Toronto homeless selling hate propaganda

A very odd story from the Post. It seems strange, almost inexplicable, that Masons would attract such ongoing attention (Jews make more sense, albeit in a twisted way). A sign of true craziness is making almost any reference to Masons in connection with Jews. In any event, the homeless hardly seem well served by the Street News.

Toronto homeless sell hate propaganda

Joseph Brean, National Post 
Simon Hayter for National Post

A grey-haired man, known on the streets as the General, stood in front of a liquor store with a stack of newspapers and a crumpled Tim Horton's cup, watching the passing customers through an artsy pair of glasses.

Most passed without eye contact. Some looked sheepish, even scared, or they shrugged to say they had no spare change. A few read the headline: "Beachers' White Racist Hate Attacks Expanding!!" And like every day at countless streetcorners across Toronto, the General sold three issues in a midafternoon hour, making six dollars, nearly minimum wage, and sparing himself the indignity of begging.

Since the passage ten years ago of the Safe Streets Act with its strict controls on panhandling, the Toronto Street News has become a popular alternative, selling 4,000 copies every two weeks across the city. Homeless people pay a nominal fee at various collection points, then sell it for $2 an issue.

But under this guise of charity, it has become the city's most prominent vehicle for hate propaganda, outrageous conspiracy theories, blatant plagiarism and libellous personal attacks, though virtually nothing about the homeless, all published at the whim of a man who lives a two-hour drive away in Ontario's farm-belt.

In the past year, the paper has claimed that Liberal MP Bob Rae's name was changed from Levine to hide his Jewishness and that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's secret true birthday is the same as Adolf Hitler's, which "looks good on a resume" for "New World Order types." It has claimed that a police officer covered up racist attacks on a shopkeeper, and even the editor admits one article was an illegal incitement to genocide against Jews. Ads are rare to non-existent, and often unpaid."It's a little left wing," the General said. "Real out there."

Barbara Hall, chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, calls it an "unpleasant rant," full of anti-Semitism and senseless paranoia that is contrary to the spirit, if not the letter, of human rights law."I don't like it. It's offensive," she said. "I suspect that a large number of people who open it would very quickly do what I did, which is say, 'This is scurrilous stuff' and throw it away... This is just using a group of vulnerable people to put out an offensive message, which is making them even more vulnerable."

"It strikes me that it's better than begging," said Mel Sufrin, executive secretary of the Ontario Press Council. At the same time, he said it fails almost every conceivable test for membership in his council. The Canadian Jewish Congress has a longstanding file on the Street News, and in the last year has brought a hate speech complaint to the police, since settled without charges, and a human rights complaint against a columnist, now referred to a tribunal.

But even though the editor and publisher of the Street News apologized for a story that urged the killing of all "jew bankers," he remains unrepentant.

"For a homeless paper, I can get away with it, and have done that for ten years," said Victor Fletcher, 63, who calls himself a "one-man charity," though not a registered one, and a "hands-on reporter."

"I have the rare luxury of sounding off any way I want. I'm just amazed that people go out there and buy it. If they didn't want to buy the paper, they can give the homeless guy two bucks. But they don't, they want the paper, so there is an audience out there. It's amazing to me."

That audience, he said, is "upscale communities and a lot of women."The story of the Toronto Street News is one of great compassion poorly focused. It involves a family feud, a massive fraud, a price war, a terminal illness, and a decade's worth of paranoid delusions.

But at its heart, it is the story of Mr. Fletcher, a watchmaker's apprentice who came to work in high-tech weapons assembly, and had a crisis of conscience when he realized that the world is controlled by a cabal of Masons and Zionists.

As penance, he turned to the radical underground press, and eventually, thanks to the charity of Toronto's pedestrians and the salesmanship of its homeless, plus a lot of his own money, became the city's most prolific and persistent propagandist.

And now it is coming to an end. Mr. Fletcher expects that neither he nor the paper will be around to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Street News next summer. He says they will die for different reasons, but the one cannot live without the other. He calls the Street News an "act of frustration."

"I've been trying to stop it for years. It's something I feel I have to do, for some stupid reason," he said. "I keep being told a lot of people depend on it."

Full story here:

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=726675

James Morton
1100 - 5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4