The government of Canada has pulled plenty of shady shit over the years. Recent examples include selling doom buggies to Saudi Arabia, bailing out the dying American-owned Postmedia newspaper chain, abandoning Afghan allies to the tender mercies of the Taliban, all the Hockey Canada hullabaloo, and showering awards on that bitch Anne Murray too.
(I kid with that last one. My mother went to college with her and says she was perfectly nice. The pride of Springhill, Nova Scotia, was even a good sport about the whole South Park bit although she chose to go golfing over the offer to perform “Blame Canada” at the Oscars.)
The Man making money off the InfoWars guy’s new book is a strange development though, even by today’s Twilight Zone standards.
Public Services and Procurement Canada are the people in charge of auctioning off government surplus and are like Amazon in the sense they sell pretty much everything under the sun. Boats, jewelry, snow blowers, office furniture, you name it. No guns and ammo though, this is still Canada.
Last Thursday they washed their hands of 47 hardcover copies of Alex Jones’s manifesto The Great Reset and the War for the World for just $270 in Canuckistan funny money, $70 more than the opening bid for 50 pounds of books that would’ve set you back more than a grand if purchased via Jeff Bezos’s Emporium of Everything.
(If you must do your shopping there, this here link gives Wonkette a wee slice.)
I haven’t read it myself but the publisher assures it’s a must-read analysis of “the global elite’s international conspiracy to enslave humanity and all life on the planet.” Which may or may not involve Jewish space lasers, Barack Hussein Obama, lizard people, and the ghost of Hugo Chavez.
If someone wants to spend their loonies on a loony, that’s their business, although it’s chef’s kiss ironic the current Liberal government scored a few shekels from selling a screed decrying the Elders of Zion World Economic Forum since the prime minister is a regular at the one percent’s annual networking shindig and presumed Eyes Wide Shut coke orgies in Davos.
GCSurplus, the online clearing house for discarded government goodies, said “viewing is highly recommended” although this isn’t an editorial plug but rather the standard advice for most of the crap they’re looking to offload, and you would’ve needed to be in the city of Edmonton to check the books out before the bidding closed.
They also posted a pic to help potential shoppers elsewhere judge the book by its back cover, and the peer reviews come from a veritable Who’s Who of Who Gives a Fuck? including Roger Stone, Tucker Carlson, and Steve Bannon. The only legible blurb comes from Joe Rogan in bigger font at the top, where he hilariously damns the conspiracy and boner-pills salesman with faint praise: “Alex is right about far more than he is wrong about… He’s the most misunderstood guy on the planet.”
The most misunderstood guy on the planet is like the inverse of the Most Interesting Man in the World, who doesn’t always drink beer but when he does prefers a serviceable Mexican lager.
“Alex isn’t ALWAYS wrong, but when he is, hoo boy…”
There’s even a shout-out from Donald J. Trump that doesn’t even try to pretend he actually read the weighty tome. The brief “[Alex Jones’s] reputation is amazing” pull quote comes from an early campaign trail appearance on InfoWars where he reassured the disgraced host he would be every bit as evil as promised. We all know the only books this guy has voluntarily read are probably ghostwriter Tony Schwartz’s The Art of the Deal, Superman comics, and the CliffsNotes for Mein Kampf. Maybe The Art of War by Sun Tzu as it’s pretty short.
The website doesn’t explain how so many of the libri non grata came into its possession, simply stating they were “forfeited to the Crown.” (The Crown is Canadianese for the government and not to be confused with the Netflix series about the poor Windsor family.) Goods that don’t come directly from the government itself are typically confiscated in criminal investigations or at the border.
They say the idea is to keep unwanted junk out of landfills although you’d think recycling would be an option, especially since Justin Trudeau may soon lose his job over an unpopular new carbon tax meant to pay lip service to the climate crisis that now lights half of Western Canada on fire each year.
Or donating them to a library as surely some of this mad bastard’s target audience are at least capable of cracking a book instead of relying on the presumably shouted audiobook version.
This post would admittedly be funnier if they’d been selling hundreds of copies instead of just a few dozen, but it’d also be alarming if they had entire rooms full of them. Which raises the question of how exactly they got their hands on the stack in the first place.
Are poisonous books now part and parcel with intercepted fentanyl shipments? Did Tucker leave them as a shitty gift to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith on his Trollapalooza tour to Canada a few months ago?
She may have been miffed he didn’t say a single nice thing about the province’s superb grocery stores and train stations like he did Russia’s after his recent in-person performance review with Vladimir Putin.
It’s a weird coincidence to have precisely 47 copies given his preferred candidate would be the 47th (and probably last) president of the United States. But my money is on them being seized during the arrest of Freedom Convoy losers who blockaded the Coutts border crossing with Montana a couple of years ago and allegedly plotted to murder some cops. Seems the sort of thing they might’ve stockpiled as a good investment.
Two hundred and seventy bucks obviously isn’t a lot of cash. With the exchange rate and shipping, that’ll barely buy you three copies of the Holy Bible for Dummies™ that Dear Leader has started hawking as his latest grift. Although the money would’ve been much better spent as a donation to the families of Sandy Hook victims still waiting on the millions of dollars a judge fined Mr. Jones for traumatizing.
I just hope the lucky winner wasn’t Pierre Poilievre expensing it to his account.
Jones happened to give the Conservative leader his endorsement to be the country’s next prime minster on Elon Musk’s money-incinerator the same day the books went out the door. Hard to put a dollar figure on whatever that might be worth but I’m guessing Poilievre won’t be trumpeting “been following this guy for years and he is the real deal” on any upcoming books.
The timing is obviously a fluke but, as a guy who died 30 years ago this week said, “just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you.”
[The Tyee / Canadaland / AP]