This is Part II of our "Strike Back!" offensive - barely begun,
trust me! - against the Soviet-style censorship attempt by Canada Customs
in seizing mine and other authors' books.
It's theft of intellectual property. Which shall not go unpunished.
Here is the CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FREE EXPRESSION Press Release:
GET INVOLVED NOW! SIGN OUR PETITION
AGAINST CANADA CUSTOMS CENSORSHIP
------> http://www.canadafirst.net/cafe/customs <------
"Canada's Customs censors have run amok," says Paul Fromm Director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression, referring to a May 1 seizure by Canada Customs of 98 different books, booklets and tapes. The material valued at about $1,450 retail were held up as potential "hate propaganda."
We have now put an online petition for Canadians and others around the world, to sound off against this heavy handed and draconian censorship of books at border checkpoints.
The petition can be found at: http://www.canadafirst.net/cafe/customs
Copies of this petition with your comments will be sent to Herb Dhaliwal, Minister of National Revenue, the federal minister in charge of Canada Customs, and to key Opposition MPs.
The petition's main statement is "I urge you to rein in the politically correct zealots at Canada Customs whose seizures of books, tapes, and booklists on political and cultural matters are turning Canada into an international laughingstock. Hands off books and tapes! Free men and women are guaranteed freedom of belief and freedom of expression by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As human beings born free, they are endowed with the freedom to read and to express themselves. They don't need the state to select their reading for them."
The heavy handed seizure of books included:
* The Irish Fairy Tale Book: Myth and Romance from the Old World
*The Breakdown of the Criminal Justice System in Canada by former B.C. Judge Les Bewley
* The Evil Empire: Globalization's Darker Side by former Liberal cabinet minister Paul Hellyer
* Our Home or Native Land: What Government's Aboriginal Policy is Doing to Canada by Melvin Smith, QC, a constitutional adviser to four successive B.C. governments
* Stalking the Wild Taboo by Prof. Garrett Hardin, a world renounced ecologist from the University of California at Santa Santa Barbara
* The Cult of the Victim by Prof. Ken Hilborn of the University of Western Ontario
* The Hate Crimes Law in Canada, 1970-1994: Effects and Operation by lawyer Barbara Kulaszka, LL.B., M.L.S.
* Lebensraum by Dr. Ingrid Rimland, a trilogy telling in novel form of the odyssey of German Mennonites from Germany to Russia and then to the New World Over a 200 year period.
The time it takes to examine titles can extend to six months or more. "The arbitrary seizure of these books is an outrageous affront to free speech and a severe business hardship," adds Fromm. The motivation was clearly political. "I was grilled aggressively as to whether or how I knew Bernard Klatt, a local controversial Internet Service Provider."
"Sadly, Canada is becoming Cuba del Norte," comments Fromm. " It's interesting that both Prime Minister Chretien and House Speaker Gilbert Parent seem inordinately fond of this communist dictatorship, which offers its sorry people little freedom to read or to express themselves. We seem to be moving in that direction here. My mom and dad both volunteered and served in the Canadian armed forces during WW II to prevent this very sort of thing -- this book burning. The behaviour of Canada Customs is ignorant and a disgrace to thinking men and women in a supposedly free country."
"Would-be dictators always go after books -- ideas and art," says Fromm. "What most amazed me was the bone-headed way the Customs' officers insisted on seizing the Irish Fairy Tale Book. The one-eighth of me that is Liverpool Irish remembers the old rebel song 'They're Hanging Men and Women for the Wearing of the Green.' In politically correct Canada, they're seizing books of Irish fairy tales!"
In another development, the Customs Censors have now started banning novels. Ingrid Rimland, Ed.D. is a U.S. citizen. A German Mennonite born in the Ukraine, she is a published novelist who recently published a massive 3-volume novel Lebensraum. It traces the history of the last 200 years as it affects the German Mennonites who were invited by the Czar to settle in the Ukraine in the 18th century.
Many persons who ordered this trilogy have had their order seized. The censors' decision to ban this trilogy has been unusually swift. One seizure on April 20, 1998 belonging to Dennis Shaw of B.C. was sent to Ottawa and a decision dated May 12, 1998 announced the trilogy was banned as "hate propaganda." This anonymous judgment on an historical novel over 1,550 pages long took less than three weeks!
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Canadian Association for Free Expression Inc. P.O. Box 332,
Rexdale, Ontario, M9W 5L3
905-897-221
905-277-3914 FAX
Founded in 1981, the Canadian Association for Free Expression believes free speech and discussion are essential to any functioning democracy. Freedom of speech and freedom to express one's beliefs are essential to human dignity. The Association, through publishing, lectures, conferences and lobbying tries to protect these basic human rights and to promote to the maximum the Charter guaranteed rights of freedom of speech, freedom of belief, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.
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CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FREE EXPRESSION
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Etobicoke, Ontario
M9W 5L3 *INTERNET*
Telephone: (905) 897-7221 cafe@canadafirst.net
Fax: (905) 277-3914 http://cafe.canadafirst.net
Thought for the Day:
"You can't drive a stake through the heart of hard work, or smother persistence with garlic, or shoot a silver bullet through the truth."
(Smith's Report, June 1998, Page 5)