The rise of neo-Nazis in Brazil has challenged a popular myth that racism, at least the overt variety on display in the US and other western countries, does not exist in there.
When Brazilian police investigator Paulo César Jardim launched a series of raids on the homes of alleged neo-Nazis in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, he unveiled a bizarre plot.
The country's simmering neo-Nazi movement, with its secret world of swastikas, hate propaganda and street violence, was being recruited by rightwing extremists in Ukraine to fight against pro-Russian rebels in the European country's civil war.
Ukraine's Misanthropic Division, an extreme right group aligned with the Azov Battalion, an ultranationalist paramilitary group aligned with Kiev, was behind the recruitment drive, Mr Jardim, Brazil's foremost neo-Nazi hunter, alleged.
One person was detained along with 47 9mm pistol shells in the December raids. He was later released. Police were still investigating whether any Brazilians had already joined the fighting in Ukraine, he said, declining to elaborate further on the probe. A spokesman for the Azov Battalion - now incorporated into the National Guard - said no Brazilians had fought for it.
"We became aware that someone had come from Europe - an Italian... had come to Brazil to recruit people for Ukraine," Mr Jardim told the FT.
The revelation, if proven, that Brazil's underground ultranationalist movements are seeking combat experience overseas is a worrying development in a phenomenon that has shocked a country that considers itself a racial melting pot. (more...)
A Nexen oilsands facility near Fort McMurray, Canada, is seen in this aerial photograph.. Nexen was sold to China’s CNOOC Ltd. in December 2012.
Canada’s need to attract foreign capital and China’s desire for strategic investments abroad are playing an elaborate game of cat and mouse.
Business ties between the two are deepening. Canada and China are currently engaged in free-trade talks and Canada proposes to invest $256 million over five years to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Two years ago, the two countries opened the first North American renminbi trading hub in Toronto.
The Globe and Mail recently reported that as part of China’s free-trade talks with Canada, Beijing seeks “unfettered access for Chinese state-owned firms to all key sectors of the Canadian economy.” But experts say state-owned enterprise (SOE) investment disadvantages Canada from both economic and—coming from China—ethical perspectives.
“When it comes to Chinese investment, the biggest issue is state-owned enterprises,” said Jack Mintz, President’s Fellow of The School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, in a phone interview. (more...)
How much have the Chinese invested in the Liberal Party of Canada? Is the real difference between political parties a matter of who they've sold their souls to?
On July 26, 1935, about a thousand anti-Nazi demonstrators attacked the SS Bremen, a sleek, state-of-the-art German ocean liner that had docked in New York. The protesters succeeded in tearing the swastika flag off the ship and throwing it into the Hudson River. It was the climax to a long, hot New York summer of street fighting between pro-Nazis and anti-Nazis.
Five of the rioters in the Bremen incident were arrested, but when they appeared before Judge Louis Brodsky in September of 1935 something remarkable happened: Brodsky dismissed all charges, arguing that the swastika was “a black flag of piracy” that deserved to be destroyed, the emblem of “a revolt against civilization … an atavistic throwback to pre-medieval, if not barbaric, social and political conditions.”
The law behind Brodsky’s brave proclamation was questionable, and it wasn’t long before FDR’s Justice Department apologized to Germany for the judge’s decision. Hitler praised the Roosevelt administration for disavowing Brodsky’s ruling. But the Jewish Brodsky’s acquittal of the anti-Nazi vandals still became a cause celèbre for Hitler’s party. The Nuremberg Laws of September 1935, which imposed harsh restrictions on German Jews, were, so the Nazis claimed, a “reply” to Brodsky’s “insult.”
James Q. Whitman dedicates his new book Hitler’s American Model “to the ghost of Louis B. Brodsky.” But Whitman disagrees with Brodsky’s claim that the Nazism of the mid-1930s was a throwback to the Middle Ages. Whitman shows that the Nuremberg Laws, instead of being a barbarous anomaly, were in part modeled on then-current American race law. The Nazi regime saw itself at the cutting edge of racial legislation, and America was their inspiration. “Nazi lawyers regarded America, not without reason, as the innovative world leader in the creation of racist law,” Whitman remarks. In the 1930s, the American South and Nazi Germany were the world’s most straightforwardly racist regimes, proud of the way they had deprived blacks and Jews, respectively, of their civil rights. (more...)
On March 20, David Rockefeller died at the age of 101. As the obituaries for one of the world’s richest men gush over his philanthropy, it needs to be pointed out that he was a major player in several Latin American coups, supported extremely corrupt military dictatorships, post-dictatorship neoliberal policies that greatly exacerbated income stratification and poverty and that his dark legacy will continue to influence the region long after his death.
The Rockefeller Foundation first arrived in Brazil during World War I and was embedded within the so-called “public health movement” amongst Brazilian elites. At that time, Brazilian eugenics was synonymous with public health and emphasized “hygienization”, expressed in the maxim “to sanitize is to eugenize”. With Rockefeller assistance, the creation of the Eugenic Society of São Paulo in 1918 represented the institutionalization of eugenics in Brazil. Amongst elites, eugenics was associated with evolution, progress and civilization, even treated by some as a ‘new religion’. In “War against the weak” Edwin Black explains that the purpose of the Rockefeller Foundation was to finance programs aimed at “the extermination of those considered degenerate”. In Brazil this meant the poor, the ignorant, those of mixed race and African descent.
In her thesis on David’s older brother Nelson Rockefeller, historian Elisabeth Cobbs argues that U.S. Foreign policy in Brazil was not only realized by official relations between governments and diplomats, but also by the private sector, including philanthropic organisations. Nelson had been a regular visitor to Brazil since the 1930s, and in 1941 was named by President Roosevelt as coordinator of the Office of Interamerican Affairs (CIAA), which ran intelligence and propaganda operations against the Axis Powers in Latin America.
Following the end of the War, Nelson headed the American International Association for Economic and Social Development in Brazil of AIA. The AIA was a “Capitalist Missionary” philanthropic NGO known in Brazil for its programmes for modernization of agriculture to North American models and standards (including the introduction of pesticides, herbicides and hybrid seeds), sanitation, and literacy. AIA would eventually birth two more agencies, IBEC (International Basic Economy Company) and the IRI Research Institute. As coordinator of the CIAA, Nelson acquired invaluable information about Latin America’s untapped natural resources, especially mineral reserves, information that he would go on to use following the war. IBEC became a key component in the post-World War Two opening of the Amazon rainforest to commercial exploitation, “a process that eventually led to military dictatorships, genocide of native peoples, loss of biological diversity and unprecedented misery for the majority of Brazilians“. (more...)
Parents and community members are urging the Ministry of Education to push for sweeping change within the troubled York Region District School Board, including the dismissal of its director of education and hiring a public ombudsman to deal with complaints.
The recommendations come as ministry investigators wrap up their investigation of the scandal-plagued board.
Ministry troubleshooters Patrick Case and Sue Herbert have conducted more than 75 interviews involving about 125 people, including parents, community members, students, current and former staff, unions, professional associations and trustees, according to a ministry spokeswoman. An additional 200 individuals and groups have reached out through email.
A list of seven recommendations on behalf of parents and community groups was sent to Case and Herbert on Friday, two weeks before they are to complete the investigation, as a follow-up to numerous meetings that have taken place over the past two months. (more...)
My own experience of social engineers, who were abundant at my alma mater, is that synthetic identities were invented to displace legitimate oppressed groups. The gender ideology prevalent in our current education establishment is the tool crafted by oligarchs to suppress groups targeted by their eugenic schemes.
President Reagan meets with publisher Rupert Murdoch, U.S. Information Agency Director Charles Wick, lawyers Roy Cohn and Thomas Bolan
Newly declassified documents from the Reagan presidential library help explain how the U.S. government developed its sophisticated psychological operations capabilities that – over the past three decades – have created an alternative reality both for people in targeted countries and for American citizens, a structure that expanded U.S. influence abroad and quieted dissent at home.
The documents reveal the formation of a psyops bureaucracy under the direction of Walter Raymond Jr., a senior CIA covert operations specialist who was assigned to President Reagan’s National Security Council staff to enhance the importance of propaganda and psyops in undermining U.S. adversaries around the world and ensuring sufficient public support for foreign policies inside the United States.
Raymond, who has been compared to a character from a John LeCarré novel slipping easily into the woodwork, spent his years inside Reagan’s White House as a shadowy puppet master who tried his best to avoid public attention or – it seems – even having his picture taken. From the tens of thousands of photographs from meetings at Reagan’s White House, I found only a couple showing Raymond – and he is seated in groups, partially concealed by other officials.
But Raymond appears to have grasped his true importance. In his NSC files, I found a doodle of an organizational chart that had Raymond at the top holding what looks like the crossed handles used by puppeteers to control the puppets below them. Although it’s impossible to know exactly what the doodler had in mind, the drawing fits the reality of Raymond as the behind-the-curtains operative who was controlling the various inter-agency task forces that were responsible for implementing various propaganda and psyops strategies. (more...)
A former office manager at Moira Secondary School will go to prison for 90 days after pleading guilty Monday to a charge of production of child pornography.
Thirty-six-year-old Steven Clarke of Belleville was charged last May after an investigation by the Toronto Police Service, which began in July of 2015.
Officers monitored internet communications between Clarke and an adult male involving descriptions of sex with children between the ages of two and four.
Then an adult male police officer engaged in online communication with Clarke and again discussion about sex with young children occurred.
There were never any actual children or images involved in the investigation. (more...)
High-risk sex offender Christopher Paul Neil, once known as ‘Swirl face’, has recently been released from prison and plans to live in Vancouver.
According to a public notification Sunday by the Corrections Branch of the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, the 42-year-old former teacher has a pattern of sexual offending behaviour against both pre and early pubescent boys.
Neil is subject to close monitoring by authorities and has to follow 18 court-ordered conditions including no contact with minors in person or on the internet. He is also prohibited from possessing or accessing any electronic device or from getting any other person to do so on his behalf.
When asked about Neil’s release and plan to live in Vancouver, the VPD’s Const. Jason Doucette directed all queries to the Parole Board but said: “The VPD will continue to work closely with Corrections Canada to monitor offenders being released into Vancouver.”
Neil has a criminal history, including abduction of a minor, indecent act committed on a minor and accessing and possessing child pornography. (more...)
Last time the little guy was called on to anoint a Conservative leader in Canada, things didn't work out exactly as expected. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The lobbyists in this country have gone a bridge too far. We reject the lying, thuggery, and gaslighting dispensed by this cult of personality. Our families and communities have absorbed enough damage at your trickster hands. Take your robocalls and junk mailings and put them where the sun don't shine.
Betty Medsger, author of The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI, talked about the events of March 8, 1971, when a group of people broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole every document in the building. Ms. Medsger talked about four members of the group: John Raines, Bonnie Raines, Keith Forsyth, and Bill Davidon. She explained how they mailed her copies of the stolen documents when she was a reporter for the Washington Post in July of 1971, and how her article about the documents revealed a wide-ranging FBI program of illegal surveillance on numerous ordinary Americans. The burglary also exposed an FBI program known as COINTELPRO, in which the Bureau illegally targeted groups such as the Black Panthers.
The shocking truth of physical and sexual abuse in one of Scotland's most prestigious Catholic boarding schools.
Mark Daly uncovers the hidden story of Fort Augustus Abbey, the Catholic monks who ran it, and exposes those who turned a blind eye to the horrors within. He hears of stories of abuse that spanned decades and took him to the other side of the world to confront those responsible.
Royal bank of Canada closed accounts of about 40 clients and bolstered tax compliance following an internal review of offshore accounts tied to last year’s leaked documents from Panamanian law firm.
The bank was named in the so-called Panama Papers.
The Panama City law firm revealed over 11 million documents that showed how lender Mossack fonesca, and other politicians, and business leaders, had set up several offshores accounts using the banks.
At least 625 Canadians were named in the papers, and the documents revealed that the bank set up 370 offshore companies for clients using the law firm.
While the bank stated that there’s no confirmation that any of those organizations were doing anything unlawful, RBC was co-working with Canadian tax authorities while leading its own inner investigation. (more...)
The Democratic leadership, and its leftwing intellectual base, are feeling implausibly smug these days. They figure it this way: the Trump era is going to inspire a blowback. Trump will make a terrible mess, destabilize income security and health care access, and skew social power in favor of fat cats, and all of this will make people angry.
Then the Left will hold all the cards. They will say: told ya so. They will tap into populist impulses with their own plan for greatness, tacking further Left than Obama was willing to go. They offer up vast income guarantees, expanded economic regulation, a puffed-up welfare state, universal health care, a war on rich people like Trump, and then they rule, forever and ever, saecula saeculorum, amen.
They should rethink this. It’s probably not going to work.
It is precisely in reaction to such policies, and the complex demographics of class and race resentment they give rise to, that hard Right movements rose in the US and Europe. There will be no mass regret for turning away from social-democratic policies. On the contrary, sticking to big-government economics will perpetuate far-Right rule here and abroad. The Left has to rethink, and fast, and it means raising fundamental questions about their economic orthodoxies. (more...)
Reading “How I Left the Left” is a solid reminder that there’s not much intellectual heft remaining on that side of the fence. If an ideology sets out to isolate the locus of evil in people’s very identity, it is pretty well spent. This, in addition to the failure of the socialist model everywhere it has tried, explains why the Left has suffered so much at the polls and now faces a serious backlash in campus and public life.
With the failure of action comes reaction, and now the Western world is dealing with something far less familiar to most people: the rise of the alt-right as the alternative. It is attractive to some young people due to its taboo-breaking, rebel ethos that so easily inflames teachers and protectors of civic conventions.
The movement is more than that, however. It has a real philosophical and political history, one that stands in violent opposition to the idea of individual liberty. It has been largely suppressed since World War II and, because of that, most people assumed fascism (and its offshoots) was gone from the earth.
As a result, this generation has not been philosophically prepared to recognize the tradition, the signs, the implications, and the political application of the ideology so many are stumbling to embrace.
Here is a prehistory of what we call the alt-right today, which is probably better described as a 21st-century incarnation of what in the 19th century would have been called right-Hegelianism. I’m skipping over many political movements (in Spain, France, and Italy), and clownish leaders like George Lincoln Rockwell, Oswald Mosley, and Fr. Coughlin, to get right to the core ideas that form something like a school of thought which developed over a century. (more...)
Britain’s version of the NSA is called GCHQ, which is now embroiled in new revelations that link her Majesty’s top spying station to child rapist and millionaire BBC Children’s TV presenter JIMMY SAVILE.
A letter from a man who was a young boy featured on the Christmas Special of the hit BBC TV show JIM’LL FIX IT several years ago was sent to a British newspaper – and it reveals that the BBC millionaire celebrity, Jimmy Savile, conspired to feature a man on his television show who was a senior freemason heading a Masonic Lodge in which many of Britain’s top spies are members – this man’s name is KEITH HARDING – and he – like his friend JIMMY SAVILE – were known to police as sex criminals preying on children long before the BBC broadcast!
The Daily Express newspaper in London describes freemason Keith Harding as one of ‘Britain’s most influential paedophiles’ and the Express goes on to reveal that Harding was the head of the Mercurius Masonic lodge founded and frequented by GCHQ employees – some of whom are spies.
Keith Harding was former membership secretary of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) and was made Worshipful Master of the Mercurius Lodge in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, in 2011. (more...)
How many anonymously owned homes is too many for a city? 100? 1,000? 10,000? How about 39,353? According to Transparency International UK (TI-UK), that’s how many anonymously owned properties are in the London area. Anonymous ownership makes it difficult to check if the money used to buy the properties is ill-gotten, or a legitimate investment. To make matters worse, many are empty, and placing excess pressure on housing prices – driving away the locals that actually work in the city.
Researchers are finding an increasing number of prime London properties are owned anonymously through offshore companies. TI-UK analysts found 39,353 properties registered to anonymous companies, and many are sitting empty. Central London, the heart of the city, has the highest concentration – with over 12,202 of those properties located in Westminster. These aren’t tiny homes either, some of them are whole city blocks, left to decay in the middle of the city.
There’s a global phenomenon occurring where investors are buying homes to leave empty, and TI-UK is calling it “buy to leave.” The organization has noted that many of these homes are being purchased from “those seeking to escape corruption, or hide corrupt activity.” They also allege that a number have been purchased by investors fearing corruption in their home country, or are attempting to launder the proceeds of corruption. (more...)
The Mississauga mom whose son brought home a drama-class handout with instructions on how to cook and inject crystal meth says she's still not getting answers from the Peel District School Board about its investigation into the incident, and that is making her angry
The board confirmed the investigation into the teacher is complete and he is still an employee. It would not give any more details about the teacher's motivations, calling it a "personnel" matter.
"It's ludicrous," said Delight Greenidge, who made headlines when CBC Toronto first reported on her son receiving step-by-step instructions the teacher apparently printed off the internet and gave to a group of students to dramatize.
The handout also included a detailed list of ingredients needed for the task. (more...)
On Monday, March 20, 2017, Graham Spanier, past president of Penn State University, is scheduled to go to trial on charges of criminal child endangerment and conspiracy related to former football coach Jerry Sandusky’s rapes of little boys. At issue is whether Spanier, who was president of Penn State at the time, failed to investigate or covered up Sandusky’s crimes.
Unfortunately, there has been of late a spate of highly educated authorities, from the Pentagon to other government workers, teachers, doctors, etc., who have been arrested and even convicted for child sexual abuse, including possession of child pornography. Dr. Lori Handrahan’s publication of “Professors & Staff Arrested for Trading in Child Rape,” has sparked public outrage as the report has been shared more than 390,000 times in a few weeks. People are asking, how is this happening?
In fact, Spanier’s story exemplifies the consequences of sexual liberalism in academia. During his 16 years at Penn State, Spanier oversaw a number of questionable sexually charged activities. For example, Spanier apparently had no problem with Patrick Califia-Rice, a transgender sadomasochism and pedophilia advocate who keynoted a speech at Penn State in 2002. The president likewise supported an on-campus Sex Faire sporting fun for all such as “orgasm bingo” and “the tent of consent.” When asked if the fair was morally wrong, Spanier said, “It depends on what your definition of immoral is.” Given his moral confusion, would reports of Sandusky’s child rapes have elicited concern? (more...)
A mysterious and controversial intermediary company with business links to Bombardier appears to be involved in a new project in Mongolia, according to an investigation by CBC's French-language service, Radio-Canada, in collaboration with Swedish, Russian and Bosnian journalists.
The company — Multiserv Overseas — is at the heart of a Swedish investigation into alleged bribes related to the awarding of a railway contract in Azerbaijan.
On March 10, the Swedish National Anti-Corruption Unit announced it had detained a senior Bombardier official with the Quebec company's Swedish branch in connection with a contract for the modernization of Azerbaijan's railway system.
Authorities also suspect two other Swedish Bombardier executives accepted to provide bribes to officials in order to influence the tendering process.
Some of the bribes are believed to have been transferred by Multiserv, a British shell company.
Now Radio-Canada's investigative program Enquête has revealed that Bombardier appeared to be planning to use the same intermediary for a railway project in Mongolia. (more...)
Paedophilia is a “fate, not a choice”, a leading sexual scientist has claimed.
Dr Klaus Beier, who runs a clinic in Germany that treats people who are sexually attracted to children, told The Times of India that healthy society must accept “paedophilia is a reality amongst us”.
Although difficult to measure, current estimates put the prevalence of paedophilia in the general population at about one per cent.
But research carried out by the National Crime Agency in 2015 suggested there could be as many as 750,000 men in Britain alone who may have a sexual interest in children.
Dr Beier suggested societies should work towards prevention, rather than focusing only on punishing offenders.
He said it was a “myth” that paedophiles could stop having sexual fantasies about children by simply choosing not to. (more...)
A Peterborough girl is suing her teacher, principal and school board for $8 million after she was allegedly bullied sick and marginalized to the point of having to pee her pants when denied a bathroom break.
According to a statement of claim filed with Ontario's Superior Court of Justice, Clemencia Muleba, 12, and her dad, Jean-Pierre Muleba, are suing teacher Julie Beaudet, principal Melanie Langlois and the Conseil Scolaire De District Catholique Centre-Sud, a Toronto-based French-Catholic board that oversees the Ecole elementaire catholique Monseigneur-Jamot elementary school.
The claim alleges the teacher, Beaudet, turned a blind eye to incidents last year involving that saw Clemencia, then in Grade 6, taunted and belittled by several older classmates.
Clemencia also claims she was regularly rejected by in-class groups and that she was the target of "sexual and hurtful comment(s)," such as "bigger buttocks" and "fat."
The teacher allegedly didn't report the bullying to Principal Langlois.
The claim goes on to state Langlois failed to take necessary steps to end the bullying after finding out about it.
And Beaudet, herself, seems to have ended up in the crosshairs of discrimination accusations.
In December, Beaudet allegedly refused Clemencia an urgenty-needed bathroom break during an exam, resulting in the girl urinating in her pants, according to the claim, which goes on to state that "toilet permission has always been given to other students."
Beaudet also stands accused of excluding Clemencia from "the last" volleyball practices and games, "saying she was not good at all in volleyball."
Clemencia is now being treated at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children for a stomach ulcer and stress disorder, the latter of which causes her to vomit, says her dad, Jean-Pierre Muleba. (more...)
Taoiseach Enda Kenny stands with Minister of State for the Diaspora and International Development TD Joe McHugh at the Irish Memorial in Philadelphia.
In some of the strongest terms used against the Church by an Irish government, Taoiseach Enda Kenny warned Church authorities they must “get on with it” in terms of meeting their share of the cost of compensating victims of abuse.
Mr Kenny said the Church must “measure up to the responsibilities that they accepted”.
Speaking in Philadelphia, Mr Kenny said religious orders must “reflect on the seriousness of this” before they are forced to do so.
He was speaking after Health Minister Simon Harris said there is “significant merit” in looking at seizing hospital and school lands owned by the Church as a means of meeting the €1.6bn cost of sexual abuse redress payments.
Mr Harris said the failure of the Church to meet its commitments is “completely unacceptable” and called on Pope Francis to instruct religious orders here to “pay over and pay up”. (more...)
On the website Tablet, writer Liel Leibovitz takes the Forward to task for our report on claims by leaders of the far-right Hungarian group Vitézi Rend that Sebastian Gorka, President Trump’s counter-terrorism aide, is one of their members.
In his piece, Leibovitz reports that he spoke with Gorka, who firmly denied the affiliation.
“I have never been a member of the Vitez Rend,” he reports Gorka telling him. “I have never taken an oath of loyalty to the Vitez Rend. Since childhood, I have occasionally worn my father’s medal and used the ‘v.’ initial to honor his struggle against totalitarianism.”
Strangely, when Gorka issued his own formal and official statement through the White House Press Office addressing the Forward’s story Thursday evening, this denial was nowhere to be found.
“I’ve been a committed opponent of anti-Semitism, racism and totalitarianism all my life,” the statement said. “Any suggestion otherwise is false and outrageous.”
Gorka’s official statement did not address assertions by Vitézi Rend leaders that he had sworn a lifelong oath of allegiance to their group, which is listed by the U.S. State Department as having been “under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany” during World War II; nor did it address the question of whether he had disclosed this reported affiliation to government officials when he immigrated to the United States or later, when he obtained American citizenship, as each process would require. (more...)
The first weeks of the Trump presidency have brought as much focus on the White House’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, as on the new president himself. But if Bannon has been the driving force behind the frenzy of activity in the White House, less attention has been paid to the network of political philosophers who have shaped his thinking and who now enjoy a direct line to the White House.
They are not mainstream thinkers, but their writings help to explain the commotion that has defined the Trump administration’s early days. They include a Lebanese-American author known for his theories about hard-to-predict events; an obscure Silicon Valley computer scientist whose online political tracts herald a “Dark Enlightenment”; and a former Wall Street executive who urged Donald Trump’s election in anonymous manifestos by likening the trajectory of the country to that of a hijacked airplane—and who now works for the National Security Council.
Bannon, described by one associate as “the most well-read person in Washington,” is known for recommending books to colleagues and friends, according to multiple people who have worked alongside him. He is a voracious reader who devours works of history and political theory “in like an hour,” said a former associate whom Bannon urged to read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. “He’s like the Rain Man of nationalism.”
But, said the source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about Bannon, “There are some things he’s only going to share with people who he’s tight with and who he trusts.” (more...)
Sebastian Gorka, President Trump’s top counter-terrorism adviser, is a formal member of a Hungarian far-right group that is listed by the U.S. State Department as having been “under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany” during World War II, leaders of the organization have told the Forward.
The elite order, known as the Vitézi Rend, was established as a loyalist group by Admiral Miklos Horthy, who ruled Hungary as a staunch nationalist from 1920 to October 1944. A self-confessed anti-Semite, Horthy imposed restrictive Jewish laws prior to World War II and collaborated with Hitler during the conflict. His cooperation with the Nazi regime included the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews into Nazi hands.
Gorka’s membership in the organization — if these Vitézi Rend leaders are correct, and if Gorka did not disclose this when he entered the United States as an immigrant — could have implications for his immigration status. The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual specifies that members of the Vitézi Rend “are presumed to be inadmissible” to the country under the Immigration and Nationality Act. (more...)
Heather Ingram promoting her book on the Oprah Winfrey Show
A former B.C. high school teacher, whose 1999 affair with a teenaged student brought her notoriety and a conviction for sexual exploitation of a minor, is working in education again in the same Sunshine Coast community.
Heather Ingram – the banned Sechelt high school teacher who pursued international media attention in the early 2000s by capitalizing on the story of the affair – has worked as an academic advisor at Capilano University’s Sechelt campus since 2014, a role that has raised concern among some in the community.
In 1999, while Ingram was a 29-year-old high school teacher in Sechelt, she began a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old student, which both say was consensual. Though the young man was over the age of consent, the affair was illegal because of their student-teacher dynamic. The following year, she pleaded guilty to one count of sexual touching a young person with whom she was in a position of trust or authority.
Ingram, reached by phone Wednesday at the office number listed for her on Capilano’s website, said: “I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you,” and referred questions to the university’s communications department.
Ingram joined the university’s Sechelt campus in 2013 and the following year she began working as an educational planning-advising officer, said Capilano spokeswoman Cheryl Rossi. In Ingram’s current role, Rossi said, she “advises potential students, who may be minors. She does not visit high schools on behalf of the university.” (more...)
In the book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, author Jeff Sharlet examines the power wielded by a secretive Christian group known as the Family, or the Fellowship. Founded in 1935 in opposition to FDR's New Deal, the evangelical group's views on religion and politics are so singular that some other Christian-right organizations consider them heretical The group also has a connection to a house in Washington, D.C., known as C Street. Owned by a foundation affiliated with the Family, C Street is officially registered as a church; in practice, it serves as a meeting place and residence for politicians like South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Nevada Sen. John Ensign and Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn. The Family, Sharlet writes, is responsible for founding the annual National Prayer Breakfast, a supposedly ecumenical — but implicitly Christian — event attended by the president, members of Congress and dignitaries from around the world. These foreign delegations are often led by top defense personnel, who use it as an opportunity to lobby the most influential people in Washington — and who repay the Family with access to their governments. The group's approach to religion, Sharlet says, is based on "a sort of trickle-down fundamentalism," which holds that the wealthy and powerful, if they "can get their hearts right with God ... will dispense blessings to those underneath them." Members of the group ardently support free markets, in which, they believe, God's will operates directly through Adam Smith's "invisible hand." The Family was founded in 1935 by a minister named Abraham Vereide after, he claimed, he had a vision in which God came to him in the person of the head of the United States Steel Corporation.
So who is Doug Coe? He shuns almost all interview requests. But in hours of audiotape and videotape recordings obtained exclusively by NBC News, he frequently preaches the gospel of Jesus to followers and supporters. In one videotaped sermon from 1989, Coe provides this account of the atrocities committed under Chairman Mao in Communist China: "I've seen pictures of the young men in the Red Guardthey would bring in this young mans motherhe would take an axe and cut her head off. They have to put the purposes of the Red Guard ahead of father, mother, brother sister and their own life. That was a covenant, a pledge. That's what Jesus said."
In his preaching, Coe repeatedly urges a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. Its a commitment Coe compares to the blind devotion that Adolph Hitler demanded from his followers -- a rhetorical technique that now is drawing sharp criticism.
"Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler were three men. Think of the immense power these three men had, these nobodies from nowhere, Coe said.
Later in the sermon, Coe said: "Jesus said, You have to put me before other people. And you have to put me before yourself.' Hitler, that was the demand to be in the Nazi party. You have to put the Nazi party and its objectives ahead of your own life and ahead of other people."
Coe also quoted Jesus and said: One of the things [Jesus] said is 'If any man comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, brother, sister, his own life, he can't be a disciple. So I don't care what other qualifications you have, if you don't do that you can't be a disciple of Christ."
The sermons are little surprise to writer Jeff Sharlet. He lived among Coe's followers six years ago, and came out troubled by their secrecy and rhetoric.
We were being taught the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin and Mao. And I would say, Isnt there a problem with that? And they seemed perplexed by the question. Hitlers genocide wasnt really an issue for them. It was the strength that he emulated, said Sharlet, who is a Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone and is an Associate Research Scholar at the NYU Center for Religion and Media in New York.
Sharlet has now written about The Fellowship, also known to insiders as The Family, in a soon-to-be published book called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.
Theyre notoriously secretive, Sharlet said. In fact, they jokingly call themselves the Christian Mafia. Which becomes less of a joke when you realize that they really are dedicated to being what they call an invisible organization.
Federal tax records for Coe's non-profit group shows it funds charitable programs around the world -- but that it is also a family business.
The 990 tax forms for 2005, the last tax year available, show that both of Coes sons were on the payroll, at $110,000 a year each. The organization also paid his wife, his daughter and his daughters-in-law.
A Humber College teacher with a lengthy journalism career that includes high-profile media and communications jobs faces serious child pornography charges.
Toronto Police say investigators executed a search warrant Monday at a home near Warden Ave. and Kingston Rd. and arrested Gregory William Dennis — allegedly known online as Williegeedee.
Investigators alleged the 59-year-old “accessed, possessed and distributed child sexual abuse material,” Insp. Pauline Gray, of the Sex Crimes Unit, said in a statement issued Tuesday.
Multiple sources confirmed Dennis was a longtime employee at Global TV, where his LinkedIn profile states he worked from 1990 and 2004.
“The news came as a huge shock to everyone at Global TV who knew him and loved him,” said one staffer at the news outlet, who asked to remain anonymous. (more...)
A WIDE SUPPORT NETWORK of professional organisations “played a crucial role” in the biggest financial tax evasion scandal in world history, according to MEPs interrogating the circumstances and causes behind the Panama Papers tax scandal.
Institutions of bankers, lawyers and accountants acted as “enablers and promoters of tax avoidance” allowing corporate and financial interests to slash trillions in offshore wealth beyond the fair taxation of national and local governments.
The Panama Papers scandal, which broke in April 2016, was the biggest data leak in the history of journalism and exposed the world's rich and powerful as complicit in a vast offshore secrecy cabal.
Over 11bn files from Panama legal-financial firm Mossack Fonseca exposed global banks, corporations, and political leaders as complicit in a system which hoards at least £13trn of global wealth. (more...)
Last week, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland opened a can of worms by dismissing references to her family’s World War II history as Russian disinformation. That wasn’t entirely true, and in the current climate, history is politics.
Freeland was banned from entering Russia for her fiercely pro-Ukraine stand. When she became foreign minister in January, Moscow refused to lift the ban. Soon, the story of her maternal grandfather, Michael (Mykhailo) Chomiak, was circulating on pro-Russian websites.
Broadly, the story is true. The known facts were laid out by the independent U.S. investigative site Consortium News at the end of February. During World War II, Chomiak, a Ukrainian nationalist, edited a newspaper called Krakivski Visti — first in the Nazi-held Polish city of Krakow, then in Vienna — that ran articles praising Hitler and his appointees in occupied Eastern Europe and denouncing Jews. According to family lore, Chomiak helped anti-Nazi resistance forces by helping their fighters get German papers. When the war ended, Chomiak was in Germany; it took him some time to move his family to Canada.
Asked about Chomiak last week, Freeland batted away the question, saying “I don’t think it’s a secret. American officials have publicly said, and even Angela Merkel has publicly said, that there were efforts on the Russian side to destabilize Western democracies, and I think it shouldn’t come as a surprise if these same efforts were used against Canada.” (more...)
Destruction: Karkoc's division is also said to have taken part in quashing the Warsaw Uprising, which saw resistance groups crushed. Pictured: Civilians being taken from a Warsaw ghetto
A state prosecutor in Poland says that evidence shows without doubt that a Minneapolis man was a Nazi unit commander suspected of contributing to the death of 44 Poles.
Robert Janicki said that years of investigation into US citizen 'Michael K' confirmed '100 percent' that he was in charge of an SS unit accused of burning villages and killing civilians during the Second World War.
Michael K has been identified as Michael Karkoc, 98, whose family deny he was involved in war crimes. He may now face extradition.
Prosecutors of the state-run Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw, which investigates and prosecutes German and Soviet crimes on Poles during and after World War II, have asked a local court in Poland to issue an arrest warrant for Karkoc.
If granted, Poland would seek his extradition, Janicki said.
Documents show that a Michael Karkoc, born March 6, 1919 in Lutsk, Ukraine, was the commander of a unit in the Ukranian Self Defense Legion (USDL), which operated in collaboration with the German army.
The unit of which he was lieutenant allegedly participated in massacres at the Polish villages of Chlaniow and Wladyslawin on July 23, 1944.
The massacres - which saw women and children murdered - were allegedly ordered in retaliation for the killing of the USDL's commander, Siegfried Assmuss. (more...)
“Israel, people of a jealous God. Consistencies and ambiguities of an elitist religion.” Already from this conference title wafts an air that is by no means friendly for Jews and Judaism.
But if one goes to read the original text of presentation, there is even worse to be found: “thinking of oneself as a people belonging in an elitist way to a unique divinity has determined a sense of the superiority of one’s own religion.” Which leads to “intolerance,” “fundamentalism,” “absolutism” not only toward other peoples but also in self-destruction, because “one has to wonder to what extent the divine jealousy may or may not incinerate the chosen’s freedom of choice.”
And yet these were the initial title and presentation of a conference that the Italian Biblical Association has scheduled from September 11-16 in Venice.
The statutes of the ABI are approved by the Italian episcopal conference, and its members include about 800 professors and scholars of the Sacred Scriptures, Catholic and not. Among the speakers at the conference in September is the leading biblicist at the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Belgian Jesuit Jean-Louis Ska, a specialist in the Pentateuch, which in Hebrew is the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. No invitation to speak, however, has been extended to any Jewish scholar.
But the rabbis could not remain silent. And they have made themselves heard with a letter to the ABI signed by one of their most authoritative representatives, Giuseppe Laras, the news of which was first covered by Giulio Meotti in “Il Foglio” on March 10. (more...)
A highly respected Toronto educator, who pioneered programming for gifted students during a 30-year career with the Toronto District Catholic School Board, is questioning the need for him to provide fingerprints to the RCMP to teach an elective course at a private school.
Otto Schmidt, 67, who is now retired but is listed by the Ontario College of Teachers as a teacher in good standing since 1971, reached out to CBC Toronto after learning about the RCMP's request.
A letter he received from Toronto police said the requirement stems from the "match of your gender and date of birth to their pardoned sex offender registry."
Schmidt, who retired in 2002 but has continued to work in education ever since, thinks he's being discriminated against.
"Obviously they're picking on men. And secondly, it's date of birth," he told CBC Toronto.
"Are all the men in the country or province or whatever going to be selected to hand in their fingerprints?" (more...)
Yours truly was directed to obtain a Top Secret clearance in order to do some rather mundane work for the defense sector. Yes, the security apparatus gets excessively exercised in this true north.
Dr. Lori Handrahan has been documenting the scope of America’s child porn industry and the involvement by America’s national security and federal employees. In this explosive video, she discusses the cases of former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who was exposed as a pedophile; and Jesse Loskarn, Chief of Staff for Senator Lamar Alexander, who was caught with child porn and killed himself.Her forthcoming book is "Child Porn Nation: America’s Hidden National Security Risk."
Douglas Valentine returns to Our Interesting Times to discuss his new book The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World - a collection of excerpts from his books, published articles and transcripts of several interviews dealing with a range of historical and current topics that shed light on the systemic and societal corruption created by the CIA's covert operations.
Complaining that the United States has one of the world’s highest corporate tax levels, President Trump and congressional Republicans have repeatedly vowed to shrink it.
Yet if the level is so high, why have so many companies’ income tax bills added up to zero?
That’s what a new analysis of 258 profitable Fortune 500 companies that earned more than $3.8 trillion in profits showed.
Although the top corporate rate is 35 percent, hardly any company actually pays that. The report, by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning research group in Washington, found that 100 of them — nearly 40 percent — paid no taxes in at least one year between 2008 and 2015. Eighteen, including General Electric, International Paper, Priceline.com and PG&E, incurred a total federal income tax bill of less than zero over the entire eight-year period — meaning they received rebates. The institute used the companies’ own regulatory filings to compute their tax rates. (more...)
