"Banning books?" wrote the ZGram reader who sent me the Reuters release below. "And we thought only Hollywood Nazis in Jewish made movies did that . . . ?"
Yes, right!
So now two of the largest book dealers - if not the largest! - in America if not the world will have to decide if the Simon Wiesenthal Center, using Germany, for crying out loud, is going to dictate to them what and where they can or cannot sell.
Dated August 10, and titled "Bertelsmann addressing German hate book sales", we are informed of the following:
Reuters:
German media giant Bertelsmann said on Tuesday it would advise its online bookselling partner Barnesandnoble.com to stop selling Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and other hate literature banned in Germany.
The company was reacting to a complaint sent by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center to the German Justice Ministry accusing Barnesandnoble.com and rival Amazon.com of violating German law by selling such books to German consumers online.
Zundelsite:
So censorship is coming to America, by the back door! What irony! Didn't America go to war against Germany - to stop Germany's dictatorial ways?
Watch now - there will not be an American bookstore manager with enough spine to oppose the German head office!
Reuters:
"Bertelsmann will suggest that Barnesandnoble.com's management create a list of books that will no longer be sold in Germany," Bertelsmann Chief Executive Thomas Middelhoff told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"My impression is that the Barnesandnoble.com management is willing to cooperate with us on this," he said.
Middelhoff added that Bertelsmann might use a list of hate literature from the Wiesenthal Center as a basis for what books it would suggest banning from its German selection.
Zundelsite:
Some of our readers ought to request that most interesting list to take a peek of who fears what. It might be a telling document that ought to be publicized widely.
Imagine the absolute naivité of a man like this Middelhoff fellow in such an important position, managing assets worth billions of dollars, to blithely follow the "advice" of a bunch of ghetto and shtetl dwellers with no authority over him whatsoever "advising" him what millions of his book customers can and cannot purchase or read. The mind boggles at such a scenario!
Reuters:
Bertelsmann and U.S. book store chain Barnes & Noble each own 40 percent of the Barnesandnoble.com with the remaining 20 percent on the New York Stock Exchange. Amazon.com was not immediately available for comment.
Middelhoff added that it aimed to block the distribution of "Mein Kampf" and other hate literature to Germany immediately. But he noted that because Barnesandnoble.com was an independent company, its management had the right to determine a policy.
Zundelsite:
So how do they intend to block it then? Are they going to electronically ink out portions of their websites, as they did with the Zundelsite in 1996 - so people couldn't see the booklet "Did Six Million Really Die?" We shall see how this unravels.
Reuters:
The Wiesenthal Center had said on Monday that its Internet researchers in Germany had ordered and received copies of "Mein Kampf" and "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a fraudulent early 20th century document that claimed an international Jewish conspiracy, from the two Internet companies.
The German Justice Ministry said that it was reviewing the accusations against the two retailers and noted that companies can be held legally responsible for distributing hate literature in Germany even if they are based in the United States.
"The law in Germany is clear," a ministry spokesman said. "Offering material that incites racial hatred with the intention of distributing it in Germany is illegal."
Zundelsite:
Small question: If Germans are not allowed to order these products, how come the Wiesenthalers can? Isn't that against the law? Did they get prior special permission?
Once again, because it is so superbly ironic: Germans will now dictate to Americans what they can and cannot sell - products which are perfectly legal in the USA? Orwellian.
Reuters:
(The ministry spokesman) added that he was not aware of any official investigation of Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com by German prosecutors.
Owning books with anti-Semitic or racist content is not necessarily illegal in Germany. But those found guilty of distributing hate literature or possessing such material with intent to distribute can be sentenced to up to three years in prison and fined.
Zundelsite:
This is, of course, all new to American merchandisers - and tailor-made to serve as a wake-up call for many. At least the "democratic mask" is being ripped off the German system. Germany is a dictatorship and hasn't been anything else for more than half a century, despite its "democratic" trappings.
Reuters:
Middelhoff said that such cases illustrated the new legal minefield created by the Internet.
"There are cultural differences at work here. This is a clear case illustrating the global nature of the Internet, as a mass medium that doesn't recognize any boundaries," Middelhoff said. "We need to find a way of dealing with this phenomenon."
He added that executives from the telecommunications and media industries planned to present proposals for Internet regulation to government officials and trade body representatives at a Global Business Dialogue summit in Paris in September.
Zundelsite:
Here is a fine sequence of thoughts for my discerning readership:
Since January of 1996, your valiant Zundelsite webmaster has withstood massive censorship attempts - along with the usual talmudic "extras": vilification, character assassination, demonization, financial terrorism, electronic assaults and sabotage etc.
First we had the cyber war of 1996, unleashed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. What was the end result? Blue ribbons - and the cloning of the Zundelsite by free speech advocates. Globally! They didn't win that one!
Then we had the indexing of documents - defeated in the courts of Germany (at least temporarily) fought for and paid for at our own expense. So far, they haven't won that one!
Next, we had the criminal electronic attack out of Nanaimo, where the "headquarters" of Nizkor are located in a mail box, the website underwritten by B'nai Brith. That crime is still on the FBI roster - and far from being stagnant.
Almost simultaneously, we had the Canadian Human Rights Commission sharks and all the various Holocaust Promotion intervenors sicced on us - who have so shot themselves in the Unspeakable this summer with their own hate campaign they are now begging for a "special judge" to help them crawl out of the mess of their own making.
Now we will see if Barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com will knuckle under - precisely where the Zundelsite did not!
With a handful of committed cyber warriors, donors, volunteers and legal help around the Zundelsite, we fought the censors to at least a standstill - and this without the help of Electronic Frontier and other free-speech-lip-service-only / we-don't-do-windows outfits.
Here is the lesson for real men and women who understand what this is all about: We CAN win against the evil of dictatorial censorship forces who are inspired by the Wiesenthaler ilk - if only we decide to stick it out and do our part. Vigorously! NOW! Not when it is too late!
Let's see now what spine is still left in American business. Let's see if the First Amendment means anything still to today's generation. Let's see who will blink first.
Barnes and Noble? Amazon? Or that handful of rabbis who think they can run America by remote control - using their defeated and conquered vassals of the Bertelsmann ilk?
To my ZGram readership I say: Why not write to barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com and give them a generous piece of your mind?
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"We are at present working discreetly with all our might to wrest this mysterious force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local nation states of the world. -
(Professor Arnold Toynbee, in a June l931 speech before the Institute for the Study of International Affairs in Copenhagen.)