Comment and Opinion

Friends of Freedom
This site disappeared in April 2010

This site first came to my notice when it published the following tribute to me in December 2005:

Ratbags Lose in Court! Separate Loss than Barrett's Latest Thrashing!!!!

This order was made with the consent of Peter Bowditch and Gebesse Holdings Pty Ltd.

On 13 September 2005, Australian Communications Network Pty Limited ('ACN') commenced proceedings against Peter Bowditch and Gebesse Holdings Pty Ltd ("Ratbags") in respect of certain statements made on the ratbags.com website alleging that those statements were misleading and deceptive in contravention of the Trade Practices Act 1974 and were false, malicious and injurious to the business of ACN.

On 22 September 2005, as an interim measure pending a full hearing on ACN's application for interlocutory injunctions against Ratbags, the Federal Court of Australia (with the consent of Mr Bowditch and Gebesse) ordered Ratbags to publish this statement by ACN on the ratbags.com website.

The only problem with this is that I hadn't lost anything in court. What they published was the first three paragraphs of a notice that I had agreed to place on this site as the very first step in a court case. It is absolutely normal practice for such notices to be displayed at the beginning of court proceedings and simply recognises the fact that courts like people to stop whatever they are doing if someone is objecting until the court has made a ruling on the objection. The case was settled in February 2006, and while I can't discuss the terms of the settlement I can say that nobody lost. Suggesting that I had lost before proceedings even started would be called idiocy by some and contempt of court by others.

The words quoted on the Friends of Freedom site were only a small part of the statement published on 22 September, 2005, and you can read the full court papers here.

As you can see from the site logo, Friends of Freedom was a equal-opportunity insanity site, adding mad politics to mad medical ideas. And no, when they said "environmental issues" they didn't mean what sane people mean by the term. Think more GM food conspiracies and Big Pharma's involvement with agriculture.

Down the gurgler (1/5/2010)
When I did my link check this week I found that one of the sites with tributes to me had disappeared. It was Friends of Freedom, a delightfully unhinged collection of eclectic madness with rantings about GM foods, whacked-out politics and of course the extremes of medical quackery. Their tribute to me took the form of reporting that I had lost a court case which hadn't actually started, supported by an edited quotation of something that I was so ashamed of that I had the full thing here on this site. I really love it when people attack me without bothering to check even the most easily obtained facts, and it is twice as delicious when the attacks are served with lashings of mouth foam. There is a certain sadness when something so idiotic fades from the 'net, leaving the world wide web a little diminished and us all a little poorer.