The Black Rod

At Wednesday's city council meeting, Mayor Sam Katz must have been auditioning for Dancing With The Stars because you've never seen such tapdancing in your life. Mr. "I Can Take It" looked on the edge of a nervous breakdown as he spewed out a string of unconvincing excuses to justify his giveaway plan to return $3.6 million of property taxes to the Gail Asper-driven Canadian Museum for Human Rights. In fact, Katz said the museum WON'T PAY ANY TAXES to the City of Winnipeg for FIFTEEN YEARS . Yes, he said that. For the first 11 or 12 years (he wasn't sure) the City will take the payments-in-lieu-of-taxes they get from the CMHR (which, as a federal institution doesn't pay taxes directly) and give it to the Province. The money is to pay off an $11.1 million secret loan that was given to Winnipeg so we could pretend we were making a significant donation to the museum to dupe the federal government into kicking in money to match contribution...

The pack journalism of the Parliamentary Press Gallery was on display like never before this past weekend. We got to see the extent to which they're willing to go to inject their personal political biases into the election campaign and to pass off their own opinions as news. But, sadly for them, we also got to see how the days of the mainstream media are numbered. It all began at a Conservative Party election rally in Mississauga where Prime Minister Stephen Harper was answering questions from reporters. Harper-hater Terry Milewski of the CBC got to the microphone with a list of carefully prepared ambush questions which he, himself, confessed were the talking points of Harper's critics. The next day, press gallery reporters for CBC, CTV, CP, the Toronto Star and even Postmedia spread stories across the country that the audience, prompted by Harper aides, drowned out Milewski's questions to protect the Prime Minister. The stories are lies. The reporters...

In between whining that Winnipeg doesn't have enough money to fix the mythical infrastructure deficit, and waiving taxes for his friends, the Aspers, Mayor Sam Katz is hoping you never find out two things about the finances of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Secret Number One Sam Katz wants city council to kickback $3.6 million in property taxes that the CMHR is supposed to pay sometime in the future, but he's hiding from the public the fact that the CMHR HAS NOT PAID ITS TAXES for 2009 and 2010 ! Its already $241,000 in arrears PLUS penalties, despite collecting $24.9 million from the federal government over those two years for operating expenses -- which were to include payments in lieu of taxes. Secret Number Two Former Premier Gary Doer was in such a rush to give Gail Asper money for her museum that he not only doubled the province's contribution, from $20 million to $40 million, but he secretly loaned another $11.1 million to the City of Winn...

Knowingly or unknowingly, Winnipeg Free Press columnist Dan Lett has become a part of the hate campaign against Canada's Ukrainian community. On his newspaper-sanctioned blog, Lett purports to address the debate over the decision, by museum trustees, to have a stand-alone Holocaust gallery within the Canadian Museum for Human Rights while relegating every other genocide in history to second-class status by lumping them together in a grab-bag gallery of "mass atrocity". The hand-picked board of the museum insists the Holocaust is the most important genocide in history because it sparked the human rights movement, a view disputed by one of their own former consultants who is among the most respected Holocaust historians in the world. http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/04/shut-their-mouths-first-legacy-of.html Voices of the Ukrainian community, namely the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, are arguing the...

Mayor Sam Katz is raising your land taxes so that millionaire Gail Asper won't have to pay hers on her pet project, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. While you get dinged by a hike in frontage fees (the most regressive tax on your land, which hurts the poorest homeowners the most), Katz wants to waive the property taxes on the CMHR. He says he's raising your taxes to pay the city's infrastructure deficit, but his friend Gail won't have to pay her share, you'll pay it for her. Katz wants to save Gail Asper $3.6 million because she and her Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights have run out of money and need millions more. The CMHR has turned into a money pit. They not only can't raise money to finish the museum, but they can't afford their taxes either. So Katz wants to do Gail a personal favour by waiving the taxes on the museum and pretending the money will go instead to construction. Except there is no money, it...

What's round, respected and rolling away from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights? Another wheel fallen off the Asper bus. "Leave it to the experts" has been the desperate last-ditch cry of proponents of the CMHR as the public facade of the museum has slowly chipped away. But the experts have begun to desert the CMHR. Over the past few months, the truth has been forced out, bit by bit -- that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights was always intended to be a Holocaust museum, is still, and, if Gail Asper has any say, always will be. Asper and her hand-picked trustees refuse to contemplate that the mass murder of anyone else has the same significance to the world as the Holocaust. That, to them, justifies having a separate Holocaust gallery, with all the other genocides in history lumped together in a "mass atrocity" exhibit. They specifically reject the argument by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association that the crimes of the Communist...

The Toronto Star tried a drive-by smear of The Black Rod Saturday, but wound up shooting themselves in both feet. The Star has invested a lot of capital in attacking the Conservatives for ejecting nonthreatening, non-partisan students from campaign rallies. The MSM has tagged it a bubble campaign and declared it demonstrates Stephen Harper's over-controlling personality. Imagine the consternation at the Star when The Black Rod broke their bubble and exposed the poster boy of the tossed students, Izzy Hirji, as a lad with a past that would have interested anyone doing security for the Conservative Party leader. http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2011/04/inventing-scandal-what-msm-didnt-tell.html He not only once posted a comment on Facebook that could be construed as a threat to Stephen Harper, saying he was ready to go to Ottawa "an take him down", but he later participated in a protest that harassed people attending a Conservative rally, and he regretted n...

( Welcome to our new readers from Small Dead Animals ! More federal election analysis coming soon ) Manitoba flood officials don't want you to panic, which is why they're doing the panicking for you. And, boy, are they sweating bullets today. If worse comes to worse, it's going to turn out we've concentrated flood preps on THE WRONG RIVER. It's not the Red River we should be worrying about. IT'S THE ASSINIBOINE! Municipal officials have been told on the QT that if things stack up the wrong way, Osborne Village and, maybe, downtown Winnipeg are going to be flooded. They're already planning for mass evacuations and helicopter rescues. Blinded by Perimeteritis , Winnipeg reporters don't realize how serious the flood situation is along the Assiniboine. West of Winnipeg has been smacked by heavy snows all winter. Just last week a resident of Brandon, looking at the snow on the ground, reported "It's just like February here." All...

"...stephen harpers plan is ridiculous, 40 years without results, and death to Kyoto!?!?!?! OMGWTF im ready to like go to Ottawa myself an take him down..." http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2212298927&v=wall You're in charge of security for the Prime Minister of Canada during the current election campaign. You read this comment on a Facebook message. What do you do? Maybe 3 months ago, before Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head at a political rally by a schizophrenic gunman, you would see the "lol" at the end of the comment and the date (2006) and put it in the crank file. That was then. Now, you dig deeper into the writer's activities since he wrote that comment. You know his name, Izzy Hirji. March, 2008. Prime Minister Stephen Harper campaigns in Guelph during the last election. About 50 protesters show up. They're mainly opposed to the mission in Afghanistan, although some shout slogans attacking Harper...