(UPDATE: Lauren Southern's coverage of this case is ongoing. VISIT TwitterFreedom.com for the latest interviews and analysis regarding this historic legal victory, plus informative backgrounder videos.)
After a legal battle that dragged on for three years , Gregory Alan Elliott has been found not guilty.
In 2012, Elliott was charged with criminal harassment after arguing with feminist activists on Twitter. He’s suffered through a tortuous court case that has cost him nearly one hundred thousand dollars.
Anyone following this case knows that Greg is only guilty of the crime of wrongthink. He was arrested for critically engaging with people who disagreed with him. It wasn’t any different from what people do on social media platforms every day.
Greg’s tweets were far milder than some of the vile garbage I’ve seen come through my notifications. He never threatened anyone, and he never gave anyone reason to fear for their safety.
All he did was argue with people that hated him so much they demanded he be shut down.
I don’t believe Stephanie Guthrie or her cronies felt victimized for a second. We’re talking about people who have posted images of themselves drinking from mugs with “male tears” written on them, after all.
They wanted Elliott to pay for having challenged them, nothing more.
The charges in Elliott’s protracted legal case have prohibited him from using the Internet, forced him to quit his job, and left him bankrupt.
The last three years of Greg’s life have been hell, and he won’t ever get them back.
Despite all this, I am joyful, Greg is joyful, and his sons are joyful. Free speech has won the day, and Greg won’t have to deal with the prospect of months of jail time or heavy fines.
People opposed to speech rights won’t get the satisfaction of seeing Greg behind bars.
Most importantly, legal precedent has been established to defend free expression.
Canada is infamous for its ineffectual provisions for freedom of speech. Establishing the legal default to favour allowing offensive speech is a boon for speech rights in Canada.
A new chapter of Greg’s life starts now. He’ll be able to return to some semblance of his prior life, free of the burden of ongoing criminal proceedings. He’ll be able to return to work, and continue making the artwork for which he is renowned.
It’ll be a rocky road, but he has a lot of people on his side.
I hope you’ll be one of those people. Greg still has legal fees to pay and is hoping to get back to designing and doing his artwork.
If you can, please contribute to the fundraiser Greg’s son Clayton has set up. Every bit of support helps.
If defending speech is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
Let’s keep pushing, and continue fighting for speech rights in Canada.
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“Det. Bangild searched only tweets sent by the defendant with the complainants’ handles, those sent by the complainants with the defendant’s handle, plus certain tweets by the defendant using specified hashtags. He did not include any tweets sent by any of the three that did not use one of the other two handles or, in the case of Mr. Elliott, the chosen hashtags.”
and then at p 18:
“There is evidence that important tweets were not picked up by the Sysomos search and thus that this concern of the defence was not unfounded, which is one circumstance of this case.”
And that’s just one of the many, many problems created by this decision.
If…“the plaintiffs were obligated to pay all the legal costs of the defendant, then we’d very quickly see an end to this nonsense”. While I want to agree with you…Nope, that’s where OHRC and the CHRC come in. They exist to perpetuate the ideology that in a free society “Only their way is the right…ooops…correct way to think.” Which in itself doesn’t sound very “liberal” and “open-minded” to me. But what do I know? I’m just a white guy working my ass off living a subsistence lifestyle so that my ex can keep living in a lifestyle of blowing money on herself that she’s become accustomed to. You know guys; there are some ideas in Sharia Law that have a certain appeal …LOL!
No heavy fines, just $100k in legal fees.
What did his accusers get? Notoriety among their fellow travellers and the thrill of seeing someone they hated for his differing opinion put through legal hell on earth.
This has to be one of the most egregious cases of anti-free speech lawfare and abuse of authority to date. And the aggressors won this, hands down.
The fundraiser for Greg Elliott is one I’ll cheerfully support, and I challenge everyone reading this to do the same.
But lucky him he got nailed with malicious criminal charges and not a malicious civil suit.
The plaintiff that’s been pestering me since 2012 has done the following:
stated in court “it’s political” when referring to her case.
Admitted that she “already got what she wanted”, which obviously was not the judgement of the court considering her intent was to use the court as a weapon.
Admitted her vendetta involving fellow SJW’s she refers to as her friends, because being critical and damaging their campaigns is a sin requiring some sort of nefarious means to knee cap and silence the critic.
There was a secret meeting in my case as well involving the social justice collective.
The plaintiff was involved in the Elano valley tree-sit, she was one of the sitters but was arrested two days prior to the rope cutting of an apparatus designed to frame a cop, in that case bud mercer was framed and even went to court — but was cleared of any wrongdoing. I believe all the sitters were accomplices in that scheme, and in spite of the findings of the court the plaintiff in my case still maintains the narrative of the tree-sitters that has been proven false.
She has admitted to having been committed to a mental institution, and even published the scathing words of the judge that I feel certainly is accurate.
She advocates the spiking of trees and was mentioned (but not dug into) by Ezra Levant on the source.
Hey maybe I need to have a wife and two kids, a middle class income, and not have been suffering from the aftereffects of a sexual assault and been less angry and nicer to deserve to get help getting my fucking life back too eh?
Maybe it’s too radical for free speech to say that the laws in this country that are designed to provide equality, are unbalanced and designed to inflict a permanent disadvantage on white males. The way it is set up things will never be equal, the debts of our ancestors will never be repaid. There will always be the divisive weapon of non-existent white male privilege to divide people and sic them upon each other, an the SJWs (commies) love it.
Anyways a dirty WCEL lawyer who violates her oath to the law society, and dirty tenured PHD’s in UVIC sponsoring a malicious litigation….I’m surprised I’ve had to endure 4 years of this shit with almost no help.
re: S.W…However, some people think free speech means they can go on and on and bore us all to death…there is a limit to the human attention span, especially when a rant has no evident format or logical sequence and becomes an endless list of copied bits and bytes with no apparent goal in mind…and then the icing on the cake: “Reign of Terror (1793–94) jacobin socialist feminist sociopathic psychopathic terrorist club Cult of the Supreme Being.”??? C’mon S.W…the only thing worse than losing free speech is the act of spitting out meaningless phrases and hysterical incoherence until everyone falls asleep and misses the war.
‘Democracy’ "government by the people; especially : rule of the majority (b:) " a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people.
We the people are the true government, when representatives are elected, they become representatives of the government [we the people] in point of fact public employees [public servants] not “the government”
Today our ‘Representatives are dictated to by ’their party’ executive, caucuses, factions and leaders, their parties do not represent Australians or Australia, only whims of influence. Is why there is so much corruption and waste in our public services, parties beach the constitutional, political liberty and duty of our representatives to represent we the people.
CRIMES ACT 1914 – SECT 28 Interfering with political liberty Any person who, by violence or by threats or intimidation of any kind, hinders or interferes with the free exercise or performance, by any other person, of any political right or duty, shall be guilty of an offence. Penalty: Imprisonment for 3 years. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca191482/s28.html
There are only two types of government and the linear between, totalitarian and democratic. Totalitarian dictatorships throughout history are always lead by sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissist and pedophiles [ASPD NPD as by the DSM5]. Notable Islam, socialist, communist and monarchies.
CRIMINAL CODE ACT 1995 – SCHEDULE The Criminal Code Subdivision B—Treason 80.1 Treason (d) levies war, or does any act preparatory to levying war, against the Commonwealth.
“If given the choice between Righteousness and Peace, I choose Righteousness.” ― Theodore Roosevelt "
Commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically it has sometimes been synonymous with “republicanism”. The English noun “commonwealth” in the sense meaning “public welfare; general good or advantage” dates from the 15th century.
The original phrase “the common-wealth” or “the common weal” (echoed in the modern synonym “public weal”) comes from the old meaning of “wealth”, which is “well-being”, and is itself a loose translation of the Latin res publica (republic).
The term literally meant “common well-being”. In the 17th century the definition of “commonwealth” expanded from its original sense of “public welfare” or “commonweal” to mean “a state in which the supreme power is vested in the people; a republic or democratic state”.
“Better things were done, and better managed … under a Commonwealth than under a King.” Pepys, Diary (1667) Three countries – Australia, the Bahamas, and Dominica – have the official title “Commonwealth”," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth.
King Charles I is beheaded for treason on January 30, 1649., by dissolving Parliament on several occasions and in 1629 decided to rule entirely without Parliament. In 1642, the bitter struggle between king and Parliament for supremacy led to the outbreak of the first English civil war.
Charles was forced to appear before a high court controlled by his enemies, where he was convicted of treason and sentenced to death. Early in the next year, he was beheaded. The monarchy was abolished, and Cromwell assumed control of the new English Commonwealth.
‘Terrorism’ originally term Socialist feminist “Reign of Terror” ‘Jacobin Club’ lead by the lawyers notably Maximilien Robespear French revolution1794
Part 5.3—Terrorism Division 100—Preliminary 100.1 Definitions terrorist act means an action or threat of action where: (a) the action falls within subsection
(2) and does not fall within subsection
(3); and (b) the action is done or the threat is made with the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause; and © the action is done or the threat is made with the intention of:
(i) coercing, or influencing by intimidation, the government of the Commonwealth or a State, Territory or foreign country, or of part of a State, Territory or foreign country; or
(ii) intimidating the public or a section of the public. tracking device means any electronic device capable of being used to determine or monitor the location of a person or an object or the status of an object.
(2) Action falls within this subsection if it:
(a) causes serious harm that is physical harm to a person; or (b) causes serious damage to property; or © causes a person’s death; or (d) endangers a person’s life, other than the life of the person taking the action; or (e) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public; or (f) seriously interferes with, seriously disrupts, or destroys, an electronic system including, but not limited to: (i) an information system; or (ii) a telecommunications system; or (iii) a financial system; or (iv) a system used for the delivery of essential government services; or (v) a system used for, or by, an essential public utility; or (vi) a system used for, or by, a transport system. https://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2015C00601
Reign of Terror (1793–94) jacobin socialist feminist sociopathic psychopathic terrorist club Cult of the Supreme Being. The Committee of Public Safety (French: Comité de salut public), created in April 1793 by the National Convention and then restructured in July 1793, formed the de facto executive government in France during the Reign of Terror (1793–94), a stage of the French Revolution.
The Committee of Public Safety succeeded the previous Committee of General Defence (established in January 1793) and assumed its role of protecting the newly established republic against foreign attacks and internal rebellion. As a wartime measure, the Committee—composed at first of nine, and later of twelve, members—was given broad supervisory powers over military, judicial, and legislative efforts.
The Committee of General Security began to manage the country’s internal police. Terror was formally instituted as a legal policy by the Convention on 5 September 1793, in a proclamation which read, “It is time that equality bore its scythe above all heads. It is time to horrify all the conspirators.
So legislators, place Terror on the order of the day! Let us be in revolution, because everywhere counter-revolution is being woven by our enemies. The blade of the law should hover over all the guilty.”50 Hébert and nineteen of his followers were arrested on 19 March and guillotined on 24 March.
Danton, Desmoulins and their friends were arrested on 30 March and guillotined on 5 April. Georges Couthon, his ally on the Committee, introduced and carried on 10 June the drastic Law of 22 Prairial. Under this law, the Tribunal became a simple court of condemnation without need of witnesses
Robespierre tried to kill himself with a pistol but managed only to shatter his lower jaw,71 although some eyewitnesses72 claimed that Robespierre was shot by Charles-André Merda. Execution The execution of Robespierre. N.B.:
The beheaded man is not Robespierre, but Couthon; the body of La Bas is shown lying on the ground; Robespierre {#10} is shown sitting on the cart closest to the scaffold, holding a handkerchief to his mouth. For the remainder of the night, Robespierre was moved to a table in the room of the Committee of Public Safety where he awaited execution.
He lay on the table bleeding profusely until a doctor was brought in to attempt to stop the bleeding from his jaw. Robespierre’s last recorded words may have been “Merci, monsieur” (“Thank you, sir”), to a man who had given him a handkerchief for the blood on his face and clothing.73
Later, Robespierre was held in the same containment chamber where Marie Antoinette, the wife of King Louis XVI, had been held. The next day, 28 July 1794, Robespierre was guillotined without trial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilien_Robespierre
Robert Owen (14 May 1771 – 17 November) was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of socialism and the cooperative movement
Owen’s son Robert Dale stayed at New Harmony after its collapse. He had a different assessment of his father’s experiment.
“All cooperative schemes which provide equal remuneration to the skilled and industrious and the ignorant and idle must work their own downfall, for by this unjust plan … they must of necessity eliminate the valuable members … and retain only the improvident, unskilled, and vicious.”
“I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young woman of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned”….. Lucy Stone …and she is so right!
But how EVIL is a society that DEMANDED A PRICE for “the right to SPEAK AT ALL in public” in the first place!!!…and then dares to demand GRATITUDE from those to whom it was forbidden! Gratitude should be forthcoming from MEN to all those women who fought for free speech while their male fellows battled tooth and nail to keep women silent! It is the men who dared to forbid public speech from women in the first place who should be grateful to those women who valiantly did what their fathers should have done!…and yet who think THEIR MALE FREE SPEECH is their right!
Yes, it came at great cost to many women…and still is not FREE in some circles…i.e. today, many, many churches still demand that women be silent with the false teaching that it is GOD’S WILL!…example:
http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=324051453
entitled " A word about women from the King of the church"…so you see speaking in some public squares is still forbidden to women…the battle for liberty is not over especially in the Southern states…and with the introduction of Islamism is growing ever more urgent…
There will always be people who carry liberty TOO FAR like these women mentioned in this post, but the price of liberty is VIGILANCE…how important to remember that liberty is NEVER FREE, NOR EASY, and the wicked oppressive nature and deceitful heart is the default position of human nature…sometimes, not only in men but, as here, also in women. So what are you going to do about it? Just keep bleating about this poor guy or realize that the battle must never be for men only, but for all! This man had a ‘LITTLE SKIRMISH’ compared to the decades long battle women have fought…help him pay his expenses and (some of you) stop beating up on women if you ever want to maintain free speech and liberty…let this be a lesson…if you don’t share liberty you may lose it altogether.
It would serve the purveyors of “so-called justice” right if both sides counter-sued the lawyers for abuse of their ignorance of the law, and even better if there was a punishment under law for frivolous abuse of the justice system and wasting the court’s time in a day when cases take for ever…
Yet, I find it difficult to believe the man didn’t use abusive language at any time considering the foul and aggressive language used against women on this site by several men, especially when there is no provocation except the perception that women are all their enemy. But, if it is true, it reduces the case to one over a simple disagreement…who would ever think they could win?
Our Communist Broadcast Network, did cover it; buried in some random page requiring the use of the search utility.
If and when some group has relatively and often temporarily less stuff than some unrelated other group, you will slanderously claim they must have stolen it from the others, so they owe them (and, as their staunch advocate and Social Justice Warrior, you, as well)!
And in stead of submitting your hypothesis to an actual court of law, presenting evidence of the crimes you accuse them of, even by dint of a class action suit, you will instead form a gang of like-minded entitled whiners to take over the government and impose your wealth-redistribution gang-thefts against your enemies by making up “new laws” to specifically target them without evidence.