Put Those Things Away Ladies. This Is Too Important

The Wall Street protests continue, with activists promising to hold out for months. However, another element has been brought in, that has no place in a legitimate rally.

Topless women with signs requesting that gawkers not look at them but listen to them. I can't help but think that Karl Rove has outdone himself. They need to stop off at Wall Street, pick up their pay cheques for discrediting the movement, and then let the grown-ups take over.

Did they really think people would listen to them if they took their clothes off?

The message of the protesters is an important one. They represent the 99% of Americans that are propping up the top 1%, and they are sick of it.

Remember the 2006 leaked Citigroup memo? (Equity Strategy, By: Ajay Kapur, Niall Macleod, Narendra Singh, Citigroup Global Market Research, October 16, 2005)

The World is dividing into two blocs - the Plutonomy and the rest. The U.S., UK, and Canada are the key Plutonomies - economies powered by the wealthy. Continental Europe (ex-Italy) and Japan are in the egalitarian bloc.

... We can see a number of potential challenges to plutonomy. The first, and probably most potent, is through a labor backlash. Outsourcing, offshoring or insourcing of cheap labor is done to undercut current labor costs .... Low-end developed market labor might not have much economic power, but it does have equal voting power with the rich .... the third threat comes from the potential social backlash.

All we have left is "equal voting power", yet people are still refusing to vote, casting their ballots instead for the continuation of our plutocracy.

When does Stephen Harper ever talk about income disparity or poverty? Never. He was handed a Senate report on how to help alleviate poverty, and he stuck his nose in the air and then threw it in the trash.

Morton Blackwell, the man who helped Preston Manning set up his anti-democracy centre, and trained people like Karl Rove and Rob Anders, is one of the key players in the Neoconservative movement.

He has made their intentions clear. In a forward to Plinio de Correa de Olivier's English language edition of his book: Nobility and Analagous Traditional Elites, that promotes "the restoration of influence of authentic elites over the multitudes", Blackwell writes:

'One does not have to accept Papal infallibility to appreciate a case persuasively made, using theological, moral, and prudential arguments. This book will convince many readers, whatever their faith, that good elites are legitimate, desirable and, yes, necessary'.

Unfortunately these are not good elites. They are just greedy elites and it's time that the "multitudes" started governing themselves again, by taking back their democracy.  A little "social backlash"

The Wall Street protests are important and those topless women need to put on some clothes or go home.

The Canadian Manifesto 11: God, Guns and Gays

Throughout the 1990s, especially the early years, the Canadian Reform Party and the American Republican Party were forging ties, that have proven to be lasting.

They share policies, initiatives, staff, and even financing.

One name that comes up often is Morton Blackwell, founder of the Washington based Leadership Institute, where young conservatives are trained in the art of political guerrilla warfare.  Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed are all graduates of his program.

Blackwell was co-founder of the Moral Majority, and was Ronald Reagan's liaison with the Religious Right.  He once claimed that the Evangelical community was "the greatest tract of virgin timber on the political landscape."

It was Blackwell who invited Stephen Harper to speak at the Montreal conference of the Council for National Policy, an organization where foreign affairs and religion are mixed, and made to fit the Old Testament.  In other words, they promote perpetual war.

Blackwell was also called upon by Preston Manning to help him establish a Canadian branch of the Leadership Institute, giving birth to the Manning Centre For Building Democracy.  A dubious title for a training centre that teaches the art of undermining democracy.

His U.S. counterpart was more than happy to help out, saying that he offers his services for free, to any groups "trying to be conservative in the U.S. sense of the word". (1)

About God's Love of Guns

One of the advisers at the Leadership Institute is James Inhofe, the Republican senator from Oklahoma.  In 1994, the Republicans were determined to sweep the mid-term election, so pulled out all the stops.  Frank Luntz left the Reform Party and helped to draft the Contract With America, while Republican leader Newt Gingrich, studied Preston Manning's anti-government campaigning

The Evangelical army that had put Ronald Reagan on the throne, were once again mobilized for action and every right-wing group in the country was on speed dial.

But perhaps the most important factor in the success of the Republicans then, was when they put a gun in God's hands and changed the profile of a religious activist, from one wanting to do what was right, to one so filled with hatred that it now consumes them.

Because 1994 was the year when the National Rifle Association found a loophole in the election financing laws, and began to interfere in the democratic process.  They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to target Democrats who supported gun control, in particular, the Brady Act.

One campaign that was fought with NRA ammo was that of Inhofe, who was running against the incumbent Dave McCurdy.  With graduates from the Leadership Institute, including our own Rob Anders, McCurdy was shell shocked.

The NRA’s PAC spent more than $150,000 in independent expenditures to run television and newspaper advertisements and put up billboards denouncing McCurdy in addition to the $9,900 it gave directly to Inhofe, just under the maximum $10,000 allowable under FEC regulations. The NRA also spent thousands of dollars more urging its Oklahoma members to turn out for Inhofe. It was an all-out attack that turned the tide against McCurdy. (2)

Inhofe ran on a campaign of 'God, Guns and Gays', a slogan later borrowed by the Republican National Committee.  However, most NRA sponsored ads did not mention guns at all.  In one TV spot, they showed McCurdy at a distance and then zoomed in to reveal that he was wearing an Aids ribbon.

The same kind of gunfight took place across the country, as the NRA took up the cause for Republican hopefuls.  Christine Todd Whitman, the woman who loaned out her Common Sense Revolution to Mike Harris in Ontario,  garnered $ 200,000 in free ads.

Recognizing a good thing when they saw it, Harris's team then sent a letter to the Canadian branch of the NRA, the National Firearms Association, promising to do what he could to kill Bill C-68, and the Gun Registry.  The NFA published the letter as an encouragement for their members to get out and vote.

This was not the organization's only foray into conservative politics.  They had been active supporters of the Reform Party, and made a huge impact in 1997, when Reform became the official opposition.  According to the book Rebuilding Canadian Party Politics:

During the campaign, the NFA's political clout was put at the disposal of the Reform Party. In a memo to supporters, NFA president David Tomlinson noted that the only party offering a "trustworthy promise of an immediate turn toward dumping the Liberal game plan, revoking Bill C-68 and bringing in a completely tweeked firearms control system that will ... favor our firearms community is the Reform Party." Using images of war and battle, Tomlinson exhorted any member who was not a political activist to "get off your butt and become one".

During the 1997 election, signs bearing the somewhat ambiguous message "Remember Bill C-68 When You Vote" were a common sight in rural areas where gun ownership is concentrated. Part of the National Firearms Association's (NFA) extensive and ambitious campaign to defeat the Liberal government and the gun-control legislation it had supported. These signs signalled widespread discontent over firearms legislation in parts of the country.

He [Tomlinson]called on NFA supporters to work for, donate money, goods and services to, and promote the Reform Party". Tomlinson himself was president of a Reform Party constituency association in Edmonton. NFA activists apparently heeded Tomlinsons call. Messages posted on the organization's website throughout the election reflected considerable involvement in Reform campaigns,. Activists compared notes about the travails of keeping Reform signs in place, boasted about their campaign activity and contributions, and called for volunteers to help at local Reform offices.(3)

The New Right movement has many "signals" and according to David Kuo, the term "believers' is assigned to anyone believing in three things: the end of abortion, the end of gay rights, and the right to carry a gun. In an oped piece Harper wrote in 1995, he claimed that Reform was about "Gays, Guns and Government Grants".

He was a "believer".

Gun Control is Not a Liberal Issue

In their effort to make everything liberal evil, the New Right has called gun control, besides a feminist plot to destroy their masculinity (honest), a 'liberal folly'.  However, the idea of gun control, was actually a conservative priority.

Richard Nixon once said that "guns are an abomination," and went on to confess that  "Free from fear of gun owners' retaliation at the polls, he favored making handguns illegal and requiring licenses for hunting rifles."

George Bush, Sr. banned the import of "assault weapons" in 1989, and promoted the view that Americans should only be allowed to own weapons suitable for "sporting purposes."

When Ronald Reagan was Governor of California, he signed the Mulford Act in 1967, "prohibiting the carrying of firearms on one's person or in a vehicle, in any public place or on any public street." 

Twenty-four years later, Reagan was still pushing gun control. "I support the Brady Bill," he said in a March 28, 1991 speech, "and I urge the Congress to enact it without further delay." 

After all, the act was put in place because he was shot, and named after the man who died protecting him.

Republican Rudolph Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, actually sued 26 gun manufacturers in June 2000, and his police commissioner, Howard Safir, proposed a nationwide plan for gun licensing, complete with yearly "safety" inspections.

Another Republican, New York State Governor George Pataki, on August 10, 2000, signed into law what The New York Times called "the nation’s strictest gun controls," a radical program mandating trigger locks, background checks at gun shows and "ballistic fingerprinting" of guns sold in the state. It also raised the legal age to buy a handgun to 21 and banned "assault weapons," the sale or possession of which would now be punishable by seven years in prison. (4)

In Canada, the first aggressive gun control, was at the request of then Ontario Conservative Premier William Davis.   After a student opened fire at the school his daughters attended, killing one teacher and injuring 13 students, he sent his attorney general, John Clement, to Ottawa to meet with the Liberal government.

Armed with a petition bearing thousands of names of Brampton residents, demanding better gun control, Clement met with federal Justice Minister Otto Lang and Solicitor General Warren Allmand to review possible amendments to the Criminal code. (5)

Though Clement failed to get re-elected, he is credited with the passing of  Bill C-51 in 1977, that came into affect on January 1, 1978:

The two biggest changes included requirements for Firearms Acquisition Certificates (FACs) and requirements for Firearms and Ammunition Business Permits. Other changes included provisions dealing with new offences, search and seizure powers, increased penalties, and new definitions for prohibited and restricted weapons. Fully automatic weapons became classified as prohibited firearms unless they had been registered as restricted weapons before January 1, 1978. Individuals could no longer carry a restricted weapon to protect property. Mandatory minimum sentences were re-introduced. This time, they were in the form of a 1-14 year consecutive sentence for the actual use (not mere possession) of a firearm to commit an indictable offence. (Wikipedia)

And for the record, John Clement is Tony Clement's stepfather.

Gun control is not a partisan issue.  It is a Canadian issue.

This past election, gun lobbyists were again out in full force.  Mark Holland, former Liberal MP for Ajax-Pickering, was targeted by several groups, including Gun Nutz.  The Conservatives wanted him gone because he had been a vocal supporter of both the Prison Farms and the Gun Registry.

What does it say for the future of our democracy, when those wanting to create a Canadian "Gun Culture", can affect the outcome of an election?  And what does it say for Christianity, when the devout are behind them?

Using Romans 13 that establishes the "boundaries of governments", they are now advocating that we all should be armed.  And they wonder why people are leaving churches in droves.  How is this inspiring to anyone?

The truth of the matter is, that the New Right saw an opportunity for support from gun lobbyists, who are financed by gun manufacturers.  The potential outcome of the end of gun control, is not important.  Only the money and the power.

Conservative insider, Tom Flanagan, said that Stephen Harper wrote the Reform Party gun policy, only stopping short at calling it a right to bear arms.  This has nothing to do with long guns, or farmers, but is to appease those who want bigger and more lethal handguns, and want the right to carry them anywhere.

They claim that the streets will be safer.

If that were the case than the United States would be the safest country in the world.

It's not.

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, p. 104-105

2. Political Snipers, By Robert Dreyfuss, American Prospect, September 21, 1995

3. Rebuilding Canadian Party Politics, By R. Kenneth Carty, William Paul Cross, Lisa Young, UBC Press, 2000, ISBN: 978 0774 807784, p. 99-100

4. Don't Blame the Liberals for Gun Control, by Richard Poe, Studies in Reformed Theology, Volume 11, 2001

5.  Another School Shooting, Thoughts From up Here, March 22, 2005

The New anti-Abortionists: Young Political Activists or Youthful Vigilantes?

I Burned my Bra For This? REAL Women of Canada and the Men Behind Them

The inspiration for the Moral Majority/Religious Right, in the United States, was the central government's passing of anti-segregation laws. However, the art of political activism by the movement, came from a man by the name of Francis Schaeffer.

If we are to understand the Harper government, we have to accept that everything they do or have done, comes from the U.S. Republican/Tea Party/Religious Right.

I could stop searching for these links, and instead focus on their truly Canadian-based actions, since it would be a much shorter list. The only problem is, that I haven't found any.

The election of Ronald Reagan in the U.S., gave the evangelical activists an "in". The election of Stephen Harper has done the same in Canada, and as Marci McDonald reminds us in The Armageddon Factor, they will now be a permanent fixture on Parliament Hill.

Francis Schaeffer and How the Evangelicals Stormed the Bastille

Reagan's 1980 victory, gave rise to many quasi-religious organizations, like Focus on the Family, who helped to finance Harper's 2006 victory, by placing radio ads on over 100 Canadian stations, against same-sex marriage. Harper's rallying cry.

The Canadian chapter of Focus on Family, was started by Stephen Harper's former chief of staff, Darrel Reid. The executive included two top ranking officials from their American parent organization, and $1.6 million from Dobson himself (Armageddon Factor, p.86), who claimed to be concerned with Canada's moral decay.

However, the notion that evangelicals should play a more active role in politics, came from Francis Schaeffer, the man who coined the term, or at least made popular the term, "secular humanism".

He believed that putting people above religion was wrong, and he was determined to do something about it. So he established a commune in Switzerland, L'Abri (shelter), devoted to Christian thought and activism. (There is a Canadian chapter on Bowen Island in B.C.)

When Michael Lindsay was researching his book: Faith in the Halls of Power, he found that many Religious Right leaders that he interviewed, had either visited the commune or had been heavily influenced by Schaeffer's writings.

One of the first campaigns that Schaeffer ignited, was the anti-abortion movement, that mobilized his followers to take action. It was perhaps the first time that orthodox Catholics and Protestants united for a common cause.

Gwen Lanholt, now president of REAL Women of Canada, was part of that movement.

And as a founding director of the Civitas Society*, the policy arm of the Harper government, she has a great deal of influence with the powers that be.

Youthful Vigilantes

Brian Lilley recently interviewed a young woman, named Alissa Golob, on his Fox News North/Sun TV Byline.

Golob is an anti-abortion activist, involved in a campaign to "shock" people into joining her cause, by posting images of aborted fetuses (emblazoned with a swastika). I've mentioned this in another post, because of yet another American inspired group, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, who had taken up the cause.



Golob believes that the graphic image campaign will work the same as MADD's (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) images of car wrecks and the police's of gang violence. However, they are about self-preservation.

No doubt the signs will impact some, but most of us have an idea of what an aborted fetus looks like.

However, this isn't really about the abortion debate, but the modus operandi of this new youth movement, attached to the broader neoconservative movement.

Golob brings up the work of her American counterpart, Lila Rose, a young woman who believes that abortions should be performed in the public square, so people can see how gross they are.

That may sound a little nuts, but Rose's involvement draws attention to a larger issue.

The benefactors.

Lila Rose is a graduate of Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, (so is Rob Anders and Karl Rove) and friend of James O'Keefe. O'Keefe was involved in the demise of ACORN, an organization that worked for the poor, especially African-Americans. The Neocons wanted it gone.

So two young activists, O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, went undercover to discredit the organization, and though their videos were later determined to be "highly edited", they were able to paint the non-profit group as "pimps".

But they couldn't have pulled it off without the help of Fox News and Andrew J. Breitbart. You might remember Breitbart as the one responsible for destroying the career of Anthony Weiner.

This has gone from political activism to dangerous vigilante justice against their perceived enemies. They want to destroy anyone and everything associated with a progressive and just society.

For Lila Rose, it's Planned Parenthood. She helped to perpetrate a hoax against PP, to "prove" that they were sex traffickers.

Where Does Alissa Golob Fit in to All This?

At the beginning I mentioned Francis Schaeffer, who inspired the Moral Majority/Christian Right. Schaeffer was a dominionist, who believed that before the Second Coming of Christ, the U.S. must be returned to a Christian nation.

Canada's dominionism, aka reconstructionism, is championed by people like Darrel Reid and David Sweet (amoung many, many others), both involved in the Work Research Foundation, and Redeemer University. (Sweet also Canadian founder of Promise Keepers)

Redeemer University, a private for-profit school, received three million from the Harper government as part of the Canada Action Plan.

Alissa Golob is a graduate of Redeemer, one of many of her fellow students, turned activists for the movement. And while she claims to be pro-life, it's pretty clear that she is just anti-abortion. She does not encourage birth control or "safe sex".

Because those are some of the best defenses against abortion.

Better access to contraception, higher quality sex education and shifting social norms have contributed to a 36.9 per cent decline in Canada’s teen birth and abortion rate between 1996 and 2006, according to a report released today by the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada.

Other initiatives that Golob could adopt would be eradicating poverty and improving health care.

But that will never happen.

The group that Golob works for, Campaign Life Coalition, also has Planned Parenthood in their crosshairs.

The Harper government has already defunded them at home and abroad.

The Campaign Life Coalition also had a hand in the success of Stockwell Day, by selling 130,000 memberships to the Alliance Party, on his behalf.

So do you see what we're up against?

Fox News, the American Religious Right and Stephen Harper. Jagged lightening, rumbling thunder and gale-force winds.

Batten down the hatches, because it's going to be one hell of a storm.

Footnotes:

* Civitas Society: Founding President: William Gairdner (Reform Party)

Other Past Presidents: Tom Flanagan (Reform Party and Calgary School), William Robson, and Lorne Gunter

Founding Directors: Janet Ajzenstat, Ted Byfield (Reform Party), Michel Coren, Jacques Dufresne, Tom Flanagan, David Frum, William Gairdner, Jason Kenney, Gwen Landolt, Ezra Levant, Tom Long, Mark Magner, William Robson, David E. Somerville (National Citizens Coalition), Michael Walker (Fraser Institute)

The ACORN Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree When it Bonks Harper on the Head

It's taken me a while, but I've been able to reduce the complexities of Stephen Harper into three simple facts.

1. He is a malignant narcissist

2. He was indoctrinated by the anti-communist, anti-liberalism crowd.

3. He is a Republican.

So if the media or political pundits want to try to make sense of what this man does, they just need to remember those three things. He is driven by his own self-importance, a visceral hatred of liberalism and an undying love for anything Republican.

Which brings me to the census issue.

We Should Have Looked South in the First Place

ACORN is an organization that advocates for affordable housing for low and mid-low income families. Barack Obama once acted as their attorney and as a result the Tea Party/Republican crowd hates them. The anti-liberalism crowd detests them for advocating for the poor, and the Religious Right condemns them because they are trying to interfere in God's master plan.

They also advocate for gun control, a livable wage, minorities ...

In other words, they are doomed in the current American political climate.

I had blogged on them before when tracking the parallel movements of the Leadership Institute, Manning Centre for Democracy and the Conservative Party of Canada.

Morton Blackwell, founder of the LI was involved in a plot to undermine the work they do. And bragged about it. You can read the story here.

Well, apparently ACORN was given the job of compiling census information and the Tea Party crowd are steeped and steaming.

One of their tea waggin' queens, Michele Bachmann, is encouraging Americans not to fill out their census forms, calling them an "intrusion" and highlighting the fact that failure to comply could result in a $ 5,000 fine. And despite the fact that no one has ever actually BEEN fined in the history of the census, her whistle is going off.



But there is a problem with the tea baggers plans to boycott the census. If they don't weigh in they could be thrown out of any decisions when it comes to the allocation of funds. Tea stained states could suffer as a result.

Google 'Tea Party' and 'census' and listen to the rhetoric the American right is using. It is almost verbatim what we're hearing from Stephen Harper, Maxime Bernier and Tony Clement. "Law abiding citizens shouldn't be penalized", "it's an intrusion", etc., etc., etc.

The Harperites claim to have been in consultation with stakeholders since 2006, but as David McKie discovered recently, no such consultations ever took place.

The response to my request for such studies was disappointing: "Having completed a thorough search, we regret to inform you that we were unable to locate any records responsive to your request."

But Mckie was looking in the wrong place. He should have just invited himself for 'tea' with Bachmann.

Controlled Controversy and the UN Security Council

Romeo LeBlanc was Canada's 25th Governor General, and the pride of New Brunswick. Referred to as “the great gentleman of Acadia”, he had a profound influence on those he met.

And when he died on June 24, 2009, a country mourned.

His son Dominic, the Liberal MP for Beausejour, recalled that his father went to work in Ottawa with people like former prime minister Lester Pearson, then Trudeau and Chretien.“My father was proud to be included in this group. They all share a vision of a compassionate Canada and each of them had an unyielding faith in the generosity and tolerance of Canadians,” he said.“The country has lost a devoted Canadian who did his best to serve with humility and compassion.”

That should have been the story. But it wasn't.

To Stephen Harper this could have been a PR nightmare. He only saw LeBlanc as a popular "Liberal" whose funeral could "help" the people he hated. So he needed a game changer.

And he found it in a thin wafer. We all remember the headlines. Did he pocket it, did he not?

And from that moment on, the story shifted from the funeral of a Canadian statesman to what Stephen Harper did with the Communion wafer. He wasn't Catholic and clearly should not have taken it in the first place.

But the debate continued and the final conclusion was that Stephen Harper was the "victim" of a smear campaign. And to prove it, the paper that ran the story "apologized" and assured their readers that those responsible would be reprimanded. Except that the reporter responsible was the son of the owner, so he was refused a second helping of mashed potatoes. That was it. The editor was canned, but she was already in trouble over another issue.

And of course the Conservatives tried to blame the whole thing on Michael Ignatieff. Doug Finley, then the Conservative Party’s National Director of Political Operations, started flogging the line:

Can Michael Ignatieff assure Canadians that no Liberal staffer, executive or advisor contacted Jamie Irving or Shawna Richer regarding the Prime Minister’s acceptance of communion at Romeo LeBlanc’s funeral?

There it was. Michael Ignatieff sabotaged the funeral of a friend. How ridiculous.

Some noted something else about the story, however. The offending newspaper was the Irving-owned Telegraph-Journal. The family of the naughty reporter. At the time, the Irving-owned Halifax Shipyard was bidding on a contract to build new coastguard ships.

And they won it

And they are now bidding on an even bigger contract. And guess what Irving-owned newspaper is singing the praises of Stephen Harper? From the Irving owned Telegraph-Journal:

... the company's chief executive, Jim Irving, made his pitch to the federal government for future shipbuilding deals - specifically, the Arctic Offshore Patrol Vessels. Irving praised Prime Minister Stephen Harper's efforts at expanding Canada's presence in the arctic ... "He's up there every summer working on the economy, the environment and the community issues ... and he's going to make a big difference with what he's doing up there," said the Irving Shipbuilding CEO of the Conservative prime minister.

I'm just sayin'.

So Why Bring This up Now?

If you want to understand how Stephen Harper operates, you have to turn to those who guide his career. Most of them are also involved with the American Republicans, including Morton Blackwell and the Leadership Institute. 800 Canadian conservatives have passed through their halls (included Rob Anders), and there will be more now that they have a Canadian affiliate, The Manning Centre For Building Democracy.

The Leadership Institute teaches something they call 'Controlled Controversy', as a means of manipulating the press, and deflecting their attention away from what could be negative publicity for you, or positive publicity for your political opponent.

A perfect example of this, was Harper's first visit to Mexico. Remember that stupid hunting vest? When would Stephen Harper have ever worn a hunting vest? He was a preppie and is rarely without a suit.

But he wanted to steer the story away from the meeting that resulted in aggressive trade deals, putting NAFTA on steroids. And it worked. Every headline from there on in was about his wardrobe. You were hard pressed to find anything about what was discussed at the summit.

And the same thing is happening today.

The Harperites know they could be in trouble with the electorate for their poor showing at the UN. But instead of taking responsibility, they are changing the narrative by suggesting that Michael Ignatieff was responsible. They know it's not true, but it doesn't matter. Headlines are now about Michael Ignatieff and his evil deeds.

Colin Horgan in the UK Guardian sees the frame up over a comment Ignatieff made suggesting that Harper did not deserve a seat on the council because of his foreign policy. It was said to a small group of supporters, not at the UN. And oddly enough, no foreign ambassadors were present.

On Tuesday, despite pouring money and countless hours into the election effort, Canada failed to win a seat at the security council for the first time in its history. Afterward, the Harper government placed blame for the loss in a seemingly strange place: on Michael Ignatieff, specifically citing his comment in September. At a press conference held after Canada withdrew from the final round of voting, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said: "Canada was not united because some saw this as an opportunity to score political points by opposing Canada's candidacy… [Ignatieff] came out clearly indicating that Canada did not deserve a seat… and for that, of course, we were extremely disappointed."

The suggestion was bizarre. Was it true that Ignatieff's – albeit politically misguided – comment, given to a small group of supporters and journalists weeks prior to the vote at the UN, could hold such sway over the international community? No. In fact, the Canadian Press later revealed: "Several ambassadors who emerged from the vote made no mention of Ignatieff's remarks; one had never even heard of him."

But look what happened. The debate was did he or didn't he? And no matter how ludicrous, Ignatieff's name will be bandied around for months as the man who destroyed our chances for a seat.

The bad publicity for our government was masterfully "controlled".

Of course you might want to ask yourself, that if Michael Ignatieff really had that much control over Ambassadors from around the world, then why is he not our prime minister?

But I think we can see where this may be headed. Will Stephen Harper use this as an excuse to pull Canada out of the United Nations, further isolating us? He's always loathed them.

I can see the headline now:

'Michael Ignatieff Responsible for Canada Pulling the Plug on It's Involvement with the UN'.

Oye!

But from one Acadian to another: Rest in Peace Mr. LeBlanc.

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

Controlled Controversy at Dalhousie With Jared Taylor

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

There is a growing trend in this country to challenge our hate crime laws, by inviting some of the most controversial speakers to our universities in the hopes that there will be protests.

And when the inevitable protest happens, the news becomes about that, rather than the message that is being delivered, that got people so riled up in the first place.

Most recently it was Ann Coulter and the "controlled controversy" surrounding her visit became the debate, ignoring the question of whether or not it was OK to Muslim-bait.

What we should have also questioned was why a Danish hate group was sponsoring her visit, and why a member of Stephen Harper's staff was arranging the pre-show party.

Forget that Ezra Levant and David Frum had their fingers it, both bosom buddies of Jason Kenney and Stockwell Day.

These 'free speech' gurus love it when the hateful messages are not directed at them or their beliefs, but when they are they scream bloody murder. George Galloway is an excellent example of that.

However, before Coulter's visit there was another 'controlled controversy" on a University campus, when Jared Taylor, a notorious white supremacist was invited to debate a professor of black studies. Why they purposely chose Dalhousie, I don't know, perhaps it's because there is rather large black community in Halifax.

The organizer, Brian Boothe, claimed that he had hoped that the Dalhousie professor David Devine would win the debate, thereby proving that racism is wrong. Divine was under the impression that Taylor was a legitimate expert, and wasn't prepared to debate a devoted racist, who had honed his skill, by simply not listening to a thing anyone had to say that would contradict his already firmly entrenched opinions.

When word of the debate circulated around Halifax, the public outcry forced the professor to cancel the debate, but Taylor showed up anyway, garnering a lot of media attention, especially when after handing out hate literature on the street corners, he was attacked by a group who clearly wanted him out of town.

In its reaction to Mr. Taylor's brief visit last week, Halifax failed on almost every measure. Prof. Divine did not check his background before agreeing to debate him as an intellectual peer, an omission that later forced him to publicly refuse to debate. The media courted Mr. Taylor, then shunned him, then courted him again, turning a non-story into a near-scandal; and citizens stooped to mob violence and an anonymous e-mail that read: "Next time he comes, we're going to cut off his head." "Must be Muslims," Mr. Taylor said.

Literally overnight, this coincidence of failures transformed a harmless kook handing out fliers in a Maritime snowstorm into the hottest interview in Halifax. He is now hailed on the Internet among like-minded American "paleoconservatives" as a martyr for free speech in the face of aggressive Canadian political correctness. Even the local papers that refused his ads turned around and defended his right to get his message out.

"I felt very sad that someone of the calibre of Prof. Divine, with all the best of intentions, fell into that trap," said Dr. Mock, a psychologist who was once dubbed the "hate hunter" for her expert testimony on neo-Nazi tattoos. "It's an old Klan trick.... They can't be refuted because their lies are propaganda and the arguments are circular and conspiratorial." (1)

See how easily the story shifted from being about a white supremacist visiting Canada and handing out hate literature, to being about the actions of those who protested his racist messages, and Canada's arbitrary laws against freedom of speech.

The situation was handled all wrong and Jared Taylor was made a hero.

The anti-defamation League has actually covered similar situations involving Taylor and the company he keeps. Mobs follow him everywhere, and he knows just the right bombastic comments to fuel their ire. You can listen to the Taylor in the following video.



Jared Taylor and the Leadership Institute

Taylor has been linked with the Youth for Western Civilization movement, funded by Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute. He regularly gives them a plug in his American Renaissance newsletter.

However, he was also supposed to speak at a conference they were holding at the Institute on race and conservatism:

The forum was titled "Race and Conservatism" and was sponsored by the Robert A. Taft Club, a paleoconservative organization that was run by fellow Leadership Institute member Marcus Epstein. It was held at a satellite building for the Georgetown University Law School in Claredon, Va., having been moved at the last minute from its original location at the Leadership Institute building after calls from the Southern Poverty Law Center and One People's Project gave reason for concern. The panel included Jared Taylor, the editor of the white supremacist American Renaissance newsletter who is planning a conference of white supremacists in the Washington DC area next month, and John Derbyshire of the conservative periodical National Review.

According to a post on the white supremacist website Stormfront* at the time when it was still planned to be held at the Leadership Institute, it was just going to be Taylor and Derbyshire discussing the role of race in policy decisions and the racial future of the Republican party. After the controversy that prompted the Leadership Institute to close its doors to the forum, Kevin Martin of the black conservative organization Project 21 became a last-minute addition to the panel.

Approximately 40 persons attended this forum, the majority of whom, among them a longtime associate of Taylor's, Professor Michael Hart, were well-known in white supremacist circles. Other Leadership Institute members were also in attendance. (2)

We have to be vigilant here, because freedom of speech is one thing, but speech promoting hatred is something altogether different. Someone argued with me once that that our soldiers had fought and died for our freedom, so that we could speak our minds. But I'm pretty sure they didn't enter battle so that we could call each other names. It was hatred that put them on those battlefields in the first place.

Jared Taylor was told that the debate had been cancelled, but came to Canada anyway, with the intent of stirring up trouble. Then when trouble did find him, the media glorified him as a martyr for free speech. There is something fundamentally wrong with that.

Footnotes:

*Stormfront has a hate forum and a radio show that is a favourite with white nationalists.

Sources:

1. How not to handle a genteel racist. Fussing over his last-minute travel plans, David Divine, James R. Johnston chair of Black Canadian studies at Dalhousie University, seems a worldly fellow, not at all the poster child for naivete on racism, By National Post, January 27, 2007

2. HEY JAMES O'KEEFE, ABOUT THAT WHITE RACIST FORUM YOU ATTENDED IN 2006... By Dan Smeriglio, New Rogue's Gallery, January 30, 2010

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

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

Steven Fletcher: Stirring it Up at the University of Manitoba

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

In April of 2009, democratic reform minister, Steven Fletcher, appeared at the University of Manitoba to discuss the initiatives of his government.

Though sponsored by the Campus Conservatives, his talk was open to all students and was well attended.

However, much to the surprise of the crowd, he spent very little time on democratic reform, but instead attacked the university's student union and the school newspaper.

On Thursday, March 19, the University of Manitoba Campus Conservatives held an open event that was advertised to the public as a talk at the University of Manitoba with the Honourable Steven Fletcher, minister of state (democratic reform). The event was attended by both minister Fletcher and sitting MP for Winnipeg South, Rod Bruinooge. I attended this event in the hopes of hearing about Fletcher’s new mandate on the government of Canada’s opinion on state, and more importantly on democratic reform. Was I ever mistaken.Although towards the end of the forum, Fletcher did answer a select few pre-determined questions actually regarding Canadian democratic reform, the event did not focus on democratic reform as the posters advertised, but rather focused almost entirely on student union politics.

Steven Fletcher sat as UMSU president at the end of the 1990s for two consecutive terms, so clearly, he’s no stranger to the politics on university campuses. But as a representative of the constituents of Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia and as sitting minister for the government of Canada, especially the minister of democratic reform, he has no business in the affairs of independent and democratic students’ unions and federations.

Minister Fletcher, on several occasions, went into rants where he referred to UMSU and the Canadian Federation of Students, my representatives, as a bunch of left-wing crazies, the “loony left,” and “loony tunes.” The minister further went into rants about the free press and independent students’ newspapers referring to the Manitoban as a socialist rag. He then began encouraging young Conservative members to take over students’ unions to promote the Conservative ideology. At several points in his talk, incoming UMSU president-elect Sid Rashid, who was also in the audience, challenged Fletcher on his clearly biased statements regarding current UMSU policies and procedures.

What is the government doing meddling in the affairs of independent and democratic student unions? This is not only offensive but completely inappropriate. ... The recent event held at the University of Manitoba further adds to the damning evidence that the Conservative Party, the current governing party of Canada, is engaged in a national campaign to advance their partisan agenda and undermine the role of democratic student organizations. (1)

The Winnipeg Free Press reported on the incident as students at the University demanded an apology. Fletcher told the paper, "I think Conservative values are student values," Fletcher said. "I was there to speak about the Conservative party and the role Conservatives play on campus. I wasn't asked to be there in a general way." (2)

But this was just part of a trend as members of the Harper government have been encouraging conservative students to take over student unions, infiltrate clubs, and establish front groups to further their cause. This again coincides with Morton Blackwell's Campus Leadership Program which has been mimicked by the Manning Centre's Campus Leadership Training Program.

Blackwell's institute has launched a website, billed as:

“CampusReform.org will dramatically increase the number of battles fought against leftist abuses on college campuses this year,” said Morton Blackwell, Leadership Institute founder and president. “And based on long experience, conservative students will win most of those new battles as they identify, expose, and combat leftist abuses and bias.” “CampusReform.org will dramatically increase the number of battles fought against leftist abuses on college campuses this year,” said Morton Blackwell, Leadership Institute founder and president. “And based on long experience, conservative students will win most of those new battles as they identify, expose, and combat leftist abuses and bias.” (3)

And if you want some idea of what that means, combating "leftist abuses and bias", when University of Manitoba students were engaged in their annual day of protest, with the Target Poverty campaign, campus Conservatives, under the direction of provincial conservative MLA, Hugh McFadyen, did whatever they could to stop the event, even forming a human chain to prevent their progress toward the legislature. They were clearly hoping for a physical confrontation.

Nov. 5 was another student Day of Action in Manitoba. This one was important because it linked issues facing students directly to broader societal concerns with the Target Poverty campaign, as well as linking up the organizations representing students with a broad cross-section of anti-poverty activists and civil society organizations in Manitoba. It’s a new tactic, and it really opens the door to building broad coalitions of activists, student unions, and other civil society organizations to confront the neoliberal* policies which have affected us all over the past couple decades. I would say that it was moderate success, in that new ground was broken and new spaces for resistance were opened up for people from diverse political backgrounds to unite and fight for a better world.

But, the latest Day of Action also featured the sorry spectacle of Hugh McFadyen and the University of Manitoba Campus Conservatives “teaming up”, presumably against students rallying against poverty. Or, as the Campus Conservatives called them on their website, a “army of pinkos”. (4)

"An army of pinkos?" I must admit, I haven't hurt that one in a while.

Apparently the Conservative Party has also been funding student elections and interfering with the democratic process on campus.

... the next big push by the University of Manitoba Campus Conservatives (UMCC)–who are well connected and appear to be well funded–will be to get partisans elected in 201o at the Students’ Union. The UMCC connections reach right to the Federal government via high profile alumni such as Steven Fletcher, current Minister for Democratic Renewal and former Manitoba Students’ Union president. (5)

Well if it means getting rid of "pinkos" who are fighting against poverty, I suppose it's a noble cause.

Footnotes:

*Neoliberalism is also referred to as neoconservatism.

Sources:

1. The True Hidden Agenda: Steven Fletcher's Recent Talk on Campus, By David Safruk, University of Manitoba, The Manitoban, April 5, 2009

2. MP Fletcher's talk stirs campus storm: Cabinet minister rejects apology demand, By: Mia Rabson, Winnepeg Free Pres, April 18, 2009

3. CampusReform.org launches TODAY! By Tabitha Hale, Leadership Institute, September 15, 2009

4. A look at Campus Conservatives in Manitoba, By Brian Latour, Canadian Dimension, November 15th 2009

5. Conservatives poised to make a move at University of Manitoba? Campus Conservative Watch, November 16, 2009

Stephen Harper and the Most Powerful Conservative Group You've Never Heard Of

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

Their banner reads "Seek God ... Trust God ... Love God."  Rolling Stone magazine calls them "a secretive group of wealthy donors that has funneled billions of dollars to right-wing Christian activists", and ABC says "Meet the Most Powerful Conservative Group You've Never Heard Of". 

Their executive director once boasted  "we control everything in the world" and a former secretary suggests that they not only support globalization but are globalization.

Who are they?

They are the Council for National Policy, and in 1997, at their Montreal conference, they invited the president of the National Citizens Coalition, Stephen Harper, to speak to them, on the state of Canadian politics. 

To understand the enormity of this invitation, guests may only attend meetings with the unanimous consent of the Executive Committee.  If one person didn't trust him, he would not have been allowed to attend.  They all trusted him.  Since then, documentary film maker, Josh Reeves, who was able to secure a membership list, claims that our prime minister's name is on that list.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

Antichrist pacing to and fro. Laughs exultantly.

ANTICHRIST: What more could I wish for? It’s only a matter of time now and not long at that. The whole world will soon be at my feet. What fools those Jews were to agree to assist me to this throne of Russia. I do not need their support any longer. Tomorrow I will break my covenant with them. Their religious ceremonies must cease. I will not tolerate such stuff in my realm.

Enter false Prophet. Salutes Antichrist.

ANTICHRIST: What brings you here to me, sir?

FALSE PROPHET: I come to make you a proposition. You already know something of my origin and my purpose in being in this world. There is a work that we can best accomplish by working together.

ANTICHRIST: You interest me. What is your proposition?

FALSE PROPHET: It is this. You well know, my Lord, that the day is fast coming when you will be the supreme ruler of this world. Already you have more power than all the governments of Europe and Asia, together. Your word is law. The kings of this earth tremble at your smallest command. Their thrones will soon be yours. But there is one thing that will always hinder your progress as long as it is allowed to exist. That thing is true religion. As long as people retain even the thought of God, their allegiance will be divided between yourself and Him.

ANTICHRIST: I realize that well enough. That is why I propose to banish religion from the earth. I will not allow the name of God to be mentioned under penalty of death. Just give me a little longer. Tomorrow I intend to break my covenant with those Jews and cancel all their religious rights. Once they are exterminated, what religion there will be left in this world will not be difficult to eradicate.

FALSE PROPHET: My Lord, I highly commend your actions, but why not go a step further still? I suggest not only the annihilation of all worship of God but propose to introduce a new form of worship in which you yourself will take the place of God. In that way man’s natural tendency to worship will be gratified and you will be exalted to a position never before held by a man. I have full control over the apostate religions that at present are worshipping our adviser, Diabolos, and a multitude of his demons. I propose turning all apostate religions into one great channel with yourself as the object of worship.

ANTICHRIST: I like well your proposition. We have all the power of the Devil behind us. We can accomplish our ends without difficulty. Militarism will be the order of the day. Deception shall be our weapon where force is unwise, until we get complete control. Let us proceed with care and the whole world will soon be out our feet.

FALSE PROPHET: One thing we have to consider. Some will refuse to worship you. How can we prevent them from evading us?

ANTICHRIST: That will not be hard. We will soon have full control of the trade and commerce of the world. We will then make the people swear their allegiance to us and bow down and worship before they will be allowed to buy or sell. When they do, we will brand them like cattle, and no one will be allowed to buy or sell unless they have our mark upon them. We will do away with any who refuse.

FALSE PROPHET: Then our last difficulty is solved. The future is open before us my Lord. Woe to him who opposes or dares to cross our path. Now let us launch our great campaign. You complete your world conquest and cease not until the last king has thrown his crown at your feet. I will see that apostate religion keeps pace with your advancements. Meanwhile we will complete all details of our plan and when we meet again it will be to make dreams come true. Image, False Prophet, Antichrist, Guards and so forth. Long blast on cornet.

FALSE PROPHET: Here ye all this proclamation and decree hereby issued by the command of the Antichrist, the supreme ruler of this world. (Reads decree concerning worship of image, receiving of mark, etc.) At the sounding of the trumpet this decree shall immediately become law, and woe to any who refuses to worship the image of the greatest man this world has ever seen. (1)

The above is an excerpt from a play written by Ernest Manning and William Aberhart in 1931. Using students from the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute, they performed it at high schools and church halls, and it is said, scared people half to death.

Based on the popular novel by Sydney Watson: Mark of the Beast, Manning and Aberhart clearly wanted to scare their audiences into accepting Christ, then and there. In one scene a young girl claims that she goes to church and reads the Bible, but was told that wasn't good enough, and the Antichrist did away with her entire family.

This play was not written for entertainment but was a form of fear mongering.  Just going to church and reading the Bible was clearly not enough.  You had to be saved.

The play also put the Jews in line with the Devil.

Aberhart and Manning were former Social Credit premiers of Alberta, and according to Janine Stingel, SC was the only party based solely on the notion of a Jewish conspiracy.  Manning would later "purge" the party of the anti-Semites, but it was mainly for political expediency, since they were starting to demand that he adhere to social credit principles. Anti-Semitism would continue to define his party for many years. (2)

James Keegstra,  the Alberta school teacher who for 15 years taught his students that the Holocaust was a Hoax, attended the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute, and his parents were devout Social creditors.  Ron Gostick, whose mother was a Social Credit MLA, was one of the largest distributors of hate literature in North America.  Stockwell Day's religious fanaticism, may have also come from his parents, who were not only members of Social Credit, but his father once ran for the party against Tommy Douglas.

The Bible broadcasts of Aberhart and Manning played for decades, to a wide audience. To suggest that they didn't have an impact would be naive. And the brand of Christianity they taught often bordered on the occult.

In Stephen Harper's 1997 speech to the CNP he said that "The predecessor of the Reform Party, [was] the Social Credit party, and in fact many of the early Reform members, were previously with the Socreds.

The Council for National Policy was the brainchild of Tim LeHaye, co-author of the apocalyptic fiction series: Left behind.  It so happens, that LeHaye was also inspired by Sydney Watson's: Mark of the Beast, and his books deliver the same anti-Communist, "you must be saved" philosophies.

The idea of creating the CNP was to act as an umbrella group for all the Christian Right organizations, that were created or rejuvenated, after the election of Ronald Reagan.  They wanted to make sure that their hold on power would continue even after he was out of office.

Using the idea of a "voting block", they could bribe and even blackmail conservative candidates.

In 1999,  George W. Bush spoke before a closed-press CNP session in San Antonio.  His speech was recorded on audio tape.  Apparently he promised to appoint only anti-abortion-rights judges to the Supreme Court and to take a tough stance against gays and lesbians, though since they refused to release the tape to the public, no one knows for sure.  Soon after, they declared that Bush was fit for the mantle of Republican leadership. (3)

I wonder what Stephen Harper's closed door meeting was like, given the enormous support he received from CNP members James Dobson and Paul Weyrich.  Dobson placed ads on 130 Canadian radio stations, denouncing same-sex marriage, while Harper used it as a campaign strategy (4); and Paul Weyrich forbid his people to talk to the Canadian press, fearing they might say too much, and risk Harper's losing the election (5).

Cross Border Hoppers

When Stephen Harper cut a deal with Peter Mackay to purchase the rights to the Progressive Conservatives, he changed the name to the Conservative Party of Canada.  Actually, the first name given was Conservative Reform Alliance Party, but they didn't like the acronym.

However, many people weren't fooled into believing that Harper and his Alliance members were now Tories.  Even before the takeover became official, the Edmonton Journal commented on the prospects of a new Conservative Party: “The [social conservative] bogeymen won't go away just because they'll be hidden from the public inside a new Conservative Party.  They'll still be there, under the bed, waiting for a chance to spring up and spout their offensive anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-immigration, pro-gun, pro-death penalty views.”

In 2005, the Vancouver Sun estimated that “roughly half the current 98 members” of the Conservative caucus “are religious social conservatives,” which is “well over double the national average.”

What has also been discovered, is that many members of Harper's caucus, then and now, actually belong to several Christian Right organizations that fall under the umbrella of the Council for National Policy.  Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition, the National Rifle Association (yes, God loves guns), Campus Crusade for Christ, the Promise Keepers, and many more.

Over 800 Canadian conservative activists, including Conservative MP Rob Anders, have been trained at the Executive Director of CNP, Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute.  (6)  In 1998,  Anders' former legislative assistant, Trevor Cazemier, was a guest at the CNP annual conference, sponsored by Republican strategist, Mark Montini. (7) His slogan: “If Mark doesn’t light your fire, your wood is wet.”

Montini then ran a firm called Complete Communication Strategies, and was a trainer at the Leadership Institute, running what he called the "human resources department for the conservative movement."   According to his bio "Mark Montini has also consulted in Greece, Canada and Chile, offering a taste of American-style political communication skills."

And that taste of "American-style political communication skills" has left an aftertaste, though it explains why Republicans and Canadian conservatives, sound so much alike. 

Their wood is always dry.

Sources:

1. Aberhart of Alberta, By L.P.V. Johnson and Ola MacNutt, Institute of Applied Arts Ltd., 1970

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

3. Meet the Most Powerful Conservative Group You've Never Heard Of, By Marc J. Ambinder, ABC News, May 2, 2005

4. EQUAL MARRIAGE GROUP CALLS ON HARPER TO PUBLICLY ‘DRAW THE LINE’, Canadians For Equal Marriage, January 27, 2005

5. Harper's U.S. neocon booster changes his story, By Beth Gorham, Canadian Press, January 27, 2006

6. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8 3, p. 104-105

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