Pierre Poilievre Continued: Poor Behavioral Controls

Another aspect of a sociopath is a person with poor behavioural controls or impulses. Poilievre is well known for outbursts and outrageous antics.

When his party was being investigated for the "In and Out" election financing scheme, he would chant "in and out, in and out", causing a great uproar, as his colleagues chimed in.

Not long after the swearing incident above, he was caught on tape using an obscene hand gesture and when the speaker of the house was discussing his lewd behaviour, he started doing a pixie dance, much to the amusement of his party, who had to be told to settle down.

He has attacked transgenders, who were in need of sex change operations, stating that the "federal government should hold back any health fund transfers used for this purpose."

He has accused opposition members of being anti-Semitic, based on even the slightest hint that Israel should be held accountable for it's actions in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. And when I say slightest, it is always ever so slight.

Randal Denley in the Ottawa Citizen once asked: Is Poilievre fit to hold public office?

I don't think so, and if it's true that he is being groomed to be party leader, and possibly prime minister some day, we could be in serious trouble.

He always speaks without thinking and that is certainly not a good trait in a leader.

Pierre Poilievre: Callousness and Lack of Empathy

Another characteristic of a sociopath is callousness and lack of empathy. What Pierre is discussing is the compensation paid to aboriginal victims of systematic abuse in the forced residential schools.

The tone of his voice definitely reveals a callousness, and the fact that he's looking for "value" for this compensation shows that he clearly does not understand the trauma suffered by former students. In fact his use of the word "partook", like they were willing participants in their own abuse, certainly indicates that he lacks any human compassion.

What is also telling is when he states that "some of us are starting to ask". The Reform-Alliance-Conservative Party have never agreed with the status afforded our First Nations, not understanding that they have treaty rights. They were never "conquered" as some would suggest, but have a legal right to their land and it's resources.

First Nations Second Thoughts

Several years ago, Marcie McDonald wrote an article for the Walrus magazine, entitled The Man Behind Stephen Harper, in which she discusses Tom Flanagan and the agenda of the Calgary School. McDonald opens with the following:

Consternation rumbled across the country like an approaching thunderhead. For aboriginal leaders, one of their worst nightmares appeared about to come true. Two weeks before last June’s federal election, pollsters were suddenly predicting that Conservative leader Stephen Harper might pull off an upset and form the next government.

What worried many in First Nations’ circles was not Harper himself, but the man poised to become the real power behind his prime ministerial throne: his national campaign director Tom Flanagan, a U.S.-born professor of political science at the University of Calgary. Most voters had never heard of Flanagan, who has managed to elude the media while helping choreograph Harper’s shrewd, three-year consolidation of power.

But among aboriginal activists, his name set off alarms. For the past three decades, Flanagan has churned out scholarly studies debunking the heroism of Métis icon Louis Riel, arguing against native land claims, and calling for an end to aboriginal rights. Those stands had already made him a controversial figure, but four years ago, his book, First Nations? Second Thoughts, sent tempers off the charts.

In it, Flanagan dismissed the continent’s First Nations as merely its “first immigrants” who trekked across the Bering Strait from Siberia, preceding the French, British et al. by a few thousand years – a rewrite which neatly eliminates any indigenous entitlement. Then, invoking the spectre of a country decimated by land claims, he argued the only sensible native policy was outright assimilation.

Aboriginal leaders were apoplectic at the thought Flanagan might have a say in their fate. Led by Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, they released an urgent open letter demanding to know if Harper shared Flanagan’s views. Two months later, Harper still had not replied.

For Clément Chartier, president of the Métis National Council, his silence speaks cautionary volumes. Martin’s minority government could fall any minute, giving Harper a second chance at the governmental brass ring. “If Flanagan continues to be part of the Conservative machinery and has the ear of a prime minister,” he worries, “it’s our existence as a people that’s at stake.”

Recently a Conservative MP, Peter Goldring, posted a newsletter to his website suggesting that Louis Riel was a villain.

Goldring posted the letter in response to a request from the federal New Democrats who wanted Louis Riel to be recognized as a father of confederation and wanted a conviction that saw him hanged for treason overturned. In his letter Goldring wrote, "Riel didn't father confederation; He fought those who did." Riel, a politician who fought for Metis rights in the late 1800s and also helped found the province of Manitoba, led two violent rebellions against the Canadian government and was hanged for treason.

The letter went on to say, "To un-hang Louis Riel and to mount a statue to him on Parliament Hill would elevate anarchy and civil disobedience to that of democratic statesmanship." The letter has now been removed from Goldring's website, but the words have Alberta's Metis outraged.

Was he one of the "some of us"?

In January 2002, when Jim Flaherty was the Ontario finance minister under Mike Harris, he suggested that the First Nations weren't "real people". (1)

Was he one of the "some of us"?

Backlash

Most knowledgeable listeners concluded that Poilievre continued to advocate the old Reform Party view and was not actually proposing to adopt any of the mutually acceptable solutions natives had agreed to or that previous governments had advocated. Mr. Harper, on taking office, had discarded Paul Martin's Kelowna Accord which was to begin to address some of the problems noted above.

Many listeners heard, in this context of prior positions by his party, Mr. Poilievre's comments as excusing prior governments' behaviour. His exact words: "Now, along with this apology, comes another $4 billion in compensation for those who partook in the residential schools over those years. Now, you know, some of us are starting to ask, 'are we really getting value for all of this money..."." As the word "partook" implies voluntary choices rather than state-sponsored child abuse, and those who pay compensation in civil courts are not usually consulted as to whether they (the abusers) are "getting value", the words appeared to convey some racist assumptions.

"Mr. Poilievre, who did not spend his childhood "partaking" in state-sponsored child abuse, is not sure the government is getting "value" for the compensation it is paying the natives it abused."

Anita Neville, the Liberal aboriginal affairs critic, called Poilievre's comments "disgraceful" and "ignorant." "I invite him to take a tour of many of the First Nations communities in this country and see how people are living," she told the Canadian Press. "The irony of something like this on the day of the apology... . And I fear it reflects an attitude or a view that is prevalent among many members of hat caucus." Opposition MPs called for Poilievre's resignation. According to news reports, many Conservative MPs were also angry at Poilievre.

The day after his appearance on CFRA, Poilievre rose in the House of Commons to apologize for his statement saying, "Yesterday on a day when the House and all Canadians were celebrating a new beginning, I made remarks that were hurtful and wrong. I accept responsibility for them and I apologize."

Liberal Tina Keeper, an aboriginal MP from Churchill, branded Mr. Poilievre "a national embarrassment," and said she had received more calls from constituents about Mr. Poilievre's remarks than she had about the prime minister's request for forgiveness for the assimilation policies of the residential-school program. (2)

This coming just as Stephen Harper was making a public apology put the entire thing in context. And for that context allow me to quote Tom Flanagan again when he was trying to repackage Harper to appear "prime ministerial": "How do we fool people into thinking that we're moving to the left when we're not?" (3)

Enough said.

Sources:

1. Canadian Race Relations Foundation, "Flaherty: Enough is enough says the Executive Director of the CRRF", News release, January 22, 2002

2. Wikipedia

3. The Pilgramage of Stephen Harper, By: Lloyd Mackey, ECW Press, 2005, ISBN: 10-1-55022-713-0

Ernest Manning and Social Credit: From Darkness to Darker Still

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

By the late 1950's*, the federal Social Credit wing was in trouble. The Diefenbaker sweep of 1958 knocked many out and they were never able to fully recover.

Finally in 1962, they decided to form a coalition with a Quebec nationalist party, the Ralliement des créditistes, then led by charismatic leader, David Réal Caouette.

After the Percy Young incident the Social Credit movement experienced a lull, both in electoral success and incidents of anti-Semitism. This changed in 1962,however, when the national party experienced a massive geographical transfer of power to Quebec. A vibrant resurgence in Social Credit's electoral success occurred under Real Caouette, a car salesman from Pontiac, Quebec, who had long been involved in the Quebec wing of the national movement. In the 1962 federal election, Caouette linked his Ralliement des Creditistes with the national Social Credit party and, by invoking Social Credit's traditional bogeys of an anti-Christian conspiracy and the plot of the "moneyed interests," helped twenty-six Quebec Social Credit MPs (out of a national total of thirty) get elected." (1)

This presented a bit of a problem for the party, since only 4 of the 30 Social Credit MPs were from outside Quebec, yet their leader was Robert N. Thompson from Alberta. The year before that, while Caouette actually won the leadership race, Ernest Manning stepped in, saying that his province would never accept a francophone Catholic as party leader.

So while Thompson was officially the national leader and Caouette only deputy leader, Caouette wielded far greater power than Thompson and he knew it. He also got most of the press:

The surprise of Canada's inconclusive national election in June was the emergence of a fiery back-country French Canadian politician named Real Caouette, 44, whose right-wing Social Credit Party unexpectedly won 26 House of Commons seats from Quebec. Since then he has been filling the air with eccentric, if not demagogic, remarks. His fellow Social Credit-ers in English Canada explain that what the French-speaking auto dealer says often gets lost in translation. But last week, Caouette came through loud and clear in an interview in Le Magazine Maclean.

"Who are your political heroes in history?" he was asked. Caouette's brisk rejoinder: "Mussolini and Hitler." The storm broke, and it wasn't helped any by what Caouette had gone on to say in the magazine: "I admire Mussolini's qualities as a leader and I regret that he was a fascist. I admire in Hitler his economic reforms and I consider that he brought his people out of misery. I regret that he employed for war instead of for peace the ideas which he had."(2)

His comments drew praise from several sources including a letter from Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, who had been president of the Reichbank during the earlier part of Hitler's regime.

Schacht had written to Caouette: "I am very pleased to read in our press about your courageous statements and laudable opinion about the ideas of Adolf Hitler. I was happy to have served under his leadership in one of the key positions in our economy before the war and owing to that I had an opportunity to become acquainted with his greatness." In a conversation with a newspaper correspondent, Caouette remarked that Schacht was a Jew but despite his origin had not been liquidated by Hitler. When the correspondent expressed doubt about Schacht's Jewishness, Caouette responded that Hitler exterminated only "useless Jews." (1)

Only "useless Jews"?

Caouette was a federalist who fought for bilingualism in the House of Commons, winning a symbolic victory when he got the Parliament's restaurant to produce bilingual menus. Interesting, since the Reformers always claimed it was Trudeau who first sought to make Canada bilingual, and indeed he did with great success. But it began with Social Credit.

This marriage was doomed to failure from the start and they would soon part ways. Running separately in 1965**, the Quebec party was more successful, and by the 1968 election, Caouette's party won 14 seats while Social Credit won none. They would reunite again briefly in 1972 but the party would never again win seats outside Quebec.

One longtime Social Credit member, disenchanted with the Quebec wing of the Party, left the province with his wife Gwendolyn and six children, and headed west. He was a supporter of Thompson and in fact, Thompson's children had stayed with him for awhile when attending school.

He would then try his hand at adding to the party's English speaking wing by running as a Socred candidate against none other than Tommy Douglas in the riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan—The Islands. I think we already know the outcome of that.

His name was Stockwell Day and his son, also named Stockwell; would later enter politics, with far more success. The senior Day had joined the Western Canada Concept, a western separatist party that wants all western provinces and territories to split and form their own nation.

Notes:

*James Keegstra joined the party in 1957

**Another federal Social Credit Candidate in 1965 was Preston Manning. According to Alf Hooke:

Manning campaigned actively on behalf of a full slate of Social Credit candidates, one such candidate being his son, Preston Manning, who ran for election in the Constituency of East Edmonton. The Conservative candidate secured 13,596 votes to Mr. Manning's: 6,762. Having spoken on young Mr. Preston Manning's behalf myself, I found the overwhelming vote against him hard to believe. I was one of those many who looked forward to hearing the voice of young Preston Manning on behalf of the Social Credit movement in the House of Commons. (3)

Sources:

1. Beyond the Purge: Reviewing the social credit movement's legacy of intolerance, By Janine Stingel, Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, Summer, 1999

2. Canada: Hitler, Mussolini & Caouette, Time Magazine, August 31, 1962

3. 30+5 I know, I was There, A first-hand account of the workings and history of the Social Credit Government in Alberta, Canada 1935-68, by Alfred J Hooke, Douglas Social Credit Secretariat

Ernest Manning, Solon Low and Anti-Semitism

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"Our Jewish friends should recognize that the cause of the growing anti-Semitism ... is not due to propaganda alone ... anti-Semitism is spreading, because people cannot fail to observe that a disproportionate number of Jews occupy positions of control in international finance, in revolutionary activities, and in some propaganda institutions, the common policy of which is the centralization of power and the perversion of religious and cultural ideals. This gives people the impression that therefore there must be a Jewish conspiracy to gain world control." Solon Low (1)

After the resounding success of Social Credit in the Alberta provincial election of 1935, a Western Social Credit Party was established to run in the federal election later that year. They won 17 seats, and John Horne Blackmore would act as their leader.

In 1939, the federal branch of the Socreds joined with former Conservative William Duncan Herridge and his supporters, to create the short lived New Democracy movement. The Social Credit Party ran in the 1940 election under the "New Democracy" name but in 1944 held their first national convention and Solon Earl Low, the Alberta treasurer, would be elected the federal party's first official leader.

Like most in the Social Credit Party at the time, Solon Low was antisemitic, believing that there was a Jewish conspiracy that had infected international finance.

Social Credit publications propagated typical Jew-baiting propaganda. Aberhart bought into the theories of Social Credit's English founder, Maj. C.H. Douglas, who blamed the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the 1940s - and the British government's efforts to control it through mass slaughtering of all infected cattle - as a "Jewish-socialist plot" against English cattle owners.Using his own words, Aberhart melded his Christian fervor with Douglas's political conspiracies to create a stereotypical portrayal of the financial system."

The principles of the old-line politicians and their henchmen are like those of the man who betrayed the Christ," Aberhart said. "Gold was his god and millions have suffered because of it. The moneychangers upheld his right and crucified the Christ and they have been crucifying everyone since who follows in the steps of the Savior."

In a similar vein, Solon Low, the provincial treasurer, had some advice for Jews in combating anti-Semitism ... Ending anti-Semitism, he said, would require Jews to denounce those "arch-criminals" in their midsts who are responsible for these initiatives.This argument would continue for years, with the CJC calling on Social Credit to reject its anti-Semitism, and Social Crediters responding that they would be happy to do so as soon as the CJC rejects the perpetrators of world domination, and so it went.Later, in 1947, when Low was federal leader of the Social Credit party, he used a national CBC broadcast to lambaste "the international power maniacs who aim to destroy Christianity" and the "international gangsters who are day-to-day scheming for world revolution." He also couldn't resist the "close tie-up between international communism, international finance and international political Zionism." (2)

William Aberhart and Ernest Manning were not innocent either.

One of the leading officials in the CJC, Louis Rosenberg, had some comments about Manning’s repudiation. “Evidently the leader of the Social Credit Party in Alberta does not like to be called an anti-semite, although he has done nothing to repudiate the repeated anti-semitic remarks which appear regularly in his official paper Today and Tomorrow and the anti-semitic statements made by the Social Credit members in the House of Commons.” Moreover, stated Rosenberg, the only difference between blatant anti-Semites in the Social Credit movement and “more circumspect and careful men” like Manning and the late Aberhart was that the former invoked the word “Jewish” in their fulminations about the international financial conspiracy, whereas the latter “use the same arguments and the same phraseology but omit the word Jewish, leaving their true meaning to be understood.” (3)

The Canadian Jewish Congress decided to meet with the new national leader Solon Low, to voice their concerns.

Notwithstanding the CJC’s uneasiness with Manning’s ‘repudiation,’ it was not until December 1944 that Alberta CJC officials attempted again to confront Social Credit on the issue of anti-Semitism. That month CJC officials H.A. Friedman and John Dower met with Solon Low, leader of the newly-created national Social Credit party. Friedman and Dower met Low at the legislative buildings in Edmonton and talked with him for nearly two hours about Social Credit’s attitude on the “Jewish question.” They showed him several issues of the party organ (now renamed the Canadian Social Crediter) which were anti-Semitic. On the surface, the meeting went well. Low was conciliatory, assuring both Friedman and Dower that he strongly opposed anti-Semitism and that it definitely was not part of Social Credit policy. He gave them “his personal assurance that he would no longer tolerate the type of articles that we brought to his attention in the party’s paper ... that he would disavow any member of the party who indulged in Anti-Semitic statements
... that he would ... make a public statement to the press on the question of Anti-Semitism, which he assured us we would find fully satisfactory.”

Shortly thereafter, Low gave a public address in Lethbridge, Alberta in which he discussed Social Credit’sstance on anti-Semitism. Unfortunately for the CJC, Low’s statement was blatantly anti-Semitictements ... that he would ... make a public statement to the press on the question of Anti-Semitism, which he assured us we would find fully satisfactory.” Shortly thereafter, Low gave a public address in Lethbridge, Alberta in which he discussed Social Credit’s stance on anti-Semitism. Unfortunately for the CJC, Low’s statement was blatantly anti-Semitic.

“Some Jewish friends of our movement have told me that we are being identified with anti-Semitism because of our persistent and outspoken exposures of a group of international financiers and world plotters who are engaged in a criminal conspiracy to destroy democracy and Christianity and to enslave mankind to their rule.” By construing his meeting with Friedman and Dower in these terms, Low simultaneously refuted and reaffirmed Social Credit’s anti-Semitism. “Some of these men happen to be of Jewish racial origin,” he commented, “and to be more specific, of German-Jewish origin.” However, they were not exclusively Jewish, Low qualified, and although many were this was no reason to condemn Jews as a whole. Accordingly, it was important to clarify for everyone, including Canada’s Jews, Social Credit’s stance on anti-Semitism: We very definitely are not anti-Semitic or anti any race or religion ... The only times when the Canadian Social Credit movement can possibly be brought into conflict with any racial or religious group would be if those comprising such a group conspired together as a group in an organized attack on democracy and Christianity. I am sure that our fellow Canadians of Jewish origin recognize that a truly democratic and Christian society ... alone will give them the social objectives they seek as individuals in common with all Canadians ... it is fantastic for anybody to suggest that as Social Crediters we are anti-Semitic. I will go further and point out to our fellow Canadians of Jewish origin that actually the Social Credit movement is the most powerful influence in the country working for their emancipation.

Low’s speech had made a mockery of his meeting with Friedman and Dower and was the absolute antithesis of what they had hoped for. Not surprisingly, Western CJC officials were extremely dismayed by Low’s address and the entire CJC leadership became extremely wary about openly confronting Social Credit’s anti-Semitism in the future. What the CJC needed, but was not yet ready to create, was a public relations approach which did not rely on the goodwill of those who promoted anti-Semitism. (3)

And as Janine Stingel points out "... while anti-Semitic sparks were emerging throughout the country at the time, they differed from the Social Credit experience, which represented an institutionalization of Jew-hatred within a legitimately elected Canadian government." (2)

And:

Stingel laments that Manning has gone down in the annals as the man who purged the anti-Semites from Social Credit, something she considers a generous assessment from what she knows of the machinations around the issue. She also sees a direct ideological (and blood) relationship between Social Credit and the Reform party/Canadian Alliance, which was formed by Ernest Manning's son,
Preston. (2)

Solon Low would visit Israel in 1957 and change his opinion drastically. He died in 1962 at the age of 62.

Sources:

1. Beyond the Purge: Reviewing the social credit movement's legacy of intolerance, By Janine Stingel, Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, Summer, 1999

2. The Social Credit's darker side: Canadian Jewish Congress cut its teeth fighting Socreds, By Pat Johnson, The Jewish Independent, April 6, 2001

3. FROM FATHER TO SON: CANADIAN JEWRY’S RESPONSE TO THE ALBERTA SOCIAL CREDIT PARTY AND THE REFORM PARTY OF CANADA, By Janine Stingel, 2001

Will the Ottawa Press Gallery Need an American Passport to Talk to Our Prime Minister?

It was a little odd that Stephen Harper felt the need to hire two former U.S. presidential press secretaries, to join his communications team.

Ari Fleischer of course would bring him closer to George Bush, now that he's ridden off into the sunset. But why Mike McCurry?

He is a Democratic, who once ran interference for Bill Clinton.

Of course these days, he's mostly lobbying and has earned a reputation for trying to make the Democrats more Republican. He's also supposedly in cahoots with big business, selling out his principles for a piece of the very big pie.

Alas, another one bites the dust.

Scott Feschuk at McLeans, probably says it best.

Harper hires Americans to help him “brand” Canada, presumably as a nation incapable of branding itself:

Ever the generous neighbour, Stephen Harper is unveiling his own little U.S. stimulus package. Our Prime Minister has retained two prominent American consultants to help him get noticed in the United States. What – the charismatic personality wasn’t doing the trick on its own?

Bottom line: there shall be no recession in the households of former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer and former Clinton mouthpiece Mike McCurry. How much
are these guys getting paid to help our PM line up interviews in the U.S. media? Alas, the Harper government won’t say, citing the provisions of the We Didn’t Tell You How Much the Psychic Hairstylist Makes – You Think We’re Going to Tell You This?

... I guess if there’s an upside, it’s that members of our own press gallery now understand what it takes to get a question answered by our Prime Minister – an American passport and Ari Fleischer’s cell number.

If it were only that easy.

Social Credit and Norman Jacques

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Norman Jacques was a farmer and horse breeder who was first elected as a Member of Parliament for Social Credit in the 1935 sweep.

In a party known for it's antisemitism, Jacques was widely regarded as the most anti-Semitic member of the party's parliamentary grouping. He promoted C.H. Douglas's belief in an international financial Jewish conspiracy, and attempted to read excerpts from Protocols of the Elders of Zion into the Canadian parliamentary record.

He once suggested that "the Jews control all means of gathering news and of propaganda" and like many in the movement believed that an international Jewish conspiracy was responsible for both communism and Zionism. He opposed allowing Jewish refugees into Canada prior to World War II on the argument that they constituted a communist invasion force, and once dismissed the charge of anti-Semitism against him as a "communist smokescreen". He was a vocal opponent of the creation of the State of Israel in 1947-48, and described Zionism as "a political movement ... to dominate the world". (1)

Like William Aberhart, Jacques became interested in the politics of Father Charles Coughlin, co-founder the Union Party, who had written several columns for Aberhart's newspaper, the Social Credit Chronicles. The Union Party was formed to protest Roosevelt's "New Deal", believing they had a better option.

Norman Jacques went to visit another founder of the Party, Gerald Lyman Kenneth Smith in 1947, and upon his return was quoted in the Montreal Gazette:

"Gerald Smith is truly a great Christian gentleman who has been cruelly maligned. He stands for Christian nationalism. But, of course, the Communists have smeared him as anti-semitic... Smith believes in America for the Americans and in the American way of life... I have tried to do the same with the Canadian way of life and Canadian freedom and I will keep right on trying". Jaques later retracted his support for Smith, and said that most of the quotations attributed to him by the Gazette were fabrications. He did, however, describe Smith as having "done more to expose communist plots that any other public man in the United States of America", and said that he would try to do the same in Canada.

The Anti-Defamation League described Jaques as a "notorious anti-semite who has abused the privilege of entry into the United States by stirring up misunderstanding and tensions among racial and religious groups." (2)

Norman Jacques died in 1949 while still in office.

Sources:

1. Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the Jewish Response, By Janine Stingel, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press ISBN 0-7735-2010-4, 2000, Pg. 91-92

2. Stingel, 2000, Pg. 183

Youth For Western Civilization

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

The group, Youth for Western Civilization, is a spin-off of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists; both spin-offs of Young Americans for Freedom, and all connected to Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute.  In fact, YFC is financed by the Institute through their Campus Leadership Program. The financing must be substantial, since when they made their debut at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), they were actually one of the major donors of that year’s event.

YWC was created to perform stunts that the seemingly more respectable Republican youth groups might shy away from.  Or as they say at the institute:  "You can get away with stuff that you would take a lot of flak for doing in the College Republicans ..."  (1)

For instance, they  held a muffin sale at several campuses, where the price of the muffin was determined by your race.  Whites paid $2.00, Asians: $1.50, Latinos: $1.00, Black/ African American: $0.75, Native American: $0.25 and Illegal Immigrants FREE.  Obviously this an attempt to incite, as whites are penalized just for being white and illegal immigrants get a free ride, while everyone else is subsidized. 

However, many of the actions of WYC are more dangerous, as they go after what they call "liberal" professors.  One who had been targeted by the group, was being harassed to the point where he emailed a friend stating that he had a gun and knew how to use it.  YFC hacked into his email account, took the message to the public and the professor was fired.  He shouldn't have said what he did and the university was right to let him go, but these are the kinds of activities that the group engages in.

Retired university professor Michael Yates says he's glad to no longer be in academia.  "At least I did not have to face the nasty right-wing students who spy on their professors and do the bidding of the professional witch hunters who spew hatred on radio talk shows, and television programs."  Others are not so lucky.

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day

When the South Park cartoon depicted the prophet Muhammad as a bear, or at least as someone dressed up in a bear costume, the show's producers began to receive death threats.  This prompted Seattle artist Molly Norris, to establish an Everybody Draw Muhammad Day, in protest of censorship.

The Muslim religion does not allow depictions of the prophet, anymore than Christians would tolerate Jesus drawn in a disparaging fashion, or Jews, Abraham.  It's blasphemy.

To Youth for Western Civilization, this was a perfect opportunity to stir up a bit trouble, so they promoted the artistic endeavour on several U.S. campuses.  It was petty and mean, but that's what defines them.

The Marcus Epstein Affair

Thomas Tancredo is a former Republican congressman and now the honorary chairman of Youth for Western Civilization.  In his younger days, he was a member of Young Americans for Freedom, and was rewarded with a job in the Reagan administration.  Tancredo ran for President in 2008, under the new Constitution Party banner, on an anti-immigration platform.  An outspoken critic of immigration and multiculturalism, he has earned a reputation as a bigot. 

Marcus Epstein is the executive director of Tom Tancredo's Team America PAC, an immigration panel at CPAC, financed by YWC, discussing the imminent demise of the white race.  “No more of this multiculturalism garbage,” Tancredo said, adding that “the cult of multiculturalism has captured the world” and is “the dagger in the heart” of civilization. (2)  Stephen Harper, in a 2003 speech to the Institute for Research on Public Policy, claimed that "multiculturalism" was "a weak nation strategy", and to ensure that Canada is "never again" perceived as a potential source of threats, he called for a "long-overdue" reform of our refugee programs. (3)

Epstein also runs Pat and Bay Buchanan's The American Cause, another group established to end non-white immigration.  Says Buchanan:  "The central objection to the present flood of illegals is they are not English-speaking white people from Western Europe; they are Spanish-speaking brown and black people from Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean." (4)

Founder of the National Citizens Coalition, where Harper has been a member for more than three decades and once acted as its President, Colin Brown, when asked why letting in Hungarians fleeing communism after the Soviet crackdown was justified, but letting in Vietnamese boat people fleeing communism was not. “I think the Hungarians have made marvelous citizens, but the bloodlines run the same way. We all come from Europe so they fit in. You wouldn’t know if the people next door to you are Hungarian or not. They don’t all go and gather in a ghetto.”

All those involved in the conservative movement, on both sides of the border, sing from the same hymnal.

Back to Epstein. 

Not exactly white himself, but Korean-American, he writes for Human Events, The American Conservative, The Washington Examiner, the anti-Semitic Taki's Mag, and racist/anti-immigrant site VDARE.  He also claims that he is not a racist, and yet according to the Washington Independant:

On July 7, 2007, Marcus Epstein had too much to drink and stumbled onto Georgetown’s scenic, shop-lined M Street, walking in no particular direction. At 7:15 p.m., he bumped into a black woman, called her a “nigger,” and struck her in the head with an open hand. An off-duty Secret Service agent was watching. Epstein “jogged away,” according to the agent’s affidavit, and when Epstein was finally chased down, he “continued to flail his arms while being taken into custody.” ... He faces a maximum punishment of 180 days in jail and a $1000 fine. He’s under a restraining order to stay away from the couple involved, has agreed to seek mental health treatment, complete an alcohol treatment program, write a letter of apology to the victim and donate $1000 to the United Negro College Fund. (5)

A Circle of Hate

According to the Anti-Defamation league, YWC has many ties with White Supremacists. 

Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) may have standing in the mainstream conservative world but from its inception, white supremacists have enthusiastically embraced the group.  In April 2011, YWC received direct help from white supremacist Jared Taylor,who runs the racist magazine American Renaissance. Taylor and YWC joined forces that month to create a fund-raising packet that Taylor mailed to his supporters on YWC's behalf. Taylor is a strong supporter of YWC because of his own racist convictions. He introduced race as a crucial issue in his fund-raising letter for YWC by writing, "Race is an important aspect of individual and group identity. Of all the fault lines that divide society—language, religion, class, ideology—it is the most prominent and divisive. Race and racial conflict are at the heart of the most serious challenges the western world faces in the 21^st century." (6)

ADL is also concerned with YWC's founder, Kevin DeAnna, who Taylor says  "knows how important our cultural identity is" and "has agreed to continue our struggle on college campuses throughout the nation and dedicated himself to reaching our children and grandchildren."

DeAnna is also linked to Richard Spencer, who runs a site called Alternative Right.  Spencer writes articles for Taylor's American Renaissance and The Occidental Observer, an anti-Semitic and racist publication, and is the executive director of the National Policy Institute (NPI), a white supremacist think tank. Spencer once remarked, "I'm very lucky to be friends with Kevin DeAnna of Youth for Western Civilization. I think this group is extremely important for our side." (6)

The H.L. Mencken Club for Mice

H. L. Menken (1880-1956) was an American author best known for his satirical essays on the famous Scopes Trials (evolution), which he referred to as the "monkey trials".  Though not really a racist, he was an elitists, who scorned a democratic system that allowed lesser men to rule their superiors.  He was also critical of Roosevelt's New Deal.

The H. L. Mencken Club came into existence in 2008, and according to their website is "an organization for independent-minded intellectuals and academics of the Right."  The Club hosts an annual conference that attracts speakers and guests from around the world, including paleoconservative Peter Brimelow, Pat Buchanan of The American Cause, YWC's Kevin DeAnna and his friend Richard Spencer.

If these people represent intellectuals and academics of the Right, then the Right is in serious trouble.

Peter Brimelow has a Canadian connection through the Reform Party, now called the Conservative Party of Canada.  He is an author and former right-wing journalist for Conrad Black's Financial Post and William Buckley's National Review.  In his book The Patriot Game, he attacks Quebec, bilingualism, the Canadian flag and the Canadian national anthem, which he sees as pandering to Quebec.

According to a college friend, after Stephen Harper read the Patriot Game, he became so enthused that he went out and bought ten copies to give to friends. (7)  I've read the book and in many ways, it formed the basis for much of Harper's and the Reform Party's philosophy.

Brimelow was an acquaintance of Canada's Paul Fromm, who founded the Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform (C-FAR), which opposes foreign aid to Third World countries.  Fromm was allowed to sell memberships to C-Far at a Reform Party assembly, in exchanging for getting Peter Brimelow to speak.

Brimelow, along with other speakers at the H.L. Menken conference, Paul E. Gottfried and Steve Sailer, operate V-Dare, an anti-immigration, pro-white hate group. The Southern Poverty Law Centre covered the inaugural event in 2008, where much of the talk was about "how the GOP could regain power by more fervently courting the white vote."

[Said Brimelow]  “The way to win is to get white votes. If [Republicans] did that, even without actually cutting off immigration, they could continue to win national elections for quite a long time.”  Look at Alabama ... with whites only comprising 65 percent of the electorate, they’re in worse shape than American whites generally. Yet McCain easily won that state, in large part because of support from 88 percent of white voters  ...  It seems like an implicit thing that everybody in the South understands how things are and they all vote Republican."

Brimelow even suggested that McCain should have said that Obama was the affirmative action candidate. “It would have been so easy. All he had to do is get up and say it.”

Fortunately, I think McCain had a bit more class.

Most of these groups who use terms like "Western", really mean "White".  When you trace their funding, they all dip from the same pool, promote each others think tanks, and organizations, and deliver the same message.

This was the message that the Reform Party presented and it did not disappear when they bought out the rights to the Tories.  It's still there under the surface.  The media just no longer covers it.

Sources:

1. My Right-Wing Degree, By Jeff Horwitz, May 24, 2005

2. CPAC Immigration Panel: Readying the Fight to Save the GOP and White America, By Brian Tashman, Right-Wing Watch, February 11, 2011

3. Too Close for Comfort: Canada's Future Within Fortress North America, By Maude Barlow, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2005, ISBN: 0-7710-1088-5, p. 19-24

4. Into the Mainstream, By Chip Berlet, Southern Poverty Law Centre

5. Tancredo, Buchanan Bruised by Racist ‘Karate Chop’, By David Weigel, The Washington Independant, June 2, 2009

6. Youth for Western Civilization:  Ties with White Supremacists, Anti-Defamation League, May 23, 2011 

7. Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, by William Johnson, McClelland & Stewart, 2005, ISBN 0-7710 4350-3

The Israel Lobby is Not a Conspiracy Theory

Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe have a new book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict called Gaza in Crisis, that deals with the horrible conditions in which the Palestinian people are forced to live.

They attempt to detail the reasons for the conflict and the bias shown Israel by many Western nations, especially the United States and now Canada.

They mention a thought-provoking article, published by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (now a book), based on extended research, that discusses the power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Israeli lobby in Washington, in shaping American policy in the Middle East in general and toward Israel in particular.

And while Chomsky and Pappe are careful not to suggest a Jewish conspiracy, which this is not, they do reveal how the country called Israel, manipulates public opinion and coerces governments into giving them unheard of freedoms to do what they want. And they do this because of AIPAC. Citing Mearsheimer and Walt:

Their basic argument was that the lobby directs American policy in a way that undermines the United States' national interest. Not since the 1960s would one have come across such a harsh criticism of either Zionism or U.S. policy from within the heart of American academia or the media.

The role of the lobby in shaping U.S. policy in the Middle East is undoubtedly crucial. But American policy in the Middle East, like any regional policy of a great power in the past, is the outcome of more than one factor. For those, like myself, for whom the analysis of such a policy is not just academic but a matter of life and death, an expanded analysis is called for, not only for the sake of understanding that policy more clearly, but also as a way of coping with its dangerous outcomes. (1)

The Israel Lobby and Foreign Policy

Mearsheimer and Walt begin by establishing the fact that Israel has been the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy for several decades, enjoying unwavering support, in an attempt to use the only democratic country in the region to spread ‘democracy’ to their neighbours. At least that is the conventional wisdom.

However, this unwavering support has instead achieved the opposite:

Throughout the region [it] has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.

Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical. (2)

And the level of support is enormous:

Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain. Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for military purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel is allowed use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence industry.

It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the US opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. Moreover, the US has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. (2)

Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support, vetoing 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, and has blocked the efforts of Arab states to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda.

Canada and Our Shift in Foreign Policy

In 2006, CTV conducted a poll asking Canadians who we should support in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

“When asked who Canada should support, a majority, 77 per cent, said we should be neutral. Sixteen per cent said Canada should support Israel, while only one per cent said Hezbollah.” (3)

And yet the Harper government became "unapologetic supporters of Israel" in direct conflict of our interests. And they did this with an aggressive campaign and some powerful allies. The Zionist group: Christians United For Israel and the American Neoconservative heavyweights, represented by Jason Kenney's director of communications, Alykhan Velsi.

Velshi is a player in the American neoconservative movement, and includes among his colleagues, the late Irving Kristol, Andrew C. McCarthy, Lynn and Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. He also belongs to the controversial American Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Continuation:

1. Has Israel Been a Blessing or a Burden?

2. Israel Engages in Espionage and Treachery Against Her Allies

3. We Can't Ignore the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. But Who is the Underdog?

Sources:

1. Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians, By Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, 2010, Haymarket Books, ISBN: 978-1608460-97-7, Pg. 19

2. The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, By: John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, London Review of Books, March 23, 2006

3. CTV, August 1, 2006

Israel Engages in Espionage and Treachery Against Her Allies

Despite the fact that the United States has been more than generous with Israel, it has not always been appreciated, which is one more reason why Canada has to be careful, when pledging our undying and unconditional love to a foreign country.

A final reason to question Israel’s strategic value is that it does not behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and to refrain from ‘targeted assassinations’ of Palestinian leaders). Israel has provided sensitive military technology to potential rivals like China, in what the State Department inspector-general called ‘a systematic and growing pattern of unauthorised transfers’. According to the General Accounting Office, Israel also ‘conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any ally’. (1)

Jonathan Pollard and Israeli Espionage

Johanthan Pollard is a former civilian intelligence analyst who was convicted of spying for Israel, receiving a life sentence in 1987. Several activist groups, and high-profile Israeli politicians, have lobbied for his release, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has again written to president Obama. According to the Washington Post:

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent a letter Tuesday to President Obama, formally asking for the release of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the American entenced to life in prison in 1987 for spying for Israel in a case that shook U.S.-Israeli relations.

The CIA has consistently opposed releasing Pollard, as have U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials who have argued that clemency would show unacceptable leniency toward a spy who had turned over tens of thousands of pages of classified information. Pollard, who worked for the Navy as a civilian intelligence analyst, began spying for Israel after he met an Israeli officer on leave in the United States in 1984. He was arrested outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington 18 months later and is currently imprisoned in North Carolina.

Pollard operated at the same time as another spy Ben-ami Kadish, who pleaded guilty to charges of passing classified information to Israel during the same period . Much of the information gathered by these men was passed on to the Soviet Union in return for more exit visas for Soviet Jews.

In 2004 it was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had passed classified information about U.S. policy towards Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying organization in the U.S, while he was working for the Defense Department. Two former employees of AIPAC (Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman) also faced charges (that would later be dropped) that they assisted him in the AIPAC espionage scandal and passing classified national defense information to an Israeli diplomat Naor Gilon.

And yet during this time, the U.S. continued channelling money and military hardware to Israel. "Israel is hardly the only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value." (1)


And any mention of Israel and 9/11, garners accusations of buying into a Jewish conspiracy, and yet even Fox News ran a four part series on Israeli spies who failed to share vital information before the attacks.

Some 60 Israelis, who federal investigators have said are part of a long-running effort to spy on American government officials, are among the hundreds of foreigners detained since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Fox News has learned. The Israelis, a handful of whom are described as active Israeli military or intelligence operatives, have been detained on immigration charges or under the new Patriot Anti-Terrorism Law. Federal investigators said some of them failed polygraph questions inquiring about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.

There is no indication the Israelis were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance and not shared it. A highly placed investigator told Fox News there are "tie-ins," but when asked for details flatly refused to describe them. "Evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified, I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It is classified information," the source said.

Bringing up any of this does not make you anti-Semitic, it just makes you distrustful of a foreign nation with an agenda. I think we have a right to question their motives, because it's pretty clear that they would not give us the same undying support we are giving them.

Sources:

1. The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, By: John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, London Review of Books, March 23, 2006

David Sweet's Promise Keepers are Part of a Larger Political Movement

The man in the video above (love the Young Turks) is discussing the founder and leader of a religious organization called Focus on the Family, James Dobson. Many of Harper's Reformers belong to this organization, including Maurice Vellacott, Rob Anders and David Sweet.

Sweet is also the Canadian founder of the Promise Keepers, an offshoot of Focus on the Family.

Dobson is a prominent member of the American Religious Right and the Council for National Policy, with ties to both Stephen Harper and George Bush.

In 2005, Dobson spent thousands of dollars promoting Stephen Harper's run for the prime minister's job, by helping him make same-sex marriage a hot button issue, to lure in the Canadian Religious Right.

My point is that this is a very powerful political movement, that gets a free ride because they cry religious prosecution as soon as you criticize their actions.

I am no longer giving them a free ride.

In fact, since they have become so political, they should lose all tax breaks, since they are clearly raking in a lot of profits, and using those profits to get their candidates elected.

More on the Promise Keepers:

Since it began seven years ago as the brainchild of a college football coach named Bill McCartney, Promise Keepers has become the largest and most controversial men’s movement in the United States. Its leaders say its phenomenal growth - from a handful of men in 1990 to 2.6 million by early this year, with a separate branch in Canada - demonstrates a yearning among men for spiritual values. Its critics reply that Promise Keepers is something more sinister: a nostalgic throwback to the days of unchallenged male supremacy, or even another bid by the religious right to impose a fundamentalist agenda on American life.

" ... It is a message that inspires hundreds of thousands of men at the same time that it unsettles some mainstream clergy and drives feminist groups to distraction. The U.S. National Organization of Women says that Promise Keepers’ real message is "women taking a backseat."

A coalition of liberal clergy called Equal Partners in Faith condemns it as "divisive and potentially dangerous." And a New York City-based group called the Center for Democracy Studies warns that Promise Keepers is nothing less than the "third wave" of the religious right - after Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition. Alfred Ross, the centre’s executive director, points to close ties between Promise Keepers and such luminaries of the American religious right as Robertson and James Dobson of Focus on the Family as proof that McCartney’s movement is no spontaneous eruption.

DeMoss, its main spokesman, was an adviser to Pat Buchanan’s right-wing presidential campaign. "Promise Keepers is steeped in political ideology," argues Ross.

There is no question that McCartney’s fundamentalist message reinforces the conservative, so-called family values that are so dear to the religious right. In 1992, he campaigned in favor of an anti-gay-rights law in Colorado, at one point describing homosexuality as "an abomination against Almighty God."

But the main reason for the men-only rule goes to the heart of Promise Keepers’ most controversial belief: that men must reclaim leadership of their families, and wives should submit to their husbands.

McCartney says that is not debatable - the Bible says the man is head of the family, and that is that. Some of his associates have interpreted this in ways that ring alarm bells among many women. Tony Evans, a frequent Promise Keeper speaker, wrote in the movement’s book Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper that men should sit down with their wives, "and say something like this: 'Honey, I’ve made a terrible mistake. I’ve given you my role. I gave up leading this family. Now I must reclaim that role.' "

David Sweet Should Not be Allowed to Vote on Women's Issues

David Sweet is the Reform-Conservative MP for Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale, and a card carrying member of the Religious Right.

As the founder of the Canadian branch of the male-dominated Promise Keepers, his views are anti-feminist, anti-abortion and anti-gay.

Now, I have no problem with his being a born again Christian (a former convicted car thief), because his religious beliefs should not affect how he does his job.

But I do have a big problem with his Promise Keepers affiliation.

The National Organization for Women, an American feminist organization has suggested that the Promise Keepers are a threat to women's rights, and I agree.

The group encourages inequality within marriages and teaches a doctrine of male superiority. According to Amy Schindler, "the discourse of masculinity found within conservative religious movements, such as the Promise Keepers and the Victorian era movement 'muscular Christianity,' is inherently political. Any masculinity project aimed at restoring or reclaiming a 'traditional' male role for privileged white, heterosexual males has a political impact within the tapestry of class, race, and gender power."

During the 2004 election campaign he was quite open about his PK past.

Religious activist turns to partisan politics
CTV.ca News Staff
June 27, 2004

Until Jan. 31, Sweet was president of the Canadian arm of the Promise Keepers, a U.S.-based evangelical Christian organization, a job he had held since 1998. The Promise Keepers is a men's group devoted to helping its members lead better lives guided by the teachings of Jesus Christ. It requires members to follow seven basic promises.

In an interview with Christian Week, Sweet said, "Men are natural influencers, whether we like it or not. There's a particular reason why Jesus called men only. It's not that women aren't co-participators. It's because Jesus knew women would naturally follow."

A leader of the Promise Keepers organization went further, "I believe that feminists of the more aggressive persuasion are frustrated women unable to find the proper male leadership. If a woman were receiving the right kind of love and attention and leadership, she would not want to be liberated from that."

And from the 'Chosen Women' rally: "[A woman's] job is to submit to our teachers and our Professors...even if we know they are wrong. It is then in God's hands."

David Sweet is also on record as saying of homosexuality, "It's pretty clear in Genesis, in Leviticus and in the book of Romans that homosexuality is not an acceptable lifestyle, and that's the truth we decided to live by."

We could argue that he may have been elected either because of these views, or in spite of them;

but that's not true. He lost the 2004 election, so in 2006, completely dropped any mention of the Promise Keepers. Why was that? Did he realize that Canadians did not share his views?

David Sweet hides his Promise Keeper past
January 16, 2006

This election, Mr. Sweet has erased all evidence of his past affiliation with Promise Keepers. There is no mention of them on his campaign website. The Promise Keepers Canada website has also been scrubbed clean of Mr. Sweet. Even the Christian Week website has been scrubbed.

“It seems that Mr. Sweet has gone to great trouble to hide his past,” said Laurie Arron, Egale’s Director of Advocacy. “For example, he’s said that women are natural followers. It wasn’t easy to track this down. An article in Christian Week in which he said this was removed from that website. Luckily, Google has cached a copy of it.”

Promise Keepers do not encourage a relationship of equals in a marriage. Rather, they call for men to “take” their role as the leader in the family. Promise Keeper Tony Evans stated “I am not suggesting that you ask for your role back, I am urging you to take it back. There can be no compromise here.” .

Is this someone we want voting on issues pertaining to women?

IS THIS REALLY YOUR CANADA? IS DAVID SWEET REALLY THE BEST CHOICE FOR ANCASTER-DUNDAS-FLAMBOROUGH-WESTDALE?

Social Credit, Neil Carmichael and Flying Saucers

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In the spring of 1963 the Social Credit Party would again be in trouble over antisemitic remarks made by one of their members. This time it was Neil Carmichael, a coin and stamp dealer and five-time federal Socred candidate in the Toronto riding of St. Paul's.

Carmichael declared that Baron de Rothschild was attempting to buy up Canadian mining interests through a non-Jewish agent. The Rothschild family, Carmichael declared, was part of an international financiers' circle which was attempting to acquire all Canadian business enterprises. Moreover, the Rothschilds and other financiers were able to borrow money from the International Monetary Fund, which was supported by Canadian tax dollars. "The public is being taken for a ride by the moneychangers," announced Carmichael, "and their money is being taken from them by the bigshots in the money world." (1)

The Globe and Mail reminded it's readers: "From its earliest days the Social Credit Party has been suspected of having anti-Semitic inclinations ... [Carmichael's speech] comes very close to the familiar anti-Semitic propaganda dealing with Jewish financiers and their alleged machinations to enslave the world ... Unless Mr. Thompson at once disowns Mr. Carmichael, the public will be entitled to conclude that the Socreds are willing to harbor men of such unpleasant opinions within their ranks."

And the Toronto Telegram remarked: "Mr. Carmichael's expose smacks of the wilder accusations dredged up from time to time by the former Social Credit member from Lethbridge, John Blackmore. And, of course, it also smacks strongly of the anti-Semitic canards spread by the Nazis. If this surprises, we should remember that the deputy leader of the party, Real Caouette, has more than once expressed his admiration for the economic policies of Hitler and Mussolini."

Party president Robert Thompson was again forced to step in. He denounced Carmichael's comments and stated that the party did not condone antisemitism. And yet at about the same time he was praising Ronald Gostick on official party stationary (2)

The Brotherhood of Faithists

Carmichael was a controversial figure, known for more than just his antisemitism. He belonged to a religious cult known as the Brotherhood of Faithists, started in the late 1800's by Dr. John Ballou Newbrough, and believed by it's followers to be the only true faith. (3)

The Toronto group would meet in the drawing room at the Casa Loma where they would engage in the building of a "cosmic pyramid". They also distributed pamphlets about flying saucers, something they devoutly believed in. The pamphlets were signed "Michael", but it is believed that they were written by Neil Carmichael. (4)

The Social Credit Party like the Reform Party that followed, did little to discourage these right-wing fringe groups. They recognized that they had a following and a passion that could be tapped into for votes.

When they were eventually outed by the press, they would simply distance themselves and go through all the right motions to appear ignorant of the situation. Carmichael ran for the party five times. His views were well known for years.

Ernest Manning would dismiss it by saying that bright lights attracted bugs, but why did they continue to shine such a bright light to lure them in? In this case it was anti-semitism, but would later under Reform, include anti-gays, anti-women's rights, anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism, anti-Muslim ... the list goes on.

The only difference between the Social Credit Party then and the Conservative Party of Canada now, is that the latter no longer apologizes.

Sources:

1. Beyond the Purge: Reviewing the social credit movement's legacy of intolerance, By Janine Stingel, Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, Summer, 1999.

2. Jew-haters and red-baiters: The Canadian League of Rights, By David Lethbridge, AntiFa Info-Bulletin, February 2, 1999

3. Faithism: God's True Church

4. UFOs over Canada: personal accounts of sightings and close encounters, By John Robert Col, Hounslow Press, 1996, ISBN-13: 978-0888821386, Pg. 13

Wallace Klinck and the Bookstore Incident

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Though Robert Thompson, then head of the national Social Credit Party had been able to quiet the press somewhat after the Carmichael affair, the stain of anti-Semitism remained: The Toronto Telegram stated: "Neil Carmichael's words are a reflection on the Social Credit Party that is capable of attracting such men." The Globe and Mail remarked: "If Mr. Thompson expects his good faith to be accepted, it is not enough to dismiss remarks like those of Mr. Carmichael as indiscreet." The paper subsequently added that "even if the Social Credit Party now expels Mr. Carmichael, the question will remain whether he is being fired for anti-Semitism or indiscretion." (1)

This method of handling these kinds of situations would continue with the Reform Party under Preston Manning and the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper, though Harper no longer apologizes, he just demands that we accept it.

Then in 1965, another incident would take place that would once again prove that antisemitism was alive and well and living in the Social Credit Party.

In January 1965 Wallace Klinck, a thirty-year old University of Alberta student and campus chairman for the Social Credit party, obtained the approval of Professor Grant Davy, head of the political science department, to make Social Credit literature available in the university bookstore. Klinck approached the manager of the bookstore, N.S. Howe, with a number of books and pamphlets on Social Credit, including six copies of the Protocols. He told Howe that "Social Credit had come under a lot of fire lately on campus and ... students should be given the opportunity to read explanations of exactly what it stands for." Howe accepted the literature.

Once it was discovered that the bookstore was selling anti-Semitic literature the provost of the university immediately ordered the withdrawal of the Protocols. Howe defended his actions by stating: "I didn't know what kind of a publication the Protocols of Zion was. And I didn't expect [the political science department] did either." In fact, Professor Davy was aware of the contents of the Protocols and vehemently disagreed with them. "Nevertheless," he argued, "it seemed to me that it would be useful for students to know the sort of background upon which the Social Credit Party developed. I understand that Premier Manning has disavowed the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' as a part of the philosophy of his government, but there is little doubt ... that Social Credit movements and parties in other areas still refer to it as a basis of their philosophy." (1)

Manning, Orvis Kennedy, the Alberta Social Credit League president, and Owen Anderson (leader of the campus Socreds) immediately cancelled Klinck's membership, and began doing damage control. Anderson declared that Klinck "violated Social Credit party principle" by distributing the Protocols. "We ... do not hold the Protocols' views, and we repudiate people who distribute racist literature." Kennedy declared that the Protocols were "scurrilous, anti-Semitic writing, a forgery" and (falsely) claimed that they had "never been part of the Social Credit literature."

Klinck denied that the Protocols were anti-Semitic but asserted, quite correctly, that they were an integral part of social credit theory originated by Douglas. "The book is a terrible outline for world conquest ... The events that have occurred in the world since it was written would make any thinking person incapable of dismissing it without serious consideration." As for accusations that he was antiSemitic, Klinck said he believed in the dangers of an international financial conspiracy which could lead to a Third World War, but stressed he was not racist or anti-Jewish. "The nucleus of international financiers has its share of Jews in it ... Many records suggest there are a substantial number of Jews involved but this does not in any way involve the entire Jewish people." He also believed that the Alberta Social Credit government "doesn't do enough to bring the truth of Douglas Social Credit philosophy to the people"; hence his decision to distribute the Protocols and other Social Credit literature. It seemed to have worked--by the time the university ordered the books removed the bookstore had sold all six copies of the Protocols.

Premier Manning seemed relatively unperturbed about Social Credit's recurring intolerance. When questioned about the campus bookstore incident on CBC television a year later, he responded only with "deft side-stepping and restrained answers." According to one critical observer: "It was interesting to watch the Premier repudiate the anti-Semitic past of the Social Credit movement ... The anti-Semitic line has now been quietly relegated to the inner circles of the Social Credit Party, where the conspiracy theory of history is far from dead." (1)

Wallace Klinck is still very much a disciple of Social Credit and appears to work tirelessly to promote monetary reform. Says Wallace:

Were consumers paid a measured dividend and retailers adhered to a measured markup there would be in each production cycle ample monetized demand for accountants to feel content that their measures were useful in our struggle to end poverty, recession and forced loss of wages.. (2)

He also continues to support the notion of a Jewish conspiracy theory, though his attacks are limited to the Jewish Lobby. I would hesitate to call that antiSemitism. I myself have often criticized the Israeli Apartheid, but not based on religion, only a country's foreign policy.

However, when notions of a Jewish Conspiracy surface, I'm not OK with that.

Sources:

1. Beyond the Purge: Reviewing the social credit movement's legacy of intolerance, By Janine Stingel, Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, Summer, 1999

2. Wallace Klinck's brief lesson, By John Gelles, February 2003

Has Israel Been a Blessing or a Burden?

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Watt in their book The Israel Lobby, question whether Israel has really been as strong an ally as many believe. Is the enormous generosity justified? And again, this is not about religion, but the foreign country of Israel.

One might argue that Israel was an asset during the Cold War. By serving as America’s proxy after 1967, it helped contain Soviet expansion in the region and inflicted humiliating defeats on Soviet clients like Egypt and Syria. It occasionally helped protect other US allies (like King Hussein of Jordan) and its military prowess forced Moscow to spend more on backing its own client states. It also provided useful intelligence about Soviet capabilities. (1)

However, backing Israel has come at a price.

The October War or Yom Kippur War , that began with a surprise attack by an Arab coalition on Israel, led to a near-confrontation between the two nuclear superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. The U.S. provided $2.2 billion in military aid to Israel, while the Soviets backed Egypt and Syria.

The U.S. support of Israel, triggered an OPEC oil embargo creating the 1973 Energy Crisis, which inflicted considerable damage on Western economies. And while Arab Nations ignited this war, it was in response to Israeli aggression.

And when the Americans needed them, Israel did not deliver.

The US could not, for example, rely on Israel when the Iranian Revolution in 1979 raised concerns about the security of oil supplies, and had to create its own Rapid Deployment Force instead.

The first Gulf War revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a strategic burden. The US could not use Israeli bases without rupturing the anti-Iraq coalition, and had to divert resources (e.g. Patriot missile batteries) to prevent Tel Aviv doing anything that might harm the alliance against Saddam Hussein. History repeated itself in 2003: although Israel was eager for the US to attack Iraq, Bush could not ask it to help without triggering Arab opposition. So Israel stayed on the sidelines once again. (1)

Allies in the War on Terror

Since the War on Terror is becoming a war between the United States and Arab Nations, or terrorist groups originating in the Arab World, many believe that Washington should then give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead. They also feel that the US should go after countries like Iran and Syria, as shared enemies of Israel.

Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are America’s enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states. ‘Terrorism’ is not a single adversary, but a tactic employed by a wide array of political groups. The terrorist organisations that threaten Israel do not threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them (as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or ‘the West’; it is largely a response to Israel’s prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. [and] Israel’s nuclear arsenal is one reason some of its neighbours want nuclear weapons, and threatening them with regime change merely increases that desire. (1)

Being "unapologetic supporters of Israel" is not in Canada's best interest. We have to look at the big picture. Suggesting that any enemy of Israel is an enemy of ours, is a dangerous precedent to set. It might help the Harper government politically, but what could it mean for us?

Sources:

1. The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, By: John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, London Review of Books, March 23, 2006

We Can't Ignore the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. But Who is the Underdog?

The reasons given for our allegiance to Israel are:

1. Their strategic value

2. They deserve unqualified support because they are weak and surrounded by enemies

3. They are a democracy

4. The Jewish people have suffered from past crimes and therefore deserve special treatment.

5. Israel’s conduct has been morally superior to that of its adversaries.

But how accurate are those assumptions?

1. Strategic Value

Israel is certainly geographically strategic in the Middle East, but can they be counted on? History has shown that Israel will always put their own needs first. They have often worked against American interests, while receiving generous financial and military support from the U.S.
And because of the U.S. support, it has made that nation vulnerable to terrorist attacks from those who have suffered because of Israeli aggression. And it's meant that they, and now us because of Harper's shift in foreign policy, must be accepting of Israeli war crimes, further alienating us from the Arab world.




2. Israel is Weak and Surrounded by Enemies

Israel is surrounded by enemies, most of their own making, but they are hardly weak. According to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Watt in their thesis on the subject.

Israel is often portrayed as David confronted by Goliath, but the converse is closer to the truth. Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger, better equipped and better led forces during the 1947-49 War of Independence, and the Israel Defence Forces won quick and easy victories against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967 – all of this before large-scale US aid began flowing. Today, Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Its conventional forces are far superior to those of its neighbours and it is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with it, and Saudi Arabia has offered to do so. Syria has lost its Soviet patron, Iraq has been devastated by three disastrous wars and Iran is hundreds of miles away. The Palestinians barely have an effective police force, let alone an army that could pose a threat to Israel.

According to a 2005 assessment by Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, ‘the strategic balance decidedly favours Israel, which has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbours.’ If backing the underdog were a compelling motive, the United States would be supporting Israel’s opponents. (1)

And Israel's conduct is only inflaming hatred and leaving them vulnerable to what Chalmers Johnson calls 'blowback'. Expected revenge.

Israel's greatest single political prob­lem is the daily threat of blowback from the Palestinian people and their Islamic allies because of Israeli policies of displacing Palestinians from their lands and repressing those that remain under their jurisdiction. (2)

And even after the Americans received their own "blowback" on 9/11, Bush still incited hatred from the Arab nations, with his silly and insensitive comments. From the Book on Bush by Eric Alterman and Mark Green:

Bush's simplistic nostrums about good and evil did not travel well. While many in Europe and elsewhere viewed the attacks on the towers to be unconscionable, they nevertheless understood the context in which they arose. Millions of Arabs were frustrated by their own lack of personal and political freedom, denied to them by autocratic and corrupt governments that maintained their despotic rule in part through their alliances with the United States. Israel was a particular source of grievance. Al-Jazeera broadcast daily the brutalities that the Likud government, armed with American weapons, visited upon the stateless Palestinians while settlers continued to occupy expropriated lands with the appearance of American forbearance, if not exactly its blessing.

That these broadcasts ignored the Israeli argument that its violence was a response to Palestinian terrorism served only to multiply their inflammatory effect. In Saudi Arabia, home to the majority of the September 11 hijackers, U.S. troops protected a corrupt, feudal monarchy that lived lavishly on oil exports and controlled access to the holy Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina. Osama bin Laden drew sustenance from the wells of hatred these policies inspired. (3)

3. They are a Democracy

Is that really a good enough reason, especially considering that Israel violates many democratic principles:

That Israel is a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships cannot account for the current level of aid: there are many democracies around the world, but none receives the same lavish support. The US has overthrown democratic governments in the past and supported dictators when this was thought to advance its interests – it has good relations with a number of dictatorships today.

Some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens, or that a recent Israeli government commission found that Israel behaves in a ‘neglectful and discriminatory’ manner towards them. Its democratic status is also undermined by its refusal to grant the Palestinians a viable state of their own or full political rights. (1)

4. The Jewish People Have Suffered From Past Crimes

This is certainly true but does it give them the right to inflict so much pain on others?

[Another] justification is the history of Jewish suffering in the Christian West, especially during the Holocaust. Because Jews were persecuted for centuries and could feel safe only in a Jewish homeland, many people now believe that Israel deserves special treatment from the United States. The country’s creation was undoubtedly an appropriate response to the long record of crimes against Jews, but it also brought about fresh crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians.

This was well understood by Israel’s early leaders. David Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress: If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country … We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?

Since then, Israeli leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the Palestinians’ national ambitions. When she was prime minister, Golda Meir famously remarked that ‘there is no such thing as a Palestinian.’ Pressure from extremist violence and Palestinian population growth has forced subsequent Israeli leaders to disengage from the Gaza Strip and consider other territorial compromises, but not even Yitzhak Rabin was willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state. Ehud Barak’s purportedly generous offer at Camp David would have given them only a disarmed set of Bantustans under de facto Israeli control. The tragic history of the Jewish people does not obligate the US to help Israel today no matter what it does. (1)

And even George Bush had a brief moment of regret over the suffering of the Palestiniamns at the hands of the Israelis:

In another of these bizarre instances, Bush once found himself confronted by a series of photographs of wounded Palestinian children by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Bush reportedly cried out, "I want peace. I don't want to see any people killed on both sides. I think God loves me. I think God loves the Palestinians. I think God loves the Israelis. We cannot allow this to continue." He then grabbed the hands of his guests and asked them to join him in prayer, as both sides looked on in an apparent state of shock. But while God may have loved both the Israelis and the Palestinians as His children, Bush loved only the former. Or rather, only Israel was represented in Mr. Bush's eyes by a "good man"—Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whom Bush deemed to be a "man of peace." As a result, Sharon, like Mr. Putin, was given a free hand to defy Bush's wishes and deal with his enemies however he saw fit, irrespective of God's purported affections. Virtually all the progress made toward peace under the Clinton administration dissipated as a result. (Pg. 4)

5. Israel’s Conduct has Been Morally Superior

This is an absolute falsehood They have behaved horribly, knowing that they have a powerful friend in the United States.

Israel’s backers also portray it as a country that has sought peace at every turn and shown great restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by contrast, are said to have acted with great wickedness. Yet on the ground, Israel’s record is not distinguishable from that of its opponents. Ben-Gurion acknowledged that the early Zionists were far from benevolent towards the Palestinian Arabs, who resisted their encroachments – which is hardly surprising, given that the Zionists were trying to create their own state on Arab land. In the same way, the creation of Israel in 1947-48 involved acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and Israel’s subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to moral superiority. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Israeli security forces killed between 2700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed. The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while in 1967, it expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights.

During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that ‘23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada.’ Nearly a third of them were aged ten or under. The response to the second intifada has been even more violent, leading Ha’aretz to declare that ‘the IDF … is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.’ The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that ‘neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.’

The Palestinian resort to terrorism is wrong but it isn’t surprising. The Palestinians believe they have no other way to force Israeli concessions. As Ehud Barak once admitted, had he been born a Palestinian, he ‘would have joined a terrorist organisation’. (1)

It's time to change our foreign policy to reflect Canadian values and not give so much support to a foreign nation who is breaking all the rules of common decency.

Sources:

1. The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, By: John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, London Review of Books, March 23, 2006

2. Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, By Chalmers Johnson, Metropolitan Books, 2000, ISBN: 978-0-8050-7559-5, Pg. 11

3. The Book on Bush: How George W. (mis) Leads America, By Eric Alterman and Mark Green, Penguin Books, 2004, ISBN: 0-670-03273-5, Pg. 231

4. Alterman/Green, Pg. 192