Cultures come and go. Some age into oblivion and are replaced by another. Some are lost through assimilation. But others are literally murdered. Such was the fate of Poland’s thriving thousand year old Jewish culture and its cantorial music tradition when the socialist jackboots of Hitler and Stalin goose stepped into that country and divided it between them in 1939.

—–

On the western Hitler side, his national socialists mass murdered Poland’s civil leaders and its Jews at a variety of well-known death camps like Auschwitz, or worked them to death in Nazi factories.  On the eastern Stalin side, his international socialists mass murdered Poland’s military officers and intelligentsia — much of which was Jewish — and either deported those other Jews deemed threats to Russian rule to the Nazis to be slaughtered or to Soviet labor camps to be worked to death. So Eastside, Westside, all around Poland, both the Jewish religion and its unique culture were crushed by two Marxist based political systems concocted by demented intellectuals in which a malevolent dictator’s state is god.

That left many, like Krakow Jewish Festival founder Janusz Makuch, whose ancestors were Jewish, feeling lost: “I tried to find the answer on a basic question: What is my cultural identity? I’m not Jewish. However, I was born in Poland. Poland, where Jewish culture and polish culture intertwined through the centuries.”  According to Cantor Nathan Lam, the film’s executive producer and a man I have met several times at a neighbor’s home, 90% of American Jews can trace their ancestry to Poland before the mass murdering began. (more…)

Like the unhinged Rosie O’Donnell, the waningly influential Michael Moore is almost too easy a target to bother with anymore – and yet he keeps handing us such tempting ammunition. In an interview published the day after Independence Day, which he no doubt spent like the rest of us, celebrating this country and being thankful for our abundance and our freedoms, Moore blathers on predictably in his ongoing campaign against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Correction – his campaign against American victories in Iraq and Afghanistan. If Moore and the anti-war Left were truly anti-war, they would be protesting the real warmongers – Islamic fundamentalists – or at least protesting both sides equally. But they reserve their condemnation for the world’s greatest terrorists. I’m talking about those jack-booted, nuke-happy imperialists America and Israel, of course.

What should we be doing instead of trying to secure lasting victory in those countries? Plucking an estimate out of his sizeable, um, back pocket, Moore says, “$15 billion is what we’ve been spending almost every month on Iraq and Afghanistan. So, one month of the killing machine could give clean water to virtually all the people that don’t have it.”

Yes, if only the American “killing machine” would stop ravaging innocents abroad in order to steal their resources and enslave their peace-loving peoples, we could turn instead to doing some good in the world. For once. Because God knows Americans need to change our greedy, warmongering, rapacious ways and learn us some generosity, compassion and service to others. Then the world will like us again. (more…)

This is our sixth month of Obama Nation strips. Huzzah!

So every other year or so a documentary bubbles up, focusing on racist groups around the world – usually skinhead types in derby jackets, Doc Martens and tight, rolled-up jeans. Essentially they look like roadies for Erasure. That’s because when it comes to neo-Nazi villains, they only come in one flavor: vanilla. Without question, Jew haters are always white, pathetic, despicable losers with tiny penises.

However most – if not all – of them – are powerless. They don’t run governments. They’re lucky if they run laundromats.

But in Iran, you’ve got a full-blown neo-Nazi running the government. You’ve got a modern day Hitler boasting about nuclear capability. He shares so much in common with Adolf it’s eerie – his envy-driven hatred, horrible hair and an irrational love for animals. All that’s missing is the funny mustache. (more…)

“That’s the best song ever written,” Judy Garland said of “Over the Rainbow” in an interview with Barbara Walters on March 6, 1967, almost three decades after she captured countless hearts as “Dorothy” in “The Wizard of Oz,” featuring that magical song.

So, too, “The Wizard of Oz”—released 70 years ago today—is, perhaps, the best film ever made.

Or, at least, the most quintessentially American—in terms of our struggles, hopes, aspirations, dreams, and, ultimately, unshakable confidence, that “somewhere over the rainbow… dreams… really do come true.”

MGM had purchased this highly popular and imaginative children’s book written by L. Frank Baum, and published in 1900, for $75,000, specifically for Judy.  During development, the silver shoes became ruby, thus undercutting Baum’s apparent allegory to “bimetallism”—currency backed by silver, replacing “the gold standard” and favoring rural farmers; in contrast to the worthless “greenbacks” some say Emerald City represents.  (more…)

Since Iran’s Green Revolution began on June 12th we have all learned the meaning of the term Basiji, whom Matthias Kuntzel of The New Republic called “Ahmadinejad’s Demons.” Since Supreme Leader In Name Only Ali Khamenei’s son now runs the Basiji, I consider it more of an Ahmie and Khamie thing, like the election itself. We’ve seen what they’ve done: murderous beatings, motorcycle drive-by clubbings, even the shooting of innocents like Neda Soltan and Kaveh Alipour.

That violence is always blamed on those protesters by Ahamadinejad and other hardliners, as well as FARS and other state-run mouthpieces, all of whom are doing their damndest to demonize the Green protesters as enemies of the state, foreign agents, even domestic terrorists. Glad we don’t have that kind of stuff in America, huh? Ya, as if! What country are YOU living in?

What, in essence, are the Basiji? Are they not an ideologically and violently overzealous arm of the fascist Iranian thugocracy? Well, if terrorizing innocent citizens over ideology with full political backing is the key issue here, then what do you call the three menacing baton-swinging racist epithet-spewing New Black Panther Party poll watchers in Philadelphia, paid in full by Democrats, who uttered such overzealous statements as “you will soon be ruled by the black man, cracker”? (more…)

I’m putting the finishing touches on my feature film coming out later this year called “U.N. Me”  (unmemovie.com), a satirical documentary on the profound failures of the United Nations. Here’s the third of three clips that very much represent the flavor of my upcoming film. Hope you enjoy … ”Iran Diplomat.”

(more…)

I often find myself thinking that if liberals didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all. 

For instance, consider the uproar from the left when Don Imus opened his silly yap about the black women on the Rutgers basketball team.  Now compare that to their response when David Letterman made his smarmy cracks about Sarah Palin and the governor’s 14-year-old daughter.  The liberals immediately sprang to his defense, pointing out that Letterman is nothing more than a TV personality and is therefore free to make offensive jokes without fear of censure.  So what do they think Don Imus is?  The secretary of state? 

Or consider how choleric those on the left become any time that Dick Cheney defends the former administration.  Well, if Obama and his cronies didn’t constantly attack Bush and Cheney and their policies, the chances are the ex-vice president wouldn’t feel compelled to set the record straight. Furthermore, Jimmy Carter never stopped bashing George Bush during the eight years he was the president, and yet nobody on the left ever suggested he shut up.  On the contrary, he was hailed at the 2004 Democratic convention, and even had the honor of being seated next to the patron saint of left-wingers, Michael Moore.  Speaking of Carter, how is it that he, who is always volunteering to monitor elections anywhere on earth, including the Westminster Dog Show, wasn’t in Iran, making sure that Ahmadinejad got 110% of the vote?  (more…)

The crime is complete. Judgment has been passed. The killing stones are in hand. As per the harsh stoning penal code of Iran’s Islamist thugocracy (for however long that lasts) where the crime took place, my stones are not so big as to kill right away, not so small you can’t call them stones. And I’m winding up like Nolan Ryan. Feel free to pick up a stone of your own. But wait for it!

And let me make this perfectly clear, even if they do say Jehovah!

Sentence must be read before being carried out. And unlike Soraya M., the board members of the Asylum of Motion Picture Airheads and Stooges will deserve every rock that’s thrown their way. I also believe that, in light of events in Iran today, the following commentary will stand out in much starker prominence than it did when I first started reporting on them in early March, when Team Oscar first set off for the Unfriendly Skies of Islamist Iran. (more…)

Q. How many young Iranian voters does it take to oust Ahmadinejad?

A. More than they have, apparently!

Remember student council elections in high school? You took it so seriously… As if you just elected the right person you’d get rock music over the PA in the morning and no final exams. When I look at things like the beauty contest election in Iran for President, an office with about the same amount of power as class president, I wonder how afraid the puppeteers on the council of twelve high muckity-mucks must be that they won’t allow someone who they had to approve to run for office actually win.

In a statement the Guardian Council said they might be willing to have a limited recount of some ballot boxes. Remind you of anything? That is exactly what the Al Goristas wanted to do in Florida a few years back. Fortunately for us (you too, Progressives), we let the lawyers handle it while we had a cookout and a few beers and when it was over we traded snide comments rather than bullets in the streets. (more…)

So much was said of Obama during the election, and for all of the promises of healing America’s divide, reaching across the aisle with a new kind of politics, creating new jobs and improving on “the failed policies of the last 8 years” I don’t see anything getting better.

The shame for Bush’s whatever-he-did-every-day was palpable by the left. Ask your favorite lefty what Bush did right and they’ll likely only talk about his help with the Africa AIDS epidemic, and even then it was probably just to look good to all of those voters who are Africans with AIDS. They were ashamed of his Texas-ness, his swagger and for the first time we declared that “go-it-alone” wasn’t an American quality. Somehow, Kim Jong-il would be better under Obama. We would talk together, and he would listen. But Kim Jong-Ronery has upped his missile launches since Bush left office. (more…)

Whenever I have suggested that left-wingers aren’t normal human beings, and have wondered if perhaps they’re some weird interplanetary life form like the pods in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the liberals accuse me of indulging in ad hominem attacks, and I suppose I am.  But I am honestly bewildered.  It just doesn’t seem plausible that Americans could find good things to say about tyrants like Castro, Chavez and Ahmadinejad, while at the same time reviling the likes of Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and General Petraeus.

Left-wingers side with the so-called Palestinians and insist that their country was stolen from them by the Jews, but when you ask them just exactly where the country was located, what their flag looked like and who their president was, they huff and they puff and they denounce you as a tool of the Jewish lobby. (more…)

Now that ‘Roxana: A True Story’ has come to a most satisfying and happy conclusion for Roxana Saberi, her parents, myself and millions of others around the globe (a conclusion not always assured, and which looked very grim in some scenes), it is now time for Your Most Humble and Obedient Critic to give you the full skinny on ‘Roxana: A True Story.’

Or, by its Hollywood acronym, RATS. Funny. I actually found that startling contraction fitting, not for Roxana (not hardly), but for all of the major black hats and clueless morons who populated this nerve-wracking Thugocracy Studios production, which had civilized people everywhere both riveted and outraged in its most grueling and suspenseful moments.

Not to mention for Roxana and her parents. But before we get to heroes and villains, let us look at the story to date with all its dramatic twists and underpinnings, many with significant international implications. Just like a good Hitchcock drama should. And I caught ‘em all!

By pure happenstance, Your Most Humble Critic and Boy Reporter was already hot on the job covering Iran (unlike some people) and hammering AMPAS for their tea and finger-cookie soirees with these guys, when I saw what Iran was pulling with Roxana and called it for what it was: a hostage crisis. And on the same day HRW called it the same in a press release on March 13th, which I didn’t find out until the 19th thanks to our on-the-ball Vein Stream Media. (more…)

According to my wife, I have a tendency to state my opinion as fact.  She suggests that I begin my sentences by saying “It’s only my opinion, but…” and go on from there.  It’s my opinion, however, that people already understand that it’s my opinion and that they share it if they’re smart, or don’t, if they’re not.  Furthermore, I don’t see my main function as a communicator to convince liberals, who are notoriously as blind as bats, to see the light, but to provide my fellow conservatives with ammunition to use against left-wingers and, whenever possible, to amuse. 

Gloria Steinem

In any case, in the spirit of compromise, let us pretend that each of the following paragraphs begins “It’s only my opinion, but…” 

When Gloria Steinem, who had been lionized by the ladies of NOW for her rather dumb remark about women needing men like fish needed bicycles, finally got married at the age of 66, I thought people should have sent her greeting cards complimenting her on having belatedly grown gills.  (more…)