Enemy of the People: Jason Kenney

by Hassan Reyes
(Basics Issue #13, Apr/May)

Indeed, it’s been a while since we at BASICS declared someone an ‘Enemy of the People’. We’ve wanted to focus our limited space on the good work being done by various people's organizations. However, the actions of one individual in the Federal government has prompted us to bring back this section to highlight the racist, reactionary tendencies that exist in Canadian politics today.

The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Member of Parliament for Calgary South-East Jason Kenney has been on a tear, looking to earn the crown of most right-wing politician in Canada, if not North America. In the first three months of 2009, Kenney has been making continuous headlines for his unrelenting support for apartheid Israel and the imperialist wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

As Minister of Immigration, Kenney has overseen a massive increase in raids on locations where undocumented workers are looking to build a life. Near the beginning of April, over 100 workers were swept up in raids in the GTA alone. Instead of regularizing these people who have come here to work in order to have their rights protected and their taxes collected, Kenney and Co. would rather split up families and detain workers in inhumane conditions.

Calling them “bogus refugee claimants”, Kenney has made it a personal mission to see that principled war resisters from the United States are denied refugee status in Canada, even though many of them face lengthy jail sentences if they return to Obama’s U.S. for refusing to participate in the murderous campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More recently, Kenney weighed in to denounce Israeli Apartheid Week, a grassroots educational and cultural series of events organized on campuses in over 40 cities worldwide. Kenney was of course responding to the calls of Zionist organizations that are realizing that the tide of public opinion in North America is shifting away from supporting Israel as it continues its construction of permanent ghettos, indiscriminate bombing and a range of other war crimes against the Palestinian people.

Just weeks after condemning university activists for showing movies and holding talks exposing Israel, Kenney responded to a call by the Jewish Defence League (JDL) asking the Canadian government not to allow British Member of Parliament George Galloway to enter the country. Galloway, an outspoken critic of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and long time supporter of Palestinian people, was considered by Kenney to be a 'threat to national security' for handing over donated items and civilian vehicles to the elected representatives of the Palestinian people in Gaza. The JDL, on the other hand, is actually classified as a terrorist organization even by the U.S. government’s standards, even though the U.S. is itself apartheid Israel’s strongest supporter in the world.

Kenney and company did, however, let their fellow Enemy of the People, George W. Bush, into the country just weeks prior to Galloway's scheduled talks in a number of Canadian cities.

Kenney appears to have no problem supporting actual terrorist groups such as the JDL or the People's Mujahedin of Iran, a right-wing neo-conservative CIA-backed outfit that advocates the violent overthrow of the Iranian government. Kenney spoke at a rally organized by the group on Parliament Hill, though he later said he didn’t remember going to it.

And then in early April, in a public address Kenney made to a group of Croatian supporters, he told the crowd that he keeps a prayer card on his desk of the fascist Croatian Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac – one of his ”heroes of the 20th century”. Cardinal Stepinac was a rabid anti-communist and a Nazi supporter who was in 1946 convicted and imprisoned for his crimes in collaborating with fascism and overseeing the forced conversion of Orthodox Christian Serbs to Catholicism during the fascist reign of the Second World War.

Kenney has been working overtime in 2009 to offend and attack the people and anyone fighting for a more just and peaceful world. So for your attacks against immigrants, peace organizations and your active involvement in the oppression of Palestinians, you, Jason Kenney, are an Enemy of the People.

No Love for ‘One Love’ from Mammoliti

Thug Councillor Mammoliti Justifies 20-Cop Beat Down of Businessman Edward Allen of Steeles / 400

by Bryan Doherty
Basics #11 (November 2008)

Someone is standing up against Toronto’s most racist city councillor Giorgio Mammoliti and is making headlines for it. North York club owner Edward Allen has been one of many targets of Mammoliti’s ongoing campaign to push people he doesn’t like out of his ward. The councillor is known for accusing particular families and businesses of breaking the law and egging on police to harass them. This time, his efforts at low-intensity forced migration resulted in twenty cops beating up a Black business owner who is now preparing to sue the police and the city for damages.

Edward Allen, Jamaican-born father of eight, runs One Love bar and restaurant at Steeles and Highway 400. Although the establishment recently lost both its restaurant and liquor licenses, Allen kept it open as a hang out for friends. In the early hours of October 29, police came knocking at his door, asking why he “hadn’t got out of town yet”. The cops say Allen kicked up a fuss by locking himself in a room and breaking bottles. But they deny any fault on their part for dragging him out to the parking lot and proceeding to beat him up.

Mammoliti told the Toronto Sun last week that he welcomed the opportunity to present the evidence against Allen’s infractions. Without extending an ounce of sympathy for the man’s injuries, Mammoliti defended what he sees as his successful representation of a diverse constituency.

What was Mammoliti’s response to the accusation of racist targettng? Get this:
“I’ve been just as tough with visible minorities who aren’t black.”

Enemy of the People: Julian Fantino

Basics Editorial
Basics Issue #9 (May 2008)


This issue’s enemy of the people is a familiar name to working people in Toronto.
Julian Fantino, notorious former Chief of Toronto Police who let the Police terrorize communities for 5 years from 2000-2005, has been spreading the fear across Ontario since Dalton McGuinty appointed him as Chief of the Ontario Provincial Police (O.P.P.)

More recently, Fantino has been attacking indigenous communities that are rightfully protecting their lands against a federal and provincial governments that have been allowing developers, mining companies and other big-business thieves to illegally exploit unceded Native territories . Fantino’s O.P.P. have arrested a number of indigenous leaders, including Bob Lovelace and Shawn Brant in an attempt to try to stomp out resistance from First Nations communities.

Fantino should know from his time in Toronto that his attempts to stomp on the rights of oppressed people will only serve to show people what the nature of the police really is – to protect the wealth of the ruling class (even when the ruling class steal that wealth). Julian, you will always be an enemy of the people. ∗

Enemies of the People: Three Federal 'Leaders'

Basics Editorial

This is going to be a special edition of ‘Enemy of the people’, for the title will not be handed over to one person, but several.

First off, let’s give it up for Stephen Harper and Stephane Dion. Their first names aren't the only thing that these guys share slight variations of - their policies and ideas are pretty damn close as well. Dion postured himself as the peaceful, gentler alternative to known war-monger and racist Michael Ignatieff when the two were running for the Liberal Leadership (don't worry Bob Rae, former NDP Premier turned Liberal party flunky, we haven't forgotten about your class-traitor, Palestinian-hating ass either). 'I will be a voice against the war in Afghanistan' gestured Mr. Dion. Now - surprise, surprise - he is making a deal to keep Canadian troops in Afghanistan until at least 2011. To be fair, you can’t really be the leader of the Liberal party and not completely abandon one of your principle election promises (like Chretien with his promise to drop the GST and do away with NAFTA in the 1990s).

Harper, a former lobbyist for right-wing organizations based in Alberta is of course also in favour of keeping Canadian troops in Afghanistan. Both him and Mr. Dion are lap dogs to the wealthy and the transnational companies like Quebec-based SNC Lavalin that are making BILLIONS off war through reconstruction and munitions contracts.

So for being shamelessly able to send of young people to die and kill innocent people in order to make others rich, Stephen and Stephane are ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE. Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff - you can join your colleagues as enemies of the people too for
reasons already mentioned.

Now the NDP almost got off on this one, as Jack Layton in opposing the War in Afghanistan. And then they went ahead and supported the Conservatives walking out on the Durban Conference against Racism in South Africa in protest of motions condemning the disgusting and brutal colonial treatment of the Palestinian people by Israel. For sticking up for the racist state of Israel that has been killing hundreds of Palestinian children, women and men every year for 60 years, you can join the Liberals and Conservatives as Enemies of the People.

This Issue’s Enemy of the People: Coun. George Mammoliti

In an ongoing feature, Basics will single out those special people who deserve recognition for having gone out of their way to show their contempt for the working class. Not just your ordinary jackasses - these are Enemies of the People!

Former NDP Provincial politician turned Liberal City Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti has really done it this time.

In response to a recent bout of shootings near Jane and Sheppard (not even the area that he represents), Mammoliti made statements to media calling for the Armed Forces to be called in to combat “terrorists”, referencing local gang youth.

Before he was a loud-mouth right-wing politician, Mammoliti was actually a landscaper for social housing in Toronto. As a politician however, Mammoliti has often championed the hard-line ‘law and order’ causes calling for families (with or without children) to be kicked out Community Housing if someone is thought to be selling drugs while he was a Parliamentary Assistant on drugs, and rallying support for extending the contract of the much-hated ex-Police Chief, Julian Fantino. This past year, he called for a ‘red light district’ (ie. prostitution centre) to be set up on the Toronto Islands demonstrating that he has neither a sense for irony or hypocrisy. Mammoliti has also been noted for the amount of donations received from corporations and developers, particularly over $70 000 raised in 2003 for his election campaign - even though no one was even running against him.

Normally, his misspending of working peoples money and jack-ass comments wouldn’t warrant him being given the label of enemy of the people. However, now with his suggestions to bring war to our streets to battle youth he has clearly shown himself to be not only stupid, but dangerous. Congratulations Mr. Mammoliti, you are an enemy of the people.