When Hatred Goes Mainstream

Jolly Berlin crowds in the brightly-lit Kurfürstendamm nightlife district had more fun last week than these beery, sausage-stuffed revelers have had in months. Well-dressed German women and their swank, duel-scarred escorts vied with shopgirls and mechanics in spurring on with laughter, cheers and songs the most savage Jew hunt since those which immediately followed Adolf Hitler's elevation to power ...

The Jew hunters; tall, blond, mighty-muscled Nazi youths in civilian clothes, appeared suddenly on the Kurfürstendamm but seemed at first not to know quite what to do. Soon group leaders dashed up in snorting Mercédès and the Jew hunt was on, a peculiar feature being that the sidewalk crowds joined in a hunting chant taught them by the hunters. This was roared out one line at a time by the group leaders, all present then repeating in a fervent chant: Perish Jew! Get the Hell out! Blood-running noses! The best Jew is a dead Jew! Perish Jew! Suiting action to words, the Jew hunters plunged into night clubs, theatres, and cafés, dragged out every customer who looked like a Jew, beat him bloody on tho sidewalk, and slugged any women who seemed to have been with Jews irrespective of whether they were Jewesses or not.

The above is from a Time magazine article published July 29, 1935, under the heading 'Jew Hunt'.

We are all well aware of that horrible time in history, but what might be surprising is that while the Nazi youth appeared to be doing the beating, "well-dressed German women" spurred them on with "laughter, cheers and songs" and that "the sidewalk crowds joined in a hunting chant".

Ordinary Germany citizens desensitized to hatred.

The poster above is from the Young Americans Foundation, a conservative youth movement that has become increasingly volatile, especially toward non-white immigration and of course Muslims.

I've written of them before, under their other banner 'Young Americans for Freedom', both simply referred to as YAF. They have links to Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, on which Preston Manning fashioned his Manning's Centre with a single corporate donation of ten million dollars.

Both Karl Rove and Harper MP Rob Anders graduated from Blackwell's school and Rove was once a member of YAF. Enough said.

In the poster above the group tells students how to identify a Muslim with things like "lasers in their eyes, venom from mouth and a peg-leg for smuggling children and heroine".

This is not unlike a children's book, The Poisonous Mushroom, written by Nazi Julius Streicher.

In the book, Streicher teaches youth how to identify a Jew:

- One can tell a Jew by his nose. The Jewish nose is bent at the tip.
- ...the lips are another distinguishing feature; they are usually puffed up
- From the eyes one can see that the Jew is: A false, deceitful person

So how are the teachings of YAF and Streicher any different?

Both promote xenophobia. Xenophobia that can lead people to accept horrifying things.

Fox News North and the English Defense League

So what does all of this have to do with us?

In the following piece from Sun TV, the station that came about after Stephen Harper's taxpayer funded lunch with Rupert Murdoch, Brian Lilley presents an interesting commentary.

He says that he had no interest in the Royal wedding until he learned that there was a group of Muslim protesters planning to disrupt the event.



Says Lilley: "Hopefully, maybe some soccer lads would take them out if they were to go ahead - rip them limb from limb..." Then he mockingly reminds his viewers that England is a Christian nation.

The video earned 42 'likes' and only 8 'dislikes', with one comment that someone should report Lilley to the CRTC. Fat lot of good that would do. Harper has appointed 11 of the 14 members, so I imagine that Lilley and his cohorts will be allowed to say pretty much anything.

However, this story is even more disturbing.

First off, the Muslim group was not the only one planning to protest that day. There were anti-capitalist groups, environmentalists, anti-poverty activists. But the only ones singled out were the Muslims.

The police themselves said that the biggest threat came not from any of the groups but from 'fixated' individuals.

While terrorist groups, anarchists and other political extremists are the most obvious potential security threats to the royal wedding, the most potent danger comes from obsessive lone operators, say experts.

These 'fixated' individuals are such a threat that in a small office not far from Buckingham Palace in central London a team of psychiatrists, psychologists and police officers are busy trying to counter that threat. The team is part of the Fixated Threat Assessment Center (FTAC), a unit established in 2006 with the responsibility of identifying and the power to indefinitely detain individuals who harass, stalk or threaten the royal family and others in public life.

However, if radical groups still concern Lilley and his faithfuls, I would be more concerned with the English Defense League, who promised to be on hand to take care of the Muslims.

According to the UK Guardian:

The English Defence League uncovered: Formed less than a year ago, the English Defence League has become the most significant far-right street movement since the National Front. The Guardian spent four months undercover with the movement, and found them growing in strength and planning to target some of the UK's biggest Muslim communities.

As warned the video contains coarse language, but it's the message that I find more disturbing than the profanity.

If they break through "they will murder them all."

As Canadians we should also take note that these guys use Geert Wilders as a role model. The same Geert Wilders who was given permission by the Harper government to speak at this year's Tulip Festival in Ottawa.

The Tulip Festival for heaven sake. Why were Canadians not outraged? Are we also now becoming desensitized to hatred?

In Lawrence Martin's book Harperland, he speaks of our immigration department specifically stating "NO MUSLIMS" in their recruitment ads. Why do we accept that?

The G-20 in Toronto is now best known for the largest number of domestic human rights violations in Canadian history, where citizens were beaten, strip searched, and held in cages. Where was our outrage?

Instead we shrugged and said "well, you shouldn't have been there".

Social activist Joe Levitt once stated that he had "lost confidence in the common man". And Gerald Caplan, NDP insider and columnist, laments that we are "going backwards into a world that we thought would never exist again." (p.12)

Why are we standing on the sidewalk cheering on the attack of everything that Canada once stood for? We might as well put on the jackboots and join in if we are going to do nothing.

What if Geert Wilders had spoke out against Jews at the Tulip Festival? Christians? The disabled? Would we have reacted differently?

This government is not only condoning hatred, but encouraging it.

When will we say "enough!"?

Rick Mercer is Getting Out the Youth Vote. The Conservatives are Tearing Them Up

Stephen Harper must really by worried about the student vote, to go to such lengths, but at Guelph University, the Conservative student organization, tried to take the ballot box, with 700 votes, declaring the process illegal.

James Curran calls it another attempt to thwart democracy.

The Conservatives are unavailable for comment.

Why Canadians Should Pay Attention to the Story of the University Professors

Susan Delacourt and Bruce Campion-Smith tell the story of two university profs who believe they are being targeted by the Harper government because they are often critical of their policies.

Two University of Ottawa professors, vocal critics of the federal Conservative government, say they have become targets of a new political intimidation tactic, aimed at using their private, personal information against them.

Professors Errol Mendes and Amir Attaran, frequently castigated as Liberal sympathizers by the Conservatives, were notified in recent weeks of two unusually massive freedom-of-information requests at the University of Ottawa, demanding details of the professors’ employment, expenses and teaching records.

Their stories are believable because I've heard them before. And Canadians should pay very close attention to this. I put together some information, working with an American free-lance journalist, and thought of pitching it to W-5. Our media has really missed the boat on this, so hopefully they will continue their investigation.

Without appearing to be an alarmist, one of the first actions of the Nazi government was to purge the universities of those who opposed their agenda.

Some Background

There has been a movement in universities across the United States that has found it's way to Canada, with the efforts of three organizations:

1. The Canadian Constitution Foundation, started by Harper MP John Weston and once run by a longtime Reform/Alliance insider and Stockwell Day supporter, John Carpay. (I received an email from CCF saying that Carpay had resigned). It is a legal group who take on constitutional challenges, especially against our public healthcare, Native land claims, and the right to attack Muslims and gays.

Their new executive director is Chris Schafer, formerly of the Fraser Institute. Karen Selick also on the exec was with Jason Kenney's Canadian Taxpayer Association, and she has worked closely with Garry Breitkreuz to scrap the gun registry. At a rally in response to former justice minister Alan Rock's statement "I came to Ottawa with the firm belief that the only people in this country who should have guns are police officers and soldiers." Selick said: "Sorry, Mr. Rock but if ever there were a good start towards a police state, that has to be it. We are being asked to give up our means of defence in return for a promise of protection from the very people most likely to become our oppressors."

This group is also involved with the Tea Party's Americans for Prosperity, and was behind attack ads against Obama's healthcare reform.

2. Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute. Budding journalist Jeff Horwitz went undercover, attending one of their seminars and wrote an article My Right-wing Degree: How I learned to convert liberal campuses into conservative havens at Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, Alma Mater of Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, Jeff Gannon and two Miss Americas. (1) Rob Anders is also a graduate of this school, and according to Marci McDonald in her book The Armageddon factor (2), about 700 other Canadians, including several of Harper's MPs, have passed through their halls.

Blackwell is also with the Council for National Policy and it was he who invited Stephen Harper to speak at one of their conventions. They needed to know whether or not Canada was ripe for the picking. Harper did not let them down. And in the run-up to the 2006 election, members of this Religious Right group put a lot of money into Harper's anti-gay campaign.

3. The Manning Centre for Building Democracy, started by Reform Party founder Preston Manning on a "secret" 10 million dollar donation from a corporate sponsor. It is fashioned after Morton Blackwell's School, employing the same tactics to shift education to the right.

When it Becomes Alarming

American David Horowitz wrote a book The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America which has served as a "list" of university professors who must be purged from Academia. His counterpart in Canada, The Society of Academic Freedom, loves the book and promotes it in their newsletter (scroll to page 13).

I posted about these groups and you can read how they all tie in with the Harper government here. The goal of these organizations, using Horowitz's book as a guideline, is to purge universities of critical thinkers. Caroline Higgins made the list for promoting peace.

And a few others:

Foul Play at Bard? [on Joel Kovel, incl. Middle East Studies Association] Controversy Ensues After College Terminates Kovel (student paper of the CUNY Graduate Center), by John Boy, The Graduate Center Advocate, May 2009

Norman Finkelstein Denied Tenure at DePaul, Solomonia, Friday, June 8, 2007

The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built: The Cases of Margo Ramlal Nankoe, William Robinson, Nagesh Rao, and Loretta Capeheart, By Dana Cloud, April 29, 2009

And when they target someone they are relentless. As retired university professor Michael Yates said of this horrible activity: "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."

I've been investigating this for months and some of the stories will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Amir Attaran and Errol Mendes have good reason to be concerned, as should every person in Canada.

They are already trying to privatize public education, so they can set the curriculum. (Evolution is a hoax). If someone in the media doesn't expose this now, it could be too late, as academics in the U.S. are already discovering.

Email the media and demand that they take this seriously, and lend your full support to these two gentlemen who have become the targets of a witch hunt. Once we get our Fox News North, that Harper has mandated will be allowed to lie, this could become very dangerous for everyone.

Wake up people. Is this really your Canada?

Cold Case Solved. The Murder of Canada's Media Was Both Bloody and Premeditated

The case always had a prime suspect, Conrad Black; and accomplices, the majority of Canadian journalists and news personalities.

But several clues that were held back, have now been made public and we may finally be able to take this to trial.

Or at least it should go to trial because what happened is criminal. Canadians have been robbed of their voice and history it's story.

The perpetrators of this heinous act must be prosecuted.

The Anatomy of a Crime

Crimes may vary in gravity, complexity, the kind of harm done, the state of mind required to commit a crime and the excuses used to validate the act. Traditionally, however, they are broken down into two parts: the physical called the ‘actus reus’ (Latin for criminal act) and the mental ‘mens rea’ (criminal mind).

I intend to prove that the murder of Canadian media was premeditated and fits all of the criteria of a criminal act, carried out by an organized gang of criminal minds.

The Physical Act: An attempt to change the ideological fabric of the country formerly known as Canada, through genocide and cannibalism.

In 1970, Keith Davey's senate committee on mass media sounded a warning about the increasing concentration of [media] ownership. Eleven years later, with the disappearance of even more newspapers, another federal investigation, this one headed up by Tom Kent, raised the alarm again. Not only were independent newspapers being bought out by such major chains as Southam and Thomson but chains were now swallowing up other chains. (1)

Conrad Black's Hollinger spent half a billion dollars in 1996 alone, gorging itself on Canadian newspapers.

A failure to act: Harm may occur because a suspect does not prevent it. In this way, the Government of Canada became a willing accomplice, by standing by while a criminal act was in progress.

Government remained complicit in this steady erosion of democracy by declining to act on the key recommendations coming out of these [senate] reviews, a press ownership review board, and a Canadian newspaper act. (1)

As a result Black's influence extended to 425 radio stations, 76 TV outlets, and 142 cable stations, and though he eventually sold off his holdings, the trend continued.

Between 1990 and 2005 there were a number of media corporate mergers and takeovers in Canada. For example, in 1990, 17.3% of daily newspapers were independently owned; whereas in 2005, 1% were. These changes, among others, caused the Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications to launch a study of Canadian news media in March 2003. (This topic had been examined twice in the past, by the Davey Commission (1970) and the Kent Commission (1981), both of which produced recommendations that were never implemented in any meaningful way.)

The Senate Committee’s final report, released in June 2006, expressed concern about the effects of the current levels of news media ownership in Canada. Specifically, the Committee discussed their concerns regarding the following trends: the potential of media ownership concentration to limit news diversity and reduce news quality. (2)

The victim’s state of mind: Sometimes a person’s guilt will depend on the state of mind of the alleged victim. Some actions are criminal only when performed without consent. In the media's murder, consent was given by our government and our own complacency. But then, murder is murder.

With successive takeovers, more and more Canadian newspaper staff lost their jobs — 1,550 over three years in the Southam chain after Hollinger took over. Hollinger president David Radler, a.k.a. "The Human Chainsaw," radically cuts staff at small-circulation papers to create cash flow for new acquisitions. With fewer journalists on staff, news editors increasingly turn to the copy provided by organizations like the Fraser Institute to fill the "news holes" between advertisements in their papers.

The preference for right-wing copy starts at the top of Hollinger, with CEO Conrad Black and vice-president of editorial Barbara Amiel, whose neo-conservative views are documented in Maude Barlow and James Winter's The Big Black Book: The Essential Views of Conrad and Barbara Amiel Black. As well as running Amiel's weekly column, Black hired his cousin Andrew Coyne and Amiel's ex-husband, George Jonas, to flog their conservative views in Southam papers. David Radler, who has said it is important to have his employees fear him, states flatly that Hollinger papers, on principle, will endorse only free-enterprise parties, explicitly ruling out any paper's support for the NDP. (1)

This is why we get so many reports from bogus groups like the Fraser, the Frontier Centre, The Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the Manning Centre for Destroying Democracy. Not enough staff so we allow them to fill in the blanks.

And this is why many in the media are now simply using copy and photos, produced by the PMO. It's often the only way they can meet their deadlines. It worked well for Mike Harris.

The Criminal State of Mind (Mens Rea): In describing the mental element required for such crimes against democracy, we can see that there was a definite intent and a desired goal, in the murder of Canadian media. Case in point is one victim Saturday Night.

The transformation of Saturday Night magazine after Black bought it has also been a factor in the prevalence of right-wing opinion in the Canadian print media. With former Alberta Report staffer Kenneth Whyte as the magazine's editor, Saturday Night has been serving up a steady diet of Whyte's "advice for the right" columns, mean-spirited critiques of such Canadian heroes as anti—child labour activist Craig Kielburger and Farley Mowat, and articles on why women should be in the home rather than the workforce. Saturday Night gives yet another platform for Southam columnists Andrew Coyne and George Jonas to air their views, as well as to neo-conservative journalists from the Sun newspaper chain, such as David Frum, Michael Coren, and Peter Worthington.

In his biography of Conrad Black, The Establishment Man, published in 1982, Peter C. Newman provided an insight into the fate that would inevitably befall Saturday Night once Black took it over. Newman's book contains the following excerpt from a letter Black wrote to American arch-conservative William F. Buckley on how to change a magazine the way Buckley had transformed National Review:

"I take the liberty of writing to you on behalf of many members of the journalistic, academic and business communities of this country who wish to convert an existing Canadian magazine into a conveyance for views at some variance with the tired porridge of ideological normalcy in vogue here as in the U.S.A. [during the 1970s]. We are aware of the lack in Canada of serious editorial talent of an appropriate political coloration .. . We are, however, people of some means as well as of some conviction, and unless faced by an insuperable economic barrier, intend to persevere with our plans, to execution."

As though the rightward turn of Canada's self-described "most influential magazine" was not enough, the Donner Foundation financed two new right-wing magazines. Next City, established in 1994 with a $1.4-million commitment from the foundation, seems to specialize in eroding compassion for the poor. (1)

Crime Accelerated to Bio-Terrorism: After getting away with murder, the criminals at large are now plotting an even more devious act. They are engaged in bio-terrorism, and it appears that they will be allowed to do so without interference.

A viral strain known as Haemophilus Ruperta Murdochus influenza, or more commonly referred to as the Rupert Murdoch Flu, has been transported from the U.S. in a petri dish and has been allowed to mutate. It will be released on society through Fox News North.

The first stage of contact will be constant attacks on Muslims, women, gays and minorities.

Symptoms will include the desensitizing of those formerly known as Canadians, so that they will be more accepting of constant attacks on Muslims, women, gays and minorities.

The final stages of this virus, before the imminent death of democracy, will be a political atmosphere so toxic that it will not be safe to leave your home without a gas mask.

But all is not lost. There may be an antidote.

A Russian scientist, Ivhad Enoff, has been working on a cure, and is patenting it under the name TurnTheDamnedThingOff.

Sources:

1. The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen: Canada and Democracy in the Age of Globalization, By Murray Dobbin, James Lorimer & Company, 2003, ISBN: 1-55028-785-0, Pg. 209-211

2. Wikipedia

From John Birch to the Tea Parties. The Far-Rightists Have Made a Comeback

I mentioned in relation to the Council for National Policy, how one of the founders was Nelson Bunker Hunt, who is now also running the John Birch Society.

I wanted to introduce him for several reasons, but mainly to show the connections to past far-right organizations that have now embedded themselves in the Republican/Conservative parties.

Another founder of the Council for National Policy is Morton Blackwell (1), the man who is behind the Leadership Institute. Preston Manning's Manning Centre for Building Democracy, runs a youth program fashioned after that of the Leadership Institute, which trains young Republicans/Conservatives in political activism, and that horrendous activism is now playing out on university campuses in Canada.

I have a lot more on that to share, but for now I just wanted to make some comparisons to the activities of the John Birch Society and what is happening in the U.S. with the ridiculous Tea Party movement. They have not created a new phenomenon, but simply revised the 1960's Bircher movement, complete with it's rampant racism.

In 1961, Time Magazine published a lengthy expose on the John Birch Society and other similar, that were creating havoc in the country, which brings the whole teabagger's notion of "Obama is a Socialist" nonsense into context.

An attractive Dallas housewife sees little of her neighbors these days. "I just don't have time for anything," says Mrs. Bert Shipp. "I'm fighting Communism three nights a week." In Hollywood Hills. TV Commercial Producer Marvin Bryan spends his spare time working for the local Freedom Club, which is dedicated to opposing "compromisers" in local and national government and to smoking out liberals in the community. Says Bryan: "We don't want to coexist with these people. We don't want our children to play with their children." At a Freedom Forum meeting in Greenwich, Conn., 800 citizens recently paid $5 apiece to sit through a day of patriotic films, speeches on dialectical materialism and attacks on the U.S. State Department, federal income tax, philanthropic foundations and Harvard University. Questions to speakers were written out, explained Mrs. Charles Chapin, one of the meeting's sponsors, in order to screen those coming from Communists who might be in the audience. (2)

At the latest Tea Party rally, and indeed at all of them, they said this of Obama:

"His mother was a Communist. His father was a Communist. His grandparents were socialists. He had Marxist professors. He taught a course in college on Saul Alinsky. He was friends with William Ayers." According to Jackson, another clue that Obama is a Leninist is that he used the phrase "spread the wealth" in his conversation with Joe the Plumber. "That is a direct quote from the Communist Manifesto," she insisted." Except that, in reality, it is not, although 1930s populist Huey Long did promise to "share the wealth." (3)

Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, lost credibility when he called Eisenhower a Communist. Now this seems to be quite acceptable.

Back to 1961:

These are only a few of the manifestations of a U.S. phenomenon: the resurgence of ultraconservative antiCommunism. Hundreds of groups and subgroups—with such names as Project Alert, Americans for Constitutional Action, Survival U.S.A. and Crusade for American ism—have popped up across the U.S., in some cases springing from nothing to several thousand members almost overnight. More than 100 anti-Communist study groups are being conducted in Dallas alone. Because their membership is sometimes secret and usually heavily interchangeable with other groups, no sure estimate of their strength is possible.

The far-rightists intend to figure in as many congressional campaigns as possible next year. California's Representative John Rousselot, a member of the John Birch Society, is talking of running for the Senate in the 1962 G.O.P. primary against Incumbent Thomas Kuchel. Arkansas Congressman Dale Alford has already begun to use far-right material in a buildup against Senator J. William Fulbright. Says Indiana's Clarence Manion onetime dean of Notre Dame Law School and a veteran anti-Communist lecturer and writer, who claims to have 350 Conservative Clubs in operation: "I've never seen anything like this. As one who has faced a great many empty seats in recent years. I'd say the whole atmosphere has changed in recent months." No Room in the Middle .... (2)

McCarthyism is definitely making a comeback, and just as in 1961, there is no room in the middle. The Conservative movement has gone to the far-right.

The John Birch Society is now one of the sponsors of the Conservative Political Action Conference, showing that we have come full circle. Do we really want to return to those days?

The rightists rally citizens to their banner in many cases by stressing a belief in nondenominational Christianity as part of their platform. "This war we're in," says South Carolina's Senator Strom Thur mond, "is basically a fight between the believers in a Supreme Being and the atheists." Thus, the rightists' two principal poles of attraction, anti-Communism and religion, are impeccable—and subject to a good deal of emotionalism. But the ultras do not stop there.

... In everything that he finds displeasing in modern society and political life, the ultra sees evidence of Communist plots and subversion. With a dogmatic either-or attitude, he broaches no disagreement. "You're either for us or against us," says James E. Gibson, senior vice president of California's Leach Corp., which makes electronic components. "There's no room in the middle any more." And the ultra, dissatisfied with the current political order, usually works outside normal political channels (2)

You're either with us or against us. Where have we heard that before? "Taliban" Jack Layton can attest to what that feels like.

Sources:

1. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8 3, Pg. 103-104

2. Organizations: The Ultras, Time Magazine, December 08, 1961

3. At the Tea Party Rally: Obama 'the Communist', By Walter Shapiro, politics Daily, May 2010

Society for Academic Freedom and Canadian Constitution Foundation

As progressives are starting to understand, the funding, planning, and coordination of the conservative movement has led to tremendous success in elections and government policy. But another arena of ideological competition has gone largely beneath the radar. An asymmetric political war is raging at universities across the country, and once again conservatives are running circles around progressives.

The campus Left, which is still organized for the most part by students and community activists, increasingly finds itself facing off against seasoned conservative strategists. And while progressive student groups are mostly self-funded, by the mid-1990s roughly $20 million dollars were being pumped into the campus Right annually, according to People for the American Way.

That money and expertise are directed at four distinct goals: training conservative campus activists; supporting right-wing student publications; indoctrinating the next generation of culture warriors; and demonstrating the liberal academic "bias" that justifies many conservatives' reflexive anti-intellectualism. (1)

In the United States much of this movement is being orchestrated by Morton Blackwell and the Leadership Institute. In Canada, it is the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, which was started with a ten million dollar anonymous contribution. What Manning is operating is anything but democratic, as he is stirring things up in a very negative way, at university campuses across the country.

The U.S. movement has had a thirty year head start, but in Canada they didn't need a head start, because most of the funding and expertise for the Canadian anti-Democratic movement is being shipped over.

I've been following the Canadian Constitution Foundation, that gets a great deal of funding from places like the Donner Foundation, Atlas Foundation, Aurea Foundation, etc., as well as from anonymous donors, who could be just about anybody.

The founder, John Weston is a Harper MP, and the current director, John Carpay; not only ran for the Reform Party but also worked on Stockwell Day's leadership campaign. They claim to take on "free speech" issues, but they have little to do with actual free speech, but more to do with an attack on common decency.

In a kind of upside down world, that they strive to create; Christian "values" now mean hatred for anyone not white, male and praying to some vengeful god at least 18 hours a day, and groups like CCF are paving the way.

But there is another group also turning Canadian Academia on it's head: The Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship. Their founding president is Doreen Kimura, a professor at Simon Fraser University. Kimura is a critic of affirmative action, and believes that males are biologically superior to females.

When I first found their site I was encouraged, because I noticed that they had taken up the cause for York University students. But alas, they are just another right-wing "non-partisan" group promoting nuclear holocaust in the middle east. They suggest that York has taken sides in the conflict against Israel. These so-called scholarly minds feel that by objecting to Apartheid in Gaza, you are somehow against all Jews.

Tom Flanagan is one of their directors, Stephen Harper's former right-hand man. You can also link to all of their campaigns here.

They are quite clever though, because they use an opinion piece written by David Frum to validate their claim that York is bias. Frum is a former speech writer of George W. Bush, his sister Linda was a Harper patronage senate appointment and he is one of the founding members of the Civitas Society. The Civitas Society where the current president of the Society for Academic Freedom, Clive Seligman, was invited to help answer the question "Can the universities be saved?"

I'd like to know if they can be saved from people like Clive, but I don't think that's what they meant.

Jason Kenney is also a founding member of Civitas. For those who don't know, Kenney and David Frum were Siamese twins, separated at birth, but they still speak with just one voice. It's uncanny really. You barely see Frum's lips move.

We've got to start exposing these groups, that all have ties to the Harper government. Peter Kent tried to interfere in York University elections. Steven Fletcher attacked the student newspaper in Manitoba, Peter Braid tried to teach students at Carleton how to cheat the University out of money.

As Joshua Holland says, these right-wing student activist groups are being handled by seasoned conservative strategists. But they are also being funded by corporate sponsored think tanks and foundations, and are linked to current members of government. Progressive students are on their own, and ill prepared to handle this assault.

Their best defense is to ignore them, but they are aggressive. When students at the University of Manitoba were engaged in a day of protest against poverty, campus conservatives, under the direction of provincial conservative MLA, Hugh McFadyen; formed a human chain to prevent their progress toward the legislature, hoping for a physical confrontation.

These guys are not fooling around.

Sources:

1. Why Conservatives are Winning the Campus Wars, by Joshua Holland, Campus Watch, August 7, 2005

Canadian Constitution Foundation and the Federalist Society Attacking Universities

I've been writing a series of articles on the Canadian Constitution Foundation, Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, who have joined forces to attack Canadian universities, partly through student associations.

It first came to my attention after reading the blog of an American woman who had been covering this phenomenon in the U.S. and in particular a group called Youth for Western Civilization. This "youth" group is funded by Blackwell's Leadership Institute, and engage in something he teaches called "controlled controversy".

Budding journalist Jeff Horwitz went undercover, I guess you'd say, attending one of their seminars and wrote an article My Right-wing Degree: How I learned to convert liberal campuses into conservative havens at Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, Alma Mater of Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, Jeff Gannon and two Miss Americas. (1)

Rob Anders is also a graduate of this school, and according to Marci McDonald in her book The Armageddon factor (2), about 700 other Canadians, including several of Harper's MPs, have passed through their halls. I'd be willing to bet that Pierre Poilievre and John Baird were graduates, though it's only speculation, based on their actions. Baird's latest outlandish display during the committee hearings into the Jaffer/Guergis affair, is pure Blackwell.

I really wish Canada had more of an actual media, because there is definitely a story here, and it's very troubling.

Not long after perusing the blog of the concerned American, I came across an article from a university newspaper, telling of an incident at Carleton. Someone attended a workshop there armed with a tape recorder, and exposed the fact that through Manning's centre (the Canadian offshoot of the Leadership Institute) there was an aggressive attempt to infiltrate student unions to shift them to the right.

In order to do this they suggested ways of obtaining funding by setting up "front" groups that would become part of a central organization. In doing this they could illegally, or at least unethically, obtain more funding (eg. five groups, five separate fundings for one organization)

Since I first started to unravel this, I've had several people contact me, all from the United States, because Canadians are still asleep at the wheel it would seem, and on Friday hit the mother lode. Pages and pages of research based primarily on the rift within the Catholic church between orthodox and modern teachings (part of it concerned Jason Kenney, which I blogged on yesterday)

Everything sent is a matter of public record, so there's no "deepthroat" thing going on, but I think we have to start taking this seriously. I printed everything off and started googling a bit, and they are definitely onto something.

I am currently reading Donald Gutstein's book Not a Conspiracy Theory*, in which he outlines the numerous think tanks and federations that currently back up Harper's Reform-Alliance-Conservative movement. And it is indeed not a conspiracy theory, as he simply follows the money. So I've been doing the same with this new "youth" movement, and when following the money, they are clearly very well financed.

And I suppose it shouldn't come as any big surprise that the same people who are funding the U.S. movement, are also throwing money around in Canada, as part of what is now called the "Religious Right"; not so much a divine mission, as it is an unholy crusade.

Controlled Controversy

Controlled controversy -- making your point in a manner so bombastic that your opponents blow their cool -- is a Blackwell specialty. (1)

John Carpay who is at present the director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation (I've been told by CCF that he will be stepping down) had worked on the leadership campaign of Stockwell Day (along with Jason Kenney) when he was running against Preston Manning in 2000.

Carpay was upset that Manning and his team were attacking Day's religious beliefs, including the comment that there was a "Jim Jones Kool-Aid"** thing going on. (3) Carpay lashed out: "I'm upset at the negative campaigning, but I hold Preston Manning responsible. He wears a fake halo and pretends to be innocent. It's rather sickening." (4)

Carpay is not alone in suggesting that Manning is not as innocent as he likes to let on. McDonald in her book suggested that he was difficult to pin down, and that is not by accident. I've read his books, and it's more about what he doesn't say in them. For instance, little or no mention of the Fraser Institute, and none of the National Citizens Coalition, despite the fact that the Reform Party would never have been as successful as they were, had it not been for these two organizations.

In fact, it was his father, Ernest, who convinced Colin Brown, founder of the NCC, to start it up in the first place. Up to then he had only placed ads in major newspapers attacking Tommy Douglas and Medicare. It was also his father who suggested that they register themselves as a non-profit, to enjoy the tax breaks, and Ernest Manning was on their advisory board. (Stephen Harper was president of the NCC before stepping down to run for the Alliance leadership in 2002. He also ran against Stockwell Day and attacked his socon groupies)

Manning and Carpay have obviously mended fences because the Manning Centre awarded him recently with the Pyramid Award for Ideas, neoconservative jargon for dismantling Canada.

Recent examples of "controlled controversy" in Canada include York University, where a group of young Conservatives burst into the screening of a film during anti-Apartheid (Israel) week, laughing at dead Palestinian children. Just bombastic enough to garner the desired response. It worked as headlines blamed York students and Jason Kenney referred to their reaction as a "pogrom", despite the fact that there was no blood and no massacre. Since then no university is even allowed to put up posters advertising the event. Ironically CCF is not taking on their case.

Another was at the University of Calgary where young Conservatives displayed anti-abortion posters depicting aborted fetuses and swastikas. They were not made to take them down only turn them away from the street. CFF handled the case, and are reporting a victory.

If anything the bombastic posters stripped the group of any legitimacy, but that was not the intent. What we have now is an administration that will give this group more leeway, fearing reprisal and negative media reports. So what will they do next? Tack an actual aborted fetus to the wall? I can hardly wait.

I already have a thread started with the incidents at Canadian universities, but am starting another here showing how they directly connect to their American counterparts. One thing that screams out at you can be seen on page 5 (you will have top scroll down to it) of a 2008 report by the Canadian Constitution Federation. There is a photo of John Carpay sitting beside Eugene Meyer, president of the Federalist Society in the U.S., an arm of the Council for National Policy.

If you want to see a power broker, the Federalist Society is one of the top. (5) Remember the Monica Lewsinsky scandal and the attempt to impeach Bill Clinton, headed by Kenneth Starr?

"Ken Starr, the sober-faced lawyer who headed the independent counsel investigation leading to the impeachment of Bill Clinton ... Starr, 63, served as solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush and was later appointed independent counsel for an investigation of Clinton that eventually looked into the president's relationship with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The Senate acquitted Clinton after the impeachment charges were brought by the House. Starr, a constitutional lawyer and member of the conservative Federalist Society, was reviled at the time by Democrats who called his inquiry a witch hunt." (6)

Now do you remember the 1997 speech that surfaced during the 2006 election campaign, that many believed cost Stephen Harper a majority, and saved Canada from total destruction? It was delivered at a conference for the Council for National Policy in Montreal where they passed a motion to try to find some way to impeach Bill Clinton. (6)

And you don't think this group is capable of getting a foothold in Canada? Will we hear John Carpay say "Just Watch Me"! Come on people, wake up. The CCF is not just a nice little legal group "defending free speech". They are organized and well financed. And a lot of that financing can be linked to the Republicans and the American Religious Right, which are now one and the same.

McDonald's book The Armageddon Factor was only a tip of the iceberg, because for every CCF out there, there are dozens of other groups, many of them "fronts", enjoying tax free status by claiming to be non-partisan and not for profit. Neither claim is true. They are very profitable and the staff moves back and forth from the organizations to Harper's parties in all of their manifestations. And I can prove it.

AND THIS IS NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY!!

Footnotes:

*Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy, By Donald Gutstein, Key Porter Books, 2009, ISBN: 978-1-55470-191-9

**In November of 1978, the world was shocked by the suicide deaths of 913 members of the People's Temple cult. Jim Jones, the leader of the group, convinced his followers to move to Jonestown, Guyana, a remote community that Jones carved out of the South American jungle and named after himself. Jones constantly feared losing control of his followers. His paranoia was the main reason he moved the cult to Guyana.

The mass suicide occurred after U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan of California and a team of reporters visited the compound to investigate reports of abuse. After some members tried to leave with the congressman's group, Jim Jones had Ryan and his entourage ambushed at the nearby airstrip. He then ordered his flock to commit suicide by drinking grape-flavored Kool-Aid laced with potassium cyanide. (Don't Drink the Kool-Aid, By: Todd Strandberg)

Sources:

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

2. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8 3, Pg. 104

3. Requiem for a Lightweight: Stockwell Day and Image Politics, By Trevor Harrison, Black Rose Books, 2002, ISBN: 1-55164-206-9, Pg. 62

4. "Manning Backer Drops Bid to Woo Social Conservatives, National Post, July 5, 2000

5. Debating the Subtle Sway of the Federalist Society, By Jason DeParle, August 1, 2005

5. Clinton Nemesis Ken Starr to Head Baylor University, By Tom Diemer, Poltiics Daily, April, 2010

6. Bill Clinton's Washington, Unzipped: 'The Death of American Virtue' is a cautionary tale of justice and libidos out of control, By Rafe Mair, The Tyee, June 4, 2010

In the Light of Day: Anne Coulter, Tom Tancredo and Controlled Controversy

In April of 2009 U.S. Republican Tom Tancredo was supposed to speak at the University of North Carolina.

According to the Raleigh News and Observer

Before the event, campus security removed two women who delayed Tancredo's speech by stretching a 12-foot banner across the front of the classroom. It read, “No dialogue with hate.”

Police escorted the women into the hallway, amid more than 30 protesters who clashed with the officers trying to keep them out of the overcrowded classroom. After police released pepper spray and threatened the crowd with a Taser, the protesters gathered outside Bingham Hall.

Police spokesman Randy Young said the pepper spray was “broadcast” to clear the hallway. He said officers' use of force was under investigation by the department. But campus visitors and some faculty members in the capacity crowd of 150 urged the students to let Tancredo speak.

The protesters relented, and Tancredo began to speak, describing failed state and federal legislation aimed at providing in-state tuition benefits for undocumented immigrants. Two women stretched out another banner, first along one of the aisles and then right in front of Tancredo. Tancredo grabbed the middle of the banner and tried to pull it away from one of the girls. “You don't want to hear what I have to say because you don't agree with me,” he said.

The sound of breaking glass from behind a window shade interrupted the tug-of-war. Tancredo was escorted from the room by campus police. (1)

Tancredo was a controversial Republican candidate for the presidency. He is strongly anti-immigration and once suggested bombing mosques in the Middle East as a deterrent for another attack on the U.S.

He is also the honorary chairman of Youth for Western Civilization, a group financed through the Leadership Institute of Morton Blackwell. According to YWC there were about 300 protesters at UNC that night, and even the professors were encouraging the students. They also claimed that they threw rocks through windows smashing them. But according to the news report one window to the classroom where Tancreno was speaking, was broken when an over zealous protester pounded on the glass.

He later apologized and was dealt with.

However, given the expected volatile nature of his visit, why did they have him speak in such a small classroom? Why not one of the halls? The university did not try to prevent him from appearing.

It's called controlled controversy and it's one of the techniques taught in the Campus Leadership Training program at the Leadership Institute.

Unlike chapter-based political organizations, CLP clubs are unaffiliated with either the Leadership Institute or each other. According to Blackwell, this trait offers a serious advantage: "No purges." The clubs' independence also comes with the benefit of plausible deniability. "You can get away with stuff that you would take a lot of flak for doing in the College Republicans," says CLP director Dan Flynn. (2)

The Youth for Western Civilization, which has been cited as a hate group, for their pro-white messages, hosted Trancedo because they knew he would rile the student groups. They advertised heavily and deliberately made sure that the venue would not house everyone wanting to attend. Most of the people in the audience were "silent protesters".

When he spoke, they turned their chairs around, so he would be speaking to their backs. Tancredo himself, was the first to make a move when he grabbed the banner the girls were holding up. This angered those outside the classroom and the police had to quiet them with the 'threat' of a tasar which they shot into the air creating an arch.

I saw the video and it was a heated exchange, but not a violent exchange. I believe the only people hurt were the man who accidentally put his fist through the glass and Tancredo when an officer stepped on his toe.

And despite the fact they claimed that the university professors were involved, they were actually trying to quiet the students down and told them to "let him speak."

But it worked beautifully. Because despite the fact that Tancredo's message was against multiculturalism, the news the next day was about the "extreme left wing groups," their violent protests and their attempt to silence free speech. The university publicly apologized and the YWC snickered and high-fived, as they had carefully engineered themselves into becoming the 'victims'.

Anne Coulter and a Little Controlled Controversy

Ann Coulter is the controversial American comedian, in the Howard Stern vein. Her shtick is gay and Muslim baiting.

Popular during the Bush administration , it would appear that she was past her prime. That stuff is only funny to those who find it funny, for a while, and then it just gets tired and old.

But then a group calling themselves the International Free Press Society in conjunction with the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute, sponsored her visit to three Canadian Universities: Western, Ottawa and Calgary.

Before the Ottawa event, a $250.00 a plate dinner was held for Conservative supporters, sponsored by the Ottawa Campus Conservatives and arranged by Ashley Scorpio, who is listed in the government's electronic directory, as a "... staffer working in the office of Conservative MP Gerald Keddy. She has also worked for Ontario Conservative MP Patrick Brown and was once an administrative assistant in the Harper PMO". (3)

Because of her books and columns, bashing anyone not a neoconservative, the Provost of the University of Ottawa sent Coulter a letter with a gentle reminder that Canada had tougher hate speech laws than the United States, so she should be mindful of that.

Just what her team had hoped for. Ezra Levant went nuts and turned the whole thing into a three-ring circus. According to him there were 2000 violent protesters all after her head. So threatening were they, that poor Ms. Coulter had to cancel the event because the Ottawa police warned her that they could not offer her protection.

Apparently her new shtick is making stuff up, and her side shtick Ezra Levant, played the bumbling clown.

First, contrary to what Coulter seems to suggest in a brief phone interview with Macleans.ca scribe Colby Cosh, it was not the police who "shut it down." I spoke with Ottawa Police Services media relations officer Alain Boucher this morning, and he told me, in no uncertain terms, that it was her security team that made the decision to call off the event. "We gave her options" -- including, he said, to "find a bigger venue" -- but "they opted to cancel ... It's not up to the Ottawa police to make that decision." (4)

It was clearly nothing more than a publicity stunt and a bit of controlled controversy, because the debate became about "freedom of speech, " and not hate-mongering, which was far more damaging, because we are now asked to decide whether or not we think it's OK to bash Muslims.

Because if it had been about free speech, there would have been no trouble with George Galloway visiting. And since we now know that Jason Kenney was directly behind it, the Conservatives and their supporters don't get to play that card.

But what I would like to know is who these people are who arranged her visit, and what they have to do with the Conservative Party of Canada.

The International Free Press Society

Despite the fact that it was determined that Coulter cancelled the event herself, and the biggest threat was that someone jokingly commented that they would like to pie her, the website of the International Free Press Society had this to say:

It is interesting to see the aftermath of Canada’s Ottawa University after an unruly crowd of leftist and Islamic protesters through threats vandalism and intimidation, shut down a planned speech by Ann Coulter.

You can visit their site here if you want to learn more about Ezra Levant. And here. They are definitely fans.

But who are they? Three words: Islamic hate group.

Their founder, the Danish Lars Hedegaard has stated that: "The modern Islamism, which nearly all Danish imams advocates call themselves a religion, but is first and foremost a political ideology in line with communism and Nazism."

You can buy copies of the Danish cartoons from them for $ 250.00 a pop, and presently they are raising funds for the Dutch MP Geert Wilders.

The fiercely anti-Islam Dutch MP Geert Wilders has been traveling through the U.S. this week on a highly-publicised trip to meet with politicians, promote his controversial film ‘Fitna’, and raise money for his legal defence back home.

Although Wilders’s stated goal has been to campaign for free speech, his trip has been sponsored and promoted by an unlikely coalition of groups united primarily by their hostility towards Islam. His backers include neoconservative and right-wing Jewish groups on the one hand and figures with ties to the European far right on the other.

On Friday, he capped his busy week with an appearance at the National Press Club. At the event, he reiterated his calls for a halt to immigration from Muslim countries and pronounced, to raucous applause from the audience, that "our Western culture based on Christianity, Judaism, and humanism is in every aspect better than Islamic culture".

Wilders is also known for campaigning to ban the Koran, Islamic attire, and Islamic schools from the Netherlands, and for proclaiming that "moderate Islam does not exist."

... An event he held at a Boston-area synagogue was sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition, an influential group whose board members include casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, and neoconservative writer David Frum, who attended Wilders’s Friday event in Washington. (5)

Well there you go. David Frum and Ari Fleischer. Both Bush administration alumni and Harper insiders. Frum is a good friend of Jason Kenney, Stockwell Day and Ezra Levant, and his sister Linda, was one of Harper's patronage senate appointments. And we all know Ari Fleischer, who has been given untendered contracts by our government, to help fend off accusations of alleged war crimes.

And the Clare Booth Luce Institute is just kind of a silly Conservative women's group who publish a calendar every year of "Hot Conservative Women".

Boy is the Conservative brand ever in the gutter. Hatred and exploiting women. And they claim to do it all for Jesus. No wonder so many people are turning to atheism.

Sources:

1. Protest Stops Tancredo Speech, By Jesse James DeConto, Staff Writer, Raleigh News and Observer, April 15, 2009

2. My Right-wing Degree, By Horwitz, May 24, 2005

3. Ann Coulter and Canada's Conservatives, By: David Akin, Canada.com, March 23, 2010

4. Sorry Ann Coulter, Canada's Just Not That Into You, By Michael Rowe, Huffington Post, March 25, 2010

5. Dutch Foe of Islam Ignores US Allies' Far Right Ties, By Daniel Luban and Eli Clifton, IPS, February 28, 2009

The Curious Case of Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe

"Everyone knows that for certain breeds of dogs it is customary to cut their tails short when they are a few weeks old. Every time you clip the puppy's tail it hurts. It hurts. You might traumatize the puppy for life. The moral is that if it's your tail that's being clipped, you want it clipped once. But if you get a chance to clip your opponent's tail, clip that puppy as often as you can." (1) Morton Blackwell

Those on the right in Canada are lauding the fact* that Preston Manning has created the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, fashioned after the Leadership Institute of Morton Blackwell. Both also have Campus Leadership training programs, where young conservative radicals are trained in the clipping of tails.

Has your student government been overrun by extreme left-wing students? Is freedom of speech being infringed upon on your campus? Are groups on campus using student money to further a left-wing agenda? Do you want to get organized and fight back?

Then the Manning Centre’s Campus Leadership Training is for you. Campus Leadership Seminars introduce aspiring political leaders on campus to the principles and practices of effective political involvement.**

And one of their former teachers at Blackwell's school, shows how it's done.

James O'Keefe and the destruction of ACORN

James O'Keefe is one of two young people who recently achieved spectacular results exposing ACORN. His revelations crippled one of the left's most powerful organizations. With training and a little financial help from the Leadership Institute, James O'Keefe started in 2004 an independent conservative student newspaper, The Centurion, at Rutgers, a large state university in New Jersey. James fought the liberal administration at Rutgers.

... James went to ten different training schools of the Leadership Institute. The Institute hired him for a year (2006-07) to help conservative students around the country form their own campus publications. He conducted 75 training programs for LI. Among the useful things James learned at LI was: "Don't fire all your ammunition at once."

In September 2009, each day for five days James released new videos exposing ACORN's outrageous practices. The roof caved in on ACORN. Obviously, the impact of his work would have been much less if James had released all those videos at the same time. Now James is a national conservative hero, and I believe he will write his own ticket to a future career doing just what he loves to do. (2) Morton Blackwell

O'Keefe certainly did write his own ticket, but not before destroying an organization that advocated for affordable housing for low and mid-low income families. Barack Obama acted as their attorney as this was a cause he also embraced.

O'Keefe And his cohort Hannah Giles, went 'undercover' at the organization. Apparently she posed as a prostitute, and introduced James as her boyfriend. They came away with five videos, released on five consecutive days, to painfully clip the dog's tail. With the help of Fox News and the controversial Andrew J. Breitbart (shown in centre of photo with O'Keefe and Giles), they made public unsubstantiated accusations against ACORN of tax evasion, human trafficking and sexual abuse.

As a result, the organization had their federal funding cancelled and were forced to close their doors, much to the detriment of vulnerable Americans.

And what about those dog clipping videos?

On March 1, 2010, the district attorney for Brooklyn concluded that there was no criminal wrongdoing by the ACORN staff in the Brooklyn ACORN office. An investigation report by California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. released on April 1, 2010 found the videos from Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Bernardino to be "severely edited" and did not find evidence of criminal conduct on the part of ACORN employees, with the Attorney General stating "things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality." The report also stated, ""Even if O'Keefe and Giles had truly intended to break the law, there is no evidence that any of the ACORN employees had the intent to aid and abet such criminal conduct or agreed to join in that illegal conduct." As of April 2, 2010, the other ACORN videos have not been released to the public in their full, unedited form, leading to speculation that the videos have been heavily edited to distort what happened during the tapings ***

Breitbart is also one of the 'Tea Party' gang, keeping company with the likes of people like Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

Where are They Now?

Hannah Giles is actually a minister's daughter, who was in journalism school when she met O'Keefe on Facebook. From Fox: "Why go after ACORN?" Giles asked. "Because I love America, I love God, and corrupt institutions don't help that." And yet it turned out they weren't corrupt at all, and she merely made them look corrupt with what the attorner general called "severely edited" videos, because they believed in helping those less fortunate. Giles is being sued, but not to worry; all the heavyweights in the Religious Right are stacking up the greenbacks as we speak.

And as for O'Keefe, he moved onto bigger and better things.

Yesterday, conservative activist James O'Keefe was arrested for allegedly plotting "to wiretap Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in downtown New Orleans." O'Keefe was arrested along with Stan Dai, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan. (3)

You can read the FBI report here. I know you're thinking 'Watergate', and so am I. But then Morton Blackwell did once work for Richard Nixon.

Footnotes:

*One of them is Tasha Kheiridden, co-author with Adam Daifallah of the book Rescuing Canada’s Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution. Daifallah was one of the students involved with Mike Harris's attempt to take over student unions on Ontario campuses.

**From the Manning Centre's promo for their Campus Leadership Training Program.

*** Wikipedia

Sources:

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

2. The Leadership Institute Connection to James O’Keefe, By Morton Blackwell, Campus Reform.org, October 15, 2009

3. O'Keefe's three alleged accomplices: Conservative activists Dai, Basel and Flanagan, By Eric Hananoki, Media Matter, January 26, 2010

Reviving Mike Harris's Campus Hijinks

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

In 2002, a story broke about Ontario Premier Mike Harris and his government's attempt to infiltrate student governments.

They were pouring a lot of money into political campaigns at several Ontario universities.

The provincial Tories are mounting a province wide campaign to fill student governments across Ontario with young conservatives, The Gazette has learned.

Numerous sources indicate the Ontario Progressive Conservative party has been actively recruiting and funding student election bids in order to fill as many high-profile student government positions as possible.

The campaign is run through the Ontario Progressive Conservative Campus Association, which established the "Millennium Leadership Fund" in 2000 to fund conservative candidates on Ontario campuses. The MLF is largely financed by senior PC members and supporters.

In a series of e-mails to OPCCA members in February and March, OPCCA president Adam Daifallah refers to the fund and touts the success of Tory candidates at a number of universities, including Western, Queen's, Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier and Windsor. (1)

Adam Daifallah went on to become a journalist with the National Post and has co-written a book Rescuing Canada’s Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution, with Tasha Kheiriddin, with a foreword by Mark Steyn.

The book advocates that Canadian conservatives create and fund think tanks and media outlets, and all of the usual strategies of movement conservatism.

"Any student government worth anything with any integrity does not cater to the needs of a political party," said Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance president and USC VP-education Erin McCloskey.

McCloskey said any student who received funding from the PCs has an unfair advantage. "To have this sort of advantage calls into question the ethics of the person running," she said.

"Student unions are not political positions. They are a place where students work together to defend their common interests," said Enver Villamizar, president of the University of Windsor Students' Alliance, where at least one Tory candidate has been elected. NDP provincial secretary Bruce Cox blasted the campaign, saying it pushes the limits of political action.

"If you have nothing to hide, then show it, he said. "I'm a little uneasy about the unfair advantage that is being given to some students because they have chosen to make a political decision. "If I were a student, I would be wondering: if my elected representatives are receiving funding from the PCs, who are they representing when they speak out?" (1)

The Neoconservative government of Mike Harris did not work well for Ontario. He was eventually forced to resign, amid scandals, and when they left office we were stuck with a six billion dollar deficit, that had been cleverly hidden by Jim Flaherty.

There appeared to be no more mention of their questionable activities, until recently, when they teamed up with the federal Neoconservatives, and are apparently pulling the same stunts across the country.

Thanks to a clever student who taped one their 'seminars', we now know that there is a movement to once again fund and support take-overs of student unions.

A series of documents posted on Wikileaks show that the Ontario Progressive Conservative Campus Association, a Tory-connected student group, held workshops at which participants were taught how to take over various student organizations on Ontario campuses.

"Presenters and participants are caught on tape advocating for the creation of front groups for the Conservative Party to masquerade as non-partisan grassroots organizations, influencing the political discourse on campus, stacking student elections with Party members, and conspiring to defeat non-profit organizations because of political differences, all with the intention of hiding their affiliations to the Party in the process," reads a release put out by the anonymous source who posted the documents.

The OPCCA hosted events on campuses in Ottawa, Toronto, and Waterloo that targeted Public Interest Research Groups in particular. (2)

The suggestions from one conversation:

Aaron Lee-Wudrick : Yeah we had a front group like that: the Campus Coalition for Liberty. It was really just a front for the conservatives, but it gave us like two voices. Two organizations support this, the Young Tories and the Campus Coalition for Liberty, which is the same thing ...

Ryan O'Connor : Sometimes you can't attach the party's name to something. You just can't. If it's a really controversial issue on campus or something that might show up in the newspaper, you want to be careful. You just have your shell organization and have the Campus Coalition for Liberty and two other Tory front groups which are front organizations, all of those groups might actually qualify for funding too.

Aaron Lee-Wudrick : Don't think that the Party doesn't like that, because they do. They're things that will help the Party, but it looks like it's an organically-grown organization and it just stimulated from the grassroots spontaneously. They love that stuff. (2)

Promoting youth involvement in politics is a good thing, but encouraging them to set up 'front groups' so that they can increase their funding is not only dishonest but illegal. And for a government to suggest this kind of behaviour speaks volumes for their integrity.

And the fact that they are passing these traits onto future politicians, would not instill confidence in voting for conservatives of any stripe.

I'm creating several pages on the kinds of things that are happening at universities today that should give you pause. Once I have them done, I will posting them as a separate chapter, because they not only use questionable ethics, but many of these groups are promoting hate, through something called 'Controlled Controversy'.

It is a technique promoted by Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institutes's Campus Leadership Program, and copied at the Canadian counterpart school: The Manning Centre for Building Democracy and their Campus Leadership Training Program.

There is nothing democratic in what they are doing and it needs to be exposed. Students have to be on their guard, for what they call "guerrilla warfare", because it threatens to alter the way we think and destroy the values we hold dear, like tolerance and even handedness.

Just after the sources, you'll find a list of related postings.

Sources:

1. Gazette Exclusive- Tories plot to infiltrate student government, By Jessica Leeder, Gazette Staff, March 15, 2002

2. Tory student groups hijack democracy on Ontario campuses, The Dominion, March 12, 2009

The Conservative Movement and Their Infiltration of Student Unions

Preston Manning, Morton Blackwell and a Questionable Youth Movement

..............Ann Coulter and Tom Tancredo

............. Stirring it Up at the University of Manitoba

..............Peter Kent and York University

..............The Tangled Web at Carlton University

..............Give me Liberty or Aaron Lee-Wudrick

..............Dalhousie and Jared Taylor

..............Morton Blackwell, Kyle Bristow and Young Americans

Preston Manning, Morton Blackwell and a Questionable Youth Movement

In March of 2009, a Conservative Party workshop was held at the University of Waterloo. A student who attended was clever enough to take a tape recorder and what was revealed from the meeting was a clandestine attempt to take over student unions, by setting up a series of front groups.

Audio recordings, photographs and documents that were leaked from a recent Conservative Party student workshop in Waterloo expose a partisan attempt to take over student unions and undermine Ontario Public Interest Research Groups (OPIRGs) on campuses across Ontario.

At a session held in early February by the Ontario Progressive Conservative Campus Association (OPCCA) and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, campus Conservatives, party campaigners, and a Member of Parliament discussed strategies to gain funding from student unions for the Conservative Party and ways to run for—and win—positions within student unions. (1)

This operation is one of the strategies taught at the Manning Centre's Campus Leadership Training program. From their website:

Has your student government been overrun by extreme left-wing students?

Is freedom of speech being infringed upon on your campus? Are groups on campus using student money to further a left-wing agenda? Do you want to get organized and fight back?

Then the Manning Centre’s Campus Leadership Training is for you. Campus Leadership Seminars introduce aspiring political leaders on campus to the principles and practices of effective political involvement. Topics for these seminars include:

»The Fundamentals of Campaigning
» Political Communications
» How to run an effective Campus Club
» How to win campaigns on campus
» How to build effective coalitions

The Manning Centre is the Canadian spin-off of the Leadership Institute of Morton Blackwell's, and like Blackwell's is funded by wealthy corporate interests. Manning's donor who provided ten million dollars in seed money, preferred to remain anonymous (2), but Blackwell's backers include the DeVos family of Amway fame and Richard Mellon Scaife, an American billionaire with oil, aluminum and newspaper interests.

Famous alumni include Karl Rove and Ralph Reed, the man who came to Canada to teach our Religious Right how to get Stephen Harper elected. He is the founder of the Christian Coalition that is affiliated with other Right-wing Christian extremist organizations, like Focus on the Family, all falling under the umbrella of the Council for National Policy. Reed made headlines recently when he was embroiled in a scandal involving casinos and Jack Abramoff.

Another graduate of the school is Reform-Conservative MP Rob Anders, who is also a member of Focus on the Family. Morton Blackwell helped to found both the Religious Right and the Council for National Policy in the U.S. Ander's former legislative assistant, Trevor Cazemier , was an invited guest at a conference held by the Council for National Policy in 1998, and was sponsored by Republican strategist, Mark Montini. (3) Stephen Harper had spoke there the year before (4).

According to Marci McDonald there are 700 Canadian graduates of Blackwell's school all working for the movement in Canada. (2)

The Leadership Institute is also running the same kind of clandestine operations as Manning, under their Campus Leadership Program.

The structure of Blackwell's Campus Leadership Program is simple. The Leadership Institute trains promising conservative college graduates over the summer and dispatches them to campuses in the fall with a mandate to start conservative student organizations. Need $500 and some ideas to start a combative right-wing campus publication? The institute would love to help you.

Unlike chapter-based political organizations, CLP clubs are unaffiliated with either the Leadership Institute or each other. According to Blackwell,this trait offers a serious advantage: "No purges." The clubs' independence also comes with the benefit of plausible deniability. "You can get away with stuff that you would take a lot of flak for doing in the College Republicans," says CLP director Dan Flynn. (5)

What these institutes teach is a kind of guerrilla warfare using several duplicitous techniques, including something called controlled controversy. I'm going to show some examples in this chapter, from both the Canadian and American groups.

Sources:

1. Conservative Party strategy to take over student unions exposed, By Rebecca Granovsky-Larsen, Editor-in-Chief and Nora Loreto, News Editor, Ryerson Free Press, March 16, 2009

2. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8

3. Tysons Corner meeting, CNP, Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner, McLean, Virginia, May 1-2, 1998

4. Full text of Stephen Harper's 1997 speech, Canadian Press, December 14, 2005

5. My Right-wing Degree, By Horwitz, May 24, 2005

Did Peter Kent Interfere With Student Elections at York University?

In 2005, journalist Jeff Horwitz went undercover at the Leadership Institute of Morton Blackwell's, and enrolled in a seminar, part of their Campus Leadership Program.

One recent Sunday, at Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, a dozen students meet for the second and final day of training in grass-roots youth politics. All are earnest, idealistic and as right wing as you can get. They take careful notes as instructor Paul Gourley teaches them how to rig a campus mock election.

It's nothing illegal -- no ballot stuffing necessary, even at the most liberal colleges. First you find a nonpartisan campus group to sponsor the election, so you can't be accused of cheating. Next, volunteer to organize the thing. College students are lazy, and they'll probably let you. Always keep in mind that a rigged mock election is all about location, location, location.

"Can anyone tell me," asks Gourley, a veteran mock electioneer, "why you don't want the polling place in the cafeteria?" Stephen, a shy antiabortion activist sitting toward the rear of the class, raises his hand: "Because you want to suppress the vote?" "Stephen has the right answer!" Gourley exclaims, tossing Stephen his prize, a copy of Robert Bork's "Slouching Toward Gomorrah." (1)

That is just one of the techniques that would be future conservative leaders are taught at the Institute.

There is no better place to master the art of mock-election rigging -- and there is no better master than Morton Blackwell, who invented the trick in 1964 and has been teaching it ever since. Blackwell's half-century career in conservative grass-roots politics coincides neatly with the fortunes of the conservative movement: He was there when Goldwater lost, when Southern voters abandoned the Democratic Party in droves, and when the Moral Majority began its harvest of evangelical Christian voters. In the 1970s, Blackwell worked with conservative direct-mail king Richard Viguerie; in 1980, he led Reagan's youth campaign. Recently, he's been fighting to save Tom DeLay's job.

Over the last 25 years, more than 40,000 young conservatives have been trained at the institute's Arlington, Va., headquarters in everything from TV makeup for aspiring right-wing talking heads to prep courses for the State Department's Foreign Service exam. Classes are taught by volunteers recruited from the ranks of the conservative movement's most talented organizers, operatives and communicators. (1)

The Canadian conservatives are now hoping to cash in on Blackwell's success and indeed the [Preston] Manning Centre for Building Democracy, also offers a Campus Leadership Training Program. Manning's Centre was started with a ten million dollar anonymous corporate donation, and is fashioned after Blackwell's model. (2)

And with the rise of Conservative party interference in student politics at universities across the country, it's important to expose this new trend.

It's not unusual for a political party to speak to students, but this kind of interference is unprecedented.

Peter Kent and York University

Students at York University cried foul when federal Conservative MP Peter Kent and Ontario Conservative MPP, Peter Shurman got involved with their election, hoping to bring forward a "... conservative, pro-Israeli" candidate.

"The Conservative party has no authority at all for getting involved in student politics and neither does the York administration. We're an incorporated, independent body," charged Krisna Saravanamuttu, who was elected president of the York Federation of Students in the controversial vote. "Prime Minister Stephen Harper's foot soldiers are deliberately interfering with student elections to help candidates more friendly to their policies.""I find it bizarre for a federal minister (Kent is Canada's minister of state for foreign affairs in the mericas) to try to interfere in a student election," said CFS chair Shelley Melanson. "If students were concerned about the election process, there are mechanisms on campus for expressing those concerns."

In one email to Tiffin at 2:14 a.m. the night of ballot counting, Kent's special assistant said he was there on campus and was concerned nobody from the university was monitoring the process. (3)

The campus conservatives had suggested that the election was rigged, but it was not up to the government to step in. The university is mandated to handle these situations. However, this is all part of movement conservatism, where every element of society is dragged in.

Sources:

1. My Right-wing Degree, By Jeff Horowitz, May 24, 2005

2.The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8

3. Stop meddling, students tell Tories: MPPs deny they were trying to sway York election results, By Louise Brown, Toronto Star, July 6, 2009