Paul Fromm – Canadian Association for Free Expression
Dear Free Speech Supporter:
On Monday, May 23, I returned from David Duke's EURO conference in New Orleans. Part of my address there had dealt with the book confiscation and censorship tactics of Canada's thought police – Canada Customs.
Perhaps, they had caught my talk on STORMFRONT and this was payback for the ridicule these goonish control freaks so richly deserve. I was to spend one hour and 35 minutes being detained and having my goods pawed through.
I could almost guess my fate. Arriving at Toronto's Pearson Airport, I went through primary screening. My passport must have alerted the agent that I was a marked man - marked for the "special" treatment by Canada's customs censors. I proceeded to the exit where a seated customs official perused my card and directed me to the secondary inspection. Only one other passenger from among the 50 or so on my flight received similar treatment. The secondary inspection – five or so agents by my count – were sitting around idle.
I was directed to a nameless agent. She would, despite repeated requests, refuse to give her name. So, I'll call her Flabby Flora. Flabby Flora had an atrocity of a haircut – hatched cut and the worst copper tinting this side of a fright whig. Fireplug short and flabby, huge saddle bags bulging from her pants beneath her waist, I just knew she'd be trouble.
She looked at my card and scanned my passport through the magic computer. "Have you had trouble with Customs?" she asked.
"I always have trouble with Customs," I answered. "Your political bosses hate me."
"But have you had seizures?" glum puss demanded. Her screen, of course, told her I had.
"No. I'm in pretty good health," I responded. "No seizures." [The double entendre and humour are lost on the politically correct.]
She disappeared into a back room with my passport. Clearly consultations with even weightier persons were called for. She returned, donned her plastic gloves and began to paw her way through my briefcase. I catch up on reading newspapers on my travels and clip items of interest. I must have had over a hundred such items. She meticulously gazed at each and every one of these - Globe and Mail articles, National Post articles, Toronto Sun articles, Vancouver Sun articles - pretty subversive stuff. [Meanwhile, some of her fellow agents have allowed in confederates carrying kilos of Jamaican ganga [pot], but, in politically correct Absurdistan, ideas are far more dangerous than drugs.]
She plunked the programme from the EURO conference and some other political pamphlets in a special pile. After she'd gone through my suitcase – dirty underwear, socks and all – a few more political books and journals joined the suspect pile.
All this took well over an hour. Yes, more than an hour spent scrutinizing newspaper clippings. Another trip to the back room and more consultations. She was directed to check some master list of books on a computer. Then, she appeared to make a phone call.
Well, in the meantime, what was happening to others. Actually, very little. It was Queen Victoria's Birthday and the customs bureaucrats seemed in a casual, holiday mood that is, except, for political offenders like me.
A giggly blonde in a halter top was sent to secondary inspection. A bubbly male agent with a shaved head dealt with her. He asked her to open her suitcase. "We'll get you right through," he told the giggler cheerfully. He carefully flipped though the first layer or two of clothes. Satisfied, he told her to close her suitcase. He stamped her customs form. She gave a final giggle. "Have a good night, Drive carefully!" he said in a high lispy voice." It was all so informal, inoffensive, so non-intrusive, so typically gentle Canadian. Her secondary inspection may have lasted all of three minutes.
But don't be deceived. It's one procedure for returning giggling vacationers; it's another for political opponents of the corrupt cesspool in Ottawa.
About 9:00 p.m., the six agents at secondary inspection, suddenly shrank to three. "Time to go," someone announced and three agents promptly disappeared, Flabby Flora, sadly, was not one of them. Pudgy fingers continued to probe and desecrate my papers and other belongings.
Meanwhile, I was well into the second hour. Flabby Flora continued to examine my clippings. [There's different treatment for political dissidents in Absurdistan.]
Eventually, after more consultations, it was decided that all my goods should be returned except for the scholarly journal The Occidental Quarterly Vol 4, Number 4, (Winter, 2004 issue.) The journal is being held, according to "notice of detention 0506-4971-K27-0001" as it "may constitute hate propaganda." The lying receipt said the good were not declared. Why should they have been? I brought the journal from Canada.
I was handed a hand-filled out form as a receipt for my stolen, I mean "detained" - goods. I then I asked Flabby Flora for her name. After all, she had mine. She had my passport and knew who I was. "I don't' have to give my name," she said. I asked again and was told by her queenship that she didn't' choose to give her name. She'd written her number of the receipt.
I demanded to see her superior. A Superintendant Carleton (?) eventually showed up, accompanied by another burly agent, young, overweight and sporting one of those clipped chin beards and mustaches that tend to remind me of the opposite sex's pubic hair. It was three on one, the odds these types love to intimidate a victim. I repeated my request for Flabby Flora's name, but got nowhere. The regulations decreed that the agents don't have to give their names, only their numbers, the pint-sized superintendant told me. I argued that I would sound ridiculous complaining against agent 38-48-60, or whatever her number was. I pointed out that the U.S. Customs agents are man enough to wear name badges
”I guess you're ashamed of what you do," I observed. It was now just after 10:00 and I walked out into the night. I had arrived for secondary inspection at 8:25.
Paul Fromm
Director
CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FREE EXPRESSION
Last updated 23/06/2005
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