This is Part II of the rapidly developing political hammer blows that have rained down on the matter of Freedom of Speech for our neighbors to the North: A once respected Canada, now widely referred to as Absurdistan.
This ZGram is going to be long - but important!
Again, for those who are new to this struggle, I will have to sketch, in briefest words, the background to yesterday's announcement that ***the Supreme Court of Canada turned down in one day (!) three (!) of Ernst Zündel's applications for redress.***
These applications for redress were crafted carefully in protest against political abuse from two fronts:
1) the government of Canada who sicced a double-headed civilian spy agency and its supposed "watchdog" agency on him to look for dirt so as to finally deport him to his native country, Germany, for Holocaust Denial, and
2) the Canadian "Human Rights" Tribunal, a political hatchet outfit that only lacks the Red Star on its forehead to qualify for what it really is: A Marxist front for those who gave us Communism in the first place and who hightailed it out of Russia in recent years to find refuge in Canada.
In other words, Ernst Zündel faced, as recent as a week ago, ***a two-way front *** in intellectual warfare, behind which bunches up the mightiest and corruptest media and money machine in the world.
It is a complicated story - that puckered to a boil two days ago when the Supreme Court of Canada - all of them appointed judges by various Prime Ministers, without any public hearings - washed its hands of the whole affair and denied Ernst Zündel leave to appeal these grotesque lower court and Tribunal decisions.
With that, the PC papers howled and shrieked from sea to shining sea, Ernst Zündel's bid for Canadian citizenship, which he needed to be protected from arbitrary deportation, was over!
***Not so!!!***
Before these Supreme Court rulings even came down, Ernst Zündel explained in his December Power Letter to his supporters in 41 countries the widening scenario:
For the last five years, I have faced, and am still facing, politically motivated Tribunals whose outrageous decisions were frequently shielded from what my experienced attorneys told me were certain to be overturned, once real courts looked at these rulings. In fact, two Anglo-Saxon, lower court judges did just that - and the grotesque political tribunals against me came to a screeching halt, at least temporarily - only to be overturned by political appointees at the higher court levels. The rest of the lower court judges just went with the prevailing flow - one of them even reversing himself within a four-week period, ruling in my case diametrically opposite to what he had ruled in a judgment in a 'same fact' case less than a month ago!
Even as I write this, I am still facing a Tribunal in the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) which had been ruled biased by a Federal Court judge. That meant that the entire agency was ruled biased against me, based on what they had published about me. The next higher court overturned this judgment, saying in effect that that was okay - they could still sit in judgment over me.
My attorneys were aghast! I appealed to the Supreme Court. They did not even agree to accept or look at the case! In effect, the Supreme Court agreed with my political opponents, and so I am once again before that Tribunal - for documents, such as "Did Six Million Really Die?" I already successfully defended many, many times before!
SIRC has already heard secret witnesses, whose names and ranks I will never know. Not even the testimony of those testifying against me - ex parte, in camera witnesses - will be shown to me. Their testimony will be excerpted and truncated, then shown to my attorneys, so that we might take guesses at who might have accused me of what!
In the so-called "open", but still not public, behind-closed doors part of the hearings, the Canadian spy agency, CSIS, which acts as my accuser in this matter, will bring in "expert witnesses" from around the world. Each one of these witnesses is from the extreme opposite of the political spectrum of my views - hardly neutral or balanced witnesses.
One is an editor of the quasi-Marxist/Jewish publication "Searchlight" - the National Enquirer of the leftist political scene in England. The others are simply "flaks" used by the ruling oligarchy in cases against dissidents.
This Canadian spy agency has submitted a long list of 34 items of material, going all the way back to January 25, 1968 - the first time I had applied for Canadian citizenship and was turned down, without an explanation of why it was refused.
Most of the material consists of videotapes, audiotapes, newspaper clippings, television shows like "60 Minutes" - all of them edited, as is usual before broadcasting, as everyone knows.
For instance, this "Sixty Minutes" tape shows approximately 3 minutes of myself, including graphics, even though the actual interview with Mike Wallace lasted for 100 minutes. This voluminous material, taken out of context, is to be presented to CSIS's expert witnesses for comment and, of course, led in cross-examination.
And that's not all! Just this past week, my lady lawyer called me and said she had received a "Banker's Box" full of material with dozens of volumes, including - to her utter amazement! - "Did Six Million Really Die?" and "The West, the War and Islam" as well as "Liberty Bell" material, all of which were already scrutinized thoroughly and exhaustively in the longest Postal Tribunal hearing in Canadian history in 1981 - which I won!
They were once more gone over with a fine tooth comb in my preliminary hearings in June 1984, and once again in my trial of 1985, which lasted seven weeks. "Did Six Million Really Die?" was the basis for my retrial in 1988 in a marathon (four months) trial, which I ultimately won before the Supreme Court on August 27, 1992.
Yet this did not prevent the Canadian Human Rights Commission to start investigations and proceedings against me in 1995-96, based on a complaint by the same woman who had dragged me before the Postal Tribunal and the criminal courts 15 years earlier!
Now SIRC is one more time looking at, and sitting in judgment of, guess what? Among other stuff, "Did Six Million Really Die?" and "The West, the War, and Islam"! - in addition to voluminous material from B'nai Brith and other Marxist, Jewish, and Israeli sources. A telling example is an unpublished interview by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth of February 2, 1997 by their New York Bureau Chief, whom I accused of being a Mossad agent or informant right to his face during the interview, since he did not want to be photographed or filmed - while questioning me for hours! (...)
Telling it the way it is!
Kirk Makin, who had upset Canada's Jewish community in 1985 for his surprisingly fair and balanced court room reporting of the First Great Holocaust Trial in 1985, was attending the Zündel Human Rights Tribunal hearings for the first time in five years. (...)
When Makin found out that I was not in the courtroom, showing my contempt for the Human Rights Tribunal by my absence, he called me on my cell phone while I was still driving through an early winter ice-rain and sleet storm near Niagara Falls. I pulled over unto the curb as soon as I recognized his familiar voice, in order to concentrate on my answers to his probing questions, while a steady stream of cars zipped past me and the ice rain pelted the roof and windshield of my car.
Over crackling static and a poor telephone connection, he understood most of what I said. True to style, he did a fair and balanced article. As usual, important aspects of our conversation were edited out, but Kirk did report the essence of this interview, and it appeared in next day's Globe and Mail, Nov. 28, 2000.
I would only object to the headline, "Zündel throws in the towel at human-rights proceedings". Nothing could be farther from the truth. I might re-arrange my strategies, but I DON't throw in the towel! Ever! I am already preparing for the appeals, before even the summations have been made. I would hardly call that "throwing in the towel"!
While I did this interview, I knew in the back of my mind that there were several important judicial reviews still waiting to be heard in higher courts. One in particular was important to be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada - the one that concerns that obscene Human Rights Tribunal ruling that "Truth is not a defense", nor is my "intent" of any importance.
For hundreds if not thousands of years, the search for truth was always the cornerstone of the Anglo-Saxon, White Man's, Western Civilization's judicial systems. Will Canada's Supreme Court destroy this tradition? Just to get Ernst? Time will tell! (...)
Here is a small excerpt from that Globe and Mail article:
"As a human-rights proceeding against Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel approached its record-shattering fifth year yesterday, someone was notably absent from the hearing room. (...)
"After devoting an estimated $140,000 to his defence as well as numerous days spent strategizing and sitting in hearing rooms, the notorious Holocaust revisionist said he is tired of being a patsy.
"I would rather save my money and appeal their grotesque ruling when it comes out," he said in an interview. "The reason I'm not there is my disdain for these people." (...)
(Ernst Zündel in his Power Letter: continued:)
I faced some hard decisions, not only about my company and my own life but also about the fate of my friends, who could face legal problems if they continued to work for me or even cooperate with me.
Into this scenario came another bomb shell. The Security Intelligence Review Committee, as mentioned above, had told me that they were scheduling more "open" but still behind-closed-doors hearings against me from the 13th to the 22nd of December 2000. I knew from the mountains of material delivered that there could be months of time, energy and money-consuming hearings in the New Year... (A)ll this focused my mind considerably.
I had agonized over what to do. I weighed my options and consulted some of my trusted advisors. I spoke several times with Dr. Faurisson and arrived at a number of far-reaching legal and corporate decisions.
I decided to end the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearings - and did. To all intents and purposes, they ended December 7, 2000 - a Day of Infamy, as President Roosevelt called that day almost six decades ago!
I contacted Doug Christie, [Ed. Zündel lead attorney] who was literally on the other end of the world 19 time zones away, giving lectures. I told him of my decisions, and also that I would not go on with participation in SIRC hearings, that I would be withdrawing my application for Canadian citizenship, which I had made way back in September 1993 - and which led to the new round of persecution via yet another Tribunal.
I reproduce the letters I sent to the Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Elinor Caplan, informing her - and by another letter, SIRC - that I was withdrawing, and that, in the opinion of several attorneys, they would, with this move on my part, lose jurisdiction to investigate and try me any further.
STATEMENT OF ERNST ZÜNDEL
TO THE SECURITY INTELLIGENCE REVIEW COMMITTEE
Tuesday, December 12, 2000
In a letter dated December 12, 2000, my attorneys have informed the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Elinor Caplan, that I am withdrawing my application for Canadian citizenship made on October 24, 1993.
I wish to put on record certain facts in this matter for the sake of history in this ever more brutal and brutalizing struggle for Freedom of Speech in Canada:
The record shows that I have lived in Canada as a peaceful, non-violent, productive member of Canadian society since 3 September 1958. I have two children by a Canadian mother and three grandchildren here. I have successfully and continuously operated several businesses in Canada and have been self-employed since the age of 20. Since 1963, I owned my own home and other property. Almost a year after I applied for Canadian citizenship in 1993, Christie Blatchford of the Toronto Sun in an article published in the summer of 1994 quoted an immigration official as saying that my application was "flawless."
Furthermore, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on August 27, 1992 in my lengthy and costly "false news" case as follows in this court summary:
" Section 181 of the Code ["false news"] infringes the guarantee of freedom of expression. Section 2(b) of the Charter protects the right of a minority to express its view, however unpopular it may be. All communications which convey or attempt to convey meaning are protected by s. 2(b), unless the physical form by which the communication is made (for example, a violent act) excludes protection. The content of the communication is irrelevant. The purpose of the guarantee is to permit free expression to the end of promoting truth, political or social participation, and self-fulfillment. That purpose extends to the protection of minority beliefs which the majority regards as wrong or false."
This ruling by Canada's highest court overturned the "false news" law as unconstitutional and clearly gave me the constitutional right and also the constitutional protection to express my viewpoint on my German people's true history, as I have come to know it through decades of careful study, without fear of persecution and prosecution - as long as I did it non-violently!
I have never done anything else! I have suffered great violence while living in Canada, including attacks on my life and my property and have been harassed by police and incessant prosecution by various bodies of the government and private Jewish groups, but I have never retaliated with violence.
Since applying for Canadian citizenship seven years ago, I have been subjected to a legal quagmire due to false and spurious claims against me made by Canada's civilian spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, that I am a "security threat to Canada." Ironically, I was informed that CSIS's "investigation" is not a criminal investigation. Yet these Kafkaesque proceedings against me include the hearing of testimony of secret witnesses, ex parte, without me and my lawyer being allowed to be present. The transcripts of these secret proceedings will only be made available to me in a truncated, highly edited, excerpted form. I will not be able to face my accusers and denouncers, much less subject them to cross-examination in a public hearing. I will not know their names, ranks, positions, expertise or their political-ideological outlook or adherence.
It seems that, for the sake of window dressing, there will also be expert witnesses for "open" hearings. I have examined their background. These expert witnesses, proposed by the government, all come from the opposite of the political spectrum from myself - in other words, they are anything but neutral, as their public pronouncements and writings show.
Furthermore, these entire proceedings are a trial by newspaper stories, television shows, newscasts and videotapes - all of them severely and selectively edited. A typical example is the "Sixty Minutes" show, where out of a 100 minute interview with Mike Wallace a little more than three minutes of sound bites and images are shown. It is virtually the same in most of the material presented by CSIS as "evidence" against me.
I am offered the veneer that CSIS's "watchdog", SIRC, is going to "protect" my rights. What rights? SIRC was found to be tainted with a reasonable apprehension of bias against me by the Federal Court of Canada - Trial Division based on its report, "The Heritage Front Affair: Report to the Solicitor General of Canada." Sadly, subsequent court decisions overturned this ruling, callously ruling that SIRC did not have to meet the independence and impartiality of Courts.
Thus, SIRC is a political body appointed by and beholden to the whims and whines of the ruling liberal oligarchy, to which it submits its findings and recommendations. I am thus to be judged by entirely political criteria with a political goal in mind. The person who will ultimately decide my application has already given notice that I will never be granted citizenship. Mr. Chretien publicly stated several years ago to a largely Jewish audience in Toronto that "Holocaust deniers" - i.e. - people like myself who question some aspect of what has become entrenched in the public mind as "the Holocaust" - are "not welcome in Canada." The Chretien government and its officials have acted on that criterion, harassing people who are critical of Holocaust propaganda at Canadian borders, barring them entry, searching their cars and luggage, seizing their books and video tapes. Citizens who order publications from overseas have their mail seized.
I do not want to appear to approve with my presence a sanctimonious fraud and charade cloaked in quasi-judicial trappings which is only meant to vilify, criminalize and silence me in the end. To claim that I am a "threat to the security of Canada", where I have lived peacefully for 42 years with virtually no Canadian criminal record, is a false, deliberate lie, without any factual foundation.
I am sad that it has come to this, but I no longer wish to pursue Canadian citizenship. Nor can I afford to proceed to fight for it as I have done since 1993. I have been forced to spend over $80,000 in legal fees, court and peripheral costs so far in these obscenely unfair proceedings. My attorneys tell me that with my withdrawal of my application for Canadian citizenship, SIRC loses its mandate to proceed in this matter.
Neither I nor my attorneys will be present on 13 December, 2000 to continue this, for me, financially ruinous charade.
ERNST ZÜNDEL
I'll be interested to see what will happen!
Well, what happened was what the attorneys had told Ernst was the only legal thing for them to do - but it was still a big surprise to all of us because of its swiftness with which it came!
***The government of Canada gulped, blinked - and pulled back!***
Here is their reply from the Department of Justice, Canada, dated December 13, 2000 to Susan Pollak, Executive Director of the Security Intelligence Review Committee. It is like a lovely Christmas present - not only for Ernst, but for all of us who rooted for him.
"Dear Ms. Pollak:
"Re: Zundel Proceedings
"As you are aware, Mr. Zundel has communicated to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration that he has withdrawn his application for citizenship effective December 12, 2000. We can advise that Mr. Zundel's withdrawal of citizenship has been accepted by the Director General, Immigration Branch, Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Consequently, since there is no longer an extant application, pursuant to section 5 of the Citizenship Act, it is the position of the Attorney General of Canada and Minister of Citizenship and Immigration that there is no basis for the SIRC to continue with this current investigation under the Citizenship Act.
So that is where we are now. Hang on to your seats! If you know Ernst Zündel, you know it is never over until it is over!
One front, the assault by the government of Canada via its civilian spy agency, has been stopped, at least publicly, for now.
The second front, the Human Rights Tribunal hearings, is almost finished, too.
We will have us a lovely Christmas!
Believe me that before EZ is finished with business in this world, he is going to get his Canadian citizenship to which he is entitled and if he should still want it - replete with an apology from his persecutors!
And costs!
And damages for suffering!
Now what we are facing in the immediate future is what's left of the remaining front - the wrap-up of the Human Rights Tribunal.
The savagely restricted testimony has been heard. The Zündel legal team will craft a classy, powerful summation, worthy of the cultured people that we are - and wait for their response.
The prediction is that the response will be vicious and the language virulent. Their "cease and desist" order will be a document to serve the many freedom fighters worldwide from which to learn their lessons - for years and maybe decades to come.
Their mask of "humanitarianism" will be ripped off for all the world to see. These misnamed "Human Rights" Tribunals will stand exposed as the prime violators of the most basic of human rights - the right to defend oneself against false accusations by marshaling the truth - and the facts!
Remember? It happened with that little booklet, "Did Six Million Really Die?" Because of the high-profile court cases it triggered, it spread by the millions. And millions. And millions.
Ingrid
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Tomorrow: The document submitted in the "Truth is no defense" appeal - and what it means for Canada that now, for all to see, its highest court has wiped its feet on it.
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Thought for the Day:
"I wonder how much smoke comes out their ears as they must burn their brains coming up with all these lies and inventions!"
(Letter to the Zundelsite)
Back to Table of Contents of the Dec. 2000 ZGrams