I see that Queen’s University Belfast -  my alma mater – is set to honour Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair today for their role in "bringing peace" to Northern Ireland. How nice. Maybe they’ll take the time to stroll across to University Square and visit the spot where Ulster Unionist politician and Queen’s University lecturer Edgar Graham was brutally murdered by the IRA in 1983. No one was ever convicted of that brutal assassination and perhaps the peace processors might reflect on why it is that their sordid "peace" can only be purchased by allowing murderers to get away with their hands dripping in the blood of the innocent. I’ve long since lost ANY respect I may have once held for Queen’s University - it is now entirely politicised and part of the chorus for peace at any price. Nice building – those running it these days are rotten to the core.

I remember being sickened by this story when it happened and if anything this latest news makes it even worse. I refer to the death of the nursing care assistant who was caught in the crossfire between two youths in London. Magda Pniewska, 26, was shot in the head in New Cross, south London, in October last year. The youth, who cannot be named, said he let off a couple of shots into the air to scare the other youth off. He denied murder and attempted murder. The second teenager was also arrested but not charged, the Old Bailey heard. Ms Pniewska had been talking to her sister Elzbieta Luby in Poland on her mobile phone when she was shot and died. Giving evidence, Ms Luby said she heard three or four shots before she heard her sister’s "last breath"

Several points. It makes me feel ashamed that such a fate could befall this Polish girl – so full of life one moment – stone dead the next at the hands of feral scum. And I feel so sorry for her sister having to hear Magda’s "last breath." Nobody deserves this and I only hope that those responsible are put away for a long time. I bet they won’t, however, and it is to our shame.  Poor Magda – you were failed by this State and it makes me feel ill. What more can I say?    

I think that Steven Plaut neatly encapsulates what is happening in Israel at the moment here…

There is a truism in Israel that, every time a political leader faces prosecution for personal corruption, he starts giving away Israeli lands. The reason is that the Left controls most of the media and the judiciary and the Prosecutor’s offices. So when a politician in Israel is playing ball with the Left, the Left leaves him alone. Polls are showing that more Israelis oppose giving up the Golan than the number who oppose giving up Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert is now "negotiating" turning the Golan Heights over to Syria’s fascists. Any questions?

Did you see that xenophobic violence in South Africa, which has caused 24 deaths and forced 13,000 people to flee their homes, has spread from Johannesburg to the volatile Zulu heartland, prompting President Thabo Mbeki to deploy the army on the streets for the first time since the end of apartheid. 

Asylum seekers have been burned to death by raging mobs and I suggest that were this happening in any other continent than Africa the liberal media would be ablaze with outrage at such naked intolerance. But this is  is South Africa – the rainbow nation and so a different standard. It strikes me that at the end of the rainbow there is a pot of seething hatred but we daren’t mention it since that might mean criticising the ANC, and we all know that might mean an indirect  criticism of Saint Nelson – the man who has had nothing to say on this vicious xenophobia that now disfigures his nation – again.

His name is Matthew, he is 26 years old, and his supporters hope to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights. But he won’t be able to give evidence on his own behalf  -  since he is a chimpanzee.

Animal rights activists led by British teacher (Predictable) Paula Stibbe are fighting to have Matthew legally declared a ‘person’ so she can be appointed as his guardian. What kind of madness is this? I mean how do we KNOW "Matthew" wants Paula as his guardian? Some animal rights activitists are just plain…bananas!

Perhaps you don’t remember the staged photos from the Hizb’Allah/Lebanon- Israeli War of 2006.  There was The Green Helmet Man, grieving, holding a dead child aloft. He was photographed multiple  times, in multiple locations, with different children and a grieving expression.  There was an ambulance, supposedly hit by a missile but showing little actual damage.  And a grieving woman who had lost her home; like the Green Helmet Man, she was photographed in numerous different locations, in front of multiple different “homes,” always grieving.  There were dust-free toys placed on top of piles of rubble,  like this one from slublog.com (linked below), and smoke and warplanes photoshopped over skylines. 

Although for a while during the war it seemed that fauxtography was everywhere, only the blogosphere showed  any interest in vetting the obviously  questionable images being produced in the Middle East.  Reuters, AP and other Western media were eager to take the faux photos at face value.  Western mainstream media were eager to allow Hizb’Allah to frame the war narrative, a narrative which holds that Israel is unquestionably the Aggressor.
 
In 2000, French journalist Enderlin and France2 broadcast a story of a young boy named Muhamed al Durah gunned down by Israelis. It was broadcast throughout the Middle East and did much to inflame passions against Israel and to create sympathy for Palestine.  

Like the fauxtography of 2006, the al Durah footage was highly questionable.  In 2004, Philippe Karsenty published an article making a credible claim that the footage had been staged.   Rather than refute the claim with factual evidence to the contrary, France2 sued Karsenty for defamation.  

Today, the French appeals court dismissed France2’s  defamation suit.  The al Durah broadcast was propoganda, a staging of a murder designed to malign Israel, a bit of drama put out for public propoganda purposes by Pallywood.

Today’s dismissal is a small victory for truth.

Here are some sources if you want to read more:

Ambulance, Green Helmet Man, Grieving Woman, Toys in the Rubble, Scholarship, Muhamed al Durah

I keep writing about Mark Steyn and his case before the Canadian Human Rights Commission because I just can’t bear to look away.  I don’t want to move into the future, a future less free than the present, a future in which the right to give offense is no longer protected, in which offensive speech is a crime.

How has it come to this?

In her May 21, 2008  article titled “Mark Steyn vs. the ‘Sock Puppets’,     Kathy Shaidle writes:

On June 2, Steyn and Maclean’s magazine — the nation’s oldest newsweekly — are obliged to defend themselves against charges of “flagrant Islamophobia” at a British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal….

…. Canadian Human Rights Tribunals have a 100% conviction rate on “hate speech” charges. According to the BC Human Rights Code, decisions brought down by that province’s Human Rights Tribunals have “the same force and effect” as “a judgment of the Supreme Court.”

So, “when the British Columbia ‘Human Rights’ Tribunal finds us guilty,” writes Steyn, “they are statutorily obligated to issue a cease-and-desist order that will have the effect of preventing Maclean’s running any writing on Islam by me or anybody of a similar bent — even though the plaintiffs have not challenged the accuracy of a single fact or statistic or quotation.”

Referring to his accusers, Mark Steyn says:

 “It’s not about who wins the argument. They’re the future of this country, and that’s that.”

This is the end of free speech as we know it, and I am heartsick.

Here’s ANOTHER instance of just how "thick" some people are from County Tyrone…in the news as I write;

"Two fire bombs have been found in a baby-changing room in a fast food outlet. The incendiary devices – one of which had partially exploded – were found in a McDonald’s restaurant in Cookstown, County Tyrone.  Police Inspector Sue Steen said the people who had left the devices in the room has shown "a callous disregard for human life".

"That room was in a restaurant used by families and children," she said. "It doesn’t bear thinking about what might have happened if the restaurant had been filled with people, or someone was in the room with a baby when they went off," she said.

Oh yes it does, because it is events like this that characterised the IRA’s bloody decades long campaign and now they sit preening in government to the general approval of many. Had these bombs gone off, and kids had died, on what basis can those who support the appeasement of the IRA  condemn this latest bunch of republican terrorists? Either all terrorism is wrong and all terrorists must be castigated or else terrorism is acceptable.

According to former US Senator George Mitchell, the late David Ervine represented the very best of Northern Ireland, George reckons that Mr Ervine was "a great man", though not a saint. 

Right. Fact. Ervine was a convicted terrorist. He was intercepted by the RUC whilst on a bombing mission. He moved into the political mainstream as the Progressive Unionist Party he led became elevated  by the manipulations of the British government despite them having virtually no electoral mandate. His colleague, Billy Hutchinson, was a convicted murderer. His mentor, Gusty Spence, was a convicted murderer. You get the drift?

The PUP was and remains is a mouthpiece for the revolting UVF – an organisation which has killed and maimed right across the so-called peace process years. I detail my CLEAR views on the PUP in my book – and I am clear that David Ervine did not represent the best of Northern Ireland and Mitchell is just one more propagandist for depravity. Hundreds of people have been murdered by the terrorist group to which Ervine belonged – and at no time during Ervine’s leadership of the PUP did the UVF stop killing, disarm or in any way cease their evil.

I contradict the esteemed Senator – those like David Ervine represent the worst of Northern Ireland.

Had to laugh at this story. The new suave sophisticated Irish Prime Minister is called Brian Cowen. He has a nickname – it is BIFFO. One charitable version of this is to refer to him as the Big Ignorant Fellow from Offaly. I am sure you can guess the more widely used but more crude version. So, living up to his nickname, he has been accused of  "conduct unbecoming" in the Irish Parliament today referring to comments made by BIFFO after opposition leader Enda Kenny had asked questions on the issue of health spending.At the end of a heated exchange Mr Cowen sat down, and turned to Tánaiste Mary Coughlan. Dáil microphones then picked up the Taoiseach using the word "f***ers"! Oh dear! What a c….lown!