Oilsands debate in Vancouver

Charming!

The low point of the evening was when a young thug bullied his way onto the stage. He was a buffoon from the very beginning of the debate, shouting strange things about the Holocaust from the bleachers the whole night. (It wasn't the only moment of anti-Semitic weirdness; when I mentioned that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, was where 15 out of 19 9/11 terrorists came from, the crowd booed me. There is obviously a large 9/11 conspiracy contingent in the green movement.)

Anyways, that Holocaust shouter somehow convinced Ben to let him on the stage, where he did what he does for a living: plays the race card -- as an Official Indian, with plenty of vomit on the damned Jews and their Holocaust.

He told me his name, Gitz Crazyboy, and I Googled him. Surprise! Crazyboy is a professional Jew-baiter, and a star speaker at Israel Apartheid anti-Semitism festivals on campus. Here's a video clip of him, if you're interested.

I wasn't much interested in taking lectures from a bigot like that. He's got his fake job -- he's basically paid to be a show-and-tell Indian for big, American environmental lobby groups. On command, he'll dress up in traditional Indian garb, and play the part of ethnic token. It was so out of place in a debate about ideas, I'd have been embarrassed for him, if he was capable of embarrassment. It would be like me being hired as a lobbyist, but told: "can you show up at debates dressed like a Hasidic Jews and sing a few songs in Yiddish to start?" I guess for Crazyboy, it beats working for a living -- which is what thousands of real Aboriginals do in the oilsands every day.

I shouldn't focus so much on the freaks in the crowd -- the 9/11 Truthers, the pay-for-peformance Official Indian, or the anti-Holocaust heckles. I don't think they spoke for Ben. But the fact that they're attracted to Ben's anti-oilsands cause is troubling.