Joe’s message to me: “Well I love you baby, but I must be rhythm bound.”

The sticker affixed to the London Calling album shrink-wrap, so many years ago, boldly declared that the Clash were “the only band that matters.” If that is true – if it was more than record company hyperbole – then Joe Strummer’s death 21 years ago today, of a heart attack at age 50, was a very big deal indeed.

It wasn’t as big as John Lennon’s murder, of course, which came one year after London Calling was released, and shook an entire generation. Nor as newsworthy, likely, as the suicide of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain in 1994. No, the impact of the sudden death of Joe Strummer – the front man for the Clash, the spokesman for what the Voidoid’s Richard Hell called, at the time, “the blank generation” – will be seen in more subtle ways.

For starters, you weren’t going to see any maudlin Joe Strummer retrospectives on CNN, or hordes of hysterical fans wailing in a park somewhere, clutching candles whilst someone plays ‘White Riot’ on acoustic guitar. Nor would there be a rush by his estate to cash in with grubby compilation and tribute discs. Punk rock, you see, wasn’t merely apart from all that – it was against of all that.

Punk rock was a specific rejection of everything rock’n’roll had become in the 1970s – namely, a business: an arena-sized, coke-addicted, utterly-disconnected-from-reality corporate game played by millionaires at Studio 54. Punk rock, and Joe Strummer, changed all of that. They were loud, loutish, pissed off. They were of the streets, and for the streets. They wanted rock’n’roll to matter again.

I met Joe Strummer for the first time on the night of October 16, 1979, in East Vancouver. Two of my Calgary punk rock buddies, plus my girlfriend and I, were loitering on the main floor at the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE). We were exhilarated and exhausted. We had pooled our meager resources to buy four train tickets to Vancouver, to see Joe Strummer and the Clash in concert. Their performance had been extraordinary (and even featured a mini-riot, midway through). But after the show, we had no money left, and nowhere to stay.

The four of us were discussing this state of affairs when a little boy appeared out of nowhere. It was near midnight, and the Clash, DOA and Ray Campi’s Rockabilly Rebels had long since finished their respective performances. Roadies were up on stage, packing up the Clash’s gear. The little boy looked to be about seven or eight. He was picking up flashcubes left behind by the departed fans.

We started talking to the boy. It turned out he was the son of Mickey Gallagher, the keyboardist the Clash had signed on for the band’s London Calling tour of North America. His father appeared, looking for him. And then, within a matter of minutes, Topper Headon appeared, looking for the Gallaghers.

Topper Headon was admittedly not much to look at: he was stooped, slight and pale, with spiky hair and a quiet manner. But he was The Drummer For The Clash, and had supplied beats for them going back almost to their raw eponymous first album, the one that had changed our lives forever. We were in awe.

Topper asked us where we were from and what we thought of the show. When he heard that we had no place to stay, he said: “Well, you’d better come backstage with me, then.”

Sprawled out in a spartan PNE locker room, Strummer was chatting with lead guitarist Mick Jones and bassist Paul Simonon, along with some Rastafarians and a few of the Rockabilly Rebels. They were all stoned, and grousing about an unnamed promoter of the Vancouver show, who had refused to let them play until he was paid his costs. The Clash, like us, had no money. That made us love them even more.

Joe Strummer, with his squared jaw and Elvis-style hairdo, didn’t seem to care about the band’s money woes. While Mick Jones flirted with my girlfriend, Strummer started questioning me about my Clash T-shirt. It was homemade, and Strummer was seemingly impressed by it. I could barely speak. There I was, speaking with one of the most important rock’n’rollers ever to walk the Earth – and he was acting just like a regular guy. Like he wasn’t anything special.

But he was, he was. From their first incendiary album in 1977 (wherein they raged against racism, and youth unemployment, and hippies), to their final waxing as the real Clash in 1982 (the cartoonish Combat Rock, which signaled the end was near, and appropriately so), Strummer was the actual personification of everything that was the Clash. They were avowedly political and idealistic; they were unrelentingly angry and loud; most of all, they were smarter and more hopeful than the other punk groups, the cynical, nihilistic ones like the Sex Pistols. They believed that the future was worth fighting for.

The Clash were the ones who actually read books – and encouraged their fans to read them, too. They wrote songs that emphasized that politics were important (and, in my own case, taught me that fighting intolerance, and maintaining a capacity for outrage, was always worthwhile). They were the first punk band to attempt to unify disparate cultures – for example, introducing choppy reggae and Blue Beat rhythms to their music.

They weren’t perfect, naturally. Their dalliances with rebel movements like the Sandinistas, circa 1980, smacked of showy dilettante politics. But they weren’t afraid to take risks, and make mistakes.

Born John Graham Mellor in 1952 in Turkey to the son of a diplomat, Strummer started off as a busker in London, and then formed the 101ers, a pub rock outfit, in 1974. Two years later, he saw the Pistols play one of their first gigs. Strummer, Jones and Simonon immediately formed the Clash, and set about rewriting the rules.

While political, they also knew how to put together good old rock’n’roll. Strummer and Jones effectively became the punk world’s Lennon and McCartney, churning out big hits in Britain, and attracting a lot of favourable critical acclaim in North America. Some of their singles, ‘White Man in Hammersmith Palais’ and ‘Complete Control,’ are among the best rock’n’roll 45s – ever. Their double London Calling LP is regularly cited as one of history’s best rock albums.

After the Clash broke up, Strummer played with the Pogues, wrote soundtrack music and formed a new group, the world beat-sounding Mescaleros. He married, and became a father. But he never again achieved the adulation that greeted the Clash wherever they went.

Strummer didn’t seem to care. When I saw him for the last time – at a show in one of HMV’s stores on Yonge Street in July 2001, which (typically) he agreed to give at no cost – Strummer and his Mescaleros stomped around on the tiny stage, having the time of their lives. They didn’t play any Clash songs, but that was okay by us. Joe Strummer’s joy was infectious, that night.

As the gig ended, Strummer squatted at the edge of the stage – sweaty, resplendent, grinning – to speak with the fans gathered there. They looked about as old as I was, when I first met him back in October 1979. As corny as it sounds, it was a magical moment, for me: I just watched him for a while, the voice of my generation, speaking to the next one.

I hope they heard what he had to say.

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Where were you, Mom and Dad, on the day that Hamas thanked the Trudeau government?

Agreed: the day that the world’s most notorious terror group offered up video thanks to the Justin Trudeau regime probably doesn’t rank up there with 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. But it’s in the same category, isn’t it?

Like 9/11, it is an Islamic death squad trying to humiliate us. And, like Pearl Harbor, it was a bit of a shock.

And, if we are being honest with ourselves, we all know what Hamas was trying to do. It was engaging in a bit of old-fashioned Soviet style agitprop, designed to cause controversy and embarrassment here in Canada. And it certainly did that.

Social media was overflowing with more outrage than usual about the video statement by some Hamas apparatchik who deserves a bullet, not a microphone.

And, if a snippet of the video ends up in a Conservative Party campaign attack video at the time of the next election, no one will be very surprised.

After the video landed like one of the hundreds of missiles Hamas has fired at Israel in the past 24 hours, Trudeau’s clueless and feckless Foreign Affairs minister, Melanie Joly, swiftly issued a tweet saying mean things about Hamas. But, like everything else that Joly does, it isn’t even worth quoting here.

Because even Joly would know, deep in the recesses of her cranium, that her tweet wouldn’t have been necessary – and the Hamas video would never have been issued – if Canada had not cravenly, stupidly, voted for a cease-fire.

When asked by assorted anti-Semites at the UN to go along with the cease-fire vote, Trudeau’s chosen representative, Bob Rae, could have and should have said: “There already was a cease-fire. Hamas was the one who broke it on October 7.” According to some sources, that is precisely what Rae wanted to say.

But that’s not how the Trudeau government conducts foreign affairs, is it? Consistency and coherence are not its core strength. What it does best is saying lots and doing little. Over promising, and under-delivering. Being useless, in other words.

Observing that the Trudeau government has been a disaster on the Israel-Gaza war since October 7 isn’t even worth saying out loud. It is so obvious, so true, everyone knows it.

The consequences are equally obvious. If there is a single Canadian Jew who is prepared to vote for Trudeau’s Liberals in the next election, it should be made into a Canadian Heritage Minute commercial. It would be a miracle.

And, if the Americans or the Brits or the French are prepared to even listen to us for two minutes at the water cooler at the next international summit, it would also be a miracle. With them, with all of our allies, our credibility has been utterly shredded by the performative, puerile antics of Trudeau and Joly.

And, most seriously of all, we have hurt our ally, Israel. We have said to our Canadian Jewish brothers and sisters that, in the big scheme of things, they don’t matter as much. Sure, 1200 of your friends and family were slaughtered on October 7, but we think you should suck it up and move on.

Well, that’s what the Trudeau government thinks, at least. And that’s why Hamas issued its little thank you note.

It was a bit of a joke, yes.

But so is the Trudeau government.

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MONTREAL- What the Hell is happening here?

Here, in a city previously known for arts and cuisine and a decided European flair, things have gone from bad to worse.

Consider:

• A Montreal Jewish school for boys has been shot up twice.
• Another Montreal Jewish school, for children as young as grade one, has been also hit with bullets.
• A Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Montreal synagogue.
• A Montreal Jewish community centre was firebombed.
• Another Montreal-area Jewish community centre – and another synagogue – were firebombed.
• A Montreal Muslim cleric spoke at an anti-Israel rally and called for God to kill Jews “and spare none of them.”
• Scores of Montreal Jewish businesses have been targeted for boycotts, threats and graffiti- including Nazi swastikas.

In none of the most-serious cases, all crimes, has an arrest been made. And Jews who spoke to Postmedia reporters declined to give their names – or report to police other anti-Semitic crimes – because they feared retribution.

That is Montreal since October 7. This city has experienced more hate crimes against Jews than any other North American city. No other city seems to have it as bad. 

What the Hell is happening here? Why is it happening in Montreal, of all places?

“The reason that Montreal is the only city in North America that has had multiple violent targeted attacks against Jewish institutions and people – from gunshots to Molotov cocktails – is because there is no condemnation of jihadist behavior taking place on the streets of Montreal. None. We need a political voice to say: enough!

“But we don’t have it.”

Beryl Wajsman, the articulate and passionate editor of Montreal’s award-winning newspaper, The Suburban, pauses. He looks more angry than sad. 

“That’s the reason Montreal’s pro-Hamas crowd feels they have a license to do what they’re doing. There’s a lack of political will here. We have not heard the right words from our mayor. Nor will we.”

Montreal’s mayor is Valerie Plante.
Wajsman says Plante is much more preoccupied with the greening the city and “the war on the car” then she is with the safety of the Montreal’s Jews. That has sent a message to Montreal’s pro-Hamas fanatics, he says: “They know they’re not going to be taken in by the police. They know they can trespass, and block traffic, and more.”

And they’re paid to do so, he says. Pro-Hamas protestors can get up to $50 for each protest they attend, he adds, and they’ve divided the city up into grids, with leaders responsible for each grid. Most of the protestors, Wajsman says, are non-residents and students from Arab countries. 

In France, Germany, Austria and other European countries, Wajsman says, anyone who now promotes anti-Semitic messages – whether it be “intifada” or “from the river to the sea” – is to be swiftly deported. “Radical deportation,” he calls it, and he says it will work here, too. 

Another writer and political observer shakes his head and speaks in hushed tones. Unlike Beryl Wajsman, whose courage is legendary around here, this man is more cautious. He has children, he says, and the police have warned him that he can become a target of pro-Hamas violence – even for displaying an Israeli flag. 

“Things aren’t balanced, here,” says this man, in accented English. “People expect Israel to fight with two hands tied behind its back. But they have a right to self-defence.”

He looks away. “I’m afraid,” he finally says. “What kind of a society are we creating, here?”

Another longtime Quebecois and Montrealer, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, agrees. She also asks that her name not be used, for fear of retribution. “The barbaric massacre of October 7 literally paralyzed me with shock, horror and fear for a number of weeks. It still consumes my thoughts and drowns me in anxiety.”

Growing up as the child of Holocaust survivors, she says, she was not as surprised to see anti-Semitism manifest itself in the city where she lives. But for many other Montreal Jews, she says, it has been a shock. “Recent events in our city have been a long-overdue wake up call,” she says. “I’m just thankful my parents aren’t around to relive it.”

So, what must be done? How can Montreal be rid of the vile Jew hatred that has infected it for weeks? How can it get it back to what it was?

Beryl Wajsman considers, then speaks. 

“The other side want Islamic radicalization to become seen as normal. But Canadians will never accept that,” he says.

“We will never surrender our country.”

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Protest movements come and go.

But they are quite different.

These days, protest movements happen more on the Left then on the Right. There are exceptions, of course, like the Ottawa occupation. But for the most part, conservatives focus on achieving influence within institutions – academia, think tanks, media, politics.

On the Left, Protest movements tend to be much more populist – “populist,” here, meaning self-professed ordinary people rising up against perceived elites. Grassroots. 

Not all Leftist populist protest movements are created equal, however. Some are pretty harmless. For example: the Occupy movement, as I documented in my book Fight the Right. Occupy trampled grass in city parks, and overstayed their welcome, but they didn’t really cause any harm. They didn’t hurt anyone. 

With Occupy, no single event caused young progressives to come together. They mobilized around a perception that the gap between haves and have-nots had grown too big. The Tea Party folks, around the same time, believed that, too, and proceeded to take over the Republican Party. 

The Left’s protest movements can be situational, as well – like 1999’s “Battle for Seattle” protests against the World Trade Organization. Those protests were aimed at stopping ministerial meetings of the WTO in that Washington State city. They were anarchic and frequently violent. Same with the G20 protests in Toronto in 2010. But both movements eventually petered out.

The self-professed “pro-Palestine” protests – which, increasingly, seem to be pro-Hamas protests  – are very different. They have been characterized by violence and intimidation and threats, but worse than Toronto’s G20 or the battle for Seattle.

This too: this new Leftist populist protest is different in this way: it’s not petering out, and the protests have long ceased to be just about Israel’s military action in Gaza. No longer do they hate just “Zionists” – their favored dog whistle for “Jews.” 

Now they hate non-Jews, too.

This week’s pro-Hamas protests show us that the enemies list has grown.

• In shopping malls in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa, Jew haters actually went after – wait for it – Santa Claus. As terrified children looked on, Team Hamas chanted and screamed and threatened people. At one mall, a masked thug actually pointed at a uniformed police officer and said that he would put the officer “six feet under.” He was not arrested. 

• The mob targeted two Zara clothing stores, in Toronto’s Yorkdale mall and Ottawa’s Bayshore mall.  The protesters boasted online about forcing the stores to shut down. Some seemed to be there because of an ad campaign, and others perhaps because they believed Zara was Israeli. But it isn’t – it’s owned by Spaniards, and headquartered in Spain. 

• Another mob went after Prome Minister Justin Trudeau in Vancouver – again. A few days after 100 Vancouver police officers were required to extricate Trudeau from a Chinese restaurant that was under siege, the masked “anti-Zionists” surrounded  Vancouver’s Westin Bayshore hotel, had a “die-in,” and accused the Liberal leader of genocide. Two days after his government voted for a cease-fire at the United Nations.

• Yet more constituency offices of Members of Parliament – most of them non-Jews – were again targeted with vandalism.  The vandalism has been happening in riding offices across the country, for weeks.

Early on, the targets seem to be exclusively Jewish. A Jewish school was shot up, Jewish community centers were fire-bombed, Jewish businesses were attacked and vandalized.

Why? The Hamas 1988 charter tells us. It makes clear that intifada – their uprising against their oppressors – was to be waged against Jews and non-Muslims alike. As the speaker of the Palestinian legislative assembly put it in 2007: “Make us victorious over the community of infidels. Take the Jews and their allies, Allah, take the Americans and their allies, and annihilate them completely and do not leave any one of them.”

You see? While the targets of this movement were initially Jews, it is now after non-Jews, too. And, until police and the authorities act, they will only get bolder.

Like the saying goes: what starts with the Jews? It never ends with the Jews.

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The polls say Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives have dropped, a bit. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have gone up, a bit.

How come? Ten reasons. Tories first.

1. Poilievre’s LikeAbility Gap. Every successful political leader in Canada – Jean Chretien, Rene Levesque, Mel Lastman, Ralph Klein, Doug Ford – was likeable. They were HOAGS: Hell Of A Guy – you could picture yourself having a beer with them. They were imperfect, and admitted their mistakes. The newly-minted Conservative leader doesn’t do that. And, as pollster Angus Reid has found, as Canadians get to know him, they find Poilievre “arrogant” and “insincere” – more than 40 per cent of them.
2. Peaking too soon: The Tories have had as much as a 15 point lead over the Grits in recent polling. That’s good, but that’s not something you want to have happen more than a year before an election. You want to have it happen in the third week of the election campaign. As in comedy, so too in politics: timing is everything. The Tories may have peaked way too soon.
3. Peekaboo Pierre: Apart from showing up at a pro-Israel rally or issuing a few tweets, the Conservative leader has been mostly silent on some of the big international issues of the day: the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. He’s kept his focus on the affordability crisis. At one level, making yourself less of a target is good politics. But sometimes, being invisible looks a bit timid, too. Love him or hate him, Trudeau has been visible and much more vocal on the wars – and Canadians are watching those wars closely.
4. Unforced errors: On those rare occasions where the Conservatives have taken a position on international issues, they’ve made unforced errors – as with the Ukraine-Canada free trade agreement. Poilievre told his caucus to vote against the deal because it “imposed” a carbon tax on the beleaguered European nation. Three problems: one, it doesn’t. The Ukrainians already have a carbon tax. Two, Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to Canada in September, in part, to push for the deal. He wants it. Three, what the Hell? Does Poilievre want to run Ukraine as well as Canada? Stay in your lane, Pierre.
5. Picking media fights: Poilievre’s testy exchange with an ill-prepared B.C. reporter while he chewed on an apple was a home run. Picking the occasional fight with the media is good politics, especially for conservatives – the base eat it up. But doing it all the time, as Poilievre tends to do, gets tired, and sometimes even looks like bullying. When nearly half of Canadians already think you’re arrogant (see above), that ain’t good.
6. Trudeau’s the devil we know: The Liberal leader, as disliked as he is, is a known quantity. Those who dislike him know why they dislike him. Those who like him – a quarter of voters – have stuck with him through thick and thin. Poileivre, however, has yet to be fully defined in the minds of voters. And, as they get to know him better, some clearly don’t like what they see.
7. One guy has a climate plan: And the other one doesn’t. This, more than any other issue, is what killed Erin O’Toole and Andrew Scheer with younger voters – the belief that Trudeau cares about the environment, and successive Tory leaders just don’t. Which is why an Abacus poll revealed, this week, that the one policy issue that still works for Trudeau is the environment. Most Canadians believe Trudeau has a green plan, however imperfect. And that Poilievre doesn’t.
8. Incumbency is Trudeau’s friend: Like him or not, it isn’t hard to picture Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister – because that’s what he’s been since November 4, 2015. As the former Special Assistant to Jean Chretien, trust me: real power – incumbency – confers gravitas and credibility on a leader. Being an opposition leader just doesn’t.
9. Audition for the job you want: …not the one you already have. Pierre Poilievre is an amazing Leader of the Opposition. He’s tough in Question Period, in committee, and in scrums. Yes. But there was another opposition leader who was great at all that, too: Tom Mulcair. So where’s Tom Mulcair now? Gone, baby, gone. Trudeau knows drama and auditions, and he’s always auditioning for the role of P.M. Poilievre, too, auditions for the job he’s already got.
10. Trudeau’s got a bigger base: Conservative-minded voters are highly motivated – to vote, to donate, to get involved. Progressive voters aren’t – but there’s more of them. When you lump the Liberal and NDP vote together, as Trudeau clearly does with his Axis of Weasels™ coalition, the progressive side offers more gettable vote. And some of it is clearly coming back to Team Trudeau.

Does any of this spell disaster for Pierre Poilievre, and another victory for Justin Trudeau? Of course not. The current shift in the polls is within the margin of error, as they say.

But Poilievre would be a fool to count out Trudeau.

And Pierre Poilievre is no fool.

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Peace in our time. 

With war raging, and yet more war seeming imminent, speeches were made. Leaders gathered together, rising to leave behind some words that would be remembered. Remembered by history.

Addressing his people, and the world, one powerful man rose and said these things.

“We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing causes, but trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and goodwill.”

Applause. 

He went on: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible we should be preparing for war because of a quarrel in a far away country of whom we know nothing.”

More applause. 

He lowered his voice for the next part: “No doubt the Jews aren’t a lovable people. I don’t care about them myself.”

Oh, wait. The above words were not uttered in the United Nations General assembly on Tuesday, although they certainly could have been. On Tuesday, you see, scores of nations – Canada among them – also deplored war and called for peace in our time. Canada, and others, called for a ceasefire. 

The above words didn’t come from the UN this week, however. They come from decades ago in Britain. Neville Chamberlain said those words.

He uttered that hateful statement about the Jews, too. Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of Britain and the United Kingdom, actually said those things.

He was wrong about Jews, of course. But he was also wrong about ceasefires, and peace in his time. But he would’ve fit right in, quite well, at the United Nations this week.

With very little effort, too, he would’ve fit right in to Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, wouldn’t he?

It is regrettable that we need to remind people that Neville Chamberlain was hoodwinked by Adolf Hitler, and tragically wrong to call for “peace in our time.” But with a significant number of voters now getting information from TikTok, and not actual books and newspapers, it’s important to recall that lesson of history.

Namely, a ceasefire then only benefited Hitler. Just as a ceasefire now only benefits Hamas.

It’s a bit ironic, of course, that Trudeau’s government cravenly called for a ceasefire this week. It is almost amusing. Because, of course, a ceasefire was already in place. 

For years, Israel and the warring factions that surrounded it – the ones who wanted to wipe it from the face of the Earth (Hamas and Hezbollah, mainly) – had a ceasefire. Apart from the occasional skirmish, tentative peace was in place. It lasted for years.

It ended on October 7, 2023. Hamas broke it. 

It’s impossible to know, of course, whether Hamas’ billionaire leaders in their Qatari mansions laughed about the ceasefire vote at the United Nations this week. But we know that their predecessor, Hitler, certainly laughed when he fooled Neville Chamberlain.

It gave him time to regroup and rearm, and to spread his hateful ideology throughout the rest of Europe. As Hamas intends to do, in the Middle East. 

As we say, we do not know how Hamas reacted to the vote in the general assembly on Tuesday. The terror group gives us a clue in its Charter, however.

There, in Article 13, Hamas says: “So-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” Take that, general assembly. 

It goes on: Hamas calls peace talks, and talk of peace with Jews and non-believers, “a waste of time.” Peace talks only help “the infidels,” says Hamas. All that is permitted is “jihad” – that is, holy war.

But Hamas does admit one thing, right in its Charter: peace conferences, and calls for ceasefires, are strategically useful. It gives them time to prepare for the next battle.

Take a bow, general assembly of the United Nations: you gave Hamas a big and unexpected victory this week.

Just like Neville Chamberlain did, so many years ago

To Hitler.

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