Harper's Balancing Act : How to Accept Anti-Semitism Abroad While Making a Mockery of it at Home

Gaitana, born Gaita-Lurdes Essami, is a beautiful Ukrainian singer and songwriter, who had represented her country in the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest; Europe's answer to American Idol.

Not everyone was happy with Ukraine's choice, however.

Yuriy Syrotyuk, a high-ranking member of the ultranationalist Svoboda (Freedom) Party, claimed that “Gaitana is not an organic representative of the Ukrainian culture ... we want to be accepted to the European Union, it could be our opportunity to show the Europeans that we are also a European nation. Gaitana “will provoke an association of Ukraine as a country of a different continent." (Time, March 5, 2012). You see, Gaitana is a woman of colour.

The All-Ukrainian Union "Svoboda"

The Svoboda Party has been enjoying political victories in Ukraine, especially since the Coup that saw the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych.

At a time when the European Union was working out a deal with Ukraine, and the International Monetary Fund was ready to finance the country's economic recovery, Yanukovych signed a deal with Russia, whereby they would pay off 15 billion in debt and lower gas prices, if Ukraine entered into their trading bloc instead.

The West went ballistic. The United States had invested five billion dollars in creating a "democratic" infrastructure, so weren't going to lose their influence so easily.

John McCain was dispatched to meet with anti-Russian rebels, including the far-right Svoboda, and a Canadian Conservative Party delegation was not far behind.

But what do we know of the Svoboda Party, that has become so important to the United States and Canada?

Gerald Caplan wrote a piece for the Globe and Mail: As a champion of Israel, Harper will face uncomfortable truths in Ukraine, in which he exposes their rampant anti-Semitism.

For his own political reasons, the Canadian PM will continue his apparently unconditional embrace of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s unelected government. But in private, we must hope, he will tell Yatsenyuk that it is intolerable and unacceptable that Anti-Semitism, as we all know, has no more uncompromising a foe than Stephen Harper and his government. They even denounce it where it does not exist. So we can be sure they must be outraged by Svoboda, even though in public, strangely enough, they have been silent as the grave.

... Given his newfound pre-occupation with Ukraine, Mr. Harper will surely know that only 16 months ago, the European Parliament expressed concern about Svoboda’s growing support, emphasizing that “racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the European Union’s fundamental values and principles.” The EU actually appealed to “pro-democratic parties [in Ukraine] …not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with” Svoboda, an admonition Yatsenyuk’s new government has totally ignored.

Oleh Tyahnybok Poster Child For Anti-Semitism

Oleh Tyahnybok is the leader of the Svoboda Party. While promoting the Coup (Scoboda militants shown in top photo), he became the sought after figure for Western photo-ops. John McCain, U.S. Diplomat Victoria Nuland and even John Baird, can be seen smiling with the new poster child of the revolution.

Unfortunately, he is also the poster child for anti-Semitism, a role he is trying to downplay.

When in Parliament, he proposed honouring the WWII Ukrainian Insurgent Army, who while fending off outside threats, were "engaged in the ethnic cleansing and killing of Poles from many towns and villages of western Ukraine. " (Wikipedia). In a speech at their grave sites, Tyahnybok said:

"They were not afraid and we should not be afraid. They took their automatic guns on their necks and went into the woods, and fought against the Muscovites, Germans, Jews and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state."

In April of 2005, he co-signed an open letter to President Yushchenko calling for a parliamentary investigation into the "criminal activities of organized Jewry in Ukraine" and warned of the spreading influence in the country of conspiratorial organizations like the Anti-Defamation League that ultimately wanted to commit "genocide" against the Ukrainian people.

Another Svoboda member, Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn, a parliamentary deputy, quotes from former Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and has actually founded a think tank named the Joseph Goebbels Political Research Centre.

The Harper government has suggested that any overt criticism of Israel could be deemed anti-Semitic, but what would they call support of a Party founded in part on anti-Semitism?

I suppose in some ways Harper can relate, as his Reform Party crawled from the ashes of Canada's Social Credit Party. According to Janine Stingel in her book Social Discredit: "Social Credit was wholly dependent on an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory." They even kept copies of the Protocols of Zion in their office.

Harper also has to restrain the zealots in his party, whose views are not unlike those of some Svoboda members. Oleksandr Maksymovych Sych , Ukraine's Svoboda Deputy Prime Minister, publicly stated that women should "lead the kind of lifestyle to avoid the risk of rape, including refraining from drinking alcohol and being in controversial company."

""The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things." Stephen Harper 1997 speech to U.S. Right-wing Council for National Policy.

Early Reform Party members thought it OK for business owners to ask ethnics and gays to move to the back of the store if they thought their visibility would turn away customers, and that schools should have the right to refuse gay and lesbian teaching applicants.

This new Conservative Party of Canada may pretend to be moving to the centre, but believe me; the back benches are filled with MPs who share these views.

And not only the backbenchers, evident when James Moore, allowed the controversial neo-Nazi, Geert Wilders, to speak at the Tulip Festival of all places.

Can Harper really pull off this balancing act of being an anti-Semitic watchdog at home, while rubbing the bellies of the anti-Semitic dogs in Ukraine.

That's going to take one powerful whistle.

Conservative Budget Provides For Harper's New 'Coup' Business

Carefully packaged and sold as a 'stay the course' budget, anyone paying attention would know that Flaherty's latest offering, was anything but.

However, since they made it just seemingly 'good enough', had the opposition tried to take them down over it, they would have once again been accused of self interest. Instead the media is now calling Michael Ignatieff spineless.

Fine. Do what you have to do so that you get to ask King Stephen a question a year, and avoid getting beat up.

Straight Goods has done an excellent break down, reminding us of what wasn't in the budget that should have been:

While the Harperites successfully conveyed a controlled message of "staying the course" with their "economic action plan," Canadians who most need help will see little aid.

The big national projects the nation so urgently needs — in green jobs, education, retraining, child care, housing, transportation, infrastructure, and so much more — simply are not happening. Meanwhile the federal government's ability to govern is being undermined by deregulation and cuts to programs.

But it was another statement from the article that got my overactive imagination going, so I'm going to throw caution to the wind, and lay out a little scenario here.

You may or may not know, that I have done a lot of research into a group that Stephen Harper helped to found back in the day, called the Northern Foundation. They were supposed to be the vanguard for the extreme-right in Canada.

According to Dr. Debra Chin

The Northern Foundation of which Mr. Harper was a member, is a male-dominated and self-anointed "white brotherhood". Females are not excluded though, provided that they accept its highly conformist and male chauvinistic
culture of fascism.

Now Chin felt the same way I did when I first learned of this. Harper was young and we all do crazy things when we're young that we may not be proud of (with the exception of myself, of course). He claimed that he was kicked out for not being right-wing enough, but so far he is the only one who has made that claim.

The NF had a publication called the Northern Voice, which was mostly visceral attacks on homo-sexuals, abortion and 'radical feminists' (women with jobs). The Reform Party advertised regularly in the publication, so it was pretty apparent that they weren't against attracting extremists. (Harrison, Toronto University Press, 1995)

But it was the other agenda of the foundation that I found interesting. They were in the 'Coup' business.

Now back to the Straight Goods article:

David MacDonald of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives told Straight Goods News that "The problems that were problems last year are still problems today." He said that the Budget does nothing for Canada's 1.5 million unemployed, many of whom are facing EI benefits that expire soon. Only half the unemployed are eligible to receive any benefits at all, he told Straight Goods News.

The big surprise for him was the "foreign policy shift. While every other department is being capped, Defence is continuing to grow for the next three years," at its current rate, he said. And after that, "it's only scaled back slightly... while at the same time the people who actually do reconstruction on the ground, in Haiti and Afghanistan, they're actually being capped.

That is, Canada is cutting foreign aid and increasing spending on expensive military equipment. "Our foreign policy is moving more toward combat military operations and away from the kind of reconstruction operations that are really what's necessary in Afghanistan. ... The question going forward is once Afghanistan ends, what are we going to do with these choppers?

Wolfgang Droege, was a close associate of Stephen Harper and according to Frank Dabbs, author of Preston Manning: The Roots of Reform, "...self-described white-supremacist Wolfgang Droege was the party's [Reform Party] policy chairman in Ontario."

Since Stephen Harper was the chief of Reform Party policy, they would have no doubt communicated often, since they were trying to break into Ontario. Droege also provided security for Manning when he was in the province, through members of his Heritage Front.

According to Wikipedia:

In 1981, Droege helped organize a failed attempt, codenamed "Operation Red Dog", to invade the Caribbean nation of Dominica and overthrow its government and restore deposed Prime Minister Patrick John to power. According to testimony presented at the trial of Droege and his nine co-conspirators, in exchange for restoring John to power, Droege would have been permitted to use the island as the centre of a drug-refinement and trafficking operation. The attempted coup went awry after a CFTR radio reporter who had been approached about an "exclusive story" decided to contact the police.

This brings us back to my posting on Canada's new 'Coup' business. Apparently the Harper government has appropriated up to 70 million dollars under the guise of 'spreading democracy'. I found nothing on this from the Canadian media, but Michael Allen from the University of California has written about this in the Democracy Digest.

And Dr. Chin believes that Harper is actually trying to fulfill the agenda of the Northern Foundation. Whether that's true or not, it's definitely something we can't just wave off:

...Mr. Harper appears to be attempting to use public office designed to defend the national interests of all Canadians, to carry out the apparent private agenda of a clique, whose members are determined to transform Canada into their own bleak fascist image under U.S. control.

I believe the ultimate goal is to open foreign markets (example Haiti), not drugs or anything of that nature.

I think I need someone like Dan Brown to put all of this together. I've been trying to drop little hints to the media (not the mainstream corporate media) hoping that someone will help me, because I believe there is a story here. And who knows, maybe even eventually a novel for someone (kidding). Unfortunately, I'm just afraid of how it's going to end.

I do get myself into these things, don't I?