Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The First Of The Grovelling Apologies

Comes from Kate at SDS, and is echoed here by Kathy Shaidle, the toxic femi-dwarf.

What am I talking about? Two days ago Connie and Mark at FreeDominion made some intensely nasty and possibly libelous allegations re rights activist Richard Warman, which they sourced to Mark Lemire. Note that these accusations are not new (they amount to the claim that Warman "entrapped" Lemire and several other Neo-Nazis into making racist remarks). Furthermore, they have been denied by Warman in the past, and they were judged irrelevant to the origonal CHRC complaint against Mark Lemire.

These allegations were then repeated on Small Dead Animals (guest posted there by Ms. Shaidle), Five Feet of Fury, and elsewhere.

Sometime last evening, prompted by Kinsella, our two ladies realized they might just be facing lawsuits for the rest of their natural lives (longer, if someone keeps up their supply of virgin blood), and so the wretched self-abasement began.

Now, this story got played far and wide in the Righty blogosphere. Prominent folks who were suckered by Lemire and have not yet prostrated themselves include Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant.

Time to assume the position, gentlemen.

Ironic that two men so concerned with defended their own right to unregulated speech should be caught spreading possibly defamatory material. I am reminded of that story about giving loaded guns to small children

Also, I am sure there were a couple of MSM columns that referenced the same postings. If anyone remembers one and can provide a link, I would appreciate it.

Update: Mark Lemire's argument hinges on his ability to show that he can trace a user-ID that Warman admitted using to post on Freedomsite (a Nazi site), plus a user-ID that Warman claims he did not use, to the IP address 66.185.84.204. However, run this number through google and you find people arguing about junior hockey, dog grooming, and a whole lot of other stuff besides. I ain't no techie, but it looks like a whole whack of people have made use of the IP. How you can make any accusations about Warman from this is a mystery to me.

Another Update: From Mike in Scott Tribe's comments:

According to ARIN reverse lookup, the IP is owned by Rogers Cable:

[...]

As a customer of Rogers myself, I know they rotate their IP to residential users every 3 weeks or so. They also send their residential customers between netblocks - I have had IP addresses from this same 66.xx.xx.xx block, as well as from 72.xx.xx.xx, 74.xx.xx.xx and 99.xx.xx.xx That only evidence that whomever posted was doing so from a Rogers customer computer. Throw in a NAT, and you can’t even tell which computer it was. Consider an open wifi access point and it could have been someone wardriving. None of this so far indicated Warman. It is no evidence at all. Christ I hate amateurs who think IP logs are written in stone.

16 comments:

Warren K said...

That is a great post. Loved the line about blood transfusions. I plan to steal that and give you no credit.

Ezra Levant is A Great Canadian.

W

Ti-Guy said...

Who's "Warren" and why is he not making his profile visible?

Question everything, as they say.

Anyway, at times like this, I really regret disliking popcorn.

Anonymous said...

You should change the name of this blog to Schadenfreude Rising. Yee-ha!

Dante said...

If this is indeed a case of bad judgment, I feel sorry for everyone involved. Many people in the blog sphere get caught up in their zeal from time to time. Quite frankly, I enjoy the fact that blogs don't read like Readers Digest. Most who blog, don't have the resources to adequately defend such action in out elitest legal system.

I would not however feel sorry for those who knowingly published information that they knew to be false.

I'll be watching with interest as well. If the information is false, I would like to see the architects punished to the greatest extent of the law. Should the information be true, I will also be interested it the fallout on the other end.

In any event, I'm just glad it isn't me.

Dr.Dawg said...

Just one correction, if I might: Kathy, not Kate, posted the piece over at SmallDead. She's supposed to be looking after the house while Kate is away. I believe that CC has a ripe comment or two about that.

bigcitylib said...

Thanks Dawg, made a quit edit.

Reality Bites said...

Dante, in all seriousness, when the "evidence" is coming from a couple of (literal) Nazis, there's a pretty fine line between knowingly publishing something untrue and knowingly publishing something that's almost certainly untrue.

People like the Fourniers aren't "principled conservatives." They're absolutely the lunatic fringe.

Dr.Dawg said...

When does the edit appear?

In any case, over at my place you suggested that the IP address look like a public one. Try Googling it. An odd variety of locales--a website entirely in Thai, an Italian site devoted to Linux...

I do believe you may be onto something. It sounds like an Internet cafe, or some-such, and wouldn't that be precisely the locale that might prudently be chosen under the circumstances?

bigcitylib said...

Edit:

"These allegations were then repeated on Small Dead Animals (guest posted there by Ms. Shaidle), Five Feet of Fury, and elsewhere."

As to the IP, yeah, it seems like it would be very hard to pin this on Warman even if he did do it.

Dr.Dawg said...

Sorry, BCL, I was looking at your first sentence. No biggie.

I've given you credit over at my place. I wonder why no one else has picked up on this until now?

Anonymous said...

At the very least this shows the huge difference in behaviour when mistakes are made.

If a conservative makes a mistake, we see an immediate and well publicized apology. EVERYBODY knows when a conservative has made a mistake.

If a liberal makes a mistake, there will be a character assassination of the person who pointed it out to them. And there MAY be a tiny blurb buried somewhere in an obscure location, indicating that you were at fault for perceiving that the liberal made a mistake.

Reality Bites said...

If a conservative makes a mistake, we see an immediate and well publicized apology. EVERYBODY knows when a conservative has made a mistake

That might be a bit more believable if the one who started the whole thing, Nazi-pawn Mark Fournier, was backtracking, but he's not.

The only one apologizing is one of the many conservatives stupid enough to believe a man who gets into bed with Nazis

Ti-Guy said...

If a conservative makes a mistake, we see an immediate and well publicized apology. EVERYBODY knows when a conservative has made a mistake.

What a lie.

If a liberal makes a mistake, there will be a character assassination of the person who pointed it out to them.

What example are you referring to?

Dante said...

If a conservative makes a mistake, we see an immediate and well publicized apology. EVERYBODY knows when a conservative has made a mistake.

If a liberal makes a mistake, there will be a character assassination of the person who pointed it out to them. And there MAY be a tiny blurb buried somewhere in an obscure location, indicating that you were at fault for perceiving that the liberal made a mistake.

....
The biggest mistake is aligning oneself to being a big C conservative or big L liberal. There really isn't much difference over time.
Unquestioned political allegiance is a mental disorder unless you are trying to make a living from it.

Anonymous said...

well that's a first!Kathy Shaidle forced to apologise!

Anonymous said...

Reality bites;

Are you the same that wished you could be there when the Churches
burned?

Are you the same piece of shit that celebrated the death of the pope?

Just wondering, cause I'am sure that these folks would like to know whom they are dealing with.