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
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.
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.
