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By now I feel practically related to Canadian columnist, Doug Collins, who has so bravely fought not just in World War II - albeit on the wrong side ;) - but now the Human Rights Commission Kommissars.
This seasoned journalist is gifted with one nifty pen - and it is always a pleasure to read him. A treat is coming up!
The first time I encountered Doug Collins was on a video tape which, to this day, is one of my favorite Zundel-Haus tapes. Taken during the First Great Holocaust Trial, Doug Collins made it very clear he had no use for Nazis - or Zundel, for that matter! - but even lesser use for censors trying to gag those they had picked as their villains to feather their own pockets.
A magnificent, passionate speech!
Ernst told me later that, months after the Holocaust Trial, he and Doug Collins had a session on the roof of the Zundel-Haus one merry afternoon with the help of some wine and salami during which Doug's nose was getting redder and redder. Ever since, there has been between those two a Mexican stand-off when it comes to the topic of Hitler and his National Socialist regime. Person-to-person, however, there seems to have developed a mutual respect and wary understanding - and when Doug Collins won his hard-fought and expensive case against the British Columbia based Provincial Human Rights Commission Kommissars, Ernst wrote to Doug Collins: "You are a man in a nation of wimps."
Coming from Mr. Z., that's weighty!
So now Doug has finished putting together what he threatened to do for some time - a book of columns titled "Here We Go Again!" Once more he strikes a mighty blow for freedom - and gives the middle finger to the Canadian Gestapo version, not too incidentally.
His explanation:
"When I retired from the North Shore News, many people asked me to put out a book of columns and a review of the disgraceful and misnamed NDP "human rights" program. I have now done so and its title is: "Here We Go Again!"
The book contains 100 columns on many subjects, including those that led to the rights complaints, plus commentaries on the struggle for free expression."
Doug's home turf, the North Shore News, commented as follows in a Timothy Renshaw Editorial of November 2, 1998 titled "Call the cops! New Collins book launched | HUMAN rights alert!"
"Doug 'The Devil' Collins is alive and in your face and set to open the bomb-bay doors on another incendiary load of dangerous opinion.
You can't keep a good ink-stained wretch down, I guess -- even after he has been dragged before the BC Press Council, prodded and poked by the BC Human Rights brigade and vilified by every left-leaning fanatic and soft-handed media type across the land.
No, sir.
This Collins guy has an external coating of something they don't make anymore. Heavy-duty rhino hide, perhaps, something impervious to the buckshot and shrapnel of the mudslinging trade.
His latest project to poke sticks at the status quo and frighten the children is another compilation of his North Shore News columns. (...)
(A)publisher for another Collins venture would likely not have been be too hard to find. But, aside from its many drawbacks, self-publishing also cuts out the timorous middle man in the equation, which in Collins' case might be worth the gamble.
For Doug the Devil, the decision was his way of ensuring that the book was an uncensored and uncompromised dose of the Collins brand of free speech.
Here We Go Again! contains 100 Collins columns from his latter News period, which ended in September 1997, when he retired from the newspaper after 13 years and close to 1,500 columns.
Included in the latest collection is the notorious $200,000 Hollywood Propaganda rocket that launched the 1997 Human Rights Tribunal hearing involving Collins, the News and the Canadian Jewish Congress. Also in the package are the three other columns included along with Hollywood Propaganda in a subsequent human rights complaint lodged by Harry Abrams.
The columns are grouped under such like-minded sections as Me, The Human Rights Gestapo, and the Media; Immigration: the Deaf Leading the Blind; Humor is as Humor Does; and Phony Rights and Real Wrongs.
Individual column headings include: All alone on the rights griddle; Massacred by the media; Thought police on patrol; Rot about the right; Pokenoses and pressure groups; Hell is here to stay; News flash! Daily press discovers free speech; and A redneck to the rescue.
Here We Go Again! indeed.
The Collins execution squad will doubtless be readying its pack of victims to be re-offended. In the best of Collins traditions, the book represents an emphatic middle finger salute to that squad and anyone else easily brought to tears."
In a Letter to the Editors, Alberta Report, November 2, 1998, Collins had further things to say in "Press freedom is threatened":
Re: "Criticism equals discrimination," (Oct. 12).
There was a small but important error in your report on the human rights plague that is sweeping this country.
As your report stated, the first complaint against me and the *North Shore News* concerned the column "Hollywood Propaganda," in which I dealt with the movie *Schindler's List* (which I dubbed "Swindler's List"). As your report noted, that complaint was dismissed, albeit after a five week hearing that cost the *News* $203,000, which is not recoverable.
What was not correct was the statement that the second complaint involves "four other columns." In fact, it again involves the "Hollywood Propaganda" piece plus three others.
In other words, it is double jeopardy in the name of "human rights," a matter that appears to worry our human rights fanatics not at all.
The *News* and I boycotted the second tribunal. Our position is that the B.C. Human Rights Code is unconstitutional and is being blatantly used as a means of harassing the politically incorrect. For even if you win, you lose.
As I stated outside the hearing on July 20, truth is no defence under this abominable process, and the only hope for the preservation of freedom of speech and press in this province rests with the courts.
Until this and other codes like it are ruled *ultra vires*, we cannot kid ourselves that we are living in a free country.
Doug Collins,
West Vancouver, B.C.
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A real pro has spoken!
Here We Go Again! has been published in defiance of the censors and could become a collector's item. It is being published privately in a limited edition, and you might welcome an early chance to order it. It will not be available in the stores and costs $15.95, including tax, plus $3 per book for postage and packaging.
If you would like a copy or copies, please make out your Cheque or Money Order in Doug Collins' name. (See the order form.) If you are on E-Mail and wish to make further enquiries, the address is Douglas_Collins@bc.sympatico.ca
How to order YOUR collector's item - which Ingrid happily endorses, sight unseen!
To: Doug Collins,
P.O. Box 91831,
West Vancouver,
B.C., V7V 4S1.
Canada
Please send me......(copy/copies) of Here We Go Again! I enclose my Cheque/Money Order for $15.95 per copy, including tax, plus $3 per copy for postage and packaging.
Total......
For American friends: Please send me ......(copy/copies) of Here We Go Again! I enclose my Cheque/Money Order for $10 (U.S.) per copy, plus $3 per copy for postage and packaging.
Total......
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Thought for the Day:
"The point of all this is that words have power. They are not the only reality, as claimed at the beginning of Genesis, but they do play a key role in defining what is accepted as reality, which is why politically correct people imagine that by banning certain words, they can ban the reality behind them. They are wrong.
Orwell and Solzhenitsyn have shown us that reality will always make a comeback, that we can use words to undermine our opponents.
It can't be done by using logic; because key parts of our logic have been outlawed. At any rate, let us honor the few journalists on our side whenever we meet them."
(Excerpt sent to the Zundelsite, apparently from Instauration)