The Black Rod

Aided and abetted by the laziest and worst reporting in the mainstream media,  the long con known as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights made the news again this week. A "jovial" Gail Asper crowed that the fundraising arm of the museum, which she heads, had surpassed its goal of $150 million in private donations thanks to four million dollars pledged by two foundations and a labour union.  The total raised was $1.5 million over the goal, the news media gushed. The only problem with that announcement -- a problem which went unreported by a single news outlet --- is that it's a lie. The only way the 'Friends of the CMHR' could reach its fundraising goal was to ignore almost $80 million in advances, loans, and unpaid obligations that still have to be covered.  You read that right---Gail Asper's pet project, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights still owes almost $80 million! Asper, with the collusion of the MSM, has to rewrite history to, as they sa...

What do you think?   A Human Rights Museum insider with intimate knowledge of how the exhibits are progressing posted this on a website: SELECTED PROJECT LIST: Canadian Museum For Human Rights — Winnipeg, Canada — Completion September 2015 Say what?  Until now the various talking heads from the CMHR have sworn up, down and sideways that the museum will open in 2014--- only two years behind schedule.   They even collected $45 million from the federal government last year on their sacred pledge that this boon (plus a $35 million loan to be co-signed by the government of Manitoba) was all they needed to guarantee a 2014 opening.  Guarantee!  Pinky swear! Suddenly they're talking about opening two years from now?  Three years behind schedule? We started beating the bushes. "This" magazine was in no doubt what year the CMHR would open: http://this.org/blog/2013/03/08/friday-ftw-human-rights-museum-asks-gay-couples-to-share-their-...

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is in the market for a new lie to replace the old lie they were using to justify a stand-alone gallery on the Holocaust and their potpourri approach to other genocides. You remember how Gail Asper and her champions were going around lecturing everybody how the study of the Holocaust and of human rights in the modern world are synonymous, with one leading directly to the other, and without one there wouldn't be the other? Here's how Gail Asper summarized the argument in Maclean's magazine: In conversation: Gail Asper By Jonathon Gatehouse - Wednesday, March 23, 2011 Q: The Ukrainian-Canadian Civil Liberties Association has charged that one horror—the Holocaust—is being “elevated” above all others at the museum. What’s your response? A: ... All the experts agree that no human rights museum could ever be established without a full examination of the Holocaust. It was fundamental to our notion...

Earlier this year, the New York designer of the museum's exhibits, Ralph Appelbaum, came to Winnipeg to give 200 donors to the CMHR a super-sneak preview of  the "interior wonders" they can expect to see when they visit. The museum's fundraising arm, the Friends of the CMHR, took detailed notes and reported Appelbaum's "thrilling" lecture in the group's Summer, 2012, newsletter.   Given the importance of knowing exactly what we're spending $351 million (and counting) on, we decided to scalp the Friends' account (with the really boring bits scissored out). Barf bags at the ready, here we go... http://www.friendsofcmhr.com/resource/file/newsletter_summer12_en.pdf "Appelbaum began his thrilling virtual tour of the Museum’s interior at the building entrance between two of the structure’s massive “roots”. The roots represent the earth as the common home of all people and the beginning of our journey ...

Infuriating tales of board mismanagement and government malfeasance that cost taxpayers more than $70 million peppered a recent update on the jinxed Canadian Museum for Human Rights by Heritage Minister James Moore. Only a tiny audience of 16 showed up to hear Moore at the Winnipeg Free Press News Cafe, and it's hard to say how many could separate the eye-opening inside stories from the pure falsehoods being peddled to justify the federal government's blank cheque to save the failed project from insolvency. One person who certainly needs to listen to the interview with Moore http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/Heritage-Minister-James-Moore-dropping-into-News-Cafe-Wednesday--169332836.html is Canada's auditor general who should be curious about questionable, if not fraudulent, government spending on the CMHR. Moore started by floating the idea that there were two main reasons why the budget for the museum has ballooned from $265 m...

Two months ago the Stephen Harper government announced they were shutting down the Experimental Lakes Area, a one-of-a-kind science research project, run by Winnipeg scientists. They said it was to save $2 million a year, a half-a-gazillionth of the federal budget. The ELA consists of 58 lakes near Kenora. For 44 years scientists were able to use the closed ecosystems of the lakes to do groundbreaking research on acid rain, toxic metals, the effect of phosphates on freshwater lakes, what spawns algae blooms that kill lakes, and climate change. One story on the closure declared "the ELA was to water ecology what the supercollider is to physics." As a result of the defunding of the world-reknowned project, 40 biologists, chemists and other scientists from Winnipeg will lose their jobs. Scientists from around the world have decried the Harper government's action, giving Canada a bad name in science circles everywhere. But the governm...

A special envoy for U.S. President Barack Obama was in Winnipeg on Monday to reignite the hate campaign against Canada's Ukrainian community on behalf of the Asper-led Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Hannah Rosenthal, described as Obama's envoy to "monitor and combat anti-semitism" was here as a speaker at the "first annual Shindleman Family lecture at the Canadian Institute for the Study of Ai-semitism". CISA, you'll remember, is the front group created and financed by supporters of the museum with the task of smearing as anti-semitic anyone who challenges the Asper Family's plan for the CMHR. Rosenthal, reiterating she was here "as a representative of the United States government", praised CISA for being "one of only six institutions in the entire world dedicated to the scholarly study of anti-Semitism." She failed to mention that CISA is a one-woman show--- director and energizer bunny Catherine Chat...