January 9, 1998

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

After a great deal of stalling and foot-dragging, a minor free-speech miracle occurred last month of which we were only notified yesterday via a write-up in Toronto Computers - a computer magazine chain that specializes in regional markets but has a national circulation of 265,000.

In its January 1998 issue, the following was said under the title "Let Zundel go denying Holocaust, says Web-rights group." This article was written by one Christopher Guly and is slightly shortened and interspersed with comments below to stay within the "fair use" guidelines a librarian once explained to me.

Writes Guly:

"In his bid to maintain a Holocaust-denying Web site, Ernst Zundel has acquired a surprising ally. The national Web-rights lobby group Electronic Frontier Canada has come out in support of Zundel's right to maintain his San Diego-based . . . Zundelsite, while distancing itself from its hateful content.

"EFC maintains that Toronto-based Zundel, like anyone, has the rights to freedom of expression on the Net "no matter how erroneous or repugnant." Furthermore, the foundation is opposed to the Canadian Human Rights Commission's recent attempts at Web regulation."

Well, good for them! We have been waiting for something like that, given that this ( non-profit? tax-supported? ) outfit's raison d'être is to protect the freedom of the Net from censorship!

Now that an official and public endorsement in print of Ernst's right to have his views represented - as explained and amplified by Ingrid Rimland's (!) Zundelsite - has taken place on the part of EFC, would the EFC agree to take the logical next step and intervene officially as an interested party, as Paul Fromm did on December 12, 1997, on Mr. Zundel's behalf? Or at least write some staunch and solids affidavits supporting our struggle? We surely need both out of this obviously computer-savvy "fight-censorship" crowd - and have pleaded with them via our attorneys for some time. So far, the Zundel-taint seems to have scared them off!

But moving right along the Guly article:

"In mid-October, a human-rights tribunal convened to decide whether Zundel's site is, in the words of commission lawyer Ian Binnie "simply anti-Semitic hate propaganda wrapped up in the flag of freedom of speech." But Zundel's lawyer, Doug Christie, argues that the tribunal has no jurisdiction over Internet content, which is EFC's position.

"Expression of opinion, and even claiming that the Holocaust is a hoax, should be protected," says EFC vice president Jeffrey Shallit, who teaches computer science at the University of Waterloo."

Once more, and for the record: Ernst has NEVER been charged, much less convicted, for "hate speech" in Canada - not that some of the Jewish intervenors at those proceedings (Sabina Citron, B'nai Brith, the Mayor's Committee on Race and Community relations) haven't tried to GET him charged in years gone by! For decades!

Guly again:

"But there are instances in which lines should be drawn in the sand, says EFC president David Jones, a computer science professor at McMaster University in Hamilton.

"The Charter does not, for example, protect fraud, libel, or death threats, whether over the Internet or not."

That is an interesting statement coming from Professor Jones! In an e-mail that bore his e-mail address, dlj@pobox.com, dated November 6, 1997, the following was said in cyberspace:

"I am actually fairly confident that if the CHRC v. Zundel case is at all 'winnable', then Zundel will very likely win it all on his own. . .

"In the case of the clown Zundel, I think that the best attitude is that shown by a young Jews' newsletter I get: they discovered that fat ol' Ernst owns and treasures a perfectly restored 1962, I think it is, Cadillac; so the question came up, do we go and destroy the damn car? Or do we rather admire the asshole's taste? The conclusion -- somewhat aided by the fact that some kids had gone and inspected the car -- was: neat; we admire the bastard's idiosyncracies." (sic)

"At this point", (continued Professor Jones) "I should perhaps remind readers that I am a member of the Net subcommittee of the Community Relations Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress. Within that subcommittee and its parent committee I tend to be in a minority: I oppose the hate laws. In that sense I am a Trudeauesque Jeffersonian. On the other hand I am a believer in direct action: if people like the Zundel crew ever became a serious force in political life, then we should (and certainly shall) side-track them in alleyways and kill them."

Would Professor Jones try to explain this? A lapse in memory perhaps?

I would say, and so would every reader who hasn't yet had his brains fried, that that passage contains both libel and death threats. A very serious matter that could be litigated - and maybe, one day, should or even will be.

As to "protecting fraud", the Zundelsite has news:

Much of the information on Nizkor's site IS fraudulent - false testimony obtained under duress and torture, unverifiable rumors proffered as "fact" which would be inadmissible in any decent court or honest proceedings adhering to some exacting standards. This is precisely what the entire hoopla around the Zundelsite is really all about.

Not only could the argument be made that EFC "protects" Nizkor and its hate propaganda collection and, hence, indirectly protects fraud, EFC is on the record for having not only "promoted" but financially UNDERWRITTEN Nizkor with donations.

Yet do you remember the grandstanding and moral outrage displayed by Nizkor, mainstream media and others because Ernst (along with many others) supports my work, dedicated firmly to shedding light instead of heat? Remember the glee and hand-rubbing because Irene Zundel is supposed to have betrayed some sinister "secret" about the funding of the Zundelsite? Horrors!

Ernst had already, four weeks before and under oath, testified behind closed doors to Human Rights Commission lawyers to all the alleged "secrets" that Irene thought she had "revealed"! Down to the exact dollar amount and modus operandi! All that had been recorded in the transcripts many days before Irene Zundel was displayed with fanfare, pomp and shine. The "secret witness" purpose and charade was merely put on as circus show to humiliate Ernst publicly. Irene was used for that. The Holocaust Promotion Lobby played her for a sucker.

With that in mind, read on what the Computer Magazine's writer, Guly, proffers next:

"Instead of silencing the likes of Zundel, EFC's solution is to smother it with other Web sites, such as the one run by the Nizkor Project (www.nizkor.org), which archives Holocaust history and is dedicated to all the people who perished under the Nazis."

And Jones, still being quoted in the Guly article:

"Instead of banishing the hatemongers to the shadows or making them martyrs by giving them an expensive show trial, the Nizkor Project shines the intense light of public scrutiny on people like Zundel and exposes their deceptive messages for what they are - warts and all."

Roll of drums here! We have no problem with that one at all - except for being falsely and maliciously mislabeled as "hate mongers" The Nizkorites are the real haters - they hate our truth and facts.

Anyone who visits Nizkor is likely to come away with what was once described in a computer manual as one of the characteristics of the Net:

". . . a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea - massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts when you least expect it."

Nizkor has been enormously useful to us. We look so proper by comparison.

The Guly article concludes, still speaking of letting Nizkor "shine the light of public scrutiny" on us:

"Maybe so, but the Canadian Jewish Congress's Bernie Farber would rather see Zundel, who has already had his telephone "Holocaust hotline" shut down, punished, and takes issue with the debate over Web rights."

Wrong. Ernst has never had a "Holocaust hotline" telephone. Ernst has never had a telephone shut down!

And, finally, still Guly, quoting Farber:

'This is not about technology, not about jurisdiction, not about regulating the Internet, and not about setting legal precedents,' Farber said during a recent televised debate over CBS-TV's Newsworld."

Well. If it isn't about technology, what's all this jabbering about the internet being a 'telephone'? The claimed CHRC "jurisdiction" is firstly about statutes Ernst's opposition claims "empowers" them to do their havoc on the Net by using the Tribunal as an Inquisition terror instrument.

We say - and now the Electronic Frontier Canada finally seems to have gotten the point - that the CHRC - Zundelsite case IS about jurisdiction, which is linked in the statutes to technologically restrictive terms and definitions!

The Globe and Mail's main editorial of October 17, 1997 put it precisely and ought to be a salutary lesson to all the censors in the world:

"Belief in the virtue and necessity of prosecuting someone with whom we disagree . . . explains why Ernst Zundel is before the courts, yet again. This time he's accused of spreading hate via the telephone lines, by means of a California-based Internet site. Telephonic communication can be, by an unfortunate act of Parliament, regulated under the Canadian Human Rights Act by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. The body cannot vet books or magazines or newspapers, but it now alleges that material published on line is within its reach. We hope the courts will decide otherwise. And Parliament could, of course, amend the law."

We can all hope, can't we? But in real courts, for the time being, wordings of statutes and laws still apply.

This is precisely why the CHRC has refused to rule on its jurisdiction, and why its lawyers are delaying and stalling the Judicial Review process Ernst has attempted in real courts - not in those quasi courts or, as the public comes to call them more and more, those Kangaroo Courts parading in the dress of "human rights"!

Meanwhile, we are bracing ourselves for the worst. We just keep heaving our evidence into the records - for there is little mercy to be had from the Inquisitors, as Doug Collins, Malcolm Ross, Ernst Zundel and others have found out by being forced to throw their own life's savings before some jackals and hyenas.

IF the courts decide for Zundel, and IF, against all odds, the Canadian Parliament amends a repressive law - or, better yet, adopts U.S. Supreme Court standards! - to safeguard freedom on the Internet for ALL Canadians, including Germans, not just Jews, that would be one more time when Mr. Zundel will have achieved for Canada what Jewish interests have not: Free Speech for ALL fair, freedom-loving people.

Ingrid

Thought for the Day:

"(Howard Stern's) jokes about flatulence, his small penis, lesbians and women's breasts are, at best, adolescent.

His humor can be racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic, though anyone who listens to Stern closely enough knows he is kidding around, not hate-mongering."

(Opening paragraph in an article, titled "Shock jock an irrelevance" by Robert Benzie of the Ottawa Bureau, November 21, 1997, commenting about the controversy around the Jewish DJ, Howard Stern, who went to great lengths offending Quebec nationalists/separatists)

Comments? E-Mail: irimland@cts.com

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