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Michael McCaul accused Biden administration of “rewarding Iran’s bad behavior in exchange for a false promise of de-escalation.”

By Andrew Bernard, Algemeiner

The Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul (R-TX) on Thursday sent a letter to President Biden describing his handling of nuclear negotiations as “reckless” and “deeply disturbing.”

“I am disturbed by recent revelations that the Administration has re-engaged in ‘proximity talks’ with the Iranian regime, and that the results of these discussions have included the apparent greenlighting of sizable payments to Iran,” McCaul wrote. “Rather than using United States diplomatic leverage and military deterrence to dissuade Iran from engaging in these malign activities, this Administration is rewarding Iran’s bad behavior in exchange for a false promise of de-escalation.”

McCaul’s letter was prompted by reports first published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that confirmed that the US and Iran had engaged in so-called “proximity talks” in March and May in Oman, with the Omanis passing messages between US Middle East adviser Brett McGurk and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator.

The negotiations coincided with the Biden administration authorizing $2.7 billion-worth of Euro-denominated payments from Iraq to Iran that had previously been frozen by US sanctions.

McCaul’s letter also raised concerns that the Biden administration might pursue an “understanding” or other informal terminology with Iran rather than a written agreement in order to circumvent Congressional review under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 (INARA).

“I’d call it a cooling-down understanding,” one Western official told Reuters.

INARA’s text requires the President to submit any Iranian nuclear agreement to Congress “regardless of the form it takes, whether a political commitment or otherwise, and regardless of whether it is legally binding or not.” McCaul said that the law was “deliberately expansive in scope.”

“This definition makes clear that any arrangement or understanding with Iran, even informal, requires submission to Congress,” McCaul’s letter said. “I urge the Administration to remember that U.S. law requires that any agreement, arrangement, or understanding with Iran needs to be submitted to Congress pursuant to INARA.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at a session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday likewise criticized the idea of “smaller agreements” between the US and Iran short of a full return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action–the Iran nuclear deal.

“Over 90% of our security problems stem from Iran and its proxies, and our policy is aimed at increasing the circle of peace, to stop Iran and its proxies,” Netanyahu said. “Our position is clear: No agreement with Iran will be binding on Israel, which will continue to do everything to defend itself.”

Concluding his letter Thursday, McCaul appealed to the memory of American troops killed by Iranian proxies.

“Any continued obstruction will rob the American people, and in particular the Gold Star families whose loved ones were killed by Iran-backed terrorism, of answers about why the United States is facilitating the lining of Iran’s coffers,” he wrote.

The post ‘Reckless and disturbing’: House Foreign Affairs Chairman slams Biden over Iran negotiations appeared first on World Israel News.

Jurors must now decide whether Robert Bowers should be sent to death row or sentenced to life in prison without parole.

By Peter Smith, Associated Press

A truck driver who spewed hatred of Jews was convicted Friday of storming a Pittsburgh synagogue and shooting everyone he could find on a Sabbath morning, killing 11 congregants in an act of antisemitic terror for which he could be sentenced to die.

The guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion after Robert Bowers’ lawyers conceded at the trial’s outset that he attacked and killed worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, in the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history. Jurors must now decide whether the 50-year-old should be sent to death row or sentenced to life in prison without parole as the federal trial shifts to a penalty phase expected to last several weeks.

Bowers was convicted of all 63 criminal counts he faced, including hate crimes resulting in death and obstruction of the free exercise of religion resulting in death. His attorneys had offered a guilty plea in return for a life sentence, but prosecutors refused, opting instead to take the case to trial and pursue the death penalty. Most of the victims’ families supported that decision.

“I am grateful to God for getting us to this day,” Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Tree of Life Congregation, who survived the attack, said in a written statement. “And I am thankful for the law enforcement who ran into danger to rescue me, and the U.S. Attorney who stood up in court to defend my right to pray.”

The jury deliberated for about five hours over two days before reaching a verdict. Bowers, wearing a dark sweater and blue shirt, had little reaction. Several survivors and victims’ relatives were in the courtroom, bearing quiet witness. Sniffles could be heard in the gallery as the judge intoned “guilty” dozens of times.

Bowers, who had raged against Jews online and at the synagogue, turned a sacred house of worship into a “hunting ground,” targeting his victims because of their religion, a prosecutor said Thursday.

Reading each of the 11 victims’ names, prosecutor Mary Hahn asked the jury to “hold this defendant accountable … and hold him accountable for those who cannot testify.”

All three congregations sharing the building — Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life — lost members in the attack. The victims ranged in age from 54 to 97.

Congregational leaders said the trial opened new wounds but was also validating.

“We learned things that we did not know,” said Stephen Cohen, co-president of New Light. “… In that sense, it was traumatizing. But it’s also, in a sense, cathartic because you did hear what happened.”

Jo Recht, president of Dor Hadash, applauded the prosecutors’ solid case.

“They drew a picture that was even more horrific than we had imagined,” Recht said. “And the level of antisemitism, the level of hatred, the volume of the outrageous (social media) posts was really sobering and really frightening. So for the jury to come back so quickly with the verdict of guilty on all 63 counts was affirming, and it was a relief.”

Prosecutors presented evidence of Bowers’ deep-seated animosity toward Jews and immigrants. Over 11 days of testimony, jurors learned that he had extensively posted, shared or liked antisemitic and white supremacist content on Gab, a social media platform popular with the far right, and praised Hitler and the Holocaust. Bowers told police that “all these Jews need to die,” Hahn said.

Jewish community members were bracing for the next stage of the trial, which would determine if Bowers is eligible for and should receive the death penalty. The penalty phase is scheduled to start June 26.

“It’s just as traumatic,” Cohen said. “Because now we get into learning about the shooter. In four and a half years, he has said nothing. We don’t know who he is. … There’s no background, nothing other than the Gab posts. So we’re going to be learning what kind of horrible human being he really is.”

Bowers, who was armed with an AR-15 rifle and other weapons, also shot and wounded seven, including five responding police officers.

Survivors testified about their terror on that day, including a woman who recounted how she was shot in the arm and then realized her 97-year-old-mother had been shot and killed right next to her. Andrea Wedner, the trial’s last witness, told jurors she touched her mother’s lifeless body and cried out, “Mommy,” before SWAT officers led her to safety.

Other survivors testified of hiding or fleeing for their lives, of making final prayers as they expected to die, of saying farewell to their slain fellow congregants. The slain were among the congregations’ stalwarts, always on time for Sabbath activities, many of which they led.

Bowers’ attorneys did not mount a defense at the guilt stage of the trial, signaling they will focus their efforts on trying to save his life. They plan to introduce evidence that Bowers has schizophrenia, epilepsy and brain impairments. Defense lawyer Judy Clarke had also sought to raise questions about Bowers’ motive, suggesting to jurors that his rampage was not motivated by religious hatred but his delusional belief that Jews were committing genocide by helping refugees settle in the United States.

The congregations have spoken out against antisemitism and other bigotry since the attack. The Tree of Life congregation also is working on a plan to overhaul the synagogue building — which still stands but has been closed since the shootings — by creating a complex that would house a sanctuary, museum, memorial and center for fighting antisemitism.

President Joe Biden said during his 2020 campaign that he would work to end capital punishment at the federal level and in states that still use it, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has paused executions to review policies and procedures. But federal prosecutors continue to work to uphold already-issued death sentences and, in some cases, to pursue the death penalty at trial for crimes that are eligible, as in Bowers’ case.

Killed were Joyce Fienberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65; Rose Mallinger, 97; Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; Dan Stein, 71; Melvin Wax, 87; Irving Younger, 69.

Ellen Surloff, who was Dor Hadash president at the time of the attack, said hearing the guilty verdicts was a relief.

“Fighting antisemitism was always important to my family,” she said. “My mother passed away not long after the shooting. So from a personal matter, the first thought that went to my head was, I wish she could have been alive to hear the verdict, to hear this horrible, horrible monster convicted for what he did on Oct. 27.”

The post Pittsburgh synagogue gunman found guilty in the deadliest attack on Jewish people in US history, could face death penalty appeared first on World Israel News.

The Soviets’ ability to absorb and eventually overcome the Wehrmacht’s blows saved humanity from the nightmare of a Nazi victory, in which case Adolf Hitler would have held dominance over much of Eurasia and perhaps further afield.

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In the past two decades, a succession of crises has led to the rise of authoritarian states, acutely showing how capitalism and democracy were never compatible to begin with.

A squad of police stand on guard during a demonstration against the new pension reform law in Paris, France, June 6, 2023. (Telmo Pinto / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images)

It’s increasingly hard to ignore the fact that democracy around the world is in retreat.

On the one hand, many of the world’s most powerful states — from China to Saudi Arabia — are governed by authoritarian administrations that seem only to be growing in strength. On the other hand, the respect for liberal democratic norms — like the right to protest and the independence of the judiciary — is on the decline in established governments. And many states that seemed to be on the road to democracy — like Hungary and Turkey — are stuck in a kind of “illiberal democratic” purgatory.

In total, around 72 percent of the world’s population lives under some form of authoritarian rule, according to some experts. Researchers at Freedom House claim that around 38 percent of the world’s population live in countries that can be characterized as “not free.” Liberal academic Larry Diamond has termed the retreat of democracy around the world a “democratic recession.”

The erosion of democracy has been particularly hard for liberals to conceptualize. After all, things were not supposed to be this way.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was meant to finally put an end to any outstanding questions about the compatibility of democracy and capitalism. The latter was inevitably going to expand, bringing with it the rights and freedoms that many in the rich world had come to take for granted. The rest of the world was destined to converge on the model pioneered by the West.

Liberal theorists and policymakers have come up with a number of arguments to explain the apparent contradiction between the spread of capitalism and the retreat of democracy.

Those on the right of the political spectrum locate the problem with foreign “enemies of democracy.” For these pioneers of the new Cold War, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin — though curiously not Mohammed bin Salman or Viktor Orbán — are to blame for brainwashing the democracy-loving peoples of the West with authoritarian propaganda.

Centrists tend to claim the real issue is “extremists on both sides,” arguing that democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, who have never even come close to achieving state power, share just as much of the blame for the democratic retreat as former world leaders on the populist right like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump.

Every evaluation of the problem is, of course, entirely individualistic. Many liberals genuinely believe that the greatest challenge to democracy today is a few “bad guys” corrupting an otherwise well-functioning system.

These arguments are, of course, utterly absurd. Support for democracy is not in decline because voters are being brainwashed by enemy propaganda on TikTok. Support for democracy is declining because democracy is simply not working the way we were told it would.

Firstly, the combination of capitalism and democracy was supposed to bring prosperity and progress to all nations that adopted them. For a brief time after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when globalization went into overdrive, this seemed a believable story.

The financial crisis brought this collective delusion to an end in the Global North. Members of the generation that came of age during the crisis of 2008 have had to adjust to the reality that they are unlikely to be better off than their parents.

But even before the financial crisis, the Asian crisis of the late 1990s showed many in the developing world that opening up one’s markets to international capital could be a recipe for disaster. Some combination of authoritarianism and market controls seemed like the natural response.

Secondly, the progress brought by democracy and capitalism was supposed to give rise to yet more democracy. Checks and balances would put an end to corruption. An educated population would choose the “right” leaders. And rather than campaigning based on outdated ideologies, those leaders would compete for votes by appealing to the “median voter,” bringing moderation to previously divided societies.

Instead, corruption is on the rise, ideology is back, and people keep picking the “wrong” leaders. Perhaps the creation of societies so stratified that the ruling class can barely comprehend the concerns of ordinary voters was not such a foolproof recipe for democracy after all.

Some slightly more thoughtful commentators accept that this astonishingly simplistic reading might not capture the whole story. In a new podcast series for the Financial Times, Martin Wolf seems genuinely concerned about the future of democracy — and accepts a small part of the blame for himself and his colleagues.

The problem, Wolf seems to believe, is that neoliberals, in all their zeal for the end of history, spread free markets too far and too fast. The shock therapy of the 1990s was not coupled with measures to alleviate the social and economic tensions that came with it.

The argument is reminiscent of that put forward by progressive political theorist Karl Polanyi, who believed that capitalist free markets spread too quickly for societies to adapt. Those whose lives and ideals were threatened by the emergence of this brave new world would push back against the encroachment of the “market society” — often supporting authoritarian strongmen to do so.

Progressive liberals like Wolf tend to believe that the solution to the problem will come in some form of regulated capitalism. Often, these commentators are Keynesians who advocate a return to the social democratic consensus of the postwar period.

But this kind of nostalgia is no healthier than that evinced by Trump fans longing for a return to a world before the spread of “gender ideology.” There is, after all, a reason why the Keynesian consensus broke down.

As soon as economic growth slowed, the latent battle between workers and bosses that had been bubbling away below the surface suddenly exploded into the political mainstream. Without excess profits extracted from the rest of the world to keep this conflict under wraps, there was only one choice for the ruling class: all-out war on workers.

For this reason, despite the fact that it is blindingly obvious that capitalist democracies require some measures to reduce inequality while tackling climate breakdown, the progressive capitalist vision for the future stands no chance of being implemented.

There’s only one conclusion left to draw — that capitalism and democracy were never really all that compatible to begin with.

“Una squadra di sabotatori ha usato la Polonia come base operativa per far saltare i gasdotti Nord Stream che trasportavano gas dalla Russia alla Germania attraverso il Mar Baltico”: lo ha appurato una indagine ufficiale tedesca, riportata da The Wall …

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On June 6th, Ethan Vogel and his father, Zach Vogel, were biking on the trails of North Table Mountain in Golden, Colorado. About 90 minutes into their trek Ethan clipped a boulder and fell off his bike. Unfortunately, when he fell, he landed directly on top of a prairie rattlesnake, which bit him in the torso near his armpit.

When Zach saw the bloodstains on Ethan’s shirt, he quickly realized the seriousness of the situation and raced to his son’s side. Ethan had already begun to lose feeling in his face and hands. The father then called 911 while holding his son’s head and trying to keep Ethan calm and his heart rate low. Ethan started to throw up, and his heartbeat rose to 165 beats per minute while lying down.

Zach called 911, and when the responders arrived, Ethan was taken to St. Anthony’s Hospital in Littleton, where he was given antivenom and other medication to stabilize him. He was later transferred to Children’s Hospital Colorado and given a 90-minute slow drip.

Fortunately, Ethan is expected to fully recover in about three weeks. He is already looking forward to returning to his bike and riding the trails again. His father has also learned an important lesson on the dangers of rattlesnakes and urges others to stay aware and listen for the sound.

On Thursday, a jury in Oakland County, Michigan, convicted Megan Joyce Imirowicz, 19, for unlawfully using irritants that caused her father’s death. Konrad Imirowicz, 64, had been struggling with alcoholism and was too drunk to drive his daughter to the hair salon for her 18th birthday, prompting her to take matters into her own hands.

Megan Imirowicz threw lye powder and water on her father as he slept, leading to chemical burns across his body and eventually his death. Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said, “This is a tragic case. The defendant lashed out in anger and wound up killing her father. I commend the prosecution team for the tremendous work that went into the prosecution and in securing justice for the victim in this case.”

Megan’s brother Austin Imirowicz and her mother, Joyce Conrad, testified at the trial. Austin revealed that Konrad had to undergo skin grafts and infections which led to the amputation of both his legs. He eventually died at home three days after being released from the hospital. He also testified about his sister’s call to him on the night of the incident, in which she asked for the PIN to their father’s ATM card to pay for a hotel room without inquiring about Konrad’s condition. Austin said, “I was angry – to show no care at all, to dismiss something so serious.” Megan Imirowicz has now been convicted and is facing up to life in prison when she is sentenced on July 25.

Alberta, Canada’s most conservative province, recently went to the polls. The purportedly left-wing New Democratic Party, in its attempt to court conservative voters, provided the Left with an abject lesson in acquiescence — a road map of exactly what not to do.

Then Alberta premier Rachel Notley seen speaking to supporters at the campaign office of Jasvir Deol during the Alberta provincial election campaign in Edmonton, Canada, March 22, 2019. (Ron Palmer / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images)

If you ask the most fervent partisans of Alberta’s nominally progressive New Democratic Party (NDP), they will tell you that they did a great job in the May 29 provincial election. They got the most votes in the party’s history; they elected two indigenous legislators; they won the popular vote in the province’s two largest cities; they defeated six of the governing United Conservative Party’s (UCP) cabinet ministers.

All of this obscures the fact that they lost and that the popular vote wasn’t even close — the NDP lost by 8.6 percentage points, amounting to more than 150,000 votes. While the NDP may form the largest Official Opposition in Alberta’s history, that will be cold comfort for those who have to suffer the consequences of living under four more years of Alberta premier Danielle Smith’s hard-core libertarian political philosophy.

Priorities for a Smith government include forcing a referendum on any future tax increases (but not cuts); involuntary treatment for people who use drugs; more money flowing from public to charter schools; increased publicly funded health care delivery from for-profit corporations; and subsidizing oil and gas companies in the midst of the climate emergency.

The NDP’s campaign was tailor-made to appeal to an imaginary suburban conservative voter who is so incensed by Smith and the outlandish conspiracy theories she espouses that they would vote NDP just this one time if the party only had the right configuration of center-right policies. The problem is that these voters, in large part, don’t exist. Most of the NDP’s gains came not at the expense of the UCP, but of the centrist Alberta Party, which ran a considerably smaller slate of candidates than it did in 2019.

A Failure of Leadership

NDP leader Rachel Notley, who was premier from 2015 to 2019, hinted that she has no desire to step aside, but is evaluating her options while applauding her own leadership abilities.

“It’s good leadership to consider your role leading up to an election and to consider your role after an election. I did that in 2015, did it in 2019, did it leading into 2023, and of course I’m doing it now,” she told reporters at a June 13 press conference. That Notley considered stepping aside after she formed the first NDP government in Alberta’s history in 2015 after eighty years of right-wing rule is surprising news indeed. The difference in outcome between these elections is profound, and this claim of soul-searching ought to stretch credulity even in sympathetic members of the public.

If the NDP is going to have a future in the province, Notley and everyone else responsible for two consecutive catastrophic defeats to hard-right candidates needs to go. In both instances, the party adopted a strategy of excessively emphasizing the personal foibles of former premier Jason Kenney and later Danielle Smith, while failing to adequately defend its own track record. Despite the prevarications of deluded partisans, this approach was an utter failure.

Housing Policy for Landlords

During a housing affordability crisis across Canada, the Alberta NDP leadership made the gobsmackingly tone-deaf decision to bring in AirBnB lobbyist and executive Nathan Rotman to manage its campaign. Rotman, who served as Notley’s chief of staff when she was premier, was quietly confirmed as involved in the campaign mid-March, but the party didn’t otherwise acknowledge his involvement.

By the end of the month, Rotman was running away from reporters in Montreal after a fire at an apartment building hosting illegal AirBnB units killed seven people. “Thanks guys,” he said to reporters who cornered him in an elevator asking him in English and French if he feels responsibility or remorse for the deaths.

Rotman didn’t confirm his involvement with the campaign until less than an hour before polls closed on May 29. When journalist Jonathan Goldsbie pointed this out on Twitter, Rotman responded: “You guys sure are upset that I took holiday to work on a campaign. Have fun writing hit pieces with your pals.”

The choice to not only hire Rotman but keep him on the campaign makes sense when one considers that Notley herself and Official Opposition Critic for Seniors and Housing Lori Sigurdson are landlords. In a country contending with an ongoing housing crisis, this means that Notley and Sigurdson are profiting from a lack of affordable housing. Incidentally, the NDP’s housing policy consisted largely of subsidies for low-income people, which would go directly to their landlords. “You want to make sure we’re considering the renters themselves, but [also the] people who own the facilities,” Sigurdson explained, failing to acknowledge the self-referential nature of her statement.

While the NDP campaigned on introducing rent control in its sole victorious campaign of 2015, it refused to do so once in power. And the issue has not been mentioned by the party since.

Smith Controlled the Terms of Debate

The NDP’s 2023 campaign strategy, for the most part, centered around Smith’s untrustworthiness, digging up various wild remarks Smith has made over the past two years in her role as a podcast shock jock. The views she espoused are undeniably concerning — such as the comparison of the three-quarters of Albertans who are vaccinated to followers of Adolf Hitler, her calling for the privatization of hospitals, and her desire to see an armed blockade of Alberta’s Coutts border with Montana “win.”

The problem is that Smith wasn’t running on any of these policies. Smith ran a typical conservative campaign, emphasizing tax cuts and adopting a hard-line, tough-on-crime stance on social disorder. Despite a significant mid-campaign revelation from Alberta’s ethics commissioner — who concluded that Smith’s actions to influence the justice system regarding a Calgary-based street preacher involved in the Coutts blockade represented a conflict of interest — Smith remained steadfast in her focused messaging.

Furthermore, Smith did not make hay of her key achievement during the first six months of her term, the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act. This grandstanding legislation grants the Alberta government the authority to disregard federal laws that it disagrees with — but has yet to be invoked.

The NDP’s policy proposals were all crafted in response to Smith’s offerings, presenting minor policy distinctions aimed at appealing to conservative voters in the suburbs. To that effect, there was no discussion of the climate crisis, despite the wildfires raging across the province as the campaign kicked off.

Whereas Smith proposed a new, lower-income tax bracket for those who make less than Can$60,000 a year, Notley proposed freezing income taxes, eliminating the small business tax entirely, and raising corporate taxes by three percentage points. Rather than provide a rationale for a corporate tax hike that would resonate with the vast majority of the population who don’t actually own corporations, the party establishment thought that boasting that Alberta still has the lowest tax rate in Canada — even lower than that in Doug Ford’s Ontario — would suffice.

While Smith proposed hiring one hundred new police officers to patrol the downtowns of Alberta’s two largest cities — Calgary and Edmonton — Notley offered 150 new police officers across the province, who would be partnered with 150 social workers, furthering the entrenchment of social work in the carceral system.

Notley, responding to the UCP’s attacks on some NDP candidates who expressed sensible criticisms of ballooning police budgets, thought she was being quite clever when she attacked the UCP for having “actually defunded the police.” This was a reference to the UCP’s reduction of the amount of traffic fine revenues that  municipalities collect to help pay for policing. However, the result of that quip was that the debate over policing ended up being framed according to Smith’s terms.

The NDP’s intense focus on winning over conservative voters in the suburbs of Edmonton and Calgary aimed to attract individuals who may not have supported some of Smith’s more extreme views. However, these voters were more than willing to overlook those positions in favor of tax cuts. Rural Alberta was written off as irredeemable — a basket of deplorables, if you will. On Substack, Edmonton-based writer Alexander Delorme aptly noted “the irony of convincing yourself to run a conservative campaign while ignoring the most traditionally conservative regions of the province.”

A Mixed Legacy

The NDP’s tenure in power was imperfect. Its strategy of watering down climate policy to secure support from the oil and gas industry — which inexplicably included support for a pipeline that would triple the province’s capacity to export planet-killing tar sands crude — was doomed to failure. The party supported the expansion of privatized long-term care, which produced deadly results during the pandemic. It made no effort to reduce public funding for private schools.

But there were undeniable accomplishments. The NDP reduced child poverty by half during its one term. It took Alberta’s minimum wage from the lowest in the country to the highest. It began phasing out coal power. It halted the privatization of lab services, which proceeded under the party’s successors with disastrous consequences.

The problem is that you didn’t hear about any of these achievements during the election campaign. It was all about Smith, all of the time.

Unless there’s a changing of the guards, expect the NDP to take all the wrong lessons from this defeat. It will further acquiesce to Smith’s agenda, actively participating in the continued narrowing of political debate in Alberta.

But it’s not enough to simply change the party leader. It’s going to take a mass movement outside the confines of electoral politics to forge a consensus in favor of an unabashedly progressive agenda in Alberta. There are already groups working to this end, such as Climate Justice Edmonton, Migrante, Public Interest Alberta, Support Our Students, and Friends of Medicare, all of whose advice was contemptuously dismissed by Notley’s clique.

A progressive challenger for the NDP leadership who seeks to return the party to its social democratic roots will need all the public support they can get. Only then will Alberta’s left have the strength to seize the party machinery and purge it of all the careerists, sycophants, and technocrats whose failures allowed Smith to achieve power.