New Mulroney Institute is bankrolled by billionaires steeped in scandal

A new $60-million university institute in Nova Scotia celebrating former prime minister Brian Mulroney — and being built with money he personally solicited — got a good chunk of that financing from donors embroiled in international controversy, a joint investigation by the Toronto Star, CBC/Radio-Canada and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has found.

From a Jordanian-born metals magnate implicated in aluminum-industry kickbacks, to a Syrian-British entrepreneur who helped broker a massive U.K. arms deal mired in corruption allegations, to one of U.S. President Donald Trump's cabinet picks with ties to Russia, a number of the power players bankrolling the Mulroney Institute of Government at St. Francis Xavier University have checkered resumés.

A senior St. FX professor called the revelations "deeply troubling."

"It really is at odds with the purported mission of the university," said Peter McInnis, chair of the university's history department and a former head of the faculty association.  (more...)

New Mulroney Institute is bankrolled by billionaires steeped in scandal

Related:

Honorary degrees for Brian Mulroney’s billionaire friends who funded his St. F.X. legacy project

Doubts cast on Canadian citizenship of Mulroney's billionaire friend

Billionaire got Canadian citizenship after renting a Montreal basement

Byron Muldoon benefactor in global bribery case, or how to buy an honourary degree from St. F. X.

This man has had some really really bad days:

Like Groundhog Day:

Sarnia teacher Barbara Organ charged with sexual assault, exploitation involving student

SARNIA - A Sarnia high school music teacher is charged with sexual exploitation and sexual assault involving a teenage girl who was a student, police say.

Sarnia police say their investigation focused on a probe into alleged incidents that took place between 2011 and 2013.

The complainant was 16 years old when the alleged interactions at now-closed St. Clair secondary school began, and a relationship between the two continued even after the student was no longer at the school, police contend.

Barbara Organ was arrested at Sarnia police headquarters Wednesday and charged. Released on bail, she’s to appear in court in December.

According to the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT), the profession’s regulatory body, Organ studied music at Western University before being licensed to teach in 1992.  (more...)

Sarnia teacher Barbara Organ charged with sexual assault, exploitation involving student

Henry Ford's "Anti-Semitic" Publications On Jews

Professor Jonathan Sarna talked about how industrialist Henry Ford founded and supported a newspaper that published anti-semitic articles. This class was from his course called “It Couldn't Happen Here: Three American Antisemitic Episodes.” Henry Ford’s international weekly, The Dearborn Independent, published an article in 1920 describing the “International Jew” as the world’s foremost problem. Sarna describes Ford as having conservative social and political views and disliking Jews because their progressive beliefs.

Essential to the understanding of popular attitudes in today's rustbelt, and also revealing about how conservatives have been diverted into self-defeating and delusional ideologies going back a century

Can conservatism ever be reconciled to modernism?

Why Were People Allowed To Play Naked Tag In A Nazi Gas Chamber?

Alt-White: How The Breitbart Machine Laundered Racist Hate

In August, after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville ended in murder, Steve Bannon insisted that "there's no room in American society" for neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and the KKK.

But an explosive cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News proves that there was plenty of room for those voices on his website.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart courted the alt-right — the insurgent, racist right-wing movement that helped sweep Donald Trump to power. The former White House chief strategist famously remarked that he wanted Breitbart to be “the platform for the alt-right.”

The Breitbart employee closest to the alt-right was Milo Yiannopoulos, the site’s former tech editor known best for his outrageous public provocations, such as last year’s Dangerous Faggot speaking tour and September’s canceled Free Speech Week in Berkeley. For more than a year, Yiannopoulos led the site in a coy dance around the movement’s nastier edges, writing stories that minimized the role of neo-Nazis and white nationalists while giving its politer voices “a fair hearing.” In March, Breitbart editor Alex Marlow insisted “we’re not a hate site.” Breitbart’s media relations staff repeatedly threatened to sue outlets that described Yiannopoulos as racist. And after the violent white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Breitbart published an article explaining that when Bannon said the site welcomed the alt-right, he was merely referring to “computer gamers and blue-collar voters who hated the GOP brand.”

These new emails and documents, however, clearly show that Breitbart does more than tolerate the most hate-filled, racist voices of the alt-right. It thrives on them, fueling and being fueled by some of the most toxic beliefs on the political spectrum — and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream.  (more...)

Alt-White: How The Breitbart Machine Laundered Racist Hate

H/T to Spitfire List

Conservatism was very successfully co-opted by Nazis during both the hot and cold wars. Look carefully, and you can discern their signature in pro-life, pro-family, free speech, limited government, pro-gun, and every cause that is dear to conservative voters. The Nazis are masters of dissimulation, spycraft, infiltration, subversion, and corruption. Assume there are none in the room at your own risk.

Have a merry eugenic Christmas! (Your side of the wall)

The global offshore system means we can’t trust basic economic figures

The Netherlands' role as a tax haven screws up UK economic data.

Donald Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he decries America’s trade deficits with countries around the world—and that’s not his fault. None of us do.

Thanks to offshoring practices like those revealed in the Paradise and Panama Papers, global trade figures are “a big black hole,” says Daniel Haberly, an economic geographer at the University of Sussex. “We don’t really know what the world economy actually looks like. That’s the big burning question for me. We have this picture of what it looks like on paper but in reality it’s probably something completely different.”

Look no further than the UK for an example of how crazy trade statistics are. The first name on its list of top foreign direct investors doesn’t surprise—it’s the world’s biggest economy, the United States. Second place, however, isn’t such a behemoth. According to British government stats, the Netherlands supposedly shoveled £139.8 billion ($186 billion), 28% of its GDP, into the UK in 2015.

Anglo-Dutch ties run long and deep, but can a country of just 17 million people really be investing so much cash into Britain alone?

Quite simply, no. The Netherlands is not just a smallish European trading nation—it’s also one of the world’s biggest conduits for cash going to and from tax havens. When the British government broke down its FDI statistics this year (chapter 6), it realized that only 34.5% of that money actually came from the Netherlands; much of the rest being from European subsidiaries of big US companies or… from British companies rerouting their money.  (more...)

The global offshore system means we can’t trust basic economic figures

We're screwed.

Your Ward News again the news: Lawyer questions time taken to investigate ads

Toronto lawyer who advertised in a publication decried as racist, misogynistic and homophobic will face a regulatory meeting at the Law Society of Upper Canada.

The LSUC is taking the step against criminal defence lawyer David Faed after a complaint was filed against him 20 months ago for placing ads in Your Ward News.

The Toronto Police Service recently arrested James Sears, the editor of the newspaper, and publisher Lawrence St. Germaine, charging them with the wilful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group, namely Jews and women.

Ottawa human rights lawyer Richard Warman, who filed the complaint against Faed, is questioning why the law society’s investigation took so long after he made repeated inquires into the matter, including to LSUC benchers.

“Personally, I’m at least as concerned that the law society permitted such a straightforward issue to drag on forever when discipline is supposed to help lawyers stay on track or get back on it as soon as possible before further harm is done to the profession,” Warman says. “That didn’t happen here.”  (more...)

Lawyer questions time taken to investigate ads

Background:

Editor, publisher of 'Your Ward News' — newspaper Canada Post banned from delivering — face hate charges

Confessions of a repentant white supremacist

When he thinks about white supremacy now, Brad Galloway sees a black hole.

It wasn’t always this way. For years, or about a third of his life, Galloway’s universe was defined by the colour of his skin. His whiteness was his identity, his greatest source of pride and his sole reason for living.

It’s why he joined “the movement,” as he calls it today. And why he shot up the white nationalist ranks like the mercury level on a thermometer in a pot of boiling water. It’s also why he lost his old friends and was nearly beaten to death.

But let’s back up to before he stomped around the Bathurst and Wilson shadows in a bomber jacket and steel-toed Dr. Martens. Let’s go back to before he was the leader of a hate group and an eager racist.

Before all of that, Galloway was just a normal Canadian kid.

He went to school in North York and played hockey, soccer and basketball. He had friends and, later, girlfriends. He wore nice clothes and fell asleep each night with a full belly. His middle class home was not just unbroken — it didn’t even have a crack.

“I like to always say that membership in these groups is not limited to impoverished, disenfranchised youth,” says Galloway, now 37 and on the line from British Columbia. “People in my movement were from the same area and we were not poor.”

So what was it? In a country as diverse as Canada, how is a quest for “racial purity” not a wacky fever dream? What’s that? You won’t rest until all minorities are banished and a white homeland is established for the master race?  (more...)

Confessions of a repentant white supremacist

Please see skinhead on CBC @lifeafterhate @mcaleer @andykat2 @R_Scrivens @jason_downard @rblazak @kinsellawarren https://t.co/UzQZT7vNvM

— Brad Galloway (@bjgalloway1717) November 26, 2017

In a free marketplace of ideas, stupid ideas quickly die. Ours is not a free market. Who continually spawns and nurtures this beast? Who profits from the fragmentation and degeneration of society?

Hitler, Manson, and The Ultimate Evil

Hamilton school bus driver charged in alleged abduction of 14-year-old girl

Hamilton police say a 70-year-old school bus driver is facing abduction charges after several alleged incidents involving a 14-year-old girl.

Police allege the developmentally delayed girl was abducted four times in late October while being driven to and from school in the city’s east end.

David Nauss is charged with four counts of abduction of a person under 16 years of age and remains in custody pending a bail hearing.

Police say Nauss worked as a school bus driver with Attridge Transportation and was a volunteer bus driver for the City Kidz charity organization.

Anyone with further information is asked to contact the Hamilton police child abuse unit.

Source:

Hamilton school bus driver charged in alleged abduction of 14-year-old girl

Ottawa claims it will reap $25 billion from tax cheats. That’s wishful thinking.

National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier

When National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier was pressed during question period Tuesday on what the government is doing to crack down on offshore tax havens, her answer included a fat, impressive figure. “Our government is fully committed to fighting tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance,” Lebouthillier said. “In our last two budgets, we allocated nearly $1 billion to doing just that, and we are on track to recoup $25 billion.”

But that $25 billion isn’t exactly in the bag. The satisfyingly large sum Lebouthillier cited is the broadest possible estimate of what the Canada Revenue Agency’s audits over the past two years have turned up, and declaring that the government is “on track to recoup it” amounts to assuming that every cent the CRA has identified as rightfully Ottawa’s will somehow be raked in.

In a series of email exchanges, CRA explained to Maclean’s that, of the $25 billion it is targeting as the result of two years of audits, about two-thirds of the total relates to what it calls “international, large business and aggressive tax planning activities.” In other words, that’s the portion associated with sophisticated individuals and companies, presumably surrounded by skilled accountants and lawyers who will now be asked to earn their fees.

So is it really reasonable to assume those adversaries will cumulatively cough up the entire amount?   (more...)

Ottawa claims it will reap $25 billion from tax cheats. That’s wishful thinking.

Meanwhile, some eyebrows are raised:

Chief Liberal Party fundraiser tied to $8M loan to offshore trust in Cayman Islands

PC leadership candidate downplays Paradise Papers connection

Closet Nazi Gets Smoked: Swedish business boss steps down in 'what do I get for my taxes' row

Caught in a Strangelovian spasm

Leif Östling, the chairman of Sweden's largest business federation, the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt näringsliv), announced his resignation on Wednesday.

The global Paradise Papers leak revealed earlier this month that Östling kept German stocks worth 30 million kronor ($3.56 million) in a company based in Malta. While not suspected of any legal wrongdoing, he ended up in hot water specifically after controversial comments he made defending his financial planning:

"It's a problem with the Swedish tax system, the taxes are insanely high in this country. (…) You ask yourself: If you pay 20-30 million kronor a year – what the hell do I get for the money?" he told public broadcaster SVT.

It is famously said that Sweden has some of the highest tax rates in the world (although it depends on how much you earn), with the cliché being that Swedes happily pay up, safe in the knowledge that the public services they receive in exchange will be of a good standard.

The cliché seemed to hold true as Östling's comments were heavily criticized by trade unions and politicians on both sides of the political aisle. He apologized and admitted that he had expressed himself "carelessly".  (more...)

Swedish business boss steps down in 'what do I get for my taxes' row

Impact: The head of Sweden's largest business lobby Leif Östling is the first major public figure to resign in the wake of the #ParadisePapers. https://t.co/5vMGgH4wG1 pic.twitter.com/vYhJRee9jE

— ICIJ (@ICIJorg) November 22, 2017

Background:

Swedes hit out at tax avoidance exposed in Paradise Papers leak

The reality that is Sweden:

Per Engdahl and Euro Fascism

Are there 2,000 SERIAL KILLERS roaming the streets of the US?

Using his computer code, which he sometimes calls the serial killer detector,
Hargrove searches for anomalies among the most common murders that result
from gang fights, robberies or love triangles

A researcher has estimated that there are nearly 2,000 serial killers at large in the United States.

Archivist and researcher Thomas Hargrove has developed his own algorithm that he uses to track the habits and status of serial killers.

He told The New Yorker that according to the FBI, 1,400 murders remain unsolved but are linked to other killings through DNA.

Hargrove, who is a part of the Murder Accountability Project (MAP), said his estimate of 2,000 serial killers at large is the number he came to after analyzing data available.

Hargrove collected records of murders for the last seven years, and he has a catalogue with 751,785 murders carried out since 1976, according to the New Yorker.

That number is roughly 27,000 more than appear in the FBI's files.

In order to obtain this figure, Hargrove needed records from each state. In some cases he had to sue states that either reported inaccurately or failed to report the murders altogether.  (more...)

Are there 2,000 SERIAL KILLERS roaming the streets of the US? 

Related:

The Serial-Killer Detector

Serial Killers Should Fear This Algorithm

Murder Accountability Project

Final thoughts:

Hitler, Manson, and The Ultimate Evil

Kincora survivor: The stolen life of Richard Kerr, including his account of how Ian Paisley strove to cover up child abuse

Reverend Ian Paisley

The Reverend Ian Paisley, who served as First Minister of Northern Ireland (NI ), 2007-2008, was aware of the sexual abuse of boys which took place at Kincora Boys Home during the 1970s. Paisley learnt about it from Valerie Shaw, who served as secretary of the ‘missionary council’ of his church, on 28 October 1973.

Shaw denounced Paisley at a press conference in 1982: “I approached Dr Paisley on at least seven occasions”, she said. “I asked him time and time again what he intended to do about this. My concern all along was very much for the fact that there were young boys under the threat of this man’s corruption”.

The man she was referring to was William McGrath, the ‘Housefather’ at Kincora, and a long-time associate of Paisley before they fell out in the 1970s. Some of the RUC officers who investigated Kincora came to refer to him as ‘The Beast’. What has now emerged is that Paisley also participated in the cover-up of the scandal in the early 1980s. Many of the residents at Kincora were raped by McGrath, Joseph Mains and Raymond Semple, all of whom were convicted in December 1981. Others got away. These included Paisley’s former bodyguard, John Dunlop McKeague, a sadistic Loyalist paramilitary serial killer. Another was Pastor Willie Mullan, an Evangelical friend of Paisley. Paisley conceded that Valerie Shaw had informed him about McGrath’s reign of terror, although not that he worked at Kincora. “Yes, she did say – she made accusations against Mr McGrath – and she based these on the evidence of Mr ‘X’. When I met Mr ‘X’, he would not meet Mr McGrath and I of course did the only thing I could do: I put (sic) Mr McGrath from taking part in an Orange [Order] service in my church. He wasn’t a member of my church but I took that discipline immediately; and I regret Miss Shaw didn’t go to police”.

Shaw, however, had gone to the RUC but had recieved no help.

Shaw also informed two senior figures at the Church who warned her Paisley would “destroy” her if she persisted in her campaign.

Shaw’s efforts to engage Paisley lasted a year and a half, after which she left his church in disgust.  (more...)

Kincora survivor: The stolen life of Richard Kerr, including his account of how Ian Paisley strove to cover up child abuse

A topic that has appeared many times in this blog:

JITHON: Kincora

Given that a British High Commissioner to Canada features in this scandal, one may speculate what other Canadian connections there may be.

Sir Peter Hayman

Operation Gladio

Originally aired on BBC2 in 1992, 'Operation Gladio' reveals 'Gladio', the secret state-sponsored terror network operating in Europe.

This BBC series is about a far-right secret army, operated by the CIA and MI6 through NATO, which killed hundreds of innocent Europeans and attempted to blame the deaths on Baader Meinhof, Red Brigades and other left wing groups. Known as 'stay-behinds' these armies were given access to military equipment which was supposed to be used for sabotage after a Soviet invasion. Instead it was used in massacres across mainland Europe as part of a CIA Strategy of Tension. Gladio killing sprees in Belgium and Italy were carried out for the purpose of frightening the national political classes into adopting U.S. policies.

Hitler, Manson, and The Ultimate Evil

Charles Manson -- Process Church dupe

On August 10, 1977, the NYPD arrested David Berkowitz for the "Son of Sam" murders that had terrorized New York City for more than thirteen months. Berkowitz eagerly confessed to being a lone marauder—one who had carried out eight senseless shootings with a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver. The case was officially closed.

Journalist Maury Terry was suspicious of Berkowitz's confession. He has spent the years since that summer researching the case, meticulously gathering evidence to demonstrate that the killer did not act alone.

In The Ultimate Evil, Terry details the chilling events, proving that Berkowitz was an affiliate of—and triggerman for—a Satanic cult known as the Process Church of the Final Judgment. Terry's work not only uncovers the cult's involvement in the "Son of Sam" murders but also finds their signature on other ritual slayings across the country.

Since the first publication of The Ultimate Evil in 1987, new evidence about the Process Church has emerged. From his prison cell, David Berkowitz has now confirmed Maury Terry's conclusions, making this updated edition even more extraordinary. As Terry untangles the dense web of information to expose the frightening extent of the Process Church's reach, he also reveals its continuing underground existence today.

U of T’s endowment, pension funds have investments in two offshore tax havens

The University of Toronto’s endowment and pension funds have investments in two offshore tax havens including a Cayman Islands company founded by U.S. Secretary of Commerce and billionaire Wilbur Ross, newly leaked documents reveal.

The University of Toronto’s pension fund holds shares in WLR IV Loans AIV Feeder (Cayman), Ltd., part of a web of offshore companies traced to Ross, a billionaire investor who founded a coal company implicated in the deaths of a dozen miners and an investment company fined $2.3 million (U.S.) by the Securities and Exchange Commission for financial improprieties.

The Governing Council of the University of Toronto — which oversees the academic, business and student affairs of the university — is also named as an investor in a company listed in the Malta corporate registry.

Both Malta and the Cayman Islands are well-known tax havens. The investments are not listed in U of T’s annual pension and endowment statements. The Cayman Islands investment doesn’t appear in the university’s financial statements because it represents less than one per cent of the pension fund’s total assets, according to a written statement from the university.

In all, a cache of 13 million leaked records from the offshore law firm Appleby — known as the Paradise Papers and obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists which includes the Toronto Star — show more than 150 prestigious universities and colleges across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. with tax haven investments, including Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania and University of Texas and Northeastern.

Together, they are invested in more than 200 offshore firms, mostly in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.  (more...)

U of T’s endowment, pension funds have investments in two offshore tax havens

Related:

University holds investments in offshore tax havens, leaked documents show

Boycott U of T over Paradise Papers revelations

More Than 100 Universities And Colleges Included In Offshore Leaks Database

Over 100 universities and colleges in Offshore Leaks Database "Some of these elite institutions hold tens of billions of dollars in their endowments, and in the eyes of the law, they are treated as charities: altruistic, mission-driven and tax-exempt."https://t.co/AC3cK3US4z

— Tax Justice Network (@TaxJusticeNet) November 21, 2017

Federal government quietly compensates daughter of brainwashing experiments victim

Jean Steel was a victim of Dr. Ewen Cameron's CIA-funded brainwashing
experiments at Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute

Alison Steel was only 4½ years old when her mother's life changed forever.

In 1957, Jean Steel was admitted to Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute. The once happy and energetic 33-year-old was diagnosed with manic depression and delusional thinking.

In the months that followed, Steel became the victim of CIA-funded brainwashing experiments conducted by Dr. Ewen Cameron. She was kept in a chemically induced sleep for weeks and subjected to rounds of electroshocks, experimental drugs and tape-recorded messages played non-stop.

Steel said her mother was never quite the same.

"She was never able to really function as a healthy human being because of what they did to her."

Now, 60 years after Cameron's experiments left her mother damaged for life, Alison Steel has finally won a measure of justice for her family.

CBC News has learned that the federal government quietly reached an out-of-court settlement with Steel earlier this year, paying her $100,000 in exchange for dropping the legal action she launched in September 2015.

While a non-disclosure agreement prohibits Steel from talking about the settlement itself, the existence of the settlement and the amount was included in the most recent public accounts tabled by the government earlier this month.

Montreal lawyer Alan Stein, who negotiated the deal, said the government's decision to compensate Steel could provide hope for the families of other patients who were subjects of Cameron's "de-patterning" experiments but were initially denied compensation.

"They still have a possibility if their medical reports clearly establishes that they were substantially de-patterned."  (more...)

Federal government quietly compensates daughter of brainwashing experiments victim

Background:

Mind Control and MK Ultra in Canada

Poland's CIA Embarrassment

Your tax dollars working for you

Catholic Church might be too broke to compensate sex abuse victims

Moncton Archbishop Valéry Vienneau said he is very worried about
the finances of the church.

Dozens of new sexual abuse lawsuits involving priests from the Moncton archdiocese are threatening the financial viability of the church.

CBC News found at least 56 lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Church in New Brunswick that are still in front of the courts, and this despite an extensive conciliation process that was conducted a few years ago.

Between 2012 and 2014, the church hired retired judge Michel Bastarache to talk to victims confidentially.

The Moncton archdiocese ended up paying $10.6 million to 109 victims, and the diocese of Bathurst $5.5 million to 90 victims.

It's estimated victims received between $15,000 and $300,000, depending on the severity of the abuse, how old they were when it started, and how many years it lasted.

What followed were major cutbacks by the church.

In Moncton, diocesan staff was slashed by half, from 19 before 2013 to fewer than 10 now. Only two staff members were kept on full time.

The diocesan centre in Dieppe, which used to be the home of the archbishop, was sold.

Virtually no money is left in the church's coffers.

"We sold things, and now we're at a point … we've taken all the money that we have," said Moncton Archbishop Valéry Vienneau.

"We had money — the diocese had money, but doesn't anymore."

Financial information from the Canada Revenue Agency reveals the Moncton archdiocese has been operating at a deficit for two of the past four years, and has no declared land or building assets.  (more...)

Catholic Church might be too broke to compensate sex abuse victims

H/T to Silvia's Site

The ‘gangster’ superior, the Irish priest and the wealthy widow

Fr. Anthony Bannon

An Irish priest played a key role in offshore structures holding substantial assets belonging to the wealthy but secretive Catholic order the Legionaries of Christ, the Paradise Papers have revealed.

The Paradise Papers are 13.4 million leaked legal and other files showing tax avoidance and other financial activity across numerous businesses from 1950 to 2016. They have been published over the past week as part of a global investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Fr Anthony Bannon (70), a former Irish superior of the organisation, appears in the leaked files from the Appleby law firm alongside the Mexican founder of the order, the late Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado, as well as on the corporate registry in Panama.

Maciel, a long-time friend of Pope John Paul II, has been condemned as a serial sex abuser of seminarians in his cult-like order. He used his order’s money to buy influence in the Vatican, and usually travelled with tens of thousands of dollars in cash on his person.

He also fathered children by two women, and used false identities. One former member of the order, Dublin priest Fr Peter Byrne, tells The Irish Times that in his view Maciel was a “sociopath” and a “gangster”.  (more...)

The ‘gangster’ superior, the Irish priest and the wealthy widow

Tax havens are where criminal capitalism and legal capitalism meet and merge:

Drug traffickers taught the rich how to hide money in tax havens

Ontario school janitor who preyed on little girls sentenced

BRADFORD — Neighbourhood parents thought of him as “the nice old fella across the road.”

But Harold Leblanc, 74, of Innisfil, turned out to be a serial predator who made friends with young couples so he could get at their little girls.

The retired York District School Board  maintenance worker was sentenced Friday to five years in prison after pleading guilty to repeatedly sexually assaulting six young girls over a period of more than 30 years.

“He’s a serial predator who sniffs out vulnerability, and he’s done it for decades,” said Crown attorney Indy Kandola, who was hoping for a stiffer sentence.

In doling out the lighter sentence, the judge took Leblanc’s age and recent heart surgeries into consideration. He also noted Leblanc is illiterate and has a Grade Two education.

“The facts in this matter are sordid,” said Justice Glenn Krelove. “He befriended neighbourhood parents which enabled him to plan and groom their children so he could sexually abuse them.”  (more...)

Ontario school janitor who preyed on little girls sentenced

Background:

Perv preyed on kids for decades

Delving into the murder of Shoeshine Boy Emanuel Jaques

Robert J. Hoshowsky is the author of The Last to Die: Ronald Turpin, Arthur Lucas, and the End of Capital Punishment in Canada, and Unsolved: True Canadian Cold Cases. A former Maclean’s researcher-reporter, Hoshowsky regularly appears on television discussing murders, most recently Hours to Kill, a 26-part True Crime series airing worldwide.

The following is an excerpt from Outraged: The Murder of Shoeshine Boy Emanuel Jaques and How It Changed a City:

For Emanuel Jaques, the sleaze of the Yonge Street strip was about as far removed from his life back in Portugal as one could possibly imagine. Immigrating from the North Atlantic’s Azores archipelago, Emanuel’s father, Valdemiro, arrived in Toronto in 1972 and worked as a cleaner before arranging to bring over his wife and six other children in 1974. For the Jaques family — and thousands of others from Portugal — Canada and the United States were seen as lands of opportunity. 

Like many other immigrant families, they settled in an area of Toronto which was affordable, on Shuter St. in Regent Park, east of downtown. It was from here 12-year-old Emanuel, his brother Luciano, 14, and friend Shane McLean, 12, set out for the busy downtown intersection to make a few dollars. Although his parents were initially reluctant to let him go without adult supervision, Emanuel pressured them until they relented; after all, he was with his older brother. A number of other kids they knew had been shining shoes for weeks downtown, and the northeast corner of Yonge and Dundas — right near a streetcar stop and a subway entrance — wasn’t some isolated part of the city, but a busy area populated with thousands of pedestrians and cars every day. The parents agreed the boys could head downtown to shine shoes, where they went every day, except Sundays.  (more...)

Delving into the murder of Shoeshine Boy Emanuel Jaques

Further excerpt:

Outrage over the brutal murder of Shoeshine Boy Emanuel Jaques

Grasshoppers do not end well:

Police: Carradine's Death Likely Sex Accident

The saint who founded a movement in response to Freemasonry

Following on from my blog on the revised CTS booklet on fertility and infertility by Dr Pia Matthews (in the CTS Explanations series), I have been reading Freemasonry and the Christian Faith by Fr Ashley Beck, first published in 2005 and revised this year. This has been prompted by a friend emailing me a couple of weeks ago to tell me she had discovered an out of print book detailing all the ways that Freemasons have been secretly and maliciously orchestrating world events, from the French Revolution to the overthrow of the late Shah of Persia.

I am suspicious of conspiracy theories, partly because I recognise how easily they can take hold of the imagination with their vast, compelling fictions, and partly because they fly in the face of salvation history. I have occasionally come across devout Catholics who speak sotto voce about masonic machinations and have privately concluded that, in this area at least, they are slightly unhinged.

This does not mean that I dismiss the diabolical and the way it tries to influence humans in an underhand way. Evil has been part of the human story from the very beginning. The good news is that Christ has conquered death and, as the children of Fatima showed so beautifully in their innocent trustfulness of Our Lady of Fatima’s directives, reciting the rosary daily as she appealed is always the surest way to defeat the Church’s enemies.

Fr Beck’s booklet shows conclusively that being a Freemason is completely incompatible with being a Christian. Why Catholics (and to a greater extent Anglicans) should ever have been tempted to join them is a mystery to me.   (more...)

The saint who founded a movement in response to Freemasonry

This rather lightweight piece suffers from a number of misconceptions. The notion that women cannot be freemasons is completely off base. The women's Eastern Star is far larger than the men's lodges. At my college, a woman professor and member of Eastern Star vigorously recruited for the order -- with much success. This college and the professor made significant contributions to the establishment of feminist ideology and women's studies at the university. This professor did her thesis at the University of California at Berkely under Theodor Adorno, one of the founders of the Frankfurt School.

So, here we see a connection between freemasonry and Cultural Marxism. Another connection is a well-kept secret. The cohort of students under this professor's tutelage were the daughters of old Nazis that immigrated to Canada. They were the product of a covert ratline to Canada, which had been abetted by Canadian masonic lodges. Our feminist professor, whose thesis was on "The Authoritarian Personality" was an ideal launderer and sheep dipper for Nazi ratline kids. One student was the daughter of a top Ontario freemason who had been an officer in the Austrian military during the war. I learned much about elite masonry from this rather talkative young lady. One further secret is that they are Luciferians, consistent with the pagan beliefs of the Nazi inner circle.

So, we find a eugenic agenda being pursued by other means than outright bloody genocide. The college was, as I've stated elsewhere, involved in the establishment of Canada's first abortion clinic and active in the promotion of contraception and homosexuality. Men at the college were encouraged to get vasectomies.

It is not surprising that St. Maximilian Kolbe began his priesthood with opposition to freemasonry and ended it with defiance of Naziism, with an attempt at the conversion of the fascist Japanese intervening. These evils are one and the same and if you have encountered the ruling oligarchy, you will have observed the convergence of these seemingly disjoint phenomena. Satan is a deceiver and wears many faces.

Industrial America, Managerialism and the “Fordist Academic”

Two figures tower over the idea, and the realisation, of industrial America. The first is Henry Ford, whose factory process dedicated to mass car production featured specifically focused machinery, a moving assembly line, and a linear process of interdependent tasks. The second giant in this regard is Frederick W. Taylor, whose principles of scientific management involved the division of factory work into small and simple tasks in a coordinated, sequential manner in the name of maximum efficiency.

Both figures propelled standardisation, the finding of a mass produced common ground, the production, in fact of commonness. Intellectually, it might have been deadening, but mass production suited mass consumption. What, then, of this creep into other areas of society, including that of the university?

In her novel Look at Me (2001), Jennifer Egan sketches one of her characters as an atomised intellectual who claims that the “narrative of industrial America began with the rationalisation of objects through standardisation, abstraction and mass production”. It concluded “with the rationalisation of human beings through marketing, public relations, image consulting and spin.”

The modern academy, far from being immune to this rationalisation, has capitulated to the Fordist-Taylor approach with enthusiastic abandon. The Fordist academic is a spineless, compromised product, an offspring cowardly in meetings, a lazy collaborator seeking to maximise production gains with minimal effort and one suspicious of individuality.  (more...)

Industrial America, Managerialism and the “Fordist Academic”

Rafał Pankowski (NEVER AGAIN) about the ideology of the so-called Independence March

Take-aways from Pankowski's analysis:

• Polish youth are losing their religious heritage.
• The youth are fastening on ideologies that promote a vanished "Western Civilization" as an object of veneration.
• They are becoming prey to demagogues that play on discontent caused by comparisons to Western European lifestyles.
• They are unmindful of the heroic lives of the generations that lived under Nazi and Communist oppression.
• Add to this, the fertility rate of this generation of Polish women of childbearing age:

1.32 live births per woman

This is a disaster for Poland!

Related:

Horrified: Tens of thousands from Europe's far right march in Poland

Europe needs many more babies to avert a population disaster

Bleak future

More Than 100 Universities And Colleges Included In Offshore Leaks Database

Hidden in the 25,000 offshore entities we added to the Offshore Leaks Database today are some of the world’s most prestigious universities and colleges.

ICIJ and its partners found more than 100 educational institutions in offshore law firm Appleby’s client database, which was part of the Paradise Papers leaks.

Some of these elite institutions hold tens of billions of dollars in their endowments, and in the eyes of the law, they are treated as charities: altruistic, mission-driven and tax-exempt.

The only time university endowments pay taxes is when they invest in debt-financed financial firms such as private equity funds and hedge funds. These investments are considered a business activity unrelated to their tax-exempt missions.

As ICIJ’s partners at The New York Times reported, large numbers of universities have adopted an offshore scheme that allows them to avoid even those taxes. The universities assign entities called “blocker funds” legal responsibility of otherwise taxable investments. These entities are incorporated in zero-tax jurisdictions such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

Consequently, wealthy universities have settled en masse on a strategy for reaping Wall Street-sized investment gains tax free.  (more...)

More Than 100 Universities And Colleges Included In Offshore Leaks Database

Student opinion:

Paradise Papers Implicate Oxford, Cambridge, and Over 100 American Universities

My own alma mater, the University of Toronto made the list. Not surprising.

A pattern?

Canada’s biggest corporations have more than 1,000 subsidiaries in tax havens, report says

Canada’s 60 biggest corporations have more than 1,000 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, depriving government coffers of up to $15 billion annually, according to a new report being published Wednesday.

The report, titled “Bay Street and Tax Havens: Curbing Corporate Canada’s Addiction” and prepared by the group Canadians for Tax Fairness, shines a light on one of the legal methods used by big corporations to reduce their taxes — tax havens.

“The reality is that most companies do this,” said Diana Gibson, the report’s author. “It’s not illegal, but it should be.”

Companies named in the Paradise Papers leak, made public last week, defended themselves by pointing out that they didn’t break any laws. But Gibson says legality isn’t the point.

“It’s not necessarily about whether it’s illegal or not, the issue is that it’s doing harm to Canada,” she said.

If the billions that remain on company balance sheets were instead collected in taxes, they could pay for a national pharmacare program, free university tuition or affordable public child care.

“Not only are tax havens costing us those lost opportunities to invest in public programs, but we’re also seeing harm to economic growth due to the inequality made worse by tax havens,” Gibson said.  (more...)

Canada’s biggest corporations have more than 1,000 subsidiaries in tax havens, report says

Was owner of paedophile palace who kept list of secret VIP vistors murdered?

The discovery of files that police said were destroyed has cast fresh doubts on the suicide ­verdict at the heart of the Westminster VIP paedo scandal.

Campaigners are demanding a review of the coroner’s verdict into the death of Carole Kasir and a new inquest.

Mrs Kasir ran the notorious paedophile brothel Elm Guest House in South West London. She may have kept a dossier of the perverted visitors’ names and photos from the early 80s.

The newly found files reveal her GP’s surprise at her apparent suicide. They also say syringes and vials found next to her body had not been analysed.

One source believes a fresh probe may expose a cover-up and reveal that Mrs Kasir, 47, who was found dead in her bed in 1990, had been murdered.  (more...)

Was owner of paedophile palace who kept list of secret VIP vistors murdered?

More commentary:

How newly found “destroyed” papers revive the mystery of the notorious gay and paedophile Elm Guest House

Legionaries deny illegal offshore dealings indicated by Paradise Papers

MEXICO CITY — The Legionaries of Christ say a series of offshore accounts opened by its disgraced founder — and exposed by investigative journalists examining a cache of documents shining a light on tax havens — have been closed.

The order added that the accounts never violated any laws and did not handle the vast sums of money alleged in the investigation.

"The offshore entities that existed with some relation to the congregation and its members were operated legally and never were companies used for illicit activities, as some journalistic articles affirm," the Legionaries said in a statement.

The statement also attempted to pin the blame for the accounts' existence on the wealthy order's founder, the late Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, who led a double life in violation of Catholic teaching, included fathering children and sexually abusing seminarians. Maciel died in 2008 after being ordered to lead a life of prayer and penance, and the Legionaries of Christ was put under Vatican leadership, which started the process of cleaning up the order's finances and closing the offshore companies.

The order previously had companies established in Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Channel Islands, Panama and Luxembourg.

The revelations of the Legionaries activities came from the so-called Paradise Papers, in which a consortium of international journalists combed through a trove of leaked information on offshore companies.

An investigation by Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, a Mexican anti-graft group, showed the Legionaries of Christ had established a Bermuda-based company called International Volunteer Services.

In its statement, the order said International Volunteer Services "did not handle economic funds."

"The educational projects related to the congregation operate with transparency, have their accounts audited and observe the legal and fiscal provisions of their respective countries," the Legionaries statement said. "They do not have any relation or operations with offshore companies."

Journalist Raul Olmos, author of the investigation, told Catholic News Service that documents cast doubt on the Legionaries' statement.

"These universities generated a lot of money," he said. "We had access to the financial statements of the Legionaries of Christ's universities, and they generated $300 million per year."  (more...)

Legionaries deny illegal offshore dealings indicated by Paradise Papers

Related:

Catholic order concedes past offshore holdings in tax havens

Background:

"Our Father" Maciel, who art in Bed: A Naive and Sentimental Dubliner in the Legion of Christ

Depraved world view of Ben Levin continues on parole

Convicted child pornographer Ben Levin, the former bigwig in Ontario’s ministry of education, is on parole — but he is busy online, trolling academic studies on porn and leaving comments that suggest the disgraced educator still doesn’t think he did anything wrong.

Or that he hurt anyone.

If he remains so clueless, why isn’t this registered sex offender still behind bars?

Levin, 65, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2015 after pleading guilty to creating and possessing child pornography and counselling others to commit a sexual assault.

Caught by undercover officers online, the world-renowned educator, UofT prof and former member of Kathleen Wynne’s transition team was a frequent visitor to an incest chat room where he counselled single moms on how to sexually assault their daughters for his pleasure and theirs, a site where his profile listed his sexuality as “nothing is taboo.”

In one disgusting sampling read out in court, the depraved Levin told one London “mom” he’d like to “f— all 3 (of her children) in front of you with your help…would they submit or would I need to tie them?”

Levin was denied full parole in August 2016 after the National Parole Board found he still lacked insight into his crimes. This past January, he somehow convinced them otherwise and was granted full parole.

Yet Levin still appears to blame everyone but himself. In his online comments, he suggests we’re the ones with the problem, that as a society, we’re overreacting to “harmless” fantasies.

Since his release, Levin’s Internet footprint is all over ResearchGate, a kind of Facebook for academics to post and review studies.  (more...)

Depraved world view of Ben Levin continues on parole

Background:

Three year sentence brings sad, sickening end to onetime education superstar

Editor, publisher of 'Your Ward News' — newspaper Canada Post banned from delivering — face hate charges

James Sears contemplating getting a real job

TORONTO — The editor and publisher of a controversial Toronto publication are facing hate-related charges.

Toronto police say James Nicholas Sears, 54, and Lawrence (Leroy) St. Germaine, 76, are each charged with two counts of wilful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group, namely Jews and women.

Investigators say they received numerous complaints about the distribution and content of “Your Ward News” between March 2015 and June 27 and allege the accused published and disseminated editions that promoted hatred against members of the Jewish community and women.

Last year, the federal government ordered Canada Post to stop delivering “Your Ward News” after the then-minister of public services and procurement found it “highly offensive and well outside the norm of Canadian values.”  (more...)

Editor, publisher of 'Your Ward News' — newspaper Canada Post banned from delivering — face hate charges

More coverage:

WARMINGTON: Hate charges laid over Your Ward News

BREAKING: NEO-NAZI RAG CHARGED WITH PROMOTING HATE AGAINST WOMEN AND JEWS

James Sears and Leroy St. Germaine Arrested and Hotel Cancels on Paul Fromm

The Campaign Against Canada’s Largest Pro-Nazi Newspaper

EDITOR, PUBLISHER OF YOUR WARD NEWS CHARGED WITH PROMOTING HATE

Background:

Warren's Life Matters: Latest

Federal government orders Canada Post to stop delivering Toronto newspaper, calling it ‘hate propaganda’

Let's sing a little victory song with Warren Kinsella:

Normalization? 'SHE'S GROWN UP': Notorious teacher Debra LaFave 'completely different' 13 years after student sex trial

An infamous teacher who notoriously admitted to bedding a 14-year-old student has discarded her troubled ways in exchange for the wholesome lifestyle required by her new-found faith.

Debra LaFave was 24 years old when she pleaded guilty to having sex with a teenage pupil – a salacious story that made international headlines in 2004 due to the novelty of a teacher-student relationship and LaFave’s striking looks.

The victim told authorities he engaged in sex acts with LaFave on multiple occasions during a four-day period that included sex in a vehicle that was allegedly being driven by the victim’s cousin.

She was sentenced to three years house arrest and seven years of probation in a plea agreement.

Thirteen years later, LaFave is a changed woman, her friend Joe Zuniga recently told People.com.  (more...)

'SHE'S GROWN UP': Notorious teacher Debra LaFave 'completely different' 13 years after student sex trial

No doubt, she votes Republican values, too. The Christian Right will absolve you of ANY sin:

Family Values: Ex-teacher Mary Kay Letourneau separates from former student years after sex scandal