Thanks for fighting the good fight, eh. 8)
By 2004 Free Dominion was the top political discussion forum in Canada and we were growing fast within our market. Although we were unrelenting in calling our governments to task at every opportunity, we had a good relationship with many politicians on the conservative side of the aisle in the House of Commons. In fact, we were so trusted by the conservatives that we were approached by the federal conservative party of the day to organize a friendly greeting for President Bush, who was making an official state visit to Canada. This we gladly did.
On the day of President Bush’s arrival, downtown Ottawa was packed with the usual suspects protesting his visit here. Connie and I believed the conservative leader of Canada’s closest ally and best friend merited a more welcoming greeting. We have no doubt that the two of us were carefully scrutinized by Canadian law enforcement, the Secret Service and Homeland Security before we were allowed into the security cordon that had been thrown up around the Ottawa airport for the president’s arrival. We obviously passed muster.
Everything went off without a hitch and the first civilians President Bush saw when on the ground in Canada was the two of us and about thirty other Free Dominioners, all waving American and Canadian flags and our hands at the president. Security trusted us enough that the president’s car passed within fifteen feet of us. A couple of hours later in a presser Mr. Bush quipped that he enjoyed seeing us waving to him “with all five fingers.”
For the next three years we continued doing exactly as we had been doing all along, but something changed. The government turned against Free Dominion, and by extension, against us. We were unaware of this at the time, so much of what follows is from a perspective from 2014, from a barrage of legal attacks and from Freedom of Information requests. In 2007 a massive influx of government officials and lobby groups joined Free Dominion anonymously and under false pretenses. Agents from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Department of Defense, at least two police departments, the Southern Poverty Law Center (from America), B’nai Brith Canada and the Canadian chapter of Anti-Racist Action all began registering on our site.
Within months a “hate crimes” complaint had been filed against us by the Canadian Human Rights Commission because one of our members had posted a link (that’s right, a link) in our forum. They ultimately had to drop the complaint against us but we have since learned that within the bowels of that government agency Free Dominion had been labeled a hate site.
Shortly after the Canadian Human Rights Commission was forced to stop its attack on us due to the fact that the complainant dropped her complaint, an ex-employee of the Commission, who by then was working for the Department of Defense, began suing us. Four defamation cases were filed in two different cities (so we would have to run back and forth to defend ourselves), and a fourth in federal court in Ottawa over a copyright claim (we won that one without a lawyer but the plaintiff appealed so we will be in the Federal Court of Appeals in a couple of months).
While this was going on, members of the lobby groups were vandalizing our site with hate-filled posts and at least one fraudulently altered document. We deleted and banned as was necessary but it was so bad that we had to temporarily shut down our registration function to stop them.
Because we had the foresight to locate our server in Panama, beyond the reach of the Canadian government, the guns of state were turned on us personally.
Free Dominion has been successfully censored, but Connie and I are not beaten yet. We will fight on.