Shame on Israel

The Complaint Department

Definitely the best thing about having the video version of my rants on YouTube is that it's really easy for people to comment on the videos. Sometimes this is a generic compliment, sometimes it's a neat idea that I hadn't thought about before, and sometimes it's just vile moose crap. So, naturally, we're going to be wrapping this season up with some of that. But not all at once. Here's a look at some of the notes I received, in the last couple of months on "Bored on the Corner".

In "Psychotic Hatreds", where I first went on about my personal pet peeves, I mentioned that I strongly despise people who call themselves Christians, yet apparently go out of their way to not follow the Gospel at all. Specifically, I talked about the conceited and intolerant views that they often have -- getting on a soapbox and saying that their faith is the only right one, that The Bible is true just because it says it is God's Word, an oddly selfish and greedy lifestyle that Jesus Himself shunned, and so on.

Well, a fellow named "Chaos1286" said "I dont agree... You shouldnt talk about things you dont understand... by this im talking about christianity...you are certainly entitled to your opinion as an atheist."

Let me start this response very simply: Chaos, I never once said that I am an atheist. Pay attention. If you can't even get such a basic detail as THAT right, you already look like you're yanking my chain. Second, what exactly do I supposedly not understand? Everything that I stated about Christianity comes from actually reading verses from The Gospel, and observations I've made of some of the "truly devout". So if you can show me where Jesus said that being peaceful, modest, and humble is wrong, by all means do so. Good luck.

While it wasn't for the "Smell Test" rant, I did get a bit of flack elsewhere, for criticizing Israel during the Gaza invasion a while back. So first of all, let me make one thing clear: criticizing Israel is not being Anti-Semitic. Anyone who says otherwise is either an idiot or a bully. I'll explain it this way: criticizing Sudan isn't being Anti-Black, criticizing North Korea isn't being Anti-Asian, criticizing North America and Europe isn't being Anti-Christian, so what in the hell would criticing Israel be Anti-Semitic?

The second issue: I don't dispute that Israel has a right to exist and defend itself. However, no one has yet explained to me why it is acceptable for Israel to bulldoze and bomb homes in places that don't belong to it, blow up schools, hospitals, ambulances, and humanitarian missions, and kill three or four times as many women and children as they kill terrorists; yet, Hamas fires a few badly aimed rockets that have killed about a dozen people, and is considered a grave threat to civilization in the Middle East. Please.

The third issue: if you're going to argue with me on this, don't bother presenting anything that comes from the Israeli Defense Force, Israeli Government, Jewish Defence League, or any other blatantly Zionist group. Why? Because they're never going to be honest about what they're doing. I'm amazed to have actually needed to explain this to grown adults, but during a war, people always make this stuff called "propaganda". It consists of half-truths and bald-faced lies, designed to make the author's side look more heroic than it really is. This isn't that strange of a concept; whenever one of us is caught doing something wrong, what's the first thing we do? Make an excuse! Usually a variation of "He started it!"

While we're at it, I also got some comments on my Omar Khadr video from last year, protesting his being beaten and seemingly railroaded, on charges that he threw a grenade at a US Army medic in Afghanistan. I say "railroaded", because the evidence against him is flimsy at best. But, because his family is tied to Al Qaeda, a lot of people seem to think that Omar is already guilty, and basically deserves to be fed to the dogs. Well, the last time I checked, under International Law, Khadr is entitled to a fair trial, due process, presumed innocence until guilt is proven and to not be beaten or tortured by his captors. As soon as we throw that away, we're no better than the animals in the Taliban that we're supposedly wanting to stop.

Furthermore, when the people condemning him on my YouTube page, refer to Afghans as "towelheads and boyfuckers", it's pretty clear what they're really after. Further, I can't help but notice that the sort of people who, like them, refer to those of us with a conscience as "bleeding heart liberals", are invariably sociopaths who don't have hearts in the first place. After all, they never care about helping families leave war zones, or really care about civilians that are killed by white Western armies. Nor do these same people care about the homeless in their own hometowns. So bite me. I'd rather have a "bleeding heart" than a dead soul.

Regarding Prime Minister Harper's chest thumping over passing the stimulus package... Considering that his government has a track record for sneaky, illegal and unconstitutional behaviour, it has absolutely zero right to demand that Parliament just rush the package through without any questions asked. That's like giving someone a baseball bat, a way to lock you in the room with him, and then closing your eyes to pretend everything's alright.

Regarding the school in New Brunswick that is no longer allowing anyone to sing "O, Canada" -- first of all, since making the first video on that, I've been contacted by Canadian citizens, by birth, who refuse to sing the anthemn for moral reasons. Why am I mentioning this? Because naturally, some of the comments I received on that assumed that indignant immigrants are to blame. I'm just pointing out that that's not necessarily true. Anyway, some of the other comments came from people who refused to even stand respectfully for the anthemn. Once again, I ask "Why are you here, if you have such a low opinion of where you live?"

When I went after Bell Canada for holding its customers responsible for hacked phone lines, one of the comments I had on the Comedy Network was to the effect that the customers are to blame, for not keeping their lines secure. First of all, one of the developments of that is that customers who do change their passwords often, are still being hacked and billed. In any event, this person conveniently missed my point: not only is it unconscionable for Bell to bill customers for calls that it knows with absolute certainty that they did not make, but since Bell is directly profiting from a crime wave, then the managers responsible should probably be arrested. That position stands.

When I critcized the RCMP for taking FOREVER to admit that its officers are a little trigger happy with tasers, I got an interesting comment from a gentleman in Ottawa, who supposedly works with the Mounties, and took great offence to the fact that I have an opinion on a high-profile issue, that is being reported all over the media and Internet. I don't care particularly if the man thinks newspapers and TV news constantly lie -- even if that is really foolish and sweeping -- but the fact is that my opinion on Robert Dzekanski's death is based on the UNCUT video that has been on YouTube and several other web sites for the last two years. The video that clearly shows the man was barely armed, not threatening the four heavily armed officers at all, and yet was shot repeatedly with the taser without warning. The last time I checked, I have a right to an opinion in this country, especially one that is based on facts that I've actually bothered to research.

Finally, I've saved the best for last. My most popular rant this time, by far, was my tirade on the controversial show "Toddlers and Tiaras". Many of the comments I received agreed that it was exploitive, but a lot of others said that these sandbox beauty pageants are harmless. To be fair, not all pageants are created equal, as "wvpageantmom" was kind enough to point out. In other words, some are more subdued than others. However, to say that parading little girls around in skimpy clothes, having dance provocatively, sending them to tanning salons, and so on, isn't warping them, is pretty naive if you ask me.

Then, there was "pageantsisterX14" who took it a step further by saying this: "my lilttle sister does glitz pageants nd they SHOULD NOT be illegalized. nd guess wat toddlers and tiaras may film my sister. my little sister is perfect. u just dont like them because u r r ugly nd look like a geeks. so suck it nd dont watch the show if u dont like it! who cares about inner beauty? i dont. it doesnt matter the slitest bit. nither does skool spelling or grammer. only plp who r UGLY care about tht stuuf. an example is u!"

My dear, even I lack the casual brutality, to say what I really feel about you, so I'll defer to Brian Griffin of "Family Guy".

"I think I have a theory about why you're such a bitch. You see, Connie, you're popular because you developed early and started putting out when you were 12, but now, you can't stand to look at yourself in the mirror because all you see is a whore. So you pick on Meg to avoid the inevitable realization that once your body is used up by age 19, you're gonna be a worn-out, chalky skin, burlap sack that even your stepdad won't want. How's that? Am I in the ball park?"

One last thing, and then I'm splitting for a few weeks: some people have noticed that I've started using a different sign-off; "That's it for me", rather than "Enough said". That's because some have suggested that it came off as trying to shut out feedback, but since then some have said they miss the old one. So between now and April, how about you tell me which one you prefer? Whichever one wins, I'll start using in Season 4. See you then.

The Smell Test

This is going to be a combination of current commentary, and a revisit of an earlier rant. However, my thoughts on both are about the same thing: public appearances. I'm not talking about how people dress, because nine times out of ten I really couldn't care less about that. I'm talking about backing up what you say.

As we know, recently Israel and Palestine got into yet another shooting match, over the Gaza Strip. Until now, this is a topic that I've never commented on, not only because some people can be really jingoistic about it, but because to be honest I don't think either side is even close to being in the right. However, in this context I think that it is important to say something to the Israeli government and military: if you want people to stop calling you a psychopathic bully committing war crimes and genocide, it would probably be in your best interests to stop bombing schools, hospitals, UN relief missions, ambulances, houses, and even some of your allies. Just a thought. Yes, I know that Hamas and their ilk like to hide among civilians, which genuinely makes the job of wiping out terrorists hard -- fine -- but you're never going to look like the good guys, if you keep grabbing land that doesn't belong to you, or blast the hell out of women and children. HOWEVER, you might just create more terrorists, who now have a good reason to hate your guts. I'm just trying to help.

The other thing, is people's response to my rant last year, over conspiracy theories. Specifically, I'm getting criticized over the fact that I don't buy the theories on 9/11. I've since looked into this in more detail, but my position stands: the stories are overblown at best. Now, since the theme of this blog is appearances, let's give the conspiracy guys some credit by establishing why these theories are popular in the first place: the U.S. government not only contradicted itself in a lot of places, when the 9/11 attacks were being investigated, but it went to the trouble of keeping some critical information out of the public eye, supposedly for the sake of national security. As anyone familiar with the McCarthy Hearings knows, this can definitely be a load of bunk. However, some of the theories concocted to explain this, aren't much better.

For example, there are people who say that the World Trade Center was demolished by explosives, as opposed to destroyed by the plane crashes. I've already explained why I feel this is very unlikely -- namely, the fact that these buildings were hit by two fairly large jetliners, which tend to burst into huge fireballs on impact -- but some people weren't too pleased with this. So I looked into this, and sure enough the engineering community seems to be pretty divided on this issue: a lot of engineers say that it was a demolition, but at least as many say it was the plane crash. It doesn't help that eyewitnesses are split on this, as well. So personally, I think it's dangerous to make an absolute statement, on something that even a group of experts and the people who were there can't agree on.

Another popular theory is the idea that the Pentagon wasn't hit by a plane, despite forensic evidence that suggests otherwise -- including bodies and debris found at the scene -- and that Flights 77 and 93 never crashed at all. Their passengers, supposedly, were deplaned safely, and asked to go into hiding. Think about this for a minute -- there is considerable physical evidence that both of those planes went down, not to mention a lot of eyewitness testimony. On top of that, between this and the demolition theory, you would need tens of thousands of people involved, and staying quiet, to pull something like this off -- and we're talking about a country where people will talk about their farts in insanely casual detail. There's simply no way, that something that sensational would stay quiet for long, especially when there's a very captive audience.

While we're on the subject, I'd like to talk about why these sort of theories aren't taken seriously in the first place, besides being -- by definition -- highly implausible. For one thing, a lot of those who take conspiracy theories seriously, use a lot of circular arguments. This means that someone holds a position so strongly, that anything proving it wrong is shrugged off as a cover-up. For example, a radical left-wing magazine called Counterpunch hired an aerospace engineer to look into the official story of what happened to the World Trade Center. What he found was that the buildings were destroyed, because of crash damage from the planes -- and he wrote about it in very intricate detail. Popular Mechanics interviewed about 300 other experts and came to the same conclusions -- so the demolition theorists all said that these experts are in on the conspiracy.

Another problem is that if you look into it in any detail, the motives are hardly ever the same, from one theorist to another; some say that it was staged to start a New World Order, some say that it was to create an excuse to invade the Middle East -- like the U.S. ever needed one that extreme before -- some even say that it was an elaborate form of insurance fraud! Again, if these people can't even agree amongst themselves, as to why the government would stage a massive terrorist attack, how do they expect anyone else to take it seriously?

I don't really have any more to add to that, except to say that whenever you hear some really outlandish statement, you should always look into it. Yes, that does include everything I've ever said on this blog. In this case, great places to start are Popular Mechanics, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and any newspaper with decent global coverage. Don't take someone's word for it, just because you like what they say. It may really be that they're just saying what you want to hear. Enough said.