Monthly Archives: November 2015
HEAR PAUL FROMM – THE ARTHUR TOPHAM TRIAL – VICTORIA, B.C. NOV. 28TH
HEAR PAUL FROMM – THE ARTHUR TOPHAM TRIAL – VICTORIA, B.C. NOV. 28TH
Part of CAFE’S mission is to encourage support for freedom of speech in Canada and to support the victims of censorship and minority-inspired persecution. Paul Fromm, CAFE Director, has undertaken an extensive speaking tour to discuss the Arthur Topham Trial. He has already spoken in Vancouver and Winnipeg with a number more locations planned.
Strike Three! Crown’s third attempt at imposing draconian bail conditions on RadicalPress.com fails By Arthur Topham
Strike Three! Crown’s third attempt at imposing draconian bail conditions on RadicalPress.com fails By Arthur Topham
Strike Three! : Crown’s third attempt at imposing draconian bail conditions on RadicalPress.com fails
By
Arthur Topham
On Friday, November 20th, 2015 RadicalPress.com publisher Arthur Topham returned for the third time to the B.C. Supreme Court in Quesnel to attend another bail hearing in the wake of the November 12th, 2015 guilty verdict in Count 1 of his two count indictment.
Crown prosecutor Jennifer Johnson was seeking what turned out to be a series of extremely harsh conditions that would have seen Topham charged with an additional criminal offence for allegedly publishing Crown disclosure documents as well as severe restrictions that would have prevented him from operating his website. In addition to those added Orwellian features Crown was also seeking unconstitutional conditions that would have prevented outside media from speculating on the reasons for the jury’s decision to find Topham guilty of Count 1. And finally, new conditions that were ostensibly meant to protect jury members from being subject to criticism or harassment.
Both Supreme Court Justice Bruce Butler and Defence Attorney Barclay Johnson appeared via telephone from Vancouver and Victoria while Topham attended in Quesnel along with Crown prosecutor Jennifer Johnson.
Crown made its presentation to Justice Butler followed by Defence counsel Johnson who countered all of Crown’s arguments with reasoned facts. When the smoke finally cleared it was apparent that Justice Butler wasn’t buying into Crown’s arguments and declined to impose any new conditions besides those already in effect with the exception of one small concession related to the safety of the jurors.
Crown, in its submission, argued that a photo of the potential jurors lined up in front of the courthouse on the snowy morning of October 26th (the first day of the trial) had been published on RadicalPress.com and it potentially posed a possible threat to the safety of the jury members (the photo, upon inspection didn’t show the faces of any of the people who were actually on the jury). Justice Butler was willing to concede to Crown’s request that it be removed and rather than have it written up in the new conditions Crown stated that if Mr. Topham would give the court his word that it would be remove then she would be happy with that. I assured Justice Butler that I would remove the photo as soon as I returned home and that was the end of it.
My wife and I and body guard Frank Frost left the courthouse feeling rather elated about the decision and knowing that RadicalPress.com had been victorious once again in retaining its right to carry on publishing until the Charter challenge to Sec. 319(2) was heard. The date for the Charterapplication has been tentatively set for the week of January 25th, 2016.
Stay tuned folks!
No Increased Bail Restrictions on Free Speech Warrior Arthur Topham
No Increased Bail Restrictions on Free Speech Warrior Arthur Topham
Peel Cops Lean on Immigration Critics
Peel Cops Lean on Immigration Critics
Help Brian Ruhe, Victim of Zionist-Inspired Job Loss and Persecution
Help Brian Ruhe, Victim of Zionist-Inspired Job Loss and Persecution
People have asked me where is my fall schedule of meditation courses. Members of a powerful Zionist organization openly state that they contacted Capilano University and four Vancouver Community Centres in order to have me fired from teaching there. They succeeded and I am now unemployed after teaching for 17 years at some of these community centres. This is a loss for spreading Buddhist meditation and it’s a financial hardship for me. I ask for your support at this time as I adjust. I have a fund raising drive on the Indeigogo website at: www.generosity.com/
I still intend to teach meditation and lead retreats privately, where my employers cannot be as influenced. You can volunteer to help in organizing this too. I also want to make a change to benefit more people so I have started my own talk show on YouTube using the amazing technology of Google Hangouts on Air which makes an instant YouTube video from each interview. I want to interview great minds all over the world on spiritual and truth search themes. This is, “The Brian Ruhe Show” and my recent guest is Sensei Mui from Chicago on this YouTube video: What is Wrong with Buddhism Again
I have over 600 YouTube videos on all aspects of my teachings which have reached over 750,000 views. My videos have focused upon Buddhism and meditation but now my talk show also focuses on issues relating to truth and justice on a global scale, WWII historical revisionism, and a Buddhist interpretation of world events and history. These are controversial topics, yes and I am one of the few on YouTube expressing these vital ideas from a Buddhist perspective. This is a free speech issue and I have a video about my current dilemma, made with the Canadian Association for Free Expression, at:
Most people are unaware of the damaging powers of Zionist supremacist forces behind the scenes, such
as Bill C-51 which allows for spying on Canadians.It is very important for me and others to speak out. We are the 99% and our voice can make a decisive difference. We are being lied to by our political leaders and the media. Please go online to get informed instead of relying on TV or newspapers, and please support my talk show where you can see how I use my freedom of speech. You don’t have to agree with everything that I and my guests say but it is wise for us to open up this dialogue with a sense of urgency. Hundreds of comments on YouTube encourage me to speak out, to take a stand and let out the truth, which got me fired from my teaching career in public institutions. In this I am facing a critical challenge but I am committing myself to continue the fight for justice because I can do what others will not dare to do if they have a family to support. Because of the responsibility for justice, I encourage all people to take part to allow justice to run, by supporting our mission, as I work with others. You’re welcome to make a donation to join me and support me in raising awareness about our true history.
I have some spiritual insight and I will not back down before intimidation and persecution. I can give you such evidence and I am challenging this. I‘ve had threats but I will continue to profile guests who are courageous and intelligent. You can see recent episodes at youtube.com/user/BrianRuhe with guests Mark Weber, John Friend and Sensei Mui. With your donations we can make a difference towards creating a good and gentle world. If you have a sense of what I’m trying to do and what I have already done, please consider making a financial contribution so I can afford to focus more time and energy on this mission.
I have spent about 3000 hours since 2007 studying outside of the controlled mainstream media, subjects of truth search themes, such as the International bankers’ control over our society, World War II revisionist history, the international Jewish community, UFOs and government cover-ups. Prior to that I also spent a lot of time on these things going back to my childhood but in 2007 I discovered YouTube and I since have learned from every educational modality you can name. In 2009 I created the Vancouver UFO and Conspiracy Meetup group and from there I have found mentors and advisers here in Vancouver who have personally guided my studies. Since then, I have changed my mind on issues
a few times but I am now able to come to some conclusions about the world and how power flows in it.
My own YouTube videos since July 2014 are about truther themes, the surprising true history of World
War II and National Socialist Germany, as well as challenging Jewish supremacy in our society, but I state
that 95% of Jewish people are not aware of nor are they responsible for the actions of the elite. I don’t
discuss such matters in the Buddhism and meditation retreats and courses I teach but I have been fired
from seven teaching positions just
because of these videos. YouTube is a big focus in my life and my altruism and over 80% of myinteraction with the world is through YouTube. What I say is backed up by better evidence than the
conventional history we were brought up with and taught in the mainstream media and universities-
which are centres of cultural Marxism. This is about truth vs. peer group pressure, about the forces of
good and the forces of Mara in the world. This is profound and I have always been drawn to the
profound.
I am a Theravada Buddhist teacher and I regard what I am doing as a higher moral standard and
I am sacrificing my own reputation in order to protect people who criticize me. I have more courage
than most Canadian men do. I now know that we are in a war but most people don’t even realize that
they’re in a war. I’m fighting in an info war for what is good and decent in the world.
If you want to know more with real evidence I can tell you more in person, and I also have more
info attached. This is part of my mission in life so to support it I accept donations for my time,
otherwise it’s not practical nor sustainable for me to spend my time contacting people one-on-one about
such things. My YouTube videos are free and they explain it all and you can watch as many as you like, at:
These truths uncovered, are the biggest surprise of my entire life and they profoundly effect every
single person in the world. This is nothing less than a paradigm shift and I am grateful that I have had a
transformational experience. My inner strength and happiness is better than ever because
my internal refuge is strong and grounded in reality.
I believe that what I am doing follows the Buddha’s teaching and ethics in general. The Buddha taught that we should make an effort to see through delusion, confusion and lies and He said, “Three things can not be long hidden: The sun, the moon, and the truth”. Of the ten paramis (perfections) truthfulness is the most important one. It is the only one that the bodhisatta, the Buddha in his previous lives, could not break because of the profound karmic implications of the truth. The Buddha criticized people who lied to him and he taught that you can blame those who are blameworthy. The Buddha was in constant argument and debate with other spiritual leaders of his day in his proclamation of the dhamma- which is truth. He taught that dhamma is a universal objective truth and that we should live in harmony with it. The Buddha taught universal loving kindness for all beings and it is because I have loving kindness for 7,000,000,000 people that I am making a personal sacrifice for them now, greater than what I have made in my past 20 years of teaching. I have right view and my knowledge of the grave dangers hidden in the world surpasses the vast majority so knowledge means I have a responsibility to act.
The Buddha taught that our actions should be timely, not untimely and that we should use right speech which is not only truthful but skillful, at the right time, spoken without harshness or ill-will and it should be beneficial. I am accomplishing all of that through the medium of YouTube because there are millions of voices on YouTube. I am skillfully adding my voice to these millions of videos to tweak an adjustment more towards what is true, wholesome and good in the world as I am a moderate in comparison to others on YouTube.
The Buddha defined enlightenment as “seeing things as they really are.” There are so many lies from the top down in our society that an intelligent Buddhist should use their discernment and insight to see through these lies and speak out against them, which is what I am proud to do.
The Buddha taught that we should not cling to attachment to views but that does not mean that we live
without views, which is impossible. It means that we don’t force our views on others or act unskillfully
based upon our views. We should still have views rooted in dhamma, the Buddha taught, and we should
act and live by those views in a way that is skillful and beneficial to ourselves and to others.
Some Buddhists make the mistake of using meditation as an excuse to not get engaged in the social issues in the world believing that they are good just by developing their practice and they actually withdraw from the world but the Buddha was opposed to this. The Buddha taught ethics for his followers because they are in the world and they are responsible for taking care of their world. In May, I met with Zen Buddhist professor David Loy when he was giving lectures in Vancouver. He told us “If Buddhism can’t help us face the social issues of the world, then maybe Buddhism isn’t what the world needs right now. But I think Buddhism can help.”
The Buddha said to a Jain who joined him that people should support their current teachers as well as their former teachers. There is also the 2,500 year Buddhist tradition of dana, referring to donations and generosity to support Buddhist teachers. In the Numbered Discourses the Buddha said that there are three people who should be remembered- the one who introduced you to the path, the one who established you on the path and the one who helped you reach a deeper insight. I have done the first one or two for countless people.
Donations can be made at:
www.generosity.com/
or by PayPal or mailed, being payable and sent to:
Brian Ruhe
#104 – 1960 West 7th Ave.
Vancouver, BC V6J 1T1
It would be gratefully appreciated!
May you be well, happy and peaceful,
Brian Ruhe
HARRY ABRAMS (Complainant in Arthur Topham Case) SPEAKS
HARRY ABRAMS (Complainant in Arthur Topham Case) SPEAKS
Harry Abrams also writes the following on the subject:
Arthur Topham – Guilty!
Undated ( 1970’s?) photo posted to Topham’s Facebook page
“…Topham’s bizarre antisemitic conspiracy theories and his repeated demonization of the Jewish people are far beyond the limits of what civil society would consider to be protected speech. While we recognize that freedom of speech is the cornerstone of a free and democratic society, Topham’s postings crossed a line when he began to actively assert the need for genocide of the Jewish people…” – B’nai Brith Canada
Harry thank you for bringing Topham to everyone’s attention. Here the system has worked as it should. – Marvin Kurz
These above are my 2 favourite headlines so far. The decision just didn’t seem to sink in for me until I finally could read it in the national mainstream news, and for this once, I think that the main outlets covering the story, both understood and conveyed the significance of why this needed to be done, and how freedom of speech in a democracy can never be totally open-ended…or else we risk losing our civilization.
More wherefores and why-fores in a moment, but first I would like to offer some acknowledgements and thanks.
Detective Terry Wilson and Corporal Normandie Levas and the BC Hate Crimes Team. Without these skilled, principled and above all, dedicated Peace officers, we never would have had this show. Det. Wilson, who led the investigation would have been the first (after myself and the B’nai Brith legal ensemble) to recognize the complaint for what it was, and make the critical decision to proceed, knowing with certainty that we had a textbook criminal case.
Richard Warman of Ottawa. See: www.
It’s been something of a shame that Richard hasn’t received much notice in all of the coverage I’ve seen so far, because he also filed similar complaints all along. I’d like to see him receive a few laurel leaves. He’s taken personal risks and worked very hard and has been an admirable steadfast colleague for many years.
B’nai Brith Canada A special thank you to Anita Bromberg, then in-house lawyer at the office in Toronto, and of course legal counsels Marvin Kurz in Brampton, Ont. and David Matas in Winnipeg, Man., both of whom oversaw my work and preparation, pro bono.
Antiracism Experts: Alan Dutton of Vancouver and Helmut Harry Loewen in Winnipeg. Thank you fellows!! For all of your support and years of commiseration!
http://anti-racistcanada.blogs
By 2006 the phenomenon of internet blogs and interactive websites and chatboards had absolutely exploded.
Not only was it a whole new era of instant feedback to news outlets, but any person, with only even a rudimentary understanding of the use of computers, could instantly become their own regional or worldwide publisher or take part in any number of exciting discussion and interest groups. We’ve never turned back. Indeed social networking plus the advent of smart phones, tablets and other highly portable computer-like devices have totally revised the way many of us communicate, socialize, fund raise and do business all around the world. For myself, setting up interest streams on Facebook have helped my business, sharpened my language learning skills (I speak English, French, Spanish, German and some Hebrew and Yiddish) plus generated a 24 hour stream of world art treasures, paintings and photography; all highly inspirational to me in my work as an advertising executive and commercial artist.
But this new communication miracle also served darker interests. Seized upon by haters of every stripe. But Canada, in those lofty days, had a reasonable remedy for online published hatred. Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. And nobody wielded this piece of legislation against more baddies and to greater effect than Richard Warman.
By 2006, and under the guidance of B’nai Brith I had already used this section successfully in two different projects. Not something that most of you would have likely heard about, because neither of those cases ever went to a hearing. The first concerned Vancouver and Victoria Indymedia. They were absolutely awash with vitriol: traditional antisemitism plus very explicit hatred against the continued existence of Israel.
Posting refutational material in response was spotty at best. The Indy editors adamantly were loathe to clean up their discussion boards and it was unruly chaos. By dint of close observation, I eventually discovered who the heretofore carefully anonymous principle editor was; and confirmed a residence address and enough relevant contact information to file a case. The Commission accepted my complaint, and the fellow was eventually served a set of papers, receiving a packet in the mail. Rather than dispute, negotiate or attend a hearing, the editor chose instead to make himself very scarce. As in off of the grid. Virtually untraceable, in fact.
But before doing so, he obliged us by erasing and disabling the then discussion board, ending the problem at hand.
Also in 2006, a local Victoria blog called www.pej.org (Peace, Earth & Justice) came to my attention in all of the bad far-left publicity that followed in the wake of Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon that year. PEJ.org became a cruel cesspit of not just criticism, but existential hatred. Here are a couple of stories about it still accessible online:
To move this story along I’ll simply say that when finally served with the complaint, the owner of the site promptly apologized and removed the specifically offending items, ending the problem.
No arrest. No release conditions. No court appearances. No legal fees.
PEJ.org still carries on today. I don’t monitor it anymore. But even if they do put out the occasional article that speaks unkindly of Israel, it’s not rampantly hateful like it was back in the day.
So finally, all of this has really been just a preamble to my initiating contact with Mr. Topham. Arthur was, if I recall correctly, for a time, actively associated with PEJ, and I picked up on something nasty of his that was re-posted there and linked back to his radicalpress.com. It was then (as it stands today) a virtual toilet of Jew hatred. In 2007 I pseudonymously emailed the fellow, pointing out one ugly article (the link is still live, but perhaps not for very much longer) and asked him politely, but firmly, if he would kindly remove this article as it was both untrue and highly offensive to Jews. I also warned that a federal level human rights action might be commenced against him if he didn’t.
I excerpt just a bit of Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust Tale and link it here:
“…Jewish supremacists are poisoning, subverting, perverting, and murdering people of all races. The world is enslaved by their control and their ideologies, with the aid of treasonous gentiles….”
Topham refused to accommodate my request.
So I went back to work and prepared a complaint. He was served and the dispute trundled along at a more or less glacial pace until it finally stalled in 2010; awaiting the outcome of a constitutional challenge to one of Richard Warman’s Section 13’s. By then it had become very fashionable for everybody and their cousin in media all over Canada to roundly condemn this human rights mechanism, and I suppose there were enough exploitable weaknesses with the process as it then was to bring down the entire piece of legislation.
Those were some bad old days.
Canada’s Parliament de-certified this section of the Human Rights Act, and that ended 2 separate complaints that both I and Richard Warman had filed against Topham. Did I forget to mention that Richard Section 13’d Topham simultaneously as well?
Since then, former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler has forwarded a bill to Parliament, with some very carefully considered amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act. It would be nice to have something like it on the books again, but I don’t suppose it will see the light of day until well after our new government has fully legalized marijuana, and kept a few other election promises first.
So this brings us to 2011, and emboldened, I suppose, by the scuttling of Section 13, Topham appeared to double down on his rants and turned up the heat with more and more classics of hate literature, plus intense vilification of both Richard and myself; and posted his piece de resistance, the Israel Must Perish screed, concocted from an obscure piece of Allied WW2 propaganda that none of us had ever heard of before.
No doubt, he thought himself very clever to substitute the words Jew for German and Israel for Germany and so on to make up this egregious piece of work.
“…It is assumed that the reader will already be fully cognizant of the Zionist agenda for global governance that is a given in today’s political reality, especially within the alternative media and on the Internet where Zionist “hate” laws are still not fully in place to restrict the natural flow of ideas and opinions that proceed from historical research and experience….”
“…There remains now but to determine the best way, the most practical and expeditious manner in which the ultimate penalty must be levied upon the Israeli nation. Quite naturally, massacre and wholesale execution must be ruled out. In addition to being impractical when applied to a population of some five million, such methods are inconsistent with the moral obligations and ethical practices of civilization. There remains then but one mode of ridding the world forces of Zionism — and that is to stem the source from which issue those war-lusted souls, by preventing the people of Israel from ever again reproducing their kind. This modern method, known to science as Eugenic Sterilization, is at once practical, humane and thorough. Sterilization has become a byword of science, as the best means of ridding the human race of its misfits: the degenerate, the insane, the hereditary criminal.
Sterilization is not to be confused with castration. It is a safe and simple operation, quite harmless and painless, neither mutilating nor unsexing the patient. Its effects are most often less distressing than vaccination and not more serious than a tooth extraction. Too, the operation is extremely rapid requiring no more than ten minutes to complete. The patient may resume his work immediately afterwards. Even in the case of the female the operation, though taking longer to perform, is as safe and simple. Performed thousands of times, no records indicate cases of complication or death. When one realizes that such health measures as vaccination and serum treatments are considered as direct benefits to the community, certainly sterilization of the Jewish people cannot but be considered a great health measure promoted by humanity to immunize itself forever against the virus of Zionism.
…Concerning the males subject to sterilization the army groups, as organized units, would be the easiest and quickest to deal with. Taking 2,000 surgeons as an arbitrary number and on the assumption that each will perform a minimum of 25 operations daily, it would take no more than one month, at the maximum, to complete their sterilization. Naturally the more doctors available, and many more than the 2,000 we mention would be available considering all the nations to be drawn upon, the less time would be required. The balance of the male civilian population of Israel could be treated within three months. Inasmuch as sterilization of women needs somewhat more time, it may be computed that the entire female population of Israel could be sterilized within a period of a year or less. Complete sterilization of both sexes, and not only one, is to be considered necessary in view of the present Jewish doctrine that so much as one drop of true Jewish blood constitutes a Jew….”
And so my friends, especially those of you in media, I must ask you to take particular notice of even just these few paragraphs above, sampled from the many thousands of pages and years and years of similar invective… volumes of material that all point in the same direction.
This has not been a complaint about opinions with which I or B’nai Brith or Richard Warman or the Jewish Community of Canada simply disagree. It’s incitement to genocide. Nothing less.
Successful London Fundraising for Horst Mahler
Update on Brian Ruhe — Vancouver Meditation Instructor, the Target of Bnai Brith’s Harry Abrams Ruination Campaign to Impoverish Him
Update on Brian Ruhe — Vancouver Meditation Instructor, the Target of Bnai Brith’s Harry Abrams Ruination Campaign to Impoverish Him
The Extraordinary Trial of Arthur Topham: Part 2
by Eve Mykytyn / November 14th, 2015
On November 12th the jury found Mr. Topham guilty of ‘inciting hate.’ This leads to a few questions.
First, the jury found Mr. Topham guilty on Count 1 but not guilty on Count 2. Ordinarily, this is a result we are comfortable with since the state (the Crown) may have proved ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that a defendant committed an assault but not have shown sufficient evidence of battery. Mr. Topham’s case is different. He was charged with two virtually identical counts, both relating to his website but covering different periods of time, that is, count 1 was for the period from April 28, 2011 to May 4, 2012, and count 2 was for January 29, 2013 to December 11, 2013.
If Mr. Topham intended to incite hate, would he really have changed his mind in the brief period between counts 1 and 2? We will never know what the jury relied upon; in yet another abrogation of free speech, the jury was threatened that if they spoke to anyone about their deliberations, they would be committing a criminal offense. How is the public supposed to understand the mysterious machinations of the term ‘hate’ without knowing what caused a jury to convict a fellow citizen of such a crime?
Hate is a crime the essential elements of which have been left undefined. As a writer, one must not only discern from the miasma what constitutes ‘hate’ but also guess what elements a jury will find persuasive. If one of the main goals of the criminal law is to prevent certain behavior then clarity of what such behavior is, is essential. What can Canadians say? May they say they disagree strongly with a particular group? What evidence can one print in support of their disagreement? Surely, it is not the defendant’s responsibility that a particular political group is also associated with an ethnic identity and a religion. The Crown, by controlling website content through its ‘hate’ law, is controlling not only what Canadians may say but also what Canadians may read. Mr. Topham’s is not the only blog to criticize Israel and Zionism. Should Canadians then read political criticism only from other countries? Very troubling.
Second, the crown had almost 2 years to prepare its case. Its evidence was contained in 4 binders. Many of the pages were illegible and the Crown itself seemed to have extraordinary difficulties in citing to its own arguments. The defense quite properly objected. The Crown wanted to provide clear copies of the illegible pages in yet another binder cross referenced to the originals. The trial could have been an exercise in maze solving. Judge Butler ruled that the Crown had to provide legible copies. This seemed to present a large obstacle and endless court time was wasted in discussions of printing costs, etc. As a foreign observer it seemed ironic that the crown spent $190 an hour on its expert witness, who as an earlier independent complainant against Mr. Topham might have been willing to accept less, and I don’t know how much money on ‘security’ but had so much trouble producing legible copies.
I belabor this point because it is very odd for the prosecution to allow its evidence to be blurry. I would expect in proving an elusive crime like ‘hate’ they would want their evidence to be as clear and convincing as possible. Was the intent to confuse the jury? Was the Crown merely incompetent? This is not impossible. The judge spent much time instructing the crown’s representative, Ms. Johnston, on procedural issues. This gave me the impression (and perhaps the jurors as well?) that the judge was helping and thus favoring the prosecution. Surely this was unintentional on Judge Butler’s part.
Third, and this relates to point two, the jury was given 62 pages of ‘charges’ (or what Americans call jury instructions). Even if all twelve jurors, ordinary men and women, are speed readers, how are they to read and evaluate 62 pages of instructions and then apply them to four binders? The plethora of material leads me to suspect that the jury was not intended to read the material at all. This would tend the jury toward a guilty verdict.
There is not a sinister act by the jury. They were asked to sit through weeks of testimony about Jewish politics, history, religion, and identity. Jury selection would have excluded anyone who was actually interested in such topics. They were handed stacks of paper. Faced with these circumstances, they presumably decided that the Crown and the judge worked for their province and had British Columbia’s best interests at heart. It is actually a testimony to the weakness of the Crown’s case that Mr. Topham was found not guilty at all.
The battle is not over. Following the verdict, both sides indicated that they intended to appeal. (Here Canada differs from the United States where prosecutors can appeal only under very limited circumstances). The Crown asked that Mr. Topham’s bail restrictions be changed and that his website be taken down. Judge Butler did not decide these issues because first, as the defense pointed out, these requests were improperly made. Mr. Topham intends to present a Charter (constitutional) argument that the judge had stayed at the beginning of the trial so that the ‘facts’ of the case could be more fully developed at trial.