Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

National Post affiliated Regina Leader-Post is covering the story of the lawsuits launched against Small Dead Animals, among other blogs.

There was an error in the story claiming that all of Crooke’s lawsuits had been dismissed.

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Hat tip to Buckdog

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And speaking of stupid lawsuits, what’s up with eBay suing Craigslist?

Ouimet of The Teamakers has hung up the blogging keyboard for now.

Last time he quit, I provided a guest blog post that coincidentally prompted the last year or so of posting from him/her/it. I was once told by another blogger frequently seen commenting there that He/She/It loves my blog. Have a good one Ouimet.

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Hat Tip to Megan

Seems Jon Swift has given up on blogging for a very extended time too.

Kate and her ever reliable cadre of tipsters are so in touch with what’s important on the web that they didn’t even notice when the better part of the Internet was sued by Wayne Crookes [Caution: strong and Wingnuttery language]. Small Dead Animals has constructed its own little world, and even on the World Wide Web, they can’t see the forest, nor the trees. All they see are terrorists, and Muslims, and tax breaks, and petro dollars.

Kate’s position:

No - you know what’s amazing? That leftie bloggers would just assume that we read them, and that we follow every twitch in that corner of the sphere. For the record, the first time I heard of the [Mark Francis] case was about 2 days ago.

But, what’s amazing is that his fellow travellers on the left lifted not a hand to help him, expended no effort to get the word out. Even in this post, you neglected to provide his name or a source link.

To that I say (and even take the bother to break my ‘radio silence’ and respond on her site [since she apparently won't see the truth it if it isn't handed on a platter to her]):

Ridiculous Kate. As Robert said, you don’t leave your echo chamber? It was on the friggen National even. When THE INTERNET (Yahoo, Google, P2PNet, etc.) get SUED, you don’t notice? And one doesn’t exactly think first thing when they could get sued for just linking to something, that they ought to write left, right, and center about Mr. Crookes’ lawsuits. (Thus the term libel chill. You’d think she’d be familiar with it, since her being sued is a good part of why the SaskBlogs Aggregator is no longer with us.)

Still, congratulations for noticing. Finally.

UPDATE:
“Lastly, I even managed to find reference to this whole issue on your blog, you do read your blog I hope.
Posted by: Zorpheous at April 14, 2008 3:53 PM”

UPDATE 2 - UPDATED: In an odd, but unrelated event, it seems Saskblogs.ca is down due to some server error. It was working fine yesterday. I’ll try to get it back online as soon as possible. The SaskBlogs Aggregator blogroll that Lance created is still online, and you can find it on the sidebar of my blog, and the blogs of many other members.
- It was the theme that broke somehow, so the site is limping along better now, but expect an overhaul in the next month.

UPDATE 3: Let’s all get sued!

Libel Chill for beginners.

As Dion and crew learned, even having a seat in the House isn’t good enough to be protected from bogus lawsuits.

Huffb1 and Saskboy are organizing a short-notice gathering for bloggers on Saturday April 12th in Saskatoon. We meet at 12:00PM at the Park Cafe on 515 20th St. W. near Ave. E S.

Stay tuned for any further details before Saturday…

…And no, this time it isn’t me giving blogging a bad name. It’s that other political blogger from Saskatchewan - Kate at SmallDeadAnimals.com

In an apparent effort to link Liberals Warren Kinsella, Jason Cherniak, and Pierre Trudeau with Hitler, she’s suggested literally that it wasn’t Nazis who killed people in Germany during the early part of the 20th Century. Figuratively, of course. She was making a different, non-ridiculous point. Clever, eh?

While comparisons with Hitler are being made, since that cat is out of the bag, was Hitler famous for demonizing political enemies so it was easier to kidnap and kill them without public protest? Yes, that’s what happened in Germany. Fortunately that doesn’t remind me of anything going on in politics or on the blogosphere in North America these days…

I gave up reading her blog and commenting there last November after she modified In Flanders Field to mock Toronto media for political purposes. Since then she’s endeared herself with more Canadians by calling for a national catastrophic famine to wipe out socialist pansies, and made fun of Kinsella by making fun of holocaust survivors. SDA now reads (and possibly always has) like a big inside joke that only some of the most vile commenters on the web seem to actually enjoy. Everyone else sees it for the confusing, and mean spirited, angry train wreck that it is.

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Hat tip to Scott Tribe

Jason Cherniak - Liblogs President, or liBorgs King?

- Jason Cherniak may not be exactly as shown

Comment from Jason Cherniak (to Chris Tindal of the Green Party of Canada)
Time: March 18, 2008, 10:21 am

Join us…

The election results from last night aren’t even cold yet! I like Chris’s response.

What is Chris doing for the Liberal Party? He’s building its competition. It’s not easy being different, but it sure feels good to know that you’re unique and stick to doing what people need.

I learned quite a bit at the Minifie Memorial Lecture today. I didn’t know that Canadian “peacekeepers” killed almost 60 soldiers in Croatia in a single battle. Unfortunately for the civilians, the Canadians arrived too late at Medak Pocket. It was certainly a surprise that I hadn’t heard of it before. Most Canadians are like me. Many more know of the disgrace in Somalia where soldiers killed a teenager. It happened at about the same time. Guess where the journalists focused attention?

Ms. Off was critical of the lack of coverage for the Medak Pocket slaughter. Indeed, she seemed to suggest that the lack of collective knowledge of the battle back home, ended up destroying most of the Canadian soldiers who fought there. Collective Canadian thought told them they were insignificant, and their killing of the other soldiers was thus not vindicated. To them it may have felt like murder, instead of a defense of the innocent. There’s a danger for that to happen to our soldiers returning from Afghanistan.

After the lecture wrapped up, there was plenty of time for questions and answers. No one got up to the microphone. Eventually after about 15 seconds, someone moved to a microphone. Many others followed in turn, including myself, and a student I’d convinced to come to the talk as well. I hadn’t intended to ask any questions when I arrived, but I realized I could ask about Ms. Off’s opinion on so called “new media”, blogs and other independent news sources like student newspapers.

I’m sure the answer given would interest most political bloggers. At first we started out as a monolithic group that uses only the main stream media for our sources, and as Ms. Off talked her way through the answer, she evolved her point to conclude that blogs will be an important part of shaping Canadian journalism in the new era of media. I unfortunately missed her 360 degree about face in the video clip I recorded. She was talking to a lot of ‘traditional journalism students’ in the room, and it must be hard to tell them that they face a job in a corporate owned monolithic employer if they don’t fight to be independent journalists.

After the Q&A finished and people were milling in the hallway, I had some snacks, and spoke with a fellow from SaskPower who reads Cathie in Canada, and several American blogs. He recommended this Onion video. (All of the other Onion headlines are pure gold on that video’s page.) There was also the parents of my friend Peter in the crowd, and a pair of women asked me how they could find blogs on the Internet. I directed them over to Saskblogs, and explained blog commenting, privacy, and search techniques for a few minutes.

I had my photo taken with Ms. Off, thanks to a journalist student, and listened to some stories in the crowd around her and attempted to contribute a joke about trains, which I didn’t realize I’d forgotten the set-up to until I’d already announced I was telling a joke. Talk about the train leaving the station with some empty cars… Let me off at the next station, please.