And the Basis For the Lemire Appeal Is....

.... sort of pathetic.

For those readers who don't have fantastic eyesight, here it is broken down:

We've said it before here and we'll say it again.

Gotta love public documents.

Free Dominion and Strange Bedfellows. Again.....

Back on June 14, we briefly mentioned that Dr. Dawg had won his appeal and that the case would now go to trial.

We don't want to argue the merit of the arguments involved, but we can't help but notice the odd assortment of characters who have lined up over the past year to support the Fourniers in this case.

When Dawg first filed his suit, Paulie chimed in with his support for the Fourniers:

In another more recent post, Paulie called on his followers to support the Fourniers and Free Dominion after Dawg won his appeal.

Today, we learned that the Fourniers will be supported by another group:

Response to the Demise of Sec. 13 in "Maclean's"

Earlier today, we were contacted by "Maclean's" and asked about our take on the demise of Sec. 13. We responded as follows:

We think that the government was incredibly short sighted in their decision to eliminate Sec. 13. It was a useful and cost-effective tool in the effort to eliminate some very vile, hateful, and potentially dangerous rhetoric online and in the public sphere. Now we have only the criminal code which, in a few cases, is like using a machete when a scalpel would have been more prudently utilized.

Those individuals and groups who were called before the Human Rights Tribunal and who were found to have violated Sec. 13 were not innocent lambs who were victimized by Big Brother. They were people and groups who were causing real harm in their communities. Their words did result in harm, and I don't mean hurt feelings. People's homes were vandalized. People have been assaulted. And these criminal acts had, in many cases, began with the dehumanization of fellow Canadians for no other reason than their ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual orientation.

The people who are celebrating this are the extremists on Stormfront and VNN and a host of other racist webforums, but as we wrote on our blog they should consider that now there is only the criminal code and the penalties are more severe than anything Sec. 13 dished out. It should also be noted that racists aren't content with only Sec. 13. Paul Fromm, for instance, has said he and his group will next focus their attention on the criminal code sections regarding hate crimes.

We get the impression that the "Maclean's" in which Sec. 13 will be discussed is coming out this week. We don't expect that our entire response will be published, or if any of it will be for that matter, but if it is we thought we'd include the entirely of our response here.

And as for the responses from the boneheads, we present a small selection:

Rift Between the Lemire Family and Fromm over Money?

Perhaps we're reading a bit much into this.

Fromm and Lemire at the "George Orwell"
Awards the year Mark and Connie Fournier won.

NOTE: One of our faithful readers on Free
Dominion is stating that this was not from
that year the Fourniers received their award
and has accused us of "document tampering."

As it was Paulie who labelled the picture as such
originally, your argument is with him, not us.

That, and Harry Abrams has nothing to do with
this blog. But please, keep guessing.

Perhaps not.

Paul Fromm and Marc Lemire have a relationship that goes back to at least the mid 1990s when Lemire hosted Paulie's websites on his own Freedom-Site (along with other websites, including the Heritage Front which he would go on to lead, but we're going to touch on this issue again in later articles).

He has travelled with Fromm to events across Canada and has promoted Fromm's speeches and writing on the Heritage Front's magazine, "UpFront: Frontline" (including an article they appear to have co-written) and on the American-based hate site Stormfront. In turn, Paulie seems to have acted as a bit of a mentor to Lemire and has been spoken about his efforts to have Sec. 13 repealed.

Talk About the Company He Keeps Part II

Related to the article we published a few days ago:

Conservative Website Hosts Mark and Connie Fournier Win 2009 George Orwell Free Speech Award

VICTORIA, October 10. While many Canadians travelled to see friends and relatives for the Thanksgiving weekend, over 125 free speechers from as far away as Hawaii jammed a hall for food, fellowship and the 24th Annual George Orwell Free Speech Awards.

This year's recipients were Mark and Connie Fournier, the former owners of [Free Dominion], a conservative website in existance [sic] since 2001. They have the unique distinction of being the victims of no fewer than three defamation suits at the hands of the ultra litigious Richard Warman, the chronic Canadian human rights complaints filer. For the past three years, the Fourniers and many of their posters have fought a staunch battle for free speech and found themselves being spied on by blind Canadian human rights investigator (don't ask how -- we don't know and he won't tell), even before a complaint was filed against their site.

One of their libel suits in currently stalled as the Fournier's are appealing a court decision forcing them to divulge the names of eight John Doe's, or anonymous posters of their website, to Richard Warman. The Fournier's are standing four square for privacy of people on their site. Their lawyer Barbara Kulaszka, calling from Ontario, warned: "This appeal is very important for freedom of speech and people posting anonymously on the Internet." She also praised Marc Lemire for "his tremendous stamina and sacrifice over the past six years to overturn Sec. 13. It always falls to individuals to carry the heavy burden," she said.

Hosted by Douglas Christie and his Canadian Free Speech League, the Orwell dinner featured webmaster Marc Lemire. Marc gave a powerful power point presentation of the struggle against Sec. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act and his recent victory, when Member Athanasios Hadjis ruled the Internet cewnsorship section unconstitutional. The CHRC is appealing (seeking judicial review) of this decision. Marc revealed further CHRC dirty tricks, including a cozy relationship with Canada Post which resulted in the closing of at least one person's post office box on nothing more than the allegation that he'd run afoul of Sec. 13.

Mr. Christie warned: "The fight for free speech is not the fight of a generation or even a lifetime."

Also present was webmaster Arthur Topham of Quesnel who is being victimized by Harry Abrams, a Victoria B'nai Brith operative, and B'nai Brith in a Sec. 143 complaint about his criticism of Zionism and Israel. Both the CFSL and CAFE have "interested party" or intervenor status in this upcoming battle,. scheduled to open in Victoria, December 14.

Representing the Canadian Association for Free Expression, Paul Fromm, the 1994 George Orwell Award winner, explained the travails of math lecturer Terry Tremaine, another Warman victim, who faces a preliminary hearing in Regina, October 19 on Warman-instigation Sec. 319 "hate law" charges about postings Mr. Tremaine made about Jews and national socialism. He was prosecuted under Sec. 13 on another Warman complaint and fined $4,000 and gagged for life (a "cease and desist" order) in 2006. Warman's complaints led to his losing his job at the University of Saskatchewan. CAFE has been raising money for Mr. Tremaine's defence.

Good. Perhaps they did get to ask Paulie about his views on "Zionism" after all?

Christie to Represent One of the John Does

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In a shocking (okay, not so shocking) move, Jason Bertucci (Faramir of the 8 Freedominion John Does) has now retained Doug Christie to act as his defence counsel in the libel action against him and the others.

So far FreeDom have retained a) Barbara Kulaszka, b) Doug Christie, and c) Lepage has hired some sole practitioner out of SK. Those are interesting choices in lawyers... We hope that Christie remains true to form and is as successful with Bertucci as he was with Fromm.

Bertucci's choice isn't that surprising given his earlier posting below:
Bertucci will apparently not be contesting being named when the John Doe x4 motion is heard Aug 20th and will file a defence as soon as he's formally served with the claim after that.

What Happens When We're Bored

Idea was stolen from one of our readers and most of them are pretty lame, but perhaps some of you will find some of these inspirational posters to be at least a little amusing:

That last one was a bit of an inside joke that we know some of our readers will appreciate.






A bit of a double meaning in the above inspirational poster. Two words for you Marc: French Cruller.

Yes, very childish. We know.

Warman v. the Fourniers: The "John Doe" hearing

This past Thursday (January 22) saw a continuation of the Warman libel suit against Mark and Connie Fournier and Free Dominion. This particular hearing dealt with the identities of the,“John Does” (though at least one is not such a John Doe any longer) who are also named in the suit. The Fourniers, through their attorney Barbara “Babs” Kulaszka, were presenting arguments as to why they shouldn’t have to comply with their legal obligations under the Ontario Superior Court’s rules of procedure which states that they are required to disclose all information about the John Does. It should suffice to know that the arguments offered so far seem less than compelling, at least to us.

Our favourite part of the hearing is Babs Kulaszka’s argument that the Fourniers can’t release the email addresses of the users of FreeDom because if they were to disclose the email addresses of the John Does, then someone would then be able to track them down.

Fromm and the collection plate

The following is Fromm's response to losing his appeal:

Free Speech Setback: Appeals Court Upholds Warman Libel Decision Against Fromm & CAFE

TORONTO. Tuesday, December 9 was a grim day for free speech and dissent in Canada, especially when it comes to criticizing those actively involved in trying to limit political discussion by dissidents. A three man panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the 2007 decision by Madam Justice Monique Metivier finding Paul Fromm and the Canadian Association for Free Expression guilty of defamation for 9 Internet postings in 2003 calling then Canadian Human Rights Commission employee Richard Warman a "censor."

Marc Lemire Edits His Own Wikipedia Article.

Oh, Marc.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens once noted that, “there are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it." And Mark, you're ability to conceal your vanity is abysmal.

Over the last number of years, Mark Lemire has been editing his own Wikipedia entry using the user-name, "Veritas-Canada." It has always been transparent that Lemire and V-C were one in the same. As Veritas-Canada, Lemire attempted to expunge any links to newspaper articles, B'nai Brith and Canadian Jewish Congress reports, and any other sources connecting Lemire to groups and individuals associated with the far right, as well as the fact he was the last leader of the Heritage Front. As a result there has been an ongoing edit war on the Marc Lemire article since late 2006.

Well, it looks like Veritas-Canada wasn't getting the job done so Lemire called in some reinforcements.

Oh, did we say "call"? What we meant to say was that Lemire CREATED reinforcements in the form of sockpuppets.