Kevin Annett Throws Down the Gauntlet to the Crown

Time for a Republic?

“Canada’s Cromwell” Throws Down the Gauntlet to the Crown

By Sarah J. Webster on September 10, 2019

Part Two in a Syndicated Series on Kevin D. Annett

Part One: http://www.salem-news.com/articles/march262019/canada-biggest-cover-up-sw.php

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice. In the name of God, go!” – Oliver Cromwell, in dismissing the English Parliament, 1653

“There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than to bring about a new order of things. For the innovator has the enmity of all who profit from the old arrangement and merely lukewarm defenders in those who may gain from the new one. That is why all successful prophets have relied not on persuasion but force, to compel loyalty in those who waver and enforce their new constitution on enemy and ally alike.” – Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1521

Preamble

The political comedian Dick Gregory once observed that an election is not a time to discuss serious issues. At the risk of disputing Dick, who was a wonderful man, this article will tackle the very serious matter of the future of a rogue nation, now that a federal election has been called in Canada.

Something both unseen and very obvious is compelling me to answer this summons: a “something” that should be apparent to any of my readers who have perused Part One of this series. For the latter concerns itself with a phenomenon known as Kevin Annett: Canada’s own version of Thomas Paine, Simon Wiesenthal and dare I say, Oliver Cromwell. Kevin is the man who has nearly single handedly exposed and confronted the genocidal nature of his country and its sponsors in London and Rome, and in so doing, has sparked a revolution.

Harry Belafonte summed up Kevin Annett without knowing it when he spoke these words about his friend Martin Luther King, after his state-sponsored execution in 1968:

Sometimes the Good Lord accepts his own perfection and closes his eyes and he makes himself a man. And sometimes that man gets ahold of the idea of what it is possible for him to do. That man lets that idea guide him as he grows and struggles and stumbles and sorrows, until finally he comes into his own God-given shape and achieves his own individual and lonely place in this world. The Master doesn’t make many like that, for that kind of man is dangerous to the sloppy ways of the world. That kind of man loves truth even more than he loves his life, or his wife, or his children, because he’s been designated and set aside to do the hard tasks. That kind of man will do what he sees as justice, even if the earth yawns and swallows him down. And even then his deeds will persist in the land forever. So you look at him well, and be thankful that the Lord allowed such a man to touch our lives, even if it were only for a little while.

In short, you can never keep a good man down.

Poverty, blacklisting, harassment and the usual struggles of advancing age are not keeping Kevin Annett down. On July 23 he publicly announced his candidacy in the upcoming Canadian national election, under the banner of the Republican Party of Kanata: the only party in Canada that aims to sever all ties with the British Crown. Kevin’s declaration didn’t surprise me: not only because of who he is, but as the logical consequence of his quarter of a century campaign to stop genocide in his own backyard. In Kevin’s words,

“There is no way to wash aboriginal blood off our hands and purge the lies from our lips if we don’t uproot the ‘crown and pulpit’ system responsible.”

As he so often says, undoing such a profane alliance is legally required under what is quaintly called ‘International Law’: another nice idea that is being studiously ignored at the United Nations when it comes to the crimes of Canada. But Kevin Annett is taking the idea seriously by embodying it, even as other nations cover for the atrocities of Canadiana.

This second article in a series explores whether Canada and its churches will ever be “prosecuted and punished” for their domestic genocide, as they must be according to the UN Convention by the same name. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sparked the issue last June 4 when he publicly admitted to the crime. But once again it is not career politicians but Kevin Annett who stands at the focal point of this matter.

The election campaign of the former clergyman is for a public office of a new sort. For Kevin is not running to be elected but to raise up a Republic in Canada. He doesn’t want Canadians’ votes but their active disavowal of their allegiance to the status quo. Kevin and two other Republican Party delegates – they eschew the term “representatives” – are the only ones speaking of independence and sovereignty. They are daring to act upon the will of the majority of Canadians, who in a 2014 opinion poll said by 58% that they want an end to all ties with the British monarchy. 

Needless to say, Canada’s government-parroting corporate media – the same group that brought you the sustained coverup of the mass murder of native children – is once again completely blacking out any news of Kevin Annett and the incipient Republican movement. In the words of an assistant editor of a major Canadian newspaper regarding Kevin,

“You of all people should know that in our profession there’s certain issues and people that can never be touched.”

I’m proud to be able herein to confound the words of my media colleague.

Like a Dutiful Lawn Jockey: Is there Life after Canada?

One of the more astute images ever drafted by the Montreal cartoonist Terry Mosher depicts former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney – the architect of the notorious “Free Trade Agreement” that scuttled Canadian industries and jobs – as a grinning jockey statue perched on the front lawn of the White House. Switch the scene to the Great Hall of the People in Beijing and place Justin Trudeau in Mulroney’s place as the most recent adornment of a foreign Empire and you’ll have a good summary of Canada’s position in today’s world affairs. 

Of course, to be fair to the pretty poster-boy Prime Minister, top Canadian politicians have never been anything but the hired guns of big money and their overseas financiers. Trudeau’s removal of all restrictions on Chinese investments in Canada and his allowing the stationing of Chinese armed forces on Canadian soil to “protect” that capital are undoubtedly acts of treason, but only in relation to the abstract notion of democracy so fashionable in Canada. In truth, Canada is simply shifting the hand that holds its leash from an American to an Asiatic one.

That said, the impact of the new masters has been devastating – especially on Canada’s west coast, where the discovery by Chinese companies of vast liquid natural gas (LNG) deposits on indigenous lands has unleashed an unprecedented terror campaign against aboriginals led by Chinese-backed paramilitaries assisted by the RCMP. The evidence of this murderous collusion and Prime Minister Trudeau’s knowledge of the killing and disappearance of native families across northern B.C. was deliberately excluded from the recent state-funded “Missing and Murdered Womens Inquiry”. This censorship in turn compelled the convening of an independent War Crimes Tribunal in Vancouver this month, to which Trudeau and others have been publicly summoned. And once again, Kevin Annett is at the forefront of this effort.

As I recounted in Part One of this story, Kevin’s premier attempt at a domestic War Crimes trial in Vancouver, during the summer of 1998, triggered the first Canadian media coverage of genocidal crimes in Indian residential schools. It also sparked a frantic effort by the government and its church partners to pay off, scare off and kill off aboriginal eyewitnesses to crimes against humanity: a concealment that culminated in the official, duplicitous and expensive whitewash known as the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (TRC).

This time around, however, the stakes are a lot higher for Canadian church and state, since genocide in their country has now not only been proven in international courts of law but publicly admitted to by the Canadian Prime Minister. Even so, Trudeau and the other officials subpoenaed to appear at the Tribunal have ignored the Summons, relying on the proven capacity of the Canadian public and the press to ignore the little matter of mass murder in their own back yard.

It seems like the good Reverend Annett has once again bitten off more than can be chewed. Of course, that’s never dissuaded him from taking on Goliath. But this recent chain of events has once more perked my journalistic curiosity; not just regarding the dogged work of Kevin Annett but whether the hitherto complicit and comfortable Canadian people will respond to his call for a fundamentally new political arrangement in their country.

Knowing how complete is the official “Night and Fog” generated around Kevin’s election campaign, I decided to seek out and follow that campaign for myself. 

On the Road with a Banned Canadian 

The north end of Winnipeg has known better days. Its dirty and untended streets are filled with dispossessed aboriginal families and homeless people, making the neighbourhood one of the poorest in Canada. Written off and forgotten by generations of politicians, north Winnipeg has been a traditional breeding ground of discontent and protest, electing the first Communist to public office anywhere in North America. So it’s perfectly fitting that it is there that Kevin Annett launched his election campaign on July 23.

Recently I found myself in a drab community center off north Main Street alongside a dozen other people, half of them aboriginal. They all came to listen to Kevin, who sat with them in a circle, the scent of sweetgrass in the air. 

“Anytime any of us starts talkin’ about takin’ our land back, our own chiefs threaten to whack us” said an old native women quietly. “We don’t even got our own family members on board with us, everybody’s too scared. And now you’re talkin’ about bootin’ out the Queen?”

“He ain’t gonna do it all by himself” piped up a young guy named Al.

People chuckled. Kevin stared at the old woman intently.

During the break, a young white couple showed up, breathless and apologetic for being late. They brought their three children with them, along with a basket full of bannock and perogies. The bunch of us sat around a table and ate, and got to know each other even better.

Evie, the mother of the kids, talked about fending off Child and Family Services workers who have tried seizing all of her children.

“They do whatever the hell they want, they can take ‘em anytime without a warrant or nothin’. Happened to my neighbour, she lost her little girl and hasn’t seen her in months. If you complain they arrest you.”

Her partner named Steve exploded,

“Those fuckers try that shit on us and they’ll get some lead in the face!” 

He stood up in anger and went outside to smoke. I could hear him cursing.

“It’s the same all over the country” Kevin explained in his calmly reassuring voice. “Once you birth register your children under Crown authority they claim to own them, just like the land and everything else. It’s a perfect example of why we need a Republic. Our families and our children’s lives are at stake.”

Evie nodded, but her eyes were unconvinced. The others shared her look, except for the young guy Al, who hadn’t touched any of the food. He stared squarely at Kevin and said,

“So what do we do about it?”  

My reading of history tells me that the chance of social revolutions erupting greatly increase when two factors intersect: the inability of the old system to function anymore and the refusal of the people to endure it. By that measure, Canada is becoming ripe for its own insurgency: the one that eluded the nation in 1837 when Patriot forces were crushed by the British Crown. Not only are Canada’s official rulers besotted in confusion and corruption, but the angry discontent from below is everywhere. Kevin Annett’s campaign is tapping into that outrage at the grassroots: something I witness whenever he holds a public meeting.

Kevin is at home in north Winnipeg, where he grew up and where six generations of his Scots-Metis ancestors lie buried. He is as familiar a figure there as he is with everyday people burdened by debt, poverty and pain. A lot of people know about him already, especially in the aboriginal world.  In the spring of 2006, Kevin was adopted into the Crane clan of the Anishinabe Nation in north Winnipeg when elder Louis Daniels adopted him and gave him the name Eagle Strong Voice. Kevin’s tenacious, decades-long battle to unearth Canada’s domestic genocide won him an enduring respect among many Indians not on the government payroll.

But that respect doesn’t automatically translate into action. Even Kevin’s strongest backers tend to balk when it comes to his plan to disestablish Crown authority and create self-governing Republican Assemblies to supplant the Canadian government. Of course, the idea that a Prime Minister would eventually admit to genocide also seemed unrealistic, ten years ago. Regardless, Kevin Annett is once more right out in front of the crowd with a vision whose time perhaps is approaching.

Al, who broached the question of what to do next, went silent after Kevin answered him with his plan for setting up “dual power” Republican Assemblies. I expected Al to reply with the standard wariness of Canadians when it comes to confronting authority. But the young guy surprised me. He stated matter of factly,

“Then we gotta get the cops and the army on our side”.

Al’s words seemed to send a ripple through the room, putting everything in a different light. Soon, people started talking about what needed to be done in their neighbourhood. Before the meeting ended, everyone except Steve the angry smoker had taken out citizenship in the Republic of Kanata. Before we left, they were already planning the first gathering of their local Peoples’ Assembly. Steve was still outside the hall, brooding in the sunlight.

“He’ll come around” Evie assured us. 

………………………

Kevin’s campaign has covered a lot of ground since his announced candidacy on July 23. On less than a shoestring, he’s spoken in nine communities and recruited two dozen people to the Republic. His burgeoning movement has scheduled  town hall meetings and election picnics throughout September and October, especially in Ontario, where the response has been the best. 

Two other people in that province have also thrown their hats in the ring under the Republican banner: Brenda Everall in Picton and Timothy Bartsch in East York. But as Timothy points out, their plan is not to be elected.

“We’re not representing anyone. We’re delegates to a future Congress in the Republic” he explained in a joint TV interview with Kevin on August 14. 

“This Parliament is so rotten we have no intention to enter it. We want people to walk away from the system and make something better.”

Brenda Everall in Picton is a veteran fighter for children’s rights who’s faced jailing and assaults for her stand. She’s running for the Republic because, in her words, “There’s just nothing else left for us”.

“You don’t have to look for the New World Order any further than Ontario courts and the Children’s Aid Society. It’s pure evil, trafficking children for profit into the hands of killers and rapists. The Crown is the problem, the judges and Mounties protect CAS, there’s never any accountability. We have to take back our children and make a just country for ourselves.”

                            Brenda Everall, Bay of Quinte      Timothy Bartsch, East York  

All during the fall, the Republic campaign will be broadening its presence to the nation’s campuses and schools. “Stuff the Crown” rallies and picnics are being planned, complete with at least one rock band in Toronto, along with open Town Hall meetings that will be televised. Kevin is especially looking forward to “tracking down Justin” as he puts it. The elusive Prime Minister has refused to answer a Public Summons or respond to Kevin’s challenge to debate him over how Canada and its churches should be prosecuted for their proven genocide.

“With the SNC Lavalin corruption scandal dragging him down in the polls, I doubt that Trudeau will have the guts to debate me right now” remarked Kevin over a glass of tea. “But I don’t blame him. Cowardice is what comes from being an abused child.”

I caught Kevin in a rare moment of rest. We had just come from a meeting in Goderich, Ontario where he had spoken about the Republic to twenty local residents. 

“They may look like your typical rural Conservatives but don’t believe it, those folks are pissed off and hot to change things” remarked Kevin, reflecting on the meeting. 

“Did you know an old lady told me that she’s going to their next city council meeting to demand that they stop sending tax money to Ottawa? And she wants the Mayor to revoke his oath of allegiance to the Queen. Hell, when that’s going on in Goderich, it shows you how much things are turning.”

Four local Goderich residents signed up that evening with the Republic. 

I asked Kevin if he wasn’t feeling like a small boat in a huge storm. His lack of funds, for one thing, means that his message is reaching only a handful of people.

“It’s a true message and it’s hitting a chord in people, so it’s spreading quickly through the grassroots. Everyone knows the present political system is a corrupt mess. Every day I’m besieged with calls from people wanting to join up with us, canvass, leaflet. One old guy drives around downtown Kitchener with our Kanata flag flying behind his scooter, shouting from his mini sound system for people to join the Republic. Beautiful!”

Kevin and the Republic campaign commenced its west to east “national tour” on August 20, building on the initial Ontario kick off. Already he has spoken across British Columbia and Alberta, where the local Western Sovereignty movement has joined hands with him. A Republic picnic complete with music, food and dancing was held in Winnipeg’s north end on Labor Day. The event pulled in another twenty two new citizens, some of whom announced their plan to occupy two vacant neighbourhood lots and cultivate them as free community gardens under the jurisdiction of the Republic.

Of course, none of this has gone unnoticed in “higher circles”.

Concern at the Top: Will No One Deal with this Meddlesome ‘Priest’?

In the course of keeping tabs on Kevin and the growing Republic campaign I checked out my sources in the Ottawa press gallery and among politicians, cops and civil servants. I wanted to gauge if and to what degree the Republican movement is being noticed by the government. 

Despite my aforementioned encounter with a newspaper editor who inferred that Kevin Annett was someone beyond the pale of media consideration, I tried my press colleagues first. Conservative by nature, wary of litigation,  the so-called fifth estate were warned off years ago from covering anything to do with Kevin. No journalist wants to talk about the man, except to ridicule him. As with rabid church officials, Kevin’s name evokes a weird odium and dread among otherwise intelligent reporters. 

No doubt my journalist colleagues resent Kevin for scooping all of them by being the first one to publish the hard evidence of massive deaths in the Indian residential schools. As for the idea of a Republic in Canada, the consensus among reporters and editors seems to be that once it actually happens, they’ll consider covering the story. 

Interestingly, such a trite response tended to diminish the higher I went into government and police circles. From what I can see, the Canadian state takes Kevin Annett quite seriously. The civil servants and Mounties to whom I spoke see Kevin and his work to unseat the system responsible for domestic genocide as a definite threat. But they don’t hate him the way church and press people do. They have a more sophisticated and level-headed view of what Kevin Annett represents. 

One mid-level RCMP official in Vancouver remarked about Kevin off the record,

“I had to admire the guy, even when he was throwing mud at us. All those years, he just never gave up. To tell you the truth, I caught more flak from my own superiors than from anything Annett did. A lot of us on the Force were happy he did what he did. We all knew the awful truth of those Indian kids had to come out eventually, it was inevitable, just a matter of time. But now everybody just wants to forget about it, which suits me just fine.”

When I asked the same Mountie what he thought of the idea of a Republic in Canada, he shrugged slightly.

“I don’t care who wears the top hat, when it comes down to it. But I won’t lose any sleep if the old lady is the last of her line.”

Not all of the responses were so benign. After I left a phone message for a senior civil servant connected to the Prime Minister’s Office, I was contacted by a lawyer who claimed to represent the Privy Council: that shadowy group that oversees the government and passes laws never seen by Parliament.

The lawyer asked me if I had contacted the PMO on behalf of Kevin Annett. When I told him no, that I was simply researching an article about him, he pressed me for information about Kevin’s location and plans. When I played dumb, he warned me that my failure to disclose information involving the “security” of key government officials constituted a felony and I could be prosecuted.

“What does Reverend Annett have to do with the security of government officials?” I asked the lawyer. When he didn’t reply, I continued,

“Are you saying Annett is a threat to their security?”

“I have been so informed, yes”

“By whom?”

“By the relevant authorities”

“Do you mean a political threat?”

“I’m not free to comment about anything else …”

Make of that what you will. The truth is that Canada these days strikes me as similar to Russia about a year before the 1917 insurrection. 

At that time, a revolutionary ferment was growing among the people yet the revolutionaries seemed distant and irrelevant, and were generally written off by the mainstream political “experts”. The same kind of unsuspected drama is playing itself out across Canada. Kevin Annett represents a nagging threat and foreboding in the mind of more than one Canadian politician: like people who anxiously scan the horizon looking for signs of an invading army.

Epilogue: One Honest Man in Sodom?

During my week on the road with Kevin Annett I tried to delve deeper into his thoughts and motives. He’s not an easy man to get to know, despite his warmth and openness. Some hidden and separate quality in him always stands apart, but it’s in that opaque aspect that I sense his real power and purpose.

“Your election campaign is an enigma to me” I remarked to him over dinner one night. 

“What part’s a mystery?” 

“It’s just that you don’t strike me as much of a politician” I replied.

He smiled, as if I’d paid him a compliment.  But I persisted.

“What is it that you have in mind ultimately, Kevin? I mean, beyond the obvious stuff?”

He gave me his intense brown-eyed stare before saying quietly,

“Something most people can’t imagine they’re capable of until they have to be. And that moment is approaching faster than we think.”

“You mean a revolution?” I asked him.

“Yes, definitely. But people don’t make revolutions, they are made by them, after things get a lot worse. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold …”

“You’ve read Yeats” I said, knowing his Gaelic roots.

“Naturally. Societies collapse spiritually before they ever do economically or politically” Kevin continued. “Look around. There is no moral or lawful substance in Canada at any official level. And there’s a growing revulsion against the whole corrupt mess, a yearning among people for something good and genuine. The truth is that the war of extermination we waged against Indian nations wiped us out too; just look at the dead drones who run the churches and government. Canada is like a terminal patient in denial about his real condition. But until we can face what we are, we’re heading for oblivion.”

“So that’s why you see rebuilding Canada from the grassroots, the Peoples’ Assemblies …” 

“Those won’t happen without an awakened group of people who are willing to take personal responsibility for making a new nation. But I’m not talking just about an awakening. We need brave and tough people willing to fight. Those are the ones I’m seeking out these days. More will follow once we set the example. There’s really no alternative, unless you think Elizabeth May is an answer.” 

Kevin’s smirking reference to the head of Canada’s Green Party – who has already pledged her support for any future minority Liberal government – reminded me of an encounter I had recently with Ms. May. When I asked her to her face what she thought of Kevin Annett and the Republic of Kanata,  the politician didn’t answer me and turned away quickly with a vexed and worried expression.

I asked Kevin about some of the basic planks of his movement’s Republican program, starting with the nullifying of allegiance to the Crown and the nationalization of the country’s wealth.

“That’s kind of a tall order, isn’t it?” I asked him.

“Only at first glance” replied Kevin. “The so-called Crown is a fiction that has no more authority than the Vatican. But in the name of that make-believe power our country’s been robbed and raped from overseas for centuries. Now it’s a matter of stepping out of an illusion and creating a new lawful jurisdiction that can take back the nation for everyone, and I mean everyone.”

Listening to Kevin Annett talk politics and social justice is never as satisfying or insightful as when he speaks from a deeper place. So I pressed him.

“But this is not ultimately about politics for you, is it, Kevin? Not about nice ideas or slogans. It’s more visceral for you, isn’t it?”

Kevin must be used to my interview style by now because he wasn’t surprised by my question.

“I’m sick of this blood soaked system” he barked. “I can’t tolerate it, I never should have. I’ve seen close friends murdered. I’ve had my life destroyed by it. My heart’s been ripped out by the screams of my daughter as she was torn from my arms. Nothing’s abstract after that.”

I replied,

“You’ve told me about how that experience of losing your children brought you into the circles of Indian residential school survivors, how you identified with their pain and they with yours …”

“It was a lot more than that” Kevin interrupted. “Things get clarified when you’re under fire. The system suddenly wanted me dead and buried. I’ve felt its blows every day for years. It’s not an abstract evil. I am in a fight to the death.”

“And pretty much alone, it seems” I observed.

“I didn’t know I would be, not at first” Kevin replied, with a world-weary gaze. “I figured that most people would support our fight to save childrens’ lives, once they learned the truth. But I was wrong. Our campaigns against genocide have never involved more than a handful of people. The people as a whole seem indifferent to the slaughter of children, which is more than strange. It’s like being among the walking dead.”

“Then what makes you think that you’ll find even one honest soul in Sodom, Kevin? How many Canadians will actually support a new Republic?”

“Over half of them who were polled said they do” replied Kevin tiredly. “A decade ago, nobody besides me was using the word ‘genocide’ in reference to Indian residential schools, but now it’s acceptable. You have to trust in the power of an idea whose time has come.”

I looked into his firm but exhausted eyes and paused, not knowing if I should ask him my next question. But I finally said,

“Are you really that hopeful? I don’t know how you can be, after all that you’ve lost. After what you know of the huge evil that you’re up against.”

Kevin Annett stared back at me with a look that I will never see in another’s eyes, even if I live for a century. Then he said quietly,

“It doesn’t matter if we win or lose, Sarah. The point is to show the world and ourselves that we refuse to go along with this crime called Canada any longer.”

I thought about that. Then I leaned towards him and said,

“You know Kevin, Abraham wasn’t able to find even one honest soul in Sodom and Gomorrah. Not one. How does it go? ‘And then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on the doomed cities’ ...”

I expected Kevin to answer me but he said nothing. We sat in silence as the rain began to fall outside.

……………………….

To contact Kevin Annett and the campaign for the Republic of Kanata write to republicofkanata@gmail.com or thecommonland@gmail.com , and see www.murderbydecree.com under “ITCCS Updates”. Follow Kevin’s work every Sunday at 3 pm pacific at www.bbsradio.com/herewestand.

Sarah J. Webster (a pseudonym) is a syndicated journalist and a resource person and adviser to alternative media networks on three continents. She has been nominated for journalism excellence awards on numerous occasions. Her email is sarahjwebster101@gmail.com .