Paulie Protests in London

We don't think that it's too much of a stretch to suggest that some boneheads and their enablers are using the current anti-refugee xenophobic hysteria in an effort to drum up some mainstream public support.

Not long ago Paulie marched with the Calgary-based Aryan Guard (who's leader Kyle McKee was released from the Calgary Remand Centre a few months ago after pleading guilty to possessing bomb making materials but after attempted murder charges were dropped) to protest the then upcoming arrival of Tamil refugees. Then he was of to BC where Paulie and about a dozen people, some of whom look like they might have been alive to protest the MS St. Louis, protested the arrival of the refugees and demanded that they be kicked out of the country. While in BC he was afforded the uncritical attention of the media who failed to mention his long, long history with racist extremism in this country.

Thankfully, some of the media has made a point of examining the views of Paul Fromm as well as the people with whom he shares an ideological home with:

• Canadian media clamouring to give well known racist/neo-nazi a platform
• 'White supremacist' puts a genteel face on racism
• Immigrants and Canada: Time for a National Debate
• Don't listen to racists about Tamil refugees, says group
  

Yesterday, Paulie was back at it in London, Ontario and boy, oh boy, was the cast of characters (though small in number) ever a motley crew:

Hmmmm. Terry has really let himself go.

So we now have Paulie with:

• Terry Tremaine, disgraced university lecturer as well as the founder and leader of the tiny neo-Nazi group the National-Socialist Party of Canada
  
• Davie Ruud of the Northern Alliance
• Tomasz Winnicki who proudly describes himself as London's biggest hater.
• Someone who we believe is Louis Morin, an old Heritage Front member
• Assorted boneheads
  

Wow, talk about the company you keep.

We Can't Believe We Missed Dead Nazi Day!

We've been a bit preoccupied, but we would be remiss if we didn't acknowledge the passing of ole' Ruddy Hess.

Then again, we are also basically lazy people, so here's how we made fun of him last year.

Ya, you're right. We'll do better next time.

Boat People and Paul Fromm Circa 1981

As we continue to follow the manufactured hysteria concerning the Tamil migrants who made their way on what was essentially a rusted out tramp steamer, as well as Paul Fromm's efforts to capitalize on the issue for his own benefit (be sure to donate, and donate often, right Paulie?) we were struck by the similarities this most recent refugee situation has with another that occurred more than 30 years ago:

Strangers by sea: A tale of Canada’s boat people

...The great boat-people success story in Canada, of course, has been the refugees from Indochina – the Vietnamese, Vietnamese Chinese, Lao and Kampucheans who now number a quarter of a million people, most of them originally sponsored in the late 1970s and early 1980s by church and community groups with federal government assistance after the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese government fell to the North Vietnamese communists. Most of the refugees were highly educated professionals who fit quickly into Canadian society.
...

Although the integration of Vietnamese Boat People is considered fairly uncontroversial today, such was not always the case. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, some of the concerns we hear today about the Tamils were directed also at Vietnamese refugees.

They're diseased. They'll be supported on the taxpayer's dime through welfare. They'll take jobs away from real Canadians. They're criminals and radicals found amongst their numbers. They are so foreign to Canadian culture and values as to be unassimilable. They will upset the, "racial balance" of Canada.

These views are in evidence on CBC radio programs from 1979 (found at number 8, 16, 17), one synopsis which can be found below:

Phone-in callers comment about the influx of immigrants. Not everybody is happy. Some people are worried about the multi-million dollar price tag. Others are worried that land and gas prices will skyrocket and unemployment will increase. They worry that Canada is ignoring its own poor and unemployed. They worry that the immigration screening process is too lax. And they worry that Canada will suffer what Doug Collins refers to on CBC Radio as a "racial imbalance." (Note: explicit language.)

Hmmm, we've been told repeatedly that Doug Collins was a respectable journalist. Such a potty mouth! But at least we know that some of his best friends were Jews.

We would urge our readers to examine all of the audio and video in the CBC archives concerning the boat people. Seems not a lot has changed in 30 years.

Interestingly, one of the voices of those opposing the Vietnamese boat people is the same one who is now opposing Tamil migrants. And like his opposition to the Vietnamese, Paul Fromm's reasons for opposing the Tamils haven't changed in 30 years:


We know that none of the claims made by Fromm, Collins or the people opposing the entry of refugees into Canada actually came to fruition. The Vietnamese boat people integrated into Canadian society, their children becoming doctors, teachers, tradesmen and women, and community leaders. Yet the anti-refugee and anti-immigrant rhetoric hasn't changed at all.

We'll keep that fact in mind as the latest group of refugees are processed.

Paul Fromm: The Genteel Face of Racism?

Our friends BigCityLib and Dr. Dawg posted articles excoriating CTV for giving Paulie a forum yesterday during his BC protest to attack the Tamil migrants and for failing to mention his rather sordid past (and present) in the White Supremacist movement. Nary a word of Paulie's links to the Heritage Front of the past, nor the Aryan Guard now, was mentioned. Paulie is instead introduced as an immigration reform activist.

Criticism of the media white-wash of Paulie's views and associations came from another, somewhat unexpected, source:

'White supremacist' puts a genteel face on racismJoseph Brean, National Post · Sunday, Aug. 15, 2010 

Paul Fromm's efforts to rouse public opinion against the Tamil migrant ship began last month from his home in Ontario, with impassioned messages posted to Stormfront.org, the Florida-based neo-Nazi website of which he is a "sustaining member" and radio host. 

It continued last week in Calgary, when he led a group of Aryan Guard skinheads to Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's constituency office, and so terrified the receptionist that she locked the door and would not accept Mr. Fromm's delivery of a letter until police arrived. 

But for Canada's best known racist agitator, things did not really get going until he reached the Pacific shore at Esquimalt, B.C., on Saturday, where the boat was docked.
There, accompanied by Doug Christie -- famous as the go-to civil liberties lawyer for every top Canadian racist of the last 30 years -- Mr. Fromm got himself front and centre on the national weekend news, flanked by his small group of two dozen protesters. 

Mr. Fromm, whose license to teach high school in Ontario was revoked in 2007 for his activism against non-white immigration and ties to groups like the defunct neo-Nazi Heritage Front, appeared in reports by three major news outlets, identified only as the leader of a group called "Canada First," or "Canada First Immigration Reform Committee." 

“If we do need immigrants, the public opinion polls show that the majority of Canadians don’t want the ethnic balance upset,” Mr. Fromm said, according to the Toronto Star story. 

The media exposure for his message recalls an episode in 2008, when Fox News was criticized by a U.S. anti-hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, for allowing Mr. Fromm to appear as a "free speech activist." 

Fox News is one thing, but to score prominent coverage offering comment on a national refugee crisis to the Toronto Star, Canadian Press, and CTV indicates that Mr. Fromm's nose for media is especially refined. 

No outlet responded to requests for comment. 

Mr. Fromm said he was "pleasantly surprised at the amount of press interest." 

"I did find it unusual," he said. "I took it to mean that some of the journalists have actually gone to journalism school." 

The Victoria Times-Colonist reported on the protest and identified Mr. Fromm as a "white supremacist." 

The others are not the first media outlets to be fooled in this way. On the surface, "immigration reform" has the same kind of naive appeal as "historical revisionism," a euphemism for Holocaust denial, and a field in which Mr. Fromm is highly regarded as a free speech champion. 

Dressed as he was in a suit and tie on a sunny summer's day, Mr. Fromm made an obviously professional spokesman for the media pack. His manner is typical of the public pose struck by other elder statesmen of Canadian racism, such as Don Andrews, a fellow traveller back to university days in Toronto, whose conviction for the wilful promotion of hatred against blacks and Jews was upheld in 1990 at the Supreme Court of Canada. Mr. Andrews has a similar attention-grabbing prank of getting municipal governments across Canada to declare "European Heritage Week," without realizing that the sponsoring organization, his Nationalist Party of Canada, is explicitly white supremacist. 

It is a winning strategy, to put a genteel face on racism for the unsuspecting public, as Jared Taylor of American Renaissance discovered in Halifax in 2007, when he challenged an unwitting Black studies professor to debate him on multiculturalism, then basked in media coverage when the professor realized he was an avowed racist, and cancelled. 

In the case of the Tamil migrants, all Mr. Fromm had to do to seize the spotlight as a voice of dissent was to gather a few people on a roadside outside of Victoria, B.C., and just start talking. 

"The only way to really do something about people smuggling is to make sure that if you come in through the back door illegitimately like this, you don't get in," he said in the CTV report. For balance, his remarks were followed by the more welcoming sentiments of a group of native women from a nearby reserve. 

For the modern "immigration reform" activist, that is how to play the publicity game -- think like the media, get to the scene, and get on camera. And if success if measured by exposure, it is also how to win. 

"I'll talk to anybody," Mr. Fromm said.
National Post
jbrean@nationalpost.com

We have to applaud Mr. Brean for being able to see through the veneer of respectability that Paulie has created for himself over the years and label Paulie as the bigot he is.

One part of the article that struck us and which we want to explore a little more is that Paulie puts a "genteel face on racism." Exactly how genteel has Paulie actually been since the late 60s when he became active in the White Supremacist movement?

Those who are aware of Paulie's past know that he was one of the founders of a group called the Edmund Burke Society. The Edmund Burke Society has always been presented by Paulie as a group of young college kids who were opposed to communism and the shift to the left in the country as a whole during the Trudeau era. To listen to Paulie, it was a group dedicated to free speech and engaging their opposition in a vigorous intellectual debate over the direction of the country and would attempt to sway Canadians through the strength of their ideas.

Hal Turner Convicted

Sure, this is more of an American thing, but as Turner made not too veiled threats against Canadians he didn't care for, we thought we'd provide a link to our friends at the One People's Project which discusses the conviction:

HAL TURNER GUILTY!

OPP have been watching Turner for the better part of a decade, as well as Bill White.

We imagine it must feel pretty sweet to see karma finally bite these two in the ass.

Oh, Richard Martin, You Are A Special Kind of Stupid

When Andrew Benson moved to Calgary in July, his best friend and life partner Richard Martin didn't accompany him on the journey. It's not as if Martin wouldn't have made the trip if he could, but he was a bit preoccupied being in jail at the time. Still, he had an open invitation to move out to Calgary once he was released.

Looks like he might have to hold off a little longer on those plans:

Racial epithets lead to charges
John BurmanThe Hamilton Spectator(Aug 11, 2010) 

The woman called police when two men, who had been taunting her, arrived at her door. 

She'd seen them around her Westdale neighbourhood over a couple of weeks since the start of July -- two men she did not know yelling racial slurs at her. The last straw was July 16. The two men followed her home and pounded on her door. She called 911. 

Hamilton police identified two suspects in their investigation and last week arrested Shane Gill, 38, of no fixed address, at an address in St. Catharines. They also arrested Richard Martin, 23, of no fixed address, at the Hamilton- Wentworth detention centre where he was in custody on an unrelated matter. Both men have been charged with criminal harassment with hate/bias overtones. 

The two men appeared in Hamilton court Friday for bail hearings but were remanded until they can obtain counsel. 

Though both suspects were of no fixed address, they were apparently living in the woman's neighbourhood at the time of the alleged offences. Police will not identify the nature of the racial remarks or what ethnic community the woman identifies with. 

Police Sergeant Terri-Lynn Collings said the case is an alleged hate/bias crime that went beyond the kind of thing usually seen in Hamilton because there was repeated contact. 

The incident is relatively rare because it meets the criminal harassment test in that it caused someone to fear for their safety. 

Collings could not recall similar charges being laid in Hamilton in recent years. 

"We don't often see this," said Collings, adding that could be due to a number of factors including having enough evidence to lay such a charge and having a witness willing to take the case through the court process. 

Collings said Hamilton Police victims services and community relations staff will be assisting the complainant each step of the way. 

jburman@thespec.com

Of course Martin isn't a stranger to the readers of this blog. In March 2009 we posted an article pointing to Martin's involvement in the vandalizing of a Toronto store. Sadly, it doesn't appear that Martin was ever even questioned, much less charged, in that case. In addition to this, it also appears that Martin is aware of other acts of racist vandalism that had occurred in the Toronto area; he either knew of the individual or individuals involved or he was had actively participated in the act himself:


We've also used these pages to childishly make fun of Martin and his friends.

Over...

...and over again.

Oh dear! However did that picture of Martin with Paulie show up here? Well, we might as well leave it there. Considering whom else Paulie associates with, it just confirms what we all believe already about him.

If the Aryan Guard and Paulie Hold a Protest in Calgary....

.... does anyone notice?

What is the use of a protest if no one pays attention?

Earlier this week, Paulie was in Calgary with McKee and whatever elements of the Aryan Guard still exist to protest in front of Jason Kenney's constituency office, as well as triumphantly announce the reorganization of the Aryan Guard:

CFIRC was helped by a strong contingent of young men and women from the White National Aryan Guard. After a year of organizational problems, the AG is reorganizing. |”The AG is back and active,” leader Kyle McKee explained.

So the AG is now the WNAG. That's certainly an acronym that we won't be able to make fun of.

Paulie and the Aryan Guard members who are currently not (a) in jail, (b) not on probation, (c) not under no contact orders, (d) actually still willing to associate their good... er.... their names with the scandal plagued gang were protesting Kenney's handling of the Tamil migrants currently on their way to Canada:

The door was abruptly locked, as an ashen face employee looked out at the protesters who chanted no slogans and were entirely peaceful. “I thought a constituency office was supposed to be open to the public,” a bemused protester observed... Twenty minutes into the protest several cruisers from the Calgary Police Service showed up. One officer inquired what the purpose of the protest was and how long it would last. Mr. Fromm indicated that he wanted to hand a letter for Mr. Kenney to the staff at his office. The officer disappeared inside the office. The door was locked. About 10 minutes later, he emerged. Apparently, Mr. Kenney’s employee would come out and accept the letter. The exchange was made under the watchful eye of the policeman. “It really shows how terrified our rulers are of the people,” Mr. Fromm observed.


Once again, Paulie makes it appear as if a bunch of concerned Sunday school teachers came out to voice their mild concerns and were treated as pariahs for their efforts. In reality, the people who did show up to this protest made a point of being intimidating:


But here's the thing we find interesting. No one knew of this protest, and we only found out a few hours ago. There was nothing announcing it to the media. There was no mention of it in the mainstream media. It's as if it didn't happen, or it might as well not have happened.

The point of a protest is sort of to get your cause known through the media, otherwise you're really not much better than the crank who used to shout sexual obscenities outside the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. No one cares.

Of course they did this because they didn't want a counter protest to confront them (and why would they, since the last protest the full Aryan Guard contingent was involved with was outnumbered by a factor of 5 to 1?). As such, their efforts were wildly successful, however it was at a bit of a cost. In reality this is the closest Paulie and McKee have come to mainstream recognition, and we are hardly mainstream ourselves.

But even though the Aryan Guard has reformed, there are a few flies in the ointment. There seems to be a bit of remaining tension between McKee and his group and the much smaller, but more crazily tattooed, WEB:

Should we start taking bets on another implosion again?

Terry Tremaine Has Some Interesting Friends

The blog is always a little slow during the summer as people are off on vacation or just enjoying the weather. Sure, we could post something about the latest Aryan Guard/W.E.B. online spat, but even we're a little bored with that (one can only make fun of the same thing for so long before becoming a bit stale). Instead, many of us who are holding down the fort are using this bit of downtime to work with our friends in British Columbia on gathering and organizing our collective intel into something that will be less fragmented.

Still, we do continue to receive information from our dear readers. Recently a news article was sent to us that has nothing to do with what we cover on this blog, however a person of significant interest is mentioned in the story in relation to a convicted serial stalker:

Convicted stalker Gerald Klein banished from Regina for a year

By JANA G. PRUDEN, Leader-Post August 10, 2010 8:28 AM

REGINA — A man who has stalked a woman for 35 years has three weeks to get out of Regina, after being banished from the city for a year by a Regina judge.

"The world's a large place," Judge Dennis Fenwick said in imposing the rare order on Gerald Klein Monday afternoon. "There's lots of places for Mr. Klein to go."

It is an unusual decision befitting an extremely unusual case.

Klein, 63, has been stalking Cathy Kaip since the two were briefly acquainted in 1974.

In his sternly worded decision, Fenwick called Kaip "a shattered woman," and likened Klein to "a toxic gas swirling around Ms. Kaip's shrunken world," looking for ways to get into her life no matter what she does.

Klein's harassment of Kaip has lasted decades and spanned several cities, and has included stalking and unwanted phone calls, flowers, letters and gifts. Klein has also launched several nuisance lawsuits against Kaip, including one for failing to marry him.

After years of lesser sanctions, Klein served a three-year prison sentence after being convicted of criminal harassment in 2003. After the prison term, the Crown obtained a peace bond barring Klein from having any contact with Kaip or members of her family, or being in the area around her home. The order expired two years ago, and the Crown then applied for another, which Klein fought at a hearing last month.

The matter had been adjourned until Monday for Fenwick's decision on whether to impose another peace bond.

After reviewing some of the history of the case, Fenwick opted to impose a new order, but he questioned whether the conditions requested by the Crown went far enough.

He noted that Klein has been able to skirt along the fringes of previous orders, and Fenwick wondered aloud whether it is fair that Kaip should continue to live in fear, unable to move about the city without being afraid of running into her stalker.

"Hasn't the time come that the worry should fall on him and not her?" Fenwick asked. "That's really the question here, isn't it?"

He noted that, "When Mr. Klein loses, he still wins."

Fenwick said Klein has conditioned Kaip to fear routine parts of everyday life, such as the ringing of the telephone, a knock at the door or a trip out of the house

"Sadly, 3 1/2 decades of abuse have allowed Mr. Klein to put Ms. Kaip in fear, even when he does nothing," Fenwick said.

He also noted that Klein continues to believe that it is he who has been wronged by the situation.

Klein sat listening to Fenwick's comments with his lips pursed and downturned, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. He was joined in court by his son and Terrence Tremaine, a Regina man who is facing his own charges for spreading hate on the Internet.

Fenwick said there is legal precedent for banishing someone from their home community, though he did acknowledge that it is rare, and should be approached with caution.

He asked defence lawyer Brad Tilling how it would harm Klein to be banned from Regina, noting that Klein is unemployed, has no property, and has no one willing to act as a surety for him.

"I have no idea where he would go, where he would stay..." Tilling said. "I don't know what would happen to him."

But it was not enough to convince Fenwick, who said he is "thoroughly satisfied" that Kaip is not only entitled to the unusual level of protection — but needs it.

"He's a cunning, resourceful man," Fenwick said. "I'm satisfied he can establish himself outside the city of Regina."

Although Klein originally indicated he may not sign the order — in which case he would have been jailed for up to a year or until he signed — he eventually consented.

He now has three weeks to leave the city and cannot return for a year after that, except in the case of a medical emergency.

"I don't doubt that it will be difficult for Mr. Klein ... but that's because for 3 1/2 decades, for 13,000 days, he has caused problems for Ms. Kaip," Fenwick said. "She can have Regina and he can have the rest of the world."

jpruden@leaderpost.canwest.com

© Copyright (c) The Regina Leader-Post

Tremaine's name is what piqued our interest initially, but on the whole this was a facinating, though sad, story. Ms. Kaip has had to endure Mr. Klein for three and a half decades. Mr. Klein seems to be in obvious needs access to a mental health professional.

We're interested in knowing what Klein's relationship to Tremaine is, but in reality this blog post is simply a story we thought our readers might find interesting.

Other links:

• Longtime stalker thinks he's the victim (article from 2006)
  
• Another peace bond considered for stalker Gerald Klein
  

Nazi Graffiti in St. John, New Brunswick

We're a week late on this, but we felt that it needs to be mentioned here:

Swastikas painted on vehicle

Vandalism: Officer says use of Nazi symbol likely means a hate crime charge
Published Tuesday July 27th, 2010

SAINT JOHN - When they threw rocks at her home's windows, it was a nuisance.

Then, it was eggs and toilet paper all over her Dufferin Row property. Last month, it was garbage, poured all over the lawn and over the car.

But what happened this past weekend brings Margret Begner to tears.

Light-purple coloured paint was poured all over her vehicle, and in blue spray paint, someone drew the Nazi swastika on the windshield and driver's door.

"What was really hurting was that they put the Nazi sign," Begner said Monday. "That just takes it over the top."

At first Begner thought the vandals had a personal vendetta against her family. But she has recently heard other people in the west side neighbourhood have also been targets of vandalism.

A neighbour on St. John Street has told Begner she doesn't sleep at night, and a Portuguese family on Fundy Drive moved away because they couldn't handle it anymore.

"It's just hate. They hate everything. They hate themselves and they hate their neighbours," Begner said of the vandals. She owns a restaurant uptown and her family has lived in Saint John for 18 years, since moving here from Germany.

Begner isn't sure if the perpetrators have something against different cultures or backgrounds.

"I think they're just against anything and everything they don't have and don't get," she said. "They don't respect private property. They have zero tolerance, zero respect."

Police say Begner wasn't the only person targeted with the Nazi markings early Saturday morning.

The Assumption Centre on Chapel Street, next to Our Lady of the Assumption Church, was also marked with the swastika, said Sgt. Pat Bonner of the Saint John Police Force.

In that case, the green spray paint was used.

"They could be related," he said.

Painting a swastika makes the crime more than just mischief, he said. It would likely result in a charge of public incitement of hatred - or a hate crime.

"That's definitely a hate crime when you put something like that - a Nazi symbol," he said. "Not only is it vandalism - it's a message."

Begner said she has installed security cameras at her home and won't give up hope until the vandalism stops.

"I know we will get them, if I have to sit on my porch every single night," she said. "If that is something it will take, I will do that."

She said she's run out of reasons for why someone would continue to terrorize her neighbourhood.

But it doesn't affect the way she feels about the city.

"At the end of the day, it doesn't matter where you live. There are people who will have different opinions and ways of dealing with things," she said.

While she waited for her insurance adjuster to examine the damage, a flood of neighbours saw the symbol and called her to say how shameful and unacceptable it was.

"They took this one too far," she said.

Our readers have been incredible when it comes to tracking down information leading to identification of suspects in cases such as this. We're asking our readers to help out on this one as well.

Paul the Poet

One would think a former English teacher would be more creative.