Contest this!

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

Riddle me this: Is it because there aren't enough right-wingers in Canada to support Ezra Levant's Western Standard? Is it because right-wingers prefer to scream at each other on blogs? Or is it just an issue of the magazine industry here being so damn difficult? It's a financial struggle for many, including the most excellent Walrus and, most recently, Saturday Night, which went down in flames.

That's just my way of leading into the latest pitch from Levant landing in my ebox. It's a writing contest, by gum, and first prize is $1,000 and your chance at publication in the WS.

There is an entry fee of $50, and every entry receives a free one-year subscription to the magazine, valued at $75. If you've already got a magazine subscription, no problem -- you can extend your subscription, or give it as a gift!

Now I ask you ...

Speaking of which, I should ask Levant whatever happened to the money -- however much it was -- he raised to fight off that human rights lawsuit following his publication of the controversial Danish cartoons? Whatever happened to the lawsuit for that matter?

UPDATE: Unconfirmed word has it that the biweekly WS is becoming a monthly to cut costs. What's more, editor Kevin Libin is jumping ship, either to Maclean's or the National Post. Looks like there's trouble at the board level, with investors bailing on this sinking enterprise.

NOTE: Readers have informed me that this is the second year of the contest.

Comments

[Maz]

My favourite photo of Ezra Levant was in a WS issue of some months ago that included a montage of photos of the Western Standard's 'parliamentary breakfast'. In one picture, EL was flanked by Stephen Harper and another parliamentary poobah. With Ezra in the middle, it was obvious Harper was there playing Mary Wilson to Ezra's Diana Ross.

[Tyler]

Ezra Levant is learning the same lesson that Ted Byfield learned at Alberta Report——flogging your own prejudices leads to financial ruin.

And yet the Toronto Star continues to publish...

[Greg Felton]

Yes, indeed, Tyler——the Toronto Star continues to publish. Somebody has to stand as a beacon of hope for those of us who are sick and tired of watching reporters don the knee padds for the Israel lobby.

On Aug. 22, it featured an op/ed by Ehab Lotayef et al. entitled "Canada's Mideast policy should be based on international law."

No other "Nyoozpaypur" would have the temerity to run an article proving, yet again, that Israel is a criminal state run by terrorists.

No paper even permits a reporter to challenge the demonstrable libel that Hizbullah is a terrorist group.

This country would be immeasurably poorer were it not for Antonia and other Star reporters who challenge the unspoken censorship that has reduced our media to a putrid, pusilanimous palace press.

By the way thanks for the quote!

[Glowbull]

Does Ezra Levant ever have dentures or something to go with those gums? Or are teeth passe?

[Peter Shaw]

With a quick google, I've discovered that not only does the CBC charge an entry fee for its writing contest as I mentioned earlier, but so do the Hibernating with Words Poetry Contest, the Canadian Poetry Association, the Cubicle Press Chapbook Contest, the Writers' Federation of NB Literary Competition, the Burnaby Writers' Society, the PoeticSoul Literary Journal, The Claremont Review, the Knowledge Bookstore, the Brucedale Press, the Surrey International Writers' Conference, Grain Magazine, Tickled by Thunder Fiction Magazine, Trent University, and the University of British Columbia.

All Canadian. All writing competitions. All charging an entry fee.

Are you telling us the CBC, Western Standard, Trent U, UBC, provincial and national poetry and prose societies, and an assortment of magazines and journals are all breaking the law, Brian? This sounds like a criminal pandemic (always the literary types!), if that's the case.

[Peter Shaw]

So Israel is a "criminal state run by terrorists", but pointing out that kill-the-Jews-wherever-they-are Hezbollah is a terrorist group is "libel" spread by the "Israel lobby"?

And this comment dumped into a post about a writing contest??

Jeeze, Antonia. You sure do attract 'em.

[wonderdog]

A writing contest bears no similarity to gambling, so this is not illegal.

Or, at least, a writing contest which is actually a contest of skill bears no similarity to gambling ... a writing contest judged by a board of semi-literate monkeys, in which the outcome is completely unrelated to the quality of the work submitted ... well, that's a lot like shooting craps.

So, yes, this is totally illegal.

[Rondi]

Greg (and others): You may not agree with Ezra about politics, but he is not a bigot, against Muslims or anyone else. And Glowbull -- disagreement about politics is fair comment. But why make an attack about superficial matters?

[Greg Felton]

Peter--You have a problem with accuracy?!

Hizbullah does NOT believign in killing Jews wherever they are. That is standard zionist hatemongering and defamation.

[Peter Shaw]

Thanks, Greg, but I'm not taking pointers on hatemongering from someone whose "work" appears on the white supremacist neo-Nazi National Vanguard's website. Might want to request they take down your article, lest anyone get, you know, the wrong idea about you... not that calling 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust a "pure myth" is likely to make you any other friends.

I'll stick with Hezbollah's own words:

"It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth."

"If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."

How about we meet halfway - Hezbollah would PREFER to not kill Jews wherever they are; it's so much easier to kill them when they all assemble in Israel.

[Greg Felton]

First, I have no control over who posts my work.

Second, the accuracy of my work stands on its own.

Third, do you read Arabic? I ask this because Hizbullah (note preferred spelling) is routinely mirepresented in our zionist press.

I suggest that you disabuse yourself of your pro-Israel prejudice and research Hizbullah for yourself.

See Laura Deeb "Hiballah: A primer"

If you wish to argue with me, please address yourself to my arguments, not to the places where they appear.

[sooey]

yes. well. israel showed lots of dead lebanese civilians who's got a right to exist. that's for sure.

[arthurdecco]

Mr. Shaw, Hizbollah is an organization. Organizations don't say things, people do.

Can you provide the links for the quotes you provided? (Preferably not to LGF or the Western Standard, rather to someone or some organization with a modicum of integrity.)

[Maz]

Apparently, Peter Shaw, some have managed to not buy into the 6-million figure for the Nazi Holocaust, and to do so without being tagged with the ol' dreary-bleary 'Holocaust denier' moniker. Two examples follow.

The late Michael Elkins was, for several years, the BBC correspondent in Jerusalem, reporting on such major events as the trial of Adolf Eichmann and the Six Day War. In 1971, Elkins published Forged in Fury, a book about Jewish avengers stalking fugitive Nazi war criminals. In 1996, the 25th anniversary edition of his book was reprinted almost unchanged, save for a new Foreword in which he disputed the 6-million Holocaust figure. Elkins owed to having no set opinion as to even the approximate number of Jews killed in World War Two; all he knew is that it was not the six million figure he claimed in the first edition.

Elkins: "The dimensions of the Holocaust are terribly important, but whether it was five million dead or four million or three, the enormity of the crime and the weight of the tragedy maintains" [cf. Forged in Fury, London: Judy Piatkus (Publishers), 1996, p. xiii].

The Wikipedia cites the Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, whose Destruction of the European Jews is widely held as the Bible of Holocaust historiography, as giving 5.1 million as the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. The same entry also notes the Auschwitz death toll had dropped from officially 4 million to officially one million after several decades. (Do the math.)

[Antonia Z.]

Oh boy. Here we go again.

Western Standard please. That is the topic.

I'm conservative, and I can't stand Ezra Levant. Politics aside, he's just an insufferable prick. Glowbull, it's too bad he DOESNT have teeth because my fist would have enjoyed meeting them.

[Peter Shaw]

Western Standard is the topic, Antonia? Makes me wonder why you bothered posting Felton's original comments. Comments that had nothing to do with the Western Standard, and everything to do with yet another venomous anti-Israel rant.

What the hell did you think would happen when a negationist Hezbollah-booster who seems oddly ambivalent about being reprinted approvingly on a neo-Nazi website called Israel a criminal state run by terrorists on a thread about a *writing contest*?

Your blog, you review and approve comments before they are posted. You opened the door. And once again, you demand it be closed after the horse has already bolted. Why don't you just stop posting that off-topic crap to begin with? Or limit it to, say, threads that actually have something (anything) to do with the Middle East?

[Arik]

Holocaust death estimates range from 4.5 million to 7.5 million.

From the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website Holocaust Encyclopedia, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

Auschwitz-Birkenau at least 960,000

Belzic 435,5000

Chelmno at least 152,000

Einsatzgruppen 1,300,000 to 2,000,000

Majdanek 170,000 and 235,000, Jews and Soviet PoWs, exact number killed in gas chambers unknown

Sobibor 167,000

Treblinka 870,000 to 925,000

Total from just these main killing centers and mobile killing units: 4,084,500 using 170,000 for Majadnek, 900,000 for Treblinka and 1.3 million for Einsatzgruppen.

Excludes all other European Jews killed by other means or at other locations between 1933-1945, including in transit to/from ghettos, in ghettos, transit to camps, arbitrary executions, Warsaw Ghetto rising.

European Jewish population 1933 was approximately 9.5 million; European Jewish population in 1950 was approximately 3.5 million.

By 1945, most European Jews--two out of every three--had been killed.

In 1933, Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe, numbering over 3 million, reduced to 45,000 by 1950. The USSR accumulated through territorial annexations and absorption of refugees up to 5.4 million Jews by 1941 (from Wikpedia); it had approximately 2.5 million Jews left in 1945. Romania's Jewish population fell from about 980,000 in 1933 to about 280,000 in 1950. Most of these demographic losses were due to the Holocaust, the rest to postwar emigration from Europe. Germany had a Jewish population of 565,000 in 1933 and 37,000 in 1950. Hungary had 445,000 in 1933 and 190,000 in 1950. Czechoslovakia had about 357,000 in 1933 and 17,000 in 1950. Austria had about 250,000 1in 1933, 18,000 in 1950.

In western Europe, the largest Jewish communities remained in Great Britain, with approximately 450,000 Jews (300,000 in 1933) and France, with 235,000 (225,000 in 1933, a net gain from displaced Jews). In southern Europe, Greece went from about 100,000 in 1933 to 7,000 in 1950; in Yugoslavia from about 70,000 to 3,500; in Italy from about 48,000 to 35,000; in Bulgaria from 50,000 in 1933 to 6,500 in 1950 (the reduction in the Bulgarian Jewish population resulted from postwar emigration). The demographic focus of European Jewry thus shifted from eastern to western Europe.

Most surviving European Jewry decided to leave Europe for Israel, the U.S., Canada, Australia, Great Britain, South America, and South Africa. Israel's Jewish population in 1949 was just over 1 million, approximately 320,000 European refugees had entered Israel by 1951.

[Antonia Z.]

Peter Shaw, if you can confine yourself to the FACTS, I would have no problem. But noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
You go for the personal attacks and the flaming. Please. If you want to comment on other people's comments, then kindly debate. Cite sources. Don't flame.

And Arik? Thanks for the numbers. But enough about that. You got your licks in. I find that getting into a numbers game is rather gruesome and macabre. Yes, I know that Maz started it. But now you have finished it. OKAY?

Millions -- (mostly) Jews, Roma, gays, political prisoners etc. -- were systematically and cruelly exterminated. Nobody here argues with that horrible fact.

All subsequent comments relating to the numbers or which contain insults will be deleted.

[Reality Check]

Antonia, I agree with Peter.

ANTONIA SENT THE REST OF THIS COMMENT BACK TO RC FOR POSTING IN THE APPROPRIATE THREAD. IT WAS OFF TOPIC HERE.

[Peter Shaw]

You consider this *factual*??

"No other "Nyoozpaypur" would have the temerity to run an article proving, yet again, that Israel is a criminal state run by terrorists... No paper even permits a reporter to challenge the demonstrable libel that Hizbullah is a terrorist group."

On a thread about a silly writing contest, that's not flaming?

[Antonia Z.]

Greg's language may be intemperate, but he is not insulting anybody. He was responding to a post by Tyler about The Star. He stated that the Star published a certain op-ed stating certain opinions.

He does not attack anybody personally.

That to me is the definition of flaming.

[Reality Check]

Fair enough. I'll save it for a thread where it is more relevant. But how did you send it back to me? I don't have it in my e-mail linked here so I can't copy and paste it in such a future thread.

Re: Greg's posts, on occasion they are quite far from the mainstream, a characterization I think he would sgree with.

I find it frustrating that certain things rise to the level of being the subject of a debate, as the occurrence of the debate itself legitimizes those views, particularly when it takes place on a mainstream site. For example, we tend not to debate whether the Earth is flat, whether there are flying saucers or whether MacKenzie King really succeeded in chatting with his Mom in sceances. IMHO historical events that have been exhaustively researched and documented fall into that category.

[Antonia Z.]

RC,

I hit REPLY on your post which would have sent it to the account you use on your posts, assuming it's a real account. Check your spam/junk mail. If it's not there, email me and I will send it to you to a private account.

[Peter Shaw]

"Peter Shaw, if you can confine yourself to the FACTS but noooo"

What did I say that wasn't factual?

[you needn't post this if you don't want to encourage more off-topic arguing, Antonia - more my own curiousity]