New documentary in the works about Zohran Mamdani that's bound to be sugarcoated

It appears the leftists in Hollywood decided to give NYC's first Muslim mayor more backing for the sake of it, by producing a documentary all about him that's bound to be mega-biased as can be:

A new documentary will chronicle openly socialist Zohran Mamdani’s rise to become Mayor of New York City, a journey that began in 2023.

The documentary will be directed Julia Bacha, who also serves as the creative director of the non-profit Just Vision, which reportedly tells stories that shine “a spotlight on the Israel-Palestine conflict,” per TheWrap.

“It was her interest in Israel and Palestine that led Bacha to Mamdani three years ago,” noted the outlet. “The Brazil-born filmmaker heard in 2023 about a group of New York activists who were calling for charities to stop using tax-deductible donations to fund Israeli settlements.”

Bacha said the documentary began as a focus on whether Mamdani and his team of pro-Palestinian lawmakers will be able to hold their assembly seats through New York’s next election cycle, but it instead morphed into him climbing to become mayor. She reportedly captured over 200 hours of footage chronicling this rise and was especially captivated by the influence of his filmmaker mother, Mira Nair.

For now, this is certainly telling enough. Another disturbing thing about Mamdani was his being "sworn in" to position as mayor on a koran instead of a bible. That says all you need to know what's going wrong in the USA, much as in Europe. This looks to be yet another documentary that gives the whole concept a bad name.

Perhaps predictably, but definitely sadly, Zohran Mamdani was elected NYC mayor

The results are in for what possibly - and definitely sadly - was no surprise in the NYC mayoral election: they've gone the way of London and now have their first Muslim mayor:

Democrat Socialist Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race, defeating former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa after a campaign defined by national attention, polling leads throughout the fall, and public debate over his economic, immigration, and foreign policy positions.

Mamdani — whose name appeared twice on the New York City ballot due to multiple party lines, a routine practice unique to the city’s ballot structure — entered Election Day with consistent polling advantages.

Independent surveys found Mamdani at 43 percent support going into the final weekend, with Cuomo trailing and Sliwa in third. Separate polling also showed that if the race had narrowed to a two-way matchup, Cuomo would have led head-to-head. In addition, the Manhattan Institute polling found Mamdani at 43 percent to Cuomo’s 28 percent in one survey, and leading when undecided voters were removed.

Hollywood involvement marked the final hours before voting, with performers and celebrities including Ilana Glazer, Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Klein, Jeff Hillier, George Takei, Mandy Patinkin, and Cynthia Nixon publicly participating in pro-Mamdani efforts. Michael Moore urged turnout nationwide. Other figures, including Amy Schumer and Marc Anthony, encouraged New Yorkers to back Cuomo.

National political figures engaged directly. President Donald Trump repeatedly urged voters to support Cuomo, warning that choosing Sliwa would benefit Mamdani. Trump also stated he would limit federal funding to New York if Mamdani won.

If anybody feels Sliwa contributed to enabling the awful Mamdani's ascent, the opinions are entirely valid, and I am hugely disappointed with Sliwa for his failure to clearly address the issue of Mamdani in one of Sliwa's campaign interviews. Of course, even Cuomo's seriously to blame for even running in the election to start with, considering his sordid record, which made Mamdani look better by comparison, even though, as noted before, he too made chilling statements on serious issues.

This election is also a defeat for NYC a quarter century after the tragedy of 911, and it's especially a defeat for victims of the horrifying crime. It's disgusting but no surprise only so many Hollywood "celebrities" would give Mamdani their backing, and make it hard to watch whatever shoddy movies they turn out. NYC is headed for the gutter, and only so many of the wrong sources enabled what's bound to be a fiasco in a short amount of time.

Update: also disturbing is that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg was reelected, despite his catastrophous policies and failure to prosecute the worst of criminals in the city. No doubt, he and Mamdani will be working closely together.

Debra Winger disappoints

The veteran actress Debra Winger, in her old of age and apparently no longer getting work in Hollywood, decided to throw away her reputation by participating in an attack on Donald Trump's NYC estate, taking part in a demonstration for the sake of an anti-Israel activist:

Demonstrators from a Jewish group filled the lobby of Trump Tower on Thursday to denounce the immigration arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist who helped lead protests against Israel at Columbia University.

The Jewish Voice for Peace protesters, who carried banners and wore red shirts reading “Jews say stop arming Israel,” chanted “Bring Mahmoud home now!”

After warning the protesters to leave the Fifth Avenue building, officers arrested 98 of them on various charges including trespassing, obstruction and resisting arrest, a police official said at a news briefing. [...]

Among those who took part in Thursday’s protest was actor Debra Winger, who has discussed her Jewish faith and upbringing over the years.

Winger accused the Trump administration of having “no interest in Jewish safety” and “co-opting antisemitism.”

“I’m just standing up for my rights, and I’m standing up for Mahmoud Khalil, who has been abducted illegally and taken to an undisclosed location,” she told The Associated Press. “Does that sound like America to you?”

Does that sound like somebody who's pro-Israel being interviewed by the AP Wire? Nope. It just sounds like somebody who had a phony upbringing in the Judaist religion. She's as bad as actor/playwright Wallace Shawn, who's also signaled his support for terrorists, and after this, it'll be exceedingly difficult for me to watch any past films and TV programs with Winger again. I'm not sure she was ever particularly successful in the long run anyway as a Hollywood actress, so that could explain why years later, she's turned to this kind of atrocious behavior, when here, she had a chance to do something better like be a book writer. Instead, she threw it all away for the sake of leftist politics and supporting terrorism.

More than 150 Hamas jihadists surrender to IDF in Khan Yunis

An important accomplishment made by the IDF in capturing a significant number of terrorists in the city of Khan Yunis:

Over 150 Hamas terrorists surrendered to the IDF in Khan Yunis on Thursday. Footage of the incident was published on social media.

The terrorists were checked by the IDF soldiers and transferred for initial questioning by the security forces.

This is a very good achievement. There'll be plenty of jihadists to put on trial soon, and hopefully, they'll be given the death sentence, something that's being debated now in the Knesset.

Amazingly enough, veteran filmmaker Steven Spielberg has commented on the issue:

Acclaimed Hollywood director Steven Spielberg spoke out on the Hamas massacre of October 7 for the first time last week.

In an address published by the USC Shoah Foundation last Friday, Spielberg said that he "never imagined I would see such unspeakable barbarity against Jews in my lifetime."

Spielberg, who is Jewish, founded the Shoah Foundation in 1994 to gather and preserve testimony from survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust. The Foundation has begun gathering testimony from survivors of the October 7 massacre under its Countering Antisemitism Through Testimony Collection program, which documents antisemitism in the post-Holocaust era.

According to Spielberg, this initiative is part of “an effort that will ensure that the voices of survivors will act as a powerful tool to counter the dangerous rise of antisemitism and hate.”

“Both initiatives — recording interviews with survivors of the October 7 attacks and the ongoing collection of Holocaust testimony — seek to fulfill our promise to survivors: that their stories would be recorded and shared in the effort to preserve history and to work toward a world without antisemitism or hate of any kind,” he said.

“We must remain united and steadfast in these efforts,” he said.

But does this means he's willing to produce films and/or documentaries in the forseeable future about this tragedy? Because if he doesn't, then he won't be accomplishing anything. Nor will it avail if he takes the same morally equivalent approach he did with Munich nearly 2 decades ago, which ultimately came at the expense of the Jewish victims of the terrorist attack in 1972 at the Olympics. If memory serves, he even sought approval from CAIR, whom it turns out is celebrating the October 7 horror:

Video emerged Thursday of Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), celebrating the October 7 terror attack by Hamas in which 1200 people were murdered in Israel and more than 240 were abducted as hostages.

Awad’s speech on November 24 to the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) convention in Chicago was reported at the time, but was largely overlooked; it resurfaced Thursday when shared by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

[...] The Biden administration also worked with CAIR, despite its radical and antisemitic history, in shaping the so-called “strategy” on antisemitism earlier this year. As Breitbart News reported, CAIR boasted that it helped protect extreme criticism of Israel within the White House’s strategy, which was a reversal of existing policy under previous administrations of both parties.

Will Spielberg be willing to condemn CAIR for their repulsive behavior, and even pan Biden's associations with them? Let's hope he and his institutions realize what a terrible PR error they'd be making if they didn't.

Update: the White House now says it's severing ties with Awad. Something they could've done long ago, and they surely knew CAIR was a repellent lot.

Update 2: Andrea Widburg at the American Thinker comments on the photographs of the jihadists who've surrendered, ideally stripped to underwear.

Update 3: also vital to note is that, as a doctor's revealed, at least 10 hostages of the Hamas were sexually abused in the tunnels:

At least 10 of the Israeli civilians released by Hamas, both men and women, were sexually assaulted or abused while in captivity, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

In a report detailing allegations of severe and widespread sexual abuse by Hamas terrorists during their October 7 onslaught and later against hostages, a doctor who treated some of the 110 hostages released from captivity told the AP that at least 10 men and women among those freed were sexually assaulted or abused.

He did not provide further details, and spoke on condition of anonymity to protect the hostages’ identities.

The doctor’s comments corroborated similar accounts shared at a meeting on Tuesday. The meeting, held between the Israeli war cabinet and a group comprising recently freed hostages and family members of those still held in Gaza, featured firsthand testimonies from some of the released captives. These individuals detailed their experiences of sexual abuse during their captivity, participants said.

Read more if you have the stomach for it. This is exactly why the Hamas has to be brought down altogether, and all sane people must strongly condemn their savagery.

Why do LGBT ideologues support anti-Israelism?

It's an important question made all the more worth pondering when creeps like a "non-binary" cast member of Sarah Jessica Parker's Sex & the City sequel on TV, And Just Like That, participated in an antisemitic rally:

And Just Like That star Sara Ramirez was spotted carrying a trans rights flag as they joined thousands of protesters at a 'free Palestine' rally in Brooklyn on Saturday.

The 48-year-old non-binary actor wore a keffiyeh - a monochrome patterned scarf which is a patriotic symbol of Palestinian identity - with a black North Face jacket, cap and dark sunglasses as they marched through the Bay Ridge neighborhood.

The use of LGBT paraphernalia at pro-Palestine protests has baffled many, since the Islamic Middle Eastern state follows sharia law, and as noted by Amnesty International, it is not safe for the queer community.

To be sure, many such practitioners are aware of that, and their reasons for taking LGBT lifestyle is more for the purpose of destroying western society as a 5th column. That's quite possibly the explanation for why these scum are willing to sell their souls to the Religion of Peace's antisemitic agendas. By contrast, look at what happened abroad:

A march in London on the same day saw what appeared to be a group bearing the Palestinian flag tear down an LGBT flag, sparking a conflict.

Palestine is not an LGBT-friendly nation. An Amnesty report last year highlighted how 'authorities failed to prevent and investigate homophobic and transphobic threats and attacks' in the country.

Outlining an example of homophobia in the nation, the report said: 'On 9 July (2022) security forces stood by and watched as a mob beat youths and children participating in a parade organized by Ashtar Theatre in Ramallah that included rainbow flags.

'The attack came amid a wave of incitement to violence and hate speech against LGBTI people and feminists that the authorities failed to investigate.'

If they're alluding to the PLO, of course they wouldn't. What does one expect from an autocracy? But shame on the UK Mail for sticking with the position there's such a thing as an Arab/Islamic state by the name of "palestine" when that's not the case. Though admittedly, it's not a surprise in Britain this kind of propaganda could still prevail. Also disgraceful is the use of the word "patriotic", which the PLO symbols most definitely are not.

And that somebody who's presumably a woman disrespecting her own gender would be involved so blatantly in an antisemitic march is just the tip of the iceberg, because And Just Like That, the sequel to Sex and the City, builds on some alarming antisemitic stereotypes itself:

“Sex and the City” (SATC) fans appropriately expressed outrage after SATC’s reboot “And Just Like That” (AJLT) made an offensive joke about the Holocaust on Holocaust Remembrance Day. They further charged that the show was permeated with overdone “woke-ism.”

But other deeply disturbing things about AJLT received little to no notice. First, AJLT repeatedly promoted the dangerous George Soros-funded Israel-bashing propaganda organization Human Rights Watch (HRW). This became even worse in the just-aired AJLT Season 2, which also displays giant HRW signs in numerous scenes.

The show also included a joke portraying Israel’s Mossad as random assassins; propagated the false “Muslim ban” myth; disparaged Jews’ physical appearance and behavior; and mocked concerns about kosher food. It thus compounded the negative, antisemitic portrayals of Jews and Israel in the series “Suits,” “Quantico” and too many other shows.

This is extremely harmful to Jews in an era of skyrocketing antisemitism, which is often manifested as Israel-hatred.

And that's just the beginning. The show turns out to be stunningly politicized, maybe even more than the original TV series was. Although, if the following alludes to the original series, something very disturbing turned up there too:

SATC portrayed the Jewish character Harry Goldenblatt as so physically unattractive that, during the early part of his relationship with the gorgeous character Charlotte York, Charlotte is repulsed and embarrassed to be seen in public with Harry.

Related episodes focused on Harry’s hairy back, Harry sloppily eating and then spitting out a bagel into his hand and Harry leaving skid marks on the sofa from sitting on it naked. Even after Charlotte falls in love with Harry’s humor, warmth, compassion (and sexual ability), and converts to Judaism so he will marry her, Charlotte yells at Harry: “Do you know how lucky you are to have me? Do you know how we look? Do you know what people out there think when they see us together? Do you?”

Harry leaves after that outburst, and Charlotte is then set up with two other Jewish men, described as “a meeskite and a faigela”—Yiddish terms for an ugly man and a gay man. Charlotte then attends a Jewish synagogue singles event populated with unattractive singles and only one good-looking Jewish man. The good-looking man leaves the event after Charlotte rejects him, and the other women then lament that “all that’s left is the fatties and the baldies.”

The other significant Jewish character, Carrie’s gay friend Stanford Blatch, is short, bald and portrayed as unattractive.

By contrast, virtually every non-Jewish SATC event attendee and date is good-looking—often extraordinarily so. Years ago, I saw SATC taping an outdoor scene in New York City’s Bryant Park. Even the extras were remarkably attractive.

AJLT continues SATC’s habit of disparaging Jewish character Harry Goldenblatt’s looks. In AJLT’s season one, episode one, Harry asks, “What? Bike helmet not a good look on a 58-year-old Jew?”

Harry’s physical abilities are also disparaged in stereotypical fashion. After Charlotte knocks Harry over during a tennis game, Harry says: “I’m OK, I’m OK. Just an old Jewish guy tryin’ to play sports.”

I guess if the homosexual character is Jewish, it's okay to depict somebody like that as ugly too, huh? Not to mention that depicting a Jewish man as gay is also an insult to Jewish manhood. Wow, this makes me glad I never saw it. I do recall reading some movie reviews of the 2 film expansions in the late 2000s, where it was told there were some crude jokes made to boot, and have to wonder what anybody sees in a TV show where the women were reportedly meant to be absurd metaphors for homosexual men?!? All this does is make clear Hollywood really is a repulsive place to be - and regrettably has been for a long time. And now, SATC and its sequel have a cast member who's going miles out of her way to align with antisemitic movements. When the TV show is as horrific as the above makes clear, you can't be shocked if any of its contributors are by extension. Let's also not forget one of the original series' actors, Chris Noth, was accused of sex offenses a few years ago, which only tarnishes the TV program even more. We can only hope more people will be willing to boycott AJLT now that it's been exposed as the atrocity it sadly is.

Update: here's another example of a LGBT advocate who was arrested at one of Jewish Voice for Peace's anti-Israeli rallies in Florida.

Lessons were not learned from 9-11

Alexander Nussbaum wrote about how no lessons were learned in the 2 decades since 9-11:

A few days ago marked 22 years since 9/11. That horrible event should have been the proverbial wake up call to America, the biblical writing on the wall.

But America didn’t learn. If anything, America learned the wrong thing. Progressives, the woke, “cultural elites,” whatever you want to call them, and the political party now in power despise America, Western civilization, and everything good, such as traditional values. The values that not long ago even the worst hypocrites espoused in public are now considered “hate crimes.”

...little did I know how bad it would be two decades later, underestimating the total madness that would engulf the West and its apparent determination to commit suicide. We saw barbarism on 9/11; today barbarism rules academia, the mainstream media, Hollywood, and the Democrat party.

And it's all dragging the entire world down with it. Some would-be conservatives, even Dubya, have to shoulder some of the blame too, because they never made convincing efforts to defeat the Religion of Peace when they had the chance, and even enabled Islamofascists in Afghanistan to do horrific things while they were there. When double-standards become commonplace, it's not possible to mend the damage. Now, said damage has taken its toll in the worst ways possible.

Black Adam movie's screenplay builds on left-wing metaphors

Overrated wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne Johnson's new Black Adam movie, last time I looked, fell to 40 percent on Rotten Tomatoes' approval ratings. But that aside, when I looked at the reviews so far, Vanity Fair had quite an eye-opener for the political metaphors turning up in screenplay, which surely were to be as expected as what turned up in Wonder Woman 1984. First:

Kahndaq, you see, is a stand-in for not-Iraq/not-Afghanistan under longtime occupation by not-America, but a band of villainous swine called Intergang who plunder the nation’s resources and make the people wait at long checkpoints. They also zoom around on sci-fi skiffs that glow blue (just like Eternium!) and really want that crown.

Soon Adrianna summons the trapped hero, Teth-Adam, who is the gargantuan Johnson wearing a superhero suit and a scowl. Bullets and missiles and grenades can’t stop him, and a mere touch of his hand can turn someone into a skeleton. He goes on a wild PG-13-style kill spree, flinging bodies thousands of yards in the air and ripping off limbs, but without any blood, terror, or agony. [...]

Ah, so that's there excuse for the violence: they didn't add any blood spilling out of severed limbs. Sorry, but doesn't make it any more acceptable, and children shouldn't have to be subject to this kind of mayhem any more than what you see in a Mortal Kombat game. Whether the film lacks terror and agony, however, doesn't really matter when disgust and insult could sum up the proceedings much better. According to the UK Independent, the filmmakers had to remove at least 5 scenes to avoid an R-rating, which confirms just how blatant their vision truly is. And as for the hints given in the above regarding the leftist metaphors, here's that part of it from VF:

There’s not really much to stew on with Black Adam once you’ve left the theater, except to be somewhat amazed at how the story comments-but-doesn’t-comment on the actual political situation in the Middle East. An early checkpoint sequence is clearly meant to mirror the struggles of everyday people crossing from the Palestinian Territories into Israel, and Adrianna’s fed-up line about world powers not doing much for the people after a decades-long presence could be about Iraq or Afghanistan or both. And while there is much reverent talk of Khandaq’s indigenous cultural heritage, there are no Muslim signifiers center stage throughout the picture. Indeed, the Hollywood staple of the muezzin call to prayer is nowhere on the soundtrack, probably a first for a movie set in this part of the world, even when it’s a fictional country. One must marvel at how this massive international project goes out of its way to be even remotely apolitical, taking its cue, perhaps, from the famously politically-unaffiliated Dwayne Johnson. It takes a special kind of movie where the most interesting thing is what’s not in there. During its two-hour runtime, you won’t be asked to exert yourself, either with backstory or political reads. Viewers can just sit back in their cushioned seats, silence all brain functions, and enjoy the CG fireworks.

Oh my, why am I not shocked they could resort to these kind of metaphors, building as they do upon anti-Israel propaganda to boot, with Intergang as the stand-ins? And that's something that'll have to be considered by all concerned when it comes to past and present movies based on DC properties: they may have more leftist metaphors, stealthed or out in the open, than we think. The Marvel movies too, lest we forget. One more reason they're not aging any better than the overload of special effects accompanying the "actors". I hesitate to think what'd a screenplay containing a metaphor for opposing war with Iran's brutal regime would be like, because it's not impossible for these obsessed ideologues to go that far too.

Interesting how the reviewer here seems disappointed specifically because there's little or no serious allusions to Islam, as though this movie couldn't be bad enough. The filmmakers, who should be ashamed of themselves, are already doing enough harm with the metaphors they've injected as it is. The following reviewer from Buzzfeed seems disappointed for similar reasons, and is much more blatant:

It’s too bad that Black Adam ultimately punts on most of the big questions it attempts to raise, because the movie does have something sorely lacking in much of its peers: a willingness, however slight, to engage with the world around it. It’s hard to miss the similarities between Kahndaq, a Middle Eastern country occupied by white military personnel, and a variety of real-world analogs, ranging from the American occupation of Iraq to the ongoing occupation of Palestine. [...]

It’s pretty jarring to see a major superhero movie that even gestures at treating America as the bad guys in anything beyond a “there are a few bad apples in the military” sense. After all, the genre entered its modern era with 2008’s Iron Man, where a weapons contractor is kidnapped by terrorists and escapes captivity in Afghanistan. Black Adam isn’t the movie that’s going to continue exploring that territory, but it’s refreshing to see it try.

So here, the writer is much more hostile to Israel in the sense he won't even mention the country, replacing it as he does with the Roman era name for Israel that's been distorted in modern times for the sake of delegitimizing Israel's claim to Judea/Samaria, by fabricating the lie that there was ever an Islamic/Arabic country there? Now that's even sicker, as is the strong hint his opinions on the USA are extraordinarily hostile too. (Interestingly, the Boston Herald says movie co-star Mohammed Amer is a "Palestinian-American". Could such casting have been intentional, coinciding with the filmmakers' politics?)

I also noticed this review by NPR's terrible writer Glen Weldon, who surprisingly enough actually panned the movie, but, he really screwed up on just who reintroduced Black Adam:

In the early 2000s, writers Geoff Johns and David S. Goyer — with art by Stephen Sadowski and many others — introduced to the comics pages a new version of Black Adam. The character had been around since the 1940s as a supervillain who dogged the family of superheroes that, like him, had been given powers by the wizard Shazam. As such, he came factory-installed with the basic supervillain-threats package: I'll destroy you, I'll rule the world, etc.

Man, is this sloppy, but to be fully expected from such a charlatan who's not a comics fan, no matter how much he insists otherwise. Black Adam was first reintroduced to the DCU proper in 1994, in Jerry Ordway's GN, The Power of Shazam, which later led to an ongoing monthly series for Billy Batson that ran at least a few years. And reprehensible Weldon would rather rob Ordway of the credit, and bestow it upon some of the least deserving of DC's overrated modern writers, Johns and Goyer, instead. As disappointing as I find Ordway's leftism these days, this is still too much. So shame on far-left Weldon for this deception as well.

Now, one more review I checked is from Midwest Film Journal, and in addition to panning the movie, they also make an eyebrow raising note regarding a certain 2013 movie whose star is brought back in this new movie as a special guest for Teth-Adam to clash with:

Man of Steel, which launched the whole misbegotten DCEU in 2013, introduced the world to a darker and more “grounded” take on these heroes. It had its flaws but feels like a masterpiece compared to Black Adam. The two have some very direct points of comparison, too, as supposed launching points for future films. Zack Snyder’s Steel, for example, featured a breathlessly cool prologue on Krypton whereas Adam features an extended sequence narrated by an annoying child. In Snyder’s film, the violence of two Kryptonians battling is destructive and purposely reminiscent (however wrongheadedly so) of 9/11. Here, Adam’s supposed brutal fighting is nowhere near as destructive and, 10 years later, considerably worse-looking. Steel’s fights still inspire awe; Adam‘s are nauseating at best.

Of course, Adam also invites comparison because it delivers on what “fans” have been supposedly clamoring for — the return of Henry Cavill to the role of Superman, a half-decade after his experience filming Justice League turned him off the role and turned Warners off of the franchise he headlined. Bringing Cavill in for a post-credits tease is a Hail Mary by a studio desperate to garner interest in a movie that they clearly know has no interest to any sort of general audience. It’s kind of pathetic, particularly because there’s a blatant joke about Superman being an empty role early on in this film. I’m a fan of Cavill in that role, but there’s no part of me that thinks he deserves to be thrown into more shitty iterations of the character, if Black Adam is any indication of where it will go from here.

Well, like I said, if this new DC movie could be so blatant in its political metaphors, chances are there'd be earlier ones going that route too, and looks like Man of Steel had one that was bound to be troubling. If Batman vs. Superman could boast a scene alluding to protests against illegal immigrants in real life that was insulting to the intellect, we can't be shocked if any 9-11 metaphors Snyder's Man of Steel attached to its screenplay could be just as tasteless. That's why I for one am not pleading for Cavill to resume the role, even in a stand-alone movie for Superman proper, because what if more blatant leftist metaphors seep in? This whole "franchise" of the past decade was decidedly never worth looking forward to in the first place, and the dark angle didn't help matters.

So now, if the above descriptions say anything, I have far less reason to admire Johnson, whom I recall was among several far-leftists who created controversy for the sake of attacking podcaster Joe Rogan over distorted reasons (and Johnson himself wrote extremely crude comments years earlier). And recalling Rogan was just as critical of Hollywood for romanticizing violence as Bill Maher was, he might want to take issue with the Black Adam movie next, because physical/sexual violence has tragically been glorified in Hollywood too over past decades, and this new film is no improvement with its portrayal of Teth-Adam. A most shameless embarrassment it decidedly is, and I wish WB would stop making superhero movies already if this is what it's all coming down to.

Predictably, Marvel studios indicates they'll go the PC route with Sabra

The Times of Israel reported that, as could surely have been expected, Marvel studios went out of their way to answer anti-Israeli activists offended at the inclusion of Bill Mantlo's minor character, Sabra, in the upcoming 4th Captain America movie:

Marvel Studios said it will take “a new approach” to its controversial character Sabra, to be played by Israeli actress Shira Haas, after Palestinian groups criticized the decision to bring the Israeli comic book character to the big screen.

“While our characters and stories are inspired by the comics, they are always freshly imagined for the screen and today’s audience, and the filmmakers are taking a new approach with the character Sabra who was first introduced in the comics over 40 years ago,” Marvel told US media outlet Variety in a statement Friday.

Translation: they'll go so far as to avoid any positive portrayal of Israel, all because they don't have the courage to stand up to Islamic antisemitism. In any case, it was pretty obvious from the start that today's comics publishers and filmmakers wouldn't defend the dignity of the Jewish creators who founded the very industry that today's films are based on. Cartoonist Uri Fink, as noted before, figured this was unlikely to be something admirable, but what's been told now only compounds the impression this'll be something awful when it's ready.

I also discovered the Nerdist website employs a possible Muslim writer who's also a LGBT ideologue(!), and he wrote a smear piece where he said Sabra shouldn't be in the Marvel movieverse. He concludes it like this:

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to put a Jewish hero in the forefront of the MCU; however, putting Sabra, an Israeli government agent, into the world’s biggest blockbuster franchise is a problem. It certainly feels like the powers that be are ignoring the real-life atrocities happening to people. There are already other Jewish heroes that Marvel Studios can include in the MCU. [...]

Ah, so in other words, he's ostensibly saying, "Jewish character = good, Israeli character = bad". But, this kind of shoddy distinction and excuse could easily be used to say, exclude indigenous residents of countries like Holland, who're called Dutch. It could even be used against the Basque of the northern Iberian peninsula where Spain is located. Come to think of it, the approach used in his screed could also be used to say only people of specific ethnicities living in the USA proper are qualified for representation, not foreign-born characters living outside. And he doesn't even care that under the PLO, gays and lesbians are suppressed by their police forces and face terrible persecution. That Nerdist would give a platform to somebody who goes by the kind of ideologies he does is truly despicable, and I will not be linking directly to their site anymore as a result of this disturbing propaganda that entirely omits how "palestinians" are a whole fabrication for the sake of invalidating Israel, and even Newt Gingrich eventually acknowledged this. To think, that nowadays, we have whole sites centered around entertainment topics who actually separate the Jewish creators of comicdom from their homeland origins. This is exactly why old movies like Otto Preminger's Exodus from 1960, based on Leon Uris' book, can no longer be made, because anti-Israelists in Hollywood have almost literally shut the gates to any such projects.

And that's why it's no shock at all when Hollywood kowtows to anti-Israeli movements, with the worst part being whenever those in charge of properties originally created by Jews refuse to defend them, regardless of how specific characters were created in the first place.

Israeli cartoonist warns new Captain America film's portrayal of Sabra could be woke

There's been news - superficial as could be expected - that Israeli actress Shira Haas was cast in the role of the Bill Mantlo/Sal Buscema-created Sabra in Captain America: New World Order. Here's what i24 News is saying about it:

Israeli actress Shira Haas joined the Marvel cast in the fourth "Captain America" film, in which she will play an Israeli superheroine, according to an announcement made Saturday evening at Disney's D23 Expo conference in California.

According to Variety, Haas will play a former spy agent named Ruth Bat-Seraph aka "Sabra," a term used for Israeli-born Jews. She first appeared in the Marvel comics in 1980.

Sabra served in the Mossad and has superpowers, which include extraordinary strength, stamina and speed. She also possesses anti-gravity devices, allowing her to fly through the air faster than 300 miles per hour.

Alas, this alone is not reason enough to watch a film coming at a time when Kevin Feige's turning their screenplays into woke garbage, as the recent Thor installment makes clear. And on that note, YnetNews says veteran Israeli cartoonist Uri Fink is not optimistic. It also tells what he thinks was a case of plagiarism, based on a character he created early in his art career in the late 1970s:

Since Disney announced that Israeli actress Shira Haas will play an Israeli superhero named Sabra in the next installment of the Captain America series, veteran Israeli comic book artist and writer Uri Fink's world went abuzz.

The reason? In 1978, at the tender age of 15, Fink created Sabraman — the first Israeli superhero — who shares some striking similarities with Marvel's heroine, first and foremost, their names.

"I'm getting messages from people who know the character, asking what I'm going to do about it, as if they're encouraging me to sue Marvel and make a killing off the whole thing," Fink tells Ynet.

"It's not the first time. It already happened in 1980 when [Marvel] first created the character, two years after Sabraman, but I didn't think it was right to sue them and I still don't think this is appropriate and that I would make anything out of it. It's just a word. You can't copyright a word. Sabra is just a word."

Sabra is a prickly pear cactus that is very common in Israel and has become a colloquial term used to describe native Israelis — rough and tough on the outside but soft and sweet on the inside.

Fink says it is likely the American comic book publisher drew inspiration from his work back in the day.

"I do believe they saw Sabraman back in the day. There were articles written about it the world over and I gave interviews to various papers, so it is likely they saw it," he says.

"Many guys in DC and Marvel were Jewish back then and the book made it to the Jewish communities abroad too. The comic was in English, and Jewish American guys dug it, it likely reached them, but it wasn't the most polished comic book in the world."

Yes, maybe it's possible, based on how similar their costumes look, although Sabraman appears to have a mask on, while Ruth Bat-Seraph doesn't wear one. That aside, here's where Fink provides a realist view in context of the PC mentality now ruining much of showbiz:

However, Fink voiced pessimism about how the Israeli character would be portrayed by contemporary comic artists.

"Sabra went on to feature in some stories that weren't very pro-Israel, it was already weird back then. So I don't think this would augur well for how she'd be depicted by Marvel now that they've gone woke," he said, using a term that is popularly used to describe people highly alert to social injustices but is also used by some as a derogatory term for a flavor of contemporary progressive leftist ideology which, among other things, is highly critical of Israel.

Sadly, her first official appearance in 1981 is nothing to write home about, because of the troubling moral equivalence and downright sloppy writing that permeated the story, and some of that unfortunately questionable scripting that took place in the original Hulk #256 where Sabra officially debuted (she may have made her first appearance 6 issues prior in a cameo) is further elaborated upon here. First:

In a move that is already thrilling some Jewish audiences and stirring controversy among other international fans and activists, Marvel Studios announced that an Israeli comic book hero will appear in the next installment of its Captain America movie franchise.

Seriously, I find it dismaying, no matter how much it does happen, when audiences just go bonkers over the mere announcement, when the finished product can be anything but a celebration. And the original debut is just why it could be thought otherwise:

Sabra (also the word for an Israeli prickly pear, which has a bristly outside and soft and sweet inside, and is used as a nickname for an Israeli person) is a Mossad agent and police officer with superhuman speed and strength. The 1981 comic that first prominently features her involves multiple quotes and plot points that would be seen as taboo in a contemporary Hollywood blockbuster.

In the comic, the Incredible Hulk mistakenly ends up in Tel Aviv, where he befriends an Arab boy who gets killed in an attack by identifiably Arab terrorists. Sabra — real name Ruth Bat-Seraph — witnesses the attack and assumes Hulk is in cahoots with the terrorists. She attacks Hulk with “energy quills,” weakening him, but the Hulk explains that the boy was his friend — and references the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Boy died because boy’s people and yours want to own land!” the Hulk tells Sabra. “Boy died because you wouldn’t share. Boy died because of two old books that say his people and yours must fight and kill for land!”

This is all delivered without any genuine quotations from the Judaist Bible/Torah or the Islamic Koran/Hadith provided. What Mantlo injected was incredibly embarrassing, and it makes little difference that it's a "product of its time". That doesn't make it any less poor. This is another example where people don't realize that a specific storyline where a character debuted is, unfortunately, the result of bad writing rushed into production. That the sea port in Tel Aviv isn't even portrayed very accurately is the least of the tale's problems.

Things are not getting better when seeing a columnist for the far-left Forward exploit the moment for confusing propaganda:

Even as the MCU has made efforts to stare down institutionalized American racism and overreach of government surveillance a la the Patriot Act, many still view these movies and shows as little more than military propaganda. (The studio has, in fact, partnered with the military quite a bit.)

He makes it sound as though the army's anything but influenced by leftism. That aside, it's loathsomely reprehensible how this puff piece builds on anti-American propaganda of the sort that claims the USA is "systemically racist". And it's just like them to cite Civil War as though it were a positive example, when it was most definitely not. Once, superheroes, if they fought each other in the past century, it wasn't over partisan politics, and IIRC, in the Avengers/Defenders War of 1973, it was over misunderstandings, and communications with a paralyzed Black Knight that got warped by Loki and Dormammu along the way. Yet these propagandists on the left never care.

Introducing the Israeli counterpart to Captain America, then, whose comic origins tie her directly to the Jewish State’s intelligence agency, has raised eyebrows. It’s scarcely surprising, given how over at DC the mere casting of Gal Gadot as an Amazon from a fictional island generates perennial outrage.

A critic on Twitter wrote that Sabra’s powers will include “demolishing Palestinian homes with her mind.” Many others noted how Sabra’s debut, in an issue of “The Incredible Hulk,” featured the killing of an Arab child (the word “Palestinian” is never used) so that Sabra can have a teachable moment. As we delve into the controversy a little more, let’s start there.

At least this is making clear that, no matter the content of the upcoming film, antisemites reject Mantlo's creation from the outset. Then:

She first shows up in 1980’s “Incredible Hulk” No. 256 “Power in the Promised Land!” She mistakenly believes that the Hulk is working with terrorists and the two fight. In their final confrontation, the Hulk cradles the body of Sahad, an Arab boy he befriended who was killed in an explosion caused by terrorists. The Hulk then lectures Sabra about the toll of the ongoing conflict.

“Boy died because boy’s people and yours both want to own land!” the Hulk yells. “Boy died because you wouldn’t share!” (Remember, this is the Hulk talking.)

What makes the Hulk even angrier is that the crux of the conflict is because of “two old books” (i.e., the Quran and Hebrew Bible) and “now boy is dead — but boy didn’t even read books!”

Many online have rightly noted how Sahad, who first tells the Hulk about the “two old books,” is a racist depiction of a Palestinian kid. He is illiterate, steals and lies to tourists for money. The only other sort of Palestinians the issue shows are terrorists. If this is indeed the nuance we can expect from Sabra’s corner of the world, there’s reason for concern.

Now, let's hold on here for a moment. The kid tells Hulk about the books...yet he's illiterate and never actually read either?!? If that's not some of the most slapdash writing, I don't know what is. Of course, why does the columnist keep insisting on referring to the Arab boy in focus as a "palestinian", and not as an Arab or even a Moslem? Funny how the columnist doesn't suggest maybe the boy should've been a Jewish child instead, since that way, Mantlo could've proven he wanted to at least try to provide insight on Jewish society from a child's perspective.

But Sabra has had a few decades to develop and she has gone on other adventures — helping to keep the son of an ambassador to Israel from turning into the next Adolf Hitler; becoming an advocate for mutants; even working alongside a Palestinian teammate called (sigh) Arabian Knight.

Overall, she’s a pretty minor character with just 50 appearances and it’s far too early to tell what her role in the new film may be.

Oh, and what's this here? I thought Arabian Knight, introduced an issue later, was of Egyptian background, and this sorry excuse for a columnist is taking this out of context too? I'm sorry, but this only compounds the perception he's telling all this out of contempt for Israel, to undermine its birthright history, and suggests he doesn't respect Golda Meir, who refuted the "palestianian" propaganda decades ago. He does make one fairly accurate observation, though:

While some will always balk at the idea of featuring an Israeli superhero at all, this may, in fact, not be where much of the world is at, even as many rally behind BDS. That said, it’s more than likely the film will face a ban in the Middle Eastern countries that have yet to normalize relations with Israel.

Even after the Abraham Accords, don’t expect Haas to be walking a red carpet in Saudi Arabia for the premiere. That new world order is still out of reach.

That is bound to be the case, sadly. If a number of Muslim dominated countries wouldn't screen Gal Gadot's movies, there's no reason to assume this'll be any different.

Through this, I found a Twitter thread posted by Simcha Gross, an assistant professor on ancient Jewish history at the University of Pennsylvania, who found the 1st full tale guest starring Sabra cringeworthy after researching it. He describes the following, in example:

Sahad tells Banner "sometimes it is very hard to be an Arab in Israel. Both my people and the Israelis say that this land is theirs. They could share it, but two very old books tell them they must kill each other over it." Some oversimplification for you! 7

— Simcha Gross (@Simcha_Gross) August 24, 2020

Sahad also tells Bruce "Me, I don't read books." In this issue we encounter only two types of Arabs in Israel; terrorists, and a kindhearted illiterate child thief/con-artist. As for Israelis, we only encounter police officers, soldiers, and Sabra. Not good. 8 pic.twitter.com/AIXP1gGgEy

— Simcha Gross (@Simcha_Gross) August 24, 2020

Not quite, in regards to Arabs: the adult marketeers who yell, "stop, thief!" and give chase are not just Arabic, they're clearly identified as Moslems by the keffiyes they wear on their heads. But, the point about the pseudo-citation of the Bible/Koran is well made, mainly because the boy, as indicated, didn't even read books.

The Hulk takes Sahad's body and flees, with Sabra in pursuit. Here comes the denouement of the story, as the savage Hulk informs Sabra that the Israelis and Arabs are the true savages, mimicking Sahad's geo-political analysis: 12 pic.twitter.com/3TjGQVBpbD

— Simcha Gross (@Simcha_Gross) August 24, 2020

I did think it was odd, in addition, that it's made to sound like Sabra never actually cared about the child in the first place. There's many stories built around the problems of misunderstandings. But this, from a political perspective, really takes the cake. The way it's set up also has the effect of watering down the serious issue of Islamic terrorism, which was just as relevant a topic in the early 80s as it is today.

And, just in case we missed the point of the savage hulk pointing out the inhumanity of the various actors in the conflict "It has taken the hulk to make her see this dead arab boy as a human being. It has taken a monster to awaken her own sense of humanity." 16

— Simcha Gross (@Simcha_Gross) August 24, 2020

And here, it is silly and superfluous to use those kind of descriptions for her personality. Now, you could argue it wouldn't be entirely implausible for the Hulk to dish out an ill-informed lecture. There were other times when he was depicted taking questionable positions, and in Hulk form, Bruce Banner could be mentally messed up (let's also note that in later years, around the time Peter David became writer, multiple personality disorder was emphasized circa issue #377). Even so, the script by Mantlo is very slapdash and the product of people who resorted to cheap paths instead of firm challenges. Not many may realize it, but Sabra's early entries, unfortunately, were not very good, as this story suggests.

And considering Hollywood's track record in the past few decades on the subject of Israel's history, that's one more reason why I'm not optimistic this new Capt. America sequel would respect Israel, let alone Sabra herself. Let's remember, Feige is a bad lot, and has already proven so with the most recent Marvel movies containing wokeness.

MSM fawns over new Muslim Ms. Marvel TV show, and spins negative reviews as trolling

When the new Muslim Ms. Marvel TV series premiered, the BBC predictably made sure to sugarcoat the whole affair, and take everything out of context, warping it all to suit their Orwellian visions, not to mention villify any Marvel fans galled at the hijacking of the franchise for the sake of far-left ideologies:

Ms Marvel comes to our screens via Disney+ today with lofty fan expectations, following other critically acclaimed Marvel shows such as Wandavision and Loki. The online buzz around the series and glowing reviews from critics ahead of its release point to Disney having another hit on their hands. However, success for this hero wasn't always guaranteed.

In 2013, when Marvel announced that they were reimagining the comic book character of Ms Marvel – originally a blonde superpowered military hero – as a Muslim Pakistani-US teenager called Kamala Khan, it was considered a controversial and risky proposition. Comic books, for the most part, have traditionally been male-dominated and white-centric – something Kamala was the antithesis of. Other attempts to diversify characters, such as creating a biracial Spiderman, had attracted backlash from some very vocal quarters of the fandom. In 2017, Marvel's vice president of sales stated that feedback from retailers indicated that readers were being alienated by the push for diversity. "What we heard was that people didn't want any more diversity," he said. "They didn't want female characters out there. That's what we heard, whether we believe that or not."

Ah, so here, they're distorting it to make it sound like the people they speak of didn't want any female characters at all. (Do they realize that makes it sound like said readers aren't heterosexual?) What most realists didn't want was characters being built around political activism and indoctrination tactics, as the Khan character was, with Marvel replacing the original bearer of the title, Carol Danvers, with a brand new one whose existence was almost entirely centered around her being Islamic, and all without being honest about the content of the Koran. This BBC article, like so many others of its ilk, all but obscures that there have been Black/Latino/Asian charcters well before this, and most of the earlier ones prior to 2000 weren't built on the heavy-handed leftism seen nowadays.

Yet the performance of the Ms Marvel comic books demonstrated otherwise. "Ms Marvel almost immediately became a hit comic and one of the biggest sellers online," says Dr Mel Gibson, an associate professor at Northumbria University and a comics scholar. "It absolutely leapt in sales to what could be considered non-traditional comic book readers – such as females, Muslims, or Pakistani Americans for example. The idea of who reads comics and how they read them was changing. It helped draw in new folk and diversify the fan base."

By mid 2018, even without a live-action TV show or movie, Ms Marvel had sold more than half a million trade paperbacks. Kamala Khan's arrival into the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not just some PR exercise: the popularity of the character demanded it. "A huge reason Ms Marvel has struck the chord it has is because it deals with the role of traditionalist faith in the context of social justice, and there was – apparently – an untapped audience of people from a wide variety of faith backgrounds who were eager for a story like this," wrote G Willow Wilson, the writer who helped craft Kamala Khan, in 2017.

Unfortunately, even that claim of huge-selling paperbacks is sketchy at best, because there's no clear data provided by leftist Bleeding Cool - who originally wrote the latter claim - that the paperbacks were actually bought. Also note that little more than 60,000 copies for as many as 9 volumes were actually printed. But this awful puff piece does reveal what kind of leftism Wilson goes by, and it's laughable at worst, because it's taqqiya (deception).

Kamala's faith certainly does differentiate her from the overwhelming majority of her comic book counterparts. The depiction of Muslim characters in comic books has often been problematic, but there was an especially tricky path to tread in a post-9/11 world. It is a testament to the team behind Ms Marvel how deftly they navigated it. Wilson weaved together storylines and interactions in a thoughtful and nuanced manner that prevented characters from turning into stereotypes. Her familiarity with the religion is understandable – she is Muslim, after all – but some of the specific details that went into her writing made me often wonder if she was secretly Pakistani as well.

"I just thought it was so interesting because I can see how different Kamala was from other personifications of Muslim or Arab characters in previous comics – notably other characters like Dust who were exoticised and where there is a whole element of orientalism going on," says Dr Gibson.

But he doesn't think it's interesting no attempt has been made to date to introduce an Armenian character with emphasis on his/her background? Or how about Arabs/Pakistanis with non-Islamic backgrounds like Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, as Bahrain happens to have? Why do only Muslims matter? When they make it sound like only one, very bad belief system should apply, that's insulting to the intellect.

According to Sue Obeidi, director of the Hollywood Bureau for the US Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the importance of Ms Marvel being a strong, authentic female Muslim character cannot be overstated. "Islam has no shortage of heroic Muslim women in its history. When you look at Aisha [bint Abu Bakr] or Khadija [bint Khuwaylid] – they were one of Islam's first heroes. They were powerful, brave and independent women with their own agency. If this character embodies some of the great attributes that many Muslim women are renowned for, you can't go wrong because that means that the character will also represent the faith well."

And this is also taqqiya, because it obscures how, as described in the Koran, Aisha was 6 years old when Mohammed took her as a child bride, and consummated said marriage when she was 9. That's hardly somebody in a position of independence or agency. But the pure disgrace coming from the BBC is nothing new. If anything, it demonstrates why they're one of the worst English-language news networks overseas.

And now, it looks like the MSM has gone out of their way to make a fuss over people supposedly "review bombing" the series on IMDB as well. One such example is Forbes:

Ms. Marvel is currently not only the best-reviewed MCU series on Disney Plus, but at a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, that’s even above Black Panther’s 96% score, meaning it’s the best-reviewed MCU show or movie…ever, at the moment.

That’s why it’s noticeable that Ms. Marvel is actually the lowest scored MCU series on IMDB based on its user star ratings. And yes, the answer is that it’s being review-bombed.

“It’s not review-bombing if people just don’t like it,” some will say, but looking at the data, it’s impossible not to see what’s going on with Ms. Marvel as an outlier with malicious origins.

Here are the scores across all MCU Disney Plus series:

Loki – 8.2/10

WandaVision - 7.9/10

Hawkeye – 7.6/10

Moon Knighit – 7.4/10

What If…? – 7.4/10

Falcon and the Winter Soldier – 7.2/10

Ms. Marvel – 6.6/10

So because one mere series doesn't rate above number 7, but is far from being rated at the bottom 1, it's suddenly a scandal? The guy who wrote this is really grasping at straws for the sake of headlines to smear Marvel fans who find the propaganda tactic revolting, but that's what the following pretty much makes clear:

I would absolutely venture that more weight is being given to those first two items, and I’ve been sent examples of closed Facebook groups protesting Ms. Marvel as “replacing” the white, blonde Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel (not what’s happening) and they view a Muslim superhero as an assault on Christian values.

Well it doesn't take much to guess he's not very enthusiastic about Christianity, and probably doesn't celebrate Easter, Lent or Palm Sunday either. I hesitate to think what his view of Judaism and Hinduism is, in that case.

Even Next Shark got in on the exaggerated act:

The inconsistency between the crowd-sourced ratings and critic reviews also suggests something more is going on than viewers simply disliking the new show. On Rotten Tomatoes, the show currently boasts a staggering 95 percent, making it the second-highest rated MCU film or show to date.

[...] Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel serves as representation on multiple fronts. The character is a Muslim, South Asian teenage girl entering a superhero universe that’s primarily been explored on screen by white male actors named Chris.

Chloe Zhao’s “Eternals” also fell victim to review-bombing after its premiere, as did “Captain Marvel,” one of MCU’s few feature-length films centering around a female superhero.

So they don't think Capt. Marvel was even the slightest bit overrated? Or that negative takes on Eternals had any good reason for being that way? As for RT, I wonder if they've deliberately fixed the polls to make it all look higher in user ratings than we'd think; they did after all fulfill Disney Corp's apparent wish to stifle any negative views of CM, a movie that reeked of political correctness and Mary Sue ingredients.

For people making such a fuss over supposed review-bombing, the examples above sure are giving telling hints how biased they really are in favor of the Muslim Ms. Marvel show, all because of the components it's built upon. If a show built on respectable Judeo-Christian values, or even Buddhism, got even the most remote negative ratings, they wouldn't be fussing at all. The way many leftists go out of their way to do spins is hugely dismaying.

Will Joe Rogan's enemies thank him for praising Israel?

Podcaster Joe Rogan, who was recently attacked by PC-advocating leftists, made a case in praise of Israel for focusing on more serious issues than what the leftists in the USA do:

Podcaster and media persona Joe Rogan showered praise on Israelis in his recent podcast on March 23, saying their experience in the Middle East's hostile environment has steeled them for the complexities of life and has led them to appreciate it.

The podcast featured a lengthy discussion with tech entrepreneur Antonio Garcia Martinez on a whole range of issues, including the influence of progressives on the daily discourse in the United States, which according to Rogan, sometimes results in "nonsense problems" taking center stage. At one point, Rogan, said that Israelis generally don't have debates over gender pronouns and other progressive matters, because of the other problems in life, recalling the impression he got from an Israeli friend's attitude toward life.

Read the rest. I don't suppose Dwayne Johnson, Neil Young and Ava duVernay would be willing to apologize to Rogan after all the trouble they - and other such leftists - caused him over stuff they hold a hypocritical position upon? This is very impressive stuff Rogan's brought up, and he should be admired for it. Something the majority of Hollywood tragically won't do. Those Hollywooders who attacked Rogan should be ashamed of themselves.

Update: Rogan also deserves praise for raising the issue of transsexual men robbing women of victory in sports.

Netflix adaptation of Grendel makes a big deal out of hiring a Muslim to play the star

The far-left CNN's written a fluff-coated report on a new TV show produced at the politically correct Netflix network based on Matt Wagner's Grendel series, which originally began in the early 1980s, and is practically being promoted based on the religious background of its lead actor:

Abubakr Ali was 10 years old when two hijacked airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001.

The terrorist attacks took place a year after Ali moved to the United States from Egypt, and they changed his life forever. From that day forward, the child in Ali became stifled, he says, aching under the weight of blame Muslim communities were forced to endure.

Acting became his only escape, he says, a passion he discovered unexpectedly in high school after taking a required drama class.

Now Ali is making Hollywood history as the first Arab Muslim male actor to portray a series lead in a comic book adaptation, Netflix has confirmed to CNN.

The 30-year-old actor will be featured in the upcoming series "Grendel" as a vigilante hero who goes by the same name. Grendel is the masked identity of Hunter Rose, a fencer, writer and assassin "seeking to avenge the death of a lost love," Netflix said in a press release.

For Ali, the role is a welcome challenge -- and the chance he doubted he would ever get.

"I'm so excited about this opportunity. There is so much possibilities with this. There are so many emotional, physical and psychological extremes that are going into the show, and it requires all of me in a really beautiful way," he told CNN. "I always thought I wouldn't be able to play anything outside the trope line that anyone who is Muslim or Arab can only play roles where they are either the good Muslim who assimilates into the Western world and proves they're one of the good ones, or the terrorist," he said. "There hasn't been room for roles like the complex anti-hero that is so complicated and flawed but also beautiful in their own way. And this role is the perfect opportunity for that."

The problem here is that the actor is making such a big deal out of being hired despite his religious background, and the network is going out of their way to whitewash it. Worst is the victimology angle they resorted to, without any consideration for how 9-11 Families and survivors of the attack could feel. And Wagner himself doesn't seem particularly troubled:

In the "Grendel" comic books, created by Matt Wagner and published by Dark Horse Comics, Rose takes on the identity of Grendel as he battles New York's criminal underworld.

"I couldn't be more thrilled about the Grendel saga, one of the longest-running independent comics series, finally being translated into live-action for the screen," Wagner said in a statement. "I'm especially excited to see Abubakr Ali bring the character of Grendel/Hunter Rose to life -- he has the charisma, style and vital edginess that I've been envisioning in the role for years."

That's still no excuse for his belief system, which neither the actor nor anybody else here seems to find reprehensible. Point: there may be moderate Muslims, but there's no moderate Islam. And since this is Netflix producing the show, that's a leading reason why it's better to avoid the new TV show regardless, seeing how PC much of their output's turned out to be.

What Hollywood actors playing comics roles are saying about Israel

This past week, as Israel was once again forced into battle with the Hamas terrorist organization long dominating the Gaza strip, there were at least two Hollywooders who'd taken roles in comics movies who had what to say. Let's take as an example Mark Ruffalo, who played the Hulk role in the Avengers films of the past decade, and exploited the moment to make anti-Israel comments. From the Jerusalem Post (via Jihad Watch):

Actor Mark Ruffalo referred to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the division between the two as a "kind of apartheid" while speaking to television host Mehdi Hasan on the self-titled NBC program.

Ruffalo accused the Israeli government of carrying out "asymmetrical warfare" against the Palestinian people, and tied in United States support for Israel as plainly aiding and abetting the separation and the "violence acted upon them."

"There’s no reason why an ally of American should not be held to same the standard as we would hold any other nation in the world,” he said.

Ruffalo added to the conversation, noting that he spoke out previously to share his view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was called an antisemite for doing so.

"I was called an antisemite about it, for doing that - which was really tough to hear," Ruffalo said. "The fact that so many people will take it to that extreme when you're talking about that type of inequality, that type of oppression, that kind of apartheid: really!"

Ruffalo then likened the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to what's taking place in the US today, saying that America houses an "apartheid system" noting the systematic racism and racial inequalities present within the country.

This makes me feel glad I haven't seen the Avengers films, which'll really be tainted by this news, but what's really repellent is how somebody who acts like he's done nothing wrong regarding Israel got a role based on a character created by Jews (Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, of course). It's bad enough he perpetuates lies harmful to the USA, and here, he's also demonstrating ignorance of Islamic violence that's now cost an innocent Jewish man in Lod his life, along with horrific behavior by anti-Israel demonstrators in Britain and Canada. To think that somebody like Ruffalo would get a comics role he doesn't deserve is sickening. Recalling he may be a native of Kenosha, Wisconsin, one can only wonder what he thinks of the horrifying arsons that took place there last year, committed by BLM rioters.

Then, there's also Gal Gadot, my fellow Israeli citizen who's played Wonder Woman, and the problem here is that she was awfully slow to speak out. From Israel Hayom:

After earning scathing criticism for failing to use her platform to speak on behalf during the first three days of Operation Guardian of the Walls, Israeli actress Gal Gadot spoke out on Wednesday.

"My heart breaks," the Wonder Woman star, who served in the IDF, wrote in a message to her 53 million Instagram followers.

"My country is at war," Gadot continued. "I worry for my family, my friends. I worry for my people. This is a vicious cycle that has been going on for far too long. Israel deserves to live as a free and safe nation. Our neighbors deserve the same … I pray for better days."

As stated, Gadot came under fire for not speaking out on Israel's behalf as rockets from Gaza rained down on the country. Social media sites were flooded with hundreds of angry tweets and posts.

"The opposite of Wonder Woman," one person wrote.

"Gal Gadot the leftist needs to pander to the Hollywood leftists and cannot allow herself to support Israel against Palestinian terror," tweeted someone else.

Another person wrote: "It's sad that many influential Jews are simply silent, such as Gal Gadot."

Now it's bad that Gadot was practically villified by the MSM following her announcement, along with social media agitators (by contrast, look at the MSM's accepting response to Gigi Hadid's approach). Yet those in Israel who took issue with her slow response do have a point. Though her statement itself is vital, she did not show the courage to properly address the issue, acted very slow, which does little more than demonstrate lack of courage - something very lacking in this modern PC-infested world of ours - and that's had the effect of galling those in Israel who realized it. I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of the local Israeli respondents were people who guessed what repellent politics lay behind the making of Wonder Woman 1984, and wrote her off as another pathetic leftist whose ideologies impeded upon her ability to take a strong stance. Of recent, she's been producing a film project based on an anti-Israel propaganda book, a documentary series that involves supporting transgender ideologues, and even took up a role in a LGBT-themed sci-fi thriller. She really is going out of her way to prove herself part of the ultra-liberal Hollywood crowd, and that's another reason why I've felt soured on her of recent. Maariv reported (translated from the original Hebrew) that the wife of a Haifa basketball player denounced Gadot as a coward:

Yuval Ashkenazi, Maccabi Haifa's midfielder, is on the way to winning the championship with his team very soon, and meanwhile the country is on fire in light of the escalation between the IDF and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the shelling, riots and lynchings in the cities involved. Adi Aharon, decided to express her opinion around the constant preoccupation with the response of the most famous ambassador of the State of Israel, Gal Gadot.

Until yesterday (Wednesday) the media did not stop worrying that the Israeli Wonder Woman should express her public opinion and support Israel and yesterday she did. Even earlier, Aaron could not resist, posted a picture of her and wrote: "Cowardly." Shortly afterwards, the most successful Israeli actress in Hollywood wrote a post referring to the situation: "My heart is broken, my country is at war. I care for my family, my friends, my people. It is a vicious circle that lasts too long. Israel deserves to live in freedom and security and neighbors. "We deserve the same. I pray that this incessant hostility will end and that our leaders will find the solution so that we can live side by side in peace."

Even after the post that Gadot wrote, there were those who did not connect and thought it was too "politically correct" such as Noam Fishbaum, the partner of Maccabi Tel Aviv goalkeeper Daniel Tennenbaum who responded "good morning baby" to a post she wrote and supposedly remembered later. And despite all those who do not understand where Gal has been until now, the vast majority is sure that she represents Israel in the Diaspora in the best way, even though she blocked the opportunity to comment on her post.

I know she did that because the anti-Israeli vitriol was getting way out of hand. But her refusal to take a side clearly is a sign of weakness. Maariv also says:

International star Gal Gadot has chosen for days to remain silent and not react to the difficult events that are taking place in the State of Israel, which is under attack by missiles, riots and violent riots. While her homeland is under fire and being extinguished, the rest of the world have taken a pro-Palestinian side, and our ambassador has largely chosen a thunderous silence.

After receiving harsh criticism from Israelis across the country and from the media, Gadot raised a post of support for both sides in the conflict. The prime minister's son, Yair Netanyahu, did not remain indifferent, and in response responded sharply to "Wonder Woman" for the neutral messages she conveyed.

And so he wrote: "The models of Palestinian descent, Gigi and Bella Hadid, who have millions of followers, have been doing antisemitic propaganda against Israel 24/7 since the beginning of the rush. But she chose to write a neutral post, as if she were from Switzerland."

And honestly, that's not sending a good message when you fail to show the courage to react as quickly as possible. Gadot's approach was dismal and dismaying. Again, no wonder I've felt soured on her.

There's also more gross comments coming from author Saladin Ahmed, who's practically written comics, such as the following:

I went to protests for Palestine during the 1st intifada when I was in jr high

marched to support the 2nd intifada just out of college 20 years ago

always always they try to make you feel alone

but you never are https://t.co/ml4l57mwoa

— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) May 13, 2021

by 'terrorist sympathizer' you mean 'guy named Ahmed who talks about Palestine'

also I'm self employed but yes Marvel pays me to write superhero comics because I'm good at it - stay mad and watch this space for new work dropping soon💅🏼 pic.twitter.com/pspXQdwDwH

— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) May 14, 2021

It's good to see there's others out there concerned about Marvel - or any other comic publisher - continuing to employ such a disturbing anti-Israelist. As I'd noted before, this is very troubling that Marvel continues to employ him virtually unquestioned to date, as his positions are revolting. (Update: it appears Ahmed erased the second post, but here's an archived link.)

I think the following news from Epicstream about Brie Larson, who played the Capt. Marvel role, unfollowing Gadot over her statements is also troubling:

...However, their "friendship" may have come to an end after the Captain Marvel star allegedly unfollowed the Wonder Woman actress on Instagram.

Instagram users noticed that is Brie no longer on Gal Gadot's follower list and people were quick to assume that it had something to do with the Israeli star's "controversial" statement on the ongoing crisis between Israel and Gaza. To those unaware, Gal penned an emotional declaration calling for peace amid the chaotic situation. However, a lot of people found her statement hypocritical as the actress apparently served the Israel Defense Force as a soldier and is believed to be a zionist.

Since Zionism is a synonym for patriotism and nationalism, it's despicable how the meaning is obscured, and antisemites just use it as an excuse for demonization. All that aside, if there's any meat to this, Larson's just made me feel even gladder I've haven't seen the Capt. Marvel movie, and won't be seeing "The Marvels", a planned sequel whose title suggests the 1st movie really was controversial enough despite the box office grosses, they'd rather downplay Larson's prominence this time round. If Epicstream's making Zionism out to sound bad, that too is despicable. At least the writer at the site has the audacity to note how Gadot is in some ways victim of cancel culture.

With all that told, this is why Hollywood's comics movies are becoming as dispiriting as anything else coming from them these days. There's good reason why the Oscars have plummeted to such a low rating on television this year, and the recent crop of comics films are hardly what I'd consider prize-worthy either.

Why I can't feel sorry to see the social justice advocates turn against Geoff Johns

Geoff Johns is a very divisive figure. He's also one of the reasons I stopped reading superhero comics in the mid-2000s, because of the jarring violence he put into his scripts. In all that time, he went on to become a showrunner for TV adaptations of the DC cast members he'd written stories for in the past 2 decades. A most decidedly undeserved career, if you ask me, and as I've noted in past years, he is a leftist himself, little different from other such ideologues in the field. Now, it would seem that, following allegations made by Ray Fisher last year that Johns caused a lot of trouble for him on the set of the Justice League film when he was more involved, the chickens have come home to roost. Let's take a look at this current item from the Hollywood Reporter (via Indiewire), where Fisher goes on with what are admittedly questionable allegations, mainly because of the following:

Fisher was raised by a single mother and his grandmother in Lawnside, New Jersey — a community that he notes was the first self-governing Black municipality north of the Mason-Dixon Line. He says he felt a new sense of urgency to speak out when the pandemic hit and the Black Lives Matter protesters took to the streets.

To Fisher, who had few screen credits, playing the half-man, half-machine Cyborg — the first Black superhero in the DC film universe — was both a huge career break and a major responsibility. (Justice League was released in 2017, the year before Marvel broke ground with Black Panther.) He was mindful that the film was overseen almost entirely by white executives and filmmakers.

While Fisher has dropped details and named names, outsiders have struggled to understand: How did Whedon incur his anger? Did Fisher really decline to participate in an investigation that was launched in response to his own complaints, as Warners claimed in September? Was Fisher fighting a righteous battle or a quixotic one when he set out on a path that appears to have cost him a place in the DC film universe?

The allegations made by Fisher, IIRC, were that Johns was one of Joss Whedon's enablers (reportedly, Gal Gadot also had problems with Whedon, and according to this report, even some Buffy performers accused him of harassment). And in that sense, yes, he could've been, or at least, did nothing to get Whedon to cut out any irrational behavior on his part. That said, it's irritating to think Fisher's raising this whole subject based on BLM, since, as any realistic coverage makes clear they're a movement built on some of the most reprehensible ideologies around, not the least being antisemitism, acceptance of Islam, and even LGBT ideology (which, as noted before, is still considered anathema to the Religion of Peace), and if Fisher accepts BLM in any way, he's only making it difficult to give him backing. Yet that's not saying I care what's happening to Johns' reputation now, if the very same PC crowd he was more or less a part of is throwing him under the bus. Still, the following is interesting:

Multiple sources tell THR that the show's creators were passionate about doing some nontraditional casting and that Regé-Jean Page, who would go on to become a breakout star of Bridgerton, had auditioned for the role of Superman's grandfather. But Johns, who was overseeing the project, said Superman could not have a Black grandfather. The creators also wanted to make one superhero character, Adam Strange, gay or bisexual. But sources say Johns vetoed the idea.

"Geoff celebrates and supports LGTBQ characters, including Batwoman, who in 2006 was re-introduced as LGBTQ in a comic-book series co-written by Johns," says Johns' rep in an email. Johns also pitched Warners on developing a television show around the first LGBTQ lead DC superhero television series, he adds. As for the role of Superman's grandfather, the rep says Johns believed fans expected the character to look like a young Henry Cavill.

Why specifically Cavill, but not a dark-haired white guy who could be 6'3 in height? Granted, it would've been embarrassingly bad if Adam Strange were changed to suit a LGBT agenda - quite possibly at Alanna's expense - for the sake of these politicized TV shows and films now in store, especially after Tom King put out such a horror story co-starring the 2nd Mr. Terrific, and that's an act of potential race-slighting nobody in the MSM thinks to consider. But let's also consider Johns was one of the DC contributors who supported the retcon to Roy Thomas' creation, Obsidian/Todd Rice from Infinity Inc, who'd been changed to homosexual as far back as the mid-90s, and did Johns ever do anything to prevent such agenda exploitation, or reverse it? Nope, nor did he ever try to keep James Robinson from shoving Alan Scott into a similar situation. Oh, and lest we forget, Johns was a co-writer of Countdown to Infinite Crisis, the 2005 crossover-precursor that saw white Ted Kord violently murdered by abruptly changed to baddie Max Lord, all so they could clear a path for putting in a diverse replacement as Blue Beetle, the Mexican-American character Jaime Reyes. If they hadn't resorted to such extreme methods, I'm sure there'd be a lot less objections to having a character of different race take over the role. Instead, under the pseudo-guidance of Dan DiDio, they treated the white originators of the roles and their co-stars like crap on their way out. And they wonder why the comics lost so much of their audience over 15 years ago?

If Johns' approach to live action films and TV differed in any way from his comics writing, there is a possible explanation to that: commercialism, and the apparent belief among people of his ilk that nobody in the wider public could give a crappy damn about the comics proper. That was one of the reasons why David Goyer's live action contributions to Superman a decade ago may have differed from what he was doing in the comics, making Supes forfeit US citizenship. Back then, the entertainment industry was still considerate to some extent of whether the wider public appreciated patriotism, a situation that's drastically changed now. And yet, not only has Johns has been involved with almost every live action adaptation to come out of WB, many of these productions do involve left-wing politics, and SJW themes. He was an executive producer on the Birds of Prey movie, as well as being a co-writer for Wonder Woman 1984, both films which build on current liberal ideologies that're pretty noxious. This being more recent, you could probably argue that in the past, there was a time when Johns wasn't quite that sold on SJW themes in commercial filmdom, yet here we are years later, and now he certainly is, if his recent efforts say something. His listings on the IMDB indicate he's part of the production staff for the upcoming Green Lantern show on HBO Max, and if it follows through with the plans to depict Alan Scott as homosexual, what does that say about his own positions? One sure thing, whether he's still writing comics on a regular basis, he's not doing anything to repair a bad situation getting worse there with social justice themes.

Since we're on the topic, here's a related interview with Johns from Arab-American News about the comic he's writing at Image titled Geiger, which says the following:

Set in a post-apocalyptic U.S., where a nuclear attack has left the continent’s surface unlivable and has pushed life underground, the comic’s release this week is fitting for the grave realities of a global pandemic.

But the main character, Tariq Geiger, is also half-Arab, like Johns. In fact, this is the second time Johns has penned an Arab comic book character. He had previously written an Arab American from Dearborn, Simon Baz, into DC’s Green Lantern canon. Dearborn is no stranger to Arab American heroes in comics, of course, with other notable works from author Saladin Ahmed.

First, let's be clear: an Arabic protagonist is fine. It's the applied religious/ideological beliefs that aren't, namely, Islam, and that's what the Baz character goes by, which unsurprisingly goes unmentioned here. However, there are hints where Geiger's going towards the end:

“When I was at the Arab American Museum (in Dearborn) back in 2012, kids were so excited to see an Arab American character in Green Lantern,” Johns said. “I’ve spent my career trying to diversify the comic book universe and introduce new characters from all sorts of backgrounds in different ways.”

Johns contributions adding new identities to the series Shazam made their way to the screen as well. Geiger, like Simon Baz in Green Lantern, is also unwittingly sent down his path through careless and cruel acts of people acting on stereotypes about Arabs.

Strange, don't they mean Islamists? Because that's pretty much what the GL stories where Baz first appeared seemed to emphasize, and that's why Johns' lurch to something more politically blatant than when he first began his career is so disturbing. He himself may not be an adherent to the Religion of Peace, but he sure seems pretty sympathetic to it. To the point where he cannot spotlight an Arab character who's a non-Muslim/Judeo-Christian adherent, or just simply secular. If he wanted to diversify the universe he's working with, he missed a huge opportunity with Arab characters as well, and something tells me he won't take it now. Heck, if he wants to diversify comicdom, how come no Armenian characters who could serve as a nod to Mannix? How come no Slovakian protagonists either? Such a hypocrite. If Geiger serves as a propaganda vehicle for the Religion of Peace, I won't be wasting money on it. No surprise they're sugarcoating Ahmed's terrible conduct either.

And now, Johns is being shunned by the very SJWs who lauded his agenda-driven tale with Simon Baz a decade earlier. Based on all the harm I feel he brought to the comics industry, that's why I find it hard to feel sorry he's now becoming persona non grata with PC leftists he's been pandering to in Hollywood. I have no idea how valid Fisher's allegations against Johns are, but this is pretty much a case of leftists turning one against the other, and Johns is the next leftist in line on the receiving end of their liberal ideological rants over live action adaptations those outside the industry proper likely won't bother to view on TV and in theaters anyway.