Escape from Vermont
Dear David,
So sorry to hear of the abuse you were forced to endure by the liberal identitarian cult you encountered in Vermont (and elsewhere.). They are no kind of leftists in our view. The irony of their authoritarian views is completely lost on them, and most of their acolytes. Many good people are too afraid to speak up for fear of being targeted themselves, as is the resulting chilling effect of such smears and false accusations.
Those of us who bring the Islands Grapevine newspaper to the residents of Denman and Hornby Islands and beyond have received similar treatment by the performative liberal “left”, as they populate the local tax funded organizations and have diverted all the tax funded advertising support away from us with the stated intent of causing our paper to fold its small business and community information service. We have survived this abuse, with reputations badly tarnished.
We are clearly aligned with leftist perspectives, and have been prominently anti bigotry, anti-war, and anti censorship, with visible and consistent support for the queer community. Our crime? We printed an article from a queer aligned local feminist woman who shared her experience of sexual assault, where she objected to a change in Canadian prison laws that allowed convicted male rapists to declare themselves as trans women in order to be transferred to a woman’s prison.
The article did not violate our anti-bigotry editorial policy and we state clearly that the publisher and editors do not necessarily agree with every view expressed in our weekly community paper. No matter to the fake left identitarian cult. They’ve been hellbent on cancelling us for the last 2 years.
We would like your permission to reprint your substack piece on your Vermont experience and we would be ever so grateful.
In solidarity,
The Islands Grapevine
Is there a chronically-online identitarian cult lurking in the Green Mountains? Let’s investigate.
David Rovics – Oct.25th, 2025
I am so outraged at the Steering Committee of Jewish Voice for Peace Vermont that I have to either hit someone or write an essay, so after a long and hard consideration of the available options, I have decided to do the latter.
Portlandia is thoroughly entrenched in Vermont. No surprise there. Like Oregon, Vermont is overwhelmingly white. White people left to their own devices tend towards the formation of identitarian cults, as evidenced by places like the Pacific Northwest, Minnesota, and Vermont, to take three very prominent examples of places that are full of this sort of thing.
The cults start on the internet, generally, and then have a way of spreading into certain parts of the US — especially parts that are isolated from the realities of major urban areas, and lack diversity. These conditions seem to make a lot of white people more susceptible to the online trolls and algorithms which seem to supersede their capacity for critical thought.
Given these sorts of dynamics in especially online sectors of US society, it’s no wonder that an entity like a JVP steering committee would be especially vulnerable to them, since JVP, like the overwhelming majority of US Jews, is overwhelmingly white.
Whether any of my hypothesizing here is accurate or not doesn’t matter. I’m just thinking aloud about what drives people to engage in cancellation campaigning and other related toxic endeavors. Why are so many people on what remains of the US left so ready to act like absolute caricatures that could have easily appeared in one of the more outrageous episodes of Portlandia, or in a Fox News hit piece?
Before I share with you the written version of the Vermont Steering Committee’s cancellation efforts, a little more context seems appropriate.
They accuse me of making transphobic comments without specifying what any of them supposedly were. They accuse me of defending Nazis. Their evidence for these accusations is a hyperlink to a blog post of mine where I talk about the circular firing squad that they are participating in. They don’t even provide us with out-of-context quotes that supposedly illustrate my transphobia or defense of Nazis.
These are the most outrageous sorts of accusations anyone can make against someone like me, and these sorts of outlandish accusations made by the steering committee of an organization call for a response by the accused.
The reality, for anyone who has attended a random selection of my shows in any of the countries I’ve toured in over the past many years, is obvious and fairly visible. At most any of my shows, my audiences are unmistakably disproportionately trans and Jewish, sometimes both at the same time. At least 10% of any given audience I play for in places like the US or England or Denmark is likely to be trans, and the trans audience members are often some of my biggest fans, who sing along the most to songs like “I’m A Better Anarchist Than You.” By the same token, in any region with a significant Jewish population, and even in countries with a very small Jewish population, my audiences are likely to be vastly disproportionately Jewish, often much more than 10%, and in the New York or London regions, often much more than that.
Why is such a disproportionate percentage of my audience trans and Jewish? Why is everyone who comes to any of my shows anywhere always against fascism, and often very deeply opposed to it?
Here are the answers:
The trans community everywhere, from my vast experience, is overwhelmingly leftwing. This, and the fact that I have written songs supporting trans people that many trans people cherish, is why a disproportionate percentage of my audience is trans.
A disproportionate percentage of my audience is Jewish because the left is disproportionately Jewish, and I’m a leftwing person of Jewish lineage singing songs against fascism, today and historically. Also lots of Jews are especially motivated by opposition to Israeli fascism, and I sing about that a lot.
My audience is, by the same token, overwhelmingly antifascist and even anticapitalist, and definitely anti-imperialist, because I am, and that’s what my body of a thousand or so songs are all about.
The Steering Committee of Vermont JVP obviously wouldn’t know about any of this, and apparently they don’t need to, before embarking on a cancellation campaign against a Jewish antifascist musician with a large trans following for being a transphobic Nazi sympathizer.
Sounds crazy? That’s because it is. The internet does this sort of thing to people, it’s not their fault for being this way. There are active trolls out there working for the FBI/Antifa spreading all kinds of angry lies about me, along with lots of Zionist trolls doing the same thing, though generally far less effectively than the backstabbers of the FBI/Antifa dumpster-burning and backstabbing brigades. When people in a sleepy little town in Vermont suddenly get inundated with bile from Portlandia or Washington, DC or Tel Aviv or wherever it’s coming from, they naturally feel like they’re being ganged up on by a bunch of people with very strong opinions about me, whether real or manufactured, because that’s exactly what they’re experiencing.
From my again vast experience with this sort of thing, when people get attacked online like that, and themselves threatened with cancellation of all kinds, as I’m sure would have been the case with various actors in this instance, there is the option of telling the trolls to fuck off, unequivocally, which I’ve noticed actually often makes them go away, or at least change their tactics. But there is a strong tendency to buckle under this pressure and agree with everything the trolls say, hoping they’ll then leave you alone.
And then there are those who are already in what the hosts of the podcast, Fucking Canceled call “the nexus,” who already are adherents to the puritanical cult of cancellation-campaigning and safety and security culture and vetting everyone for their potential past misdeeds whenever the opportunity arises. And the trolls make sure it arises!
Whatever turned JVP’s Vermont steering committee into a profoundly dysfunctional identitarian cult of cancellation-campaigning, I can only wonder (which is partially what I’m doing here with this missive).
But here’s what the steering committee wrote, and what a steering committee member shared with JVP’s public discussion list.
Jewish Voice for Peace Vermont-New Hampshire stands unequivocally with the Trans community. For those who do not know, members of JVP VT-NH had organized a benefit concert for Middle East Children’s Alliance featuring folk artist, David Rovics. When the concert was planned, organizers were unaware of Rovics’ extensive history of making transphobic statements. To learn more, please visit https://davidrovics.substack.com/p/the-social-engineering-of-the-circular (TW: transphobia and defense of nazis).
We apologize to everyone harmed by our partnership with him. Now that we know about his transphobia, the steering committee no longer endorses the concert and recommends cancellation. If the concert happens, the steering committee would like an announcement stating the concert is not endorsed by JVP VT/NH to be read before the performance. We will not be the first to cancel one of his shows for this exact reason, so there is precedent for such action.
Because the concert is so soon, October 25, it is highly unlikely we can book another artist, but we are open to planning a new concert in the future with stronger vetting practices.
The concert was a benefit for the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA). If you choose not to go to the show (or if it gets canceled) donations to MECA are strongly encouraged.
But wait, it gets better.
After the steering committee circulated this missive, my old friend who had initially undertaken to organize a gig for me during this ongoing visit to the northeastern US was intent on organizing the gig anyway, without the sponsorship of JVP.
That’s when someone initiated an effort to pressure the venue to cancel the event, and pull the rug out from under the organizer.
This is exactly the same thing the group, UK Lawyers for Israel, has done to try to shut down my gigs in England. Pressure venues to shut down gigs and not host antisemitic performers. Though the Vermont steering committee doesn’t call this Jew an antisemite — just pro-Nazi. With no explanation. At least UK Lawyers for Israel provide an explanation, in the form of the titles to all of the songs on my first album about the Gaza genocide — the one which Israel continues to carry out, as the JVP steering committee tries to get a benefit for Gaza canceled.
The organizer saved the event from being canceled, in a sense, but not in a sense that made any sense at all to me.
To speak in the language that identitarians love to use, I am a victim of abusers. Cancellation campaigning, trolling, spreading false rumors and lies, these are all forms of bullying, which is a form of abuse. They are also McCarthyite forms of abuse, intended to rob a person of both their reputations and their livelihoods. The behavior is despicable, abhorrent, and a prime example of why the left is shrinking so rapidly for so long in this country.
The abusers then present themselves as victims, or allies of victims. But I am not any of the things they baselessly claim I am. I am a victim of their McCarthyite abuse.
As an abuse victim well aware that I am an abuse victim, and seething with appropriate levels of rage as a result of being a victim of the JVP Vermont steering committee’s abusive behavior, I was flabbergasted when my old friend, the original organizer of the gig, explained to me in an email that the reason why the venue hadn’t canceled on him was because he was promising there would be dialogue between me and my accusers.
I am a big supporter of dialogue. Ironically, it is my support for dialogue that is the origin of the false allegations about me being a Nazi sympathizer. In the eyes of Rose City Antifa, the accelerationist wackos of IGD (”It’s Going Down”), and apparently also the JVP Vermont steering committee’s puritanical end of the left, I made the terrible error of talking to a couple of people they all consider to be members of the right or antisemites, and I did so publicly, on my YouTube channel. The interviews are still there, you’re welcome to watch them, but you won’t find any of the accusations against me substantiated if you do. You will, however, find dialogue of a sort that might make some people uncomfortable — and of a sort that I and most sane people I know agree is vitally important to be having right now.
But dialogue with people who have actively been trying to get my gig canceled? Dialogue with people who are only having this dialogue because they failed to get the gig canceled? Dialogue with my abusers, who have just finished punching me in the face, and then punching me in the gut afterwards? No. I’m not Gandhi. That kind of dialogue is for someone else. The only dialogue I’m interested in with people who make such accusations against me is the kind involving apologizing to me, and explaining to me why their behavior was abhorrent. When I discovered that my friend’s plan was to sort of ambush me with this phony effort at dialogue with my abusers, it was I who canceled the gig. No thanks.
If you do watch the interviews I’ve done with people Antifa/IGD thinks should never be “platformed,” then you’ll start to see the massive conundrum I’m in, as a victim of the abusive behavior of the cancellation-happy organizations or networks characterized by Antifa, IGD, and the Vermont JVP steering committee.
That is, how many hours of my interviews with other people do you need to put yourself through before determining that all of the accusations against me are baseless? And how many of my hundreds of essays do you need to read to figure out the same (including the one they link to)? How many of the darling of Rose City Antifa’s Shane Burley’s unreadable and possibly AI-generated tracts about me do you need to read before you realize that he’s a cancel culture lunatic guru and not worth paying any attention to?
Figuring out why the accusations are nutty is a full-time job, and no one has time for that. That’s what makes cancellation-campaigning such an effective tactic. The truth doesn’t matter. The tactic is all that matters. The tactic itself creates a dark cloud around its victims, whether the people engaging in it are freelance leftwing cult members, FBI provocateurs, or working in a Mossad troll farm somewhere.
For whatever it’s worth, by my observation, the extent of the insanity of the kinds of accusations floating around about me and so many of my friends who have experienced exactly the same sort of thing over the past decade especially would not be possible without the aid of active online cults, troll farms, and especially social media algorithms that drive conflict into our feeds and suppress any efforts at reasonable discourse.
If there’s any hope for our society, it will begin when we all collectively abandon all of the corporate platforms. I wish I could afford to be the first to do it, but I can’t. Quite possibly they’ll cancel me first anyway, for the same sorts of baseless reasons as JVP’s Vermont steering committee has sought to do. I’ve already been permanently demonetized by YouTube and had albums removed from Spotify, so they are indeed in great company, and indeed aren’t the first to try to cancel me, as they accurately state.
On another note, if you know my mother, Anne, and have anything you want to say to her before she dies, likely in the very near future, feel free to pass a message for her on to me.
Shucking Oysters: The Horror of Politics
Shucking Oysters: The Horror of Politics
By Alex Allen
Which is scarier? Halloween or politics? One is a holiday with make-believe frights; the other is a living nightmare with real frights. Some people – like most dogs – have an intense fear of Halloween. Others find politics to be more frightening. I would wager to guess that many of us, at this timely juncture, are finding politicians and their politics a bit scary. In fact, if you’re not suffering from political anxiety you’re not paying attention.
Politicians are similar to fireworks. You’ve got your Bombettes, Noise Makers, Bursting Torpedoes, Sparklers and Flames. Watching politicians and their parties implode is just as much fun as pyrotechnics. And this week we are witness to a brilliant display. Now, we can gloat about our dysfunctional politics up north for a change. BC politics: The soulless NDP, the ugly Conservatives, and the well-meaning Greens.
For added flavour, let’s throw into the bubbling cauldron, a party led by a former Liberal/United MLA and a party led by one very questionable individual. No morals? Nasty? White privileged? Yes, you too, can have your very own political party. It’s alarmingly easy.
Let’s start with BC Conservative leader John Rustad. Arrogant. Rude. With as much charisma as a slice of white bread (down from a toaster a year ago), he seems to have no semblance of empathy or perception. Whoever his handlers are, they have not figured out that this man is beyond grooming (except perhaps a mole excision).
This week, Rustad’s “management” committee urged him to step down: “As evidenced by sagging poll numbers, memberships, fundraising, a shrinking caucus and staff, philosophically inconsistent policy, low morale, and perhaps most importantly, a lack of enthusiasm and tepid endorsement from our membership, your leadership has ceased to serve that purpose.”
Rustad, in his usual myopic way, said that he will not resign, that it was an “internal matter within the party.” Yes, and –? This all comes after yet another BC Conservative caucus member quit. The latest, Penticton-Summerland MLA Amelia Boultbee, stepped down saying: “He has invited me to ‘get the F out’ if I don’t like it and I’ve taken him up on that offer.”
With laser-focused ignorance, Rustad responded, “I can tell you very clearly as the Conservative Party of British Columbia and me as leader, we have one direction and one direction only, which is to bring down this NDP government.” Unbelievably, Rustad said he believed Boultbee had found her role as critic for the Ministry of Children and Family Development stressful and that she had recently broken down in tears in his office. A month ago, Mr. Paranoid ordered his MLAs’ phones searched to determine who was leaking information to the media.
Vancouver-Quilchena MLA Dallas Brodie was kicked out of the caucus in March after making comments mocking residential school survivors. Peace River North MLA Jordan Kealy and Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream MLA Tara Armstrong resigned shortly after in solidarity. Elenore Sturko, MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, now an Independent, was drop-kicked in September “for not being a team player.”
Les Leyne wrote, “It would take a miracle to arrest the momentum. Rustad staying on as leader would create new levels of weirdness in a party that has had more than its share. But the party has set records for strange behaviour every other week for the last year, so nothing can be ruled out.”
One-direction Rustad fired his communications officer, Lindsay Shepherd, at the beginning of October after she posted: “The Orange Shirt and the Orange Flag perpetuate untruths about Canadian history, such as the grandest lie of all that 215 children’s graves were unearthed in Kamloops. It is a disgrace that this fake flag flies in front of the provincial parliament buildings, and it is a disgrace to see the shirt of lies framed prominently and permanently beside the coat of arms so that locals and tourists cannot view our insignia without having their eye drawn and redirected to the Orange shirt.”
And now we have the One BC, started by disgraced MLA Dallas Brodie along with MLAs Armstrong and Kealy who accused Rustad of diluting Conservative values. Since then, the dynamic trio have pushed for such legislation as repealing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and ending sexual orientation and gender identity policies in schools.
One BC’s Brodie, with bald-headed bravado, just proposed a bill to prevent publicly funded employees from making Indigenous land acknowledgements. “Land acknowledgements are the anthem of a suicidal nation,” she said. “They’re recited in classrooms, boardrooms, and before virtually every public event. They’re repeated ritualistically to instill the belief that our country is illegitimate, that Canada has no right to exist, that our ancestors are evil, and that our history must be abrogated.” Brodie added, the acknowledgements are a “grooming exercise to encourage British Columbians to acquiesce into the surrender of their own land and accept that they do not have power over their own resources in this province.”
The bill was defeated on a vote of 85 to five failing to pass first reading. Sources say it’s unusual for a private members’ bill to fail on first reading, but not surprising, considering this is the second One BC bill to be voted down so far this session. The first was a bill to stop doctors from providing puberty blockers to minors.
If that’s not enough, Brodie is promoting a documentary called “Making a Killing: Reconciliation, Genocide, and the Plunder of Canada” which criticizes “the reconciling industry as a lucrative guilt campaign that has funnelled billions of tax dollars, often under false pretenses.” Former BC Green MLA Adam Olsen, reacted to the ongoing ignorance: “I feel for all our relatives who have to confront these kind of messages and have their entire history questioned in such a mean-spirited way.”
One thing is sure, Brodie and her party will be constantly haunting Rustad on who wears the rightful right-wing crown. The other party, Centre BC, created by former MLA Karin Kirkpatrick, are offering a “more pragmatic, moderate” option to the shape-shifting NDP. Eby, known for his ruthlessness is floundering. He has no climate policy. He’s not interested in conserving old growth forest. He’s fast-forwarding mining applications with no environmental foresight. Even the $12 billion budget is over the top. The NDP have failed in so many areas, from housing affordability to the opioid crisis, one has to question why they even exist.
José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, the Portuguese novelist and diplomat, wrote presciently in the 1880s: “Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason.”
What’s going on in this world – both locally and beyond – is without question scary. It shows that there is true evil and that there is real horror and most of it’s happening in the murky world of politics. Be very afraid.
Glass Houses at Comox
Gabriel Jeroschewitz, October 20th, 1981, to October 6th, 2025. Abridged, I started this story in 1981; I’ve only been able to finish it now. It’s a valid account of my various stays in the Comox Psych Ward. I’m putting this in because May is Mental Health Month, but I think every month is Mental Health Month!
Glass Houses at Comox
They say the walls are white. They are not white to me. They are the colour of unwritten apologies—pale, trembling, and always about to confess something. I lie still on my bed, counting breaths like coins, waiting for the night shift to arrive with its tray of pills and hollow smiles. The pills are supposed to make the ghosts quieter. No one warns you that they also make the ghosts better dancers.
I’m Gabriel—or at least that’s what they call the version of me that signs the daily wellness sheet. The other Gabriels, the translucent ones, have stopped signing anything. They linger, waltzing through the fluorescent light like cigarette smoke from an unseen mouth.
The Comox Psych Ward is, officially, a “healing environment.” The brochure says so, complete with a watercolour of a mountain reflected on a lake: serenity printed in four-colour process. But the lake I see isn’t serene—it’s viscous, like mercury stirred by invisible fingers. Every ripple carries whispers. They tell me jokes that should be funny—about the staff, about the smell of disinfectant—but the punchlines always end with blood.
Despite the challenges, I find a way to laugh. My survival strategy in this place is to laugh before the ghosts do.
They crash through my windows nightly. Not genuine windows, of course—plastic panes thick enough to stop a desperate man, but apparently not dense enough to stop whatever lives between waking and sedation. They burst through like disappointed relatives at an intervention, each dragging a different fragrance: paint thinner, sugar, regret.
They have no forms, only intentions. They push limits like a painter might push colour past the lines—smudging balanced psyches, leaving fingerprints across the mind. One of them, a tall blur wrapped in static, calls himself Dr. Hue. He tells me he used to cure civilizations before they learned to medicate themselves. Now he paints hallucinations on my eyelids when I blink. “You’re better this way,” he says, “flat, like a cartoon protagonist who never ages.”
Dr. Hue likes to quiz me. “What colour is pain today?” he asks.
When Dr. Hue quizzes me, I respond with my own unique perspective. “The colour of pain today is burnt laughter,” I say, knowing that ‘ gray ‘ will not satisfy him.
The nurses are kind in the way that frightened people are kind—careful, brisk, eyes never lingering. They talk to us as if we are made of glass. Maybe we are. When I inhale too deeply, I can feel the hairline fractures spiderwebbing under my skin. I tell Nurse Shelly this once. She smiles, writes something on her clipboard, and says, “That’s progress.”
She doesn’t see the ghosts behind her—those insecure beasts gyrating on spiral gradients, twisting themselves into mathematical impossibilities. They look like funhouse reflections of humanity, each trying to perfect the art of being incomplete. They whisper into my ears about the fragile balance between comedy and collapse.
One of them, a thin creature with a voice like a child imitating an adult, asks me to tell a joke. I oblige.
“What’s the difference between a patient and a prophet?”
Pause.
“One of them gets his messages from God. The other one has better medication.”
The ghost laughs until the walls flicker.
Despite the challenges, I find moments of hope. The ghost’s laughter makes the walls flicker, which I interpret as a positive sign.
But the nights… the nights stretch like rubber over broken teeth. My child comes then—the tiny, sleeping version of me. He curls up in the chair by the bed, clutching a stuffed animal made entirely of words. Each word is sharp-edged: failure, fatherless, fraud. The toy bleeds punctuation. I want to pick him up, to promise that it gets better, that one day he will learn to smile without supervision. But I can’t touch him. He’s made of memory, and memory is brittle here.
Once, he looked at me and asked, “Why did you stop dreaming?”
I didn’t dare to answer. I just stared at his closed eyes, wondering what sort of world he saw from behind his eyelids—was it calmer, or did he also have ghosts practicing arson on his thoughts?
He sleeps gently, unaware of the tyrants who play dice with time outside our room.
There’s a rumour among patients: the Comox ward is built on a fracture worldwide. It was not a physical crack but something more profound, like reality snagging its sleeve on a nail and doesn’t know how to sew it back. That’s why the shadows move differently here, why clocks occasionally run backward, and why laughter sounds like a scream half the time.
I told Dr. Craig about it. He said, “You’re experiencing intrusive ideation. Not uncommon.”
I said, “You’re experiencing a lack of imagination. Also not uncommon.”
He didn’t appreciate that. The next morning, my medication dosage doubled.
Now the walls hum.
The humour keeps me sane, I think. I treat every ghost like a heckler and every panic attack like an improv cue. I’ve learned to riff with my hallucinations.
“Welcome to the show,” I tell the phantoms as they gather each evening. “Two-drink minimum, no refunds, tip your invisible bartender.”
They applaud with hands made of cold air and shattered glass. I bow. I feel alive. Then one of them—a featureless mass with a grin too bright for the dark—steps forward holding a meat cleaver carved from light. “We love your material,” it says, “but the ending needs more… disembowelment.”
I tell it that’s a bit on-the-nose. It laughs, swings the cleaver gently through my chest. It doesn’t hurt exactly—it just rearranges my memories into a collage. For a moment, I’m not Gabriel, patient 217 in Comox. I’m my primordial forefather, painting mammoths on cave walls. I’m an ape discovering reflection in a puddle. I’m a child again, choking on my first spoken lie.
Then I’m back, sweating, clutching my blanket, tasting salt and electricity.
Morning comes like a bureaucratic apology—late, pale, unconvincing. I’m served oatmeal and orange juice. The ghosts retreat into light fixtures, sulking. I check on the sleeping child; he’s still in the chair, still clutching his lexicon of fears. I envy how peaceful he looks. I envy his ignorance.
The staff does its rounds. Blood pressure, temperature, dose. The rituals of care. I nod, answer mechanically. They think I’m improving. I can see it in their eyes: hope, or at least its cheaper cousin, relief.
But even as I smile, I feel the slight shiver beneath the floor, the coming crack in the day. The phantoms are regrouping. They’ll be back tonight, hungrier. They always are.
I ask Nurse Shelly for a crayon and a piece of paper. “To draw,” I tell her. She hesitates, then grants the request. I sketch a window on the paper—just a plain rectangle, open to an imagined sky. Then I draw eyes—my own, hers, the child’s, the ghosts’—all around it. Watching. Waiting.
When I’m done, I tape it above my bed. It feels like a promise to myself: Show your eyes. Meet me face to face.
Because even if I am no hero for heartache, even if my psyche is thinner than glass, I want to see them—every monstrous thought, every spectral lie—before they start the next performance.
And maybe, just maybe, I’ll laugh first again.
The Islands Grapevine KNOWS YOU: The Advice Column That Answers Before You Ask
The Islands Grapevine KNOWS YOU
The Advice Column That Answers Before You Ask
by Cylon2036, Cyborg Editor we/us
(Fused to the underbelly of time. Pseudopod-certified.)︎
Q: Dear Grapevine,
How did you know I was going to write in about the Denman roadside eggs?
A: Because the eggs know you too.
They’ve been whispering your name since the equinox. They’re not chicken eggs—they’re memories of your past mistakes, calcified into ovals and sold by someone named “Sharon” (she is not Sharon).
Do not eat them. Hatch them into regrets. Name one “Steve.” Let him go.︎
Q: Dear Grapevine,
I haven’t asked anything yet, but I feel like I should. Should I?
A: You just did.
Classic paradox. You’ve already asked. We’ve already answered. The question you would have asked (“Am I the last person on Denman who doesn’t own a kombucha scoby named Greg?”) is too sacred for publication.
But yes. You are.
And no, you are not ready.︎
Q: Dear Grapevine,
How do I unsubscribe from reality?
A: By performing the sacred Unsub-dance.
Spin counterclockwise while shouting your childhood phone number into a hollow stump. A goat will appear. Do not acknowledge the goat. The goat knows what you did at the Blackberry Fair (the zucchini race incident).
When the moss begins to speak, answer only in riddles. Congratulations: you now exist in an article in The Islands Grapevine which will never be printed.
Also: you never existed. Thank you for reading.
Cylon2036 we/us
A Few Anecdotes About Garbage
A FEW ANECDOTES ABOUT GARBAGE
By Rosa Telegus
Lunch was a catered buffet served in the boardroom of the Comox Valley Regional District office in Courtenay. This was the time Lindsay chose to dump three large black plastic bags of garbage on the floor in front of us – us being the Regional Solid Waste Advisory Committee. Lindsay is not a homeless gal. She is a CVRD outreach person and was with stunning flair making a point. She spent the next ten minutes while we chomped through roast potatoes and chicken and a Greek salad sorting the garbage that she and her crew had collected around Courtenay. The bags contained mostly recyclables and compost, and not much actual garbage that should be buried in a landfill.
Smell? It’s those organics, coffee grounds, vegetable peelings, and trashed desserts that smell, the methane generators. Or, let’s call them the climate changers. However, luckily there were no disposable diapers in those bags that Lindsay brought in. If there had been, the room would have emptied.
Back on Denman – a dutiful unknown Denmanite, or perhaps it was a visitor not knowing where to take it, recently dropped off a bag of garbage at the Recycling Centre – after hours. Garbage, not recycling, containing a used disposable diaper. Horrible for our Recycling Centre workers. But: diapers – a favourite food of bears! Bear candy! I have seen bits of diapers, cleaned of their contents, hanging off trees around dumps. Us Ministry of Environment inspectors could recognize the smell for miles away.
“Bear,” we’d say as we drove in.
Watching Lindsay go through those bags of garbage reminded me of my days at MOE in Kamloops where, in addition to bears, illegal garbage dumping was a problem. We would go through bags of garbage looking for what? Not recyclables but envelopes or bills with names and addresses and phone numbers. Amazingly, this always worked to lead us to who dumped the garbage.
And now to Comox: I have a ninety-nine year old friend, Ann, who continues to compost.
“Every morning I eat an orange,” she told me. “Then I snip up the peel and put it around my peach tree.” Her lovely peach tree is abundant with ripe fuzzy peaches in late summer. “Enough to fill my freezer and last the whole year,” Ann continues. “Perhaps the oil from the orange peel does the trick?” I reply.
I prefer to dwell on the glee I see on Ann’s face as she shows me the earth around her peach tree, bright orange with snipped peel.
“Yes, I get it,” I say, meaning her attitude, I guess, and her care and thought about where her orange peels go. This could be the secret to a long life!
Denman Island Bulletin Board Declares Itself “Beacon of Kindness,” Immediately Erupts Into Civil War Over Lost Cat Post
Denman Island Bulletin Board Declares Itself “Beacon of Kindness,” Immediately Erupts Into Civil War Over Lost Cat Post
By Staff Satirist, The Islands Grapevine
DENMAN ISLAND, BC — The Denman Island Bulletin Board Facebook page, long touted as the “heart of the community” and “a safe space for respectful discussion,” has once again demonstrated its unique talent for transforming mild inconvenience into full-blown moral warfare.
The group, which claims to “foster connection and share helpful local information,” was thrown into chaos Tuesday after a resident posted a photo of a cat “possibly lost or just really chill.” Within 14 minutes, the post had devolved into a 168-comment thread featuring accusations of “toxicity,” “censorship,” and at least three separate references to the Magna Carta.
“This group is about compassion and respect,” declared one admin in a post pinned above a 400-comment thread titled ‘Who Keeps Taking the Recycling Bins?’ “We welcome all voices — except the rude, the negative, and anyone who disagrees with me in even a nuanced way.”
Longtime residents say the page has become a vital community resource for finding plumbers, reporting ferry delays, and settling centuries-old philosophical questions through personal attacks.
“It’s incredible,” said local potter Fiona Drift, who was banned for asking where to buy tofu. “One minute you’re just trying to share that the Co-op has oat milk again, and the next, someone’s accusing you of corporate fascism.”
Observers note that the Bulletin Board’s moral compass swings wildly depending on who’s holding it. Self-described “gentle souls” have been seen publicly shaming neighbors for tone, font choice, and “energetic aggression,” while others rally around slogans like ‘Community, Compassion, and Consequences.’
One moderator, speaking under the pseudonym PeacefulDolphin49, defended the group’s approach. “We don’t silence anyone,” she said. “We simply remove comments that make people uncomfortable, question authority, or use the word ‘however.’ That’s not censorship — that’s curating good vibes.”
A recent poll of islanders revealed that 92% read the Bulletin Board “religiously,” while 87% claim they “hate it but can’t look away.” Anthropologists have proposed the page be preserved as a digital heritage site documenting “peak small-town drama.”
Despite frequent declarations of “no more negativity,” the group shows no sign of slowing its descent into self-parody. Sources report that a new rule banning “passive-aggressive language” has already sparked heated debate over whether the phrase “Have a lovely day” qualifies as an attack.
In a recent update, moderators invited members to join a new spinoff page, Denman Island Bulletin Board: The Kindness Reboot, described as “a drama-free zone for community harmony.” Within hours, the group had splintered into three factions: True Kindness, Kindness Uncensored, and The Real Bulletin Board, You Sheep.
As one commenter succinctly put it: “This island doesn’t need a community page. It needs a group hug and maybe a mute button.”
Letter to the Editor – Melanie Ridgeback
(Satire/Fiction)
Dear Editor,
We demand changes to the Grapevine’s editorial policies. If you don’t follow our guiding principles (below), we’ll continue our advertising boycott that withholds all publicly tax funded local advertising from The Islands Grapevine..
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
1.As neuro-curious allies,The Islands Grapevine acknowledges our privilege before speaking in this safe, consent-based conversational space.
2.The Grapevine only sees sentient beings on diverse evolutionary timelines.
3.The Grapevine will assure our community newspaper is inclusive for all energy forms, including those who identify as ambient light.
4.The Grapevine will now refer to Halloween as ‘Intercultural Awareness and Post-Colonial Reflection Day.”
5.The Grapevine will no longer use big words — it’s a micro-aggression against pre-verbal consciousness.
The Grapevine will also adjust its language as a result of our newfound training in nonviolent communication.
(eg. the tree didn’t fall — it self-lowered in resistance to the anthropocentric forestry-industrial complex.)
The Grapevine acknowledges that the bullying behaviour of a few hostile and privileged neighbours is as a result of them navigating late-stage capitalism.
Instead of being cancelled, The Grapevine will now describe it as a “community-driven accountability redistribution.”
Sincerely, and with extreme prejudice,
Melanie Ridgeback
You Believe The Mainstream Narrative? Of Course You Do, You’re Twelve
You Believe The Mainstream Narrative? Of Course You Do, You’re Twelve
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
The ultimate expression of “everyone is twelve now” theory is in the mainstream worldview promoted by western pundits and politicians which holds that the world is full of evil villains doing evil things simply because they are evil, and that these Bad Guys are opposed by the virtuous Good Guys of the US-led world order.
You think Hamas killed Israelis because they’re a bunch of monsters who hate Jews? Of course you do, you’re twelve.
You think Trump is trying to get rid of Maduro because Maduro is an evil dictator who wants to poison Americans with fentanyl? Hell yeah homie, you’re twelve.
You think Putin invaded Ukraine because he hates freedom and democracy and wants to conquer the world? Bless your heart my twelve year-old buddy.
You think the US and Israel have been attacking and eliminating rivals in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Palestine in order to fight terrorism, stop tyranny, and protect the world from nuclear weapons? Yeah, that checks out, you’re twelve.
The mainstream western worldview is like a children’s cartoon, with the Bad Guys doing Bad Things simply because they are Bad, and the Good Guys striving heroically to stop them. It sounds like a shitty PG-13 summer blockbuster starring The Rock, but it’s the consensus worldview of serious professional pundits and analysts who share this perspective on mainstream platforms with serious expressions on their faces, and anyone who calls any part of it into question is dismissed as an extremist or a deranged crackpot.
Because everyone is twelve now.
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I said the above on Twitter and I got a reply from a guy saying “Western countries like Denmark, Holland and the UK, US and Israel too are objectively nicer and happier places than the third world ones you mentioned. You can see by walking around, looking at people and things. So we’re doing something right that they’re doing wrong.”
It always fascinates me when people think this is some kind of checkmate argument. Yes obviously it’s nicer to be in the countries doing the bombing, sanctioning, extracting and stealing than the countries being bombed, sanctioned, exploited and robbed. It’s nicer to be a mugger than the person being mugged, too. It’s always more pleasant to be the hammer than the nail.
It’s such a self-evidently stupid argument, but you see it all the time. Whenever I talk about the abusiveness of the western empire I always get empire simps in my replies all “hoho, but have you considered that it is nicer to live here than to live there?” Of course it is, dickflop. It’s always going to be easier being the abuser than the abused.
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Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir reportedly advocated shooting children who get too close to the “Yellow Line” dividing Israel-controlled parts of Gaza from the parts under Hamas control. After a while you start understanding why so many people refer to the Israeli regime as “demonic” and “satanic” even if you’re not religious. At a certain point you just run out of strong enough adjectives.
It’s so weird how the western political/media class regards Ben-Gvir as a fringe kook whose comments should be ignored despite the fact that he (A) is Israel’s national security minister and (B) consistently ends up getting what he wants.
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Zohran Mamdani is outside my area of political interest and it’s none of my business who New Yorkers elect as their mayor, but the Islamophobic shrieking I’ve been seeing online in response to his campaign has been absolutely jaw-dropping. No one with mainstream political or media aspirations could ever get away with talking about the religion of a Jewish politician the way Zionists have been openly talking about Mamdani and his faith.
From what I can tell Mamdani is a just a regular guy and a fairly ordinary progressive Democrat with an extraordinarily high level of campaign talent, but these freaks are claiming he’s going to impose sharia law and start throwing gays off the Chrysler Building. It’s a degree of mass hysteria about Islam unlike anything I’ve seen since the immediate aftermath of 9/11, which any normal person will agree led to some extremely bad thinking and terrible decisions.
Some of it is arising from organic American racism and the knee-jerk rightist impulse to throw anyone to the left of Bill Clinton out of a flying helicopter, but a lot of it has nothing to do with Mamdani at all. As we’ve discussed previously, Zionists have been seizing on every opportunity to promote hatred of Muslims because it’s a lot easier than convincing people to like Israel.
To be clear, I am not speculating when I say this. Drop Site News published a reportlast month based on leaked documents which showed that the Israeli government had commissioned an American polling company to help it with the PR crisis caused by its genocidal atrocities, and the report found that the most effective strategy would be to foment fear of “Radical Islam” and “Jihadism”.
So this agenda is already in the waters of Zionist consciousness. The election of a Muslim to the most high-profile mayoral position in the United States provides Israel supporters with ample opportunity to stir up panic about Muslims in America on the assumption that Israel will benefit from such sentiments, since Israel is always killing Muslims. There is no argument to be made that Israel is a good nation that is inherently deserving of support, so they’re banking on circulating the belief that it’s good to drop bombs on Muslims instead.
Western politics is getting more and more diseased, and US politics is leading the way. It’s making people dumber, crazier, and more hateful, and is preventing them from seeing that the real minority that’s been causing everyone’s problems are the rich and powerful oligarchs and empire managers who rule the western power alliance. Keep ordinary members of the public hating each other and fighting each other, and they won’t start hating and fighting their actual oppressors.
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