America has plenty to be thankful about on this Thanksgiving Day - and given what came humming overnight into my office via fax, I would put the First Amendment on top of that list for which to give thanks to our forebears.
This may be your last year - and, changes are, might well be your last decade to have your say your way?. Be thankful for your freedoms while they last. They may not last. Freedom of Speech, such as it is, will soon be a thing of memory in every other Western democracy, the way things are developing. Here's Canada, before your very eyes sliding right into the censorship abyss:
Source: National Post, November 25, 1998
Title: Crackdown on hate materials planned: Tougher laws would include penalties, hard drive seizures
Reporter: Jim Bronskill
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National Post: "Possession of hate propaganda for the purpose of distributing it to others could soon be a crime."
Zundelsite Comment: Americans always assume that countries like Canada, Germany and other Western democracies are modeled after theirs. Little do they know that this is a false assumption.
In Germany right now, a 70-year-old man, Udo Walendy, is in prison - not for what he said, but for what he ***didn't*** say. In some Revisionist work he authored, the scoundrel didn't pay tribute to the Holocaust Lobby ***enough*** - neglecting to emphasize that in the blood bath that was World War II, nobody suffered as much as the Jews.
So there he is, behind bars! Only one of more than 7,000 others who face a similar fate for similar "crimes" in Germany - an alleged "democracy"! As a salutary lesson to others!
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National Post: "The measure is among several planned Criminal Code reforms aimed at toughening laws against the spread of hatred."
Zundelsite Comment: What spread? What hatred? Didn't Bernie Farber, Community Relations spokesman for the Canadian Jewish Congress, as quoted in a June article in the Montreal Gazette, admit that anti-semitism in Canada was at the lowest level since World War II ?
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National Post: "The package will include specific new penalties for the desecration of churches, cemeteries and other institutions - a response to such crimes as the spray-painting of swastikas on gravesites and synagogues."
Zundelsite Comment: Read Laird Wilcox's works such as the Hoaxer Report.
I remember what happened right in my neighborhood a couple of years ago. A lurid story of a "hate crime" - that is, graffiti on a synagogue - was reported prominently on Front Page. The report of the ethnicity of the schmierfink - you guessed it! - replete with a handy psychiatric excuse right in his trouser pockets, was downplayed on Page 16 or so.
Same day. Same paper. Costs: $1.99 for a spray can. That's how statistics are padded or and sometimes even incidents created!
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National Post: "It would also include a Criminal Code revision allowing police to seize computer hard drives containing hate propaganda."
Zundelsite Comment: Makes me wonder what could happen to me, were I to live in Canada. If people send me "Attachments", they automatically go into my systems folder - a place where I don't often visit. Can you imagine what mean-spirited people might do - to me and to you? Anybody with a yen to do in a politically incorrect neighbor need only send a juicy attachment - and tip off the police! (Don't send me unasked-for attachments! They will be immediately purged!)
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National Post: "Another move would prevent those charged with promoting hatred from using the defense of truth based on a denial of the Holocaust or any other historically recognized act of genocide."
Zundelsite Comment: So there you have the German concept "Offenkundigkeit" being slipped into Canada - the European equivalent of the American "judicial notice" concept.
Certain things, goes the reasoning, are so "obvious" they cannot be argued in court. Night follows day. The sun sets in the West. Youth comes before old age. The Holocaust was an "historically recognized act of genocide."
Now you know what the Zundelsite Tribunal hearings are really all about. We flushed 'em out with that one all right - perhaps a little prematurely?
That's what Ernst was going to discuss at the Parliament Press Conference on June 5th - that truth would be no longer a defense in Canada, and what it would ***mean*** to Canadians!
The Canadian Jewish Congress did not that one bit and had it speedily stopped!
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National Post: "Federal and provincial justice ministers quietly agreed to the charges recently during a meeting in Regina."
Zundelsite Comment: Of course they would "quietly" agree. Do thieves planning theft trumpet their plans from the roof tops? Only those up to no good avoid public debate and public scrutiny.
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National Post: "'There was unanimous support for the principles here, that hate-motivated violence is something that we condemn,'" said Pierre Gratton, press secretary to Justice Minister Anne McLellan.
Zundelsite Comment: A ZGram reader sending me a letter yesterday described a similar scene:
"I saw an AIPAC meeting on C-span once where Bill Clinton was in the audience listening to the speakers and clapping like a page. They let Bill come up and say a few words but he wasn't one of the major speakers. And a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of Israel at the DC Holocaust Museum went basically the same way. Senators and Congressmen jumped up like lap dogs to lick their master's face. And When the PM of Israel was murdered Senators and Congressmen fought to get seats on Airforce One to go to Israel for the funeral. It's not . . . racketeering, it's tribute."
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National Post: "Federal justice officials are studying the planned revisions with the aim of bringing in legislation next year, Mr. Gratton said yesterday."
Zundelsite Comment: Ernst commented last night that ". . . given what I have seen the Liberals do, this revision will be in place by the end of March 1999 at the latest . . . "
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National Post: "Current Criminal Code provisions prohibit anyone from inciting hatred against members of an identifiable group distinguished by colour, race, religion, or ethnic origin. Under the changes, the list of characteristics would be expanded to include sex, sexual orientation, age, and mental or physical disability."
Zundelsite Comment: It is called Empire Building. It will mean clogging up the courts. The fools will pay for it.
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National Post: "The new offence concerning possession would apply to those who have hate propaganda for the purpose of distributing it with the intention of promoting hate."
Zundelsite Comment: Note such loosey-goosey concepts as "purpose" and "intention".
Hate crimes ***could*** happen! If you can't see that, it means you are anti-Semitic! Censor free speech! Start with pornography to get a system going!
See where "intent" comes in? We are talking about actions that are assumed ***will*** happen in the future but need to be criminalized NOW. It's like getting a speeding ticket before you have started your car.
Just like in Germany where people have been charged and convicted for writing to all Members of Parliament on historical issues while bills relating to those issues were considered.
What an opportunity waiting to happen. It will take politically correct mind-readers and soothsayers to administer the proposed changes in the Criminal Code. Bernie Farber, Marvin Kurz, Sol Litman and other have long experience and undoubtedly will offer to help and train cops and prosecutors to see and find hate in material they don't like - even if you and I and the Mayor of Toronto cannot find it even with a magnifying glass.
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National Post: "The provision will make it easier to crack down on hate mongers while protecting the rights of people to openly discuss controversial issues, said Ujjal Dosanjh, British Columbia's attorney-general, who has been pushing for adoption of the new measures."
Zundelsite Comment: What hypocrites! What double-speak! Ujjal Dosanjh is the provincial attorney general who took it on the nose when he was trying to nail Canadian columnist, Doug Collins. In that case, he wasn't exactly "protecting" his victim's "rights to openly discuss controversial issues", was he?
Inquiring minds want to know: Was he, by any chance, inciting hatred against Collins, by asserting that Collins was inciting hatred? Did he consider himself within the law in doing so? Dosanjh lost against Collins, which must be why he is so eager now and wants to change the laws.
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National Post: "'It would preserve academic freedom, freedom of expression and all those values that we cherish,'" Mr. Dosanjh said yesterday in an interview. "
Zundelsite Comment: Ask Phillip Rushton who was interrogated by the cops and has been running scared ever since.
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National Post, still quoting Mr. Dosanjh: "'Promotion of hatred isn't a value that we cherish as Canadians, and that's where it would stop.'"
Zundelsite Comment: You betcha! Soon, many more Kanadians will be facing the Kommissars of Loving Kindness and will ask with Solzhenitsyn: "What? Who? Me?"
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Let me finish this ZGram with two angry posts in response to a rather nonchalant Canadian who thought he could do with a little less Freedom of Speech if he could shut up the villain Ernst Zundel:
* "There was a time when people fought and died for the liberties. That will not be the end of the fighting or dying, either, even if the world follows your plan. Others will have to fight and win back the liberties you are happily throwing away with both hands, and I do not think they will be laughing."
* "One day, you will have all have the ugly, repressive, terrorist government you seem to crave so badly, just as you arguably deserve. It will not come from Zundel and his supporters. It will come from ordinary people like you, trampling people to death under your small cloven hooves."
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"A cultist is one who has a strong belief in the Bible and the Second Coming of Christ, who frequently attends Bible studies, who has a high level of financial giving to a Christian cause, who home schools for (sic) their (sic) children, who has accumulated survival foods and has a strong belief in the Second Amendment and who distrusts big government.
"(A)ny of these may qualify a person a cultist but certainly more than one of these would cause us to look at this person as a threat, and his family as being in a risk situation that qualifies for government interference."
(Janet Reno on National TV on June 26, 1994)