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On Wednesday, we'll be having a little fundraiser here at SteynOnline for the Freedom Five - Ezra Levant, Kathy Shaidle, Kate McMillan and Mark and Connie at Free Dominion, the five Canadian bloggers being sued by serial plaintiff and Stormfront member Richard Warman. So I hope you'll swing by between midnight Eastern and the following midnight Eastern and support a good cause. It's impossible to take on the systemic abuses of the "human rights" apparatus in Canada - the drive-by verdicts of Commissar Hall at the Ontario commission, the entrapment and identity theft practised by Dean Steacy at the federal commission - without also taking on Richard Warman. He is the plaintiff on over half of all Section 13 cases in the history of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission and on every case before the Tribunal in the last five years. Section 13 is Warman's Law; the CHRC is Warman's Inquisition; and the CHRT is Warman's Star Chamber.
When he announced he was suing the Freedom Five, several commentators wondered why he was seeking only $50,000 in damages from the entire group - the defamation equivalent of small claims court. It seems reasonable to conclude that Mr Warman is not anxious to expose himself to discovery or cross-examination, and one can understand why. Given that he is Section 13's all but lone plaintiff and this is apparently his vocation in life, he is, to put it at its mildest, an unconvincing witness. First, he explicitly denied, under oath, that he'd ever signed up at the Freedom Site message board, on the grounds that "I could access everything I needed to as a guest". Two minutes later, when his secret identity of "Lucy" the hate-message poster was revealed in court, he revised his answer: "Sorry. I stand corrected."
Since then John Pacheco has been "correcting" some of Lucy's other answers, and Ezra Levant has added his own thoughts to John's analysis. Once again Mr Warman's testimony under oath is not persuasive - this time with respect to his chum Dean Steacy's secret identity of "Jadewarr" the (other) hate-message poster. Despite Mr Warman's denials of any knowledge of "Jadewarr", Mr Steacy confirmed a year and a quarter later that Mr Warman was in on the "Jadewarr" secret and, indeed, had logged on as "Jadewarr" himself. That certainly colours his earlier testimony. It is not unreasonable to conclude, in the following exchange, that Mr Warman is not a private citizen filing a hate-speech complaint but a guy in the know colluding with the CHRC in their attempt to switch evidence in mid-trial. The Commission, with the cocky complacency that comes with a 100% conviction rate, had introduced in evidence a document that happened to reveal the "Jadewarr" name. At that point nobody knew CHRC employees were getting their kicks by joining hate sites and posting hate messages. So, realizing its error, the CHRC slyly withdrew the document, printed out a different version and slipped that in instead. Judge Hadjis noticed the evidence substitution but couldn't figure out what was going on:
THE CHAIRPERSON: I’m sorry, I’m a little confused here...
MR. VIGNA: The layout, when you look at it, it might seem different, but if you look at the contents it’s pretty much the same...
THE CHAIRPERSON: I do see that the content is similar. It’s got the poem in it, but how come the layout is different, as Mr. Vigna has indicated?
MR. WARMAN: Sure. I will happily explain. The first one is a Commission document. The second one is a document that was printed off in my presence on Friday.
THE CHAIRPERSON: So, the second document was available on the Internet and printed off?
MR. WARMAN: Yes, on Friday.
THE CHAIRPERSON: On Friday.
MR. WARMAN: So, if it’s more appropriate, we can withdraw the first one and simply tender the second one.
Conrad Black currently sits in a Florida jail for "obstruction of justice". Why? He was caught on video removing boxes from his Toronto office and loading them into his car. As the prosecution conceded, every document in those boxes had already been sent to the US Department of Justice. But the prosecutors made great play of the fact that what matters with evidence is not just the contents but also the provenance: Is it an original or a copy? Does it have a different time stamp or fax address on it? In the Black trial in Chicago, you couldn't get away with removing in mid-trial the New York computer printout of a document and substituting the London photocopy of it on the grounds that "the content is similar". The defence would rightly demand a mistrial. The integrity of evidence is critical. Yet Judge Hadjis lets the prosecution swap evidence in mid-testimony - and furthermore it's the supposed "witness" and "plaintiff" who "suggests" which version is the "appropriate" one.
Mr Warman was not ignorant of "Jadewarr". He was in on the secret - part of the cosy conflict of interest between the CHRC and its former employee. The Pieman is, by his own admission, a Stormfront member and hate-message poster with a track record of incorrect and misleading testimony under oath. Hard to see quite what he's suing over.
As for the CHRC, the systemic corruption only confirms the need for a full-scale Royal Commission. Jennifer Lynch, QC, the head honcho of the racket, wrote a characteristically pompous argument-from-authority in last week's Maclean's. But that won't do anymore - not when her own "investigators" are the subject of Privacy Commission investigations and criminal complaints.
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