One thing that we noticed regarding the ruling against Free Dominion and the two "John Does" remaining who hadn't been dropped or who had settled earlier is the relative silence of many of their most vocal supporters. We might have missed a comment, but thus far not a word has been spoken about the decision on Kathy Shaidle's "Five Feet of Fury", by her husband who runs, "Blazing Cat Fur", Kate's "Small Dead Animals", Ezra Levant's blog, or on Mark Steyn's website. Some of these bloggers had also been sued for defamation by Mr. Warman (in the case of Arnie at Blazing Cat Fur, he had settled some months ago). Aside from the woman who was providing the blow by blow ("Xanthippa's Chamberpot") and an announcement on the American-based "Free Republic" (of which a good deal of the discussion is unrelated bickering), there has been silence. That isn't to say things will remain silent or that we somehow missed a recent comment regarding the case, but as of this moment, there is silence.
Suffice it to say that a third judge has ruled in Richard Warman's favor and has stated that Mark and Connie Fournier must provide the ips of those named in Warman's defamation suit. It also awarded Warman costs, though that number has yet to be determined.
And now, we await the inevitable Greek Choir's lament and gnashing of teeth to occur on the Free Dominion boards.
Richard Warman is pleased to announce the resolution of his libel action against ‘Droid1963′, one of the John Doe defendants from the Freedominion website. The resolution includes an agreement to pay nominal damages and costs with all damages being donated to the Military Family Resource Centre – a charity that helps support the families of the men and women of the Canadian Forces. Mr. Warman thanks ‘Droid’ for having apologized and retracted the material in question.
BCL posted on this earlier in the day, though we first noticed it in the early hours of the morning.
We haven't really written about the denizens of Free Dominion for some time (except for the occasional allusion to the website), mainly because we decided that they didn't merit a comment most of the time. Still, we've continued to be interested in the Richard Warman defamation suit filed against the couple who operate Free Dominion, the website itself and a number of anonymous members collectively referred to as the Does appear to have been identified.
All of the John Does, as well Mr. and Mrs. Fournier, have been adamant that they would fight to the bitter end, claiming that this if a free speech issue and that Warman was simply trying to silence his critics.
For one of those John Does, it looks like the struggle ended yesterday:
We can only speculate as to the change of heart. Perhaps "Droid1963" worked out some sort of deal with Mr. Warman? Maybe his lawyer told him that the case would ultimately be lost and this is Droid1963's attempt at a mea culpa to try and stem the damage. Or, just maybe, Droid1963 looked at his posts, decided that he had wronged Mr. Warman, and independently posted a genuine apology.
Who knows.
Suffice it to say we were very interested to see what the reaction would be, however when we clicked on the link later, we found this:
Looks like the page was blanked. We found it ironic that the Fourniers would censor one of the John Does given their defence of the John Does' right to free speech.
To their credit, the Fourniers did eventually allow the post, however they locked it so that there would be no comments:
The April 26, 2010 edition of "Macleans" featured a story entitled, "The Return of Hitler" written by Katie Engelhart. The main focus of the article was to discuss the growing interest in Hitler's, Mein Kampf and the resurgence of the far right in places such as Hungary, but also the growing popularity of Hitler's book and the ideas found within in such unusual locations as India and Turkey.
Not too far into the article, Engelhart mentions something that most literary critics have stated already regarding Mein Kampf. As writing goes, it's really not particularly well done. In fact, it's tedious, convoluted and as Winston Churchill stated (and whom Engelhart quotes in the article), "turgid, verbose, [and] shapeless."
One of our resident boneheads from Calgary took great offense to this characterization of der fuhrer's efforts:
-->
KATIE ENGLEHART calls Mein Kampf “Hitler’s poorly written, 700-page magnum opus,” “a badly written book” and “part autobiography, part raving philosophical treatise.” And she seems to base this largely on the opinions of other critics. Has she ever read Mein Kampf? Can she provide any actual examples of poor writing from within this tome? Hitler’s writing is straightforward and clear.
Bill Noble, CalgaryOkay, okay, we know this is an old photo and that Billy looks a bit different now, but it sort of makes the point that we're not exactly dealing with someone who is dealing with a full deck of cards. But if our readers insist that we provide a more up to date photo, well, this is the most up to date that we can come up with:
We make a point of not visiting Free Dominion too often. Frankly, it gives us all headaches. But we did take a gander a few days ago. It appears that resident crazy uncle Edward Kennedy had (another) visit from the RCMP around September 17:
Isn't life exciting? I was contacted by, and agreed to a meeting with the RCMP earlier this evening in regards to a complaint from the inhuman rights commission. Poor babies, it seems they want to be immune from any criticism of their persecution of victims and imposition of their politically correct bs.
The constable was reasonable and pleasant to talk to during the investigation, and I gave him a lengthy statement over the issue.
I will post a review of what transpired and what was said, tomorrow and am sending the same message now to these clowns that I sent back in my statement. I am NOT going to stop exercising my freedom of expression and I am not nor will I be intimidated by the fat asses sitting on their heated thrones, thinking they can rule the wortld of thought.
More tomorrow, I am tired, and need to sleep. Working for a living does that to you, but then the arses at the hrc would not know about that. Half a day's work would kill these pompous pampered pathetic peons of pitiful political correctness.
Ed later provides more detail about the encounter:
...and now for the sequence of events.
The general public is and has been aware of my total contempt and disdain for hrc's far and wide, openly voiced here and in real life. One cannot love freedom, democracy and justice without hating the alter, and in my observations of their bullying and totalitarian tactics, my disgust and anger was, is and WILL be apparent.
The RCMP called me late afternoon yesterday and asked if they could visit me, to which I agreed immediately. However, I thought this visit had to do with an investigation over a recent filed complaint I made with the Police Services Commission over violation of oath and code, abuse of system, and duplicity/partiality of several Renfrew OPP officers.
It was interesting when I started the conversation, leading off on that note, when I realized the issue was a complaint by the crybabies at the hrc who did not like me to be so critical of their attacks on justice, democracy and freedom.
The officer made it clear this was an official investigation and read me my rights, which I summarily dismissed and invited him to bring out a tape recorder if he had one in his pack, which he did, and turn it on.
When he did I made a statement about my right to freedom of expression and I made it clear that I would not desist in any way in exercising this freedom fought for in the last Great Wars, also mentioning that I had relatives who had shot better people than hrc tyrrants.
The officer indicated this was about comments made on the "Lemire" case but I corrected this by stating every case I have observed in the jungle of hrc defecation to be similar and an attack on freedom, justice and democracy so my comments and criticisms applied to everything they had touched and defiled. He asked if I used any other computer and I stated the truth that I used only the one in my study. The initial session lasted about twenty minutes after which we had conversations off the record about the fascism of the "Places to Grow Act" wherein the lieberals had written into the act that no compensation would be allowed for landowners and that redress before the courts was made illegal. When a provincial government takes away the basic right to a man's day in court the best word for that is FASCISM and FASCISTS.
Anyway, this material will be taken to his supervisor and then to Ottawa where an official will make a decision. I think that this issue falls under "Section 59" that prohibits intimidation/threats of the hrc's, right after the part where they are given entitlement to special soft toilet paper and mandatory "bidets" in their sheltered existences. Seems that they have yet to learn that as public figures, they are subject to criticism and ridicule. Respect must be earned, and what these self important pitiful excuses for people see to not have learned is nobody, myself included, can be mandated by decree to bow down at their feet and worship their pathetic personages. I think they are a waste of human air and skin.
The issue is strictly one of interpretation and these inquisitors had better learn quickly that what I say and what their paranoid minds read into it are generally two different things. NOBODY has the right to tell me what I mean by what I say and to impose on my words their own fairy tale interpretations.
I asked the Constable to take a message to them, that they can have their fat asses transported to the local OPP station a few miles from here and under the security of the whole detachment, replete with armaments, I will entertain their questions BUT I reserve the right to ask my own. It will be I will answer one of their every time they answer one of mine.
Now how is that for a deal? We will see what they say in return. To be sure, though, I will offer no respect for a bunch of overpaid fat assed politically correct underworked busybodies who think they can impose their warped and tainted ideologies on others, least of all me.
Stay tuned, I could get lucky, they might tyake me up on my offer of the meeting. Hope though they do not mind me wearing my sawdust covered workclothes, I only dress up for suitable occasions. _________________ Please let me know if I said something that offended you. I may want to offend you again sometime.
Kennedy is a fan favourite over on the FreeDom boards so not surprisingly the denizens of the forum jump to his defense. Then again, as we've written earlier, Kennedy isn't exactly a stranger when it comes to over the top language which may be viewed as threatening and an act of intimidation:
Well here is the deal Red. There is always a comeback and retribution to those who impose injustice, and it is always more than that given. I have good people around me, today I addressed a public meeting with Randy Hillier as guest speaker, Jack MacLaren, president of the OLA, and Scott Reid who was also scheduled but could not come due to the early return to parliament.
I spoke an hour and mc'ed the meeting, my theme was "Justice Democracy and Freedom". I addressed many issues as well as the hrc fascists. Randy mentioned the hrc problem. I had told a key OLA member about the hrc thing and was called and asked about it by top OLA brass without telling anyone else. Randy Hillier called me and asked about it before the meeting today where we both spoke.
Needless to say, the boys are not pleased. This is an intimidation tactic that is not intimidating anyone, but will have the opposite effect, and when I am told who is the whiner, the shite will hit the fan.
59. No person shall threaten, intimidate or discriminate against an individual because that individual has made a complaint or given evidence or assisted in any way in respect of the initiation or prosecution of a complaint or other proceeding under this Part, or because that individual proposes to do so.
Possible punishment if found guilty is:
Offence
60. (1) Every person is guilty of an offence who
...
(c) contravenes subsection 11(6) or 43(3) or section 59.
Punishment
(2) A person who is guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding $50,000.
In other FreeDom news, we heard from a friend of a friend who knows a guy that one of the John Does have filed his defense in the Warman libel suit against the John Does, the Fourniers, and FreeDom. And while we aren't aware of the particulars of the defense, we're sure it will be as successful as the last libel suit Mr. Warman was involved in.
We've said it before, we're sure we'll say it again in the future, and we will say it again right now. Considering how often this blog is declared irrelevant with absolutely no readership by some of our self-styled opposition, they sure do pay an inordinate amount of attention to us.
We, on the other hand, don't usually go out of our way to read what they're writing about us, but we are occasionally sent links by our non-existent readership when we are mentioned. Sometime we read what they have to say about us. Sometimes we don't. But when we are, in part, the subject of an article by the mighty blogger Jay Currie, well, our hearts go all a twitter.
Our dear readers may remember when we published documents indicating the real life identities of the Free Dominion "John Does" who, along with Mr. and Mrs. Fournier, are subjects of a Richard Warman defamation suit. Our readers may also remember the folks at Free Dominion were not please that these documents, all of which are public domain and available to those who wish to access them once they were filed, were made public, even in their redacted form (unlike some of those published by those on the right, we removed home and work addresses, email addresses, some websites, names of spouses, and in one case information regarding a family matter). They called us all sort of nasty names, including but not limited to communists, a violent street gang, and criminals. That the folks at Free Dominion rather routinely post similar court documents on that web forum seems to be of little consequence; it would appear that these powerful voices for free speech get a little squeamish when they themselves don't approve of the speech.
After the initial hubbub died down we figured that cooler heads had ultimately prevailed. Perhaps it did, but it was brought to the surface again recently.
That brings us to Jay. On August 23, 2009, Jay Currie published an article detailing an apparent "investigation" by the Department of National Defense into Richard Warman to determine whether he had been pursuing his human rights work (though we're sure Jay would use a different term) on company time and using the department's resources. To his credit, Jay seems to think that not much, if anything, will be found to have been improper. His original article linked to a Free Dominion thread that appears to have now disappeared, perhaps owing to fears that it may be used against the subjects of Warman's litigation. In that thread was an email (written not long after the Free Dominion meltdown about ARC having published public domain documents and when emotions were pretty heated), ostensibly from one of the "John Does" to no less than the federal Minister of National Defence Peter MacKay. Jay republished it on his blog:
From: [Redacted] [mailto: [Redacted]@ [Redact-it].ca] Sent: June 8, 2009 3:51 PM To: MacKay, Peter – M.P. Subject: Richard Warman, DND employee?
June 8/09
Dear Mr. Mackay,
As Minister of Defence, perhaps you could look into the situation regarding one Richard Warman who I believe is a counsellor employed at DND in Ottawa.
Mr Warman has been running a legal and political campaign in which he targets people who do not agree with his political views (which are Liberal) with expensive lawsuits and other harassment. In my case, he reported my name and address to so-called anti-racist groups, who are in fact communist street gangs [we're quite sure that he's talking about us, but we'll get to this shortly].
My question is this—does Richard Warman spend working time on these projects, and has he been using the computer facilities at DND to gain information on his targets?
This situation should have been addressed by the Prime Minister and the Justice Minister at an earlier stage, but now it has reached the level of a sort of Stalinist political operation in plain sight, operating out of the DND and the offices of [Redacted]
Essentially, what we have here is a case of a powerful civil servant, quite possibly using the surveillance capabililty of the DND, harassing political opponents with the full support of the Government of Canada. I am not sure if you were aware of this situation, and I would hope that you would want to reverse it.
An extensive investigation is required to satisfy natural concerns that the power of the state is being used against the citizens of Canada, and in particular, of western Canada, because Warman seems to prefer residents of the western provinces (it is more expensive for us to fight his charges in court down in Ontario).
Thanks for your co-operation.
—[Redacted], —[Redacted]
"John Doe" even received a reply:
RE: Richard Warman, DND employee? Monday, August 17, 2009 3:55 PM From: “dnd_mdn@forces.gc.ca” Add sender to Contacts To: [Redacted]@[Redact-it].ca
Dear [Redacted]:
Thank you for your e-mail concerning a potential conflict of interest involving Mr. Richard Warman, an employee of the Department of National Defence.
I am advised that Chief Review Services, the authority responsible for conflict of interest issues for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces, is currently investigating and that a report is forthcoming.
I trust this information is of assistance, and thank you again for writing.
Sincerely,
Peter G. MacKay Minister of National Defence
MCU2009-03804
One thing we noticed immediately is that our "John Doe" serves up all of the conservative red meat right away:
1. Just happens to mention the political party affiliation of Mr. Warman which, as it so happens, is the Official Opposition and the key opponent of the federal Conservative Party. Hoping for a little political retribution, are we? ("Mr Warman has been running a legal and political campaign in which he targets people who do not agree with his political views (which are Liberal)")
2. Complaints of, "Western Alienation" ("An extensive investigation is required to satisfy natural concerns that the power of the state is being used against the citizens of Canada, and in particular, of western Canada, because Warman seems to prefer residents of the western provinces") which is a bit of a battle cry for Alberta conservatives.
3. Repeated references to the dirty Red Menace as if we were living in the 1950s and he's about to chair the House Un-American Activities Committee ("In my case, he reported my name and address to so-called anti-racist groups, who are in fact communist street gangs" and "...but now it has reached the level of a sort of Stalinist political operation in plain sight, operating out of the DND and the offices of [Redacted]")
On this last charge, let us at the ARC Collective (yes, we're aware of the irony we're about to commit here) unequivocally answer our "John Doe":
We are not, and have never been, members of the Communist Party.
Actually Lucille Ball had the best response when asked if she was a commie which wents something like, "the only thing red about me is my hair and even that's fake."
We would also ask if our accuser has no shame or sense or decency, but we fear the reference might be lost on him so we'll direct him to this link.
More the point, we're accused of being a criminal street gang. We'd like to know where exactly he gets his information about us because we can assure him and our dear readers that not one of us has ever been charged with or been under investigation for a single crime. Collectively, our running afoul of the law has amounted to a total of four speeding tickets and one driving with undo care and attention ticket in the past 20 years. If our accuser is going to try and equate us with one of their current bogeymen, the ARA, sorry but that dog don't hunt either. We are not members now, nor have we ever been members, of the ARA, though when we actually look at their records, we don't see a lot of criminal activity outside some relatively minor infractions and whatever the BONEHEADS (not blockheads, "The LS from SK") have claimed. But we may very well have missed something so we'll move on.
One would think that someone currently facing defamation charges would be more careful about the accusations that they make.
And at this point do any of our dear readers think that denying Mr. Warman was the source of the documents will be believed? That's sort of a rhetorical question.
Still, we do have some support. One person, "truewest" makes the following comment about ARC:
As for ARC, it’s better researched, more accurate and more responsible tha[n] most of the blogs you link to from your site.
You’ve linked to a complaint filed by hate-monger Melissa Guille’s brother against an anti-racist website. It was dismissed under s. 41(1)(d) of the Act because it was “trivial, frivolous, vexatious or made in bad faith”. (Shocking!) Is that what you’re calling the “hitherto unknown ‘intent’ test”?
Now, we here at the ARC Collective, an insignificant blog with no readers but which appears to be the subject of a great deal of speculation, wonder how long it will take for this most recent post to become the subject of heated conversation on conservative blogs and web forums. Will they be able to resist the siren song leading them astray or, like one of Pavlov's puppies, will they begin to salivate?
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.
We were sent the following link to some FreeDom posts voicing concern over our having published information on the John Does: Okay, now I'm REALLY mad!!!
We wondered whether or not we should address this or allow the fine folks at Free Dominion to stew in their conspiracy theories. In the end, we decided to respond.
Ladies and gentlemen of Free Dominion, we at ARC do NOT have in our possession the pictures and the maps you believe we have. If they do exist, they may very well have been included in the package you received, but we don't have them. And if we did have them, we would not publish them, nor would we provide them to people who requested them.
But we DON'T have them.
We suspect that the inclusion of the information in the packages you received was the evidence used to support the claims made about the identities of the John Does. As one of you posters so astutely noted, nothing that we posted couldn't have been found on the Internet as posted by the individuals in question. In fact, we redacted a great deal of information on the files simply to make sure that it couldn't be used for illegal purposes.
Now we here at ARC are quite certain that you won't believe us and will continue to perpetuate the idea that we're a vicious gang of thugs hell-bent on causing you and your loved one's harm. Sorry to burst your paranoid fantasies. No, we have stated and will continue to state our opposition to violence as a means of effecting change. Maybe this will assuage the concern of your free speech loving, yet oddly threatening of litigious action when others exercise their free speech rights, forum members.
And Connie, we assume you're aware of a situational comedy from the 1950's called, "I Love Lucy." We understand it was quite popular at one time. Do you remember one of Desi's catch phrases and when he would use it?
Not everything we write in relation to you and your website has something to do with Richard Warman (though we guess that at this point you're telling horror stories to children about him so we understand your preoccupation). Sometimes, we're wittily referencing pop culture.
Oh, and did you ever stop to consider that the ARA sign thanking Warman for the bus money might have been to cause a vitriolic reaction, sort of like the reaction you folks are having to it, given the animosity held by some of his opponents towards Warman? No?
And besides, as one of your other posters wrote, we're insignificant. We're half a tenth of a fly shit on the 120 story glass skyscraper that is the Internet. So if we were you, we'd ignore us. Hardly worth your time.
Actually, that's a good idea. Since it's basically more of the same from FreeDom anyways, we think we're going to ignore them.
UPDATE: The reading skills of our FreeDom friends are obviously lacking. You might want to re-read what we posted before accusing us of lying. And yes, we did archive the text we had posted on June 2. The text that did not include pictures or maps and had the names of everyone not the John Does redacted, as well as the addresses. But if you want us to re-post it to prove that to you just say the word.
Continuing our focus on FreeDom (and enjoying the reaction of the likes of Edward Kennedy) we've learned that four of the anonymous forum posters named in Richard Warman's civil suit have been identified:
Roger Smith (a.k.a. "Peter O'Donnell") Jason Bertucci (a.k.a. "Faramir") Andrew ******** (a.k.a. "Droid 1963") Dan LePage (a.k.a. "SaskBigPicture")
Since the folks at FreeDom are super smart, Mark Fournier has jumped to the conclusion that the identification of these individuals must be the result of nefarious activities on the part of Mr. Warman:
Well, since you asked so nicely Mr. Fournier, here's how their identities became known spelled out nicely in Mr. Warman's most recent affidavit:
We've likely redacted more than we actually needed to, but just to be on the safe side...
Now, let the fun begin.
UPDATE: Bloody hilarious. Evidently ARC is an insignificant failure and no one pays attention to us, however within half an hour of our posting the article there was a mention of it on FreeDom and Connie bumped up an old thread that complained about our having commented on her and Mark shaking hands with Fromm and his wife (while we were going to let this go when she first accused us of being hypocritical, we think we will discuss this in greater depth at a later date). We certainly didn't let them know we had posted it, so it would seem that some of their own readers have at least a passing interest in what is written on this blog.
Maikeru: 'Since we [ARC] have yet to address the situation in Gaza, it might be a good idea to explain what our position on the entire Arab-Jewish conflict is so people can understand. The way we see it, if Jews and Arabs can't seem to come to a peaceful solution to their problems after thousands of years of fighting, we most certainly aren't going to be able to contribute anything of value. Gentiles and other people who are neither Jewish or Arab who want to exploit the troubles in the Middle East for whatever political or financial agenda they have should be hauled off and shot.'
Now, we assume that 'Makeru' is referring to our statement regarding our stance on the Palestinian and Israeli conflict and the unwelcome involvement of the Aryan Guard and some extremist Muslims. We invite our readers to examine our article and determine whether or not we wrote what was attributed to us. Of course a simple Google search will show that the quote attributed to us originated on the FreeDom forums and not here on this website. If our position on the crisis in Gaza appeared anywhere else on the Internet and if there was any editorializing by the person who republished our position, we do not necessarily support their ideas.
Free Dominion claims to be, "the voice of principled conservatism." We invite our readers to determine the accuracy of that claim.
Thank you FreeDom for making our day. We had a great laugh about this. Please keep it up.
UPDATE 2: Back from our mini vacation. We redacted slightly more information on the final page of the affidavit regarding one of the John Doe's family members (although there was no mention of a name in the unredacted section, it did discuss a family relationship).
For a bit of a change of pace from covering the March 21 Aryan Guard march in Calgary, we thought we would post the John Doe ruling in the lawsuit against the Fourniers. Suffice it that Connie and Mark are not going to be happy.
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.
