Anti-Racist Suffers Attack on Home

Remember a few months ago when the group, Anti-Racist Action Calgary engaged in a poster campaign to expose a member of the Aryan Guard attending the University of Calgary? Well, seems that they have responded in kind:

At 9:50 AM April 2, Bonnie Devine opened the front door of her family’s house to discover 2 poorly-made posters plastered to the front door of their residence.

The posters attempt to defame Jason Devine, a public spokesperson of Anti-Racist Action Calgary (ARA), and ARA itself as an organisation. Besides a sad attempt at slander, the posters are marked by poor grammar.

Most importantly, the posters feature at their bottom the web site address of the Aryan Guard (AG): www.aryanguard.org and their email address: aryanguard-calgary@hotmail.com

While ARA has no problems with such pitiful attempts at attacking us, indeed the free publicity is welcome, plastering the posters on the front door of the Devine family follows in a repeated trail of attacks on their house: a Molotov cocktail thrown at the house, repeated racist graffiti sprayed-painted on the house, a cinder block thrown through the front window and a projectile shot through the children's window.

These posters prove that members of the AG have been targeting the Devine family in their hatred of Anti-Racist Action Calgary, and further lead us to believe that the AG has been behind the previous attacks listed above.

While this effort by whom we presume to be the remnant of the Aryan Guard is actually sort of funny, the next incident is certainly not funny at all:

Victim fears neo-Nazi link in suspected bombing of Abbotsford home

By Rafe Arnott,
Abbotsford Times
April 6, 2010

Abbotsford police are reporting that accelerant used in a fire that damaged a home in the 33900 block of Old Yale Road at 2 a.m. Monday had a fused device connected to it.

The presence of the device caused police investigators to request outside assistance, said APD spokesperson Const. Ian MacDonald.

“We didn’t relinquish the investigation, we asked for some expertise from the [RCMP] bomb squad,” he said.

A resident of the house in question, Maitland Cassia, identified himself as a member of Anti-Racist Action, and said he was jolted out of bed by what he described as a loud “blast.”

Cassia fears the blast that started the fire was in retaliation for an anti-Nazi rally he helped organize that took place at New Westminster’s Braid SkyTrain Station on March 21.

The rally generated media coverage and subsequent photos from the event splashed Cassia’s name and face across several Lower Mainland newspaper websites, making him a target, he said.

He said he is fearful of further retaliation, and planned on moving out of the house immediately.

Members of the bomb squad were on scene Monday, said MacDonald, and collected several items of interest in evidence bags and containers.

Heavy black scorching, and damage to the home’s exterior could be seen adjacent to a door situated at the side of the home.

Debris was blown across the yard for several metres in an outward pattern from the door.

Police suspect the device was used as a way to create distance when the accelerant was set off, and are treating the incident as arson.

The Braid rally in March drew hundreds of anti-Nazi protestors, and was in response to a planned white supremacy, neo-Nazi rally that never materialized.

Online sites quoted Cassia declaring the rally a “victory” for those opposed to racial discrimination.

MacDonald said police have no prior interaction with the residents, or the address in question, and are trying to determine what potential motives for the incident might exist.

“We would obviously investigate any suggestions that the [residents] may have for potential reasons for [the incident], but I couldn’t comment further on what has transpired here,” said MacDonald.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

We've held off on publishing the news about the bombing in the hopes that we'd be able to pick up on some chatter online or from some sources relatively close to racist groups based in B.C. (our B.C. intel is in it's relative infancy at this moment) but now we're hoping that our readers are able to provide some more details.

It is interesting, however, that the folks who run FreeDom have accused the ARA of being an ultra-violent domestic terrorist group involved in arson, murder and all sort of nasty things (we've yet to see any truth to these accusations; the Zundel fire in the 1990s, which a few have tried to link to the ARA, was actually claimed by a far-right Jewish hate group linked to the Kahane movement and the JDL). But when actual acts of violence are committed against the ARA members, real domestic terrorism is given a pass or, in at least one case, justified. Just as we here at ARC would condemn crimes committed against both members of the ARA and members of any racist group, we would hope that others would offer the same condemnations.

A Look Back at the Jean-Sébastien Presseault Case

Back in 2007, Jean-Sébastien Presseault was given a 6 month prison term for violating Canada's hate crime laws. At the time, the usual suspects on Stormfront were bitching about a man being put in prison for, "thought crimes." In fact, Tomasz Winnicki includes Presseault among the, "free speech" martyrs who have been, "persecuted" by the evil government.

The reality, of course, is very different than the fiction created by the boneheads.

A few days ago we were sent a message containing a link to ruling in Presseault's criminal case. We are treated to a profile of a man who wasn't exactly pure as the driven snow before this particular criminal conviction:

Presseault, in fact, had a pretty extensive criminal record:

DATE	OFFENCES	SENTENCE
1995/12/19	(1) Breaking and entering (2) Possession of property obtained by crime (3) Conspiracy	Suspended sentence with two years’ probation and 100 hours of community work to be done within six months
2000/01/06	(1) Extortion (2) Forcible confinement (3) Conspiracy	(1-3) 10 months for each count and two years’ probation and mandatory prohibition order (s. 109 Cr. C.)
2000/04/20	Failure to comply with an undertaking (two counts)	$200 fine for each count
2000/05/18	Obstructing a peace officer	$150 fine
2006/10/25	(1) Possession of a prohibited or restricted firearm and ammunition (2) Uttering threats (3) Possession of a weapon during a prohibition order (4) Breaking and entering and committing (5) Possession of break-in instruments	(1-3) 60 days and two years’ probation (4-5) Eight days for each count served concurrently and two years’ probation

Jonathan Besler’s Woman Woes

Jonathan Besler was one of the few Nazis who showed up at the anti-racism rally in Calgary on March 21. Besler, 32, is from Eatonia, Saskatchewan, where he ran for Mayor in the fall of 2009 on a “Libertarian” platform, an effort which garnered exactly 11 votes. To be fair, Eatonia has a population of only about 500, but it’s curious that someone with political ambitions, however small or improbable, would think it’s a good idea to attend protests with white supremacists.


That’s Besler on the right (with Nazi pal Layton Bertsch) in the above photo, attempting to convince the press that he is “proud to be white but accepting of others as well," a message which somewhat contradicts his stance at the 2009 Aryan Guard “White Pride Day” rally (for good measure, we've circled Besler in red and Bertsch in black):



Other sentiments similarly miscommunicate Besler’s message of non-racist acceptance:

“It’s not the number of immigrants, it’s the quality. With Canada subscribing to Marxist ideals, we attract and import leeches rather than productive individuals.” – Jonathan Besler, May 3, 2009

and


But if a white nationalist with failed political pretensions doesn’t surprise our readers, it will probably come as no shock that Besler also appears to be the resident “weird guy” with delusions of intellectualism that women uniformly avoid. And try as he might, it seems that Besler, who says his main goal in life is “to have a family and serve God” has been having a little trouble convincing white womanhood to give him the chance:


Besler will probably tell you he just has high standards. His ideal woman is white (because anything else would be genocide), “preferably younger than 21...to 25”, with “traditional family values.” She should be disinclined towards jealousy and possessiveness (his biggest turnoffs) and accepting of the fact that he quotes Judges 10:3-4 and 12:8-14 in reference to his ideal number of future children. This criteria is interesting in light of the fact that Besler also advocates polygamy, seeming to regard himself as a potential future adherent and nurturing a rather suspicious interest in the TV series “Big Love”:


And like all good Aryan Guard supporters and Warren Jeffs wannabes, Besler’s views on preteen motherhood are proudly regressive:

[Q] A twelve year old girl has a baby, should she keep it? [A] Naturally. Just because post-war western women are being nurtured to believe that 30 is the new 13, doesn’t mean I have to buy into that BS. – Jonathan Besler, May 3, 2009

Besler certainly has an “unusual” take on relationships. Aside from plural marriage (good) and race mixing (bad), we momentarily thought we heard banjos strumming in the background as we read his views on reproduction:

“A recent study shows that third cousin marriages result in higher numbers of both children and grandchildren compared to eighth cousin and greater pairings. We can hypothesize that this level of relatedness among humans is close to an ideal balance between inbreeding and outbreeding, though clearly there is a lot more research needed on the subject. Unfortunately, since this type of research is in opposition to the multiculturalists’ agenda, we may have to wait a while. “ – Jonathan Besler, Nov. 19, 2009

Polygamy, preteen motherhood and cousin marriage. Apparently a recipe for fumerase deficiency and generations of Hapsburg jaws also doubles as an Aryan Wet Dream. But for all his hoping, Besler seems to have some insight into the fact that he is destined to lose with women, stating “I love all women; unfortunately we tend to lack tolerance for each other beyond social pleasantries.” We’re sure this insight doesn’t extend to any recognition of his own deficiencies, but we female members of the ARC Collective do have a soft spot for the truly pathetic, so we’re going to try to help him out.

Jonathan, dear: some advice. Women generally don’t like racist, maladjusted weirdos who hang out at white power rallies. It makes us sort of uncomfortable. It makes us sort of think you are the type of person who would blow up a federal building or try to start your own cult. We also tend to be wary of men who view us as vehicles for racial and religious reproduction instead of human beings with individual agency and worth. Our dreams for the future generally don’t include moving to a segregationist compound in Utah with our sister-wives, and we certainly don’t want to stroke your manly ego (or anything else, for that matter) with any “light competition” over who gets to birth the most of your precious white babies.

Oh, and by the way: women usually do google searches on potential dates. We’re willing to bet that by this time next year, you’ll still be single.

: - )

For A Change of Pace, Something Uplifting

A member of the Collective took these pictures during her daily commute earlier this month in Toronto at the Downsview TTC Station:

These were part of an anti-racism campaign by a local high school.

A bit of a positive post on a blog that too often focuses on the negative. Great job kids!

Update on the Hants County Cross Burning

We had earlier linked to news of a cross burning in Hants County, Nova Scotia. The victims, Shayne Howe, Michelle Lyon, and their five children, are a mixed race family whose home was attacked in February. Howe, who is black, had discovered a two-metre cross burning on his front lawn and heard men shouting racial epithets including “die nigger die”. A noose was discovered dangling from the cross, which was constructed with such premeditation that it was designed to hook onto the family’s well crock.

The perpetrators were arrested and taken into custody within days. They turned out to be brothers Nathan Neil Rehberg, 20, and Justin Chad Rehberg, 19, who are second cousins of Michelle Lyon.

After the Rehgerg's first court appearance, lyon posted this to a Facebook support group for the couple:

i am writing this to let everyone no how court was for me today, DISTURBING, i had to hear how my cousins PLOTTED and made this cross, and how they got it here. there plans were very detailed and well thot out over weeks. there mother and stepfather knew all about this planned attack, and didn't do much to stop it. (obviously cuz it happend) i was sickened to hear that the "N" word is freequently used by the two of them , and that they had a wooden stick they made they called their "N" beater. as to my knowlege they have both confessed to the attack. they both were denied bail for "now" until they can find someone to place assurity on them. they are now held till monday for court in windsor. shayne and i shed many tears in that court room today hearing the charges and whole story, shayne actually had to leave the courtroom at one point, because the details botherd him so much.

The brothers were subsequently released on $5000 bail to the custody of their grandparents and ordered to stay away from the Lyon-Howe family. They have been charged with criminal harassment, public incitement of hatred, mischief and uttering threats. Community response to the attack was immediate, with residents offering support and organizing an anti-racist Love Walk in the small community that was attended by 250 people.

Whether or not the brothers will own up to the viciousness of their actions, its impact on the victims, the black community in Nova Scotia and race relations in the province remains yet to be seen. The Rehbergs’ lawyer was quick to dismiss the hate crime charges as “overblown”, and friends and supporters of the brothers have gone online with some rather revolting rationalizing:

It must be said that there is no evidence supporting the accusations that were used to displace blame for the attack onto the victim himself. By all accounts, Michelle Lyon did not personally know the Rehberg brothers, and it goes without saying that anyone who can justify subjecting the couple’s mixed race children to racist terror and violence doesn’t give a shit about their safety or well-being.

The brothers are scheduled to enter pleas on April 19. Let’s hope they accept responsibility for their crimes and allow the victimized family at least a small measure of peace and justice.

Bill Noble. We Have No Words

You know, sometimes, we really don't need to say or write anything.


We especially enjoy the photo he decided to include. Sure, it does add a bit more crazy to the mix, but we're sure Billy has a perfectly good explanation for wanting to include it rather than, say, one that doesn't make him look bat-fucking insane. We'll let Bill explain:


Yep....

And he was considered the intellectual of the Aryan Guard.

April Fool joke? Come on! It has to be an April Fool joke! No one could be this self-deluded. Right?

More Information on the W.E.B. No-show On March 21

For months, the members of W.E.B. had been trumpeting their efforts to organize they "White Pride" march and rally for March 21. They were ridiculed and mocked by erstwhile allies turned enemies (the Aryan Guard which had previously organized the event and who's membership's own legal problems have been well documented on these pages) and by anti-racists who all agreed the average W.E.B. member couldn't organize his own sock drawer, never mind an event such as which they proposed. But W.E.B. insisted, INSISTED, that there would be a march, and the continued insisting that there would be a march until 3 days before it was to have occurred.

And........... then they canceled it and said they wouldn't be able to organize it in time.

Shocked! Shocked we were!

At the time, we had speculated that it was their own legal problems that had resulted in their inability to get the ball rolling. And, as it turns out, we were correct.

On K.H.'s Facebook profile, as she brags about, "standing up for the White Race" and junk like that, others noted that the bing, strong, virile males of the movement couldn't be bothered to show up (Bertsch, Besler and "Willis" not withstanding). That's when Dustin Johnson provided a justification:

No contact orders, eh?

And the legal woes don't yet appear to be over. As far as we know, Tyler Sturrup is still in jail, and Robert Reitmeier had a court appearance today as well:


The master race. We think you need to work a little harder on that because frankly, we don't see it.

Ann Coulter. Whatever.

She also criticized the media for being liberal and Democrats for whining about their rights under the First Amendment.

"They're always accusing us of repressing their speech," she said. "I say let's do it. Let's repress them."

She later added, "Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment."

So said the hero of Canadian speechies (and a woman we think Ed Kennedy would like to father children with given how he fawns over her) Ann Coulter during a speech in Gainesville, Florida in 2005. This quote, as well as others even more detestable, have been repeated ad nauseum during the last couple of days as Coulter engages in her speaking tour of Canadian universities.

As we write this article, Ms. Coulter is about to take the stage at the University of Calgary. Well, not the university itself. She's now speaking off-campus for security reasons based on claims that she felt threatened in Ottawa, resulting in the cancellation of her speech there; this cancellation has sent the speechies into an apoplectic rage as they demand heads roll.

We know we should care about Ms. Coulter. She writes and says things that are vile, hate-filled and disturb every sense of civil discourse. We should be frothing at the mouth in rage that "Coultergeist" has even been let into Canada.

But...... we're not.

Not even a little bit.

Now don't get us wrong. We believe that what Coulter writes and says is everything that people say it is and people have a right to exercise their freedom of speech to denounce and oppose her and her rhetoric.

Problem is, we're not entirely sure Coulter believes what she writes or says either.

We remember when Coulter was just one of a number of political talking heads making the rounds on t.v. news and talk shows in the late 1990s. We were first introduced to Coulter as a semi-regular on the Bill Mahr program, "Politically Incorrect." At the time, there was really little to distinguish Coulter from any of the other political talking heads on both the left and the right. She was, in retrospect, extraordinary by how absolutely ordinary she was. She was a generic conservative, often picked to "debate" a generic liberal. She acted the way other conservative pundits acted. Spoke from the same script. Really, the only time she actually stood out to any of us is when she was rocking the eye patch for a while.

Being a political pundit in the United States is a bit dog eat dog. If you want to have any staying power, you have to find some sort of gimmick (Tucker Carlson's bow tie as a somewhat nerdy case in point). Once you have your gimmick and you achieve a certain level of notoriety with the base you're appealing to, then that's when you get your own talk show on FOX (if you're a conservative) or MSNBC (if you're a liberal). Or, if you're aren't consistently capable of hosting a full hour of television, you write books. But these are relatively rare considering the number of talking heads that are out in the media trying to get their big break. Most end up back working as junior partners at small law firms, a fate that Coulter could easily have fallen into herself.

So, what is a generic conservative pundit to do if he or she doesn't want to start punching a regular clock? In Coulter's case, things didn't look very promising. He grasp of policy was (and still is) weak. She was moderately attractive, though not as much as she'd like to think, but there were a lot of other more attractive pundits so that gimmick wasn't exactly unique. But Coulter did come up with one that has turned out to be a gravy train that just won't stop.

Ms. Coulter decided the best way to gain a significant fan base was to write and say the most outrageous, shocking, intolerant, ignorant, insulting rhetoric she could think of. And it has worked, and continues to work, beautifully.

Coulter has been wildly successful by appealing to the ugliest parts of her fan base's intellect and emotion. This approach has made her an embarrassment to mainstream conservatives (she's been fired as a columnist for a number of conservative publications), but her admirers eat it up. She's made millions on books with simple titles (simple titles for simple minds perhaps): Treason. Godless. Slander. Guilty. All in an effort to manipulate the base emotions of her mostly male readers (right down to the slinky, formfitting dresses she models on the covers) who already are inclined to believe that Democrats, liberals and progressives are not people with whom they have they fundamentally disagree with on a variety of issues, but as a cancer in the body politic that needs to be destroyed with extreme prejudice. She's helped contribute to a polarized political environment in her own country in which civil discourse is not only rejected, but stomped into the mud.

And she's laughing all the way to the bank because she's managed to fool the rubes who really think she believes what she writes and says.

Take the current controversy that has the speechies frothing at the mouth. Ms. Coulter cancelled her speech at the University of Ottawa because of the threat posed by protesters. As Kady O'Malley, Scott Tribe, and Dr. Dawg have pointed out, it seems just a bit contrived. Sort of like something a controversial speaker and writer would do to drum up controversy. And has it worked! As an example, by our last count, there was something like 15 threads on Free Dominion concerning the cancellation of the speech in Ottawa. And boy are they pissed! Hell, this beats the 7 threads they had created last month attacking us for a postering campaign started by a completely different group.

Add to this that Ms. Coulter plans to file a human rights complaint against François Houle who had the temerity to ask Ms. Coulter to please be respectful and show restraint. Only people who love Ann could view that mild mannered email as a hate crime, but such is the power of Coultergeist.

Anyone want to bet if she sells out her speaking engagement in Calgary given the free publicity she's getting?

Now in Calgary, Ms. Coulter isn't above continuing to use the cancellation of the event in Ottawa to create controversy and, thus, more publicity to put bums in the seats and people buying her books. Now she's clumsily attempts to use regional tensions to further her efforts:

"It's quite a country you have here," Coulter told Evan Solomon, host of Power & Politics, on CBC News Network on Thursday. "I'm more determined than ever to turn pretty much from Calgary through the west into the 51st state now. We got to save the good Canadians."

"Save us from what, Ann?" Solomon asked.

"From the crazy liberals. From the crybabies," Coulter answered, sporting sunglasses. "How did Canada go from being the country that sends us all our best comedians to a bunch of whining, crying babies that can't take a joke?"

And though most people, including conservatives, will reject this view, it will have it's support in the Canadian branch of the Coulter fan club.

Coulter went on to say this about freedom of speech in Canada:

"I have discovered that Canada's approach to free speech, and that is speech they like," Coulter said Thursday. "It's not free speech if they are going to say, 'Yes, you can have free speech as long as you don't say X, Y, Z.'"

When asked what her message to Canadians was, Coulter answered: "It's a lovely little country. I do recommend that you get free speech. It's a lot of fun."

From the sound of things, you're going to be in luck Ms. Coulter. It appears that there will be a number of people who will be exercising their freedoms as they protest your presence in Calgary. And we don't expect you or Ezra or Mark or the FreeDom crowd to complain because, well, it's just not free speech if you only allow the speech that you agree with. Right?

However, as far as we know, no one in the ARC Collective will be participating in the Calgary protests. We do support those who will peacefully voice their displeasure with Ms. Coulter and her views, but we think we'll sit this one out.

Instead, most of us are going to stay home and do what poor Ann and her empty, dusty womb will not be able to do tonight.

We're spending time with our wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends and children. With people we love, and who on good days love us (and on bad days must love us more for putting up with our shit).

And with that, so ends our contribution to the plethora of blogs, forums and news sites that have managed to find themselves involved in the Coulter hysteria. And it does end because we've got better things to do.

Two Interesting Characters Emerge Out Of Calgary and Vancouver

To write that the anti-racist rallies in both Calgary and Vancouver were wildly successful would be an understatement. So successful where they that very few boneheads actually showed up to try and counter the anti-racists. We here in the Collective hope that these events, held peacefully, will continue far into the future.

The boneheads, on the other hand, are just a little bit shell shocked. Only a handful even bothered to show up; these include one who was arrested for assault and one was removed from the scene by police in Calgary, and only one known racist showed up in Vancouver, though he seemingly made a point of not bringing attention to himself. Concerning the Vancouver march, this post pretty much sums up the reaction from the bonehead crowd:


Hell, it almost seems despondent. Perhaps someone needs to be placed on a suicide watch?

However, there were two interesting characters who showed up. In Calgary, one lone male was seen sitting near the anti-racists holding the following sign:

Ah, David Lane's 14 words, eh? And we like the part about pride not equaling racism. A nice touch. Too bad it's bs when coming from Mike, who posts as "Ich_verstehe" on the Aryan Guard forums:

Willis Is Not A Nazi Part 3: So, Willis Has A Name

Our friend Willis, who again is claiming (again and again) not to be a Nazi, had a court appearance today. And we learned his full name:

Man charged in fight at rally denies white supremacist ties 

By KEVIN MARTIN, Calgary Sun    Last Updated: March 22, 2010 4:41pm 

The alleged white supremacist charged with assaulting a photographer at an anti-racism rally denied Monday he’s a skinhead. 

William Kaiser Miettinen said the chest tattoo he displayed to demonstrators isn’t a white supremacist symbol, but simply a Celtic cross. 

“I’m not a skinhead,” Miettinen told provincial court Judge Jim Ogle. 

“I was not part of that (neo-Nazi) demonstration,” he said, of a planned white supremacist march the anti-racism crowd was rallying against. 

Crown prosecutor Bev Bauer, who asked that Miettinen be held without bail, said the accused attacked photographer Jason Beers with his skateboard when his picture was taken. 

“He ripped open his shirt displaying multiple tattoos in support of white supremacist groups,” Bauer said. 

When Beers began shooting, Miettinen swung at him with his skateboard in what Bauer called “an unprovoked assault at a peaceful demonstration.” 

But duty counsel Bob Haslam, who acted for Miettinen at his bail hearing, suggested Beers’ conduct may have contributed to the incident. 

“I wouldn’t agree with my friend that it’s totally unprovoked, this is a photographer shoving a camera in his faced,” Haslam said. 

Ogle agreed to release Miettinen, who is charged with assault with a weapon, on $500, no-cash bail, with a condition he stay away from Beers. 

His case is back in court on April 13.

So, it's William Kaiser Miettinen, is it? And you're not a Nazi, eh?

You know, you might be able to convince more people of that if you didn't attend Nazi marches alongside the likes of John Marleau:

Or seig heil along with members of the KKK, Aryan Guard and W.E.B. members in front of Nazi flags:

And put on a damn shirt! You're almost 30!

Another friend commented elsewhere on "Willis":

If you're 13 and hang out at the skate park you may recognize "Willis" as that creepy older guy who likes to buy cigarettes for underagers and "teach" them how to bare knuckle box. If you were at M21, you'll recognize him as the shirtless wonder who tried to assault a photographer with his skateboard...while 60 cops looked on. 

Needless to say, Willis got his point across on M21 -- and that point was that he's both violent and dumb. He's been charged with assault with a weapon and released on a $500 no-cash bail. At his hearing on Monday morning, Willis pitched a sob story about how he's not really a Nazi or racist and it's all just been one big mistake. Someone should tell Willis that if you cover yourself with racist tattoos, throw around the "seig heil" salute and assault people at an anti-racist demo while yelling white power slogans, no one is going to believe you when you say you're not a Nazi.