What Can You Believe Anymore? Not So Much Apparently

In my persistent quest for the truth, I have been persuaded that

almost nothing is ever as it seems anymore.

In today's news from Dubai comes a report of a man from Kerala, India, who applied on a mechanical engineering job in the Gulf State. The email he received from his prospective employer was astonishing for its candidness. It has since gone viral:

Gulf News - Shaheen Bagh is the epicentre of ongoing mass demonstrations against India’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act.

The act makes it more difficult for Muslims to become citizens of India:

The Shaheen Bagh protest is an ongoing 24/7 sit-in peaceful protest, led by women, that began with the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in both houses of Parliament on 11 December 2019 and the ensuing police intervention against students at Jamia Millia Islamia who were opposing the Amendment. Mainly Muslim women, the protesters at Shaheen Bagh, since 15 December 2019, have blocked a major highway[a] in New Delhi using non-violent resistance for 43 days now as of 26 January 2020. It has now become the longest ongoing continuous protest against CAA-NRC-NPR. -Wikipedia

Abdulla S.S., 23, who had applied for a mechanical engineer’s position in Dubai said he is still reeling from the shock of the email he got from UAE-based Indian expat Jayant Gokhale in response to his job application last week.

Rs 1000 is about $14 USD; free food and tea, sweets, are a pretty tempting offer especially for an unemployed Indian. 

The question is: 'is this going on elsewhere, or is it a one-off event?'  

This week in Vancouver, the extradition trial of Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of Hauwei, and the daughter of the founder of the spectacularly successful Chinese telecom company, got underway with a couple dozen protesters at the courts to support Meng. 

It turns out that they were hired to be there and, at least some, didn't know why they were even there until the last minute. 

Some of the participants have since alleged they were paid to take part in the protest.

Ken Bonson told the Star a friend recruited her and later deposited $150 into her account. At the courthouse, a woman she had never met before named “Joey” supplied them with posters, Bonson said. After learning more about Meng and the allegations against her, Bonson said she wished she had never taken part and felt “ashamed and embarrassed.” The Star has since spoken to the friend, who denies being paid or paying anyone to take part in the protest. The man refused to go on record for an interview. He said he did not know anyone named “Joey.”

Julia Hackstaff, an actor, wrote on Facebook that she was the victim of a “filthy cheap scam.” She said someone had contacted her Sunday evening asking if she wanted to be a background performer in a production for $100. When she arrived, she said, she received ambiguous instructions to hold a sign. When reporters approached the group and started asking questions, she thought it was all part of the production but quickly realized “everything was ‘too real.’

“I left after 5 minutes of being there.” - The Star

Another reason to suspect protests.

There is no reason to suspect the greatest protest of the 21st century - the Yellow Vest protest in France that has been going on for almost a year and a half, but, it might be worth investigating anyway.

But, perhaps the most disturbing example of paid protesting has to do with indigenous people of British Columbia and Alberta being used as pawns by American environmentalists, some of whom are sponsored by David Rockefeller (The Rockefellers were founders and owners of Standard Oil), to isolate Alberta oil and gas and keep it from reaching tidewater. This ensures Americans can buy it at ultra cheap prices, and they can't take markets that might otherwise be open to American oil and gas.

A left-wing lobby group in San Francisco wired $55,000 to the bank account of an Indian chief in Northern Alberta, paying him to oppose the oilsands.

The same IRS disclosure shows Tides Foundation (started by philanthropist Drummond Pike) made 25 different payments to Canadian anti-oilsands activists in a single year, totaling well over a million dollars. And that’s just one U.S. lobby group. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund out of New York, spends $7 million a year in Canada, with an explicit campaign strategy of fomenting Aboriginal unrest, through protests and lawsuits. - Toronto Sun    Alberta's Oil Not the Only Thing That's Dirty

The Rockefellers are known as great philanthropists, and they were. However, one has to wonder how much of their philanthropy was self-serving. 

Drummond Pike, started Tides Foundation, then Tides Center, then Tides Canada. Much of Pike's work was involved in supporting progressive politicians in both Canada and the  USA:

Pike along with George Soros and other Democracy Alliance members John R. Hunting; Paul Rudd (co-founder of Adaptive Analytics); Pat Stryker; Nicholas Hanauer; ex-Clinton administration official Rob Stein; Gail Furman; real estate developer Robert Bowditch; Pioneer Hybrid International-heir and congressional candidate Scott Wallace; Susie Tompkins Buell; real estate developer Albert Dwoskin; and Taco Bell-heir Rob McKay, funded the Secretary of State Project, an American non-profit, 527 political action committee focused on electing reform-minded progressive Secretaries of State in battleground states, who typically oversee the election process. The Alliance was critical in getting California Secretary of State Debra Bowen and Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie re-elected. - Wikipedia

See also:

Talk About ‘Collusion’: How Foreign-Backed Anti-Oil Activists Infiltrated Canada’s Government   Or, how wealthy American environmentalists bought the Canadian government and destroyed Alberta's Oil Sands industry

How America is Strangling the Canadian Oil Industry, and We're Helping Them

Anti-pipeline campaign was planned, intended, and foreign-funded: Vivian Krause

Alberta's Oil Not the Only Thing That's Dirty

First Nations chief received $55,000 from Tides Foundation

Ezra Levant, Toronto Sun

A left-wing lobby group in San Francisco wired $55,000 to the bank account of an Indian chief in Northern Alberta, paying him to oppose the oilsands.

Singer Neil Young, right, speaks in front of climate scientist Andrew Weaver, left, Indigenous rights advocate Eriel Derenger, second left, and Athabasca Chipewyan Chief Allan Adam

And sure enough, that chief – Allan Adam, from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation – earned his money. Last weekend, he flew to Toronto to sit on a stage next to Neil Young, the folk singer who was in town to demonize Canada’s oil industry.

Now, $55,000 might sound like a lot of money to pay, just to rent a politician for a day if all the chief did for his money was to appear on stage in Toronto beside Neil Young. But to the Tides Foundation, it’s well worth it. Think of Adam as an actor, hired to play a part in an elaborate theatrical production.

Neil Young had his role: he’s the American celebrity who can draw crowds of fawning Baby Boomer journalists. But at the end of the day, he’s just another millionaire celebrity. When he talks about the oilsands, he quickly reveals himself as a low-information know-nothing.

Adam brings what Young can’t: authenticity. Young likes to wear an Indian-style leather vest, but Adam really is an Indian, and he really lives near the oilsands.

Adam didn’t do a lot of talking in Toronto. He was more of a prop than an actor. See, the Tides Foundation is from San Francisco. And Neil Young lives on a 1,500-acre estate near San Francisco. Without Adam, this would have just been some California millionaires coming up here to boss Canadians around. That’s why they had to hire Adam, to aboriginalize their attack on Canada. It was political sleight of hand, to distract from the fact that this was a foreign assault on Canadian jobs.

Tides could have hired an actual actor, like maybe Lorne Cardinal, who played the Aboriginal policeman in the comedy series Corner Gas. But they didn’t hire an actor. They hired an elected public official. That’s the problem.

Bribing an elected official?
Adam’s official title is “chief.” But it’s not a religious or cultural title. Under the Indian Act, that’s just the legal title given to the elected mayor of an Indian Band.

The Tides Foundation put $55,000 into the bank account of a mayor to get him to take a particular political position. Depending on what Tides was getting the Chief to do, the payment might well have been a bribe. But we won't know, because no one is talking about the $55,000 payment.

How is it acceptable that a foreign lobby group can simply deposit cash into a bank account of a Canadian politician? Who else is being paid cash to oppose the oilsands?

This fact almost escaped detection. It was buried in the Tides Foundation’s 138-page filing with the IRS, who only disclosed it to get a tax break. Even then, it was shrouded in secrecy.

The money was paid to a numbered company, 850450 Alberta Ltd. Only a search of Alberta’s corporate registry revealed that 850450 Alberta Ltd. was owned by another company, called Acden Group Ltd., that had changed its name twice in the past four years. Adam and other band politicians were directors and shareholders, in trust for the band.

Doesn't sound the least bit like they were trying to hide something!

The payment was well-hidden – and Adam certainly didn’t disclose it when he was on stage with Young.

The same IRS disclosure shows Tides made 25 different payments to Canadian anti-oilsands activists in a single year, totaling well over a million dollars. And that’s just one U.S. lobby group. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund out of New York, spends $7 million a year in Canada, with an explicit campaign strategy of fomenting Aboriginal unrest, through protests and lawsuits.

If a foreign oil company – say, ExxonMobil – was depositing secret payments in the bank accounts of MPs, it would be a scandal. Those MPs would face an RCMP investigation, Exxon would likely be charged with bribery, and the media on both sides of the border would have a field day.

Yet none of those things will likely happen with Adam.

Because the Tides Foundation knows that the Canadian media and even the police are cowards when it comes to Aboriginal politicians. They don’t dare hold them to account, for fear of being called racist. If you doubt this, look at the continued success of Theresa Spence, Attawapiskat’s chief.

Tides got its money’s worth.