Day 1′s events can be read here.
Day 2′s events can be read here.
Day 3′s events can be read here.
Day 4′s events can be read here.
I’m afraid that I was unable to attend on day 5. I have heard some accounts which I would like to share with you. However, do remember I have not seen this myself, so it is just a person on the internet repeating a rumour….so give the account weight accordingly. Mr. Warman was still on the stand and acted up the self pity, even bringing forth tears for the jury, when he recounted just how difficult this has all been for him, the righteous protector of our society.
Day 6′s events can be read here, as a real newspaper sent the liberal Glen McGregor to cover the appearance of Mr. Icke as a witness.
Day 7’s events can be read here.
It is getting harder and harder to juggle ‘things’ so that I can make it to the courthouse to observe. Day 8 of the proceedings was no different: could not make it in until the afternoon session. Before I describe what I saw, I think it will not hurt if I re-state my biases, as I necessarily have them and the readers should be aware of them.
I am a free speech absolutist and an anti-slavery fundamentalist – which necessarily makes me a voluntaryist to a great degree (though I do stop short of anarcho-capitalism). Prior to covering the Warman vs Free Dominion legal saga, I did not know either party, have never been a member of Free Dominion or even went to their site. Over these past 3+ years, I have developed a genuine affection for and admiration of the Fourniers. I have exchanged a polite ‘Thank you’ with Mr. Warman every now and then when we held the courtroom doors for each other.
From the tidbits of information I have managed to scrape together about the morning’s events, I did indeed miss much that was important. Jason Bertucci, aka Faramir and one of the defenders represented by Ms. Kulaszka gave his testimony, as did another person (I did not write down the name, so I’ll have to confirm who…). Apparently, Mr. Katz had softened from his previous adversarial style of questioning (imagine a US TV show).
Still, the defense was optimistically hopeful of the morning’s events.
The court re-convened at 14:04 and the judge asked Ms. Kulaszka what was her next step. She replied that her witness, Mr. Paul Fromm, was waiting outside.
Thus, the jury was brought in and at 14:07, the bailiff went and fetched the witness.
The witness was sworn in on the Bible and stated his full name to be Frederick Paul Fromm. He wore a dark suit with a dark red kerchief in the pocket, white shirt and a dark tie with a gold coat-of-arms type repeated motifs separated by a thin gold stripe. With his graying hair and understated glasses, he looked very distinguished.
Considering that the plaintiff tried to cast Mr. Fromm (rightly or wrongly) as a neo-Nazi, I think his testimony (and cross-examination) were much more favourable for the defense than the prosecution.
I’ll jump around – in time, that is – to make it a narrative which is easier to follow…
Mr. Fromm started off testifying that he was with an organization called ‘Canadian Association for Free Expression’. As such, he is committed to freedom of expression, even if the speech itself is politically unpopular. (I am paraphrasing here.)
Then, he delved into ‘the Zundel saga’. Mr. Fromm explained that whether he agreed with Ernst Zundel’s views or not, he found the process the government had subjected him to to be unconstitutional and had organized public protests in order to say so. (He was, of course, later vindicated as the process itself was, indeed, found unconstitutional by the courts.) As a result of these protests, he became the target of the Anti-Racism Association, the ARA, which had played such a significant part in the trial earlier.
If you don’t remembe the ARA, Mr. Warman had given a speech at one of their events during which he joked that the ARA members would be just as surprised that he has police officers as friends as his police officer friends would find it surprising to find Warman had friends among the ARA, Mr. Warman had identified himself as having belonged to the ARA while he had lived in Toronto and outlined his ‘Maximum Disruption’ doctrine to be used against either neo-Nazi groups or just for fun, against people who annoyed him…Connie Fournier had testified that this very speech had greatly informed her opinion of Mr. Warman.
One of the statement which Mr. Warman is seeking compensation for defamation is the claim that he had paid for a bus that brought the ARA to a rather ‘vigorous’ demonstration at Mr. Fromm’s house because, as he had testified earlier, Mr. Warman had stated that being accused of financing an urban terrorist organization would be damaging to the reputation of a practicing member of the bar…from which I can only conclude that Mr. Warman himself considers the ARA to indeed be a terrorist organization…
Mr. Fromm had testified that many of the people against whom Mr. Warman had laid complaints against under Section 13 of the Human Rights Act (HRA) were very poor and could not afford legal representation in front of the Tribunal. Unlike in a real court, where one has to be either self-represented or represented by an actual lawyer, the pseudo-courts that are the HR Tribunals are not so strict about any of the legal procedures and anyone can be represented by a citizen who acts as their agent. In this capacity, Mr. Fromm had represented Jessica Beaumont, Terry Tremaine, and a number of others.
He had done his best to help these poor, unsophisticated people defend themselves against the ‘Maximum Disruption’ assault launched by Mr. Warman. But, back to the ‘Zundel’ bit: and, again, I am jumping back and forth in time (testimony-wise, cross-examination and re-direct…) in order to have continuity in narrative.
It was established that Mr. Zundel had been the subject of protests (and/or threats by the ARA).
It was testified to (by Mr. Fromm) that the arsonists who had set fire to Mr. Zundel’s house were never criminally charged.
When the ARA protested in front of Mr. Fromm’s house (and trespassed on condominium property and greatly terrorized his neighbours), they chanted “Nazi scum, out out out!” – but, later, he testified that the ARA members threatened to ‘burn him out just like Zundel’… the implication of terrorist threat being rather obvious and not in the least conrtrovened by anything Mr. Warman’s side had to offer.
On cross examination, Mr. Katz brought out that Mr. Fromm had been a teacher, who had been fired from his job…but, his students from various cultural and racial backgrounds had protested his firing and even made a video in his support, testifying how he had not only taught them to achieve but also to have raised their self esteem and their self-confidence.
In the end, Mr. Katz introduced the letter of dismissal from when Mr. Fromm had been fired from his teaching job and had questioned Mr. Fromm on it. I could not get the exact wording written down during testimony, so I asked him to repeat the exact wording to me after the court session was over.
Mr. Fromm said the letter said he had been fired because of his ‘persistent disregard of and contempt for multicultural and ethno-centric cultural equity, which are core values of the education system’… He explained that he thought the core values of the education system were ‘reading, writing, mathematics, computer literacy, self discipline, co-operation with others’ and so on…
At this, both sides rested.
Monday, day 9 of the court proceedings, would be about the lawyers and the judge haggling out the questions for the jury – the jury itself would be excused.
An alternate view of the events can be read here.
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 