It was a column I never wanted to write, about a subject I never expected to confront. As the son of Holocaust survivors, experiencing the gruesome effects of post Holocaust trauma every single day and night of my life, the last thing I expected to confront was the idea of a Jewish State with a gov't that may be committing crimes against humanity. If you care about humanity, you must care about innocent Palestinian children, dying of starvation, right now, not because Hamas exploited, betrayed & abandoned them, but because they are Palestinian.

Message to Canadian Conservative Friends: If you insist on resisting aid to Ukraine in the name of fighting carbon taxes, you are disgracing yourselves as Cdns and joining Putin's expanding corps of useful Idiots. In the name of #Navalny, become useful to Canadian democracy. Conservatism - my home for yrs. My motivation to identify w them was their strong opposition to authoritarianism. Putin's heroes sent tanks into my birthplace - Budapest. No Cdn party would take a tougher stand vs the Putins than the CPC, I thought. But I was wrong - dead wrong.

The Face of American Fascism no longer hiding his agenda. "Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands. nytimes.com/2023/07/17/us/…

My July 8th Free Press column is deeply personal: Former PM Stephen Harper could not make the message any clearer. As the leader of the International Democratic Union, an organization made up of conservative parties from around the world including the party he founded in Canada, Stephen Harper wants Canadian Conservatives to collaborate more closely with the Hungarian right-wing government of Viktor Orban. My allegiance to Canada is 100 per cent. Canada rescued my parents and me from authoritarianism in the Hungary of the 1950s.

The poll is offering a realistic look of today's UCP reality. The party was supposed to unite Wildrose with the Progressive Conservatives. Full Transparency: I supported the idea until I had my live on national radio throw down with then leader Jason Kenney. His ridiculous responses to my questions about values, leadership character & personal character, ripped the blindfold from my eyes. When I met the real Jason Kenney, I learned that PC supporters were getting jobbed. The UCP was going to be a vehicle for knuckle draggers.

Mr Poilievre, my dad was a common man-son of a common mum & dad - they ran a general store. One day, customers, common folk, looted the store- cheered the Adler Family's deportation to Auschwitz. Why? They were manipulated by Populists-posing as hero worshippers of Common people.

https://twitter.com/PierrePoilievre/status/1647265799017754624

Let's speak clearly. Not saying that the Cdn cultural and economic conditions are ripe for the brand of Fascism that swept Europe in the 30s &40s. What I am saying is that Populism is almost always led by charlatans who manipulate common people by pretending to hero worship them.

On this day, Don Martin is an archeologist - digging for fossils from the Reform Party Stone Age. He discovers Poilievre. ctvnews.ca/politics/don-m… "To seal the deal w those voters, to create a lasting Conservative regime stretching beyond any one-off election win, Poilievre has to grow a more likable personality & stand on a wider-appeal platform, which doesn’t sound like a fossil from the pre-Harper Stone Age." Don Martin

Outside of #ab millions of Canadians have no idea what has been brewing in one of the most bizarre political stories in the history of Cdn politics. Some day a movie will be made -might be called Premier and the Preacher. The Premier, Danielle Smith. The Preacher is Pawlowsky. "Pawlowski wanted Smith to convince the prosecutor to drop the charges. The premier explained that she had been working on doing exactly that and would continue to do so with the justice minister and his deputy.

Rights are "endowed by our creator" - 18th Century US Declaration of Independence language. But the legal foundation for rights in Canada is the Charter of Rights & Freedoms.I don't care whether you are religious. Your biz. But Cdn legal rights are conferred by our Constitution.

https://twitter.com/PierrePoilievre/status/1642526096959610880

I have a deep distrust of those who politicize God. It's a pander to the Religious Right. Most politicians don't want to ever appear to offend believers. So they rarely challenge Conservative pols who pretend that God is their political partner. Witnessed this 24/7 in the US.

EVs- When you're in Norway, you see the future "This vision of the future, unsurprisingly, is situated in Norway, a country with an unmatched enthusiasm for battery-powered cars. Last year, four in five cars sold in Norway were electric. Boosted by favourable tax policies and a government that has mandated 100 per cent zero-emission car sales by 2025, Norway has become the best place on Earth to peer into the dawning age of electric mobility. That includes sculpting what it will look like to fill up for decades to come."

Calling out #Poilievres simplistic sloth "As the fmr chief of police for Ottawa, I have seen first-hand the positive effect that a safer supply can have on an individual’s life. We can even look at the program operating right now in Ottawa, "where Mr. Poilievre is currently the sitting MP The patrons of supervised consumption sites are not only given the chance to survive their addictions, but when under the care of a medical professional instead of a street dealer, they have a chance to live long enough to take."

Why was @DavidAkin madder than a hatter? For the exact same reason any media professional would be and why any citizen of a democracy ought to be. "There were to be No questions. Those were the ground rules Pierre Poilievre’s people communicated to the press on Tuesday" That's right no questions. So the media was invited to cover the near leader make a statement and that's it. No Questions. Any working professional would be thinking and or saying "I'm not a fucking stenographer for Poilievre." Now the new oppo leader's loyalists can

There is a practical reason why it's important to report truth. The lethal weapon used by those who wish to dismantle democracy is the lie. Look I get that not everyone is as motivated as I was when I was a small child, and began to study the the creation of Fascist Propaganda. I was trying to figure out why so many of my ancestors including my paternal grandparents had been murdered. The child's mind was trying to figure out why parents would for no apparent reason rapidly develop bouts of sadness and anger. The child wrongly thought he could help.

Gary Mason has all of a columnist's finest tools. The most important one is courage. Very few in this country have the guts to speak the truth about Pierre Poilievre. Mason lays it out in his latest @globeandmail column, which has a made him a target for acidic abusive vitriol. "I also believe that certain politicians need to own some of what we are seeing. Pierre Poilievre, for instance, is the clear frontrunner to become the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. He has been a federal cabinet minister. He is not some random dude on the net."

"Mr. Jones was found liable last year for defaming the victims’ families while spreading bogus theories that the shooting had been part of a government plot to confiscate Americans’ firearms and that the victims’ families had been complicit in the scheme." "This week’s trial was the first of three to determine how much Mr. Jones owes the families for the suffering he has caused, and the size of the award is sure to be contested. Jurors deliberated for about four hours before reaching Friday’s verdict."

"In another broadcast, Infowars falsely linked the judge to pedophilia and human trafficking; in another, Mr. Jones questioned the intelligence of the jurors in the case, implying that his political enemies had" handpicked “blue-collar” people who “don’t know what planet they’re on,” and were ill-equipped to decide what monetary damages he must pay Ms. Lewis and Mr. Heslin. In written questions submitted to Mr. Jones, jurors took immediate issue with that characterization."

From @LeelaAheer "My heart sinks when I hear statements that COVID is not real. Families have lost dear ones, parents have welcomed little ones and taken care of their children alone, our seniors sacrificed their time with their families to make sure that we could contain COVID" "and support our healthcare system. Long COVID can be devastating. Protective measures were put into place to keep our province safe and prevent our healthcare system from collapsing. What we have learned over the past few years will serve us in the future,"

Let's speak clearly. Canada is one of the most peaceful, and prosperous countries in the world - not because of our geographic location, not because of genetic superiority. It is because of shared values and institutions that support those values. Two of the most important institutions that keep Canada, Canada, are Public Health and Public Education. Any politician, who for self interested reasons, wishes to dismantle public health or public education, has to be challenged by members of the public.

Who in #Alberta is Ok with this? "#DanielleSmith..has been especially focused on..vaccines & vaccine mandates(to which she has previously drawn parallels to the Nuremberg trials)..she vowed that if elected, #ab would not enforce any federal vaccine mandates." @calgaryherald "Nuremberg Code was created in 1947 in Nuremberg, Germany, following the trial of a group of Nazi doctors accused of conducting inhumane and often deadly experiments on prisoners of concentration camps without their consent." FullFact.Org

Canada Is Right to Be Worried About the Right-Wing Unraveling of the US "Tucker Carlson called Justin Trudeau a 'Stalinist dictator' and claimed the progressive Prime Minister had 'suspended democracy and declared Canada a dictatorship.' Cdns take that sort of thing seriously" "when America's top cable host tells such vicious lies about their nation and its elected leaders, they worry about what may come next. Carlson, after all, has promoted the White Replacement Theory that led to the recent murders in Buffalo, New York"

#Kenney You won't read a bushel of bromides from me about Kenney's contributions to Cdn democracy. Our democracy is in dire need of good human beings in positions of authority. 3 years ago on my show, I gave him an hour to pass the Human Being Test. He was flailing . So I gave several chances to self correct. In the end I even gave him the easiest test for redemption. Asked him to apologize for his evil behavior in San Francisco, working to deny dying Gay men in hospice care, the chance to receive visits with their partners.