Tony Clement, Deputy Chairman of the IDU

 CBC reports on Con interim leader Rona Ambrosia's top shadow cabinet jobs yesterday,

"Tony Clement, who has virtually no international experience, having served as minister of health and president of the Treasury Board under Harper, will be the critic for foreign affairs."

No international experience. Really, CBC? 

Here's Tony a couple of weeks ago at the International Democrat Union Committee on Foreign Affairs meetup in Marrakesh.  The IDU - an international alliance of some 80 centre-right and rightwing parties from around the world - has featured Tony as Deputy Chairman for a year now.

He's been Canada's representative as a vice chair at IDU, alongside now deceased Senator Doug Finley, Harper’s former bagman and in-and-out scheme campaign director, for years. 

Founding members of the IDU included Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, then US Vice-President George Bush Sr, President of France Jacques Chirac, and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Until quite recently their photos formed the IDU front page :

Australian Prime Minister John Howard was chair for 12 years. 

This might explain how Harper came to recite verbatim a speech in support of George Bush's war on Iraq delivered just two days before by PM Howard, and why Harper's former chief of staff and election war room strategist Patrick Muttart travelled to Australia to learn and refine Howard's micro-targeting election techniques for use in four successful Conservative Canadian elections and later returned to Australia to work on their 2011 election campaign. 

On March 28 to 30, 2012, the IDU Standing Committee on Elections and Campaigns was hosted by the Conservative Party in Ottawa - one of the IDU's regular election technology seminars. 

In August 2014 Tony Clement hosted Pierre Poilievre's address on 'Democratic Reform' to a meeting of the IDU Executive held in Ottawa after the passage of the Fair Elections Act.

Last year NZ President John Key was asked to assume the IDU chairmanship by the prime ministers of Canada, Britain and Australia. 

From the IDU History page : 

"Through the IDU, member Parties can exchange policy ideas, assist each other to win the political argument, and to win elections. The IDU plays an essential role in enabling like-minded, centre-right parties to share experiences in order to achieve electoral success.

A major event is also held every four years to coincide with the Republican Convention."

This might not be what you mean by "international experience", CBC, but it certainly is what the Cons and the IDU mean by it.  And it wouldn't hurt you and other promedia, Linda Diebel excepted, to mention this international cross-fertilizing agency of rightwing electioneering at least once sometime in your news broadcasting lifetime. 

Update on Con/IDU links : In 2013 the Harper government paid $8000 for former PM/IDU Chair John Howard to address the annual Manning Conference in Ottawa.

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Nigel Wright & Linda Frum in the Republican wayback machine

In a week that has featured ...

1) Nigel Wright let off the hook by the RCMP for bribing sitting legislator Senator Mike Duffy in spite of weeks of PMO discussions involving over a dozen senior party officials re buying Duffy's silence,    and 

2) Senator Linda Frum making the most idiotic and widely-mocked attack on Elections Canada over the Fair Elections Act to date, ie  that it is a conflict of interest for Elections Canada to both administer the vote during elections and encourage people to vote between elections, 

... it is fitting that Jay Watts III should dig up a piece of Canadian history that includes both Frum and Wright, as blogged by Brian Busby in a brilliant pair of blogposts that really should be savoured in their own right.

Seems in 1984, a rightwing Republican foundation confirmed it was funding several start-up campus publications in Canada among its 69 across North America. The Institute of Educational Affairs was set up by Irving Kristol, godfather of the US neoconservative movement, his fellow founding PNACer William Bennett, and William Simon, Reaganite, Richard Nixon's treasury secretary and board director of Halliburton Canada. It bankrolled : 

~ University of Toronto Magazine, founded by Nigel Wright - already working in Muldoon's PMO - and his friend and classmate Tony "Gazebo" Clement, and
~ McGill Magazine and editor Linda Frum, daughter of CBC's Barbara Frum and sister to David "Axis of Evil" Frum
~ Libertas at Queens, run by the son of the CEO at the Bank of Montreal. 
The original Canadian University Press article says 7 other clones of Libertas appeared across Canadian campuses that month, including articles of *unusual access* for campus papers - like an interview with George Bush.

Nigel Wright told the Montreal Gazette at the time that he had "no misgivings about applying for and accepting money from the Republican foundation".

The only advice he could recall receiving from the foundation was a circular "suggesting we publish nothing to do with the John Birch Society."

 Right-wing paper covertly funded from US , also published as Republicans fund Ontario & Quebec right wing newspaper :

"We were happy to have help and advice from the Americans," said Nigel Wright. 

In 1982 the IEA and American Spectator, a prominent conservative newspaper, held a seminar for college students interested in starting or maintaining conservative newspapers. More than 40 students attended to hear speakers such as the Spectator's R. Emett Tyrell Jr lecture on taste and strategy. 

"Don't print Klu Klux Klan literature," Tyrell advised. 

IEA Executive Director Phillip Marcus suggested: "If someone accuses you of being racist or sexist, accuse them back of McCarthy tactics." 

One person contacted who attended that conference but asked not to be identified said: "They told me that when I was ready to go ahead publishing, I shouldn't worry about the money. They said they'd take care of that."

From such smug little acorns are whole governments sprouted, along with their bent senators and chiefs of staff and covert bribes and Republican-style voter suppression bills.
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Ap27 Update : While we don't know whether Linda Frum attended the 1982 RepucliCon newspaper start-up seminar that advised accusing opponents of McCarthy tactics, Jay Watts III discovered her doing exactly that in the Montreal Gazette in 1984.
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McVety wants National Defence investigated

You would think that rapture raptor blowtard Charles McVety would be satisfied with his part in getting DefMin Peter Airshow MacKay to ban Executive Director of the Canadian Islamic Congress Imam Delic from speaking as planned at Defence headquarters yesterday as part of Islamic Heritage/History Month celebrations.
Banned, as Pogge put it, for : "Comments made six years ago by someone else who later apologized for them."

Hell no. McVety still wants Harper to investigate MacKay's National Defence headquarters for boogity boogities. Here he is on CTV :

"We're questioning whether it is a serious security failure. One is the wisdom of our National Defence headquarters having an Islamic Heritage celebration when our men and women are overseas fighting ...."

Um, Charles, did you miss Senator Hugh Segal introducing Imam Delic to speak at the launch of Islamic History Month in Parliament in October 2007? Back to Charles :

"You have to remember this is an internal national defence issue. Is this a security breach that has entered into other places in our government? It's a real surprise to see this happening inside our National Defence headquarters - we're talking about the internal operations of our national defence and intelligence within our defence forces."

From McVety's letter to Stephen Harper (Guess he finally got over being pissed at Steve for being a one-worlder commie):

"Circumstances surrounding this failure raise questions about our Defence headquarters’ internal security at a time when experts warn of the risk of infiltration of our security organizations. Was the Delic invitation facilitated by associates of the Canadian Islamic Congress or other radical Muslim elements operating from within National Defence headquarters itself?
Something has gone wrong, and we ask fair-minded Canadians to call upon Prime Minister Stephen Harper to fully investigate this serious security failure."

Wear it, Airshow. It's all yours. Looks good on ya.
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See also Dave, Boris, Dawg, Pogge, Balbulican, and Cathie

And here is the text of Imam Delic's cancelled speech.
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KAIROS - Jason Kenney digs himself a deeper hole

Really, Jason, I didn't think you could make this any worse.

G&M, today : In a media release issued from Jerusalem, Mr. Kenney explained his decision to cut off funds to the church aid group KAIROS :

"Our government is working to dismantle the client relationship that existed between the government of Canada and organizations whose priority is seemingly to advocate for the legalization of banned terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as deny the Jewish people's right to a homeland."

KAIROS - as one might expect of a group comprised of the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops - is of course a very strong supporter of "the Jewish people's right to a homeland".
Its website also says it is opposed to boycotts and sanctions against Israel.

Back to the G&M :

Mr. Kenney's office referred - as did the Canada-Israel Committee, an influential Jewish body - to statements from NGO Monitor, an Israeli organization that says it analyzes "the misuse of development aid funds in the Israeli-Arab conflict zone by highly partisan Canadian NGOs such as Kairos."

And previously, on Dec 17th in The Sun :

"Kenney’s office pointed to critical comments made by an Israel-based group. The NGO Monitor said KAIROS is a “main supporter of the anti-Israel divestment movement in Canada..."

Ok, that's twice now Kenney's office has cited NGO Monitor as the source of his intel on KAIROS and for his decision to libel and defund KAIROS from the podium at a conference in Israel.

So who is NGO Monitor? ... *google google google* ...
A rightwing US-funded Israeli lobby group which has been agitating against Canadian government funding for KAIROS since 2004 as part of their 'name and shame' program.
NGO Monitor board members include Alan Dershowitz, James Woolsey, and Elliot Abrams, and coincidentally, the president of NGOM Gerald Steinberg is chair of a panel at the same anti-Semitism conference in Israel from which Jason Kenney denounced KAIROS.

NGOM sure don't like KAIROS :

"KAIROS demonizes Israel through accusations of “war crimes” and “collective punishment."

...they write, while curiously providing a link to a KAIROS letter to Stephen Harper which condemns the attacks on civilians by both Israelis and Palestinians.

They also don't much like Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Ford Foundation, the BBC, numerous Israeli human rights groups, the Israeli soldiers who testified about Israel's atrocities during the Gaza seige, or the Goldstone Report.

Well done, Jason. Really.
NGOM is free to carry on its support for the policies of Israel's military as it chooses, while occasionally getting smacked down for its embarrassing biases .

But you, you made it Canadian government policy and then you announced it on foreign soil.
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Dec 24 Update : Jason Kenney sends word that since all the major churches in Canada are royally pissed with him for announcing in Israel last week that KAIROS had its funding cut off for anti-Semitism, he would now like us all to forget what he and his spokesweasel said and blame Bev Oda instead.
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