Apparently it is okay for neofascist dingbats to smear the reputation of a respected academic, trade unionist and blogger by spreading lies about him being a supporter of the Taliban, but if you say mean things about a police spies and agent provocatuers, well....
Activist charged with criminal defamation over posting about undercover officers
Police officers linked to last year’s G20 summit say a Kitchener activist defamed two undercover police officers in comments he made on a local university-based website.
Dan Kellar, 29, was recently charged with two counts of defamatory libel by officers in the OPP anti-rackets squad as he left his Kitchener home on a bicycle.
He was also charged with counsel to assault one of the officers.
Police allege he published comments likely to injure the reputation of the officers by exposing them to hatred, contempt or ridicule, or that were designed to insult the officers.
Kellar and his lawyer, Davin Charney, say the charges are an attempt to stifle dissent.
“Dissent is now a criminal activity,’’ said Kellar, a member of Anti-War at Laurier (AW@L), which calls itself “a community-based radical direct-action group committed to solidarity and anti-oppressive organizing.’’
Criminal defamation is a rarely used section of the criminal code, Charney said.
“It gives police the ability to criminalize and charge people who are criticizing the police,’’ he said.
Sgt. Pierre Chamberland, a communications spokesperson for the OPP, acknowledged the charge of criminal defamation isn’t commonly laid.
“It’s not a charge I hear used every day,’’ he said. “However, I suspect people will need to understand they own the words they post publicly.’’
Click the headline and read the whole thing. The police spies who infiltrated the activist group were outed at some other site months ago. These charges have been laid simply because Dan Kellar said something rude about the undercover cops involved. He invited people to "spit in their footsteps and scoff at their existence" and I guess the big, brave infiltrators got their feeling hurt, because that statement drew a "cousel to assault" charge. Does that mean that if I scoff at the existence of these people I am guilty of assault? I guess they better lock up all the right-wingnut bloggers who told us that the police never use agent provocateurs or infiltrate non-violent groups.
Oh, and that respected academic, trade unionist, blogger and bon vivant, the inimitable Dr. Dawg has more
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