Edmonton suspect member of Freeman group.

Well, it might have taken the Journal a few days to flesh out the details, but the Freeman connection was mentioned by a Sun reporter on twitter a couple of hours after the story broke.

http://www.connect2edmonton.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=37391

Post #7 on that thread.

Hindsight is 20/20 and so on and so forth, but I have to wonder, with all the warning signs this fellow was showing, why didn't the EPS use the Emergency Response Team or-whatever-they-call-them to deal with the situation?

Based on the bullet hole pictures from the connect2edmonton forums, I'm also guessing he was using multiple firearms.  The 6 biggest holes might be from shotgun slugs, looks like there might be 9 or 10 medium sized holes from a centrefire rifle, hard to tell from the picture but it looks to me like there were also a lot of smaller bullet holes too, maybe from a .22 or a smaller caliber rifle.  One poster on those forums was speculating as to what kind of firearm was used to shoot so many times in the 10-15 seconds or whatever the details were, I'm thinking he switched guns rather than reloading.

Anyways I am also thinking there was probably no way this guy was going to ever surrender peacefully even if the EPS backed off and called in the ERT to contain the situation.  A single well placed shot from a police sniper might have been the best way to end this.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

To call it a loose affiliation of loners is a denial that it is a fairly organized (if completely bogus and conspiracist) philosophy.

And it also fles in the face of the numerous murders, attacks and other crimes that have been committed by members.

And it is the only loose affiliation of loners I know of that hands out its own sherriff badges.

Well, the phrase "loose affiliation" is, iteslf, pretty loose in terms of its possible meanings. For myself, I think you could call the group a "loose affiliation", in the sense that their members, or at least the ones like the guy in Edmonton, aren't acting on orders from a centralized authority.

Though the justifying "legal" theory seems very much to emanate from a central source. Raddatz's ranting about "admirality courts" and whatnot was pure Freeman, though his anti-semitic and white-supremacist ramblings could have come from a variety of sources.

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"It’s not so much a group, as a loose affiliation of loners and malcontents, looking for a cause to rationalize their failure and legitimize their fury. The Internet provides them a ready-made vocabulary for their grievances."

Not that there's anything wrong with coming down with a sense of alienation from this society, particularly when any thought is given toward the ‘what and for whom’ our society’s leaders represent, or with being a malcontent where these circumstances are concerned.  Many terms in fact have been coined and applied to such individuals who get themselves into a state like that, such as blooms, nihilists, misanthropes, etc.  I suspect most regular people invest themselves in theories, political gestures and activities, even personal hobbies where political activities hold no anaesthetizing power over an individual, in order to avoid being irrevocably captured by the alienation that this society produces.  The ‘lucky’ ones are brought out almost all of the time from falling completely into that abyss through a combination of social interaction and distraction.  People like this fellow don’t always have that available and so we get to see them in the news occasionally.  And there always seems to be a name for them, even if it isn't readily apparent what that might be, because to leave things unnamed risks a more detailed public examination of the causes until a suitable name is found, and everything gets squared away accordingly.

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And the most relevant way in which it is exactly the opposite is that in Hicks's case his partner insisted there wasn't a religious motive.

Yes, I remember what a game-changer that was.

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And while there are some who do have cards and badges, I suspect, as with all terrorist organizations, they don't all necessarily have one in their wallet.

I suspect that while that's true, it's mostly true because most terrorist organizations don't identify themselves with cards or badges.

But if an organization does identify itself with cards, badges, or both, is it unreasonable to not just assume someone with neither is also a member in good standing because they agree on some things?  Or were they just out of cards AND badges on the day they pledged?

From Colby Cosh...

"The most visible OPCA types tend to be right-wingers — fat, middle-aged, divorced male right-wingers, if we’re being honest. As Justice Rooke pointed out, this is not quite a complete picture. OPCA tactics have been used by left-anarchists who claim conscientious objections to paying taxes in a NATO member state; they have also been used by aboriginal defendants to claim immunity from the white invader’s law.

Still, one could say with some justice that the “Freemen” and the “Sovereign Citizens” are to libertarianism what the “Islamic State” is to Islam. The ordinary libertarian despises the state, even thinks it a wicked conspiracy, but he knows that its authority is ultimately grounded in firepower. There is no magic verbal formula he can utter to the police that will allow him to drive around with license plates from the Republic of Me, Myself and I."

One thing that the Cosh piece reiterates is that FOTL doesn't seem to have any centrally-directed organizational goals, comparable to(say) getting the British out of Ireland, establishing a caliphate, or stopping women from having abortions. Rather, they purport to give legal-advice to people, in pursuit of each individual's self-driven goals. And the goals of the various Freemen are sometimes incongruus with one another, eg. the white supremacist in Edmonton probably wouldn't have a lot in common with the wayward First Nations activists claiming "soverreign" status.