I'm still pretty lost on everything. What I gather is that Crow and Karol are both crazy and spew garbage on the radio waves. But, it sounds like you're saying Crow is the real crazy person? Cause Karol seems to spew some pretty bizarre stuff.
I don't want to tell anyone how they should or should not feel about either of the primary players, or any of the supporting cast. Only you know how much you really know about these people and about the personality conflicts between them over parts of the last 15 years.
My perspective is only my perspective. I don't consider it gospel.
Knowing the background that I do, I'm more inclined to forgive VE7KFM's occasional bouts of poor operating, and much less inclined to give K3VR the benefit of any doubt. One of the administrators of the popular amateur radio forum QRZ is said to have said that, "K3VR is a bait-trolling bastard who gets his kicks out of pissing people off." Given what I've heard from him in the time I've followed the KFM/K3VR feud, I have no reason to disagree with that assessment. During the numerous times I've heard K3VR on air, he's never been part of a conversation where he hasn't launched a personal attack on VE7KFM, spread of some defamatory claim about him being a "terrorist", a "pedophile" or a "murderer", mocked persons he deems "mentally ill" and who he believes KFM has put up to engaging in some act against him. Of late, you never hear him where he's not defaming a certain FCC official he believes is part of a conspiracy against him, or using a particularly vulgar term for the female genitalia to poke fun at that official's last name and his Polish heritage.
I'll grant you that at times VE7KFM invokes what he refers to as "colorful Canadian language", sometimes to a degree that's beyond what's necessary and what doesn't fall within the realm of good taste. But that's par for the course on 14.313; no one operator there can rightfully refer to any other as foul-mouthed as they're all foul-mouthed. KFM has also made some inflammatory statements on things political. He seems to have a knack for getting people worked up through rhetorical and political hyperbole. Again, this is pretty standard in amateur radio. Another problem frequency is 7.200 MHz LSB, inhabited by a group of operators I refer to as the 14.313 2nd stringers as they occasionally find themselves up there, and sometimes the impact players from 14.313 will appear on 7.200. There is a guy there (WA4D) who likes to talk politics and who gets guys worked up, despite never having uttered an obscenity. He's an honorably discharged ex-member of the US Military who - like Karol - has no criminal record and is under no legitimate suspicion of
any criminal act, but who is vilified as a "terrorist" because he rubs people the wrong way and disagrees with some aspects of US Foreign Policy.
It's impossible to trust either of their websites against each other since a lot of it just comes off as a word salad and is 100% biased.
Comparing the two websites is comparing apples and oranges.
Karol is, by his own admission, not great with computers and not a great typist. Frankly, his website - which at the very least he takes ownership of rather than hiding behind the name of an alleged "public interest" group - looks pretty decent for someone who is stumbling their way through the web-design process. It comes off as what it is, the website of a person who is angry that they're in a situation they've been forced into and who is trying to defend himself from some of the worst false claims you could make about a person, along with mockery of personal details about his life that have no relation whatsoever to amateur radio that have been made public simply to embarrass the guy.
By contrast, the websites accessible through domains owned by Tom Whatley N1FM and Brian Crow (his own personal blog at K3VR.com until recently acted as a republisher of VE7KFM.com's content), pretends to be "investigative journalism" by a "public interest" group that claims to stand for "responsible" free speech but was recently described by one of the 14.313 goon squad as having been conceived for "shaming". The false claims there, along with doctored audio items are too numerous to count, but I'll give you just two examples, both from the ve7kfm.html sub-page: I am, according to that site (whose editors/managers allegedly go to "painstaking" efforts to "guarantee" the accuracy of what's published there), a KFM sock-puppet. I'm not. Also, you'll notice a link to audio about a "member of Madera clan" who was recently charged with child molestation. That link was originally on the top of the front page under the heading, "Madera jailed on $500,000 bond!". Of course when you listened to the audio, you only heard the name "Madera", and never Karol's first name - or a location. That's because those items were edited out of the audio that was taken from this news report:
http://www.wlwt.com/news/cincinnati-man-accused-of-raping-child-last-year/31912024
...about Maximo Madera, a resident of Cincinnati, OH, no relation to VE7KFM.
It'd be nice if you could try to clear some of this up. I know thats probably a huge undertaking...
I'd be glad to give you a perspective, but keep in mind that it's only
my perspective. I'd like to think it's a perspective that comes from accurate knowledge of the facts as I know them, but there's certainly more to it than any single person knows.
Late in 2001, Karol is speaking Polish with his friends on 14.273 (as he's been doing for a couple of years by that time), and starts getting harassed by rulebreaking amateurs who have a history of harassing non-English speakers (KZ8O in particular). The FCC is not doing anything substantive about the rulebreakers. Unbeknownst to Karol, one of his harassersis also part of the ridiculous feud between K3VR and Glenn Baxter K1MAN a few clicks up on 14.275. Karol writes a few paragraphs that he posted on EHam back in 2003 called
The Life of Riley (in reference to FCC official Riley Hollingsworth, the person tasked with overseeing the enforcement of rules governing FCC-licensed operators).
[Take note,
The Life of Riley that you can read here:
http://members.shaw.ca/ve7kfm/riley.html
...is not the original version. It was written/published in 2007 for posting on KFM's website. Originally, Brian Crow K3VR wasn't mentioned as Karol didn't even know who he was at the time, and their personality conflict didn't really start until late 2004.]
The Life of Riley is highly critical of Mr. Hollingsworth's job performance, particularly where it concerns the harassment of non-English speakers by KZ8O (who by this time has already been "warned" by the FCC for the same activity elsewhere on the bands) et al. He makes the mistake of mentioning Glenn Baxter and his problems with the FCC, which is considered a "defense" of Baxter who K3VR ridiculously considers a mortal enemy. Sometime in 2004, Brian Crow starts mentioning VE7KFM, referring to him as Baxter's "co-host", despite the fact that VE7KFM never endorsed Glenn Baxter. KFM has, in fact, frequently referred to Baxter as "no friend of mine", primarily because the two of them had their own conflict over Baxter's supposed "ownership" of 14.275 and the proximity of the Polish-speakers on 14.273 and their alleged interference with "his" frequency. Despite this, KFM is continually accused of being in league with Baxter and his "terrorist" organization, and more attention is called to Karol's criticisms of US Foreign Policy.
All of this happened without KFM ever mentioning K3VR or having any sort of conversation with him. Later K3VR would accuse KFM of defaming him and his family starting in 2002 as a justification for his personal attacks against KFM, but KFM didn't even know who K3VR was until 2003 and didn't actually have a personality conflict with him until 04/05.
It's now 2005, and up until this point everything that's gone on has been pretty much confined to the HF bands and a few obscure Usenet groups. It was then that VR really starts to take shots at KFM, especially on the Internet. What specifically caused the whole situation to go from a relatively minor war of words to the creation of VE7KFM.com with its false allegations of pedophilia and murder I really don't know. I suspect it had something to do with Glenn Baxter getting fined by the FCC about that time and dropping out sight for a time. The attacks on KFM get ever more personal. He's got people driving by his house taking pictures that wind up online, he has members of his family being ridiculed on air (even though they're not amateurs), pictures of his family members are being posted on that website, phony Emails allegedly from some of these family members are being posted, Emails from now deceased amateurs are being posted ridiculing KFM, comments about his past that have nothing to do with amateur radio are being bantered about and the man is being accused of the murder of the daughter of a former business associate.
Oh, and numerous complaints are being made to his local police as well as a US and Canadian federal law enforcement agencies. Not that anything comes of them, but still.
Might you not have some "bizarre" comments in response to all of that?
You might occasionally invoke some colorful (read, vulgar) language yourself. You might also find yourself making an inflammatory comment or two yourself. You'd also probably feel that this sort of "shaming" treatment (again, that's the justification coming directly from someone on-air who is a cornerstone player) was far out of proportion to your actual wrongdoing, to the degree occasionally using foul language that even your critics use and making an inflammatory comment constitutes a "wrong" deserving of being falsely accused of the murder of the daughter of a close associate.
Obviously there is a lot more to it, but I think I've accurately summed up the background.
Oh man, this guy's a keeper! "Colourful Canadian language, as is my right in my Ca-na-da, when gratuitously attacked" three times in the one rant - poetry.
More hilarious than the response is the fact that the comments that prompted it were a result of an amateur from Texas being too stupid to realize he was talking to a recording.
