Posted on 08/10/2002 1:29:46 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
The anti-FReepers are on the prowl. As most of you know, there is a group of ex-FReepers who have been dogging us for the last several years. The anti-FReeper community was started several years ago by a group of disgruntled individuals who were banned from FR and then wanted to get back at us by damaging our reputation. This started out as petty name calling and rumor mongering, but they now appear determined to cause us as much harm as possible. Even to the point of attempting to get FR and FRN shut down and the owners and managers of the organizations bankrupted or jailed.
Some of the early members of the group include ex-FReepers Mojo, Aligyrl, Landshark, Z2, Headhunter, LindaM, and others who have come and gone over the years. The most recent additions to active anti-FReeping appear to be ex-FReepers Clarity, Clinton's a Liar and JoeEveryman.
There appears to be a certain love/hate relationship involved here. Some of these people hate FR and its PTB (that's "Powers That Be" in their lingo) with such passion that they cannot stay away. Some of the original members of the AF community have given up and drifted off, some have come back to FR, and some are as determined as ever to kill FR and have me and whomever else they can thrown into prison for whatever crimes they imagine us guilty. Their motivation is pure revenge. Their driving force is hatred.
Their current attack is centered around an attempt to break up the Free Republic Network and, through that angle, to cause as much damage to FR as possible. Unfortunately for all of us, there is a genuine problem with the ex-leader of the South Carolina Chapter. Apparently, there was some money collected for events that was never paid over to the vendors and the chapter leader is accused of taking off with the money. I am not going into all of the gory details here, but I understand that there is an official police investigation ongoing and the SC Chapter and the FRN are cooperating fully with the authorities. The anti-FReepers, led by JoeEveryman, are trying to gain maximum leverage from any fallout from this case and are attempting to use it to bring down FRN.
JoeEveryman ran an FR thread (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/728856/posts) last week on this subject. I eventually deleted it because it was turning into an anti-FReeper haven and I do not want that on FR. The anti-FReepers have plenty of their own websites to conduct their hate campaign. Those who are interested may find JoeEveryman (posting as "Panjandrum") on the LibertyPost.org forum, now appearing to be the latest home of the anti-FReeper community. I have undeleted the JoeEveryman thread for those who are interested in reading it, but have left it locked. I do not want any more anti-FReeping activity on FR.
JoeEveryman is now banned from Free Republic. It is clear on the thead that he ran here on FR and on this (http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readarticle.cgi?114+1485+0+1) thread on LibertyPost.org that his intent is to bring FR down and to cause us as many legal problems as he can. I cannot see allowing him to do this on my own website.
It appears to me that they are either preparing some sort of lawsuit and or are trying to entangle me, Bob J, FR and FRN into the SC case. None of us had anything to do with whatever wrongdoing may have taken place in SC. The South Carolina Chapter is an independent entity, as are all of the FR chapters, and neither FR nor FRN have any ownership or control over their activities. It appears that the anti-FReepers are trying to break that down. We'll see. FRN is cooperating fully with the authorities and I will too if they ask.
In the meantime, I do not want them scheming on FR so they are banned and will remain banned. I will also ban any other FR members who get actively engaged in this attempt to bring down FR.
A request to all. Please do not drag any of the anti-FReeper stuff to FR. I do not want it here.
Free Republic has withstood many attacks over the years, from both the left and the right and I am confident that we will survive this attack from this Free Republic Haters Association as well.
Thanks for your continued support.
Jim
Yep, the one and only...he's always been 'special'...but, I have to admit that he does have a way of crafting extremely good insults!-)
And here I thought I was talking about name-calling between Bush supporters and fringe candidate supporters. Now I realize I wasn't!
Thanks for straightening me out on that.
Uh, no.
And thanks for the courtesy ping.
Mark Twain knew what he was talking about and lived a full life (1835-1910).
Oh, yeah - forgot that one!
And I've been called "unprincipled" by some of those same anti-FR that have been named in this thread because of the same...
Not to mention childish, petty, hateful, RINO, etc.
There's been a huge battle here between the "Constitutionalists" and the "Bushbots". I can understand much of it; I think most of us could agree that the power and reach of the Federal government is much greater than most of the Founding Fathers could have imagined (although ever since the Revolution there have been heated arguments about just how far Federal power should reach....)
The debate seems to center on whether or not Bush is a strict Constitutionalist, and whether or not he's a true Conservative.
My own opinion is that he isn't as conservative as many of us would like, and that was clear from the primaries - but he is a moral man, which is a relief after the past eight years, and he's more conservative than Gore would have been.
The larger point, and bigger question, to my mind, is how we move the country far enough to the right so that a "true Conservative" and strict Constitutionalist could be elected, because it should be quite obvious from the last election that it could not happen today.
We seem to be dealing with a situation where one could view the glass as half-full or half-empty. Again my opinion: we're better being thankful that we have a half-full glass (rather than nothing) and working to refill it, than complaining and "refusing to drink" because we don't have a full glass yet.
Well said as usual, Amelia.
Why would you say something that is untrue? There are plenty of posts at LP that have nothing to do with FR.
You'd think this place were the Amish or something, venture outside and risk being shunned.....Does it make me a whore to read bulletin boards/forums other than FR?...and God forbid that I might actually decide to post on one?
Socialism is a natural tendency in a democracy. The web, markets and yall are the best hope we have to protect freedom for a few hundred more years.
I love and support Free Republic and I have no time for more than two obsessive habits at any given time, so I do not even want to know what else is out there...
I do find all the infighting here and there to be horrid. Like any big family, there are always spats happening, and I am sure it sure looks silly from the outside.
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