Freeman-on-the-Land armed land seizure - northern Alberta

[notorial dissent]

What it seems to boil down to is that it was someone else's fault. I don't understand the part about her NOT wanting to get a lawyer, but she doesn't sound too swift on the uptake as it is.

I would be really curious to find out who these "hereditary owners" were who supposedly "sold" all this land. That will make an entertaining tale as well I'm betting.

I would also bet their little escapade probably crossed over several different jurisdictions and they are going to start looking to see who can nail them with the most and most serious charges before it is all over with.

[grixit]

Wildife lawyer might be there to determine if there should be a civil suit for enviromental damage.

[notorial dissent]

Among other things.

[GlimDropper]

What it seems to boil down to is that it was someone else's fault. I don't understand the part about her NOT wanting to get a lawyer, but she doesn't sound too swift on the uptake as it is.

Well, she isn't a freeman on the land but her co defendant is, if she gets an attorney then that might cockblock his sovereign mojo. I'm glad that she isn't facing extremely serious charges because so great is her faith in Mr. Fiola's ability to defend both of them that not only wont she retain her own lawyer, she wont ever speak with one (I guess adhesion contracts are kinda like cooties). Thus again we witness the harmful affects of second hand sovereignty.

I would be really curious to find out who these "hereditary owners" were who supposedly "sold" all this land. That will make an entertaining tale as well I'm betting.

It doesn't seem like it's dawned on her that the "land patent" Mr. Fiola purchased is anything other than what he told her it was and he believes purchasing that document gave him ownership of the land. And we're not talking about in fee simple here were talking about full allodial rights. When you stack that many magic words right up against each other like that you can see why no freeman or sovereign could ever doubt they own the land the piece of paper their money paid for says they do. After all, the guy who sold them the paper told them everything they wanted to hear while all those nasty government people tell them the opposite. Who do you think they want to believe?

[grixit]

Thus again we witness the harmful affects of second hand sovereignty.

I wonder if we can get a Surgeon General's warning for that.

[Hilfskreuzer Möwe]

... Well, she isn't a freeman on the land but her co defendant is, if she gets an attorney then that might cockblock his sovereign mojo. I'm glad that she isn't facing extremely serious charges because so great is her faith in Mr. Fiola's ability to defend both of them that not only wont she retain her own lawyer, she wont ever speak with one (I guess adhesion contracts are kinda like cooties). Thus again we witness the harmful affects of second hand sovereignty. ...

It doesn't seem like it's dawned on her that the "land patent" Mr. Fiola purchased is anything other than what he told her it was and he believes purchasing that document gave him ownership of the land. And we're not talking about in fee simple here were talking about full allodial rights. When you stack that many magic words right up against each other like that you can see why no freeman or sovereign could ever doubt they own the land the piece of paper their money paid for says they do. After all, the guy who sold them the paper told them everything they wanted to hear while all those nasty government people tell them the opposite. Who do you think they want to believe?

Precisely.

I have been keeping an eye on Petrova's posts on her Facebook page concerning her trials and tribulations in trying to facilitate Fiola being released on bail. Here are some representative message threads on that point:

• https://www.facebook.com/iam.nothere.31 ... 9332935387
  
  https://www.facebook.com/iam.nothere.31 ... 5826250071
  
  https://www.facebook.com/iam.nothere.31 ... 7982908522

In a previous message I asked whether Petrova was simply very poorly informed on these procedures and how courts operate, or grandstanding to her community. I am pretty certain it's the former - and I have a degree of sympathy for someone who is tossed into the deep end of criminal law and has to respond. Which is why in Canada we have Legal Aid defence lawyers to assist in these matters. If you choose to use them. And a good Sovereign never agrees to a contract that would give the state jurisdiction over themselves. And thus the circle completes itself.

Just to explain to readers, since Petrova isn't being exactly direct on what is going on, in Canada it is relatively difficult for the Crown to hold someone on bail prior to trial. Criminal Code, s. 515 specifies that by default an accused person is to be released on Judicial Interim Release under suitable recognizance conditions (a.k.a. bail), unless the Crown can prove continued detention is appropriate. So at the first run, the onus is on the Crown to prove the accused must be kept off the streets.

Section 515(10) lays out how the Crown can prove a requirement for ongoing detention/restriction: by demonstrating either:

• 515(10)(a) - the accused must be detained or else the accused will not appear in court (the "primary" ground);
  
  515(10)(b) - ongoing detention is necessary to protect the public, including risks to the complainant and the possibility of re-offence (the "secondary" ground); and
  
  515(10)(c) - "the detention is necessary to maintain confidence in the administration of justice" (the "tertiary" ground).

Any one will do. The tertiary ground is almost never used, but it is intended to operate where there is a slam-dunk case against a really awful criminal who engaged in really awful crime. The overwhelming majority of detentions are on the primary and secondary ground.

I do not know how the Crown proved Fiola should be denied judicial interim release at the initial hearing, but my money is on the primary ground. The classic evidence to prove the primary ground is that a person in the past has disobeyed court orders. In Fiola's case he was picked up in possession of a firearm while that was prohibited by court order.

But, what is the real challenge is that since Fiola apparently still claims to be Sovereign and above state authority, that means he does not recognize court authority - and thus the only way to guarantee he will show up in court (or for that matter not re-offend) is to keep him detained. There are now a number of Canadian cases that apply this principle in bail and other contexts, including: R. v. Jastrebske, 2013 SKQB 150, R. v. A.N.B., 2012 ABQB 556, R. v. McCormick, 2012 NSCA 58. I presume the same is true here.

So, there's the trap to claiming Sovereign Citizen / Freeman-on-the-Land status. By default, you say you won't obey the court. By default, you satisfy the primary ground.

The second hurdle Fiola faces is that once he is detained he can have a new Judicial Interim Release hearing because either a certain amount of time has passed (90 days, Criminal Code, s. 525), or where the accused applies for release (Criminal Code, s. 520). The problem is that in those proceedings the accused must prove (on a balance of probabilities) that there has been some change in the situation, a "change in circumstances", that warrants release. That's the onus faced by Fiola.

And I can't think of anything that has changed, as Fiola apparently still wants to run his Sovereignty-based defence. So he'll stay in detention. It's a trap of his own creation. Hopefully someone will explain that to Petrova, as she does not quite seem to grasp that point.

And here's another statement in a recent Petrova comment that indicates she is still in the thrall of whomever is behind the squat land scheme:

... But he has been trying to get our community leaders his full disclosure and they still haven't received it. ...

Disclosure materials are private and privileged. I would be surprised if the Crown did give those to the mysterious masterminds behind 'the community'. That's why I was so surprised when Alexander Ream of the Nanaimo Four published his disclosure online. I've never seen a criminal accused do such a thing.

SMS Möwe

[notorial dissent]

I love that, I can see the slogan now, "second hand sovereignty" every bit as dangerous as the actual practice.

Like I said, not too swift!!!

So she is going to ride the sinking barge to the bottom along with her sovrun buddy, oh, well, too bad, so sad!!!!

Oh, I'm quite sure she believes him, or it, or whatever. I would be willing to be that critical thinking, or thinking period is not in her repertoire. I'm betting she'd be a prime candidate for certain bridges and prime bottom land in FL and parts of the south as well given the right spiel as long as the right magic words were mentioned.

What I want to know is who it was who saw this pack of yikes coming and took them for everything he/they could get. Really not much finesse or expertise required, if they're dumb enough to by in to the sovrunty krock, they'll buy in to anything really stupid without too much encouraging.

[notorial dissent]

Disclosure materials are private and privileged. I would be surprised if the Crown did give those to the mysterious masterminds behind 'the community'. That's why I was so surprised when Alexander Ream of the Nanaimo Four published his disclosure online. I've never seen a criminal accused do such a thing.

SMS Möwe

Yabut, you are more likely used to dealing with sane(well relatively), used to the drill, common garden variety criminals, not these ding dongs, who are barely competent to be dealing with society on their own, let alone getting dressed by themselves, and there are a good number of this type it would seem, who, as my sainted grandmother used to say, "shouldn't be let out with out a keeper, and on a very strong leash". I used to think she was almost as cynical as I am, I've now come to the conclusion she just had a better grasp of the situation than most.

[Burnaby49]

After reading no more of her writings than the three Facebook posts Mowe put up I see Petrova as a woman dangerously disconnected from reality. At least reality as I would understand it if I was sitting in custody hoping to get released. She plans to sue the trapper who's cabin they expropriated while she is languishing in jail on charges relating to the same incident? Good luck.

These guys never seem to realize that when they are in durance vile they should never, under any circumstances, POST ANYTHING ON FACEBOOK. Do they think it is a secret school clique not accessable by the authorities?

[notorial dissent]

Burnaby, I think the "dangerously disconnected from reality" pretty well covers it. In answer to your question, yes, "they think it is a secret school clique not accessable by the authorities", at least if you allow the think part as valid, I don't. Dumb is dumb is dumb.

[Hilfskreuzer Möwe]

I’ve been patiently waiting for the documents that support the squatter’s alleged land interest to emerge, but no luck (so far). However, a recent comment on one of Petrova’s Facebook threads (https://www.facebook.com/iam.nothere.31 ... 7982908522) by a William Brewis offers an interesting clue:

William Brewis
if he has honest belief he did lawfully purchase allodial land with the belief the land is outside the jurisdiction of canada then he would have an honest claim of right to be there and have a long riffle for protection from wildlife . there is also the point that he has revoked his consent to be governed, with the honest belief that canada is a free and democratic society , it is fact that one must be free to join and one is free to leave at anytime, and legislation (law) is only and agreement between parties. and if in fact the land was not a lawful transfer then a civil claim should be made against those that sold the property to find out what is really going on, and also to show your serious about not trying to change or hurt legislation just trying to get to the bottom of the land dispute that is currently the matter here. since legislation has nothing to do with paul(presumption of revoked consent), he would not wish to change it for everyone just for this matter, which law is based on a case by case basis. you can also play hard ball and make an application for a legal determination on anything in legislative law to get an answer they cant just blow off.
[Nov. 2, 2013]

Brewis is interesting in that on one hand he is providing Petrova with some relevant legal information, such as the appropriate Criminal Code provisions for judicial interim release, and he is suggesting to Petrova that she use the CanLII website as a resource – both dead on the mark. However, some of his other suggestions do not conform to my understanding of Canadian law, such as that one can ‘opt out’ of state authority (Meads v. Meads, among other authorities), and he makes other comments about the operation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (in other posts) that are clearly incorrect (for example, R. v. Petrie, 2012 BCSC 2109).

Brewis makes what I think is a clever observation that another possible appropriate response is to investigate whether this was a fraudulent land transaction (i.e. Fiola got scammed) via a civil action against whoever sold Fiola the land. A very valid point.

There’s an interesting legal question that emerges from Brewis’ “honest belief” argument, and this is the dichotomy between whether Fiola thought he was engaged in a legal land purchase – and his error was that factually there was no land to be transferred – or whether Fiola had made a kind of land purchase that is not recognized by law. That is a distinction between an “mistake of fact” – this is a fraudulent legal transaction, vs. an “mistake of law” – this is an illegal land transaction.

The problem is that a “mistake of law” is never a defence. This was recently summarized in Alberta in this decision: R. v. Legrande, 2013 ABCA 229 at para. 9 (http://canlii.ca/t/fz805):

... Section 19 of the Criminal Code makes clear that ignorance of the law by a person who commits an offence is not an excuse for committing the offence. This provision applies with equal force and effect by virtue of s. 3 of the Provincial Offences Procedure Act, RSA 2000, c. P-34 to Alberta’s regulatory offences. In Lévis (City) v. Tétreault (City), 2006 SCC 12 (CanLII), [2006] 1 S.C.R. 420, the Supreme Court of Canada reaffirmed that in cases involving regulatory offences, ignorance of the law is no defence. It follows that a pure ignorance of s. 9 of the Wildlife Regulation and of s. 39 of the Wildlife Act would not afford a defence to the Applicants.

If this was Crown land (I'm presuming it is), and kind of land transfer was illegal or does not exist, then Fiola (and Petrova) cannot claim they honestly believed the law was they could own and occupy this land. That’s why I was very interested when I saw Brewis mention "allodial land". I do not believe any post on this forum has yet commented on what “allodial title” means in Canada, so I thought I’d offer a few comments and some caselaw.

Basically, there is no allodial private title to any land in Canada. Courts sometime refer to the Crown interest in land as an allodial or ultimate interest. All land in Canada belongs to the Crown, and even the most extensive interest that is possible, fee simple, does not affect that fact. In Trusts and Guarantee Co. v. The King, 54 SCR 107 (http://canlii.ca/t/fslvp) Justice Anglin evaluated whether granting a “letters patent” to a piece of property effectively removed the Crown’s interest, and not only rejected that argument but concluded the Province of Alberta cannot create legislation that would affect the Crown’s ultimate interest in land:

... But it leaves untouched the allodial interest or "ultimate property" which remained resident in the Crown after the grant of the fee and by virtue of which, on the death of the owner intestate and without heirs, the fee having determined, the Crown was again seised of the land as it had been before the grant. Nothing passed to the personal representative of the owner. There was nothing upon which the provisions of section 3 could operate. The owner's interest simply ceased to exist.

…

While it is no doubt competent to the legislature of the Province of Alberta, subject to the restrictions of section 21 of the "Alberta Act," to determine the tenure of land in that province and to amend the law of descent, it cannot deal with either of these matters so as to affect the rights by that section reserved to the Crown in right of the Dominion, including inter alia the right of escheat. In so far as it may purport to do so chapter 5 of the Alberta statutes of 1915 is ultra vires.

An aboriginal interest in land does not affect the underlying ultimate ownership by the Crown of all land in Canada. In Guerin v. The Queen, [1984] 2 S.C.R. 335 (http://canlii.ca/t/1lpfn) the Supreme Court of Canada states that aboriginal peoples have a “legal right to occupy and possess certain lands, the ultimate title to which is in the Crown”. A good explanation of this ‘layering’ is provided in Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, 1993 CanLII 4516 (BC CA) (http://canlii.ca/t/1q09f):

[792] “Fee simple" is a description of an estate. It means that the land is held, unconditionally and without restraint on alienation, either directly or indirectly from the holder of the radical, allodial or root title. The concept that the Crown in right of British Columbia could hold an estate in fee simple from the Crown Imperial is both incorrect constitutionally and incorrect in terms of estates in land. The Crown's title is paramount and not held of any superior lord who could impose restraints on it. The title remains an allodial title and its nature was not changed by the imposition of a statutory scheme, though for the purposes of administration of the statutory scheme the Crown may be said to hold land in fee simple. The concept in English common law that Sovereignty may carry with it the root title may not have been well understood, and the concept of fee simple title may have been much better understood in British Columbia at the relevant times. …

[944] … Both Amodu Tijani and Roberts confirm that the aboriginal title of the Indian peoples is a burden on the allodial or root title of the Crown. If that is so, then the aboriginal title would not be repudiated by the vesting of a subordinate title to the root title, namely a fee simple title, in the Crown.

[945] The error on the part of the trial judge in this respect, in my opinion, was to consider that there is an inconsistency between the co-existence of aboriginal title and fee simple title. The aboriginal title is a burden on the fee simple title just as it is a burden on the allodial title. The resolution of those competing interests presents problems, but the existence of those problems does not deny aboriginal title.

Regina v. N.T.C. Smokehouse Ltd., 1993 CanLII 4521 (BC CA) (http://canlii.ca/t/1q09l) also has a nice commentary at para. 187 on how all aboriginal interests are subordinate to the ultimate Crown title to land:

… The allodial title to the bed of the river is in the Crown, just as the allodial title to the reserve is in the Crown, and the allodial title to neighbouring lands within the ancestral homelands of the Sheshaht and Opetchesaht peoples is in the Crown. The fee simple title to the reserve is in the Crown. The fee simple title to the adjoining lands is either in the Crown or in someone to whom the Crown granted fee simple title, or the successors of that person. And so the fee simple title to the bed of the river is also in the Crown or a grantee. But the aboriginal title consisting of the shared exclusive right to the possession, occupation, use and enjoyment of the bed of the river and the fishery of the river is in the Sheshaht and Opetchesaht peoples. That right of possession, occupation, use and enjoyment is a burden on the allodial title of the Crown and on the fee simple title of whoever holds the fee simple title.

So that’s that. It seems pretty clear to me that the Canadian courts have rejected the possibility that anyone in Canada can somehow have or acquire an allodial interest in land in that country. Redbird tells us that aboriginal persons have been involved in the land deals with the Grande Prairie squatters – and that seems plausible to me, particularly since Petrova in her public statement said this:

I am sure that decision for the courts to decide will be decided in our favour when it comes to light that there are over 500 sections that have been sold by the rightful, hereditary First Nations owners to people, like us, who are peaceful human beings that only want to live on this land and enjoy its beauty.

So we have an obviously illegal transfer of land – the mysterious hereditary First Nations owners could not transfer an “allodial” interest in land to Fiola – no land interest of that kind can exist in Canada, and aboriginal persons certainly do not have the capacity to grant that.

Then there’s the land titles registration issue. Alberta uses the Torrens land title system where the only legally enforceable right to land is one that is registered on a central registry. I found a neat review of that in a recent Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench judgment: Bank of Montreal v. 1323606 Alberta Ltd., 2013 ABQB 596 (http://canlii.ca/t/g0znd). A construction company built a house on a piece of land it did not own, and did not register its potential interest in the land. Net result? The house belonged to the landowners – not the builder.

Did Fiola check the land titles registry to confirm the mysterious aboriginals had an interest to sell? If not, he is out of luck because that is a basic expectation of anyone who wants to know who owns what land:

[29] The Torrens system’s simple, direct, single-resource mechanism to evaluate land title prompted the observation in Community Credit Union Ltd. v. Otto, 2002 ABQB 317 (CanLII), 2002 ABQB 317 at para. 9, that is remarkable that someone would develop on land without first making a review of the Land Title Register because:

[s]imply put a person seeking to acquire an interest in land is entitled to rely absolutely on the register and if one ignores the register, it is at one’s peril. Conducting a land titles search is simple and inexpensive and access to the registry is unrestricted. ...

[30] Any person can evaluate who owns real property by examining the Land Titles Register information on the land in question. There is no legal obligation to investigate possible unregistered claims which may be attached to land. In Sibley v. British Columbia (Registrar of Land Titles), [1981] B.C.J. No. 43 (B.C.S.C.), Selbie L.J.S.C. said this at para. 33:

To the suggestion that the petitioners, personally or through their solicitor, should have, in effect, "double checked" the abandonment by contacting the party who put the Caveat on in the first place, I can only say that I know of no such duty on the part of a bona fide purchaser acting in good faith. That would be an intolerable burden to put on prospective purchasers -- to investigate every known, suspected or rumoured, prior unregistered claim before entering into their contract. The law provides a procedure for the protection of claimants and they ignore those procedures at their peril. ... [Emphasis added]

Petrova said this about the land purchase documentation:

I believe Paul Fiola owns the land we occupied. I have personally viewed the Purchase Agreement and Bill of Sale as well as the land patent documents. All of these documents appear to be in order and lawful contracts with all appropriate signatures and surveys done. There is no reason for me to believe otherwise.

That's all entirely irrelevant. The only relevant information is in the Alberta Land Titles Registry. It's easy, cheap, and intended to prevent scams just like the one that may have been perpetrated against Fiola.

So that’s that. I think any defence of innocent but mistaken ownership by Fiola will not prevent criminal liability to either Fiola, Petrova, or anyone else in their “community”. The kind of land interest they claim does not exist. Their apparent failure to investigate the land title registry will certainly undermine a “mistake of fact” defence. The law is they knew where to go to find out whether they were or were not being scammed.

As far as I can tell, they never looked.

SMS Möwe

[notorial dissent]

Möwe, lots of good points. Several of which I have been after since this started.

it would seem that the Canadian system is pretty much the same as the American one when it comes to land title. There really is no such thing as allodial title in the US, and never was. All the original title was held in right of the Crown and granted by charter, which if anything, tied the holders even closer to the Crown. When we changed gov't formats, the basic concept remained, with our Fed Gov't replacing the Crown in all respects of land title. Fee simple became pretty much our common title, but still subject to the underlying sovereign interest, true allodial title of the gov't, and that has not changed. Our sovrun loons have a fascination with land patents for the same reason they don't understand that allodial title does not exist, and that the only thing they can do with a land patent, not granted specifically to them(well even then actually), is frame it and put it on the wall.

Your passel seem to have bought part and parcel into the sovrun land patent allodial title myth, not to mention the bit about refusing consent to be governed.

Some one saw them coming, played on their general ignorance of reality and more importantly of how land ownership really works in particular, and probably sold them a bunch of papers with fancy sounding words and pretty pictures or some such on them, and they were quite frankly ignorant enough that they swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, and are thus sunk. They are out whatever money they actually expended, and they are all facing a great number of possible serious charges, particularly with the Canadian attitude towards fire arms, and particularly as it was on (probably)Crown lands

[Number Six]

This issue piqued my interest, the Canadians seem to have as many loonies as the U.S. does, not helped by the unemployment situation and the proliferation of bad ideas on the internet.

A quick search turned up one particularly reprehensible theory of "freedom" sovereign living:

"Fully restoring allodial character to your land and its title is a multi-step process comprised of three to
five sequential segments, depending on the circumstances of each individual. The very first requisite
step is to restore your own status and standing to that of sovereign Elector so you have proper authority
to carry out the remaining necessary actions. The way you go about lawfully restoring your sovereign
Elector status and standing is thoroughly detailed in The Errant Sovereign’s Handbook by Augustus
Blackstone. The next two steps in the process may or may not apply to your own particular situation.
The first of these two conditional steps is the removal of title from registration with the county/state.
Not every state and county adopted the Torrens Registry System. Even in those that did adopt it, title
registration was optional. It was not mandatory. In those locales, land titles may be registered or recorded,
but not both. If the title to your property has been registered, in lieu of recorded, you will need to
withdraw it from registration. The information on how to properly do that is to be found in the forms
etc. starting on page 32 (or 33) hereto." http://freedom-school.com/land_patents- ... _title.pdf

These theories have been propagated by the usual cast of characters for varying fees. Or people could try "putting" their land or other possessions in a "pure" trust and thereby protect themselves from various forms of seizure or legal threat. Nice ideas, hard to believe people could sell these with a straight face, any lawyer with a scintilla of experience like Larry Becraft regard them as total tomfoolery.

[notorial dissent]

I had wondered when someone was going to trot out Blackstone's drivel again, it is so old its whiskers have whiskers at this point.

Not that it is anything resembling a surprise, but still you hoep for occasional flashes of originality, and never seem to get it.

[Number Six]

According to Becraft, Carol Landi was one of the originators of this:

"Back in 1983 and 1984, Carol Landi popularized an argument that the land patent was the highest and best form of title and that by updating the patent in your own name, you could defeat any mortgages. This contention violated many principles of real property law and when Carol started trying to get patents for most of the land in California brought up into her own name, she went to jail. Others who have raised this crazy argument lost the issue."
http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/deadissues.htm

In time all of these arguments get recycled, probably more in good economic times than in bad.

[Hilfskreuzer Möwe]

For awhile I have had a nagging suspicion that I am missing something in the ongoing tale of the Grande Prairie squats. A link has been missing from the web.

But I think I’ve found it.

It began from a video of Rob Inthe Pagefamily (viewtopic.php?f=47&t=9407), which he cited in a South African Freeman-on-the-Land forum as the antidote to Meads v. Meads. It turns out the video is available on the Youtube page of an Edmonton-area outfit called “Goddesses Lair” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIGf-U20yp8) and oh GOD it is awful. This apparently was at some kind of conference – 75 minutes of new age twaddle as Rob babbles about he was a terrible person and then he unlocked the inner wonderfulness inside, had a rebirth in which he unlearned himself, yadda yadda yadda. Since I have not actually had that much exposure to Rob’s Secret Stuff I continued to half listen, resisting the temptation to self-injury, hoping Rob would talk about his pseudolegal techniques. And at the end he offers two things:

• 1. the only time he has arrested while "travelling" was when he didn’t put up his mental “happy-thoughts” shields, so that has to be the trick, and
  
  2. you have to take his 2.5 day seminars to know his secret techniques.

Oh great. I just suffered through a mind-numbing new-age crap-fest that was no more than a sales pitch. And then Rob said something to a half-audible question – that if you want to live 'in' mainstream society in an 'opted-out' mode then you should look at what the Embassy is doing and live free by diplomatic means.

Embassy? What? Someone talking about “embassies” and diplomatic stuff in Edmonton? In mid-summer 2013? A little digging and I found this webpage advertising the event, “Liberation Day Edmonton”, at which the Rob in the Pagefamily video had apparently been recorded (https://www.facebook.com/events/600471749963950/?ref=22). And at the end of the event description was this chunk of text:

Also attending & sharing with us will be:
Andreas Pirelli of the First Nations Sovran Embassy of Earth Larry Zachow from the Northern Watchmen Peoples Embassy, and the founder of the free economy society in Edmonton.

…

Sunday there will be a meeting of the First Nations Sovran Embassy of Earth 10am to 5pm. Bring your lunch for sunday as well if you are attending, and show up early as there will be paperwork. Separate registration is required so email for info/registration/ find out extra fees for joining etc. info@goddesseslair.org

Andreas Pirelli, a.k.a. Senior Chief Justice of the Tacit Supreme In Law Courts Mario Antonacci I know. But Larry Zachow is new. After a little investigation I am fairly confident that he’s our donkey.

To date Shaunda Petrova has kept indicating that she and Fiola are associated with some kind of community, and that community has provided legal documentation for Fiola’s land ownership, been in contact with authorities, etc. But who is the community? I am quite certain it is the North Watchmen People’s Embassy, sometimes called the Northern Watchmen People’s Embassy. It’s a branch off the Sovran Nations Embassies / Tacit Supreme In Law Courts movement. If you go to the United Sovran Nations website (http://unitedsovrannations.org/) and look in the upper right corner there’s a logo for the “North Watchmen People’s Embassy”, one of the United Sovran Nations.

And here’s the North Watchmen People’s Embassy website (http://nw-pe.org/). Interestingly, unlike most others in the Sovran Nations/Tacit Supreme In Law Courts network it does not have a giant ill-written warning that it has been discontinued. The front page notes:

A Private Jurisdiction…

THIS IS A PRIVATE DOMAIN HELD IN TRUST – NO COMMERCE EXPECTED and/or IMPLIED

Looks like we’ve found the right place! The remainder of the site, which includes a message forum and email server, is password restricted.

Next we turn to Larry Zachow, spokesperson at the June 1 event and co-host for the Sunday full-day workshop. It didn’t take long for me to conclude we have our man. Larry (Lawrence) Zachow was an Edmonton-area mortgage associate who in 2011 was prohibited from continued activity in that business by the Real Estate Council of Alberta (http://www.reca.ca/consumers/content/pu ... achow.html). The notice indicates his suspension is due to failure to pay an administrative penalty – I did not find any more details. The website for Asset Capital Mortgage is still active (http://www.assetcapital.ca/), though parts are broken. Asset Capital Mortgage is not listed as a licenced brokerage, and Larry Zachow is currently still suspended according to the Real Estate Council database.

This may have to do with a dispute between Zachow and a broker who had worked for him, which is discussed in these three cases:

• Oberle v. Asset Capital Mortgage Corporation, 2005 ABPC 341: http://canlii.ca/t/1m2m1
  
  Oberle v. Asset Capital Mortgage Corporation, 2005 ABPC 365: http://canlii.ca/t/1m95f
  
  Oberle v. Asset Capital Mortgage Corporation, 2006 ABQB 250: http://canlii.ca/t/1n89x

In brief, Zachow stiffed the broker, alleged he was a thief and engaged in fraud, and for Zachow’s troubles he was ordered to cough up $6,739.67 in commissions that had not been paid, and $1,300 in costs.

Larry also has a further litigation history – and it is an interesting one. News reports link him and his wife, Aida Callagui-Zachow, to assault of their 14 year old daughter. I found the sentencing judgment at the provincial court level:

• R. v. L.E.Z., 2010 ABPC 397: http://canlii.ca/t/2f4x4

In brief, the Zachows’ disapproved of the sexual activity of their 14 year old daughter, who was grabbed by the hair, restrained by Larry, had her clothing removed and her legs pulled over her head, and was then strapped by her mother with a belt across the buttocks. The daughter subsequently disclosed the event at school, which led to the charges.

At sentencing Judge Stevens-Guille reported neither parent was remorseful, and the discipline was inappropriate (para. 21):

… They, as it seems does their community simply do not accept the law in Canada with respect to the disciplining of children, or that it does not apply to them because they answer to a higher authority than the Courts.

The pre-sentence reports were negative (para. 36, 47). The court concluded denunciation was necessary (para. 43), and the parents were sentenced to a week in jail, but were released on time served.

A newspaper report of that period (http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Crime/2010/ ... 39236.html) offers more details, such as that Zachow is apparently a pastor, and had referred to his daughter as a “slut” and “whore”.

The decision was subsequently appealed to the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench, which does not seem to have led to a reported decision. There is a news report, however (http://www.edmontonsun.com/2011/04/19/e ... g-daughter), which indicates that by this point Zachow had clearly adopted OPCA strategies:

However, that was not before the justice was questioned about her allegiance to the Queen, criticized for allowing a "vexatious and frivolous" appeal to be heard and interrupted several times by the convicted father, who represented himself, and his large group of hostile supporters.

…

Earlier, Zachow had demanded to know if Browne had sworn an oath of allegiance to the Queen and argued that he was being "maliciously prosecuted" and all of the charges should be immediately dismissed. He also said he would be forming his own grand jury, to which several of his supporters, who were continuously giving him advice, loudly stated: "hear, hear."

The appeal was by the Crown, and resulted in the Zachows being convicted of assault with a weapon, rather than common assault. The sentence remained the same.

The Zachows’ church is “Truth Ministeries” and its address maps to an unassuming Edmonton private residence.

So, Zachow is some kind of OPCA affiliate, and he has a real estate background – the perfect person to concoct fake or plausible but invalid land titles documents and help spin a tale. Is there any other evidence he is neck deep in this? While his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/larry.zachow.5) has almost no public content, the friends links are interesting:

• Shaunda Petrova (Iam NotHere) (https://www.facebook.com/iam.nothere.3150) – Grande Prairie squatter
  
  Andreas Pirelli (https://www.facebook.com/andreas.pirelli.79) – a.k.a. Mario Antonacci, Senior Chief Justice of the Tacit Supreme in Law Courts
  
  Rob Inthe Pagefamily (https://www.facebook.com/rob.pagefamily) - OPCA guru
  
  Lorene Lund (https://www.facebook.com/lorene.lund.9) – the organizer behind the “Liberation Day” event, and a feminist/new age group in Edmonton, the "Goddesses Lair" (http://www.goddesseslair.org/)
  
  Preston Piotrsson (https://www.facebook.com/Tesserat) - head of the “Infinite Nations”, another Sovran Nations Embassy (https://www.facebook.com/groups/InfiniteNations/) (http://infinitenations.org/)

And a pack of other Canadian Freeman-on-the-Land and OPCA celebrities, including:

• Robert Menard (https://www.facebook.com/robert.menard.52) - Freeman has-been
  
  Dean Clifford (https://www.facebook.com/saoirse.nabas) - Freeman soon-to-be has-been
  
  "minister" Edward Jay Robin Belanger (https://www.facebook.com/Romans1129) - head of the Church of the Ecumenical Redemption International
  
  Jacob Hillier (https://www.facebook.com/jehiller) - head of the “Alberta Allodial Prosperity Association” (https://www.facebook.com/groups/Albertaprosperity/) (https://communities.cyclos.org/Albertaprosperity#home)
  
  Glenn Winningham of the House of Fearn (https://www.facebook.com/glenn.fearn) - Sovereign Citizen guru and gun-runner
  
  Nanya Shaabu Eil (https://www.facebook.com/Nanya.Shaabu.EiL) - Chief of the At-Sik-Hata Nation of Yamasee Moors and owner of North America

My guestimate is that the Zachow is the hub of this matter. As for the “Community” repeatedly mentioned by Petrova, if you trace through the various Facebook pages of the people involved the same names come up over and over. What I do not see is public promotion or discussion.

This puzzles me. We know that there are a diverse variety of persons being drawn into the Grande Prairie squat, and not all are obviously linked. I have not seen advertisements for the North Watchman People’s Embassy, but my guess is they must exist. How the recruitment is being conducted I just don’t know.

Redbird, if you’re skulking around, I’d love to hear any perspective you could offer. In an earlier message you say that the squat promoters have split – the Indians have been left out but another group is now merrily selling plots of “allodial land” – would that be the North Watchmen People’s Embassy?

SMS Möwe

[Burnaby49]

Excellent job of tying everything together except . . . This is all getting too complicated for an amateur like me.

I've lost track of how all the links connect and how the players interact. However the ex real estate agent's role makes sense. As Mowe says, somebody had to do the paperwork. What I do have is a mental image, perhaps incorrect, of an underground of true believers who are totally disconnected from reality as we know it. Using fake legal documents which, to them, were entirely valid they set up an alternate reality in which they believed they were legally moving onto crown land they somehow now owned. Unfortunately the ex-users, those pesky trappers, caused problems and the crown is now reneging on the deal but it has to be legit because a bunch of first nations original owners were the real vendors. It's sad how we persecute peacful individuals who just want to live peacefully off the land.

As an aside I've noticed that reports on American sovereigns seem to have diminished significantly on Quatloos and we Canadians are taking up the slack, albeit in a much more peaceful manner. Is the American movement just in a quiescent period? Is Canada now the cutting edge in the fight for freedom of the individual against the all-powerful state? Or is it that we need an American Hilfskreuzer Mowe diligently, perhaps obsessively, digging into American Freemanism?

I said a few years back, when I started posting here, that the Canadian Freeman/Sovereign movement was essentially a poorly reproduced carbon-copy of America's leadership but now it seems to have gained enough critical mass to have developed a life of its own.

[grixit]

Yeah, complicated and hard to follow. I'm beginning to picture Mowe as having one of those big conspiracy walls in his house. You know, with pictures and articles taped up with arrows drawn between them? Hope he remembers to eat and get outside regularly.

[Hilfskreuzer Möwe]

Yeah, complicated and hard to follow. I'm beginning to picture Mowe as having one of those big conspiracy walls in his house. You know, with pictures and articles taped up with arrows drawn between them? Hope he remembers to eat and get outside regularly.

Geeze guys, I do have a life! (Of sorts.) This is merely an amusing and occasional hobby.

Though I will admit the Tacit Supreme In Law Courts / Sovran Embassies is intriguing - it's very different from our usual Freeman/Sovereign type phenomena. First, it is secretive - normally these outfits are loud as possible in how they broadcast for new recruits/suckers, but this one seems the opposite. It has tons of public webpages - but they go nowhere. The usual overt and obvious links are missing. This may simply reflect that Pirelli/Antonacci was trying to keep a low profile given his legal troubles in Quebec.

The membership looks like the result of a scavenger hunt: there's a few left over Freemen, other OPCA detritus, conservative religious extremists, some hippies, new-age and feminist fanatics, what one might call 'doomsday preppers', it just is hard to fit together.

And weirder yet, they're carrying out the Big Dreams that Menard has been selling for the past decade (but being Menard, he never did anything with them.) All very curious.

... As an aside I've noticed that reports on American sovereigns seem to have diminished significantly on Quatloos and we Canadians are taking up the slack, albeit in a much more peaceful manner. Is the American movement just in a quiescent period? Is Canada now the cutting edge in the fight for freedom of the individual against the all-powerful state? ...

I said a few years back, when I started posting here, that the Canadian Freeman/Sovereign movement was essentially a poorly reproduced carbon-copy of America's leadership but now it seems to have gained enough critical mass to have developed a life of its own.

I think there are two phenomena occurring in parallel.

First, the Freeman-on-the-Land movement in Canada is in the midst of a collapse. The movement attracted an increasing number of persons in the last 2000's, focussed on Robert Menard and the World Freeman Society. Menard promised much, but nothing happened. Instead, as Freemen tried to apply their supposed techniques they met with failure - and increasingly they faced criminal sanction in response. There came a tipping point where the main body of the community became discouraged, and many people dropped out. The diehards continued, but they too encountered no success. In the last few years most no longer even try to go to court to "enforce their rights." They face an alert judiciary who knows about their ideas, and a body of established caselaw, particularly Meads v. Meads.

With the fall of Menard has come a new wave of gurus. Some are old hands - for example I recently discovered Detaxer David Kevin Lindsay has emerged from his troglodyte warren and is traveling Canada holding seminars for the first time in years. Wally Dove of the Human Rights Defenders League In Canada is another. Others have emerged from within the Freeman movement and are selling their own variations on the form, such as Dean Clifford, Scott Duncan, and Chief Rock Sino General. Others just seem to have popped into public appearance, such as Marcus the dead lawyer of Serpentking. The OPPT is also gaining attention to some degree.

Let's call these 'successor gurus'.

Among the remnant Freeman believers/holdouts there is a market for new ideas and techniques from the successor gurus. There is a specific kind of product which attracts the most marketplace potential. The successor guru techniques need to be new in the sense that they might plausibly work because they are different from the old Freeman-on-the-Land forms. In a lot of ways that amounts to the successor guru saying 'and here is where Menard got it wrong and went off track.'

However, because the Freeman diehards are also very set in a certain world context, the successor gurus must still be selling something that is plausible to that Freeman zeitgeist - the scheme being promoted uses chunks of recognized concepts, and puts a new spin on others. The Human Rights Defenders League In Canada is a good example - it retains the old Freeman-on-the-Land 'you can opt out of the state with the correct paperwork' motif, but the new spin is that the Menardian Freemen had botched it up by not realizing you need to invoke international treaty to first get rid of your Strawman.

When you combine these factors, you end up with the following:

• 1. The Freemen-on-the-Land holdouts really want to achieve their objectives, and now believe that they cannot do so by court action - they need to take active 'real world' steps. This means more public interactions that are readily detected by the media, and the kind of scenarios that lead to reported court judgments.
  
  2. The holdouts are looking for new guidance, and there's a ton of successor gurus who are lining up to take their money. There really is a blossoming of new vaguely original thought in the Canadian OPCA world, but it never varies too far from the old core motifs. Hence the large number of new gurus and schemes we have been reporting here in Canada.
  
  3. The mainstream of the Freemen are just fading away, which makes it even harder for the successor gurus to make a buck. Without tangible public success, the Freemen movement becomes smaller and smaller. This leads the successor gurus to push their followers to action - very different from the Menardian period where it was all talk, and very little action.

I expect most of the current wave of successor gurus will disappear in the not too distant future. I see an epidemiological pattern, as you look through the history of Sovereign/Freeman ideas in Canada. First there were the Detaxers, who OPCA memes were sold largely on a commercial basis to greedy and desperate Canadians. When those memes were exposed as futile, the Detaxer phenomenon collapsed in the mid 2000's.

However, the initial gurus of the Freeman movement picked up those ideas, and with a bit of reworking came up with a new infectious parasitic meme set that they could sell to a new market, a largely leftist/hippy/econik/protest community who had been unexposed to the Detaxer ideas, and therefore were 'immunologically vulnerable' to infection with these new ideas. We are now at the tail end of the collapse of that infection as the Freeman parasitic memes are known to their current host population as a dead end.

The successor gurus are taking the Freeman and Detaxer meme sets and rearranging those, adding some innovations, all in the hope of triggering another infection cycle. It won't work because their ideas are fatally flawed, and because most of their target market is already 'immune'.

If there is another 'cycle of infection', and I suspect that is likely, it will come when one of the successor gurus comes up with a plausible new set of OPCA memes, and introduces it to a vulnerable population who want the empowerment and the goodies that come the scheme, but who have not had a sufficient exposure to the older Detaxer and Freeman meme infection cycles and therefore might 'buy in'.

So here's the real question - the Freeman-on-the-Land movement and the successor gurus are doomed to fail, there is no question of that. But has there been enough public attention so that the underlying OPCA memes have been introduced to the Canadian public, identified as crackpot, and triggered an 'immunity' in the national population as a whole? I don't know - but if so that counters the probability of a future mass movement, and instead restricts potential new 'infections' to much smaller, niche 'host' communities.

I have seen a lot of interest in Freeman-type ideas and a couple gurus who appear to be specializing in a family law dispute context, and it seems to me that the powerfully disaffected persons in those disputes could represent just such a small, die-hard group of potential believers. Dean Kory, Amy Collins, and A.N.B. are examples of that potential ongoing infection pool. Is that the next wave? Perhaps - though I suspect a new OPCA movement of that kind would be 'squished' in short order by the legal apparatus.

Another potential trigger for a new 'infection cycle' would be the appearance of a new and vulnerable population, perhaps due to desperation. I think that is what is currently ongoing in Ireland, where economic dislocation has led to a large potential host population who would normally shy away from anti-government/conspiracy contexts, but have been driven by economic need to grasp at straws. I don't see a parallel like that in Canada at the present.

SMS Möwe

[Hilfskreuzer Möwe]

Media reports indicate that Paul Fiola and Shaunda Petrova are scheduled for a one day trial on July 21, 2014 in Alberta Provincial Court on offences related to their squatting activities: http://www.dailyheraldtribune.com/2013/ ... claim-case

Fiola is still in custody. The report indicates they were represented by legal counsel, which is sensible of them.

Things have become very quiet online on this matter. Petrova has stopped making public comments, I suspect as her lawyer told her that was a very poor idea.

SMS Möwe