Thanks Tom, for that explanation.

My point was that if it weren't for the article he wrote that was published all over Australia, the cult would never have spent the money and taken the time to pursue John.  Sure, John made mistakes, as we all do, but it requires someone to capitalize on those mistakes for all those bad things to happen, and I am very confident that were it not for John's articles, no one would have bothered to go after him.  Clearly, the cult was not damaged by the release of those IRCC documents.  It's scorched earth response was just way out of proportion to the supposed harm from that.  It was more that they wanted to get something on John and destroy him.  And they did.  And then after that, they tried to advertise all over the world that John is a criminal.  They not only pursued the court case, they used John for PR as the poster boy for the "hate group" allegations.  Pretty goddam extreme and hateful.

I mean, really, it was more than just a court case, it was investigators, trailing John and his friends, chasing him across the continent and harassing him.  It was extremely brutal.  John may have given them an opening, but it was the cult that barged through the door and wouldn't let up.

My comments about the nutty Australian premies is just based on what I have observed over the past few years.  For example, there is still one attack website up, that is clearly based in Australia.  The whole Catbox scene was clearly centered in Australia, and I just haven't seen that level of fanaticism coming from other countries.

In fact, it seems that premies in North American and Britain are much more laid back about it all.  Sure, there are some nuts, but not like I have seen coming from Australia.  Sure, I'm confident most of the premies in Australia are no different from those in other countries, but given the relatively small numbers there, the wackos do seem to be a higher percentage.  Obviously, I don't have statistics, but I do have my theories about why that is the case.

Thanks again.