The censorship case around the Zundelsite is multi-faceted and complex, as I have stated to exhaustion. It is easy to lose sight of what is ***really*** playing as new developments occur.
Let me try once again, in light of yesterday's laudatory news from "highest quarters":
Way back when I first painstakingly compiled my first Zundelsite documents, I made sure that on my homepage the following words appeared in prominent print:
"Everyone has the right of freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinion without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." (Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Rights)
After several massive attempts by Holocaust Enforcers, both in Canada and overseas, to get the Zundelsite kicked off the air in cyber space, as a last resort the Canadian Human Rights Commission was trotted out. It, in turn, appointed a Tribunal that was to deal with Ernst Zundel - deal with him once and for all!
The legal struggle that ensued became ever more surreal and abusive on the Human Rights Tribunal's and the various Holocaust Enforcer Intervenors' part. One of the grotesque results was a nine-page CHRT ruling stating this:
". . . consistent with a focus on effect rather than intent, it is the effect of the message on the recipient, and ultimately on the person or group vilified, that is the focus of the analysis. The truth in some absolute sense really plays no role. Rather, it is the social context in which the message is delivered and heard which will determine the effect that the communication will have on the listener. It is not the truth or falsity per se that will evoke the emotion but rather how it is understood by the recipient. The objective truth of the statement is ultimately of no consequence if the subjective interpretation, by virtue of tone, social context and medium is one which 'arouses unusually strong and deep-felt emotions of detestation, calumny and vilification'. Therefore, in our view, whether the message is true or not is immaterial. Whether it is perceived to be true or credible may very well add to its impact, but its actual basis in truth is outside the scope of this inquiry."
In other words, all that was needed was an "oy vey" out of the ever-whining quarters - and truth was no longer allowed.
Whereupon Ernst Zundel took himself promptly to Parliament Hill in an attempt to book a room especially set aside in the Press Gallery area for just such a purpose: to inform the Canadian people that truth as a defense in legal proceedings had just gone POOF in Canada, at least in front of the Zundelsite website Tribunal.
All of Canada, of course, knows the outcome. The result of that trip was a medieval Zundel ban, courtesy of Mr. Parent, Speaker of the House of Commons.
Not only that, for good measure the lead Zundel attorney, Doug Christie, was dealt the same censorship blow, once he took the various censors to court on Ernst Zundel's behalf.
I am not telling you anything new - I am just refreshing your memory to put the following into perspective, because it is significant. Hear-hear! According to yesterday's front page article in the Canadian National Post by Robert Fife, Ottawa Bureau Chief, we are apprised as follows:
"The United Nations has taken the unprecedented step of demanding that Parliament provide an Ottawa publisher with full membership privileges in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. The UN Human Rights Commission ruled that Gib Parent, the Speaker of the House of Commons, had violated the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that guarantees the "freedom to seek, receive and impart information" without "interference" by limiting Robert Gauthier's access to Parliament."
Now Mr. Gauthier is obviously not Mr. Zundel. Mr. Gauthier is described in this National Post article as a "publisher of the obscure National Capital News" who has been trying for 16 (!) long years to gain status as a press gallery member, which would entitle him to certain privileges, among them the use of the parliamentary library and ". . . the many perks and services afforded journalists by Canadian taxpayers."
The reason Mr. Gauthier was snubbed by the powers-that-be was, ostensibly, that he was ". . . not involved in daily journalism" and did not work for a regularly published newspaper.
The article describes his paper, quoting a "colleague" as often promoting "oddball causes," - in other words, we might infer, as likewise not being politically correct.
Mr. Gauthier tried, but failed, to get the Federal Court of Canada, the Ontario provincial court, and the federal Competition Bureau to take up his cause. As a last resort, he tried the U.N. route in 1996.
And guess what? Miracles still happen.
According to the National Post (. . . reporting a bit late, but who's counting . . . ?):
"On April 7, the UN ruled that Mr. Gauthier's inability to access the press facilities in Parliament "amounts to a violation of his rights under Article 19 (the UN covenant) to seek, receive and impart information." It demanded that Parliament respond by July 17 to its request that it set up an independent panel to review Mr. Gauthier's case."
"I'm pleased with this," Mr. Gauthier told the National Post. "The U.N. has ruled that the individual is stronger than the state."
Mr. Gauthier furthermore stated that he intends to sue Parliament and the employers of the 415 members of the press gallery to recover lost income over the past 16 years.
I am telling you all this with a very wide grin because in the first weeks of this coming September there is going to be a Judicial Review heard in the court in Ottawa, brought by Ernst Zundel against the members of Parliament, about the Zundel ban.
This U.N. ruling ought to help, for it would certainly appear to fair folks far and wide that the U.N. Human Rights Commission looks at this issue in exactly the same light as Mr. Zundel does, as his freedom-of-speech-loving lawyers and supporters do, as Ingrid does, and as her ZGram readers do. The Zundel attorneys will naturally draw the attention of the court to this ruling by the U.N. - and equally submit the Zundel grievance to exactly the same body.
Will there be, one more time, one of those conspicuous talmudic gyrations the cynics among us expect? Let's see how they handle this case.
How sweet life is! What goes around, indeed will come around. People have rights to free speech. Even Germans have rights to free speech. Even Zundel has rights. Or does he?
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers . . we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations."
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn