Large white supremacist meeting shakes residents of Alberta town

That CBC headline caught my eye this morning. The CBC investigative journalism crew really has its finger on the pulse of what's going on in small-town Alberta. Remember a couple of years ago when they had a sudden surge of personal essays on what it's like to be the only Black trans teen in a small prairie town? Well, aside from empathy, there's not much those teens demand of us. Today's expose is an entirely different kettle of fish. We might feel sorry for that loney kid, but we need to be absolutely outraged about these white supremacists who terrorized a small town! The locals were stunned and shellshocked! Except if you actually read the story, they weren't. In fact, apparently nobody in town was even aware this army of 60+ white supremacists had visited until several weeks after the fact, when CBC brought it to their attention. Only then did the alleged "shellshock" set in. According to Grokepedia, the population of that Alberta hamlet is 58. You'd think they'd notice 60+ nazis in their midst, especially when they were waving banners from the overpass over the highway. The cbc quotes the owner of the general store as saying he had no idea. That's where you buy beer in Millarville... we're supposed to believe over five dozen middle-aged racist white goobers, mostly CAF vets, came to town for a week and didn't buy any beer??? We're in get-the-fuck-outta-here territory with that one! Anyway, I see two plausible explanations for this story. Is it possible those small-town Alberta bumpkins are secret fascist symps? The other possibility is that the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, the NGO 100% funded by our federal government, and whose "research" underpins this CBC story, is desperate to have its funding renewed, and is hoping to scare up some scary headlines.

Top expert explains rise in Jew hate, and it's not about Gaza

There’s been a lot of attention focused on the unprecedented rise in antisemitism in Canada these past few months. Never before have things been so bad that a Parliamentary committee had to be convened to find out why Jewish students felt unsafe at their universities. Turns out it’s because of those anti-genocide encampments that have sprung up over the past month or two. We can’t call them that, obviously. That would make the counter-protesters “pro-genocide,” and we can’t go there. So instead, we call them “pro-Palestinian,” or “pro-Hamas,” or '“anti-Israel.” I’m no expert, but my hunch is the spike in antisemitism is due largely to what the world has watched unfold in Gaza since last October. In the aftermath of the Hamas attack on 7 October, which claimed the lives of 1,200 Israelis and saw another 250 taken hostage, Israel had the sympathy of the entire world. But, as the weeks and months of Israel’s counterattack dragged on, and the death toll among Gaza civilians climbed into the tens of thousands, mostly women and children, that sympathy soon enough gave way to outrage over the excesses of the IDF. South Africa petitioned the International Court of Justice claiming Israel was committing genocide. I think there’s a connection between all that and the unprecedented rise in antisemitism. So I was looking forward to hearing the thoughts of a bona fide antisemitism expert on CBC’s Sunday Magazine this morning. Piya Chattopadhyay had Bernie Farber on, and Bernie’s got a nose for hate of all stripes. He’s made a career of sniffing it out and snuffing it out. I was quite surprised, therefore, that Bernie was unable or unwilling to make a connection between Gaza and the uptick in antisemitism. In her intro, Piya had mentioned something she called the “Israel-Hamas war,” but Mr Farber didn’t bring it up at all. Nor did he mention Gaza, 7 October, 35,000 dead civilians, the ICC request for war crimes charges against Netanyahu and Gallant, or the genocide proceedings at the ICJ. No! None of that has anything to do with the climate around anti-genocide encampments and a spike in antisemitism. Jew hate is the oldest hate in the world, and its ebb and flow has something to do with the arc of history. No connection to anything going on in Gaza today. In fact, he explicitly detached events in the Middle East from antisemitism in Canada by reminding us we can’t expect to solve the “problems” in the Middle East because they’ve been going on for 5,000 years, and will likely go on for another 5,000. There you have it! Antisemitism ebbs and flows with the arc of history. Nothing to see in Gaza… move along!

Imagine a future where Bibi and Biden and Sinwar share cell at International Criminal Court

On a day when our media were preparing to celebrate the demise of “the butcher of Tehran” in a helicopter crash, Lady Luck peed in the punchbowl with the news that the International Criminal Court had applied to the International Court of Justice for arrest warrants for the leaders of Hamas, and, cinch up your seatbelts and don the oxygen masks, the Greatest Leader of the Chosen People since Moses! If granted, that means both Israel and Hamas leaders will be wanted on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. That’s not gone over well with the government of Israel. Any equivalency between a virulently antisemitic terrorist death cult and the democratic government of the only democracy in the middle east etc is nothing but a vile blood libel against the Jewish people blah blah blah… The Cotler-Farber gang will be burning up the phone lines today making sure the CBC, Globe, and the PMO get the correct message out. There is no equivalency between Netanyahu and Sinwar! And they’re absolutely right. Sinwar launched an attack that lasted for many hours and claimed the lives of some 1200 Israelis. Netanyahu’s retaliation is in it’s eighth month and has claimed the lives of at least 35,000 Palestinians. Irwin and Bernie are right; there’s no equivalency whatsoever!