And the silence of the political blogs
This is not a political nor a current affairs blog. I will post on politics usually when it pertains in some manner to the visual (and sometimes the other) arts, and I usually post to analyze rather than to report. Hence my weekly posts.
An example is my long discussion on how, through the politics of multiculturalism, Canadian Olympians were robbed of a truly relevant uniform, and instead we got a mish-mash of Chinese cultural and superstitious symbols. I even dared to connect this with the fact that two of the designers were of Chinese origin, with a natural desire to bring their background into their designs.
Here is yet another Chinese connection, much more macabre, and strangely in line with the most dangerous foe we have yet in the Western World. A young man on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba was stabbed and beheaded by a fellow traveler. Initial pictures of the murderer, and his name, showed him to be of Chinese origin.
My take on this initially was that people are influenced by their environments - by television, film, internet, their cities and their buildings, the languages they hear around them.
I wasn't sure how to go to the Muslim part, except that I was willing to say this: a new immigrant, alienated that he is from his culture, and difficult as it is to "assimilate" in his new one, could very easily be influenced by evil forces such as those internet videos of beheadings by Muslims of their non-Muslim hostages. The Virgina Tech. killer, for example, despite mentioning Jesus as his inspiration to kill himself and others, sent his manifesto package to NBC with the return address name of "A. Ismael." His very martyr-like position (suicide-bomber style) also suggests more a Muslim influence rather than a Christian one. So there is no reason why this Chinese man was not influenced by Islam to do his evil deed. After all, it is all around him at the moment. So either way, whether he is Muslim or not, his influence could be directed to Islam.
None of the big-name bloggers, from Kathy Shaidle, to Ezra Levant, to Steve Janke, to Damian J. Penny, to the Shotgun blog, to the whole MacLean's blogging group, and on and on, posted on this story. And Small Dead Animals simply just posted a video which she called "Brutality". A few others commented on the news, some to decry the lack of gun-touting fellow-passengers, and another angry at the "blame the victim" mentality of the news.
And beyond that, I found only one blogger who was willing to use the word Muslim in his post at all. But his blog was really a parody at what he thinks conservative bloggers would be saying, which they weren't saying at all!
The only Canadian site I could find which discusses the Islamic nature of this crime is at Free Dominion. But that is a forum of ordinary Canadians. And I've consistently found that ordinary people seem far more perceptive than news journalists, and now big name bloggers too.
All in all, from a survey of 30-35 bloggers, mostly right-wing but some left-wing, only ten mentioned the story at all, and only one left-wing blogger mentioned Islam as a satire on how right-wing bloggers would write about the crime.
I'm posting this "current affairs" post now because I have analyzed the influence and penetration of Islamic imageries and signs through many posts, where I have even set aside a side column for posts on our changing landscape brought on by Islam. Slowly, and most dangerously, Islam is changing our environment. See, for example, my post on the "Muslim Girl Magazine" where the constant presence of hijabs and scarves in our streets, as well as in magazines and films, could be influencing young non-Muslim girls into accepting Muslim attire and even behavior. Perhaps this is how the Chinese immigrant in Manitoba, and the Korean student at Virgina Tech. were also influenced.
The Greyhound bus beheading should have brought up to these bloggers images of those awful internet videos of Islamic groups murdering their kidnapped victims, as Geert Wilders' film Fitna graphically documented for us . And if that was too much of a stretch, the fact that a Chinese man was involved in this brutal killing of what appeared to be a white man, should have alerted these bloggers to the importance of the story - maybe something to do with immigration and unassimilated or alienated immigrants?
These conservative bloggers after all ask for donations from their thousands of readers (tip jars are prominent, especially now since several are facing lawsuits), and yet consistently neglect to write about the most important transformation in Canadian history, which I've repeatedly written about, besides my routinely updated "Our changing landscape" side column, and for which I have to scour the internet to find reliable sources to support my posts. Here are a sample of such posts:
- Islamic references cropping up everywhere
- Hindu temples all over suburbia
- A side culture of Indians in Canada, living their Indian lives through movies, songs, festivals and websites
- Cell-phone conversations in incomprehensible languages
- Downtown Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver changing into condo-havens (yes, it is all those immigrants which are spiking up the housing boom)
- How architecturally sound and attractive buildings are being demolished for condos and high rises
- Alien symbols by alien peoples (no-one, as far as I know, has written about the strange Coat of Arms of the Governor General, or even questioned the Chinese theme of our Olympians' uniforms, which they just dismiss as "unattractive.")
- Multiculturalism ruining our designs (and in effect our arts.)
- And how Geert Wilders' Fitna provides important imagery for understanding Islam, including the awful beheading scene, images which he thankfully omits but provides the chilling sounds (screams) instead.
So, when a beheading occurs, our bloggers dare not touch it since they don't know how to respond! They haven't made the effort to understand these changes, and just continuously rant about the Liberal government (Dion is a big favorite) or how Harper is reneging on his promises.
First class journalistic investigation, also revealing the large non-white population of Edmonton where Vince Li lived, including 11,000 Arabs and 18,000 Muslims as well as Li's possible Chinese Muslim background, is found here. I think it is the only place on the internet with such a comprehensive discussion of the topic.