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   Message 22,772 of 24,289   
   PaulFromm to All   
   Political Prisoner Terry Tremaine In Cou   
   29 Sep 11 22:13:52   
   
   XPost: van.general, soc.culture.canada   
   From: paul@paulfromm.com   
      
   Threatened With Life in Prison, Political Prisoner Terry Tremaine Heads to   
   Court   
      
   VANCOUVER. September 19, 2011. Political prisoner and free speech dissident   
   Terry Tremaine heads to the Federal Court of Appeal today in Vancouver. The   
   Canadian Human Rights Commission is appealing a bitter loss in Federal Court   
   last November.   
      
   Federal Judge Sean Harrington found Mr. Tremaine not guilty of “contempt of   
   court.” The judge ruled that the Canadian Human Rights Commission had   
   registered   
   a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal “cease and desist”gag order in February, 2007   
   but had failed to serve Mr. Tremaine until August of 2009.   
      
   This is the latest round in a bitter campaign by the Canadian state to silence   
   the jovial former university math instructor. The chief instigator in this six   
   year campaign of persecution, which has already seen a Mr. Tremaine serve 23   
   days in prison, is Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman who works for the Department of   
   National Defence.   
      
   Mr. Warman filed a Sec. 13 (Internet censorship) complaint against Mr. Tremaine   
   in 2005. In April of that year, he wrote a letter denouncing Mr. Tremaine and   
   demanding “appropriate”action to Mr. Tremaine’s employer, the University of   
   Saskatchewan. He promptly lost his job. Warman wrote the complain even though   
   Mr. Tremaine’s case had not yet been heard, and, indeed, would not be for   
   another year.   
      
   Still before the complaint was adjudicated, under a law which has since been   
   declared unconstitutional, Mr, Warman filed a complaint with the Regina City   
   Police alleging Mr. Tremaine had violated Canada’s notorious “hate law”, Sec.   
   319 of the Criminal Code, for many of the same postings that formed the grounds   
   for the human rights complaint.   
      
   In February, 2007, a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found Mr. Tremaine guilty   
   of   
   a discriminatory practice, and, although penniless, fined him $4,000 and hit   
   him   
   with a “cease and desist” order, enjoining him from repeating the impugned   
   statements or making similar statements.   
      
   Mr, Tremaine for the next 10 months continued to post on his nspc website,   
   although he tried to moderate his expressions.   
      
   In 2009, Mr. Warman complained again and the Canadian Human Rights Commission   
   launched a “contempt of court” action, which was ignominiously adjourned sine   
   die when prosecutor Daniel Poulin discovered that Mr. Tremaine had never been   
   served.   
      
   In conversations in July, 2009, Mr. Poulin made it clear to Paul Fromm, who had   
   been Mr. Tremaine’s representative at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that   
   Mr. Tremaine could avoid jail, if he’d just take down his website. “Now, the   
   scope of the ‘cease and desist’ order had expanded from avoiding the repetition   
   of a few statements that might be offensive to privileged minorities to the   
   shutting down of his website and the removal of over a thousand posts Mr.   
   Tremaine had made on STORMFRONT,” says Mr. Fromm. “This was the same pattern we   
   saw in the Lemire case, where, when we tried to probe exactly what statements   
   were offensive, we were told that it wasn’t just the statements in theoriginal   
   Warman complaint but the ‘totality’ of the site. We were told that even the   
   name   
   ‘Freedomsite’ and its mailing address were‘hate.’. It became clear that the   
   state censors were going far beyond the‘remedial’ goals of the law, bad as it   
   is, and were trying to totally silence Internet dissidents.”   
      
   Early in 2010, the relentless serial complainer Richard Warman filed more   
   allegations against Mr. Tremaine and the compliant CHRC again charged Mr.   
   Tremaine with “contempt of court.” He was acquitted and the acquittal is the   
   subject of the appeal.   
      
   In the meantime, Mr. Poulin has made it clear that he will seek what Mr.   
   Tremaine calls “life in prison on the installment plan” – a year if the appeal   
   goes against Mr. Tremaine; a longer sentence, if he doesn’t take down his   
   website; a longer sentence, when that one is served, if the website remains up.   
      
   Mr. Tremaine’s lawyer Douglas Christie of Victoria, raised many other issues at   
   the appeal. The judge hung his ruling on the want of proper notice. However,   
   Mr.   
   Christie also challenged the assertions that Mr. Tremaine’s Internet postings   
   on   
   a website in another country constitute “communicating.” He cited several   
   Supreme Court rulings in copyright cases which held that   
   “communication”occurred, not when copyrighted music was uploaded to a website,   
   but when it was downloaded, without paying royalty fees. Thus, ironically, Mr.   
   Christie says,“the person guilty of communication might be Canadian ‘hate cops’   
   or people like Mr. Warman who download the material.|””   
      
   A further complication is that Mr. Tremaine cannot now legally add to, delete   
   or   
   tamper with his postings on STORMFRONT or with his website, under bail   
   conditions relating to the Sec. 319 charges instigated by Mr. Warman. This case   
   will be heard in Regina, June 4, 2012.   
      
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