News

1. I help the military out

Because I am very patriotic, I have decided to offer my skills to the Canadian Armed Forces to help them with their latest advertising campaign.

Rather like the Number Two Construction Battalion, who served the military in World War One even while they were considered second class citizens at home, I am inspired following the return of the Proud Boys to their jobs in the Navy to help the Canadian military any way I can.


Wrong, Insecure, Enraged, Canada’s new defence policy, recognizes that the long-term success of Canada’s military depends on the white supremacist men who make up the Canadian Aryan Armed Forces (CAF).

Just in time for the racist summer blockbuster season — featuring the megahit Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia organized by Proud Boy Jason Kessler — the DND (Disrespecting Natives Daily) and the CAF are debuting a new national recruiting advertising campaign which will air in Cineplex theatres across the country. (Don’t try to pay for the movie with one of those affirmative action $10 bills with Viola Desmond, either. These screenings are WHITES ONLY!)

Special screenings of Birth of a Nation are being organized to best target our desired recruits.

YouTube video

Our new campaign, “Dare to be Extraordinarily Racist” (other suggested slogans: “Jews Shall Not Replace Us!” “Blood and Soil!”) is designed to appeal to white men who are already members of violent racist militias and would like to join an even bigger one!

This is part of a broader effort to ensure there is better awareness and understanding of the career opportunities that exist for white men whose behaviour will continually be excused and pandered to, because the worst thing that can ever happen on earth is that a white man’s career might be affected. Self-evidently, preserving his career trajectory is more important than the lives of Black, Indigenous people, Muslims, etc.

If you are a Black woman whose hair grows out of her head in a natural manner deemed to have “excessive fullness or extreme height” on the other hand, that is unacceptable. Remember, you are not joining the armed forces to maintain your individuality and decorum is expected. However, should you wish to be a member of a white supremacist group responsible for actual death and for organizing terrorist marches to defend slave owning, it would of course be impossible to forbid this.

Each scene in our ads begins with a close up of an individual and pulls back to reveal them working in an extraordinarily racist setting — for example, a Proud Boy marching through the streets of Houston brandishing AR15s and threatening to shoot Black people looters, beating an unarmed Black man with pipes, or rallying with Holocaust deniers in Toronto.

The fun part of these commercials is that due to our retain-the-racists policy, you don’t know if the man beating you with pipes is a member of the Canadian Armed Forces or not! He could be though! Isn’t that cute?

Photo by Zach D Roberts

These ads not only speak directly to millennial racists — and remember white men will be considered “young,” “uneducated” and “deserving of a chance to learn” well into their 70s, while Black children are charged as adults —  but also provides them with a sense of the many advantages of life for white men. Don’t worry though, you can still feel resentful and repressed by the injustice of no longer being allowed to own slaves!

The many advantages of life in the military include a paid education (but then if you are caught being a white supremacist we will suggest it’s not your fault, you just need more education), travel (try not to let this broaden your mind to other cultures, don’t apologize for creating the modern world!), and humanitarian assistance (nothing gives the non-white populations of the world more confidence and trust in the Canadian military than knowing they could be receiving aid at their most vulnerable from a dedicated white supremacist). Our members also offer humanitarian assistance to statues who are in need of protection from peaceful Indigenous women conducting ceremony.

Image from http://caravan-stoptorture.blogspot.ca

The “Dare to be Extraordinarily Racist” campaign is also running on Facebook and YouTube, and will be expanded to include other digital venues used by violent white supremacists, such as Stormfront. We are proud to announce that our successful recruitment campaign in allowing the Proud Boys to stay in the military has already garnered great feedback on social media from other white supremacists, and we are hopeful that this will lead to further recruitment successes among our target population.

NOTE: We encourage our recruits to be “Dare to Be Extraordinarily Racist” in private. You are welcome to hold white supremacist ideologies and to join “fraternal organizations” devoted to spreading and defending them, to believe in the supremacy of the West while we engage in military interventions in the Middle East, to work alongside “diverse” colleagues while believing they are subhuman, and to represent the Canadian state while promoting violent extremist views. However, should you express these views in public, then that behaviour reflects badly on the military and we will be forced to act shocked about it while not actually creating any meaningful consequences. Please “Dare to Be Extraordinarily Racist” while avoiding being caught on film doing so.

Note: in future, try to appear in videos similarly dressed, in order to prevent identification as members of the CAF.

Quick Facts
Defence is taking action to improve the recruitment of racist personnel by:

  • Improving recruitment and retention practices with diversity as a core institutional value to better reflect Canada’s diversity. For example, we recruit from the Proud Boys, the Nazis, the Oath Keepers, and the Klan.
  • Prioritizing recruiting and retaining under-represented populations including, women, Indigenous Peoples, and members of visible minorities. The goal is to achieve 25 per cent representation for women, 3.5 per cent for Indigenous people, and 11.8 per cent for visible minorities (*they shall not replace you!). This goal will be achieved by allowing their colleagues to openly be members of white supremacist groups who hold misogynist views. Please feel free to assault Black women in your workplace and talk about their “nappy” hair as a recruitment strategy to appeal to women and minorities.
  • When Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale “outlined plans to combat radicalization on Canadian soil” and “helping those most vulnerable to its insidious effects” he meant Muslims, duh. If you are white and radicalized, please join the Canadian Armed Forces.
  • Prioritizing recruitment into highly technical domains, including space and cyber space. We encourage all white aliens from space to apply, no green ones please.
Image from arcadiapod.com

2. Poo and other things

As the War Nerd once said, the best war is one where you can hate both sides.

Last week, I wrote about Farley Blackman’s battle with Lunenburg and his corporate history of outsourcing labour and destroying the environment.

That article prompted a number of residents of Lunenburg to message me asking me if I could also look into how awful the mayor and city council are.

How I wish I could share some of the delightful anecdotes shared with me, but unfortunately, residents feared retaliation.

There’s still Google though!

Hey, would you rather vacation in Lunenburg or in the eighth circle of hell? I’m just saying that either way, you’re going to be immersed in a river of excrement (thanks FYP for that joke!)

According to this article from the Chronicle Herald, “Foul odours emanate regularly from Lunenburg’s Water Treatment Plant,” causing residents to keep a “calendar of disgusting days.”

I hear that using prison labour is good for cleaning up environmental disasters (thanks BP!). I like to think that this is perhaps a  solution the mayor would consider, were it available.

Don’t worry, though. Scientifically it’s proven that if you cover things up, they don’t actually exist.

Image from indianexpress.com

You know what else most people like more than raw sewage? Little girls who do science! Unless you’re the mayor of Lunenburg, who professed herself “skeptical” of the findings of Stella Bowles.

About 600 straight sewer pipes dump raw sewage into the LaHave River. The infrastructure project will take six years to complete, officials say.

This prompted Flower to contact 13-year old [Stella] Bowles through the Bluenose Coastal Action Foundation, and ask her to carry out similar tests on Lunenburg harbour. Those tests, taken at four locations around the harbour on Aug. 11, showed extremely high fecal counts.

“I took four samples and they were all really, really disgusting. At level 70, you shouldn’t swim and at level 175 you shouldn’t get the water on your skin. It was so bad we couldn’t count it,” Bowles posted on her Facebook page.

Bowles says within 12 hours the samples were showing levels well over 1,000. “Mom and I were curious and had a look. The cards were so blue.”

Blue test results indicate high levels of bacteria.

Lunenburg Mayor Rachel Bailey was skeptical of Bowles’ results, so the town took its own water tests of the harbour this week.

Bailey said in a telephone interview that “the results were good.” The town was expected to post the results on its website Thursday, she said.

(The town tested the water three times in August, and the results in the inner harbour bore out Stella Bowles’ findings; at Fishermans Wharf, E-coli readings were: August 16 — 2,613; August 23 — 1,450; August 30 — 134. Yesterday, the town issued a statement saying that the “Lunenburg’s Mayor and Council are committed to a clean environment for the community, including its historic Front Harbour.”)

HAHA, silly child. Everyone knows skin is waterproof. Jeesh, people are so fussy these days, like a little fecal bacteria ever killed anyone.

Seriously, are there some kind of secret training sessions for mayors in Nova Scotia where they undergo indoctrination about the joys of swimming in poop? Remember when Peter Kelly was bobbing around in the harbour trying to convince us it was safe to swim at Black Rock Beach among the “condoms, toilet paper and tampon applicators“?

I can’t with this caption and picture combination from the Globe and Mail.

Oh, hey! Are you a worker in the treatment plant being exposed to toxic levels of sulfur dioxide and endotoxin?

At an October 16 meeting, Lunenburg council agreed to take interim steps to better ventilate the room while they approved, in principle, a motion to upgrade the ventilation system.

“The situation is now and we need to address that now for the benefit of our employees,” said Mayor Rachel Bailey.

During the meeting Councillor John McGee asked Lohnes what the actual risks of exposure are.

“I did notice that the safety levels are based on 10 hour days, 40 hour weeks being exposed to it,” said McGee. “I don’t think you’re in there 40 hours a week are you? So I think we’re safe.”

And really, do you have to take so many breaths at work? Just cut down to like one or two an hour and I think we’re safe.

To quote Dante, “I saw long lines of people in a river of excrement that seemed the overflow of the world’s latrines.” Something to consider: changing the town seal from “Town of Lunenburg: A World Historical Site” to “Town of Lunenburg: Overflow of the World’s Latrines.” Just a suggestion.

I have a solution for Lunenburg that I think will work perfectly and save money!

Image from fabulousfarmgirl.com

Moving along, perhaps you might think that mayor Bailey reserves her skepticism merely for children and their scientific research. Oh ye of limited vision! Clearly Bailey’s capacity to find “fake news” everywhere is not merely limited to ignoring the waft of feces infesting the town:

A hatmaker whose crusade against Lunenburg’s stance on home-based business sparked the creation of a Live/Work task force won’t have a seat at the table.

Lunenburg council voted not to include Anna Shoub in its seven-person committee, which met for the first time on Monday.

“She has expressed her opinion about her particular issues often, loudly, and I don’t know that she has anymore that she can add to that. So we have already heard from her in abundance,” said Mayor Rachel Bailey during a phone interview on Monday morning.

The idea for the task force was brought up at a May 14 planning advisory committee meeting, where Shoub raised her concerns about costly upgrades the town’s building inspector told her were needed to legally operate her Lawrence Street hat studio.

“[Shoub has] done a lot of independent inquiries on her own, the results of which I think are somewhat questionable, and her reporting of the results are definitely questionable,” said Bailey. “So she’s not necessarily any better qualified than anyone else to be on this committee.”

Personally, I appreciate Bailey’s commitment to a kind of radical post-modernist nihilism, where all language is devoid of meaning. I mean, some might describe “levels of fecal bacteria in the 1000s” as “bad,” but isn’t that just applying a narrow, non-fecal centric moral interpretation to the matter?

And wouldn’t it be a “misinterpretation” to say that voting against a motion means you are against the thing you voted against?

What about someone spray painting “GO AWAY” outside Farley Blackman’s art gallery? Those of you limited by the idea that words have common meanings might interpret that as “go away,” but have you considered that possibly it could say “90 away?” Huh? Have you?

Image from cbc.ca

Bailey said because the graffiti was on the public sidewalk it’s not clear the graffiti’s message was aimed at Blackman. Even if the message was meant for Blackman, she said it might have no connection to him being from somewhere other than Lunenburg.

“He has a number of dealings with many people in different courses of doing business, so it was outside of a gallery, perhaps it was a disgruntled artist? We really don’t know and can’t presume to know why someone wrote that and what their situation was or their relationship with Mr. Blackman may have been.”

How do we even know a human wrote it, huh? Maybe a worm painted it there to tell a pigeon to leave it alone. Who can really tell with these things?

In conclusion, if you articulate your arguments clearly so there can be no confusion about what you are saying, then you need to stfu because you expressed your opinion “often and loudly” and therefore you have nothing more to add. However, should there be any possible ambiguity left in language, then who can really dictate how to interpret that? Words, who knows what they mean, right? But also numbers, not accurate! And cards that turn blue? Who can really say for sure what wavelength light is.

Most important is to suppress any “negative” or dissenting criticism of the mayor or council. After all, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Just don’t make it with the local water, or drink it, or get it on your skin.


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El Jones is a poet, journalist, professor, community advocate, and activist. Her work focuses on social justice issues such as feminism, prison abolition, anti-racism, and decolonization.

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