bag of milk to getting plastered on Sunday.

Toronto was once the bastion of the Orange Lodge, all part of the Anglo domination of this metropolis until the 1950's, when the immigrant Italians made their mark in the construction industry, followed by the Portuguese and other ethnic groups. Today many of those lodges, where once  the doors were open and God was respected, are shut down; The Masonic Temple in downtown Toronto became the venue of many rock concerts and later, served as studios for CTV network productions. God was indeed an intrinsic part of Toronto life; those who held respectable and decent jobs were expected to be church-goers and the city's "blue laws" reflected that respect. Today, T.O. is "Hate Central," aimed at free expression of religious and ethnic identity.

Toronto has remained a center of Canadian "culture." It is now the locale of the world's largest annual exhibition (The CNE), our national broadcaster (CBC), Queen's Park (as our provincial capital), and still enjoys areas of great dining, theatre, opera — and sadly, is plagued with crime. I've written to the bone about crime here for quite a spell, and if we are to remain having a city worthy of our love of it, we need to push government to make and enforce laws to keep us safe from the human sewage that threatens to destroy its quality of life.

Here also, just to touch a point once more, is where the greedy businessmen of finance, entertainment and political “sneakery” congregate to hang on to power — and sometimes, lose it. John Tory just decided to pack it in as head of the provincial Conservatives. He's the one who, as a head honcho of Rogers Communications, tried to pull a billing scam for unwanted cable TV services and got slammed for it, having to give up that little scheme. He stands as the typical capitalist, yet another sad symbol of Toronto's power in Canada. 

Today we share the problems of most major North American cities, including neglect, poverty, crumbling  infrastructure, and criminal mayhem. Our multicult (mostly black) crime wave of Toronto's is a far cry from our earliest "waves," most of them involving French Canadians robbing banks — and getting a lot stiffer sentences than a gang-signing punk who empties his gun on innocents from a car these days.

Yet despite its flaws, its greedy merchants and its corrupted politicians, I love this town. That's why I'm so critical of it. You should love it, too... after all, aren't you raising your kids here? Well, why not get them involved with a little civic pride and involvement to make Toronto a better city? You can learn more at the special City of Toronto website at http://www.toronto.ca/toronto_history/index.htm 

Get involved. And, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TORONTO!

 

 

Terror and Cowardice in Race-mixed Societies

 

In two Canadian cities, there are a pair of crimes currently under scrutiny that more than explain why this nation is fast-becoming a clone of America in terms of criminal violence mostly caused by non-whites.

One of them is the Vince Li case, who has now been found 'not criminally responsible' in a Winnipeg court for the gruesome act of cutting off a young man's head, the decision rendered by Judge John Scurfield. This is the famous and horrid case of an Asian Canadian who was on trial for decapitating a Greyhound Bus passenger Tim McLean last year, an incident made all the more horrible by reports that the other passengers just stood by and refused to intervene as a young man's head was being cut off. As it stands, Li will appear in court in 90 days to determine how he will be institutionalized, with yearly reviews to see if he can be released into the community.

No, seriously. And he doesn't even get a criminal record. This is the cowardly state of justice in Canada today; on the day of Li's judgment of non-competency, The National Post's David Asper remarked that settling for future supervision for Li "doesn't satisfy victim's bloodlust, but it's the practical reality.” Asper, whose mega-rich family runs Canwest, one of Canada's largest media empires (and now near bankruptcy) can still afford to make these callous remarks. If you're just a plain old white man, your life is cheap and you'll have to take your chances; no price is too high to uphold multicult justice. The news media, who take as a motto for its stories, "If it bleeds it leads" still refers to violent shootings as "gunplay," still trivializing the seriousness of this crisis. That's what makes all their supposed concern about crime as phony as a Bernie Madoff-run furniture sale.

The other case is in Mississauga (near Toronto), where a young girl hassled by bullies and who spoke out was again victimized by vandals after being punched in the face by another girl. The Mississauga girl received very little help for her plight. For starters, the alleged attacker cannot be legally identified thanks to the damnable Youth Justice Act, which protects so-called young offenders and has been instrumental in protecting non-white immigrant punks and the criminal activity that they commit from real punishment. So far, there's been not even a condemnation of Mississauga Mayor 'Hurricane' Hazel McCallion over this unstopped criminality, or any aggressive investigation on the part of Peel Police or any crackdown — the victimized girl was moved to another school.  Case closed.

Both these incidents and their aftermaths expose the kind of cowardice among whites that has been just one of the many disgusting hallmarks of multiculturalism and the hands-off favoritism shown to non-white punks who laugh at the law and sneer at police who are either are incompetent, cowardly, or both. Toronto has been under siege by generations of this vermin ever since the former la-la hippies got their leprous hands on our legal and educational systems, making it all but a breeze for "youth"  and "visible minorities" to rob, rape, assault, mug, murder and terrorize the white law-abiding population with impunity and no fear of legal reprisal.

What's happened to our once-gutsy white Canadians, whose outrage at these atrocities once would not abet until the perpetrator(s) were tracked down and justly punished? The spinelessness of too many of us is nothing less than shameful. One man, who could have been overpowered on that Greyhound bus before his gruesome deed could be accomplished, was allowed to take a young man's life, and not even the bus driver led an attack. Instead the horrible drama was allowed to play out until the evening hours, all captured on nationwide Canadian television. Li has to be brought to court each time through a special tunnel that connects his jail cell to the court, with a heavy police presence (your tax dollars in action) in lieu of alleged death threats. One question: Where the hell was the anger to stop Li on that bus? Where was the foresight shown to keep him a safe distance from where he could harm anyone?

And who was there for Lindsay Hyde, the teenager still not safe from the punks who hassled her at school and at her home. The cops weren't. The school administrations at both the municipal and provincial levels weren't. Young Lindsay stands alone, courageously, after speaking out. Damn those who didn't do what should have been done, and damn those politicians past and present whose mollycoddling of creeps and pandering to the “diversity” garbage has imperiled us all!

Diversity is our strength — but only if we keep our separate ethnic groups separate. I could fill a hundred columns going back in time to the seventies, with stories of what happens in race-mixed societies where cowardly whites meekly accept like sheep the wolves placed among them. Nobody thinks anymore of Barry Cobby who was choked to death decades ago by black teen Paul Smithers, or the convenience store owner made a quadriplegic by a group of black hoodlums who shot her in cold blood. Or Jane Creba, whose young life was snuffed out on Boxing Day. Where is the seething rage for them?

It's way past time we all got mad and jumped in — take a proactive and aggressive stance against violent crime whenever and wherever it occurs; we can't rely on the police to protect us in 21st century Canada. If you see a crime — get involved and help stop it right there. And get on the 'net to your local police, city council, provincial and federal justice ministries. Demand public safety, tougher laws, less leniency for killers, robbers and rapists of any age.

Until our societies separate by race and ethnicity, none of us will ever be safe from violent crime. And until we get off our collective duffs and decide that no one can stop crime in the end — except ourselves.

 

 

All That Doesn't Glitter: Oscar's Own High School Musical

 
There's something all-too-familiar about awards shows, most especially the grand-daddy of them all, the Academy Awards. And there's hardly a single industry in America so full of self-congratulatory fluff and phoniness as the entertainment industry.

The films that have been nominated for major and minor Oscars are the real point every year. and aside from the over-the-top sex and violence, there's more often than not some trendy political message (be tolerant; don't hassle gays; Love can conquer age differences and Nazism, etc.) or just plain creepy tale that gets promoted . This year, I personally have seen three of the nominated flicks: Frost/Nixon (Best Picture) The Dark Knight (Best Supporting Actor); and Defiance (Best Original Music), and for the first time in years, watched the entire Oscars show. Now, it's dish, dish, dish...hope you have your antacid near you.

The whole sorry mess had the look and feel of an upscale high school musical. Host Hugh Jackman had only two production numbers: the sloppy Best Picture Medley that Billy Crystal did way funnier, and a pitiful ersatz "Puttin' On My Top Hat" buck-and-wing that wasn't worth 75 cents. A slow curtain opening 11 minutes in, a stumbling-words shtick about technical awards from Will Smith, and a sloppily-presented segment for "Those Who Left Us" were just the technical flubs.

As for the films, Slumdog Millionaire cleaned up pretty nicely, its trophies included Best Picture and Best Director as Hollywood gushed over the little film from India made for just a few million dollars (FYI, a million rupees, when converted, adds up to around $20,000), and the film withstood anger from many in India who weren't fond of its raw portrayal of Mumbai's violence and poverty. SM was just one flick that celebrated romance this year, other prominent ones being The Reader and in its own rite, the animated Wall-E had some robot-on-robot action. Not to be outdone, gays got their chance to be romantic of sorts as a subplot of Milk, for which rat-faced Sean Penn got a Best Actor. Always gracious, Penn ragged on the anti-gay protesters at the Kodak Theatre and pleaded again, "We've got to have equal rights for everyone," in response to the brouhaha over gay marriage legalization.

Penelope Cruz, who copped a statue for Best Supporting Actress, whined about how she couldn't get an Oscar in her home town. Presenter Daniel Craig almost tripped over Sara Jessica Parker's gown. Mickey Rourke, who got skunked out of an award for The Wrestler, looked like a busboy just fired for drinking on the job. A sad, sad part of the night was Jerry Lewis, looking like hell, to receive a humanitarian award and full of maudlin thanks as the Academy praised his career and his controversial association with young victims of Muscular Dystrophy.

There was only only lady who truly looked great, 75-year-old European legend Sophia Loren, one of the Best Actress presenters. Looking radiant, she was the only touch of class and only reminder of the real glamour of the Hollywood of old. The rest were mostly scrawny, dewy-eyed young things with hideous gowns.

Each year Hollywood kisses its own collective keester, but this year's presentation was not much of an improvement from 2008, when Hollywood was crippled by the writer's strike. If the actors' union walks and Hollywood shuts down for another year, there might not be enough interest to stage even a press conference reading of the winners next year. Meanwhile, already filmed, and coming soon to a theatre near you: A remake of The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3; the rebooting of Star Trek; the quirky superhero saga Watchmen, the next (ugh) Harry Potter flick and the DaVinci Code sequel Angels and Demons (Tom Hanks takes on the Illuminate!).

Wow, I can hardly wait until next February.

 

 

Immorality Rules in Primetime

 
When television and its technology opened up new worlds of information and imagination a few decades ago, it was pretty harmless to observe anything that wasn't uplifting. Cartoons were clean and the kinds of situations of today's comedies and dramas were watchable by all family members. Reality TV? Try shows like This Is Your Life or Truth or Consequences. Aside from a kiss on I Love Lucy or a bad guy getting blasted on M Squad, that's what passed for sex and violence. Compare sitcom married couples in separate beds in the sixties to, say, the hot and steamy romps on CW's 90210, and there's no comparison. Later on, cable television and Pay-TV, for those who could afford it, became the homes for racy movies with sexually-explicit or violent content. Today you can turn on the weekday afternoon lineup on A&E and see The Sopranos, a show deemed unfit for broadcast TV not that long ago.

Today's primetime schedules on Canada's main networks (along with mini-networks like E! and A), along with the main broadcast fare of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW and My Network are rife with unsavory premises, soft-core porn and propaganda by the bushel full. And right now, SAG strike option not withstanding, more are on their way this spring, summer and next fall. The relaxing of content laws for American TV, not to mention the loopholes that allow webs like Fox and CW to operate and promote themselves as networks without being subject to the same rules, have contributed to the dumbing-down and degrading of a medium from whence came Omnibus, Playhouse 90, and other landmark shows that we all once enjoyed.

Despite the economic crunch hitting Canada's broadcasters. most primetime U.S. fare is part of the night time Canadian schedules, with many shows simulcast at the same as the U.S. carriers. So basically, most of North American network TV is the same, with little bleeped up here and a "mature content" warning standard before each broadcast (and those little ratings boxes up in the corner, which attract as many of those who shouldn't be watching as warn parents).

A newcomer on the Fox schedule is Dollhouse, a sci-fi drama that glamorizes and gives a mystique to assassination. Here, a mysterious organization sends pre-programmed agents to carry out its cloak-and-dagger assignments. The hitch is that after every job is done, each agent has their memories and personalities erased and reprogrammed. Creepy? Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, dreamed it up. On NBC, being a mercenary is kinda fun, especially when you're Chuck, a computer nerd whose brain is downloaded with America's most valuable intelligence data and you have a half-dressed babe as your bodyguard/agent/partner. Back on A&E, there is The Beast, with Patrick Swayze as an FBI agent with a Mossad style about him breaking in a new rookie agent. Shifting loyalties are a staple of counterintelligence dramas: even 24's Jack Bauer is famous for following his own agenda, no matter who it hurts. And might is right — just ask the producers of pro-American hit series like CBS's NCIS and The Unit.

It's a great time to elevate ladies acting like whores and putting down men. The new Gary Unmarried  and Worst Week (CBS) are merciless in their portrayals of dimwitted guys who excel only in having excessive sexual appetites. On CBC's Being Erica, a neurotic female gets a chance through a mysterious man to travel back in time to fix the mistakes in her life instead of learning from them. On the current-wrapping Corner Gas (CTV/Comedy Network), there's just not a good man among the denizens of Dog River, Saskatchewan, but a lot of level-headed, wise and wisecracking gals. And let's face it, aren't we all sick of men acting like lovestruck wimps on The Bachelor? 

"Reality TV" has brought the dysfunctional family  away from the sitcom and made us see how much in danger the nuclear family is in. ABC's Friday night perennials, Wife Swap and Supernanny feature bratty kids and mothers who are either total flakes or boom-voiced harridans. Guys don't fare well as problem-solvers on those shows, either. They're as dysfunctional and/or as wimpy as Steve Douglas of My 3 Sons or Happy Days' Howard Cunningham or even King of the Hill's Hank Hill.

The occult continues its own genre. From Bewitched of the 60's to the 90's hits Charmed and Sabrina, witches have powers just like moviedom's Harry Potter, and it's made acceptable that those with superhuman powers can tinker and change destiny. There's nothing that can break down a barrier better than humor — that's how CBS had us all "rethinking bigotry" with a character named Archie Bunker.

In just a few months, those in charge of the networks will be announcing next fall's offerings and some of the pilots they are considering now are real doozies: A sneak peek:

Slummy Mummy (working title; ABC): a single, poor mom raising kids. Fans of Roseanne will love it

V (ABC): Yep, a remake of that series from the 1980 's about carnivorous lizard aliens masquerading as humans with a symbol that looked like an LCD swastika. Talk about an immigration problem...image racemixing carried to the highest degree.

The Vampire Diaries (CW): With vampire cults kidnapping and killing all over North America. what could be better than  a new reason to glamorize it? Any Canadian network thinking about buying this show should be reminded of the vampire-inspired tragedy of Dawson College.

Witches of Eastwick  (ABC): based upon the movie of the same name.

Remember, not all of the above may appear in the fall; the current economic climate has become so prohibitive that fewer new shows turn up every September, and fewer make it to a second year; part of the primetime shakeup will soon move Jay Leno into the 10 pm slot, with the risqué antics of Conan O'Brien taking over the Tonight Show. Either way, TV has been dumbed down and sexed up enough for broadcast TV. Parents have been able to change the face of TV through pressure on networks, and on the sponsors, in the past. If your idea of TV "entertainment" is anti-male / leftist / race-mixing propaganda, you should be happy.

If it isn't, don't just sit there and grumble.

 

 

Where have all the fathers gone?

 
Family Day is coming up in Canada — a celebration to my mind (or at least it should be) of the traditional Canadian family. I was close to my dad — he was the kind of man you don't see much of these days: strong, he commanding of respect and authority. Yet no dad could have loved his family more, and gone through the sacrifices he made.

I think of him a lot when I watch the sharply-contrasting sitcom "fathers" of the past few decades. from Ozzie Nelson, to Steve Douglas (My Three Sons), Andy Griffith's Sheriff Taylor, Mike Brady, Archie Bunker (All In The Family), Al Bundy (Married With Children), all the way to those '80s losers Dan Conner (Roseanne) and Dr. Cliff Huxtable (The Cosby Show), and today's animated Peter Griffin and Stan Smith TV's dads have been portrayed and/or fallen into the following categories: confused and dumb; terrified of the missus; bumbling, blowhard 'old-fashioned' or tyrannical dads, and conniving sex maniacs.

Starting with category one, we have Father Knows Best, where Jim Anderson (Robert Young) was clueless about his kids and his relations with his daughters, and refers to them with the creepy nicknames of "princess" and "kitten." His wife however, is the real power behind the drone. On Leave It to Beaver, papa Ward Cleaver never blew his top or punished young Theodore; thwarted by his wife's "I'm worried about the Beaver,” he would gently sit in his den and remind his kids, "When you cheat on a test, you're only cheating yourself." Another sweater-wearing "cool dad,” widower Steve Douglas of My Three Sons (Fred MacMurray) regularly deferred to the older housekeepers Bub and Uncle Charley. These kinds of fathers weren't limited to live-action comedies — witness the ultra-right-wing CIA twerp Stan Smith of American Dad, who hates "Muslim terrorists" yet all but converts to Islam when his wife Francine gets too bossy. Oh yeah, his son is a nerd and his daughter a spoiled libber-in-training. Or how about the totally dumb Peter Griffin of Family Guy, with his whiny wife Lois and whiny daughter Meg, dimwit son Chris and effeminate toddler Stewie? Volcanic, neglectful neck-wringer ("Oh why does Marge constantly thwart my occasional interest in my children?") Homer Simpson? Or the back-on-TV "square" dad Harry Boyle of Wait 'Til Your Father Gets Home, whose only advice about parenting came from the childless weekend vigilante Ralph Kane? Or finally, there was chummy dad Mike Brady, who "ran" the '70's wholesome Brady Bunch and continued to act here and there until his death in 1992 — of AIDS.

Wimps? We have Roseanne's 80s hubby Dan (John Goodman), a hulk of a man terrified of his screeching harridan of a wife. On The Nanny, we have a Manhattan widower with an ice-queen girlfriend who entrusts his kids to a Queen's-raised hairdresser with no experience but a mouth the size of Lake Michigan.

Dads who are "whipped" are a staple of prime time and syndication. Bill Cosby, the most popular TV dad of the 1980's, was regularly and totally put down by his TV-lawyer don't-mess-with-me wife Phylicia Rashad. Yet, "Cos'" still travels the USA berating black parents for not keeping the traditional family unit together and letting generations of black punks rule the streets with blood, murder and mayhem. For all his bluster and occasional get-rich-quick schemes, Married With Children shoe salesman Al Bundy is not the master of his domain. His retro-looking acid-tongued wife Peggy spends every cent he makes, is constantly in need of pleasuring and can't even cook. His kids are write-offs — the perpetually horny Bud (who never gets a girl) and his daughter Kelly, who acts and dresses like a cheap teenage floozy. Al's idea of dad/son bonding is taking Bud to a nude bar on his birthday and priming him with money to place you-know-where. Another "dad" having parental troubles was Duckman. Voiced by Seinfeld's Jason Alexander, this animated "private dick/family man" was a non-stop drinking/swearing/skirt chaser who relegated his sons to the care of his deceased wife's iron-pumping sister. The only TV dad louder than Duckman has to be 1970's iconic TV bigot Archie Bunker

The idiot dad has been a TV staple for years now. Dick Van Dyke in his 60's sitcom was hardly the kind of dad we'd like to have even taking any pack of kids for a hike or fishing. On King of the Hill, there are not one, but two idiot dads; the uptight Hank Hill, who has more of a passion for selling propane than guiding his overweight comic wannabe son Bobby, and conspiracy nut/exterminator Dale Gribble, who still hasn't figured out that his American Indian "son" is actually the product of an affair between his wife and local stud John Redcorn.

So what, you may ask? They're just figments of wimpy writers' and Jew TV producers' imaginations. It's the images that are portrayed that too often have crept into the ways that men are perceived to be. If we laugh at things like neglectful, oafish and even brutish and violent dads, it's a little easier to accept the opposite of the strong, positive leader that the male head of a household used to be. Kids and wives want dads these days to be tolerant, hip, cool, liberated and "progressive" — a "Mr. Mom." There's no room in the modern two-parent household for discipline, tough-love, and the firm, steady hand of men who led their kith and kin, until women's lib and the cult of political correctness took over.

If anyone needs any proof of the anti-man/anti-kids/anti-family agenda of the other sector of society that is responsible for sitcom production (queers), just flip on and count the number of currently-running sitcoms past and present where there's nary a kid in sight, just hedonistic adults looking for fun, fun fun: Friends, Rules of Engagement, Old Christine, Seinfeld. The "half-man,” the boy from Two-and-a-Half Men, is being raised by his divorced father and his girl-chasing uncle.

It's time we all stood up and mouthed off against these unreal grotesques of TV's heads of the house. It's rough enough for men just to raise a family without the media's anti-family agenda muddying up perceptions of what a father should be. And it's time we returned the family to its traditional form and re-established the spirit of pater familias from the days of ancient Rome: the man as the head authority of the house, worthy of respect by all. Re-establishing the strong and wise head of the household is the greatest legacy any man can give his family

Well, dad? What are you waiting for?

 

 

Science Fiction's Race-mixing Propaganda

 
Who of us hasn't watched science fiction? Space monsters, guys like Buck Rogers, Captain Video, even the old kiddie shows like Thunderbirds, Space Ghost and grown-up fare like Outer Limits and Science Fiction Theater entertained us long before Gene Roddenberry gave us the UN in Space (a.k.a., Star Trek) and George Lucas slapped a German Nazi helmet and breathing mask on Darth Vader.
 

Today, I have to wonder about those sad dudes who have gone beyond just filling a few hours a week with reruns of shows that have long since aired their first respective years on TV networks and in syndication, and who do things like dress in pointy Vulcan ears, buy Klingon dictionaries and swarm like locusts to sci-fi conventions to see if Lt. Uhura still has nice legs. I don't doubt a few have even tried to marry and raise their kids the way, say, The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy would — heaven help us all.

 

There is a big difference between the really smart of us and those whose very sense of self-worth is derived from the world of sci-fi: We grew up. Here in the real world, we look at science fiction films and TV shows over the past five decades, and the keen among us see the way sci-fi morphed from relatively harmless escapist fare to politically-charged and “ZOG” message-laden propaganda.
 

Let's start with Star Trek. Premiering on NBC in 1966 and seen in syndicated reruns, a slew of films (and at least five primetime shows all now in syndication); Paramount is about to reboot this most lucrative franchise this spring. Guided by producers and creative people such as its creator Southern Baptist-turned-humanist Gene Roddenberry and producers such as Rick Berman (Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Enterprise), this show has been responsible more than any other televised series in the encouragement of miscegenation (i.e., date. mate and procreate with anyone or anything you want regardless of race, religion, color, planetary origin or number of tentacles). Its original premise, a sort of emissary/ exploratory ship whose "prime directive" is to not interfere in planetary cultures or societies, gets broken every week or so. Its iconic 'wise one," the half-human/half-Vulcan Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) never shows emotion, prides himself on logic but can take you out with one pinch on your neck. Oh yeah, some of that show's most cherished episodes feature interfering in a space cultural tribal war (sound familiar?). playing nursemaid to an emotionally-unstable adolescent alien with the power to destroy everything in sight, and yup, even taking on some nasty space Nazis. It was a ground-breaker in another sense: it featured TV's first interracial kiss between Capt. James Kirk and Afro-American Lt, Uhura. The series, and its "United Federation of Planets" (a sort of galactic UN), has a simple message: If we Earthlings just put aside our revulsion to ugly and aggressive nasty aliens, we might find common ground enough to live as one.

 

It's a New World Order scenario retooled as a New Universal Order (just check out the UFP's logo and its similarity to the UN emblem). Even Star Trek's arch bad-guy alien tribe, the Klingons, eventually betray their race (on ST:TNG, a Klingon is their security chief), and a human "empath" named Deanna Troi is a future lady Dr. Phil who tries to get it on with any space creature with a pulse, including a man-sized naive android dildo named Data. On sister-series Deep Space Nine we have a shifty little alien bartender named Quark who always tries to outsmart DS9 alien cop Odo, while elsewhere on the space station, it's like The Cosby Show with the dad-and-son bonding of Afro-American station honcho Ben Sisko and his son Jake.

Moving on to another Roddenberry creation, Andromeda, this one was co-produced by Canada's Canwest Global TV (owned by the Winnipeg-based Asper family) and Jay Firestone's Fireworks Entertainment, Here we have a hunky Jim Kirk type (Kevin Sorbo) leading a multicult army against the future Nazi-like "Nietzscheans." Been there, saw that, yawned again.

Babylon 5, from Michael J. Straczynski, was billed as a more-adult-oriented Star Trek show with a similar multicultural-good-guy/bad-guy alien concept, except less soapy. Then we have Stargate (the motion picture) and its spin-offs Stargate SG-1 (created by Jonathan Glassner), Stargate Atlantis, and its own animated cartoon series. Here, mucking about with time and space through an alien technology called a "stargate" is A-OK (think how many civilizations you can monkey with — it's a George Bush dream!). It still runs on the CTV-Globemedia-owned Space channel.

The world of science fiction truly has evolved from the days of B-movies with god-awful wires, cardboard sets and props and cheesy dialogue into a bizarre world that promotes dangerous morals, frightening images and deadly ideas that are the very opposite of promoting racial ecology and integrity. And the dreck goes on: In a few months, (actor's strike pending), we will learn the fate of the new primetime creepfests such as Fox's Fringe, and CBS' The Eleventh Hour (both deal with trying to stop mad-science conspiracies a la X-Files), along with more about shows in development and being prepared for this fall such as ABC's Eastwick (an adaptation of the film The Witches of Eastwick).
Marshall McLuhan once said that "the medium is the message." If that is true, then today's and tomorrow's media is delivering a dangerous message of race-mixing and self-destruction.

Let the viewer beware.

 

 

Smarmy Media Hides Gaza Massacre

 
You know, with all the hoopla and excitement over what is sure to be a very short honeymoon — I refer to the first weeks of of the new Barack Obama administration — there's not a lot of attention being paid to just how much of one story, and how little of others, are being covered by the media. As I write these words, the first days of the truce between Israel and Hamas is taking place, after three weeks of Gaza being virtually destroyed and its residents being killed, bombed, and maimed with everything from bullets to missiles to the ghastly white phosphorus that burns to the bone, and the coverage of what exactly has happened there, and the extent of the damage done to the Gaza strip and its people, is nothing short of atrocious. This week, U.S. television viewers were hit with a week-long double whammy, especially on the so-called news networks: the celebration of Martin Luther King Day, the very day before the swearing in of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. I never in all my days saw such a maudlin display for a pair of people, one of whom was a revolutionary communist in Reverend's clothing who did his part in causing chaos in formerly segregation US cities coast to coast); the other, a smiling, charismatic black man (who was not a slave's descendant) who finagled his way into the highest office in the land, only to get the word that his was not going to be the final say. Rows upon rows of cheering visitors (mostly black) in Washington and in other U.S. cities, plus a Kenyan dance troupe bouncing around in Calvin Klein clothes to the strains of Hakuna Matata in celebration of their new Moses. There were even reporters wearing fedoras again — once, a guy wouldn't be caught dead without his hat on his head, even in a fight, and the unprofessional sight of swaying CNN reporter Zain Verjee (who apparently thought she was auditioning for American Idol). Even the Canadian networks jumped on the Obama-wagon the day before the Inauguration. This, apparently, was supposed to be "news." No comment, coverage or analysis on the coming showdown in the new Parliament that might force another federal election, just Obama-rama, 24/7.

The US media apparently had decided that another event wasn't news: the three-week bombing of Gaza and the killing and burning of its inhabitants with fire, bullets, bombs and the horrific white phosphorus. It was a war crime going on right under the world's nose, and with all the resources, reporters, money and supposed ingenuity of the so-called fourth estate, it was only little by little that the news of what Israel had done to Gaza had begun to slowly trickle forth. And even that, after the ceasefire was declared. During the entire time, there was no on-the-scene coverage of the bombing, no Anderson Cooper or Geraldo Rivera managing to outwit the military (as the media usually does) and bring us, live, the horrific and most important story of one of the twentieth century's first war crimes. There was no asking by the networks to go into the battle zones, just total compliance with the Zionists and their representatives, just downplaying the wicked horror of dead, broken bodies, crying families and maimed and burned children in the aftermath of Israel's brutal firestorm in favor of one non-story after another. I got tired fast of the coverage of "Sully," the pilot who guided his airplane into the "Miracle on the Hudson River" and saving all those passengers and the saturation coverage hero worship that followed, while Gaza's men, women and children were being incinerated and murdered in schools, hospitals and in their beds. Hey, even if all those air travelers weren't saved or died in that crash, it still pales in comparison and news worth to the hundreds, maybe thousands, whose bodies and souls were destroyed and scarred by Israel's treachery. The don't-ask-don't-tell treachery of the media, from the absence of the Gaza coverage to the disgusting footage of the truce agreement signed by those shrews Israel's Tzipi Livini and outgoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, made me fume.

The rest of the media wasn't much better, with the radio hosts like AM 640's John Oakley, readily-armed with a pro-ZOG zinger to everyone who so much as had one bad syllable calling Israel on its atrocity or tied to make a point about the war crime, or CFRB's John Moore (everyone says he's queer), and his slippery metrosexual Montreal smile. Most of the broadcast hosts and 'analysts' and 'experts' on Gaza, predictably, consisted of two-faced bigots (mostly Jews and Irish) whose loyalty and Israel-can-do-no-wrong was as obvious as the chutzpah of the Zionists themselves, whose "oops" attitude about civilian casualties was almost beyond belief. I did feel slight comfort that newly-appointed senator Mike Duffy of CTV didn't wave his bland take on the Gaza massacre. The print media were like nose-ringed-led bulls, among the worst of the lot being the warmongering Popeye-armed Peter Worthington of Sun Media. He was more arrogant and louder than most of the pundits, echoing the kosher line in his bleating that it was all Hamas' fault and the Gazans got what they deserved. (So you think it's justified under any condition and okay for Israel to burn and bomb schools and hospital and to murder the most defenseless, Peter? Well, sir, I have one question for you: just who are the real monsters?) Even casual news-watchers whose only interest in what's outside the house beside the latest snowfall and the last Leafs game, shouldn't be let off the hook for not demanding more of their media, whether it's privately owned or whether it's paid for by their taxes like the CBC.

The Zionist media is not only big and monopolistic, but diversified. Only a handful of their private mega-conglomerates (e.g., Astral Media, Corus and Canwest) run virtually all of privately-owned Canada's TV stations, networks and specialty channels. Just a while back, the Nationalist Party wrote a complaint to Ian Greenberg of Astral Media read it on our Activities Page), which in addition to owning TV outlets like Movie Network and Family Channel, also owns a string of news/talk radio stations across the country, one of them being Toronto's CFRB (a.k.a. Newstalk 1010, which once billed itself as "Ontario's Family Station" but now toes the Zionist line from its news angles to its talk show hosts and guests). Now that some more attention will hopefully be paid to the aftermath of the worst criminal war crime Israel has committed since Sabra and Shatila, it is time we all paid more close attention to what the media is nor covering and raise the devil with regulators in the USA (the FCC ) and in Canada (the CRTC ) whenever bias or absence of coverage is detected, most especially when it involves the atrocity of Gaza. and to call them on their selective compassion — the kind that bleeds rivers for air crash survivors, but not a micro-drop for the doomed of Gaza.

 

 

Geza Matrai's Legacy

 
In the spring of 1972, I was on my own. I had just said goodbye to my family and had settled in a new home in Toronto's east end -- the home of anti-communist activist Don Andrews, who, among being responsible for my political and cultural awakening, had, through our work together in the Edmund Burke Society, introduced me to many people involved in the EBS' fight against communism and international socialism in Canada, an affable Hungarian-Canadian named Geza Matrai.

When I first knew him and his beautiful girlfriend Maria Benes, I had no idea of what he had done the year prior in Ottawa during the visit of Soviet Premier Alexi Kosygin; I was still getting the hang of the anti-communist politics that was the cornerstone of the EBS and whose ideology had attracted me since my chilling boyhood days when I saw the drunken butcher Nikita Kruschev banging his shoe and proclaiming to the West, "We will bury you!" in a performance worthy of a professional wrestling villain (we all know what became of the Cold War charade).
 

The Edmund Burke Society was formed in 1967 in Toronto by a trio of young activists who were concerned by the rise of the militant Left during the sixties and frustrated by the lack of organized militant opposition to it in Canada. Named after the British parliamentarian, it took as a motto and its philosophy a quote from Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." It had already had a long and proud tradition of fierce opposition to the Left and had attracted worldwide media attention for its numerous throw-downs with Maoists, Trotskyites and sundry others who embraced communist ideologies and causes. Famous people were not immune to the anger of the EBS, which in 1972 changed its name to the more militant Western Guard and had adopted the Celtic Cross as its symbol.
Among the activists I worked with in my early years were Don Andrews, the tough-as-nails Jerry Doyle (now living in South Africa), and Geza, a friendly, fun-loving man of Hungarian descent who was also deeply passionate about the plight of his people held captive in Eastern Europe.

 

Many activists and supporters of the EBS were from that region of the continent, and in that organization, put aside their various differences and united to speak up and demonstrate for all those still imprisoned and abused behind the Iron Curtain. EBS/Western Guard members and leaders were a regular sight at Red embassies, ethnic halls, and even counter-picketing Viet Cong supporters at the U.S. Consulate, which almost every time ended in a rumble. The Reds could not believe that there were young, tough men willing to literally kick their rumps around in Canada, and it was this consistent activism, and militant image and ideological dissemination (mostly through the EBS/WG organ Straight Talk!, of which Geza was one of many salesmen, putting it in ethnic and university bookstores) that broke the back of the militant commies across Canada. Many of the dust-ups with the Reds had made the news, such as the Battle of Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto, and the Battle of magnificent, historical-columned Latvian Hall (my own baptism of fire, where I, Don, Geza, Martin Weiche and other stalwarts defended the place where we were holding a meeting. When it came to defending freedom, Geza was no slouch. He was a founder of the Canadian Anti-Soviet Action Committee and the Canadian Hungarian Freedom Fighters Federation, but when it came to fighting for any nation's or anyone's freedom, Geza was there. Earlier in his life he met commander extraordinaire Otto Skorzeny (the man who had rescued Mussolini). Geza never was one to balk at a challenge.
Geza Matrai's greatest accomplishment was a legacy of his that was a spectacular act in October 1971 that captured the imagination of the world and was recently recalled in the January 15 National Post. In that year, Soviet premier Alexi Kosygin was strolling in Ottawa with his ideological pal, the late and unlamented socialist tyrant Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. All of a sudden, Geza leaped onto the back of the Russian, shouting "Freedom for the Captive Nations!," and causing a sensational embarrassment for Trudeau and his Liberal government. Although he was peeled off the back of the Soviet butcher to be hustled off to the Ottawa Jail, Geza made world headlines. After being sentenced to three months' jail in the political trial that followed, Geza left Canada to tour Europe.

What made Geza Matrai stand out (and above) so many people that I have worked with for over three-and-a-half decades, is that he kept the faith. He never renounced his views. Despite the hounding he received from Canada's political police, he kept his anti-communist views alive and vibrant for years, he never recanted, never left the activism, never chucked his passion (like so many so-called right-wing 'leaders') to melt into the woodwork like a scared cockroach at the first warm breath of the enemy only to end up in an old-age home having an alien attendant changing your diapers. In the National Post article, he pointed out a similarity between himself and Munthadr al-Zaidi (the Iraqi journalist who did his own version of flinging a 'Little Bit of Sole' at George Bush's head), calling al-Zaidi a "kindred spirit."

Geza, I salute you, as should all Canadians who truly care about freedom. You are one of a kind. In an age where our very freedom in Canada is about to again be challenged, and outfits like the Canadian Jewish Congress seek to stifle all opposition to Israel's atrocities in Gaza, men of principle and good old fashioned guts should be applauded.
God guide you, old friend.

 

 

Bayou of Pigs:  Not Your Average Caribbean Cruise

 

We've all seen a good adventure movie from time to time, each with varying elements of action, intrigue, comedy and yep, sex. Very few are in my top ten of best pictures, but if someone would kindly acquire the film rights to Stewart Bell's new book Bayou of Pigs, I'll slap down a ten and risk a couple of hours in a dark theater.

 

"Bayou of Pigs" was the sobriquet given to the planned invasion of Dominica in the early 1980's, a small island that doesn't make the news very often, and the book that it is written about is a detailed, funny and somewhat poignant recap of a group of Canadians who got together to hatch a plot that involved members of the white nationalist movement past and present (a number of whom I know quite well) and a group of Americans that included one right-out-of The Green Berets commando (who was working with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), black communists and an anti-communist lady who ran Dominica. some gun-toting Rastafarians, an Irish lady who ended up in a Caribbean jail and a Brit who tried to come to her rescue.

 

Its author Stewart Bell, whom I also met, writes for the National Post and also wrote a magazine article, The Terrorist Next Door, which became a made-for-TV movie.

 

As I mentioned, I knew many of these people from Canada: I knew Steve Hammond, a lively British chap who was no slouch when it came to gettin' physical with the reds, and a relatively good conversationalist. He was the one went off to rescue the captured Marian McGuire after she was imprisoned in Dominica, just before stopping off at a Canadian Tire for rescue supplies (I'm not kidding — I guess he read somewhere that's where Batman gets his utility belt gimmicks).I worked with Jim McQuirter, the only Canadian Klansman to become a Toronto Sun "Sunshine Boy" (we nicknamed him "Media Man," after a song by the 1980's band Flash in the Pan). I helped him run a private mailbox service with Armand Siksna, a proud Latvian who kept his nation in his heart and had less than zero tolerance for anything that gave off a whiff of socialism,

 

One of the main "reasons" for the invasion was to thwart the Establishment of another communist beach head in the Caribbean. The plan was ambitious, well-detailed and had a band of people you're unlikely to find in regular mixed company. How it turned out is a scenario worthy of a film or TV mini-series.

Crisply written, the work moves back and forth among its protagonists with a pace to rival Robert Ludlum or Tom Clancy, except with one difference — 1t really happened. Its layered multi-plotted labyrinth will introduce you to adventurers and opportunists, romantics and rascals and an entire cast of characters from a number of nations who were involved directly and peripherally with one of the most amazing and under-reported stories of the last twenty years.

Bayou Of Pigs is a book that can be enjoyed by anyone, no matter what your political stripe. Pick up a copy, or order it from E-Bay or Amazon.Com. It's an easy read and it'll be the best time you ever spent learning how not to do your own version of Rambo.

[ Read Excerpts HERE ]

 

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