u/CarletonCanuck

Unfortunately didn't get a photo of the food - we demolished it after a long morning hike.

We had the beef tapa and longganisa rice combos; portions were big for the price ($15 each, came with meat, rice, egg, spring rolls, and a drink), the rice was perfectly garlicky, and the meat was tender with a sweet and tangy ginger sauce. A definite must-try if you're out in Calabogie!

Jesse has recently been saying that the killing of Toronto police officer Marc Pinizzotto was an "antizionist killing", and linking the killing + shooting at a US consulate as part of anti-Jew hatred, connected to Iranian-backed terror groups.

I'm not sure what reporting Jesse has read, particularly in the Globe and Mail, but the most recent reporting by the Globe seems to indicate that the shooting is not linked to any terror groups - from the article;

>Toronto police previously said they did not have evidence linking Mr. Al-Saadi to the U.S. consulate shooting. The RCMP, which oversees national-security investigations, has not replied to requests for more information about the case.

The only "evidence" seems to be a statement from Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, who is accused of attempting to organize shootings in the US/Europe.

>As part of the probe, the FBI says it obtained a March 20 audio recording in which Mr. Al-Saadi boasted that his “people” were responsible for attacks in Canada against “the consulate and the Knesset.”

I think it's incredibly disrespectful to the dead officer's family to be speculating on the criminal motives of his killer/associates, to forward Jesse's personal political ideology. He seems to have no evidence beyond what Mr. Al-Saadi has said - it's not uncommon for terrorists to claim that they were responsible for tragedies to make their reach seem bigger than it actually is.

Between this and the racist insinuation that the synagogue arson in Montreal was done by a Muslim person, Jesse seems to be engaging in the age-old right wing grift of labelling every tragedy as being caused by your political enemies, in an attempt to foment hatred against them.

EDIT; It seems the police killer has ties to a gun-for-hire scheme that includes some shootings related to the tow truck and construction industries. This puts even more cold water on the idea that this was an "antizionist" attack, however this is still a developing situation.

Much has been said by myself and others about the many anti-semitic, anti-Arab/Muslim, and generally bigoted people at Jesse's Tafsik conference and their histories, but it looks like some of what was said confirms just how bad the whole thing was.

Despite Jesse's complaints of lack of media coverage, the event was actually covered by Jewish Currents, and many of the statements by speakers are pretty abhorrent and racist.

Some excerpts;

>ANTI-ZIONIST JEWS ARE BUGS: At a panel on “anti-Zionism in education,” Gad Saad called Jewish anti-Zionists “the most execrable of all anti-Zionists,” to applause from the crowd, and launched into a tortured metaphor—a favorite of his—that situated Jewish anti-Zionists as suicidal insects hijacked by foreign bodies. “An actual wood cricket abhors water,” Saad said. “It wants nothing to do with water. But when it is parasitized by a hair worm, the hair worm needs the wood cricket to jump into water,” killing the wood cricket. Jewish anti-Zionists, Saad said, are “wood cricket Jews.”

>HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR DENIAL: After establishing Jewish anti-Zionists as insects, Saad asked the audience to guess who he believed to be the “biggest of the degenerate wood crickets.” Someone in the crowd offered Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart. “Peter Beinart is a good one, I despise him,” Saad said. “But no: Gabor Maté.” Maté, an author of popular psychology books who has been a leading public critic of Israeli violence against Palestinians, was born in Budapest in 1944, in the midst of the Holocaust. Saad ridiculed characterizations of Maté, who is Jewish, as a Holocaust survivor. “Six-month-old infants are not cognizant beings,” Saad said. “If he is a Holocaust survivor, then I too am a Holocaust survivor, because in the 1940s I was swimming in my dad’s testicles as a spermatozoa.”

On Jesse's panel, statements from speakers who Jesse later praised for having "courage";

>DARK ENERGY: On a panel about “alternative media,” pro-Israel influencer Emily Austin asked Eve Barlow to talk about “how anti-Zionism has kind of destroyed the UK.” Barlow obliged, saying that “people are still afraid to talk about what’s really going on, which is this creeping Islamism. And anti-Zionism has been the Trojan horse by which it has entered our lives.” Later, Barlow said that she had moved out of the UK in 2014. “It was dark energy there in the UK,” she said. “I could feel the creep-in. It was just dark . . . It’s eating away at everything.”

>“SUICIDAL EMPATHY”: Later in the same panel on “alternative media,” Austin borrowed one of Saad’s favorite terms as she opined on immigration policy. “It’s so interesting, you see it all the time,” she said. “People leave their third-world countries to come to a phenomenal, functional first-world country that suffers from suicidal empathy, that allows them in en masse. And then they bring the values that destroyed their country into this one. But it seems deliberate. So they know exactly what they’re doing."

Several days ago I had asked Jesse Brown about his ties to far-right extremists. He declined to answer me originally, but some members of the Discord were kind enough to hold his feet to the flames a bit. My rebuttal;

1. I think Jesse's acknowledgement that Ben Shapiro can incite violence against Muslims and other groups is pretty damning and unjustifiable. If you purport to be concerned about Jew hatred/antisemitism/anti-Zionism, it makes zero sense to then ally yourself with people who are spreading that exact same type of hate, except targeting other groups.

2. Hasan Piker has not inspired any terrorists, as far as I'm aware.

3. He's just being plain hypocritical here. He's happy to pillory any pro-Palestine/anti-Zionist demonstration as being deeply racist and implicating everyone in attendance as being misguided/hateful, but offers lukewarm concerns when called out over associating with people who, again, **have connections to terrorism**.

4. He does not address the anti-semitism of some of the attendees, including from one of his panel partners. This is an unteneble contradiction if his concern is supposedly "Jew hatred".

5. Jesse seems woefully uneducated/ignorant of the far-right, and that's probably because he's got blinders on to his associations with it. Why is Jesse, concerned about Jew hatred, at a conference where they cheered for white nationalist Tommy Robinson? Why associate with Caryma Sa'd, who has neo-Nazi ties? Why focus on anti-Zionism as a source for Jew-hate, when the most Zionist country in the world (America) is a well-spring of far-right extremism and antisemitism? Jesse seems incapable/unwilling to examine these contradictions.

He also notably did not touch any of the Caryma Sa'd connections.

Overall, I'd say pretty weak responses and justifications.

I had reached out to Jesse Brown a couple of days ago regarding his associations with far-right extremists, racists, and people tied to white nationalist movements in Canada.

Jesse responded quite quickly - specifying that Canadaland does not take anonymous queries, and that he would need my name if he was going to answer.

I'm not sure if requiring names is typical Canadaland policy, but for obvious reasons, I am not going to give my name to someone with ties to far-right extremists and white nationalists - I don't really need Caryma Sa'd showing up at my door to pester me, thank you very much. I don't see how my name is particularly relevant to answering these questions in the first place.

So for the meantime, unless someone more daring would like to attach their name to my questions, Jesse is refusing to answer questions about his ties to far-right extremists.

Hey all,

As many have noticed, Jesse Brown's editorial choices on Canadaland, and his public behaviour on social media, have taken a pretty aggressive far-right turn. Jesse and Canadaland have been silent for the most part on many of the concerns brought forth on this subreddit for the past couple of years.

The following is a letter I've written to Jesse Brown, the Editor inbox for Canadaland (probably also Jesse?), and Canadaland Director of Operations Farheya Ahmed.

This isn't an exhaustive list of Jesse Brown's misconduct/extremist associations, as going through them all would take weeks. This is meant to highlight two of the biggest concerns I personally have - Jesse's appearance at the Tafsik conference, and his associations with Caryma Sa'd.

I'm hoping Jesse/Canadaland staff will respond to my email, but I'm doubtful considering they haven't responded to the subreddit's concerns for years. I will share the response to the subreddit if I do get one!

We may be witnessing a generational crashout in the field of independent Canadian journalism