Toronto's Social Justice Warriors Hypocrisy Exposed

Meow everyone. In the last four segments of this series, I tried to set the stage for Occupy Toronto and what was some of the back ground that one needed to be made aware of. There is still quite  a bit more to cover, back ground wise and I will be covering them in great detail as this series progresses.  However, the time has come to start to address Occupy Toronto and its genesis, and its subsequent evolution, its transformation and ultimately its   death and demise.  This is, after all, what everyone was waiting to read.  As with the previous articles, images come from a variety of sources, many being  my own, enhanced with some  very good online finds. Once again as well, a huge thank you to EnGine for her outstanding skills in editing  and fine tuning.

September 2010

The world is starting to hear about this whole new thing called Occupy. It had various different incarnations and was widely touted  as being an offshoot or direct descendant of the Arab spring movement which had significant impact on the Arab world with the deaths of the Libyan leader as well as some other leaders who either left office or met other fates. Violence death and  destruction was part and parcel to the events of the Arab world. A derivative of this migrated to North America and was called Occupy Wall Street. The occupy movement was premised around the idea that there was a great inequality within the financial sector such that it was in great need of either restructuring it, or completely rethinking it to make it accessible and equitable for everyone. On the surface,  this appeared to be an idea that had potential and if done correctly, could have some level of success.

Mid September, message were sent out on Facebook to  invite people here in Toronto to a meeting to discuss the idea of an  Occupy Toronto. The very first meeting was held on a Friday evening at Berkzy  Park on front street between church street and Yonge Street. 

I recall being one of the very first persons to arrive and a short time later another  person arrived whom I later learned was  the person who organized this meting, Bryan Batty. Bryan is a young man in his 20’s and is a business student at Humber College. He is well spoken, clean cut and quite a presentable person. He was the first face of Occupy Toronto … or was he? Soon, more persons arrived, more still and by the time the meeting was to commence, close to 250 persons had shown up. 

As people started to arrive, I was seeing some familiar  faces. I did not have names to go with them but I was determined to that I was going to find out  who was who. Some of these persons I saw were fixtures in other protests I have covered, including the G20. There was a respectable mix of persons in attendance, ranging from students who made up the vast majority of this meeting to business professionals to the curious onlooker. I observed a few person there who really looked out of place, dressed like 60’s hippies, but half my age. What was very interesting was the presence of some key union persons who said nothing but lingered in the back ground. The Ontario federation of Labor sent there director of communication Joel Duff to this meeting and subsequent meetings. Union representative from other unions such as OPSU and CUPE were also represented with their key persons, mostly local presidents. Subsequent meeting were held at University of Toronto OISE campus which would later become ground zero for the organizing of Occupy Toronto. While I attended all these meetings, I could not help but get this feeling that something about the way these meetings were being held felt out of place, didn’t feel quite right, but I was still not educated enough on this sort of thing to fully understand what was going on. I knew these meetings had a really weird  feel to them , and there was an aura of what felt like some sort of indoctrination component to it,  but  the details eluded me. That would change.  What I noticed as well was the Bryan was no longer the person who was in charge, indeed, he spoke very little. I noticed as well that certain persons seemed to be speaking far more than others, and this seemed to be at all the meetings. What was really creepy was these hand signals being used as a means of communication within the group of the assembled. Great pains in fact were taken to  teach these signs to everyone. I  noticed  as well, that certain language was being used at all meetings. One  very interesting observation I had was that certain speakers, persons whom I would later discover were called facilitators, all had a somewhat mono-tone-esk quality about their speech.

One thing that was drilled into everyone was this us vs. them mentality, us being those of us who do not run the financial institutions, and them, being the one who do run them. There was much talk about how incensed they were about how some people made 10 – 15 million a year while the  “ rest of us “  had to make due with less. The organizers of Occupy Toronto wanted us to believe that we are simple pawns in a power game that is there only to benefit the top earners of the world and us  as the spring board to garner even greater wealth. The fact is that while there certainly may be a certain element of truth to that premises, it is not, in my opinion quite as blatant as they wanted us to think, nor is it, also in my opinion, quite as black and white as that. The occupy organizers are angered at the fact that big corporations received bailouts during the economic downturn. I agree that it did not go over well with many people, however, these bailouts meant that these same companies either continue to operate, or simply close down and put tens of thousands of people out of work for good. Keep in mind as well that these bail outs were to be repaid, which they were, so this was not free   money. The other objection these same occupy organizers have are tax breaks for big corporations, Once again, my position is that you either give them a tax break and they stay, employing tens of thousands of person, or, don’t give any tax breaks and these same corporation simply pack and move to a place where they will receive these breaks, again putting tens of thousands of people out of work. These Occupy leaders simply had zero concept of business and how it works. Business is not always pleasant  but it exists for a reason and it is successful for a reason. Occupy was going to have no part of listening to any thing even remotely close to logic and reason. The cult mentality would not allow for this.

The other huge issue these same leaders had was with the high salaries of some key executives. What they failed to understand is that while these  salaries are high, they are fully justified considering the fact that these CEO’s are responsible for companies that transact billions of dollars of trade and investment every day.  When things do go wrong, it is their heads on the line. These same CEO’s are the one that generate the business through international trade agreements  that bring additional investment to Canada. Their salaries are totally justified.

This “ Us vs. Them “ attitude was not restricted to those with good paying jobs. It very quickly became another anti-cop series of ad nauseum discussions. People forget that cops do not make huge salaries and are just as affected by the exact same things as the rest of the population.  After all, this was being run and organized by professional protestors, therefore, there had to be the usual known perceived adversaries available to pre-blame  should things go wrong. This is part of the way professional protestor work. I indicated previously that they create a problem, indoctrinate the masses to this “ problem “, and then create an atmosphere  of fear and mistrust  to ensure loyalty and obedience.

I spoke of the meetings to get occupy on its way, I spoke of those who organized it, however, there was people in place who did not seem to fit into this whole concept of what occupy was to be. It was soon clear that the movement was being high jacked right in front of us by certain persons who clearly had interests that did not mesh or coincide  with what the premises of occupy was to be. Many faces appeared, many faces I recognized  from other events I photographed that seemed greatly out of place here, yet, here they were and in seemingly positions of significant power and authority. The usual suspects, OCAP, CUPE, the CFS and of course, the anarchists, all present and well represented .   I was wondering what was going on but decided to wait and see where this was heading.

As the meetings were taking place, committees were formed to undertake various tasks, both prior to the planned occupation and during. I offered my services in the media field, as a photographer and videographer, I was uniquely qualified to document each step and event of occupy. The first  major sign that something was “ out of place “ , was when I was told that my services while widely recognized, were not required in this area as,  according to one person, they had the top experts in the field of media to cover occupy. I immediately thought that,  oh, they were able to get Lawrence McCurry to cover this. What a great idea,  as he is indeed far superior to me in  covering this, based  on his  previous works.  Well, I though that to myself, only to discover that they did not have him onboard. I then decided to undertake the responsibility of ensuring that accommodations and accessibility requirements were in place for persons with disabilities. I thought, hey, I am an expert in this area anyway so why not. Well, that also hit some major road blocks as, in order to have a plan in place to provide accommodations, the location was going to have to made known to me, I insisted. All I was told was that this top secret. Hold on a second I said, what ever happened to the fully open and transparent ideology that these same leaders professed to uphold a the previous meeting? I said clearly that unless I knew where the place was, accommodations were not going to be in place in time as I needed to inspect the area to ensure it was all accessible. I was told that there were top people working on this. Wait a second, I AM one of these top people, one of a very few in the city who has a complete grasp of accessibility and accommodation needs. .

More meetings, more indoctrination sessions more training sessions and we were almost ready. One last training session was held on the Friday before the planned occupation, Friday October 14 at OISE. Dave Vasey was in charge of this session.

Dave Vasey  became somewhat of a cult figure well before the Occupy Movement.  Vasey was one of the very first persons to be arrested during the G20.  According to material I found online, he appeared to be arrested for failing to identify himself when directed to do so by police officers. This took place at or near one of the high security fenced off areas.  There was a law that was enacted that claimed to a allow law enforcement  to enact certain laws within a certain distance from these high security fences. It was later learned that this law was never actually in place. Obviously, there was a communication breakdown somewhere, or, as some persons will argue, this law, or its vagueness  was a deception on the part of the government. I am not going to argue one way or another about it, as  simply, I don’t the facts  to formulate an opinion or hypothesis.  It was  simply there,  right or wrong, but with a law in place, I do think responsible citizens do have a duty to abide by laws in place. If you don’t like a law, there are peaceful means to argue them and at the same time, not get arrested.  Getting arrested serves no purpose as one is useless in a jail cell.

 He held a session based on what he referred to  as his Rukus Society training manual. This was one last team building exercise.

The Rukus Society is a California based professional protestors training center / organization. They teach young protestors things like repelling, high altitude protesting, civil disobedience, how to target police in protest actions and how to work in teams. Vasey is a member of this organization as is Taylor Flook , ( aka Taylor Chelsea )  It just happens that both of these persons are also adorned with an identical  tattoo “ Love Is The Movement”.  This may be a means to identify other Rukus Society  members, or, this may be a simple coincidence as in the case of Vasey and Flook, the two were dating for a while. I have heard of other Rukus Society members with this same tattoo but as yet, I have not been able to verify any hard facts to support this as being a “ calling card . “ As I mentioned, these exercises Vasey had us do where, onto themselves, seemingly meaningless but it did serve the purpose of  showing who had leadership skills and who were more followers. Other  such training exercises used may be a tight rope from a low height, to falling backwards to show the trust of the other person to catch you. 

Dave Vasey is one of those professional protestors who will make you think that he IS THE know-it-all when it comes to protesting. The more I heard him speak, the more I was having visions of the old TV cartoon called  Rocky and Bullwinkle and the mini segment within it called Mr. Know-it-all. Don’t get me wrong, Dave Vasey is  not the brightest person, however   he is quite intelligent  but very singular focused.  This mentality  does not allow for deviations from a plan, nor does it allow to discussions or questions.  He does not, however, react well to being openly challenged. In fact, when challenged , Vasey will resort to the textbook  uses of name calling, accusations and baseless, unfounded  allegations. It’s the classic divide and conquer tactic used by professional protestors who are questioned when things don’t seem to be quite right.  It got to the point with him that I found myself asking him many questions just to watch him drown in his own verbal sewage. The entertainment alone was worth it   Vasey may be intelligent  but he is also not the brightest light bulb in the box. Smarts and intelligence are two vastly different things.

Such training sessions and subsequent exercises are usually done shortly before a planned action to ensure these trust  building skills are not forgotten. The Rukus Society has one other very noticeable distinction. The Rukus society is on  the Unites States of America,  Dept. of Homeland Security  Watch List for terrorist organizations. The link below shows that the USA  Dept. of Homeland Security  has the RUKUS Society on their watch list.

http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/trackedlist11910.pdf

Dave Vasey would play a far greater part in occupy later on, as would many of the highest level professional protesters from this city. One very interesting person I observed as playing a key role was someone I have know for several years prior to Occupy, Antonin Mongeau.  Antonin was the president of the French Club at the University of Toronto  and had had some significant encounters with his student union as well as my own student union at Ryerson University.  We spoke often via phone and email but never actually met. We did have the same dislike for our student union and the CFS so seeing him there was somewhat interesting. Antonin is quite a likeable person and while I have had the opportunity to speak with him over the phone  and on  line many times, I have actually never  physically met him prior to occupy. I had this stereotypical vision of him based on our conversations. I have no idea how or why, but I imagined him as being a little nebeschy 100 pound fully fed, clothed and soak little geeky guy, Nothing could have bee farther  from the truth as  he is considerably taller and bigger than I am. He is a gentle giant in many ways and is not afraid to show you his sensitive side.

 He was in charge of the Food Team. What made me really wonder just what was going on here was seeing him actually. He was speaking and suggesting that things were already in place and ready to roll once the occupation was to get underway.  It appeared to me already here that this whole occupy was being manufactured  by outside forces and these people  who were seemingly running the show were representatives of these outside forces or organizations. I was still too ill informed to formulate thoughts or opinions about all this, but things just didn’t seem to fit quite  right,  didn’t seem to add up.

Now wait a second, unless there were outside forces in play here, I could not see how this was going to get accomplished. I could not help but wonder just what is really going on behind the scenes and why are we not being told about this. This was, after all, as proclaimed, ad nauseum, an open and transparent movement where supposedly everyone had a say, had a voice in how this occupy was going to work. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Cults give the appearance of freedom and openness, however, they always hide the real details, the truth from even their own members.

I could not quite put my finger on what was seemingly out of place here, however, the questions were piling up and the answers were not forth coming. I fairness to the lack of answers, I didn’t ask too many questions at first, but that would change. 

Learning the truth is the Achilles heel of any cult. The leaders tell you only what they want you to know and with hold all other information, or, provide disinformation to ensure loyalty and to maintain control  over the rest of the cult. Cults are about power for the very select few and subservience and servitude from all others to the leaders. Cults are easy to spot yet hard to break into. Cults are easily identified through very select use of language, as one example. Occupy made use of this tool as well. Speakers lists were referred to as “ stacks “,  people who would undertake certain tasks would “ bottom  line “ them, to name some of the more obvious one. Hand signals were the most obvious   tools used by occupy and in true cult fashion, the signals were identical between the various occupy movements throughout North America.

Friday night was coming to a close but not without a few small surprises. While a meeting was held at OISE, another identical meting was held at Sid Smith , an other facility also at the University of Toronto for the exact same reason. That second meeting was held there because those who arrives later were “ utterly shocked “ to see a police presence at OISE consisting, of, as I recall, four bicycle officers. Both meetings ended at about the same time and the participants from Sid Smith arrived at OISE and one of the organizers  loudly proclaimed upon arrival that “ hey Frank, I hear you work for the RCMP. “  My reply was, “ news to me , where do I pick up my pay check ? “

 After a short private discussion with the person who said that, I made it very clear that I wanted the location of the park and I wanted it NOW. I told him I was tired of playing guessing games and if I am going to do the job I said I would do, I either get the info I need or get someone else but do one or the other NOW. I don’t know if I scared the crap out of the guy, Wilsun Tsu   ( aka bash bunny  and   one of the very top organizers and in charge of the logistics team )  was his name. 

Well, he gave me the location, the park to be occupied was  to be St James Park. However, I still  could not help but to think that there is someone or some entity far more powerful in control here. These people here who claim,  and appear as being in charge,  are just to disorganized to undertake a mission of this magnitude, and in such a short period of time. No, there is a another organization  that must be calling the shots and pulling the strings here.

These guys here are acting as if they are working from a  prepared script designed to appear disorganized and dysfunctional. One thing that I noticed right away, even from the very first meeting was that while the leaders were for the most part, quite polite and charming, however, they never stated their last names. It was only through lots of digging and discrete questioning of others that I was able to learn who they REALLY were. In most cases, they used aliases as names. For example, Lana Brite  who was one of the key organizers and would play a very significant role later on   was really Lana Goldberg. Antonin used  the alias Antonin Smith,  but I already  knew his real identity. This is another cult pattern.

The leaders rarely if ever reveal their true identity to the other members. This is for a variety of reasons, ranging from anonymity in the event that persons are arrested and cannot give up names of person if they don’t know thee real names, or offer up false names as a means to throw off law enforcement. This is yet another example of how the leaders hold onto the power. “ I know who you are but you don’t know who I am “.  I suspect that this was the case as well, in other occupies throughout North America. The players were different  in name only but the game was the same, as was the outcome. This was a well planned, well designed well coordinated event but the work was all done behind the senses, out of sight from  all but the very select group within the  ruling inner circle.  The leaders would get new names as well, they would be called facilitators, very much like the title that cult leaders give to themselves.  

 I was fully expecting to see images of Jim Jones strewn about these meetings  and of course, the proverbial Kool Aid  all ready to ingest as a sign of loyalty to these  leaders.  I was not going to have to wait long. No pictures of Jim Jones were to be found, but the “ Kool Aid “ seemed to flow faster than the water from a shower head, and lots of people in line to partake. Too bad that many  gave up on the morning shower to drink it.

The time for ad nauseum meetings was over. It was time to Occupy. This is what meetings were about, what all the planning was about, what all this so called training was about. The next segment will look at the now famous date of Saturday October 15, 2010, the date of the official Occupy Toronto occupation of the  still top secret park that no one but the very select few  know about. Please, don’t choke from the laughter, the best is yet to come.  Stay tuned ……….