I am happy to report that all of my "missing" December ZGrams are posted! It was a two-day job! I haven't yet begun to sift through my mail, including my e-mail, and I want you to know that the reason why I am no longer as attentive to your personal letters as I used to be and as I would still like to be, is simply that I am so swamped with hundreds of letters a day and requests for answers to questions, information etc. that I simply can't. Not even filters help! That is the price of success! :)
But I am back, and I am doing the best that I can, believe me! And I am happy that more and more of you are taking an active part in following up with information from your own files and sources praising and reinforcing those media folks who haven't yet lost all their brain capacity to the Canadian version of Political Correctness, as exemplified by that pompous body pimping for the Well-Connected, the CHRC, whose mission seems to be to terrorize into submission or ruin iconoclasts financially - while a complacent Canada is snoozing its last remaining freedom away.
Which brings me to a salutary post which appeared in the newsgroup bc.politics,tor.general,can.general. There, freedom cyberfighter, "Slade", wrote thusly on December 8, 1998:
"It is so very typical of moralistic tyrants that the rules they make are the very rules they will be the first to break."
Canadian newsgroup participant:
Speaking of breaking rules, what does this have to do with BC or Vancouver??!??!?!?!?!
Slade:
You have a columnist there (formerly?) of the North Shore News. Well respected for decades on the Vancouver scene, Doug Collins has worked for CBC and elsewhere.
Collins is a bit unusual, though. He has a conscience and, despite all his years handling news, seems to have preserved some principles. Thus he has come to tangle with those who prefer a nation of slaves to a nation of freemen.
The creation and management of a slave society is not possible in the presence of free speech, free press, and the unencumbered private ownership of firearms. Canada has seen those things vanish recently with remarkable rapidity. Those who remember Canada's low crime rate are astonished to discover the freedoms they have enjoyed for a hundred years are suddenly the cause of an impending crime wave and must be eliminated.
Thus the authorities turned on Doug Collins and attempted to break both him and the North Shore News with a series of legal prosecutions. It was not enough to charge them once, test the law, and accept the outcome. When the prosecution was not effective the first time, they tried again on slightly different charges. When that was unsuccessful, the BC prosecutor lobbied the Federal Canadian parliament to pass more laws to prosecute further.
The basis of that prosecution is the same "hate speech" nonsense with which they are hammering Ernst Zundel in Toronto. They promote the silly idea that "hate" is a communicable condition, like computer viruses, influenza, or forest fires. If a person mistakenly reads a book or opens an Internet web page with the wrong attitudes on it, POW! He could catch this horrible condition of "hate". It would penetrate his mind and make him commit violent acts against people he formerly had no problem with. Thus these laws refer to the "spread of hatred" like it was a social plague that justifies ANY violation of principles of justice.
That is how all this concerns you in Vancouver and BC. Not only is your province deeply involved in this current movement of "if thinking that is wrong, I don't want to be free" - your elected officials are using their position to push their "clean thought at any price" agenda onto all of Canada.
Now, compare the sorry state of freedom of speech in Canada to what is happening in Russia - as per this small excerpt sent to me by one of my old-time ZGram readers: (Source NY Times Sun. Jan 3,'98 Pg. 8 Int. Sect. Discussion of economy and society in Russia.)
"Russia has become a noisy, even raucous democracy. Its citizens can now travel abroad and millions of them do.
Though often subservient to economic interests, Russian newspapers, radio and television are uncensored. Virtually any political opinion can be found on the newsstands of Moscow alone.
The phenomenal rise of the internet - even the Communist party has a website - seems to insure there can be no retreat to the days when the state defined reality.
'I expected more from the democrats, but nevertheless they have not given up on freedom of speech and freedom of conscience', said Dmitri S. Likhacev, one of the nation's most venerated scholars. 'It is essential not to lose those freedoms, especially now they are under attack' ".
Adds my good cyber friend who sent me this:
"My comment: Canada is a little late in attempting to model on the USSR."