This is the 3rd in a series of full and partial transcripts of public talks from leaders associated with the Fatima Center, headed by Father Nicholas Gruner. From September 8-11, 2013, in Ontario, Canada, Gruner's Fatima Center will be hosting a major conference, with a planned keynote address to be given by Former United States Congressman (R-TX) Ron Paul. Father Gruner has recently been revealed as a Holocaust denier. As researcher Rachel Tabachnick characterized, the Fatima Center conference was originally to feature "New World Order conspiracy theorists, holocaust deniers, racists, and an openly fascist speaker". The latter, self described neofascist Italian politician Roberto Fiore, has since dropped out of the event - along with Canadian Senator Roméo Dallaire, whose personal secretary told the CBC "There is absolutely no way that General Dallaire would be associated with these speakers."

But for the time being, Ron Paul - whose troubled history included anti-Semitic and racist newsletters published in his name in the 1980s and 1990s, remains slated to keynote the event.

Back in the early 1990s, I helped an Americans United activist in Missouri fend off efforts by a small-town school board to insert creationism into science classes.

We were frustrated. We had explained to the members of the board that what they wanted to do was unconstitutional and would run afoul of the 1987 Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard (at the time a fairly new opinion). They were not swayed.

[Canadian/British spelling used in Canadian news references.]

This past week Canadian politicians have distanced themselves from the upcoming Fatima Center conference.  "Defence Minister Rebuffs Anti-Semitic Conference" announced a Canadian Broadcast Corporation headline. Defence Minister Rob Nicholson told the CBC that he had never endorsed the event, contrary to claims in Fatima Center promotional media.  CBC had reported earlier in the week that Canadian Senator Roméo Dallaire dropped out of the Fatima Center event, expressing his embarassment that a mixup led to him being scheduled as a speaker.   The CBC quoted his personal secretary as saying, "There is absolutely no way that General Dallaire would be associated with these speakers."  Dallaire had been used in promotional media including a billboard at the U.S. and Canadian border featuring him and Ron Paul, keynote speaker for the event's September 11 gala dinner.

In a segment of the radio show "Heaven's Peace Plan" which aired in 1990, following the first Gulf War with Iraq, Fatima Center head Father Nicholas Gruner and his colleague Father Paul Kramer joined Tom Zola, then-head of catholictreasures.com for the following discussion - in which the three describe a Jewish-Masonic plot to instigate world wars and, ultimately, launch a New World Order led by the anti-Christ. I have transcribed this segment to demonstrate the remarkably continuity of the anti-Jewish conspiracy narrative told by leaders associated with the Fatima Center, a narrative which over the course of more than two decades, from 1990 to 2013, remained essentially unchanged. For comparison, see my story "Judeo-Freemasonry" Aims To Exterminate Humanity, Claims Father Paul Kramer, from a talk Kramer gave in England on June 2, 2013.

Father Paul Kramer, a radical Catholic traditionalist associated with the Fatima Center and the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), describes, in this video, from a talk titled "Freemasonry and the New Mass" that Kramer gave at a SSPX conference in England, June 1-2, 2013, how an organized global conspiracy, comprised of Freemasons but ultimately controlled by Jews, plans to overthrow Christianity and the Church and impose a one-world government "New World Order" that will seek "the total extermination of the human race" according to Father Kramer [partial transcript in full story. See, especially, 17:00 - 25:00 in video.]

In September, Kramer will join Former U.S. Congressman Ron Paul at the Fatima Center-sponsored "Fatima: The Road To Peace" conference in Ontario, CA. For background, see these two stories from TTA contributor Rachel Tabachnick: Ron Paul to Keynote Catholic Traditionalist Summit with NeoFascist and Overtly Anti-Semitic Speakers, and Bircher President: 'If You Like Ron Paul, You'll Love the John Birch Society'. Also see, from the Washington Free Beacon, Fatima Center Head Denies Anti-Semitism, Questions Holocaust]

It's September 2, 2008 and the Republican National Convention is taking place in Minneapolis.  Across the river at the Target Center, an audience of several thousand have gathered for the Rally for the Republic, a parallel Ron Paul convention. The speakers for the event have been announced in advance with the exception of one surprise special guest. Emcee Tucker Carlson declines to announce him, but the crowd cheers as the speaker approaches the podium. It's John McManus, president of the John Birch Society.

The 2008 event received limited coverage at the time, but Paul's long term relationship with the JBS warrants more scrutiny as Paul continues to launch new components of his "Ron Paul Revolution."

As we approach the launch of the Ron Paul home school curriculum, which is being prepared in consort with theocratic theorist Gary North and Catholic neo-confederate Thomas Woods, let's take a quick look back at an often overlooked part of Ron Paul's political history.  

The conference in Ontario is billed as "Fatima: The Path to Peace" but it features New World Order conspiracy theorists,holocaust deniers, racists, and an openly fascist speaker. (Video below.)   Former U.S Congressman Ron Paul will keynote the week-long international summit to be held in September at Niagara Falls, Ontario. The billboard at right, advertising the event, is at the Peace Bridge entrance to Canada from Buffalo, New York. Paul is accustomed to sharing the stage with conspiracy theorists - John Birchers, Christian Reconstructionists, and Neoconfederates - but this time it's the international summit of a radical Catholic traditionalist organization. The Fatima Crusaders not only reject the reforms of Vatican II, but also teach that the Vatican is in collusion with the United Nations to form a one-world government.  This article includes short bios of some of the scheduled speakers and video of one of them rallying a crowd in Europe against homosexuals and Jews. Come back to Talk2action.org next week for another installment on Ron Paul and the John Birch Society's previous involvement with this same organization.

Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, who authored a very kind introduction to Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America (which featured several essays by Talk to Action contributors) is retiring after 14 years as director of the Religion Department at the Chautauqua Institution, which followed 20 years as General Secretary of the National Council of Churches.  The Religious Right's Institute on Religion and Democracy marked the occasion with a sneer.  But today, let's pay no attention to IRD.  

Let's hear instead from Joan Brown Campbell via an excerpt from her introduction to Dispatches, which she opened with a quote from the noted rabbi, Abraham Heschel:  "There is a time when silence is betrayal... that time is now."    

 

Update, August 18, 2013: Arthur G. Robinson, who was running for U.S. Congress when I originally published this story on September 18, 2012, has just been appointed chairman of the Oregon State Republican Party. Here are my other articles on Art Robinson:
Dump Nuclear Waste at Sea, Proposed Oregon GOP Congressional Candidate
Oregon GOP Congressional Candidate Sells Racist Book Suggesting Africans Are Like Retarded Children
GOP Congressional Candidate Friends With "Execution By Stoning" Advocate
Republican Proposed "Sprinkling" Radioactive Waste on America

"the negroes on a well-ordered estate, under kind masters, were probably a happier class of people than the laborers upon any estate in Europe." -- from George Alfred Henty's book With Lee in Virginia, currently printed, sold, and promoted by Republican Arthur B. Robinson's Robinson Books.

Art Robinson is campaigning to represent Oregon's 4th Congressional District in Congress

Improbably, the smackingly racist writing of 19th Century British author George Alfred Henty -- whose boys adventure novels had kind words for slavery, described Africans as having the intelligence of ten-year old children, and featured a comedic description of a slave being tortured with red hot irons (see quotes, below) -- may become an issue this year in an Oregon congressional race.

[Note: this is a long report. But you can get the essential gist by simply reading the four quotes, below, plus the first two introductory paragraphs. That's 410 words more than you've just read.]

Digby discusses how threats drove an abortion provider out of Wichita, but a federal judge ruled that these were not "true threats" under the law. Digby observes that rights gained can be easily lost.  In this case, access to abortion care in the face of massive, sustained antiabortion campaigning by the Religious Right.

The Grio  Kimberley McLeod discusses how Rev. Bernice King, (youngest daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., fan of Samuel Rodriguez, and a former elder in the mega church of the serially scandalous  and notoriously dominionist Eddie Long) says that because some of her friends are gay, her opposition to LGTBQ civil rights cannot be based on homophobia.

The Guardian  Charlotte Higgins reports:  

Christians in Britain and the US who claim that they are persecuted should "grow up" and not exaggerate what amounts to feeling "mildly uncomfortable", according to Rowan Williams, who last year stepped down as archbishop of Canterbury after an often turbulent decade.

"When you've had any contact with real persecuted minorities you learn to use the word very chastely," he said. "Persecution is not being made to feel mildly uncomfortable. 'For goodness sake, grow up,' I want to say."

True persecution was "systematic brutality and often murderous hostility that means that every morning you wonder if you and your children are going to live through the day". He cited the experience of a woman he met in India "who had seen her husband butchered by a mob".

Christian Nationalism, the idea that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation, and that this heritage has somehow been stolen and must be restored, is central to the ideology of the Christian Right.  Even though the claim is based on bogus history and wishful thinking, it remains a powerful narrative.  The recent controversies surrounding Christian nationalist author David Barton's book The Jefferson Lies not withstanding, a recent survey by the First Amendment Center (a program of the Freedom Forum) suggests just how powerful the Christian Nation narrative may be.