Categories for Feature

She baited him.  But she didn’t catch and release.

No, instead, Kamala Harris hauled the slippery, slimy form of Donald J. Trump onto her boat and…well, it wasn’t pretty. She baked him, she roasted him, she poached him, she broiled him, she grilled him.  Most of all, she filleted him.  Like the prosecutor she once was, Kamala Harris used precision – and facts, and passion, and That Look – to slice and dice the hulking, wrinkled, flushed form of the Mango Mussolini.

It was beautiful. It was brutal.  It wasn’t even close.

Oh, and that childless cat lady, the singer. At debate’s end, Harris won the endorsement of the most-famous, most-loved person in this and several other worlds, Taylor Swift.  That, too.

But – sorry, Swifties – Kamala Harris didn’t need your endorsement.  She won, indisputably, long before your heroine took to social media.  Here’s ten reasons why.

1. It was her show.  Right from the first moment – when she crossed the bluish ABC stage to shake his hand, leaving him looking off-balance and uncertain from the get-go – Harris knew what she wanted to do, and she did it.  Polls had told her that she needed to do two things: look and act presidential, and tell Americans more about her and her plan.  She did that stuff, with lots of policy bits in between.  But she didn’t overwhelm folks with detail, like Professor Obama did in his first debate with Mitt Romney.  She was conversational – and she was in control.  It was the Kamala Show, with an Insane Asylum as the first guest.
2. He was medicated at the start.  But Dr. Harris knew how to throw him off his meds, and she swiftly (sorry) commenced baiting the porcine putative president.  She needled him about his former supporters, now supporting her.  She needled him about world leaders wanting her, not him.  She even needled him about the size of crowds at their respective rallies.  That last one was so obvious, so predictable, you could see it coming as far back as the DNC.  But he fell for it all anyway, proverbial hook, line and sinker.  A sucker is born every minute. But a huckster-sucker? There’s only one of those, and he got his ass handed to him last night in Philly.
3. She spoke to people in their living rooms, right to camera.  When the job assignment is getting people to know you, that’s what you’ve got to do, and she did.  But you also have to do that when you want to establish a connection – and the polls had told her that many Americans were saying they didn’t really know who she was.  So she got to work on that, and reached out to millions.  Trump, meanwhile, was your angry, racist uncle at the end of the open bar at the wedding, saying things that made you wish he was back in County jail. He didn’t connect, he was disjointed.  She connected.
4. TV is about pictures, I was taught in J-school.  And it’s a journalistic catechism I have never forgotten.  TV is about emotion.  TV is about how you look, not what you say.  It’s about how you say something.  And – and, yes, I’m campaigning for her, so I’m a bit biased – she looked like a million bucks.  He, meanwhile, looked old, his turkey neck quivering, and his mouth resembling a sphincter, with all that that implies. He desperately wanted to rattle her.  But she effortlessly kept her cool, and when he said something insane – which was every three seconds, just about – she’d do this arms-crossed, eye-narrowing thing that my Mom used to do when my brothers and I knew that she knew what we did, and she was just enjoying watching us try and wriggle out of it.
5. She brought the facts, however. Look, I’ve prepared Prime Ministers and Premiers and Mayors and leaders for TV debates.  As such, I know that you can’t just show up to a debate with a firm chin line and nice smile.  You have to know stuff. And she did, she did. In debate prep, you can over-prepare your candidate, and they can end up robotically spitting out statistics and factoids like an algorithm in a suit.  But Kamala Harris wasn’t over-prepared – she was prepared just right, as Goldilocks might say.  She knew when to deploy facts that would be devastating (on abortion, etc.) and when to deploy facts to get under his spray-tanned skin (on the border, etc.). She knew her stuff.  He doesn’t know any stuff.
6. Conspiracy theories showed up, and she didn’t get fazed or flustered.  I’ve worked on campaigns for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  In all of that time, I’ve learned one Star Trekkian thing about Donald Trump: he will always go where no politician has gone before.  He will say people in Springfield are eating dogs (when, in fact, it’s his fave drug dealer, RFK, who does that). He will accuse migrants of rape (when, in fact, he’s the one he’s been found civilly liable for rape). He will say his opponent is a Marxist (when, in fact, he’s the one who has every Communist dictator on speed dial).  Trump says all those things because (a) the mouth-breathers who support him love how it upsets the pointed-headed elites and (b) it throws his opponents off the trail.  But Kamala Harris wasn’t thrown off.  She’d listen to his demented soundbites, shake her head, smile, and move on.  She didn’t take his bait.
7. She showed foreign policy chops, he showed he doesn’t belong back near the nuclear codes.  On Israel, on Ukraine, on any number of international flashpoints, Harris sounded moderate, sensible and firm – you know, like a U.S. president is supposed to sound.  Trump, meanwhile, just mused about his fondness for dictators, and claimed that he would end all wars.  When she asked him how he’d do that, he didn’t say.  In fact, when asked by Harris or the moderators about anything at all, he’d whiff the ball.  I’ve got “Concepts of a plan,” Trump actually said, thereby giving standup comedians a line to use until the end of time.  But on foreign policy – on anything – he has neither a concept nor a clue. (Bonus: I liked that she mentioned his indifference to antisemitic hate.  Because he, the Klansman’s son, is.)
8. She came with zingers. “You’re a disgrace.” “Trump abortion bans.” “You sold us out.” “Same old tired playbook.” “You’re a disgrace” (again). All of those zingers – trust me, are plotted and planned long in advance in debate prep.  The key is using them when they fit, and making them sound natural.  She achieved both, and thereby won the war of the clips.  Because – sadly, or not – most voters now form their views about a debate based on clips, not the whole broadcast.  And she delivered the lines that the Democratic team knew would win her the war of the clips.
9. We knew, he knew, we all knew: her strategy was to let him talk, and hang himself.  He knew, he knew.  He’d been warned (that’s what the whole psychodrama about the muted microphones was about).  But Trump still jumped into the coffin-sized hole she had dug for him, and he got a shovel, and he kept digging.  He thinks he won the presidency the first time by saying whatever pops into his tiny cranium (he’s not entirely wrong about that).  But, this time, he lost a second shot at the presidency by putting all of his many shortcomings in the window – when the circus had left town.  What’s amazing is that he knew what she wanted him to do, and he did it anyway.  Cue the Republican chattering classes, yammering about the moderators, even though Trump got many more minutes to speak.  When they attack the moderators, that’s when you know they’ve lost: they’re kvetching about the ref.
10. I’m not saying Donald J. Trump is a racist, a rapist and a convicted criminal – even though, well, he is.  Despite (and hopefully not because of) those things, he won the highest office, and looked like he was going to win it again.  Last night, a Montreal high school kid – and a big city criminal prosecutor – showed up, and stripped every piece of bark off his tree.  By the end, there was nothing left.

Will she win? Yes, she’ll win.  It’ll take days, it’ll be close, it’ll be contested, stop the steal, blah blah blah.  But she won.

Well done, “Madame President.”  All of us like the sound of that. 

Childless cat lady Taylor Swift, too.

Comments (24)

Kissed by Jesus.

When you ask addicts, or those who are regulars on the sidewalk outside the Bridge Street United Church in Belleville – or anywhere – what using fentanyl is like, the first time they did it, that’s what some will say: it’s like the heavens parting, and some deity reaching down to embrace them.

For the first time in their lives, they’ll say – lives which have been too often sad and lonely and dark – they felt wanted and loved.

Some writers used to say heroin was like returning to the womb, except fentanyl is 100 times better, users say. The warmth starts in their toes and fingers, and creeps towards their heads and hearts.

All your troubles go away, they say. Nothing else intrudes on the bliss that results from fentanyl. They fall in love with it.

The first time, they say, nothing else compares. There is no joy as complete as the joy bestowed on them by fentanyl, that first time. Until that first feeling fades.

And then, the pain begins. The darkness returns. The depression seizes them.

After the vampire that is fentanyl sinks its fangs into them, nothing else is ever the same. It owns them. It controls them.

Fentanyl takes over.

**

Dr. Meldon Kahan is dispassionately describing what fentanyl does to the human brain.

“We all have, in our brains, a reward system,” says Kahan, who is a Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Toronto, and Medical Director of the Substance Use Service at Women’s College Hospital. “It’s in the middle of our brain. And when we do something that’s important for survival – like eating or sex or what have you – there’s a dopamine spike in our reward pathway in the brain. That’s what gives us a sense of pleasure.”

He pauses.

“That is all related to the memory part of our brain, too. So, we vividly remember the next day how it felt. And, that memory center, it’s related to the executive function part of our brain – which is what tells us to go out and do it again and again. Drug use acts on that reward center in our brain, too. And the dopamine spike users experience is often more powerful than what they get from activities like eating or sex. In essence, the drug hijacks the reward center of our brain, and it becomes more important than normal survival activities.”

Heroin and other opiates literally do that; they hijack a person’s brain. But how to they compare to fentanyl?

“Fentanyl,” Khan says, exhaling. “Well. It is an extraordinary drug. The other opiates are like puppy dogs compared to fentanyl. I’ve seen patients where their entire existence is focussed on getting it, because they cannot tolerate withdrawal from it.They are tormented every single day by powerful cravings.” He pauses again. “And, sure, they have free will. But addiction is a mental disorder. Their decision-making is completely compromised. Whatever they are going to do in their life is completely compromised by the drug.”

“And the drugs we have to counter it? They’re not enough.”

**

Fentanyl is an opioid, which essentially relieve pain. It is a synthetic opioid, too, which means that it was made by people, not nature.

Fentanyl – its formal name is N-phenyl-N-[1-(2-phenylethyl)-4- piperidinyl]propanamide – has been around for a long time. It was invented in the Belgian laboratory of Dr. Paul Janssen in 1959 or so. Janssen was in the pharmaceutical business, and he had been looking for a drug that would be as potent as it was fast-acting – and make him a fast buck.

Morphine and the like were available back then, but Janssen wanted something stronger than that. He and his colleagues played around with the molecules in morphine and meperidine for a while, until they decided to synthesize a derivative, one that would break through the blood-brain barrier much faster. In 1960, they did. They created fentanyl.

It was as much as 200 times more potent than morphine. It was more than 50 times more powerful than heroin. It was, and would for a long time remain, the most potent opiate in the world. Like other opiates, it could cause “fatigue, sedation, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, respiratory depression, and unconsciousness/anesthesia,” the American Pain Society wrote a decade ago. Too much of it could kill. But unlike the others, its effects – especially if taken orally or nasally, which is how most addicts now use it – could be felt in just seconds.

Oh, and this: it was wildly, massively addictive. Wrote the Pain Society, in what would be one of the biggest all-time understatements: “Patients need to be carefully monitored for signs of opioid overdose.”

**

They should be. About 22 people die every day from opioid overdoses in Canada; most of them are men in their thirties, and 82 per cent of the time, it’s fentanyl that kills them. B.C., Alberta and Ontario have it the worst.

On one cold and unforgiving February night in Belleville, Ontario, nobody was “carefully monitoring” Brian Orford and his friends at the Bridge Street United Church. Mostly, locals were doing what doing what they always do: staying away. Crossing the street to avoid the sad-looking people at the basement entrance to the church. Or, avoiding the area entirely.

On the two days in question, in the first week of February, the Belleville police issued a statement that is the sort of thing you see in war-torn corners of the world. But not so much in Belleville, Ontario, the Friendly City. For Belleville, as far as anyone could remember, this was a first:

“The Belleville Police Service is advising the public to exercise caution and avoid unnecessary travel to the downtown core area following reports of a significant number of overdoses on Tuesday afternoon,” the statement read. “[There is a] need for increased vigilance and awareness in the affected areas.”

It was a state of emergency, the authorities would say, which is what you declare when you’ve got “a danger of major proportions,” one that could cause “serious harm” to people. So, just about every ambulance and paramedic and police officer in the 613 area code hurried to the corner of Bridge and Church streets, sirens and tires cutting through the night.

Two dozen of Brian Orford’s friends had overdosed on fentanyl mixed with something else. Close to half of them were at death’s door, with doctors and nurses frantically working to save their lives.

The news flashed across the country like a rocket, because something like that had never really happened before in Small Town Canada. Belleville, the Friendly City, became the scary city. On TV, news anchors solemnly described it as unprecedented, because it was. Things would get worse before they got better, too: on the Thursday, the very next day, with overdoses continuing to happen on and along Bridge Street, Belleville declared the actual state of emergency. Life on the sidewalk at the Bridge Street United Church – never good – had gotten measurably worse.

Brian Orford is 44 years old, but he looks much older than that. His eyes are profoundly sad, sadder than an unused crib in a dumpster. His hands are swollen and red from drug use, and they clutch at the corners of his donated parka. He’s been on the streets, without a home, for almost a decade.

Orford, who grew up in and around Belleville, is well-known at the church. Like the others – hundreds of them – he comes in the mornings for the continental breakfast, usually a bagel. On Sundays, they come for something that is closer to a full meal. They get fed at the Sally Ann, too, depending on donations.

When you stop and ask if he will talk to you, Brian Orford says sure, and leans against the church wall, as if to steady himself. He speaks in a voice that sounds weary and broken. He’s asked about his friends, the ones who overdosed and nearly died. Was it a bad batch of fentanyl?

“A lot of people here have switched to those other drugs,” Brian Orford says. “It’s pretty dangerous.”

The fentanyl is being cut with GHB, the date rape drug. Xylazine, too. That one is called “tranq dope,” and it started up in the States a few years ago. Tranq is even deadlier than fentanyl, because naloxone – or Narcan, which is used to save those who are overdosing – doesn’t work on it. If you use too much tranq, you can get necrosis – rotting of human tissue, flesh-eating wounds. Parts of you can literally fall off. They call it the zombie drug.

Brian Orford talks a bit more about his friends, in a quiet voice, and then he excuses himself to get something to eat in the basement of the church. He shuffles off, bent like a twig in a storm.

**

The overdoses at the Bridge Street United Church still happen, but not as bad as in February. Maybe it’s because the people there stick together. Compared to other towns and cities, they look after each other. They’re proud of that.

Tammy and Sherri do. Tammy sits on a bit of cardboard on the ground, Sherri beside her, on the lawn chair she favors. They’re both 51 years old. They’re best friends, they say. They don’t want to give their last names, because feel ashamed by what their lives have become. They don’t want to get their pictures taken, either, because some of their family don’t know where they are.

Which is on the street, for years. Both have been living on Belleville’s streets for a couple years, now. Tammy, who is Indigenous and tattooed and smart and plain-spoken, is from Belleville “and out Peterborough way.” Sherri, who is quieter and usually willing to let Tammy speak for both of them, is from a little town near Brantford. Sherri is housed now, in a rooming house. Tammy is hoping to be, but she’s scared about it: she’s not used to living under a roof. Sherri isn’t addicted to anything except coffee and cigarettes, she says. Tammy, meanwhile, doesn’t hesitate: she’s addicted to fentanyl.

They’re asked, first off, what they and everyone at Bridge Street really need. Safe supply? Programs? They both answer: housing. “We need more low-income housing for everybody,” Tammy says. “There’s not enough housing.” No one ever really kicks a drug habit, she says, unless they have a place to live. It gives them hope, more than just about anything else. “If you don’t have housing, that just adds to your drug problem,” says Tammy. “I just want a home. Then I can work on my addiction.”

One of Tammy’s sons comes up and sits down on the ground beside her. He’s a gangly, dark-haired boy, and he doesn’t say a single word during a discussion that lasts a long time. He’s an addict, too. Tammy has three other kids; Sherri has six. All of Sherri’s were taken away from her, for adoption. Tammy’s are on the street, like her.

The conversation turns to what social workers and politicians prefer, which is “hubs” where there is “safe supply.” Tammy immediately frowns and shakes her head. Sherri shakes her head, too. Some places offer people like her weaker-dose opioid pills to get them off fentanyl, Tammy says. But most of the addicts just sell the pills to get more fentanyl, she says. And then the people they sold pills to? They start looking for something more powerful – and then they turn to fentanyl.

“I was into fentanyl really, really bad,” Tammy says. “So I went to Kingston to get clean, about eight months ago. They dropped me off at the hub they have there. It’s just a place where they do drugs. It’s the epitome of friggin’ drug abuse, there.”

They’re asked about the night of all the overdoses, the night Belleville made the national news. “I ended up dying right here on the lawn,” Tammy recalls, pointing at the dirt. She had no vital signs, but she was eventually brought back. She continues: “I don’t remember what was in it. Maybe tranq.” She squints, remembering. “Narcan just brings you back to life. It doesn’t work on the tranq.”

She stops and looks at a scarecrow of a man wobbling down the sidewalk. “You okay, buddy?” she calls out to him. “You okay?” He nods and moves off. Tammy waves a thin arm in the direction of the other ghostly people navigating the sidewalk. She starts to say something, then stops.

Kids as young as 15 can now be found at the church, Tammy and Sherri say. Much older people, too, well into their seventies. People sometimes drive by the church in their big, shinybSUVs and scream at them, they say. These people drive up and down Bridge Street and tell them to die, over and over. “Some people are really mean,” Sherri says.

They’re both quiet for a while.

**

Lori Regenstrief is a doctor. Her expertise is addiction, and she’s blessed with the ability to speak passionately about it. She’s helped addicts in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Inuvik, Sudbury, Manitoulin Island and inner city Toronto. These days, she’s in Hamilton. Reached while on the road, again up near the Arctic, Regenstrief listens carefully to what Tammy had to say about hubs and “safe supply.”

“It’s almost like palliative care,” she says, agreeing. “You are basically saying to people like Tammy, ‘Well, you don’t have to get better. You just stay where you are and we’ll give you these pills.’”

Tammy is right about so-called safe supply, she says. “Look, even with small amounts of fentanyl, people become very quickly addicted. It’s very, very addictive. It’s way more potent than heroin. And, you know, we never as a society offered heroin on a wide scale, did we? We never said: ‘Oh, high school kids should really have access to clean heroin,’ did we?

She pauses, and she sounds angry. “But that’s what we’re doing now.”

**

The discussion, which has gone on for a long time, is coming to an end. Tammy and Sherri are asked whether the outside world – the world beyond Bridge Street – understands them. Cares about them. Wants to know them.

Sherri shakes her head and says nothing. She looks down the road.

Tammy finally speaks. “They want us to be invisible,” she says.

“Gone.”

Comments (3)

Comments (2)

Hamas U. is back.

Across the country – across the United States and Europe – post-secondary students are returning to class. And, with them, the Israel-hating, Jew-hating lunatic fringe are returning, too.

This week, at the University of British Columbia, a blood-red banner is hoisted alongside a real pig’s head: PIGS OFF CAMPUS, said the “People’s University for Gaza.” At the University of Calgary, a monument to Israeli hostages was vandalized within hours of its creation. At Toronto’s Metropolitan University, at its clubs fair, the Jewish Hillel club was attacked by screaming anti-Israel bullies, telling Zionists (ie., Jews) to get “off our campus.” And, at Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., a professor was propagating misinformation about the war in Gaza – in a course syllabus.

The haters and the hate are back. So, where are students – Gen Z and Millennials, mostly – getting this misinformation about Jews and the Jewish state? Why have so many embraced antisemitism? Because, make no mistake, they have: as one Canadian pollster has revealed, 35 per cent of Canadian Gen Z “support the destruction of Israel,” and 41 per cent say “extreme violence” is “justified against innocent Jewish civilians.”

Young Canadians (and Americans, and Europeans) are getting antisemitic conspiracy theories and disinformation online. And they’re being led by Hamas and its axis into the dark side.

Cyabra is one of the world’s leading firms in fighting disinformation. They uncover fake profiles and disinformation and publicize the results. And they have now published shocking a shocking report about the avalanche of Jew hate that has overwhelmed the Internet since October 7, when Hamas killed 1,200 Jews, raped Jewish women and girls, and committed an untold number of atrocities.

Cyabra found that thousands of fake accounts started to sprout up on social media almost exactly 18 months before October 7. They were at first mostly benign, posting in Arabic or English about cricket matches or kittens. And then, in the early hours of October 7, the fake accounts sprang to life.

One, called “RebelTaHa,” had just 82 followers before October 7. When Hamas attacked Israel, RebelTaHa’s followers suddenly grew exponentially – just one of his antisemitic posts would be seen 170,000 times. It went viral.

RebelTaHa, Cyabra found, wasn’t real. It was fake. And, with the clever use of hashtags and interactions with 162,000 other fake accounts – and, with boosting by what Cyabra calls “non-state actors” – fake accounts like RebelTaHa reached an extraordinary 530 million social media accounts in just two days.

[To read more, subscribe here.]

Comments (0)

Comments (6)

FORTY YEARS.

September 4, 1984: 40 years ago today, I was on an Air Canada flight from Ottawa, heading home to Calgary to start law school. The pilot came on the blower.

“For those of you who are wondering, we are hearing that the Liberal Party has lost every one of its seats,” he said. “And we have a new Conservative majority government.”

The plane erupted in cheers and applause – lots of it. Having just said goodbye to many of my Liberal friends at Ottawa polling stations, and having just finished working for a Liberal cabinet minister on the Hill, I slid further into my seat. A woman beside me noticed I wasn’t as deliriously happy as everyone else.

“I take it your friends have lost?” she asked.

“You could say that,” I said.

On the ground in Calgary, my Dad was there to collect me. We silently listened to John Turner’s concession speech on the way back to my folks’ home on the Bow River. Near the end, Turner said: “The people are always right.’

“I’m not so sure about that,” I responded, but – on reflection – I reckoned that Turner was indeed correct: the people are always right.

And the people had chosen Brian Mulroney, in record numbers. More than seventy-five per cent of eligible voters turned out to give Mulroney an astonishing 211 seats. The Liberals were reduced to a paltry 40 – only ten ahead of the New Democrats.

So began the Mulroney era, and a decade in the wilderness for the Liberal Party of Canada. It was an extraordinary decade, a time of great change, and it is hard to believe it all started 40 years ago today.

Not many in the media marked Mulroney’s September 4, 1984 triumph, and that is a shame. He changed Canada – not always for the good, but not entirely for the bad, either.

Meech Lake, Charlottetown, and assorted ministerial resignations, are always cited as the principal failures of the Mulroney era. But the former Conservative leader had successes, too: free trade, which his Liberal successor – my future boss, Jean Chretien – refused to undo. So, too, some of his major economic reforms, which arguably helped return the federation to balanced budgets and surpluses.

To not a few of us, his most singular achievement was his unflagging opposition to South Africa’s evil apartheid system. This placed him squarely against his closest conservative allies, Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and America’s Ronald Reagan. But Mulroney’s determination to end apartheid put him on the right side of history – and earned him the enduring friendship of Nelson Mandela.

Why does all this matter now, 40 long years later? Two reasons.

First, Mulroney extraordinary victory on September 4, 1984 – and the historic events that followed that day – should not be forgotten. Whether you approve of his tenure or not, Mulroney truly changed Canada.

The second reason really has nothing to do with Brian Mulroney at all. The second reason we should recall September 4 is this: when democratic political change comes, it sometimes comes in a way that is dramatic, decisive, and defining. It can be shocking.

That may be good, that may be bad. Depends on the team you belong to, I suppose.

One thing cannot be disputed, however:

As on September 4, 1984, as today, the people are always right.

Comments (8)

BIDDEFORD, MAINE – George Weismeyer is America.

He lives on the ground floor of a three-story walk up on Gove Street, down by Saco Bay in a working class neighborhood. He used to be an Independent, which is a recognized and registered political affiliation down here. Last year, half of American voters said they were independent, neither Democrat nor Republican.

Asked which way he’ll be voting in November’s historic vote, Weismeyer smiles and says Democrat. Why, he’s asked.

“I used to be an Independent,” says George. “But when he started up on that born in Kenya stuff, that was it for me. Democrat.”

Weismeyer is referring to the Birther Hoax, which happened in 2008. In that year, Barack Obama was running for president, and some conspiracy theorists started to suggest that Obama was ineligible for high office. Because he’d been born in Kenya.

He wasn’t – he was born in Hawaii – but the Birther Hoax got legs in 2012, when a private citizen named Donald J. Trump started to tweet that it was true. An “extremely credible source” had told him, Trump said at the time.

History will record that Obama won anyway, and that was that. But the Birther Hoax – which ushered in the Donald Trump era, and ushered George Weismeyer towards the Democrats – was the official start of Crazy Time in U.S. politics.

In that way, George Weismeyer is America. His political orbit was changed by the black hole in space that is Donald Trump. Everyone in America has had their politics changed by Trump – either pulled toward him by some dark gravity, or pushed away.

Over on Cleave Street, there’s more of this. Two Canadians volunteering for the Democrats on a sunny and hot Sunday are looking for Tammy Wilder. They find her husband instead.

She’s a Democrat, and so is he, he says. Kamala Harris was anointed the Democratic Party presidential candidate just days before, so Tammy Wilder’s husband is asked about the issues Harris should be talking about. He stops cleaning the stove top and squints.

“There’s a lot of issues, actually,” he says. “But that sonofabitch? No way.”

[To read more, subscribe here.]

Comments (21)

Comments (6)

It’s getting bad again.

At the start of the Summer, many of the anti-Israel occupations at universities and colleges were shut down, or moved on. In the streets, the pro-Hamas protests seemed to be happening less often. Things seemed to be getting a bit quieter.

Then this week happened.

Here’s a recap of the past seven days:

• Across Canada, more than 100 Jewish organizations and people – from physicians to hospitals to synagogues – received a written death threat: “We placed many explosives inside your building. They are placed in black backpacks. You will all end up in a pool of blood, none of you deserve to keep living.” Police took the bomb threat seriously, and evacuated multiple locations to search for bombs.

• At the Democratic Party’s national convention (DNC) in Chicago, thousands of Israel-haters surrounded the United Center while Kamala Harris, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton spoke. They burned American and Israeli flags, they breached barriers, they assaulted police, and they repeatedly called for violence to – as one sign put it – “end Israel [and] stand with Hamas.” Meanwhile outside the DNC, a Nazi flag was held aloft, and greeted with Nazi salutes.

• After a long, long delay, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) finally asked their national vice-president Fred Hahn to step down for posting a wildly anti-Semitic video. However, they notably did not ask Hahn to step down as president of Ontario’s CUPE branch. And, the next day, they abandoned all decency and called criticism of Hahn’s anti-Semitism by Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Labour Minister David Piccini “completely revolting and unacceptable.”

• An undated photo surfaced of Toronto’s Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik speaking at an anti-Israel rally beside the flag of Hezbollah, a listed terrorist entity in this country. Toronto’s Mayor Olivia Chow neither condemned it nor disciplined Malik.

Anti-Semitism and extremism, clearly, have come roaring back. They never completely left us, of course – there have been too many documented cases of arson and vandalism and threats throughout the Summer of 2024 – but it felt, for a fleeting moment there, that things just might be getting a little less awful.

Not so. The beast of Jew hate – and the hatred directed at the majority of non-Jews who support the Jewish state – is back, slouching through our streets towards its ultimate goal, a dark and antediluvian caliphate.

When we look at footage of the Israel-hating protests at the DNC or in our own streets, something is readily seen. It’s not that the majority are self-professed Muslims, necessarily, or that they belong more to one race than another.

It’s this: in Canada, in the United States, in Europe, the ones who detest Israel and the West the most are young. Specifically, Gen Z (from ages 19 to 24, roughly) and Millennials (from age 25 to 39 or so). Polling confirms the same thing: anti-Semitism – and even pro-Hamas sentiment – is surging among young people. But why?

Avi Melamed is a former Israeli intelligence officer. He has been paying close attention to the rising tide of Jew hatred both before and after the pogrom of Oct. 7.

In an interview, Melamed says this: “Young people very, very easily fall for sensationalized, romanticized images and rhetoric and symbols. It’s very easy to capture their hearts and minds and manipulate them. When you don’t have knowledge, when you don’t have basic educational skills like critical thinking and media literacy, you are not going to be looking for context and nuance. And it can lead to disaster.”

He pauses, then adds: “As long as you’ve got a combination of fast-food information, and young people who lack the basics in education, groups like Hamas will continue to excel on these social media platforms.”

And capture support and recruits.

Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, the brilliant head of Internet watchdog CyberWell, pays close attention to anti-Semitism online and brings it to the attention of Meta (who own Facebook and Instagram), Elon Musk (who owns X), and others. Younger people rely on the online world more than any other demographic, she agrees.

“We know from history, and we know from the Holocaust, that anti-Semitism is one of the most destabilizing social conspiracy theories for any society,” says Cohen Montemayor. “When [CyberWell and others] warn about the popularity or the trendiness, the boldness of anti-Semitism in online spaces, we are warning about it for this reason: history has shown what a destabilizing conspiracy theory it is.”

“And every Western democracy is under the threat, right now,” she adds.

The evidence, Melamed and Cohen Montemayor and other experts agree, is everywhere to be seen: anti-Semitism is worse, now, than it has been since the Nazi era.

And young people, shockingly, are falling under its sway.

Comments (0)

NEW YORK – The 2024 Democratic National Convention – the DNC – is over.

The red, white and blue balloons have dropped. The speeches have been spoken. The 4,700 Democrat delegates are heading home, or home already.

So what was accomplished? What wasn’t? What is still to be done?

Here’s ten observations from an (admittedly) biased perspective – a Canuck who has volunteered for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and (now) Kamala Harris.

1. It ain’t over. One thread ran through the speeches of Harris, Barack Obama and even Oprah Winfrey: independents. Over and over, the Democratic luminaries stressed the critical importance of that middle swath of American voters – the ones Harris needs to win. The media polls notwithstanding, the earnest appeals for independent support strongly suggest that the Democrats haven’t won the election, yet.

2. Harris is a good speaker. But she ain’t Barack Obama, or even Michelle Obama.  Her Thursday night address was only 38 minutes long – the twelfth-shortest in modern history. Content-wise, it was a pretty safe speech, with the traditional Democratic Party themes. But it broke no new ground. Harris isn’t a bad speaker – but nor is she Winston Churchill. Hope she’s better in the debate.

3. The DNC had one theme, however, that wasn’t traditional – it was positively radical, for them: freedom. For a generation, conservatives have made “freedom” their own: freedom to buy lots of guns, freedom to drive big cars, the freedom to say and do what you want. They owned it. The Dems have now flipped the script. Because Donald Trump is an aspiring autocrat, the Democrats are preaching a different kind of freedom – freedom of reproductive choice, freedom to love who you want to love, freedom to vote how you want to vote (and have it respected). It’s freedom with a twist.

4. Notice something missing? Unlike in 2008, when Barack Obama needed to address his skin color – or in 2016, when Hillary Clinton needed to address her gender – Kamala Harris did not say anything, not a word, about hers. Polls have shown that Americans don’t really consider those to be a big deal, so Harris smartly decided to follow their lead. Her gender and her racial identity make her truly extraordinary, but – for now, she’s keeping all of that on the down low. Voters don’t want those things to be the center of her campaign, and she agrees.

5. Tim Walz was an inspired pick.  With a Left Coast woman of color at the top of the ticket, the Democrats had no choice: they had to find a regular white guy from the middle of America. They needed the Doug Fordiest Ralph Klein of all Jean Chretiens, and that’s exactly what they got. Walz is remarkably unremarkable and it works. Big time.

[To read more, subscribe here.]

Comments (2)