Liberals Believe In Nothing And Remember Even Less

April 3, 2025

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

MAR 31, 2025

The other day I shared a short post about a video that was going around showing a father in Gaza tearfully cradling the head of his son who was decapitated in an Israeli airstrike, and some guy responded with the comment “Good thing you helped get TRUMP ELECTED!!”

And I must admit I was actually, truly shocked. I mean, what exactly did this fellow think was happening under Biden that whole time?

I saw a post on Twitter where a leftist responded to a liberal who was acting like ICE just suddenly transformed into a modern gestapo under Trump, saying, “Liberals believe in nothing and remember even less.”

And it’s just so true. They don’t believe in anything. They don’t stand for anything. It’s just a team sport for these people. Politics for the mainstream liberal is not about advancing values or building a better world, it’s about their team winning solely for the sake of winning. And because they have no real values or causes beyond winning for its own sake, what their team does when it’s in office doesn’t matter to them.

A Democrat president can be as tyrannical and murderous as he wants and liberals will just brunch away in cheerful obliviousness, content with their knowledge that their team is holding the trophy.

https://x.com/Anansis_Library/status/1905690925411828161

You see this in the way our friend believes that I “helped get Trump elected” by criticizing the people who were perpetrating an active genocide. He just automatically took it as a given that it was my responsibility to stay silent on Gaza because the person in charge was a Democrat and his veep was running for president. The fact that it was a genocide which needed to be ferociously opposed never entered into the equation for him. All he cared about was winning.

All of the most shocking and gruesome things I have ever seen online were recorded in Gaza during the Biden administration. Nobody who’d paid the slightest bit of attention to Israel’s US-backed atrocities in 2023 and 2024 would believe this was anything new that just started under Trump. But because Gaza is just seen as a political plaything by these freaks, they only care about it now that Trump is in office — and only insofar as it can be used to take points away from the Republicans.

And that’s exactly why they lost. The Democrats calculated that the Harris campaign could simply ignore Gaza without putting any daylight between Kamala’s policies and Genocide Joe’s and still win the election, and they were wrong. Polls show that among people who voted for Biden in 2020 but not for Harris in 2024, Gaza was by far their biggest reason for not doing so. The Democrats believed in nothing and stood for nothing, and nothing is what they got.

Mainstream “centrism” is just as toxic, murderous and tyrannical as Trumpism. These people will watch entire populations being mowed down by the hundreds of thousands via the policies of the people they voted for, and as long as it doesn’t interrupt brunch they’ll keep sipping their mimosas and laughing and tweeting and feeling smugly correct, and then go to bed and sleep like babies in an ocean of human blood.

___________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go hereto buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Feature image by Becker1999 (CC BY 2.0)

Letter to the Editor – Howard Stewart

April 3, 2025

Dear Grapevine

Re: “Canada is at a Juncture”

Well, hats off. The anonymous letter to the editor in last week’s GV reminds us of all we’ve come to expect and value from your paper. Full of unique insights, startling revelations, and brave stands that we might otherwise only get through social media. The real truth that one never sees in the legacy media. I was a bit disappointed though, that we didn’t see something about the globalists’ ongoing campaign to have us spend our lives inside, eating insects, in the name of their bogus climate crisis. Part of their taking control over us of course. Carney has almost certainly played a role in this too, Might we see more on this next week?

Thanks again, Howard Stewart.

Ps: You can withhold my name if that’s become the new policy for letters to the editor.

Editor’s note –

Thanks to Howard Stewart for being an ever vigilant proofreader and “communitarian” for pointing out my error and omission of attribution of the Letter to the Editor in last week’s issue, Mar.27th/#1677.

Its author is Helen Grond of Hornby Island.

Proper attribution WAS given to the letter on our website theislandsgrapevine.com at last week’s press time.

The omission was purely a mistake at the layout part of the printing process. This can happen to any publication that prints thousands of words, 50 weeks of the year. And as with any publication the chance of ‘correcting the record’ presents itself in a subsequent issue where apologies can be extended to readers and contributor alike. In this instance to Helen Grond and to TIG readers, not the least of whom Howard Stewart, who’s standards serve as measure of how woefully short the paper falls…. every week.

Nonetheless, TIG muddles along priding itself on being committed to Diversity, Equity, and the Inclusion of the wide spectrum of views that exist beyond Howard’s furrowed brow. As stated in every issue, views expressed in the paper aren’t necessarily held by its Publisher. As our unofficial proofreader Howard can attest that letters in the Grapevine have reflected leftist, centrist and conservative views.

I’d like to reassure our readers that they needn’t worry about TIG’s commitment to supporting the lawful right of free expression. Howard’s opposition to someone expressing their endorsement of a political party he disagrees with disqualifies him as a candidate for promotion to a role of editorial influence at the paper. His skills of keen focus and narrow perspective long ago identified as being best suited to proofreading.

And as for myself, TIG readers will continue to enjoy my commitment to the goal of getting it righ…correct, each and every week. With accountability in the times when I don’t.

Happy Spring everyone!

Mike Van Santvoord

Tree Island from Union Bay

April 3, 2025

https://printartphotography.ca

Negative Rooster

April 3, 2025

#1678

April 3, 2025

The Hypocrisy of Permitting in BC: Small Sheds vs. Shipbreaking Facilities

March 27, 2025

Here in British Columbia, a homeowner needs to obtain a permit to build something as small as a 10×10 foot shed. Yet, shipbreaking and vessel retrofit facilities—massive industrial operations that can release toxic chemicals, manage hazardous waste, and pose significant environmental and health risks—are allowed to operate without proper permits.

How is this possible?

No Permits, No Oversight

Shipbreaking and vessel retrofitting activities are happening without required permits, plans, or any oversight. These facilities—located next to residential areas—can release hazardous substances like lead, asbestos, and toxic antifouling paints into the environment, yet no government agency is stepping in to ensure safe handling or containment of hazardous waste.

What’s at Stake?

No Hazardous Waste Containment: These operations fail to have proper systems in place to contain dangerous waste materials, such as asbestos or lead-based paints.

No Approved Plans: There are no approved plans for the types or sizes of vessels allowed for retrofitting or shipbreaking. This means facilities can take on any vessel, regardless of its size or potential impact.

No Facility Size Limits: There are no regulations governing how big these facilities can become, potentially allowing them to expand in size without oversight.

No Inspections: Despite the obvious risks, there are no inspections for these operations, even though building a shed requires multiple inspections. How can we ensure these operations are safe without any monitoring?

No Plans for Hazardous Material Disposal: There are no approved plans for where hazardous materials go once they’re removed. Without proper disposal, these materials can contaminate our land, water, and air.

No Regulatory Accountability: Without a proper permitting process, how does the government even know these facilities exist? There is no accountability, leaving the door open for dangerous practices to continue unchecked.

Why Does a Shed Require More Scrutiny?

It’s clear that the standards for regulating industrial operations are being bypassed, while smaller, less impactful projects face strict requirements. It’s a double standard that puts people and the environment at risk.

We need change. These operations should be required to follow the same rigorous permitting, oversight, and environmental protection protocols as any other industrial facility. The question is: Why isn’t the government holding these businesses accountable?

Let’s demand that BC’s regulations ensure public health and safety by requiring proper permits, hazardous waste containment, and environmental safeguards for shipbreaking and retrofit operations!

Stories of Resistance, Review

March 27, 2025

Another packed Activity Centre Lounge event was held Monday, March 24. Stories Of Resistance, Tal Mitnick and Einat Gerlitz, 2 Israeli conscientious objectors to Israeli military service and to the settler colonial ethnic cleansing project in Gaza and the West Bank, came to Denman Island at the midday to speak about their path to resisting the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. Thanks to Fireweed and Melanie Murray and the other organizers for their sponsorship.

The Israeli visitors spoke of their personal stories, and how they broke from the brainwashing and propaganda of Israeli children’s education to find both compassion and friendship with their Palestinian neighbours. They spoke of hearing the sound of bombing raids in Gaza, and of seeing the small body bags containing Palestinian children, tens of thousands of which have been killed in the continuing slaughter of civilians, including journalists, doctors, nurses, and aid workers.

They also spoke of the complicity of our own Western governments, including Canada, in arming and funding these war crimes, and of how the relationship between Israel’s international influence is a reciprocal extension of Western Imperialism in the MiddleEast. Both Mitnick and Gerlitz served months in prison for resisting military service, and were later released as conscientious objectors.

Following the telling of their stories, there was a very useful question and answer session, and they received a standing ovation at the end. They had reminded us that they considered themselves privileged Israelis, with the ability to speak openly, if even under tremendous criticism and outing of their personal information, opening them to death threats by their fellow citizens. They considered these personal injuries as badges of honour.

They assured us that when they return to their home, they expect to easily move through their border customs and return to their working lives, and their continued efforts to make the necessary changes to their communities in resistance to Israeli Apartheid. They pointed out that their Arab/Palestinian neighbours enjoyed few of these same freedoms to speak out or activate publicly, for fear of the repercussions that would be brought upon them.

If this issue is important to you, or if you are looking to find kindred spirits with local activists, there is a FREE PALESTINE/DECOLONIZE B.C.! Benefit Concert on April 26 at the Back Hall at 7:00pm. This event is hosted by Denman4Palestine and the Slai-Dai-Aich Rest and Recovery Network, featuring international folk singer David Rovics, currently on his Make Planet Earth Great Again World Tour.

Shucking Oysters: Electric Shock Therapy

March 27, 2025

So, what’s your ride? Something electric perhaps? Maybe a Tesla? It’s not a fun time to be owning a Musketeer vehicle right now. Who would have known that instead of driving your EV vehicle with sustainable pride, you would suddenly find yourself a moving target. Tesla drivers are now shamed and yelled at where ever they go. Could it be to do with Musk’s controversial antics, his connection to Mr. Trumpet, along with his new role as the US bureaucracy slasher? What is clear cut, is that the man of innovation has shown his true Cyber colours: as an entitled, chainsaw massacring idiot.

In a random bathroom many moons ago, I remember reading on the wall, “If you’re going to keep shitting on the world, the world will reply energetically.” While Elon Musk is certainly not in any danger of struggling to make ends meet, his astronomical wealth has taken a huge hit. Since the beginning of this year, he has lost $126 billion off his own personal wealth which is nothing to sneeze at. What his handlers seem to forget, is that Tesla is synonymous with Musk and Musk is synonymous with Tesla. And now Teslas have become a symbol of Trump and his brainchild, the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. The optics didn’t help a few weeks ago, seeing Lord Rump sitting in the driver’s seat of a red Tesla with Musk riding shotgun, gushing, “I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American.”

But it’s not all bad news, he’s still the richest person in the world, with a total baffling net worth of $307 billion, followed by mild-mannered Jeff Bezos who has a net worth of $218 billion. Despite the stock price drop, Tesla’s market value is currently over $700 billion US, which still makes it the world’s most valuable automaker. Even the Tesla Model Y was the top-selling vehicle last year.

Bob Porter, president of the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association said he wants people to know that getting behind the wheel of a Tesla isn’t a political statement for most drivers. “You are conscious that you’re driving a Tesla and people see you, and you do worry about, will there be any repercussions?” “Emotions are running high so, of course, people are looking at Tesla owners like we are all part of his club, and it’s not true,” he said. To bring some humour into this otherwise depressing time, a bumper sticker on the back of Porter’s Tesla reads, “I bought this before Elon went crazy.”

One dealership in Vancouver was recently vandalized with an obscene remark about Musk spray-painted on the wall. In Ontario, 80 Tesla vehicles parked outdoors were damaged and a Tesla was put on fire at a local parking lot. In Montreal, two people were caught spray painting the outside of a Tesla dealership. Even the Vancouver International Auto Show had to remove Teslas from its event citing safety concerns.

Similar incidents have happened down south. Trump accused “radical Left lunatics” of boycotting Tesla and said that people vandalizing its sites would be regarded as “domestic terrorists.” Attorney General Pam Bondi announced charges against three “violent Tesla arsonists.” Bondi said in a statement: “Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars.”

In true American fashion: One person was accused of being armed with a suppressed AR-15 rifle and throwing eight Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership in Oregon. In South Carolina, someone wrote “profane messages against President Trump” on some Tesla charging stations before using Molotov cocktails to burn the units. In Colorado, a person was arrested and accused of trying to light Tesla vehicles on fire with Molotov cocktails. In Las Vegas, a person armed with a gun fired three rounds into different Tesla vehicles and used Molotov cocktails to set some on fire. And in New York, a Cybertruck was defaced with a swastika.

The UK-based group Everyone Hates Elon has been branding hundreds of Tesla vehicles in London with stickers saying “don’t buy swasticars.” Two left-wing activist groups, Led By Donkeys from Britain and Germany’s Center for Political Beauty, recently claimed responsibility for beaming an image of Elon Musk making his “inauguration salute” onto Tesla’s gigafactory in Berlin, along with the words “Heil Tesla.”

With all this rage and anger, instead of pulling their cars off the road, many owners are pulling the Tesla logos off their cars and either replacing them with other auto names or leaving the make and model to our imagination. Disguising the sedans shouldn’t be too hard given that they look like every other new car on the road. However the Cybertank is another story altogether. These stainless steel wedgies are not trucks; they’re fashion statements.

And just when the orders started flying in, the side metal panels started flying off these supposedly indestructible trucks. It’s the latest in a series of setbacks for Tesla, which has grappled with numerous recall issues, including one involving “the possibility of unintended acceleration from a trapped pedal” as well as incorrectly installed trunk beds that could fall off.

We have two Cybertanks on our island. They scream look at me…. I’m driving “the Transformers version of an Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile!” It looks like a Hummer that took a bunch of steroids and had sex with a M1A2 Abrams tank. Or as one individual wrote,“it looks like a roller skate had sex with a creeper from Minecraft.” I guess that’s cool to some people. They’ll need it, when they take the heat…for the next four years.

If I Must Die

March 27, 2025

“If I must die you must live to tell my story

to sell my things

to buy a piece of cloth and some string,

(make it white with a long tail)

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in a blaze- and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh not even to himself-

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love

If I must die

Let it bring hope Let it be a tale”

Refaat Alareer, 27 November, 2011 (for his daughter, Shymaa)

On the morning of 7 December, 2023, poet and professor Refaat Alareer was killed by the Israeli military in Gaza. He had been targeted by the military, and was murdered along with several family members in the home he was taking refuge in. He was a writer, educator & activist. His PhD. dissertation was on the poetry of John Donne. He taught English Literature and composition at the Islamic University of Gaza (now destroyed).

His friend, writer Susan Abulhawa, recounts that Refaat chose English as his subject over Arabic because “he wanted to master the language of the empire that oppressed him…[believing] there was great value in speaking and writing to the people of empire to lay bare our humanity before them”. (Refaat Alareer, Forward by Susan Abulhawa, xiv.) Refaat taught and mentored many young Palestinian writers, editing 2 volumes of their work: Gaza Unsilenced and Gaza Writes back: Short Stories from young writers in Gaza, Palestine. His wonderful book: Refaat Alareer, If I must Die, Poetry & Prose, was published posthumously in 2024.

As he said in 2023: “In Gaza, people can be seven wars old”. Refaat was 44 years old, a husband and father of 6. His eldest daughter and first grandchild had been killed in an Israeli airstrike earlier in 2023. He volunteered at the Gaza Zoo.

“I’m an academic. Probably the toughest thing I have at home is an Expo marker. But if the Israelis invade, if the paratroopers charge at us, going from door to door, to massacre us, I am going to use that marker to throw it at the Israeli soldiers, even if that is the last thing that I do.” (2023) That same year, he wrote: “We didn’t fail. We didn’t submit to their barbarity.” May he rest in peace. And may we take forward his message to resist until there is freedom and dignity for all.

Refaat Alareer
Editor for book ‘Gaza Writes Back’

This Is Trump’s Genocide Now

March 27, 2025

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

MAR 18, 2025

This is Trump’s genocide. Trump is just as culpable for what happens in Gaza as Netanyahu. Just as guilty as Biden was during the last administration.

Trump signed off on the reignition of the Gaza holocaust. He spent weeks sabotaging the ceasefire and then gave the thumbs up to the resumption of the genocide. He did this while bombing Yemen and threatening war with Iran for Israel.

I don’t know why Trump has done these things. Maybe it’s all for the Adelson cash. Maybe Epstein recorded him doing something unsavory with a minor during their long association and gave it to Israeli intelligence for blackmail purposes. Maybe he owed somebody a favor for bailing him out of his business failures in the past. Maybe he’s just a psychopath who enjoys murdering children. I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he did it, and he is responsible for his actions.

Trump supporters will justify literally anything their president does using whatever excuses they need to, but they are only revealing how completely empty and unprincipled their political faction is. They are unthinking worshippers of power who go along with whatever the president tells them to. By continuing to support Trump even as he continues Biden’s legacy of mass murder in the middle east, they are proving themselves to be mindless stormtroopers for the empire in full view of the entire world.

You can still support Trump if you hate immigrants and LGBTQ people and want lower taxes for the obscenely wealthy, but there is no legitimate reason to support him on antiwar or anti-establishment grounds. He’s just another evil Republican mass murderer president.

❖

Republicans in 2002: We need more authoritarianism and more wars in the middle east. Anyone who disagrees is a terrorist supporter.

Republicans in 2025: We need more authoritarianism and more wars in the middle east. Anyone who disagrees is a terrorist supporter, and antisemite.

❖

By the way has anyone checked on the western Zionist Jews? How are their feelings feeling today? Are they feeling nice feelings or bad feelings? Are their feelings feeling safe or unsafe? We need wall to wall news coverage of this supremely urgent issue; no time to cover any other story.

❖

I write so much about the fake “antisemitism crisis” not only because it’s being used to destroy civil rights throughout the western world, but because it’s one of the most dark and disturbing things I’ve ever witnessed.

It’s been so intensely creepy watching all of western society mobilize around a complete and utter fiction in order to stomp out all criticism of a foreign state. It’s about as dystopian a thing as you can possibly imagine, all these pundits and politicians pretending to believe that Jewish safety is seriously being threatened by an epidemic of antisemitism which must be aggressively silenced by any means necessary. All to shut down opposition to the worst inclinations of a genocidal apartheid state and the complicity of our own western governments with its crimes.

And we’re all expected to treat this scam seriously. Anyone who says the emperor has no clothes and calls this mass deception what it is gets tarred with the “antisemite” label and treated as further evidence that we’re all a hair’s breadth from seeing Jews rounded up onto trains again if we don’t all hurry up and shut down anti-genocide protests on university campuses. They’re not just acting out a fraudulent melodrama staged to rob us of our rights, they’re demanding that we participate in it by pretending it’s not what it plainly is.

It’s not just tyranny, it’s tyranny that orders people to clap along with it. It’s such a disgusting, evil thing to do to people. Such psychologically dominating abusive behavior. The more you look at it, the creepier it gets.

❖

The anti-imperialist left is what MAGA and right wing “populism” pretend to be. We ACTUALLY oppose the empire’s warmongering — not only when Democrats are in power. We ACTUALLY want to defeat the deep state — we don’t applaud billionaire Pentagon contractors like Elon Musk taking power. We ACTUALLY oppose the establishment order — because the establishment order is capitalist. We ACTUALLY stand up to the powerful — we don’t offload half the blame onto immigrants and marginalized groups.

The anti-imperialist left is also what liberals pretend to be. We ACTUALLY support the working class. We ACTUALLY stand up for the little guy. We ACTUALLY want justice and equality. We ACTUALLY support civil rights. We ACTUALLY oppose tyranny.

Everything the human heart longs for lies in the death of capitalism, militarism and empire, and yet both of the dominant western political factions of our day support continuing all of these things. This is because westerners spend their entire lives marinating in power-serving propaganda which herds them into these two mainstream political factions to ensure that they will pose no meaningful challenges to our rulers. All political energy is funneled into movements and parties which are set up to maintain the status quo while pretending to support the people, with the illusion of political freedom sustained by a false two-party dichotomy in which both factions serve the same ruling power structure.

Of course, what mainstream liberalism and right wing “populism” have to offer that anti-imperialist socialism does not is the ability to win major elections with successful candidates. This is because generations of imperial psyops have gone into stomping out the anti-imperialist left in the western world, and because only candidates which uphold the status quo are ever allowed to get close to winning an election. This doesn’t mean mainstream liberalism or right wing “populism” are the answer, it just means our prison warden isn’t going to hand us the keys to the exit door.

At some point we’re going to have to rise up and use the power of our numbers to force the urgently needed changes we long to see in our world. Everything in our society is set up to prevent this from ever happening. That’s all the two mainstream political factions are designed to do. That’s why they both have phony “populist” elements within them which purport to be leading a brave revolutionary charge against the establishment, while herding everyone into support for the two status quo political parties. And that’s why the anti-imperialist left is everything they pretend to be.

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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go hereto buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.