Saturday, September 03, 2022

How Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh gave rise to the dangerous movement we now know as MAGA



Resentful, Media-Savvy and Paving the Way for Trump

In “Partisans,” Nicole Hemmer zeros in on ’90s figures like Pat Buchanan as guiding forces behind the Republican Party’s hard-right, conspiracy-minded turn.

Pat Buchanan at a Florida rally during his 1992 run for the Republican presidential nomination.
 He told the gathering that his candidacy was forcing President George H.W. Bush
 to become more conservative.
Credit...Peter Cosgrove/Associated Press

By Gabriel Debenedetti
Sept. 2, 2022

PARTISANS: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s, by Nicole Hemmer


American political history is not always terribly complicated, but even its simplest lessons can be little match for our collective amnesia. How surprised should we be, really, to learn that “America First,” one of Donald Trump’s favored campaign slogans, was used by a pair of also-ran presidential candidates in 1992 — the hard-core right-wing commentator Pat Buchanan and the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke?

“How, exactly, did we get here?” is an urgent question. But if the inquiry is one of the defining nonfiction genres of the last half-decade, some of its more common iterations now risk feeling stale. There are the narrowly reported rise-of-Trump tales, the sprawling warping-of-conservatism narratives, and the academic tracts on consequential demographic and economic transformations.

Many have been valuable. Still, it now takes an especially creative exploration to break new interpretive ground. By reconsidering a rogues’ gallery of figures whose media-fueled rise through the 1990s coincided with the explosive debut of a combative, nativist and populist right — and by unpacking how that movement split off from Reaganism — Nicole Hemmer accomplishes just that.

Hemmer, a Vanderbilt University historian and frequent commentator on conservatism and conservative media, is well matched to the task she set for herself. She is publishing just as the right-wing media convulses, but also as the masters of the broader press infrastructure reckon only uncomfortably with their part in building today’s political landscape, when they consider it at all. In “Partisans,” she focuses on how the Rush Limbaughs of the world interacted with the Newt Gingriches to steer the contemporary right toward where she found it in 2016.

“The party’s transformation, sudden though it seemed, had been underway for a quarter century,” she writes. “In the turn toward nativism and a more overt racism, in the criticisms of conservative elites, in the wariness about free trade and democracy, in the sharp-elbowed, fact-lite punditry.”

More Coverage of Fox News‘American Nationalist’: Tucker Carlson stoked white fear to conquer cable news. In the process, the TV host transformed Fox News and became former President Donald J. Trump’s heir.

Empire of Influence: ​​A Times investigation looked at how the Murdochs, the family behind a global media empire that includes Fox News, have destabilized democracy on three continents.

Defamation Case: ​​Some of the biggest names at Fox News are being questioned in the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the network. The suit could be one of the most consequential First Amendment cases in a generation.

How Russia Uses Fox News: The network has appeared in Russian media as a way to bolster the Kremlin’s narrative about the Ukraine war.

This is partially accomplished through carefully chosen anecdotes. Take Hemmer’s reconstruction of the time George H.W. Bush, recognizing at Roger Ailes’s urging that he needed to woo Limbaugh, invited the radio polemicist to the White House and carried his bag to the Lincoln Bedroom. The Buchanan moments, especially, leap off the page. (The “America First” slogan originated not with him or with Duke but with 1930s-era Nazi sympathizers.) After Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign, the G.O.P. platform for the first time endorsed building “structures” on the border with Mexico. You see where this is going.

Still, Hemmer does not pretend to find novelty in the simple conclusion that Trumpism is the product of a decades-long right-wing drift. She is more specific. She illuminates the consequences of mainstreaming provocative conservative opinions as the radio and television landscapes modernized.

Her history argues persuasively that the swift ends of the Cold War and Republicans’ hold on the White House dramatically changed the context and incentives for right-wing strategizing — opposition to Soviet communism was no longer a useful organizing principle, and Bill Clinton was a tempting target. She demonstrates too how easily forgotten figures — like the author Dinesh D’Souza and the militia-friendly Representative Helen Chenoweth — hastened and radicalized the pessimistic ideological revolution, all while “too many people were too attached to the idea of the party of Reagan to notice.”

Buchanan may be an afterthought for today’s right, but Hemmer considers him central to its development. He is the man who simultaneously exposed the political shakiness of the post-Reagan mainstream conservative coalition and the possibility of shaping modern policy discussions around white racial anxieties. Though Reagan, a former actor and radio host, was a media figure himself, Buchanan’s rise through the pundit class was unique. After years in the columnist, radio and White House press room trenches, he prepared for the electoral stage with fame-solidifying roles at CNN and PBS just as the networks were eager to elevate combative conservative voices.

Hemmer argues that the conspiracist Buchanan, seeing room for a Bush alternative, used his knowledge of the national media’s motivations to catch outsize attention. He set in motion a narrative about his emergence as a force in national politics when he got in front of cameras before Bush on New Hampshire primary night in 1992, for example, and avoided being called “extreme” for so long because reporters were so used to him.

Limbaugh is only barely secondary, announcing himself as a player in electoral politics by backing Buchanan in 1992 and then developing into a cultural phenomenon with his zeal for racist and sexist provocation just as cable news programming found its footing and modern talk radio blossomed — granting him significant wealth and incentive to push the envelope as far as it would go.

By sending Limbaugh a letter calling him the leading voice of conservatism after Clinton was elected, Reagan codified what was already clear, in Hemmer’s telling: He “legitimated a new source of power in the conservative movement, one the Republican Party would have to compete with, or try to co-opt, in the coming years.” And as networks pushed more inflammatory programming, a new generation of partisan pundits like Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter stepped in, gaining celebrity along the way.

“Partisans” is told mostly chronologically; it can at times feel dauntingly expansive. It covers the familiar rise of Gingrich and Washington Republicans’ belligerent political style. But it also demonstrates how Gingrich, recognizing the populist power of Ross Perot, carefully sought to woo his voters and change the G.O.P.’s appeal, and how Gingrich and Limbaugh taught elected officials the power of the new grass roots inflamed by conservative media.

The narrative then swerves to the emergence of militias and white nationalists obsessed with gun rights and opposed to civil- and gay-rights movements, before addressing how conspiratorial conservatives pushed the establishment G.O.P. into an investigate-first stance with Clinton in office. By late in his term, Hemmer writes, Republicans could no longer deny that their base had forced them to decouple “from public opinion at the national level” and to become “more reliant on partisan punditry and political entertainment.”

The second Bush era is treated as less formative, though it saw partisans reorient their scorn toward liberals more broadly with the Clintons gone. By the time we reach Barack Obama’s first term in 2009, readers are unsurprised to learn that a Gallup poll in May that year found Limbaugh to be the G.O.P.’s voice, according to voters. (Hemmer covers the Tea Party’s rise, too, in a treatment that feels swift but not insufficient; her focus is clearly on the preceding decades.)

Hemmer deftly avoids making it all about Trump. She doesn’t need to. The foreshadowing is painfully obvious, as when Bob Dole, in order to swing the 1996 election, baselessly charged that Democrats were flooding the country with criminal immigrants, or when, 16 years later, Steve Bannon pushed the xenophobic TV host Lou Dobbs toward a run for president on an outsider’s platform. When Trump does arrive, the stage has already been set by a 1992 Buchanan visit to the border, where he served up incendiary rhetoric about criminals and immigrants, as an actual violent fringe group literally waited in the wings.

The arrival of Hemmer’s vigorous book suggests that serious scrutiny of the 1990s, and its responsibility for today’s politics, has finally arrived. We may soon know if it’s come too late.

Gabriel Debenedetti’s book, “The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama,” will be published this month. He is the national correspondent for New York magazine.

PARTISANS: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s | By Nicole Hemmer | 368 pp. | Basic Books | $30
Exclusive: Oath Keepers lawyer: 'I hope they get the real perpetrators — Flynn, Byrne, Powell'

Raw Story - Yesterday 
By Jordan Green, Staff Reporter

Screengrab© provided by RawStory

LONG READ

The arrest of Kellye SoRelle, the Texas attorney associated with the Oath Keepers on Thursday, on conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and other "offenses" potentially marks a new stage of the prosecution of the perpetrators of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

SoRelle describes herself as the “general counsel” for the Oath Keepers. The far-right militia's founder Stewart Rhodes and eight other members face charges of seditious conspiracy.

But, SoRelle says she served as interim leader of the Oath Keepers for two weeks following Rhodes’ arrest in January 2022.


To date, the conspiracy charges against Oath Keepers members — including seditious conspiracy against Rhodes and other leaders, and lesser conspiracy charges against a larger group of members — allege a pattern of coordination limited within the organization. But the recent arrest of SoRelle, someone with extensive ties to an array of election deniers broadly involved in the effort to overturn the election and on the ground at the Capitol on Jan. 6, potentially opens the door to conspiracy charges against a wider network of operatives.

Since her first appearance in federal court in Austin on Thursday, SoRelle has been tweeting about her case.

“So, the clear question is… [if] I am the patsy,” she tweeted. “That means the entire election challenge front was all a set up for the conservatives, because they are all protected. Good luck y’all. They won’t stop with me.”

In a direct message to Raw Story on Twitter, SoRelle pointed the finger at three high-profile Trump allies: retired Lt. General Flynn, attorney Sidney Powell and retired Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne. Powell filed multiple lawsuits seeking to overturn the election, while Flynn rallied Trump supporters at protests and media appearances, and Byrne covered travel and lodging costs for a wide array of volunteer researchers and analysts seeking to reverse the election.

“Only thing I have to say, I hope they get the real perpetrators — Flynn, Byrne, Powell etc., those behind the Big Lie that set up the conservatives,” SoRelle told Raw Story.



Exclusive: Oath Keepers lawyer: 'I hope they get the real perpetrators — Flynn, Byrne, Powell'© Raw Story

Byrne responded by text with one word: “Silly.” Joe Flynn, the brother of Michael Flynn, was more blunt: “F*** off.” Powell could not be reached for comment.

SoRelle previously testified by video before the House Select Committee to Investigate the Attack on the US Capitol. During a brief clip of SoRelle’s testimony that was presented to the public in July, SoRelle implicated political strategist and longtime Trump ally Roger Stone, InfoWars host Alex Jones and “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander.

When an investigator asked her to confirm that Stone, Jones and Alexander were “the leader of these rallies,” SoRelle responded, “Those are the ones that became like the center point for everything.”

A lawyer for Stone responded shortly after the hearing that his client “engaged in only legally protected, First Amendment activities.”

Court documents indicate that SoRelle was actively involved in the Oath Keepers’ tactical planning while also volunteering for legal efforts to overturn the election. Meanwhile, previous reporting shows, SoRelle cultivated ties with other election denier groups, including Latinos for Trump and Veterans for Trump, that were on the ground at or near the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The indictment unveiled against SoRelle on Thursday alleges that she knowingly combined, conspired, confederated and agreed with other persons to corruptly obstruct, influence and impede Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote. To date, the government has not revealed any other co-conspirators in its conspiracy case against SoRelle.

In a transcript of a Nov. 9, 2020 GoToMeeting conference call that was filed in court earlier this year, SoRelle updated members of the Oath Keepers on her involvement in legal efforts to challenge the election. SoRelle has said elsewhere that she volunteered with Lawyers for Trump, and was sent to Detroit to investigate election irregularities.

“And then you have the Giuliani pals, I guess, previewing the Campaign pod that’s trying to solve the mystery of the ballots,” SoRelle told Oath Keepers members during the conference call, referencing Rudy Giuliani, then-President Trump’s personal lawyer. “So, I’ve been in communication. I obviously work for the [Republican National Committee] version of it, and then I’m in — I like the Q crowd, they’re kind of fun — and then I’ve been meeting with the campaign crowd.”


On Dec. 18, 2020, an open letter from Rhodes and SoRelle was published, calling on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.

Calling on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and call the National Guard into service, Rhodes and SoRelle warned that if the president failed to act and left office prior to Joe Biden’s inauguration, it would force “We the People to fight a desperate revolution/civil war against an illegitimate usurper and his Chicom puppet regime.”

Without presenting evidence, the document claimed that “through well-orchestrated mass vote fraud, the Communist Chinese and their domestic enemy allies are about to install their illegitimate puppet, Joe Biden.” As federal and state courts dismissed election challenges and state officials refused capitulate to Trump’s demand to reverse the results, Rhodes and SoRelle claimed that “complicit traitors have been put into place in every branch of government (legislative, executive, judicial) at every level (local, state, federal).”

“Know this,” Rhodes and SoRelle concluded in their overture to Trump. “Millions of American military and law enforcement veterans, and many millions of more loyal patriotic American gun owners stand ready to answer your call to arms, and to obey your orders to get this done.”

Rhodes and SoRelle’s call paralleled an effort by retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, lawyer Sidney Powell and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, who paid an unexpected visit to Trump in the Oval Office to ask him to deploy the National Guard to seize voting machinery, which also took place on Dec. 18.

As Trump supporters converged in Washington, DC in the days leading up to Congress’ scheduled session to certify the electoral vote, SoRelle and Rhodes appeared to network with a wide array of other figures who were vociferously promoting the view that the election was stolen.

Most famously, perhaps, SoRelle was present during a Jan. 5 meeting between Rhodes and Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio in a DC hotel parking garage shortly after Tarrio was released by a DC court and ordered to leave the city, with charges pending for burning a BLM flag stolen from a Black church and illegal ammunition. Bianca Gracia, president of Latinos for Trump, and Joshua Macias, cofounder of Veterans for Trump, were also present during the brief meeting.

Video posted by Jonathon Mosely, an attorney who previously represented Oath Keepers defendant Kelly Meggs, shows Gracia and Macias approach Tarrio first, followed by SoRelle and Rhodes. After Gracia and Macias embraced Tarrio, Gracia introduced Tarrio to SoRelle.

“I want you to meet this attorney, Kellye,” Gracia said. “She’s from Texas.” Then, Tarrio and Rhodes shook hands, and exchanged pleasantries.

At the time, Macias was out on bond after being charged with weapons offenses outside the Philadelphia Convention Center, where votes were being tabulated on Nov. 5, 2020. Antonio LaMotta, who was also charged alongside Macias for weapons offenses in Philadelphia following the election, was arrested last month on charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

SoRelle, Macias, Gracia and Rhodes were together again that day for a roundtable discussion livestreamed on Facebook from a hotel room by Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase.

“That same community are the most well-trained, crucible-trained combat veterans that this world has ever seen,” Macias said during the livestream. “And they are the brother, the sister, the uncle… those that would open up and help you buy your shoes, okay. These are veterans out there that are well trained that can… be brought in as a special group and be utilized in any shape or form at [Trump’s] disposal. And we have a million in Vets for Trump just right now, standing at the ready, let alone those within one degree of separation.

“So, here we sit at a precipice of change where we have a community that’s ready to step in, do what is needed,” Macias continued. “The president has all the power and the authority to do so, and he has the backing of We The People….”

Rhodes concurred, echoing a point made in the Dec. 18 open letter that he and SoRelle addressed to Trump.

“In fact, us veterans, until age 65, under federal statute, still are subject to being called up,” Rhodes said. “That goes for seventeen to forty-five if you’re not a veteran…. He can call us up right now and put us to work.”

SoRelle was a featured speaker, alongside Gracia and Macias, at a “Freedom Rally” co-hosted by Latinos for Trump and Virginia Freedom Keepers near the Russell Office Building on Jan. 6.

Later, SoRelle and Rhodes walked over to the east side of the Capitol, where dozens of Oath Keepers members breached the building in stack formations. In an interview last September with David Sumrall, an election denier who campaigns to support Jan. 6 defendants, SoRelle insisted she was not aware of any prior planning to breach the Capitol.

“Well, Stewart had guys that were protecting the different speakers at different events, namely Ali Alexander, who was supposed to have one literally on the Capitol grounds,” SoRelle told Sumrall. “Then, everybody’s like, ‘Well, we don’t know where everybody’s at. This is chaos. Like, what the heck?’ So, that’s why we ended up at the Capitol. We went down there just to see if he could locate his people, you know. And then next thing you take it to crazy la-la land, as in everybody’s the mastermind, and whatever.”

SoRelle has previously cast suspicion on Byrne, Flynn’s ally. In a rambling affidavit shared on Twitter last November, SoRelle claimed that a former Trump administration Department employee named Jason Funes showed her a video of a man that claimed he flew to the Capitol with Byrne and Jason Sullivan, the provocateur who filmed Ashli Babbit’s shooting. SoRelle wrote that the man, a former Proud Boy named Thad Cisneros, “was recorded stating that he flew to Washington, DC with Patrick Byrne and the Sullivan brothers, and that Patrick Byrne paid for the provocateurs to be at the Capitol.”

Funes and Cisneros both told Raw Story in June that SoRelle’s account of Cisneros’ statement on the video was inaccurate.

Byrne also disputed SoRelle’s account, but volunteered that it was possible that he flew Gracia and Tarrio from Texas to Washington, DC in December 2020.

Byrne shared a Signal thread for “TAP leadership” with Raw Story in June. The thread included personnel associated with The America Project, an election denier group in Florida that he founded with the Flynn brothers.

“Kellye is crazy and likes to make s*** up,” Joe Flynn wrote.

Gracia distanced herself from Cisneros, saying he was rumored to be an “informant.”

“At this point, everyone is either an informant or domestic terrorist,” she said.

CRYPTOZOOLOGY CRYPTID
Bigfoot sighting deemed 'credible incident' at South Carolina park

Luke Gentile - Yesterday 
At least three people reported seeing a creature they believed could be Bigfoot last month in what officials are calling a "credible incident."

Bigfoot sighting deemed 'credible incident' at South Carolina park© Provided by Washington Examiner

The three visited South Carolina's Hunting Island State Park on Aug. 3, according to a report.

A creature they thought was around 5 to 6 feet tall walked upright and fled into nearby woods, they said.

The creature fled so quickly that they were unable to capture it on camera, they added.

After the incident, the group filed a report with park staff and the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.

The creature's legs were "approximately 3 feet long, human-like jointed knee, with dark brown, splotchy black hair that was approximately 2 inches long," the report reads.

“We were all in a state of amazement as to what occurred as it happened so quickly. We have enjoyed taking many vacations at the park throughout the years since we were children in the [1950s] to the present," it continues. "While the area is abundant in wildlife, we have never witnessed anything like this in the past."

An investigation into the incident will be initiated, the park superintendent said.
White nationalist mayoral candidate getting Hamilton voters list is frightening, say anti-hate groups

Saira Peesker - 

Municipal election candidates are entitled to get access to the names and addresses of voters as defined under Ontario law, raising some concerns when it comes to a self-described white nationalist who's running for Hamilton mayor this fall.


Paul Fromm, who runs several far-right organizations, is among Hamilton's nine mayoral candidates for the Ontario municipal elections this October.
© Lorenda Reddekopp/CBC News

Paul Fromm, who has run many times for political office at different levels, is among nine mayoral candidates looking to replace Fred Eisenberger, who chose not to seek re-election in the Oct. 24 municipal vote.

The City of Hamilton confirmed to CBC that municipal candidates were given access to the list of voters as of Sept. 1.

Fromm has advocated for whites-only immigration and marched with Nazis.

His latest attempt to become Hamilton mayor — he also ran in 2018 — has drawn concern from anti-hate activist Bernie Farber and others.

Farber, chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, reacted to Fromm getting voters' names and addresses by saying, "What can be done with that is a little frightening."

But in an email to CBC Hamilton, Fromm said any concerns about him having voter information are unfounded, adding that "the implications are both scaremongering and defamatory."

"I have run in elections, municipal, federal and provincial, in both Ontario and Alberta [once], and have had access to voters lists. I have never used them other than for legitimate election purposes.

"I hope this election will be about freedom and the way many politicians have abused and restricted ours during COVID."

Farber, however, said releasing people's home addresses, in an era when information can be shared easily online, puts individuals who work in the public domain or who say or do things that "racists and bigots don't like" at risk.

"If a bad guy wanted to find out where the good guys lived, all they have to do is run for office," Farber told CBC Hamilton in late August, calling Fromm "the great-grandfather of the neo-Nazi movement in this country."

Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said while Farber and his organization aren't alleging that Fromm has or will do anything illegal with the data, the bottom line is they don't trust him.

"You can't trust a word a Nazi says and he's been an open one for decades," Balgord said.

Farber, former chief executive officer of the Canadian Jewish Congress, has been the target of numerous threats and a 1994 neo-Nazi plot against his life. (Around that time, Farber says, the Heritage Front was planning to come to his workplace — he believes it's because they didn't know where he lived.)

Anti-racism centre also expresses concern

In a statement to CBC, local organization Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Centre (HARRC) said it shared Farber's concerns.

"As an organization that offers support services to individuals who encounter racism and hate in Hamilton, allowing Paul Fromm ... access to the voters list is a real concern in Hamilton," said HARRC executive director Lyndon George.

George said Fromm's history of not recognizing how hurtful his views are to many members of the community means it is difficult to trust him with something that can make residents feel vulnerable, such as having their personal information.

"Fromm has made hate his life work… From anti-Semitic to anti-immigrant statements, he has a long and well-known list of hate associated with his name. Allowing him access to a voters list that includes addresses and names of residents is something we clearly do not support … There is a level of concern because he doesn't believe everyone should be treated equally … His words have often been the things that individuals turn to to validate their sense of hate. This is real life, there are real consequences."

Fromm's history with far-right organizations


Fromm, who moved to Hamilton from Mississauga in 2018, has a long history with white supremacist groups and causes. He runs several far-right organizations, including:
The Canadian Association for Free Expression, which has campaigned in support of Holocaust deniers.
Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform, which opposes foreign aid.
The Canada First Immigration Reform Committee, which opposes immigration, particularly by people who are not of European descent.

Fromm was dismissed from his teaching job at the Peel Region School Board in 1993 because of his political activities.

In revoking his teaching licence in 2007, the Ontario College of Teachers cited Fromm's attendance at a birthday celebration for Adolf Hitler in 1991 and him sharing a stage with Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in 1994 as among the reasons.

Hamilton could have a better system, Farber says

Farber said he's removed himself from the voters list to protect his family from potential threats from any candidate or party.

He said the Canadian Anti-Hate Network has made its concerns clear at the federal level. The organization has also taken issue with candidates and parties at various levels, such as the People's Party of Canada, and its access to voter information.

Farber also suggested that Fromm's repeated candidacy in Hamilton could have motivated the city to come up with an alternate system to releasing voter information.

"Hamilton could lead and could come up with a resourceful idea to keep the information personal," he said, shortly before the list was made available to candidates.

The City of Hamilton confirmed that, under Ontario's Municipal Elections Act, it must provide voter information to anyone certified as a candidate.

Candidates must submit an oath promising to use the package for election purposes only and not post it online or sell it, explained Aine Leadbetter, manager of elections, print and mail.

Enforcement of the act is done through the courts.

When asked why Fromm should have access to the names and addresses of voters in Hamilton, given his far-right ties and activities, city communications officer Michelle Shantz said "all certified candidates are entitled, under the Municipal Elections Act (MEA), to request and receive a copy of the voters list."

The issue of giving voter lists to candidates with controversial pasts was raised in recent years in Calgary when concerns surfaced over mayoral candidate Kevin J. Johnston, who was facing assault and hate-crime charges in Ontario and B.C.

CBC News reported in 2021 that as a result of allegations surrounding Johnston, the City of Calgary was working with its legal team regarding legislation that requires a list of voters be provided to mayoral candidates.

Elections Calgary eventually decided to run the October 2021 civic election without a voter list, according to the Calgary Herald. At the time, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network said while Calgary wouldn't be giving the municipal candidates the names and addresses of voters, "the issue with elector lists is a Canada-wide problem."

George, of HARRC, said Calgary made a "bold decision" on the issue and urged Hamilton policymakers to do the same.

"Standing up to hate takes leadership at all levels of government. The question is will our current and future elected municipal leaders take steps to prevent known neo-Nazis like Paul Fromm from accessing the voters list?" he asked.

Political scientist Peter Graefe told CBC Hamilton the list can be beneficial to candidates who are able to tap into voter information from past elections and be strategic in their campaign planning.

"With both name and address, campaigns can be more confident in lining up data collected in past campaigns (including campaigns at other levels of government) with the voters list in the current campaign," he said.

Fromm is running against Bob Bratina, Andrea Horwath, Keanin Loomis, Ejaz Butt, Jim Davis, Solomon Ikhuiwu, Michael Pattison and Hermiz Ishaya.

While the Canadian Anti-Hate Network didn't take specific issue with any other candidate in Hamilton, it told CBC it doesn't think "anybody should be given voters lists, given the privacy and safety issues."

Howard Eisenberg, president of the Hamilton Jewish Federation, raised concerns of his own over who's able to get voters lists.

"It is troubling that personal information from the voter registry could find its way into the hands of self-declared white nationalists," Eisenberg wrote in a statement. "This is something that would be concerning not just to the Jewish community but to other minorities as well.

"Hamiltonians should take a stand against hate at the ballot box and send a clear and unequivocal message that there is no place for hate at City Hall."

Hamilton-based Rabbi David Mivasair sees things differently. Mivasair is a political activist with Independent Jewish Voices, which has called out Israel's treatment of Palestinians and supported the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

He said although it's unpleasant to think about Fromm getting everyone's address, it doesn't really change much. Mivasair said a lot of personal information can easily be found online, and candidates often buy voter information that has such details included.

"I'm not particularly concerned that a racist gets access to publicly available information," he said. "I assume that if anyone wants to find me or any other community activists, they can. It's not hard to find virtually anyone. Any journalist, any political activist, any rabbi.

"I'm not saying Paul Fromm is an OK person or I am not worrying about him. But … that information [from the voters list] doesn't indicate a person's ethnic background or political orientation. He's not going to be able to go through that information to find out who the leftists are or who the racialized people are.

"If he wants to get Rabbi Mivasair doxxed, he can [already] do that."





'Salad bar extremism': Edmonton researchers release second report on violent extremist movements

Jonny Wakefield - 
Edmonton Journal

John McCoy, executive director of the Edmonton-based Organization for the Prevention of Violence, which released a second report on extremist movements in Canada with a focus on Alberta.

Those most at risk of committing hate-based violence are less likely to be members of a formal “group” than they were three years ago, an Edmonton-based research team has found.

On Wednesday, the Organization for the Prevention of Violence released its second report on extremist movements — a follow-up to a 2019 report on hate and extremist groups in Canada, with a focus on Alberta.

Through interviews with around 200 members of the RCMP, city police agencies and community organizations across the province, the researchers found that many of the groups which made headlines in years past are now largely defunct — and that a new, more individualistic mode of radicalization has taken hold.

“The FBI director in the States has used the analogy of ‘salad bar’ extremism,” said OPV executive director John McCoy. “I think that’s quite an apt description. You take a little bit of this, a little bit of that.”

The OPV, which conducts research and runs a program to help people exit extremist groups , launched in 2016 and focuses on violent extremism in the Edmonton area. The agency is funded by the federal government and REACH Edmonton, a community safety group, and operates independently of law enforcement, though it includes several current and former police officers on its board .

The authors of the latest report — Michele St-Amant, David Jones and Michael King and McCoy — set out to update the 2019 study, which catalogued the number and types of extremist movements active in Alberta. They included freemen-on-the-land and sovereign citizen movements to militias to Neo Nazi and white supremacist groups to Al-Qaeda spin-offs like ISIS.

“When we were doing the research for the 2019 report, a lot of the focus was on a group-based phenomena,” McCoy said. “There was still a lot of talk about militia groups like the Three Percenters, we had a longstanding legacy of Neo Nazi groups in the province … there was still a focus in law enforcement and the national security sector on Daesh or ISIS and the legacy of recruitment of foreign fighters, with a decent contingent coming from Alberta.”

“All of that’s changed in three years.”

In particular, groups including Combat-18, Blood and Honour, the Three Percenters, Soldiers of Odin and the Proud Boys are all mostly “defunct” according to law enforcement officials interviewed for the study. The Three Percenters and Proud Boys were both added to Canada’s list of terrorist entities in 2021, though law enforcement officers interviewed by the researchers said the groups were largely in decline before the listing occurred.

The collapse of ISIS’s “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria has also led to a decline in religiously motivated violent extremism.

Instead, those who pose the biggest threat now are more likely to be defined by “idiosyncratic” grievances picked up in — and egged on by — fringe online communities, McCoy said. He pointed to the Nova Scotia mass shooter, who had “long-standing anti-authority grievances,” as well as the brothers in Saanich, B.C., who engaged in a shootout with police at a local bank, and were “down the rabbit hole of anti-government conspiracy but weren’t necessarily part of an identifiable group.”

He said individuals who engage with violent extremist content typically have a history of trauma or early childhood adversity, addictions issues and “acute” social isolation worsened by the pandemic.

“Those individuals did not do well the past few years. The social isolation only worsened, the mental health worsened, and the trauma was always there.”

He said part of the shift to “salad bar” extremism has been driven by the relative ease with which formal groups have been infiltrated by law enforcement.

Now, “it’s not easy to monitor them through their affiliations,” McCoy said. “It becomes very difficult to say this person is a legitimate threat, and this (other) person needs a social care response; this person needs law enforcement intervention and arrest, and this individual needs counselling.”

The full report is available at preventviolence.ca


jwakefield@postmedia.com

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Jamil Jivani sues Bell Media, alleging he was fired for not fitting 'Black stereotype'

Adrian Humphreys - Friday

A former talk show host is suing Bell Media Inc. claiming he was fired as the media conglomerate’s only full-time Black talk radio host because his views didn’t match a stereotype the company expected from a Black man.


Conservative commentator Jamil Jivani in 2020.© Provided by National Post

Jamil Jivani was dropped from the airwaves of Bell’s iHeartRadio network and fired in January. He claims it became clear he was hired as tokenism and fired as wokeism.

“There was an expectation that because he’s Black he should have been saying and doing certain things — because in Bell’s mind he was checking this token box, and when they realized they weren’t getting the kind of Black man they wanted, that’s when he was out the door,” said Jivani’s lawyer, Kathryn Marshall, a partner at Levitt Sheikh.

“They really wanted him to espouse a certain liberal worldview they thought he should be espousing as a member of the Black community.”

Jivani filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming breach of contract and wrongful dismissal.

The company denies the allegations.

“Bell Media does not comment on matters before the court. However, we can confirm that we will be defending ourselves against these false claims,” a Bell Media spokesperson told National Post.

Jivani, 34, of Oshawa, Ont., is a lawyer and author known for conservative views. He is a regular contributing columnist for Postmedia, including National Post.

His daily show on Newstalk 1010 in Toronto and other stations in the Bell radio network launched at the start of Black History Month in 2021, amid racial protest over the police killing of George Floyd. His show highlighted his experience and connections in the Black community.

“As news stories around Black Lives Matter and other racial issues faded from the news, Bell no longer had the same use for a Black employee. Tensions increased from Bell management when the Plaintiff would share his perspectives, views and beliefs,” he alleges in his statement of claim.

“It became clear that Bell had a rigid but unspoken vision for how Black people should fit into the company. Bell wanted the Plaintiff to be a token beholden to the company’s identity politics,” he alleges.

Jivani first appeared on Bell radio shows as a periodic guest before he hosted a show focusing on Black Lives Matter, on a trial basis in 2020, and as a fill-in host that same summer, his statement of claim says.

The next year he became full-time staff with a daily 7 to 10 p.m. show on Newstalk 1010 and several stations in Bell’s network.

“His first guests included the first Black Attorney General, Kaycee Madu, and the first Black championship CFL coach, Michael Pinball Clemons,” his statement of claim says.

“The plaintiff was excited to join one of Canada’s largest media companies and to share his views and perspectives, not just as a member of the Black community, but as a free-thinker and activist. Bell was excited to have the plaintiff on its programming, as he was a member of a racialized community and it was beneficial to them for both optics and content.

“Little did the Plaintiff know, Bell expected the Plaintiff to espouse only certain kinds of views — ones that fit a stereotype that Bell thought a member of the Black community should conform to,” he claims.

Jivani’s lawsuit alleges he was pressured by management to record a radio segment denouncing Canada as a racist country in the lead up to Canada Day. He declined.

“Bell was disappointed by his refusal to espouse a specific set of social and political views, and the company was disappointed that he did not fit the mold of a Black stereotype that they had expected him to,” his claim says.

He said his show included diverse voices including academics, authors, comedians, journalists, and athletes, including Toronto Raptors basketball star Fred VanVleet. Several guests were Black conservative commentators.

In late 2021, a manager told him there had been “complaints and concerns” about his show’s “divisive and contrarian topics,” his claim says. A note from a manager read: “I want to be sure we are reflecting the company’s strong commitment to Diversity and Inclusion, and that we are building passion in our audience and growing our ratings.”

A meeting was scheduled for the new year. When the meeting arrived, however, the agenda seemed to have shrunk.

He was told he was terminated as part of organizational changes; the manager then hung up, leaving him on the call with a human resources consultant, he claims.

Marshall called it “outrageous” that white media executives used diversity as a wedge to fire their only Black radio host.

Jivani’s claim seeks compensation of $42,500, the amount he was expecting to be paid over six months, additional damages of $500,000, and a declaration Bell Media breached its duty of good faith and honesty.

Bell Media calls itself “Canada’s leading content creation company” and “Canada’s largest radio broadcaster.” The company owns CTV and more than two dozen speciality TV channels.

The company’s personnel decisions have made headlines recently over its sudden and secret firing of Lisa LaFlamme, the CTV news anchor, which was greeted with anger and dismay.

LaFlamme’s messy termination prompted a wave of complaints from inside and outside the company and sparked international condemnation of perceived sexism and ageism. Her decision to allow her hair to grow out grey during the pandemic prior to her firing seized public attention.

In June, Danielle Graham, the former host of CTV’s flagship entertainment show, eTalk, sued Bell Media .

Graham claimed she was fired in retaliation for challenging gender discrimination against women at the company where she was skipped over for promotion, paid less, given fewer perks but more requests for free work than male colleagues.

Bell to conduct independent review of CTV newsroom after Lisa LaFlamme ousted
LEGAL AID STRIKE
Alberta defence lawyers walk out of Edmonton, Calgary courts as part of latest job action

Adam Toy - Friday- 
 Global News

Defence lawyers who represent Albertans that wouldn’t normally be able to pay for their services staged a walkout in front of courthouses in Calgary and Edmonton on Friday morning.



Criminal defence lawyers protest outside Calgary Law Courts on Sept. 2, 2022.


The defence attorneys are also refusing to take new cases for serious criminal charges, like sex crimes, firearms-related offences and homicides.

The job action is the latest in a series of escalations between criminal defence lawyers and the Alberta government.

Read more:

And following a controversial newspaper editorial by Legal Aid Alberta CEO John Panusa that was published Thursday, the quartet of criminal lawyers associations with hundreds of members are calling for him to resign.

In the op-ed, Panusa appeared to try to calm concerns and explained what services Legal Aid Alberta provides via their 300 staff lawyers and 1,200 private practice-contracted lawyers.

He said the province provides all of its funding and claimed LAA had been “pushed into the news” by the recent job action of those contracted lawyers.


“To date, LAA has received sufficient funds to support all of our services and provide legal counsel for everyone who qualifies,” Panusa wrote, saying LAA has been able to “weather” the job action.

On its website, LAA outlined tactics it is using to cover for the withdrawn services from the contracted lawyers, including virtual court appearances by their staff lawyers, increased road trips to rural courts, and taking on extra files.

It wasn't what lawyers wanted to hear.

“I thought maybe he would explain why. Legal Aid Alberta continues to suggest everything is fine because when our membership halts, the system grinds to a halt,” Danielle Boisvert, president of the Criminal Trial Lawyers Association, said in Edmonton on Friday.

“Mr. Panusa, if you aren’t going to fight for the most vulnerable Albertans, then what Albertans deserve is your resignation."

Read more:


In a written statement, Solicitor General and Justice Minister Tyler Shandro said legal aid and officials in his ministry have begun the work, “and if there is evidence to support increasing the rate paid to defence lawyers, we will submit that request to the Treasury Board.”

Shandro repeated previous statements on the matter, saying any increases to defence lawyers’ pay would come as a part of the fall budget process.

Video: Alberta criminal defence lawyers stage walkout in legal aid battle

Kelsey Sitar, vice president of the Criminal Defence Lawyers Association in Calgary, said the relatively low pay for her and her colleagues has been a problem more than a decade in the making, but was made worse in the past three years.

She said the 2018 funding agreement between the province, Legal Aid Alberta and the Law Society of Alberta was not honoured when the UCP came to power.

“We are now below the numbers that we were receiving before any of those commitments were made by the NDP,” Sitar told reporters in Calgary.

Video: How offenders could be impacted by job action over legal aid system

“What this current system does is it doesn't even encourage — it forces lawyers to try and run a volume practice so that they can turn enough files through their office to try and pay the bills.

“Of course, that's a huge disservice to Albertans who deserve a lawyer who has the time to properly prepare and conduct their case appropriately.”

Sitar warned the low compensation levels are not attracting the next generation of lawyers to take up legal aid cases, noting rates are “substantially lower" than what anyone would expect to find in the private market.

“Who is going to be here for Albertans who end up before the courts 10 years from now? We don't know who that is right now, unless the government does what they need to do, what they committed to do.”

Read more:
Alberta criminal defence lawyers ‘up the ante’ in job action

Sitar said Alberta legal aid lawyers are paid about half of what their colleagues in other provinces are paid, noting the entire system is underfunded.

“It makes sense that nobody could pay their overhead in their mortgage when that's all you're making.”

John Hooker, a Calgary criminal lawyer who has practiced for 47 years, was part of a mid-1970s pilot program for legal aid in the province. He said the treatment of legal aid in subsequent governments has changed — especially recently.

“This government treats this as almost like a thorn in their side,” Hooker told reporters Friday.

“They've funded the police on several different occasions in the last two years. They've funded the prosecution on several occasions in the last few years. And legal aid has remained the same and the work has doubled.”

Other public sector unions came out in solidarity in Calgary on Friday.

Cameron Westhead, second vice president of the United Nurses of Alberta, said Shandro’s previous antagonistic approach to doctors and nurses is on display with defence attorneys.

“We see the UCP engage in this brinksmanship where they'll take things right to the edge and then they'll back off. And so this is a pattern that we've seen,” Westhead said.

“(The province is) picking fights with some of the most important people in our justice system, and we can't allow them to get away with that.”

Video: Alberta criminal defence lawyer groups announce further job action over legal aid system

For Boisvert and her fellow defence lawyers, the issue at hand is fair compensation to allow access to justice.

“Albertans deserve access to a lawyer when they cannot afford one. Albertans deserve a zealous defence provided by a strong and capable defence lawyer,” Boisvert said in front of the Edmonton Law Courts

“Most importantly, Albertans deserve a legal aid CEO that is going to fight for them.”

— with files from Sarah Ryan and Adam MacVicar, Global News
‘One hell of a piggybank’: Couple finds cache of 400-year-old coins under kitchen

Michelle Butterfield - Yesterday 

A lucky couple in the U.K. made an astonishing discovery hiding under the floorboards of their kitchen while undergoing a house renovation, and they could become much richer because of it.



The find of over 260 coins is one of the largest on archaeological
 record from Britain, and certainly for the 18th century period.
© Courtesy / Spink & Son

According to Spink & Son auction house, the unnamed couple found a cup of rare gold coins buried under their North Yorkshire kitchen, and they're aiming to sell them for almost CA$380,000.

The cup, described to CNN as being no larger than a can of pop, contained more than 260 coins dating from 1610 to 1727.

Read more:
Treasure hunter finds legendary cash hidden under old home’s floorboards

Gregory Edmund, an auctioneer with Spink & Son, said the lot of coins has an estimated value of £150,000(GBP) in spending power.

"It is a wonderful and truly unexpected discovery from so unassuming a find location," Edmund said in a press release.

"This find of over 260 coins is also one of the largest on archaeological record from Britain, and certainly for the 18th century period," he added.

According to The Times, the couple made the discovery in July 2019. They first thought they had hit an electric cable, but once they pried away more floorboards and concrete, they discovered the cup.

The coins date from 1610 to 1727 and covered the reigns of James I and Charles I through to George I.

Local British publications say the coins "almost certainly" belonged to the Fernley-Maisters, an influential mercantile family who traded iron ore, coal and timber before becoming lawmakers in the early 1700s.

Read more:
Hidden Rocky Mountain treasure chest found after decade-long hunt

Their family line dwindled soon after the couple died, which is presumably why the coins were never retrieved, the auction house said.

In the press release, Edmund says the Fernley-Maisters family "clearly distrusted the newly-formed Bank of England, the 'banknote' and even the gold coinage of their day because they (chose) to hold onto so many coins dating from the English Civil War and beforehand."

"Why they never recovered the coins when they were really easy to find just beneath original 18th century floorboards is an even bigger mystery, but it is one hell of a piggy bank," he added.

The coins will go to auction on Oct. 7. It appears each coin will be auctioned off individually.

Video: Centuries-old shipwrecks, gold coin treasure discovered off Colombia
Brazilian man survives 11 days in ocean floating alone in a freezer

Marcelo Medeiros - 

A Brazilian man reportedly survived 11 days in the Atlantic Ocean last month, taking refuge inside a freezer after his boat sank, according to CNN affiliate Record TV.

The man, Romualdo Macedo Rodrigues, is a fisherman. During a fishing trip in early August that was supposed to last three days, cracks in his boat started filling with water, sinking the vessel off the coast of northern Brazil. He was able to jump inside the floating cooler to stay alive, and a group of fishermen found him 11 days later off the coast of Suriname.

According to Record TV he was treated at a hospital in Suriname and detained by authorities for a few days because he didn’t have proper documentation. Now’s he’s back in Brazil. “I was born again. I thought I wouldn’t be telling this story, but I’m back here,” he added.

“I was desperate. I thought my end was coming. But thanks God, God gave me one more chance,” Rodrigues told Record TV. “I saw it (freezer) wasn’t sinking. I jumped (inside it), it fell to one side and kept normal.”

The fisherman says he doesn’t know how to swim.

“Sharks were surrounding the freezer, but they went away. I thought (I would be attacked). I stayed on the top (of the freezer), I didn’t sleep, I didn’t sleep. I saw the dawn, the dusk, asking God to send someone to rescue me.” Eventually water started to creep inside the freezer, and he says he used his hand to scoop it out. He didn’t have food or water.

“I was thinking about my kids, my wife. Every day I was thinking about my mother, my father, all my family. It gave me strength and hope … but at the moment I thought there was no other way,” he told Record TV.

When the fishermen arrived, he said: “I heard a noise, and there was a boat on top of the freezer. Only they thought there was no one there. Then they slowly pulled over, my vision was already fading, then I said, ‘My God, the boat.’ I raised my arms and asked for help.” Rodrigues was thankful to survive.

“That freezer was God in my life. The only thing I had was the freezer. It was a miracle.”


REMINDS ME OF ANOTHER GUY SAVED BY A FRIDGE

Pope dissolves Knights of Malta leadership, issues new constitution
 
By Philip Pullella

 Members of the Order of the Knights of Malta arrive in St. Peter Basilica 
for their 900th anniversary in Vatican© Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Saturday dissolved the leadership of the Knights of Malta, the global Catholic religious order and humanitarian group, and installed a provisional government ahead of the election of a new Grand Master.

The change, which the pope issued in a decree, came after five years of often acrimonious debate within the order and between some top members of the old guard and the Vatican over a new constitution that some feared would weaken its sovereignty.


FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis meets cardinals at the Vatican© Reuters/Vatican Media

The group, whose formal name is Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, was founded in Jerusalem nearly 1,000 years ago to provide medical aid for pilgrims in the Holy Land.

It now has a multi-million dollar budget, 13,500 members, 95,000 volunteers and 52,000 medical staff running refugee camps, drug treatment centres, disaster relief programs and clinics around the world.

The order has been very active in helping Ukrainian refugees and war victims.

It has no real territory apart from a palace and offices in Rome and a fort in Malta, but is recognised as a sovereign entity with its own passports and licence plates.

It has diplomatic relations with 110 states and permanent observer status at the United Nations, allowing to act as a neutral party in relief efforts in war zones.

Cardinal Silvano Tomasi, the pope's special delegate to the order, told reporters at a briefing along with some members of the provisional government that the order's new constitution would not weaken its international sovereignty.

But as a religious order, it had to remain under the auspices of the Vatican, said Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, a member of the working group that prepared the new constitution approved by the pope on Saturday.

Francis convoked an extraordinary general chapter for Jan. 25 to begin the process of electing a new Grand Master.

The last one, Italian Giacomo Dalla Torre, died in April.

"We hope this will re-establish unity in the order and increase its ability to serve the poor and the sick," Tomasi said.

Tomasi and the Lieutenant of the Grand Master, Canadian John Dunlap, will lead the group to the general chapter. A new Grand Master is expected to be elected by March, officials said.

Under the previous constitution, the top Knights and the Grand Master were required to have noble lineage, something reformers said excluded nearly everyone except Europeans from serving in top roles.

The new constitution eliminates the nobility rule as well as the tradition of Grand Masters being elected for life.

"It will be more democratic. The question of nobility has now become secondary," Tomasi said.

Future Grand Masters will be elected for 10-year terms, renewable only once, and will have to step down at age 85.

Reformers, backed by the Vatican, had called for a more transparent government to bring in fresh blood and allow the order to better respond to the massive growth it has seen in recent years.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella, Editing by Louise Heavens)