Well Done BL

Yes this article should be out from net & editor + writer should apologise

What a shame, I just read article & it only says about suffering Muslim
as if Indians are responsible for all that

Shame on WRITER

Good Stuff!

The guy needs to know that a writing in a popular daily comes with a great responsibility. People don't need to know 'his' side of the story.

There is a similar moron writing in TOI, Tarun Vijay. Steers everything towards religion, which I personally hate. Read his last ten articles with an unbiased mind and you will know what I mean.

here's what I did

I emailed a letter strongly criticizing the article & making a request to pull it out & even asked for an apology to

Bureau of Accuracy/Public Editor - publiced @ thestar.ca

Editor-in-Chief: Fred Kuntz - city @ thestar.ca

Letters to the Editor - lettertoed @ thestar.ca

Mr Siddiqui - hsiddiq @ thestar.ca

(remove the spaces in the email id's, if you wish to copy & paste the ID's)

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i..........rock........!!!!!

I hope all of you who wrote the letters to the Star signed your name, gave ur canada post address, and tel no o/w nothing will come of them.

That is usually the norm.

If they decide to act on them they usually call to confirm if the letter has been written by you.

I agree.He is like a spokesperson of Al Qaeda and the Pakistani community in Canada. His reporting is one of the most biased I have seen on the Toronto Star. Every terrorist attack is justified by him - an attack in Bombay because of injustices to the muslim community in India or because of Kashmir. He is a staunch opponent of the presence of American or Canadian troops in Afghanistan. He is always criticizing Israel ignoring terrorist acts of Hamas. Yes and as someone mentioned most of the letters published in the Toronto Star were Muslims/Pakistanis supporting his article.A strongly worded letter should be sent to the Toronto Star which hopefully will be published by them.

Another propoganda by our neighbour to save faces


http://www.hotklix.com/?ref=content/152704

I think writing emails/letters is a good start. All the same, Individual letters won't make much of a dent in my opinion, you're dealing with seasoned vets who've got more letters than they can read in a lifetime. Here's where "hit them where it hurts" really applies. It seems to hurt only in two places considering none of us have received any responses to our letters

1. The finances. Nothing hurts like this one. Boycott publications by TorStar, get desi and other advertisers to pull ads, raise awareness in the community to do the same and boy, do they feel the pinch.

2. Public opinion. Although this does not hurt as much as finances, it does hurt primarily because it ends up affecting the finances eventually.

Here's how I'd break this down

Objective
1. Get TO Star to pull this article and post a retraction. I wouldn't go as far as asking for an all-out apology simply because that may be hard to swallow for them and create unnecessary obstacles.
2. Get Star mgmt. to put this guy under the scanner and pre-scan his articles proactively for blatant bias.
3. Get Star mgmt. to agree that they will show more sensitivity to the South Asian community and put more thought prior to publishing articles. (I remember some time back when on Diwali, the star published an article on gujarat riots and there was NOTHING about desis celebrating Diwali)

Main issues with article
1. Utter bias under a thin deceptive veil of a positive premise (i.e. Mumbai will recover).
2. The hidden agenda surfaces after the line "Terrorism is not new to the subcontinent". Ever line after this seems to suggest that every terrorist attack in India conducted by Islamic extremists was in some way provoked by Hindu persecution of the muslim minority in India.
3. Mention of riots in Gujarat, babri masjid in Ayodhya but absolutely no mention of the train burning in Godhra. No mention of Akshardham. No mention of Kashmiri pandits being killed on a daily basis. Stock exchange bombing conveniently portrayed as "retaliation". And then out of the blue, a mention of Christian-Hindu "savagery" in ORISSA??? huh??
4. The summary of why the attacks happened mention nothing about the extremist factions who have hijacked Islam and their distorted agenda that is swimming in pure evil. NOTHING. NOT ONE LINE MENTIONING ANYTHING ABOUT THIS IN THE WHOLE FREAKING ARTICLE THAT SUPPOSEDLY TALKS ABOUT A TERRORIST ATTACK IN MUMBAI!!!

Instead, one of the causes mentioned is "revenge for ongoing persecution of Indian muslims".

The most apalling part of it is this guy guy conveniently forgets that that the terrorists targeted Westeners and particularly Jews. So now the ongoing persecution of muslims caused these nutjobs to kill Jews and Americans and Canadians!! That's some super logic working here!!

Finally, the closing is another sinister envelope of positivity on how Mumbai will rebound.

Like I said before, my beef with the article isn't the mention of injustices done to muslims in India by virtue of being in minority. I have no illusions of India being secular perfection and there is unquestionably some truth to this and the Hindu majority has to make great strides to remedy this. My problem is the blatant one-sidedness of the presentation at a time when most Indians are still in shock about these attacks. It is salt on wounds and you have to be the the filthiest of the filthy to do that after so much blood has been spilled less than a week back.

What needs to be done to send a message
1. Set up an online petition to have Toronto Star retract this article and put this guy under the scanner. Get as many signatures as possible. The peition should be able to demonstrate the historical bias of this guy.

All Canadians should be invited to sign the petition, not just desis.

2. Draft an email with a link to the article to ALL of your friends/colleagues (in Canada and outside, of all religions) and get them to send a canned response via email to Toronto Star editors. Email addresses given by IROCK previously should suffice, send one email with everyone cc'd so that this guy feels the heat.

The email should point out the historical bias of this Individual AND demand that all receipients immeidately discontinue purchase of ALL TorStar publications until they retract this article and promise to be more aware in the future.
There should be some clear action items highlighted in the email (for instance if you get a telemarketer call to get Toronto Star, tell them that you won't be buying it because of Haroon Siddiqui)

3. I noticed a Jewish gentleman writing to the Star with the same observations as above. Let's get in touch with some people from the Jewish community and get them to write emails to the editors as well. The article completely ignores the targetting of Jews in this incident.

4. Draft a separate letter/email to each of TorStar's executive management team highlighting the above points. Torstar's site and executive mgmt. team is here http://www.torstar.com/corp_officers.php. Letters can be sent to the coporate offices addressed to the corporate office and I bet all of these guys have a firstname.lastname@torstar.ca email address.

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Any other ideas? Here's your opportunity to walk the talk! We desis usually back away from organized protest and then complain when we get treated like sh*t and our voices are not heard.

I'm willing to invest significant time over the next week or so to make some of the above things happen, but obviously can't do it unless others chip in.

Here's my ask of you.

1. For the above tasks, first post ideas on how best we can have our voice heard, I'm more than open to suggestions and disagreements with my points above. We should agree on this by Thursday.
2. Once the action items are finalized, people will have to take ownership of Individual items. All it'll take is about 4-5 dedicated people to get this rolling and by mid-next week, we can deploy all the communications.

Post ideas on the thread. PM me if you feel this is a strong enough cause to volunteer some time.

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