January 29, 1998

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Today just three items that ought to be food for thought:

1. According to a Reuter release of January 8, 1998, the US House of Representatives has approved a bill authorizing up to $25 million for groups that assist Holocaust survivors.

This bill, approved anonymously, also provides $5 million to pay for archival research to assist in the restitution of assets looted from Holocaust victims.

There goes America the Dutiful!

2. Look who's traveling - and why:

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a fight censorship organization trying to keep censorship away from the net, has after much legal battle obtained over 500 pages of materials from the U.S. State Department on the international travels of the former U.S. Envoy for Cryptography, David Aaron who also served as U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development when the OECD was developing its encryption policy guidelines.

EPIC writes;

"The released documents show Ambassador Aaron made frequent trips around the world lobbying for international adoption of key escrow encryption.

"He visited Australia, Belgium (both the European Union & Belgian governments), Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The documents also indicate that he went to South Africa, and met with the counselor of the Latvian embassy in Paris and with Russian Finance Ministry officials.

"Even before Aaron was appointed as President Clinton's 'Special Envoy for Cryptography,' U.S. State Department messages indicate that the United States was making overtures to various countries via American embassies around the world.

"These include the diplomatic posts in Canberra, London, Tokyo, Ottawa, Tel Aviv, Paris, Bonn, The Hague and Moscow. One message to these foreign posts announced the revised U.S. cryptography export policy (the key recovery within two years or 'no export' rule). The public announcement of that policy was made on October 1, 1996.

"Aaron apparently was not always greeted warmly in his travels. In Japan, the government requested that the meetings be kept secret and that the press not be informed.

"Even the U.S. Embassy in Japan was less than enthusiastic -- the embassy suggested that Aaron and his delegation could take the airport bus to their hotel rather than be picked up by an embassy driver."

3. The Vancouver Sun of January 26, 1998 ran an article titled "U.S. Nazi-hunter ignites Canadian controversy", from which I quote in part:

"Jewish and Ukrainian groups are trading accusations over the appointment of Neal Sher, the former head of an investigations unit considered unscrupulous by some and a scapegoat by others.

"The federal government's recent hiring of a top American Nazi hunter has re-ignited long-simmering tensions between Canada's Jewish and Ukrainian communities over the pursuit of suspected war criminals.

"Leaders of the two communities have been trading increasingly nasty shots in newspaper letters to the editor since the appointment last month of Neal Sher, former head of the United States Office of Special Investigations (OSI), as an adviser to Canada's war crimes unit."

Said the president of the Alberta Ukrainian Self-Reliance League, the lay organization of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Eugene Harasymiw:

"There is indeed much to learn from the American experience, provided we as Canadians recognize the OSI and Neal Sher for what they really are - corrupters, and not facilitators, of justice."

This was followed by a telling comment by Irving Abella, of the Canadian Jewish Congress, to wit:

"For the most part, since very little has happened in Canada, it's not been until recently that the Ukrainians had any reason to concern themselves with the possibility of deportation or denaturalizations."

You know about the darkest cloud that has a silver lining. Here is the silver lining: Now the Canadian Holocaust Promotion Lobby will have to spread themselves thin between the Ukrainians and Ernst Zundel.

And maybe the two will now find common ground?

Ingrid

Thought for the Day:

"It is a mean thief that plunders the dead."

(Austin O'Mallye)

Comments? E-Mail: irimland@cts.com

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