Petition: Neil Young, Please Cancel Your Concert in Israel in July

I'll sign that petition, but I count my allies on issues where we agree, not where we disagree. If everyone did the latter we'd have no allies at all.

In short, I think he's wrong on this, but I'm not going to start attacking his credibility after the strong show of support he has just made on another important issue, and the attacks he has taken for it.

You see bandwagon jumping? How do you justify that? Do you think those positions weren't honestly held?

Again, I may not agree with everything he has done, but what I see (in your references, not in the boycott issue) is someone who is not afraid to hold a position that might be unpopular - something that is not often done just for kicks.

And did you read that article you posted josh? It's quite the apology for the tar sands; that's why it was written - not about his plans to play in Israel. And it contains a couple of very nasty racist and anti-poor slurs.

Unionist wrote:

Having said that, we should appeal to Neil to stay the fuck out of Israel. But I'll take with gratitude whatever contributions he is willing to offer to the progress of humanity. Name another star that has his guts.

Thankfully there are some; not pointing it out to take issue with you. So far as most of them are concerned, you are bang on.

But that comment reminds me of when we saw Billy Bragg at the Winnipeg Folk Festival two years ago as part of the tribute to Woody Guthrie. He raised the question of why Guthrie's estate would entrust some of his music to him - a non-American. His answer: that people in his country have a starker understanding of what Woody meant by the slogan on his guitar: "This Machine Kills Fascists".

He had 30,000 people on their feet when he said that.

I hope Young changes his mind. I know Bob Newhart took a lot of heat - people attacking him personally and saying they'd never watch or listen to his stuff -  when he was booked to play an event run by some right-wing homophobic group. He backed out. not long afterwards. Who knows if he even knew what it was.

Now I know Neil Young can't be ignorant of the Israel boycott, or the occupation issue. Let's hope he thinks about it and acts accordingly.

Slumberjack wrote:

Speaking of collective punishment, I wonder if there's an artist we could actually encourage to go and perform there?

I can think of one, sadly he's busy being prime minister right now. Maybe if we can arrange for that contract to end, he can go there and bang out old beatles tunes anytime he wants. He can take Nickleback too.

If there was an organized boycott against Canada similar to the BDS campaign I'd consider supporting it. Personally,  I weigh my support for  those actions case-by-case.

Fact is, there is no similar boycott against Canada, though it may only be a matter of time on a number of issues.