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Volume 14,
Number 21 |
Also in
this section:  The wiz: James Alexander McQuirter And he's got a plan for you to get rich quick... He's
a wizard under the sheets!
by Eric Jackson, mostly from other media As a wizard, he's definitely not in Merlin's league He joined what has been dubbed "The Scum of the Earth, aboard The Ship of Fools," wherein a heavily armed group of white supremacists planned to land in Dominica, attack the Caribbean island nation's police station, assassinate the prime minister and live like kings. He bragged about it in advance to a Canadian reporter, who went straight to the Ontario Provincial Police and then to Dominica's Prime Minister Eugenia Charles. The captain of the yacht hired for this invasion tipped off the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, who infiltrated three of their agents into the invasion force and sold the white supremacists the arms and explosives for which they had been incautiously shopping. As the wannabe invaders were about to board the boat for this adventure they were arrested --- but not our wizard. He was in Dominica with the advance undercover force. Eventually he was also picked up by authorities, and did three years behind bars for that one. Then he put out a contract on his girlfriend's common-law ex-husband, a fellow white racist activist --- alas, to a police agent. He did six years behind bars for that one. Meet James Alexander McQuirter, son of a ne'er do well Vancouver used car salesman who rose to the dizzying height of Grand Wizard of the Canadian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan --- and then came to Panama, to preach the Emerald Passport get rich quick creed at Herman Bern's Gamboa Rainforest Resort. In the Canadian outfit in which McQuirter was put forward as a leader, one did not have to be particularly intelligent to be a wizard. Actually, the brains behind that Canadian affiliate of the KKK faction headed by David Duke was an immigrant of German origin, one Wolfgang Droege. McQuirter got to be Grand Wizard for much the same reason that Sarah Palin got on the GOP national ticket: the combination of youthful good looks and an ability to recite a scripted political pitch. What, they have the Klan in Canada? The Klan movement in the United States has had several incarnations and has usually been divided into various factions, and the Canadian KKK has always been an appendage of its US home base. Originally, the Klan was formed by former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest to fight against Reconstruction and intimidate black men from voting. It had no Canadian presence in the 19th century. In its second incarnation, the American Klan fed on nativist themes in the 1920s and prospered --- gaining political power in several southern states and in the former Union state of Indiana --- until discrediting itself in a 1930s alliance with Nazi Germany's American political apparatus. During that time the KKK's Canadian affiliates gained a considerable following in the prairie provinces and British Columbia, counting on 40,000 dues-paying members in Saskatchewan alone in the early 30s. In its third incarnation the KKK killed a bunch of civil rights workers but lost its struggle with Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers, and didn't find many sympathizers in Canada. Deplored by the general public and shattered by infighting and a series of criminal prosecutions, the boys in the hood who remained politically active tended to trade in their white sheets for blue blazers and became a peculiar strain of conservative Republicans. Emblematic among this generation were David Duke, who inspired McQuirter and Droege, and Duke's white power colleague and the founder of stormfront.org, Don Black. Stormfront has its Spanish-language section and its Panamanian participants, but it's usually money rather than politics that brings North American storm trooper types to the isthmus. In McQuirter's case, it might also be the fact that because of his criminal past he is barred from entering the United States. A profitable spinoff for a used car salesman's fascist son Consider that the Jewish banker is one of the central stereotypical villains in the white supremacists' rogues gallery, and that Klan and Nazi types allege that the Jews have set up a "Zionist Occupation Government" (ZOG) in North America, which is why an ignorant, intolerant white boy from a family without money can't get ahead these days. People who buy such arguments become the perfect marks for hustlers with North American far-right pedigrees and schemes to detour around the various perceived Hebrew-interposed obstacles to the good life. And it's a good business in Panama, too. Herman Bern makes money when his Playa Bonita or Gamboa resorts are used for "investment seminars" put on by the likes of former "patriot" militia shill Mark Boswell alias Rex Freeman or our wizard Mr. McQuirter. In fact those hotels are set up for the running of indoctrination games, wherein reasonably smart people are convinced to do stupid things with their money. The main thing is that they are beyond the places where taxis cruise, so that ingress and egress is as a practical matter limited. When one is indoctrinating people, it's important to create a controlled atmosphere in which an inward-looking group mentality is fostered, and the ability to step outside and walk or take a short and cheap cab ride to some other distraction detracts from such an atmosphere. Once a person or organization who's indoctrinating has a captive audience, the mental (and physical) resistance of those assembled is broken down, typically through fear, fatigue or fervor. Ringers planted among the group testify to their salvation. (The far right professes a Christian identity, but apparently it's OK with them to bear false witness when doing battle with ZOG.) Time constraints are imposed ("if you walk out of here the offer is withdrawn" and such). "Indoctrination" as in "boot camp?" Well, it's funny, or appalling, when you think about it and read a bit more. At the bottom of one of pages in the the website for one of the main people in the organization for which McQuirter was hosting seminars at the Gamboa Rainforest Resort, the guy advertises "Bootcamp Live Trainings." So what's McQuirter selling? Why, the "Emerald Passport Income Opportunity." Go to their website and figure it out: What's in it for me? Emerald Passport Inc. Founded with your financial freedom in mind. The Emerald Passport Opportunity offers distributors many benefits. Some are financial; others are intangibles, such as pride in achievement, leadership development, the joy of helping others, working with family, and acquiring the skill of running and owning your own business. Let's begin with Income Potential. “When you are at the ground floor or within the close distance, it is then when you get rich!” - unknown Important Disclaimer - Income is not guaranteed Say what? What are they selling? Well, see, it's like this. You pay $1,295 for a distributorship, plus about a hundred bucks more for materials. That gives you the right to sell distributorships. The first two that you sell, you get nothing. After that, you get 75 percent of the take. For every distributorship you sell, you get a percentage of the first two distributorships they sell. (Wait a minute --- doesn't that sound like a sales pyramid? Ah, but then the neo-Nazi creed has it that those big structures at Giza were built not by the ancestors of the Semites who live there now, but by fair-skinned Aryan types who, after having made their point, ultimately decided that it was more rewarding to nazify Northern Europe than to supervise Nubian stone cutters and Hebrew brick makers out in the hot African sun. Anyway, in the sales pyramid biz they have a special name for this kind of operation, an "Australian two-up compensation plan.") C'mon, getting rich quick from cuts out of less than $1,300? But wait, there's more. See, the distributorship allows you to sell not only relatively cheap online courses about how to get rich quick by speculating in foreign currencies and real estate. Then there is the "The Phase Two product," a four-day seminar in "personal development" and "wealth building strategies" that sells for $5,995, with $4,500 of that going to the distributor (who has previously paid that amount to a "Qualified Phase Two distributor" and convinced two people to do the same); and the "Phase Three product," a $14,995 "millionaires conference," $10,000 of which goes to the "qualified" distributor who can get that third somebody to pay that. "I have no choice but to be excited --- otherwise it wouldn't be exciting," as Emerald Passport shill Sam Lajic spins it. And at these conferences, in addition to wisdom like that you can get the wizardly counsel of James Alexander McQuirter, who uses the name "James Alexander" in his role as financial whiz and personal development guru down here. Ah, but if you buy into the system, you sign an agreement that begs many a question about exactly what you will be buying and selling. Part of the boilerplate reads: I further understand and acknowledge that no EPI Product offered by EMERALD PASSPORT, its agents, officers, representatives, IDs or DIRECTORs shall be construed as business, accounting, medical, legal, tax, investment or financial advice, nor shall I rely upon the accuracy of any information offered by the aforementioned assignees in the conduct of my business operations.  Emerald Passport's Jim Rivas, using former Miss Universe Justine Pasek to pass himself off as somebody who's reputable and important in Panama Who are these guys? So who runs Emerald Passport? Their website doesn't say. Other websites name Jim Rivas, and say that Sam Lajic is his "right-hand man." On his website, Rivas describes himself as a "Member EPI Executive Leadership Council" and "EPI's First $100,000 per month earner." (Do the math, and figure out how many people would have to be brought into the sales pyramid, then figure out how likely or unlikely that might be.) Down here in Panama, attorney Jaime Figueroa was the president of Emerald Passport until McQuirter's activities in Panama and his KKK past were revealed on Okke Ornstein's Bananama Republic website, Figueroa having taken over from real estate salesman Alonso de la Guardia (of Palmetto Realty). Ornstein reports that McQuirter first began working in Panama when de la Guardia was president of the company. Figueroa is CEO of Panama All In One, a company dedicated to helping foreigners move to Panama. As soon as he was advised of "James Alexander's" identity by Ornstein, he resigned from Emerald Passport. He also says that the post he quit was a ceremonial rather than decision-making job. In his former role, Alonso de la Guardia described Emerald Passport as "a wholesale provider of life-enhancing educational products to an elite group of independent business owners; our global network of direct resellers. We offer a unique Web-based business opportunity to anyone who wants to have a business of their own...."  The men who brought the Grand Wizard to our shores, Emerald Passport's Jim Rivas and Alonso de la Guardia Yes, there are a lot of foreign expatriates who have moved here. However, those who tout and pretend to lead the "expat community" and serve as its intermediaries with Panama in general are to be distinguished from most of those who come to live here. The relationship between the former and the latter is primarily that between predators and prey. To use a concept described by historian C.L.R. James in another context, this pack of predators includes "men of all nations and all crimes" --- like our erstwhile wizard under the sheets turned get rich quick seminar host. The Canadian community's reaction Canadians tend to be much more low-keyed and moderate than Americans. Whenever an American hustler is exposed in the community, there is always a right-wing fringe that rises to his defense and denounces the medium that identified him. But rarely does the local Canadian community comment one way or another about unsavory Canadians who turn up on the isthmus. (Rest assured that they have come here, and, as we have seen, they continue to do so.) In this case, the Canadian Association took notice of James Alexander McQuirter, and resolved to tighten its vetting of new members so as to avoid ties with the criminal element. The Canadian Embassy and through it the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were notified, but have had no public comment. Although
McQuirter may have bought the protection of the Torrijos
administration like so many other foreign hoodlums, the price of that
protection will likely go up once administrations change because that
is the nature of Panamanian political corruption. Moreover, he won't
be getting any social cover from this country's Canadians. Canada's
government probably can't do much about him in any case --- the Grand
Wizard's presence here is, after all, a problem of the Panamanian
government's making. Correction: In an earlier version of this story it was stated that Jaime Figueroa was the source by which Okke Ornstein dated McQuirter's arrival in Panama to the time when Alonso de la Guardia was president of Emerald Passport. Figueroa was not Ornstein's source.
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2008 by Eric Jackson email: editor@thepanamanews.com or e_l_jackson_malo@yahoo.com Mailing
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