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Will Amy Goodman be delayed at the Detroit-Windsor border and asked repeatedly if she plans to speak about the Pride Parade?
If Amy Goodman decides to come to Toronto, she may be prevented from entering Canada depending on when she chooses to come. If it's before the G20 summit in Toronto, she won't get in. If it's after, she might have a chance.
I hate it when I find an article on the interet about Israel one day, and then the next day, I can't find it.
While Israel has problems between the Israelis and Palestinians, it may eventually have problems among the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, Orthodox Jews, and secular Jews (who are officially Orthodox). They will be fighting over who should live in certain homes and neighbourhoods.
Focus groups conducted by conservative PR firm Navigator discussed censoring Parade participants less than two months before Pride Toronto's botched signage announcement.
I'm not sure if Navigator could be considered "conservative". I think they will work for anyone who will pay them. I work with small "c" and capital "C" conservatives; my ex wife's in laws were Reformers, and while I may have, and will have vibrant dissagreements with them, they were and are decent, respectable people, who were not abject, morally debased cowards for hire.
So, not that I'm in the habit of deffending conservatives, I have to bristle at the suggestion that "Navigator" is in fact "conservative".
It is something else that I don't have the vocabulary to describe.
Too late.
Every year Pride Toronto prints a free "Pride Festival Guide". Xtra Magazine has also been producing a "pride guide". Around 7 or 10 years ago, Pride Toronto got the copywrite on the phrase "Official Pride Festival Guide" or something like that. In 2004 I think, I volunteered on a committee to bring in Dan Savage and Anne-Marie Macdonald for a panel on queer parenting, and it was there that I learned the distinction, which seemed to be *very important* to the Pride Toronto folks on the committee. And I also believe the phrase "Pride Toronto" is owned, so nobody can legally reproduce that phrase either. Why they would want to is yet another question.
Zionists have been pressuring Pride Toronto's funders over the past year to get them to implement this censorship policy.
If you don't support censorship, here's a one-minute e-mail action to let these sponsors know how you feel: www.tinyurl.com/tps10
Staying on theme, eh? I'm reminded of that scene from Star Wars during the fight with the Death Star.
It's quite outrageous that Simon Wiesenthal's name has been appropriated in this way by his "Friends". Wiesenthal had, at best, an ambivalent view towards Israel and Zionism and while I wouldn't go as far as to say he was an "anti-Zionist" I doubt that he'd share the view the FSWC has been promoting in recent years conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism or, in particular, moving the Simon Wiesenthal's focus away from anti-Nazism and Holocaust remembrance to Israel advocacy.
Done, and thanks for the link, hopefully more take the time to too......
I will agree with aka Mycroft about the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies. There seems to be less focus on getting people to remember the Holocaust and more on advocating for Israel.
On the issue of the Pride Parade, if the QuAIA are not allowed to participate in the parade, they must decide what options to take. They can try to infiltrate the parade, they can see if there is enough support from other parade participants to boycott the parade. That might be iffy. They can agree to participate but not have signs that may be deemed negative toward Israel. They might go with other options if they can think of any.
Maysie... okay, Pride Toronto and International Olympic Committee, same bureaucratic logic, got it... this is precisely the kind of thing that makes me recall the Situationist gloss on Diderot:
Not that I am entirely without sympathy for the organizers... I have enough experience trying to organize events that were supposed to be for the LGBT communities "as a whole" to know that herding cats is easy in comparison... but to cave in to pressure from outside organizations to control how people within the communities want to organize and present themselves? Is it that hard to write a non-committal letter back to the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and suggest that if there are LGBT members of their organization who wish to participate as a delegation in the march they are quite welcome to follow the regular procedures?
In Israel, Jews and Arabs are equal. I think?
Israel: Arab family denied right to rent home: by Jonathan Cook
Mrs Zakai said: "If Jews were being denied the right to live somewhere, it would be a scandal, but because our friends are Arabs no one cares."
Arab discrimination is happening in Israel proper.
UPDATE: original link for article.
Open letter to the Community
thanks for posting that Mycroft - glad to see things resolved in this fashion, here is hoping they don't try a similar thing in the future
I'm sure Pasternak and Gladstone will come up with something. Their problem is they're such blunt instruments and clumsy manoeuvrists that anything they try is so heavy handed that it collapses under the weight of their arrogance.
aka, do you think this is do the responses they got from the email petition call to action?
As I received several letters back from sponsors, telling me most definitely they would not be interfering with parade signs and would be continuing to fund just as things have always been.
Toronto Could Pull Pride Parade Funds If QuAIA Involved
http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19193&It...
"Reached last week by email Elle Flanders, a spokesperson for QuAIA, told the CJN that her group will be submitting an application to march. Flanders wrote that as a Jew who grew up in Israel, she was 'personally not interested in being represented by homophobes like Mammoliti.' She added: ' I am further embarassed at the breakdown of democratic process when it comes to criticism of Israel's state policy. Mammoliti's motion is without basis: criticism of Israel does not equal hate. Crying anti-Semitism where it does not exist is harmful to the Jewish community.'
The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement last week supporting Mammoliti's motion, calling on the city to use the 'window of opportunity' to do the right thing and prevent hate groups like QuAIA from fomenting hatred and discord in the annual parade...'"
As for the 'Friends..' check them out.
FOSWC
http://www.fswc.ca
Museum of Tolerance:
http://www.haaretz.com/magazine/museum-of-tolerance-special-report/museu...
Perhaps MP Bob Rae can be of assistance as he's quite tight with this organization, its aims and objectives..
Doesn't setting up a "Museum of Tolerance" suggest that tolerance is a thing of the past?
And would the museum gift shop sell items like "My Parents Went To The Museum of Tolerance and now I have to put up with this t-shirt"?
Ken, maybe they should rename it "The Preserve of Tolerance" (as in game preserve). Then people can come visit it, nicely contained under glass bell jars. Things are so much more "antiseptic" when kept under glass. :rolleyes:
And the gift shop could sell jars of "Tolerable Preserves". They may not totally agree with you, but you'll be able to keep them down after awhile.