The More Things Change....

UPDATE (October 7): Our friends in Quebec have done a hell of a lot of legwork on this file already. For those you you who, like us, are sadly uniligual, here is the translated link.

We've all been rather busy here in ARC land with real life issues, but we certainly couldn't allow this to pass without comment:

Anti-immigrant Greek political party accused of being racist opens Canadian chapter

Justin Ling, National Post Staff | Sep 28, 2012 6:20 PM ET | Last Updated: Sep 28, 2012 6:21 PM ET
More from National Post Staff

MONTREAL – The Greek political party Golden Dawn has been called a neo-nazi organization. But Canadian supporters who opened a Montreal chapter this month say that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The Montreal chapter is one of only two outside Greece. It launched in early September and began to collect food, medicine and clothing to send to Golden Dawn headquarters in Athens for the needy. Organizers say they have sent about a ton of aid to Greece.

Warman Wins. Lemire Loses.

You've got to love it when the good guy wins in the end.

Only a small part of the document, but you get the idea.

We fully expect the usual suspects will react as they have been conditioned to react.

Apoplectic rage.

Have fun with that.

Canadian Immigration Report and the Quebec Education System: Well, THIS Is Interesting

We didn't have a great deal of time earlier today to discuss the story regarding the group Canadian Immigration Report (CIR) and their invitation, since withdrawn, to be witnesses at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. As far as we can tell the story was first made public by the NDP and was later picked up by the msm and bloggers.

We had come across the CIR some time ago but we started significant attention once they interviewed Kyle McKee who was speaking for Blood & Honour in Calgary (we'll post the screen shots of the interview on the CIR website at the bottom of the page). The agenda of the CIR is clear as day if one simply spends three minutes examining the website, however our concern is that they have attempted to surreptitiously influence the education system of Quebec in a small way.

You see, one of the CIR members who was invited by the Conservatives to act as witnesses is also an author:

Canadian Immigration Report Called By Conservatives to Testify

This writer has to be off to work and isn't sure if the other members are aware of this yet, but we're sure you could read more about this at some of our friend's blogs. We will note that in addition to buddying up to Paul Fromm and writing about the virtues of the Nazi Party, Canadian Immigration Report also did a softball interview with Calgary's own Blood & Honour gang's leader Kyle McKee who is currently in jail awaiting trial on assault and weapons charges.

We'll get back to this when one of us is available to do so.

State of the Movement: Canada's Blood & Honour Part 3

NOTE: As this article is pretty screen shot heavy, we decided that we would divide it into three parts. This article is Part 3.

Noble doesn't spend as much time online as in the past (though given the terms of his release, he should have been arrested when he first began posting online again). In fact, other than his reply on the thread discussing his attendance at the Pride Week events, it had been some time since he had logged in to write anything on the Blood & Honour International forums.

Our readers could imagine his surprise when he found that he had been banned. But at least he dealt with his banning with class and dignity:

Wait. We mean he threw a hissy fit.

Now, we've since learned that the above post has now been deleted or hidden and the link he provides no longer brings up anything of particular interest. If only someone had taken the appropriate scr.... oh just get to the screen shots and stop being so coy!!!

State of the Movement: Canada's Blood & Honour Part 2

NOTE: As this article is pretty screen shot heavy, we decided that we would divide it into three parts. This article is Part 2.

We may very well have as many boneheads reading our blog as we do anti-racists, so we were not at all surprised when Jessie Lajoie commented on our article on the Blood & Honour International forums:

What resulted included statements of denial and disbelief, anger, disgust, bemusement, resignation (to the fact that the Canadian B&H members were embarrassments), and righteous indignation:

State of the Movement: Canada's Blood & Honour Part 1

NOTE: As this article is pretty screen shot heavy, we decided that we would divide it into three parts. This article is Part 1.

Since most of the, "important" players are currently in jail and/or awaiting trial, both factions of Blood & Honour are in a bit of flux. And though things seem to be quiet, we thought it might be interesting to take a look at one of those factions to determine how healthy it is as an organization and if there's a chance it might survive it's current downturn.

When it comes to the Calgary-based Blood and Honour faction aligned to Combat 18, the prognosis isn't good which just tickles us pink.

Our long time readers will remember that we had posted an article regarding Bill Noble's attendance with his new girlfriend at Pride Week events back during the summer. We even held out some hope that Noble might even be having a change of heart, though we were realistic enough to understand that he is one of those who may never change.

Our article did result in a response on Noble's own webforum. Although we haven't had access for the better part of a year (mostly because nothing much ever seemed to happen when we did have access), someone was kind enough to send us the relevant screen shots.

Suffice it to say, Billy's friends in the movement found his actions to be rather curious:

Extremists Baiting Extremists Who Further Bait Extremists

We didn't write about the folks with Canadian Hindu Advocacy (all two or three of them) or their plan to harass Muslim worshippers outside a Toronto mosque by parading dogs in front of it (because for some reason the myth that Muslims hate and/or are afraid of dogs has managed to really take hold in the minds of the anti-Muslim fringes) for two reasons. First and foremost Ron Banerjee is a publicity whore who is pretty much irrelevant except that he is promoted by the Canadian JDL and Michael Coren on Sun News and we didn't want to contribute, even in a small way, to his efforts at self-promotion. Second, we sort of knew it would end up as a complete failure anyways. But if you would like to read about this almost surreal piece of performance art, our friend BCL has done a very good job since the ill-fated decision by Banerjee to call for the protest (here, here, and here).

But even before Banerjee's mosque dog walk action, he had already come up with another way to antagonize the Muslim community.

Calgary Movement From the Inside

We'll let the article speak for itself:

How neo-Nazis think: Calgary photojournalist spends three years following skinheads' lives (with photos)

Brent Gundlock launches documentary project to understand extremist ideologies of white supremacists

By Michele Jarvie, Calgary Herald September 8, 2012 2:25 PM

Hate Speech Charges Stayed Against Tremaine

One of the justifications given by the Conservative government for the repeal of Se. 13 of the Human Rights Act was that it was, in effect, redundant. Hate speech law were already found in the criminal code, thus the criminal code should be used to fight hate speech.

We here and many elsewhere have discussed the flaws with this argument, most of which we need not repeat, but one of the reasons that we and others support Sec. 13 is because it is a much more efficient, and quite honestly fair, process (it's also a hell of a lot cheaper for all parties). The Crown is often hesitant to bring file charges for even the most egregious hate propaganda and when charges are filed, it seems to take forever as the defence engage in delaying tactics.

So guess what happened?

Hate charge stayed against Regina math instructor

The justification for staying the charges is based primarily on the length of time it has taken for the case to go to trial. The judge assigned the blame for this delay to the Crown, however if one looks at the motions filed by the defence, the Crown can hardly be assigned sole blame for the snail's pace this case has proceeded.

So far most of the usual suspects have yet to comment on this turn of events, however our friends at Free Dominion have noticed. Connie suggest that this is a loss for Richard Warman and seems to take some pleasure in this belief.

We have to say though that it is an odd reaction from someone who claims to be a, "friend of Israel" to be cheering for a man who has openly advocated for the extermination of Jews and who associated with people who are violent and willing to do their part in that effort (two of whom are currently in prison on murder charges). Then again, we've really never expected consistency from the good folks at Free Dominion.

But Connie's claim that this is a loss for Richard Warman also doesn't seem to pass the smell test for another reason. Warman did file a Sec. 13 complaint against Tremaine, which Warman won. Later, for violating the terms of the CHRT decision, Tremaine was found guilty of contempt of court for which he will face sentencing on October 9. The criminal case against Tremaine was filed by the Crown in Saskatchewan. The failure of the case has been (in our opinion unjustifiably) assigned to the Crown for delays that prevent a timely trial taking place. That ain't Warman's fault, Connie.

However, the success of the CHRT and the failure of the criminal process does highlight how useful a tool Sec. 13 was in the fight against hate speech.